Futurama, created by Matt Groening, has always been a show caught between love and frustration, both from its creators and its fans. The show’s relationship with FOX (The network they originally broadcast on), was tumultuous at best, with the show’s writers constantly fearing cancellation. The unsure ground the writers were treading on led to the show ostensibly getting 4 finales. 

It never matched the success of Matt Groening’s more notable The Simpsons, making the show entirely dispensable for FOX. They aired episodes out of order, sometimes not airing it on certain weeks, and they notoriously kept rotating its time slot on a weekly basis making it impossible to keep up with the show. FOX simply had no interest in the show and wanted to remove it and made it their goal to quietly put down the show, leading to its cancellation in 2003. 

After numerous revivals and potential finales, it seemed the book had closed on the world of tomorrow in 2013 with the excellent ‘Meanwhile’, a stirringly sweet and wonderful way to send of the show. However, after 10 years the show has been brought back for an 8th official season (11th broadcast season), a remarkable testament to the enduring fanbase the show has accumulated over time no doubt, but it came with a lot of baggage for fans. Speculation that the revival would continue the downward trend of declining quality that fans perceived during the Comedy Central years of the show (it’s original revival), gave a hint of doubt about the merits of another revival. 

This new Season, released in two parts on Hulu or Disney Plus in the UK, unfortunately, does not capture the quality of the show’s golden age, instead, conjures memories of it. That’s not to say it was all bad. There were certainly some top-notch episodes in the first half of the season. ‘I Know What You Did Last X-Mas’, ‘Related to Items You’ve Viewed’, and ‘All the Way Down’, were all fantastic additions to the Futurama library, truly capturing the balance of humour, heart and social commentary reminiscent of the show’s golden years. However, many episodes strain to resemble a similar authenticity, coming closer to a desperate imitation than a fully fledged reboot. Many episodes, especially in the second half of the season, are forgettable, lacking a memorable plot or jokes. 

Many fans have cited the seasons overreliance on topical references and humour, a tendency the Comedy Central run frequently indulged in. The season references NFT’s, Cryptocurrency, COVID-19, (3 years after quarantine!), cancel culture and Amazon – a wealth of topics which already seem irrelevant to most viewers and unfortunately, the writers couldn’t do anything particularly humorous or imaginative to make it feel timeless. Instead, it largely misses the mark and already feels outdated. 

The season was capped off with an underwhelming finale, ‘Otherwise’, which while being a decent episode, didn’t reach the romantic or sentimental heights of previous finales. But despite the mixed bag of episodes, it’s great to hear the entire voice cast return, to mine whatever charm they can from the material, even if their voices have notably aged in the ten-year gap. The show does admittedly recapture the charm ever present in the show, so you can almost overlook the season’s various problems. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that the show is becoming a nostalgic blast from the past offering comfort when needed, rather than the hilarious, intelligent and daring show that it began as. It gives way to an interesting form of melancholia that occurs when a beloved show starts losing its teeth. The inconsistent quality of the season may draw up questions about whether it was worth reviving this classic, but it’s nice to have these characters back, while it lasts. 

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