The Kardashians arrived on Hulu on April 14, 2022, carrying a promise its own synopsis makes plainly: an all-access pass into the lives of Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie, from billion-dollar businesses to school drop-offs. It is a retooled continuation of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which ended in 2021 after 20 seasons on E!. The new show does not so much reinvent that machine as relocate it.
Trailer, via Hulu.
A Forty-Episode Order Before a Single Frame
Hulu greenlit The Kardashians for a multi-season launch of forty episodes before the series debuted. The first season ran 10 episodes. Every season since has run 10 as well. That is an unusual vote of confidence for an unproven show, and it tells you what the streamer thought it was buying: not a gamble, a fixture.
The pitch is honesty. The synopsis promises “the truth behind the headlines” and a “rivetingly honest story of love & life in the spotlight.” What the show delivers is the same family, the same cameras, and a format that has been running, in one form or another, since the E! years.
The Cast, and the Partners Who Drift Through
The core six are all credited as themselves: Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian Barker, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner. The series centers on the three Kardashian sisters and their half-sisters Kendall and Kylie, with Kris alongside them.
Across the seasons, partners and ex-partners pass through: Travis Barker, Tristan Thompson, Scott Disick, Corey Gamble, Kanye West, Lamar Odom and Caitlyn Jenner. Friends and celebrities drop in occasionally. The revolving door is the show’s real structure. Relationships enter, get discussed, and exit, and the cameras are there for all of it.
Ranked by how much the series actually needs them:
- Kris Jenner — the engine. Without her there is no multi-season order to justify.
- Kim Kardashian — the headline the show keeps promising to get behind.
- Khloé Kardashian — the most reliable source of unguarded reaction.
- Kourtney Kardashian Barker — the family’s built-in resistance to the format.
- Kendall and Kylie Jenner — the half-sisters whose separate lives the show keeps reaching for.
Eight Seasons, Seventy Episodes, and a Calendar That Never Stops
The show’s run is its own argument. Eight seasons and 70 episodes, first aired April 14, 2022, last aired December 25, 2025. The first four seasons premiered twice a year. The second arrived in September 2022, the third and fourth in May and September 2023, the fifth in May 2024. A sixth and seventh season were ordered in July 2024, and premiered in February and October 2025.
| Season | Premiere |
|---|---|
| 1 | April 2022 |
| 2 | September 2022 |
| 3 | May 2023 |
| 4 | September 2023 |
| 5 | May 2024 |
| 6 | February 2025 |
| 7 | October 2025 |
That is a schedule built for habit, not for event television. Nothing here asks you to clear an evening. It asks you to keep the subscription open.
What “All-Access” Actually Buys
The synopsis promises the “intense pressures of running billion-dollar businesses” and “the hilarious joys of playtime and school drop-offs.” Those two poles are the whole design. The show wants the boardroom and the kitchen to sit in the same episode, and it wants you to believe both are equally revealing.
They are not equally revealing. The business material arrives already managed — a brand, a launch, a number that has been cleared for air. The domestic material is where the show occasionally loosens, because children and siblings do not read talking points. The gap between those two registers is the gap between the show it advertises and the show it is.
A Retool, Not a Reboot
Calling The Kardashians a continuation is accurate, and it is also the problem. Keeping Up with the Kardashians ran 20 seasons on E! and ended in 2021. What replaced it kept the family, kept the format, and changed the platform. A retool is a fair description. A reinvention it is not.
The streaming move does buy one real thing: length. Ten episodes a season, no commercial breaks, no broadcast standards tugging at the edges. Whether the show uses that room is another question, and mostly it does not. It fills the time with the same beats at a slightly slower pace.
The Score, and What It Reflects
The Kardashians holds a 4.9 out of 10 on Metacritic, with a score of 49 out of 100. That number is not an accident of taste. It reflects a show that arrived with a forty-episode commitment, a familiar cast, and a promise of honesty it cannot fully keep, because the family at its center has spent two decades learning exactly how to be watched.
The parts that work are the parts the machine cannot fully control: a sister’s irritation, a partner’s awkwardness, a mother managing everyone in the room. The parts that fail are the parts that were sold hardest — the billion-dollar businesses, the truth behind the headlines, the all-access pass that turns out to be a well-lit hallway.
Eight seasons and 70 episodes later, the show has proved it can run indefinitely. It has not proved it has anything new to say. The Kardashians is competent, watchable and almost entirely unsurprising, which is a strange verdict for a series whose central pitch was revelation.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.