Will Netflix’s ‘Love Death + Robots’ Be Renewed for Season 5?

Netflix’s acclaimed adult animated series Love Death + Robots has dropped its long-awaited fourth season, which includes 10 striking fever dream episodes that run the gambit of storytelling — from a cat battling Satan, to naked gladiators riding dinosaurs, to a dolphin messiah.

Once again, the show has served up visions inspired by an array of short stories that are unlike anything else on TV (trailer below). And once again, there are controversies, with the show’s passionate fandom debating certain aspects (such as a character voiced by Mr. Beast, and executive producer and director David Fincher’s short which takes a Red Hot Chili Peppers’ performance and recreates it using thousands of puppets).

Below, creator and director Tim Miller (Deadpool) discusses the new season, several of the episodes and the show’s future (if you haven’t yet watched season four, better to do that first). The show’s success has also allowed him to expand his talents to another adult animated anthology series, Prime Video’s Secret Level, which has been renewed for a second season.

Before we get into the new episodes, if you could adapt any story for this show — like, anything out there that you don’t currently have the rights to do — what would you want?

“Johnny Mnemonic” by William Gibson. And I know they made a movie, but it’s so different than the short story that nobody would recognize those two things other than some character names and a dolphin. The original short story is just amazing — as were many of those books from that age. My second one would be a Gibson and Bruce Sterling collaboration from Mirrorshades called “Dog Fight.”

You have a huge number of published short stories that you pull from to inspire these. As this is “summer reading list” season, what are some of your all-time favorite short story collections?

Mirrorshades, which is also where [the season 4 episode] “400 Boys” comes from, is fucking fabulous. Gibson has another collection called Burning Chrome. And I really love these books called SNAFU from Cohesion Press in Australia, where we find a lot of Love Death + Robots stories.

It feels like there’s some creative linkage between your show and Black Mirror. Have you and Charlie Brooker ever discussed collaborating or trading an episode?  

No, but I’d happily do that. I think he’s much more thematically consistent. His show with its fear of technology and what it might do to our lives, whereas I’m all over the map. My theme is no theme.

So this season, people seem to love “Spider Rose.” The original ending of the short story, she eats her pet out of desperation because she realizes she wants to live, which causes her body to metamorphosis into a new version of the creature. What made the new ending right?

The transition to a visual medium. You can talk about the creature being cute, but it’s a different thing entirely when you see it. And [director] Jennifer Yuh Nelson made it super fucking cute. So the idea of then eating that thing — which, if I directed it, maybe I still would have done — but she certainly made the right choice for the audience. It was just too cute to eat at the end of the day.

For “Golgotha,” I know it doesn’t matter, the story works either way, but I still wondered: Was the dolphin just a dolphin or was the dolphin the Messiah?

No, the dolphin is a messianic figure. The idea that a dolphin would be able to rise from the dead, be able to speak to aliens and also tell them humans suck and you should scour the earth clean, it was too much of a chance. I’m pretty agnostic, or atheist, and this and “How Zeke Got Religion” ends with an affirmation of religion. So I try not to let my beliefs get in the way of a good story.

I was curious about that, because religion is a theme in multiple episodes this season and wondered if that was a coincidence.

I’m sure, if I was in therapy, there would be some kind of assessment. Like why are there so many cats? I hate cats, so why are they there? But I’m not aware of it. It’s really sometimes only after the fact that somebody points out a pattern that I go, “Oh, yeah, I guess so.”

Speaking of the cats, I quite liked “For He Can Creep.” What drew you to that one as a non-cat person?

I don’t like cats, but I do like John Scalzi and John Scalzi likes cats and a lot of those stories are from him. But that one is by Siobhan Carroll. The attitude of [the black cat] Joffrey, the protagonist, I found it very humorous that he feels like like the poet is his pet and when Satan shows up he’s like, “Fuck you, don’t tell me what to do.”

“The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur.” You can’t really go wrong with naked Ben-Hur meets Jurassic Park in space. I know it was originally written for Zack Snyder, who couldn’t do it. But I don’t think it could have been more Zack Snyder even if he had? Other than maybe more slow-mo?

