After four seasons on Hulu, the sci-fi animated series Futurama delivered an episode that many viewers assumed would be its final one. The season finale, titled “Final Ending: The Last Conclusion,” premiered today on the streaming service, but creators David X. Cohen and Matt Groening have now confirmed the show will return in 2027 with three new specials. What plays as a sweeping series finale was, in a very real sense, written as one — a direct product of the uncertainty that surrounded the series’ revival.
“At the time we wrote the season finale, we did not know if the show would be going on again. So in our minds, that’s a last episode ever, and we wrote it accordingly,” Cohen, the longtime showrunner who co-developed Futurama with Groening, told Polygon. The episode follows Fry as he searches for a copy of a 20th-century film he and his brother Yancy snuck into as children, using that quest as a springboard for a meditation on endings themselves. Professor Farnsworth proposes a theory on why people crave conclusions, while the rest of the Planet Express crew navigate their own ending-related stories. The hour marks the close of Futurama’s current Hulu era, which began in 2023.
A Finale Built Around the Concept of Endings
Cohen said the episode grew out of his long experience writing last episodes — a distinction few series can claim. Futurama has now produced six such closers, and the team is working on a seventh.
“I’ve thought a lot about endings of stories, endings of series, and so this one is really an ending about the concept of endings. It’s based on this idea I have that human beings actually evolved to need to know the ends of stories.”
David X. Cohen, Futurama showrunner
Cohen illustrated his theory with an evolutionary example, suggesting that early humans who craved the resolution of a story — whether a forest might contain a bear or a tree heavy with mangoes — gained a survival advantage. Executive producer Claudia Katz added that the show’s structure, built on two-season orders of ten episodes each, shaped how the writers approached the closer.
“With this finale, there’s a bittersweetness to Futurama, which is really anchored in Fry disappearing. His whole family went on without him,” Katz said. The episode also nods to “Meanwhile,” the beloved 2013 series finale — a gesture Cohen said he intends to land as a reminder that the world keeps turning even after the credits roll.
A Bolder Format for the 2027 Specials
While the season finale closed one chapter, Cohen and Katz revealed that the three upcoming specials will offer the creative team more freedom than a standard 22-minute episode allows. Rather than cramming a story into a single slot, the team can spread out a “really big, cinematic, epic Futurama story,” Cohen said.
Cohen described the format as the outcome of discussions with Hulu and Disney about what would best serve the franchise. “We want to have some special events to call attention to Futurama,” he said, framing the specials as premiere-style moments rather than a conventional new season. Katz called the approach a way to “eventize” the content, delivering three distinct events after four straight seasons of the same format.
The first special will embrace the holiday spectacular genre, blending Bender’s romance with a talking snowman with an emotional farewell to Kwanzaabot, the character voiced by the late Coolio. Cohen noted that Rough Draft Studios is employing “out of the box” animation techniques, with a nod to classic Christmas special styling.
Beyond the holiday entry, Cohen said the specials will pay off the long-running arc of Fry and Leela’s relationship. “We are going to deal quite a bit with that in a way that pays off the many years that we’ve been leading up to what’s really going on there,” he said, though he stopped short of revealing details of the still-in-production finale.
Looking Ahead
Cohen confirmed that the upcoming series finale, now in the writing stage, will tie together the grand plan for the universe with the characters’ personal hopes and dreams — a natural moment for the small green alien Nibbler to step in. “The script will be coming in any minute now,” Cohen joked, before Katz shot back: “I didn’t even know that yet!”
As Futurama looks toward its 2027 specials, the creators remain focused on the emotional core that has defined the series throughout its many revivals. For Cohen, the measure of success remains simple. Asked what Slurm tastes like, he answered without hesitation: “It tastes like addictive.” Futurama is streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus.
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