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Posted in: AMC, Anime, Netflix, Review, TV | Tagged: Pantheon
Pantheon: Don't Miss Out on This "Big Ideas" Sci-Fi Animated Series
Ken Liu's Pantheon is that rare animated series with some truly mind-blowing ideas that every Sci-Fi fan needs to check out.
Every now and then, you get Pantheon, that rare thing in TV and movies: Science Fiction with big ideas that make your brain explode in several different directions at once. It's also one of the most neglected TV series, originally produced by AMC Studios and streamed in 2022, it received little attention even during the peak of Lockdown and the streaming era, then unceremoniously cancelled before its second season. Netflix picked up both series, which tell a complete story, for streaming early in 2025, where it's slowly building a cult following.
A Pantheon of Digital Gods or Devils
Pantheon is based on six interconnected stories from "The Hidden Girl and Other Stories" by Hugo award-winning author Ken Liu (who also translated Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem into English) that's a rare epic. It starts small and burns slowly but gets bigger and bigger as it goes along. The story begins in a recognisable near-future that looks like our present but with some technological and digital advances a bit further than our time. Maddie Kim (Katie Chang) is a teenage girl grieving over the loss of her father, David (Daniel Dae Kim), a genius programmer who died two years before. Caspian Keyes (Paul Dano) is a sullen high schooler and computer prodigy struggling with an abusive father (Aaron Eckhart) and timid mother (Taylor Schilling).
Maddie starts getting messages from someone who might be her dad, which sends her and her mother, Ellen (Rosemary DeWitt), into further spirals of grief. Has David's consciousness been secretly and illegally uploaded by his employers at Logorhythms? Katie gets online help from one of her internet friends, who turns out to be Caspian. The mystery of David's digital resurrection is part of a decades-long project launched by the late Logorhythms founder Steven Holstrom (William Hurt) that turns out to be tied to the mystery of Caspian's life and the questions he's had about his identity. Once Maddie and Caspian meet, all bets are off. Conspiracies, cover-ups, and global threats emerge as the two teenagers go on the run. The title of this series is really a question: are advanced digital consciousnesses a new pantheon of gods? And what if everyone gets to become uploaded and uplifted? Are they then also gods?
Pantheon starts intimately but opens up into a saga of global conspiracies, action thrillers, moral, ethic, existential, and philosophical questions about life and consciousness and the Singularity that few TV series or movies dare ask. Are uploaded consciousnesses the same person or just a copy? Do they deserve rights as sentient lifeforms? Is digitization the next step in evolution, taking people beyond imperfect and fragile bodies into programs that can be copied and restored forever? The series keeps these ideas grounded with a heart, which is that of Maddie Kim's trauma and grief that leads her to make decisions that aren't always the best. Pantheon's characters are all flawed, and Maddie and Caspian aren't always likable, which is a sign of how uncompromising the writers are about showing the harshest acts and consequences of everyone's actions. Recurring themes from Ken Liu's fiction also show up here: how people are at the mercy of the powerful while trying to find ways to resist and survive. Big Tech is the villain here, of course, and it's probably not an accident that Steven Holstrom looks like Steve Jobs. Pantheon is a drama with major ideas and questions that bite, and anyone who wants more than escapist comfort food from their SciFi should be watching it.
Pantheon is now streaming on Netflix in the US.
Pantheon
8/10
A rare Hard Science Fiction TV series that could only be done in animation with its set pieces in Cyberspace, Virtual Reality and locations all over the world of the near-future, this epic begins with a teenage girl's grief over the loss of her father that opens up to a saga of global conspiracies, action thriller, moral, ethic, existential and philosphical questions about life and consciousness and the Singularity that few TV series or movies dare ask
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