The Simpsons Will Never Have a Finale — The Animated Series Hits the 800-Episode Mark
Yesterday, February 15th, the 37th season of the iconic animated series "The Simpsons," which now airs under the oversight of Mickey Mouse, came to an end. The story continues — we just have to wait until the fall of 2026.
Matt Selman joined the show's writing staff in 1997, rose to executive producer by 2005, and has been running the project as the main showrunner since 2021. On the occasion of the 800th episode of The Simpsons, he spoke with The Wrap, including on the topic of a finale, which in the classic sense will never happen.
About a year and a half ago, we made an episode that was like a parody of a series finale. We crammed every possible finale concept into one show, so that was kind of my way of saying we're never going to do a series finale. We did the series finale in the middle of a show that mocked all the ideas of wrapping everything up or ending. The show shouldn't change. The characters reset every week. It's like Groundhog Day, but they don't know it — and they don't die that often. If the show ever ended, there wouldn't be a finale, it would just be a regular episode with the family. Maybe there would be some Easter eggs here and there, but no lines like 'I'm going to miss this place.' We just want every single episode to be a self-contained, amazing mini-movie, original and unlike the other 799. It's a hard task, but a really fun one — striving for originality; and really being worthy of being TV show creators where we can do whatever we want and people still like it. So we're just the luckiest writers in the world. I just don't want to mess it up.
We never try to predict anything. We just know that people are stupid and make bad decisions, and the people of Springfield are easily influenced and quite fickle. Deep down they are kind, like everyone else, but they can be misled, made to make the wrong choice, manipulated, short-sighted, selfish, and so on. It's a universal thing that doesn't change over time, so we just study history, study humanity, study the past, study culture, and these things seem to repeat more often than you might think.
Matt Selman, showrunner of The Simpsons