Ridley Scott’s 2-Part HBO Sci-Fi Was So Good, I Still Can’t Believe It Got Cancelled

Since there have been so many great, ambitious sci-fi shows in the 2020s, I’m still shocked that Ridley Scott’s HBO series fro 2020 was cut short after only two seasons. Sci-fi TV is enjoying a renaissance in the 2020s, even if the stagnant Star Trek franchise is struggling to capitalize on this boom. Apple TV has Severance, Silo, Foundation, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Netflix has Black Mirror, the Stranger Things franchise, and 3 Body Problem, and Prime Video’s upcoming cyberpunk sequel Blade Runner: 2099 gives the streaming service another major title in the genre.

Of course, this boom isn’t without its casualties, and HBO’s focus on fantasy means the legendary cable service has had a hard time competing with other entertainment giants when it comes to sci-fi. As popular as Game of Thrones and its spinoffs might be, HBO has struggled to outdo Netflix, Prime Video, and Apple TV in the sci-fi space. The Dune franchise’s streaming spinoff Dune: Prophecy earned middling reviews and the darkly comic Avenue 5 was cancelled after only two seasons. Meanwhile, HBO’s Ridley Scott series Raised by Wolves once seemed like it would be sci-fi’s answer to Game of Thrones, but its swift cancellation proved otherwise.

Raised by Wolves Was An Early Small-Screen Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Set on the planet Kepler-22b after the Earth’s destruction, the story of Raised by Wolves initially focused on two androids, Amanda Collin’s Mother and Abubakar Salim’s Father, who raise a colony of humans to regenerate the population. The pair soon discovers that humanity isn’t easy to govern as the existing generational feuds between religious extremists known as the Mithraic and their militant atheist enemies resurface among this new population of young humans. Slowly, these humans become some of the show’s most complex characters.

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Like so many cult sci-fi flops that deserved better, Raised by Wolves is exposition-heavy and somewhat icily sterile in terms of tone at first, as the show establishes its inhuman protagonists during its early episodes. However, as the battle lines between the humans become clearer and the androids struggle to understand these divisions, Raised by Wolves starts to show the complex attitude toward artificial intelligence and sentience that made Scott’s Blade Runner a prescient masterpiece.

Raised by Wolves’s Big Budget May Have Caused Its Early Cancellation

Raised by Wolves truly comes into its own in season 2, once its large cast has been well established and viewers are invested in the complex, nuanced characters on both sides of the ideological divide. It doesn’t hurt that the action also ramps up in season 2, providing more stakes now that viewers care about the show’s heroes.

Of course, like a lot of shows that rose to prominence in the years after Game of Thrones succeeded in getting viewers immersed in a sprawling fictional world, Raised by Wolves made the major mistake of not grabbing a big enough audience fast enough. As a result, its fate was already sadly sealed.

Compared to the Star Wars franchise, which has a lot of audience goodwill and buy-in for new shows to rely on, Raised by Wolves tested the patience of new viewers too much with its slow storytelling. There was a genuinely innovative and immersive sci-fi fable in this ambitious show, but its massive budget meant that Raised by Wolves never had the chance to become a mainstream sensation before the show was axed just as its storyline was starting to get truly great.