Prime Video's Secret Level has a lot of similarities to Netflix's Love, Death & Robots, but are the two connected? Secret Level takes 15 video games - ranging from God of War to Pac-Man - and adapts their worlds, characters, and stories into animated television episodes. It already sounded like a perfect replacement for Love, Death & Robots, even though Love, Death & Robots season 4 is confirmed. In fact, Secret Level seems like such a perfect substitute for Love, Death & Robots that many viewers may wonder if they're somehow connected.
Secret Level and Love, Death & Robots share quite a few similarities. Both shows are anthologies, meaning each episode tells an independent and new story. They also both feature a similar style of animation, which is intentionally supposed to look like the 3D animation of video games. Even more than that, however, Secret Level shares a lot of thematic similarities with the best episodes of Love, Death & Robots, and they both often look at dark possibilities for the future. It's easy for viewers to assume that they're connected somehow, and they would be right.
Both Secret Level and Love, Death & Robots were created by the same person: Tim Miller. Prior to creating Love, Death & Robots, Miller was known for directing the first Deadpool movie as well as Terminator: Dark Fate. As the mind behind both shows, Miller used many of his experiences from working on Love, Death & Robots to create Secret Level. In an interview with Variety, Miller said that many of the writers worked on both shows, and once they had a story in mind for a specific game, they would "go into “Love, Death & Robots” mode of what’s the coolest way we can tell a story?"
Blur Studio also worked extensively on both Love, Death & Robots and Secret Level, meaning Miller and his team were involved in every step of development, from writing to visuals.
Tim Miller and the writers of Love, Death & Robots weren't just involved in the writing of Secret Level, however. Miller is also the co-founder of Blur Studio, an animation studio that works on 3D rendered cinematics for games like Call of Duty and Gears of War as well as films like the Sonic franchise (via Blur). Blur Studio also worked extensively on both Love, Death & Robots and Secret Level, meaning Miller and his team were involved in every step of development, from writing to visuals. With so much creative control over both shows, it's no wonder Secret Level and Love, Death & Robots are so similar.
Secret Level Is Thematically Similar To Love, Death & Robots
Both Love, Death & Robots & Secret Level Tell Dark & Thought Provoking Stories
Secret Level is, in many ways, not only created by the same people who made Love, Death & Robots, it's a spiritual successor to the earlier show. Both series take extremely dark looks at the near future, the potential end of the world, and the role of technology in it all. Both Love, Death & Robots and Secret Level share grim thematic elements, coupled with their anthology formats which deliver grim looks at the darker parts of humanity in both the past and future. They're essentially both animated versions of shows like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone.
How Secret Level & Love, Death & Robots Differ
Secret Level Has More Fantasy & Hopeful Elements Than Love, Death & Robots
Though they are quite similar, there are also plenty of ways Secret Level differs from Love, Death & Robots. One of the biggest differences is in their tone: both shows can get quite dark, but Secret Level manages to retain a lot more optimism than many of the short stories in Love, Death & Robots did. That was partly because Secret Level also leaned more heavily into the fantasy elements of the games it adapts, whereas Love, Death & Robots functions more as a sci-fi horror show. There's a lot more room for light moments in Secret Level than there is in Love, Death & Robots.
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The clearest distinction between Love, Death & Robots and Secret Level, however, is in their source material. For the former, many of its episodes were either completely original short stories or adaptations of science fiction classics, like Beyond the Aquila Rift by Alastair Reynolds. Secret Level, on the other hand, uses established characters with known backstories and creates new stories to tell with them, such as Kratos' journey through the city. Because of that, Secret Level established itself as something entirely different from Love, Death & Robots, even though the similarities between the anthology shows are still clear to see.
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Secret Level is a computer-animated anthology series that tells bold, unique, and emotive stories set in popular video game franchise worlds.
Release Date December 10, 2024
Seasons 1
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Love, Death & Robots is an animated dark-comedy anthology series created for Netflix that springs from the creative minds of the sci-fi animated film, Heavy Metal. Each episode of the show follows a new story created by different animation and directorial crews as they explore at least one of the three titular themes.
Release Date March 15, 2019
Seasons 3
English (US) ·