TURANGA LEELA

'Turanga Leela' (often referred to simply as 'Leela') (born A.D. 2975) is the primary female character in the animated television series ''Futurama''. She is voiced by Katey Sagal.
On the show, Leela is captain of the Planet Express ship. She was originally believed to be a Cyclopian alien, but later discovers that she is actually a human sewer-mutant. She is the primary love interest of the series' protagonist, Philip J. Fry. Leela always wears a computerized armband on her wrist.
The writers of ''Futurama'' often add minor details as coincidental references, and Leela is no exception. When she worked for the cryogenics lab, she was Officer 1BDI ("one beady eye"). Also, she lives in Apartment 1I ("one eye"). In addition, Leela wears a single contact lens (shown in "The Why of Fry")

Contents

Name origin

Biography

Love life

Sean

Doug

Dean Vernon

Zapp Brannigan

Alcazar

Adlai Atkins

Chaz

Philip J. Fry

References

Name origin

"Leela" is considered her given name. "Turanga" is her family name, as seen when she addresses a letter to her parents "Turanga Morris and Munda." Her culture uses the family name-given name order (Akin to the naming orders of real life Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hungarian names). An in-show explanation for this is never given; in real life, her name is a pun on Olivier Messiaen's most famous orchestral work, the ''Turangalîla Symphony''.^[1] Messiaen stated that the title of the piece derived from two Sanskrit words, turanga and lîla, together meaning roughly "love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death." Her surname was not given until later episodes, and so may be a later idea of the creators. Leela was named by her mother Turanga Munda and her father Turanga Morris.
''Lila'' means ''purple'' in Spanish, Swedish, Hungarian, Finnish, German, and some Slavic languages, suggesting her name may be inspired by her hair color, or vice-versa. The name ''Leela'' may also be a homage to one of the Doctor's former companions, also named Leela, in the British sci-fi series ''Doctor Who'', of which Matt Groening is a fan.

Biography

Leela was born into the society of subterranean mutants who live in the sewers beneath New New York, forbidden to come aboveground because of their genetic abnormalities. Leela was "the least mutated mutant ever born," her eye being the only difference between her and a normal human; her parents deposited her on the steps of the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium in order to spare her the degrading life of a mutant. Leela's mother (calling on her education in Exolinguistics, a field which does not presently exist) attached a note to Leela's blankets in an alien-like script, which from translated alienese, reads "Your parents love you very much"; she stated that, if her degree in the subject was worth "diddly-poop", it would convince the head of the orphanarium that Leela was an alien, as opposed to a mutated human. Her parents closely monitored her youth, periodically intervening to protect her from falling down stairs, leaving birthday presents for her, etc. Leela finally discovers that she and her parents are mutants in the episode "Leela's Homeworld," which came as a surprise as she, too, believed herself to be from an unknown alien species.
As a child, Leela often had to endure childish bullying from other orphans, mainly because of her being a cyclops, as well as for her dental braces. As a teenager, still feeling the torment of being a cyclops, Leela trained in Arcturan Kung-Fu, succeeding despite the misogyny of her teacher, Master Phnog. She developed a lasting crush on a fellow orphanarium inmate, Adlai Atkins. They would later meet as adults, after he had become a successful cosmetic surgeon.

As an adult, Leela could be seen as a very attractive woman, except that she has only one eye, the apparent reason for her lack of relationship experience. Leela's first mentioned job was a Cryogenic Counselor, through which she meets Fry. After Fry convinces her to break from the bonds of her job, Leela becomes a Space Captain at Planet Express, piloting the aptly named Planet Express Ship. She is physically very strong.
Due to having a single eye, she lacks stereoscopic vision and therefore has problems with depth perception. In spite of this she seems to have no difficulty in flying the Planet Express ship (other than colliding with billboards on a weekly basis in the show's opening sequence). This lack of depth perception was also comically commented on in the episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", in which a fictional cyclops was estimating the distance of a missile aimed at their planet. He guesses 'A trillion miles?', however, the missile strikes less than a second afterwards.
Leela's armband receives no more concrete name than her repeated description of it as "this thing I wear on my wrist", and is capable of whatever small things the plot demands. It apparently has a tracker called a "wrist-lojackamator". In "The Luck of the Fryish", whilst searching through Old New York, Leela states "If we get bored looking, I've got Tetris on this thing". In "The Problem With Popplers", it scans materials to determine if they are edible or not. In "Spanish Fry," it carries an emergency cosmetic laser. It speaks twice and has a female voice. In most episodes, she wears the armband on her right arm, although in one shot in "Space Pilot 3000", she is seen having it on her left arm.
Leela is also known to have a very nosy personality, though this often proves a positive attribute, as her tendency to meddle with Fry's affairs often saves his life.
Leela has an odd-looking pet named Nibbler, which she found on the planet Vergon 6, in the episode "Love's Labors Lost in Space".
In the episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" Leela holds Kif's ungloved hand and transfers her DNA to him. This results in him becoming pregnant with her children. However, in Kif's species biological mothers apparently are considered secondary to the father's smizmar, who is in this case Amy; thus she is considered the "real" mother of Kif and Leela's numerous tadpole-like offspring.

