Hank Hill will impart life lessons to his family and neighbors for at least two more seasons. Hulu announced the King Of The Hill renewal today, per Deadline, handing the show another 20-episode order to bring it through season 17. The Mike Judge and Greg Daniels-created show initially went off air in 2009, with a handful of episodes airing in syndication the following year. All was quiet in Arlen, Texas until 2023, when Hulu announced that it would be bringing the show back for its 14th season. Those 10 episodes aired this past summer, marking the most-viewed adult animation premiere on Disney+ and Hulu in five years. The premiere specifically drew 4.4 million views in its first seven days of streaming, the trade reports, making the renewal a bit of a no-brainer. Season 15—the second half of that original 20-episode order—is set to premiere sometime in 2026.
Season 14 saw the returns of original voice actors Mike Judge, Kathy Najimy, Pamela Adlon, Johnny Hardwick, Stephen Root, Lauren Tom, and Toby Huss, but some big upheaval for their characters. “The King Of The Hill revival follows Hank and Peggy Hill returning to a changed Arlen, Texas after years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg,” a synopsis of season 14 reads, per Deadline. “The couple reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane.”
Even though these characters now exist in a very different world, Judge said he wasn’t trying to use the show to impart some grand message in an interview with Deadline over the summer. “I’ve gotten a lot of people over the years who said, ‘I watch King Of The Hill before I go to sleep.’ And I’m OK with that. I have comfort shows that are like that for me,” he said. “I want them to just like it. I don’t think of the series as me having some big message or anything like that. It’s just with all the algorithms of social media, a lot of trying to divide people’s attention works because [whatever topic] makes you angry or gets you charged up. But then you go out into the real world, and all of that [noise] is just Twitter or whatever platform—you get out into the real world and people are a little nicer, more normal. And I think we think of this show as just out there in the real world.”
