The following contains spoilers for The Simpsons Season 34, Episode 3, "Lisa the Boy Scout," now streaming on Hulu.

The Simpsons is no stranger to meta comedy. Multiple episodes over the years have poked fun at the series itself, the fandom that surrounds it and the networks that have broadcast it. This self-deprecating aspect of the show has been a factor since the earliest seasons and continues to be part of its charm.

But The Simpsons Season 34, Episode 3, "Lisa the Boy Scout" is one of the show's wildest attempts at meta humor. The episode laughs at the fans who come up with unlikely ideas about the long-running series. It also takes aim at the series itself for the lengths it's gone to over 700+ episodes. No one is safe -- and that's what makes it memorable.

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Lisa, Abe, Marge, and her sisters in The Simpsons

"Lisa the Boy Scout" is inherently meta. The episode centers on a pair of hacktivists who've broken into the Disney servers and discovered clips of rejected storylines and revelations from The Simpsons that could destroy the franchise. Demanding a cartoonishly massive ransom in bitcoin, the pair begin to "reveal" a loosely connected group of wild plot shifts and retcons. More than a few of them touch on questions and theories that have plagued fans of the show for years; the clips "confirm" they existed as ideas within the universe.

One of the clips focuses on Chief Wiggum confronting his wife Sarah and revealing Ralph isn't his son -- but rather the illegitimate offspring of fellow Springfield police officer Eddie. Homer is revealed to have been in a coma since trying to jump Springfield Gorge in Season 2, turning decades of storylines into dreams Homer experienced while unconscious. The show's uncanny ability to predict the future even gets an explanation, courtesy of a time-traveling adult Bart venturing into the first episode ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire") to give his family warnings about what's ahead. These retconning plot twists are accompanied by even more ridiculous concepts -- like Lenny being a figment of Carl's imagination, the love-to-hate her Selma and Disco Stu secretly being Marge's parents and Martin Prince as an undercover cop with a wife and children.

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The Simpsons Lisa the Boy Scout Meta 3

"Lisa the Boy Scout" pokes a lot of fun at the wild ways the show can be morphed by plot twists, and seems to be coyly teasing the fans who conceive of them. But on top of that, The Simpsons finds a way to make itself the butt of the joke. Similar to Season 11, Episode 22, "Behind the Laughter," the episode then shifts into self-deprecation by revealing more clips that will ruin the franchise -- all of which stem from actual episodes of The Simpsons. There's Marge and Lisa preparing to go to space in Season 27, Episode 16, "The Marge-ian Chronicles," Homer's unsettling gastric surgery in Season 19, Episode 7, "Husbands & Knives," and the elf-like jockeys from Season 11, Episode 13, "Saddlesore Galactica." This comes after a montage of punny Simpsons episode titles that apparently couldn't justify their use -- pointing out the occasionally scattershot focus of the show.

The episode ends by returning to the more basic plot it interrupted, which includes the revelation that Homer and Marge almost broke up only for a last-second apology from Homer to save their marriage once again. "Lisa the Boy Scout" is a wild episode of The Simpsons, and one of the best meta swings the show has taken since "Behind the Laughter." It's also an interesting look into which fan theories the creative team thinks are worth making fun of -- highlighting ones that would seemingly "ruin" the show by adding dramatic beats to silly characters like Ralph or overcomplicating already dramatic beats like Lenny and Carl's friendship. It's an abusrd and often hilarious deep dive into The Simpsons.

The Simpsons airs Sundays at 8:00 p.m. on Fox and streams on Hulu and Disney+.