The Futurama Finale Formula

It is a question The Simpsons, currently in its 36th season, has never had to grapple with. What does a finale look like? What beats would the writers want to hit if the curtains closed on Springfield’s famous family?

This is a question Futurama has plenty of experience answering. At this point, the writers have got it down to a fine art. If you want to get good at something – practice, practice, practice.

I’ve been a fan of Futurama since just after its first run ended, when it was airing on British television. I’ve seen it come back as direct to DVD movies, on Comedy Central and now on Hulu (as well as in a crossover with The Simpsons, and even as a one-off podcast). By now I know what to expect from a season finale, and they’re oddly the episodes I look forward to most – even if they sometimes mean there’s no more Futurama for the foreseeable future afterwards.

The show’s original run wrapped up with the operatic ‘The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings’, while the quadrilogy of direct to DVD films ended with ‘Into the Wild Green Yonder’. With the show’s subsequent renewals on Comedy Central and Hulu respectively, each season has had a reliably strong finale episode with an equally reliable structure – ‘Overclockwise’, ‘Meanwhile’, ‘All the Way Down’ and ‘Otherwise’.

It took until into the Comedy Central run, the first “proper” renewal of the show, for this formula to fully emerge.

“They’re very good hands.”

While future endings would have a distinct hard sci fi flavour, more Star Trek or Philip K Dick than space fantasy, ‘The Devil’s Hands’ is actually a Faustian fable. Picking up from the events of ‘Parasites Lost’, where a parasitically enhanced Fry mastered the fictional holophonor instrument to woo Leela, we find him trading hands with the Robot Devil to allow him to play for her again. The Robot Devil’s “ridiculously circuitous plan” to reclaim his hands leaves Fry once again unable to play and finish the opera he has written for Leela. As his patrons leave however, he hears her encouragement in the otherwise abandoned theatre: “Please don’t stop playing Fry. I want to hear how it ends.” This line of dialogue reportedly took months to record what with Katey Sagal’s busy schedule. Along with the simple, sweet ending Fry manages for his opera all by himself, it was the perfect note of affection with which to leave the characters. It reflected the unanswered question of the pair’s relationship while still ending on a positive note.

Future endings would double down on this romantic theme, while expanding on the show’s science fiction themes as opposed to its occasional theological and fantastical elements.

“Same speed ahead!”

It is difficult to classify ‘Into the Wild Green Yonder’ as a finale in the same sense, since it comes in feature length form. Even taken as the four episodes it was broken into for broadcast, it spends its final 22 minutes tying up its sprawling story about environmentalism and ancient aliens. It does enough to keep the Fry and Leela arc front of mind by having them in touch as they embark on separate adventures, which is necessary as the first two movies had shown them pursuing other relationships (even if Lars in ‘Bender’s Big Score’ eventually turned out to be Fry from another timeline).

Leela’s reciprocation of Fry’s love at the end as the Planet Express Ship heads into a black hole is a little sudden, but did at least serve to put the pair in a good place as a contingency against the show not being picked up for more episodes.

As we know however, it’s the show that keeps coming back. Ever since, the writers have taken care to honour the evolving connection between Fry and Leela for the big moments, and increasingly made an effort to keep consistency for the episodes in between.

With the exception of ‘In-a-Gadda-da-Leela’ that is, which while funny, betrays the pair’s character dynamic and relationship status quite callously in its ending sequence. Fry is forced to watch as Leela and Zapp Brannigan are made to “consummate” their Adam and Eve coded tryst by a crazed satellite. As only the second episode in the Comedy Central run, it felt like an immediate and unwelcome gut punch to the freshly official partnership between the two, and more like something I would expect from the far less sentimental Family Guy or American Dad than Futurama.

Other than that misstep, the revived iterations of the show have generally presented Fry and Leela as exclusive lovers, save the odd inexplicable throwaway gag – “It sure was nice of the mayor’s wife to have sex with me” – and treated finales as opportunities to move the relationship forward a little at a time.

‘Overclockwise’, ‘Meanwhile’, ‘All the Way Down’ and ‘Otherwise’ all share a similiar structure, fine tuned to represent the show at its best while providing emotional closure for the characters. All without precluding the show from continuing. They are also easily some of the best episodes from the show’s various resurrections, with Meanwhile considered one of the greatest episodes from the entire series.

