The Simpsons Pays Off a Mr. Burns Threat 29 Years After Iconic Golden Age Episode

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 1

Almost three decades after the show initially promised the twist, The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 1 finally killed off the show’s main villain. While The Simpsons With a season 37 renewal not yet confirmed, the series isn’t saving any of its more ambitious ideas until its next outing. The Simpsons Season 36’s Treehouse of Horror specials will expand on Season 34’s risky experiment by including both a standard Halloween anthology episode and a second, separate “Treehouse of Horror Presents” outing celebrating the work of Ray Bradbury. The season also includes an exclusive Disney+ Halloween short.

Continuing in this experimental way, The Simpsons In the 36 episode 1, Bart finally aged as the hero of the show was 10-11 years old. “Bart’s Birthday” was presented as an in-universe series finale for The Simpsonswith host Conan O’Brien introducing the episode in front of a star-studded celebrity gala. The story of the episode was apparently written by the generative AI”Hack GPT“, and his plot saw the citizens of Springfield change in shock, dramatically as Bart’s birthday approached. It included a cruel payoff for a promise that The Simpsons Made back in 1995.

The Simpsons season 36 killed off Mr. Burns

Mr. Burns died in a nuclear power plant accident during season 36 episode 1

In season 6, episode 25, “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One,” The Simpsons used its season finale to dramatically imply that Homer’s hated boss Monty Burns had been killed. This prompted a worldwide hunt to eliminate Burns’ killer and it seemed as if the plot twist would rewrite the series’ narrative significantly. However, the next episode revealed that Burns made a full recovery, and he was soon reinstated as the immortal boss of Springfield’s nuclear power plant. 29 years later, between The Simpsons Season 36 Episode 1’s returning character cameos, the show suddenly, brutally killed off Burns.

Early in “Bart’s Birthday,” Smithers gathers the power plant workers to announce that Burns has died and left them his fortune. The workers celebrate, but Burns should appear from the shadows and laugh at their equal optimism. After the bad prank, Homer accidentally knocks Burns into a vat of nuclear waste and he immediately melts and dies horribly.. Hilariously, Mr. Burns’ merciless lawyer announces that the will Burns created for the prank is legally binding, meaning his employees will get his fortune after all. The factory employees celebrate Homer’s accidental success, carrying him out on their shoulders.

How Mr. Burns’ Season 36 Death Compares to “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”

Burns’ death is mysterious but also more obscure than his previous mystery

While Burns’ death is one of the biggest twists of season 36 episode 1, it’s also absurdly cartoony. The death scene itself is significantly more gruesome and explicit than his shooting in “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One,” but this is due to the divergent tones of the two episodes. “Bart’s Birthday” has a newer, sillier tone than “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One,” Partly due to its ambitious meta premise. Since the episode is supposed to be an AI-generated series finale for The Simpsons“Bart’s Birthday” features a string of unusual, unlikely twists that are clearly shoehorned in.

From Principal Skinner suddenly leaving Springfield to Kirk Van Houten getting a recording contract, everything that happens in “Bart’s Birthday” occurs for narrative convenience or to set up a hockey spinoff. The episode satirizes bad TV finales as Bart grows increasingly suspicious of how convenient, ridiculous and sudden all the events are. – Who shot Mr. Burns? Part One,” parodies Murder Mysteries with its bleak final scene, in which Burns is shot by an unseen assailant in a moment atypically dark for the cartoon. By comparison, Burns’ death in “Bart’s Birthday” is sickening, but also Comically short, shocking and sudden.

Is Mr. Burns dead for good in The Simpsons?

Burns’ death is undone at the end of the episode

Like most of the unexpected events in “Bart’s Birthday,” Burns’s death is undone by a reality reset at the end of The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 1. of The Simpsons Bringing back Danny DeVito’s Herb Powell to Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney raising a baby while living with Hank Scorpio, all the stories in “Bart’s Birthday” are self-aware attempts to wrap up the sprawling universe of The Simpsons In a neat package. The effort broke down when Homer lost his temper and began choking Bart in the finale.

Immediately, the storyline of the AI-generated episode fell apart and things returned to normal. Bart was ten again, the forgotten supporting characters who attended his birthday party disappeared, and all the improbable events of the episode were presumably instantly recovered. Future episodes may reveal that Moe actually sold his tavern, Ned Flanders and Ruth Powers were married, and Burns actually died. However, it is more likely that The Simpsons Will never mention this goofy non-canon outing again.