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Hulu shuts down permanently in the biggest U.S. streaming merger ever
By Grant Mercer,

1 days ago

Hulu, one of the original pillars of the streaming era, is being folded into a larger entertainment machine in what amounts to the most sweeping consolidation the U.S. streaming market has seen. The stand‑alone service that helped define cord‑cutting is set to disappear as a separate app, with its technology, shows, and subscribers absorbed into a unified Disney platform. For viewers, advertisers, and rivals, the shutdown marks the end of a 20‑year experiment and the start of a new phase in which a single mega‑service will try to do what a bundle of apps once did.

What looks like a simple app retirement is in reality a complex merger of brands, rights, and business models that have been evolving for years. I see Hulu’s closure not as a failure but as the logical endpoint of a strategy that began when Disney moved from minority investor to full owner and started treating Hulu as the core of its streaming future rather than a side bet.

How Hulu went from pioneer to acquisition target
To understand why Hulu is shutting down, it helps to remember what it was built to be. From its launch, Hulu was designed as a Type of OTT streaming platform focused on the United States, a place where next‑day TV and a growing slate of originals lived side by side. Over time, it became the de facto home for edgier series and adult‑oriented films that did not fit neatly under the family‑centric Disney brand, which made it strategically valuable once Disney decided to go all in on direct‑to‑consumer streaming.

The turning point came when Disney moved to consolidate control and fold Hulu into a broader streaming strategy that also includes ESPN and Disney+. In that context, Hulu was no longer just a competitor to cable but a key asset in a portfolio that could be bundled, cross‑promoted, and ultimately merged. A detailed look at Disney’s digital push shows how the company’s acquisition of streaming technology and content rights, including a transaction that valued Hulu at $27.5 billion, set the stage for the current merger and made it clear that the service was central to The Walt Disney Company’s future streaming strategy.

The $8 billion takeover and the biggest U.S. streaming merger yet
The final act of Hulu as an independent service is tied directly to Disney’s decision to buy out its remaining partners and take full control. Reporting on the deal describes Hulu shutting down after Disney’s $8B takeover, a move that ends nearly two decades of the service operating as a joint venture and clears the way for its content to live only in the Disney+ app. That $8 billion figure is not just a price tag, it is a signal that Disney is willing to pay premium rates to simplify its streaming footprint and present a single, dominant destination to consumers.

At the same time, Disney has been reshaping its global streaming brands to make Hulu the centerpiece of general entertainment. On Disney+ outside the United States, The Star brand has been phased out and replaced with Hulu outside the US except Japan, with the exception of Hulu Ja in Japan, which continues as a separate arrangement. That shift, combined with the $8 billion takeover in the U.S., turns Hulu from a stand‑alone OTT app into a global content label embedded inside Disney+, effectively creating a single mega‑service that absorbs what used to be multiple brands.

From “Goodbye Hulu” headlines to a unified Disney+ experience
Once Disney had the freedom to restructure, the company moved quickly to explain that the familiar green app would not survive. Coverage of the decision framed it bluntly as Goodbye Hulu, with the Streaming App set to Be Officially Shutdown as Disney confirmed it was going all in on combining its services. The message to subscribers was that the shows and movies they associate with Hulu would still exist, but the way they access them would change, with a single login and a unified interface replacing the old bundle of separate apps.

Disney executives have described this as “fully integrating” Hulu into Disney+, a phrase that captures both the technical and branding shift. In practical terms, that means the Hulu tile, profiles, and recommendations will live inside a combined app rather than in a separate icon on your home screen. Reporting on the integration notes that the company is fully integrating Hulu service into Disney+, while still maintaining offerings like Hulu + Live TV and premium add‑ons as part of a broader subscription structure. The result is less a disappearance of Hulu’s content than a migration into a larger, more complex streaming hub.

What “shutting down” really means for subscribers and devices
For viewers, the most visible change is that the Hulu app itself is being retired, even as the brand lives on inside Disney+. Some early coverage tried to calm nerves by stressing that Hulu is not shutting down in the sense of its library vanishing overnight, explaining that, According to Disney, the plan is to launch a unified Disney+ and Hulu app that consolidates general entertainment, sports, news, and family content while creating better ad bundling opportunities. In other words, the shutdown is about the app and the corporate structure, not the annihilation of the shows people binge.

