Futurama: Every Planet Express Crew Member Ranked

Futurama was a fantastic TV show, coming back from the dead first as a string of DVD movies, then getting a fully-fledged revival on Comedy Central. In that time, they’ve had a lot of employees at Planet Express, all offering a variety of skills... or lack thereof.

They’re ranked here based on how good a character they are, rather than specifically figuring out how much they contribute to the enterprise. As the seasons go on, the package delivery aspect gets less important, so it’s harder to discern who’s actually vital to operations anyway.

For the regular cast then, that’s quite straight forward: the best loved characters will finish higher. For guest Planet Express crew members though, it’s slightly harder.

There are some who stay in the show in recurring appearances, but might only work for Planet Express once. For these, they’re ranked purely on their time on Planet Express’ books. What they do before and after might help their popularity as characters in general, but here it’ll be more specific.

That said, the bigger names tend to get more lines and bigger roles when they’re at the company, so the bigger stars are still at the north end of the list.

Hermes’ wife LaBarbara is a pretty average character against the weird and wonderful backdrop of Futurama, too straight and narrow to really shine. She’s occasionally important to the plot, but with Hermes-centric episodes being rare anyway, even that doesn’t happen all too often.

She’s at her best when they play up her love triangle with Barbados Slim; something which doesn’t happen during her short stint at Planet Express, so having her as their lowest ranked was a relatively unavoidable conclusion.

LaBarbara is hired by Hermes in the episode Neutopia, under the guise of helping them spend more time together while helping Hermes around the office. However, it’s actually because they need more female employees to make a girlie calendar; Amy and Leela alone can’t pose for all 12 months.

During the episode, they crash on a genderless planet and after some decent screen time for LaBarbara, first their gender characteristics are removed, then switched.

Obviously the focus is on the more prominent members of the crew from here on out, and LaBarbara quietly fades into the background. The short time on the crew is never spoken of again, and that feels like it’s for the best.