The Best and Worst of Love, Death & Robots Volume 3

Almost exactly three years after the series originally premiered, the third volume of Netflix’s animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots is back to deliver … well, all three things it promises in the title. As with last year’s much-improved Volume 2, this new crop of nine episodes — some as short as 7 minutes, some as long as 21 — largely does an admirable job of serving up the show’s signature, eclectic blend of sci-fi, horror, and comedy (and, more often than not, throws in at least a few buckets of gore).

The fun of an anthology series like Love, Death & Robots is queuing up an episode with no idea of what it’s going to be about, or even what it will look like — and while some segments in Volume 3 tower above the others, each one is worth checking out, if only for the novelty of it.

I’ve ranked all nine segments, below, starting with the worst and ending with the best. And as with my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2, I’ve also noted whether each segment actually features love, death, and/or robots — so you can focus on the episodes that actually deliver on your favorite part of the show’s three-pronged title.

9. “Swarm�

Love: Yes
Death: Yes
Robots: Yes

Shoutout to “Swarm� for being the only Love, Death & Robots Volume 3 segment to feature love, death, and robots. Unfortunately, this little morality play feels like Love, Death & Robots on autopilot, as a couple of humans decide to exploit a seemingly benign alien race and face some entirely predictable consequences. This is also the one story in this collection that really feels like it suffers due to its abbreviated length — the speed by which Rosario Dawson’s character goes from “I can’t let you do this� to “Okay, I’ll help you do this� is entirely unconvincing.

8. “Mason’s Rats�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: Yes

And they say you can’t build a better mousetrap. Craig Ferguson and Dan Stevens lend some vocal star power to this cheerful, entirely forgettable story, which follows a Scottish farmer who enlists a small army of robots to wage war against an army of rats that has infested his barn. There are a few clever world-building details sprinkled in — like the revelation that World War III apparently happened at some point in this universe, which sets the stage nicely for the “give peace a chance� ending — but the whole “consumer technology causes more problems than it solves� thing was already explored in Volume 2’s “Automated Customer Service,� and with more verve.

7. “Three Robots: Exit Strategies�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: Yes

In the first direct sequel to a previous Love, Death & Robots segment, we revisit the robo-tourists from Volume 1’s “Three Robots� as they continue journeying across a postapocalyptic Earth. As before, the fun here is watching robots poke fun at the ridiculously shortsighted ways in which humans tried, and failed, to stave off an apocalypse of their own making. The satire remains on point — “At least they died free of government constraint,� says one robot as they pick through a prepper’s bomb shelter, overstocked with bullets at the expense of food — but this is basically just a rehash of the first “Three Robots� episode, right down to a riff on the same surreal swerve at the end.

6. “Night of the Mini Dead�

Love: Yes
Death: Yes
Robots: No

The shortest segment in Volume 3 is also one of the silliest, as a couple makes the ill-advised decision to get busy in a cemetery — love, am I right? — and end up unleashing a zombie apocalypse that swiftly consumes the entire planet. The zippy “Night of the Mini Dead� cheekily refuses to take the end of the world even a little seriously. Every squeaky-voiced human we meet is a complete jerk, so you won’t feel too bad when the zombies devour them. When global leaders finally shrug and launch their full nuclear arsenals, killing zombies and humans alike, Earth literally ends with a fart. The story is slight, but the real draw here is the animation — with the camera pulled way back, resembling nothing so much as a handcrafted diorama, the end of the world is treated like a petty, instantly forgotten drama in the grander scope of the universe.

5. “Kill Team Kill�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: Yes

The lesser of Volume 3’s two “tough-as-nails military squad takes on an unfathomably powerful monster� segments, at least “Kill Team Kill� delivers on the overkill promised by its title. Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, best known for directing the Kung Fu Panda sequels, really lets it rip here — and this time around, the bear is the villain. A bunch of commandos square off against a genetically modified grizzly described, quite accurately, as “a tank with fur.� Some of the military tough-guy talk lands on the wrong side of over-the-top, but on the plus side, you won’t get too attached to anybody before they get shredded, or exploded, or otherwise obliterated.

4. “In Vaulted Halls Entombed�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: No

The other “tough-as-nails military squad takes on an unfathomably powerful monster� edges out “Kill Team Kill� by delivering Volume 3’s most unnerving ending. In the most photorealistic entry in this crop of episodes, Joe Manganiello leads a team of soldiers into a cave and discovers a massive creature straight out of the H.P. Lovecraft playbook. As for why the sole surviving soldier stabs her own eyes out … well, to borrow a quote from another satisfying slice of sci-fi cosmic horror, where she’s going, she doesn’t need eyes to see.

3. “The Very Pulse of the Machine�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: Yes

Probably the prettiest of Volume 3’s episodes, “The Very Pulse of the Machine� also boasts one of the cleverest setups: An astronaut, voiced by Mackenzie Davis, is stranded on one of Jupiter’s moons and has no choice but to ingest a series of increasingly destabilizing drugs in a desperate effort to survive. As the astronaut begins to hear her dead companion talking to her, and the environment around her grows increasingly surreal, it’s not clear if she’s hallucinating or has genuinely encountered an intelligent alien life — right up to the ending, which puts a satisfying button on the whole thing.

2. “Bad Travelling�

Love: No
Death: Yes
Robots: No

At long last, Love, Death & Robots producer David Fincher takes his turn in the director’s chair, reteaming with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for this grim, gripping slice of nautical fantasy. While hunting sharks on an alien ocean, a crew of sailors discover that a giant sentient crab has boarded their ship. When the crab, ventriloquizing through a human corpse, insists on passage to a populous island where it can hunt and kill countless innocent people, the quick-thinking captain is stuck between his desire to save lives and an increasingly mutinous crew. Tense, twisty, and gripping, this isn’t just the best of Volume 3’s more traditionally narrative shorts — it’s one of the best Love, Death & Robots segments of all time. The only real letdown is the ho-hum ending; after so many clever narrative pivots, this one really could have benefited from one last nasty twist.

1. “Jibaro�

Love: Yes
Death: Yes
Robots: No

Like Volume 2, this batch of Love, Death & Robots episodes saved its best for last. Alberto Mielgo, who won an Oscar this year for his animated short “The Windshield Wiper,� delivers the most frenetic and nightmarish episode of Volume 3. This twisted, wordless quasi-love story follows a deaf knight whose entire battalion is felled by a siren-like creature covered in gold and jewels. When the siren becomes obsessed with the man, on whom her cries have no effect, he sees an opportunity to rob the riches from her body, even as her seductions draw him further in. Mielgo has since described the whole thing as a metaphor for a toxic relationship in which both parties end up suffering — but whatever you get out of it, it’s both disturbing and mesmerizing.

A purist could probably argue that this medieval-set short doesn’t really belong in Love, Death & Robots — maybe Netflix will greenlight Love, Death & Horses someday? — but animation this strange, singular, and dazzling is also the best-case scenario for what you can get out of an animated anthology.