'The Simpsons' takes a shot at new Disney owners and parodies 'Avengers'

The Simpsons parodied Avengers: Infinity War on Sunday night in ‘Bart the Bad Guy’, the latest episode to air in North America. The show created superheroes, known as the Vindicators, who battle a villain in a storyline very similar to Infinity War.

The show makes a couple of obvious spoof characters, like instead of Iron Man there is Magnesium Man. The show also played on some of the more ridiculous character tropes, for example one of the heroes is simply a human with an air rifle, known as Airshot. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige leant his voice to the parody’s Thanos-esque villain Chinnos.

The show also explored the intense fandom surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Much like Infinity War and Endgame, fans had to wait a year to see the sequel. So the primary plot of the episode centres around Bart Simpson knowing the ending of the series before anyone else, and using the knowledge to gain goods and services from fans hoping to avoid spoilers.

Homer Simpson echoes all MCU haters, like Martin Scorsese who recently took a few shots at the franchise. Homer tells Bart, “You see, as a grown-up, I know that muscle jerks in tights with magic powers punching and hugging each other is boring B.S. for babies."

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The Simpsons also took a shot at their new boss, Disney. At the end of the episode, they showed television executives contemplating the murder of the family, if they were to leak the plot of the sequel. An executive ultimately disarms a bomb in the Simpsons' house, but the deactivation tone is the Disney jingle and the "D" in "disarmed" is in the trademark Disney font.

The show earned a rave review from Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed several MCU installments, including Infinity War and Endgame, and voiced their toon selves, who called The Simpsons parody "surreal."