Escape the Night

Escape the Night
Genre
Created byJoey Graceffa
Written byAdam Lawson
Directed byAdam Lawson
StarringJoey Graceffa
Opening theme
"Evil House"
by George Shaw
ComposerGeorge Shaw
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes49
Production
Executive producers
  • Brian Graden
  • LB Horschler
  • Catherine Keithley
  • Adam Lawson
  • Petar Mandich
  • Nancy Tamayo
  • Ari Weiner
Producers
  • Joey Graceffa
  • Chris Grannon
  • Daniel Preda
CinematographyCypress Sterling
EditorSteve Grubel
Camera setupMulti-camera
Running time19–41 Minutes
Production companyBrian Graden Media
Original release
NetworkYouTube Red
ReleaseJune 22, 2016 (2016-06-22) –
August 15, 2018 (2018-08-15)
NetworkYouTube Premium
ReleaseJuly 11 (2019-07-11) –
September 4, 2019 (2019-09-04)
NetworkTubi
ReleaseNovember 27, 2025 (2025-11-27)

Escape the Night is an American fantasy-adventure reality competition series created by Joey Graceffa that premiered on YouTube Premium (formerly known as YouTube Red) on June 22, 2016. The series follows Graceffa and a rotating cast of internet personalities who are invited to a dinner party and subsequently trapped in elaborate dark fantasy scenarios inspired by horror and murder mystery aesthetics. Each episode blends scripted narrative with unscripted challenge-based gameplay, requiring the cast to solve puzzles, complete tasks, and “survive” the storyline.

Graceffa serves as creator and producer, with Adam Lawson as director and writer. The series is produced by Brian Graden Media and premiered its first season on June 22, 2016. Escape the Night ran for four seasons, concluding on September 4, 2019, and became the longest-running original series on YouTube Premium until 2020. It received six Streamy Awards nominations, winning two.

Following the series' cancellation, Graceffa launched a crowdfunding campaign on November 2, 2023, through Indiegogo to finance a potential feature-length continuation of the franchise. In November 2025, the free streaming service Tubi acquired the rights to the series and announced a revival project intended to serve as a "grand finale" for the franchise. Under the title Escape the Night: The Lost Tapes, Tubi added all four seasons to its platform and commissioned a three-episode mini-series, which premiered on November 27, 2025.[1]

Synopsis

The series follows internet personality Joey Graceffa as "The Savant", a fictionalized version of himself whose entanglement with dark supernatural forces repeatedly traps him — and the friends he summons to his aid — inside elaborate settings displaced from the present day: an estate that "only exists in the year 1920", a Victorian-era manor, the small town of Everlock frozen in time in 1978, a purgatorial Museum of the Dead, and, in The Lost Tapes, a 1980s video-rental store conjured inside Pandora's Box. Each guest receives an invitation assigning them a unique era-appropriate persona — archetypes such as The Journalist, The Detective, or The Prom Queen — and must arrive dressed and behaving in character in order to enter the cursed setting, where the group remains in costume and in persona for the duration of the night.

Once inside, the group discovers it is trapped and learns that escape requires gathering a season-specific set of enchanted objects before sunrise: four hidden artifacts and a binding ritual in the first season, eight gems of power held by the Sorceress's lieutenants in the second, eight corrupted artifacts that must be cleansed of evil in the third, and nine jeweled keys to a sealed vault in the fourth. Each object is guarded by a monstrous adversary and locked behind puzzles, hidden clues, and physical tasks scattered through the location.

Recovering the objects carries a recurring human price. In most episodes, the guests must vote two of their own into a "death challenge", a contest that typically ends with the loser's elimination through a fictional, in-story death at the hands of the evil's forces — a death that, in several seasons, is itself the act that releases or cleanses the episode's object. The dwindling group advances through increasingly difficult trials, and each of the four seasons concludes with exactly two guests surviving the night.

Unusually for a reality competition, the series maintains serialized continuity across seasons. Guests "killed" in one season can return in later installments — most notably in the fourth season, in which deceased guests from previous years compete for resurrection — and Graceffa's host character undergoes his own continuing arc: he escapes the first season unknowingly tainted by the evil, dies at the end of the second season, is restored to life over the course of the third, and is pulled into Pandora's Box at the end of the fourth, a cliffhanger resolved in The Lost Tapes.

