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Dhruv is a Lead Writer in Screen Rant's New TV division. He has been consistently contributing to the website for over two years and has written thousands of articles covering streaming trends, movie/TV analysis, and pop culture breakdowns.
Before Screen Rant, he was a Senior Writer for The Cinemaholic, covering everything from anime to television, from reality TV to movies.
After high school, he was on his way to become a Civil Engineer. However, he soon realized that writing was his true calling. As a result, he took a leap and never looked back.
A closer look at Netflix's ongoing sci-fi book adaptation, which feels like the perfect replacement for The Expanse, reveals how it has subtle Lovecraftian undertones.
Bringing H.P. Lovecraft's work to the big and small screens is often challenging because of the ambiguous and deliberately indescribable nature of his cosmic horrors. Owing to this, there aren't a lot of direct adaptations of his stories. Still, traces of his terrors can be found in several other stories of varying genres in the live-action storytelling medium.
A Netflix sci-fi show, which is not based on a Lovecraft story, also seems to have subtle hints of the author's cosmic horror sensibilities, making it the perfect series for fans of his brand of horror.
Stephen King Called 3 Body Problem "Lovecraftian," & He's Right
Stephen King reviewed Netflix's 3 Body Problem and called it "terrifying, Lovecraftian." Even though 3 Body Problem inclines more towards the hard sci-fi genre and seems less in tandem with H.P. Lovecraft's terrifying cosmic horror tales, it is hard not to agree with King's take. Like Lovecraftian stories, 3 Body Problem reminds viewers of humanity's insignificance against the vastness of the universe.
Although its central alien beings, The Trisolarans, are not as "incomprehensible" as the Great Old Ones, they view humans as nothing but a biological nuisance, deserving to be eradicated from the grand scheme of the universe.
Just like the main characters in Lovecraft's stories lose sanity after being exposed to forbidden knowledge, even the ones in 3 Body Problem suffer profound existential crisis as they realize the fundamental laws of the universe (as they knew them) are being manipulated by a higher power.
3 Body Problem often borrows heavily from real science and introduces many familiar concepts like orbital mechanics, chaotic systems, and quantum phenomena. However, it expands these ideas to an almost cosmic and mystical scale, which makes it feel Lovecraftian in more ways than one.
3 Body Problem Has The Potential To Become Netflix’s Answer To The Expanse
3 Body Problem holds an above-average Rotten Tomatoes score of 78% and has also managed to get renewed for two more seasons on Netflix. While its first installment struggled to fit the original book's grand vision into its eight episodes and felt a little too crammed with many ambitious ideas, the show will only get better with each installment.
Game of Thrones' creators, Benioff and Weiss, have been doing an incredible job of retelling the original trilogy's story in such a way that it feels both faithful to the source material and suitable for TV's serialized format.
3 Body Problem season 2 is scheduled to be released on Netflix in 2026.
As the original books suggest, some of the best story beats in the show lie ahead as it gets closer to the Dark Forest arc. With so much going in 3 Body Problem's favor, it seems to have the potential to become Netflix's answer to The Expanse. Like The Expanse, it already has everything from a seemingly Lovecraftian alien being that defies the laws of physics to a sprawling narrative that spans both time and space.
While only time will tell whether the Netflix show will manage to even come close to matching The Expanse's sci-fi legacy, it already has immense potential.
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