Here’s the finale episode masterplan for a modern Futurama season or series finisher, based on my interpretation.

Start with an ambitious, often complicated hard sci fi idea as the driver for the adventure, jeopardy, comedy and character beats. Often these involve time travel or the future, as well as other timelines and universes. Let the episode focus on Fry, Leela and/ or Bender, often with a decent amount of screen time for the supporting cast of Farnsworth, Hermes, Amy and the rest (Zoidberg). And finally, leverage whatever sci fi concept is being used to build to an emotional payoff for Fry and Leela, usually spotlighting their ongoing romantic connection.

In other words, take HG Wells, Isaac Asimov or The Twilight Zone, channel the show’s most important themes and character arcs into the narrative and play us out.

The show had several episodes that ticked most of these boxes in its original run, such as ‘Time Keeps on Slippin’’ and ‘The Sting’, as well as the acclaimed ‘The Late Philip J. Fry’ from the Comedy Central run. Each of these combines sophisticated science fiction derring do with heartfelt storytelling. All they are missing from the formula is a placement at the end of a season, and – crucially – a definitive remark on Fry and Leela’s relationship at the end.

Revealingly, Ken Keeler wrote ‘Time Keeps on Slippin’’ as well as ‘The Devil’s Hands’, ‘Overclockwise’, ‘Meanwhile’ and ‘Otherwise.’ He also wrote high point episodes for the show’s relationship storylines and high concept sci fi riffs with ‘Put Your Head on my Shoulders’ and ‘Godfellas’, respectively, suggesting he just “gets” how to write the show’s hallmark themes.

“Every time I burp, a new galaxy is created.”

In ‘Overclockwise’, originally written as a potential series finale, Bender exponentially increases his processing power, ultimately becoming capable of predicting the future. It’s an interesting variation on the character to turn him into a powerful, Skynet-like being. It produces plenty of laughs – with Bender repeatedly arranging for Dr. Zoidberg to stand under chandeliers just as they’re about to drop. In a subplot, Leela leaves both her job and Fry, leaving Fry wondering about their future. The convergence of the two plots leads to two resounding emotional moments expressed largely through animation. The image of a future-seeing Bender’s wordless, conflicted expression when Fry asks about his future with Leela is a genuinely fantastic piece of visual storytelling. Then there’s the episode’s ending, where Bender has made a note of the couple’s future after being rebooted to factory settings by Mom (along with taking down a list of which chandeliers are going to fall). In another silent scene, Fry and Leela read their future – expressing sadness, jealousy, worry and happiness as they do. It leaves enough to the viewer’s imagination to be evocative, and pays off the central storyline well.

‘Overclockwise’ builds its story on the best things about the show – a fanciful sci fi concept (based on overclocking CPUs), a romantic payoff, and Bender doing or becoming something outlandish yet completely in character.

“I was never lonely. Not even for a minute.”

It’s between ‘Meanwhile’ and ‘The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings’ for the greatest finale in the show’s history, and although ‘The Devil’s Hands’ is funnier, you cannot deny the full force of ‘Meanwhile’’s narrative. Once again written by Keeler as a possible series finale, it ended up serving that purpose for ten years as Comedy Central didn’t order any more episodes after it aired.

When the Professor invents a button that goes back in time ten seconds, and then has to recharge for ten seconds, Fry decides to use it to savour the moment of his proposal to Leela – after also using it to steal her a ring. The timey wimey misadventures eventually result in Fry falling to his death over and over again, and finally stopping time altogether when he breaks the button. In a sequence to rival anything the show had done before for pure wist, Fry and Leela are shown growing old together in a world frozen in place.

The spry plotting and comedy antics of the episode are all just setup for these sweeping, romantic scenes to play out, and for an aged Fry’s words to Leela when the Professor arrives to reset the universe. “Wanna go around again?” “I do,” she replies. It’s wonderful stuff, and rightly seen as a fitting place to leave the series.

A decade later the show is back, and it has yet to be cancelled again – Hulu ordered twenty more episodes across two seasons before the first order of twenty had all been released. Nevertheless the writers capped each season of ten episodes with another episode true to the established formula for their finale episodes, creating a brace of certified keepers in the process. With the series now 25 years old – even if it hasn’t been on the air for most of that time – it almost feels as if the creatives have a duty to make sure they keep crafting worthy finales, as they’ve wrapped things up with such aplomb in the past. It would be a shame to bring it back and ultimately end things on a lesser note.

