Difference between revisions of "Treehouse of Horror XXXI"

Revision as of 17:07, June 4, 2023

This THOH is considered non-canon and the events featured do not relate to the series and therefore may not have actually happened/existed. The reason behind this decision is: The episode is part of the Treehouse of Horror series. If you dispute this, please bring it up on the episode's talk page.

This article is about the episode. For other uses of "Treehouse of Horror XXXI", see Treehouse of Horror XXXI (disambiguation).

"Treehouse of Horror XXXI"

Episode Information Episode number: 688 Season number: S32 E4 Production code: ZABF17 Original airdate: October 18, 2020 November 1, 2020 Guest star(s): Ben Mankiewicz as himself Showrunner: [[Al Jean]] Written by: Julia Prescott Directed by: Steven Dean Moore

"Treehouse of Horror XXXI" is the fourth episode of season 32 of The Simpsons and the six-hundred and eighty-eighth episode overall. It is also the thirty-first installment in the annual Treehouse of Horror series. It originally aired on October 18, 2020 in Canada and on November 1, 2020 in the USA. The episode was written by Julia Prescott and directed by Steven Dean Moore. It guest stars Ben Mankiewicz as himself.

Synopsis

"Don't miss the annual terror-themed trilogy, including a frightening look at the 2020 election, parodies of Pixar and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a ninth birthday Lisa just can't get over."

"1. Opening segment: Homer goes to vote in the 2020 election.
2. Toy Gory: Bart is horrible to his toys, and pays the consequences.
3. Into the Homer-verse: Homers from different dimensions come to the main universe.
4. Be Nine, Rewind: Lisa and Nelson keep reliving the same day over and over again."

Plot

Opening segment

It's election day in Springfield, and people are voting at Springfield Elementary. Marge is calling Homer to his duty to vote, while he's on his hammock. Homer gets into the cabin, trying to decide, when Lisa appears, making him think about all that happened on Donald Trump's period of presidency, but he just dreamed of voting, and one year after, the whole city is burning, and Homer is standing on his house armed. While Hans Moleman gets ambushed by a robot, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appear over the city.

Toy Gory

Marge asks Bart if he's boxing his toys to sell for charity, and Bart says he's saying good bye to them, but Bart has other plans: he destroys them in many possible ways, between explosions and distortions. When he is done, Marge gives him a Radioactive Man toy.

When Bart leaves the new toy alone, he comes to life, and Krusty's doll shows him what happened to all the other toys. Bart then plays with both, putting Radioactive Man in a microwave, destroying it. The other toys reunite to form a plan to revenge him after a funeral in his honor.

The toys drag Bart out of the door and in a room, where they reveal themselves to be alive and kill him, using plastic surgery done by Dr. Malibu Stacy. They transformed him into a toy and left him at the tree in front of the house, where Lisa finds him.

The family brings him at Dr. Hibbert's Studio, where he shows them how they converted him. This marked his end, as now toys are the ones playing with his lifeless body, forever.

Into the Homer-verse

It's Halloween at the Power Plant and Marge calls Homer to bring the candies home, however he ate them all at work. In a search for more, he ends up in a secret room for high clearance people only.

Homer finds a machine in it, but when it doesn't accept his quarter in the USB port, he tackles it, making it explode, and from it, multiple Homers appear, from different universes. Next on Channel 6 News, Kent Brockman shows various results of the 6 Homers in town.

Marge opens a can of Duff Beer to bring them home, and Lisa explains with a song how Homer opened a hole in the space-time continuum. When Bart jokes around him, Homer tries to strangle him, only to find himself transforming into more Homers.

Lisa realizes what's happening and how the situation could turn tragic, so she tells the Homer to recreate the explosion that brought them here to fix it, but Mr. Burns stops them, saying they'd be the ultimate form of cheap undocumented labor, with a vomiting frog as prize for it.

The Homer refuses, so Burns bring out his and Smithers alternates and a fight begins, leaving the Homers dead, but when Burns discovers in Smithers Noir's universe he's Smithers' assistant, Burns sends them back into the machine. In the end Marge is left with Homer Noir, the only one she wanted, but he transforms into Green cat Homer and escapes.

Be Nine, Rewind

It's Lisa's 9th birthday, half way to adulthood. When she comes down to the party, Sherri and Terri makes her realize it's a party for losers, and asks for somebody to kill her, when a car comes through the window hitting her.

But she suddenly wakes up back in her room, and relives the last few minutes again, having her change fate by placing Milhouse in front of the car, driven by Gil, doing his driving test with Patty.

Nelson grabs her arm and brings her under Bart's treehouse, when they get crushed by it. She wakes up again at the start, getting angry and saying she can solve it, but that causes the roof to fall on her, killing her again. She this time knocks on her desk softly, but knocks the mirror on herself.

On the next return, Nelson reveals himself to be a returner too, but he falls in a woodchipper when trying to high-five her. She kills herself too upon realizing she needs to return so Nelson could live but he tells her too late that there's an alternative.

More deaths happen, by being burnt by the cake's candles, to stabbing themselves with the knife, and then crushed by the air conditioner. They find out that the only way to solve the loop is to get help from Comic Book Guy. He proposes a series of solutions based on movies but they tried all of them.

In the end they find out that the only way is to kill Gil before he could crash into the house, so they throw him a brick and succeed. Lisa returns home to celebrate her birthday without consequences, except for Ralph's head being turned the opposite direction.

Gallery

Production

A scene was cut, showing 8-bit Homer jumping on a building game, Donkey Kong arcade game.^[1]

This episode was screened virtually exclusively for 500 people who signed up on Decider on October 14, 2020, courtesy of Fox.

The episode was scheduled to air on October 18, 2020 but was preempted to November 1, 2020 due to the NLCS Game 7. It aired on October 18 in Canada.

References

Promo videos

• The Simpsons @ Home - Comic-Con@Home 2020 at YouTube
• Managing the Problems of Daily Living - Executive Producer of The Simpsons, Al Jean at Vimeo
• The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror Lists 50 Reasons Not to Vote Trump at YouTube
• Homer Votes 2020 at YouTube

Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to "Treehouse of Horror XXXI".