Lazarus is one of the most anticipated anime of the upcoming season, for good reason, being acclaimed director Shinichiro Watanabe’s latest tv anime project since Carole & Tuesday. A near-future set action-thriller, Lazarus follows its eponymous team of Suicide Squad-esque criminals who’ve been tasked with finding Dr. Skinner, the mysterious reclusive creator of a wonder drug called Hapna that he suddenly revealed to be a deadly poison that will take the lives of everyone who’s taken it, which is most of the world’s population, in 30 days unless they find and convince him to give them the antidote. In the process of unraveling Skinner’s past to locate him in the present, the Lazarus team is also confronted with echoes of their own pasts and regrets that led them to take Hapna themselves, as well as untangling the web of intertwined factions who profited off Hapna who are now seeking to either cover their asses or cash in before the end of the world, and contending with the interference of thrill-seeking nihilists who seem to be acting either on Skinner’s behalf or in support of his intentions.
While there are a lot of twists and turns in the story, the real focus of the show is on its action sequences. Lazarus is executed with a snappy and exhilarating sense of style and flair that is signature of Watanabe’s work, with its action elements pushed to the most impressive, creative, ambitious extremes his team and collaborators were able to conceive, and the show looks and feels so damn good in every frame along the way.
Lazarus is easily the most polished and stylish anime Adult Swim has produced and one of the best-looking anime to come out in recent memory overall. The character and action-animation are incredibly expressive and thoughtfully employed to leave a visual impact. The show uses its color design to striking visual and thematic effect, particularly to accentuate certain characters and settings, which is particularly evident in the show’s opening sequence. The environments are highly detailed and make the world feel lived-in and believable, particularly in its depictions of how different cities and locales look around the world, where the New York-inspired Babylonia City is highly distinct from the locations set in the Middle East or based on Las Vegas. Lazarus is consistently visually and aurally entertaining and stimulating, a treat to watch and listen to in equal measure in all aspects of its production, from the animation, to the background art, to the score, to the soundtrack, to the voice acting, to everything else and more.
As you would hope it would, considering the incredible talent and collaborators Watanabe brought onto the project almost purely on the strength of his reputation and the influence of his works on the worlds of animation, film, and music. Lazarus is directed by Watanabe himself, written by himself and longtime writing collaborator Dai Sato with initial development having involved the late great Keiko Nobumoto as well, featuring music by the likes of Kamasi Washington, Bonobo, and Floating points, animation production by MAPPA, and with action choreography developed by John Wick director Chad Stahleski and his team at 87 Eleven and audio mixing services provided by the Formosa group, a professional Hollywood sound design studio who’ve done award-winning work on films like Dune and Top Gun Maverick. Granted, a team of talented people is still capable of making a bad product, but Lazarus feels like one of those lightning-in-a-bottle productions whose ambitions pay off in a show successful in almost everything it sets out to do and be.
Watanabe lamented during the Lazarus panel at New York Comic Con 2024 how often he gets requested to make a sequel to Cowboy Bebop. He asked the crowd if that was really what they wanted to see. I think he was visibly disappointed by how many people cheered yes. Watanabe always strives to do something different with each of his works in setting, storytelling, tone, and genre. Even when his shows have shared elements like in his space-faring sci-fi series – Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy, and Carole & Tuesday – they remain very different in feel and focus from each other.
I know Shinichiro Watanabe does not want Lazarus to be compared with Cowboy Bebop and seen as its own, new thing. Like most creators, he does not want to constantly live in the shadow of his most popular and well-known work. When I asked Watanabe at NYCC what he hopes his legacy would be, he replied that he hopes that Lazarus will be seen as another masterpiece to add onto the legacy of his work. While I would like to avoid Bebop comparisons, there is frankly just a lot about Lazarus that feels evocative of it, whether he wanted it to or not. Considering that Watanabe was able to recruit so many of his collaborators on Lazarus because they love and revere Cowboy Bebop, perhaps it’s unsurprising that their resulting work on Lazarus gives off such similar vibes, even if that’s not what Watanabe intended. Regardless, Lazarus is probably the closest Watanabe has ever gotten to making a sequel to Cowboy Bebop, perhaps not directly but through its vibes, and that’s particularly felt in its characters, action, aesthetic flair, and musical sensibilities.
