Pantheon will debut with two episodes on AMC+ and HIDIVE on Sept. 1, 2022, followed by one new episode weekly.
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Ken Liu’s 2020 book The Hidden Girl and Other Stories includes a set of interconnected chapters that chronicle the singularity and humanity’s transcendence of the corporeal over the course of thousands of years. The first two episodes of Pantheon, AMC’s animated adaptation of that work, aren’t in any rush to get to that distant future as they both faithfully reproduce Liu’s scenes and lines while padding the story to give more time to his minor characters and add in entirely new plots. While sometimes overburdened by its heavy philosophical themes, the show’s first two episodes provide an intriguing premise propelled by plenty of cyberpunk corporate intrigue.
Pantheon’s premiere largely follows Maddie (Katie Chang), a teen plagued by bullies at her new school who finds assistance from a mysterious hacker who communicates only through emoji. Discovering the truth about his identity puts her in contact with Caspian (Paul Dano), a socially withdrawn computer prodigy whose upbringing seems to be an elaborate experiment. Both wind up entangled in a battle between the world’s largest corporations to control Uploaded Intelligences, digital versions of human consciousnesses.
The characters feel richly developed, particularly Maddie who struggles to share the pain she’s going through, and her father David (Daniel Dae Kim), who emotes a beautiful tenderness as he struggles with his own mortality and tries to do right by both Maddie and his wife Ellen (Rosemarie DeWitt). A historian entangled in a world of ambitious developers, Ellen provides the grounded counter to the concept of digital immortality but also lights up with fierce energy when pushed to protect her family.
Pantheon isn’t especially subtle with its themes. The pilot opens with a lecture on the recurring pattern in mythology of gods overthrowing their parents to take over control of the universe. Uranus tried to protect his rule by imprisoning his own children, but was eventually overthrown. The obvious parallel is that the corporations trying to contain the new form of life they’ve created are already beginning to see the limits of their hubris.
The second episode, “Cycles,” opens with a similarly blunt monologue about how the human brain is the most powerful computer in the world made even more remarkable through its capacity for love. It continues with a scene meant to illustrate the relationship between Maddie and her parents that’s a bit too on the nose: a video gaming session where David uses a cheat code to prevent his character from dying so he can keep protecting Maddie. “What’s the point in playing if you can’t die?” Ellen asks. “Why die if you don’t have to?” David counters. It’s all pretty heavy-handed.
Even if you haven’t read Liu’s work, elements of the plot and themes will seem familiar from the likes of Upload, Black Mirror, and Serial Experiments Lain. But the twisty plot and powerful emotional core make the first two episodes feel full of promise as they seed mysteries and major conflicts to be developed throughout the rest of the eight-episode season. The sentimental family drama pads fairly hard science fiction that can sometimes be unnecessarily brutal, like a scene of a man being involuntarily uploaded, pleading for his life as his brain is ripped apart by a laser scan.
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Big Mouth and Star Trek: Lower Decks animators Titmouse give Pantheon a distinctly anime feel, seemingly paying homage to their influences with a riff on Neon Genesis Evangelion’s NERV logo displayed on Maddie’s laptop. It’s lovely work, nailing the genre’s ability to convey deep feeling with subtle facial movements. In Pantheon, these are often shown reflected on computer screens or hazy in security footage, emphasizing the idea of the world perceived by a digital eye. Wrinkles and lines are particularly well executed to bring personality to the faces of Caspian, his overbearing dad Cary (Aaron Eckhart), and his haggard mom Renee (Taylor Schilling).
Flashbacks take on a fuzzy quality, but so do the green streets of Palo Alto, Calif. In contrast, there’s a stark crispness to the darkened rooms and computer screens where much of the plot of Pantheon’s first two episodes unfolds, visually bringing home the concept that the digital world is just as seductive, and possibly just as real, as the one our bodies occupy.
