What you love most about the Marvel Universe was done years earlier by this famous TV series

This show ahead of its time had long preceded the MCU

Image Credit: Marvel Studios

What is now one of the most fascinating and discussed themes in the Marvel Universe, the concept of the multiverse was explored in a surprising way years earlier by a famous TV series that has always had a special talent for anticipating trends and innovations in the world of entertainment: The Simpsons!

The multiverse is today one of the most explored themes in blockbusters; however, it is a concept that has existed for decades in science fiction and in narrative in general. The Marvel Universe helped bring it back to the center of attention with works such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), an animated film that introduced audiences to the concept of parallel universes with different visual styles. From there, the theme was further developed with Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). The latter attempted to represent the multiverse with different aesthetics for each timeline, although it failed to leave a mark on viewers.

At the same time, DC also tried to ride the multiverse wave with mixed results. One example is The Flash, which did not have the success hoped for at the box office, despite the ambitious attempt to explore multiple realities. The real triumph, however, came in 2023 with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which exceeded expectations, offering a visually innovative representation of the multiverse. Each universe explored by Spider-Man featured a unique artistic style, ranging from watercolors to collages, to Renaissance influences: a variety of visual languages ​​that made the film a work of art in itself.

Long before Marvel and DC brought the multiverse to the big screen, The Simpsons had already touched on this idea with their iconic 1997 episode, Treehouse of Horror VI. In the Homer³ segment, Homer accidentally enters an alternate dimension, transforming into a three-dimensional version of himself. Not only was this segment a breakthrough for the series, which used CGI and live-action footage for the first time, but it could have anticipated the idea of ​​the multiverse as we know it today. The episode was originally conceived to show Homer traversing multiple dimensions, each with a unique visual style, similar to what we see in Doctor Strange and Across the Spider-Verse. 

Season seven showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein revealed that initial ideas included a stop-motion dimension and a paper-cut dimension. However, they ultimately settled on a parody of the Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost," in which a little girl gets lost in another dimension. Had the writers stuck with the original concept, The Simpsons would have introduced the concept of the multiverse many years before Marvel. The idea of ​​exploring different visual realities would have anticipated by decades the creative approach of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, where the Spider-Punk universe, realized in a collage style, closely recalls the paper-cut dimension imagined by the creators of The Simpsons. 

This universe, characterized by an aesthetic inspired by punk fanzines, took years to work, precisely because of the complexity of its design. The Simpsons' ability to anticipate themes and trends in pop culture is not new. The series has often predicted real-world events and experimented with plots that would later become central to other media. The fact that the Homer³ episode did not fully explore the multiverse does not detract from its innovative scope.

Source: SlashFilm