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When you think of famous Millennials, names like Taylor Swift, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jennifer Lawrence probably come to mind. Now, you can add Homer and Marge Simpson to that list, at least according to the show’s updated (albeit admittedly loose) timeline. For fans who have been watching the show for nearly four decades, it’s a jarring reminder of the passage of time. And it’s a choice the showrunner is now defending—while also telling everybody to calm down.
Back in the golden era of The Simpsons in the ’90s, occasional flashbacks suggested that Homer and Marge grew up in the ’70s. However, the 37th season premiere, “Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother,” which aired last Sunday, flashed back to Marge’s youth in what’s clearly the ’90s. A 2008 episode, “That ’90s Show,” meanwhile, flashed back to Marge and Homer meeting in the ’90s, conflicting with a 1991 episode, “The Way We Was,” which showed how the pair met in 1974. So what gives with the inconsistency?
Showrunner Says the Timeline Is Loose
“My creative process is: I don’t give an eff,” Matt Selman, one of the current showrunners of The Simpsons who has worked on the series since 1997, told Entertainment Weekly.
“If the show only took place in the present with a kind of vague 1970s-high-school Homer-and-Marge backstory that seems increasingly impossible—that would be much worse for telling good stories,” he continued.
Since the characters in The Simpsons don’t age and each new episode is essentially set in the then-present day, it would cause more headaches than it would be worth to not update the timeline, according to Selman. Not being able to do flashbacks at all would “creatively handcuff” the writers, but having Homer reflect on what it was like to be young in the ’70s while being in his mid-30s in 2025 doesn’t make sense, either.
For Selman, making new episodes that work on their own are much more important than a fixed timeline. With few exceptions—like Maude Flanders’ death or Apu having octuplets—there really isn’t any canon or episode-to-episode continuity in The Simpsons. This means that the newer episodes which have Homer and Marge being solidly members of the Millennial generation don’t meaningfully conflict with past episodes where they were Boomers or Gen Xers. If the show is still on in a decade, they’ll probably be Gen Z.
“In no way are we saying that the beloved other flashbacks didn’t happen,” Selman said. “We’re not saying that. None of it happened! It’s just a silly little show! So I like it all. Everything happened and didn’t happen with the same level of historical veracity.”
The Simpsons Return to the Big Screen for a Movie Sequel
For as much as Selman’s explanation of why the timeline of Homer and Marge’s backstory changed makes sense, it’s still a rough reminder of the ceaseless passage of time. The Simpsons might not be getting older, but you are. Another reminder? The Simpsons Movie came out in 2007. A just-announced sequel, the second time the Simpsons will grace the big screen, will premiere on July 23, 2027, just four days shy of 20 years after the first film. We’ll have to wait until then to see if the upcoming movie will make any other massive changes to the series’ extremely flexible continuity.
Season 37 of The Simpson Is Currently Airing Sundays at 8 p.m. on FOX.
This story was originally reported by Men’s Journal on Oct 3, 2025, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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