The latest episode of “Futurama,” the season 11 finale entitled “All The Way Down,” covers a lot of territory.
Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) devises a new machine called the Simputron, which is able to render a full-scale simulation of the known world.
Only, because he hasn’t tapped a reliable power source for the process, the simulated universe is at first rendered in 8-bit. The main action of the episode spirals into Nolanesque territory, pondering the dread-filled existential quandary of whether by now it’s pretty much certain we’re living in a simulation and, if so, whether that even matters.
The Planet Express crew decide to send Bender (John Dimaggio) down into the body of simulation Bender, “Inception” style, and reason with them not to blow up a magnetar and thus glitch out the coding of their “universe,” thereby revealing the man behind the curtain, so to speak.
The episode ends with a powerful moment of pathos,…
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