Legend of Tarzan originally aired on UPN for 3 seasons comprised of 39 episodes. It continues the story from the Tarzan animated feature film. Another Tarzan franchise film, Tarzan & Jane, is already streaming on Disney+. What makes that film interesting is that it is actually the last 3 episodes from this series mashed together. Perhaps the full series will be here soon.
Clearly there is interest in watching the series as can be seen by this article from June, written by our friends at Disney+ Informer.
Falsely Advertised In January
On January 13th, 2021 Disney+ released an video to their official YouTube channel that infamously suggested 2001’s Legend of Tarzan cartoon series was “Now on Disney+.” This information comes from the 2:46 mark in the Disney Deets episode “A Goofy Movie | All the Facts.” Unfortunately, this assertion is not a fact. Not only has Legend of Tarzan never streamed on Disney+, it’s never even been promoted and no-showed.
What’s interesting about this is that 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the series and so adding it this year would make perfect sense. The exact anniversary date is September 3rd, less than 2 weeks ago. Over the course of the year we sent e-mails to their communications team, content team, and more inquiring about the mistake, but unsurprisingly nobody responded. It’s unfortunate that something like this could occur without even an acknowledgement of the mistake. It’s false advertising, is it not?
Why We Think Legend of Tarzan Is Coming Soon
While it’s risky to assume things, we think the series will be coming in the next few months to properly mark the 20th anniversary. The reasons for this are two-fold.
For one, it seems weird that this statement could be made without anyone double-checking. If the series is uploaded to their servers, whoever does the checking may have seen its presence and incorrectly assumed it had gone live.
The other reason is the footage itself is crisp and clear. As far as anyone can tell the series has never been released on-demand, on DVD, or on VOD. It last aired in 2012 on Disney XD. The clip they used didn’t come from the pirated YouTube copy which we won’t link to. They must have a good copy in their available assets.
Beyond that, Disney wouldn’t be using pirated clips in official videos.
Disney+ Day seems like one heck of a good time to add a bunch of the cartoons that people are shocked weren’t available at launch – major franchise adaptations such as House of Mouse, Aladdin the Series, The 7D, and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
Have you ever watched the series? Is Legend of Tarzan coming and Disney majorly jumped the gun back in January or was the mistake totally random?
Drew Ryan is a film, TV, and Disney geek. He has degrees in English, Student Personnel Administration, and Library & Information Science from Lawrence University, Concordia University-Wisconsin, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Interested in the minutia and licensing of streaming service content, he is always publishing lists, suggestions, and advocating for Disney’s missing library to be added to Disney+. Drew subscribes to Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and Paramount+. You can find him waxing nostalgic over classic Disney Channel or geeking out over Marvel, CW shows, & Disney on Twitter.
