‘Raised by Wolves’ Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: The Robot Chainsaw Massacre

[Morrisey voice] “Robot with a chainsaw, I know, I know, it’s serious.”

Actually, it’s not serious at all. It’s fucking wild, is what it is! Like, show of hands: Who thought Raised by Wolves would one day show Father, the clinically mild-mannered caretaker android responsible for the fate of the human race, battle a robot with a chainsaw for an arm to the death amid a cheering crowd? Hmmm…I’m not seeing any hands raised!

And why is he battling said chainsaw-armed robot? To win a bunch of white blood-fuel, which he needs to restore and power up the skeletal million-year-old android he’s secretly working on. (And talking to.) Because some kind of human race existed on remote Keppler-22b a million years ago, and was advanced enough to build androids! Like I said: Wild!

Oh, and did I mention that Father recently recovered from yet another “death,” this one at the hands of his old enemy Marcus, who’s had superhuman powers ever since he was force-fed the weaponized eyeballs of Father’s battle-droid companion Mother? That the wound he incurred at Marcus’s hands is how he discovered that his blood would revive the million-year-old android? No? Well, I’m mentioning it now. Again: Wild!

Shall I keep going? Sure, why not! Let’s switch gears and talk about Mother, who spends much of the episode carrying around a gun the size of a middle-schooler in order to shoot and kill the giant flying serpent she somehow helped conceive and gave birth to. Wouldja believe that she discovers the snake-thing is a herbivore, more interested in eating the planet’s pumpkin supply than drinking human (or android) blood? And that the great hunt for the beast that we expected ends with her peacefully having lured it into captivity with said pumpkins? Which, of course, means there’s some other giant snake-beast flying around out there, one with the capacity to withstand the corrosive acid sea and which has displayed a distinct hostility to human life? Crazy, right?

Let’s see what else…Oh, right: Marcus attacks Father in order to free his Mithraic prisoners from serving as live bait for the snake. He welcomes them into his growing community with open arms even though they’d previously exiled him, force-fed him Mother’s eyeballs, and left him for dead; only Lucius, the guy most responsible for the whole force-feeding-eyeballs and leaving-for-dead thing, rejects the offer. 

Meanwhile, Vrille, the android “daughter” of Marcus’s new girlfriend Decima, strikes up a friendship with Paul and (especially) Campion (who’s obviously smitten with her). She reveals that it’s hard pretending to be another person all the time and says that her mother broke her actual daughter’s neck under circumstances she’s forbidden to divulge.

When Paul is brought in for questioning by the supercomputer called the Trust regarding whether he’s had any contact with Marcus, he lies—or at least stretches the truth; he hasn’t talked to Marcus, but he knows where he is. As a reward, he’s given back his mouse, though it behaves strangely, in a way that suggests to his “sibling” Holly that it’s been brain-chipped by the Trust. Speaking of the Trust, it lets slip to Paul that it plans to have Marcus hunted down and killed within 24 hours—almost certainly a ploy to get Paul to go back to Marcus to warn him, probably accompanied by a tracking device in the mouse’s brain. The episode ends with Marcus finding Paul, Campion, and Holly, ready to welcome them into his new religion. 

There’s some other stuff in there too: Sue figures out the snake, an “organic-synth hybrid,” is young and has a mother out there somewhere; Mother and Father argue quite a bit about Mother’s desire to keep “Number Seven,” the snake, alive; Father drops lines like “Love is the death of us all” while he’s talking to the million-year-old android; Mother keeps trying to groom Campion to become the leader of the atheists, while Campion is now suddenly interested in whether other androids besides Mother can make babies; Marcus does away with honorifics and last names because “we’re all part of the same family now.”

But mainly, what I want to impress upon you is that Raised by Wolves has almost totally transformed from the bleak, spare, sparse drama it started as. The gonzo birth of that snake in the Season One finale—and, I’d argue just as importantly, the gruesome black comedy death of the helmet-wearing rapist who gets all hulked up before his skull is imploded, an episode or two before that finale—seems to have been a major turning point for the show, not just in plot terms, but in tonal terms as well. The show feels much fuller now, much more replete with incident and interactions, much more wild and woolly. 

And to my surprise, it’s working for me. Do I miss the hypnotically somber style of the initial episodes? Yes. Do I want to reward a television show for taking the risk of remaking itself midstream? Also yes. Giant snakes? Superpowered humans? Robots with a chainsaw? Bring it on.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.