The Simpsons' Marvel Insult Revealed The Show's Impossible MCU Problem
Although The Simpsons season 33 tried to spoof Disney and the MCU, the gag fell flat because of the show’s relationship with their new corporate overlords. In its critical prime, The Simpsons was unafraid to bite the hand that fed the hit show. Throughout its so-called Golden Age from seasons 3-12, The Simpsons frequently mocked Fox, the network that the show aired on, for their perceived trashiness, lack of intellectual programming, and ruthless business tactics.
While The Simpsons season 33 recently took inspiration from classic episodes of the show, unfortunately, the series also proved that it can’t recapture this rebellious streak anymore. When The Simpsons “You Won't Believe What This Episode is About - Act Three Will Shock You!”” (season 33, episode 14) referenced Disney’s takeover of Fox and Marvel’s dominance over DC, the joke didn’t land the way that classic Simpsons gags about Fox did. There are several reasons for this disparity.
The joke occurred when Homer becomes a meme overnight thanks to accidentally shoving Reverend Lovejoy out a church window. The screen then displayed a rapid-fire stream of macros that label the shoving Homer as “Lil Nas X” and the falling Lovejoy as “Haters,” Homer as “Streaming” and Lovejoy as “Movie Theatres,” and Homer as “Arby’s” and Lovejoy as “Digestion.” The Simpsons season 33 joke then took aim at Disney and Marvel (sort of) as another two examples labeled Homer as “Marvel” and “Disney” shoving aside Lovejoy’s “DC” and “Fox,” respectively.
The problem was that the joke came off more as an arrogant aside about the two entertainment goliaths and their shared dominance over the industry, rather than the sort of charming self-deprecation that classic Simpsons jokes about Fox’s trashiness played as — particularly when Disney now owns The Simpsons and has used it to promote MCU properties recently. When The Simpsons mocked Fox for what the show mocked as low-quality programming, the series was implying that The Simpsons was not an example of this issue. The classic Simpsons jokes about Fox creating programs for the lowest common denominator worked because the series was implying that The Simpsons, unlike Fox, did care about art and saying something compelling to its audience — essentially, the joke implied that Fox was at fault, but The Simpsons was not.
In season 33, The Simpsons can’t afford to be as insulting about Disney and Marvel as the show always was to Fox, because they are guilty of the same thing they’re accusing Disney and Fox of within the show itself. By becoming something of a cog in the MCU marketing machine — especially with the heavily promoted Marvel crossover — The Simpsons became part of the problem these jokes used to highlight. While The Simpsons season 33 featured some surprisingly inventive storylines, there is no avoiding the fact that the show is now used as a marketing tool for Disney products and Marvel movies. As a result, The Simpsons joking about Disney trouncing Fox and Marvel shoving DC aside comes across less as criticism, and more along the lines of a victory lap.