On Friday, September 26, 2026, the season two finale of Bunch of Friends premiered on YouTube. Fans had been eagerly awaiting the friends’ shenanigans and tomfoolery, but by the time the video was complete, tears were streaming down their faces (mine included!) at the undeniable conclusion that, yes, friendship really is that serious.
Niche Forever
The first official Bunch of Friends video premiered in September of 2025, but each of the four members has been creating content for quite a long time.
Coy gained traction for his ‘Just Chatting’ Twitch streams throughout 2021, and ended up making content with Karl Jacobs and other creators in the Mr. Beast sphere. Will rose in popularity on TikTok for his funny, high-energy content around the same time.
Anthony started a channel on Youtube to document his college years with his friends—one of which is Hanbon, the fourth and final member of Bunch of Friends. He’s been the reason for a multitude of internet trends (Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest, John Chungus, Kid with Crocs, etc.), which I could spend a whole article talking about. However, what’s important is that whatever secret sauce he has came with him to the Bunch of Friends channel.
You might have seen their thumbnails replicated in fanart. Driving until we run out of gas and Raising a baby as a heteroplatonic multiracial polycule have done their rounds on Tumblr. Additionally, their Gen Z humor has been clipped and gone viral on TikTok for videos like Blind, Deaf, Mute, and Stuck in the Arctic.
Their dynamic is appealing to many viewers both because of its relatability of 20-something year olds doing stupid sh*t, and for the way their friendship doesn’t feel all that staged.
Sure, their content is dramatic, since at the end of the day they are internet personas who want viewers to subscribe. However, while they’re being dramatic, there is an undeniable realness between their interactions, too. You can tell they’re a tight-knit group, bonded by their odd humor and willingness to embarrass themselves publicly.
Maybe this is parasocial of me to say, but while watching a video, it truly feels like I’m watching a group of friends, not Youtubers. I can project my own friends and I into the scenarios Bunch of Friends come across with ease.
24 hours to eat a skateboard
Season one followed the group through a variety of silly situations that drew out their distinct personalities (which are heightened, of course, by their signature colors).
Hanbon, the pink one, is vibrant and goofy. Will, the purple one, is friendly and awkward. Coy, the green one, is impish and witty. And Anthony, the yellow one, is both responsible and unhinged.
Throughout the season, they insist they’re going to eat a skateboard as a promise to their fans when they reach 100k.
You might be wondering how the heck they’re going to do that, but I can assure you they have about as much of an idea of how as you do! The finale, 24 hours to eat a skateboard, is the culmination of this promise, and the friends spend 24 hours (a clock ticks down on the wall as a reminder) trying to figure out how the heck they’re going to actually eat a skateboard.
It’s a whole thing, but in the end, they don’t find a solution.
The clock ticks down, and with six minutes left, their garage door opens and the camera’s aspect ratio changes into something cinematic. There’s a crowd of people in their driveway protesting their eating of the skateboard—a crowd that includes the ‘strangers’ from past Bunch of Friends videos.
An epic battle occurs, mixing cinematic shots with camera “mishaps” that allow the viewer to see body doubles and how fake the fight scene is. Their acting, however, is extremely serious, which juxtaposes the complete unseriousness of the fight. They lean into the bit and make the whole nonsensical situation indisputably hilarious: This is the Bunch of Friends method.
What I’ve been looking for
After a brief hiatus, the bunch returned for season two. Their videos followed the same format of silly situations taken with the utmost seriousness, however now that their first season garnered them over 100k fans, the content felt more produced.
I don’t mean this in a bad way; in fact I think it’s a good thing. Season one felt like they were just doing anything for content. While that’s not inherently a bad thing, it did mean that sometimes the narrative line felt chaotic. I’m obviously coming at this from a storytelling perspective—a creative writing major talking about the narrative structure of a YouTube channel is ironic, isn’t it?—but the cohesiveness of season two was extremely compelling to me. They managed to tell a larger arc of friendship while still keeping the distinct personalities that rose them to fame in the first place.
By “arc of friendship,” I mean, mostly, to say the way their authentic care for one another was present in each and every video. A highlight of this is when they got a baby doll that they pretended was real and referred to as their child. Maybe this was why that friendship between them felt at the forefront of season two: they were acting like a real family.
In the Mr. Beast video, specifically, their care is evident. A little tipsy, next to the fire, Coy tells the group “I’m really grateful for Bunch of Friends because it’s taught me a lot about what friendship is,” and how, because they have this channel together, they’ve learned to resolve conflicts and grow their bonds further.
Hanbon adds, “You guys aren’t my friends, you’re my brothers” while expressing how she can imagine them all growing old together. Will then tries to comfort Hanbon as she cries by arguing it’s hard to keep friends in their age after college, and “for us to spend…” He then spills his drink, but we can assume he was going to say something about how it means a lot that they choose each other time and time again.
