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Stewart Gilligan "Stewie" Griffin is a fictional character in the animated series Family Guy. Stewie is obsessed with world domination and matricide, and has an ambiguous sexual orientation. He is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin. In addition to siblings Chris and Meg, Stewie has a half-brother Bertram who is unknown to the other Griffins. Stewie is voiced by Seth MacFarlane and speaks in what some consider a British accent.
Though he was once a child genius bent on world domination, the writers have dropped that aspect of his personality, instead focusing on a more flamboyant character.
Stewie is considered to be the show's breakout character.
Discussion
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Quotations
(responding to Chris who asks if he wants ice cream) Yes, but no sprinkles! For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you.
(speaking to Brian) Give me my money! (Patriot Games)
(speaking to Lois) Whatever helps you sleep at night, bitch. (Fast Times at Buddy Cianci, Jr. High)
(Stewie looking outside shop at a buttton suit) Oh who am I kidding, with all those buttons, I'd look like Steve Harvey.
Actually, my first act of violence was when I left that time bomb in Lois' uterus. (smiles evily) HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY LOIS! (Lethal Weapons)
As for you, kind sage, I only hope my heartfelt thanks will keep you warm as you spend the next 10 years IN FROZEN CARBONITE!
Encyclopedia
Stewart Gilligan "Stewie" Griffin is a fictional character in the animated series Family Guy. Stewie is obsessed with world domination and matricide, and has an ambiguous sexual orientation. He is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin. In addition to siblings Chris and Meg, Stewie has a half-brother Bertram who is unknown to the other Griffins. Stewie is voiced by Seth MacFarlane and speaks in what some consider a British accent.
Though he was once a child genius bent on world domination, the writers have dropped that aspect of his personality, instead focusing on a more flamboyant character.
Stewie is considered to be the show's breakout character. Wizard magazine rated him the 95th greatest villain of all time.
Personality
Stewie is one year old and has a sophisticated attitude. He reached his first birthday in the season 1 episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", and has remained the same age ever since. Strangely, he talks to Brian about events that happened years ago, although this can be considered normal in Family Guy given that, for example, in "A Picture Is Worth a 1,000 Bucks" Brian claims he knew Andy Warhol who died in 1987, even though he is only seven years old himself. His nature and mannerisms are juxtaposed with typical childlike interests and actions. While highly literate and able to cite pop culture references that date much further back than his age would let on, he is also entranced by Raffi and the Teletubbies. Stewie succumbs to other weaknesses of children his age – he believes Peter has truly disappeared in a game of Peek-a-Boo, believes that Quagmire actually takes his nose away, talks to his teddy bear (Rupert) as if he were alive, is overcome with laughter when Lois blows on his stomach, and has no idea how to use the toilet. MacFarlane has stated that Stewie is meant to represent the general helplessness of an infant through the eyes of an adult.
Per cartoon physics, his ability to move objects of greater weight than himself is not surprising to other characters, nor is his ability to retrieve firearms from hammerspace. On one episode, the way his football-like head shape was formed, was revealed. Stewie was jumping on a bed when Brian saw him and told him to stop. Stewie yells "Shut up! You're not my mother!" in a normal voice. He then smacked his head on the ceiling and fell onto the bed. Brian asked if he was okay. Stewie, with his head now football shaped, said "Fine, why do you ask?" in his current voice. Without his knowledge, the hit changed his head shape and changed his voice. However, scenes that depict Stewie's birth have shown him with his distinctly shaped head.
Stewie's mastery of physics and mechanical engineering are at a level of science fiction. He has constructed advanced fighter-jets, a mind control device, a weather control device, robots, and a time machine. Stewie employs these to cope with the stresses of infant life (such as teething pain, and eating hated broccoli) and to murder his mother Lois, with mixed success at best depending on the objective.
In other episodes, Stewie engages in other violent or criminal acts, including robbery, carjacking, loan sharking, forgery, and killing off many minor characters.
Stewie has been obsessed with his mother's extermination since the beginning of the show, and has commented several times on the subject to other people, such as when he is being interviewed when the family become part of a reality show; "It's not really that I want to kill her... it's just that I want her... not to be alive... any more." His matricidal tendencies are primarily as a result of her constantly (and unknowingly) getting in the way of his evil plans, so he desires to kill her so he can carry out his plans without interference. His attempts are always fruitless in the end, usually resulting from various unfortunate circumstances getting in the way, such as her opening a cupboard door as he attempts to blow a poison dart at her, or simply moving out of the way when he is about to shoot her with a crossbow.
