In a shocking announcement this week, we found out that the cult series Twin Peaks was returning to television, and we still kind of can’t believe it. The original series ran for two seasons of ABC, but was cancelled due to low ratings. Since then, it’s become something of a cult phenomenon as more and more people get into the show via streaming services like Netflix. And though there was a feature film in 1992, Fire Walk with Me, fans have long dreamed of a proper sequel to the series, taking place right after the events of the second season.

After 25 years though, it seemed impossible that this would ever happen. The time of Twin Peaks had passed, and we should just appreciate what David Lynch gave us, enjoy the two seasons that exist of it, and move on.

But then it happened. This week, Showtime announced that the show would return for a nine episode limited series in 2016, as we previously reported. All nine episodes will be directed by Lynch, and the show will continue storylines from the second season. It’s a full continuation of the Twin Peaks story, over two decades later.

It was pretty shocking news, but really, it shouldn't have been that surprising. In recent years, there has been precedent for long dead shows being revived, and with the rise of cable and streaming services, there are more and more places a show can go after being killed, especially when there’s a large fan base there like Twin Peaks.

As exciting as the Twin Peaks announcement was, it's hard not for fans to be just a tiny bit skeptical. After 25 years, will the new season be able to live up to all the hype? How often do shows return after being cancelled, sometimes after a long hiatus, and not end up being disappointing?

To try to answer that question, let’s take a look at 10 other examples of shows that were brought back from apparent death, all with varying degrees of success both critically and financially.

image courtesy of INFphoto.com

[ new page = Futurama ]

10. Futurama

The Futurama situation is pretty hilarious because it's a show that has actually “ended” on three separate occasions. The series, created by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, aired from 1999 to 2003 on Fox before being cancelled at the end of its fourth season. For a while, Futurama was a four season series with a somewhat rushed but decently satisfying ending.

Then in 2007, the show was revived with four straight to video films. These were later aired on Comedy Central, split up into 20 minute segments and dubbed the show’s fifth season. The last of these direct to video films, Into the Wild Green Yonder, was also presumed to be the end of the series, and that film ends with the possibility of the show continuing but also a fair amount of resolution if it didn't.

And then Futurama was revived yet again, with Comedy Central officially picking up the show for a 26 episode sixth season airing in 2010. The network renewed the show for a seventh season the following year. It was then announced that Futurama was ending yet another time with the end of Season 7, which aired in September of 2013, being the last episode. However, Groening has expressed openness at continuing the series, so it’s not out of question that the show will be brought back for a fourth damn time.

Though the movies were generally received well, many fans expressed some initial disappointment at the show’s return to Comedy Central, and there was some sense that it didn't live up to the hype and wasn't as good as the original series. But the show ended up coming into its own with some pretty great episodes throughout its Comedy Central run, and with a pretty great series finale that was received warmly by most fans. Futurama ends up being an example of how a show can come back and not quite live up to the quality of the original series, but still be pretty enjoyable.

[ new page = Community ]

9. Community

For Community fans, it seemed to all be over in May 2014. After receiving pretty mediocre ratings for most of its run and constantly being on the bubble, NBC finally cancelled the cult comedy series at the end of its fifth season. This was after a history of constant problems, such as star Chevy Chase dramatically leaving and the showrunner being fired (and then rehired).

Throughout the summer, the fan community desperately scrambled to try and get the show picked up by another network. There were fan campaigns to contact Netflix and Hulu and petition for a sixth season, as the show gets much of its viewers from online streaming anyway. But things seemed to be going nowhere, and by the end of the summer, both Netflix and Hulu had said they would not pick up the show.

As the day of the actors’ contract expiration came, the Community fan base was pretty somber, finally accepting that the show was over and there would be no resolution to any of the storylines left dangling in the season 5 finale.

But then something crazy happened: Yahoo Screen announced it had picked up the show for Season 6. This was an absolutely shocking announcement, both because Community’s revival seemed completely impossible by this point, and because barely anybody even knew what Yahoo Screen was.

But Community is coming back for a sixth season this January, albeit without Yvette Nicole Brown. How successful this show’s transition from TV to the Internet will be remains to be seen, but it goes to show that we’re now living in a time when a show with mediocre ratings, but a very vocal fan base really be saved.

[new page = Family Guy]

8. Family Guy

It’s hard to believe, but one of the most popular animated series of all time, Family Guy, was actually cancelled only three seasons into its run. The series began airing in 1999 on Fox and aired three seasons until in 2001, Fox cancelled the show due to declining ratings.

