“The Simpsons” is an American institution. And like most American institutions of a certain age — the Washington Monument, your local natural history museum, A&W joints — we only visit every so often unless we have an avowed interest in it, and those visits get more infrequent as the years go by.
If you want to really feel old, consider this: Ratings for the jaundiced denizens of Springfield peaked in Season 6, which took place long ago that this year, people who were born after it aired will begin to turn 30. If you feel just as old as I do writing that sentence, you’re welcome.
The Fox staple, now in Season 36, could only make it over a million viewers for seven out of its 17 episodes, according to Nielsen data. Once was the season debut, two episodes were “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween specials — generally among the highest rated “Simpsons” shows — and most of the higher-rated episodes were after critical NFL matchups. The series is now owned by Disney, and it’s only a matter of time before it gets kicked to Disney+ streaming only for new episodes.
So, how to juice ratings? One way is to introduce a new character; “The Simpsons” lampooned this in one of their episodes, so famously that the character that was introduced to the program-within-a-program, “The Itchy & Scratchy Show,” has become a modern-day by-word for these kind of Cousin Oliver characters: “Poochie.”
The other, infinitely more cheap way to do this, is to kill off a character. “The Simpsons” hadn’t done this to one of its main characters — at least until the finale of Season 36, when it decided to (kinda, sorta) kill off Marge.
Now, instead of the usual cry of “‘The Simpsons’ did it already,” people are accusing “The Simpsons” of being a cheap ripoff.
So, spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the episode, titled “Estranger Things” — a pun on “Stranger Things,” because there’s nothing “The Simpsons” loves more than a title that plays off another existing property. (This season alone saw “The Yellow Lotus,” “Desperately Seeking Lisa,” “Homer and Her Sisters,” “The Man Who Flew Too Much,” “The Past and the Furious,” and the worst of the lot — that’s really an accomplishment when you consider it for any length of time — “Abe League of Their Moe,” where Grandpa “Abe” Simpson finds another fan of the minor-league baseball team, the Springfield Isotopes, in the bartender Moe. I’m being serious here.)
So, “Estranger Things” involves — well, here’s how the New York Post put it on Wednesday in an article regarding fan reaction to the finale: “RIP, Marge Simpson. Well, sort of.”
Sorry for spoilers, but there are going to be more than a few of them going forward here.
Did you ever watch “The Simpsons”?
The episode involves Bart and Lisa in a timeline when both stop watching “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” and become — ergo the title — estranged.
The miscreant Bart grows up to become the operator of an unlicensed nursing home where he has Homer in cold storage. Lisa, demoted from post-Trump president (yes, that was also part of “The Simpsons” timeline, albeit long before “President Trump” was a thing), has become commissioner of the NBA. Given the dubious nature of this year’s draft lottery, I’m not quite sure whether Bart or Lisa ended up more respectably.
Anyhow, Simpsons matriarch Marge is worried that the kids will grow apart when they’re older. And they do! A cool 35 years later, we see that Marge is in heaven; we see a brief scene of Marge’s funeral and then have Homer taken from the illegal nursing home by protective services and potentially whisked off to Florida. Not a bad fate, if current trends hold, but Lisa is shell-shocked.
She then finds a video from Marge, telling the siblings to always depend on one another. And then they rescue him and take him home, where they watch “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” — but rebooted.
“I’m so happy my kids are close again,” Marge says at the end, at which point (again, I’m really making none of this up) her new husband in heaven, Ringo freaking Starr, tells her that they’ll be late for the heaven buffet, where they have a shrimp tower.
“OK Ringo. I’m just so glad that we’re allowed to marry different people in heaven,” she responds.
Now, about that “Itchy & Scratchy Show” reboot, which is played for laughs when it comes to the entertainment industry’s tendency to recycle and reboot IP to the point where you’re literally nauseous. (Tobey Maguire was like, what, six Spider-Mans ago?) There’s only one thing that’s worse than a reboot these days. That’s a series that has gone on for so long that it hasn’t even had a chance to catch its breath for a reboot.
“The Simpsons,” which is locked in through Season 40 (!!!), is pretty much patient zero for this trend — something fans noted in response to Marge dying (or “dying”):
I haven’t even watched The Simpsons in 10+ years but they really killed MARGE?!
— Jenn 🌸 (@jenniferx30) June 25, 2025
why are marge and ringo dead https://t.co/qRVWI0OWnD
— Daisy (@KJCents) May 19, 2025
Well, Marge Simpson’s dead… kind of.
In the Season 36 finale of ‘The Simpsons,’ a flash-forward shows her passing away decades in the future.
Fans flooded social media with reactions, but don’t worry: this “death” was more timeline tease than character sendoff. pic.twitter.com/gqTNHpia5g
— What’s Trending (@WhatsTrending) June 25, 2025
“Ratings that bad, eh?” More or less!
Look, I get it: To the extent that Americans have any kind of shared cultural consciousness, “The Simpsons” is as close as it gets outside of sports. But the point of sports is that it’s continually surprising and refreshed. “The Simpsons” has essentially become the kind of show that, at its peak, it used to lampoon.
Even “Family Guy” — which has been around in some form for most of the series’ run and which aired its first episode before “Seinfeld” went off the air — feels fresher and more daring at this point. And mind you, this is coming from someone who perfervidly hopes we find some way to subject Seth MacFarlane to extraordinary rendition. It’s that bad.
The fans the show still has are livid, and rightfully so. It’s become the kind of tired show it was once a fresh alternative to. Give it a rest, animators; let it breathe, so we can at least look forward to the reboot for a few years. It’s a show, not an A&W.
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