Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Simpsons, Season 38, Episode 3For almost a decade, The Simpsonsstruggled with one of its most beloved characters, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, voiced by actor HankAzaria. As one of Springfield’s favorite neighbors, the Kwik-E-Mart owner faced mounting criticism for a stereotypical portrayal of Indian Americans and was consequently pushed into the background. Although he continued to appear occasionally and was seen in numerous frames of the series with other side characters, Apu suddenly became voiceless after 2017. But that finally changed in Sunday night’s Season 38 episode, “Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening.”
Finally returning to Springfield with new voice actor Sunil Malhotra, Apu’s return proves to be one of the series’ most important comebacks for more than just fan service and nostalgia. After years of avoiding the issue, The Simpsons has finally acknowledged its biggest mistake and found a way to bring the Indian-American character back without ignoring the concerns that led to his absence in the first place.
‘The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror Special Finally Addressed Apu’s Absence
While Apu’s portrayal has been criticized for years, the conversation gained more momentum when South Asian actors shared their experiences and comedian Hari Kondabolu released his 2017 documentary, The Problem With Apu. Exploring how Apu’s exaggerated Indian accent, catchphrases, and cultural stereotypes affected South Asian viewers’ experiences as Americans, Kondabolu’s investigation underscored how so many grew up being mocked or compared to the character. But what made matters worse was how Azaria, a white actor, was the one voicing him since 1990.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
With that kind of perspective perpetuating a stereotypical lens, Azaria eventually apologized for the mistake and stepped away from the role. “I really do apologize,” he said at the time in a report from CBS. “I apologize for my part in creating that and participating in that. Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologize. And sometimes I do.” But while the mistake was fully acknowledged, the show chose to cut Apu from stories and stopped giving him speaking roles. The problem was never that Apu existed, but how he had been portrayed, and removing him didn’t actually fix that.
Which is what makes his return in Sunday night’s episode, “The Revengening,” so interesting. The Halloween special, full of blood and guts, follows a mysterious figure seeking revenge against Springfield in an I Know What You Did Last Summer (err, Halloween) kind of way, only for the killer to reveal that he’s Apu. He accuses the town of “forgetting” about him, telling residents, “I am the one you pretended never existed!” Of course, the events align with the episode’s subject matter, but when Bart (Nancy Cartwright) admits they were “too scared” to do anything, and other characters joke about “internal conversations that went nowhere,” The Simpsons is openly making fun of its own handling of the controversy. Because rather than ignoring Apu’s long absence, the show finally admits it didn’t know how to deal with the problem.
Apu’s New Voice Gives ‘The Simpsons’ a Chance To Get It Right
As Variety reports, South Asian actor Malhotra has now taken over the role, but as he tells the publication, accepting the job wasn’t an easy decision. The actor admits he was initially uncomfortable with the opportunity because of the character’s controversial history. With it being eight years since Apu had spoken on the show, Malhotra admits he was curious about the writers’ room now: “Could they bring him back in a way that acknowledged and apologized for past mistakes? Could I make the character my own, and reclaim him in some way? And could they achieve all of that in an unmistakably ‘Simpsons’ way that didn’t disappoint fans?”
That awareness and care for the character matters, because Apu has always been more than his accent or the jokes made at his expense. He was a friend to Homer, which is reaffirmed in the final moments of the episode, a devoted husband and father, and an important part of Springfield. After turning down stereotypical Indian roles in the past, Malhotra wanted to ensure the show’s writers took Apu seriously and even requested a meeting with showrunnerMattSelman, who told Variety there is more ahead for Apu. “We love this character, and wanted to bring him back in a smart, ‘Simpsons’-y way that allowed him to evolve. We’re excited by what Sunil has already brought to the role, and look forward to seeing more of Apu in the future.”
With JaninaGavankar also joining the cast as Apu’s wife, Manjula, there’s hope that the show will give these characters meaningful stories again. Of course, one episode doesn’t erase the mistakes The Simpsons made in the past, but it is a good step forward for course-correcting and bringing back a beloved part of Springfield that didn’t need to be forgotten.
The Simpsons airs Sundays at 8:00 p.m. EST on Fox and streams the next day on Hulu.
