Will The Time Bandit appear in season 20? recently there were rumors that it had been sold to the company

The 20th season of the hit TV show “Deadliest Catch,” a genre-defining series following commercial crab fishermen who risk their lives on the treacherous and unpredictable Bering Sea, returns with a two-hour premiere on Tuesday, June 11, at 8 PM ET/PT on Discovery Channel.

Since its debut, the 59-time Emmy®-nominated series has revolutionized unscripted television. It utilizes best-in-class cinematography and storytelling to capture every death-defying moment at sea, captivating generations of viewers with authentic, tenacious characters.

“Deadliest Catch is the gold standard for unscripted series, paving the way for an entire genre of television that highlights everyday working heroes,” said Howard Lee, President of Discovery Networks. “Audiences have grown with our captains and their families, respecting their unwavering determination and experiencing the struggles and successes with them. This season is a celebration of their epic stories and the first page of their next chapter.”

To kick off this milestone season, the lucrative Red King Crab fishery has finally reopened in Alaska, igniting the first derby-style race in decades. Forced to obtain their crab hauls in a highly competitive timeframe, veteran and rookie captains are thrust into cutthroat rivalries that will push each crabber to their limit. Meanwhile, the crab grounds become more perilous than ever as a rare super El Niño weather pattern intensifies winter storms, serving as a grim reminder of why Alaska crab fishing is known as the Deadliest Catch.

The captains will face the biggest challenges of their storied careers as:

Captain Jake Anderson loses the F/V Saga, the boat he captained for a decade and held an ownership stake in. Now, he must swallow his pride and return to his mentor, Captain Sig Hansen, on the F/V Northwestern, the vessel Jake began his career on as a greenhorn 18 years ago, until he can earn a captain’s seat on a new boat.
After leading his crew to fight a fire on the F/V Wizard that nearly cost the life of a deckhand, Captain Keith Colburn faces a life-threatening emergency at sea 750 miles from the nearest hospital.
At the end of last season, Captain Wild Bill Wichrowski received a medical bombshell, forcing him to fight for his life and legacy on the F/V Summer Bay.
Lured out of retirement by the reopening of Red King Crab, Captain Johnathan Hillstrand returns to the F/V Time Bandit to capture his million-dollar quota.
Captains Steve Harley Davidson and Jack Bunnell risk their reputations and financial future to upgrade to the 126-foot F/V Pacific Mariner in hopes of catching more quota and more crab.
Sophia “Bob” Nielsen, the youngest captain in the fleet, takes the helm of the massive 113-foot F/V Seabrooke, honoring her late father, Gary, and testing her mettle against the most violent seas on earth.
Hungry to secure his future as a skipper, Jacob Hutchins makes a play for the relief captain spot on Captain Rick Shelford’s F/V Aleutian Lady.

In addition to watching “Deadliest Catch” on Discovery, viewers can follow the conversation on social media with #DeadliestCatch, and follow Deadliest Catch on Facebook, X, Instagram for more updates.

The F/V Time Bandit is probably the most iconic of all the crab-fishing vessels featured on Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch.” Owned and operated by the Hillstrand brothers, Johnathan and Andy, and puckishly adorned with the Jolly Roger on its prow, the ship has been a staple since the second season. But viewers have surely noticed the absence of the Time Bandit in some of the more recent seasons, particularly Seasons 14, 15, and 16.

Reports from TMZ in 2019 that the Time Bandit was up for auction likely gave fans the impression that the ship’s absence was all but permanent. A listing on Dock Street Brokers had listed it with an asking price of $2.8 million. This came just a few years after a large explosion in the ship’s engine, necessitating repairs that forced it to sit out Season 15 of “Deadliest Catch.” Between these two pieces of news, doubts must have flourished that the Time Bandit’s days on the show were a thing of the past.

However, Seasons 17, 18, and 19 of the show have seen the Time Bandit back in action, with at least one Hillstrand — namely Johnathan — manning the ship each time. What’s more, the Dock Street Brokers’ online listing for the boat has been down for some time. While we aren’t entirely sure what became of the decision to sell, it looks like the Time Bandit is still in the hands of the Hillstrands and is very much a part of “Deadliest Catch.”

The Time Bandit was retired, put up for auction, and has returned to the seas

As featured on “Deadliest Catch,” the Time Bandit is, to be sure, a unique ship, featuring a dishwasher, rooms with queen-sized beds, and even a four-man sauna, all of which are more-or-less unheard of on a crab fishing boat. A special episode during the ninth season of “Deadliest Catch” also revealed that the Hillstrands’ connection to the boat runs very deep; Andy and Johnathan’s father and uncle were both among the group that designed and built the Time Bandit.

Prior to the engine explosion, Johnathan Hillstrand had announced his retirement at the end of Season 13, which meant that the Time Bandit also sat out Season 14. That retirement thankfully proved to be short-lived, though obviously the repairs and the planned auction got in the way of the ship’s return to “Deadliest Catch.”

More recently, changes to the show’s format have prompted some to wonder if the ship is once again missing in action, with u/wildebeest55 recently posting on the r/deadliestcatch subreddit that they had not seen it for at least a few episodes. Ultimately, other users pointed to this recent format shift, which seems to be moving away from showing every single ship’s crew each week, instead showing a different group of ships each week.