Why ‘Simpsons’ Creator Matt Groening Thought Original Treehouse of Horror Was ‘Worst Thing’ Show Had Done

THE SIMPSONS, The Simpsons, as The Addams Family, from left: Barney Gumble, as Uncle Fester, Bart Simpson, as Pugsley, Marge Simpson, as Morticia, Maggie Simpson, as Cousin Itt, Homer Simpson, as Gomez, Lisa Simpson, as Wednesday Addams, (1989-). — © 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. /Courtesy Everett Collection

What To Know

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, initially thought the original “Treehouse of Horror” segment “The Raven” was “the worst, most pretentious thing we’d ever done.”
Groening and the show’s writers were concerned that parodying Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was not “Simpson-y” enough and worried it lacked the show’s signature humor.
Despite his initial fears, Groening later acknowledged the segment’s success and noted it was well-received by both fans and critics, including his intellectual friends.

Tonight, one of TV’s longest-running Halloween traditions will come again, as the 36th Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” special airs at 8pm EST on Fox. In the decades since the first “Treehouse” premiered on October 25, 1990, the episodes — which see Simpsons characters parody various horror (and occasionally non-horror) classics, accompanied by a spooky couch gag or wraparound story — have become beloved not just by TV fans, but horror fans as well, including Academy Award-winning horror auteur Guillermo del Toro, who created the opening sequence in 2013. But as the first episode was being filmed, series creator Matt Groening anticipated none of that — in fact, he worried that the original “Treehouse of Horror” segment parodying Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was “the worst, most pretentious thing [the show had] ever done.”

Why did Matt Groening not like “The Raven” segment?

In the DVD commentary for the show’s second season, Groening and some of the show’s writers and producers weighed in on the episode, noting that, unlike other “Treehouse” stories, it cuts away from the segment back to the reality of Bart and Lisa in the treehouse, because they worried that “The Raven” was “not Simpson-y enough.”

“I remember watching this in animatic and I was so frightened that this was going to be the worst, most pretentious thing we’d ever done,” said Groening. “I was like, ‘Oh no, where are the gags?'” Obviously, in retrospect, Groening admitted that “It turned out great,” then added, “This was given the seal of approval by my snotty, New York intellectual friends.”

He picked some gentler words to explain his hesitations around the episode in a 2010 interview for NPR, saying of “The Raven”: “I was actually nervous about that particular segment of the show, because I thought I don’t know — the kids aren’t going to know who Edgar Allan Poe is, and ‘The Raven’ is kind of, you know, kind of old-fashioned. But, you know, we spruced it up. We actually had a raven with Bart’s haircut.”