There are a lot of comparisons that can be drawn between the aesthetic elements and characteristic qualities of Lazarus and Bebop. Whether that’s intentional or by design, if you’re a fan of Bebop it’s difficult not to view Lazarus through the lens of and comparisons to the former. That isn’t to say Lazarus is deferential or referential to Bebop or Watanabe’s other previous works. Rather, as is often observable in the work of an auteur, it feels like Watanabe has built and added onto the foundation of what he’s done before, approaching ideas and themes from a different and novel approach, interwoven through a narrative framework that is very much a commentary on the present socio-political moment with modern blockbuster-inspired action set pieces that make the content of the show feel fresh and contemporary. The whole package comes off as a great remix of internal and external influences, resulting in a show that stands on its own as something entirely new.
Though, admittedly, the concept behind the Lazarus team really is most akin to the Suicide Squad, complete with an Amanda Waller-esque character who assembled the team and is giving them orders, threatening them with explosives that will detonate if they try to forcibly remove them. Axel even jokes that they’re like a team of superheroes like the Justice League. That said so far none of them have any super powers, besides kicking ass of course. And this show kicks a whole lot of ass.
Bebop vibes aside, like Watanabe’s other projects, Lazarus is doing its own thing and has its own focus that sets it apart, but there’s also a sense of nostalgic familiarity to it. Its opening credits are set to a snazzy jazzy instrumental song and is dripping in stylized color-themed shapes and silhouettes with moving background text, graffiti, and grit much akin to Bebop’s iconic opening. The eclectic score infuses many different styles of jazz, blues, funk, pop, and hip-hop, evoking qualities that are at times with many memorable tracks incorporating heavy use of sax and piano. Its near-futuristic world is in some places pretty and pristine and in others worn down and ravaged by grime and time, depicting a spectrum of multicultural and international settings reflecting the relative class, wealth, and status of the people living in them. Despite all the technological and medical advancements of the future, it is still a struggle for most to get by, so while the appearance of the future looks more advanced the core of it is still mired in the same problems of times past. The main cast of characters is comprised of a bunch of misfit criminals that includes a cocksure freebird with a mysterious past he doesn’t like to talk about, a straightlaced by-the-books type who used to be on the straight-and-narrow, a femme fatale trickster who’s secretly lonely and lovelorn, and an eccentric child genius hacker with obtuse social skills who’ve all ended up working together as a team and become a found family through happenstance.
Watanabe’s shows are characterized by their stylish flair, multicultural influences, and eclectic musical soundtracks that heavily incorporate jazz, funk, and hip-hop. Thematically, his series are also often charged with socio-political criticisms of the ways in which government, big business, criminal organizations, law enforcement, and military forces often collude to protect the interests of power at the expense of ordinary people. His works often feature and highlight marginalized or exploited groups and communities and how they are outsiders or alienated by cultures of violently enforced conformity and suppression.
Lazarus follows in this tradition with some of the most direct political and social commentary Watanabe has ever explored in his works. As the mystery behind Dr. Skinner and Hapna unfurls, the layers of complicity between different interest groups in government, big pharma, and the finance industry are untangled and exposed, showing how these groups took advantage of Hapna for their profit and gain. Granted, the show requires a buy-in to accept its premise that a drug would be so quickly and popularly used that it poisoning everyone who took it would have apocalyptic consequences, which some might find incredulous. Personally, I bought it because firstly, the show is set in the near-future so modern rules and regulations for drugs may no longer apply, which I can certainly believe considering the current gutting of regulations meant to protect public health in the U.S. right now. Secondly, the show never says that literally every single person in the world took Hapna, just that it was so easy to get and affordable that it was widely distributed and taken, so it killing everyone who took it would have severe ramifications for the world’s population even if not literally all of humanity is wiped out.
Hapna’s dissemination and popularity is attributed to being as much a result of predatory marketing playing upon people’s vulnerabilities and an illicit drug trade targeting children, paralleling the realities of many a drug that becomes popularly misused from its intended purpose for more harmful practices. The series disappointingly does seem to cut the pharmaceutical company that distributed Hapna some slack, showing its CEO being genuinely regretful of having distributed Hapna and helping the Lazarus team in their efforts to lure Skinner out. Even so, the show still emphasizes their culpability in turning a blind eye to how it was misused and keeping it on the market without confirming its safety and side effects, so while it’s not as scathingly critical of the pharmaceutical industry as Common Side Effects it’s still pretty skeptical, showing that they while they may not have been malicious they’re still at fault for their negligence and incompetence in prioritizing their business over people’s well-being and enabling this crisis. The parallels between the Hapna crisis and the global COVID-19 pandemic is also notable, showing the negligence of people in power to prevent the crisis from escalating and being slow in developing a cure, and even then having people attempting to steal and monopolize it for their own gain at the expense of the public and moral good. Lazarus is definitely a show of the moment, a reflection of a lot of current anxieties about public health and how they’re entwined with large-scale issues in socio-economic and political systems globally.
