Family Guy Really Did Kill Off One Of Its Long-Running Gags, And An EP Opened Up About It

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Although Family Guy hasn’t quite reached the same long run as The Simpsons, it’s proven remarkably durable, overcoming dips in viewership and even facing cancellation at times. The show is now preparing for its 25th season, which will include a Halloween episode, but you’ll need a Hulu subscription to watch it. Over the years, Family Guy has featured countless recurring jokes. But it looks like one of those long-running gags might finally be finished.

In the very first season of the show, viewers met a large chicken who gave Peter Griffin an outdated coupon. This seemingly small moment sparked one of Family Guy‘s most hilarious running gags: a spontaneous, often unexpected, fight between Peter and the chicken that continued for over twenty-five years. However, last season, the chicken – named Earnie – was written off the show. According to Executive Producer Alec Sulkin, who spoke with TV Line, the giant chicken is probably staying dead, and he explained why:

I really think the chicken’s time has come and gone. To be honest, I feel like we squeezed so much amazing action and visuals out of the giant chicken fighting Peter – it’s hard to keep surpassing that! It asks a lot of our production crew, and maybe we’ve just gotten everything we could out of that character. It was a fun ride, but it feels like a natural ending.

In Season 23’s episode, “The Chicken or the Meg,” Meg Griffin started seeing Nugget, who was the son of the enormous chicken, Ernie. Ernie initially seemed okay with Meg, but he eventually told her she had to choose between Peter and dating Nugget. Meg’s reaction was to violently and graphically behead the chicken. It’s a cartoon, so these things happen.

Naturally, another common trope in cartoons, and Family Guy in particular, is that characters who die often come back to life, unless their death is meant to be permanent. I believe every main character on the show has died at least once by now. So, if the Giant Chicken suddenly started attacking Peter in a future episode, viewers wouldn’t be surprised at all. It’s just part of the show’s formula.

However, it doesn’t look like that will happen this time. It seems the team behind the scenes feels they’ve already maximized the potential of that joke. With each repeat of the fight, they aimed to make it even better than the last, but it appears they’ve reached a point where they can’t improve on it any further. Therefore, it looks like the era of the Giant Chicken is definitively over. Meg accomplished what Peter couldn’t and defeated him for good.

Circumstances are subject to change. Perhaps if someone develops a brilliant plan for utilizing the Giant Chicken down the line, he might make a comeback. Possibly if that Family Guy movie ever gets made. However, for the time being, it seems he’s permanently left. This marks the conclusion of a significant period.

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2025-10-03 20:08