Saladin K. Patterson is the EP and showrunner of King of the Hill. The fantastic new season of the iconic animated comedy series about Texas family Hank, Peggy and Bobby Hill and their friends premieres this Monday July 20th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Patterson shares highlights of what fans can expect this season and why audiences continue to embrace this show. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

Jackson Murphy: Congratulations on not only this season, but last season as well.

Saladin K. Patterson: Thank you.

JM: I think for fans of the show, they’re gonna love what happens in this season. And how did it feel for you building out the 20-episode arc, and the fan reaction so far?

SP: Could not be happier with the fan reaction, man. That was such a relief to us. As you can imagine, the pressure of being charged with bringing back such a beloved show as “King of the Hill”, and I was a huge fan of the original as well, so I really wanted to make sure that we honor what made everybody love the original, but then also added to it in a way that made them wanna stay… wanna revisit it. Very, very satisfying to know that the fans and the critics as well responded so positively to what we did for Season 14. And then for Season 15, it was an exciting challenge to try to keep it going. I wish I could say that we have some secret formula like Coke locked in a vault somewhere that we can just revisit to make sure we know what we’re doing. But some of it is just kinda exploring what works and staying true to what the show was originally and then figuring out, “Okay, where does that guide us next?”

And then for this season that’s getting ready to drop on Monday, we really wanted to take the opportunity to say, “Okay, Hank and Peggy are back now.” So we’ve kinda gotten past… they were gone and now they’re being re-acclimated to the world. “How does streaming work?” No, it’s not a lot of that kind of stuff. It’s more now they’re back and we are enjoying telling stories that Hank and Peggy would have experienced had they been here the whole time. They’ve been married 20/30 years. What does that look like? What does it look like to have a grown son? What does it look like to be in retirement? Now it’s more settled in and them just exploring new things for them still, but not new because they were gone, new because they’re entering a new phase of life. And that felt like a refreshing and very relatable way to approach this Season 15 that’s getting ready to air.

JM: Yeah. And I love Bobby and Connie’s relationship. I’m so proud of them. I’m so proud of Bobby and the restaurant and everything he’s done. The arc that you’ve had with him and watching him grow as an adult — it’s just fantastic.

SP: Well, thank you.

JM: You’re welcome. How did that feel for you emotionally and watching this character grow now over these couple seasons?

SP: One of the things that I think I benefit from, and I think the show benefits from as well, is that me, Greg [Daniels] and Mike [Judge] all have kids who are roughly the same age as Bobby, in that age range. And so we’re witnessing them experiencing adulthood that is unique to that generation. Social media of it all, the adulting of it all, just the emotional development that is different these days. How hard it is to actually be on your own. So because we’re seeing our kids go through that in real life, it certainly gives us opportunity to make some observational storytelling choices. And so that’s fulfilling, in that we’re able to kinda really make sure he show stays grounded in reality and reflects what people are really dealing with in a fun, funny way. And people have always related to the Bobby character, and seeing him as an adult, seeing him thrive in certain ways, but also seeing him have challenges that hopefully are relatable, I do think it’s gonna continue to make “King of the Hill” an enjoyable thing for people to watch.

JM: I completely agree with you. You have so much on-point, relatable commentary. Comedic commentary and emotional commentary. And you’ve got Dale leaning into all the conspiracy theories, which I think is hilarious. Is that some of the most fun you have with the writers and everybody coming up with all that?

SP: Yeah. Dale is certainly one of the more fun characters for me to think of stories for and things for. Dale can be crazy. That’s the thing. And that was by design, right? “King of the Hill”, when Greg and Mike created it, they purposely made it a very grounded animated show, more so than the shows that were around them at the time, like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” and things like that. But because of that, Dale gives us the opportunity to sometimes go a little crazy in only a way that Dale can. And there’s a lot of fun and humor that certainly comes from that, even though at the end of the day, Dale’s more grounded now than he probably was in the original because the extremes have moved so far extreme to where he doesn’t represent the fringe anymore. But he’s still, in terms of our world and our characters, the one we can still push to the limits.

JM: Right. And Hank and Peggy are a fantastic couple. And that relatable factor for them for the audiences as well. These characters have been with people for so, so long, and you do a lot of great things in the final two episodes that we’re not gonna spoil. Without giving it away… was that what you always intended how this season was gonna end? Did you always know that in the back of your mind?

SP: You know, I wish I could say that we were that smart. But that’s something that as we explored the characters and really put ourselves in the world again, in the mind of these characters, and asked ourselves, “What would they be experiencing? What would they be challenged by? And at this point in life, what do you look back towards and say, ‘If I could do it again, I would do it differently,'” All those things kinda led us to come up with, “Okay, what if we did revisit a world from the original series that the fans have a lot of nostalgia for, that our characters themselves probably do miss a little bit as well?” And that kinda helped us come up with the idea of, as you alluded to, what the season finale will be in terms of where Hank finds himself landing going forward.

JM: And now you’ve got two more seasons. Congratulations.

SP: Yes! Thank you. Thank you.

JM: So are you figuring all that out now and seeing those come out probably over the next couple years?

SP: Yeah, exactly. Because of how long the runway and leeway is for animation, we actually just finished writing what will be Season 16, and we are now writing Season 17. But what we just finished writing for Season 16 won’t air until… 2027. And what we’re doing now for Season 17 will air in 2028. So we have a lot to play with. But we’re very excited. We’re continuing a lot of the storylines and the momentum that you will experience for this Season 15, and we’re excited about that and excited about people seeing that eventually too.

JM: Good. Yeah, this has become a summer event. And this show has been a huge factor at Comic-Cons over the years. And you get to have a lot of fun with that on this season as well. Personal inspiration for you? A lot of the details are really spot on with what you do in that episode.

SP: Yeah. We all have had a Comic-Con experience. The writer of that episode, Stephanie Johnson, is someone who is really into that world and so she was able to really give us that level of verisimilitude that you want, especially when you’re dealing with something where it’d be so easy to make fun of the world. And that’s why we kind of put Hank in the position that we put him in, so that he actually learns to appreciate the people behind the costumes as well. That’s an episode I’m excited to show audiences as well.