The three of them tell Anthony to open up since the rest of them have, and he tells them, “You guys are what I have been looking for for many years.”
“Awe” fills the silence, and then they remember they were watching a Mr. Beast video during their whole chat and turn their attention back to it.
HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?
The highly anticipated season two finale did not disappoint on a cinematic level nor a power-of-friendship one.
This whole season followed an inconceivable promise similar to that of eating a skateboard: they were going to get a meeting with the CEO of YouTube, Neal Mohan, and they were going to ask him a question.
“The CEO of YouTube finally said yes,” follows the group as they prepare for the meeting they ‘secured’ with Neal Mohan. At the beginning, we find out that Coy is the one asking the question, and upon the group wondering what it is, he tells them it’s a secret. (He doesn’t know the question he wants to ask.)
They prepare for the meeting, and we see Coy ask a YouTube content marketer what he should ask Neal Mohan. More specifically, what he should ask not for Bunch of Friends, but for himself. A betrayal! Gasp!
The friends soon arrive in LA, have an interlude of partying, and then, with only a few hours left before their meeting, they begin the drive to YouTube headquarters in San Francisco.
15 minutes away, they run out of gas and plan to make it to the meeting on time by foot. On the way, however, they’re stopped by Thanos (the name of their doll baby) who confronts them about their bad parenting. Olaf (long story short:a character from one of their Facebook Marketplace videos) then hits Thanos with a car and kidnaps Hanbon.
On the way to save her, the boys encounter people that appeared in this season’s videos (a la the season one finale), and end up separated.
Anthony saves Hanbon with an Obsession reference while Will and Coy Uber to the meeting. Will pans the camera to the question in Coy’s hands, showing the viewer. It reads: “Do you have any advice on growing a solo channel?”
Coy gets defensive about it, but Will assures him he didn’t read the question. Only we, the viewer, know what Coy’s (original) question is. He and Will make their way to YT headquarters, hoping Hanbon and Anthony will meet them there. However, Will backs out, claiming “this is f*cked” to do without all of them together.
But Coy is determined to go to the meeting even if it means going alone.
Anthony and Hanbon are confronted by John Chungus, who tells them that everything that happened (running out of gas, Thanos, Olaf, etc.) was part of the plan he devised to bring them closer together. He tells them not to “lose track of why [they] started this thing in the first place: for each other.”
John Chungus aids Anthony and Hanbon to reach YT Studios, and on their final stretch, they find Will. They apologize to each other and race to meet Coy.
Alone, Coy panics, having lost the question. He realizes he was about to make a huge mistake asking about a solo channel, and searches for his friends.
In the meeting room just as Coy arrives, Will pulls out the question Coy was going to ask, and Coy shouts at him to wait. There is a different question he wants to ask now. He begins an emotional monologue about the toll content creation takes. How even though they have a community of fans now, it’s a lot of responsibility to be looked up to.
He then expresses something I couldn’t dream of paraphrasing:
Our lives, as much as I hate to admit it… aren’t a sitcom with an A plot and a B plot where everything works out in the end and, you know, even if we do fail, it’s actually really funny and endearing. Like, sometimes we fail and it just sucks! And it’s embarrassing. And we disappoint people, and we disappoint each other, and we don’t just get to cut those moments out, you know? Like, we have to sit in it and deal with it in our real lives. And I guess rthat reality, like, scares the sh*t out of me.
But…. I feel like I’ve realized, like, whenever I’m worried about how I’m acting or what other people are thinking about me, like, I just…I just look at you guys. And I see you guys being yourselves. And it makes me want to be more like myself.
You’ve really taught me what it means to be someone’s friend.
Everyone is crying, and then Will urges Coy to finally ask the question. Coy wipes his eyes and tilts his head back, thinking of a new question. He ends up smiling, looking at the friends before him, and asks:
How did I get so lucky?
They all hug, and then Coy realizes they weren’t meeting with Neal Mohan at all, but rather the head of Creator Partnerships. Instead of discussing a deal, the friends journey home. Together.
Close to home
Having Coy undergo this lone-wolf-realizing-he-needs-his-friends journey is extremely personal to me. He’s my bias of the bunch, so him expressing these feelings that I myself have felt was absolutely devastating. I felt clocked. Tears were shed, and texts to my friends were sent immediately after finishing the video.
Truly, my friends are the best. I appreciate them so dearly, and never fail to feel appreciated back in turn. They’re my people. The kind that get me better than anyone else. The kind that feel too good to be true. The kind that make me feel lucky every single day we spend together.
Being able to project my own friendships onto Bunch of Friends has always been what drew me most to the channel. I love the group’s shenanigans, of course, but it really is the raw, genuineness of their relationship that brings me back time and time again. I see myself in them (Coy specifically—ouch!) and I see my own friends reflected back out to me.
Bunch of Friends truly is a breath of fresh air compared to other content houses and commercialized content. They’re exactly what I—and many others—need!