"The Muppet Show" 50th Anniversary Special Trailer Deep Dive!

As you probably know, Disney aired the trailer for the The Muppet Show 50th Anniversary Special New Year's Eve during Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking with Ryan Seacrest.

BUT, what you may not have noticed was all the easter eggs it contained.So join us as we deconstruct the trailer scene by scene to reveal all the good, and the bad, we uncovered. 

First, if you HAVEN'T seen the trailer, watch it in high-def below:

Now, let's go through it. As you can see Rowlf's eyes look a little cross-eyed, jut like they did in at his recent appearance at The Game Awards. 

This is probably a new Rowlf puppet and hopefully they'll adjust his pupils for further productions.

The curtain rises... with Janice in the orchestra pit?

Janice is not supposed to be in the orchestra pit. As we'll see soon, she appears in the arches and now she's in two places at once! 

But look who's in the audience, everyone's favorite Muppet chef.... Angelo from The Muppets Kitchen with Cat Cora!

And on the other side, is an actual fan favorite, Angel Marie from Muppet Treasure Island!

Next, we have the large monsters coming through the arches. Sweetums, Thog, and The Mutations and now joined by Doglion instead of Timmy. 

Speaking of Thog, it's great that they rebuilt him to fit through the arches unlike in 2011's The Muppets, however - it's a bit jarring to see his fur flap around and not look like all one piece of shaggy fur. 

We get our first look at one of the skits, presumably featuring guest star Sabrina Carpenter in a bar room brawl throwing Blue Frackle around (more on him later). 

If you look closely, in the background is Paul Revere! 

In the next shot we see Miss Piggy barging into Carpenter's dressing room. It looks similar to how it looked on the original show, with new framed cards and pictures on the wall. 

Now we come to The Muppet Show arches, and quite possibly the most controversial part of the trailer. 

I say controversial because it's so iconic, and yet also has the most changes of anything else seen in the trailer. 

For starters there are only 4 rows, as opposed to the original's 5. (More info on the original lineup here. 

This means characters have be rearranged or removed entirely. A similar thing happened with the arches in 2011's feature film The Muppets where there were only 4 rows and they even left a few arches empty.

This arrangement doesn't put Kermit in the center and feels squished. I'm not sure why the 5th row couldn't have been preserved.

In the new new arrangement, the top row consists of Hilda (making her first appearance since the first season of the original series), Pops, Robin, Uncle Deadly, Baskerville, Pepe, Beautiful Day Monster, Bobo, Beaker, Howard Tubman, Crazy Harry, Marvin Suggs, Wanda, Wayne, and Lew Zealand. 

Hilda is an all new rebuild and looks pretty good from the brief clip we see. 

Not having Beaker in the original arches was an odd omission that I'm glad was corrected both this and in the 2011 version. 

Row 2 features the male koozebainian, Bean Bunny (making his first appearance since 2009), Dr. Strangepork, The Swedish Chef, Sam Eagle, a whatnot (similar to the one used in 2011), a rebuilt George the Janitor, a rebuilt Boppity - Blue Frackle, Link Hogthrob, a rebuilt Gloat -Green Frackle, and Beauregard. 

Bean looks great, but George's nose seems a bit too light and doesn't have enough difference to the rest of his face.

George in The Muppet Valentines Show

2026 George

The rebuilt Gloat (the Green Frackle) looks like his face might be more condensed and Boppity (the Blue Frackle) seems to now have a wider body. 

Row 3 has Rizzo, The Newsman, Dr. Teeth, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and Mahna Mahna.

No major change here except the replacement of two chickens on the ends with Rizzo and Mahna Mahna.

Row 4 has the female Koozebanian, Mildred, a rebuilt Zelda Rose, Janice, rebuilt female whatnot, Camilla, and a rebuilt Miss Mousey. 

Similar to George, Zelda Rose's nose seems to light and doesn't contrast enough from her face. 

Zelda Rose on The Muppet Show

Rebuilt Dancer Whatnot

Last we have a rebuilt Miss Mousey who hasn't been seen since 1986. No real complaint here except that her hat seems a bit more floppy then before. 

After the arches we see Miss Piggy backstage on the stairwell wearing an outfit strikingly similar to the ones used for Fisher-Price's dress-up doll.  

We then see another shot from the bar sketch, this time with Sabrina Carpenter smashing a bear bottle over J.D. Frackle's head. 

Beau breaks some sort of contraption off the wall. 

There a nice dynamic shot of Zoot and Lips, presumably from The Electric Mayhem's number. It's great to see a shot like this as most of The Muppet Show featured still camera shots. 
 

Executive Producer Seth Rogan makes an appearance suggesting we may see other cameos as well. 

We then see the title and air date. 

But that's not all. The thumbnail for the video features a shot of Uncle Deadly, Scooter, Mildred, Miss Piggy, Kermit, an unkown creature, and Marvin Suggs backstage not seen in the trailer itself. 

Be sure to watch The Muppet Show 50th Anniversary special on Disney+ and ABC Feb 4th where we'll get to see all the new puppets, performers and Muppet theater in action.