The Simpsons recently celebrated its 29th birthday, which means Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, despite not aging a day in nearly three decades, are older than Oscar winners and Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. There’s little reason to think the show won’t run for another five seasons? Three decades? Forever? Fox loves making money, and the characters are elastic enough that, shockingly, there are still new stories left to tell (this season’s “Halloween of Horror” wouldn’t look out of place in season nine).
But eventually, The Simpsons will end, and we’ll have to find something else to watch at 8 p.m. EST on Sundays (assuming there are still “schedules” whenever The Simpsons wraps up — by that point, we might be living in a timeless, flat-circle society, where minutes are hours, and hours are eternity). When that inevitable day arrives, what will the finale look like? Will it be a flashback, or maybe a flashforward? Over the weekend, someone on Reddit asked, “How would you end The Simpsons?” (assuming you can ever actually stop them). Here are some of the best and funniest suggestions.
outroversion: Do an entire season of “last” episodes. Each episode can be unique and break all of the rules that were followed for years on the show, like Bart and Lisa finally move on to the next grade, etc. Episodes can parody other famous last episodes, like the Simpsons get arrested for breaking “the good samaritan law”, etc. Each character (like Apu or Moe) can be featured in at least one episode in the season and we’d see how their story ends. This way, the whole series and it’s characters won’t have to end in one 22 minute jam-packed episode.
aaeeiioouu: Since they haven’t aged the entire run of the series, I would have them age one year each episode of the final season.
ngwoo: With the opening credits. The entire run was a couch gag.
MisterCrawl: “We have to go now. Our planet needs us.
Note: The Simpsons died on the way back to their home planet.”
NuclearStar: They all meet up for a meal at Moe’s and then just as Lisa walks through the door, the screen goes black.
rwilso7: On Xmas eve, Homer and Bart go to the dog track.
PM_ME_YOUR_BEERBELLY: They should do an episode where Homer starts doodling and making comic strips for his friends. Meanwhile Mr. Burns is producing a television show that keeps running short, and needs some filler material. He sees one of Homers sketches, likes it, and asks him to write an animated series for the show. Homer calls it The Groenings.
He writes the first episode about an animator named Matt getting fired from his job for writing shows that are too controversial and then somehow gets a job at a local nuclear power plant as a safety officer. He is terrible at his job and there is a nuclear meltdown causing comic mayhem.
Homer’s show is a success, and Mr. Burns asks him to start writing the show for a 30 minute time slot. The show eventually runs for 30 seasons, meanwhile Homer, the Simpsons, and all the other residents of Springfield age naturally until Homer comes up with a final episode: Matt Groening begins making cartoons again, starting with a few shorts about a dysfunctional family called The Simpsons.
Here’s how I see it: Homer becomes a lumberjack. The end. Either that, or The Simpsons is an idea planted into our brains at birth by Rupert Murdoch-owned doctors, and it can’t go “off the air” until all traces of humanity are wiped off this big blue ball we call Earth. I’m honestly not sure which will happen first.
(Via Reddit)
