The Simpsons kills off iconic character after over 30 years

After more than 30 years, The Simpsons has seemingly parted ways with a fan-favorite homicidal maniac – his chances of survival were hopeless… utterly hopeless.

The Simpsons exists in its own perpetual time capsule; nobody ever ages, and everyone always looks the same. Maggie will always be a baby, Lisa and Bart will always be kids, and Homer and Marge have barely changed. The show redid Homer’s backstory and turned him into a ’90s kid, but let’s just pretend that never happened.

Similarly, the residents of Springfield are just… always there, and of the deaths that haven’t been undone in the same episode, there’s a few worth noting: Mona Simpson, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Edna Krabappel, and Maude Flanders.

With the latest Treehouse of Horror, The Simpsons appears to have added another huge death to the list – and it wasn’t even the rakes that got him.

The Simpsons kills Sideshow Bob

Sideshow Bob, voiced by Kelsey Grammer since the first season of The Simpsons, is killed off in the latest Treehouse of Horror – and he’s murdered by Lisa.

This unfolds in the “Ei8ht” segment, a parody of Silence of the Lambs that follows Lisa as an adult. She becomes a true crime specialist after Sideshow Bob successfully kills Bart, and turns to him for advice amid a spate of first-born murders across Springfield.

Then comes the twist: Lisa was the culprit all along, and she just wanted to get closer to Bob and have her revenge, with the segment ending with her stabbing him to death (she even plays ‘He Remains an Englishman’, which is a great nod to episode Cape Feare).

Of course, this is a Treehouse of Horror episode… so the chances are, Sideshow Bob is probably still alive in The Simpsons. However, it’s still been heralded as an all-time Simpsons moment by fans.

“After the way he slaughtered Bart, I needed this ending. Definitely one of my all-time favorite Treehouses,” one user commented. “The Sideshow Bob segment was legitimately phenomenal, the other two were just good but I genuinely love that segment so much,” another wrote on Reddit.

“Never seen Sideshow Bob be so dark. Especially being someone who is actually in prison for life, rather than finding ways to charm his way out,” a third wrote.

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXIV is available to stream on Hulu now.

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