The show wasn't gone for long though. After its cancellation, Fox sold the rights to Family Guy reruns to Cartoon Network, which began airing the show on Adult Swim. The show became Adult Swim’s highest rated program, boosting their viewership by 239%.

Additionally, when the show was released on DVD it did unbelievably well, with the first and second seasons selling 400,000 copies within a month of release. This no doubt had Fox severely regretting their cancellation of the show, and so in 2004 they announced they would bring it back.

This was the earliest example of a show being brought back directly because of DVD sales, and is a rather unusual example of a network bringing back its own show not long after cancelling it, rather than another network swooping in.

[new page = Arrested Development]

7. Arrested Development

Now's the story of a funny show that lost everything, and the one network that had no choice but to bring them back together: it's Arrested Development.

It’s still pretty hard to believe that Arrested Development was brought back from the dead. The series was probably the most notorious cancelled show of all time next to Firefly, to the point where “Arrested Development Season 4” became a running joke referring to something that would never happen. But we’re now living in a world where Arrested Development season 4 is a real thing.

After being cancelled by Fox in 2006 due to poor ratings, Arrested Development became a cult hit, with fans calling for its renewal for years and years. Then in 2012, Netflix stepped up to the plate and announced it would be renewing Arrested Development for a fourth season. It was an absolute dream come true, which showed the true power of online streaming.

The fourth season of Arrested Development aired in 2013, but unfortunately it received a mixed reaction from fans, with many calling it a huge disappointment and wishing the show had stuck with three seasons. The main complaint among the fan community was that due to conflicting schedules, much of the season was shot with the actors being separate from each other, with the family rarely all in the same scene.

Though a lot of fans argue the fourth season was actually brilliant in its own way, the Arrested Development revival raises the question of if it's sometimes better for a show that went out on the top of its game to stay cancelled.

[new page = Doctor Who]

6. Doctor Who

Yes even Doctor Who, one of the most massively popular sci-fi shows, seemed like it was dead in the water for a period of time.

The British series began broadcasting on November 23rd, 1963. The show was a huge success, and so it ran on the BBC for 26 seasons. But in 1989, the show was losing viewers, and BBC1 decided to suspend production of the show. They wouldn't call this a cancellation though, assuring fans that the series would return. But for now, Doctor Who was essentially dead.

There eventually was some more Doctor Who six years later when in 1996 Fox, Universal Pictures and the BBC teamed up on a Doctor Who made for TV movie. But this wasn't the success the BBC was hoping for, and so aside from this brief glimmer of hope, there was no Doctor Who from 1989 until 2005.

The show returned in 2005 as a rebooted series, which was created by Russell T Davies. Since this reboot, the show has become a massive success outside of just the UK, with many fans in America and around the world. This reboot was a sort of reset of the show, still continuing the continuity from the previous history of Doctor Who, but starting with Season 1. It was also pretty friendly to new viewers, and it's pretty common now for American Doctor Who fans to have only watched the show from the 2005 series.

The show is currently in its eighth season of the reboot, and this is one of the prime examples of how a show can effectively come back from a long break and be just as good if not better than ever.

[new page = Beavis and Butt-head]

5. Beavis and Butt-head

It seems a lot of people don’t even realize this show ever came back, but after 14 years, it had a brief revival on MTV just a few years ago.

Beavis and Butt-head was a notorious show in the 1990’s about a pair of dumb, immature teenagers who would make sexual references and criticize music videos. It aired on MTV from 1993 to 1997.

In this case, the show mostly ended because the creator, Mike Judge, felt it was time for it to end, not because the network unexpectedly pulled it. Judge wanted to go work on a new show, King of the Hill, which was also a huge hit.

Then in 2011, Judge and MTV decided to revive the show. It’s not quite clear that anyone was really begging for a renewal as with shows like Firefly and Arrested Development. Beavis and Butt-head seemed like a relic of the 1990's that would be impossible to recapture in modern times.

But actually the revival did very well, with the premiere getting MTV 3.3 million viewers and with the fan response being generally pretty positive.

Though the revival did well for MTV, its ratings declined mostly due to competition with other networks, and MTV never ended up ordering a second season (while not officially cancelling the show). Since then, Judge has discussed the possibility of taking the show to another network.

But despite its future still being unclear, in terms of fan response, Beavis and Butt-head was a great example of a revival that it seems nearly everyone was pretty happy with.

[new page = The Killing]

4. The Killing

Like Community, The Killing was a show that just never seemed to catch a break.

