Stewie Griffin

Stewart Gilligan "Stewie" Griffin is a fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy. He is voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the Griffin family, in the episode "Death Has a Shadow" on January 31, 1999. Stewie was created and designed by MacFarlane himself, who was asked to pitch a pilot to the Fox Broadcasting Company, based on The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve, two shorts made by MacFarlane featuring a middle-aged man named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve.

Stewie is a highly precocious toddler who talks and acts as an adult. He is the third child and second son of Peter and Lois Griffin, the youngest brother of Meg, the younger brother of Chris, and the older half-brother of Bertram. He began the series as a megalomaniacal sociopath, initially obsessed with violence, matricide, and world domination. As the series progressed, particularly following the events of the direct-to-video film Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story and the two-episode arc "Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie", the devious and violent aspects of Stewie's personality were toned down, and he has evolved into an eccentric, friendlier, and flamboyant scamp. He has also come to have a very close friendship with the family's anthropomorphic dog, Brian, whom he originally used to antagonize in the earliest episodes. Stewie is considered to be the show's breakout character and has received numerous award nominations from writers such as Jodiss Pierre.

Stewie Griffin is portrayed as a one-year-old prodigy who has a sophisticated voice, American football-shaped head, and can speak very fluently in an upper-class British accent with quite-advanced vocabulary. He reaches his first birthday in the season 1 episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", and the family celebrates Stewie's birthday in a cutaway gag in the season 12 episode "Chap Stewie". As Stewie's first birthday was celebrated in the episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", it is safe to assume that it was Stewie's second first birthday in the episode "Chap Stewie". Very highly literate and able to cite pop culture references that long predate his birth, Stewie is also entranced by Raffi and Teletubbies.

Stewie succumbs to other childish tendencies; he believes Peter has truly disappeared in a game of peekaboo, often has difficulties understanding the concept of shapes, 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 a toilet. MacFarlane has stated that Stewie was created 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 apparent ability to retrieve firearms from hammerspace or his ability to talk. According to "Don't Be a Dickens at Christmas", he understands German (but cannot speak it), as his great-great-grandmother is of German descent and the Pewterschmidts (except Lois) speak it. In "The Big Bang Theory" it is revealed that he is descended from Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, on Lois's side of the family.

Stewie's mastery of physics and mechanical engineering is quite extraordinary and at a level of science fiction. He has constructed advanced fighter jets, mind control devices, a weather control device, a teleportation device, robots, clones, a working Transporter device from Star Trek, time machines, a Multiverse Transporter, and a shrinking pod, as well as an assortment of weapons including lasers, rocket launchers, and crossbows. Stewie employs these to cope with the perceived stresses of infant life (such as teething pain and eating broccoli) and to murder his mother, Lois, with mixed success at best depending on the objective. As made clear in the pilot episode, Stewie's matricidal tendencies are a result of Lois constantly and unwittingly thwarting his schemes, and so he desires to kill her to carry out his plans without her interference.

In other, later episodes, Stewie engages in other violent and criminal acts, including robbery, aggravated assault, carjacking, loan sharking, forgery, and killing off many minor characters (with a tank, guns, and other assorted weaponry).

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 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, being shot and killed by Peter, he decides to put aside his outlandish plans of matricide and world domination for the time being.

Stewie shows a complete disdain for most people, especially Matthew McConaughey, but does show affection and even rare instances of kindness to his family. Such moments include his support for Meg (whom he traditionally calls "Megan") as when he chided Brian's coke-induced hostility to her ("The Thin White Line"), retracted his joke, "I hate you too, bitch" when Meg said "I hate you all" to the family ("Untitled Griffin Family History"), told his parents to stop their gross negativism on Meg's attempt at cooking and give her a chance ("Trading Places"), and wiped her tears during a weepy moment. On a more frequent basis though, Stewie constantly disrespects Meg, as he does with most elders (and as most people do to Meg), often being rude to her and subjecting her to the malice of his misbehavior, once even tricking her outside to be attacked by bees on steroids.