Futurama’s new Hulu season owes a lot to the show’s past finales

“It just won’t stay dead!” reads the subtitle of “Bender’s Big Score,” the bombastic feature-length return of FuturamaAfter it was cancelled in 2003.

The tagline makes a powerful statement, even though it was only canceled once. In 2013, the show ended again after a second cancellation. Futurama’s trips between the graveyard and the screen have become something of a 21st-century tradition, with the latest renewal arriving on Hulu on Monday.

Despite being taken out back with a loaded shotgun on two occasions, each cancellation carried a silver lining — the creators of the show were able to craft definitive finales every time, giving birth to “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings,” “Meanwhile,” and the feature-length, direct-to-DVD Wild Green YonderThis was created when the show was limbo in between deals for syndication. (Another potential finale, “Overclockwise,” was aired at the end of the sixth season.)

The ending to a show should attempt to find some resolution to the series’ main tensions while offering one last dose of what gave the show its fundamental identity. The For Futurama, that meant resolving the will-they-won’t-they tennis match between Fry and Leela amid a whacky sci-fi adventure. Each finale shoots for that exact balance, but they don’t all hit it head on — though they all show love for a particular strand of Futurama’s identity.

Fry and Leela is the only way to go

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The show put in a lot of work to ensure that Fry and Leela’s romantic tension sustained its entire run, often having to walk back previous definitive endings or find creative solutions as to why they aren’t together just yet. Some are more successful than others — Leela’s proclamation that “you’re a boy, I’m a girl, we’re just too different” stands out as one of the more wonderfully silly reasons to elongate their unresolved tension.

Fry’s and Leela’s journey to find each other in the finale is never the central plot. However, the most effective finales in this regard — “Meanwhile” and “Devil’s Hands” — revolve around the pair. Fry breaks time to give himself and Leela an eternity of travel through the universe and a chance to harness their love. The latter is more of a depiction of Fry’s courtship as he makes a deal with the literal (robot) devil in hopes of wooing Leela.

“Devil’s Hands” proves to be somewhat indefinite, ending with Fry fumbling through his big performance, his audience abandoning him except for Leela, who claims she “wants to hear how it ends” as the series fades to black. It’s touching, and its open-endedness stops the finale from feeling like it’s racing to a conclusion. “Meanwhile” provides more of a concrete outcome, with the couple growing old together in a frozen universe, something deeply romantic and satisfying to see after spending over a decade with these characters.

Wild Green Yonder Fry and Leela kiss on the edge of their deaths. The film has an undercurrent mapping out their relationship as they occupy opposite sides of a political issue and eventually find their way to each other — a microcosm of these two characters’ journeys. The series began with them separated by over 1,000 years. They ended up being together despite this.

“Overclockwise,” in its outsized plot, finds time to give Fry and Leela a silent, hilarious, and touching moment where they read a letter detailing their fate generated by the simulations of a godlike Bender. Futurama There were many creative solutions to form the eternal bond between Fry & Leela. Every ending suited the time, too: “Devil’s Hands” being representative of a show with more story to tell but no time to tell it; Yonder being a climactic end to a feature film; “Overclockwise” being a calm, sweet moment that works as an ending to a season as well as the series as a whole; and “Meanwhile,” which stopped time to give what seemed to be the final finale.

Futurama endings changed by sci-fi trend

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Sci-fi is a genre that can provide both a grand spectacle and incredibly intimate character studies. It’s a staple of the genre to take a small technological concept like overclocking or a modern conflict like climate change and apply it to the heightened world of tomorrow.

Wild Green Yonder uses sci-fi as a tool for political satire, seeing Leela, Amy, and a group of female activists looking to stop Amy’s father from building his interplanetary “giant mini golf” course, which would end up destroying the habitats of various planets. This episode’s message of environmental awareness takes precedence over the main characters, making this a fitting finale to the show. Futurama at times. Yonder and “Overclockwise” share this flaw, leaving character behind in the name of spectacle.

