Last week it was announced that Apple's new sci-fi show Murderbot is premiering much sooner than we expected: May 16, barely three months from now! Based on the hit book series The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, the show will follow a self-hacking security robot who develops sentience. They are drawn toward human emotions despite insisting they want nothing to do with them. Wells first started releasing the Murderbot novellas in 2017, and they quickly became cult favorites among science fiction fans, winning numerous awards and garnering as close to unanimous praise as any series I've seen in recent years.
All this is to say: sit up and pay attention to this one. Apple TV+ has gained a reputation for making great sci-fi shows, and with Murderbot they've got a story with excellent source material, a solid pair of writer-directors in Chris and Paul Weitz (Mozart in the Jungle), and a great lead actor, Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the titular Murderbot. Unless some kind of serious misstep is made, I'll be shocked if Murderbot doesn't become one of the sleeper hit genre shows of 2025.
Amidst all my excitement, I did find myself with a few questions. The largest was: how much of the books will Murderbot cover in its first season? Wells has written seven mainline Murderbot Diaries stories to date; five novellas and two full-length novels. The novellas are set before the novels, and they each clock in under 200 pages. Will the first season adapt more than one?
Fortunately, we now have an answer. Wells took to Bluesky to share a few additional details about what fans can expect in Murderbot, including how much of the book series the first season will adapt: "Answering some questions: the series covers the first novella 'All Systems Red,' I'm a consulting producer, and we've been working on it since 2021. (So it seems fast from the timing of the announcements but it has actually taken a million years in me-time.)," she wrote.
Murderbot is a perfect fit for Apple TV+'s multi-season strategy
I have to give the disclaimer that Murderbot has not been renewed for multiple seasons yet; all of the marketing materials refer to it as a "series," without the words "season 1" anywhere in sight. But I still can't help but think about how perfectly suited it is for expansion if Apple decides to pull the trigger.
Of all the streaming services, Apple TV+ has gained a lot of trust from viewers for not preemptively canceling television shows. Netflix, Amazon, Max...all have caused an upset at one point or another for canceling series that had passionate fanbases but seemingly weren't meeting internal expectations. Meanwhile, Apple has renewed its sci-fi saga For All Mankind for five seasons despite the fact that it took a while to catch on, and renewed the spy thriller Slow Horses for season 6 before season 5 even aired. There are plenty of examples of Apple giving its shows time to actually grow and find an audience. Hell, they haven't even canceled Foundation, a sci-fi show that does a questionable-to-bad job of adapting the legendary book series by Isaac Asimov and has had shake ups behind the scenes.
So while Apple is very carefully calling its 10-episode run of Murderbot a "series" instead of a "season 1," I think there's reason to be optimistic the studio could be game for more. And if it goes that route, the source material is there. With season 1 (yeah I said it) taking the time to really dig into the meat of All Systems Red, that means future seasons would have plenty of room to explore the rest of the novellas and novels. If the show keeps to that same pace of one book per season, it could easily run for quite a long time.
That seems like it could be an especially promising proposition considering that a few of the streamer's other series will be reaching maturation soon; Silo will only run for four seasons total and has already aired two of them, and shows like For All Mankind, Foundation, and Severance feel like they probably have firm endpoints in mind. Murderbot could take up the mantle as one of the streamer's new flagship sci-fi shows when the previously established hits run their course.
What is All Systems Red about?
As for what we'll see this season, Apple's official description keeps things fairly opaque:
Based on Martha Wells' best-selling, Hugo and Nebula Award winning book series “The Murderbot Diaries,” “Murderbot” is a sci-fi thriller/comedy about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients. Played by Skarsgård, Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.
That doesn't tell us very much about the actual events of the show, though I do like that it plays up the comedic aspect of The Murderbot Diaries by mentioning Murderbot's infatuation with soap operas. Fortunately, the book has been out for a few years, and its back cover description reveals a bit more:
A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid―a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
Murderbot premieres its first two episodes Friday, May 16 on Apple TV+. New episodes drop weekly after that for the rest of its 10-episode run.
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