'The Simpsons' EP Al Jean on Homer and Marge's Separation, Harry Shearer's Return, and… Another Movie?

Homer and Marge, splitting up? Say it ain’t so! Okay, it ain’t so.

The Simpsons fans everywhere went into a panic a few months back when executive producer Al Jean told Variety that the Season 27 premiere (airing this Sunday) would see Springfield’s favorite couple “legally separate.” But Jean tells Yahoo TV that, like all problems on The Simpsons, this one will be neatly resolved in 30 minutes.

“No, they’re not breaking up,” he reassures us. “It got re-reported and re-reported, and then CNN said, ‘Homer and Marge break up!’ And I was like, 'Nobody said forever. Nobody even said divorce.’ When have we ever done anything permanent?”

But they do embark on a trial separation brought on by Homer’s severe narcolepsy, which drives him into the arms of a tattooed pharmacist voiced by Girls star Lena Dunham. “She’s attracted to him because he’s funny and sweet and kind of vulnerable,” Jean hints. “And he’s got a bag full of drugs.”

More episodes to look forward to this season: an all-new Treehouse of Horror in which Sideshow Bob finally gets to kill Bart, a plot development that Jean says was inspired by Wile E. Coyote’s eternal pursuit of the Road Runner. (“I wanted the coyote to eat him so badly. So I get my wish in this episode.”) Plus, we’ll see Bart actually age (!) in a Boyhood parody that’ll air around Christmas, and SNL’s Kate McKinnon and Dixie Chick Natalie Maines team up to voice a homeless woman with a beautiful singing voice (Maines handles the singing, natch).

Related: 29 Things You May Have Missed in the ‘Simpsons’ Lego Episode

And the best news of all: After initially declaring he was leaving the show, Harry Shearer eventually signed on the dotted line to continue voicing Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, and about a hundred other Simpsons characters. How close did they actually come to replacing Shearer? “We never read anybody,” Jean says. “But there was never a guarantee that he would come back. We were prepared either way. However, we said we’d be happy if he came back. That’s what we wanted. And that’s ultimately what happened.”

Following the close call with Shearer, though, can Jean actually envision The Simpsons living on without any of the main cast? “In my opinion, if the cast didn’t want to do it, we’d stop doing it,” he says. “What was unique about this situation was five of them agreed to the deal, and Harry didn’t. The show was going to get done. So we were in the position where we had to do the show, whether Harry was in it or not. So we tried to get him back, and we’re glad we did.”

So with the whole cast back in the fold, might we see another Simpsons movie anytime soon? “We’ve talked about it,” Jean says. “There was an episode I co-wrote that aired this past year where they went to the Kang and Kodos planet. And we wrote that as a show, and then we thought, 'Oh, maybe we could turn it into a movie.’ Finally, we said, 'Let’s just air it.’”

But if the Simpsons ever do head back to the big screen, Jean says, it won’t be for a good, long while: “I would rather not do it until the show is over. And I really don’t know when the show will be over. We’re definitely doing 625 [episodes]. And they’ve got an option on the cast for two years after that. So it could go thirty years. That wouldn’t be unlikely. I don’t know. A movie’s not imminent, I’ll put it that way. It’d be wonderful, but we’d never want to do it unless it was really good. I’d much rather no movie than a bad movie.”

Season 27 of The Simpsons premieres Sunday, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. on Fox.