How “The Simpsons” Used “Loki” To Invade The Marvel Cinematic Universe

When Disney Plus launched with all of the “Simpsons” episodes, the team behind the longest-running prime-time TV series in history were thrilled.

“It’s a perfect fit and, you know, 100 million subscribers,” executive producer Al Jean says with a chuckle.

But there was a catch: While Disney Plus has specific tiles on its homescreen for Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, “there’s no tile that actually says ‘The Simpsons,'” he says. .

So, co-creator and executive producer James L. Brooks suggested that “The Simpsons” should invade the rest of Disney Plus, through a series of crossover shorts.

“It was just the desire we had to reach viewers [of] the other branches of Disney Plus, to see if they’d be interested in us – you know, if they hadn’t seen us so much, ”says Jean.

The first short film, “The Force Awakens From Its Nap” – which placed Maggie Simpson in the world of “Star Wars” – premiered on May 4 (i.e. the May 4 holiday “Star Wars “). As this film wrapped up production in April, Jean focused on Marvel Studios’ ‘Loki’ series for their second film – but they must have moved at superhuman speed, as this show aired in June.

The result is “The Good, The Bart, and the Loki”, with Tom Hiddleston voicing his signature role as the shrewd god of evil after being banished from Asgard and the lands, to his horror, in Springfield.

“They couldn’t have been nicer at Marvel,” says Jean. “They said, ‘Hey, do you want the Avengers music?’ And we said, ‘Would we do it ?! Yes!'”

As Jean revealed in his conversation with Variety, the team behind the film, led by director David Silverman, drew on their knowledge not only of past films and series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also of the upcoming film “Thor: Love and Thunder” – and , for the last post-credits scene, they just had a week to make everything run.

There’s a big board in which a whole bunch of different Simpsons characters appear as the Springfield Avengers, including Barney Gumble as Iron Man and Milhouse as Hawkeye. How did you decide all this?

It was the funniest thing. In the room, we were just putting them together, and it was really quick. It was as if Patty and Selma were the Scarlet Witch and Agnes. My favorite was Ralph as the Hulk and Herman as Captain America – because he wears the Captain America shield on his shirt because he owns a gun store. It took about 10 minutes to put everything in place. We would have had more – I mean, there are 100 Avengers – but we were just trying to make sure production gets done on time.

When you turned Lisa into Thor, was it a hat trick that …

… That Natalie Portman is going to be Thor in “Love and Thunder”? Absolutely. And then, for me, it was really funny that, you know, now that Lisa is Thor, she even has that for Bart, so he’s really made it worse. The parallel between Bart and Lisa and Loki and Thor is pretty clear.

Did Marvel have any notes? Or did they just let you do your thing?

They were really great and supportive. The only note we had was that we thought we might have a Stan Lee appearance. We put as many cameos and post-credits footage as we can into a four-minute short. But they said their policy is that since he passed away they no longer use it in movies, which I fully understood. And we’ve had it on the show three times, so we had our chance.

The final post-credit streak is completely reminiscent of the Disney Plus show “Loki”, right down to production design. How much time did you have for this?

A week, and it was a nail rodent really. Jim Brooks said, “Oh, we have to do something with the show now that it’s launched,” because we were releasing on July 7th. So, it was based only on the first episode. I hadn’t seen the other three, and obviously I have no idea how it ends either. I suspect Loki isn’t up to anything good. This is my theory.

Wait, did you have a week to write, record and animate this?

Yeah. We recorded Dawnn Lewis as a judge. David Silverman turned around just as quickly. So this whole ending, whatever the minute, is in a week.

The short film ends with Lisa unknowingly sending Bart into oblivion and Loki takes over Bart’s life.

Well, in the last short, Maggie dies. She returns as a Force Ghost, but she’s dead. This one, Bart doesn’t seem to have a very good ending. [Laughs] Homer also appears to eat Flanders at the end of Loki’s story, so there’s a lot of sinister stuff beneath the surface!

So, do you think you’ll be revisiting the world of Marvel or the world of Star Wars again?

We really want to keep making these shorts – definitely [with] those two, but also with other properties, like Pixar and classic Disney movies. We’ll probably take a little longer for the next one. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet, but there are so many things that are, you know – I mean, when I was a kid I was a huge Marvel fan. I started collecting when I was six years old. These are the things that we would like to come across or parody, anyway.