Unlike most reality competitions, Escape the Night offers no cash prize; "winning" a season simply means surviving the night. This allows participants to focus on developing their characters through roleplay and contributing to the evolving storyline rather than competing purely for a payout. The cast members do not know what will happen next, experiencing each twist, hidden clue, and monstrous encounter in real time. While the votes and the outcomes of most death challenges are genuinely competitive and unscripted, the production has on occasion pre-arranged a guest's exit at the end of a specific episode, such as for scheduling commitments, health issues, or in cases of inappropriate conduct.

Format

Episodes generally follow a recurring structure: the group gains access to a new area of the setting, uncovers a piece of the season's lore — often through journals, notes, or messages left by the Society Against Evil — and completes a series of puzzles or physical tasks tied to that episode's adversary, typically the guardian of the episode's enchanted object. These culminate in a voting ceremony that sends two guests into a death challenge; the survivor usually returns with (or unlocks) the object, whose recovery or cleansing opens the path to the next area. In the third season, this progression is made literal through a map of Everlock on which new locations appear each time an artifact is cleansed.

Voting operates on a pool-and-draw system rather than a simple majority. Guests each cast a vote — names written on slips of paper and drawn from a hat in the first season, and cards bearing each guest's name or likeness that are shuffled before two are drawn in later seasons — after which two names are drawn at random from among the votes cast. Because the draw is random, a guest who receives even a single vote can be sent into the challenge, a mechanic that shapes the cast's strategic discussions. Individual seasons layer additional twists onto this base: in the fourth season, for example, guests' mistakes in group challenges placed their cards directly into the voting pile, and across the series certain episodes grant exemptions, force specific guests into the challenge, or otherwise bypass the vote entirely.

The death challenge itself is usually a head-to-head contest — a race to complete a task, solve a puzzle, or survive an encounter — in which the loser is "killed" in character and removed from the game. Eliminated guests are written out through elaborately staged kill sequences performed with the season's monsters and villains, and these deaths are treated as canon within the franchise's ongoing mythology. Some episodes alter the structure with team-based or group challenges, and deaths also occur outside the format altogether, most notably Graceffa's own death in the second-season finale.

The settings are populated by in-fiction characters portrayed by actors — household staff in the first season and Everlock townspeople such as Calliope and Mortimer in the third — who guide and assist the group, and occasionally betray it; the first season's head of staff, Arthur, is ultimately revealed to be in league with the evil controlling the house. Each season's primary antagonist commands a roster of subordinate monsters and lieutenants, each typically guarding one of the season's objects and serving as the focus of a single episode.

Deaths in the series are not always permanent. In-fiction means of revival recur across seasons: the third season's guests use a "Lazarus harp" to return Matthew Patrick to the game, and the fourth season grants the group a wish that returns eliminated guest Colleen Ballinger to the game mid-season, and the fourth season's premise is itself built on resurrection, with deceased guests from previous years competing for the chance to return to life. Recurring story elements across seasons include the Society Against Evil, a fictional secret order dedicated to fighting dark forces, and the Cursed God, the cosmic entity ultimately revealed to be behind the franchise's villains.

Production

Concept

In October 2015, the subscription service formerly known as YouTube Red, revealed upcoming projects including an untitled Joey Graceffa project that involves a murder mystery.[2] A year later, the subscription service teased clips of their upcoming murder mystery series.[3] Graceffa revealed in a Teen Vogue interview that "the idea for the project has been in the works for two years, and that he most looked forward to collaborating" with other YouTubers.[4] The creator also said the series was inspired by a murder mystery episode of television series Lizzie McGuire, and was also closely related to the American film Clue (1985).[5]

Filming

The creator described filming season one as "super-intense" from starting production at 10PM and wrapping up filming at 6AM. This took five consecutive nights from filming "two episodes each night" at Los Angeles, California.[6]

Distribution

Two episodes of the first season premiered on June 22, 2016, through YouTube Red.[7] The premiere season gained success, was renewed for a second season in October 2016, and premiered on June 22, 2017.[8] Graceffa confirmed that a third season was renewed in May 2018. The third season premiered on June 21, 2018. With the fourth season renewed, it made the longest-running original series on YouTube.[9] The fourth season premiered simultaneously at VidCon during a panel conference with Graceffa and was also available to watch for free on YouTube, on July 11, 2019.[10] The full series is currently available on Tubi.

Episodes

SeasonContestantsEpisodesOriginally releasedWinners
First releasedLast releasedNetwork
11110June 22, 2016 (2016-06-22)August 17, 2016 (2016-08-17)YouTube RedEva Gutowski & Oli White
21010June 22, 2017 (2017-06-22)August 16, 2017 (2017-08-16)Andrea Russett & Tyler Oakley
31010June 21, 2018 (2018-06-21)August 15, 2018 (2018-08-15)Matthew Patrick & Nikita Dragun
41010July 11, 2019 (2019-07-11)September 4, 2019 (2019-09-04)YouTube PremiumBretman Rock & Colleen Ballinger
TLT63November 27, 2025 (2025-11-27)TubiJoey Graceffa

Post-production

Gabbie Hanna controversy

On June 27, 2021, former contestant Gabbie Hanna released "an exposé video" aimed at producer Daniel Preda, creator Joey Graceffa, and their creative team. In the video, her eating disorder was triggered by "alleged mistreatment on set" and her dietary meal requests were denied by production.[11] Daniel Preda denied Hanna's allegations and personally received her meal options. Preda also mentions that Hanna has "missed or delayed production obligations" and was "verbally abusive" to staff.[12] Various season four cast members sided with the creator and writers of the series, with one of them mentioning it "paints an untruthful picture of what happened."[13]

Cancellation and mini-series

After a year from its fourth season premiere, YouTube Premium confirmed and declined to renew the series for a fifth season. In the summer of 2021, Graceffa stated in a vlog that the streaming service will no longer fund and distribute further seasons of the series, but has stated that he has full ownership of the intellectual property.[14]

In October 2023, Graceffa released a couple of teasers for an upcoming project through the series' social media platforms. Later on, the creator announced an upcoming film for the series; a fundraiser was set up through Indiegogo.[15] In November 2023, Graceffa brought five previous contestants to compete for a role in the upcoming film: Manny Mua (who later on got to be cast), GloZell Green, Tyler Oakley, Teala Dunn, and Rosanna Pansino. The winner was Rosanna (The Fitness Instructor).[16]

On November 12th, 2025, Joey Graceffa announced that a new miniseries entitled Escape the Night: The Lost Tapes was coming exclusively to Tubi.[17]

On November 18th, 2025, Graceffa announced in a post on X that the series will release on November 27th.[18]

Other media

Escape room

With the release of the fourth season, an immersive escape room was set up for a limited event that ran exclusively from August 9 to August 27, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California. The escape room had multiple rooms to venture through, with surprise guest appearances from Joey Graceffa, Jack O'Connor as Mortimer, and Eva Augustina Sinotte as The Sorceress.[19]

Board game

In June 2020, Graceffa announced that due to COVID-19's impact on Hollywood and television, their fifth installment was postponed indefinitely, but teased a new interactive fan version. Fans of the series subscribed to a newsletter email list in order to receive updates about the new project. A Kickstarter campaign was started to fund a board game based on the series; their goal of $30,000 was achieved in just three hours. It was formally announced the next day.[20]

Accolades

Name of the award ceremony, year presented, category, nominee(s) of the award, and the result of the nomination
Award Year[a] Category Recipient(s) and nominee(s) Result Ref.
Streamy Awards 2016 Best Costume Design Olivia Hines Nominated [21]
Best Ensemble Cast Escape the Night Won
2018 Best Comedy Series Nominated [22]
Best Costume Design Olivia Hines Won
Best Ensemble Cast Escape the Night Nominated
Show of the Year
Shorty Awards 2018 Best Website Series Won [23]

Notes

  1. ↑ Indicates the year of ceremony. Each year is linked to the article about the awards held that year, wherever possible.

