An indie rock group is randomly responsible for Beavis and Butt-Head‘s revival.
Portugal. The Man, which was formed in Alaska in 2004 and is best known for the song “Feel It Still,” asked Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge if he could introduce them with his iconic title characters at 2018’s Coachella (presumably, just for kicks). As Judge told ComicBook.com, he enjoyed doing the intro so much that when Paramount Plus came knocking, he enthusiastically answered.
“It fell back in place pretty nicely . . . I’ve been saying what started it was, the band Portugal. The Man, I met them right before they got whatever level of huge they are. They’d asked me to do an intro for them of Beavis and Butt-Head introducing them for Coachella, and I hadn’t done those voices in so long at that point. I gave it a try, and then I listened back, and it was fun to do, and it sounded like Beavis and Butt-Head, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is kind of easy for me to do.’ And then Viacom, Paramount Plus had reached out about doing more, and it also seemed like a good time to do it. It’s a good time to return to stupidity. There’s not a lot of dumb, simple comedy around.”
Judge created the irreverent teenage duo for the 1993 MTV short Frog Baseball, which was expanded into an eponymous series that ran from 1993 to 1997. A Beavis and Butt-Head movie was released in 1996 and an eighth season was added to the original series in 2011. Thanks to Portugal. The Man, B&B were revived again in 2022 with the Paramount Plus movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. The streaming platform will host another Beavis and Butt-head series come August 2022.