Is The Peripheral worth your valuable streaming time? Find out in our The Peripheral review of the new Amazon series!
Advertisement
The Peripheral – based on the novel of the same name by William Gibson – tells the story of Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) who finds herself sucked into the events of the world 70 years from her own time.
Living in North Carolina with her veteran brother and ailing mother in the year 2030, Flynne is struggling to make ends meet. Her brother has PTSD from a war we aren’t ever totally clear on that happened in Texas, leaving Flynne to be the main money maker for the family. She works in s a 3D printing shop while her brother plays VR games for lazy rich people to build their characters up for them. The issue is that Flynne is the better player and has to step in for him from time to time despite everything she already handles.
The pair get a unique opportunity when they are asked to test a new headset that is even more realistic. The secret, however, is that it projects the wearer into the future where their consciousness into a body known as a ‘peripheral.’ There, Flynne gets embroiled in corporate espionage that leads to her life being under threat both in 2030 and 2100.
How does time travel work in this show? Well, I wish we had a solid answer for you. Somehow the people of 2100 keep taking care of issues for Flynne and her family in 2030. While bringing Flynne forward in time makes sense, the backward ability is a bit more difficult to grasp.
With a series such as this, the technology and science of it all shouldn’t matter, and we should be focused on the story. The problem is that the tech is a large portion of the story. As the show goes on you come to find all the ways the future has influenced life in the past trying to change the outcome of events. But you are never clear on how exactly they accomplish this. Even how the headset arrives is never really made clear.
The Peripheral tries desperately to build an exciting world of technology and intrigue, but it falls short every time. You think you’re about to learn something that will make everything clearer, or make you even care about the outcome, but instead, you are again left feeling unsatisfied.
There is no doubt this series tries to make you love it, but sadly it tries in all the wrong ways and falls consistently short.
Prime Video will debut the first two episodes of The Peripheral on Oct. 21. Episodes will follow weekly on Fridays.
DISCLAIMER: Prime Video provided six of the eight episodes of The Peripheral for this review. We watched all six episodes before beginning this review.