The technical transition is already visible on specific platforms. Support documentation spells out that, As of a set date, Hulu will no longer be available on Nintendo through the eShop, and Starting early 2026, the app will stop functioning on that hardware altogether unless users move to the updated software path. Those device‑level cutoffs are a preview of what will happen more broadly: the green Hulu icon will gradually disappear from app stores and smart TV menus, replaced by a Disney+ app that houses everything from family animation to prestige dramas under one roof.

Twenty years of Hulu and the logic of a mega‑merger
Emotionally, the shutdown hits hardest for long‑time subscribers who have spent two decades watching Hulu evolve. One retrospective framed the moment with the line Disney Is Officially Shutting Down Hulu After 20 Years, noting that After two decades as a major player in streaming, Hul has built strong recognition among global audiences. That longevity is part of why the merger feels so consequential: this is not a niche experiment being sunset, it is one of the original streaming brands being retired in favor of a single, consolidated giant.

Other analysis has described Hulu as “ending after 20 hard‑fought years,” emphasizing how the service survived competition from Netflix, Amazon, and a wave of newer entrants before finally being absorbed. One report on Hulu is ending after 20 hard‑fought years explains that the result will be an entirely new unified app, with Hulu’s service and Disney Plus both feeding into the same interface. From my perspective, that framing captures the trade‑off: viewers lose a familiar brand and some of the quirks that made Hulu distinct, but they gain a single destination that is easier to manage and potentially more powerful in negotiations with content suppliers and advertisers.

Live sports, global branding, and the scale play behind the merger
Hulu’s shutdown is not happening in isolation, it is part of a broader wave of consolidation in TV and streaming. Earlier this year, Disney signaled how aggressively it wants to control live sports and advertising inventory by striking a major deal with a competing streaming television service. Coverage of that move noted that Did anyone have this on their media predictions list when Disney announced a tie‑up that would reshape live sports streaming and deliver new Scale for advertisers. That same logic applies to the Hulu merger: by putting everything under one roof, Disney can sell bigger ad packages, negotiate harder with leagues and studios, and present a clearer value proposition to subscribers.

Internationally, the rebranding of The Star into Hulu on Disney+ shows how the company is using the Hulu name as a global general entertainment label even as it kills the stand‑alone app in the United States. One detailed breakdown of what happens to Hulu originals notes that, While the separate app will disappear, the While the separate app will disappear, the “Hulu” brand will continue as “Hulu on Disney+,” serving as Disney’s global general entertainment brand. That approach lets Disney keep the equity of the Hulu name while simplifying the number of apps it has to maintain, a classic consolidation move in a maturing market.

What viewers will actually see when Hulu vanishes
For everyday users, the question is simple: what changes on the screen? The answer is that the Hulu tile will effectively move inside Disney+, and the content mix will broaden. The official Hulu welcome page still pitches a deep library of current‑season TV, originals, and live options, but those same categories are being replicated inside the unified app, with profiles and parental controls adjusted to handle everything from kids’ animation to R‑rated thrillers. In practice, that means a household that once juggled separate Hulu and Disney+ apps will open a single icon and find both Bluey and The Handmaid’s Tale under different content hubs.

Tech‑focused coverage has already started walking viewers through what to expect in 2026, with one explainer from Core Cars News Techlab warning that Big Changes Are Coming to Hulu in 2026 as we are just a few weeks away from that year. Those changes include new navigation, updated recommendation algorithms, and a more prominent role for live sports and news inside the combined app. From my vantage point, the user experience will likely feel less like losing a service and more like waking up to a major software update that quietly rewires where everything lives.

The end of an era, and the start of something bigger
There is a certain irony in watching a service that helped break cable’s grip on television end up as part of a new kind of bundle. Hulu began life as a scrappy OTT alternative, and it is exiting as a core ingredient in a streaming conglomerate that looks more like the old pay‑TV ecosystem in scale and ambition. Yet the financial and strategic logic is hard to ignore: Disney paid $8B to finish the takeover, previously saw Hulu valued at $27.5 billion, and is now using that asset to anchor a single mega‑service that can compete on equal footing with Netflix, Amazon, and whatever comes next.

As I see it, the permanent shutdown of the Hulu app is less a eulogy than a milestone in the consolidation of streaming. The brand will live on inside Disney+, the shows will keep rolling out, and the green logo will still appear on splash screens and marketing materials. What disappears is the illusion that the streaming revolution would always be about more choice and more apps. With Hulu’s merger into a unified Disney platform, the industry is entering a phase where fewer, bigger services call the shots, and the next big story will be how viewers respond when the dust finally settles.

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