Volume 3 of Love, Death & Robots brings new additions to the adult animated anthology series with stories across a wide variety of genres and visual styles. The episodes are now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Three Robots: Exit Strategies(Episode 1):
K-VRC, XBOT 4000, and 11-45-G have returned and this time they’re travelling around Earth trying to learn more about how the different classes of people survived the apocalypse.
They first visit a survivalist camp filled with redneck, doomsday preppers who believed that all they needed to survive were an obscene amount of guns and ammunition.
Next up is an oil rig in the middle of the ocean repurposed into a luxury hotel where the tech billionaires holed up. Unfortunately for them, no one knew how to carry out that most menial task and their overdependence on tech led to their downfall.
Following that, they visited an underground bunker where the world leaders hid, but what they found was the leaders gathered around the table feasting on one of their own after their self-sustainable farm failed.
Finally, they visit a military off-site where several rocketships were set to take the wealthiest 0.1% of the population to Mars and they realize that one ship did make it out, making them wonder who might have survived. A quick cut to Mars shows that it was the cats of Earth who managed to escape and thrive on a new planet.
Bad Travelling (Episode 2):
A giant crustacean called a thanapod boards a ship and wreaks havoc amongst the crew. It manages to eat one of them before making its way to the lower levels of the ship. The captain, Torrin, makes everyone pick straws to decide who will go down and deal with the creature.
When the biggest man in the crew picks the smallest straw, he incites a mutiny and the captain is forced to go down. When he comes face to face with the creature, it talks back using a dead crew member as its vessel. It wants to be taken to the nearest populated island.
When Torrin resurfaces, he rushes to secure his gun and gain an advantage. He then tells the crew of the thanapod’s wishes and how he has made to deal with the creature.
His first order is throwing down the initial mutineer as food before discussing a plan of action with the crew. He suggests taking the ship to a deserted island nearby so that the unsuspecting people on the island don’t have to worry. They then vote on what to do.
Once everyone has voted, he takes out two members of the crew stating that they voted to doom the islanders. He then orders them to set sail for the deserted island. Throughout the trip, the rest of the crew make attempts on the captain’s life but he’s always one step ahead.
He’s forced to kill them all after which he reveals everyone but him voted to save themselves instead of the honourable choice. He then heads down to meet the creature and claims they have arrived before emptying a couple of barrels of oil and setting the ship ablaze, saving anyone else from the same fate as his crew.
The Very Pulse of the Machine (Episode 3):
Two astronauts are riding a rover on one of Jupiter’s moons, Io, when they are hit by an eruption. The rover overturns and one of the astronauts, Martha Kivelson, hurts her arm while the other one dies.
Martha gets out of the rover and realises that her oxygen tank is compromised, so she’s forced to hook up to her partner’s tank and drag her body back to their base.
Along the way, she stumbles and aggravates her injury, forcing her to inject herself with analgesics. As she walks on, she begins to hear her partner reciting poetry but shrugs it off as effects of the drugs.
As she travels the terrain, she has vivid hallucinations and the voice talking to her claims that it is emanating from the moon itself. Martha begins to believe that this moon is an organic machine as it states and opens her eyes to the possibilities.
She ultimately gives her life by jumping into a toxic pool as the moon promises that her consciousness will be preserved. The next approaching Earth satellite receives a message from Martha, which begs the question, was it all real?
Night of the Mini-Dead (Episode 4):
This entire scene takes place in a miniature world with the voices high pitched and squeaky. A couple makes love in a graveyard before accidentally awakening the dead.
The zombies slowly make their way to the city and eventually jumpstart the apocalypse. A period of ‘Mad Max-esque’ times ensues as it spreads across the world. People do their best to defend themselves but to very little avail.
Eventually, some zombies make it a nuclear plant, causing an explosion and giving rise to mutant zombies. The world leaders have no chance but to launch all the WMDs they possess as the camera pans out to a view of the galaxy.
Kill Team Kill (Episode 5):
A group of soldiers are making their way to the objective point but when they get there, they find their teammates completely massacred. They’re immediately set upon by a giant cybernetic bear going ballistic.
