Futurama is back with the one change fans wanted

Futurama is a TV institution. The sci-fi comedy first premiered in 1999 on Fox, and has weathered many changes in the years since. It was canceled at least twice, once on Fox and later on Comedy Central, before coming back in its current form on Hulu, where it just started airing its 14th season.

Last year, Hulu changed the show’s long-running formula and dropped every episode of Season 13 all at once. For Season 14, it’s taking a more traditional approach, and it’s the right move.

The long and continuing legacy of Futurama

There are a lot of stories in the future

Futurama is the story of Philip J. Fry (Billy West), a dull-witted pizza delivery boy living in New York City in the year 1999. He accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the year 2999. In the far future, space travel is fast and common, one-eyed mutants walk among us, and the devil is a robot who lives underneath New Jersey. Everyone Fry ever knew and loved is dead, but he’s way too excited about this fresh start to care.

Futurama is created by David X. Cohen and Matt Groening, the latter of whom also created The Simpsons, and the shows have long had a kinship. Like The Simpsons, Futurama is full of pithy one-liners, visual gags, and cultural commentary, but this time it’s dressed up like a sci-fi show rather than a family sitcom. Sci-fi comedies are hard to make work, but Futurama has pulled it off nearly three decades now.

Not that there haven’t been challenges. As funny as the show was, it was never as popular as The Simpsons, which led to Fox canceling the series in 2003 after five excellent seasons. It bounced back on Comedy Central in 2008, where it stayed for five more years before getting canceled again. Hulu has been airing new episodes since 2023.

Futurama has survived the jump from network to cable to streaming, staying consistent through multiple eras of television history. It’s always remained steadfastly itself, despite attempts along the way to change it.

Futurama is as sharp as ever

And fans get to watch it the way it was meant to be watched

The current fourteenth season of Futurama kicked off with a two-episode premiere on Monday, August 3. New episodes will air every Monday until the season wraps up on September 18 with an episode ominously titled, “Final Ending: The Last Conclusion.” That sounds pretty definitive, but this show has cheated death enough times for us to know not to take it too seriously.

Last year, Hulu tried dropping all 10 episodes of Futurama Season 13 at once, on September 15, 2025. Results were mixed. Some fans liked the opportunity to binge the new season, but others didn’t like that the massive drop disrupted the usual pace of the series, and robbed the fans of the opportunity to talk about each episode as they came out. It was a version of a conversation TV fans have been having for years, ever since Netflix started making original series and pioneered the binge model.

For Futurama, the once-a-week model definitely works better. Unlike a show like The Simpsons, the status quo does change on Futurama, if slowly. For instance, over the course of the series, we see the characters Kif (Maurice LaMarche) and Amy (Lauren Tom) flirt, get into a relationship, and eventually have kids. Their son Newt is now a recurring character. Fry and Leela (Katey Sagal) have a relationship that waxes and wanes over the years. When the story changes like this, it’s better if episodes come out once a week, so viewers can absorb the plot twists at the same pace.

Binging TV vs once-a-week

What’s better depends on the show

Credit: Hulu

I don’t want to imply that Futurama is a soap opera. The focus remains on entertainment. Season 14 satirizes scammers, lab-grown meat, Ticketmaster, and competitive eaters, and features a healthy helping of vampires, pirates, and parodies of movies like Planet of the Apes and Smokey and the Bandit. The gags come fast and furious.

The binge model works for some shows. Hulu is also airing new episodes of King of the Hill, another animated sitcom that is being revived years after cancellation. In that case, they’ve dumped all the episodes of the new seasons at once, and no one has complained. But with Futurama, it’s good to stick to the weekly model.

Futurama forever

Hulu has more Futurama planned. After this current season wraps up, they’re planning a trio of super-sized episodes, including a Christmas special, that will arrive in 2027.

So if you’re a fan, you’ll be eating well for a while to come. If you’re not but you’re curious, there’s never been a better time to see what the fuss is about. And if you prefer your sci-fi shows to be more dramatic, you have lots of options.