‘The Simpsons’ Kamala Harris prediction falls flat

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In a rare miss, The Simpsons may have got it wrong.

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The long-running animated series has an eerie track record when it comes to predicting the future. In a 2000 episode, titled Bart to the Future, the show teased Donald Trump’s first presidency.

In the flash-forward episode, Bart takes a trip to the White House to visit his sister, Lisa, who has grown up to become “the first straight female” president of the United States.

Lisa is meeting with her inner circle in the Oval Office when Bart visits, and can be heard complaining about the state her predecessor, a “President Trump,” left the country’s economy in.

When Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris announced her bid to become America’s next president in July, many pointed to the episode as proof that The Simpsons was predicting her victory because of the similarity in their outfits.

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“The Simpsons has done it again! Here’s from the 17th episode of the 11th season (in the year 2000) showing Lisa Simpson as the first female president of the United States talking about how the country is broke after President Trump. And, here’s Kamala wearing the same outfit at Biden’s inauguration,” one user tweeted in July.

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But now, netizens are saying the show’s run has ended after Harris lost her campaign against Trump.

“This is the first time The Simpsons were wrong,” wrote one X user alongside a photo of Harris at the inauguration and an image of Lisa Simpson as president.

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“I guess The Simpsons weren’t right this time. ‘Kamala you’re fired,’” another person joked.

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But one user noted that The Simpsons managed to get one thing right following Tuesday’s election as they shared an election map from the show and one showing the results between Harris and Trump.

“The Simpsons just casually predicted the exact election voting map,” one X user captioned an image from the show and one showing the final tallies for Trump and Harris.

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Back in March 2020, fans pointed to a May 6, 1993, episode titled Marge in Chains — which featured a fictitious disease dubbed the “Osaka Flu” that everyone contracts after an ill factory worker in Japan coughs on boxes that are shipped to Springfield — as proof that the series saw the coronavirus pandemic coming.

Later in that same episode, when the townspeople of Springfield demand a cure, they accidentally topple a crate marked “Killer Bees” — which some fans took as proof the series also foresaw “murder hornets.”

Bill Oakley, a co-writer on the show, downplayed the notion that the series acts as a modern-day Nostradamus telling The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s that we knew about.”

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But over the years, The Simpsons has seemed to have had a crystal ball when it comes to foretelling current events. In addition to name-checking Trump in a 2000 episode, the program is credited with predicting smart watches (1995’s Lisa’s Wedding), Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance (2012’s Lisa Goes Gaga), a Beatle responding to overdue fan mail (1991’s Brush with Greatness), the Siegfried and Roy tiger attack (1993’s $pringfield) and the U.S. winning gold in curling at the 2018 Olympics (2010’s Boy Meets Curl).

In 2022, Al Jean, a producer on the series, tweeted how the show forecast Trump’s announcement that he would run for president in 2024 by sharing an image of Homer Simpson and a campaign sign that read “Trump 2024.”

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“As predicted in 2015,” the producer tweeted.

On social media, one fan reacted to the prophecy by tweeting, “I need The Simpsons to predict the following: world peace … an end to world hunger and inequality, an end to billionaires.”

“How does The Simpsons keep predicting this s—?” another person noted. “It honestly kinda scares me at this point.”

Earlier this summer, Jean cheered Harris’ campaign for president when he posted a side-by-side photo of Lisa Simpson and Harris sporting nearly identical outfits. “@TheSimpsons ‘prediction’ I’m proud to be a part of,” he wrote on X. 

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Jean also tweeted a barb at Trump, saying the former president “should take a cognitive test asking him to correctly differentiate Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Usha Vance and Nikki Haley.”

But show writers haven’t always been right. While a 1999 episode floated the possibility that the San Francisco 49ers would win the 2020 Super Bowl, they lost that year to the Kansas City Chiefs.

And when some fans of the show speculated that The Simpsons may have predicted the deep-sea Titan disaster in 2006, executive producer Mike Reiss shot down those theories.

A Season 17 episode, titled Homer’s Paternity Coot, finds Homer and his long-lost father Mason Fairbanks getting lost underwater after they take to the seas in a pair of submersibles in search of a lost treasure.

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“Did The Simpsons predict the missing Titanic sub scenario in this 2006 episode?” the Twitter account History Vids asked in a viral tweet that was viewed over six million times.

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But it was just a coincidence, Reiss said.

“We did that episode because the movie Crimson Tide had just come out,” Reiss told the New York Post, referencing the 1995 film that starred Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. “We didn’t predict the future, we just did it off that movie and 20 years later, something like that happened.”

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