How To Watch All of Futurama

Futurama’s long, strange TV trip began in 1999 when the animated sci-fi comedy from Simpsons creator Matt Groening and Simpsons writer David X. Cohen premiered on FOX. Since then, Planet Express has delivered the series to Comedy Central, Syfy, FXX, Adult Swim, and now Hulu, which will debut Futurama’s 12th season on Monday, July 29. Bite Bender’s shiny metal ass, cancellation gods.

If you’re looking to refresh your Futurama knowledge, or you’ve been frozen in a cryogenic pod for a couple of decades and missed it the first time around, here’s how to watch all 11 previous seasons. Pour yourself some Bachelor Chow and prepare for takeoff!

Futurama TV seasons

All 11 previous seasons of Futurama, as well as 2024’s upcoming season 12, are available on Hulu. As the meme goes …

Season 1 (1999; 9 episodes)

Futurama began with hapless pizza-delivery guy Phillip J. Fry (voiced by Billy West) accidentally locked in a cryogenic pod on New Year’s Eve 1999, then thawed out on December 31, 2999. Fry soon lands a job with intergalactic delivery service Planet Express, owned by his only living relative, Professor Farnsworth (also West), alongside badass cyclops Leela (Katey Sagal) and acerbic robot Bender (John DiMaggio).

Season 2 (1999–2000; 20 episodes)

The continuing adventures of Fry, Leela, Bender, Professor Farnsworth, Hermes (Phil LaMarr), Dr. Zoidberg (West again), and Amy (Lauren Tom) include Futurama’s first Christmas episode (featuring a homicidal Robot Santa), Bender’s evil twin Flexo, and the discovery of the lost undersea kingdom of Atlanta, Georgia.

Season 3 (2000–2001; 15 episodes)

Standout episodes of Futurama’s third season: “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid” (flying brains suck up the planet’s intelligence), “I Dated a Robot” (Fry falls in love with a robot version of Lucy Liu), and “Bendin’ in the Wind” (Bender becomes a folk-rock singer and joins the bottled head of Beck—voiced by Beck himself—on tour).

Season 4 (2001–2002; 12 episodes)

Futurama’s penultimate season on FOX: The network’s constant shuffling of timeslots, NFL overtime preemptions, and airing episodes out of intended order led to a decline in viewership and general frustration among fans. Even so, this season features the epic “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” which pits the Planet Express crew against the original Star Trek crew.

Season 5 (2002–2003; 16 episodes)

Technically, season 5 of Futurama was part of season 4, but FOX confused things so much that no one could keep track. Still, the series landed a guest voice appearance from Al Gore as his own disembodied head explaining global warming in “Crimes of the Hot.” And it also gave us the presciently-titled “Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television.”

Season 6 (2008–2009; 16 episodes)

Season 6 of Futurama, the series’ Comedy Central revival, is an oddity because it’s actually four 90-minute movies (Bender’s Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder) sliced into 16 episodes for redistribution. The original, uncut movies are available to purchase through Prime Video as Futurama: Season 6.

Season 7 (2010; 13 episodes)

In Futurama’s first properly episodic season for Comedy Central, Bender campaigns to legalize “robosexual” marriage between humans and robots, superintelligent space cats invade Earth, and, in “The Futurama Holiday Spectacular, ” the gang learns all about Xmas (formerly Christmas), Robanukah, and Kwanzaa. Season 7 also includes a spot-on nod to the evils of Twitter.

Season 8 (2011; 13 episodes)

Season 8 is mostly business as usual for Futurama: Bender learns how to replicate himself and threatens to take over the planet, the Planet Express crew goes back in time to the American Revolution, and Leela writes a hit children’s TV show. But the season’s last episode, “Reincarnation,” is an experimental doozy, hilariously mixing up animation styles.

Season 9 (2012; 13 episodes)

In season 9, the world is prophesied to end in 3012 (been there), a presidential candidate’s birth certificate is missing (ditto), and Bender has a child with the office soda machine (OK, that’s new). In an hysterical callback to last season’s “Reincarnation,” the gang is reimagined as wild animals for a faux nature documentary in the season finale.

Season 10 (2013; 13 episodes)

Futurama’s final Comedy Central season kicks off with Professor Farnsworth joining a street-racing gang in “2-D Blacktop” (a not-so-subtle riff on The Fast and The Furious), then veers off into more alt-animation shenanigans with “Saturday Morning Fun Pit,” and concludes with Fry finally proposing to Leela as the Professor inconveniently rips the fabric of time in “Meanwhile.” Ten years pass until …

Season 11 (2023; 20 episodes)

Good news, everyone! Futurama re-re-returned as a 20-episode Hulu Original on Monday, July 24, 2023, streaming new episodes for 10 weeks through September with the second half arriving in 2024. The first new episode, “The Impossible Stream,” finds Fry on the edge of insanity as he tries to binge-watch every TV show ever made (if we can do it, you can do it, Fry).

Season 12 (2024; 10 episodes)

From Hulu: “Futurama, the epic sci-fi series from Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, returns in 2024 with 10 all-new episodes. On this orbit around the sun, our occasionally heroic crew embarks on mind-bending adventures involving 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.”