The socio-economic disparity between different communities is pointedly highlighted, particularly in visits to a homeless encampment and a poor Middle Eastern community. Jill, a trans woman who leads the homeless encampment, notes that there are many marginalized people like her who have ended up running afoul of the law and destitute out of a lack of opportunities for social mobility and are already so fed up and disillusioned with the world that many of them would be happy if it came to an end. There are direct discussions of systemic and institutional racism, sexism, and discrimination that contribute to social and economic inequalities. The fourth episode of the series even satirizes finance bros, A.I. artists, and manosphere types, depicting them with disdain for using their exploitative tools and privileges to rig markets and dupe audiences for their own profit and poking fun at their pathetic lack of real intelligence and competence without the help of their tools. In the same episode, the show also critiques the darker aspects of these subcultures including how they perpetuate misogyny and rape culture, viewing women as sexual objects on the virgin-whore binary to be used and disposed of. Lazarus uses its premise as a means to bounce around the world to different places and communities, taking a mirror up to and critiquing the layers of corruption and dysfunction underlying Lazarus’ seemingly advanced and prosperous world. In showing how some of the worst people in this society exploit the marginalized and vulnerable, you start to understand why Dr. Skinner may’ve turned on and set out to dismantle humanity and the world as they are.
Watanabe’s protagonists have themselves constantly disconnected and disinterested in the dominant cultural and governing systems – “Cowboys,” ronin, domestic terrorists, alien hunters, refugees, etc. – who live their lives outside of these institutions as much as possible, roaming their worlds without a set home, though they still must interact with them in transactional capacities because they are unable to become fully independent from the capitalist systems of their world and need money to buy the basic necessities needed to live in the world, particularly food to eat. Thus, the protagonists of Watanabe’s systems are often alienated outsiders who regularly find themselves in conflict with more powerful forces backed by the capitalist machine, but they persevere against the odds stacked against them through their unique strengths and talents that have allowed them to escape lives of misfortune and consistently fight to stay alive and remain able to live freely.
Axel embodies this spirit as the show’s protagonist most evidently. He is laid-back and cocksure, reacting to any threats to himself with amusement and shrugging off any jam he finds himself in, boasting a quick and loose fighting style that makes him look like an effortless badass able to best multiple opponents at once, even a bunch of security guards inside a small elevator. Of all the characters, Axel comes across as the most free and least unburdened, shown through how easily he is able to get along with other people and adapt himself to new environments, using his charisma to win people’s trust and let their guard down. It’s implied that of all the characters who took Hapna, he was immune to its effects, hinted by how he describes that he still felt pain when he took it, and that the ED sequence shows him getting up amidst everyone else passed out among pills and rubble. As the only one unburdened by his past and regret, and the only one who couldn’t escape from his pain and had to deal with it on his own without Hapna’s help, he may be the most equipped to confront the dilapidated state of the world, looking right at it while others have their eyes closed, sleeping through the end of the world.
Doug is the series second most fleshed-out and intriguing character so far. He serves as the team’s resident serious by-the-books type, frustrated whenever someone on the team deviates from their plans. As a result, he is often out of his comfort zone interacting with the more lax members of the cast, and gets put in situations where his earnest seriousness begets comical outcomes, like his amusingly goofy dancing when they infiltrate the nightclub. While Doug’s seriousness is often contrasted with comical scenarios to elicit humor, his backstory and situation is explored seriously as social and political commentary. As a Black man in academia, he had to endure lots of racist discrimination and dismissal, including from the dean of his school whose insistence there would never be a Black Einstein provoked him to punch him in the face. Doug is thus a first-hand victim and example of institutional inequalities that inhibit the opportunities available to marginalized people. As such, he has his guard up and is mistrustful of other people, even the people he’s working with or for, but has a strong sense of loyalty and appreciation for the people who have his back like his old mentor and advisor who defended him during the fallout of his confrontation with his dean.
