When it comes to fitting in references and Easter eggs into shots, no one beats the Simpsons, and the new short from the Simpsons team, The Good, The Bart, and the Loki is proof of that. The team managed to fit in a full one hundred Marvel references, but only had three months to make it happen according to new interviews with Simpsons showrunner Al Jean by The Wrap and Variety.
A standard Simpsons episode takes nine months to produce, while the beloved Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes take a full year, Jean told The Wrap. For this Loki crossover, though, the team had less than three months. In the short, Odin banishes Loki–voiced by Tom Hiddleston himself–to Springfield, where he crash lands in the Simpsons back yard. Homer, for one, welcomes his new Asgardian overlord. Lisa ends up in a prison cell in Asgard, where she discovers she’s worthy of hefting Thor’s hammer. Of course, Loki replaces Bart while Lisa sends Bart off to the stars, and Homer persuades Loki to turn Ned Flanders into a pork chop. It’s pretty dark.
This is the second Simpsons short the team had produced, with the first coming from the Star Wars Universe; The Force Awakens From Its Nap debuted on May 4. For the team, these shorts are a way to remind Disney+ viewers that the long-running series is on the service. The big properties like Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar, each have their own dedicated tiles.
“There’s no tile that actually says The Simpsons,” Jean told Variety. Simpsons co-creator James L. Brooks suggested that Springfield “invade” the rest of Disney+, according to Jean. “It was just the desire that we had to reach out to the viewers [of] the other branches of Disney+, to see if they would be interested in us–you know, if they hadn’t seen us as much.”
Everything about the short had to happen quickly. Linking the Simpsons’ beloved characters to Marvel counterparts? “In the room, we were just putting them together, and it was really fast,” Jean told Variety. “It was like, Patty and Selma are the Scarlet Witch and Agnes. My favorite was Ralph as the Hulk and Herman as Captain America… It was about 10 minutes to put that together.”
Even the post-credits sequence, which has the TVA judging Loki for his crimes, such as having a British accent when he’s actually from Norway, happened in a quick turnaround.
“A week,” Jean said of the sequence, which is based only on the first episode of the Disney+ series. “I hadn’t seen the other three [episodes], and obviously, I have no idea how it ends, either. I suspect Loki is up to no good. That’s my theory.”
Despite the tight time frame, Marvel was supportive, with Feige himself offering up the Avengers music to drive home the hilarious Avengers Assemble scene in the short. Jean said that the only thing the Marvel Studios nixed was a Stan Lee cameo; now that the Marvel co-founder has passed, the studio no longer uses his likeness for cameos.
You can watch the short exclusively on Disney+. If you’re caught up on the latest episode of Loki, make sure to check out the lightning-fast cameo and all the Easter eggs we found in this week’s installment.
