The Simpsons: Who Dies Tonight?

It's been pretty well-established for a while now that tonight's episode of The Simpsons, titled "Clown in the Dumps," will feature the death of a recurring character.

It isn't the first time somebody has died on The Simpsons, of course. Bleeding Gums Murphy was an early example, and Maude Flanders perhaps the most notable and memorable. Where The Simpsons tends to score over many other animated series, notably its Sunday night network-mate Family Guy, is that when characters die on The Simpsons they tend to actually stay dead, which is something that the showrunners have promised will happen with tonight's episode.

(Yes, there was once that matter of a character who had a "memorial hospital" named after him, only to show up later and explain that he was in fact just very sick at the time -- but that's the exception on The Simpsons, not the rule.)

The obvious implication, from the title at least, is that the character will have ties to Krusty the Clown. That's an effective means of narrowing it down -- and a necessary one.

The Simpsons Executive Producer Al Jean has said that the actor or actress playing this character has won an Emmy for the role. Of course, all six members of The Simpsons's main cast — Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer — have won Emmys for their work on the show. Only Shearer's characters are safe, since he won his first Emmy after Jean had first dropped the hint. Guest stars Kelsey Grammer, Jackie Mason and Anne Hathaway have also won Emmys for the show.

While some reports have held that the character to be killed is an "iconic" one, Jean rejected that description in a conference call with reporters in April. In that same call, he led some to believe that it was an actor who only plays one role. Yahoo! reports that they were assured that the death of the character didn't mean the end of their involvement with The Simpsons, something you presumably wouldn't have to tell someone who plays multiple roles.

Lastly, there are at least two people -- including Comic Book Guy, as seen above -- wearing yarmulkes in the episode's funeral scene in the preview below. That suggests a Jewish character.

So...who's a possibility?

Princess Penelope

While Anne Hathaway technically won an Emmy for this role, it seems pretyt unlikely that they would bring a one-off character back to the show just to kill her, much less hype it as a big event, and without promoting the appearance of an A-list movie star like Hathaway on the series. She seems safe. 

Homer Simpson

We're including him here because previews for the episode have gone out of their way to tease him -- but nobody believes it for a second.

Sideshow Bob

Sideshow Bob is played by Kelsey Grammer, who has won an Emmy for the role. His brother in the series is played by David Hyde Pierce, who played Grammer's brother on Frasier.

Pierce, not a frequently-recurring character, will appear on the series tonight, leading some to believe that it will be Sideshow Bob who dies (not totally unreasonable since, after all, Krusty has had a complicated and often hateful relationship with his onetime comic foil, but has proven to really care about Bob in the past, most notably in the Season 12 episode "Day of the Jackanapes."

Rabbi Krustofsky

Krusty's dad seems the most obvious choice for a number of reasons -- there's the yarmulkes, which come in concert with the revelation by Jean that religion will play a role in the episode to some extent.

There's also the fact that going to great lengths to hide the identity of the deceased, only to reveal ahead of time that Sideshow Bob's brother will show up, seems to be a misdirect.

Krusty the Clown

This one would be a shocker, the biggest death since Maude Flanders, and could be a hugely successful surprise since so much of the speculation has revolved around the idea of Krusty in mourning.

Dan Castellaneta has won an Emmy for the role, so that fits. The Jewish heritage also stands for the same reasons it seems so obvious with the rabbi.

The title? Well, that could be a misdirect as easily as the David Hyde Pierce guest appearance could. If Krusty were killed and replaced by another clown -- perhaps even Sideshow Bob, which could explain both things -- that clown could be mourning the loss of Krusty as much as anyone else in the series.