Groening may be right. After the show—about a wackily satirical future where unfrozen 20th century delivery boy Fry adjusts to flying cars, wise-cracking robots, and coin-op suicide booths—ended its most recent revival on Hulu, Futurama is already scheduled to broadcast three “XXXL-Sized” specials in 2027. After that, Groening hints, who knows?
“The thing about ‘Is Futurama coming to an end?’ Well, we’ve come to an end many times before,” says the Simpsons and Disenchantment -creating animation legend. “We make a joke about it with the season finale (“Final Ending: The Last Conclusion”). It’s redundantly, fatalistically titled. 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 animators and the actors and the writers all would love to do more stories and we’ll see.” That coyness was echoed on a recent podcast by series executive producer David X. Cohen, who noted, “The one that’s going to be on shortly is our sixth series finale… I feel like we’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
Indeed, even though Futurama has been airing in fits and starts since 1999, its stellar voice cast (including Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman) all leapt on board the Planet Express ship for the 2022 Hulu revival, and are reportedly back for the upcoming super-sized episodes. And as the A.V. Club noted following its most recent (temporary?) goodbye, nobody does an ending like Futurama.
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