Julien Neaves, Sci Fi Head Writer
Hey Hollywood. Hey! Yeah I’m talking to you. You wanna do a remake of a classic series? Of course you do. Foolish question. So when you want to do a remake of a classic series you need to watch Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot and do what they did. Because that series is 13 flavours of awesome sauce! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
But seriously the third and final season of the remake of the 1960s series recently dropped and it capped off an excellent Sci Fi show that both honoured the original and took the material to dazzling new heights. With a galaxy-sized SPOILER ALERT and a “Danger, Will Robinson” let’s dive into it!
Season 3 picks up where Season 2 left off and we have Judy, Penny, Will, Robot, Smith and the children in an unknown part of space with the Fortuna, the vessel of Judy’s long-lost biological father Grant Kelly. Meanwhile John, Maureen, Don and the other adults are trapped on a planet infested with alien robots.
The final season was two episodes short of the two previous seasons (eight instead of 10) but I didn’t even notice a difference. They pack in so much story and lore and character development and adventure without it ever feeling overstuffed or stretched thin.
The acting has always been strong with this show and Season 3 continues that trend. I enjoyed seeing Taylor Russel’s Judy dealing with the weight of leadership and the surprise of discovering her father (Grimm’s Russel Hornsby in a solid performance). Molly Parker and Toby Stephens are again phenomenal as Maureen and John respectively and act their behinds off as parents separated from their children. And Mina Sundwall and Ignacio Serricchio are always dependable to bring the laughs and a little romance as Penny and Don respectively. And let’s not forget Don’s plucky chicken/surrogate daughter Debbie.
But as much I loved Debbie and the others the highlights for me were Maxwell Jenkins’ Will and Parker Posey’s Dr Smith. I loved the more mature, bleaker and assertive Will who was fully prepared to die for his family. And Smith has always been such a wonderfully scheming character and in Season 3 we see her greatest struggle between self-preservation and selflessness. And it was endlessly entertaining.
Another strong point of the show is its special effects and in the final season they continue to impress and astound. From the cool-looking ships to weird planets to creepy alien ruins to giant ship-swallowing worm creatures the visual effects are all blockbuster-worthy.
But you know why we’re all here. It’s for those super cool robots! And there is a lot of that here. Our main machine Robot gets his moments to shine including a Groot-like save of Will. “We are Will Robinson” if you will. And good bot Scarecrow gets some cool scenes too (rest in pieces SC). In terms of bad bots SAR continues to be a genocidal monster (no one was surprised he killed all his “masters”) and his evil minions have never been scarier, even approaching horror-level tension. And the epic robot-on-robot battle between Sally and the turned bots versus the evil bots made me feel like cheering. One nitpick would be that I think SAR should have been more distinctive in design as often I wondered if it was him or just another bad bot.
I suspect some fans may feel either or both Will and Robot should have stayed dead but I was fine with how it was done. It is a family show after all. And I was glad Lost in Space maintained its family adventure tone throughout and never went “edgy” for the sake of it. Though I would keep the smaller kids away as those alien robots are terrifying.
As the credits rolled on Season 3 I was thoroughly satisfied. And I’m glad they concluded the story organically instead of needlessly stretching it out. This was one Sci Fi journey I was glad to get lost in.
Editor Jules’s Score: 10 out of 10
So what did you think of the final season of Lost in Space? And you can check out more great Sci Fi content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by Freddy Krueger, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “12 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.