Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for May the 12th Be with You!

The Simpsons is celebrating Mother’s Day in a unique new fashion with its May the 12th Be with You short. The Disney+ short sees Marge joining up with a variety of mothers and mother figures from Disney’s 100-year roster of characters to go on a special intergalactic adventure to celebrate the May holiday. Between trying to find an appropriate vehicle to carry them all to troublesome Stormtroopers, the group will face a number of hilarious hurdles to enjoy the day.

May the 12th Be with You hails from Simpsons veterans Joel H. Cohen, Ryan Koh, former showrunner David Mirkin, Jeff Westbrook and current co-showrunner Al Jean. The short is also directed by David Silverman, who has not only been with the show since it first was spun off from The Tracey Ullman Show, but was also the director of The Simpsons Movie and every Disney+ short to date, which began with 2021’s Maggie-led The Force Awakens from Its Nap.

Taking full advantage of its Disney+ home and studio synergy, May the 12th Be With You includes characters from every franchise either created or owned by the House of Mouse. Some prominent examples include Ahsoka Tano from Lucasfilm’s Star Wars universe, modeled after Rosario Dawson’s live-action version, Groot from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nani from Lilo & Stitch and various members of the Madrigal family from Encanto, among many others.

Ahead of the short’s premiere, Screen Rant interviewed The Simpsons co-showrunner Al Jean to discuss May the 12th Be with You, the unique way he and his team sought to honor mothers around the world, including his own who recently passed, the various Disney Easter eggs and characters riddled throughout the special, and the chances of a Simpsons Movie 2.

May the 12th Be with You Came About Quick (& From Jean’s Idea For One Gag)

With The Simpsons season 35 being the show’s shortest since its debut season due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the team chose to focus solely on filling out their season rather than developing a new Disney+ short. For Jean, however, he found himself inspired to do a short specifically celebrating Mother’s Day in December, with one joke in particular helping him build out the story of the special:

Al Jean: Well, we didn’t do any, of course, during the writers strike, and then we were getting back into production on the show in December. I thought, “You know, we’d done the May the Fourth Be With You special. May the 12th is Mother’s Day, why don’t we do that?” And Jim approved and we worked on it. David Silverman came aboard, he’s directed all of them, which is fantastic. It’s been in the works since December.

I thought it’d be funny to have Bambi’s mother be the first joke, and then Jim has always wanted us to crossover with Marvel with Star Wars, with everybody on Disney+. And then, at the end, we said, “Hey, Hulu’s coming aboard, so maybe we could get Seth to voice Stewie at the end of the short,” which we did, which was a thrill. He did it right away, and we’re really, really happy about that.

With so many characters to choose from, though, Jean and director David Silverman found themselves presented with an interesting challenge of deciding which characters could be “Simpsonified” and which should stay in their original animation style:

Al Jean: In terms of Disney characters going to Simpsons style, something like Bambi’s mother doesn’t Simpsonify, in my opinion. This was pretty much David Silverman’s choice throughout and how he wanted to do it. She looks more like a deer and more like she does the original movie than a character that’s more animated and more easily Simpsonified.

So it’s a mix, it was a complicated issue, but I thought we really tried we tried to get everything in. It was difficult to choose one character, but because they go on Ahsoka’s ship, which you may notice has a window by Boeing. [Chuckles] So, to get the ship just right, we consulted with the Lucasfilm people, who were always very generous with their time and experience.

Jean Wanted To Highlight “Every Family Unit” In The Special (& Challenges Fans To Spot Every Disney Character)

When it came to then building out the roster of Disney characters who would appear in May the 12th Be with You, Jean and his creative team were spoiled with choice as no one was off-limits for the special. The group ultimately made their choices based on the desire to highlight “every family unit” that relates to a mother-child dynamic, ranging from Lilo’s bigger sister/mother figure Nani to Ahsoka and Rotta the Hutt:

Al Jean: I was just gonna say, we have a big sister who serves as a mother in Lilo and Stitch, we have a joke about Disney being unfair to stepmothers at the end. [Chuckles] I said to David, “Let’s just get every family unit that’s sort of a mother-child combination,” because it isn’t always just the traditional mother-child anymore. And it’s a tribute to all of them, it’s tribute to my own mother, who passed this year. I wouldn’t be anywhere without her.

[No one was off limits]. Like, for example, Ahsoka from Star Wars is Rotta the Hutt’s guardian, so she’s not really a mother, but we were glad to have Ahsoka. In short, there was nobody that we wanted to get that we couldn’t. I’ll give a signed script cover to the first person who lists every Disney character in the short. [Laughs] Contact me on Twitter.

