An upcoming episode of The Simpsons, featuring the guest star voices of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, will take on the topic of spoiler culture. The iconic animated show has often been a mirror of popular culture, even at times becoming alarmingly prescient, and there is no culture currently more popular than superhero movies and the obsessive secrecy around them.
Spoilers for new movies have always been a problem, and debate often rages over how long the statute of limitations on their revelation should be. The issue has become more prevalent in recent years due to the spiraling popularity of the ever-sprawling MCU and the necessity of balancing people’s desire to go into the movie ignorant of its twists and turns, and the desire of other people to talk about the film after they’ve seen it but still needing to be careful to not spoil it for others.
As reported by TVLine, the episode in question is titled “Bart the Bad Guy” and will air on February 23, 2020. The plot involves a popular superhero movie franchise named Vindicators, and due to being mistaken for a terminally ill child Bart is able to see the latest installment before its general release. As a result, he becomes able to weaponize his knowledge of its events, threatening people with spoilers to get anything he wants. The Russos play a pair of studio executives determined to stop spoilers for the movie getting out, while Feige will voice the antagonist of the Vindicators movie, a supervillain with somewhat apparent inspiration named Chinnos.
This isn’t the first time the humor of The Simpsons has referenced the MCU. In January last year the couch gag of one episode featured the family arriving home to find Thanos already sat there, and the Mad Titan then takes Maggie’s pacifier as the final Infinity Stone and uses the Infinity Gauntlet to dust the whole family, except for Maggie who then proceeds to sit and watch TV.
It’s appropriate for the Russos to appear on The Simpsons as guardians of spoilers, as one of the most ubiquitous aspects of the marketing campaigns for Infinity War and Endgame were the pleas for viewers to not spoil its events. However, at the same time it’s also a little ironic, in that they were also the ones to declare an end to the spoiler ban after less than three weeks, decreeing everyone free to openly discuss the movie heedless of the people who for various reasons had yet to be able to see it. As well as the constant risk of spoilers, the episode will likely also address the problem of the small minority of people who take a sadistic delight in actively trying to spoil movies for others, hence the episode’s title that will portray Bart as very much in the wrong for threatening to do so.
Source: TVLine