No, The Simpsons isn’t ending, but it did sort-of air its series finale last night

Last night, some viewers of The Simpsons felt a bit confused while watching the show, as the newest episode did an odd thing: it told everyone that this was the show’s series finale, as in its final ever episode. The episode, titled Bart’s Birthday, is all about TV’s most troublesome boy, and him finally experiencing his 11th birthday, a thing thought unthinkable considering the show has been running since 1989 and the characters haven’t aged a day since.

It kicked off with former Simpsons writer and TV host Conan O’Brien explaining that it was the show’s finale, where he played an animated version of himself in an opening monologue, saying, “It’s such an honor to be with you all for the series finale of The Simpsons. I knew I was the right man for the job because I’ve hosted the last episode of three of my own shows and counting… Well, it’s true. Fox has decided to end the Simpsons.”

O’Brien went on to explain how Fox wanted to cancel the show decades ago, before showing what he said were the original cuts of classic episodes like Bart the Daredevil and Little Big Mom, and how they were originally conceived as the show’s finales, with Homer being killed off. The host then explained that the show’s writers had actually used AI to come up with the script for the finale, which included a bunch of series-ending cliches like Bart finally ageing – except, again, of course, this was all just a goof, and Bart is still 10 forever.

Most people obviously won’t be aware of episode counts or whether a show has been renewed or not, The Simpsons is very much a show many will just be put on casually, so clearly the episode was predicated on that – after all, this was the 36th season’s premiere.

The AI thing more feels like a jab at the tech than actually being written by AI, but it also isn’t exactly clear whether AI was used for the writing process or not (let’s hope it wasn’t). The Simpsons hasn’t been picked up for season 37 yet, so it could still end up being cancelled finally, but if it does, at least it sort-of has a series finale already.