To everyone saying, “That’s a stupid take,” or, “But who cares?” Probably Hulu.

It’s a numbers thing. You have fans of Futurama, that’s one market, and you’re likely to get a good percentage of those as people coming in to watch the reboot, but not 100% of them. But if they’re the only ones who stick around to watch the full new season, that’s a really limited market. That’s a relatively teeny tiny audience. There are plenty of shows that tried to continue marketing themselves in their later seasons, especially episodic (as opposed to serial) shows. Because you always want your numbers to grow. You want to bring in new fans.

I also don’t see it being a huge thing because I don’t think a lot of people who have never heard of Futurama before are going to be particularly interested in the reboot, but the thing is that some would be. And hitting them with inside jokes that they’re not going to get without having watched the rest of the series, yeah, it’s going to make some of them turn the show off instead of going back and watching the older stuff or keeping going. We’ve seen that happen before. And that risks making the audience shrink instead of grow. That’s bad. That will probably lead to it getting canceled again. If the creators are fine with that, I as a long-term fan am going to watch the new season anyway and would prefer a good, clear artistic vision to shine through than something that’s simply looking to draw in the widest possible prospective audience, but from a publisher standpoint, from the viewpoint of a new fan, and even from the viewpoint of someone who simply wants more seasons, I can kind of understand why potentially alienating new viewers would be seen as a concern.