LuAnn Platter

🍗 A special post. 🥕

King of the Hill, 1997.

"I am a proud, ignorant woman."

— Luanne Platter

"I am a proud, ignorant woman." — Luanne Platter

Luanne Platter is a blonde Texan gumdrop with an engine that misfires every other sentence, a walking hymn to the underestimated and cosmetologically gifted.

As a temporarily adopted niece of Peggy and Hank Hill in King of the Hill, she enters the series with a mascara wand and a heart full of televangelist optimism, quickly becoming the show’s most underappreciated Zen philosopher. Luanne cries easily, prays often, and once believed she could major in “hair.” Her name, of course, is not just a name—it is a deep-fried pun, a cafeteria-born eponym paying homage to the LuAnn Platter at Luby’s, Texas’s sacred temple of steam trays and Jell-O cubes. For a low, low price, the LuAnn offers a “select entree, two sides and a roll,” with options including Luby’s Fried Fish (golden, mysterious), Liver and Onions, and that cornerstone of Gulf State cuisine: Chicken Fried Steak. Mac & Cheese came standard-issue in many hearts.

The writing of Luanne was as intentional as her big curling iron curls. Co-creator Greg Daniels once noted that the character served as a counterpoint to the dogmatic, proudly propane Hank. Where Hank tightens his belt and speaks through molars, Luanne performs dramatic reenactments of Christian puppet shows and believes in redemption through conditioner. Originally voiced by Brittany Murphy, Luanne’s vulnerability and daffy persistence became a fan favorite, not least because the show never stooped to mock her, it simply observed, tenderly, as she tried to start a Christian puppet ministry or briefly became a born-again virgin. Meanwhile, Luby’s itself (founded in 1947 in San Antonio) sits somewhere between nostalgia and net loss. Once boasting hundreds of locations, it became a fixture of Texas Sundays and post-funeral luncheons, beloved by people who considered lime gelatin a vegetable and trusted their meatloaf to come sliced by a man in a paper hat. That a character like Luanne could emerge from such a platter makes perfect sense. She's filling, earnest, and always, always Texan.