In the Star Wars parody episode "Blue Harvest", Peter imagines Stewie in the role of Darth Vader, which would match his darker personality, although this version of Vader is portrayed as wisecracking and sarcastic to match the show's comedic style. In "The Former Life of Brian", Stewie expresses disappointment at having his face painted as a "kitty-cat", rather than in the likeness of Darth Maul, a Dark Lord of the Sith seen in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Stewie often seems amused when he notices or creates destruction.
Stewie eventually realizes his dreams of matricide and world domination in the sixth season two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie". The events, however, are reverted in a deus ex machina ending, where most of the story turns out to be a computer simulation. Because of the rather disastrous ending for himself in the simulation, he decides to put aside his plans of matricide and world domination for the time being.
Despite his evil, Stewie does seem to have a human side. For example, in "Chick Cancer", when Brian unwittingly makes a racist comment while the two of them are discussing Stewie's "marriage" to Olivia Fuller, Stewie is openly disgusted by it. When Brian profusely apologizes, Stewie leaves, saying, "You gotta work on that. Bad dog." In one episode where Brian goes to find his mother and discovers that her dead body has been stuffed, Stewie says, "Someone must have said something funny, because your mother's in stitches!" After laughing for a few seconds, he tells Brian, "I'll leave you to grieve," before walking out of the room, supposedly to give Brian some alone time with his mother.
Influences
The two major influences on the generation of Stewie seem to be the English actor Rex Harrison and the American actor David Hyde Pierce.
Some elements of Stewie's personality come from Harrison. MacFarlane has stated that My Fair Lady (starring Harrison) heavily influenced his portrayal of Stewie, and on the Late Show with David Letterman, described Stewie as "Rex Harrison in an infant's body." Family Guy has included several tributes to My Fair Lady, most notably in "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea" and "Running Mates."
MacFarlane has also on more than one occasion linked Stewie with David Hyde Pierce. He has said that he wanted Pierce to play Stewie in any live action version of the show, and a running gag is that people seem to believe Pierce does the voice (he doesn't). MacFarlane himself jokingly made that claim in the 100th episode celebration special.
Communication with adults
Stewie's speech is not always understood or acknowledged by other characters. The show once references this in an example of metahumor at the start of the seventh season in Love Blactually.
A discussion between Brian and Stewie reveals that characters either fully understand Stewie or only understand him to a degree that is related to the character's closeness to the 'main cast'. When considering talking to Loretta, Brian tells Stewie that she will understand him due to her proximity to Cleveland, making her close enough to the main cast.
There have been at least two other occasions in which Stewie being understood is joked about. One being where a cut-away at the end of season 2 episode 18 showed a class of children in the distant future with one saying "What's the deal with the baby... I mean, can they understand him or what?"
Brian Griffin always understands
Brian is, as of now, the only main character whose ability to understand Stewie is unambiguous; the two always converse normally. In "Running Mates", Brian briefly appears to hear Stewie's thoughts; this phenomenon has not been explored in subsequent episodes.
In two episodes, another baby by the name of Olivia communicates similarly to Stewie, with the exception that she is taken seriously by adults. Also, Jillian (Brian's girlfriend of several episodes) appears to understand Stewie just as well.
Adults understand, but disregard Stewie
At the end of the episode "E. Peterbus Unum", the question of whether adults could understand Stewie is raised. In the DVD audio commentary, MacFarlane explains adults can understand him, but don't take him seriously, "sort of like... if a four-year-old who [could] talk told you to 'fuck off', you'd laugh, because it's cute." In this manner, characters acknowledge Stewie, but pay no mind to his often-insulting addresses, such as calling Peter "the fat man" and referring to his mother by her given name, Lois. His insults are occasionally heard, such as when Stewie tells Lois "Why don't you burn in hell?!" Lois replies, "Well, no dessert for you, young man." Stewie generally is insulting to both Meg and Chris, but does acknowledge them. He also is one of the few characters who calls Meg 'Megan'.
In "Untitled Griffin Family History", it is clearly shown that the other characters can understand Stewie; when Peter states that he dislikes The Godfather to the point where he can never watch the ending, Stewie asks "Well, how do you know you don't like it if you don't give it a chance?", and Lois says, "I agree with Stewie, it doesn't seem fair."
In "Lois Kills Stewie", Peter is being held at gunpoint by Stewie as he shouts at him, after Peter did not comment on Stewie's macaroni picture of an owl. A short conversation is then heard where the two talk for a short time. This conversation is acknowledged by the rest of the family.
In Road to Germany, Quahog pharmacist Mort Goldman learns of Stewie's intelligence and communicates with him as fluently as Brian throughout the entire episode. However, this is quickly negated at the end when Stewie throws the knowledgeable Mort back into his time machine, destroys it, and accepts the "past" Mort as the one to continue the series with.
