Did The Simpsons X account tease the return of Apu?
An official Simpsons account tweeted a Matt Groening sketch of Apu on July 14, his first appearance on the show’s socials in a decade. It’s already at 2.8 million views. Here’s what actually happened to the character, including the part where the man who criticized him never asked for him to be erased.
Somehow, Apu returned.
On July 14, the official Simpsons X account posted a Matt Groening sketch of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon holding a golden Squishee on a purple pillow. The caption read: “Frozen. Colorful. Questionably nutritious.”
It’s the first time Apu has appeared on an official Simpsons social account since September 2016. Ten years. The post has 2.8 million views and counting, which the social team almost certainly knew it would.
Apu hasn’t spoken on The Simpsons since 2017
For anyone who missed the decade: Apu’s last speaking role was “The Serfsons,” Season 29, October 2017.
Hank Azaria voiced him from 1990 until then. In early 2020, Azaria announced that he and the producers had agreed he’d resign the part, following Hari Kondabolu‘s 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu.
The show’s response was to stop using him. Not to recast him, not to rewrite him, not to explain it. The entire Nahasapeemapetilon family, wife Manjula and all eight kids, quietly became non-speaking background art. Nobody in Springfield has ever mentioned it.
Hari Kondabolu claims he never asked for Apu to be removed
Kondabolu’s documentary interviewed Kal Penn, Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, and Maulik Pancholy, and collected accounts of South Asian kids getting called “Apu” as a schoolyard insult. Kumail Nanjiani has said that early in his career, auditions asked him to do “the Apu accent.”
That was the complaint. Not “delete him.”
Kondabolu has said repeatedly that he loves The Simpsons. He wanted the character reconsidered and recast, given the depth the show gives everyone else. When the show responded by shrugging, he said he was saddened by it.
So the critic didn’t want Apu gone. The fans didn’t want Apu gone.
Fox got rid of Apu.
Lisa Simpson shrugged on camera in 2018
Before the erasure, there was the response episode, and it’s the strangest artifact in this whole story.
In April 2018’s “No Good Read Goes Unpunished,” Marge tries to read Lisa a beloved childhood book and finds it’s full of racist stereotypes. Lisa turns to the camera and says: “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?”
The shot pans to a framed photo of Apu on Lisa’s nightstand, inscribed “Don’t have a cow, man.” The two agree the issue will be dealt with later. “If at all.”
Read it as the show admitting on camera that it had no plan and no idea what to do, and you’re right.
What got buried with Apu
Kneon’s right that the character’s actual writing gets flattened in the retelling, so here’s what’s canon.
Apu has a PhD. He graduated first in a class of seven million from Caltech, the Calcutta Technical Institute, and came to America on a scholarship to the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology. He took the Kwik-E-Mart job to pay off student loans and stayed because he liked the work and the people.
He’s named after the protagonist of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, which is not a punchline. It’s one of the towering achievements of world cinema.
And in “Much Apu About Nothing,” facing deportation, he buys a forged birth certificate listing him as the son of Herb and Judy Nahasapeemapetilon of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Then he tears it up, because he refuses to pretend he isn’t Indian, and passes the citizenship test legitimately instead.
A vegetarian, a devoted husband to a wife he grew to love, a father of eight, the hardest-working man in Springfield. In one Treehouse of Horror he survives the zombie apocalypse because of his vegetarianism and rescues the Simpsons.
That’s not nothing. That’s more interior life than the show ever gave Lenny.
The recasting wave hit Carl and Dr. Hibbert too
Apu wasn’t the end of it. The Simpsons went on to recast non-white characters with actors of matching background, which is the policy Fox confirmed.
Carl, also an Azaria voice, went to Alex Désert. Dr. Hibbert, one of Harry Shearer‘s, went to Kevin Michael Richardson.
Note what happened there. Carl and Hibbert got recast and kept their jobs as characters. They still talk. They still have storylines.
Apu got neither. He’s the only one the show couldn’t figure out how to keep, which tells you the problem was never really about who was doing the voice.
The Simpsons killed Apu in a Halloween special and never mentioned it
The show knows exactly what it did, and it’s been making jokes about it.
Last October’s Treehouse of Horror XXXVI included “Plastic World,” a post-apocalyptic Springfield buried under generations of garbage. Lisa and the survivors fall through the crust and find a ruined Kwik-E-Mart with Apu’s corpse inside, next to Snake’s.
Eight seconds. First substantial acknowledgment in nearly a decade, and it’s a body.
Reiss has called Apu a “Schrödinger’s Character“ in his book, both existing and not existing until someone opens the box. Showrunner Matt Selman was asked about Apu’s future by Cracked earlier this year and said: “I can’t talk about Apu right now. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
That’s the actual state of things. Not a plan, not a principle. A shrug that’s lasted ten years.
If Apu comes back, he probably won’t be the same Apu
Assume the tweet means something, which it might not. Season 38 premieres September 27.
Azaria has said he’ll never play the part again, so any return likely means a South Asian actor and a rewritten character. While it might be the politically correct thing to do it’s also a real loss, because thirty years of comic timing lives in a voice that isn’t coming back.
More to the point, a returning Apu can’t be the guy who ran a bachelor auction and sang backup in the Be Sharps. He’d arrive carrying a decade of discourse on his back. Every line he got would be read as a statement. That’s an impossible way to write a joke.
Ten years later he’s the most talked-about character on the show, and he hasn’t said a word.
Want More Clownfish TV?
This article was brought to you in part by The Reefers of more.clownfishtv.com. Free subscribers get articles like this one in their inbox. Paid subscribers get the full Clownfish TV podcast feed, livestreams, and members-only episodes that never hit YouTube.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, watch @ClownfishTV on YouTube and find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Newsweek and Cracked (July 14-15, 2026), verified the news — the official Simpsons X account posting a Matt Groening sketch of Apu holding a golden Squishee on a purple pillow captioned “Frozen. Colorful. Questionably nutritious,” the post reaching more than 2.8 million views, it being Apu’s first appearance on an official Simpsons social account since September 2016, the image originating from the 2016 episode “Much Apu About Something,” and the caution that the post does not appear to signal an imminent return to a speaking role
Wikipedia and ScreenRant (2025-2026), verified the history and the character — Apu voiced by Hank Azaria from 1990 to 2017 with his last speaking appearance in Season 29’s “The Serfsons,” Azaria’s early 2020 announcement that he and producers agreed he would resign the role, Hari Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu featuring Kal Penn, Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari and Maulik Pancholy and documenting children being called “Apu” as an insult, Kumail Nanjiani’s account of being asked to perform “the Apu accent,” Kondabolu’s stated love for the show and his sadness at its dismissive response, the April 2018 episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” and Lisa’s “what can you do?” line delivered alongside the inscribed photo of Apu, Mike Reiss’s acknowledgment of the problem, Azaria’s 2007 quote that writers asked “how offensive can you make it,” Al Jean and Mike Reiss’s account that the character was initially not meant to be ethnic, the character’s PhD from Calcutta Technical Institute, his naming after Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, and his citizenship storyline
ComicBook.com and Cracked (2025-2026), verified the aftermath — the recasting of Carl with Alex Désert and Dr. Hibbert with Kevin Michael Richardson under Fox’s confirmed policy of matching voice actors to characters’ backgrounds, the Treehouse of Horror XXXVI “Plastic World” segment depicting Apu’s corpse in a buried Kwik-E-Mart, Mike Reiss’s “Schrödinger’s Character” framing from Springfield Confidential, showrunner Matt Selman’s “I can’t talk about Apu right now. I don’t know” response to Cracked, and The Simpsons’ renewal through Season 40 with Season 38 premiering September 27, 2026