The Summer of Glen Powell Will End with the ‘Family Guy’ Halloween Special
Like every summer, the hottest season of Glen Powell’s career was doomed to cool down eventually.
Starting with the surprise streaming success of Richard Linklater’s action romcom Hit Man back in early June and peaking with the mega budget disaster film Twisters that’s currently pulling in impressive box-office returns, movie-watchers have spent the last couple of months swirling in a storm of powerfully Powell proportions as the chiseled, charismatic and comically inclined leading man continues to establish himself as a veritable cinema superstar. As such, Powell is looking to cap off his career-defining warm season in the fall by joining other A-listers like Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane in the Family Guy Hulu Halloween special on October 14th.
Don't Miss
During a panel at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, Family Guy producers revealed that Powell will appear in the first of the show’s two 2024 holiday specials as a competitive pumpkin-carver and primary antagonist named Patrick McCloskey. In less than a year, Powell went from winning Sydney Sweeney’s heart in Anyone But You to losing a jack-o’-lantern competition to Peter Griffin.
The synopsis of the upcoming Family Guy Halloween special reads, “Peter and his friends aim to unseat the reigning champion (Powell) in Quahog’s annual Pumpkin Contest by any means necessary.” The Hulu special will also feature the esteemed Gladiator star and legend of the British theater Sir Derek Jacobi voicing Stewie Griffin’s teddy bear Rupert, just in case the premise of the Family Guy Halloween episode wasn’t grabby enough to get Shakespeare-heads to start a Hulu subscription this October.
Family Guy landing the hottest leading man in entertainment to play a pumpkin carver who will probably find himself both bested and embarrassed by Peter Griffin at the end of the Halloween special is either a huge get for the show or a bit of a step backwards for Powell, who has been on an incredible run of popular projects in the last couple of years since his A-list breakout in Top Gun: Maverick. Then again, like most impossibly attractive actors, Powell has repeatedly insisted that he wants more opportunities to show off his comedy chops, once lamenting how Lorne Michaels bumped his Saturday Night Live hosting gig due to Top Gun’s scheduling changes.
If Powell’s lucky, his Family Guy spot could open a lot of doors in his burgeoning adult animated comedy career. Maybe, this Christmas season, The Simpsons will let the current “It Boy” voice a mall Santa who gets his ass kicked by Barney Gumble.
