It’s been over 30 years since The Simpsons came out, but even with that enormous amount of time it has never had a spinoff. Because? It tends to be quite common in series as a way to take more and more advantage of a successful product, what has led to this not happening with Matt Groening’s series?
With over 700 episodes, The Simpsons is a timeless series that holds its own season after season. Hence, a multitude of ideas have been raised about possible spinoffs, but none of them has been completed for a series of reasons that we will discuss below.
secondary characters
One of the main characteristics of The Simpsons lies in the large number of secondary characters it has. But the most important have come to have practically as much relevance throughout the series as the main family. The series depends, to a large extent, on them and their presence. This can be seen in a multitude of episodes in which Homer and company do not appear much and become secondary themselves.
Shooting a spinoff in which one of the supporting casts got the lead would be a terrible idea. And, at the same time, that very series would end up depending on the other secondary ones, so it would become The Simpsons again. Or, failing that, something similar, but worse. A priori it might seem to us that an Apu, Moe or Krusty series would be great, but the writers of The Simpsons have developed so many independent stories around them, that it is obvious that they have already had their own “spinoff” moments.
I would not surpass his legend
It is unthinkable that, at this point, there is a series derived from this one that could surpass it. If the spinoff did not premiere during the golden age of the series, when it was in its first ten seasons, it is unimaginable that it could happen now. The first episodes or even the initial season could perhaps cause interest among the audience, but it would be a project that would be doomed to failure. And most likely, his misfortune came quickly, plummeting from the second season and ending in a cancellation that would stain the history of The Simpsons.
At the time, a long time ago, there was talk of releasing a spinoff titled Springfield. The idea they had at Fox was to create a different series that would give more prominence to secondary characters. But since they were aware of what we have said in the previous section, they planned to use the series to tell stories of many characters and not just one. That would allow Homer and company to be taken out of the equation, leaving them in very minority roles and developing other citizens of the city. However, in the end the project did not materialize. The work they had done turned it into an episode, chapter 21 of the seventh season.
Not a cool concept anymore
The Simpsons have been copied constantly. Over the years, after the series created the concept of adult animation, a multitude of projects have appeared that have taken Matt Groening’s series as a reference. Although they are not copies, because all of them contribute something distinctive that, in some cases, have helped them succeed in style, they have contributed to the fact that the concept, over the years, is no longer so fresh.
Surely you can think of many of the examples of series that fall into this category, such as Family Guy, South Park or Father made in the USA. Therefore, it is most likely that the concept would not generate as much interest even if the formula were to radically depart from what other adult animated series have done.
And Futurama what?
The truth is that it could be said that The Simpsons does have a spinoff, although it strays so far from the norm that we really shouldn’t consider it as such and it’s something open to debate. We are talking about Futurama, a series that meets what a Simpsons spinoff needed in order to succeed. First, it came at a time when the Springfield stories hadn’t run out of steam as much as they have over the years. And second, they used a totally different world, characters without any kind of relationship, but that, in some way, it was not difficult for you to imagine seeing them on the same screen.
Futurama and The Simpsons ended up getting their well-deserved crossover, but it aired in 2014, possibly too late considering how the series has aged. Therefore, with the existence of Futurama, which today is at full capacity with its return on Disney +, the reality is that we do not need any spinoff of The Simpsons. We already have everything we want.
