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It's not every day that you get to talk to some of the minds behind one of the greatest scifi shows in television history. So when Popverse got to sit down with the Futurama writers (what, did you think I meant The Expanse? Get real) at San Diego Comic Con 2025, we brought plenty of burning questions to the table. And with a series as long-running and conceptually varied as Futurama, you won't be surprised to learn that one of our questions basically amounted to, "What haven't you done yet?"

Thankfully, the show's head writer was only happy to explain.

The cast and creators of Futurama were at SDCC '25 to promote the upcoming Season 13 of the storied, thrice-cancelled animated comedy. Among those promoters were head writer David X. Cohen and animation director Peter Avanzino.  During a roundtable discussion, Popverse asked the creators behind the series what science fiction concepts they had tried to do in the show but couldn't.

"I remember one," answered Avanzino, "It was a character moving backwards in time."

Jumping off of this answer, Cohen (who helped develop Futurama with Matt Groening al the way back in 1999), explained the development of that impossible-to-pull-off episode.

"We talked about that," said the writer, "But didn't do it. It was Fry and Leela - one of them was going to be moving backwards in time, and one forwards. They were going to meet, momentarily, in [the same] time."

So kind of a Benjamin Button situation, but with actual time instead of just age? Tell us more, David.

"Josh Weinstein, the head writer of Disenchantment, was going to write this episode," Cohen continued, "This was in the Comedy Central run, and we spent days and days talking about it. It was so complicated. We wanted to record Leela talking backwards, but then it was like, 'No, they can interact.' The logic of it didn't work out."

A bummer for sure, but all that work wasn't in vain. The time distortion that the team was planning eventually made it onto our screens, in the short but very impactful moment that ended the seventh season of the show. That episode was season 7, episode 26, titled Meanwhile, and at the time, it was considered the series finale.

"We preserved the moment of meeting," concluded Cohen, "And made that the series finale at that time. Where Fry and Leela were frozen in one moment and spent their lifetime together. So it had one beneficial offshoot."

Futurama is streaming on Hulu now. Season 13 airs September 15.

Follow all of the science fiction madness that David X. Cohen could get onscreen with Popverse's Futurama watch order.