5 Reasons “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Is the Definitive Simpsons Episode

The Simpsons has kept the world laughing for over three decades, yet no episode is more tightly written, well-constructed, or outright hilarious as the two-parter “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” The plot sees Springfield’s sinister billionaire owner of the Nuclear Power Plant C. Montgomery Burns hatching a scheme to block out the Sun in Springfield, only for one mysterious citizen to shoot Mr. Burns (though he survives the attack). With a near-endless enemies list of virtually everyone in Springfield, the identity of Mr. Burns’ attacker forms the mystery of the show’s second part, with the reveal being the kind of twist that only The Simpsons could ever pull off.

To pin down the greatest episodes from The Simpsons‘ extended and seemingly never-ending run is to take a trip down an infinite rabbit hole of wacky comedy hijinks. This is especially true for The Simpsons‘ ’90s-era golden age, the very timeframe that “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” debuted in. Nonetheless, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” packed everything that makes The Simpsons what it is into a splendid two-part story. Here are the five reasons why “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” remains the greatest Simpsons adventure.

“Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Is a Legitimate Simpsons Mystery Story

Throughout its entire existence, The Simpsons has been the perfect balancing act of dry comedy with cartoon zaniness. An episode whose A-plot is focused on Homer and Marge’s marital strife can manage such elements of Homer being transported to “a strange fantasy” world and meeting a talking dog — Season 8’s “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer,” to be exact — without the slightest violation of its own internal logic (which itself goes completely out the window in the Treehouse of Horror episodes). This makes “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” a real standout on the show as a genuine whodunit comedy caper.

To be sure, there’s no shortage of The Simpsons‘ patented brand of silly comedy goodness in the story, such as Chief Wiggum’s bizarre coffee cream-derived vision of Lisa pointing him to clues and Homer’s Fugitive-inspired escape from his wrongful arrest. The framing of it all, however, is a sharply crafted mysterious tale of the Springfield Police and Lisa alike working through clues to identify Mr. Burns’ would-be assassin. “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” keeps viewers on their toes with everyone in Springfield having a plausible vendetta against Mr. Burns, from the financial harm Moe and Principal Skinner experienced from Mr. Burns’ oil drilling operation to Homer Simpson‘s frustration that his boss of 10 years can’t remember his name. More than any other Simpsons singular episode or two-parter, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” keeps viewers on their toes right up until the identity of his assailant is revealed.

Mr. Burns Gets to Hatch His Greatest Villain Plot

There has never been a greater or more comedic embodiment of corporate villainy than C. Montgomery Burns, and “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” really lets him cut loose in his most dastardly plot ever. Beginning with the discovery of an oil well right under Springfield Elementary School, Mr. Burns sets his sights on the geological fortune right under Springfield immediately. True to The Simpsons‘ brand of humor, Mr. Burns makes a failed bid to obtain the oil legitimately by disguising himself as Jimbo Jones and proposing the “quite corking” idea of signing the oil over to Springfield’s Nuclear Power Plant (Smithers providing little assistance with a standard issue school stapler).

After siphoning the oil away from the school (and injuring Bart’s beloved dog Santa’s Little Helper in the process), Mr. Burns sets his sights on a new enemy that he calls the Sun, planning to deploy a massive visor to block the sun to drive up energy consumption in Springfield, and with it the nuclear power plant’s profits. Obviously, everything about both of Mr. Burns’s schemes is filtered through the prism of Simpsons universe logic, but “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” nonetheless elevates him, as his loyal assistant Smithers puts it, from “everyday villainy to cartoonish supervillainy” with a fittingly sinister and Simpsons-worthy villain plot to go with it. Indeed, Mr. Burns isn’t the only character who undergoes a big transformation in the two-parter.

“Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Made Smithers a More Three-Dimensional Character

Mr. Burns’ assistant Waylon Smithers is typically portrayed on The Simpsons as a caricature of a corporate sycophant who worships the ground Mr. Burns walks on, with Smithers even harboring romantic feelings for him. That changes when Mr. Burns decides to pirate the newly discovered oil from Springfield Elementary. For the first time in The Simpsons‘ history, Smithers tries to talk Mr. Burns out of his plot on the grounds that, “This isn’t a rival company you’re battling with, it’s a school. People won’t stand for it!” Smithers is even more horrified at Mr. Burns’ Sun-blocking plot, and his decision to stand up to his boss ultimately costs him his job and throws him into an alcoholic depression.

Compared to his usual portrayal on The Simpsons, Smithers feels far more humanized in “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” as a man who loses everything trying to pull someone he admires away from the greed that has overtaken him. Though Smithers ultimately isn’t the culprit behind Mr. Burns’s near-murder, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” does a fine job of setting him up as the most plausible suspect as both someone who feels betrayed by Mr. Burns and someone standing up for the people of Springfield against him. To be sure, the status quo of Smithers as Mr. Burns’s loyal assistant is restored to normal by the end of the two-parter, but it stands as one of the greatest accomplishments of “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” that it shows the most fleshed-out version of Smithers ever seen on The Simpsons.

[RELATED: The Simpsons Reveals Secret Reason Homer Still Has His Job After 35 Years]

“Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Was a Bridge Between The Simpsons Seasons 6 & 7 (& Kept Viewers on a Huge Cliffhanger All Summer)

It isn’t uncommon for TV shows to end one season on a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next season’s intro, and The Simpsons pulls off that exact trick marvelously in both parts of “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Part one aired on May 21st, 1995 as the finale of Season 6, leaving viewers on a four-month cliffhanger until part two kicked off Season 7 on September 17th of that year. For any typical season-to-season cliffhanger, this would have been a great tool to keep an audience hooked for that time span, but this was The Simpsons, ending Season 6 on Chief Wiggum’s shaky promise that he would “give it a shot” to uncover the identity of Mr. Burns’s assailant.

During that summer, Fox also launched a brilliant marketing tie-in inviting viewers to offer their own theories of who shot Mr. Burns. This included a call-in contest in which fans could offer their theories, and even a website devoted to the mystery, Springfield.com, at a time when the Internet was far less of a factor in everyone’s daily lives. The cliffhanger ending and Fox’s tie-in contest both worked like a charm, with viewers around the world as determined to uncover the identity of the mysterious shooter as Lisa Simpson herself. Of course, only The Simpsons could set up such an engaging attempted murder mystery only to pull the rug out from under everyone so splendidly.

The Twist Ending Is Pure Simpsons Hilarity

“Then they found out it was the baby.” Such is Troy McClure’s cliff notes version of the twist ending of “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” on “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular.” As ridiculous as it would have sounded on any other scripted sitcom, The Simpsons pulled off the most Simpsons twist ever with the reveal that none other than Maggie Simpson was the one to shoot Mr. Burns when a struggle between the decrepit centenarian billionaire and the infant over a lollipop caused Mr. Burns’ revolver to fall into Maggie’s lap and discharge.

To be sure, several alternate endings were animated showing such characters as Smithers, Moe, Apu, guest star Tito Puente, Barney Gumble (who at one point was considered to be the real culprit before Maggie), and Santa’s Little Helper shooting Mr. Burns, but all were expressly phony endings intended to keep the episode’s twist under wraps (and which were later shown on “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular,” along with a fake alternate ending revealing Smithers as the shooter and Mr. Burns docking him a 5% pay cut as punishment). The reveal of Maggie as the one who shot Mr. Burns is everything that has made The Simpsons the ongoing, eternally popular animated comedy that it is, a patently silly twist that could only work in a world where Homer Simpson is employed as safety inspector of a Nuclear Power Plant. With Maggie as Mr. Burns’ shooter and the four preceding elements backing that twist up, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” stands three decades later as The Simpsons‘ crowning achievement of everything that makes it comedy gold.

The Simpsons is available to stream on Disney+.

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