Doug’s background and experiences shaped him into a methodical leader who is also the one most equipped to be diplomatic with or de-escalate conflicts with other parties through his ability to reason and empathize with them. Doug, in relaying his story about how he was subjected to discrimination but had someone who stood up and advocated for him, expresses a counterargument to falling into cynical defeatism, that even in the face of obstacles and hardships, there are people worth saving, connections worth making, and lives worth living in this world. As the only character who seems suspicious of the intentions of Hersch, the Amanda Waller-type leader of the team, and her connections to Hapna and Skinner so far, Doug is the character who seems the most invested in delivering justice and equity in the outcome of Lazarus’ mission, and is one of the most embroiled in the show’s social and political thematic explorations.
The arcs of the other members of the team aren’t quite as thematically developed in the first five episodes, but you do get a sense of what Watanabe is going for and try to explore with them. Chris is the team’s wannabe femme fatale, skilled at acting a flirty pretense to let people me guards down, although like Faye Valentine she’s more of a trickster than a seductress. She’s bold but level-headed, certainly playing straight man to the more reckless and impulsive Axel, and draws a line at killing to the point of refusing to work with Axel if he’s a killer. Her reasons for taking Hapna appear to be to have tried to get over a heartbreak. Through her, the series might explore how people yearn for a cure to their emotional wounds as opposed to physical ailments.
Finally, Leland, Elaina, and Lin all cross over in terms of being young characters who feel detached and dissociated from society. Leland is introduced to us quitting school because he feels there’s no point in going anymore if the world is ending, and he took Hapna out of a feeling of malaise, apathy, and disempowerment over the future awaiting his generation. Eleina is a prodigious hacker who potentially is the most serious criminal of the group, but is socially introverted and is literally enclosed in a digital bubble when she’s doing her hacking, reflecting how she’s more comfortable in her own digital world than the world irl. Her true personality comes through when she’s in the zone of her hacking, lighting up with savage delight when she is about to own something and tells them to “get wrecked.” She reflects the disconnect between the sides people show of themselves on and offline, and the blurred lines between those identities in a world where online and irl are so entwined. Finally, Lin is a rival hacker character to Elaina who seems to be motivated by a sense of thrill-seeking anarchy. We don’t learn too much about her in these first few episodes, other than she seems to be protecting Skinner’s secrets and respects Elaina as a fellow hacker and enjoys dueling skills with her. She also seems to just want excitement, excited about “hardcore” challenges, which she yells out A LOT. Lin feels like another representation of the dissatisfaction and alienation of young people towards the state of the world, in her case actively helping an effort to see it destroyed and enjoying outwitting people in power and watching them scramble. Between Leyland, Elaina, and Lin, it will be interesting to see how Watanabe explores youths reacting to and living amidst a global health crisis and the differences in their attitudes compared to adults.
Many anime fans seem to really dislike Sentai Studios dubs, but personally, I think the cast and performances of Lazarus are quite strong. Having watched both the Japanese and English versions of the show, I don’t think you can go wrong with either, because both sets of actors do a great job of capturing the personality of their characters and pull off the comedic, personable bits of flair that make them endearing. As far as the dub goes, I particularly enjoyed Jack Stansbury’s casual smartass deliveries as Axel and Luci Christian’s range as a sly flirt, exasperated straight man, and badass babe as Chris. The only two performances in the English dub I was a little mixed on were Elaina and Lin. Annie Wild’s performance as Elaina feels a little awkward at first, trying to capture her as a generally soft-spoken and reserved character and sometimes coming across a bit stilted as a result. However, when the other side of Elaina’s personality comes out and she gets more of a focus in the fifth episode, it feels like Wild has become comfortable in the role and has struck the right balance between doing a more quiet, muted voice for Elaina while still getting across a lot more of her personality. Lin’s VA, who I don’t know yet since they’ve not been announced and weren’t in the credits of the screeners I watched, matches the character’s excitable energy well. It’s just Lin’s constant exclamations of “hardcore” kinda started to get old and grate on me after a while. Lin feels like an Ed from Bebop type of character in her idiosyncratic and strange ways of speech, so I think how much you like the performance will depend on how much you like that kind of character in general.
The Japanese cast is of course incredible all around, and while I actually feel some of the English dub performances stood out more, the casting choices for the Japanese version add some layers to the show that are missing in the dub. For example, the Japanese cast has Bebop VAs Koichi Yamadera and Megumi Hayashibara play Dr. Skinner and Hersch respectively, and given there seems to be a connection between Hersch and Skinner one wonders if the casting of Spike and Faye’s VAs is an intentional signal to what their relationship to each other was like. The show also has the sibling VA duo of Maaya Uchida and Yuma Uchida play siblings Chris and Leland, and there’s a comfortability to their interactions that feels like a real rapport drawn from their own experiences of how they talk to each other as siblings. There’s a lot of thought and intentionality behind some of the choices in the Japanese cast of Lazarus that is missing and unreplicable in the English dub, so while I thoroughly enjoy the dub and will continue to watch the show that way, I think there’s an argument to be made for watching the show in Japanese for the in-jokes and additional layers of characterization presented by the casting.
