Hulu's 'New Matrix' Series Deserves More Than Its 82% Rotten Tomatoes Score
By Published May 12, 2026, 11:31 AM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2026. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2026. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
Although ’s attempt to replace franchise fell a little short of this lofty ambition, creator Alex Garland’s underrated show still deserved better than its 82% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. If proves anything, it is that viewers are living in a new golden age of sci-fi TV. While was one of the only sci-fi shows of the 2010s that could truly rival Game of Thrones critically, there are now at least a dozen shows that could credibly claim that level of critical acclaim.
Silo, Foundation, For All Mankind, Black Mirror, Love, Death, & Robots, , Fallout, The Last of Us, Station Eleven, and Severance are all modern classics, and this rundown doesn’t even include underrated one-season wonders like The Peripheral. There are plenty more ambitious projects that ensure this trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, too. From Prime Video’s long-awaited Blade Runner spinoff show to Apple TV’s William Gibson adaptation Neuromancer, it is a great time to be a fan of small-screen sci-fi.
This only makes it more surprising and disappointing that Alex Garland’s , an ambitious series that borrowed from The Matrix series, didn’t earn a better critical reception upon its 2026 release. Garland emerged as a visionary sci-fi screenwriter and director in the 2010s thanks to projects like Ex Machina and Annihilation, but the thriller miniseries Devs marked his first attempt to bring his unique brand of dark sci-fi to the small screen. The show follows Sonoya Mizuno’s Lily Chan, an engineer at the quantum computing software giant Amaya. After her boyfriend joins the corporation’s devs team and almost immediately dies in suspicious circumstances, Lily smells a conspiracy and starts digging into the shadowy company.
Devs' Daringly Bold Approach Deserves Points For Originality
Without giving away too much of the show’s knotty plot, suffice to say that viewers of will recognize some major twists once Lily realizes what is going on in the eponymous devs team. With a superb supporting cast including Cailee Spaeny, Alison Pill, and Nick Offerman, Devs boasts the same patient storytelling style and quiet sense of mounting dread as Garland’s later directorial efforts, Men and Civil War.
Some critics felt that the show’s ambitions were a little too grand for their own good, complaining that Devs lost their attention thanks to its blend of slow pacing and complex sci-fi jargon. However, for viewers who binge the series as if it were a mega-sized movie instead of watching episodes daily or weekly, an approach also preferable for the , there is a compelling tale in this complex miniseries.
The mystery of how and why Lily’s boyfriend died is just the beginning of a complex exploration of free will and determinism that Devs uses its eight-episode run to explore in depth. Where many sci-fi shows leap from one character’s perspective to the next, Devs instead doubles down on this storyline and immerses viewers in the world of Amaya. Like Ex Machina, the show is as concerned with big, ethical philosophical questions as its next plot twist.
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This approach failed to win over some critics upon Devs’ original release in 2026, although its 82% rating from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes is still a superb average. However, new viewers should not be put off checking out the series just because of its deliberate pacing. At a time when was canceled in part because the show’s complicated premise was a hard sell for mainstream audiences, it is important to ensure that Hulu’s spiritual successor to The Matrix series, Devs, doesn’t languish in obscurity.
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Amaya Mizuno-André
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