Futurama season 12 will answer "important" cliffhangers in "huge" stories, showrunner confirms
"Do not fear – we are going to address those important hanging issues."
Futurama showrunner David X Cohen has confirmed that all our big questions from season 11 are about to be answered as the series gears up for some "huge" stories in season 12.
The animated sci-fi returned to screens last year after a 10-year hiatus, with the second season of its comeback about to debut.
Season 11 left us on quite the cliffhanger, with the Planet Express crew wondering if they're in a simulation and with questions about how much Fry remembers after his rebirth.
Cohen tells RadioTimes.com: "At the time we wrote our 10th episode of this season, we had not been renewed yet. Now as it turned out, we got we have at least two more seasons after this season coming.
"But you have to think back, to put yourselves in our heads. At the time we wrote the last episode of this year, it was for the fifth time we thought there was a good chance we were writing the series finale, the last episode we'd ever do.
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"So it very much touches on our last series finale and that so, at the end of the year, things get quite emotional and we sort of deal with the whole question of 'what do Fry and Leela remember? What do they not remember? How does the old universe fold into this new universe?' So it's quite touching and it was intended to be possibly our last episode ever again. So yes, do not fear – we are going to address those important hanging issues."
He adds of what's to come: "Last year, we did a lot of work to bring the show back. This year, I feel like we have total freedom and some big epic sci-fi adventures.
"So a little more freedom, some huge stories that are more about the characters and not about necessarily the technical explanations of why we're allowed to be back on TV and continue.
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"So a couple of my favourites, just character-wise, there's meeting Bender’s extended family in Mexico, for example. And we have a big Squid Game episode, our second one, which is called Quids Game...
"One other favourite one I'm going to point out because I wouldn't have expected it to be my favourite for the season, but just in terms of sci-fi’s ability to comment on our world today, we have our fast fashion episode coming up in the middle of the season, because we had a writer who knows a lot about fashion and she wanted to do it and I was like, 'I will find a sci-fi take on that!' And it ended up being probably my favourite of the season, and we have Cara Delevigne in that."
Cohen also points out that Futurama streaming rather than being on commercial television adds a crucial extra few minutes, which are key for the show's "ambitious" new episodes.
"We can make the episodes a little bit longer ad we found that allows us really to do a little bigger B story or more complicated interweaving of stories," he explains.
"You wouldn't think having an extra one or two minutes would make that big of a difference. But it has, it really does. So for example, the story with Bender's family, there's another story going on, which is really fun, about this museum heist going on. It ties into it, but we never would have been able to do that type of episode with a minute and a half less of screen time."
Futurama season 12 begins on Disney Plus on 29th July. New episodes weekly. Sign up to Disney Plus for £4.99 per month or £79.90 for a full year’s subscription.
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