References

  1. ↑ Spangler, Todd (November 12, 2025). "Fox Corp.'s Tubi Unveils First Slate of Creator-Led Series, Which Includes a Revival of Joey Graceffa's 'Escape the Night' Murder-Mystery Show". Variety. Retrieved November 12, 2025.
  2. ↑ Jarvey, Natalie (October 21, 2015). "YouTube to launch subscription service with original series from Fine Brothers, PewDiePie". The Hollywood Reporter. Eldridge Industries. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  3. ↑ Weiss, Geoff (May 5, 2016). "YouTube teases Red series from CollegeHumor, The Game Theorists, Joey Graceffa in latest trailer". Tubefilter. Archived from the original on July 16, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2016.
  4. ↑ Cerón, Ella (June 21, 2016). "Watch all your favorite social media stars play an epic game of murder mystery". Teen Vogue. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  5. ↑ Hamedy, Saba (June 21, 2016). "Watch Joey Graceffa bring YouTubers together for 'a dinner party to die for'". Mashable. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  6. ↑ Hiramine, Brie (June 21, 2016). "Exclusive: Joey Graceffa reveals behind-the-scenes secrets from Escape the Night". J-14. A360 Media. Archived from the original on April 10, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2024.
  7. ↑ Agard, Chancellor (June 23, 2016). "Joey Graceffa, Escape the Night cast perform seance in YouTube Red series — exclusive". Entertainment Weekly. Dotdash Meredith. Archived from the original on March 10, 2020. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  8. ↑ Weiss, Geoff (May 25, 2017). "Liza Koshy, Tyler Oakley, Jesse Wellens to star in season 2 of YouTube Red's Escape The Night". Tubefilter. Archived from the original on June 1, 2023. Retrieved November 6, 2023.
  9. ↑ Hoggatt, Aja (June 1, 2018). "The Escape the Night season 3 trailer is finally here". Entertainment Weekly. Dotdash Meredith. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  10. ↑ Ramos, Dino-Ray (June 12, 2019). "YouTube fantasy competition series Escape The Night to return for fourth season". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on July 9, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  11. ↑ Tenbarge, Kat (June 28, 2021). "Joey Graceffa says Gabbie Hanna was a 'nightmare' on the set of Escape the Night". Business Insider. Axel Springer SE. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  12. ↑ Tenbarge, Kat (June 29, 2021). "Gabbie Hanna called a production assistant a 'dumb f—ing c—,' Escape the Night producer says". Business Insider. Axel Springer SE. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  13. ↑ Winkie, Luke (June 30, 2021). "The Gabbie Hanna and Escape the Night drama, explained". Vulture. Vox Media. Archived from the original on December 25, 2022. Retrieved April 24, 2024.
  14. ↑ Spangler, Todd (June 25, 2020). "YouTube cancels Escape the Night but host Joey Graceffa has something else in store for fans". Variety. Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  15. ↑ Gutelle, Sam (November 2, 2023). "YouTuber Joey Graceffa seeks $250,000 for film adaptation of mystery series Escape The Night". Tubefilter. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  16. ↑ Graceffa, Joey (November 30, 2023). "Escape the Night cast compete for a movie role". Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved November 30, 2023 – via YouTube.
  17. ↑ Spangler, Todd (November 12, 2025). "Fox Corp.'s Tubi Unveils First Slate of Creator-Led Series, Which Includes a Revival of Joey Graceffa's 'Escape the Night' Murder-Mystery Show". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2026.
  18. ↑ "Escape the Night on X: "'Escape the Night: The Lost Tapes' premieres November 27th on Tubi. https://t.co/IW8oYeFrJj" / X". X. November 18, 2025. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ↑ Weiss, Geoff (July 12, 2019). "Joey Graceffa's Escape The Night spawns actual escape room in Los Angeles this August". Tubefilter. Archived from the original on June 10, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2024.
  20. ↑ Spangler, Todd (July 7, 2020). "Joey Graceffa launches Escape the Night horror board game on Kickstarter". Variety. Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  21. ↑ Robinson, Will (October 4, 2016). "Streamy Awards 2016: Full winners list". Entertainment Weekly. Dotdash Meredith. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
  22. ↑ Schaffstall, Katherine (October 22, 2018). "Streamy Awards 2018: Winners list". The Hollywood Reporter. Eldridge Industries. Archived from the original on December 4, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  23. ↑ Ramos, Dino-Ray (January 16, 2018). "Shorty Awards nominees: Tiffany Haddish, Lena Waithe among those recognized for Social Media Excellence". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
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