Does Danny DeVito’s Return to ‘The Simpsons’ Mean That Uncle Herb Is Coming Back?
When The Simpsons returns to television on September 29th, the series will kick off its 36th season with a premiere centered around Bart Simpson’s birthday party, a star-studded event that will feature honored celebrity guests such as Conan O’Brien, Tom Hanks and John Cena. But the best birthday present of all would be the presence of a long-absent Unky.
Right now, The Simpsons and its staff are staring down the barrel of the last season on the show’s current contract with Fox. Though many Simpsons mainstays have maintained that yet another renewal for the longest running primetime series in American television history is an inevitability, the show’s producers are taking no chances on the series’ continued success as they make some splashy moves to ensure solid viewership upon their return this fall. At San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, a handful of Simpsons executives teased the guest list full of high-profile partygoers that they’ve secured for the first episode of Season 36, titled “Bart’s Birthday,” a group that includes the above A-listers as well as one of the show’s first and greatest guest stars: The Trash Man himself, Danny DeVito.
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DeVito has appeared in three Simpsons episodes starting in Season Two, playing Homer’s long-lost half brother Herb Powell. Though Simpsons co-showrunner Matt Selman unveiled DeVito as one of the guests for Bart’s birthday party during a panel at the annual nerd convention, he didn’t explicitly state that DeVito would reprise his role as the genius inventor and automobile executive whose career came crashing down the very moment he let Homer take the wheel.
“It’s kind of (a) crazy, star-studded premiere,” Selman said of “Bart's Birthday” during The Simpsons’ panel at SDCC on Saturday. “It’s a pretty bold, big idea,” claimed the long-time Simpsons writer and producer, though Selman notably didn’t divulge any details about the plot line of the premiere, nor did he specify what roles O’Brien, Hanks, Cena and DeVito will play respectively.
Herb Powell only appeared on-screen in two Simpsons episodes, first in the aforementioned Season Two’s “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” wherein he opens up his successful life to the Simpsons family, then again the next season in “Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?” during which he picks up the pieces of his shattered career following the disastrous events of his first episode. However, Golden Age Simpsons fans may not know that Herb made a brief, voice-only cameo in the Season 24’s “The Changing of the Guardian,” in which Marge and Homer call Homer’s half-brother to ask him if he could become Bart, Lisa and Maggie’s legal guardian in the event of the parents’ untimely demise, only to learn from Herb’s voicemail message that the inventor of the Baby Translator is once again bankrupt for undisclosed reasons.
With DeVito returning for his fourth Simpsons episode over three decades after his incredibly memorable series debut, it stands to reason that Herb will be in attendance at “Bart’s Birthday” — though we can expect him to be fashionably late if he’s taking The Homer to the party.
