Spoilers follow for all 10 episodes of King of the Hill Season 15, streaming now on Hulu, below.
A new season of King of the Hill just dropped, and the fresh batch of episodes continues the show’s tradition of combining slice-of-life stories with wit, charm, and lots and lots of propane. Now, the cast and showrunner of the long-running animated comedy are spilling secrets about Season 15’s final episode, which includes major character moments and an extended flashback to the years we missed between the original series finale and now.
Season 15 of King of the Hill marks the second full season of the show’s revival, which takes place eight years after the events of the original run. In the season finale, titled “Propane Recall,” Hank is pulled back into the propane (and propane accessories) game after several former Strickland Propane colleagues plead for his help.
I spoke with Showrunner and Executive Producer Saladin Patterson, along with cast members Kathy Najimy, Toby Huss, Stephen Root, Pamela Adlon, Lauren Tom, and Ashley Gardner ahead of the Season 15 premiere to break down the finale. Patterson says that, although “Propane Recall” – which explores Hank’s quitting Strickland Propane five years prior and his decision to take a job and move to Saudi Arabia with Peggy – felt like a natural season-ending episode, it didn’t start out that way.
“We broke that episode, probably [in the middle of] the season,” Patterson says. “And then when it came together, we were like, ‘It kind of feels like a season finale.’ And that’s what led us to just put it at the end.”
King of the Hill Season 15. Courtesy of Disney/Mike Judge
Patterson says that although the episode ends with a major development in which Hank buys 51% of Strickland Propane from his old boss Buck and thus gets a long-sought promotion after years of being Assistant Manager, the storyline wasn’t something they had necessarily been holding back since reviving the show.
“It’s not something we had planned from the beginning of Season 14,” Patterson says. “It kind of came up organically. So Season 15 was a lot about exploring where [the characters] are in life now.”
One of the biggest revelations of “Propane Recall” is that Bobby (Adlon) goes to live with Lucky and Luanne (Tom Petty and Brittany Murphy) when Hank and Peggy move to Saudi Arabia. Patterson says the moment was a way to honor the legacy of Petty and Murphy, who both passed away after the show’s original run.
“That’s been very tricky for us to navigate in terms of going forward,” Patterson says. “We want [those] characters to still be a part of the world, but so much of why people want to revisit those characters has to do with how they were portrayed. So we’re just not guaranteed to be able to recapture that.
“It felt like, okay, at least for now in this moment, not knowing about the future, this feels like a satisfying way to give a wink and nod and homage to Lucky and Luanne in a way that’s organic to the story. They’re the ones that took care of Bobby. That felt good to say.”
For her part, Adlon says that the flashback portion of “Propane Recall,” where we see most of the characters drawn in the way they were in the original series (save Bobby who’s dyed his hair blue), was one of her favorite parts of the season.
King of the Hill Season 15. Courtesy Disney / Mike Judge
“That’s candy for us,” Adlon says. “Because it’s wildly creative. It’s like when Hank is watching the home movies of Bobby and Connie. That is what makes the show so human. And then you get to add memories that you’ve never seen before in previous seasons. And that’s what a life is. That’s what a whole life is with a family.”
Stephen Root, who plays Hank’s sad-sack neighbor and friend Bill Dauterive, agrees.
“It’s like looking at home movies for real-life people,” Root says. “You went, ‘Oh, I remember when I was like that. I would never wear that now.’ It’s like seeing physical representations of your memories. And I think that was a brilliant idea to get back to us as we were.”
For their part, Kathy Najimy (Peggy Hill), Ashley Gardner (Nancy Gribble) and Lauren Tom (Minh and Connie Souphanousinphone) say the finale flashback was indicative of the skill that goes into making the show.
“I think it was so much fun,” Najimy says. “Because the thing about the writers is that they really respect all of the changes, the aging, the not aging, but it doesn’t become about that. It’s just what it is.”
“I heard that’s what it’s like when you die, you get your life flashed before you,” Tom adds. “Like the ending of Six Feet Under where you get to see what happens. I love the progression of that. Very cool and well done.”
“I loved it,” Gardner says. “It was just so [wonderful] watching all the passage of time in that quick way. [That] was just ingenious to me.”
Key to the “Propane Recall” flashback is the reappearance of secondary characters who we haven’t seen since last season or, in some cases, the show originally went off the air. One of those is Hank’s old boss Buck Strickland, who passed over Hank for a promotion in favor of his incompetent son, setting the episode’s plot in motion.
“As an actor, it’s fantastic to be able to bring another guy that you knew so well for 13 seasons and to play something completely different than Bill,” Root says. “It is a joy as an actor to be able to go into that character again and know this is one of the characters that ain’t going to change. He’s all about himself.”
Toby Huss, who took over the role of Hank’s conspiracy theorist neighbor Dale Gribble when original voice actor Johnny Hardwick died in 2023 and also voices many other characters on the series, was also excited to take a stroll down memory lane with fan-favorites that we haven’t seen since King of the Hill’s initial run – including Hank’s drawling former colleague Joe Jack and propane nemesis M.F. Thatherton.
“I love that dude,” Huss says of Joe Jack. “When [they created him], there was some guy that I had [known] when I was a kid in Iowa that was just a slow talking-dude. And then with the twist of calling everyone honey and sweetheart and sugar. Everybody has that guy in their lives that is that friend of their dad’s or works with their dad or mom. And Thatherton’s just a goofball. It’s always fun to do any of these characters again, man.”
As “Propane Recall” closes, we see Hank take control of Strickland Propane in a moment that was nearly 20 years in the making. Patterson says that the twist sets up new plotlines and conflicts for Season 16, which has already been confirmed, and beyond.
“Hank is the owner, but remember he’s only 51%,” Patterson says. “Which means Buck is still 49% owner, which means he’s still involved. Hank clearly has been prepared for this, but Buck’s a different personality. And being a boss is different from what Hank is used to. And sometimes there’s some traits that you need as a boss that Hank may not have that Buck does”.
Patterson says that the show won’t stray too far from its roots when King of the Hill returns in 2027, but that doesn’t mean the characters won’t continue to progress.
“It’s not going back and retreading what they did so well in the original,” Patterson says. “Hank is a new person, a different person. He’s the boss now, and that’s a unique challenge.”
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton