WARNING! Spoilers for the final season of Future Man ahead.
Hulu’s Future Man series finale ending sees the season's - and, generally, the show's - many twists and turns come to a satisfying conclusion. While there's room for Future Man to explore more stories down the line, its main narrative has come to an end with Future Man season 3.
Ever since Future Man’s debut, the show has firmly proven itself to be one of the funniest and most challenging dissections of time travel. Hulu’s comedy effortlessly blends science fiction and comedy together in this ultimate fish out of water story, where a perpetual slacker is suddenly tasked with saving the world. Each season of the show pushes the time travel concept further and goes to sufficiently outrageous places, yet the show’s final season looks at the consequences that Josh, Tiger, and Wolf must face after they effectively “break time” from overusing time travel.
Future Man season 3 takes the biggest leaps yet and pushes Josh and company outside of time to a mysterious sanctuary known as Haven that’s full of history’s greatest lost figures. As Haven manipulates the time-displaced heroes and puts them on the run from time assassins, they’re left with one final hurdle that’s truly the culmination of all of their work. Once again, the fate of the universe rests on Josh Futturman, but the events of Future Man season 3 really take a toll on Josh and he may not be willing to answer the call when it’s most important.
Josh and company deal with a lot of obstacles in the final season, but the Future Man series finale revolves around the biggest danger that any of them have faced, “The Big Suck.” Seth Rogen’s character, Susan, explains that The Big Suck is an all-encompassing disaster where the past collides with the present. It’s such a cataclysmic event that it will doom the entire universe and implode everything if it fully comes to pass. The triggering of The Big Suck comes down to an innocent mistake that takes Josh back to December 31, 1999 where excitement over the Y2K scare masks everything that’s going on. Much like many of the disasters seen on Future Man, this major event comes down to a simple act of human nature, not anything villainous as would be expected.
It’d be a considerable downer if Future Man ended with the end of the universe courtesy of a time black hole, but stranger things have happened. Perhaps The Big Suck coming to pass could have re-triggered the start of a new universe and eventually all of this would be destined to happen again in the future. Instead, Future Man goes with a much more inspirational ending that also speaks to the themes that have been present in the show since the start.
The events of The Big Suck all come down to an embarrassed hacker who downloads a corrupted file that spreads across the campus and faces social exile as a result. This hacker is determined to save some face over how he infects his peers, but it’s because of his tampering to fix this problem that the events of The Big Suck go into motion. There are many extreme approaches that Josh could take to handle this situation, but instead he just talks to this stressed hacker and convinces him to not go forward with his plan and, instead, accept responsibility. Josh sees so much of himself in this individual and it takes him the course of the entire series to take his own advice here, which makes his epiphany all the more powerful. Josh’s maturity and the hindsight that he has over the decisions in his life end up helping him save the world.
The final handful of episodes in Future Man season 3 feature the entire cast lost in identity crises as the lures and tricks of Haven try to knock them off course. The trio comes out of the place stronger than ever and they learn quite a bit about who they all really are, as they spend the equivalent of hundreds of years lost in time. The final clarity that Tiger reaches is that she becomes a pacifistic shepherd who remains in Haven, living happily with the time assassin who was hunting her down. She’s accepted a life of structure and order, not an existence where she’s just some blunt instrument of death.
Wolf instead finds himself turning to a life of philanthropy and more or less copies Bruce Wayne’s trajectory, as he opens a school for wayward boys and becomes his own variety of superhero who helps the helpless. It’s oddly perfect for him. Finally, Josh chooses to remain in 1999 after preventing The Big Suck from taking place. He watches the younger version of himself with his parents and as much as he wants to reach out and make a connection, he holds back. Josh is finally able to move on and achieves independence without relying on the support and safety of his family. Josh is ready to make it on his own, and even if he’s not fighting to save the world anymore, he’s still a hero in his own right.
After Future Man showcases the epilogues for all of its characters, it tells one more outrageous joke that might be the best one from the entire series. Future Man jokingly posits that the series is in fact based on a true story and that Josh, Tiger, and Wolf’s impossible adventures come from a real place. Part of what makes this gag work so well is that Future Man is a show that’s so clearly fiction, but it pushes this joke so far. The tag features the “real” Tiger, Josh, and Wolf as it showcases the lengths that the series went to recreate “reality” with these characters. It’s a brilliant dissection of how biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Ford V Ferrari usually conclude, as well as a sly dig at the constant whitewashing that happens in biopics of this nature.
Future Man’s big finish is preoccupied with huge stakes surrounding the fate of the universe and Josh finally being able to embrace the hero role that the series has positioned him in since the pilot episode. However, around those giant issues the real lesson at hand here is that Josh learns how to accept responsibility for his decisions in life and understands that sometimes mistakes can’t always be corrected.
The whole series has looked at Josh’s frantic attempts to alter time and correct mistakes, but he’s learned the hard way that this only results in more problems. Josh is finally able to appreciate that that acceptance and maturity are much healthier approaches in life. It may be tempting to try and fix mistakes, but Josh learns that even more can be achieved through admitting faults and moving on rather than living in the past. Josh puts this into practice with how he convinces the hacker in the Future Man series finale to follow this advice, but it’s a lesson that’s just as relevant for him as he begins to embark on a life of independence.
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