Is The Simpsons Retiring Apu?

The long, long saga of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon's tenure on The Simpsons got a new wrinkle yesterday after a producer for the Netflix show Castlevania, Adi Shankar, alleged from "multiple sources" that the show was going to "drop the character altogether" after over a year of highly-public debate over the character's place in a modern sitcom.

Shankar himself got the news at the end of a contest he had devised in which he asked the public for spec scripts where he hoped to crowdsource the "cure" for the problematic character. He asked for people to write an episode of The Simpsons that "takes the character of Apu and in a clever way subverts him, pivots him, intelligently writes him out, or evolves him in a way that takes a mean-spirited mockery and transforms him into a kernel of truth wrapped in funny insight aka actual satire."

Shankar told IndieWire he had found the perfect script, and even hoped to have it produced, until he got wind of The Simpsons's apparent plans. But, there's more. On Sunday night, Simpsons showrunner Al Jean went halfway to debunking the rumor by tweeting:

This is all technically true, but also, it does not refute the original claim. Take it with a grain of salt, but this is not a denial either.

Apu—an Indian character on the show voiced in a thick, stereotypical accent by Hank Azaria (also responsible for voicing the likes of Chief Wiggum and Moe Szyslak)— has been the focus of sustained criticism from fans of the show for years. The conversation rocketed into the mainstream last year thanks to Hari Kondabolu's truTV documentary The Problem with Apu.

Since then, people who like The Simpsons and people whose lives are joyless voids alike have weighed in on the place a character like Apu can have. He's a beloved character in The Simpsons, but he is also inescapably a racist caricature. While Jean, Azaria and co.'s interpretation isn't necessarily mean-spirited, Kondabolu's documentary explored the more nuanced harm a character like Apu can have, calling Azaria's performance "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father."

I grew up with The Simpsons and then some. I've probably seen every episode of seasons 1 through 11... 20 times apiece, Apu being front and center for some of the true highlights. It took me a shamefully long time to see issues with the character. "Can you imagine if The Simpsons aired its first episode today?" I wondered out loud to a friend several years ago. "What they do with Apu just wouldn't be tolerated." Now, it seems, the time has come, and so far the show has done a less than admirable job in acknowledging or even respecting the problems that both critics and fans of the character have with his portrayal. Good intentions have nothing to do with the effect of actions, and when a bunch of white guys devise an avatar for an entire culture that ends up doing more harm than good, it is up to them to right that wrong. All this is to say, whether Apu does or does not end up being retired, the folks over at The Simpsons are going to have to be smarter about it than they have been so far.