The 31st season of The Simpsons keeps airing new episodes, with the most recent being “Bart the Bad Guy“, which aired on March 1, 2020. The episode is the 14th episode of the season and one of the most delightful episodes of the season so far. It is a well-cooked mix of Bart, superhero parodies, spoilers and, over all, comedy and jokes. A really must-see episode.
The episode starts at the Springfield Googolplex Theatres, where the film Vindicators: Crystal War is shown, with Chinnos using the Doomsday app to crystalize and then disintegrate the Vindicators. The Vindicators’ plan to stop him fails and the movie ends with a cliffhanger. Eleven months later, at school, Skinner warns the students about taking part on the “Flag yourself challenge”, by using Reaction Guy‘s videos as an example, but Bart instead follows the example, creates the channel Reaction Bart and records his own “Flag yourself challenge” video, but Milhouse gets injured in the process.
Milhouse gets treated at the Springfield General Hospital, and when he’s transported elsewhere for physical therapy, Bart takes his place. Airshot, Glen Tangier, comes to visit Milhouse, but he mistakes Bart for him and was going to offer him the opportunity to watch the sequel to the movie if he was ill. Having Airman knocked himself out with alcohol, Bart takes the opportunity to watch Vindicators: Crystal War 2: Resurgence before it gets to the theaters. He goes to the Android’s Dungeon to treaten to reveal spoilers from the movie to Comic Book Guy, who gives in much of his stuff to keep Bart’s mouth shut. Bart then becomes Spoiler Boy, getting much more stuff from people, except Homer who doesn’t care about them, but joins Bart in taking advantage of knowing the spoilers.
At the Old Suzie tree’s birthday party, Bart asks the Springfielders to build a tree house on top of the tree. Milhouse confronts his friend at night about him using his “powers” for evil, calling him a supervillain, and Bart was going to announce a big spoiler when Magnesium Man appears behind them. Magnesium Man stops him from saying anything and opens a portal in the tree and transports Bart into the Marble Universe, revealing that superheroes are actually real and that revealing a scene for Airshot to Comic Book Guy changed their world, as the supervillains saw it and killed Airshot before he could act. But while Bart cries, all is revealed to be a virtual reality recreation by the movie producers to stop the spoilers from leaking.
In the simulation, Chinnos appears, as soon as the producers raises the intensity of it. Chinnos offers him actual super powers in exchange for the spoilers, but he refuses breaking his phone and the super heroes win. Bart “returns” to the real world and Bart stops his villainous actions, while the producers stop a bomb from going off if the family was going to talk about it. In the end, Bart gives back Skinner’s toupee and the stuff given to him by Comic Book Guy and stops the tree house from being built, while at the premiere, people spoil the movie for everyone through their phones.
The episode, written by Dan Vebber and directed by Jennifer Moeller, is the tale about a kid who gains one of the most powerful superpowers of nowadays: spoilers of an upcoming huge superhero film. And the element that makes the tale really interesting and hilarating is that said kid turns to be none other than Bart Simpson. Bart has been known by the audience for more than 30 years, and the episode handles perfectly the way Bart uses the knowledge of movie spoilers as he behaves exactly as it would be expected: with mischief and pranks.
The voice acting in the episode is, as always, marvelous (joke not intended). As a brief comment, it is needed to state that the new voice of Martin Prince, Grey DeLisle, has certainly mastered the role at this point, as Martin’s voice does not seem quite different than the voice he has had for 30 years and, above all, keeps being a very fitting voice for Martin. The great Nancy Cartwright does, as always, an excellent job voicing Bart. The episode also featured some guest voices, such as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige who did a great performance of Chinnos, Tal Fishman as a funny Reaction Guy, Taran Killam (who performs an excellent voiceover) as Glen Tangier/Airshot, Joe Mantegna as Fat Tony or MCU actress Cobie Smulders as Hydrangea. Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo also guest-starred as movie executive 2 and Movie executive 1, respectively.
As expected, the episode was loaded with tones of references to Marvel (or Marble) and The Avengers lastest two films. The episode itself is hilarious, entertaining and with a cleverly-written comically realistic last scene, which evokes to the classic scene of Homer spoiling Star Wars in an episode from the early years of the show and reminds of the power of spoilers. Season 31 has been quite enjoyable so far, maintaining the quality level of Season 30. Let’s hope for more episodes like this.
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Notes and Observations:
- The ending credits of Vindicators: Crystal War has Batman/Bruce Wayne as Real Superhero Consultant.
- Comic Book Guy says “sweet Batarang Jesus”.
- Bart leaves The Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop in a toy Batmobile.
- The song that plays after Bart becomes “Spoiler Boy” is “People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul” by James Brown.
- Bart says “what’s the story, morning glories?” a reference to the album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis.
- The headquarters of the Vindicators is a parody of the Hall of Justice from DC Comics.
- The ending with Bart asking what day it is then going around town saying “I’m a changed boy” is a parody of A Christmas Carol.
- When the {{w|The Walt Disney Company|Disney}} bomb gets disarmed, the company’s theme, “When You Wish Upon a Star“, plays.
- Some Marvel references:
- Vindicators: Crystal War is a parody of Avengers: Infinity War.
- Vindicators: Crystal War 2: Resurgence is a parody of Avengers: Endgame.
- The Vindicators are a parody of The Avengers.
- The fight on the planet in the film is a parody of the fight on Titan in Infinity War.
- The Doomsday app is a parody of the Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity Gems.
- Marble Studios is a parody of Marvel Studios.
- Bart calls Comic Book Guy “fat Thor”.
- Bart references {{w|Avengers: Endgame}}.
- White Malik has a T-shirt with the Springfield Monorail on it.