Now that the legendary series by Matt Groening, Futurama , is going to return in 2023 with new episodes from Hulu, it is an excellent occasion to remember it. Therefore, we show you everything you need to know about Futurama : its origins, characters, seasons, legendary chapters and curiosities. In short, a complete guide on Fry, Bender and company.
There are series that never die, or rather, that rise, die, rise, die… Without a doubt, the legendary Futurama is one of those. Created by Matt Groening, also guilty of The Simpsons , it is a cult animated series for all self-respecting geeks.
His mix of science fiction and humor, extremely intelligent and planned, is simply inimitable. In fact, it has given mythical episodes that are not only remembered but, as with The Simpsons , are already part of our popular culture and our subconscious.
Only a select few get this and Futurama is one of them.
What is Futurama about?
The series tells the story of Philip J. Fry, a 25-year-old trapped in a dead-end job as a pizza delivery boy. When he accidentally freezes himself on December 31, 1999 and wakes up a thousand years in the future , he gets a chance to start over.
In an advanced and peculiar society, with touches of dystopia and a lot of humor (black on many occasions), he started working for the space courier company Planet Express , which delivers packages to the five quadrants of the universe.
There he will find companions like Leela, the captain of the delivery ship with one eye, or Bender, a drunken robot with the worst of humans and machines, although with a good metal heart deep down.
The series explores themes of popular culture, relationships, technological advances and social evolution with an acidity, emotion and adult humor that are second to none. In fact, it has produced some of the best episodes and gags in television history .
And I’m not exaggerating.
The origin and history of the Futurama series
The already historical Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (writer of Beavis & Butthead or The Simpsons ) proposed the idea of Futurama to Fox, but they did not receive much support, since the characters and the setting were quite unusual.
But they gave it the green light and the series began airing in 1999.
Futurama was always a free verse. Both for the better, because it allowed the creation of some of the best episodes in living memory, and for the worse, because the series had a very unstable run.
Fox treated it with little care , changing its broadcast, without fans being able to find it. In fact, Groening remembers it as one of her worst experiences of her life , since the network saw her as too adult, ironic and on edge for her audience. Her constant interference and fights with Groening are already mythical.
That, and the fact that it was not focused as a series of marketing committee, destined to please the masses, made its audience suffer and it was canceled in its fourth season .
The (first) revival of Futurama
As reruns of the series were always successful, Comedy Central ended up ordering more episodes , initially four longer ones for DVD. However, it would take the form of a new season in the usual format.
That fifth incarnation began to air in March 2008 and continued until its cancellation in 2013 , again almost definitively, after the broadcast of the second batch of episodes of its seventh season.
However, it has already been announced that there will be a new one .
How many seasons does Futurama have?
In case all the previous mess has not been clear, since the series revives and dies like in a zombie movie, Futurama has 7 seasons and another one on the way for 2023 , which will make a minimum of 8 seasons.
What is known about the new season of Futurama?
Not much at the moment, except that Hulu has confirmed the order for 20 episodes and it’s official.
The vast majority of actors who voiced the main characters (with the exception of John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender, at least at the time of writing this), as well as the original animation studio Rough Draft , have also clarified their return . Highlight their official statement with the news.
“It is truly an honor to announce the triumphant return of Futurama once again before it is abruptly canceled again.”
Who are the main characters of Futurama
The series is plagued by a series of unforgettable characters, led by:
- Fry. A pizza delivery boy lost in the future , lazy, without goals and very unintelligent (for being a diplomat), but with a huge heart.
- Bender. Fry’s metallic best friend . A rude robot who meets Fry when he mistakes a suicide booth for a phone booth. Bender was going to use the suicide booth on himself and that gives an idea of the tone of the series.
- Read it. The captain of the Planet Express ship is a mutant orphan from the sewers of New York with only one eye. The voice of sanity almost always, she is a romantic tension with Fry, but they do not formalize their relationship until the sixth season.
Accompanying the main characters, we have:
- Amy Wong. Typical rich daddy’s girl , who interns at Planet Express without needing it.
- Hermes Conrad. Accountant and bureaucrat , in love with the thousand procedures for everything that has to be done in a future as Kafkaesque as the present on that subject.
- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Descendant of Fry , owner of the courier company and genius and mad scientist, who goes crazy because of his age and eccentric temperament.
- Dr Zoidberg . A crustacean alien, resident doctor of the company, bizarre and extremely stupid. His doctor’s degree is actually in art history.
Plus, of course, a host of spectacular supporting cast like Zap Brannigan, as well as a handful of celebrity cameos.
What are the most mythical episodes of Futurama
It’s hard to convey why Futurama is one of the best animated series, you really have to watch it. Emotion and laughter go hand in hand in many episodes, with phrases and gags (sometimes planned long in advance) that have gone down in history.
Some of those chapters and moments are:
- Jurassic bark . Impossible not to start here, since you have to see it with the Kleenex nearby. Second chapter of the fifth season, probably the most remembered and mythical because it is the episode of Fry’s dog . We say no more. If you have seen it, you will have already made yourself sad. If you haven’t seen it, it’s TV history.
- War is hell . Season 2 Episode 17. Fry and Bender join the army to get a discount on gum and end up in the war. One of the funniest, no doubt.
- Less than a hero . Episode 4 of season 4. Many chapters have a message in the background, tenderness or emotion. This is pure comedy without more, in which Fry and Leela become superheroes and Bender joins for the sake of it.
- Fry and the Slurm Factory . Which is basically a hilarious remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .
- A god among us . In which Bender becomes the god of some little aliens.
The truth is that I could be citing almost all the episodes. In addition, she has left a lot of lines for the story, totally quotable in many situations, as in the case of The Simpsons .
Expressions like: «Good news, guys…» or «Well, now I’m thinking of setting up my own amusement park, with casinos, and whores», are common references.
Curiosities about Futurama
And in case you thought you were an expert on the series, here are some fascinating facts about Futurama that very few know.
- The Futurama writers are true geeks and it shows in the love and jokes. In fact, they are so nerdy that one of the creators, David Cohen, participated in mathematical competitions and another screenwriter, Ken Keeler, a doctor of mathematics, invented a new theorem just to solve a plot of the script .
- The episode of the Fry’s dog that we have named, and whose name was Seymour, is based on a true story. The one about the Hachikō dog who waited for his owner at the train station every day. There is a Richard Gere movie on the subject and I ate it at the cinema. Don’t make the same mistake and save yourself.
- Despite the Why not Zoidberg? that phrase is never said in the series .
- Philip J. Fry is named after Phil Hartman , a comedian who is a close friend of Matt Groening. He was going to be the voice of Zap Brannigan, but he passed away before he could do it.
- And going back to the dog (and I promise that’s the last reference), at first, the writers were going to do something similar, but with Fry’s mother . However, even they felt that it was too much.
Fox would have blown the fuses even more with that, but Futurama is one of those unrepeatable series that combines extremely intelligent humor with large doses of geek references .
And now, with his future return (and abrupt cancellation, probably), we are going to revisit his endearing characters knowing everything about the series.
Where you can see?
Currently the series is available exclusively on Disney +, although there is a detail that can completely make you dizzy. On the Disney service (Star, to be exact), it offers a total of 10 seasons of the series, something that does not match if we take into account that there were 7 seasons that were officially launched throughout the history of the series. What happened? Well, it is simply a mess of categorization between the seasons of Fox and Comedy Central, but what matters is that there are each and every one of the chapters that saw the light a few years ago.