A couple months back, I cancelled my HBO add-on on Amazon Prime and subscribed to the new HBOMax, since Max promised to have all of HBO’s content and more. Still I probably wouldn’t have gotten the new steaming service so soon if it weren’t for the hype around one of its original shows… and that show was not Raised By Wolves.
I, like many other people, got HBOMax because I wanted to watch Lovecraft Country. (I will write a review for THAT excellent show sometime after the season finale comes out.) But since I was on the service anyway, I started exploring what else it had to offer.
That was when I found Raised By Wolves, a weird science fiction show with a retro aesthetic. I didn’t know what kind of audience a show like that could pull in, but I knew I was definitely going to check it out.
Here is the premise (minor spoilers for the first episode only):
In the far future, the Earth is being torn apart in a world war between the Mithraic religion and the Atheists. But Kepler 22b is found to be an earthlike planet able to support human life.
The Atheists build a small ship that can travel faster than the human body can take, and they put two androids (Mother and Father) and twelve frozen embryos on it. They send it off to Kepler 22 b. First, they lose six of the embryos in their crash landing. Then, over the course of the next twelve years, five of the six children they incubate die from illness or accidents, leaving only one child: Campion.
Meanwhile, the Mithraic build an ark: a giant ship with stasis chambers. It would travel slower than the Atheists’ ship, but it could carry hundreds of people.
The story of this show is about these two groups contending with each other and with the planet they hope to inhabit.
And… that’s really about all I can say about an overall plot. Not because of spoilers, but because this first season is a group of overlapping character arcs and a series of mysteries about the world, few of which are solved by the end of the first season.
As a result, I cannot just recommend or not recommend this show. It does not easily slot into a box where I can say, “If you liked that thing, then you will probably like this one.”
What I CAN do is tell you what I liked about it, then let you decide for yourself.
I loved the weirdness of this show. “What are the big holes in the ground?” “What were the giant serpents, and why did they die?” And dozens of other questions that I can’t even pose in this review without giving spoilers are raised throughout the first season. Lots of the worldbuilding doesn’t seem to make any sense. (I say ‘seem’, because so few of these questions are answered in this first season, that they technically still have a chance to make them make sense in the future.) But while it might not make sense, it is all intriguing.
I was completely drawn in by the stark, grounded aesthetic of the show, driven by practical effects. This may have been a choice dictated by budget, as the digital special effects, when they were there, especially the big CG stuff at the end of the first season, left something to be desired. Still, it drove this retro sci-fi feel that seemed to fit with this weird show.
The character and acting are excellent.
You have Mother and Father, two androids living independently for years without oversight from humans. We watch as they come to terms with the fact that they have somehow developed real human emotions along the way, rather than just simulating them. You have their feelings for each other, for Campion, and for their mission, and their struggles with that, struggles that only become clearer when it is revealed that Mother has secretly been a Necromancer, the android warrior capable of raining down death and destruction on any who stand her way, this whole time. Both of the actors do a phenomenal job with this, and I would not be surprised if the actress who plays Mother gets nominated for some awards.
Then, you have Campion, the one child left to them. He must try to navigate this world with his android parents and the Mithraic people who have just arrived. He must decide what he believes is true and right. And he discovers that those things are often hard to find.
And you have the Mithraic people themselves; people who espouse a religion that worships a sun-god deity with marked similarities to Christianity. But within this group, you have doubters, true believers, blind followers, power-hungry leaders, and people who just wanted to get the hell off the dying planet Earth. Their internal dynamics create the possibility of some fascinating character dynamics and arcs.
Finally, you have the themes explored in the show: What makes a person a person? When is violence justified? When is faith justified? Do ends justify means?
So, the question remains: should you watch this show?
If the idea of a weird, retro, character-driven sci-fi show that asks about ten times as many questions as it answers in the first season, then yes! Otherwise, I’d recommend giving this one a pass. (Or, if you already have a subscription to HBOMax, maybe give it a try, but know what you’re getting yourself into.)
Do you think you will check out Raised by Wolves? Have you already? What did you think?
Let me know in the comments down below!