Futurama: 10 Big Mistakes That Leela Did That We Can Learn From

Ever since its premiere in 1999, Futurama has become one of the most successful animated sci-fi comedies available on TV, and it’s still popular among fans, even though the show has already ended. Besides its imaginative stories and the colorful future in which the TV show takes its viewers, it also has another distinct advantage – a rich plethora of great heroes with different characters.

Yes, most of them are far from perfect, but that doesn’t make them any less sympathetic, quite the opposite, actually. Turanga Leela is often-mentioned as a fan-favorite but even Leela makes some pretty serious mistakes you can take a lesson from.

10 Taking Drugs

Leela is good at her job, and while she sometimes makes mistakes, just like any other person, she usually manages to come up with a solution to the problem. However, she can be a bit of a perfectionist, which leads to problems both in her professional and personal life.

During one mission with the rest of the Planet Express crew, Amy and Leela end up playing Butterfly Derby, a rather brutal sport. To become better at the sport, Leela starts using a substance called “Nectar” which can improve her performance but it’s also addictive and makes Leela more aggressive. Leela is old enough to know that she should stay away from drugs, but she takes Nectar anyway.

9 Being Mean To Amy

To be fair to Leela, she usually does her best to get along well with others, her co-workers and friends included. But she and Amy sometimes butt heads and don’t see eye to eye. They’re friends, or at least friendly, yes, but that doesn’t stop them from exchanging occasional insults and snide remarks.

That said, Amy doesn’t make it much easier for Leela to be nice to her since she makes fun of Leela’s appearance and her habits sometimes. Still, Leela is mature enough to try and be the better person in this scenario and she could also take into consideration how different she and Amy are.

8 Doubting Her Appearance

Leela spends all of her childhood and most of her adult life believing that she’s an alien, abandoned by her parents on Earth – when she’s, in fact, a mutant. Unlike many other mutants, she looks very much like humans, except the fact that she only has one eye.

Leela is very insecure about her looks, and people don’t help it by constantly asking about her eye whenever they meet her for the first time. Leela makes the mistake of not realizing she’s beautiful the way she is and even doubts that Fry could be actually attracted to her since she doesn’t look like ordinary people.

7 Doing A Job She Hates

When Fry accidentally falls into the cryo booth and ends up one thousand years in the future, Leela is one of the first people he meets in the year 2999.

When Leela and Fry meet, Leela is working for the cryogenics lab and she holds the important position of a career assignment officer. When someone new wakes up in the future, Leela is the one who assigns them the job they’ll be doing. Leela’s good at her job but she doesn’t seem to like it very much, even has a rather depressive hate-Monday poster hanging in her office. She’s much better suited as a team captain, a position she takes on later.

6 Not Looking For Her Parents

As hinted above, Leela didn’t have the easiest of childhoods. Her parents abandoned her when she was just a baby, brought her to an orphanage where she was raised until she was old enough to manage to live on her own and making enough money to get by.

Leela believed her parents were aliens because of a letter the orphanage owner found with her when he took her in. Leela spends her childhood lonely and without friends, yet she doesn’t try to look for her parents later on. She only finds them by accident and almost kills them in the process, until Fry reveals their true identity to her.

5 Killing Alien Babies

Leela is usually rather respectful towards other life forms, as long as said life forms aren’t trying to kill her or her friends. In her line of work, she comes across many different species and she treats them with respect.

However, in one episode, Leela actually commits multiple murders by eating alien babies. Granted, yes, she doesn’t know that the things she’s eating are alive, and babies, but she should know that it’s better to know what you’re eating before you put it in your mouth. Once she finds out the truth, Leela immediately stops snacking, but at that point, it’s already too late and the damage is already done.

4 Relationship With Zapp

Zapp Brannigan is a rather pompous, arrogant and silly Captain whom Leela meets during her work at the Planet Express. Zapp has the tendency to try and charm people around him, usually attractive women, but it never really works for him since he doesn’t know how to treat people and he’s more likely to end up insulting them than convincing them of having a functional relationship with him.

Even his right-hand and a personal assistant Kif can barely tolerate him most of the time. Leela becomes overcome by pity and spends the night with Zapp, a fact she comes to regret bitterly later on since Zapp keeps pursuing her afterward.

3 Getting Amy’s Boyfriend Pregnant

Many Futurama characters aren’t that lucky in romantic relationships. Fry is hopelessly in love with Leela. Professor Farnsworth is buried in his work. Hermes and his wife are in love but they often argue. And as for Leela… well, she makes some seriously doubtful choices along the way, such as having a brief fling with Zapp Brannigan… or getting Amy’s boyfriend Kif pregnant.

Kif is an alien and he can get pregnant when someone touches his bare hand. That’s a fact Leela doesn’t know the moment she saves his life by stopping him from falling and knocks him up in the process. Talk about good deeds being punished.

2 Making A Deal With The Devil

Leela has a good job, good friends and she’s smart and efficient, but she also makes some serious mistakes that impact the life of the people closest to her. Even when she doesn’t do these mistakes on purpose, they still happen. One of the times when Leela has a serious lapse in judgment is when she makes a deal with the robot devil without reading all the details of the contract between them.

She promises him her hand, but while she means her actual hand, aka her limb, the robot devil wants to marry Leela. And to stop him from doing so, Fry gives up his hands and with them, his ability to play music.

1 Not Dating Fry Sooner

By far, Leela’s biggest mistake is not giving a chance to Fry much earlier, denying them the joy of time spent together as a couple. Fry is in love with Leela pretty much from the moment they start working together and get to know each other better, but even when he repeatedly asks her out and tries to prove his affection to her, Leela still refuses him, worried about his childishness and the fact that they work together.

But as their counterparts from an alternative universe prove when they reveal they’re happily married, Leela and Fry are actually a great match, and it takes Leela a long time to realize it.

About The Author

Kath Leroy
(523 Articles Published)

Kath Leroy is a writer at Screen Rant. She also publishes in a number of Czech magazines. She works as an actress and appeared in feature films, short films, as well as TV series. Kath has loved movies, TV, and literature ever since she was a child and her father first played Star Trek for her. Since she has a background in writing genre fiction and screenplays, Kath enjoys fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero films and shows above all – however, she likes to watch films of all genres.

Visit Kath Leroy’s blog for her articles about culture, acting life as well as other topics, follow her on Twitter and on Instagram as @girlartistgeek or contact her directly at [email protected]

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