While The Simpsons season 34 will reportedly provide a family-centric backstory for one of Homer’s oldest friends, this particular supporting star already received an origin story 10 seasons ago, making the move a potential retcon. The Simpsons has a bizarre relationship with its own continuity. One producer for the long-running animated comedy has claimed repeatedly that The Simpsons has no canon from episode to episode and takes place in a freewheeling cartoon reality wherein the rules of the universe constantly rewrite themselves based on each episode’s story, but this has never necessarily been true.
While The Simpsons never killed off Apu in canon after retiring the character, the show did kill off Bleeding Gums Murphy and has kept the character dead in the years since. Homer’s mother Mona has remained definitively dead for some seasons now despite Glenn Close still appearing in new episodes of The Simpsons via flashbacks, further reaffirming that there are some elements of the show’s canon the creators clearly hold dear. This makes the news of one storyline in The Simpsons season 34 all the more surprising.
At D23 Expo 2022, The Simpsons writer Rob LaZebnik claimed that The Simpsons season 34 would feature an episode focused on Carl Carlson’s backstory. LaZebnik said the episode’s plot would see Carl unearth his family history, but the thing is, viewers already got a Carl backstory 10 seasons ago. While the show has revisited stories before (as The Simpsons' many Sideshow Bob episodes prove), the fact that Carl’s new backstory promises to focus on his family’s history when Carl’s original existing backstory already also focused on his family history seems like a bizarre oversight.
Carl’s Simpsons Backstory Explained
According to “The Saga of Carl,” (season 24, episode 21) Carl is Icelandic and his family has a long history as scorned pariahs who were locally infamous for their supposed cowardice. Their good names are restored by Homer Moe and Lenny by the end of the episode, but The Simpsons season now 34 promises to see Carl learn about his biological family, which is an odd choice after Carl clearly identified closely with his original backstory. While adoption is a complex subject and characters can have all manner of shifting feelings toward their adopted and biological families, Carl’s Icelandic saga specifically centered around the character viewing himself as an Icelandic Carlson and identifying with his family’s curse, something that The Simpsons season 34 seems destined to undo.
The Simpsons season 34 might find a way to work around this. For example, Carl’s new family backstory might be a minor setup for another, bigger story, much like Grandpa’s fear of death led to an episode about the Simpsons getting a tennis court. Alternatively, Carl’s episode might address his feelings toward his Icelandic family instead of ignoring one backstory and overwriting the earlier episode with this new plot. However the show handles the story, though, The Simpsons should take note that the series has already given Carl a pretty solid family-based backstory and avoid retreading an overly familiar plot.