Yahoo Is Keeping Community Alive for a 6th Season

Community is one step closer to ”six seasons and a movie.” Today, Sony Pictures Television announced that the series, which NBC cancelled in May, will return this fall on Yahoo Screen for a sixth 13-episode season.

For five seasons, “six seasons and a movie”—a meta-joke from the show—became a rallying cry for fans and cast alike as Community hung on by the skin of its teeth, on the perpetual brink of cancellation. Finally, this May, NBC dropped the hammer, announcing that despite the show’s respectable ratings and avid fan following, it wouldn’t be renewed for a sixth season. For a while, rumors flew—Community was going to another network, it was getting picked up by Netflix (unlikely) or Hulu (a better bet), etc.—but its survival was still a long shot. By mid-June, the chatter had died down, actors announced new projects, and it looked like Community was over for good. Now it’s been given yet another chance.

With luck, the Yahoo Screen reprieve will give Community, under showrunner Dan Harmon, a chance to send the show off right. Harmon was fired on the eve of the fourth season, and while he was back for the fifth, the show never quite regained its footing. A sixth season isn’t just a chance for Community to wrap up trailing plot threads, but to go out with the same kind of bang that made it—at least for a while—one of the best sitcoms on the air.

While Harmon himself initially seemed lukewarm about the prospect of a save, he’s been nothing but positive about the Yahoo Screen deal, telling The Hollywood Reporter he’s “very pleased” to see the show return, and vowing to dominate its new competition.

After that, who knows? After all, as one viral campaign to save the show said, “you don’t get to a movie without making six seasons.”