Family Guy used its San Diego Comic-Con panel to line up a busy end of the year, including a starry bit of stunt casting, ABC7 reports.
The Halloween special
Hulu announced a Family Guy Halloween special titled "Happy Hell-o-ween," in which Kieran Culkin voices the Devil. The premise is pure Family Guy: Stewie and Brian end up in Hell, "paying for 24 seasons worth of bad behavior," and after they annoy the Devil enough, they "somehow end up in charge."
Casting Culkin drew good-natured ribbing from the show's own people. Alex Borstein, the voice of Lois, joked that the part was "type-cast," calling the Devil "the role he was born to play." Seth Green, who voices Chris, agreed: "Not a stretch. Very exciting to have him on board."
And a holiday one
The Halloween special is not the only thing on the calendar. Hulu also announced a companion holiday special, "The Peter Clause," in which Peter competes to become Quahog's official Santa. Both specials are set to stream later this year on Hulu and on Hulu on Disney+, while the show's 25th season is scheduled for 2027.
Why it counts as news
Family Guy is a long-running institution rather than a novelty, and two seasonal specials plus a Season 25 renewal is a real sign of a franchise Hulu still considers a tentpole, not a nice, if minor, casting story. The Culkin booking is the hook, a prestige actor slumming enjoyably in a cartoon, but the fuller item is that one of animation's most durable series is being programmed aggressively around the holidays and into a 25th year.
For readers in Los Angeles, where the animation and voice-acting business is a real part of the local industry, these Comic-Con announcements are the routine machinery of the town's biggest export. The Herald notes it in that spirit, a light but genuine piece of entertainment news out of a convention that increasingly functions as the industry's late-summer marketing stage.
