Netflix has just debuted its sci-fi epic, 3 Body Problem, this past week, and it’s landed at #2 on the top 10 list in the US. But if you’ve binged through it and finished the show, you’ll know that it ends on a significant cliffhanger, one that demands a season 2. But will it get one? This is Netflix we’re talking about, so there are some things to consider.
It feels like Netflix may end up a bit between a rock and a hard place, given the show’s initial performance here, who’s involved, budgets and other considerations.
The show is an adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, the famed book by Cixin Liu, but one that is a part of a trilogy, which also includes The Dark Forest and Death’s End. As such, the three pieces, much like the three-body problem itself, are meant to fit together and you can’t really just have one or two without the others. When you commit to season 1 of a show like this, you in theory, should be signed up for three seasons. But Netflix did not announce that ahead of time, nor have we seen any sort of day-one renewal here for the show.
This is a very, very important project for Netflix, a service that generally speaking does not commit to all that many high profile, expensive sci-fi projects give that they are so high-risk and expensive. You have Stranger Things, obviously, but Netflix has mostly left sci-fi to Apple TV+. Here, this is an extremely important project given that A) it’s such an acclaimed sci-fi book and B) Two of its three creators are David Benioff and DB Weiss of Game of Thrones fame. Expectations are high.
Reception is…fine? But only fine. Critics are giving it a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is good not great for the higher-skewing scores of TV (Shogun has a 99% on Hulu right now, X-Men 97 a 100%, even Paramount Plus’s Halo show has an 89%). User scores are not terribly good. It has a 64% from viewers, while something like say, The Gentleman on Netflix may have a lower 70% critic score, but a much higher audience score of an 86%. And ultimately, audiences are what matter.
3 Body Problem has also debuted behind Homicide New York, a true crime show, on Netflix’s US Top 10 list. It’s early, but the sign of a really strong show is usually a #1 debut, and if not, well, you need word of mouth to spread to get it up there. But I’m not sure how “virally recommended” 3 Body Problem is going to be given its exceedingly high concepts. There’s also cost. A show lower down the list might get renewed if it’s cheap and watched enough. But a sprawling, sci-fi epic like 3 Body Problem? That has to perform extremely well.
It’s a really tough balancing act here. This is a very important show with very high profile talent attached in the form of the Game of Thrones duo, and it really needs three seasons to tell the complete story of the famed trilogy. But reception feels like it’s going to be pretty tepid, and Netflix will have to decide just how committed to it they’re going to be.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
