Hank Hill and his family have returned to Arlen, Texas, as King of the Hill’s fifteenth season picks up where its predecessor left off. While the Hulu animated revival has mostly seen older iterations of Hank, Peggy, and Bobby, along with various supporting characters, many fans had questions about what came before. Luckily, the showrunners for the fifteenth season had answers. Thanks to the season finale, King of the Hill isn’t just in a good position to create compelling and hilarious new stories for Arlen; it will allow viewers to see a brand new side of Hank.
Warning. If you have yet to watch King of the Hill’s fifteenth season finale, be forewarned that we’ll be diving into serious spoiler territory. For those who might not know, the final episode of this highly anticipated season gave us a look into why Hank and Peggy ended up moving to Saudi Arabia. Thanks to Buck Strickland passing over Hank to be the new manager of Strickland Propane, the father of the Hill family quit on the spot and decided to look for employment elsewhere. Eventually returning to Texas, Hank was told in the recent finale that Strickland wasn’t exactly doing all that well thanks to the new management.
In the final moments of the finale, Hank is made the new manager/ownder of Strickland Propane, meaning that Hill’s days of retirement are now officially over. Hank routinely shone in his previous role of Assistant Manager, but now that he is in charge of the ship, seeing him transform Strickland Propane by being at the wheel is an interesting addition to the story. Hill’s love of propane has long been documented, with King of the Hill poking fun at just how much Hank fell in love with his work, so now that he is in charge, will this turn out to be an interesting detriment to both him and the family? Will he spend too much time working after trying to come to grips with retirement? There are some ripe storytelling elements to be explored, but luckily, Hulu has already confirmed the future for the animated revival.
While Hank’s life might have changed the most thanks to the fifteenth season finale, this isn’t to say that other members of the Hill clan didn’t see some major differences as a result of this season. Specifically, Bobby and Connie are continuing to take their relationship to the next level, as the pair admit that they love one another after their long history. Ironically enough, perhaps the main character that hasn’t changed is Peggy, who is still retired as of the season’s end. This fact might just give us more hilarious storytelling in seasons sixteen and seventeen as Peggy tries to figure out what she should do now that Hank is going back to work and Bobby has “fled the coup.”
Earlier this month, we here at ComicBook.com had the opportunity to chat with season fifteen’s showrunner, Saladin Patterson, about how the series was planning to progress now that Hank is a working man once again. Luckily, Patterson hinted at the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same: “You will not miss any alley guy shenanigans. If anything, there’s just the added complication now of Hank has to be involved in those things, and shenanigans at work. We also have figured out ways to bring work to the alley, that I won’t necessarily spoil now, but you know, that was something that we thought was important as well.” With the sixteenth season already written according to the showrunner, it’s full steam ahead for the Hulu animated series.
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