Lazarus feels like the apotheosis of Watanabe’s experience in sci-fi, rekindled by his work on Blade Runner Black Out 2022, as well as taking inspiration from John Wick to create an action-animated series that had the same kind of contemporary and innovative setpieces and choreography he was impressed by in that film. Working together with John Wick director Chad Stahleski and his team at 87 Eleven, as well as assembling a team of some of the best action animators in Japan, Watanabe has structured each episode of Lazarus around one to two big action sequences per episode. While the 87 Eleven team only worked on half of the show’s episodes, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference and not be impressed by the show’s action direction throughout. The first episode itself is completely the work of the Japanese animation team and has some of the most memorable imagery and action moments in the entire show as Axel coolly pulls off a jailbreak and effortlessly outmaneuvers his pursuers.
The action direction and setpieces in the show pull a lot in equal measure from modern Hollywood blockbuster franchises like The Matrix, Mission Impossible, and The Fast and the Furious alongside Japanese action and crime thriller flicks from the likes of Beat Takeshi and Seijun Suzuki. While some of the episodes may have more comparatively low-key first halves, focusing on the procedural and investigation aspects while exploring the characters and their ongoing search for Skinner, the show is never slow and is constantly in motion narratively and literally. A lot of information is conveyed very quickly in dialogue scenes and never dwells too long in one place. Moreover, the show is not a dry procedural, but very funny and witty, so a lot of exposition or information is imparted by way of humorous and entertaining interactions between the characters that also do a lot to help characterize, endear, and develop them as more about them is revealed and built upon in every episode. There are two recurring gag characters in every episode – a bumbling local cop who often gets comedically affected by the Lazarus team’s actions, and a cat with a heart-shaped fur spot that hangs around in front of their headquarters – and it’s fun to have small parts of the show like these that don’t have to do with the plot but add a lot of humor and character to the show’s world and setting. There are a lot of other fun sight gags and easter eggs peppered into the show, including perhaps an early clue about the whereabouts of Dr. Skinner himself. The mysteries behind Dr. Skinner’s disappearance and whereabouts and the development of Hapna build on top of each other and open doors to new questions with every episode in intriguing ways. But even if you’re not as invested in the investigation, Lazarus’ fun characters, light sense of humor, eclectic and stimulating music, immersively rendered and realized world, and dynamically choreographed and ambitiously animated action sequences keep every episode entertaining and a thrilling delight to watch from start to finish.
It’s an interesting convergence that Lazarus is premiering in the same week and just days after Common Side Effects’ first season has ended. Both shows are about the cultivation and consequences of a cure-all miracle drug that exposes a deep-state conspiracy involving multiple factions who either profit off its distribution or destruction at the expense of innocent lives. Dr. Skinner feels like a dark counterpart to Marshall Cuso, an idealist who initially wanted to help people and make the world a better place, who then became so disillusioned with humanity that he gave up on it and shepherded it to destruction. Perhaps Dr. Skinner’s rationale is that humanity was already dying, and he just administered an euthanasia to help ease and end their suffering. After all, in each of the intros for every episode of the show, the characters describe the reasons why they took Hapna, which range in motivations but all share one common thread; they were unhappy, and they wanted an escape.
However, given the show is titled “Lazarus,” as in “God has helped” and the concept of rebirth, it’s also possible that this mass poisoning is Skinner’s way of helping humanity, by letting them “die” so that they may be resurrected and reborn truly cured of their ills, literally and spiritually. Considering the last shot of the ED shows Axel waking up on a highway littered with rubble, pills, and bodies, I imagine that the idea of rebirth is being presented as a means of freeing yourself from your past life, a spiritual redemption, and a fresh start. However, considering Axel is the only one to revive along a road littered with dead bodies ahead and after him, there is also the idea that only a few will be given this chance of rebirth, putting into question whether Dr. Skinner intends to go Thanos and cull countless lives just to make a “better world” for those who remain. There are a lot of directions the show can go with these ideas of people taking Hapna as a means of escape and dissociation from the pain of living, and the reckoning that promises rebirth and redemption in the world those who survive Hapna may create.
