Will ‘Futurama’ Season 12 Revisit Zoidberg’s Sex Life?
A comedy series that has reached double digits on the season counter will often pad out episodes by picking a side character who isn’t exactly known for their active love life and giving them a romantic plotline — so why not Zoidberg?
On July 29th, Hulu will release the second season of its Futurama revival, Season 12 in the show’s official annals, with an additional two seasons to come in the new deal struck by the platform and Matt Groening’s oft-canceled and oft-rebooted franchise shortly after the first batch of Hulurama hit streaming. Critics and fans watched the first season of new episodes in almost a decade with mixed emotions after the fourth and (what was supposed to be final) finale, the universally beloved “Meanwhile,” sent off the series on a profoundly touching note. With the dark matter engines humming in the Futurama franchise ship once more, fans hope that the show will continue to flesh out the show’s sprawling, colorful universe — especially in matters of sprawling, colorful flesh.
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This morning, Hulu released a trailer for Futurama Season 12 that features a slightly sensual moment for a certain Schlimazel doctor that has fans wondering if one of the show’s most infamous loose ends could be closed with Zoidberg tying the knot.
At around the 1:15 mark, Zoidberg can be seen in a white suit on a 1970s-themed dance floor underneath a disco ball boogying with a woman whom he dips low and leans in close. Many fans have taken this erotic close-up to mean the return of the one-off character Marianne, a florist and formerly smell-blind woman with whom Dr. Zoidberg falls madly in love with in the 2013 episode “Stench and Stenchability.” In the episode, Zoidberg grapples with his obligation to perform a surgery on his new girlfriend that will allow her to detect his notoriously disgusting odor, but, in the end, the surgery is a success and the couple stick together.
Sadly, the very next episode was “Meanwhile,” and when the series returned with the current run on Hulu, none of the first batch of streaming episodes included any mention of Marianne. Until this trailer, Futurama fans assumed that Zoidberg finally finding love was a signature Groening-style one-episode arc that will never come up again. Then, though the woman briefly shown in the teaser has a different hair color from Marianne and possibly different facial features, fans in the Futurama subreddit celebrated the new trailer as proof that Zoidberg’s better half wasn’t left behind back at Comedy Central.
“Was that Marianne!?!?” one fan exclaimed.
Another added, “Marianne is back, thank God they let Zoidberg keep her.”
However, others were skeptical, with one frame-studier saying of Zoidberg’s dancing partner, “Looks almost nothing like her. The nose is completely different! And Marianne’s hair is orange, not white. Am I supposed to believe that she dyed her hair off screen?”
Hopefully, the upcoming season will feature Zoidberg finally experiencing the beauty of true love, but, even if it doesn’t work out, don’t feel too bad for the poor crustacean — you can’t sink any lower when you live at rock bottom.
