A return to the year 3000 is in your future. Hulu has released two minutes of clips from the next season of Futurama, due to premiere by the end of the month….plus a bonus poster you can print out and stick on your apartment wall. Neat!
Though there were concerns the re-re-re-return of Futurama would bring diminishing returns, the ten episodes we got last year were mostly as strong as ever. Turns out there’s still plenty of gas dark matter whale oil in this ship’s tank. We’ve watched the below trailer already and laughed out loud quite a few times. Coming attractions include Bender visiting his extended family, and oddly enough, an episode devoted to the history of coffee.
Though coffee isn’t a new invention, Futurama tends to use its distant-future setting to tackle contemporary issues and trends. One big question is how this show plans to riff on the rise of AI since….well….it already happened. The world — nay, the galaxy — is full of robots. How special would ChatGPT be if Bender already exists? It’s been confirmed there is an AI episode in the coming season…it’ll be interesting to see how they solve this one.
“On this orbit around the sun, our occasionally heroic crew embarks on mind-bending adventures involving birthday party games to the death, the secrets of Bender’s ancestral robot village, A.I. friends (and enemies), impossibly cute beanbags, and the true 5 million-year-old story behind the consciousness-altering substance known as coffee. And, of course, the next chapter in Fry and Leela’s fateful, time-twisted romance.”
As always — though there was a brief contract negotiation scare a while ago — Futurama stars the voices of Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman. Futurama returns July 29 on Hulu and runs new episodes weekly through September.