Aaron McGruder’s Absence From Final Season of ‘The Boondocks’ Still a Mystery

There's trouble in Woodcrest.

By Jamilah King Mar 24, 2014

The fourth and final season of Adult Swim’s hit animated series "The Boondocks" is almost underway, but it will do so without its creator, Aaron McGruder.

McGruder’s absence hasn’t quite been explained. He did announce that he’s working on a new series for the network called "Black Jesus," featuring a modern-day black Jesus who’s living in Compton, Calif., but fans still aren’t clear on why he’s not involved in seeing "The Boondocks" across the finish line. After all, he did transform it from a college newspaper comic strip into one of the network’s most successful animated series. A press release from Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series, noted that the final season "was produced without the involvement of Aaron McGruder, when a mutually agreeable production schedule could not be determined."

Justin Charity wrote over at Gawker about the show’s troubled road:

Through the comic’s conclusion in 2006, and the TV series’ stalling in 2010, McGruder and The Boondocks drew frequent criticism from conservative commentators and black intelligentsia alike. The characters’ fondness for the word "nigga," the overheated invectives against the Bush administration and white American power, the ensemble parody of minority stereotypes–it’s so far unclear whether the TV series will retain such edge despite the absence of its notoriously brash creator, a guy who called Condoleezza Rice, an early fan of McGruder’s strip, a "mass murderer" to her face in 2002, as he shook her hand.

But it’s that brash attitude that also made it a fan favorite. 

The show’s final season premieres April 21st.