Fox fans should prepare for a whole lot of Amy Schumer—her voice, anyway. The comedian will guest star on not one, not two, but three of the network’s animated shows on Sunday: Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, and Family Guy. We know only vague sketches of what she’ll be doing as she hangs out with Bob Belcher and Peter Griffin, but her Simpsons appearance seems pretty major, albeit brief—because it could totally change Mr. Burns’s backstory.
As Simpsons executive producer Al Jean explained in a conference call, “We said a good character for our plot would be that she’s Burns’s mother in the past and kind of the source of this unhappiness that he has that’s haunted him to the present.”
Yes, Schumer will play the evil billionaire’s mother in black-and-white flashbacks, The Huffington Post reports, including one in which she “ridicule[s] her young child in front of his heroes.”
But we already met Mr. Burns’s mother back in Season 5’s Citizen Kane–inspired fourth episode, “Rosebud.” That episode introduced Burns’s self-described “loving natural parents,” whom he abandoned to live with a cold billionaire.
It’s true that in the ensuing 20-plus years of Simpsons episodes, Burns’s backstory has become complicated, to say the least. But his choice in role models, along with the devastating loss of his teddy bear Bobo (“Rosebud”’s answer to a certain sled), have, until this point, anyway, been framed as what led Burns to become, well, Burns. There’s always a chance these two stories could intertwine—perhaps Burns’s parents weren’t as kind as they seemed, though in “Rosebud” a young Burns describes himself as “the happiest boy there is” before he left them. Or perhaps Burns’s backstory is just getting another rewrite.
Over on Bob’s Burgers, Schumer will play a fast-talking customer that Bob runs into at the toy store.
And on Family Guy, Schumer will voice a wise-cracking male construction worker with a thick New York accent.
Seems like a safe bet that no matter what actually happens on these episodes, Fox is going to have a raucous Sunday night.
