While this article avoids spoilers, the first six episodes of Futurama season 12 were watched for review.
With its eleventh season on Hulu last year, Futurama was resurrected and resumed. The incredibly solid season demonstrated that one of our favorite animated sci-fi shows ever to be canceled (two or three times) had been faithfully restored.
Sure, things weren’t exactly the same. But season 11 had a close focus on the core Planet Express crew (aside from the COVID-19-inspired episode, “Rage Against the Vaccine”), and almost every character was played by their returning and original voice actors. Clearly, season 11 was an effort to restore the series, and a successful one at that.
Futurama season 12
But with Futurama season 12, the series uses the solid foundation it re-established in season 11 to step into the unknown. This isn’t to say the series has become unrecognizable as itself – far from it.
Many Futurama mainstays are on full display in the six season 12 episodes I’ve watched. Without being too specific, this includes both archetypical and specific Star Trek homage episodes. It also means more episodes from that subset of Futurama episodes based on “future reiterations of trends from recent history.” This type of episode is sometimes dismissed as “slightly dated.”
Given the amount of time it takes for Futurama to make the journey from script through animation and to air, this is a necessary evil. But it also gives the show a chance to recall events before they fade from memory, while still allowing enough temporal distance to acknowledge some of the latent absurdities in our own society’s trends.
In offering this kind of contemporary societal commentary, Futurama continues to embody one of the best facets of science fiction: better illuminating the nightmarishly irrational world to which we are collectively continually subjected.
Boldly Going Beyond Boundaries
However, Futurama season 12 also makes a clear effort to push the show into territory that had remained hitherto unexplored. There are episodes that are formally and thematically making narrative inroads where no Futurama episode has gone before.
There’s also an effort to bring many more members of Futurama’s expansive cast into the limelight, with many of these familiar faces earning more than just a cameo one-liner. In particular, Tress MacNeille gets the chance to shine again and again, with one of my personal favorite characters she plays getting a juicy supporting role in one episode. And of course, there are plenty of supporting characters who return for comedic one-liner cameos, too.
Futurama season 12 also expands on a trend that began with season 11: the addition of Cara Delevingne to the show’s supporting actor roster. Like season 11, she appears in multiple smaller roles, but season 12 also adds a larger role for her, too. Collectively, these roles give her a chance to show off both her acting and voice modulation skills. Hopefully she’ll continue to be included in the show’s cast in seasons 13 and 14.
Delivery Scheduled for Monday, July 29
And of course, the other masters of voice acting that round out the Futurama cast continue to deliver top-tier performances. Katey Sagal, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr, Maurice LaMarche, David Herman and Tom Kenny remain as excellent and indispensable as ever.
My biggest complaint for the whole endeavor continues to be the lack of physical release for the new seasons. If anything approaching the incredibly high quality of the episode commentaries for the older seasons can be achieved on releases of these new seasons, I and the other members of the show’s rabid cult fanbase will snap the sets up like pancakes doused with Fry’s blood.
But in the meantime, I applaud the decision to release the new episodes on a weekly basis. Like every previous outing, Futurama season 12 is filled with episodes that reward those who rewatch and take the time to unpack the dense layers of science fiction, comedy and depraved and/or automated debauchery.
Futurama fans will relish this boundary-pushing visit to New New York City, and will be left looking forward to the mercifully ongoing exploits of our beloved PlanEx crew.
The ten new episodes of Futurama season 12 will be available for streaming on Hulu on a weekly basis on Mondays beginning July 29th, 2024.
