The Simpsons Predicted A Big GoT Twist 2 Years Ago
Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8, episode 5 "The Bells"
The Simpsons has done it yet again.
Continuing its uncanny ability to predict real-world events and pop culture phenomena years in advance, the long-running animated series The Simpsons accurately predicted the massive twist that came on the fifth episode of Game of Thrones' final season. And the show didn't just do it, oh, a month before the huge turning of the tides happened on Thrones. No, The Simpsons prophesied how the penultimate installment of Game of Thrones would end back in 2017.
We're about to dive into explicit spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8, episode 5, so please, turn back now if you don't want to know what happens.
The prophetic episode in question is the season premiere of The Simpsons' 29th season, a fantasy-heavy installment entitled "The Serfsons" that is set in an alternate version of Springfield known as Springfieldia, which aired on October 1, 2017. The episode sees the Simpsons family — Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa — wearing old-timey outfits; discussing deadly creatures known as ice walkers; interacting with characters like Lord Montgomery, King Quimby, and Jacqueline Bouvier, who wears an amulet around her neck that inflicts detrimental effects on her body when she takes it off; and talking about magic, Warmfyre, and dragons.
Clearly, "The Serfsons" is a standard spoof on Game of Thrones: the ice walkers are like the White Walkers, Jacqueline is like Melisandre, Warmfyre is like Wildfire, and the dragons are, well, still dragons. But one scene in particular has retroactively caught fans' attention, as it perfectly parallels the events of Thrones season 8, episode 5.
When the Simpsons are standing on a balcony of a fortress and looking down at their city, Bart points up to an enormous red dragon breathing flames on innocent people below.
"Look, the dragon is burning our village!" he says. Homer responds, "I love our life."
This moment is shockingly similar to Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) spiraling into hysteria and ordering her dragon Drogon to burn down King's Landing and everyone in it, which took place on the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. The Simpsons scene also matches what Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) went through: Just as the Simpson family looked upon their burning village, Cersei watched from her balcony in the Red Keep as Drogon and Daenerys blasted her city with fire. Even the dragon that unleashes fiery fury onto the Springfieldia village on "The Serfsons" is red — just like Drogon is on Game of Thrones.
Once fans realized that The Simpsons predicted Dany would snap and turn into the Mad Queen, they lit social media ablaze with posts expressing their amazement at the show's ability to foretell the future. "Freaky AF how The Simpsons knew about the #MadQueen before everyone else," one Twitter user wrote. Another added, "Writers at The Simpsons got a crystal ball or something?!?!"
Indeed, it seems that The Simpsons creative team is as skilled in fortune-telling as the Red Woman Melisandre herself, and that the series' creator Matt Groening is secretly a real-life Three-Eyed Raven. The show, which has been on television for almost 30 years, has freakishly predicted the future on a number of occasions. An episode from 2000 foresaw Donald Trump being elected the President of the United States, as the story sees Lisa Simpson becoming the new Commander in Chief and saying that her cabinet "inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump." The 1995 installment "The PTA Disbands" predicted the 2014 scandal wherein the Environmental Working Group found that several hundred processed foods contained the same compound used to make gym and yoga mats soft and squishy. A 2012 episode prophesied that Lady Gaga would fly in from the heavens during a Super Bowl performance — which actually happened five years later in 2017. And recently, The Simpsons made headlines again for predicting that the Walt Disney Company would buy 20th Century Fox — something that genuinely happened in March of 2019, when the House of Mouse finalized its deal to acquire Fox for $71.3 billion.
There are several other instances of The Simpsons peering into the future, and given the show's track record, it was bound to predict something about Game of Thrones at some point in time. We're just glad this episode didn't give a hint as to who might end up on the Iron Throne. With only a handful of major players remaining after the destruction of King's Landing, the final fight for supremacy over the Seven Kingdoms is going to be jaw-dropping any way you slice it. It's probably for the best that The Simpsons didn't broach the subject of who finally wins the game of thrones, though something tells us Matt Groening might already know the answer.