Why Raised By Wolves deserves to be saved

#SaveRaisedByWolves. That is all.

Despite being one of the weirdest, boldest shows on the air, HBO Max has canceled its science fiction drama Raised By Wolves. Which is a damn shame, because it was one of the strongest genre shows we’ve gotten in quite a while.

Raised By Wolves followed the journey of a pair of androids tasked with restarting humanity on the distant planet of Kepler-22b. It was a high concept sci-fi drama that explored concepts about what it means to be human, how technology intersects with our lives, and relationships as vast as the universe and as intimate as family.

The show leaned very hard into the kind of science fiction horror that was right at home alongside producer Ridley Scott’s Alien films. In any given episode, you could expect to come across things like androids (benevolent or murderous) struggling with the meaning of existence, a giant flying snake with a slippery secret past, a war between hyper-religious zealots and atheists, sea monsters that like to suckle human babies on their kelpy teats, and any number of other perception-battering ideas. Words like “weird” get thrown around a lot when describing TV shows, but Raised By Wolves really earned the descriptor.

However, despite that seemingly insane list of plot elements I just spouted off, the thing about Raised By Wolves was that it actually managed to tie all those ideas together into a coherent story. A good story even; for as varied as it could be, Raised By Wolves never felt like a show that was cobbling itself together. Sure, it could get confusing at times, but there was always a strong creative vision behind the story. It was never anything less than pretty good, and often it was great.

Plenty of other great shows have been canceled over the years, leaving fans with broken hearts and dreams for how they might have resolved. What makes Wolves different? Why does it deserve to be saved, when so many other shows haven’t been?

Raised By Wolves had a uniquely strong vision and creative team behind it

First, the aforementioned weirdness meant that Raised By Wolves was exceptionally original. There simply are not many other shows like it. And not many shows have the writing, special effects and actors to pull off this kind of story.

Another thing that sets Wolves apart is what I can only refer to as “the X factor.” Sometimes it is just obvious when you consume a piece of media that it’s a story someone has poured their entire being into; that they’ve been waiting years to tell. Creator Aaron Guzikowski had been developing the ideas behind Raised By Wolves for nearly a decade by the time the first season came out. That kind of commitment shines through. As outside the box as it was, I don’t think there’s any denying that Raised By Wolves was about as good at being Raised By Wolves as the show could have hoped for.

When you have that kind of vision, it really is a shame to see it cut short without warning. Wolves was not floundering in its storytelling; it got stronger throughout its second season and left off on some huge cliffhangers. It was clear that this show knew where it was heading, which makes it even worse that it didn’t get even a chance to tie things up. Per Collider, Aaron Guzikowski was already working on Raised By Wolves season 3; the plans were clearly in place for where the show would go next.

The flip side of all this is that, though HBO Max has parted ways with the series, that huge creative force is still tied to the show. The studio that developed it was independent of HBO: Ridley Scott’s own Scott Free studio. Scott himself, one of the all-time great directors of sci-fi horror, took a personal interest in Wolves after Guzikowski sent scripts to the production company, enough that he spontaneously sketched the very first storyboards for the series by hand and decided he wanted to direct the first two episodes himself.

The thing about Raised By Wolves is that if it were to get picked up elsewhere, there’s pretty much no doubt it would still have Guzikowski and, presumably, Scott’s studio attached to it. That means that no matter where Wolves lands, even if it really couldn’t bounce back and had to shift to a different medium like novels or something, it would still have Guzikowski’s story behind it.

Though we live in a time where TV is more competitive than ever, it’s not common to come across shows that have that kind of stewardship. Raised By Wolves would be a great show for a network to save not just because of its passionate fanbase and strong creative vision, but because the crew behind the scenes feels like it could actually survive this kind of transition. Like The Expanse before it, there’s no doubt that Raised By Wolves would make the best of a second lease on life.

The #SaveRaisedByWolves Campaign

Speaking of that dedicated fanbase, there’s been a concentrated effort to get Raised By Wolves renewed or saved by another network. The Save Raised By Wolves campaign launched a petition shortly after the show’s cancelation last month. As of this writing, it has over 16,000 signatures and counting. If you want to check it out, you can find it here.

The first two seasons of Raised By Wolves are still available on HBO Max. Here’s hoping that one day we’ll see how the story ends.

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