Futurama’s executive producer David X Cohen has revealed that he wasn’t surprised to learn that the show is being axed from Comedy Central. He told Entertainment Weekly “I felt like we were already in the bonus round on these last couple of seasons, so I can’t say I was devastated by the news… It was what I had expected two years earlier. At this point I keep a suitcase by my office door so I can be cancelled at a moment’s notice.”

The show has already suffered cancellations in the past, EW reports; it originally aired on Fox, between 1999 and 2003, before the network sent the show out the door. It was relaunched in 2007, with four straight-to-DVD movies, by Comedy Central, who have re-ordered shows in 2010 and then again in 2012. The show will now end its 140 episode run on September 4, 2013. The final 13 episodes will begin airing on June 19 at 10pm, meaning that season 7 will be the last for the popular 31st century comedy.

Despite having won two Emmy awards for Outstanding Animated Program (in 2002 and 2011), ratings for the show have started to slip. In 2010, the show drew in an average of 2.6 million viewers but this has now slipped to 1.7 million in 2012. Comedy Central’s EVP of Programming, Dave Bernath said that it was a “natural end” to the show. “That’s a helluva run that few shows achieve, and especially given the fact that it came back to life, it’s really an amazing story… I'm more thankful and feel a sense of gratitude toward the whole process — and that we found a way to keep going for 52 more episodes.”