‘Simpsons’ Fans Wonder If Disney Will Pull Neil Gaiman’s Episode

Warning: This article contains references to sexual assault and child sexual abuse.

Neil Gaiman has now been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women, some of whom are claiming that the fantasy author committed violent sexual assault. The allegations against Gaiman were first made public in the Tortoise Media podcast Master last summer, and this week New York Magazine published a highly detailed, truly sickening exposé on the subject. Gaiman has denied some of the article’s claims. 

And while this is by no means the most pressing issue right now, for those of us who spend nearly as much time in Springfield as we do in the real world, there is the question of what will happen to the Simpsons episode in which Gaiman guest stars.

Season 23’s “The Book Job” is a literary-themed Ocean’s 11 parody that finds Homer assembling a crack team to write an artistically bankrupt, but highly profitable, YA fantasy novel. In addition to Bart, Patty, Principal Skinner, Moe and Professor Frink, the squad also includes Gaiman, who randomly offers his services.

In the end, Gaiman double-crosses them all, and steals the book for himself, even admitting that he can’t actually read. We’re not remotely suggesting that the Simpsons predicted anything here, but in retrospect, it does seem oddly prophetic that they floated the idea that Gaiman is an untrustworthy sociopathic monster over a decade ago.

In the wake of the damning report, some Simpsons fans have been questioning whether or not the episode will now be pulled from streaming. 

The precedent for such an action is what happened with “Stark Raving Dad.” The Michael Jackson-centric episode was effectively banned from Disney+ for reasons that should be extremely obvious to anyone that hasn’t been in a coma since 1992.

Jackson and Gaiman’s alleged crimes are obviously different, but there are some other key distinctions as well. In the case of “Stark Raving Dad,” Jackson wasn’t just the guest star, Leon Kompowsky’s belief that he’s secretly the King of Pop is the narrative focal point of the entire episode. Gaiman, on the other hand, is a minor character in a story that mostly has nothing to do with him (although he gets more screen time than most Simpsons guest stars).

Part of the reason that Simpsons creatives were willing to take the drastic step of withdrawing “Stark Raving Dad” from circulation is that the episode itself was impossible to separate from the allegations against Jackson because, as Al Jean told The Daily Beast in 2019, there were rumors that Jackson used his Simpsons appearance to “groom boys.”

But it does seem a little weird to scrap one episode entirely, while leaving the other alone. Especially because, according to New York Magazine’s reporting, Gaiman used his charming public-facing persona, which is very much on display in The Simpsons, to make himself seem “very harmless” to his fans, when that was, allegedly, not the case at all.

Maybe Disney will add some kind of disclaimer noting that stealing a book about trolls is far from the worst thing that Neil Gaiman has been accused of.