Are you nostalgic for “classic” Family Guy? Or perhaps you’ve wanted to pick up the series for some mindless fun? While much of the show is indeed available on Netflix, the sad news is that the first 8 seasons of Peter Griffin’s misadventures aren’t.
Why Aren’t Seasons 1-8 of Family Guy on Netflix?
If you hadn’t heard, Family Guy was completely removed from Netflix at one point in 2018. It turns out that the company simply hadn’t renewed their contract with Fox, following a series of feuds between the two companies over Netflix “poaching” two Fox executives. Employment disputes aside, this has caused Family Guy and other Fox titles (Futurama, American Dad) to leave the platform.
Not a great look considering their already dwindling library of third-party shows. Understandably, Netflix has faced a lot of backlash from fans of the series. Perhaps this added pressure convinced some higher-ups to look past prior disagreements and try to bring back the show.
Well, Family Guy has since made a partial return to the platform sometime after Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. However, it hasn’t been made available to viewers in the US. Don’t worry, though, as there’s still a way for American viewers to enjoy the show on Netflix. The parts of it that are available, at least. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Is Season 19 of Family Guy on Netflix?
Unfortunately, there’s no word on when the current season will make it to Netflix. Considering newer seasons of the show usually pop up on Netflix in September, we expect season 19 will do so as well. The season finale is set to air on May 9th 2021.
Why Isn’t Season 19 of Family Guy on Netflix?
As the nineteenth season of Family Guy is still airing at the time of writing, it hasn’t been made available for streaming on Netflix. The current licensing agreement between Disney and Netflix may guarantee exclusive streaming rights to Hulu (owned by Disney) for a set period of time. Netflix can then release the season to its subscribers outside the US. This is mostly speculation, but it’s the likeliest scenario.
That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the rest of the series on the platform. Of course, things tend to get complicated when exclusivity contracts are involved. For example, seasons 9 through 11 of Family Guy are only available on Netflix Canada, and there’s always the risk for out-of-the-blue regional changes.
Fortunately, it has never been easier to keep up on Netflix thanks to StreamCatcher The tool allows you to see exactly:
- Where your favorite shows are airing on Netflix
- Which region has the most seasons available
- Whether the show is available in different languages (dubbed or subtitled)
- Which VPNs can reliably unblock Family Guy and many other Netflix shows from around the world
Why Do I Need a VPN to Watch Family Guy?
As mentioned, a few seasons are only available on Netflix Canada. You can still find the show elsewhere (France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Israel), but you’re only getting seasons 12 through 18. If you’re located anywhere else in the world – well, you’re pretty much out of luck.
Luckily, a VPN allows you to easily change your online location to the country of your choosing, as long as your provider has servers in the area. In this case, you would need to connect to a VPN server based in Canada to get the most Family Guy seasons on Netflix. StreamCatcher even recommends a few different providers that work on the platform, with servers that cover the areas listed on their website.
Considering Netflix blocks VPN traffic, those recommendations will save you a lot of time researching providers that can still unblock Family Guy and other titles. No use signing up with ten different VPNs only to discover that none of them work, right?
Do Free VPNs Work on Netflix?
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. As mentioned above, Netflix heavily restricts VPN traffic, and even subscription-based providers may be affected at times. Luckily, the latter have the funds to acquire fresh new IP addresses and wider server networks for their subscribers. Not only that, but they can invest in new obfuscation techniques to mask your VPN usage online.
There’s a slim chance you may find a free VPN that actually works on the platform. However, don’t expect it to last long, or provide you with a decent streaming experience. Why? Here are a couple of good reasons:
- Did you know that Netflix uses about 1 GB of data an hour for SD video and 3 GB if you watch stuff in HD? Well, free VPNs usually have data caps between 500 MB and 10 GB per month (at most). So that’s just shy of a season of Family Guy per month.
- Some free VPNs do offer unlimited data, but all of them will throttle your bandwidth. After all, they need to offer relatively equal speeds to all users. The only way to do that, however, is to slow down your own connection to a crawl.
All this is ignoring the fact that free VPNs can be dangerous. Most of them collect your data to sell to advertisers, just in case you were wondering how they manage to stay in business. In the most extreme cases, all your private data (including payment info and passwords) could be leaked online as part of a data breach.
Where Can I Watch the Missing Seasons of Family Guy?
Enough doom and gloom, though. We still have 8 seasons of Griffin family shenanigans that remain unaccounted for. Now, the only place you can stream Family Guy seasons 1-8 (on demand) is Hulu. If you’re outside the US, you still require a VPN to access the service. Aside from that, you’ll need access to some form of US payment method, as Hulu doesn’t accept credit cards or PayPal payments from abroad.
This can be easily solved by looking up places that sell Hulu gift cards and creating an account that way. Don’t forget to use your VPN when creating the account. Finally, you could always buy the remaining seasons on services such as iTunes and Amazon Prime Video or even automaty do gry na pieniądze
