‘King of the Hill’ Won’t Be Recasting Luanne Platter or Lucky Kleinschmidt

King of the Hill will look a lot different after a 15-year hiatus. Mega Lo Mart has drones, and Bobby is now a 21-year-old chef who cooks up gourmet German-Japanese cuisine. Along with these major adjustments, fans also will have to accept a conspicuous lack of Luanne Platter. 

Luanne was voiced by the late Brittany Murphy, who passed away just three months after King of the Hill’s series finale hit airwaves in 2009, while her husband, Lucky Kleinschmidt, was played by late rocker Tom Petty, who died in 2017. With the Season 14 premiere around the corner, fans have been wondering how the show plans on addressing these characters, who served as series staples throughout the initial run. 

It remains unclear what presence, if any, these existing characters will have in the show, but it’s safe to say that we won’t be getting a Manger Babies reboot, as IndieWire has confirmed that neither character will be recast. 

This isn’t the only casting shake-up ahead of the show’s revival. Johnny Hardwick died shortly after production began in 2023, and creators tapped series vet Toby Huss to take over the role of Dale Gribble. Similarly, earlier this month, it was announced that The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng would voice Kahn Souphanousinphone — a decision co-creator Greg Daniels first explained several years ago when asked how Huss, who is white, landed the part of Hank’s Lao neighbor in the first place. 

“If we were casting today, we wouldn’t have cast him. But we cast it in 1997. Most animation casts play multiple roles, and Toby Huss initially played Cotton Hill and was cast for that, and then Kahn came up later,” Daniels said in 2023, noting that the show “didn’t have the budget” to cast another actor at the time. “But it’s different now.”

Again, when it comes to the new King of the Hill, a lot is different now.