Amazon is finally turning the Mass Effect games into a TV show

Amazon MGM Studios has announced that it’s putting a Mass Effect TV show into development. Per Variety, the series will adapt BioWare’s best-selling space opera video game franchise, which sees players take control of a charismatic, take-charge star captain who recruits a rag-tag group of weirdos to fight crime, stop intergalactic threats, and provide them a wide variety of faces/orifices to smooch.

But we kid Mass Effect, even though those games do have a lot more tongue-tussling with aliens than might be prudent, given how apocalyptic their plots eventually get. The franchise is already one of gaming’s biggest, with a beloved trilogy, a less beloved follow-up game, and a bunch of novels and other expanded universe stuff under its fancy space-belt. Now, the series is being adapted for television, with Daniel Casey, who previously wrote the movie we’re legally required to refer to as F9: The Fast Saga, serving as its writer and executive producer.

And you might find yourself thinking, “Didn’t Amazon already say it was working on a Mass Effect show?” And, yes, indeed: The mega-giant initially tossed the idea out back in 2021, along with periodic efforts to make the gaming franchise into a film. But that was back before video game adaptations were capable of winning both Emmys and big ratings draws, so presumably there’s a little more life in those efforts now.

From an outside point of view, we can’t help noting that Mass Effect—which takes place in a universe where humanity is the junior partner in a sort of space U.N., despite our gumption and specialness making us the only ones capable of saving the universe—might be in danger of falling into what we think of as the Last Of Us problem. I.e., it’s a game where a decent chunk of the appeal was taking tropes and story ideas from genre TV and film, and adapting them into a playable story; now that those same space opera ideas are being translated back into TV, it’s an open question of what’s there that’s actually original. (That being said, what the hell do we know? Last Of Us was a hit despite being TV’s dozenth or so zombie show, so maybe people are primed for a new-old set of space adventures.)