In some cases Stewie is heard swearing a lot. In the episode "Road to Rupert" he highjacks a car by using a gun from a ski race; numerous beeps are heard.
Ambiguous sexuality
When the writers began to flesh out Stewie beyond being a generic evil genius in season two, MacFarlane and the writers began to explore the infant's sexuality with a series of one-off gags, which hinted that Stewie could be gay. On the commentary of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the writers describe how they were going to make Stewie discover he was gay, but decided to scrap this idea in order to retain Stewie's sexual ambiguity for writing purposes.
MacFarlane planned for the series' third season to end with Stewie coming out of the closet after a near-death experience. However, the show's abrupt cancellation caused MacFarlane to abort these plans, and the episode "Queer Is Stewie?" was actually produced, but never shown. Since that point, MacFarlane has opted to have Stewie portrayed as sexually ambiguous, as, in his eyes, the flexibility of Stewie's sexuality allows for much more freedom in terms of writing for the character. Although Stewie seems bisexual because he has shown love for both men and women like Brian and Olvia, he is shown reacting with spontaneous enthusiasm to brief homosexual encounters in several episodes, and in "Chick Cancer" he wishes men could "get together with their buddies, and just have it be the same thing as being with a woman". A few episodes depict Stewie imagining homoerotic adventures with his teddy bear, Rupert. In several situations Stewie is implied to have an attraction for Brian, and in one episode tries to trick Brian into having sex with him. Stewie also sticks his finger in Brian's mouth and puts his finger back into his own mouth. Stewie has also cross-dressed in several episodes. In one episode, when Brian and Stewie are setting up a bet, Stewie asks Brian if he wants to "kiss on it". In a cutaway gag, Stewie states that he likes to go to gay bars to relax (whether or not the other Griffins are aware of this is unknown) and in another he aspires to be the effeminate male friend of the popular girls upon going to high school, and his effeminate teenage self shows homosexual tendencies. In the episode The Former Life of Brian he is seen naked and yells at Brian's son, Dylan to take his pants off. Also he has been naked while in front of Brian and Dylan referencing that he has had an attraction towards both of them.
Stewie has also had liaisons and attractions to girls, notably in "Dammit Janet!", where Stewie falls in love with a girl named Janet, and "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", where Stewie falls for his babysitter. In "Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother?", Stewie becomes sexually aroused watching female cheerleaders undress. He then glances down at his pants and exclaims, "It appears my wee-wee has been stricken with rigor mortis." In "Chick Cancer", Stewie falls in love with a child actress named Olivia Fuller. Stewie also came close to having sex with Connie D'amico. Stewie, at first sight, was attracted to Brian's girlfriend, Jillian. In another episode, Stewie was on the playground with a girl who was momentarily his girlfriend. Also in another episode, Stewie is seen pointing out all of the female babies that he would "do." He also was seen easily annoyed by Jasper, Brian's gay cousin. After noticing Jasper's gay attitude he states that he would not fit in with the family. Several episodes depicting Stewie's possible adult self portray him as celibate, even though he is persuaded (by time-traveling baby Stewie) to pursue a relationship with a woman. In the episode "Ocean's Three and a Half", Stewie falls madly in love with Suzy Swanson, the Swanson's new baby, and tries to impress her with a song but by the time the episode was over he had lost interest in her only to fall in love with Bryan Adams.
MacFarlane later elaborated:
When asked why he made "the decision to take Stewie from homicidal maniac to gay little song boy," MacFarlane answered that "It wasn't a conscious decision. Characters evolve in certain ways and we found that doing the take over the world thing every week was getting played out and was starting to feel a little dated. It was weirdly feeling a little ‘90s and believe me, if we were still doing that the show would be on its last legs. I only half jokingly go by the guideline that if it is something that might possibly ruin the show, it is a story we should probably do."
Bertram
Bertram is Stewie's mostly antagonistic half-brother, and is voiced by Wallace Shawn. While exploring his father's internal organs using his miniaturized flying ship (a la the films Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace), Stewie first meets Bertram as the homuncular inhabitant of a gunship-like spermatozoon (all of Peter's sperm, including Stewie at this stage in existence, appear this way). Their personalities are similar, and in battle they are evenly matched. Bertram returns post-natally, having been sired by Peter via sperm bank donation. Curiously, Bertram was never audibly named in his first appearance, although this could be explained by the fact that he wasn't born yet and his parents named him, and though Stewie refers to him as "Bertram" in all subsequent appearances, he did not do so when they first parted ways.
