Back to the Future’s animated spinoff series wasn’t particularly bad, but it did show why a proper live-action movie sequel to the original trilogy would never have worked. In 1991, CBS began airing an animated series based on the Back to the Future franchise. It followed on from the end of Back to the Future Part III, with Doc Brown and his family going on time-traveling adventures. While Homer Simpson’s voice actor Dan Castellaneta played Doc in the animated segments, Christopher Lloyd reprised the role in the live-action sequences.
This animated show is likely to be the closest thing that fans will ever get to Back to the Future Part IV, which will probably never happen. Robert Zemeckis is open to adapting the Back to the Future stage musical into a movie, but he has no interest in continuing the saga with a new sequel. But it’s probably for the best that another Back to the Future movie never happened. The animated show proves why a fourth film wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Back To The Future 3’s Sequel Shows There Was Nowhere To Take Marty McFly & Doc Brown
There Was No More Story Left To Tell
The animated Back to the Future series isn’t bad (it’s actually a lot of fun), but there’s also no real need for it to exist and nothing substantial to its story. If they’d made another live-action movie, a true Back to the Future Part IV, then it likely would’ve been different from the animated show — and much less frivolous and inconsequential — but the cartoon really highlights that there was nowhere to take these characters after Part III. There was no more story left to tell.
Back to the Future: The Animated Series marked the television debut of Bill Nye as Doc’s lab ᴀssistant.
Doc’s final scene in Back to the Future Part III confirms that time travel still exists and Doc is still traveling back and forth through history, but the arcs and themes had all been tied up. Marty’s future was erased, so his destiny could be whatever he made it. Doc got the happy ending he always deserved with a loving wife and children. After that ending, the story felt (and still feels) very complete. Despite making the animated series, whose canonical status has been debated, the creators agreed that the Back to the Future story was over.
Will There Ever Be Another Back To The Future Movie?
It’s Unlikely, But Not Impossible
As long as Zemeckis has a say, there won’t be another Back to the Future movie. He won’t direct a sequel to the original trilogy or a reboot of the franchise, and he won’t let Universal make one without his involvement. But it would also be naive to say that there will never, ever be another Back to the Future movie. Given how Hollywood works, leaving no stone unturned and no sacred classics unadulterated, Back to the Future will probably get rebooted someday in one form or another — especially since there’s always been talk of a revival.
