Luanne Platter Doesn't Show up on 'King of the Hill' for Understandable Reasons

Over the course of its first 13 seasons, King of the Hill established a world filled with a variety of different characters. Most of those characters are back for the new season, the first since 2009, but there's an absence that some fans found difficult to ignore.

Luanne Platter, who is Hank Hill's niece by marriage, was a crucial part of the original series after her character debuted in the show's first season. Here's what we know about why Luanne is totally absent from the new season, and what creator Mike Judge has said about that decision.

The simple reason Luanne is not in the new season is that Brittany Murphy, the actress who voiced her throughout the entirety of the show's original run, died in 2009 shortly before the 13th season aired. The new season doesn't even mention Luanne, and while that might seem like a betrayal to some fans, it would likely be difficult to find an elegant way to acknowledge Murphy's real-life death within the confines of the series.

“The analogy I use as a sports fan is, sometimes the best way to honor someone’s work is to hang their jersey up in the rafters as a show of respect and what they meant to the organization," showrunner Saladin K. Patterson told IGN shortly before the new season premiered.

It's clear, then, that King of the Hill decided not to recast Luanne, and instead to simply get rid of the character completely.

That might leave some fans feeling like the show isn't quite complete, but it's worth acknowledging their argument that any alternative probably would have been inadequate. Murphy left an indelible mark on that character over the course of the show's original run, and any attempt to recapture that would likely fall well short. Instead, they simply chose to leave it untouched.

Although King of the Hill is still as reliably funny as ever, one of the reasons this new season has been so warmly received from critics is that it does so much work to acknowledge the way time has passed inside this universe. Hank and Peggy return to Arlen after living in Saudi Arabia for a decade, and are shocked by how much their beloved Texas has transformed in that time.

The loss of key members of the cast reinforces that feeling that things have changed. King of the Hill is in some ways the same show that it has always been, but not including Luanne is just an acknowledgment that the world has changed in the more than 15 years that it was off the air.

Brittany Murphy will always be an indelible part of the King of the Hill universe. It's for precisely that reason that they decided against including Luanne in the revival at all, even though there are some fans who definitely miss her presence.