'Family Guy' to Address the Deaths of Carrie Fisher and Adam West

Family Guy's 16th season will include more appearances by recurring cast members and pop culture icons Carrie Fisher and Adam West, the creative team revealed at New York Comic Con. The season will also include farewells for Angela and Mayor Adam West, the longtime supporting characters played by Fisher and West.

Hosted by executive producer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, the irreverent animated comedy's New York Comic Con panel included stars Alex Borstein (Lois), Seth Green (Chris), Patrick Warburton (Joe) and Mike Henry (Cleveland / Herbert) alongside writer and actor John Viener, executive producer Alec Sulkin, and executive producer Rich Appel. Family Guy creator and actor Seth MacFarlane, tending to post-production duties on The Orville, joined by Skype.

Chevapravatdumrong introduced an episode airing in November, "Three Directors." The episode is comprised of three segments, each telling "famous directors' versions" of the Family Guy story: Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Michael Bay are lampooned in spoofs dedicated to their films and respective styles.

Blending together parodies of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, Con Air, and Transformers across its 22 minutes, the episode includes appearances by Carrie Fisher and Adam West, who passed away in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The Michael Bay spoof segment of the episode sees a bulked-up Peter fiercely make out with a sexed-up Angela.

"We have a couple more episodes with them coming up," Sulkin said, adding Fisher's and West's deaths "will be addressed" moving forward.

"That will be Carrie's last episode, but not Adam West's," Appel said. "The last direction we were able to give her was, 'it's a deep French kiss with Peter Griffin, go wild.' She was as game for this as she always was over the years, and we're going to have a farewell for Carrie in a little while and another for Adam West later on this season."

When asked if the filmmakers would be replacing Adam West as the Mayor, Borstein was quick to joke, "We had replaced him with Tom Petty, but…"

"Adam West has recorded many episodes into this new season, so you'll be hearing his voice a lot this year, thank God," Sulkin said. "He's so funny. We miss him, obviously. Somewhere down the line we're gonna have an episode where we get a new mayor, we're working on that. But we won't be replacing Adam."

The Family Guy team teased what's ahead in Season 16, including Herbert the pervert running into trouble with the law, Brian and Stewie re-imagined as Sherlock and Watson, and the 300th episode, described by Chevapravatdumrong as a Stewie and Brian friendship story and "a love letter to one of the greatest film franchises of all time, The Fast and the Furious."

"Really, I think you guys will love it," Appel said, pointing to the 300 milestone as his favorite episode.

Family Guy debuted Season 16 on October 1st. The 300th episode airs January 2018 on Fox.