[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Sunday’s “Christmas Guy” episode of Fox’s Family Guy.]
After the somewhat shocking death of Brian Griffin three weeks ago in an episode of Fox’s “Family Guy,” the alcoholic dog is back. It is Christmas after all. After Brian’s death, fans began to protest the move, even calling for a petition to bring their favorite character back. But it seems like it was the plan all along to bring Brian back during the Christmas special.
During the episode, the Griffin’s new dog, Vinnie, dresses up as Brian in a bid to cheer Stewie up, but it doesn’t work. Instead, Vinnie takes Stewie shopping at the mall for anything he wants. There, he spots Stewie from the past and remembers that the time machine is in the other Stewie’s backpack. Vinnie distracts the alt-Stewie, and present-day Stewie steals the time machine. He sets his time machine back to before Brian was struck and killed by a car and says goodbye to Vinnie. “Good dog, Vinnie, good dog,” Stewie tells him. He jumps back to the moment right before Brian was killed and saves his best friend. “You’re alive my friend!” he exclaims. “I couldn’t live without you, so I came back from the future to save your life.”
In a moment that likely made you feel feelings, Brian responds with a simple, “Thank you for saving my life. A lot of other families would have just gotten another dog and moved on.” Future Stewie disappears and the Griffin family is happily reunited for Christmas, where Brian gives Stewie a framed picture of them together.
“And thus endeth our warm, fuzzy holiday lesson: Never take those you love for granted, for they can be gone in a flash,” he wrote before adding: “I mean, you didn’t really think we’d kill off Brian, did you? Jesus, we’d have to be fucking high.” MacFarlane, who voices Brian, then followed it up with, “Oh and hey… thanks for caring so much about the canine Griffin. He is overcome with gratitude.”