In the years since the indie animated web series The Amazing Digital Circus debuted on YouTube in late 2023, it's become a gigantic viral phenomenon.

The pilot has been viewed more than 425 million times, and the immensity of the show's online fandom (complete with lively merchandising scene) prompted Netflix to license the episodes for streaming.

(The entire series — currently eight episodes — is still available free on YouTube, similar to the way Amazon Video picked up Vivienne Medrano's animated YouTube series Helluva Boss, which is also still free on YouTube.) Now, the series is taking its next big step toward the mainstream: Episode 9, the series finale, will debut exclusively in theaters this June.

The series, animated by Australian indie studio Glitch Productions, and written, directed, and scored by a creator who goes by "Gooseworx," follows a group of cartoony characters trapped in a circus-like virtual-reality setting presided over by Caine, a ringmaster-like AI.

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In the pilot, an accountant who remembers putting on a virtual-reality headset in the real world shows up at the circus in a jester/clown character avatar.

Unable to remember her real name, she accepts the name "Pomni" and immediately starts looking for escape routes.

Throughout the series' run, she learns more about the circus and Caine, as he sends her and her fellow captives on title-like missions with darker purposes.

Image: Glitch Productions The Amazing Digital Circus was inspired by Harlan Ellison's classic 1966 short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," a maximalist story about an insane, hate-driven, all-powerful AI endlessly torturing the last surviving humans on Earth.

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But the show puts a whimsical, candy-colored spin on that idea, with Caine as a similarly powerful but often hapless and goofy overlord of his digital domain.

Episode 8 of the show debuted on March 20, and has since been viewed more than 81 million times ## Editor's Note The implications of this news could be significant for the industry. Source: [Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/amazing-digital-circus-finale-where-to-watch-release-date/)