Animation is a natural home for sci-fi. The stories can take many forms, follow all sorts of tones, and give us any kind of robot (if we get a beep-boop at all!). The only thing it needs is to be unrestrained; science fiction, as a genre, feels best when it’s unbound by the limits of the world we have now, able to instead live in chasing down the possibilities of “what if?” But all too often, animated science fiction still feels limited — if not by a production budget, then by a lack of imagination of what the format could offer the story.
That is not the case with Pantheon. Based on a series of short stories by Ken Liu, the show follows a group of people across the globe brought together by a conspiracy: A tech company is attempting to upload people’s consciousnesses into the cloud as “Uploaded Intelligences” (UIs). Of the people affected is Maddie (Katie Chang), a teenager still reeling from her father’s death when she starts getting messages from someone online who seems to see all and know all.
Liu, a celebrated author of speculative fiction known for books like the Dandelion Dynasty series and his translation work on The Three-Body Problem, is no stranger to science fiction that peels off from reality to take surprising turns. With Liu’s The Hidden Girl and Other Stories as a framework, Pantheon takes that ethos and runs with it. The show seems to revel in pulling away from our world and into the science fiction of its UIs, the way fingers disconnect after holding hands.
The animation follows suit: The style resembles Invincible, or other Titmouse productions. But like those shows, that’s just the start for the tone of normalcy; a method to ground a world as we fly further and further away. Before too long, the virtual world is an expression of how malleable animation can be (and how big the creatives blocking for it can dream). The show moves quickly from premise to possibility, diving into just how strange and multifaceted the potential of virtual consciousness really is.
By season 2, the show is all gas, no brakes. You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube, and Pantheon’s story gets to focus on the mess that happens when all the secrets come out. It’s a freer version of the show, and even more of a good time than the first: As the world copes with the UI conspiracy, it’s forced to broaden its perspective, weighing more vantage points on the ensuing madness in both worlds. In the real world, people largely aren’t too excited about governments controlling UIs and threatening the internet as they know it. In the digital realm, UIs feel mixed as they weigh what it means to be something beyond human, maybe even godlike.
The story manages to never lose its head, thanks to the grounding perspectives of the characters we’re following. Maddie and computer whiz Caspian (Paul Dano) are both confronted with the exhilarating and terrifying sides in the limitless options of virtual life. And so, across its two seasons, Pantheon gets to run wild — as does the animation. The show is constantly finding new ways to portray how surreal and unlimited virtual reality is, with UIs moving like they’re fighting Fire Lord Ozai. It is exactly what I want in a sci-fi — the freedom to move that begets a freedom to imagine, and make it all feel true.
Pantheon is now streaming on Netflix.
