Duo the Duolingo owl in the anime series The Final Test Duolingo

Duolingo App Debuts New Anime Series Starring Its Owl Mascot

Originally posted on Nerdist | By Eric Diaz | Last updated Oct 10, 2025 10:13 AM ET

Everyone who’s trying to learn a new language these past few years is almost certainly using the Duolingo app. You probably have at least one friend who’s kind of annoying about it. It’s so popular, in fact, that according to a report in Variety, Duo, the Duolingo owl mascot, is getting its own anime series, The Final Test.

The company produced a five-episode, short-form series together with the animation studio Titmouse, famous for shows like Netflix’s Big Mouth and Star Trek: Lower Decks. Doing an anime series is meant to promote their newly updated Japanese language courses. Each episode will be one minute long. You can watch the trailer for The Final Test right here:

The Final Test Duolingo anime mini series will “expand the lore of Duo and his friends, revealing their origin story before they became guardians of the streak.” What they mean by streak, in Duolingo slang, means the number of consecutive days a user has finished a lesson. The company describes their mascot Duo as “a persistent, social, and emotional boy who communicates via text, and is a day owl.” Duo only speaks in his own unique language, which consists of sound effects used in the app. All of the voice acting in this new series is in Japanese. However, it has subtitles available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Thai.

Duolingo began back in 2011. And just 14 years later, it has exploded into becoming the most popular app for learning new languages. Currently, Duolingo teaches 43 different languages. This year, Duolingo’s apps averaged 128.3 million active monthly users, and about 10.9 million paid subscribers. If this initial mini-series proves popular enough, we just might get more anime adventures of Duo the owl in the future. The Final Test premieres Oct. 13 on Duolingo’s YouTube channel.

This article first appeared on Nerdist and was syndicated with permission.

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