He’s got his exit from Springfield planned.
“The Simpsons” shocked viewers in October when the long-running animated series called its Season 36 premiere its “series finale” — only to reveal that the entire storyline of the episode was generated by AI.
It wasn’t the real finale, but showrunner Matt Selman told The Post, “The discussion that it would be so hard to do a last episode is what led to the fake series finale. That it’s sort of an impossible thing.”
“The show isn’t meant to end,” he continued. “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 was talking to The Post for the show’s Christmas special, “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” which is now streaming on Disney+. The special follows the chaos that ensues as Homer is hypnotized into believing he’s Santa Claus.
For the show’s real series finale, Selman would want it to just be “a regular episode.”
“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.”
He said he’d like it if the show’s last episode was just “a really good story about the family.”
Emmy-winning “The Simpsons” writer Carolyn Omine told The Post about the eventual series finale, “I’ve heard a few people say ‘I think it should be this’ or ‘I think it should be that.’ And it’s hard, because what the show is kind of keeps changing. So it can’t be the idea you’ve had in your pocket for a while.”
Selman added that so many people’s ideas for a series finale “are based on having watched other last shows.”
“And I don’t think it should be a response to the litany of last shows that already exist. We covered that area,” he explained, referring to the fake-out “series finale” episode.
He joked: “[The last episode will be] a parody of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with [Mr. Burns] as Scrooge. The laziest idea!”
