The Peripheral is a science fiction series on Amazon Prime Video. Based on William Gibson’s 2014 book of the same name, the 8-episode series was created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. It stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Flynne Fisher, Gary Carr as Wilf Netherton, Jack Reynor as Burton Fisher, Louis Herthum as Corbell Pickett, T’Nia Miller as Cherise Nuland, Melinda Page Hamilton as Ella Fisher, Adeline Horan as Billy Ann Baker, Charlotte Riley as Aelita West and Eli Goree as Conner Penske.
Today, Prime Video released 2 episodes of the sci-fi series. The review is based on all the 6-episodes provided by the team. The show’s synopsis reads, “Stuck in a small Appalachian town, a young woman’s only escape from the daily grind is playing advanced video games. She is such a good player that a company sends her a new video game system to test…but it has a surprise in store. It unlocks all of her dreams of finding a purpose, romance, and glamour in what seems like a game…but it also puts her and her family in real danger.”
The Peripheral Review Contains No Spoilers
The Peripheral is set in 2032, and we meet Flynne Fisher, a smart young girl who’s good at virtual reality games. Flynne plays the game on behalf of her brother and always gives her best. She works at a 3D-printer shop and takes care of her sick mother. One day, her brother gets a different kind of game, aka sim, to play with. It’s a headset that makes players feel like they’re really present inside the game and experiencing/living everything for real.
If Flynne uses the headset to play the sim, they will be rewarded good money. After her brother’s insistence, Flynne starts playing the game. What looks like a usual flirtatious dating game turns out to be darker. Soon, the line between the game and Flynne’s reality starts fading. Every episode teaches us more about what the makers have called a peripheral and Flynne’s role in the other world.
In the first two episodes that are realised today, we learn that the people in the game are from the future. The future looks gloomy, and people are trying to seek answers from the past.
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The first episode is easy to grasp as things take place at a normal pace and are easy to understand. However, in the second episode, the line between the game and the real world starts blurring. It makes the plot more complicated.
I can understand that the science fiction genre is usually presented in a way that astounds the viewers. The series does manage to create surprising moments. However, it also leaves us scratching our heads at times.
We understand the basic premise in the second episode, but more characters are introduced later. Each episode is at least an hour or more. So the length, the subject, and so many characters leave one confused. What started as a show about the other side of the world turns out to be a search mission. Sometimes, there are gunshots, action scenes and forced romance.
Chloë Grace Moretz, Jack Reynor and Gary Carr appear the most on screen. They’ve played their parts well. We see most of the story from Flynne’s point of view when trying to grasp this new, perplexing, hidden world.
The Peripheral (2022) Review: Final Thoughts
Overall, The Peripheral on Prime Video has partly intriguing and partly confusing. It gets complicated after the first 3 episodes. Simpler explanations of the events happening in the show and shorter episodes would’ve made it binge-worthy and easy to understand in the first watch itself.
The show is now streaming on Prime Video.
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