That Dang Ol’ Gang Is Back! ‘King of the Hill’ Creators Spill the Beans on the Hulu Revival

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This article was written for the July-August ’25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 351).

In January 1997, a new prime-time animated show joined the Fox TV lineup that was quite different from what audiences expected to see in animated comedies. Set in the fictional suburb of Arlen, Texas, the lo-fi show followed the gentle misadventures of propane salesman Hank Hill, his substitute teacher wife, Peggy and their hilarious and eccentric son, Bobby, for 13 comforting and big-hearted seasons. So, when word got around that show creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels and showrunner Saladin K. Patterson were working on a revival of the series for Hulu, the fan base was quite ecstatic — to put it mildly!

Many of the original voice cast members are back to reprise their characters: Judge (Hank, Boomhauer), Kathy Najimy (Peggy), Pamela Adlon (Bobby), Stephen Root (Bill), Ashley Gardner (Nancy) and Lauren Tom (Minh, Connie) continue to shine in the new season, with series alum Toby Huss (Cotton, Kahn) taking over the role of Dale. (Johnny Hardwick’s voice will also be heard posthumously; he recorded a few episodes as Dale before he passed away in August 2023.) Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show, Kung Fu Panda 4) also joins the cast as the new voice for Kahn Souphanousinphone.

Back to Arlen, Texas

The 14th season of the show picks up with the gang after a time jump, and we find out that Hank and Peggy have come back to Arlen after Hank’s retirement from a propane job in Saudi Arabia, and that our boy Bobby is now a chef in Dallas. Their world now includes drones and vapes and sushi bars, but the Hills and their friends are just as tight-knit, buttoned-down and hilarious as ever.

Mike Judge traces the origins of this new season to a 20th anniversary live table read with the original cast back in 2017 at San Francisco’s Sketchfest. “We all thought it was really fun and went over really well,” he recalls. “After that, Greg and I started talking about doing the show again or maybe coming up with a spinoff. Greg and I had a lot of other stuff going on at that time, but whenever we’d talk about King of the Hill, it seemed like it could be good to revisit it. There are just so many new things in the world that would annoy Hank, and when we hit on the idea that he had been working out of the country for a long period of time, then returned home, and that we would age the characters, I felt like it could be really fun to do again.”

 

“When we hit on the idea that Hank’d been working out of the country for a long period of time, then returned home, and that we would age the characters, I felt it could be really fun to do again. There are just so many new things in the world that would annoy Hank.

— Co-creator Mike Judge

 

 

Daniels remembers that Judge asked him to read the stage directions, which is what he used to do in the old days. “We read the Season 2 episode ‘Husky Bobby’ in front of a packed theater, and they were wild for it. So, we started to think, ‘Hmmm, maybe a revival would be welcome.’ Mike and I started meeting and pitching it out.”

“We were having a great time,” says Daniels. “When we came up with the ideas that Hank and Peggy were returning from the Aramco base out of the country, and Bobby was a chef in Dallas who wasn’t going to college but was serving Southern Methodist University kids and running back into Connie, we pitched it to Fox. They weren’t that interested, but it became the motivation for us starting Bandera Entertainment together, to continue working on animation projects that we loved and we found interesting. But a few years later, Hulu circled back … and we got Saladin Patterson to run it and Wes Archer to supervise the animation again, and the pieces fell into place.”

Early Toon Roots

Patterson, a seasoned producer and showrunner who worked on the stop-motion animated series The PJs early in his career, and whose TV credits also include Frasier, The Wonder Years (2021 version), Psych and The Bernie Mac Show, says he was excited to dive back into the world of animation after many years of overseeing live-action comedies.

“I have always been a fan of animation, and two of my biggest influences are Looney Tunes cartoons and Peanuts’ animated specials. I had worked on an animated project with Greg [Daniels], Louis C.K. and Albert Brooks before, but unfortunately that show never made it to the air. I almost got to work on the original King of the Hill, but then I went to Frasier instead. However, we always wanted to work together again!”

Patterson says he loves the opportunities that animation offers to writers on the show. “One of the unusual things about King of the Hill was that it was actually a lot more grounded than some live-action shows back then, like My Name Is Earl,” he points out. “This new season of the show also gives us an opportunity to tackle some things that feel relevant today both culturally and socially.”

 

“I really hope that people will feel the show is relevant in our world today and not just as a throwback to 15 years ago!”

— Exec producer and showrunner Saladin Patterson

 

Just like many fans of the show through the years, Patterson says he believes the original series offered some of the best storytelling on TV. “I really loved that, at the heart of it, King of the Hill was a cross-generational family show. Hank’s approach to parenting and his take on manliness and manhood really reflected how small-town American reacted to outside influences. I’m originally from Alabama, and I had an appreciation for the fact that you want to protect some of the old-school values. That’s why I also enjoyed working on The Bernie Mac Show, because Bernie and Hank had similar points of view when it came to raising kids. I really responded to that whole concept of old school vs. new school. Audiences who tune in to the new season will see that we have found a way to really keep the core and heart of the show while wrapping it in a contemporary envelope that makes it still quite relevant today.”

Judge, who co-created the show with Daniels and based it on his own life in Richardson, Texas, almost three decades ago, says he loves seeing Hank Hill reacting to all the new annoying things in the world today. “I also like seeing Bobby grown up and the way he and Hank interact with Bobby as a young adult on his own. I especially like an episode in the new season where Hank and Bobby compete in a brewing competition. I think it’s a great episode and shows what the new family dynamic is like, and it feels good.”

Daniels agrees. “I also love seeing Bobby as a 21-year old. I enjoy the stories of his life working at a restaurant in Dallas, and interacting with Joseph, Chane and Connie as young adults.”

Patterson points out that the writing team tried not to dive into today’s bitterly divided politics. “The show has always been more about the family and culture rather than politics,” he notes. “But we touched upon immigration a little bit, but not in an overtly political way. We have no idea what these policies will be two years down the line, and everything could change by the time the show airs. So we must be careful to be focused on more cultural and generational changes, ironies and conflicts.”

 

One of the benefits of working on an animated comedy like King of the Hill, per Patterson, is that the writers and voice actors are not limited by sets and locations. “Sure, you can tweak the laws of physics a little bit, but animation can also give you a certain kind of freedom,” he says. “For example, I love the fact that we had an episode that is set in a version of Comic-Con. It was fun to be able to represent that scale on the show. It would be really difficult and expensive to shoot a live-action show at Comic-Con. We were also able to show every aspect of Bobby’s restaurant — from the kitchen and the main dining area, as well as what his suppliers look [like] — all of that was much easier thanks to animation!”

As audiences tune in to catch up with the Texas clan, Patterson hopes he and the team have been able to repeat what made the original show so special. “That would be the heart, the storytelling, the strong, memorable characters and all the relatable conflicts between them,” he says. “I hope audiences will enjoy seeing Hank and Peggy at a different point in their lives as they try to figure out this new chapter in their lives as a couple and parents of a grown-up Bobby. I also really hope that people will feel the show is relevant in our world today and not just as a throwback to 15 years ago!”

 

Judge agrees: “I hope they enjoy it and find it funny in the same way that they always did. There are shows I watch that are just kind of comfort-watching, like when I was a kid it was The Andy Griffith Show or The Beverly Hillbillies and many others. Lately it’s been What We Do in the Shadows in my household. There’s not much I take away from those shows, other than they’re fun to watch and make me laugh. So I hope King of the Hill is like that for our viewers.”

---

The new 10-episode season of King of the Hill premieres August 4 on Hulu.