Raised by Wolves Season 1 (2020)

Ridley Scott personally directed the first two episodes. That alone is sufficient reason to take notice of this drama. Raised by Wolves is a sci-fi drama released through HBO Max in 2020, beginning with the story of two androids who lead human children to a new planet to raise them, fleeing a destroyed Earth.

What it’s about — Humanity raised by androids

Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) are two androids. They arrive on the planet Kepler-22b leading human children, intending to build an atheist society. But when a religious group called the Mithraic arrives on the same planet, conflict begins. The collision surrounding religion versus atheism, human versus machine, and creation versus evolution is the drama’s core. Mother is a combat android with latent destructive capabilities, and the planet’s secrets gradually reveal themselves.

Direction — Scott’s Gothic sci-fi aesthetic

The 1st and 2nd episodes directed by Ridley Scott instantaneously establish the world-building and aesthetic standards for the entire drama. The Gothic sci-fi aesthetic he established in the Alien series is clearly visible here as well. The barren planetary surface, the ruins of structures of enormous scale, and the empty sky visually overwhelm the smallness of humans. The subsequent episodes also maintain this initial tone well, and as the 10 episodes progress the drama moves in increasingly strange directions.

Performance & characters — A Mother who makes you doubt her nature

Amanda Collin’s Mother is the most impressive performance in this drama. She renders with subtlety the contradiction of an android designed as a weapon who also wants to be a mother to the children. The kind of acting that makes the audience continuously question Mother’s true nature — as though she may or may not have emotions — is the kind of difficult work Collin handles throughout. Travis Fimmel’s Caleb is a member of the religious group with a complex interior, creating the opposing dynamic with Mother.

What the work says — The clash of atheism and religion

Raised by Wolves explores the enormous theme of atheism versus religion through the language of science fiction. The interesting structural choice is that while Mother and Father try to build an atheist society, the planet itself overturns their premises. The circular structure in which humans create god, machines raise those humans, and those machines in turn confront the meaning of god runs through the entire drama. The question of whether technology can replace religion — or whether technology itself becomes a new religion — is also contained within it.

Ratings & reception

IMDb score is 7.4. The bold visual direction and ideas received high praise, but opinions were divided on the ambiguity of the story development. The show attracted attention among sci-fi drama fans for its originality, and Season 1 built a devoted fanbase. The fact that Ridley Scott served as executive producer and personally directed the early episodes raised expectations for the drama, while simultaneously creating some disappointment when the quality varied across later episodes.

What doesn’t quite work

As the drama progresses, the story becomes increasingly abstract and ambiguous. The accumulation of mythological elements without clear explanation is part of the appeal but also makes it difficult to understand what you’re watching. Compared to the shock of the Ridley Scott-directed episodes 1 and 2, the quality of subsequent episodes is uneven.

Verdict

Raised by Wolves Season 1 is one of the most ambitious science fiction dramas of recent years. It is the result of Ridley Scott’s cosmological questions being unpacked in the format of a TV drama. It is strongly recommended to viewers open to ambiguity and strange sci-fi world-building. The transformation that Mother shows across Season 1 — from tool to mother, from mother to something else again — is the drama’s most essential emotional thread. Rating: ★4.0.

Recommended for

• People who enjoy Ridley Scott’s sci-fi aesthetic as seen in Alien and Prometheus
• Those seeking philosophical sci-fi dramas about religion, technology, and artificial intelligence
• Viewers who enjoy open-ended narratives that don’t provide easy answers