When you first arrive, Futurama first ended in 2003 to the airing of “Overclockwise” in 2011, nerd culture had burst from behind the curtain of pop culture to establish its dominance. The nerd culture has risen to the top of pop culture. Futurama’s initial run, things like comic book movies still felt like the obsessions of outsiders. This could be why the show’s initial run ends with “Devil’s Hands,” a familiar play on “deals with the devil” stories, rather than the more technical tales of future finales after science fiction emerged as a mainstream force.

This changing method of storytelling shows how FuturamaIt was able for sci-fi to be woven into stories that varied in size. Though it often led to stories that may have been too grandiose for their own good, the most recent finale, 2013’s “Meanwhile,” struck gold.

The A-plot is more Fry/Leela drama: After Leela’s brush with death, Fry is afraid of her being taken away from him and decides to propose. In a subplot, the professor invents a button that sends time 10 seconds into the past as well as a bubble that protects the user from the button’s effects. Fry, believing that Leela rejected him, jumps off the Vampire State Building, a decision he regrets instantly. Remembering the professor’s time button, he looks for a way to cheat death, only to find that he had been falling for longer than 10 seconds. Fry and Leela are in the bubble of protection when the time loop occurs. They stop the entire time.

It’s the perfect marriage of sci-fi and romance, with a take on each genre we barely see, but one that fits together beautifully. Fry and Leela embark on a romantic journey as they choose to live for eternity as two of the few breathing creatures in existence. As the only hearts beating in an ice-cold universe, they travel through the cosmos. “Meanwhile” is a gorgeous dedication to how the rest of the universe is insignificant when you clutch the hand of the person you love.

True to Futurama’s roots

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A show’s final goodbye should be an emotionally charged experience. The finale of a show can have flaws, but the spirit must be maintained. Futurama’s reputation for comedy, tender character work, and creative sci-fi ideas are swirled into each finale.

Picking up after “Devil’s Hands” and “Overclockwise” were more straightforward tasks, as they’re episodes that maintain their sitcom DNA, with everything more or less back to normal at the end of the episode. It makes sense that the last episode was designed as an emergency final in the event of another cancellation. “Devil’s Hands,” however, feels like something left open-ended due to the creators’ feelings that they had more story to tell after just four seasons. Groening’s and other creators were always eager to see the show return due to its popularity and deep emotional connection.

Yonder had to deal with the fact that the characters were heading to their doom, resulting in the convoluted, slightly nonsensical “Rebirth” at the start of the next season. Professor conceives a bizarre device which breathes new life into all of the Planet Express crew members except Leela. In an effort to avoid resolving death by a machine that undoes it, the professor creates robot copies of her. YonderThe series was viewed as its last feature length. It would be difficult for any episode to reverse a plunge to death.

This is the first episode. Futurama revival on Hulu is tasked with following up “Meanwhile.” Though it is often regarded as a perfect end for the show, it refuses to be diminished by future episodes; “Meanwhile” stands immune as a parallel universe story. But that doesn’t mean the Hulu incarnation of the series won’t be tasked with carving out its own identity once again: The new season needs to reckon with the passage of almost a decade in which adult animated sitcoms like Rick and MortyThe dominance of the. Futurama’s once uncontested sci-fi niche. Modern adult animation owes much to Futurama, It is worth expanding upon the original ideas. It is a good idea to expand on the basic ideas in multiple ways. Rick and Morty The show has pushed its science-fiction concepts further into fantasy.

Animations like Bojack HorsemanTake on Futurama’s ability to deliver an emotional gut punch. The first two times it was shown, Futurama’s contemporaries, such as Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers” American DadThey were not as inventive with sitcoms. It was a great way to get people interested in the format. Futurama’s core fan base but alienated it from a truly mainstream audience. Modern landscapes are a reflection of the modern world. Solar Opposites,Rick and Morty” Final SpaceThey are not afraid to experiment. It was the things that made Futurama unique in the 2000s aren’t so rare anymore.

Finales from the past and current adult animation shows weigh on the life span of Futurama’s Latest revival But that’s the thing about this show — it just won’t stay dead.