It’s been an eventful day in Springfield, home of the beloved Simpson family—and not just because Universal Studios Hollywood just opened the new Simpsons theme park zone. The big news, of course, is that Harry Shearer is leaving the voice cast; and his parts, including C. Montgomery Burns, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner (or Armin Tamzarian…), and many others, will be recast. (Paging Billy West?)
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The entire cast has been negotiating contracts for the upcoming 27th and 28th seasons, and Shearer had been the driving force behind pay increases before. But this time Shearer says that the dispute was over reasons aside from money, like availability for other projects, though the show was reportedly willing to let him record his parts from anywhere he moved to. Whatever led to the conscious uncoupling, it’s a big blow to the show to lose one of its most versatile cast members—while Shearer remains ready to smack down trolls who think otherwise whenever necessary. And since The Simpsons is by now so entrenched in American culture that it can speak to nearly every news story, it seemed to predict this exact scenario back in a 1999 episode:
The smaller and somewhat tangentially related news is that this Sunday’s season finale of The Simpsons will feature an appearance by Adult Swim’s Rick & Morty for an extended couch gag. It’s the first appearance of the duo ahead of the second season's July 26 premiere; Morty and his mad scientist grandfather have bit of a Humpty-Dumpty accident and scramble to put the Simpsons back together again. It wasn't meant to resonate quite so perfectly, we're assuming, but the Shearer news means some creative omelet-making might just be on the horizon.
