Matt Groening and David X. Cohen finished their run with “Futurama” by giving Fry a button that can only travel back 10 seconds in time, which later leaves him stuck in an infinite 10-second time loop. But considering that this is the show’s third series finale, fans might be wondering if it’s actually Groening who has got some sort of looping time button on his hands.

Yet this series finale is different. The show spends its last few episodes tying up loose ends — Fry reconciles with his mom and dad, and Zoidberg settles into a peaceful happiness (surprisingly) — so this last episode, which also shows Fry and Lela getting married, feels like a true finale. It gives closure, which is all anyone can really ask for.

Still, the way it all wraps up at the end does allow for more episodes to be made should a different network pick the show up. “Futurama” is as good as it’s ever been, which is why so many fans were surprised when Comedy Central announced that it wasn’t going to buy any more episodes after this seventh season. Groening and Cohen created a cartoon universe with infinite worlds, dimensions, characters and possibilities. So with so much gas left in the tank, why wouldn’t it keep going on some other network?

Fans should be happy even if it doesn’t. The finale certainly did the series justice, and there’s solace in knowing that there are 140 brilliant episodes to watch over and over again, which make up one of the best animated TV shows in history.

“Futurama” was smart — as evidenced by the Méliès joke and time-travel paradox in the finale. The show always rewarded its viewers for noticing the details and for having a strong cultural and scientific background. The writers created their own language that appeared across multiple episodes; in one famous episode, they have to write a theorem to get all of the characters back into the same universe, and for some reason, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” makes a cameo in the finale. For those who missed details and references like these, the wickedly clever plot, puns and slapstick humor were there to enjoy as well.

“Futurama” was one of those few animated shows on television that took full advantage of its medium. The show was about the art of animation as much as it was about a delivery company, and it paid homage to that process. Episodes like “Saturday Morning Fun Pit” and “Reincarnation” both explore the sub-genres of animation, from the Disney- and Fleischer-style of Golden Age animation to Japanese anime to the dopey, simplistic, Saturday-morning cartoon.

Groening and Cohen’s future have rigid and scientific rules, but it is abstract and ever-expanding too, which allows big stylistic risks like these to pay off so well. In many instances, it was the technology of their future that made it work. Professor Farnsworth’s gadgets and inventions are always screwing with elements of their fictional universe, which often alters the show’s animated style. The episode “2-D Blacktop” places the characters of an already two-dimensional art form into a two-dimensional universe. What happens next?

“Futurama” repeatedly put itself into problematic artistic circumstances and then layered them with characters facing ones just as thorny and daunting, whether they be romantic, social or intergalactic. It created characters that, even when fighting giant space honeybees, somehow evoked empathy as well as sympathy.

“Futurama” did it in a way that “The Simpsons” touched on before Season 10, that “Archer” is too young for, that “South Park” achieves every once and a while and that Seth MacFarlane only dreams about late at night when no one is home. Fry and Leela were as much Ross and Rachel as they were Rita and Runt, and Bender was the Iron Giant as much as he was Wakko, Yakko and Dot all rolled into one.

The Planet Express team — and even the supporting characters — had depths and histories like few other animated shows really even made an effort to strive for. Groening and Cohen knew it, too. In later seasons, they took those characters and challenged their identities and the viewers’ relationship with them the same way Chuck Jones did with Daffy Duck in “Duck Amuck.” But they did it with Bender, and then Lela, and then Dr. Zoidberg and then with just about every other member of Planet Express. And it worked.

That made it all the more difficult to say goodbye to “Futurama” on Wednesday; viewers were deeply attached to those characters and their world. But that bittersweetness at the end of a series is the mark of a great show. And while many fans may hope that Groening will press a button and keep the world in some infinite time loop where “Futurama” is still on television, one gets the sense that the Planet Express crew is living on, out of our sights regardless, and never truly gone forever.