Hey friend,

I get asked about the future of Eddsworld a lot and I think it’s time I gave you all an honest answer.

When Edd died I went into denial. I wasn’t ready to accept that the thing we’d built together was over now, and that our personal relationship was just… Gone. I believe almost all of Edd’s friends felt this way. Instead of taking the time to grieve however I jumped straight into business-mode and started making huge promises. 8 more eddisodes? Sure! Posters, wristbands, books, personalised thank-you videos, a full soundtrack, and a making-of documentary for the donators? Why not?! A DVD with every single eddisode fully remastered with multi-language playback? LET’S DO IT!

“Edd’s world will keep on spinning!” I claimed as I called upon the fandom to help us fund the show. I’d worked with Edd for 9 years. I’d co-written, co-directed and co-produced the show since I was 14 - I could do this. I asked Paul, who was living with me at the time, how much time and money he’d need to take over from Edd and we went from there. See, I wanted to keep Edd alive, but I was afraid people would think I wanted to profit from Edd’s channel. I vowed to donate 100% of the show’s takings to charity, and to do that I needed a pot of cash to pay our crew (from fear of judgement I even promised to publish our financial records monthly to avoid suspicion, but scrapped that idea because how much money our crew makes is their business and theirs alone). The response was overwhelming and we surpassed the desired amount. We had everything we needed to spend the next two years giving Edd’s show a proper send-off. Then I fell apart.

You see, with the arrival of $83,211 in donations, the motivation to keep Eddsworld alive went from being an act of love to a legal obligation. It wasn’t a choice anymore. I’d turned this tragedy into a business I was in no state to run, and I ended up making mistake, after mistake, after mistake. Underpaying and overworking animators; handing the responsibility of reward fulfillment to inexperienced people; worst of all I just stopped doing my job altogether. I just didn’t want to write jokes anymore. It took a year for me to call upon Eddie’s help to co-write, co-direct, and co-produce the show, but by then a lot of the damage was done: rewards missing, crew wronged, and money wasted. It took a whole second year for us to get the production back on track.

Now, here we are almost three years after losing Edd and we’ve still got four more eddisodes to go until every video I promised is out. Almost every single donator is still missing something; the DVD is nowhere to be seen; I’ve made an enemy of damn-near the entire animation community; by the time we’re done I’ll have spent, not made, around $20,000 of my own money because I wildly underestimated the cost of producing a webtoon. I really, undeniably, screwed this thing up.

So… Does ‘The End’ mean what you think it does? I can’t say. I honestly, in good faith, cannot make any more promises. What I can say however is that after ‘The End’ is released I will be stepping down as show-runner for Eddsworld, and placing its future back into the hands of Edd’s family. I will support whatever happens after that, but I won’t be making any more major decisions. Perhaps Matt will take over. Perhaps the show will become public domain. Perhaps we’ll say finally say goodbye. It sounds pathetic given all the horrible stuff that happens in this world, but losing Edd was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and every day I carry the responsibility is another day I can’t begin to move on.

I’m sorry for every way I’ve let the fandom, my friends, and the artists I’ve worked with since we lost Edd. I’m doing my best to fix what I can, but some things are just beyond repair. I really hope you enjoy what’s left to come, and I hope whatever decision that’s made afterwards is the right one.

- Tom