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12 Monkeys: 5 reasons why it’s the perfect sci-fi series to binge

By Shana Lieberman

SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 20: (L-R) Producer Terry Matalas and actors Emily Hampshire, Todd Stashwick, Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull and Alisen Down at the "12 Monkeys" press line during Comic-Con International 2017 at Hilton Bayfront on July 20, 2017 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 20: (L-R) Producer Terry Matalas and actors Emily Hampshire, Todd Stashwick, Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull and Alisen Down at the "12 Monkeys" press line during Comic-Con International 2017 at Hilton Bayfront on July 20, 2017 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) /
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1. 12 Monkeys is weirdly relevant in 2020, even if it’s off by a few years

Maybe this is stating the obvious at this point, but there’s a virus that kills a disastrous number of people. Decades later, the survivors make a valiant effort to stop it from ever happening.

If you’re reading this post in 2020, the year COVID-19 swept across the globe in the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 flu, there will be moments from “the past,” according to 12 Monkeys, that really makes you wonder: “What if?” They may not have guessed the year correctly, but they were pretty close.

Images of bodies piling up will be pretty familiar to anyone who watched the news coming out of New York in the pandemic’s earlier months. And the idea of how the virus swept across the planet so quickly, perhaps because of the actions of just one traveler or maybe even because it was unleashed in a particularly crowded part of an already busy city, will be pretty on-the-nose for why all the experts have begged people to stay home.

But because this is fiction, there are opportunities for heroic acts beyond our current scope. Those, too, will make you wonder “what if” but in all the best, most uplifting ways. The way12 Monkeys handles its plague is simultaneously terrifying and hopeful, and that hopeful part is something we probably could all use right now.

2. 12 Monkeys has some of the best writing and dialogue in science fiction

It’s very clear that series creators Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett had a plan and stuck to it. The four short seasons (13, 13, 10, and 11 episodes, respectively) do not leave any room for wasted time and are jam-packed with the groundwork for the show’s ultimate conclusion.

Each episode is expertly put together so as to feel like it’s a film in and of itself, yet ends in such a way as to make you desperate to see what happens next. As the episode numbers increase, the stakes and the edge-of-your-seat feeling will skyrocket with them.

And forgetting about all of that for a second, another aspect of the writing that will be sure to make you love this show like very few others is the pure beauty of it. There are so many moments in the dialogue that will make you pause to say, “wow, that’s art” and countless messages written into those moments that really force you to consider whether you’re a believer in fate or choosing your own path.

Even the series finale leaves viewers a chance to actually think for themselves. It’s writing that somehow wraps everything up with a nice, red bow and pushes you to ask whether this is truly the end or just the beginning.

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