First Look: King Of The Hill is Returning, Y'all

15 years after King of the Hill went off the air, the Hill family and friends will return to our screens when the show's revival premieres on Hulu later this summer.

For the uninitiated, King of the Hill is a cult favorite adult animation about a Texas family living in the fictional DFW exurb of “Arlen” (based on North Texas native, creator Mike Judge’s vision of Richardson, Garland and surrounding areas in the ‘90s) while dealing with issues of the times that a straight-laced conservative family might face.

“After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg, Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill,” reads the revival’s official logline. “Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane.”

“We liked the idea that he had been gone for a while, and the most Mayberry kind of freezer that you could put the family in was an Aramco base, which is like an idealized kind of white-picket-fence America,” show co-creator Greg Daniels told Vulture. “They had gone to Saudi Arabia and they were just coming back and had missed out on a lot of recent, uh, cultural changes.”

So far, an official trailer hasn’t been released, but Hulu dropped an updated version of the iconic opening credit sequence.

The opening credits are chock-full of split-second reveals from the new season, including the Hills moving out, a "Gribble for mayor" sign, pandemic face masks and what appear to be never-before-seen characters.

The real world has changed tremendously since the Obama first-term era the show left us in. For example, the Hill's chain-smoking conspiracy theorist neighbor Dale Gribble (whose original voice actor, Johnny Hardwick, died in 2023) doesn’t seem like such an extreme figure in the times of Trump

“There’s more extreme in real life than Dale now,” Saladin K. Patterson, the new showrunner of the revival, told Vulture.

Also of note in the revival is the absence of beloved, married characters Luanne and Lucky. Their respective voice actors, Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty, have both died, leaving their characters written out the new show by having them move away from Arlen. Meanwhile, the Hill's Laotion neighbor, Kahn Souphanousinphone, will be voiced by Asian-American actor Ronny Chieng, instead of white voice actor Toby Huss.

One of the most exciting storylines appears to come from none other than the aged-up fan favorite Bobby Hill, who is now the co-owner and chef of a "Japanese-German Hill Country fusion BBQ" restaurant in Dallas. That might sound too ridiculous to be true, but it checks out when you consider this city's bold restaurant scene. Though we don't know all the details yet, it’s safe to assume he’ll be featured heavily in the revival along with his friends Connie, Joseph and middle-school bully Chane Wassanasong.

At this point, so many questions remain: Is Boomhauer still a Texas Ranger? Will Bill survive the pandemic? Are presumed fellow North Texans Beavis and Butt-Head finally making cameos? Where does the disciplined and principled Hank stand in a world where conservatism has gone off the rails?

We'll have to grab an Alamo and settle in, because all 10 episodes will be available on Hulu on August 4.