The Simpsons showrunner defends making Homer and Marge millennials: 'Not worried about messing wi...

&34;I feel like story and character should come first, and the cinematic universe rules of a show that has none should come in a distant second,&34; Matt Selman

"I feel like story and character should come first, and the cinematic universe rules of a show that has none should come in a distant second," Matt Selman says.

The Simpsons showrunner defends making Homer and Marge millennials: 'Not worried about messing with the timeline'

"I feel like story and character should come first, and the cinematic universe rules of a show that has none should come in a distant second," Matt Selman says.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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October 3, 2025 10:00 a.m. ET

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Homer and Marge Simpson in season 34 of 'The Simpsons'. Credit:

- *The Simpsons* season 37 premiere suggests that Marge was a young teen in the '90s, making her and Homer millennials.

- Co-showrunner Matt Selman is unconcerned with moving the characters' backstories forward in history: "I am not worried about messing with the timeline."

- Selman also says that he believes that "the number of people that are bothered by that is very small."

*The Simpsons* is not trying to build a rigid canon.

The season 37 premiere of the long-running animated series, "Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother," features Marge recalling her youth — which seems to have occurred in the 1990s, as she fondly recalls watching a *Dawson's Creek*–esque teen drama as a teen.

That version of events makes Marge — and, by extension, Homer and the rest of their peers — a millennial, despite the fact that all of the adult characters on the show have remained the same age since it premiered in 1989.

Marge and Homer Simpson in 'The Simpsons' season 2, episode 12 'The Way We Was'.

Matt Selman, who has worked on the show since 1997 and now serves as one of the series' showrunners, is unconcerned with shifting character origins because it allows the show to remain contemporary.

"My creative process is: I don't give an eff," Selman tells **. "The options are: we don't do flashback shows ever and we don't mention the past ever, which creatively handcuffs us, *or* we are playful and silly, which is the DNA of the show, and we have fun with whatever generation the show is airing in."

Selman explains why forcing the characters to maintain consistent backstories — at least in terms of their historical context — would drastically inhibit the writers' creativity. "If the show only took place in the present with a kind of vague 1970s-high-school Homer-and-Marge backstory that seems increasingly impossible — that would be much worse for telling good stories," he explains.

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Cartoons generally never see their characters age, and Selman says that *The Simpsons* must acknowledge the characters' pasts in some capacity.

"Part of telling stories is people remembering things from their youth, their childhood," he explains. "Everyone's childhood is directly responsible for how they behave as an adult. You can't ignore childhood if you're going to be a storyteller. So we're not ignoring childhood. It would've been interesting as an experiment to just lock into the '70s and have them be like, 'Well, Lisa, when I was a kid in the '70s…' and then just have it all be about the '70s, even though we live in the f---ing post-apocalyptic future now."

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere 'Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother'.

Selman doesn't know why anyone would expect complete canonical consistency across 37 years of a comedic cartoon — and notes that new developments don't cancel out old histories because the entire show is fictional.

"I would also like to point out that in no way are we saying that the beloved other flashbacks didn't happen," he explains. "We're not saying that. None of it happened! It's just a silly little show! So I like it all. Everything happened and didn't happen with the same level of historical veracity."

The showrunner invites eagle-eyed fans to observe *The Simpsons*' inconsistencies if it makes them happy. "If it brings you pleasure as a fan to pick apart the timeline of a 40-year-old show where the characters do not age, please pick it away," he says. "Pick, pick, pick. Have fun, pick at it, go crazy, pick it away. Everyone's favorite joke from season 4 is 'Cartoons don't have to be 100 percent realistic.' And then another Homer walks by the window."

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere 'Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother'.

Selman doesn't believe that many *Simpsons* fans pay attention to the show's canon (or lack thereof) to begin with — and he also thinks that the minority who *do* care must be extremely passionate about the series.

"I honestly think the number of people that are bothered by that is very small, and it speaks to how much they love the earlier episodes from their childhood," he says. "So that's special. And no one wants their childhood to be altered, although I don't see how we altered it, 'cause those episodes are still there. It's not like we're taking the other ones off, or we're saying like, 'Oh, that was all a dream in the '70s, but we never tried to explain it.'"

Ultimately, Selman thinks that if the majority of *Simpsons* fans genuinely cared about plot holes or canonical consistency, the show wouldn't have made it this far.

"It's a f---ing paradox. People suck it up anyway," he says. "Our show is still very popular in both America and internationally. I am not worried about messing with the timeline. I feel like story and character should come first, and the cinematic universe rules of a show that has none should come in a distant second."

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*The Simpsons* airs new episodes Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

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