Is Marge Simpson dead? The strange case of panic from the web

And therefore Marge Simpson is he dead? No, but we risked seeing it transforming into a commemorative meme with date of birth and death.

It all started with a sentence thrown there, maybe it was a test. Yeardley Smith – historical, loved and iconic voice by Lisa Simpson – was a guest of the podcast Real Time with Bill Maher And, between one joke and another, Sibillina said: “We killed Marge.” Internet, as is known, does not like shades. The time of a refresh, and the equation was already made: Marge Simpson died. After 35 seasons, 770 episodes and at least 200 variations of the haircut (all blue, of course, but still), the most patient female character on TV was given for passed off.

X crowded with digital necrologists, conspiracy theorists and nostalgic commentators. “The Simpson family will no longer be the same.” “The end of an era”. “Now also Homer will have to learn to cook.”

I just don’t. It is not true. Poor Marge was not murdered by a twist, but by a misunderstanding. Smith, in reality, referred to an episode set in an alternative future, one of the many with whom The Simpsons They have fun playing with the time line. An episode, a hypothetical version of a reality that is not ours (and not even that of Springfield, which is already a multiverse of its own). In that narrative dimension, Marge has actually died. But in the official timeline it is still there, to bear Homer, to redo the beds, to dust Lisa’s school prizes and defuse Bart’s existential damage.

In short, panic at all. Smith, overwhelmed by chaos, then clarified: «It is an episode set in the future. It’s not a real thing ». Which is the most Simpsons way of explaining something. A real thing, in Simpsonsis only what continues to exist in the episode after.

It is interesting, however, to see how the possibility of Marge’s disappearance has turned on more emotions than the death of certain real characters. Because in addition to being Bart’s mother, Lisa and Maggie, over the years Marge has become a family figure, a fixed point, she is absurd to pop icon status.

But this is also the Simpson paradox: a series born to be a dysfunctional parody of the American family, which over time has become a kind of pop comfort, an animated refuge where things, however absurd, always end up returning to the starting point.