Bertram appears to rival Stewie in virtually every way, including his skill with firearms and hand-to-hand combat. He is very similar to Stewie in appearance as well, the only difference being he has a pudgier face, freckles, and a tress of red hair on top of his head; every other physical aspect is identical between the two. When not battling each other, they seem to get along quite well, considering they have so much in common, especially their hatred for Lois among other things.
While technically a half-brother to Chris and Meg, Bertram appears only to Stewie in these episodes; it is not made clear whether Bertram occupies the same reality as the rest of Griffin family in the logic of the show. Brian seems to have some knowledge of his existence Sibling Rivalry but it is uncertain if he is aware of his relation to Stewie.
Video game
In Family Guy Video Game!, Stewie discovers Bertram attempting to out do him in taking over the world. Desperate to stop him, Stewie shrinks himself and makes his way to Bertram's lair within Peter's testicles to discover his plan, destroys his henchman cloning lab, and rescues a kidnapped Rupert from a rocket. He finally confronts Bertram in the park, where Bertram turns himself into a giant.
Other appearances
- Stewie has appeared as a Spokesperson for Snapvine.com, speaking as Darth Vader and asking users what they would blow up with the Death Star, while promoting the Lucas-McFarlane project "Blue Harvest".
- Stewie appeared in a short clip on the 20th annual MTV Video Music Awards insulting rapper 50 Cent, which has become a viral video circulating on numerous online services. Stewie, with blocks spelling out "MTV", Rupert and a baby toy in the background, reads some words from the song "Wanksta" in a comical voice, then commenting: "Well, good luck finding the subject and predicate of that run-on sentence! And what the bloody hell does it mean, "we don't go nowhere without toast"? Now, you listen to me, Mr. Cent. If you want to make it in this business, lay off the doobie!". He then pulls out a hitherto concealed sign reading "Stewie for Governor".
- Stewie's face, on a stick, can be seen in the background of the ESPN talk show Pardon the Interruption.
- During the 2006 Canadian Election Royal Canadian Air Farce ran their own election with Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton (all leaders of the major anglophone parties of that election), Jim Harris (whose Green Party, while still minor, was gaining public attention) and "Stewie from Family Guy." Stewie ended up winning with 36 percent of the votes.
- Stewie has appeared on the MSNBC news program Countdown with Keith Olbermann, often introducing (or regressing) news stories regarding Bill O'Reilly. On the May 24, 2006 show, he introduced O'Reilly as Worst Person in the World (a regular Olbermann segment) on the program. Stewie said, "Oh, wait, Bill, hold still. Allow me to soil myself on you. Victory is mine!" This has been shortened to just "Today's Worst Person in the World." Stewie announced June 1 "Countdown presents: 'Factor Fiction', wherein we expose that bastard Bill O'Reilly lying again." He then repeated what he had said above. This has become the norm on O'Reilly segments most of the time. On June 5, 2006, he introduced "Breaking News" about Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and American Idol by saying "Oh here we go. Probably some story about Britney Spears or, knowing Keith, some baseball card." He also did an animation saying "Breaking News. Oh, this should be rich, must be something of a monumental earth shattering importance or they wouldn't have that Earth there shattering. See it shattering? It's Earth Shattering Breaking News. Oh, do tell me! Tell me, tell me!"
- Stewie (along with Brian, the latter with no speaking roles) has also appeared on the unaired short of My Name Is Earl called Bad Karma, in which he influences Earl to get even with everyone who's wronged him. Earl watches him on TV instead of Carson Daly. This short appears on the Season 1 DVD.
- Stewie was an announcer of the 2006 Spike Video Game Awards.
- Stewie and Brian appeared at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards performing a musical number poking fun at networks and current shows on the air, while also poking fun at new programs, such as the one based on the GEICO Cavemen. The song was based on the FCC song from the episode "PTV".
- Stewie — in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon form — appeared in a commercial for Coca-Cola that aired during Super Bowl XLII. During the course of the commercial, the Stewie balloon and the Underdog balloon fight over a floating bottle of Coke. During the course of the battle the bottle floats away from them and into the waiting arms of a Charlie Brown balloon. A Macy*s spokesperson has since stated that the balloon was fictional, however, part of the actual ad aired in a anniversary ad for the store. (On Loveline, Seth MacFarlane stated that he was uninformed about the ad, because of the Writer's Guild of America Strike going on at the time of its production).
- Stewie appeared briefly in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, where Rat claimed to Pig that setting up TiVo was as easy as taking candy from a baby, then Stewie is revealed to be holding a candy cane next to them, calling Pig "Fatman" and threatening to kill him if he touches the candy cane.
Footnotes
External links
- and others on CartoonSpot.net
- Stewie Griffin Quotes
- Stewie Griffin Live
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