A rant about HBO Max and my favorite show

Lilliana, Writer

On the 15th of April of last year, the series Infinity train was canceled. A series about kids/teens/adults working through their problems on an infinite train. A little over a year later, in August 2022, the beloved series was announced to be taken off all streaming platforms, leaving no evidence it even existed on HBO Max, in a week tops. That following week, it was removed, along with many more works and projects created by employees of the company, who were soon dumped, because of the merging between the two streaming services, Discovery + and HBO Max. This merger caused thousands of fans to be in distress because of the countless projects being dumped and laying off employees “for the sake of saving money.” This coming from a multi-billion-dollar company. Almost two months later, fans of animation are still devastated. While you can still access this show, and some others, by purchasing it off a random service for 1.99 per episode, it still leaves a gut-wrenching feeling knowing that the people who helped create these shows were betrayed and were left in the dust to attempt to keep their hard work alive with little resources to do so. To honor their hard work and dedication, I think it is right to shine a light on one of the few creations I saw, out of the total of the 25 removed. That being Infinity Train.

The first premiere of Infinity Train was released on August 5, 2019, with the character Tulip starring as the main role for book one on Cartoon Network. The series goes through the hardships she faced and how they impacted her as a character. Throughout the 10-episode season, we see growth. Growth in everyone. From the main cast down to the side characters. The first season so perfectly radiates what the series is: a process of moving on and evaluating. Past traumas and growing from past damages. The show targeting, originally, a kid/teen-based audience, now gained thousands upon thousands of people from all age groups as an audience from the reliability and likability of the characters, alone.

Here are some opinions from a wider audience, also known as your classmates, about the show.

“It made me view childhood trauma differently and how impactful it could be!”

“From what I’ve heard and seen it seems like good representation!”

My almost-last statement remains that I mean no harshness towards the company, only confusion, and disappointment. I have no idea what HBO Max does or has done, but this being the only thing I’ve heard about the company, does not look good on them. Laying off and deleting projects/works of staff members, which was rumored that they had little to no notice about it, and leaving the hard work to drop off the face of the earth, is not the best thing to do to your employees, whether they are now ex-staff or not. Finally, these ex-staff/staff members worked hard to make all these projects come alive and blossom. Now, most of them are working twice as harder as before, due to the lack of a platform they have now, to keep their memory alive. If you have any interest in this show, or are interested in looking into the other shows that were removed, I highly recommend that!