The crime series, which has been compared to Twin Peaks, began airing on AMC in 2011. Its ratings were consistently okay but not spectacular, so at the end of the second season, AMC cancelled the show.

But then something weird happened that could only happen in modern times. AMC announced that they had made a deal with Netflix to continue the show. The Killing would continue to air on AMC, but Netflix would have exclusive streaming rights to episodes. Netflix would also be paying for a lot of the show’s production costs. The series accomplished the rare feat of being cancelled and brought back by the same network, but unlike Family Guy, it was brought back the very same year.

And then it got cancelled again. At the end of 2013, AMC announced it was cancelling the show again, for real this time. It would not be returning for the fourth season.

And then the show was brought back again. A few months later, Netflix announced it would pick up the show for a fourth and final season, a season which ended up being met with pretty good feedback from fans.

The Killing, along with Community, is a great example of how much easier it is to save a show from cancellation in the days of online streaming, where companies like Netflix and Yahoo can simply sweep in at the 11th hour and pick up the show.

[new page = Veronica Mars]

3. Veronica Mars

This is yet another example of how much is possible in the age of the Internet.

Veronica Mars starred Kristen Bell and aired on The CW for three seasons from 2004 to 2007. Despite ratings for Veronica Mars gradually improving, The CW decided to cancel the show in 2007. Almost immediately there began to be whisperings of a possible movie, with creator Rob Thomas saying he had met with Kristen Bell to discuss a potential film.

But hopes for the movie were diminished when in 2009, Bell said she doubted the movie would ever happen. She and Thomas had taken the film pitch to Warner Brothers, she said, but the studio said there was no real enthusiasm for a Veronica Mars movie. Unlike shows like Family Guy, the DVD sales for Veronica Mars weren't spectacular, so the studio didn't get the sense there was a large audience waiting to eat up a movie.

In the following years, Thomas continued to express interest in the movie, but making clear that getting financing was the major obstacle. But we no longer live in a time when major studios are the only ways to fund a movie, and in 2013, Thomas and Bell took the project to Kickstarter to have fans raise the funds. It was a massive success, and the project raised its $2 million goal within its first day. By the end of the campaign they had raised a total of $5 million.

The Veronica Mars movie finally became a reality earlier this year, releasing in limited theatrical release as well as on online streaming. Between its box office and video on demand, the film just barely broke its budget of $6 million. So while not a smash success, it wasn't a failure either, and the film was pretty well received by fans and critics.

[new page = Scrubs]

2. Scrubs

Regarded by many as one of the best comedies of the 2000s, Scrubs nearly had a very unfortunate and unsatisfying ending. Its seventh season consisted of only 11 episodes due to the writers strike of that year, and NBC announced that they would not be picking the show up for an eighth season.

The last episode of season seven was just a regular episode, not a series finale wrapping up any of the characters' storylines. This would have been the way Scrubs ended had ABC not swooped in and picked up the show for its eighth season. The eighth season was much better received by fans than the seventh and was able to have a true finale, an episode which was generally loved by fans and which received a 9.7 on IMDB.

But of course, season eight wasn't the end, and ABC ended up giving Scrubs another season. Scrubs season 9 has become shorthand for a show going on longer than it should have. The ninth season introduced a bunch of new characters with some appearances from the original cast, and basically the entire Scrubsfan community has agreed to pretend this season doesn't exist.

So while it was no doubt great that the show was able to return from death and get a proper ending, this is also an example of how a show being revived can sometimes lead to it going on just a bit too long.

[new page = Firefly]

1. Firefly (sort of)

Joss Whedon’s Firefly is widely regarded as one of the greatest examples of a show being cancelled before its time. The sci-fi series aired in 2002 on Fox, but was cancelled due to poor ratings after only 11 episodes.

But even as it aired the show had a loyal fanbase on the Internet that was outraged when the show was cancelled so early. They organized campaigns to try to revive the show, which included raising money for an ad in Variety and organizing a writing campaign to UPN. It still remains as one of the most passionate and vocal fan communities for any show.

Despite fan efforts, Firefly never got a second season, but luckily for fans, the end of Season 1 was not the end of the story. In 2005, mostly due to the tremendous fan calling for it, Universal released a feature film followup to Firefly, Serenity.

If it was successful, this could have led to the continuation of the franchise, but unfortunately for fans, the film did not do very well at the box office, making $10 million on its opening weekend on a budget of $40 million. The film was received well by fans though, and so this is a pretty positive example of a show being cancelled but still getting some sort of revival later on, largely due to the huge fan base.