What’s Going on With ‘New Girl’ and Netflix?

New Girl is widely regarded as a quirky and fun sitcom made for casual viewing, mostly noted for its chemistry between the leads, Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick Miller (Jake Johnson).

The dramedy was previously available on Netflix, but it left the streaming service early last year, and fans of the show will instead need a Hulu or Peacock subscription to see their favorite sitcom characters onscreen. The announcement of New Girl getting a new streaming home came in March 2023, when it was moved from Netflix following Disney’s decision to relocate 20th Century Studios shows (formerly known as 20th Century Fox) to Hulu, in which Disney is a part stakeholder.

All 146 episodes of the show were made available to stream on Hulu and Peacock from April 17, 2023, onwards. Apart from New Girl, other former 20th Century Fox shows like American Horror Story, Pose, and Arrested Development were also moved from Netflix.

Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, New Girl follows the life of Jessica Day, a 30-something teacher who decides to move into a Los Angeles loft with three men—Nick Miller, Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr.)—after a bad breakup. The quartet forms the core cast of the show, which introduces two more lead characters at a later stage: former roommate Winston Bishop (Lamorne Morris) and Jessica’s best friend Cece Parekh (Hannah Simone). The show was produced as a single-camera comedy and ran for nearly seven years, from September 2011 to May 2018.

The show’s debut season was met with a great response from the audience, as it managed to pull 8.22 million viewers. The second and third seasons maintained steady viewership with 5.85 and 4.61 million viewers, respectively, which was followed by a sharp decline that continued from seasons four to seven. However, the show has managed to maintain cult status despite that, with Nick Miller’s status as the internet’s boyfriend playing a major role in that.