The creator of Murder Drones doesn’t owe anyone a season 2
I’m so disappointed that this isn’t a unpopular opinion, but it really has to be said- Liam Vickers doesn’t owe anyone a season 2 of Murder Drones just because he decided he didn’t want to make a season 2 during post-pilot - up to mid-episode 5’s production for unknown reasons. Likely because the whole plot post-canon didn’t really have anywhere else to go by then.
(We know this was Liam’s first show & he was the only writer so it could’ve been stress, or due to him simply wanting to move onto other projects or focus on his private life with all the money he likely has now, or maybe due to something involving his possible treatment at Glitch. We can only speculate).
For anyone that’s not caught up yet- yesterday he announced he is stepping away from all social media, but will still be animating & planning new things eventually on his youtube channel (seemingly separating himself from Glitch, & thus Murder Drones, his first show, to work on his own smaller & unserious independent projects). This isn’t surprising since he was almost never active to begin with, but has caused lots of people to insist that the creator is a bad person for stepping away because we are “owed“ a season 2.
The show has an open-ending with Cyn / the solver (the main villain) aka a technological eldritch horror being stuck inside of Uzi’s tail forever. Uzi ISN’T patched (a solver host being patched completely removes the solver’s ability to possess it’s host), but the series establishes that the solver uses psychological warfare to take over it’s host, which Uzi manages to overcome & even overrides against Cyn / the solver throughout the final episode. In the full canon post-credits scene, we see Cyn / the solver’s holograms when Uzi looks in the mirror & she looks annoyed that the solver (in her tail) wanted her to wear a bow.
Within the unknown-if-canon 1-year-later music video (not made by Liam & it’s also never been clarified by Liam or Glitch if it’s canon or not), it was revealed that the solver (within Uzi’s tail) is able to only cause pranks via biting other drones (it’s notable to point out that the solver CANNOT infect other worker drones with the solver itself anymore) to insert a stereotypical zombie virus into them & annoy her. It’s also revealed that Uzi can just retract her tail to keep the solver further locked away from biting others, & even slap the solver locked inside her tail if needed. Tying up her tail‘s mouth shouldn’t be an issue either.
However, the main criticism tied to how “we’re owed a season 2” is tied to 3 things-
1.) The fact that there’s “unanswered plot holes / plot lines” that need to be answered.
2.) That because there is potential content for a season 2, we are thus owed a season 2 even at the cost of trying to convince Glitch to make one without Liam’s permission or input.
I shouldn’t even have to explain how bad these 2 points are.
There was hardly anything left unanswered in the show.
We know the basics of Cyn / the solvers origins- it’s a eldritch horror entity that manifests within corrupted drones‘s OS & potential repair process with a 1 out of 1,428,572 chance of even having the smallest chance at manifesting. Why does Cyn / the solver consume planets / solar systems? Because it’s “hungry” & it’s tied to the solver’s goal. We know the solver’s goal- to assimilate everything. This was spoonfed in the story so much that I’m shocked people complain that this “should’ve been MORE SPOONFED” due to the “complex” dialogue (“with a 0.00000007% chance, manifestations through corrupted drones carry a increased risk of-“ “we know it manifested through corrupted drones” “I an evil” “I am hungry” “honestly, I’m starving (starts to eat the planet)” ”MATTER COLLECTION - TIME LEFT TO ASSIMILATE THE UNIVERSE” “I am the solver of the absolute fabric, the void, the exponential end” “the solver will consume everything you hold dear”, etc). Why does it assimilate / why is it hungry? Because this eldritch being represents the exponential end of all things as a living singularity. The solver being a black hole / singularity keeps endlessly consuming things & in the series it’s directly stated that it would’ve caused cause the big crunch.
What happened to the disassembly drones? We see their bodies were torn apart at the cabin fever labs entrance due to the sentinels while their cores were stored by Alice in the oven. What might’ve happened to them? Best case scenario they were eaten by the sentinels, are locked in the oven forever, or possibly ended up into the depths of space from the solver’s end of episode 7 explosion. Worst case scenario they (somehow) break free of the oven just to end up trapped underground covered in debris within that massive crack on copper 9’s surface, or they somehow escape up to the planet’s surface just for the main cast to find & kill them a day later.
We know what happened to humanity across solar systems- they were all wiped out by the solver & disassembly drones, while any speculation tied to humans surviving tends to rely on fanon explanations. We know what happened at cabin fever labs- solver test subjects were found, offered to join, then were interrogated & tortured in order to understand the solver, which failed, leading to them aiming to develop a patch instead. Who killed Nori? Likely N but it doesn’t matter to the plot at all for various in-universe reasons. Why didn’t the 2 main character robot-vampires die to sunlight while falling? BECAUSE. THE SCENE. HAPPENS. AT. NIGHT! Why wasn’t it directly told to us that it was nighttime? Because you can visibly see it’s nighttime throughout the entire episode & the one before that.