They do their best to fight back but after a few members of the team bite the dust, another soldier shows up and scares the bear away with a megaphone.
He says that the bear belonged to a CIA base nearby and was part of Project Barghest. It went rogue recently and it’s up to them to shut it down. They arrive at the base and stock up on weapons but the Barghest takes them by surprise.
Another ton of bullets later, the Barghest is finally down with two soldiers remaining. They heave a sigh of relief before the bear’s eye pops out and blows them to smithereens.
Swarm (Episode 6):
A human doctor, Afriel, is seen conversing with an alien as they drop him off at the site of something called the ‘Swarm’. He claims that he is there to learn about its functioning.
He enters the Swarm and meets another doctor, Galina Mirny, who has spent time at the Swarm and learnt much about how it operates and the many different castes of species that inhabit it.
Afriel reveals that he is there to learn the fundamentals of how the swarm operates so that they can model the human race on a similar structure. He convinces Galina that it is for the betterment of humans and that the Swarm will remain unaffected.
They begin to manipulate different workers and castes of the Swarm until one day Galina doesn’t return from a trip. Afriel goes out in search but is attacked by the warrior caste. They take him to a big brain that has assimilated Galina and is talking through her.
The brain states that it was created by the Swarm as a defence mechanism against Afriel’s plans. It tells him that they have no hope of reaching the levels of the Swarm because humans are an inferior species but Afriel holds firm that they’re not.
The brain proposes that Afriel works with the Swarm for the sake of his knowledge, or else he will be assimilated like Galina. Afriel reluctantly agrees, sowing the seed for a worrisome partnership.
Mason’s Rats (Episode 7):
Mason notices that he has a rat problem on his farm, but on closer inspection realizes that these rats are slightly evolved and use primitive weapons. He contacts a pest control agency.
A suited executive states this is a growing trend thanks to decades of human occupation on Earth and pushes their company’s latest product, a laser system. The highly sophisticated tech is installed and initially takes out many of the rats before they grow smarter and shut down the lasers.
He calls the company again and the executive suggests a mobile improvement, a scorpion droid. It proves highly effective and is constantly dropping bodies.
One day, Mason watches on as the rats fight back with admirable desire and bravery. They manage to heavily damage the droid but just as it is about to wipe them out for good, Mason shoots the machine himself. He then tips his hat to the rats for their efforts and shares a drink signalling a time of peace.
In Vaulted Halls Entombed (Episode 8):
A platoon of soldiers is observing some insurgents and a hostage. They’re tasked with rescuing that hostage and they follow them into a cave system. Once inside they find that their targets have been reduced down to just bones.
They wonder what did it and soon encounter a swarm of spider-like creatures that engulf their victim and consume them until there is nothing left but bones.
They’re forced deeper into the cave system until they reach a shrine of some sort. They are met with bigger spider-like creatures and only two soldiers remain.
They walk into the shrine and find a massive devilish monster that speaks to their minds. It is chained up and wants to be released, so it controls one of the soldiers but the other soldier fights and kills her teammate. She is left alone with the monster.
The next scene shows the soldier walking outside chanting in a strange language, but her eyes are gouged out and her ears are bleeding. What has been unleashed on this Earth?
Jibaro (Episode 9):
An army makes camp near a lake and one of the soldiers who happens to be deaf splits from the group to check out something. A highly bejewelled woman steps out of the lake and lets out a siren-like scream pulling all the other men into the lake in a frenzy.
Only the deaf soldier is left alive and he manages to escape. The next night when he falls asleep, the woman lays down next to him. When they wake up, he realises that she is covered in gold and jewels and chases after her as she rushes up the stream.
He finally catches up to her, and her screams do not affect him. He’s able to overpower her and steals all the riches that he can from her and leaves her body to wash away.
Her body reaches back to the lake and as some sort of divine intervention, blood begins to flow back upstream. It reaches where the soldier is having a drink and as soon as he has a gulp of the blood, he gets his hearing.
He is caught off guard by all the sounds and in a crazed rage rushes back through the forest until he finds himself back at the lake. The woman wakes up once again and notices that she has lost her usual visage and screams in agony, finally taking down the soldier that was responsible for her misfortune.
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