Danny Trejo, Ana Ortiz, Tom Kenny, Cara Delevingne, Tim Gunn, Bill Nye, Kyle MacLachlan, LeVar Burton and Neil deGrasse Tyson are among the guest stars appearing on the upcoming episodes of “Futurama,” the show’s producers announced Saturday.
“Futurama” producers Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and Claudia Katz were joined by voice acting stars Billy West (Fry, Prof. Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg), John DiMaggio (Bender), Lauren Tom (Amy), Phil LaMarr (Hermes), David Herman (Scruffy) and Maurice LaMarche (Kif) at San Diego Comic-Con‘s Ballroom 20 to share spoilers and more details about the resurrected animated series, which launches its new batch of episodes with Season 12 this Monday on Hulu.
“Futurama” returned to TV last fall, the second time the show had been resurrected. “Sometimes we get canceled during the panel,” Cohen joked.
The ten new episodes promise the next stage of Fry and Leela’s romance, as well as “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.”
In the case of this season’s guest stars, Trejo will play Bender’s cousin, Doblando, who leads Bender to their ancestral robot village in Mexico. Kenny plays a “gambling alien who forces our crew to play children’s games… to the death!” Ortiz will play Marquita, “champion of the robot matadors, Bender’s tutor in the noble art of bug fighting… and the love of Bender’s life.”
And Delevingne is herself “with some additional new parts. A force in the world of future fashion.” Gunn himself, covering Milan Fashion Week 3024. Nye is himself, hosting the 3024 Inventors Awards. Maclachlan is himself, “enjoying a cup of the universe’s best Joe.” Burton plays “an unlicensed hologram of LeVar Burton.” And deGrasse Tyson is himself, “solving the greatest mystery of all time… with science!”
The Footage: The team knew they had a limited amount of time and wanted to do something different, so instead of just showing a trailer, the stars and producers held a table read of an entire episode. The team read “”Quid’s Game,” written Cody Ziglar, and set to air as episode 2 of this season. The “Squid Game” parody follows a sadistic group of aliens forcing the characters through life-or-death games.
But after Act 1, Cohen jokingly overruled Groening and Katz to show Act 2 as a clip. The final act, however, will be left to fans actually watching the episode.
What We Learned: There might be another crossover with “The Simpsons,” Groening said. “Yeah, that’s a brilliant idea!” What about with Groening’s other series, “Disenchantment”? As a Netflix show, that might be tough to coordinate with Disney’s Hulu. But as Cohen joked, “Oh, Disney will buy them in a few months anyway!”
Hulu’s revival of the series marks the second time the show has been brought back since it originally launched in 1999. After its initial four-season run on Fox, reruns of the show found new life as part of the Adult Swim lineup on Cartoon Network and on DVD. Four direct-to-video films were then produced, which were later re-edited into a fifth season that aired on Comedy Central starting in 2008. Comedy Central would go on to air two more seasons consisting of 26 episodes each between 2010 and 2013. Hulu had picked the show up for 20 episodes back in February 2022, and renewed it for two more seasons last November.
