“Futurama” is over. Long live “Futurama!” The long-running animated series wraps its Season 14 Monday on Hulu, and there are no immediate plans for it to return as a regular series. But the show’s creator, Matt Groening, is not worried.
“They can put us in a coffin. They can nail the lid shut, but they can’t bury us,” Groening told Variety. “We will rise again.”
A History of False Endings
“Futurama” first premiered on Fox in 1999. It ended its run there in 2003. Comedy Central revived it in 2008 and wrapped it up in 2013. It returned again in 2023 via Hulu.
Whenever the show appeared to be going away, or seemed headed toward its conclusion, the producers put together an episode that could also serve as a series finale — only for the show to return. Monday’s episode, which closes out Season 14, carries the title “Final Ending: The Last Conclusion.”. It is a bit of an origins/flashback story, following Fry and his brother sneaking into a PG-13 movie as kids, with “shocking consequences for the future.”.
The joke in the title was acknowledged by Groening himself, who admitted it. “It’s redundantly, fatalistically titled,” He said. “I think we have a whistling-past-the-graveyard attitude these days because we’ve been in this situation many times before. We have lots more stories to tell.”
The XXXL Trilogy Is Coming
Still on the horizon are three supersized Hulu specials, which were first revealed at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con and are now being made. They are known as “XXXL-Sized,” and the first one starts with a Christmas-themed episode in 2027.
“The people at Hulu/Disney were saying, ‘Hey, give us some big stories that we can promote,’ and we said, ‘Gotcha,'” Groening said. “So these three that are coming up are kind of epic stories, and they’re promotable.”
The specials will stretch out stories that normally fit inside episodes. “The nature of these stories, in general for ‘Futurama’ and also ‘The Simpsons,’ is that each episode could be a movie,” he added. “I mean, we pack enough melodrama and shenanigans in every episode to stretch it out. It’s just fun to tell a bigger story, but also take the time to breathe a little bit.”
Robot Santa, the violent version of St. Nick who has made occasional visits since Season 2, is confirmed to appear in the Christmas edition. Groening would not say more about the other two specials, except that they pay off hints from the very beginning of the show.
“When we were writing this season finale, from our point of view, it could have been the series finale and that is a situation that we have been in probably more than any other show in history,” executive producer David X. Cohen told the “Making Of” podcast. “The one that’s going to be on shortly is our sixth series finale, in the sense again that at the time we wrote it might be, and we are now currently working on the seventh series finale.”
What Happens After XXXL?
“If it doesn’t happen, we’ll do something else,” Groening said. “I love the group of people that work on this. It’s just a blast to work together.”
A group of actors bring the show to life, among them John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman. The creator behind it is Matt Groening, who made the series along with David X. Cohen.
That’s why Season 14’s penultimate episode, “A New New York Yankee in King Elfo’s Court,” featured a “Futurama”/”Disenchantment” crossover. The crossover brought together a Netflix and Hulu series through a “very nimble negotiation” between Disney and Netflix.
Multiple attempts have been made to write this show as a possible series finale. The tally stands at this point:
- The original run on Fox ended in 2003
- Comedy Central revived it in 2008
- Comedy Central wrapped it in 2013
- Hulu brought it back in 2023
- Season 14 ends Monday
- The current episode is the sixth potential finale, per Cohen
- The seventh potential finale is the XXXL trilogy in production
The creators of “Futurama” have already brought a show back from its own finale. The coffin is sealed tight, with the lid closed over it. What happens next will determine whether the show returns.
Source material: “Matt Groening on the Future of ‘Futurama’ as the Series Gets Another Finale: ‘We Will Rise Again’ (EXCLUSIVE),” Variety.
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