Marge Simpson Is Dead 35 Years Into the Future on 'The Simpsons' and Everyone Wants to Know How

The beloved Simpsons family matriarch, Marge Simpson, dies in the Season 36 finale of The Simpsons. Well, sort of. While some fans immediately mourned seeing the time jump episode where Marge is no longer alive and is instead guiding Lisa through a letter she left behind, others want to know how Marge Simpson died.

As unfathomable as it is to learn that Marge dies at some point in the future, it leaves a lot of questions and gaps for fans to try and fill in. As one fan on Reddit put it, though, "This is like saying characters that died in Treehouse of Horrors are also killed off," so you can probably take this flash-forward with a grain of salt. Still, how and when does Marge actually die?

During the Season 36 finale of The Simpsons, we learn, 35 years into the future, that Marge has died and Bart and Lisa are still working on figuring out how to be siblings and friends. It's through a letter that Lisa finds that she learns how important it was to Marge that Lisa and Bart learn to love and appreciate each other.

Marge's letter mentions telling Lisa and Bart that very thing "several years ago." This means Marge might have died just a few years before the events of this time-jump episode. But the how of it all is a bit fuzzy.

It's possible, however, that it's an unexpected accident. Marge is always in good general health. She even says in her letter that it would be "unlikely" for her to die before Homer. So it seems like it could have been something sudden, like a car accident or something unexpected, that killed Marge.

There's always the chance that Marge never dies, though. Well, as far as viewers are concerned, anyway. There have been other versions of the future that contradict each other on The Simpsons, like when Lisa becomes the president, or when Homer dies and he's turned into a robot. This is an animated series, so if fans really don't love the Marge is dead in the future storyline, it might not stick.

Luckily, this is a cartoon. While there has been some continuity over the years, like Milhouse's parents splitting up or callbacks to episodes about things like Mr. Plow and Sideshow Bob's hatred for Bart, the show is not bound to staying true to anything viewers see. So Marge dying, whether it's in a season that airs before the show goes off the air eventually, or it happens far into the future, could happen any time the writers want.

To that tune, maybe Marge doesn't actually die at all, which is another possibility. If the writers want to suddenly stick with this particular flash-forward on The Simpsons, then maybe Marge will die when Bart and Lisa are adults, and before Homer has really lived into the old age that he's shown at in the Season 36 finale. But if the writers nix that idea altogether, it clearly wouldn't be the first time the future was changed.