We’re Finally Getting a Live-Action ‘Powerpuff Girls’ Series, and It’ll Be Feminist AF

Sugar, spice, everything nice, a pinch of resentment, a spoonful of cynicism, and behold: Our new Powerpuff Girls. If not improved then at least more three-dimensional, a group of twentysomething Powerpuff Girls may be coming to a laptop near you. According to Variety, an updated, live-action version of the Cartoon Network show is currently in the works at CW, though the show’s logline implies that the grown-up Powerpuff Girls are leaning spicier than sweet. 

“The Powerpuff Girls used to be America’s pint-sized superheroes. Now they’re disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?” the show description reads.

If a new Powerpuff Girls series wasn’t already exciting enough, just get a peek at the huge names behind the project.

“In the works” means the show is not a done deal yet, but because it’s masterminded by writers and executive producers Diablo Cody (of Juno and Jennifer’s Body fame) and Heather Regnier (Veronica Mars and iZombie)—both of whom have extensive experience writing angsty, supernaturally-inclined young women—we’re hopeful that the project will come to fruition.

In case you were not of cartoon-watching age during the show’s original run between 1998 and 2005, and/or have never been drafted for a three-person Halloween costume (either way, we’re sorry for your loss), we’ll recap. The Powerpuff Girls follows three sisters—Buttercup, Blossom, and Bubbles—who were accidentally created when their scientist father threw a bunch of seasonings and chemicals into a bubbling cauldron. Then they spent their entire tenure as elementary school-aged children fighting legions of evil mutants that regularly terrorized their small town.

It was only a matter of time that the CW took that source material and ran it straight into hot, brooding young adult territory (see: Riverdale).

This isn’t the first time The Powerpuff Girls have been revisited: ThePowerpuff Girls movie was released in 2002. Then a rebooted version of the series aired from 2016 to 2019, which mostly showed what the child laborers got to do when they were off the clock (mainly, going to school) and featured an excellent pop-punk theme song by Tacocat. But with the masterminds behind Juno and Veronica Mars taking on this project, we couldn’t be more excited.