The Simpsons panel at San Diego Comic-Con had one last surprise in store: a video message from Vice President Kamala Harris was re-released at the end of the event.
After introducing the final clip as coming from a “super fan,” Matt Groening, who produced the Fox animated series, which is about to begin its 36th season, played footage of Harris laughing and reciting a well-known line from an earlier episode of “Treehouse of Horror.” The clip was recorded by a group of University of Chicago students several years ago as part of an assignment to get elected officials to recite lines from The Simpsons.
“We must move forward, not backward. We must move up, not forward. And we must keep spinning toward freedom,” Harris said in the video, which, with no explanation given, drew loud cheers from the crowd, who seemed to assume it was filmed for the panel.
The quote comes from season eight’s “Treehouse of Horror VII,” which aired on October 27, 1996, shortly before that year’s presidential election between then-Presidents Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Part of the episode features aliens Kang and Kodos dressed as the two candidates, with a Clinton impersonator delivering confused messages at a public event.
Social media users recently poked fun at the fact that Lisa Simpson became the first female president in the 2000 episode “Bart to the Future,” a feat that Harris hopes to achieve with her own presidential campaign after President Joe Biden withdrew from the Democratic nomination on Sunday. Footage from that Simpsons episode has since gone viral, particularly a clip of Lisa wearing a purple suit and complaining about budget problems that she blames on President Donald Trump.
The episode aired long before Trump, who will likely face Harris in this November’s election, was elected as the nation’s effective commander in chief in 2016.
The panel featured Groening, Matt Selman, Jessica Conrad, Rob Lazebnik, Tim Bailey, and moderator and longtime fan Kevin Smith.
Seth Green sat down on a panel midway through the event and talked about the work his company, Stoopid Buddy Studios, is doing to create a stop-motion character called “Denim,” a parody of the Marvel Comics classic “Venom.”
As seen in a clip shared from the upcoming season’s “Treehouse of Horror XXXV,” denim takes over his body when Homer puts on the creepy pants.
July 27th, 2pm Updated information regarding Harris video taken several years ago.
