Original airdate: October 19, 2025
The premise: In “The Last Days of Crisco,” 1970s-era Springfield is plagued by a blood-thirsty monster made of congealed fat. “Clown Night with the Devil” is a Late Night with the Devil “parody.” In “Plastic World,” Lisa leads a group of post-apocalyptic survivors to search for soil in an artificially over-saturated hellscape.
The reaction: We’re at well over a hundred Treehouse of Horror segments in total, it’s gotta be a challenge to come up with new ideas for these things at this point. What’s going to stand out? Inevitably every ensuing year I’m going to think about the special from 2022, where I was completely blown away by how much I enjoyed it, proving that they still had the sauce to really make these things pop. This year, sadly, was just another shrug for me. The first segment very quickly reveals itself as a Jaws parody, with newly promoted Chief Lou trying to warn the town of the dangerous lard monster, but is unsuccessful in the face of a feckless mayor trying to keep their profitable tourist traps open. I’m actually kind of surprised they’ve never done a Jaws riff before, at least as far as I can recall. That being said, what’s the transformational element of this parody? It’s a big blob of fat instead of a shark. That’s pretty much it. That and Homer plays a Southern grease magnate who smacks people and things with his hat a lot, a joke that I guess the room loved so he does it like a dozen times, then his great plan to defeat the monster is build a trap that would hit it with an enormous hat. Hilarious! I just found it pretty boring. Segment two tackles a more modern film, 2023’s fun and inventive Late Night with the Devil, presented as a legendary “lost tape” of demonic activity occurring during a live late night show broadcast. Here, it’s repackaged as a live Krusty the Clown show from the 90s (presented in grainy 4:3 ratio) where things quickly go awry until Satan himself makes an appearance. In the film (spoiler alert), we learn the host had made a deal with the devil to make his show successful at the expense of his wife’s soul. Here, I guess the subversion is that fanboy Bart made the deal, wanting to prop up his favorite show in competition with the growing amount of edutainment shows of the time. It’s not really much of a twist on the original premise, it’s basically someone else other than the host made the deal with a similar motive. The tag at the end of the segment of an older Krusty and Satan having their show pitch rebuffed by stone-faced TV executives felt like it would have been more fruitful of a full story, I’d rather have seen that. Segment three may be the best by default only because of how unique it looked, with all of the background elements being rendered in 3D plastic, in addition to the finale with all of the different characters looking like Playmates Simpsons action figures, including some who never made it into the legendary toy line like Drederick Tatum. Weirdly, the end of the story of a melted down Homer and Marge creating Maggie, with Lisa marveling at how abominations to humanity created a pure innocent life in this new world reminded me of 28 Years Later (kind of spoilers) where the zombie gives birth to a completely healthy baby. That movie just came out so I don’t see how that could be a direct reference, but it was interesting. But then we get the Maggie World ending and it just felt like nothing. I feel like I’ve said a lot that the most disappointing thing these Halloween specials became was boring, and this one felt like a bit of a snoozer.
Three items of note:
– The opening was pretty funny, designed by The Onion’s “Stan Kelly,” the absurd political cartoonist. Hearing Matt Groening yell “Yes! Yes!!” as the sicko out the window was definitely worth it.
– Lou has always had a unique character design in that he’s got beady little eyes, at least compared to the big bug eyes of most of the rest of the cast. But his design in this episode was kind of inconsistent. In his first appearance in the Mayor’s office, his eyes are still smaller, but not so much so compared to the likes of Quimby or Moe. But from the fair onward, he’s got incredibly tiny eyes, maybe even smaller than he typically has. And they’re drawn so close together as well. I don’t know if he just looks “off” without his policeman’s cap on, but he definitely looked pretty weird to me.
– Is it time once again to bitch about voice acting again? These things just jump out at me when they happen, I’m not actively looking to repeat this topic over and over, but in the second segment, Krusty’s got to yell his lines a couple times, and there’s one in particular where it doesn’t even sound like Krusty anymore (“A man was just maimed for life by a demonic monkey!!!”) Doing the gravelly Krusty voice cannot be an effortless feat for the 67-year-old Dan Castellaneta, and it definitely came off a bit off sometimes. But if I can follow up with a compliment, I thought he did a great job in the first segment as Southern Sheriff Homer, adding just a slight amount of accent to his usual voice (as did Nancy Cartwright in her few lines as Bart.) Speaking of voice actors, Julie Kavner made out good this week, as Marge is not in the first two segments, getting her first line near the end all the way at minute 17. Lisa also does not appear until the final segment, but she’s the focal character, so she’s got much more to do.
Me Blog Write Good 
Regarding voice actors, my theory is that the second movie after season 38 is going to be a grand send-off for the aging main cast. Season 39 & 40 would then be a soft reboot, with a new cast (but all the same writers, don’t you worry!) so that The Simpsons(TM) can truly go on forever. Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…
I figure that putting the movie right in the middle of the greenlit seasons was to ensure it wouldn’t be a sendoff.
