Taking inspiration from Heavy Metal, this Netflix anthology series sought to bring
together multiple animation studios to tell stories aimed at adult audiences. Over the
course of the first volume, we see several different characters’ stories being told,
but who are the heroes and who are the villains?
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge and this is Love, Death + Robots Characters: Good to Evil.
Two quick disclaimers before we begin: First, this video will focus on Volume One as it has
18 episodes and is the longest of the three volumes. Volumes Two & Three will be saved
for a separate video. Also, since most of these episodes are under 20 minutes long,
we will be focusing on characters who have a more obvious morality ranking; as such,
won’t be including Gail and Rob from “Ice Age” or Adolf Hitler from “Alternative Histories.”
As usual, we’ll start with the most noble character and work our way down
to the most evil. The characters in this first category are… The Good.
The gold medal for the most good goes to the farmers in “Suits”: Hank, Jake, & Mel.
When the countryside’s invaded by insectoids called “Deebees,” these three suit up in mechs
in order to clear out the infestation. Hank takes on the initial swarm when a breach
appears in their shield, but is quickly aided by his neighbors when the threat proves to be
bigger than expected. The three are able to take out as many of the Deebees as they can while the
other families in the colony make it to a safety bunker. Jake ends up making a heroic sacrifice
and detonates his mech after its failure to help clear out the invading insectoids so
Mel and Hank can reload their ammunition and finish taking them out. In the end,
they manage to clear out the breach as well as take out a larger version of the Deebees as well.
The silver medal of good goes to the wives of the aforementioned farmers: Beth & Helen.
Beth plays the primary support role in the episode by coordinating everyone from the colony to make
it to the safety bunker as well as providing additional gunfire support to help protect
their home from the Deebees. She’s also the one to take the final killing blow against the giant
Deebee. Helen also plays support but in a smaller role; she helps to corral the colonists into the
bunker as they arrive and provides gunfire support when the Deebees make it to the farm.
The bronze medal of good goes to Liang from “Good Hunting.”
Liang starts out as an apprentice to his father in hunting shape shifting spirits that are causing
trouble. He ends up meeting a huli jing named Yan and ends up preventing her death. As times go on,
Liang befriends the shapeshifter and provides her with food as her hunts become more and
more difficult due to British colonization. He even rescues her from a group of men who
are harassing her. As Liang begins to work with robotic engineering during the changing times,
Yan seeks his assistance once more; Yan’s body had been made robotic against her will and she desired
to hunt those who oppressed her and other women like her. Liang works to build Yan a new body so
that she’s finally able to shapeshift back into her huli jing form and hunt down predatory men.
Following him is Lieutenant Colby Cutter from “Lucky 13.”
Despite being assigned an unlucky ship in her fleet, Cutter proves that she can get the job
during. During her first mission out, she chastises another pilot for choosing to take
off without his ground crew, to which he ends up getting blown up. She takes it upon herself
to rescue everyone from that ship as well as holding out for one straggler to make sure
everyone is retrieved. With every subsequent mission, there were no casualties as Cutter
made sure all the soldiers were brought home. In the final mission, Cutter ends up detonating her
ship in order to kill as many enemy troops as she could until the evacuation ships could arrive.
After her are Lieutenant Decker and Sergeant Sobieski from “Shape-Shifters.”
Despite being discriminated against for being werewolves by their fellow soldiers,
these two still make it their duty to help protect their country. When their convoy is ambushed,
Decker is able to use his heightened senses to locate the threat to have it neutralized.
During an ambush of a local watchtower, Decker’s able to convince his superior to let him go ahead
of the rest of the troops as he would get there and deal with the threat faster. He discovers
everyone to be murdered, including Sobieski, with the work being done by another werewolf. The young
marine is able to suss out the werewolves on the Taliban side during a day mission and
takes them on against orders during the night, killing them. Decker then decides to end his
service and takes Sobieski’s body with him as he departs from the horrible treatment he endured.
Next is Dr. Wehunt from “Sucker of Souls.”
We don’t see very much from the archeologist but we do see that he genuinely cares for the
well-being of everyone on the dig; from the mercenaries he hired to the young assistant
that unfortunately gets eaten. Wehunt’s knowledge is able to get the crew out of
a couple sticky situations with the vampires and keep them alive just a little bit longer.
Another crew member, we have Suzy from “Beyond the Aquila Rift.”
Suzy’s another character who doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but what she does
have is impactful. During her first ruse from her surge tank, she immediately questions how
the crew ended up in the Schedar Sector claiming that having a routing error would be impossible,
sensing something to be awry. On her second wake, she’s able to recognize that Greta who met them
at the station is not real and attempts to attack her, assumingly aware of what’s really at play.
Our first non-human comes next, Otto from “The Dump.”
This garbage creature came to be from an abandoned puppy that ended
up fusing with all the refuse and metal it consumed in the dump. Otto ends up eating
Ugly Dave’s friend Pearly, but only because he was hungry and in poor condition. He gets taken on as
Ugly Dave’s pet once the elderly man realizes the truth about the creature.