In looking at his favorite Disney Easter eggs and characters included in the special, Jean has a few different choices, including Winnie-the-Pooh‘s Eeyore, since many people are surprised he “has a line” in the short, while also pointing to one from The Simpsons‘ own long-running history of characters:

Al Jean: Surprisingly, people are really excited that Eeyore has a line. [Laughs] I love Eeyore, but that was one, and our character Shary Bobbins, which I wrote the original Simpson Shary Bobbins episode, is in the short, and is the same voice, Maggie Roswell. So, that was a thrill. One of our writers, since we were talking about Lilo and Stitch, Carolyn Omine, does the voice in the short too. So, that was really fun.

Jean Was Thrilled By Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy Involvement (Though Don’t Expect More Soon)

More than just pulling from Disney’s movie library, May the 12th Be with You also works in some meta humor regarding Hulu’s roster of characters, featuring appearances from Bob’s Burgers‘ Belcher family, King of the Hill‘s Hill family, and Family Guy‘s the Griffins. The latter even results in a vocal cameo from Seth MacFarlane as Stewie, with Jean praising the multihyphenate’s creative collaboration of the short:

Al Jean: We sent it to him, and he just did it. And of course, he’s very funny, he did ad lib some stuff we bleeped. And it’s bleeped, but we asked him to, it wasn’t like he was trying to make trouble. [Laughs]

Even with it coming up on a decade since the two-episode Simpsons and Family Guy crossover event, however, Jean does caution that this meta appearance by Stewie doesn’t necessarily mean another crossover is happening any time soon, as both creative teams want such a story to feel special rather than expected by audiences. That being said, the co-showrunner won’t rule out the opportunity for the Simpsons to meet up with the Griffins, or another Fox family, in the future:

Al Jean: I was really thrilled with all of it. I love the Family Guy crossover, which was their script. But I think that the key was to do it every once in a while, not to make it something that people can expect. That’s why I think it’s so fun to have Seth on this. But, we’re all friends, writers cross from one show to the other, animators have crossed. We definitely consulted with the Family Guy people on how Stewie should look in this short, as well as the Marvel people and Star Wars people. It’s a great club to be in, I’m thrilled. We had a full Futurama one, which is a little easier, since it’s all sort of Matt Groening designs, so thematically, it really fit. But I like Bob’s Burgers a lot, so maybe.

Jean Is Confident About The Simpsons‘ Future (Though A Little Cautious About A Movie Sequel)

In looking at the future of the franchise, Jean has plenty of ideas and hopes about where The Simpsons will go, namely wanting to hit a major milestone and even an idea of a potential spinoff centered on Maggie. When it comes to The Simpsons Movie 2, though, the co-showrunner acknowledges the long wait may continue a little longer for one key reason:

Al Jean: In the first short we did, I thought, “Oh, if she just pulled her pacifier out, it would look like a lightsaber.” So, she’s kind of turned into this little warrior, which she always was in the short. I mean, she defeats the bad guy in The Simpsons Movie. [Laughs] She really does a lot, so I love the one that we did last year. Writer Dan Vebber had the idea that Maggie gets Grogu’s baby stroller and goes space-hopping. So, Maggie the Warrior, are you listening, Disney +? Could be a spin-off.

I think it’s a bigger issue than The Simpsons. On several levels, we’re really hoping for Inside Out 2 to do great this summer. I want to see the animation business completely returned to what it was before the pandemic. And then, I think if that was the case, it would make sense to do The Simpsons theatrically. But I understand that it’s an issue above me about, “Where would you release it? And how would you release it?” And we are, with the shorts and other things, streaming on Disney+, so I love seeing animated movies in theaters. I loved The Boy and the Heron that just won the Oscar. I’ll always go see the Miyazaki movies that come out. So, I really am all for animation being fully theatrical, so I hope that’s where it goes.

[We have not] formally [talked] about a movie, no. We’re exploring different venues like this [the short] for presenting The Simpsons, but it’d be premature to say we had a movie script in development. With the help of our animators, we had a full slate of shows this year, which looked terrific. We did have to just take a break for four months because of the strike, which I’m glad we did, that was what we should have done. But I think the show is in fantastic shape. I’m biased, but I think that the current episodes are, whether I work on one, a lot or not, are great. And I think that the future is bright, it’s gonna go to 800, and I hope 1000.

About May the 12th Be with You

It’s Mother’s Day and Marge Simpson joins the moms of Disney+ on a special holiday outing that turns into an epic galactic adventure filled with heroes, villains and a surprising old friend.

May the 12th Be with You is now streaming on Disney+!