Prime Video's 10/10 Sci-Fi Fantasy Masterpiece Succeeds In Its Hardest Task
One of Prime Video's masterpiece series is getting expanded in the perfect way, and it confirms how the show has succeeded in the hardest task that it had ahead of it. Prime Video's library of TV shows offers plenty of exciting series across different genres. That said, sci-fi and fantasy are easily among the best that the streaming service has to offer.
After all, Prime Video's most expensive TV show to date, and the overall most costly series of all time, is the fantasy adaptation The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show expands the world of one of the most iconic movie franchises of all time, taking inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien's epic works.
In the sci-fi realm, Prime Video has quite a few shows that will leave fans scratching their heads. From the hard sci-fi masterpiece that is The Expanse to the short-lived cyberpunk that was The Peripheral, some of the best sci-fi shows on streaming come from Prime Video. That is why this masterpiece mixing both of them ended up resulting in a stellar show.
That sci-fi fantasy series would be Secret Level. Created by Tim Miller, who was also behind Netflix's animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots, Prime Video's Secret Level takes that approach to video games. The show explored many different worlds across its 15-episode first season, and now, two years later, Secret Level has succeeded in its hardest task.
Prime Video's Secret Level Has Produced Its First Spinoff
Every episode of Secret Level season 1 tells its own story based on popular games like Sifu, Dungeons & Dragons, Pac-Man, Mega Man, and so much more. One of those, episode 5, "And They Shall Know No Fear," was set within the expansive Warhammer 40k universe. The episode followed a group of Space Marines who travel to a planet crawling with Chaos cultists to destroy a relic. The animated anthology's Warhammer 40k episode was its best, earning a series-high 8.7 user score on IMDB. Years later, it was revealed that an animated Warhammer 40k series is now in development.
Not only that, but the upcoming Prime Video series will feature Dave Wilson's return to the Warhammer franchise. Wilson served as the director of the Secret Level Warhammer 40k episode, and he will return as the director and co-creator of the new animated series. Joining him as co-creator is John Orloff (Band of Brothers). By bringing back the man responsible for the best Secret Level episode to date, with a writer who has the credits to bring an emotional and action-packed story about the Space Marines taking on the aliens known as The Deathwatch, and Henry Cavill as an executive producer, the Warhammer 40k series feels like a dream come true.
Animated Anthologies Spawning Spinoff Series Is Always Their Hardest Task
Whenever a new animated anthology series comes out, there are inevitably debates about doing sequel episodes about popular stories or even full-on spinoffs. Accomplishing the latter is always the hardest task they can face. After all, Secret Level's episodes were all quite short, with a few only going on for a handful of minutes or less. The same goes for most shows that follow this format. For instance, despite being a huge success, Netflix's Love, Death & Robots has spawned no spinoff series. Instead, it went for the easiest route, which was to create a sequel episode for its most popular story.
As such, Prime Video's upcoming Warhammer 40k animated series joins a select group of spinoffs that came from animated anthology series that managed to set up in little time immersive worlds that viewers wanted to see get expanded. Among those are Disney+'s Marvel Zombies, which has been renewed for season 2 and came from Marvel's What If...? series, and the streamer's upcoming Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, which is a spinoff of the anime anthology Star Wars: Visions. Who knows whether Secret Level could develop even more spinoffs in the future?