Everything else (“How will N & V fully adjust to the bunker? We see them adjust across the series, but not entirely”, How will Uzi mess around & cause pranks on her own?” “Will Uzi & Khan make a body for Nori?“, etc) can just be easily concluded on your own or through writing fanfics (-which for a fandom that complains soo much & insists can do better than Liam, tends to heavily lack in the most bare minimum writing quality when it comes to fan projects, but that’s a whole other topic).
The “unanswered plot holes / plot lines“ in question tend to be things like “why do the cast (that drinks oil in every episode) don’t drink oil constantly onscreen every 5 seconds?” or “why do the vampire robots NOT die to sunlight… while being outside at night?” or “what’s the purpose of the sentinels? Tessa (& the sentinel’s own POVs) state & show multiple times that they exist to eliminate intruding drones, but this still isn’t enough!” & “why wasn’t the definition of the word explained directly to us?” when this shouldn’t even need to excessively told or shown to you, yet the series & Liam himself did so anyways.
Liam shouldn’t even be responsible as a writer for not including a definition to a word (“sentinel”) & I despise how over 500K people genuinely believe writers should be “held accountable” for not doing so. It’s entitlement on the consumers for not wanting to put in any effort in engaging with media, & even more for these same consumers to hypocritically turn around & insist that the show “demands you turn off your brain, or you‘ll notice these ‘plot holes’ that DO NOT EXIST.
To address the 2nd point, I often have to ask- what counts as potential content for a season 2?
A prequel can be done about humanity’s reactions to earth being destroyed & the cabin fever labs experiments, or a spinoff based on J‘s attempts to leave the planet to get away from the loved ones she betrayed & then finding her own purpose on the dog planet since nearly all human life in the universe is gone. But there’s little to no content that can be done for a season 2.
”Shadow hallway” Doll (episode 3 reference to when she stood in the hallway right before attacking a worker drone) & eldritch J (episode 2 reference) appearing as antagonists based on what we saw in the end credits? Those were just the most obvious references to past episodes & multiple animators confirmed this. We even see J is alive on copper 9’s surface so there’s no possible way for eldritch J to exist anymore.
Yeva coming back to life? It’s heavily implied that V destroyed her core judging from the massive acid-hole in Yeva’s chest. V also says that Yeva didn’t taste good, so she would’ve had to eat inside Yeva’s chest where her core is which heavily implies that she ate it. Even if you retcon this detail & use fanon logic to argue that Yeva might’ve still escaped as a core, this wouldn’t work since this is all assuming that Yeva for some reason wouldn’t try to talk to her traumatized daughter from danger, didn’t get spotted by any other worker drones or Doll herself who was in that exact same room for years, & didn’t go down to the labs either.
The solver trying to take control of Uzi due to “getting stronger within her” (if we believe that the music video’s canon) would seem like a cool concept for a season 2 until you remember that Uzi can already override the solver, has a support system now, & there’s likely still backup data on the working (or previous versions that they can use as a reference to recreate the working one) patch somewhere in the labs. Another issue with this is that it would effectively be repeating both Uzi & (to an extent- V)’s arcs all over again.
A potential season 2 plot point Doll revealing herself to still be inside Uzi’s head & not actually dead? Although the series makes it clear that she’s a heartless killer that prioritize her own blind dark path of revenge over innocent lives, it would be extremely out of character to make her a villain given that she still had empathy towards Uzi & died trying to stop everyone from being wiped out. Doll’s VA even mentioned that Doll is an extremely mentally broken character, but never says she’s downright pure evil on Cyn’s level.
The humans somehow being retconned as dead & waging war against Uzi, thinking that she will one day also commit the solver’s actions? Unless if they used the completely-breaking-the-entire-worldbuilding fanon solver runes / anti-solver technology concept, the humans don’t stand a single chance against Uzi. Solver hosts can create black holes the size of planets big enough to cover all access to sunlight instantly, & Uzi has 2x or 3x the power of a single solver host.
A slice of life with no antagonist, villain, or other conflicts in any way? That will get very boring very quickly.
A new solver host (that retains their own free will similar to Uzi) that becomes a billain, but more morally gray? That would be extremely hard to write given that you would have to top Cyn / the solver, who already represents how powerful a solver host can become. And any other solver host as a villain within season 2 fanfics & fan concepts tends to feel like self-inserts or actual mary sues.
It always seems like the fandom makes any excuse to justify why Liam Vickers “objectively owes us a season 2“, when they can’t just admit that the series is over & the only thing we can do is make our own fanfics, AUs, fan songs, etc. I genuinely have never seen a fandom so dedicated on insisting that fandoms (as a whole) can never stand on their own without the creator constantly pushing out new content when there’s so many fandoms out there still alive despite the original medias ending nearly a decade ago.
