It has been true the previous few years, and it’s nonetheless true at the moment: “The Simpsons” remains to be good, folks! Even 36 seasons in, the cultural phenomenon has confirmed to be the one actually dependable American establishment left, a staple of tv, a titan of popular culture, one of the crucial influential animated reveals of all time.
In season 36 we noticed nice episodes that includes pairings we do not see that always anymore, like an episode the place Homer and his dad create a sport, or one the place Bart and his grandpa bond over baseball, and an episode that parodied “The White Lotus” (and killed a personality we hadn’t seen in many years). And but, the perfect two episodes of the season have been all about Marge Simpson (Julie Kavner). The primary one is titled “P.S. I Hate You” and offers with Marge’s must be appreciated and the chaos that ensues when her secret hate letters she’s been writing to everybody in Springfield for years are stolen. Then we now have the season finale, “Estranger Issues” which offers is all about how Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Lisa (Yeardley Smith) bonded over “Itchy & Scratchy” and the way they drift aside in a potential future the place Marge dies earlier than Homer (Dan Castellaneta).
Sure, you heard that proper. Marge dies earlier than Homer. In some way.
It is a massive change to how “The Simpsons” had portrayed issues prior to now, resulting in lazy writers and followers on-line who haven’t watched the present in years to leap to conclusions and speculate that Marge Simpson is formally and unequivocally useless for good. No less than, the noise received loud sufficient that government producer Matt Selman needed to verify to Selection that Marge Simpson shouldn’t be truly useless.
“There is no canon,” Selman mentioned, responding to a query about whether or not Marge’s dying is canon for the long run timeline of the present. ‘The Simpsons’ would not even have canon!”
The Simpsons is all the time in flux
“Clearly, since ‘The Simpsons’ future episodes are all speculative fantasies, they’re all completely different each time,” Selman mentioned. “Marge will in all probability by no means be useless ever once more. The one place Marge is useless is in a single future episode that aired six weeks in the past.”
Certainly, the hypothesis round Marge’s dying got here from the truth that that is the very first time an episode of “The Simpsons” confirmed a future through which Marge died earlier than Homer. Although each episode of “The Simpsons” ignores what’s come earlier than it, the episodes set sooner or later have — for essentially the most half — adopted a comparatively streamlined continuity. Lisa is all the time profitable, if not outright the President of the US. Bart is a loser, and Homer died younger. Positive, there have been variations, together with the good episode “Barthood” (among the best parody episodes on the present), which reveals future Bart discovering success proudly owning a bicycle modification store, nevertheless it’s nonetheless largely the identical massive occasions and the identical character fates.
Having Marge die immediately and leaving Homer as a widower is stunning, which helps the episode stand out (like having Marge be concerned in an affair with Ringo Starr in Heaven or Bart run an underground elder care facility for Homer and his pals at their childhood house). However it doesn’t imply each future episode from right here on out will comply with this timeline, in any other case that’d break the one most essential rule of sitcoms — issues cannot change perpetually and you’ll’t set something in stone. Nonetheless, it’s true that Julie Kavner shouldn’t be getting any youthful, and her efficiency as of late has definitely proven the years in her voice. Ought to something occur to the beloved voice actor, “The Simpsons” already has a manner out.
