Why iconic Simpsons character Smithers is no longer black like he was in season one

Anyone doing a rewatch of The Simpsons since it dropped on Disney Plus will have run into a bit of a jarring moment in the show's third ever episode.

That episode is 'Homer's Odyssey' - which by the way is just a really clever title - and it's all about Homer becoming a safety campaigner after being fired from his job at the nuclear power plant.

By the end of the episode, Homer is offered the job of safety inspector at the plant to stop his campaign and he takes it on, though he's had plenty of other jobs throughout The Simpsons.

Anyhow, this episode is the first time we see recurring character Waylon Smithers and his appearance in 'Homer's Odyssey' has become talked about a lot because for just this episode in season one he's black.

For the rest of The Simpsons, Smithers is the same cartoonish yellow as most of Springfield and has a green jacket, but for his inaugural appearance he had a while jacket and darker skin.

This has puzzled Simpsons fans on the internet for the longest time, and there are a LOT of Simpsons fans on the internet.

The original Smithers, but he was never supposed to look like this. (Disney)

It turns out that the whole thing was actually a mistake that they just didn't have the time and money to fix.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening told TMZ: "He was always yellow, and they painted him wrong once.

"At the time we didn't have enough to do retakes, so when there were glitches and mistakes it stayed that way.

"He was never 'Black', it was an accident."

Gyorgyi Peluce, the show's colour stylist, accidentally made Smithers look darker than his character design intended but they couldn't go back and sort it out.

Besides, back then they had no idea that the internet would rise and become full of Simpsons fans who'd pick over every episode in painstaking detail to see if there were any sorts of errors.

And The Simpsons executive producer Jay Kogen did say that they'd discussed whether Smithers would be black, but ultimately decided against it.

Sometimes the answer is that it was a mistake they didn't have time to correct. (Disney)

He said: "Originally [Smithers] was gay and Black...But we thought it was too much so we just kept him gay."

Meanwhile, show director David Silverman claimed the concept for Smithers was 'Mr Burns' white sycophant' and that producers decided in the end it'd be 'a bad idea to have a black subservient character to a rich white man'.

There you have it folks, it was all just a mistake that they couldn't fix the first time around, so your mind can be put to rest after these long years of worry.

I'm sure it's been troubling you for a very long time.

Meanwhile, The Simpsons just killed off another long-running character so perhaps they'll start offing a few more.

Topics: The Simpsons, TV and Film

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker