Futurama Finale Written as Possible Last Episode Before 2027 XXL Specials on Hulu Futurama's season 14 finale was written as a possible last episode ever amid cancellation fears, with three XXL specials set for Hulu in 2027. Futurama's season 14 finale, titled Final Ending: The Last Conclusion, was written to potentially serve as the last episode ever amid fears of a possible third cancellation, according to longtime showrunner David X. Cohen and executive producer Claudia Katz. The episode, the tenth of the season, explores the concept of endings even as three Futurama XXL-sized specials are announced for Hulu in 2027. In an interview with Polygon, Cohen explained that the writing team did not know whether the series would continue when they wrote the season finale. He said the show takes pride in having practice writing last episodes, noting this was the sixth such episode they had written and that a seventh is now in the works.Cohen said: We have a lot of practice writing last episodes ever, which very few shows can say. At the time we wrote the season finale, we did not know if the show would be going on again. So in our minds, that's a last episode ever, and we wrote it accordingly.He added that because they have done this so often, he has thought a lot about endings of stories and endings of series. This finale, he said, is really an ending about the concept of endings. It is based on his idea that human beings actually evolved to need to know the ends of stories.Cohen illustrated the idea with early humans telling a story about a forest. Some listeners wanted to hear the rest and could learn whether a bear would maul them or whether a tree was covered with nutritious mangoes. He said this is an evolved need, like eating and breathing and reproduction.The finale follows previous potential series finales. In 2013, the episode Meanwhile aired and was thought to be the last episode ever at the time. When asked whether Meanwhile is the ultimate final episode, Cohen said he was not sure how to answer, calling it a favorite with intense and believable emotion.Cohen said that in their last episodes ever, they want viewers to think the world is still going on. Interesting and beautiful things are still happening, he said, and we may not see them, but they are still happening. Katz added that the show often received two-season orders of ten episodes each, so the finale of the first batch was known not to be a final series finale, while the finale of the second batch was often uncertain.Katz said the finale carries a bittersweetness anchored in Fry disappearing. His whole family went on without him, she said, never knowing what happened to him and never seeing him again. The episodes that throw back to that, she added, have an extra sweetness to them.Cohen noted that time travel is intrinsically emotional because going into the future means leaving things behind. There are things you cannot go back and fix or people you cannot go back and see, he said, calling it intrinsically emotional. The history of Futurama includes multiple endings and revivals. On August 10, 2003, the first era ended when The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings aired on Fox. The series later returned for a multi-season run on Comedy Central that concluded with Meanwhile on September 4, 2013. Nearly a decade later, new episodes were produced for Hulu.Despite the finale being written as a possible end, three Futurama XXL-sized specials are in the works and will premiere on Hulu in 2027. Cohen compared the specials to movies and said they will have a lot of creative freedom with their formats. He said the team can now spread things out and do something that could not be done in 22 minutes, adding that they are a little freer this time in the writing.The series continues to receive good reviews decades after it began, which Cohen and Katz have described as a testament to how the creative team has coped with broadcast upheaval. Futurama has now aired several episodes that the creative team thought could have been its series finale, each ending the show on a lovely note in its own way. With the 2027 specials, the story could end with a movie-style special that gives the team more room to tell a larger story.