‘Simpsons’ Fans Have Come Up With Some Dark Theories to Explain a Futuristic Plot Hole
As hard as it is to believe, the writers of The Simpsons didn’t plan out the storylines for all 36 plus seasons of the show back in the late ‘80s. While that hasn’t really been an issue for a half-hour cartoon that’s perpetually frozen in time, one of the show’s early flash-forward episodes now contains a continuity error that may or may not have been caused by a wizard.
“Lisa’s Wedding” from Season Six began with a renaissance fair fortune teller showing Lisa a vision of her future, which includes a fiancé named Hugh. Sadly, the episode ends with the two breaking up just before the ceremony, because it turns out that this particular psychic specializes in relationships “where you get jerked around.”
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When Patty and Selma arrive at the futuristic wedding, we get a brief glimpse of an elderly Ned and Maude Flanders:
Which doesn’t make sense. How can Maude be at a wedding when Bart and Lisa are grown up if she gets tragically killed by a T-shirt cannon, as seen in Season 11.
Well, it turns out that people have some theories, and they’re surprisingly disturbing.
One fan on social media recently suggested that this scene could still work within the context of the larger show if the woman in question isn’t really Maude Flanders. What if in the intervening years Ned “groomed another woman to look like her” à la Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo?
This creepy explanation isn’t without some precedent. In the episode “I’m Goin’ to Praiseland,” Christian rocker Rachel Jordan stays over at Ned’s house only to wake up to discover that he’s cut her hair to make her look more like his dead wife.
There are some other theories, too. When this discrepancy was brought up in a 2021 Reddit post, one person floated the idea that Flanders could have constructed a “robotic replica” of Maude, which sounds outlandish, except for the fact that the episode contained several lifelike androids who were indistinguishable from real human beings. That is, unless they cry, short circuit and melt off their own faces.
People also pointed out that Mrs. Krabappel is seen at the wedding as well, despite the fact that her character canonically died in the show, a plot point necessitated by actress Marcia Wallace’s death in 2013.
This detail prompted one fan to theorize that Lisa’s knowledge of future events ended up changing the future. Meaning if the Simpson family hadn’t gone to the renaissance fair that day, both Maude and Edna would have lived.
For all we know, this temporal meddling was responsible for the death of Larry the Barfly, too.
