Summary
- The Simpsons broke new ground in season 35 with a dark retcon of an old episode, shocking fans and using its own history against them.
- The show rarely revisits old scenes, but this meta moment added a creepy twist by altering classic animation for a gruesome effect.
- Despite its age, The Simpsons season 35 proved it can still innovate and surprise viewers with clever meta-humor and unsettling twists.
Although The Simpsons has retconned plenty of plots and character details over the years, season 35 featured an impressive meta moment that was a series first. The Simpsons is one of the most self-aware shows on television. Decades before the likes of 30 Rock and Community mocked their own sitcom trappings, The Simpsons was both an incredibly popular family sitcom and a ruthless deconstruction of the familiar genre. Homer proudly pointed out that he learned no lesson from an episode’s adventure and the Simpson family’s status quo was always dysfunctional instead of orderly since the series began in 1989.
However, while The Simpsons season 36 might change this, the show hasn’t always been aggressive in its use of meta-humor. The Simpsons breaks the fourth wall a lot, but the show doesn’t mock its own history, cultural legacy, and critical reputation in every single episode. Although the series takes plenty of shots at itself, it is still notable when The Simpsons finds a novel new way to mock its many earlier outings. To this end, season 35, episode 5, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” featured an impressive series first that took the show’s self-referential humor to new, and surprisingly creepy, heights.
The Simpsons Changed An Earlier Episode’s Storyline In Season 35
Treehouse of Horror XXXIV altered old footage from The Simpsons
Like all of the show’s annual Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” was non-canon. However, the segment “Ei8ht” was the first time The Simpsons altered clips from an old episode to retcon its events, with the show turning a classic Golden Age comedy scene into a gruesome massacre. In the fan-favorite outing season 5, episode 2, "Cape Feare," Bart escaped Sideshow Bob while the pair were trapped on a houseboat by tricking him into reciting an entire musical as they floated to safety. In “Ei8ht,” The Simpsons took footage from this episode and altered it so Bob foiled Bart’s plan.
In The Simpsons’ dark revision of “Cape Feare”, Bob successfully killed Bart in front of a horrified, helpless Lisa. While this would have always been a dark joke, it is not the first time that a Treehouse of Horror episode depicted Bob killing Bart. What made the scene so uniquely disturbing was the choice to reuse the original episode’s animation. Incorporating Bob killing Bart into “Cape Feare” made "Ei8ht" genuinely unsettling as this segment switched suddenly from a classic episode of The Simpsons to a gruesome scene of Bart dying offscreen. This death was seamlessly added to the original episode’s clips.
Why The Simpsons Doesn’t (Usually) Retcon Old Episodes Onscreen
The Simpsons rarely needs to revisit existing scenes
This was particularly effective because The Simpsons hasn’t used this gambit before, meaning the scene felt more like an edgy fan edit or a creepypasta than a real outing of the series. The reason that The Simpsons hasn’t revised footage from existing episodes before is likely the same reason The Simpsons family doesn’t age. The show has an elastic canon that allows the creators to constantly muddle details, meaning the writers rarely need to explain any retcons in-depth. When characters do reference old episodes, a short clip of the episode suffices, like when Ned's forgotten Vegas wife returned.
Furthermore, the creators of The Simpsons may avoid altering footage from classic outings in new episodes since these clips remind viewers of Golden Age episodes. The show’s visual style has changed a lot since the ‘90s, so the switch between “Cape Feare” and “Treehouse of Horror XXXVI” was immediately noticeable in the segment. This made sense in “Ei8ht” since it was intended to be a nightmarish flashback, but might be jarring and weird in a normal episode. Since The Simpsons season 35 borrows from earlier episodes already, it would confusing and unnecessary for the series to remix existing scenes from earlier outings.
The Simpsons Season 35’s Weird Retcon Was A Success
This trippy sequence was surprisingly creepy and ingenious
The Simpsons flashing back to the events of a classic episode and rewriting them was risky, and “Cape Feare” was one of the most ambitious episodes the show could have revisited. The season 5 outing is a classic that is beloved by fans, so “Ei8ht” revising the story of “Cape Feare” could have been received terribly. However, using the original episode’s animation and adding such a dark twist was genuinely creepy in a way that took advantage of fan nostalgia for the show’s Golden Age.
Viewers who saw the original episode as children are now likely to be adults, and seeing Bart lose to Sideshow Bob was a nasty, mean-spirited surprise that used the comforting aesthetic of Golden Age episodes of The Simpsons against the viewer. While The Simpsons season 35 is not perfect, the show deserves credit for actively engaging with its own meta-significance in moments like this. The Simpsons proved that it can use its own history to surprise, impress, and even creep out viewers with this unexpectedly clever sequence, and showed that the long-running series still has some life left in it in the process.
