Hulu’s original time jumping sci-fi comedy Future Man is completing its run with this third and final season. While the best of the three seasons is open to debate, the series has had plenty of great moments throughout. The first season was filled with the kinds of 80’s pop culture references a millennial would dream about, and it excelled at making jokes and references to the movies that we grew up with.
In fact, that first season took its initial premise from The Last Starfighter and then followed a storyline closer to Terminator meets Back to the Future through the end of the season. The second season took on more of a social commentary approach for its laughs after they travelled into the distant future, and, in its final season, Future Man has blended the two expertly as it comes to its timeless conclusion.
The sci-fi comedy is at its best when Josh (Josh Hutcherson, Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Tiger (Eliza Coupe, Happy Endings), and Wolf (Derek Wilson, Birds of Prey) are together, and last season ended with a cliffhanger of them captured by time travel police and forced to compete for their lives in a gameshow run by Susan (Seth Rogen, Long Shot), similar to Running Man or, more aptly given Hutcherson’s participation, Hunger Games.
Tiger and Wolf embrace the opportunity to show off their affinity for violence, but they are unaware that their memory is erased after each victory. This leaves Josh as the only one capable of remembering, painfully in his case, each episode they go through. He is more out of his element than ever, and concerns himself only with escape which becomes a possibility once aided by the unlikeliest of allies. Seriously, THE last person you would expect.
Once they are able to escape the game, they must find a way to back to the place and time each of them loves the most, while avoiding recapture. The first few episodes of them in the game, and then jumping to different points in time are hysterical and interesting to see. They also feel much more in line with the series debut season. Josh simply trying to stay out of harm’s way the best he can is paired hilariously with watching Tiger gleefully kill anyone opposing or simply laughing at her and hearing Wolf name drop celebrities he’s interacted with and calling his own fighting moves as he does.
The chemistry of the stars keeps this show going even when it seemingly goes off the rails with one of its odd narrative turns or while wading through the raunchiest of bits. They all work well enough together to sell every joke with the perfect timing required, and, while these actors are capable of standing on their own when called upon to do so, it always seems like a waste to keep them apart.
It’s about halfway through Future Man Season 3, probably around Episode 5 when the trio find themselves at a place called Haven, which is supposed to be somewhere Josh feels happy and safe, that the story takes a turn. While it begins as an interesting concept, allowing them to make jokes about some familiar people gone too soon, it grows old before the end of the next episodes half hour runtime. Again, the show is best when its main characters are working off of each other, so pulling them apart even for a little while keeps it from firing on all cylinders.
Luckily, they move on before the finale, and they are able to reach a somewhat satisfying conclusion, allowing things to come at least half-circle, considering how convoluted the timeline and plot is by this point. Ultimately, things end on an unexpected high note as a final pre-credit sequence gives us one last glimpse at all the things that made the series unusual and hilarious. It’s been fun to watch this group adapt and grow together as they’ve travelled through time, and even at its most absurd, Future Man still packed a lot of clever one-liners and laughter into each episode. It’s a fun series, easy to binge, and what more could you ask for from a show built around the concept that researching a cure for herpes could destroy humanity?
