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Margaret "Maggie" Simpson is a fictional character featured in the animated cartoon television series The Simpsons. She is the youngest child of their household, eternally a baby.

Character History

Early Life

Maggie was born in 1993, according to the show's chronology (though the fact she appears in 1987 and is still a baby as of 2006 confuses this). Her exact birthday is unknown, but she was conceived on November 18th, thus making her birthday around September 1st. In an Ullman Short on a calendar the date read Maggie's birthday was August 15.

Her claim to fame is falling down frequently as she struggles to walk and sucking on her pacifier, reputedly voiced by Matt Groening during the Tracey Ullman era and by Nancy Cartwright during the regular series. However, during the series, the sound effect is called from a sampler, making any voice attributions moot. She was named after Margaret "Maggie" Groening, youngest sister of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.

Little Maggie has gotten herself into many dangerous situations. However, she has always depended on the help of other creatures to get her out of these fixes, like other imprisoned babies when she wanted to escape from a daycare center, or a group of grizzly bears when she was lost in the forest. The most significant of Maggie's allies is the town barkeeper Moe Szyslak, who proved himself an unlikely hero in Season 14 ("Moe Baby Blues") when he saved her life twice (once from falling off a bridge and drowning and a second time from an Italian-American Mexican Standoff).

Maggie is seen many times during the series to be skillful with a gun. She shot Charles Montgomery Burns in the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" cliffhanger, gunned down the mobsters who had the intention of killing Homer Simpson in Papa's Got a Brand New Badge, and killed Groundskeeper Willie (although this was in a Halloween episode) making a total of eight shots, excluding Groundskeeper Willie. In Bye Bye Nerdie, Maggie fires a nailgun several times at Homer with sharpshooter accuracy. Maggie also appears to own several handguns and shotguns. She appears to know how to play the saxophone better than her sister Lisa, but Lisa is the only person who knows this and shows no intention of telling anyone. She has a seemingly limitless supply of pacifiers that she distributes to people and animals who are sad or otherwise seem to need them.

Some fans have suggested that Maggie will probably be the real Simpson genius of the family ahead of Lisa. For example, at age one, Maggie could spell EMCSQU (E=MC²) with her toy building blocks, whereas Lisa at three considered it impressive that she could spell STAR with her building blocks. In "Treehouse of Horror V", Maggie (still at the age of one) manages to spell REDRUM without anyone in the family noticing. She has also played Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker on her toy xylophone, and written her own name using an Etch-a-Sketch.

She has also saved Homer from drowning in the same episode as Homer bowled a perfect game (300). In the same episode Maggie scores a 300 but Homer accuses her for an over-step and she gets a 295.

Despite her budding genius, Maggie is still very impressionable and easily influenced by what she sees around her. She once bonked Homer on the head with a mallet in imitation of an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, and later attacked him with a pencil and shot a dart gun at a picture of him on the wall. She is also mortally terrified of her aunts Patty and Selma, even waking up in the middle of the night and trying to escape the Simpson car when Selma claims that "she wants a baby".

Maggie seems to be exceptionally strong for an infant, being able to out-muscle Mr. Burns for a teddy bear, wield a mallet with enough force to give Homer a head injury, and even keep a grip on the Simpson house so strong that Homer could not pull her away when Patty and Selma came to pick the children up. Maggie's strength may have been enhanced by fear in this latter instance.

During the show's opening credits, Maggie is passed through a supermarket checkout and on the machine it says she's worth $847.63 (The monthly price of raising an infant in 1989).

In 2 episodes at her aunt Patty and Selma's house she was able to change her diapers by herself, just like Lisa once did. And once wore a Patty and Selma wig while she was supposed to be eating Patty and Selma's manwich.

