‘Arrested Development’ Season 5 Release Date Announced: The Show Is Returning in May

Netflix Arrested Development

Netflix has just released the Season 4 remix of Arrested Development, and fans are already wanting to know when we can expect Season 5. The show has just announced that Season 5 is returning on May 29, but the tweet was immediately deleted. The show quickly fixed this with a new tweet that wasn’t deleted, showing the same date.  Read on to learn more.

Arrested Development‘s official Twitter account just announced, on May 7, that the show is returning on May 29. The account then deleted the tweet, so we’re not sure what that means. But here is the notification we saw about the release date before it was deleted:

Twitter

The show fixed that error and released another tweet with the same news, and it’s not deleting that one. So it looks like it’s official.

Even before the show announced the release date, fans were given a lot of hints that the show was returning sometime in May.  When he announced the remix release, the show’s creator Mitch Hurwitz also said that Season 5 is going to be released so soon that you’ll be surprised when it’s available. “Like real soon,” he said on Twitter. “Like, if you knew when, you would not be wrong to be thinking, ‘Why are we all just hearing this now?'” (And now that we know the return is May 29, he was right!)

Variety hinted that Season 5 might be released later this month, which is far sooner than anyone else has predicted. Variety wrote: “A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the news about Arrested (Jeffrey Tambor returning to Season 5), which is set to return to the streaming service later this month.” This story was published after the Season 4 remix was released on Netflix, so it was referring to the Season 5 release date. Some fans thought that Arrested Development’s Twitter feed was hinting at a Mother’s Day release date, but the new season is coming a little later than that.

Hurwitz’s Twitter is one of the best places to keep an eye out for the show’s release date. He was one of the first to announce the Season 4 remix. So if you follow him on Twitter and then choose to get mobile notifications, you’ll hear immediately when he releases more details about the Season 5 premiere date. You’ll also want to follow the official Arrested Development Twitter account, and turn on mobile notifications for that one too. This is the account that first announced new release date.

Hurwitz also tweeted this Pop Culture story on May 1 and noted that “you’ll get to see the wonderful Henry Winkler in the fifth season of Arrested Development WAY Sooner than the, again, wonderful Henry Winkler predicts in this article.” In the article, Winkler predicted that Season 5 would premiere sometime this summer, later clarifying “midsummer.”

So Arrested Development Season 5 is for certain going to be released “way sooner” than mid-summer. Summer technically lasts from June 21 to September 22, making mid-summer happen late July to late August. But the show is being released May 29, which is far sooner than that.

Jason Bateman provided one additional hint about the release date before it was officially announced. He said the season would release before Season 2 of his Netflix series Ozark. Season 1 of Ozark debuted July 21, 2017.

Fans were making their own predictions about the Season 5 release date too. One fan thought (hoped) that Season 5 might be released on Friday, May 4, since the Season 4 remix was released a day earlier than expected. (And the original Season 4 is actually still on Netflix too, despite what he thought in the tweet below.)

We’ve learned a few other tidbits about Season 5. Ron Howard will return to do the voiceover. And Jason Bateman said that Season 5 will return to the Fox format and pick up right where Season 4 left off.  He told Rotten Tomatoes: “I would recommend before season 5 starts for people to go back through that fourth season and try to refamiliarize yourself as best you can with that, because the first two episodes of the fifth season basically stitch into the final parts of the fourth season as a sort of a continuation and it kind of zippers the two together, then starting in episode 3, really starts covering all the new ground of this fifth season.”

Bateman has also said that Season 5 is going to be the best season yet for the show.  Apparently at least part of the season is going to have a murder-mystery format. And it also may feature some prequels and actors playing younger versions of the cast.

Jeffrey Tambor will be back for Season 5, along with Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Jessica Walter, Will Arnet, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, and David Cross. Tambor was fired from Transparent after harassment allegations, but Netflix only commented to Newsweek that “Transparent is an Amazon show.”

When Season 5 is released, you can watch it on Netflix here. Do you have a prediction for the Season 5 release date? Let us know in the comments below.