No, The Simpsons did not predict the death of a 96-year-old woman… but if it had, it’s because adult Bart traveled back in time to the late 1980s to tell his family, including his younger self, about the horrors that await them in the future, naturally.
Season 34’s “Lisa the Boy Scout,” written by Dan Greaney and directed by Timothy Bailey, begins with a tried-and-true sitcom plot: Lisa joins the Boy Scouts (not to be confused with the Junior Campers), much to Bart’s dismay. But then, the episode gets “hacked” by Psuedo-nonymous, an “anarchist collective of nameless hacktivists” demanding $20 million in Bitcoin, or else they’ll air never-before-seen, “show-destroying” clips from The Simpsons. It’s a clever concept, leading to fake (?) rejected episode ideas like how there was never was a Lenny, he was just a figment of Carl’s imagination; Martin being a 36-year-old undercover informant with a wife and kids; and Ned converting to Judaism after Homer steals his mustache and uses it as a goatee.
“Lisa the Boy Scout” also reveals how The Simpsons is able to “predict” so many real-life events. One of the hacked clips is from the first episode of the show, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” after Homer surprises the family with Santa’s Little Helper on Christmas. The fuzzy feelings are interrupted by a grown-up Bart, who announces to the “lamewads of the past” that he has “come back in time to reveal the events of the future, so that you can amaze the world with your uncannily accurate predictions.” Like how in 2016, the Nobel prize in economics will go to Bengt Holmström.
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There’s also gas hoarding, pandemics, World Cup results, Disney buying Fox, and how, apparently, everything in the future will be owned by Panda Express. “Ooh, orange chicken,” an excited Homer exclaims. Now there’s one prediction I hope comes true.
https://twitter.com/mattselman/status/1579287651248898048
You can watch the episode (which is one of the best in years) on Hulu.
