King of the Hill Should Address Bill’s Most Heartbreaking Loss With Its New Seasons (And Finally Close a Plot Hole)

King of the Hill’s new revival series has been renewed for three more seasons with Hulu, but the animated series really needs to address one of Bill Dauterive’s most heartbreaking losses with its new episodes. King of the Hill returned to screens earlier this Summer with a brand new season of episodes on Hulu 15 years after the original broadcast run with FOX came to its end. The new episodes introduced a whole new status quo as well as it’s set nearly a decade’s worth of time following the final episode of the series with some big changes for everyone involved.

King of the Hill Season 14 revealed that Bill underwent some of the most dramatic changes as well. While his life had become much sadder during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hank returning to Arlen also helped get Bill’s life back on track moving forward. With new episodes coming in the future, Bill still has yet to address the fact that one of his romances in the original series was not only swept under the rug, but totally forgotten as of the new episodes when that person dies off-screen.

King of the Hill Kills Off Bill’s Big Romance

In the original run of King of the Hill, Bill sparked a romance with Kahn Souphanousiphone’s mother, Laoma. The Season 7 episode, “Maid in Arlen” saw Laoma coming to live with her son before ending up falling in love with Bill. Kahn tries to break the two of them up, but the end of the episode sees them happily confirming their relationship for the future. Outside of a mention in the next episode that he was happy with Laoma, the character is never seen or brought up again in the rest of the original series’ episodes.

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That was until the King of the Hill Season 14 episode, “Kahn-scious Uncoupling” where Kahn confirms that his mother has since died as of the new era of the series and that he still holds a grudge against Bill for dating her. This makes it an entirely worse kind of heartbreak for Bill as the series not only wrote off his happy ending not long after it gave it to him, but killed off his romantic partner entirely without even allowing him to have that relationship on screen. It’s a loss that has somehow made Laoma’s absence from the original series even more of a plot hole than before.

What Should King of the Hill Do With Bill?

The issue from that point on, however, is what King of the Hill should do about this. In the same episode where it’s confirmed Kahn’s mother has died, Bill never really addresses the loss directly. Outside of the joke of dating her, Bill doesn’t really get a moment to highlight how close he and Laoma were (and instead sees him still obsessing over his ex-wife Lenore). If the new episodes continue to go down this depressing path for Bill, there’s just got to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

It might be difficult because writing Bill as a perennial loser is much more fruitful for humor for King of the Hill itself. But what fans have come to love from this series in particular is the way it reflects actual changes in people over time. Bill is a character who is deserving of some kind of better ending for himself, and now there’s plenty of time to at least allow the series to address the fact that he was in a happy relationship before she had passed. Just having Bill acknowledge it on screen would be a big step forward to that end goal.

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