Leela (Futurama)

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Turanga Leela
Futurama character
Information
Species	Mutant Human
Gender	Female
Family	Turanga Morris (father) Turanga Munda (mother)
Relatives	Hubert J. Farnsworth (distant nephew) Munda's mother (grandmother) Munda's grandmother (great-grandmother) Yancy Fry, Sr. (father-in-law) Sherri Fry (mother-in-law) Yancy Fry, Jr. (brother-in-law) Yancy Fry, Jr.'s wife (sister-in-law) Philip J. Fry II (nephew) Enos Fry (paternal grandfather-in-law; deceased) Mildred Fry (paternal grandmother-in-law) Mr. and Mrs. Gleisner (maternal grandparents-in-law; deceased)
Born	July 29, 2975
Age	25
Height	1.82 m (6 ft 0 in)

Turanga Leela is a fictional character from the animated television series Futurama. Leela is spaceship captain, pilot, and head of all aviation services on board the Planet Express Ship. Throughout the series, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with, marries and has a mutant child with Philip J. Fry, the central character in the series. The character, voiced by Katey Sagal, is named after the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen. She is one of the few characters in the cast to routinely display competence and the ability to command, and routinely saves the rest of the cast from disaster. However, she suffers extreme self-doubt because she has only one eye and grew up as a bullied orphan. She first believes herself an alien, but later finds out she is the least-mutated sewer mutant in the history of 31st-century Earth. Her family (particularly her parents' accent and "outcast" status) parodies aspects of pollution and undesirability associated with industrial New Jersey when compared with New York City.

Fictional character biography

Turanga Leela was born to Morris and Munda, two mutants who live in the sewer deep under New New York City. The mutant doctor who delivered Leela remarked that she was "the least mutated mutant ever born". When Leela was still an infant, her parents gave her up to the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium with a note written in mysterious symbols to suggest that Leela was an alien, so that she would have a better life than a typical mutant.

For the first three seasons of the series, Leela hopes to meet another member of her race of one-eyed aliens. In the episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", Leela meets Alcazar, a cyclops who convinces her that he and she are the last two members of their extinct race, only to discover that he is a shapeshifting impostor. Leela's parents' plan for concealing her origins works well until an industrial accident caused by environmentally irresponsible Bender brings Leela and her friends into the New New York City's sewer system where for the first time Leela meets her parents and discovers that she is not a cyclopean alien, but is actually a sewer mutant.

In the episode "The Problem with Popplers", Leela's family name, Turanga, was used for the first time. The episode "Less Than Hero" establishes that among Leela and her parents, their family name is placed before the given name.

Character development

Katey Sagal provides the voice of Leela.

Leela's orphan upbringing and mysterious origins are helpful to fuel the development of her character over the course of the series.

Despite her strong-willed nature, she often feels self-conscious about her distinctive appearance, and at one point elects to have surgery to give her the appearance of having two normal-sized eyes, though she later has this reversed. Leela's single eye hampers her depth perception and is sometimes exploited for comic effect, for instance, in the episode "The Problem with Popplers" it is suggested that she actually is crashing into billboards every time in the opening credits, though it typically does not interfere with her ability to pilot the Planet Express Ship (beyond crashing into the odd billboard) or her mastery of martial arts.

Originally a career placement officer for new defrostees at a cryogenics lab in the year 2999, Leela quit her job after meeting Fry, a defrostee from 1999, and Bender, a high-tech, job-deserting, girder bending robot. Together they are employed as the crew for Planet Express, an intergalactic delivery business run by Fry's distant relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Leela serves as captain of the Planet Express Ship, proving herself to be a skilled officer and often rescuing her less-talented coworkers from peril.

Leela is an avid environmentalist. In "Love's Labour Lost in Space", Leela and crew are sent to Vergon 6, a planet that is about collapse because of mining. Her mission is to save the animal inhabitants of the planet. The mission winds up unsuccessful because of a small animal Leela finds only one of because he ate the rest of the animals. This animal, who she names Nibbler, becomes her pet for the remainder of the series. Her environmentalist beliefs resurface again in Into the Wild Green Yonder. Despite her love of animals and nature, she embarks on an Ahab-like quest to kill a space whale in the episode "Möbius Dick".

Abilities

Leela is a skilled martial artist and adept weapons expert and survivalist. In the episode "The Raging Bender" , a flashback revealed that she had earned a red belt in Kung Fu as a teenager, but despite her besting all the other students, she quit due to her sexist instructor, of whom she beat up years later. She is very athletic and in great physical condition, with most males (of any species) unable to match her in physical combat.