Netflix's Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Shares First Intense Trailer: Watch

Netflix's anime series Splinter Cell: Deathwatch reveals its first trailer and confirms when it takes place.

By Spencer Perry

It's been over three years since the first look at Netflix's Splinter Cell animated series was revealed to the world. First confirmed during the inaugural Geeked Week event back in 2021, Netflix's 2024 Geeked Week has finally delivered the first teaser of the new series, officially titled Splinter Cell: Deathwatch. The first video footage of the series immediately confirms two major things about the Splinter Cell anime, that Liev Schreiber will be voicing Sam Fisher AND when the show will take place during the canon of the video games. Check out the video for yourself below.

Splinter Cell: Deathwatch hails from animation studios Sun Creature and Fost and is co-directed by Guillaume Dousse and Félicien Colmet-Daage. Derek Kolstad, creator of the John Wick franchise, serves as the head writer for hte series and series as executive producer alongside Helene Juguet, Hugo Revon and Gerard Guillemot for Ubisoft Film & Television.

What is Splinter Cell: Deathwatch?

Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is a new animated series form Netflix that is based on the stealth-action games from Ubisoft. Very little official information about the project has been announced but the Geeked Week teaser trailer does offer a major clue. As we see glimpses of Sam Fisher, and hear some iconic narration from Liev Schreiber in the role, one of the few pieces of footage that's revealed is a casket with the name "Douglas Shetland" embedded into it. Longtime fans of the Splinter Cell video games will likely know this name well as Douglas Shetland was a character featured in two of the most well recieved titles of hte entire franchise, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

In the context of the Splinter Cell franchise, Douglas Shetland was a longtime friend of Sam Fisher who started a private military contractor company, Displace International. The events of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory reveal that Shetland used his company to stoke tensions between North and South Korea. By the end of the game though, Shetland is dead and his conspiracy has been quelled by a former friend.

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What is notable about the inclusion of Douglas Shetland's casket being in the teaser trailer for Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is that it likely provides a major clue about when the series takes place. Since Sam Fisher was forced to kill Shetland at the end of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory it seems very likely that the TV series is set between the events of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

New Splinter Cell Game

It's been over ten years since the last Splinter Cell game with Splinter Cell: Blacklist serving as the last proper entry in the series to be released. Ubisoft remains in development on a remake of the first Splinter Cell game, but no further reveals or news about the title has been showcased to the public yet. In the meantime, the Splinter Cell: Deathwatch series may have to hold fans over as the wait continues; granted, no release date was confirmed for the series by Netflix, so it's unclear if the new show or the new game will be the first thing released to the world. 

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