‘Futurama’ Cast Talks How the Season 13 Finale Honors the Show’s Legacy

Fans of Futurama know that since its debut, the series has had more than its fair share of finales, both season and series, thanks to the show’s confusing history. Over the past two decades, it has been on and off the air a few times, so it has had several series finales.

The first series finale, “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings” in Season 4, saw Fry trade his hands to the Robot Devil so he could impress Leela with a flawless holophonor symphony. It ends with the two holding hands as the screen fades to black. The next would-be ending was the 2009 film Into the Wild Green Yonder, created as a send-off during the show’s DVD movie era. “Overclockwise” from Season 6 served as another possible finale, as Comedy Central had yet to announce renewal, closing with Fry and Leela contemplating their future, while Season 7’s “Meanwhile” marked the show’s 2013 conclusion, with Fry and Leela living out an entire lifetime together. And this list doesn’t include season finales, which can be just as poignant.

Now streaming on Hulu, Futurama has been renewed beyond Season 13 and delivers another “finale” with the episode “The White Hole.” Although it is not the end of the series, this season’s closer explores themes of aging, immortality, and what it means to leave a mark on the universe before you are gone, something Futurama knows well. Very well.

Disney/Matt Groening

To complete a mission to witness the birth of a universe and serve as Earth’s ambassadors, the crew is frozen for 10 million years. While they remain in stasis, replicants of the Planet Express gang keep the ship running. Throughout that time, thousands of duplicates are created to handle everything from repairs to sweeping up the dust and bones of earlier versions. Though only minutes pass on Earth, aboard the ship, the crew lives and dies through thousands of versions of themselves.

Hilarious and heartfelt, the episode ends with the replicants rebelling and claiming the glory of discovery rather than dying like their predecessors. Their fleeting existence, working and disintegrating within minutes, underscores life’s fragility and death’s inevitability, even in a future of cloning and cryo-freezing. In the end, the ones who did the work and saw the miracle are erased from history, while those who slept through it return home to a hero’s welcome. The mission to witness a new universe’s birth becomes a meditation on what it means to leave a mark and be remembered.

Disney/Matt Groening

“The White Hole” offers a grand payoff that echoes many of the series’ core themes surrounding mortality, legacy, and heroism. The finale stays true to that formula: it wraps death, identity, and purpose into a time-traveling cosmic event, yet it’s still fundamentally about what it means to live and be remembered.

Billy West — the voice behind Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan, and more — credits the show’s longevity to the consistent quality of its content.

“The qualities of a show that help people, elevate them, rather than drag things down. You know, you can mirror the reality of TikTok and society, and because we bear witness to the destruction of Western civilization on your phones all day. Futurama has an optimism in the way they think, and there’s an innocence to the characters still,” West told TV Insider.

Disney/Matt Groening

“The writers keep everything vibrant. We have such great respect for them, so we honor those words. It’s like gospel to us, and they keep making the characters interesting,” voice actress Lauren Tom (Amy) commented.

“I think the trademark has always just been how smart the comedy is, and that our writers literally have come from Harvard — even though we haven’t really had the same exact writers through the entire 25 years — they always end up choosing really smart folks to write,” continued Tom.

In addition to genius writing, the actors credit the scribes with keeping them engaged as well.

“I love it when they introduce what the characters have gone forward to do,” said Phil LaMar (Hermes). “Like Amy had children. I mean, I would love to see Fry and Leela have a one-eyed baby. Or maybe find some more hidden past connections with characters, like we did recently, find a connection between Hermes and Bender. Yes, Hermes helped make Bender, but it took us decades to find that.”

But for the crew, both live-action and animated, Futurama stands as a test of time.

“Because it’s from our past, but it is our future,” said LaMar.

Futurama, Season 13, All episodes streaming, Hulu

Read the latest entertainment news on TV Insider.