This is per Deadline, which reports that the Seth MacFarlane-starring series is apparently set to be renewed at the network where it debuted way back in 2005, before departing Fox back in 2014. (This follows news that TBS wouldn’t be renewing the series, officially canceling its last original scripted program. American Dad! reruns will still run on TBS through 2030.) The move, set to happen after the show’s 21st season finale on Monday, will reunite Dad! with The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, and MacFarlane’s Family Guy, reuniting four of the longest-running animated series that ever made up the network’s “Animation Domination” programming block. (With all due respect, of course, to the corpses of Allen Gregory, The Cleveland Show, and the 2012 Napoleon Dynamite cartoon.)
“Hey,” we hear those of you who spend too much time thinking about the minutiae of TV production asking yourselves, “Isn’t American Dad! a Disney show now, while the Fox network is still owned by the Murdochs?” Which is totally true—the show is produced by 20th Century Television, which Disney engulfed when it bought pretty much all of the Fox properties that weren’t Fox itself back in 2019—but neither company has ever seemed inclined to dislodge the network’s various adult animated series from their decades-long home. (In fact, Disney and Fox just re-upped an ongoing deal to have all these shows continue to stream on Hulu alongside their in-season broadcasts, suggesting all involved are pretty happy with the current arrangement.)
The upshot of which is, y’know, more American Dad!, which we’d argue is a fairly unambiguous comedy win. For those who’ve never seen it—or who checked out after its first few seasons, which adopted ill-advised efforts at political timeliness—Dad! really is one of the oddest comedies on television, less dependent on one-shot gags than its older sibling Family Guy, and far more interested in toying with its own format to produce bizarre half hours that can be both hilarious and harrowing as the mood takes it. (There are whole essays to be read just on the utility of disguise-loving alien Roger Smith, the finest character of MacFarlane’s voice career, whose blend of sociopathy and malleable identity allows him to fulfill literally any role a story might demand.) But enough gushing from us: American Dad! has been renewed, it’s coming back to Fox, it’s generally pretty good news.
