The Simpsons brought Apu back on Sunday night, and the first time he spoke in nearly nine years, the episode had him accept an apology from the entire town of Springfield. Actor Sunil Malhotra now voices the Kwik-E-Mart owner, replacing Hank Azaria, who quit the role in 2020 after a 2017 documentary called the character a racist stereotype. The show that has insulted every group on earth for 37 years spent a decade too scared to use one of its best characters.
The Return Is a Group Apology
The October 18 episode, “The Revengening,” airs a week before the Halloween special. A man in a “Daft Monk” costume is killed over and over by Springfield residents, then returns a year later to take revenge. At City Hall he removes the helmet and reveals himself as Apu, who explains that he ended up on an island of forgotten garbage:
“I am the man you left for dead. I am the one you pretended never existed!”
Marge answers for the show’s producers:
“Apu, we’re so sorry we left you for dead. Believe me, we wanted to do the right thing.”
Bart adds, “But we were so scared, and just didn’t know what to do.” Lenny says, “If it’s any consolation, we had so many internal conversations about it,” and Carl finishes the thought: “Ahh, they kind of just didn’t go anywhere.” Then it turns out to be a dream, and Apu is back behind the counter with his wife Manjula, now voiced by Janina Gavankar.
Executive producer Matt Selman said the show wanted “to bring him back in a smart, ‘Simpsons’-y way that allowed him to evolve.” Malhotra said that when his agent called, “the idea actually made my stomach sink,” that he was “prepared to walk away,” and that he asked whether the writers could “bring him back in a way that acknowledged and apologized for past mistakes.” He also said he spoke with the producers to make the character “more culturally appropriate.”
How Apu Got Erased
Apu last spoke in the October 2017 episode “The Serfsons.” The pressure came from The Problem With Apu, a 2017 documentary in which comedian Hari Kondabolu talked with South Asian entertainers including Aziz Ansari, Aasif Mandvi and Hasan Minhaj about the character. The film was screened and discussed in the show’s writers’ room.
The show answered in 2018 with the episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished.” Marge reads Lisa an old book she finds too offensive, and Lisa looks at the camera as a photo of Apu sits by her bed:
“Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?”
Marge adds that “some things will be dealt with at a later date… if at all.” In February 2020, Azaria confirmed he was done with the role. He said: “Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore.” In 2021 he went further on a podcast: “Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologize.”
In June 2020 the show announced that characters of color would be voiced only by actors of the same background. Alex Désert took over Carl from Azaria and Kevin Michael Richardson took over Dr. Hibbert from Harry Shearer. Apu stayed on screen but silent for years, while creator Matt Groening told an interviewer in 2021: “I think the Apu stories are fantastic, and he’s one of the most nuanced characters on a silly two-dimensional cartoon show.”
A Show That Insults Everybody
The controversy only works if Apu was singled out, and he never was. Springfield is populated by caricatures of nearly everyone. Groundskeeper Willie is a Scottish brute, Fat Tony runs an Italian-American crime family and Krusty the Clown is the son of a rabbi. Bumblebee Man is a Mexican soap star in a bee suit, Cletus is a rural stereotype with a swarm of kids, and Ned Flanders and Reverend Lovejoy poke at churchgoers. Mr. Burns mocks the rich and Homer mocks the working father.
That was the formula for three decades: nobody is off limits, and nobody gets to be the only dignified person in town. Apu was a hard-working small business owner and a devoted father of eight in a town full of incompetents, which made him one of the better-treated characters. Groening’s own description of him as “one of the most nuanced characters” on the show points the same way. The documentary asked the show to treat one group as the exception, and the writers agreed.
What Going Politically Correct Cost the Show
The ratings line up with the retreat. The show averaged 4.8 million viewers in the 2016–17 season, 4.1 million in 2017–18, the year of the Kondabolu film and the Lisa scene, and 2.4 million by 2020–21, the first season after the recastings took effect. By 2023–24 it was at 1.99 million.
A fan-run tracker using overnight numbers put the 2024–25 season at 1.31 million viewers, with the season finale at 0.54 million, the lowest of any episode. The 2025–26 season recovered to 1.86 million, which the same tracker credited mostly to scheduling.
Broadcast television shrank across that whole period, so the numbers do not prove one cause. They do show an audience leaving at the same time the show stopped doing the thing it was known for. The writers themselves spent years scolding their own jokes, and a return scripted as a town-wide apology puts that on screen.
The show also pulled the Michael Jackson episode in 2019 and brought back Jackson’s character from that episode as a gag in this week’s return. That makes the episode a tour of everything the show removed, narrated by the people who removed it.
Who Is the Joke On?
If a show that mocked every group for 37 years needed nine years and a dream sequence to apologize for one of them, who was the apology for, and will the audience that left come back to hear it?
Matt Groening was on the Pedo Express and got foot massages from little girls.
Apart from enjoying what the Universal Studios Florida Simpson park offers in both attractions and gift shops last year and a Fortnite Mid-Season Event, I haven’t engaged with the franchise in years. Nor do I intend to do so. Old books, old movies, the Bible, and University studies now fill my time.