Summary

• Futurama's season 11 revival could bring back characters with unfulfilled potential.
• The revival should improve on the inconsistent anthology episodes from past seasons.
• The show should address and make up for past misjudged plot lines.

While the Futurama revival is going strong, the series still has a few controversial storylines from earlier seasons that season 11 should fix. Futurama has a messy history. The show began airing in 1999 and originally lasted four seasons. Futurama was canceled in 2003, but the show was then revived for a quartet of straight-to-DVD feature-length spinoff movies between 2007 and 2008. These proved so popular that Futurama was revived again in 2010 for two more seasons. Futurama was canceled again in 2013, only for Hulu to revive the series once more in 2023.

As such, it was no surprise when Futurama's revival used a meta-joke to mock the show's rocky network history in the season 11 premiere. Since then, it has been relatively smooth sailing for the latest Futurama revival. Despite concerns that the series would feature too much topical humor with trailer gags about cryptocurrency and pandemics, the first few episodes of Futurama’s season 11 revival maintained a clear focus on the show’s lead characters. However, while the signs are promising for the revival, the show still has an opportunity to revisit and resolve some historical arcs that, with hindsight, failed to deliver first time around.

8 Futurama’s Revival Can Bring Back Harold Zoid

Last seen in his weak debut, Futurama season 3, episode 8, “That’s Lobstertainment!” Harold was an utterly forgettable addition to the show’s cast who never justified his presence in the series. Harold Zoid’s first outing was so weak that even the show’s producers itted “That’s Lobstertainment!” was among Futurama’s least-liked episodes in season 3's DVD commentary.

Fortunately, The Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria is still available to reprise this role in a season 11 revival episode. This new outing could give Zoidberg’s uncle a purpose beyond slapstick silliness and this could redeem a character that had plenty of unfulfilled potential. While the characters of Futurama love to hate Zoidberg, he is a fan-favorite figure and, as such, his uncle deserves a better legacy on the series than “That’s Lobstertainment!”

7 Futurama’s Revival Could Get Anthology Episodes Right

Like The Simpsons, Futurama occasionally split up the show’s episodes into three mini-stories with a framing device. However, this yielded inconsistent results, especially after the show’s first cancelation. As such, Futurama’s season 11 revival needs to make up for season 7, episode 19, “Saturday Morning Fun Pit,” and season 6, episode 13, “The Futurama Holiday Spectacular.” These two fan-hated outings struggled with the format even though Futurama had produced plenty of stellar anthology episodes earlier in its run.

6 Futurama’s Revival Could Retcon The Show’s Worst Episode

One storyline that Futurama has largely ignored began in season 6, episode 3, “Attack of the Killer App.” This episode was widely disliked as most of the outing’s plot was based, inexplicably, on mean-spirited a parody of the obscure Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle. The episode ended with Mom’s company turning millions of customers into mindless drones. Now that Futurama season 11, episode 5, “Related to Items You've Viewed” brought back Mom and changed her company to Momazon, there is already a perfect setup for the show to explain what happened after this abandoned storyline.

5 Futurama’s Revival Could Undo Its Transphobic Episode

While most of Futurama’s missteps were disliked because they were unfunny or pointless, some of the show’s misjudged plot lines were more harmful. For example, Futurama season 4, episode 12, “Bend Her,” saw Bender opportunistically alter his gender to cheat in sporting events where he competed with female robots. The plot’s inherent transphobia drew criticism according to Futurama’s crossover with The Simpsons, these criticisms weren’t limited to its weak writing. The episode’s entire premise was transphobic, meaning the season 11 revival should address this plot and make up for its misguided message about gender roles.

4 Futurama Season 11 Could Address Leela’s Sporting Career

Futurama season 3, episode 16, “A Leela of Her Own” established that Leela canonically holds the status of “Worst blernsball player of all time,” thanks to her brief career as a professional player of the sport. However, as this outing was widely disliked, her achievements in the game and attendant fame haven't been mentioned since. A follow-up storyline could explain whether Leela is still ed for her blernsball playing and whether she returned to the sport, both of which would go some way to making up for the underwhelming conclusion of this forgotten plot line.

3 Futurama Season 11 Can Give Cubert and Dwight A Solid Story

Futurama season 3, episode 12, “The Route of All Evil,” took an interesting risk when the series gave Cubert and Dwight a storyline of their own. Unfortunately, every episode of Futurama’s season 11 revival has been stronger than this atypically weak outing. To make up for the largely pointless events of the only earlier episode that they headlined, the show’s two youngest heroes should get another, more substantial standalone outing that proves Cubert and Dwight can hold up a solid story on their own after all.

2 Futurama Season 11 Can Focus On Kif, Amy, and Their Kids

Futurama fixed at least one of the show’s major mistakes when season 11’s revival gave Amy and Kif an episode of their own. The birth of the pair’s progeny was covered in season 11, episode 4, “Children of a Lesser Bog.” However, they could still benefit from more focus after how disappointing Futurama season 4, episode 1, “Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch” was. That outing somehow made Kif’s pregnancy a story about Leela, so Amy deserves more Futurama focus after this unnecessary diversion.

1 Futurama Season 11 Can Address Bender’s Free Will (Properly)

In Futurama season 7, episode 9, “Free Will Hunting,” the question of whether Bender has free will was brought up for the first time when he nearly killed Professor Farnsworth. As intriguing as this topic seems, the show then skirted around the story’s potential and provided no meaningful conclusion or character growth in the outing. Thus, Futurama’s season 11 revival should revisit this plot and give the existential dilemma more thought. It would be interesting to find out whether the morally ambiguous antihero Bender really is not responsible for his actions, and Futurama’s season 11 revival could answer this question with a deeper episode that revisits this forgotten plot.