‘The Simpsons’ Showrunner Explains Exactly How the Series Will End

The Simpsons is currently in its 36th season and recently celebrated the 35th anniversary of the show’s original premiere broadcast. Ending any beloved series is difficult. However, closing one as iconic and groundbreaking as The Simpsons is truly “impossible,” according to executive producer and showrunner Matt Selman, who revealed details of how he feels the long-running and beloved animated series should come to an end.

Speaking with The New York Post, Selman noted that a conventional series finale of The Simpsons would be “impossible.” But the finale has clearly been on the minds of those involved with the show. The 36th season premiere saw the show poking fun at the nostalgia that most series go for when riding off into the sunset. The “series finale” episode made light of saccharine show endings as well as The Simpsons’ actual ending, which will happen one day.

“The discussion that it would be so hard to do a last episode is what led to the fake series finale,” Selman told The Post. “That it’s sort of an impossible thing. The show isn’t meant to end. To do a sappy crappo series finale, like most other shows do, would be so lame. So we just did one that was like over the top.”

Selman also said that the real Simpsons finale will just be a “regular episode,” with the team deciding that it will be the final show after the fact. “The characters in this crazy show don’t age … I think later we’ll just pick an episode and say that was the last one. No self-aware stuff. Or, one self-aware joke.”

The showrunner did, however, note that the last episode should play to a strong suit of The Simpsons, that, despite being a band of misfits, they are a band of misfits together. Selman said he envisioned “a really good story about the family” for the final episode.

Tracing The Simpsons’ Origin Story

While the show recently celebrated the 35th anniversary of the original premiere broadcast on December 17, 1989, The Simpsons characters created by Matt Groening actually date back even further than that. The show originated as an animated short on The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987, where it found a home for three seasons.

Groening based and named the characters after members of his family. The creator detailed The Simpsons origin story in an interview with Smithsonian magazine in 2012:

“I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, ‘Life in Hell,’ for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.”

“I basically drew my own family. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart.”

Following its premiere as a standalone show in 1989, The Simpsons would soon enter its “golden age” in the 1990s, becoming a centerpiece for Fox. The iconic show is also historic, becoming the longest-running American animated series, longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series.

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Release Date

December 17, 1989