Futurama Predicted Its Hulu Revival When Writing Fry & Leela's Wedding
To quickly recap: Matt Groening's and David X. Cohen's animated sci-fi comedy series "Futurama" debuted in 1999 and ran for four seasons before being canceled in the summer of 2003. It followed the adventures of a slobby dope named Fry (Billy West) who accidentally cryogenically froze himself in the year 1999 and woke up on New Year's Eve in 2999. In the future, he met his great, great, great (etc.) grand-nephew Professor Farnsworth (also West) who ran a delivery company, became best friends with the alcoholic robot Bender (John DiMaggio), and fell in love with the tough-as-nails cyclops Leela (Katey Sagal). While the series was only moderately popular in its initial run, it became beloved through its DVD release. The show was revived in 2008 as a series of four, feature-length straight-to-DVD movies which were eventually cut into portions and aired as a season of television.
The four movies were supposed to be the end of the series. But, sensing that more could be done, Comedy Central renewed the series for a second time in 2010. This third life of "Futurama" lasted until September of 2013, when it was canceled yet again.
As of 2023, however, "Futurama" has been shocked to life again, this time on Hulu. By this time, the showrunners know how to write a final episode, and what to plan for, just in case the series might get renewed again. After all, they've written three final episodes before.
In a 2021 reunion special, Cohen revealed that in the last episode he wrote, he let be a little bit more open-ended in the past. He kind of suspected that it would not be the last time he'd see Fry and Leela.
'Meanwhile'
The last final episode of the season of "Futurama," "Meanwhile" (September 4, 2013), involved a wrist-worn time travel device that could take its wearer back in time 10 seconds. Fry while wearing the device, jumps off the Vampire State Building in a state of romantic despondence. While falling, however, he sees Leela and becomes overjoyed. The problem is, he has been falling for more than 10 seconds, so when he uses the time travel device to undo his jump, he's still in midair. He is doomed to plummet for all eternity.
Through some rigmarole with a time shield and an airbag, Fry is saved, but the device on his wrist is smashed. Time freezes, and only Fry and Leela remain. With the world frozen, they get married and wander the Earth. They become very old.
In the final scenes of "Meanwhile" the Professor pops in from another timeline and repairs the time travel device. Doing so will erase all history after the Professor invented the device to begin with. Fry and Leela decide that they loved their life together and should give it another go. They erase time and the status quo is restored.
Cohen knew he had to undo something as dramatic as a wedding. He said:
"I mean, now from experience, the best formula, we find, for a series-ending episode is the grand sci-fi story with the actual touching emotional story on top of it. So if we managed to pull both of them off at the same time, that's a good series-ender. This time obviously we went a little further with the Fry/Leela wedding because it's a little harder to back out of that if we ever come back and say, 'Oh, Fry and Leela have gone their separate ways,' people might get mad."
Restoring status quo
Status quo is, of course, vital to any and all serialized TV shows. Audiences have to come into every episode with the secure knowledge that all the characters are relatively in the same place. They can learn lessons and grow slowly over time, but big, life-altering events are typically saved for sweeps week. Cohen knew better than to end "Futurama" on a "high note," as it were because it would require him to wriggle out of a problem the next time the show was inevitably rebooted. Hence, he chose to have Fry and Leela — who always enjoyed a will-they-won't-they relationship — finally have their wedding, only to use time travel to undo it. Cohen said:
"One of the things that comes with practice is we know not to chop everyone's head off at the end, because you never know if you're going to need those characters next week."
Cohen is referring specifically to the gap between "Into the Wild Green Yonder" in 2009 and "Rebirth" in 2010. At the end of the former, the crew sailed into a wormhole, not knowing where it led. In the latter, everyone crashed and died, and the Professor had to use a vat of stem cells to resurrect them. Just as the series was reborn, so too were the characters. There was a moment, however, when all the characters were merely suspended dead severed heads with their skeletal bodies hanging below.
So Cohen knew better than to end on a question mark like "Are they alive?" Yes, they're alive. No, they're not married. And, yes, if the show dies and comes back, everything will be back to normal.
"Futurama" is now in its 11th season and streaming on Hulu.