Season 3 of Netflix’s sci-fi anthology animated series Love, Death + Robots is finally here, with a collection of nine thrilling and mesmerizing new stories that are sure to blow your mind. Ranging from comedy to science fiction, fantasy, horror, and drama, every episode in the series plays with the concept of love, death, or robots, not necessarily together at once, and makes you rethink your understanding of reality hours after you’ve binge-watched the show. Since it is an anthology, no story is directly connected to the other (except for two episodes), and you can pick it up from wherever you like and enjoy the euphoric animation without having to worry about continuity errors.
However, if you put the three seasons together, there is a recurring theme of human extinction, and most of the time it is our own damn fault. Be it the disparity between humans themselves, unpredictable explorations, reckless experimentation, attacks from otherworldly species, or a robot uprising, Love, Death + Robots surmises humanity will eventually be wiped out of the earth, and robots or other entities become the new residents of the once lively planet.
Let’s have a look at the following seven episodes from Seasons 1 to 3 of Love, Death + Robots that feature the end of humanity, in the most imaginative ways possible.
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"When the Yogurt Took Over" (Season 1)
An alternate reality storyline based on a short story written by John Scalzi, where a group of scientists performs weird experiments on yogurt, and one of the samples gains sentience. The yogurt can speak, and multiply, and seems to be far more intelligent than humans themselves. However, it has plans of its own, and a desire to rule over the planet. Directed by Gabriele Pennacchioli, Víctor Maldonado, and Alfredo Torres, the episode takes a satirical approach to leadership, that humanity does in fact has the potential to be a better race. But greed takes the best of human emotions, and even if we have a plan to alleviate all of humanity's problems, our tendency is to take shortcuts.
A decade later, humanity is seen flourishing once again under the yogurt’s rule. However, one day, quite inexplicably, the yogurt decides to leave the planet in spaceships, leaving the now completely subjugated hairless primates staring up at the sky. No one knows why they left, whether it was a looming threat far beyond their own capabilities, or to conquer other worlds. What we do know is that without the yogurt, a post-apocalyptic scenario where humans have consumed everything to extinction is inevitable.
"Ice Age" (Season 1)
Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Topher Grace as a young couple who just moved into a new apartment, the episode is an adaptation of a short story written by Michael Swanwick, and circles around an antique-looking fridge that doubles as a dimensional mirror. It displays a tiny reality veering into the ice age, where humans are just beginning to adapt and evolve. Time moves a lot faster than our own reality, and the couple witnesses the growth of human civilization, going from the Medieval era to the Industrial Revolution in a matter of minutes. However, a few minutes into the Modern era, the tiny humans go berserk and begin tactical nuclear warfare. The episode looks at the cycle of life, and takes it a step further by showing the different possibilities of how life can flourish or end as we know it on earth. This story looks at three possible ways humans can go extinct, either through nuclear warfare, if we survive we become beings of pure energy and are no longer humans, or die alongside the dinosaurs in the catastrophic asteroid impact that wiped 90% of species off the face of the earth.
"Alternate Histories" (Season 1)
In another amazing short story written by John Scalzi, we are comically presented with imaginary scenarios of how humanity could have been saved from Adolf Hitler's cruelty. Through an alternative history research simulation app called Multiversity, we come across six different hypothetical timelines where Hitler doesn’t commit suicide at the end of World War II as we know it but instead meets his death in six different ways. Out of the six scenarios, two showcase the extinction of humanity, along with Hitler. The fifth story shows how Hitler dies from a meteorite dropping over his head, which is a precursor to a much larger asteroid that wipes out 93% of species along with humans. In the sixth and a far more futuristic one, Hitler gets caught in a crossfire between time-traveling Nazis and Anti-Nazis but is then saved by his cybernetic future self. However, both the Hitlers make the mistake of getting in contact with each other, resulting in an explosion that consumes the entire universe. The simulation ends right there, and then restarts and continues with another concept, “What if Abraham Lincoln shoots first”.
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"Automated Customer Service" (Season 2, Episode 1)
In a bizarre amalgamation of Wall-E and The Terminator, this episode adapted from a short story by John Scalzi imagines a future where machines have become so futuristic and self-reliant, that they don’t even need humans to fix themselves, everything is done by the machines. The customer service that was once a booming industry for humans has been replaced by a self-aware A.I. that gives automated responses, and comically mocks humans for their helplessness. We see a peaceful futuristic retirement community staffed by robotic helpers, robots doing everything for humans from feeding them, moving them, to cleaning after them. Things go haywire for an elderly lady when she notices aggressive behavior in her "Vacuubot", a robot vacuum cleaner equipped with everything necessary to eliminate anything from dust to humans. She manages to take it down with some help from a neighbor, but now the whole town’s robots are after her in a bid to take her down, indicating a robot uprising, that could have snowballed into a Terminator-esque situation in their future.
"3 Robots: Exit Strategies" (Season 3, Episode 1)
Directed by Jerome Denjean, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, and Patrick Osborne, this episode is a direct sequel to "3 Robots" (Season 1), three robots (K-VRC, XBOT 4000, and 11-45-G) continue their post-apocalyptic trip, summarizing how humanity really went extinct on earth. They investigate several sites, ranging from poorer sections of the society to the insanely rich, and finally a formerly self-sustainable bunker for government officials. The robots conclude humans were wiped off the face of the earth partly due to the robot uprising and largely due to humanity’s greed. The only species that managed to survive and escape the dying planet is a breed of intelligent cats, who managed to colonize Mars and now live a cozy life.
"Night of the Mini Dead" (Season 3, Episode 4)
"Night of the Mini Dead" is an apocalyptic zombie satire adapted from a short story by Jeff Fowler and Tim Miller, depicting another end-of-the-world scenario. Similar to the episode "Ice Age", we see events happening at a much faster rate as compared to our own time. It shows how two horny teenagers accidentally set off a zombie apocalypse in their sexual frenzy, that devours almost all of mankind until the President of the United States launches every nuclear missile in the American arsenal, which prompts other nations to launch their nuclear weapons as well. This results in the annihilation of Earth, or a puny fart on a universal scale.
"In Vaulted Halls Entombed" (Season 3, Episode 8)
Taking inspiration from H. P. Lovecraft’s lore and based on a short story written by Alan Baxter, this episode directed by Jerome Denjean, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, and Jerome Chen brings you face to face with an Eldritch horror that is supposed to be incomprehensible to the human brain. Deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, a squad of Marines is chasing a group of insurgents to rescue a hostage. Little do they know they are about to face a far greater threat, as the squad loses three of its members to a swarm of bizarre-looking flesh-eating spiders, that guard the passageway to an ancient and hidden tomb. What we see next is one of the best on-screen depictions of Cthulhu, an Eldritch god prophesied to bring upon the end of the world. Cthulhu shows visions of the apocalypse that is to come, and orders the survivors to free him. Luckily, one of them manages to break free, kills the other, and escapes the temple by gouging out her eyes and making herself deaf. However, humanity is still not safe, and there might be another who will stumble into the vaulted halls of Cthulhu, freeing him, and bringing forth the end of the world as we know it.
