What We Learned at the King of the Hill ATX TV Festival Panel

Hank's back and he's mad as hell. So sayeth Mike Judge in the inimitable tones of Hank Hill, pater familias of the Hill family and heart of the unofficial state TV show of Texas, King of the Hill. With those words, Judge closed out the first look at Friday's sneak preview of season 14 of the newly-resurrected show at the ATX TV Festival.

After being canceled by Fox in 2008, the animated series returns for a new season at a new home on Hulu. There was a packed house at the Paramount Friday night for a special panel featuring co-creators Judge and Greg Daniels alongside new executive producer and showrunner Saladin K. Patterson, as well as voice actors Pamela Adlon (the voice of Bobby Hill), Lauren Tom (Minh and Connie Souphanousinphone), and Toby Huss (Kahn Souphanousinphone Sr, and Cotton Hill).

After a chance to see the new credits and a very, very brief clip from the season premiere, Judge and the crew got to talk about bringing the show back after 13 seasons and a 17-year hiatus.

Little known fact: There had almost been a spinoff in 2000, with Monsignor Martinez, a live-action version of the Peggy's favorite telenovela. Directed by Judge and cowritten by Daniels, Judge, and KOTH writer Jim Dauterive, it starred Ivo Cutzarida as the two-fisted priest and David Herman as his sidekick, John Smith. Judge called it “one of the funniest scripts I have ever been part of” but Fox took a pass.

When Fox canceled King of the Hill in 2009, that seemed to be it for the show – until San Francisco Sketch Fest in 2017, when the cast reunited for a table read of season 1, episode 18, “Husky Bobby.” Daniels said, “It went over so well that we went, 'Huh, we still have interest.' And then we went to pitch it to Fox and they weren't interested. So it took a while, and they came around.”

Patterson is the newcomer to the show. Even as a superfan of the original, after his experiences on the reboot of The Wonder Years, he'd sworn off taking over an existing show. “Coming on property that already has a beloved fanbase is amazingly hard,” he said. “You're never going to please everybody, they're never going to accept it as a thing. And then they said King of the Hill is available, and I said, 'I'll do it!' I've learned nothing.”

However, he wasn't just coming back to a straight continuation of the original series, with Hank still at Strickland Propane and Bobby still in junior high. This is a post-COVID King of the Hill, and time has moved on. Judge said, “Because it's such a grounded, realistic show, it just seemed right that they would be older.”

So, what's changed and what's stayed the same in Arlen, Texas in the last few years?

Hank Still Has a Narrow Urethra

That's about all we really learned from the brief snippet of episode one, that – as Peggy announces to the impatient line forming at the airplane bathroom – Hank still has his peeing problem. In the intervening years since season 13, Hank and Peggy went to Saudi Arabia to shore up their finances for retirement, and now they're back in Arlen.

Judge noted that the location came after he saw heard about how American petrochemical firms have built subdivisions in Saudi Arabia designed to remind visiting Americans of home. Daniels added, “We liked the idea of [Hank] living on this Aramco base in this completely idealized American picket fence existence for the last few years, and then come back and see what state we're in.”

Judge said that “there's a whole world of things that have happened in the last 15 years that Hank would be annoyed with,” especially after living his fake American dream in Saudi Arabia. “He comes back, and there's a bike lane and a scooter lane all around the alley and he can't turn into it.”

Peggy Is Still Peggy

As voiced by Kathy Najimy, the former substitute teacher is throwing herself into retirement with her signature glee. Patterson said that, while Hank is having trouble adjusting to retirement and having nothing to do, Peggy is “a character who thinks that she can do anything, and now she has the time we can have fun with what some of those anythings will be.”

Bobby Is All Grown Up and Still Breaking Hank's Heart

Peggy and Hank's baby boy is now 21, and has left Arlen for Dallas, where he has launched a successful career as a chef at a German-Japanese fusion restaurant. However, he's still not making life easier for his dad. First, the restaurant is in Dallas, and second, he's cooking on charcoal.

For Adlon, playing Bobby as an adult wasn't about the process of the intervening years, but about something she'd experienced as a parent. She said, “There's this moment where you're looking at your kids and there's just this click that happens. Like, my daughter was walking up the stairs and ‘Oh, god, you just got older.’ You just see it. You live with somebody for so long and you don't notice, and then all of a sudden you're like, 'Wow' and [Bobby] just did that. He dropped into being an adult person who could go to a bar and get a beer, and have agency over himself.”

Dale Is Now a Lefty

Of course, the return of the series comes after the deaths of the voice actors behind several key characters: Brittany Murphy, who played Hank's well-meaning but empty-headed niece, Luanne Platter; Tom Petty, who became a series regular as Luanne's love interest, Lucky; and the man behind Dale Gribble, Johnny Hardwicke, who died in 2023 at his home in Austin. Judge confirmed that Hardwicke, who had also served as a writer and script editor on the original run, had actually recorded six episodes of the new run before he died, and that Huss would be donning those signature mirrored shades in the part moving forward.

Huss called being cast a great honor, and paid tribute to the amazing work that Hardwicke did in creating the character. For the new episodes, he said, “I'm not trying to copy Johnny as much as I'm trying to be Johnny, and hopefully Dale comes through that. ... All I'm trying to do is hold on to the Daleness.”

As for Dale, his politics have shifted – or rather, the world has shifted around him. Having run for mayor of Arlen, his particular brand of political paranoia has been “outrighted on the right,” explained Huss.

Connie Made It to College

“She turned out alright,” said Tom of Bobby's on-again, off-again childhood crush. She's now in college studying engineering, and “a little more open-minded me, so that was kind of nice to see in that Gen-Z way.” That openmindedness meant Tom had to learn an acronym – ENM. “I had to look it up and ask my kids.”

Bill Is Just Glad Hank's Back

What's Sgt. Bill Dauterive (as voiced once again by Stephen Root) been up to? Let's just say that he's not been doing so great in a Hankless world. Patterson gave a tease of one line: “Hank, I think I finished Netflix.”

Season 14 of King of the Hill debuts on Hulu on Aug. 4.