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At first glance, Aaron Guzikowski’s Raised by Wolves seems to speak rather bare-handed of a trinity of stress-inducing human constants: difficult parenting choices, a repressive religion, and runaway technology – specifically designed as a fight to save children. of an apocalyptic war between the loyal atheist militants and the antipodes in the declining future of humanity. High stakes; heavy thing.

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Thanks to now-out-of-control robots originally designed to evaporate unbelievers from the Sun God, the Earth we knew is an abandoned ruin – our last surviving remains having fled to the barely hospitable Kepler-22B in two. packs: a strictly atheist, one under the equally severe banner of monotheism.

It’s a frontier planet of little food, wild and intelligent local monsters, and the kind of nights we’ll soon be experiencing in Edmonton, where you can freeze to death if you’re not careful about your butt.

Some critics of the series seem to have a short-term memory problem over the coldness and lack of humor of Battlestar Galactica while still managing to make it into the top 10 sci-fi TV series of all time – while others have more reasonably gritted their teeth “as a parent” to the number of children’s bodies that the mother (Amanda Collin) and father (Abubakar Salim) androids fail to protect, and how it is not fun to watch either.

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Fair enough. The stakes are indeed brutal, and perfectly in tune with his creative pedigree. It is, after all, a sci-fi horror show and, set to wrap up its 10-episode first season on Thursday, certainly has the touch of executive producer and co-director Ridley Scott, including: Androids creamy blood; faceless aliens with buggy exoskeletons; ruthless environments seen through Hollywood’s “Moscow” filters; and, for sure, reliable, the increasing countdown to “monster in the house” murders.

But to turn away from this inventive show all together is a wasted opportunity to enjoy one of the least moralizing and morally intriguing TV series of the past decade, which begins with the fact that – like Princess Mononoke and to a lesser extent measures Game of Thrones at its best – it’s not a simple battle between good and bad binaries, but rather a collection of perfectly understandable people (and androids) fighting each other fiercely to protect what they believe in really be the only way to save humanity: to eliminate the other side.

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For the first two episodes, I wondered, okay, but this is science fiction: metaphorical country. So beyond the homecoming costumes and exploding priests, what is this show really supposed to be about, philosophically? At first, I opted for “motherhood,” as Mother and Sue both awkwardly relaxed into their babysitting roles – and the show’s title contains the word High, after all. And as Marcus (Travis Fimmell) rises to the parent yin mother yang, I have developed everything to be “raising children in wartime.”

But the more I think about Raised by Wolves, the more I am convinced that it is a great metaphor for something else: namely, the power of social media and its algorithmic encouragement of binary thinking, surely Frankenstein’s technological monster. in our time.

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The idea first occurred to me as I watched Mother, in her lethal Necromancer form, literally destroy men with her voice, a bloody manifestation of “culture of cancellation” if you look at her under the correct one. angle. Don’t judge, PS, just observe. But when Marcus begins to hear voices that no one else can – an analogue to the “special knowledge” that so many Internet conspiratorial YouTubers believe they have on everyone – I started to really look at the big picture. in the context of our click bait. , reality online.

Namely: two parties totally convinced by the principles of their own strict orthodoxy that the other will bring to the end of the world, and maybe very soon. If this doesn’t sound a little familiar to you, you probably (luckily) haven’t hung out on social media as much lately.

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The fact that Marcus starts out as a religious fanatic turning into a real one, and that Mother succumbs to temptations outside of her ruthless worldview – in her case a kind of romantic pornography – only adds nuance to the show and humanizes our protagonists (for fun, think of each of their Father and Sue partners as Internet widows of sorts – they’re my favorite characters on the show, hands down).

But I think the message that a combination of growing, polarized faith and uncontrollable technology is not exactly foreign to some of our current struggles is valid.

So, the central question of the series may not be how do we raise our children in wartime, but rather, how do we currently raise ourselves and each other – and where it might. he lead us? Whatever opinion you might have on whether this is a fair thing to bring up without further qualification – well, that’s my point, actually, and I think that’s the one too. from the Serie.

Kudos to the writers for cheering us on on both sides – which is a lot harder to do in the real world we live in, unfortunately – even though in the world of Raised by Wolves everyone’s ultimate goal is the same: surviving both physical and metaphysical, in who they are and what they believe in.

In the real world, can we do better than a collection of pre-programmed robots and hawkish doctrinal purists? Stay tuned. But I certainly encourage humanity, which includes you.

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