Finn Brooks: Hey! Good, good — actually wait, have you had a chance to look at the Lost Media Wiki entry for this? Because I went down it last night and I — okay I have thoughts, but you go first, you've been sitting on this.
Hope Sterling: I have been SITTING on this, thank you. Okay so — Johnny Test: The Lost Web Series. WildBrain announces it March 15, 2019, right, this short-form YouTube revival, fifteen episodes planned. And the only one that ever touched the public was 'The League of Johnnys,' which went live May 2nd, 2020 and got privated — on May 5th. Three days.
Finn Brooks: May 5th. That's not a rollout strategy, that's a — I mean, that's a panic button.
Hope Sterling: Right?? And like — no explanation from WildBrain, none, ever. Which, okay, companies pull things all the time, but you put it on your own official Johnny Test YouTube channel, you made it public, people watched it—
Finn Brooks: And then silence. Not even a 'we're reworking it,' not a 'coming soon' placeholder — just gone.
Hope Sterling: And the other fourteen episodes are just — nowhere. Like, lost media. Actually tracked on Lost Media Wiki as a real documented lost media case. In 2020. During a pandemic when everyone was online archiving literally everything.
Finn Brooks: That is the detail that keeps breaking my brain a little — 2020 specifically. The archiving instincts of that particular internet moment and it still slipped through.
Hope Sterling: Someone was not watching the channel that week and I need to know who.
Finn Brooks: But okay, hold on — because that's actually where I have to pump the brakes a little. The premise we walked in with today said one of the lost episodes is 'set to premiere soon,' and I went looking for that, like actually looking, and — Lost Media Wiki? Lost Media Archive? Both of them still classify the whole web series as ongoing lost media. No confirmed recovery. No announcement.
Hope Sterling: Wait — still? Like, as of now?
Finn Brooks: Still. And the research basically says it flat out — 'current sources contain no evidence of lost episodes set to premiere soon.' What actually exists is informal leaks in fan communities. Which is — I mean, that's completely different from WildBrain going 'here's a date, here's a link.'
Hope Sterling: Okay that's... deflating. Like, I wanted that to be real.
Finn Brooks: It's like — think of it as someone posting a concert listing before the venue has actually confirmed the date. The energy is real, the want is real, but the ticket doesn't exist yet. Leaked into fan spaces is not the same as recovered and scheduled. Those are two completely separate things.
Hope Sterling: No, that's the right way to put it, actually. Because like — fans finding partial content somewhere and fans getting an official WildBrain drop are not the same headline and I've been treating them like they are.
Finn Brooks: And no announcement from Netflix either, for what it's worth. Which matters because — I mean, Netflix is in the picture with the broader revival, so if anyone was going to flip the switch on releasing these, it'd be one of those two. And neither has said a word.
Hope Sterling: So what we actually have is Lost Media Wiki doing the job that WildBrain... just isn't.
Finn Brooks: Exactly that. Fan archivists holding the institutional memory because the institution won't. That's the confirmed part. Everything else is still a wish.
Hope Sterling: But wait — and this is what's been nagging at me — people keep comparing this to, like, old BBC tape erasures? The whole 'oh, lost media, it happens, Dr. Who episodes got wiped in the seventies' thing. And that's not the same thing at all.
Finn Brooks: Oh, that comparison is doing so much wrong work.
Hope Sterling: Because the BBC was — like, that was neglect, right? Someone needed a tape and grabbed the wrong shelf. Nobody sat down on May 5th, 2020 and went 'yes, delete.' Except WildBrain literally did. There's a date on this decision.
Finn Brooks: And it's their own channel. WildBrain uploaded it, WildBrain privated it — no DMCA, no rights dispute snowballing out of control. Someone at DHX-slash-WildBrain, same company, made a specific call. That's not negligence, that's a choice with a timestamp.
Hope Sterling: And there's zero regulatory requirement — like, platform-native content, nobody's making them keep it anywhere. They control every copy.
Finn Brooks: Which, okay, and here's the detail that kind of broke me a little — James Arnold Taylor didn't even come back for this. The original voice of Johnny Test, gone. So this thing was already orphaned from its own legacy pipeline before it got deleted. No Taylor means no natural home in any archive the original production would flow into.
Hope Sterling: Wait — Taylor didn't come back? So Kids' WB to Cartoon Network, nine years of that voice, and then WildBrain just... recast and then also deleted it?
Finn Brooks: It compounds every time, I mean — Cookie Jar, DHX, WildBrain, each handoff is another moment where archive responsibility just quietly evaporates and nobody signs for it.
Hope Sterling: And honestly the part that comes later is going to make this worse — because what Lost Media Wiki is actually doing versus what an actual recovery would even require? Those are two completely different things and we need to get into that.
Finn Brooks: — and that's exactly it, because picture this: some twelve-year-old in 2031 wants to watch the Johnny Test web series. They Google it. WildBrain's channel? Nothing. Netflix? Nothing from Scott Fellows' production notes, nothing from the original Kids' WB era. The only thing that tells them this show ever existed is the Lost Media Wiki entry.
Hope Sterling: That is — wait, that's actually kind of haunting? Like a Wikipedia page for something that just... vanished?
Finn Brooks: The wiki entry IS the record. Lost Media Archive too — they're both tracking this as partially found animated content, which means, I mean — 'partially found' is doing heavy lifting there, because what's found is the knowledge that it was made and then suppressed. Not the actual episodes.
Hope Sterling: So recovery in the real sense — like, someone actually watches 'The League of Johnnys' follow-ups — that only happens if WildBrain or Netflix does an official release. Which hasn't happened.
Finn Brooks: Hasn't happened, no confirmed date, and — wait, actually this is the part — WildBrain has now gone through, what, Cookie Jar to DHX to WildBrain, all these corporate transitions, and each one is another moment where someone could've just... not forwarded the file.
Hope Sterling: Right — but specifically WildBrain uploaded it themselves in 2020 and still said nothing after. That's not a handoff failure, that's just silence.
Finn Brooks: On their own channel. That's the part. No external pressure made this happen — and no external pressure is going to un-happen it either. Fan archivists preserved the documentation of a loss. That's genuinely different from preserving the thing itself.
Hope Sterling: Okay, and I'll say the bigger thing here for one second — studios can just quietly erase platform-native content and nobody has to answer for it.
Finn Brooks: Right — but specifically WildBrain, their own channel, May 2020, and still nothing. That's not a systemic abstraction, that's a timestamp with a name on it.
Hope Sterling: My one detail that I cannot let go — WildBrain has issued zero statement. Not in 2020, not in the six years since. May 5th happened and they just... kept the account running, kept posting other stuff, and said nothing. That's the haunting part to me.
Finn Brooks: Mine is that the remaining thirteen, fourteen episodes — whatever the final count is — they're still just lost media. Like, officially. Lost Media Wiki isn't tracking a recovery, it's tracking a gap. That's where we actually are.
Hope Sterling: Okay but wait — that means the silence IS the answer, right? Like, if six years go by and WildBrain never explains May 5th, 2020... that IS the explanation.
Finn Brooks: I mean — yeah? I think so? And honestly that's scarier than any specific reason would've been, because it means every other platform-native show sitting on some server somewhere is one quiet corporate decision away from the exact same fate and nobody has to say a word about it.
Hope Sterling: To 'The League of Johnnys,' three days of freedom, and the Lost Media Wiki doing more archiving than the actual studio. Cheers.