Well, at some point there was lot more sex in it. The Duke and Duchess were not just sitting there. They were, let’s say, otherwise occupied during the race — which I think would make it a little more Zack Snyder. We dialed that back. Not because of any puritanical instinct, it’s not really Mr. Beast’s brand and — to be quite honest — it felt a little gratuitous, even to me. Sometimes you do something and you think it’s cool, and then sometimes you go, “Am I doing that for the right reasons, or am I doing that just to shock people and get a reaction?”

I thought Mr. Beast’s character worked and didn’t realize it was him while watching. The way some fans reacted, you would think that guy had invented cancer rather than found a way give tens of millions to strangers. Plus he’s clearly parodying himself. Has that pushback been surprising at all?

I wasn’t surprised at the reaction to Mr. Beast. In fact, it was a little milder than I expected, just because he’s a polarizing figure. Why? I’m not entirely sure. If I was 13, I’d have a better handle on that question. People go, “This feels like a blatant attempt to get his fan base to watch the show,” and I want to go, “Well, duh, yeah.” It’s good to get people to watch the show. It allows us to make art and tell stories. Like with Secret Level, “Well, this just feels like a bunch of stories meant to sell games.” And again, I wanted to go, “Well, yeah, because nobody’s going to give us money to make this shit if we’re not selling games.” Like nobody gives money to make movies unless somebody’s paying to watch those movies.

The one episode that people seem to pile on a bit is “Can’t Stop.” It sounds like fans were thinking that it was going to progress into a story instead of being only a performance. Was that aspect ever discussed?

It was never discussed and I think that’s more my hubris than anything. The reason David and I created the show to begin with was an excuse to do anything that we thought was visually interesting, and/or a good story. Sometimes music videos tell a story. Sometimes they’re just beautiful. I feel that that’s the same way with with animation. Sometimes it’s just a beautiful piece of art. So I was kind of surprised by that because it didn’t enter my my head, nor had anybody else’s. I remember the first time I saw Mad Max: Fury Road, I was disappointed because I was expecting more of a story. The second time I fucking loved it, because I could just sit back and enjoy the spectacle and not have that expectation. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there on “Can’t Stop,” but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

It sounds like you don’t mind looking online to see how people react to the show when many creatives are like, “That way lies madness.”

A showrunner I respect just watched season four and wrote to say he fucking loved it. I said, “Me too, but we’re getting a little hate.” Then he said, “Dude, there’s not many things that I can tell you about this industry that I’ve learned over the years. But the one thing is do not read the comments.” Maybe I’m insecure, but I can’t help it. And as accomplished as David is, when we screen the show, or I’m on the press tour, he’ll text me afterwards and ask, “How did it play? Do they like it?” If you’re a creator who doesn’t care what people think, I’m not quite sure what you’re doing it for. Certainly there’s a level of self satisfaction, but you want people to enjoy what you do.

Every writer does, I think. This is the longest wait for new episodes. Will there be a season five? And, if so, will it take another three years?

Boy, I hope there will be. I have a plan already. I picked two seasons worth of stories and said [to Netflix], “We can get it out faster because we’ll just do these seasons back to back.” The wait was too long and fans were not happy about that, and rightly so.

Speaking of waiting for new seasons, how long for a second season of Secret Level?

I’m not sure I can announce that yet. We’re trying to learn from our mistakes. It wasn’t the plan to take three years. It was a really a rough time coming out of the pandemic. When the trolls go, “They’re taking the money and spending it on popcorn and pizza,” I’m like, “Man, we don’t make any money on this show!” All of the money goes up on the screen. And if we had more money, that would go up on the screen, too. If we got a chance to do more seasons, we would not let that happen again. I am genuinely excited about the next batch of stories that are waiting in the wings. I’m interested in examining some of the weightier topics of our time, particularly what happens with the intersection of AI and humanity’s future, and there are a lot of great stories about that.