Matt Groening on the future of ‘Futurama’ after the end of the season 14 series finale

“Futurama” is over. Long live “Futurama!” »

While the long-running animated series concludes its season 14 Monday on Hulu, there are no plans at this time for it to return as a series regular. (However, three supersized Hulu specials are still coming).

But given how often Matt Groening’s animated comedy has ended — only to be rebooted a few years later — it’s hard for everyone involved, including Groening, to assume that this time, it’s really done.

“They can put us in a coffin. They can nail the lid, but they can’t bury us. We will be resurrected,” Groening said. Variety. “I guess I’m not too worried.”

“Futurama” first premiered on Fox in 1999, but ended its run there in 2003. Comedy Central revived it in 2008 and ended the series in 2013. It returned again in 2023 via Hulu.

Every time the series disappeared or it seemed like the series was ending, the producers would prepare an episode that could serve as the series finale – only for the series to return later. This is why the producers had fun with the episodic name of the last “finale” of the year. Monday’s episode – the end of “Futurama” season 14 – was given the title “Final Ending: The Final Conclusion.” The episode is a bit of an origins/flashback story; here’s the logline: “Fry and his brother sneak into a PG-13 movie as kids…with shocking consequences for the future.”

And yes, this could still serve as the series regular finale. But don’t bet on it.

“The thing about ‘Is Futurama coming to an end?’ Well, we’ve gotten to the end many times before. We make a joke out of it with the season finale. Its title is redundant and fatalistic,” Groening said. “I think we have a whistle-to-the-graveyard attitude these days because we’ve been in this situation many times before. We have a lot more stories to tell. The animators, the actors and the writers would all love to do more stories and we’ll see. You never know.”

In the meantime, “Futurama” continues with these three specials (dubbed “XXXL-Sized”) first announced at San Diego Comic-Con this summer. These extended episodes, currently in production, will begin in 2027 with a Christmas-related episode.

“The Hulu/Disney people were saying, ‘Hey, give us some big stories that we can promote,’ and we said, ‘I got you,'” Groening said. “So these three upcoming stories are kind of epic stories, and they can be promoted.”

“The nature of these stories, in general for ‘Futurama’ and also ‘The Simpsons,’ is that every episode could be a movie,” he added. “I mean, we pack enough melodrama and shenanigans into each episode to expand it. It’s just fun to tell a bigger story, but also take time to breathe a little bit. Because one of the things that plagues animated series is a short running time.”

Beyond the extended Christmas episode, Groening won’t share yet what the other two specials are about, only noting that “we’ve been on the air forever, since 1999, so there’s more to the overall story arc of the characters. The things we hinted at early on have finally come to fruition, and some unanswered questions for true fans will finally be answered. But I can’t really be more specific. If you ask me again in a year, then I can talk about it.

But he shared more in the Christmas edition (or in “Futurama” parlance, “Christmas”): Robot Santa, the violent version of St. Nick who has made occasional visits to “Futurama” since Season 2, will play a role.

“Our version of Christmas, of course, is with Robot Santa,” Groening said. “Which was very controversial at the time, because our robot Santa thought he was Santa, but he thought everyone was bad, so he was trying to kill everyone. That didn’t fit into the Christmas spirit. At first there was talk about not running the shows. That was controversial. But now everyone realized, hey, that’s all, it’s all for fun!”

In a recent episode of “The Making Of” podcast, executive producer David

“When we were writing this season finale, from our point of view, it could have been the series finale and that’s a situation we’ve probably found ourselves in more than any other show in history,” Cohen told the podcast. “The one that’s going to air shortly is our sixth series finale, in the sense that it might have been at the time we wrote it, and we’re working on the seventh series finale at the moment. I feel like we’re pretty good at that.

“In my mind, if we go off the air, the characters are still having their adventures and interesting things are still happening,” Cohen added. “And I like to let the audience think that there are great things to come for these characters, whether we get to see them or not. That’s kind of the philosophy that guides the finales of these series that we’ve written.”

What will happen if, after the three upcoming specials, “Futurama” really doesn’t come back? “If that doesn’t happen, we’ll do something else,” Groening said. “I love the group of people working on this. It’s just great to work together. In fact, the ‘Futurama’ cast, the animation studio and a lot of the writers also worked on ‘Disenchantment,’ which is what I did with Netflix for five seasons.”

That’s why the penultimate episode of season 14, “A New York Yankee in the Court of King Elfo,” featured a “Futurama”/”Disenchantment” crossover episode. Bringing together a Netflix and Hulu series wasn’t easy. “It’s been a very nimble negotiation for Disney and Netflix to work together,” he said.

“Futurama” stars John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman. Groening created the series which he developed with David X. Cohen. Groening, Cohen, Ken Keeler and Claudia Katz are EPs; the series is produced by 20th Television Animation, part of Disney Television Studios. Animation comes from Rough Draft Studios.