Netflix’s animated puberty comedy Big Mouth ran for eight seasons and 81 episodes, from September 29, 2017, to May 23, 2025. It was created by Mark Levin, Nick Kroll, Jennifer Flackett and Andrew Goldberg. It scored 8.0/10 (Metacritic 80/100) across published critical tallies.
The show follows middle school kids in the Westchester County suburbs of New York as puberty tears their lives apart. It is crude, it is often gross, and it is one of the most honest things Netflix has ever put on its service.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Nick Birch and Andrew Glouberman
The core of Big Mouth is a friendship. Nick Birch and Andrew Glouberman are best friends, and Kroll voices his own fictionalized younger self. John Mulaney voices Andrew.
The two boys are based on Kroll and Goldberg’s upbringing, and that grounding is what keeps the show from floating off into pure shock value. The jokes are loud, but the shame underneath them is quiet and real.
Puberty here is not a metaphor. It is a physical event that happens to bodies on screen, and the show refuses to look away.
Maury, Connie and the Hormone Monsters
The show’s best invention is the hormone monster. Maurice, voiced by Kroll, pesters Andrew and Matthew, and sometimes Nick. Connie the Hormone Monstress, voiced by Maya Rudolph, pesters Jessi and Nick, and sometimes Missy. Mona mainly pesters Missy.
These creatures are over-sexualized shoulder angels, and they are the engine of the series. They push the kids toward things the kids are not ready for, then stand back and watch.
Maya Rudolph does double duty as Diane Birch and Connie, and she is the show’s secret weapon. Her Connie is seductive, funny and genuinely menacing in the same breath.
Jessi, Jay and Matthew
The supporting kids carry as much weight as the leads. Jessi Klein voices Jessi Glaser. Jason Mantzoukas voices Jay Bilzerian. Andrew Rannells voices Matthew.
Fred Armisen voices Elliot Birch, and Jordan Peele voices the Ghost of Duke Ellington. That is an absurd amount of comic talent for one animated series, and the show uses nearly all of it.
Jay is the show’s id, and Mantzoukas plays him at full volume. Matthew’s arc matters because the show treats his sexuality as a fact rather than a problem to solve.
The Shame Wizard and the Depression Kitty
Big Mouth personifies everything. The kids meet the Ghost of Duke Ellington, a French-accented Statue of Liberty, a pillow capable of getting pregnant, a capsule of Adderall, and Jessi’s own vulva.
Then there are the emotion creatures: the Shame Wizard, the Depression Kitty, Tito the Anxiety Mosquito, and the Lovebugs Walter, Sonya and Rochelle. Each one turns an abstract feeling into a character with a voice and a grudge.
This is where the show earns its reputation. The Shame Wizard is not a gag. He is the thing that makes teenagers lie to their parents, and the show knows it.
A Musical Sitcom About the Body
Big Mouth is billed as an adult animated coming-of-age musical sitcom, and the musical part is not decoration. The songs are part of how the show processes embarrassment.
It also embraces an openness about the human body and sex that most American television still avoids. That openness is the point. The show is not trying to be shocking. It is trying to be accurate about what adolescence actually feels like.
The first season ran ten episodes and premiered on September 29, 2017. The second arrived on October 5, 2018.
Eight Seasons on Netflix
Netflix renewed Big Mouth through a sixth season in July 2019. A Valentine’s Day special landed on February 8, 2019, ahead of the rest of season three on October 4, 2019.
Season four came on December 4, 2020. Season five followed on November 5, 2021. Season six premiered on October 28, 2022, and season seven on October 20, 2023.
In April 2023, Netflix renewed the series for an eighth and final season, making it one of the longest-running original scripted series the service has produced. That final season was released on May 23, 2025.
Teenage friends find their lives upended by the wonders and horrors of puberty in this edgy comedy from real-life pals Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg.
Human Resources and the Spin-Off Problem
The spin-off Human Resources debuted on March 18, 2022, and ran two seasons before concluding on June 9, 2023. Netflix confirmed in April 2023 that it was canceled.
The spin-off is the clearest evidence of what Big Mouth does well and what it cannot export. The hormone monsters work because they are attached to specific kids with specific problems. Pull them out of that context and you lose the thing that made them matter.
Human Resources was not a failure of animation or casting. It was a failure of stakes.
What Big Mouth Gets Right
The show’s real subject is not sex. It is the gap between what kids know about their own bodies and what they are willing to say out loud.
That gap is where the Shame Wizard lives, and it is why the Depression Kitty and Tito the Anxiety Mosquito land harder than any joke. Big Mouth treats mental and physical upheaval as the same event, because for a thirteen-year-old they are.
The show also does something rarer than it gets credit for. It lets its characters be wrong, embarrassing and unlikable without punishing them for it.
Where the Show Lands
Eight seasons is a long time to sustain a premise built on a single biological event, and Big Mouth does not stay sharp the whole way. The later seasons lean harder on creature-of-the-week invention, and the spin-off proved the formula has limits.
But the show’s best material holds up. The hormone monsters, the Shame Wizard and the musical numbers are not gimmicks. They are the most direct language American television has found for what puberty does to a person.
Big Mouth is crude, and it is frequently disgusting, and it is also kind. That combination is hard to pull off, and the show pulled it off for most of a decade.
Score: 8.0/10 (Metacritic 80/100)
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