Possibly, but it could also be Disney locking in a couple seasons of the new Simpsons so the team can smoothly transition. The movie would have been in development before the four-season-pickup, if the first Simpsons movie’s long development cycle is any indication of this one.
Looking at the list of credits, the amount of writers and executive producers is basically a museum of everyone that’s ever worked on the freaking show. “Too many cooks” and all that…
I don’t even know why they still have Quimby there when he sounds no different than Homer. Lou also sounded pretty awful. First time I’m hearing him in years.
Imagine if this next Simpsons movie was also the series finale. What a cultural event that would be.
I’m actually really looking forward to seeing what this movie is like. It’s easy to be cynical about this franchise (hence why I end up doing it so much). But finale or not, a second movie is going to be different and interesting compared to the show, because it has to justify its own special existence instead of passively being renewed. If nothing else, it’ll be something new to talk about instead of having to retread a lot of the same points.
I think the quality of the movie (and whether it gets a theatrical release) is going to determine its cultural impact more than its finale status, personally. A genuinely good Simpsons movie in theaters would mean cultural relevance the Season 33 upswing could only dream of. People want The Simpsons to be good, that’s why there were so many “good again” articles, they just know better than to expect it. A good film would restore that faith. But a bad one, even / especially a bad finale, would only remind everyone how worthless this franchise became. It could outright sink the show once and for all.
The movie might also just be a mediocre super-sized episode that gets forgotten by everyone in two weeks. But at least that’ll be a surprise for once.
I got a lot to say about long-running animated programs that are afraid of change, but the Halloween episodes are meant to play around with the rules. Regardless, this felt so boring and lifeless.
The first segment was meant to be a parody of both Jaws and the Blob (the 1980s version), and I’m still perplexed at the idea of Lou being a key character. I’ve always been a stickler for wanting minor characters to get more of a focus, but that was more of me wanting the show to make episodes that didn’t pigeonhole the titular family into an episode out of obligation to remind the audience what they were watching. But Lou?
My biggest gripe with the second segment was that a key element with Late Night with the Devil was that you never saw the Devil proper; for a show that is huge fans of Tell, Don’t Show, they know how to be very lazy when it comes to suspense and go “Ah, fuck it; let’s just have some gore and shove Homer’s head up his asshole”. Also, not to be pedantic, but despite Matt Selman’s love affair with going back and depicting moments in 4:3 aspect ratio, seeing a clip from “All About Lisa” (which aired in 2008) about a show that allegedly aired in 1995 really annoyed me.
Lastly, the third segment is just… what?
This year’s THoH was definitely ‘production value first, actual writing second’. The second segment in particular highlights this by pulling an AD! where cheap gratuitous bloodshed happens only to ‘advance’ what very little plot there was which makes it this year’s Ei8ht as the worst segment.
“Production value first, actual writing second” is nearly every episode of this show from the last decade, if you ask me. (The decade before that didn’t even have much production value.) That doesn’t mean the writing is 100% worthless (though it sometimes is), but these episodes’ production value always pulls way, way more weight than the script. I think that ticks me off more, because it shows the amount of real human effort being wasted whenever there’s crappy humor and storytelling.
Well it really sticks out more with this episode compared to most others with it’s intro sequence, second segment being made to look like a Season 14 through 19 episode when they initially aired and the last segment blending 2D and 3D.
If this show treated its characters like people and not props, I’d be down for a Lou spotlight episode / reinvention to give him more characterization and depth. Why not? But a seven-minute THOH segment obviously isn’t gonna do that. So he’s just a nobody here. I think the strongest bit of Lou characterization they ever did was imply he was Lewis’ father in a crowd shot, because troublemaker Bart having a friend who’s a cop’s son might be an interesting dynamic.
If nothing else this episode reminded me that I still need to go watch Late Night With the Devil. Can’t imagine it possibly being more of a bore than this was.
Late Night is incredible and was my second favorite movie of last year.
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the Apu “cameo” that was a little too on the nose.
The intro to the episode was so friggin stupid, which was a sign of things to come. The first felt like it was rehashing a bit of the plot from the Mr Burns story from last year’s episode with an EC Comics story from Shock SuspenStories, but it’s apparently a parody of The Blob, and I just don’t buy it. There was nothing at all that resembled either version of that film. Anyway, the story was a lard of crap and felt so random. I just watched it 20 minutes ago and I can’t recall a single joke.
The next story, a take on Late Night with the Devil was better, I guess. I like Idris Elba as the devil and him making a deal with Bart make sense. However, the story overall was not all that funny. I think I laughed at one joke.
I want to say the third tale was the worst of them all, but it actually got me to laugh out loud when Lisa and gang entered the Kwik E Mart and we saw the remains of Snake and Apu. I also liked the scene when they melted Lenny’s hands off and they became sharpened stubs. I do give them credit for trying something new with the CGI and 2D animation, but it looked very jarring together. Overall, I’ve seen worse THOHs, but this was quite forgettable.