Fortunately, the two finales served so far indicate that they’ve still got their formula down, tapping the winning structure of the above two examples.

“I feel, therefore I am.”

Of the two, I might prefer 2023’s ‘All the Way Down’. With an intellectual exploration of the concept of a simulated universe, the episode is actually mostly set around the table at Planet Express (in contrast with the vivid, dramatic imagery of many of the finales). With Farnsworth’s homemade simulated universe on the table between them, it’s one round of philosophical questions after another. The best character development here might be Amy, who has come into her own as a doctor of applied physics and a mother throughout the show’s renewals. She spars with the Professor over the conundrum of how we would be able to know if we lived in a simulation, while the crew ponder whether they’d even want to know if they did and Bender has an existential crisis. Fry and Leela don’t have much to do, however they do get their big emotional moment at the end. When Farnsworth and Amy underclock the simulation, causing it to run at a hundredth of a second speed, the simulated Fry and Leela just happen to be going in for a kiss – they and the rest of their universe slow to an imperceptible speed, freezing the moment in tableau as the credits roll.

Written by co-creator David X. Cohen, ‘All the Way Down’ has been warmly received by viewers, who enjoyed how it captures the feel of “classic” Futurama. Capping off a season that has an episode satirising covid years after lockdown, and another about blockchain, this certainly feels like more familiar territory and the show playing to its strengths.

Leaving it to viewers’ imagination whether Bender ever escapes the simulation he enters and goes “back up”, or whether our Bender is now from a universe further up himself, and whether we were watching a simulation the whole time (as hinted deftly with a zoom out partway through), and indeed whether any of that matters if the way we feel is still real, are all very interesting questions to leave lingering in the mind and very confident writing. It’s an episode that gets better the more you think about it, and that’s a powerful thing for a finale to do.

“If two of the three of us have to get married, I’m glad it’s them.”

‘Otherwise’, on the other hand, deals with multiverses. Since the original run episode ‘The Farnsworth Parabox’, which quite excellently used the concept for a slew of light hearted character moments and a bit of rumination on leaving things to chance, multiverses have taken over at the cineplex. Between ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ and Marvel, the idea has been thoroughly explored in pop culture in recent years. Futurama’s latest take on the idea adds a twist – Fry suffers a nearly lethal “Deja Vu attack” and debilitating episodes of Deja Vu throughout the story, as a parallel reality bleeds into his. Meanwhile the crew get a fancy new delivery vessel and end up in a dogfight against invisible “ghost ships” alongside Zapp Brannigan – with Brannigan conducting a marriage ceremony for Fry and Leela amidst the chaos.

The swashbuckling plot makes a nice contrast to ‘All the Way Down’ which is almost all conversation. It leads to a punchy reveal that for most of the episode we were watching the parallel universe version of the Planet Express Crew, with some clever foreshadowing along the way – a glimpse of the crew in their original ship during the space battle. It is Futurama at its most maximalist, hitting all its beats and giving us a big moment while demurring from actually marrying off the couple. There are also many callbacks to earlier episodes: Bender’s fear of the can opener, references to different lengths of wire, and an extended sequence recalling ‘Meanwhile’.

Ultimately it may come down to taste. Like with ‘The Devil’s Hands’, there’s something purely evocative and a little bit perfect about the idea of a tiny alternative dimension Fry and Leela frozen in an endless kiss. However, ‘Otherwise’ feels so emblematic of the finale formula they’ve established. Not to mention, it makes me think that Futurama could do worse than an episode riffing on Deja Vu based films like ‘Groundhog Day’, ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ or ‘Lola Rennt.’

With such an established and – so far – successful approach to tying up its character arcs and delivering a memorable shot of its sci fi infused storytelling, Futurama seems well equipped to bring things to a satisfying close when it ends – and who knows, ends again.

Interestingly, ‘Otherwise’ aired within days of ‘Bart’s Birthday’, a Simpsons episode that jokingly imagines the show’s finale. If Matt Groening’s most enduring series wants to leave us with a truly worthy ending when the time comes, perhaps it’s a good idea for it to start getting as much practice as Groening’s most unkillable series.