The show has a lot of ambiguous but thematically loaded symbolism and metaphor that seems to lean into these readings, perhaps most notably the imagery of the spinning dreidel that topples over in the intro. First of all, I want to throw out any worries that the dreidel is linking the global health crisis in Lazarus to a Jewish conspiracy or something, that is an incredibly shallow and surface-level assumption. I can assure you it’s unsubstantiated by the rest of the show, particularly since Dr. Skinner is not himself Jewish, so the metaphor of playing dreidel should be understood and interpreted just in its own context. From what I understand, playing dreidel is a gambling game where you pool wagers into a pot and how much you win from it depends on what Hebrew letter shows up face-front after you spin the dreidel and it topples – “nun;” the player gets nothing from the pot, “gimmel;” the player takes everything in the pot, “hay;” the player gets half, and “shin;” the player adds to the pot. Based on the intro, I believe the letter that falls face-front at the end is “nun.” Assuming the person spinning the dreidel is Dr. Skinner, the idea could be that making Hapna was a gamble he played with humanity, and there was nothing he gained from it. If it’s humanity who spun the dreidel by taking Hapna, then perhaps they got nothing from playing it. I do think it’s notable that Skinner is the one who sees the symbol face-front on the dreidel, but from the viewer’s POV we see the “shin” on the side. “Shin,” in context of the game, is contributing to building the wealth in the pot – and in a broader sense the idea of everybody adding and contributing to a greater reward, which could be what Skinner wants from humanity and what the Lazarus team represents. “Shin,” as in the Japanese word, could have several meanings from “new,” “true,” “God,” “heart,” and/or “mind,” perhaps referencing the series’ themes of exploring rebirth, the truth, religious existentialism, and the ways people feel and think.
It is also worth noting that it is commonly believed that the Hebrew letters on the four sides of the dreidel are initials representing the phrase “nes gadol haya sham,” or “a great miracle happened there.” The spinning dreidel could represent Hapna being seen as a miracle for humanity, and it falling could represent the end of that miracle. That the viewers see “sham” on the side could also have the literal English meaning of the word as “false,” referring to Hapna as a false hope for humanity’s good. It may be worth further considering that playing dreidel is said to have originated from Hebrews hiding their study of the Torah from their oppressors under the pretense of a game, so in that context the hide-and-seek game Skinner has proposed to the world to find him before the time limit runs out might also be a pretense for his own study to see how humanity will react to this crisis. There are a lot of different interpretations of what the dreidel could mean that depend on how deep the metaphor goes, my takes themselves are fairly surface-level from just doing a bit of research. Even so, it’s abundantly clear that Watanabe is trying to say something about Dr. Skinner or humanity playing god and gambling on lives and the yearning to find a deeper meaning and truth in the world, and I’m really curious as to what Watanabe means by his choice of visual metaphors and symbols and where he plans to take these ideas.
Regardless of the direction Lazarus takes, it’s easy to see how both it and Common Side Effects were developed in parallel thinking, from two different angles and in two different countries, during this global cultural moment. People all over the world are increasingly suffering from illnesses of the body and soul. Treatment is costly and out of reach for so many in physical pain, while those suffering from intangible maladies can find no cure for their malaise in a world more connected yet fractured than ever. The promise of a miracle drug that’ll quickly, easily, and cheaply fix what’s sick and brown and make all your pain and suffering go away is understandably and universally appealing. If such a thing existed, and you could take it, why wouldn’t you? Even if you’re not physically sick or hurting, maybe it could be an escape, from hopelessness, boredom, depression, a broken heart, or even just feeling anything at all. It’s easy to understand the fascination both in-universe and IRL with this idea in a time in which people’s physical and mental health are failing them, and the future seems so bleak and uncertain. Frustrated with a sense of helplessness, people yearn to take power and control over their health back from colluding forces in healthcare, finance, and government that they believe have a vested interest in keeping them sick and miserable. Even if oftentimes, the most costly things are the ones that claim to be free.
We don’t have a miracle drug that’ll make all our pain and problems go away, but we do regularly rely on entertainment as an everyday escape for our pain – particularly television. Since the heyday of the controversies over its increasing cultural relevance and ubiquity, people have reappropriated Karl Marx to meme that “television is the opium of the masses.” A show like Lazarus reflects our cultural moment, focusing on the sense of discontentment and the feeling of living one day closer to the end of the world. If television is a drug, then Lazarus is sure to give its viewers one a hell of a high.
