Today, Apple’s streaming service, Apple TV Plus, has done something unheard of in streaming television. The company has now re-released the final episode of the canceled sitcom Mythic Quest with a new, re-edited ending. The re-edit removes the original season cliffhanger and replaces it with a new ending that acts to resolve the show’s lingering plot point, thus wrapping up the series by giving the show’s supporters, and characters, closure.
But while the re-edit may please fans, it raises some interesting issues concerning the entertainment historical record.
A first in TV streaming
On March 26, Apple TV Plus released the 10th episode of Mythic Quest season four. Titled “Heaven and Hell,” this episode was initially designed to be the season’s finale, and, as most season finales do, it ended on a cliffhanger.
However, after the season finale aired, Apple announced that it was canceling Mythic Quest. With no season five, the show’s cancellation meant that the series ended on a cliffhanger that would never be resolved—just like so many streaming series that were canceled before it.
But then Apple did something unexpected and unheard of in the world of streaming television. It allowed Mythic Quest’s producers to go back and re-edit the season four finale by swapping out the cliffhanger ending for one that better aligns with a series finale—in other words, one that wraps up the show’s loose threads.
Mythic Quest’s creators and executive producers, Megan Ganz, David Hornsby, and Rob McElhenney, announced the unusual move last week, stating, “Because endings are hard, with Apple’s blessing we made one final update to our last episode—so we could say goodbye, instead of just game over.”
And now, the re-edited Mythic Quest episode is available.
How the original and re-edited endings are different
If you navigate to the Mythic Quest listing on Apple TV Plus now, you’ll see that the episode shows a new original air date of April 18, 2025, signaling that Apple has now released the re-edit.
As the entertainment website Pajiba points out, the re-edited episode features a relatively small change. In the original episode, the show’s two main characters, Ian and Poppy, who have always had a platonic and professional work relationship throughout the show’s run, kissed. The repercussions of that cliffhanger kiss ending were originally meant to be fully explored in Mythic Quest’s season five.
Yet the re-edited episode now removes the kiss ending entirely. As Pajiba notes, “It’s the same episode, only this time, the two agree to repair their working relationship, but it remains platonic. They hug, and that’s it.”
It’s likely that since work had already ceased on the series, this new hugging scene had already been previously shot, which is what allowed the creatives to alter the episode so quickly within just weeks of its original release.
Altering the historical record
While fans of the show will no doubt be grateful that Apple gave the creatives permission to go back and change the final “Heaven and Hell” episode to provide closure for them the show’s characters, how Apple has handled it is worth pointing out.
There are television shows that have been canceled before that were later brought back on a new network or revived on streaming, but never, to my knowledge, has there been a show that has had its last episode aired before cancellation, changed, and then re-released.
But it seems like Apple has chosen to go about its fan-pleasing move by not caring too much about the entertainment historical record. That’s because there is nothing left on Apple TV Plus’ platform that suggests the “Heaven and Hell” episode available now is anything but the one that originally aired.
Mythic Quest’s season four finale has now been relabeled as the “Series Finale” in Apple TV Plus’s show listing. Apple has chosen to make only the re-edited version of the show available to watch. (We’ve reached out to Apple to ask if it plans to also release the original version at some point.)
Furthermore, its original release date has also been changed from March 26 to April 18, 2025. It is also not mentioned anywhere in the episode that the episode has been re-edited from its original version—nor is there an option to view the original ending.
In other words, it seems like Apple has taken the George Lucas approach to changing the historical entertainment record. In the late 1990s, Lucas released a version of the original Star Wars trilogy with new scenes and effects inserted. Lucasfilm then essentially wiped the trilogy as it originally was from existence. To this day, Lucasfilm (and now its owner, Disney) only makes the re-edited version of the Star Wars trilogy available for consumption.
When it comes to a less culturally relevant show like Mythic Quest (compared to Star Wars), is this that big of a deal? Probably not—at least not to general streaming subscribers. But the wiping of the original episode highlights how, in this digital world of ours, anything can be altered at any time—and the original may not always be preserved for posterity.
