Cartoon Network · 2011 to 2012
Studio 4°C rebuilt Thundera as a serialised anime-influenced fantasy, ran it for 26 episodes, and never got to finish. The best-reviewed ThunderCats production since the original, and the shortest.
The 2011 Reboot
In July 2011 Cartoon Network handed ThunderCats to Studio 4°C, the Japanese house behind Tekkonkinkreet, and asked for the origin story the 1985 series never told. What came back was darker, serialised, and built to run for years. It got one season.
Developed by Ethan Spaulding and Michael Jelenic for Warner Bros. Animation, the 2011 series reopened the fall of Thundera from the beginning. Lion-O is a prince rather than a lord, Tygra is his adopted brother and rival, and the Sword of Omens is a question the show takes 26 episodes to answer. Continuity carried from one week to the next, which the 1985 run almost never did.
The look was the loudest change. Studio 4°C brought an anime-influenced line and a colour palette the property had never worn, and paired it with Andrea Romano's voice direction and a cast that mixed television names with career voice actors. It divided the fanbase on sight and won most of them over by the back half.
Cartoon Network split the run, holding the back half from November 2011 to March 2012. When the finale aired in June, the show was described as being on hiatus rather than cancelled, and no announcement ever came. Art director Dan Norton confirmed in early 2013 that it was finished.
Season two existed on paper. The Avista cliffhanger the finale leaves you on was the setup for it, which is why the last episode plays less like an ending than an interruption. The reasons most often given by the people who worked on it are soft toy sales on the Bandai line and the damage that mid-season gap did to the audience.
There is no season 2 of the 2011 ThunderCats, and there will not be one. The order was for 52 episodes across two seasons; 26 were produced. The second half was written and partly boarded before the plug was pulled, which is why the finale ends where it does rather than resolving anything.
What survives is what the crew have said since. Season two would have picked up straight from the Avista cliffhanger, carried the search for the remaining Power Stones forward, and paid off the betrayal the finale sets up. None of it was animated, none of it was released, and no script or reel has ever been made public. Anyone claiming a season 2 episode list is working from fan speculation.
The property has restarted twice since instead: ThunderCats Roar in 2020, and the Warner Bros. Pictures Animation feature confirmed in June 2026. Neither continues this story.
The 2011 series recast most of the roster and gave several of them histories the 1985 run never had. Each entry below covers the character as this series wrote them.
Every ThunderCats character across both series is indexed in the character encyclopedia.
Voice-directed by Andrea Romano. Larry Kenney, the 1985 Lion-O, plays Lion-O's father here, so the pilot hands the character from one actor to the next on screen. Full roster, photographs and credits on the voice cast page.
In the US the series streams on Hulu, and it can be bought or rented on Prime Video, Fandango at Home and Google Play. The complete season is also available on Blu-ray. Availability shifts by region and by year, so confirm on your own service before buying anything.
There are 26, all in a single season. The run opened with an hour-long pilot, Omens Parts One and Two, on 29 July 2011 and closed with What Lies Above Part Two on 16 June 2012. Every one of them is indexed below with its air date and synopsis.
Cartoon Network never aired a formal cancellation. The series was described as being on hiatus after the season one finale, and it was art director Dan Norton who confirmed in early 2013 that it was over.
The plan had been for 52 episodes across two seasons. Soft toy sales on the Bandai line and a mid-season schedule gap that pushed the back half of the run to March 2012 are the reasons most often cited by the people who worked on it.
No. Season two was written and partly boarded but never produced, and the property has moved on twice since: ThunderCats Roar in 2020, and the Warner Bros. Pictures Animation feature announced in June 2026. The 2011 story ends unresolved, on the Avista cliffhanger.
Will Friedle, of Boy Meets World and Batman Beyond. King Claudus was played by Larry Kenney, who had been the original Lion-O in the 1985 series, which makes the 2011 pilot a father-and-son handover between the two men who have voiced the character.
In the US it streams on Hulu, and it can be bought or rented on Prime Video, Fandango at Home and Google Play. The complete series is also out on Blu-ray. Availability moves around by region and by year, so check your own service before buying.
No. It is a full reboot with its own continuity, animated by Studio 4°C in an anime-influenced style, and it retells the fall of Thundera from the beginning rather than continuing the Rankin/Bass run. The characters and the Sword of Omens carry over; the story does not.
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Every episode of the single season, in air-date order, with synopses and a frame from each. Switch between the cel wall and the list.
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