In The Simpsons season 1, Waylon Smithers was (briefly) black, but why? It turns out there are a few reasons for this early mistake. The Simpsons has been running since 1989, so it's understandable that it once looked very different to how it does now. With Disney+ making all 30 seasons of The Simpsons available, fans new and old are about to discover (or re-discover) just how much has changed since season 1, but Smithers' skin color is one of the most obvious.
Of course, Waylon Smithers is one of The Simpsons' most popular ancillary characters. He's the longtime assistant to Mr. Burns (both are voiced by Harry Shearer) and he's utterly sycophantic to his ancient, billionaire boss. This is because Smithers is gay and in love with Mr Burns; his sexual orientation was a secret and the source of a longtime series of running gags but Smithers did finally come out in The Simpsons' season 27 episode "The Burns Cage". Still, lots of people in Springfield knew about Smithers, including one of his exes, John the antique store owner (guest star John Waters), although Smithers is singularly devoted to Mr. Burns (the writers used to refer to him as "Burns-sexual"). And of course, there were lots of clues about Smithers long before he came out of the closet: his computer start-up screen was a nude Mr. Burns complimenting Smithers for being "quite good at turning me on" and Smithers is the president of Springfield's Malibu Stacy doll fan club.
Yet in Waylon Smithers' first appearance, in The Simpsons' third episode ever, "Homer's Odyssey", he was animated with black skin and blue hair as he was giving a tour of the Springfield Nuclear Plant. The reason for this jarring sight is simple: it was an early mistake in the animation by the color stylist, Gyorgyi Peluce. But it was also partly because a black Smithers was the early concept for the character. Executive producer Jay Kogen explained, "Originally [Smithers] was gay and black...But we thought it was too much so we just kept him gay." (The idea for Smithers being gay came from The Simpsons' original showrunner, the late Sam Simon, who also didn't want too much attention drawn to it.) The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening later reiterated to TMZ that the black Smithers in "Homer's Odyssey" was "a mistake" but that the producers didn't have enough money at the time to correct it.
The Simpsons' longtime director David Silverman claimed that Smithers was always intended to be "Mr. Burns' white sycophant" and the producers ultimately decided that "would be a bad idea to have a black subservient character to a rich white man", so Smithers was literally color-corrected for his next episode. The first appearance of the proper yellow Smithers with grey hair was in "There's No Disgrace Like Home", the fourth episode of The Simpsons season 1. Silverman retconned this error by saying that Smithers had a tan from a recent holiday in the Caribbean. (Smithers would later take a forced holiday to the Caribbean and Homer Simpson replaced him as Burns' assistant in The Simpsons season 7 episode "Homer The Smithers".)
Of course, the black Smithers isn't the only strange sight in The Simpsons season 1. The early episodes of the series were littered with crude animation and off-model characters; as the show proved to be a hit on FOX and benefited from an increased budget, The Simpsons' animation style gradually improved and the character models were altered and perfected as the series continued. For lots of fans, The Simpsons season 1 is more like a proto-Simpsons as the series went through necessary growing pains until it truly found its voice and became one of the greatest shows in TV history.