Following him is his owner, “Ugly” Dave Dvorcheck.
Ugly Dave is just a solitary man who lives in the dump and has done so for the majority of his
life. Everything he could ever want and need ends up in the dump eventually so he sees no
reason to leave. When he’s asked to sign papers to move out the dump so that the city can build,
he intentionally stalls with a story and promises to sign them afterwards.
Despite initially attacking Otto for eating his friend Pearly, he stops once he realizes that
Otto is just a refuse-covered puppy at his core and adopts the creature
as his pet. He does get points docked for allowing Otto to eat the city inspector,
but he recognizes that Otto needs the dump in order to live hence he has no plan to move out.
Afterwards is Sonnie/Khanivore from “Sonnie’s Edge.”
In a dystopian world where beasts are genetically engineered for deathmatch entertainment,
Sonnie’s an undefeated fighter alongside her ace monster, Khanivore. When the ringmaster
tries to bribe her to throw the match, Sonnie refuses. Her friends claim she is fighting as
revenge for her past assault and mutilation. When Khanivore ends up winning the match,
Sonnie’s met by Dicko’s mistress Jennifer, only to be attacked. It’s then revealed that Sonnie
is just a placeholder body with her consciousness inside Khanivore. She then proceeds to murder both
Dicko and Jennifer, explaining that every fight is a fight for her life, giving her her “edge.”
Coming next are the mercenaries from “Sucker of Souls”: Mr. Flynn, Micky and Gary.
These three are hired by Dr. Wehunt to protect the archeologist during his excavation of a series of
underground tunnels housing vampires. We see the most action from Mr. Flynn as he fights
back against Dracula when they are attacked and makes sure to keep the doctor alive. When
his employees decide to make jokes, he drives home the point that the threats are serious
and need to be handled properly. The mercenaries fight back against Dracula when he attempts to
storm their base and end up blowing him up in order to make sure they survive.
Rounding out this category are Sergeant Sergei Pavlovich and the Red Army from “The Secret War.”
Pavlovich and his men are sent into the Siberian forests in an attempt to take out demons that have
resided there. Both the sergeant and Lieutenant Nikolai Zakharov had previously voiced concerns
to their Major about the platoons being too spread out in order to support each other,
but were told that each platoon was capable. When they see another platoon in distress,
they are forced to stand by and watch as they’d been ordered not to interfere. They
discover information left behind by a secret police member that the demons were initially
summoned to help aid the army. Pavlovich wants to use the information to dispose of the demons,
but is warned by his lieutenant that they need not bring up the government’s past
mistake. Eventually, they discover a burrow and attempt to cave it in, but the explosion ends up
opening it instead. The sergeant thus commands a last stand against the demons and orders his son
to report to the Major in order to have the area bombed, destroying the demons for good.
With the Good Characters wrapped up,
we now move into more neutral territory. These characters fall in… The Grey Area.
Starting off this category is the Yogurt from “When the Yogurt Took Over.”
After being engineered in a lab, the yogurt develops sentience and asks for an audience
with the U.S. leaders. It has developed solutions to all the country’s problems and
requests payment in the form of control of Ohio. The leaders laugh at the idea but then agree when
the yogurt threatens to seek an audience with China instead. As progress occurred in Ohio,
the yogurt gave the president a plan to follow in order to eliminate the national
debt. The president chose to defy this order and subsequently doomed the country into turmoil,
signing over executive power to the yogurt to fix the issue. This proves to be successful and
humans are able to live in prosperous conditions for a decade before the yogurt leaves the planet.
Following after is Yan from “Good Hunting.”
This huli jing became a kindred spirit to Liang after he decided to spare her following her
mother’s death. She became dependent on him for meals as the progression of technology made it
harder for her to shapeshift and hunt. After she’s operated on against her will for the governor,
she desires nothing more than to hunt down the British colonizers in order
to free other women that are in similar situations to her. She’s able to achieve
this through Liang’s help and hunts down those who choose to harass and assault working women.
After her are K-VRC, XBOT 4000, and 11-45-G from “Three Robots.”
These three travel to Earth deciding to take a vacation to learn about humanity and why
it collapsed. They attempt to understand how humans were able to survive with such
limited capabilities whilst also taking jabs at one another in attempts to understand their
culture. Due to their lack of information, they often fall victim to assumptions and hearsay
about what human culture was like. Next is the cat from “Three Robots.”
Though not having a major role in the episode, the cat becomes a minor foil in the robots’ vacation;
it uses the robots limited knowledge to trick them into believing that if they stop petting it,
the cat will explode. The cat also confirms K-VRC’s comment about human genetically
altering cats, stating that it added to humanity’s downfall. The cat then demands
more petting under the threat of explosion, calling upon other cats to corner the robots.
Following up, we have the city inspector from “The Dump.”
