This year, one of the all-time best The Simpsons episodes turns 30: 1995’s “Lisa’s Wedding.” It’s the first episode of the series set in the future and, to my mind, the best of the lot, but here’s where things get interesting. The future in “Lisa’s Wedding” is 15 years from that date, making it 2010, and now, here in 2025, it’s been 15 years since then. Which means it’s an episode from the past, one that shows a future that is now in the past. D’OH! And it proves to be a turning point in the series as a whole.
What Is “Lisa’s Wedding” About?
“Lisa’s Wedding” begins with the family visiting a Renaissance fair, where Lisa (Yeardley Smith) comes across a fortune-teller. Skeptical at first, Lisa is won over by the fortune-teller’s ability to name the entire Simpsons family and what they’re doing at the moment (“Homer is heckling the puppet show” sealed the deal), and listens as she hears the tale of her first true love.
The story jumps ahead to the year 2010, when 23-year-old Lisa meets British student Hugh Parkfield (Mandy Patinkin). The two have a lot in common – vegetarianism, the magic of Jim Carrey, and the Rolling Stones (“Not for their music but for their tireless efforts to preserve historic buildings”) – and Hugh invites Lisa to meet his parents back in England. He then asks her to marry him, and she accepts. Now it’s off to meet her parents… and cue the hyperventilation.
We Get A Surprising Look at Springfield’s Future
“Lisa’s Wedding” is the first time we see what will become of our favorite Springfield citizens. Bart (Nancy Cartwright) is a twice-divorced 25-year-old building demolition expert; Maggie is a teenager who never shuts up (but never talks in the episode, always being cut off). Marge (Julie Kavner) is still a housewife, and Homer (Dan Castellaneta) is… still in Sector 7G. But Milhouse (Pamela Hayden) is his supervisor, so that’s a thing, and Mayor Quimby (Castellaneta) drives a cab under the name Mohammed Jafar, working for Otto (Harry Shearer). Martin Prince (Russi Taylor), presumed dead, lives underground à la Phantom of the Opera, Mister Burns (Shearer) is cryogenically frozen until a cure is found for seventeen stab wounds in the back (but they’re up to fifteen!). The Simpsons’ home at 742 Evergreen Terrace has had Homer-renovations (“Remember: If the building inspector comes by, it’s not a room, it’s a window box”).
This first glimpse into the future of Springfield’s citizens is an important one in the series’ history. There are arcs that are comical for sure, but others make an odd degree of sense. It’s not surprising that Homer hasn’t left Sector 7G, nor is it surprising that Bart hasn’t amounted to much. It’s a narrative that carries forward in most of Bart’s future arcs, a natural consequence of his actions in the present. The allusion to a romance between Lisa and Milhouse is another arc that has often been revisited, including a zombie-Milhouse that becomes far more interesting to Lisa in “Days of Future Future.”
“Lisa’s Wedding” Showcases What We Love About The Simpsons
In addition to catching up with Springfield, “Lisa’s Wedding” has fun with what the future will bring, something that every future-set episode takes a crack at. Some are ridiculous: Big Ben is now a digital clock flashing 12:00, and “wacky old designs” for airplanes have been re-evaluated (bi-plane? nah – hex-plane). Largely, though, the episode is notorious for the number of predictions that came to pass within it, arguably the point The Simpsons turned from funny animated sitcom to Nostradamus incarnate. The episode predicted smartwatches (technically second, after Dick Tracy in 1931), FaceTime, the still-touring Rolling Stones, remote (and commercialized) education, virtual darts, and famed London landmark The Shard. Also, Fox is turning into a hardcore sex channel so slowly that no one notices (The Real Full Monty is just the beginning…).
It also predicted a key moment to come in the series itself: Lisa’s vegetarianism, which would kick off with Paul McCartney‘s appearance in Season 7’s “Lisa the Vegetarian.” It did, however, drop the ball when it comes to Maude Flanders (Maggie Roswell).The success of the future-set “Lisa’s Wedding” prompted The Simpsons to go back to the future a number of times since. The results have been varied, from the lows of “When Nelson Met Lisa” to the highs of “Holidays of Future Passed.” One of the weaker entries, the second future-set episode “Bart to the Future,” would gain notoriety for predicting the presidency of one Donald Trump. One last point: flashback and flash-forward episodes of The Simpsons are problematic for some, people who have issues with continuity. In The Simpsons, of all things. To you, I reach back to the past for this gem: “Eat my shorts.”
The Simpsons is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
The Simpsons
- Release Date
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December 17, 1989
- Network
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FOX
- Directors
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David Silverman, Jim Reardon, Mark Kirkland
