Futurama Wraps Its 14th Season on Hulu — With Its Latest ‘Final Ending’ and, Yes, a History of Rising Again
The year 3000 keeps pulling the planet Express crew back for encores. On September 28, Hulu aired "Final Ending: The Last Conclusion," the season 14 finale of "Futurama" — and the very same day, Variety published an interview in which co-creator Matt Groening said there are no current plans for the show to return as a regular series. Cue the predictable headlines about the end of "Futurama." Except here's the thing anyone who has followed this show knows: "Futurama" has been ending for longer than most shows have existed. The crew has been cancelled, resurrected, boxed up on DVD, rebooted and re-streamed so many times that Groening himself told Variety, "Well, we've come to an end many times before." In the same breath, he added, "They can put us in a coffin, they can nail the lid shut, but they can't bury us. We will rise again."
The résumé justifies the swagger. "Futurama" was born on Fox in 1999 from the mind of Groening and co-creator David X. Cohen, and the network gave it the axe in 2003 after 72 episodes — while fans were still figuring out how much they loved it. Then came the improbable first resurrection: four direct-to-DVD movies between 2007 and 2009, which Comedy Central chopped into episodes before ordering 52 brand-new ones that ran from 2010 to 2013. Then silence, until Hulu shocked the industry in February 2022 with a 20-episode revival order — followed by another 20-episode pickup in 2023 that carried the show through seasons 11, 12, 13 and 14. Along the way the show banked six Emmy wins and 14 nominations, including two for Outstanding Animated Program, and kept critics broadly charmed: the Hulu revival opened with an 86 percent critics score in 2023 and season 13 landed at a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes this year, albeit from a small pool of reviews.
Why does this particular ending feel different? Timing, mostly. The news didn't leak through a press release or a trade report of an order not being picked up — it arrived bundled with the finale itself, in Groening's own wry mouth, hours before "Final Ending: The Last Conclusion" started streaming. And the signal behind the signal is clear: three supersized, so-called "XXXL-Sized" specials are already in production at Hulu, with the first — a Christmas-themed episode — slated for 2027. That's the studio's way of saying the door isn't locked, even if the regular-season machinery goes quiet. Billy West, who voices Fry and Professor Farnsworth, told UPI on the eve of the finale that the writers always prepare for the possibility of no return while keeping a parachute packed — and noted that fans keep telling him season 14 has a "first season vibe," as energetic as anything since the show began.
The cast, meanwhile, has earned its place in the story as much as the animation. West and John DiMaggio (Bender) and Katey Sagal (Leela) have voiced these characters across four separate networks and formats — a feat few voice casts ever match — and DiMaggio's own 2022 pay dispute, resolved days before the Hulu revival's cameras rolled, became the emblem of the cast fighting for the show's survival rather than walking from it. Executive producers Cohen, Ken Keeler and Claudia Katz remain the engine behind the revival's critical streak. So here we are again: season 14 has ended, no season 15 is on the books, and history suggests betting against this show is a losing wager. After all, "Futurama" once delivered an episode called "Roswell That Ends Well" — and few shows in television history have ever ended quite so well, so repeatedly, as this one.
