‘Molly of Denali’ will stop producing new content after fifth season airs
The next season of the PBS KIDS show “Molly of Denali” will be the last for the foreseeable future.
The team behind the award-winning children’s TV show will stop working on new content. Molly of Denali is widely celebrated in Alaska because it features an Alaska Native lead character and showcases Indigenous culture.
This comes as the Trump Administration is cracking down on federal funding for NPR and PBS. But Alaska State Writer Laureate Vera Starbard, who is a writer and story editor for the show, said that’s not the full story.
While she and other writers knew the decision was in the works before the presidential election last year, she said they didn’t get the official announcement until last week. And she said she doesn’t think there’s just one reason for the decision.
“What I don’t want is for a show this great and this exceptional to be put into this very polarized political lens of ‘it’s x person that did it. It’s this x action that did it,’” she said. “It’s actually a lot of sort of typical television reasons combined with, ‘yes, I do think [the] funding atmosphere that has been tough for a while, political atmospheres, those all for sure contribute to the much bigger reasons.”
This isn’t the end for the show though. GBH produces “Molly of Denali.” In an email, a spokesperson wrote that there’s still another season that will air, but that PBS KIDS is not commissioning another season of the show.
“Molly of Denali” premiered in 2019 and was the first nationally distributed children’s program to feature Indigenous main characters. The show won its first Emmy Award earlier this year for an episode written by Juneau resident X̱’unei Lance Twitchell. He and Starbard are among several Alaska Native writers who contributed to the show during its run.
Starbard said the news is bittersweet.
“It was just sort of a mix of emotions, hearing about it, being proud that we accomplished this thing all together, at the same time knowing it’s potentially over,” she said.
PBS confirmed new “Molly of Denali” episodes will continue to air through the next year and beyond. The show’s library of episodes, podcasts and games will still be available to people in the coming years.