Adam West recorded five Family Guy episodes prior to death
Even though the great Adam West is no longer with us, there are ways that he will continue to live on. One of those is going to be through more episodes of Family Guy. Given that this is a show with such an incredibly long production cycle, there are opportunities for him to be able to continue to see his character of Mayor Adam West within this world.
Speaking in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Steve Callaghan made it clear that West had recorded five more episodes of the show before his death, and there was never any debate as to whether or not to remove those stories from the episode:
“He’s such an integral part of the series that it never even occurred to us to take that out. I would almost feel like that was somehow not properly honoring him. I think the proper way to honor him is to keep the character in the show. There were two or three episodes where his character had been written in [beyond those mentioned], but he hadn’t yet recorded those, so obviously we’ve made accommodations for that. There was one scene where he was officiating a wedding, and it was easy enough to just have a different character do that. I [wouldn’t] even consider having someone come in and try to imitate his voice.”
West appeared in dozens upon dozens of episodes over the years, so we do hope that the show finds a way to give him a proper tribute when the time comes. Callaghan also mentioned in the interview that Carrie Fisher also voiced a recurring character, and with that, we do wonder if Family Guy will be able to find a way to balance out the humor with honoring these great people — who are also in turn known for their own great sense of humor. We don’t think that they would want anything overly sappy or sentimental; instead, they would want something for them that is true to who they are and hopefully the world that they were a part of.
Ultimately, we are going to very much miss West for all of the fantastic contributions that he gave to the entertainment world. We’re just so lucky that he was able to have such an impressive second life on this show even after being Batman for so many years.