Love life

Sean

Leela periodically referenced this never-seen ex-boyfriend (it's unclear when exactly they dated or for how long), describing him as uneducated, unambitious, pasty, and hunched, (which Fry calls a 'pretty boy') but finding his musical ability on the saxophone attractive ("The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings"). He apparently cheated on her and, in "Love and Rocket", Leela unconvincingly insisted that their breakup was mutual, implying that he dumped her. On another occasion, when Fry advised Dr. Zoidberg into tricking a girl into liking him, Leela replied she would never fall for that kind of trick, only to run out of the room crying when she realized that all her boyfriends had done that, "even Sean!"

Doug

Doug was only seen in "Love's Labors Lost in Space" at the very beginning having dinner with Leela in a fancy restaurant. It was not revealed whether or not he and Leela had been going out for some time or if they had just the one dinner date. Leela liked him at first because he did not care that she was a cyclops. However, after he slurped up an after-dinner mint with his very long lizard-like tongue, Leela immediately disliked him. This is perhaps a clue that the dinner date was their first encounter together.

Dean Vernon

In the episode "Mars University" it is revealed at the end (in a style parodying the ending of the comedy film ''Animal House'') that Leela wound up going out on a date with the dean of Mars University. Afterwards, he never called her back.

Zapp Brannigan

When Leela found herself on the ''Nimbus'', she met celebrated space captain Zapp Brannigan. Initially somewhat attracted to him, Leela quickly discovered that he was actually a "pompous dimwit" when he arrested her and her crew for technical violation of "Brannigan's law".
Zapp then summoned her to his overly lush quarters, which he called his "lovenasium", where he attempted to seduce her. Leela was completely unimpressed; however, when her forthright rebuff reduced him to tears, Leela slept with him. Upon awakening to find herself in Zapp's bed, Leela was mortified. Zapp, however, was delighted at his "romantic conquest" and gloated mercilessly, serene in his delusional self-image (in the episode "Brannigan Begin Again", he confessed that Leela was "The only woman who ever loved me...physically").
Throughout the series, Zapp bragged about his night with Leela and tried to entice her into dates and romantic encounters. Leela remained unswayingly disdainful of him and avoided or attacked him whenever possible.
Bender also harasses Leela about her relationship with Zapp, and Bender is often rebuked for it.

Alcazar

In the episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", Leela had a brief relationship with (and indeed almost married) a shapeshifter named Alcazar who had posed as another cyclops and claimed to be the last other member of her 'alien species'. After seducing her, with her motivated in large part by a desire to preserve the cyclops race, his behavior became ish. The relationship became a parody of the TV series ''Married... with Children'', in which Katey Sagal starred as Peggy Bundy. Leela is even drawn with an outfit typical of Peggy's, and she addresses Alcazar as "Aaaallll", as Peggy had addressed her TV husband, Al Bundy.
Fry had been suspicious of Alcazar all along and interrupted Alcazar's and Leela's wedding ceremony by revealing Alcazar's master plan: to find and marry five lonely alien females to be his wives and tend to his five palaces. Fry brought the other four brides to the wedding, and they and Leela assaulted Alcazar until he revealed his true insect-like form. After he explained everything, Leela asked him why he did not change form in "the one place that counts."
The name "Alcazar" is a pun on the word "Alcázar", the name of the Royal Castle in Seville. The false history of the cyclops race given by Alcazar, including a brilliant scientist who placed his infant child in a rocket ship sent to Earth while his home planet was being destroyed, is a parody of the origin of Superman.

Adlai Atkins

When recollecting on her crush on him from childhood, Leela meets and dates Adlai, who is portrayed to be a normal man. As a cosmetic surgeon, he offers and performs an operation to give her a normal appearance with a second eye, although the second eye would be cosmetic and nonfunctional. Leela willingly dates Adlai simply to appear 'normal' and also because he would be the only respectable decent man that she has had the chance to date.
Adlai is portrayed as a normal "average" guy whose life revolves around mundane, dispassionate activities and mannerisms such as toning down Hawaiian shirts to grey tones, flat directness, and doing jigsaw puzzles of pacifier factories.
After wanting to adopt a 3-eared orphan from Bender, she discovers that Adlai is too interested in making everything "normal," seemingly unable to accept things the way they truly are, so Leela forces him to undo the surgery and make her a cyclops again ("The Cyber House Rules").

Chaz

Leela dated the Mayor's Aide after he wooed her by demonstrating his power. However, after a chance encounter with children from her old orphanarium, Leela realized that Chaz was far too interested in the power of his position. She decided to prematurely end the date by shoving his badge in his mouth after he denied the orphans the use of an ice rink ("The Why Of Fry").

