One of the biggest hooks here is that Ted: The Animated Series is not simply taking the characters and replacing everybody behind the microphone. Seth MacFarlane returns as Ted, while Mark Wahlberg once again plays his longtime thunder-buddy John. Amanda Seyfried is back as Sam, John’s wife, and Jessica Barth reprises her role as Tami-Lynn, who is now Ted’s wife.
The animated format may be new, but the voices should sound very familiar.
The cast also adds Kyle Mooney as Apollo and Liz Richman as Ruth, giving Ted and John a few new people to drag into whatever terrible decisions they make next.
Ted and John have somehow reached family life
Here is where things get interesting.
Ted: The Animated Series takes place 12 years after the end of Ted 2. John and Ted are now neighbors, both have families of their own and both are stuck in dead-end jobs.
Basically, adulthood happened to them.
That does not necessarily mean adulthood changed them.
The series follows the two friends as they continue encouraging one another’s bad ideas while trying to deal with marriage, parenting, work and all the other responsibilities that come with supposedly growing up.
Anyone familiar with Ted and John probably already knows how smoothly that is going to go.
Seth MacFarlane takes Ted into another format
Seth MacFarlane created the animated series alongside Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh, who also executive produced the live-action Ted television series.
Corrigan and Walsh will serve as co-showrunners, while Rough Draft Studios handles the animation.
Animation also opens up an interesting new playground for this particular character. Ted has never exactly been restricted by normal behavior, but an animated world can take his bad ideas much further without having to worry quite as much about the laws of physics.
And considering this is Ted we’re talking about, that could become dangerous pretty quickly.
The Ted story keeps getting bigger
It has been a long road for a character who started as the childhood wish of John Bennett.
The original Ted movie arrived in 2012 and introduced audiences to the foul-mouthed bear who had grown up right alongside his best friend. Ted 2 followed in 2015, and the franchise later went backward in time with the live-action Ted series.
Now the animated show gets to move things forward again.
Ted and John may have wives, families and jobs now, but the basic friendship at the center of the franchise is still intact. They’re older, they’re supposedly wiser and they still seem perfectly capable of talking each other into something ridiculous.
Some things apparently never change.
Check out the official teaser trailer for Ted: The Animated Series below.
Ted: The Animated Series premieres with eight episodes on Thursday, December 17. Additional episodes will stream in 2027.
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