Future

Episodes set in the far future make a few predictions about Maggie. In "Lisa's Wedding", she seems to take after her brother in being a rebel. She is a sullen teenager who has won a motorcycle trophy at some point. She wears her pacifier around her neck. She also has a picture of Homer with her, in her room, revealing that perhaps the member of the family that she most loves, is her father (Maggie being the only Simpson child to say "Daddy" as her first word, althought in Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily it was her mother who made her leave the Flander household, and in Separate Vocations, her father even forgot they had a third kid, so it seems her love for her father is increased by his disregard for her, while her love for her mother works the other way around which makes the former stronger). She will apparently have an "amazing" singing voice, but her voice is not actually heard in the episode, save for a throat-clearing and a heavily-muffled attempt over a mouthful of food during dinner with the family; ironically, Homer says about her when he catches her on the phone, "Doesn't that kid ever shut up?" The episode "Bart to the Future" revealed that Maggie has become an astronaut and has a daughter called Maggie Junior, who is identical to her mother at age 1. "Future-Drama" shows her in a dried-out Alaska, complete with a malnourished polar bear. Whether these predictions are reliable is questionable, not least because The Simpsons characters never age, but the success of the two female Simpson children – Lisa goes onto become President – and the relative failure of the male Simpson child – Bart works in demolition in "Lisa's Wedding" and is an unemployed musician in "Bart to the Future", although he is Chief Justice of the United States in further possible future depicted in the vague epilogue of The Movie, so he may not be totally lost – is consistent with the episode "Lisa the Simpson", which reveals that genetically, the Simpsons are incredibly intelligent, but the male Simpsons carry a defective gene which significantly reduces their desire to use their intelligence.

Maggie talking

With a few exceptions, Maggie does not speak. However, she is keenly aware of events around her and emotes with subtle gestures and facial expressions. Unfortunately, these are the easiest parts to clip out of an episode for syndication, so they may be missed by most people.

Maggie's first word ever spoken in the normal continuity of the series was in "Lisa's First Word", and was voiced by two-time Academy Award winner Elizabeth Taylor. However, it was not heard by the Simpson family:

Homer: The sooner kids talk, the sooner they talk back. Maggie in I hope you never say a word. and shuts door
Maggie: her pacifier out Dad-dy.

In one early episode, Homer attributes Maggie burping as "burlap" after being chastised earlier in the episode for missing many of Bart's and Lisa's early achievements.

Maggie said daddy in "Good Night", the very first Simpsons short on the Tracey Ullman show, broadcast on April 19th, 1987. On that occasion, Liz Georges (later a star of As Told By Ginger) provided the voice (although The Tracy Ullman shorts are not considered canon with The Simpsons episodes).

Maggie has talked during fantasy sequences and Halloween episodes of The Simpsons. In one Halloween show ("Treehouse of Horror V"), she was played by James Earl Jones. Her line was "This is indeed a disturbing universe," said after killing Groundskeeper Willie. In another Halloween show; ("Treehouse of Horror IX", sub-episode "Starship Poopers") Maggie is depicted as the daughter of space alien Kang, and therefore a semi-supergalactic alien. In the end of that episode, Maggie says, with the voice of Kang: "Okay, But I'll drive!", whereafter she lets out a loud vaudevillain cackle.

In "Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes?", Maggie makes a wider-than-usual range of noises which are rendered as speech by an electronic baby translator invented by Homer's half brother Herb. And in "Brother from the Same Planet", her burp is interpreted as the word "Bart" (intended to remind Homer that he must pick up Bart after a soccer game). In "Flaming Moe's" Homer imagines everyone saying "Moe" all at once, including Maggie.

Fans generally agree that her second spoken word in the normal continuity of the series was "Daddily-doodily" (voiced by Yeardley Smith, in "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily"). However, since in the sequence she then turns her head around 180 degrees à la The Exorcist, this can also be thought of as a hallucination of Bart and Lisa.

In most cases, crying and giggling noises have been made by Nancy Cartwright or Yeardley Smith occasionally.

She has said "It's your fault I can't talk" in a hallucination in the Thanksgiving episode.

Bart also tricked Marge and the audience in Radio Bart by putting a microphoned radio under Maggie's pillow and saying: Bart (as Maggie): Mama, mama. Marge (surprised): Huh? Maggie, you talked, can you say "mama" again? Bart (as Maggie): Sorry lady, show's over!"

Maggie's baby talk was subtitled in "Million Dollar Abie:" "Bald Mommy will surely fail."

Relations

Maggie is:

Simpsons characters | Fictional babies

Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson | Maggie Simpson

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Maggie Simpson".

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