Groening Vows 'Futurama' Will 'Rise Again' After Another Finale

As 'Futurama' wraps Season 14 on Hulu with no renewal in place, Matt Groening tells Variety the show can't be buried and three XXXL specials arrive in 2027.

On Monday, September 28, Hulu released "Final Ending: The Last Conclusion," the Season 14 closer of "Futurama," with no renewal for a 15th season announced — though three supersized "XXXL" Hulu specials are still in production for 2027, according to Variety. Matt Groening told Variety in an exclusive: "They can put us in a coffin. They can nail the lid shut, but they can't bury us. We will rise again." The episode's fatalistically redundant title is a joke the writers built in on purpose, since the show has faced this exact moment many times before. Cracked notes the episode features Fry chasing the ending of a movie he saw a millennium ago while the Professor muses on humanity's evolutionary need for conclusions.

The finale math has become a running gag inside the show itself. David X. Cohen, who developed the series with Groening, told "The Making Of" podcast — as cited by Variety — that "Final Ending: The Last Conclusion" is the sixth episode written as a potential series finale, and the upcoming "XXXL" trilogy is giving the team a seventh crack at one. Cracked counts the same sixth-finale total, and ranks the candidates from "Overclockwise" and "Into the Wild Green Yonder" up to "Meanwhile," the 2013 ending it calls the best. The show premiered on Fox in 1999, ended in 2003, was revived by Comedy Central in 2008, wrapped again in 2013, and returned via Hulu in 2023.

Variety quotes Cohen explaining that the team approaches each possible ending with the characters' lives continuing beyond the credits: "if we go off the air, the characters are still having their adventures." He said he likes leaving audiences believing beautiful things are ahead, whether or not viewers get to see them, calling that the guiding philosophy for the finales the show has written. Groening framed the mood as "whistling-past-the-graveyard," telling Variety the writers, animators and actors all have more stories to tell — even adding that each "Futurama" episode packs enough melodrama to stretch into a movie.

Variety reports the three "XXXL-Sized" specials, first announced at San Diego Comic-Con and now in production, kick off in 2027 with a Christmas — or "Xmas" — installment starring Robot Santa, the murderous St. Nick who Groening says was once controversial enough that there was talk of not airing those episodes. Groening teased that the specials will pay off hints planted since 1999 and answer unanswered questions for true fans, but says specifics must wait a year. He also credited Hulu and Disney for asking for "big stories that we can promote."

If the specials truly are the end, Groening told Variety the team would simply do something else together, noting the cast, writers and animation studio also made "Disenchantment" for five seasons on Netflix. That shared crew enabled Season 14's penultimate episode, "A New New York Yankee in King Elfo's Court," a "Futurama"/"Disenchantment" crossover that Groening called "a very nimble negotiation to have Disney and Netflix working together." The series, produced by 20th Television Animation with animation from Rough Draft Studios, stars John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal and the rest of the long-running voice cast.

The near-term calendar is settled even if the series' fate is not: Cracked reports the tenth and final episode of Season 14 is now streaming on Hulu, with three exclusive 2027 specials slated, including an extra-length X-Mas episode. The TV Cave's Monday roundup lists the Season 14 finale among the night's key streaming events, alongside All American's series finale on The CW.