Raised by Wolves Huffs and It Puffs—and It Might Just Blow You Away

There are no wolves in Raised by Wolves, but the ambitious HBO Max series from writer/creator Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners) raises a handful of kids, plenty of hell, and the bar for meaty sci-fi TV. Starting simply enough—with two factions of survivors, whose religious war has demolished Earth, landing on the only other inhabitable planet the species knows about—Raised by Wolves builds out an in-depth sci-fi world through the language of a survival story and the inherently human question of the soul. Even if Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner) only directed the first two episodes, his maverick touch is felt throughout the confident show.

Over the course of the first six episodes, I watched as the refugees of the apocalyptic conflict—ragtag atheist embryos parented by Mother and Father androids (Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim) and the fervent devotees of an assimilated world religion known as the Mithraic, including Marcus (Travis Fimmel) and Sue (Niamh Algar)—floundered on the hostile new world while holding old grudges. The ideas are big but the stories are small, grounding everything in family units.

Mother and Father try to raise their batch of kids as best they can—their only directive being the success of the colony and the atheism of their wards—building a shelter, farm, and more for Campion (Winta McGrath) and the others. The vast rocky, dry landscape gives the DIY base a Castaway feel and The Martian problems: What to eat, where to sleep, how to stay healthy long enough to trek to the tropical region of the planet. Collin and Salim are wonderful to watch work through it all; I love how the actors move (they carry themselves with hard angles and straight lines, with Mother’s more advanced model a bit more lithe and human) and how they speak. Salim’s enunciation has such a specific yearning inhumanity, without veering into cartoonishness, that makes Father immediately sympathetic. Collin contains multitudes. Fierce, loving, and cruel—not out of emotion, but like the upgraded version that she is—her delivery drives home the tragic farce of parenthood they’re replicating while cementing our idea of this world’s varied androids. Plus, Collin’s got robo-veins in her forehead that can carry whole scenes. Their relationship conflicts, like a Marriage Story between a Game Boy and superpowered Siri, are uniquely delicious in their logic.

Then there’re Marcus and Sue, with their own secrets and history. Boasting fun space mullets and Templar tabards, their ensemble’s medieval/sci-fi hybrid aesthetic is just as entertaining as the duo’s complex backstory—and they bring children of their own. The child performers find varying degrees of success, but pregnant, unhappy Tempest (Jordan Loughran) is the most compelling. Watching these details unfold from the relatively simple premise (it’s not like Westworld where it’s telling two [or more] stories at once and at least one is a secret) feels elegant even when the results are blow-your-hair-back bonkers.

Each new development, nicely metered-out in doses of mystery, plotting, and payoff, is a natural occurrence cropping up as we run our hands through the series’ dense texture. That doesn’t necessarily apply to everything, as my main problems with the show have to do with its more outlandish threads (maybe there are ghosts?!) and its tendency to fall back on “we’re sitting down and having a chat about something Big” scenes. Secrets are massive and planetary in scale: Giant Star Wars worm-in-the-asteroid holes, big snakey skeletons, secretive third parties to this war’s second act. Don’t worry, that’s all part of the Scott/Guzikowski vibe: honestly-performed, slow-burn devotion to themes nestled into a pulpy shell.