Disney+ Drops Three New Simpsons Episodes This Summer

Disney+ will stream three new Simpsons episodes this summer, opening with the double-feature “Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition” on June 17, the Italian noir spoof “Simpsley” on July 3, and the sci-fi riff “Yellow Mirror” on August 26. All three land worldwide on the platform and count as the first brand-new Simpsons content since the show passed its 800th episode in December.

Treat them as bonus reels and you miss the bigger move. These streaming drops are the spring half of a production model that now splits the longest-running scripted series in American primetime between two homes, one of them behind a paywall.

Three Episodes, Three Release Dates

The summer slate opens with the most star-stacked of the three. “Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition,” a double-feature, follows a couples’ date night that unravels after Marge learns Homer left the kids with only a doorbell camera for a babysitter; a tipsy Marge then conjures a trilogy of fantasies about a better husband. It guest-stars Betty Gilpin, the actress best known for GLOW, with songs from the singer Laufey and the pop duo Tegan and Sara.

The two solo episodes that follow trade broad gags for genre pastiche. One sends a broke Marge Bouvier to Italy to lure a wealthy Seymour Skinner back home, only to run headlong into his clingy, freeloading houseguest. The other splits into two bleak segments, including a story in which an AI (artificial intelligence) powered tablet befriends and quietly manipulates baby Maggie.

All land worldwide with no Fox broadcast window attached, per the official Disney+ summer episode announcement. These are the three new episodes the platform has dated, and the specifics sit below.

The Math Behind a Shorter Fox Season

Here is the shift the episode titles bury. For its current run, The Simpsons makes 17 episodes a year, and only 15 of them air on Fox across the fall and winter. The other two skip the broadcast schedule entirely and surface later on streaming, which is exactly what this summer’s drops are.

Matt Selman, the show’s executive producer and showrunner, has called the arrangement a “dream scenario.” The logic is seasonal. Concentrate the broadcast run around the months people actually watch live television, hang it on Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, then let the writers’ room spend its leftover energy elsewhere before coming back the next fall. Disney leans into the same calendar with events like the official World Simpsons Day celebration guide.

That math reflects a genuine contraction. Classic Simpsons seasons once ran past 20 episodes a year; the Fox count now sits at 15. The network renewed the show on April 2, 2025, for four more years, carrying it through Season 40 and the 2028-29 television season, so the split is baked in for the rest of the decade.

The streaming pair is not filler either. It is the part of the slate that can take more time, because Disney has cleared the team to release an extended cut of a streaming episode after the first version premieres, room a broadcast deadline never allows.

• 15 episodes air on Fox each fall and winter
• 2 streaming exclusives follow later on Disney+
• 800 episodes had aired by December 2025

Disney+ as the Show’s Risk Lab

Pulling two episodes a year out of the broadcast schedule does more than tidy the calendar. It hands the writers a sandbox with looser rules, and the streaming exclusives are where the show now takes its biggest creative swings. Recent Disney+ originals have leaned into time-travel and future-set premises the broadcast room would usually steer around, and the team can chase a complicated plot without a Sunday-night runtime forcing the edit.

One that’s kind of a time travel adventure; it’s a little more future, genre experimental than we would usually do.

That is how Selman has described the kind of story the streaming slot unlocks, and the same restructuring that thins the Fox season is what frees the team to bankroll side ventures, from holiday specials to the show’s Springfield crossover inside Fortnite. Fewer weekly episodes, in other words, is what pays for a busier franchise everywhere else.

Borrowing From Black Mirror and Patricia Highsmith

The summer trio doubles as a tour through other people’s genres. The August closer is an open nod to “Black Mirror,” the streaming-era anthology about technology curdling, though the writers have said it tilts closer to “The Twilight Zone” than to any single Charlie Brooker plot, and it runs two dark segments rather than a continuous tale.

The Italian-set episode is a near-straight lift of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the con-artist thriller drawn from Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, recast as a Springfield noir of lies, lust and borrowed wealth. The double-feature, by contrast, plays as a string of alternate-Homer fantasies stitched together by Marge’s frustration.

The casting tracks those prestige ambitions. Here is how the references and guest stars line up:

• The August closer spoofs “Black Mirror” and guest-stars Demi Moore and Patti Harrison
• “Simpsley” reworks “The Talented Mr. Ripley” as an Italian-set Springfield noir
• The double-feature stacks Betty Gilpin with musical guests Laufey and Tegan and Sara

What Broadcast Fans Give Up

For viewers, the trade-off is real. The pre-streaming Simpsons rolled out on free, ad-supported broadcast almost every week of a long season. The new shape leaves a wider spring gap on Fox and parks two episodes a year behind a subscription, so the most experimental work is also the hardest to stumble onto by accident.

The broadcast run still carries the show’s milestone and continuity beats. Season 37 alone delivered the 800th episode and an episode that wrote out a longtime Springfield character, the kind of moment fans expect to see when it airs, not months later.

The streaming exclusives sit outside that flow on purpose. They are treated as standalone specials, not numbered entries in the canonical season, which is what frees them to spoof and experiment but also lowers the cost of missing one.

Disney gets the cleaner win. The exclusives give the platform fresh, can’t-watch-anywhere-else animation to pair with the full Simpsons library on Disney+, which already holds 36 seasons and the 2007 movie, the sort of catalog hook that keeps a subscription ticking over between new drops.

If the summer exclusives pull viewers onto the platform and hold them, the thinner Fox season starts to look less like a cut and more like a deliberate rebalance. If they play as forgettable curios, a 37-year-old broadcast institution will have handed away a slice of its weekly home for a streaming bet that did not pay.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Can I Watch the New Simpsons Episodes on Disney+?

They roll out across the summer, with the double-feature arriving June 17, the Italian noir episode on July 3, and the sci-fi closer on August 26. Each is available worldwide on the platform from its release date.

Do I Need a Disney+ Subscription to Watch Them?

Yes. All three stream exclusively on Disney+ with no free Fox broadcast window, so an active subscription is required to watch them at launch.

Are These Episodes Part of the Regular Fox Season?

No. They are produced as standalone streaming specials that sit outside the numbered broadcast season, which is why they can lean so hard into parody and genre experiments.

What Movies and Shows Do the New Episodes Parody?

The summer closer spoofs the tech-anthology series “Black Mirror” with a Twilight Zone flavor, while the Italian-set noir reworks the con-artist thriller “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

How Many Simpsons Episodes Are Made Each Year Now?

Seventeen. Fifteen premiere on Fox each fall and winter and two stream later on Disney+, an arrangement locked in through Season 40 and the 2028-29 television season.