This inspector is sent out to the dump to have
Ugly Dave sign paperwork, granting the city permission to build where the dump is and
requiring the man to move. He’s annoyed at the request of Dave telling him a
story first before he signs the paperwork, but he allows it if it gets his job done.
Another group of people, we have the cyborg crew, Hawk, Suli, Kali, Rookie, & Bob from “Blindspot.”
This group is sent on a mission in order to rob a heavily guarded microchip before the truck
it’s on reaches a nearby tunnel. Despite having alerted the guards, the team tries their best
to support one another in the efforts to get to the front of the truck. Rookie eventually
is able to recover it but is upset at the loss of his team, only to discover that their data
has been backed up by Bob for rebuilding. Since we can’t determine what everyone’s roles are in
regards to the importance of the microchip and who has it, we can’t rank the team any higher.
Afterwards is Thom from “Beyond the Aquila Rift.”
Attempting to return home from a successful mission, Thom and his team end up in the
Schedar Sector due to a routing error and come face to face with Thom’s old flame,
Greta. He takes the time to catch up with her while the ship is being repaired and becomes
intimate with her once again. He eventually discovers from her that they’re farther in space
than initially told and goes to tell his team, only for it to go sour. He eventually is able
to catch on that he’s in a simulation and is demanded to see the truth. It’s then
revealed that Thom is elderly and emaciated and losing his mind as he’s trapped in space.
Rounding out this section are the “Deebees” from “Suits.”
When we first see these creatures, they appear to be an invading force;
attacking the colonists in search of a meal.
However, we see at the end of the episodes that the colonists are the actual invading
force in the planet populated entirely by Deebees. They only fight to survive and find food to eat.
With our Grey Area complete, we now enter the dark side. These characters are… The Bad and The Evil.
At the top of this category is “Greta” from “Beyond the Aquila Rift.”
Greta shows up to inform Thom and his crew that due to a routing error they are lightyears off
their course. She takes advantage of the ship being down for repairs to catch up and rekindle
her fling with Thom. After being intimate, she openly admits that she lied about where
they are and reveals their true location, stating that the rest of the crew should know. However,
Suzy calls out that Greta isn’t real and attempts to attack her before being pacified. After Thom
demands the truth, Greta admits that she created the simulation to shield him from
the horrifying truth. When she reveals the true state, Thom is shown to be in extremely poor
condition amongst a spider web of other trapped ships. She herself is a terrifying spider-like
monster and sets Thom back into the dream-like simulation when he see her for who she is.
Just outside our top three is Dracula and the other vampires from “Sucker of Souls.”
Dracula is discovered in a series of underground tunnels wanting nothing more than to feed on human
flesh. After attacking Simon, he hunts down Dr. Wehunt and the mercenaries in
order to consume more. He eventually falls victim to a giant explosion planted by Gary,
but the group ends up in a nest of other vampires awaiting their next meal.
The bronze medal of evil goes to the Taliban werewolves.
These two are able to infiltrate the watchtower by taking Sobieski
so they couldn’t be detected and then proceed to slaughter everyone else.
They manage to temporarily avoid capture as Decker intentionally avoids
ousting them during a reconnaissance mission, only to have a battle with him that same night.
They are both powerful and ruthless but still end up falling victim to Decker.
The silver medal of evil goes to Dicko and his mistress, Jennifer.
Upon Sonnie’s arrival to the “Beastie” fight, Dicko offers the champion
$500,000 to throw the match to which she refuses.
Dicko then sends Jennifer to seduce Sonnie only for her to attack the young woman. Dicko
only cares about his business and will get anyone out of the way who threatens it.
The gold medal of evil goes to the governor from “Good Hunting.”
Yan mentions that the governor became a regular client of hers when she had to
resort to being an escort in order to get by. Because he had a thing for machines,
he drugged Yan and forced her to be cybernetically enhanced so she would
be more attractive to him. He also became enraged when she didn’t consent to intimacy with him any
further and attempted to attack her, instead getting attacked himself by Yan.
Before we close out our list, let’s award some sinner medals.
The Darwin Medal goes to the three robots. It’s clear that they had some knowledge of humankind,
but there were definitely holes in the information.
The Pride and Greed Medals go to Dicko. He only
cared about the success of his business and refused to let anyone surpass him.
The Sloth Medal goes to “Ugly” Dave. He refuses to
leave the dump as everything will end up there anyways.
The Gluttony Medal goes to Dracula and
the vampires. They want nothing more than to feed on human flesh.
The Wrath Medal goes to the Taliban werewolves.
War is already a place full of hatred and adding angry lycanthropes doesn’t help.
The Envy Medal goes to the cat. It takes advantage
of the robots having hands to fulfill its desires to be pet.
Finally, the Lust Medal goes to the governor. His desires are
so specific to the point of forcing bodily mutilation to others for his own pleasure.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree. And let us know which Love,
Death + Robots character ranked where. Make sure to hit that notification bell
and binge our other videos. But most importantly; Stay Wicked!