20th Century Fox Licensing/Merchandising / Everett Collection
D’oh!
“The Simpsons” showrunner Matt Selman is in “super denial” about one aspect of the show: What would he do if a primary cast member suddenly died?
“I don’t think about it, so I’m just going to not think about that,” he told People magazine in an interview published Monday. “But certainly, it’s just if the show ever does a last episode.”
The long-running animated series premiered in 1989 and was created by Matt Groening. Its voice cast includes Hank Azaria, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith and Harry Shearer.
Other shows have had to navigate unexpected tragedies, such as “Riverdale” star Luke Perry passing away unexpectedly while the show continued and wrote around his death, or “Euphoria” actor Angus Cloud dying at 25 in July 2023. The show is set to return without him on an unannounced date.
Many of “The Simpsons” stars voice several characters on the show, which follows the cartoon residents of Springfield, including the boorish Homer Simpson, his smoker-voiced wife Marge, and their kids mischievous Bart, smart Lisa and baby Maggie.
Selman has been with the show since 1997.
Regarding an eventual series finale, he told the outlet: “I just hope it’s just a regular episode with no Winky Winky stuff at all. Just a great family story, just like a classic story that’s just funny and involves the whole family and doesn’t feel like it needs to wrap up anything or change anything or tie anything up or be magic or talk to the audience directly.”
The Season 36 premiere recently got the internet abuzz about how it will eventually end, because the show dubbed the episode its “series finale” — leaving viewers confused.
But the show later revealed that the entire storyline of the episode was generated by artificial intelligence.
“I legit thought this was the series finale until I realized it was all a joke XD But still this was a great and funny season 36 premiere! Loved all the references!” one fan wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Selman told People how the idea for that tricky episode came to be.
“I was in New Zealand and then the writer’s strike ended, so I started immediately working on the show again in New Zealand a year ago,” he explained. “And part of that was doing press for Season 35, which was about to start. And the question you always get doing press is what would you do for a last episode of the show?
“I always felt like there was no good answer to that question because the show was never meant to end,” he added. “It was meant to go on forever. It was meant to make fun of the idea of last episodes and everything we do, every episode is both a first and a last episode of the show.”
He told the outlet on Monday that he doesn’t think the show needs to end with a bang, since it made a big deal of its fake-out “series finale” in the Season 36 premiere.
He quipped: “We did that. We just did that. We covered it. Check that off the list.”
Season 37 has yet to be announced.
“The Simpsons” airs Sundays on Fox at 8 p.m. EST.