Netflix renews Love, Death, And Robots for an unprecedented (these days) 4th season
The anthology series was built from Tim Miller and David Fincher's attempts to revive Heavy Metal
In an era where Netflix executives stalk the figurative halls of the company’s library, axes in hand, just waiting to strike, Tim Miller’s animated anthology series Love, Death, And Robots has achieved the seemingly unthinkable: A fourth season renewal on the streaming network.
And, look, we know: Once upon a time, it was totally normal for Netflix shows to run to four, five, even six seasons. But that was in the ancient days of yore, when the budgets ran freely, the subscriber counts could only increase, and renewal notices fell like rain. In 2022, it’s nearly unprecedented.
Of course, Love, Death, And Robots does have a few aces up its sci-fi sleeve, some of them very shiny: The series—which grew out of Miller’s attempts, along with fellow executive producer David Fincher, to make a new Heavy Metal movie a few years back—has won a boatload of Emmys for its previous three seasons, including two wins for Outstanding Short Form Animation. There’s also the anthology nature of the show, which is surface-level good because, hey, people love an anthology—and which also probably doesn’t hurt Netflix’s bottom line, since it means there are no regular performers, and only a few regular writers, attached to the series, racking up increasingly expensive paychecks as they go. (Fincher’s name probably doesn’t hurt either, even if he still won’t come back and make more Mindhunter for ’em.)
In any case, it’s welcome news: There’s not much else on TV that looks or feels like Love, Death, And Robots, which wears those Heavy Metal influences proudly, telling stories of violence, sex, aliens, betrayals, and just generally awful shit befalling people (sometimes with a cheesy, Cryptkeeper-esque punchline to close things out) in fantastical worlds. Miller and Fincher both produce on the series, alongside Jennifer Miller and Joshua Donen; writers on individual episodes of the show have included novelists John Scalzi and Joe Abercrombie, with authors adapted including J.G. Ballard, Bruce Sterling, and many others.