I'm starting to think we'll never see him again.

Number of words per season for "The Simpsons" characters who had a significant word count in the first ten seasons but later spoke significantly less or not at all.

16 small multiples using a step chart visualizing the word counts per season for characters who had a significant word count in the first ten seasons but later spoke significantly less or not at all. Shown are the characters (ordered by overall word count) Troy McClure, Lionel Hutz, Roger Meyers Jr., Maude Flanders, Dr Nick Riviera, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Dr. J Loren Pyror, Larry, Rabby Hyman Krustofsky, George H. W. Bush, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Herman Hermann, Birch Barlow, Jacqueline Bouvier, Devil, and Mrs. Glick.
Characters were selected based on their cumulative word count (300 or more words spoken in seasons 1-25) and the disparity in words spoken between the first 10 seasons and the subsequent 15 seasons (at least 3 times more words spoken in the early period). Generic character names such as "commander" were excluded from the analysis. Note the different value ranges on the y-axis.
The title is a quote from Lisa Simpson in the episode "Dog of Death" (S03E19).
Chart: Cédric SchererSource: Todd Schneider & William CukierskiGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper