King of the Hill showrunner says Jonathan Joss’ passing was not the reason for John Redcorn’s big change this season

King of the Hill is now back for season 15, which is the second season since it returned after a 15-year hiatus. In season 14, Hank Hill (Mike Judge) and his wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) came home to the small town of Arlen, Texas after spending several years in Saudi Arabia. When they returned, they caught up on the lives of their neighbors, most of whom hadn’t changed all that much. However, there was one big difference: Nancy Gribble (Ashley Gardner) had resumed her affair with John Redcorn (Jonathan Joss) — which had ended way back in season 4 — unbeknownst to her husband Dale (Johnny Hardwick/Toby Huss).

Now that relationship has undergone another change this season and the King of the Hill showrunner says it’s not for the reason everyone might think.

On June 1, 2025, Jonathan Joss was murdered by his neighbor. His tragic passing took place just two months before the premiere of King of the Hill season 14. Joss’ husband described the attack as a hate crime, while local authorities said they found no evidence the murder was motivated by hate.

“Jonathan Joss’ passing was tragic in so many different ways. It caught us off guard and he was such a sweet, fragile soul,” King of the Hill showrunner Saladin Patterson tells Polygon, also lamenting “how unfortunate and how cruel life can be sometimes.”

John Redcorn shows up briefly in King of the Hill season 15 episode 5, “The Best Little Marriage in Texas,” which features Hank and Peggy attending a church-related marriage retreat. Once there, Peggy finds out that Dale and Nancy are teaching a class about how to keep a marriage strong. This frustrates Peggy, given Nancy’s infidelity.

Eventually, Peggy manages to get Nancy and Dale replaced with her and Hank. This prompts Nancy to explain to Peggy how good the marriage retreat has been for her and Dale. At the end of the episode, once the retreat is over, John Redcorn comes to pick up Nancy as usual, and she tells him her “headaches” (the euphemism for their affair) have cleared up. John Redcorn then says, “Really? OK, let me know when they come back.” He then sheds a tear (a nod to a well-known 1970s commercial), and drives off.

At first glance, one would assume that the affair’s end came about because of Jonathan Joss’ real-life murder. However, the end of the affair between Nancy and John Redcorn was not brought about because of his death. Joss is even credited in the episode, meaning he recorded John Redcorn’s lines for “The Best Little Marriage in Texas” prior to his death.

“The truth of the matter is, we had broken and completed that episode well before he passed away,” says Patterson. “It feels like it’s a reaction to it, but that episode was almost in the can when he passed away.”

Patterson, along with King of the Hill creators and executive producers Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, didn’t even see this as the end of the John Redcorn character. “We had purposefully left it open-ended,” says Patterson. “In our minds, we could always bring John Redcorn back anytime we wanted to.”

This had also been the case in the original series, where John Redcorn occasionally factored into stories after Nancy ended their affair in season 4.

Image: Disney

Creatively speaking, the reason why the King of the Hill writers decided to end the affair was so they could examine Nancy and Dale’s relationship in a new way.

“We wanted to tell stories now that the characters in this age and phase of life would be dealing with,” Patterson says. “Nancy and Dale, Hank and Peggy, being couples that have been married 20 to 30 years, it’s a very common thing for you to be turning that lens back on your relationship and saying, ‘Who are we as a couple now? We’ve changed. We’re different people than we were when we got married.’ We wanted to explore some of those things. That’s what led to the decision to do the marriage retreat story, where Nancy’s like, ‘You know, judge me all you want, but us being in this role has been good for our marriage.’ We think that’s a very relatable thing, and that meant at least putting a pause on the John Redcorn affair. In our minds, that’s what it probably was, a pause.”

Image: Disney

However, a simple “pause” was suddenly made a lot more complicated with the death of Joss, and whether or not the Nancy and John Redcorn relationship will ever resume is now a much weightier decision.

“Now that [Jonathan Joss has] passed away, we have to decide if that pause is going to be permanent or not,” Patterson says. “It’s still open-ended, similar to the Luanne and Lucky of it all. If stories lend themselves to be better served by reintroducing that relationship, we’re certainly open to doing it. We then have to deal with the real-life challenge of casting. Jonathan Joss was not the original John Redcorn. He’s the second John Redcorn, so there may not be as much preciousness to that decision, but it’s still something that we don’t take lightly.”

King of the Hill season 15 is now available on Hulu.