‘Family Guy’ Bosses on Finally Allowing Lois & Stewie to Talk for 450th Episode

For its 450th episode, Family Guy did something fans have been waiting for from the very beginning: allowing Lois to finally converse with baby Stewie.

In “Edible Arrangement,” which serves as the Season 24 premiere, Stewie gets stoned on Brian’s marijuana gummies and slips some into Lois’ wine glass. Soon, they are chatting up a storm. In what becomes a surprisingly tender and revelatory exchange, they both share their truths and come to understand each other so much more — he even reveals why he once wanted to kill her, a callback to his earliest “vile woman”-spouting days.

For showrunners Rich Appel and Alec Sulkin, the job of picking a storyline that would live up to such a major milestone was an easy one — even if the storyline started out as something entirely different.

“We just always try to make every episode funny and special. And I think then, when we’re looking at, ‘OK, 450 is coming up. OK, it’s going to be our season premiere,’ we look at the pool of episodes that we could possibly use for that, and Rich and I have just, since the minute the outline was made for this one, it’s been one of our favorites, and it turned out great. Our writer, Travis Bowe, did an excellent job,” Sulkin told TV Insider.

However, the original concept didn’t have Lois speaking with Stewie; instead, it was going to be Peter and Stewie having a pot-induced bonding experience.

“When this idea was first kicked around, for obvious comic reasons, it was, ‘Peter gets high with Stewie, and they go on kind of a buddy adventure,’ which has its fun,” Appel explained. “Then we realized, ‘Well, hold on, who’s got the interesting psycho-drama and emotional history with Stewie? It would be, obviously, the mother he’s wanted ‘to kill’ since the show premiered.’ And a conversation between them, we realized, ‘Oh, wait, that won’t just be funny, we hope, but it’ll be more meaningful and emotionally based than something with Peter.’ So we shifted gears,’ and for me, at least, that’s when I thought, ‘This is going to be one that will stand out,’” Appel explained.

When the cast did a live table read of the script for the Lois and Stewie story at the Paley Center for the show’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2024, the feedback from the audience was thunderously approving. “When we got to the act break when they first spoke, there was just this roar from the audience, which just made me and Alec think, ‘Yes, we were right.’ Because they were obviously big fans who came to this event, but they recognized in the lore of the show after 25 years that would be a big, big moment,” Appel remembered.

Though the bosses of the show do suspect a “Peter and Stewie get stoned” iteration still would’ve been a “fun” episode, they also agree it wouldn’t have had the same emotional resonance.

“My gut is, it would have been a funny buddy comedy… It would’ve been The Odd Couple,” Appel predicted.

“Yeah. It would’ve been a lot more silly, and we would have done maybe one or two emotional lines at the end, and we would have had sort of the veneer of that emotional tie-up, but the Lois episode honestly takes you through that,” Sulkin added.

“Maybe what it would have been is, because they were high, they did something really goofy and stupid, and for once, Stewie let loose and behaved like a fat slob, and then Peter had to save him,” Appel offered.

“Now I’m kind of upset we didn’t!” Sulkin joked.

For now, at least, the showrunners reserve the right to return to that idea for the next milestone, Episode 500: “Stewie and Peter get high. I think we broke the story,” Sulkin said with a laugh.

Ultimately, the decision to have Lois understand Stewie was always meant to be a one-and-done, which is often the case with key episodic changes that don’t become show canon.

“Years ago, we made the decision to have Chris and Stewie able to communicate now, which was expanding it, and it’s just good math for the show when Stewie has more people with whom he can communicate, but I think preserving the special nature of Stewie and Lois’ non-communication is a good thing,” Appel explained.

The fact that a large chunk of the show’s audience now streams the series in no particular order also weighs on that decision. “The other practical issue we have to acknowledge is our show is now seen more [on] streaming, where a library of 450 episodes exist, that are shown not necessarily in seasonal order. And I think it would be odd for the fans if there were 42 episodes where Stewie and Lois could communicate and 400-and-whatever because it’s like, ‘Wait, why isn’t she just asking him this question?’” Sulkin added. “We have to honor the fact that fans commit to our show, and it’s like a 300-hour play without intermission… or with 1,000 intermissions!”

As for why it took this long for the full-circle moment to finally happen? Sulkin explained, “A decade ago, we did a crossover with The Simpsons, and people are like, ‘Why didn’t you do this sooner?’ And really, I mean, there’s so many logistical reasons why not. But the fact that we waited ’til Family Guy had 15 years under its belt — and The Simpsons, of course, had 20-something by that point — meant that fans could recognize different ways that might overlap, and there were histories with both shows, and that’s what I think makes it so satisfying with Stewie and Lois. Rather than it happening in Season 3, they’ve had so many years of living with this dynamic and seeing more and more of the relationship play out.”

Moving forward in the season, we can expect another mother-child adventure right away and another with her completely out of the picture, Sulkin teased.

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In next week’s episode, he said, “Lois introduces Meg to something she’s never tasted before, and that’s the seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte. And when the season is over, and the Starbucks aren’t serving it anymore, Meg and Lois decide that will not stand, and they break in, steal supplies, and start kind of an underground drug-like operation that goes a little haywire, but it’s another, like Stewie and Lois, it’s a fun thing, because we haven’t done that many mother-daughter stories compared to how many Brian-Stewie stories, or Peter and the guys.”

The third episode of the season, “Man-Fest Destony,” puts Peter Griffin back into the spotlight: “The one after that we’re excited about because we’ve got Cole Escola, who was the star and the creator of Oh Mary! on Broadway. And in that, the guys go out on a boat, and there’s a storm, and as they’re on the boat, they all are bemoaning their problematic marriages and family, and say to themselves, ‘Well, it would be great to be in a world without women,’” Sulkin said. “And then there’s a storm, and they shipwreck on an island. They don’t know it’s Fire Island. To them, their wish came true, and they’re on a magical island. Cole Escola of plays kind of the King Bee, so to speak.”

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