Philip J. Fry

Though she and Fry had several intimate moments throughout the series, and he was constantly trying to convince her to date him, they have yet to consummate the relationship, although they came close several times and have kissed (and hugged) on a few occasions. In addition:

★ In the episode "Anthology of Interest I," the What-If Machine invented by Professor Hubert Farnsworth reveals that Fry and Leela would have had sex (she turned the lights off, Fry says "I really like it") if Leela were more impulsive, instead of killing him like she did the entire cast, including her beloved Nibbler.

★ In the episode "Time Keeps on Slippin'", after rejecting Fry's amateurish advances, she confesses to Dr. Zoidberg, "Fry is very sweet, but he's so immature. I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness." Later, the two get married, but due to the phenomenon of time randomly skipping, they are unable to remember what led them to do so, and though Fry wanted to stay together, Leela divorced him (which they also cannot fully recall).

★ When they traveled to a parallel universe in the episode "The Farnsworth Parabox," it was revealed that the parallel Fry and Leela were married. This is explained by the fact that Leela once flipped a coin to decide whether or not to date Fry; since all coin flips were the opposite results between dimensions (everything else worked exactly the same in this dimension, other than hair color [or shell color, in the case of Zoidberg and Bender]), the "real" Leela's coin flip influenced her ''not'' to go on the date, while the alternate version of Leela did go on the date and began a long-term relationship with Fry afterwards. The implication is that had she gone on that date, she would have also married the "real" Fry.

★ In the episode "Parasites Lost," Fry, benefiting from increased intellect thanks to a super-intelligent worm infestation, is able to properly tell Leela that he loves her and she appears to reciprocate. Unfortunately, Fry, concerned that Leela loves him more for what the worms did than for his true self, subsequently rids himself of the parasites and goes back to being his usual self with Leela, who promptly gives him the cold shoulder.

★ During the cruise on the Titanic in the episode "A Flight To Remember," Fry poses as Leela's fiancée, in order to save her from Zapp Brannigan's advances. However, he also posed as Amy Wong's boyfriend as well, a fact which causes Leela to become jealous. Fry lets her know that their fake relationship means much more to him than than the one between him and Amy.

★ In the episode "The Sting," Leela experiences a series of lucid dreams after Fry "dies". At first they seem to only indicate her feelings of guilt, since Fry "perished" saving Leela's life (this implies that Fry was probably brave enough to "sacrifice" himself). In the very last one, before she awakes, Fry tells her to never give up through a picture of him on her bedside table and then admits that, though he never told her before, he loves her. The end of the episode reveals that Leela had in fact been in a coma for the majority of the episode's events and was dreaming; in real life, a healthy Fry had been speaking to her by her bedside for a solid two weeks.

★ In "Insane in the Mainframe" Leela tried to "remind Fry of his humanity only the way a woman can" by kissing him. However the plan failed.

★ They are seen together at the end of "Love and Rocket" before being joined by Zoidberg.

★ Fry buys a gift (a pet parrot) for Leela (which later escapes and is destroyed by Robot Santa) in "Xmas Story". They also almost kiss when they find themselves under the mistletoe when being chased by Robot Santa.

★ Teenage Fry visits Teenage Leela and dates her in "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles."

★ Fry admits in "The Why of Fry" that Leela is the only valuable thing to him. Nibbler cryptically states that, "She must be the other...You must not give up on her!" However, Nibbler then modified Fry's memory, and the series was cancelled before the meaning of this prophecy was ever explored. When Fry returns to the Planet Express headquarters after this experience, Leela and Bender had just finished removing the head of Chaz from a photo of Chaz and Leela. As Leela holds up the newly altered photo, Fry walks into the room, his head replacing Chaz's in the photo from Leela's perspective. Fry then gives Leela a flower and she kisses him. When the credits of the show roll, Fry is heard shouting an enthusiastic "Yes!".

★ At the end of "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," after Fry's opera is ultimately a failure, Leela still remains to see it end after being touched by Fry's intentions in making the opera for her. He finishes by playing his holophonor and generating a rudimentary hologram of Fry and Leela walking off, hand in hand.

★ In issue #21 of ''Futurama Comics'', Leela and Fry nearly kiss because Fry thinks his last day may be spent stuck with Zapp. However, they are interrupted by aliens. (Note that the comics are of uncertain canonicity)
Many of the episodes do seem to indicate that Fry and Leela would end up together, given only slightly different circumstances, especially in the very last season, where Fry and Leela become noticeably closer. Among some ''Futurama'' fans, this relationship has turned into a topic of intense shipping. Given that Comedy Central has entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox Television to syndicate the existing episodes and air the new movies as new episodes in an episodic format as of February 2008, it is possible that Leela and Fry relationship may once again be picked up.

References

1. Life in the 31st Century, Matt Groening: Past, present, Futurama Robert Lloyd