Apu’s The Simpsons Season 28 Return Sets A Dangerous Precedent

Published Oct 19, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

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While The Simpsons did bring back Apu after nine years in season 38, episode 3, it is still tough to tell how far the show will go with the precedent that this change seems to set. The iconic tagline of The Social Network famously stated that one couldn't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies in the process, and fans of the longest-running US scripted prime-time TV series of all time know that no show gets this old without some detractors.

Although The Simpsons is both the longest-running sitcom in American TV history and the longest-running animated comedy ever, that doesn’t mean the series is without its controversies. Admittedly, the much more markedly vulgar South Park tends to be at the center of most censorship scandals involving animated adult sitcoms. However, The Simpsons has gotten in hot water plenty of times, too, and not just for The Simpsons’ annual gory Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials.

One of the show’s biggest controversies of the last decade came when comedian Hari Kondabolu’ released his 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu. The movie saw its creator interview actors and comedians, including Hasan Minhaj, Kal Penn, Maulik Pancholy, and Aziz Ansari, all of whom spoke candidly about Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Kwik-E-Mart shopkeeper and Indian-American immigrant originally voiced by Hank Azaria. The documentary’s interviewees felt Apu’s depiction contributed to racist stereotyping and bullying, and Apu was quietly retired the same year.

The Simpsons Season 38 Episode 3 Acknowledges The Show’s Mistakes

Image via MovieStillsDB.com

However, The Simpsons never addressed Apu’s disappearance, and the show’s creators never offered a substantive response to these critiques. The decision to simply drop Apu and not mention him was one that earned widespread criticism, with an episode of South Park even parodying the choice a year later. Nevertheless, the creators of the show stuck to their proverbial guns, until season 38, episode 3, “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening.”

For the most part, “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening” is a one-story Halloween special that follows a guilt-stricken Homer as a masked killer picks off his accomplices after a fateful accident. When Homer, Superintendent Chalmers, Professor Frink, and Mr. Largo accidentally hit a masked reveler with their shared car on Halloween night, they toss the body off the bridge and never mention the incident again.

When the presumed dead partygoer returns, still masked, to kill Chalmers, Largo, and Frink, Homer assumes he is next. However, when he attempts to tell Marge, she informs him that she, too, thought she killed the same masked partier a year earlier, and also hid the event with the help of her co-conspirators, including Disco Stu and the Sea Captain. Since they, too, have since been killed off by the reveler, she fears she’s next.

At a Springfield Town Hall meeting, it becomes clear that almost everyone in town had a hand in the nameless character’s death, and thus, almost everyone is responsible. However,“Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening” then reveals the killer is The Simpsons’ missing character Apu, and the entire Halloween special has been a risky extended meta-gag about the show’s own failure to address Apu’s sudden disappearance in 2017.

Apu disbelievingly notes that no one seemed to notice his absence despite what a constant presence he was in their lives, and accuses the townspeople of acting as if he never existed. To further drive home the point, an apologetic Lenny notes that the townspeople had many “internal conversations” about his disappearance, while Apu’s explanation of his fate after that Halloween night pokes even more fun at his offscreen exit.

Apu’s Season 38 Comeback Leaves His Simpsons Future Unclear

Upon washing up on the shore of a deserted island, Apu is met by The Simpsons’ Dr. Nick, who welcomes him to an island that is filled with what he terms ‘garbage’ that Springfield ‘no longer wants.' Dr. Nick notes that he has been on the island for ‘eight seasons,’ before the show reveals that the late musician Michael Jackson’s character from The Simpsons, Leon, is also trapped there.

Jackson’s lone appearance as Leon on The Simpsons was famously removed from Disney+ after the release of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, a choice that was never addressed in the series until now. It’s a risky thing for a series that’s been on the air over 40 years to start examining its past, but bringing up Apu and Jackson’s shared deletion from the show’s in-universe memory points to The Simpsons doing just that with “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening.”

To be clear, it is still not entirely obvious whether Apu, voiced in this episode by new guest star Sunil Molhotra, will continue to appear in the series going forward. Apu is back, but only in a Halloween special that is explicitly not canon, judging by the number of notable supporting stars he killed off. That said, the revelation that the entire story of “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening” was only Apu's mid-work dream, and Homer’s reassurance that Springfield would never forget Apu, could mean this marks his official return to the regular series.

Apu’s Simpsons Season 38 Return Shut Down Other Comebacks

As confusing as the semi-canon status of “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening” is, the episode does reaffirm one element of the show’s infamously slippery continuity. As The Simpsons season 36 finale’s infamous Marge death controversy proves, the show has offered various contradictory versions of the family’s future over the years. The Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes are also explicitly not part of the show’s loose canon, as they often kill off notable stars.

However, the canon of The Simpsons does still exist, however loose and diffuse it may be, and the show does occasionally kill off certain characters permanently. As if to reaffirm this, “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening” features an early scene set in Springfield Cemetery that prominently includes visible graves for characters like Frank Grimes, Sherry Bobbins, Alice Glick, and The Simpsons season 37’s guest star Sadie Krustofsky.

This gag reinforces the reality that some other characters can permanently canonically die in the show, which seems like good news for Apu’s comeback. After all, if these characters are genuinely, permanently gone from The Simpsons, then it seems like this new recast version of Apu is here to stay, and his nine-year absence was nothing more than a bad dream.

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  Homer Simpson / Abe Simpson / Barney Gumble / Krusty (voice)

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  Marge Simpson / Patty Bouvier / Selma Bouvier (voice)