Family Guy is returning to Adult Swim

Disney pulled reruns from the network that saved the show in 2021, but now it's coming back.

By Mary Kate Carr | December 3, 2024 | 10:53am

Screenshot: Hulu/YouTube

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Some things just go together: peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, Family Guy reruns and Adult Swim. The cartoon and the network have been separated since 2021 when its license expired. But Variety reports a new deal has been struck to give Adult Swim non-exclusive rights to old episodes beginning in 2025. According to the outlet, the grand return will kick off with a three-day marathon on January 1, with back-to-back episodes airing from 7 PM E.T. to 5 AM. After that, episodes will air every weeknight from 10:00 to 11:30 PM E.T.

“Adult Swim is a huge part of Family Guy’s early history, and we’re excited for the series to return to our lineup in 2025,” Michael Ouweleen, president of Adult Swim, said in a statement (via Variety). “Having Family Guy back on our air is a great complement to the amazing slate of animated originals we also have planned for next year.”

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Adult Swim, a cable network under the Warner Bros. Discovery umbrella, is credited with keeping Family Guy on the air in the early 2000s. As creator Seth MacFarlane explained on the Logically Speaking podcast earlier this year, Family Guy was canceled at Fox after just three seasons. But during the two years it was off the air, DVD sales and popular reruns on Adult Swim convinced the network to revive the series: “I got called into Fox, and they said, ‘Listen, we wanna kinda’—and I quote— ‘sneak this thing back into production,'” as MacFarlane tells it.

And the rest is history, nearly 30 years’ worth on the air. Family Guy continues to produce new episodes for Fox plus holiday specials on Hulu, which has the exclusive streaming rights to the series. Old episodes also air on FXX, which had exclusive rights to the reruns starting in 2021. But Disney is apparently loosening the reins by licensing the reruns back to Adult Swim as well as to Comedy Central in another deal made earlier this year.