Ridley Scott’s Android Show Got Axed Before It Finished Its Own Story

Raised by Wolves arrived on HBO Max on September 3, 2020, with Ridley Scott directing the first two episodes and Aaron Guzikowski running the show. It lasted two seasons and 18 episodes, ending on March 17, 2022. HBO Max cancelled it that June, then pulled it from the service in December.

Trailer, via IGN.

Kepler-22b, and the androids who land there

The premise is the best thing about it. Earth is destroyed by a great religious war. An atheistic android architect sends two of his creations, Mother and Father, to the planet Kepler-22b to start a peaceful, godless colony. They raise human children there. Then the Mithraic arrive — a deeply devout religious order of surviving humans — and the experiment starts to come apart.

That is a real science fiction idea, not a costume. The androids are not raising kids so much as running an argument about whether belief can be engineered out of a species. In this paper’s reading, Mother and Father are the parents and the thesis at the same time. The Mithraic read less like villains than a competing answer to the same question: what do you do with people after the world ends?

Amanda Collin plays Mother, Abubakar Salim plays Father, and Winta McGrath plays Campion, the child at the center of the colony. Travis Fimmel plays Marcus. Niamh Algar plays Sue, Jordan Loughran plays Tempest, Felix Jamieson plays Paul, Ethan Hazzard plays Hunter, Aasiya Shah plays Holly, and Ivy Wong plays Vita.

What Ridley Scott brings to the first two episodes

Scott executive produces and directed the first two episodes. Kepler-22b is a real place on screen — dust, rock, hard light — and the androids are designed with specificity rather than generic chrome. Collin plays Mother with a stillness that makes the violence land harder when it comes.

The show never quite decides how much of its own mystery it wants to explain. Season one stacks up questions: what Mother is, what the Mithraic actually believe, what the planet is doing to everyone standing on it. Some of those get answers. Some get more questions piled on top. That is a choice, and for a while it is a good one.

The Mithraic, and why the religion is the point

The religious conflict is where Raised by Wolves does its best work. The Mithraic are not a strawman. They are survivors who found something to hold onto, and the show lets them be right about some things. The androids are not a strawman either. Mother’s atheism is by design, and the show is honest about how thin that makes it when a child asks her a real question.

Guzikowski is writing about whether you can raise a person without a story to believe in. That is a heavier idea than most genre television attempts, and the first season mostly earns it. Season two leans further into the mythology and, in this paper’s view, gets more confident about its own weirdness.

The second season, and the cancellation

Season two premiered on February 3, 2022. The show was cancelled in June 2022, before it could finish what it started. That fact hangs over any review of Raised by Wolves now. You are not watching a complete story. You are watching two seasons of a story that stops.

The first season drew generally positive reviews. The second drew critical acclaim. That tracks with what is on screen: season two is the more assured of the two, more willing to commit to its own rules, and it ends unresolved.

Hard numbers

• Premiere: September 3, 2020, HBO Max
• Finale: March 17, 2022
• Seasons: 2
• Episodes: 18
• Created by: Aaron Guzikowski
• First two episodes directed by: Ridley Scott
• Cancelled: June 2022
• Removed from HBO Max: December 2022
• Metacritic: 64/100
• Our score: 6.4/10

Season by season

Where it sits against the rest of HBO Max

Raised by Wolves had a real idea and then, in this paper’s view, backed away from it at the wrong moment. The first season is the more promising of the two, not because it is better made but because it is still setting things up. Season two is better made and less promising, which is a strange thing to write about a show that was cancelled before it could pay anything off.

The cast is the reason to watch. Collin and Salim are doing something difficult — playing machines who are also parents — and they never let it become a gag. Fimmel is doing his usual thing, which works here because Marcus is supposed to feel like a man performing a role. The kids are uneven, but the show gives them enough to do that the unevenness reads as youth rather than weakness.

The writing is where the cracks show. Guzikowski has a big idea and a lot of mythology, and the show keeps introducing new pieces without retiring old ones. By the end of season two there are more open questions than the remaining runtime could ever close. That is not a cliffhanger. That is a tab left unpaid.

What the 18 episodes add up to

Raised by Wolves scores 6.4/10 — our number, matching the published critical score of 64/100 on Metacritic. That is about right, though the number hides a split. Season one is the stronger of the two on promise. Season two is the stronger of the two on execution. The average is dragged down by the fact that the show was cancelled before it could finish.

What matters here is not the cancellation. Shows get cancelled. What matters is that Raised by Wolves was cancelled while it was still building, and the building was the good part. The androids, the religion, the planet, the argument underneath all of it — those are worth the 18 episodes. The unresolved ending is the cost of admission, and it is a real cost.

The part worth watching is Mother. Collin takes a character who could have been a gimmick and makes her the most human thing on a show about whether humans can be replaced. That performance is the reason to start. The reason to stop, eventually, is that the show does not stop so much as get stopped.

Amanda Collin · HBO Max · Raised by Wolves · Ridley Scott · science fiction TV · TV cancellation