Stewie Griffin

Role in Family Guy

Stewie Griffin is a one-year-old who speaks with a refined upper-class British accent and uses an impressively large vocabulary. His head is shaped like an American football. His first birthday happens in the season one episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang," and a later episode, "Chap Stewie," includes a cutaway gag where the family celebrates his birthday again, effectively making it his second first birthday. He is extremely well-read and can reference pop culture from long before he was born, yet he is also fascinated by Raffi and the Teletubbies.

Despite his intelligence, he has very childish moments: he thinks Peter has actually vanished during a game of peekaboo, struggles with shapes, treats his teddy bear Rupert like a living friend, laughs uncontrollably when Lois blows on his stomach, and cannot use a toilet. Other characters do not find it strange that he can lift objects heavier than himself, pull guns from nowhere, or talk, thanks to cartoon physics. In one episode, it is shown that he understands German but cannot speak it, and another episode reveals he is a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci through Lois's family.

Stewie has an incredible, almost science-fictional grasp of physics and engineering. He has built things like fighter jets, mind-control and weather-control devices, teleporters, robots, clones, a working Star Trek transporter, time machines, a multiverse transporter, a shrinking pod, and many weapons including lasers and rocket launchers. He uses these inventions to deal with the frustrations of being a baby, such as teething and eating broccoli, and to try to kill his mother Lois.

As established in the very first episode, his desire to murder her comes from her constantly and accidentally getting in the way of his plans, with his success rate being inconsistent.

Development

Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, provides the voice for Stewie Griffin, as well as for Brian Griffin, Peter Griffin, Glenn Quagmire, and many minor characters. Stewie’s accent was inspired by English actor Rex Harrison, especially his performance in the 1964 musical film My Fair Lady, with additional influence from Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. MacFarlane has also mentioned David Hyde Pierce as his ideal choice to play Stewie in a hypothetical live-action version.

Stewie’s head is shaped like a rugby ball. In the episode “Stuck Together, Torn Apart,” a cutaway gag shows his head is normal until he bounces on a bed and hits the ceiling, stretching it into its familiar shape. However, flashbacks in “Chitty Chitty Death Bang” reveal his head was already football-shaped at birth. Stewie’s sexuality is intentionally unclear.

Ambiguous sexuality

Starting in season two, when the writers moved beyond making him a simple supervillain, they added one-off jokes hinting he might be queer, such as in “Chick Cancer” and “We Love You, Conrad.” In “Brian and Stewie,” his cellphone screensaver shows a muscular man; he also keeps a picture of Chris Noth in his wallet and expresses a desire for sexual relations with Brian’s son, Dylan. In episodes like “Turkey Guys” and “Send in Stewie, Please,” he seems about to come out of the closet but is interrupted for laughs.

Conversely, in “Dammit Janet!,” he falls in love with a girl named Janet, and MacFarlane describes him as “a very unhappy repressed heterosexual.” The writers once considered having Stewie discover he was gay but dropped the idea to keep his sexuality ambiguous for storytelling flexibility. MacFarlane originally planned for the third season to end with Stewie coming out after a near-death experience, but the show’s sudden cancellation stopped that.

The episode “Queer Is Stewie?” was made but never aired. Since then, MacFarlane has chosen to keep Stewie sexually ambiguous, believing it gives more creative freedom.

Reception

Seth MacFarlane has been nominated for two awards for voicing Stewie Griffin. In 1999, he won a Primetime Emmy Award in Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. Wizard magazine rated Stewie the 95th-greatest villain of all time. IGN named Stewie the best Family Guy character on its list of "Top 25 Family Guy Characters".

In 2010, Entertainment Weekly placed him 45th on its list of the "Top 100 Characters of the Past Twenty Years. Gay.com ranked Stewie as the fifteenth-gayest cartoon character. Hal Boedeker of The Orlando Sentinel called Stewie "a brilliant creation. Stewie and Brian usually form the center plot for the show's highest-rated and most critically acclaimed episodes, the Road to ... episodes; five of those occupied the top five places in a list of Stewie and Brian's greatest adventures.

Several commentators, including graphic novel author Chris Ware, have noticed similarities between Stewie and the title character of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Ware remarked the similarities are "a little too coincidental to be simply, well, coincidental" and stated he did not want his book to be accused of being a rip-off of Family Guy. 20th Century Fox insists Stewie is entirely original. In a 2003 interview, MacFarlane said he had never seen the comic strip, described the similarities as "pretty shocking," and said he could see how Ware would reach that conclusion.

Merchandise and appearances in other media

Stewie Griffin has been plastered on a wide range of merchandise, including T-shirts, baseball caps, bumper stickers, cardboard standups, refrigerator magnets, and posters. In the Family Guy Video Game!, he learns that his brother Bertram is also trying to take over the world. To stop him, Stewie shrinks down and sneaks into Bertram's lair, which is located inside Peter's testicles. There, he uncovers the plan, destroys a cloning lab for henchmen, and saves his kidnapped teddy bear Rupert from a rocket.

The final showdown happens in a park, where Bertram turns himself into a giant. The DVD movie Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story explores Stewie's secret and a potential future for him. He is also a playable character alongside Brian in Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse, where the duo travels across different dimensions to defeat Bertram again. Outside of video games, Stewie appeared in the Bones episode "The Critic in the Cabernet" as a hallucination caused by a brain tumor in FBI agent Seeley Booth, with all his dialogue written by Seth MacFarlane.

He was featured in a Coca-Cola commercial during Super Bowl XLII, and he and Brian starred in a Wheat Thins ad. The pair also performed a musical number at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards, and Stewie appeared at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards. On December 21, 2009, he presented the "Top Ten Things You Don't Want To Hear From Your Child" on the Late Show with David Letterman. In the 2023 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Donatello joked that Michelangelo's head shape looked like if Stewie had a baby with Hey Arnold!.

Stewie also shows up in the 2024 Simpsons short May the 12th Be with You, where he asks for vodka in his juice box, only for Homer to stuff him in a bag and carry him off to Moe's Tavern.

Did You Know?

• Stewie's first birthday is celebrated in the season 1 episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang," and a cutaway gag in season 12's "Chap Stewie" shows the family celebrating what is effectively his second first birthday.
• In "The Big Bang Theory," it is revealed that Stewie is descended from Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci on Lois's side of the family.
• Stewie understands German but cannot speak it, as established in "Don't Be a Dickens at Christmas," because his great-great-grandmother is of German descent.
• In the season 9 premiere "And Then There Were Fewer," Stewie secretly saves Lois from being murdered by Diane Simmons by killing Diane with a sniper rifle, claiming he only did it so he could kill Lois himself later.