NOTE: This article contains spoilers. Read at your own will.
“You really wanna know me? Take a number.”
If The Harder They Fall and X-Men had a child, it would be Bass x Machina.
Brian Tyree Henry lends his voice to Netflix’s latest adult animated series, Bass x Machina, in this six-episode series about a bounty hunter, Bass Reeves—a father forced to become the judge, jury, and executioner in a lawless Steampunk West.
An occupation that may cost him everything and everyone he loves.
And the opening fight sequence, set against Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry,” captures the feelings of a revolution immediately.
The collision of modern hip-hop with the violence of the Old West makes the action in Bass x Machina feel less like a historical retelling and more like a confrontation with the anger and injustice that continue to resonate with people of today.
Created by LeSean Thomas, the series also stars Janelle Monáe, Tati Gabrielle, Cree Summer, Chaske Spencer, Currie Graham, and Starletta DuPois—and they bring the world of sci-fi, love, and bounty hunting into the moral gray.
The gray in making the best decisions for your family that become the worst for someone else’s.
And in a world where the law is only as fair as the person holding the non-business end of a pistol, the line between doing what’s right and doing what’s necessary becomes hard to decipher.
You Can’t Outrun What’s Destined For You
“You already lost one family. You wanna lose this one too?”
Burdened by nightmares, old wounds, and haunting memories, Bass carries the weight of his profession like a bad omen. But instead of running away from trouble, he heads right toward it.
But there’s a difference between being fearless and being accustomed to the danger that faces you no matter where you turn.
“Oh, we don’t serve negroes.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I don’t eat ‘em.”
Bass x Machina doesn’t shy away from the prejudice embedded in this world’s timeline.
Each episode sprinkles in darkly humorous interactions rooted in the racism of the time period—encounters that Bass navigates with the ease of someone who’s experienced enough bigotry to no longer flinch when its aim is headed his way.
Even if it still hurts.
Instead, he swats it away like a fly. A nuisance.
And he gets right to business.
Bass is on a new bounty to find a missing scientist, Dr. Eugene Starr, who’s linked to dangerous technological experiments.
His problem?
Dana, the scientist’s niece and budding engineer, is looking for him too and insists on tagging along.
Dana brings more than her budding engineering expertise and experimental weapons on their journey.
She brings along a determination that challenges every instinct Bass has to control the danger around them—creating an unlikely partnership that forces them both to confront hard truths about the other and themselves.
Bass Reeves: Fact and Fiction
The real Bass Reeves was a deputy U.S. marshal whose career spanned over thirty years, reportedly arresting over 3,000 fugitives in Indian Territory.
Although there have been stories about his life before, even a fictional miniseries on Paramount+, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, none of them explore Bass’s life quite like Bass x Machina.
Bass and Dana journey into the lands of the Choctaw to search for her uncle, and the series infuses history and language into the dialogue that highlights the Indigenous history that gives life to these lands.
The setting is more than a historical backdrop.
It places Bass’s journey within a landscape shaped by communities that traditional Western storytelling often omits.
But those who give life also have the supernatural powers to take away.
And they take away, alter, and morph human bodies in the most gruesome ways.
What makes Bass x Machina compelling isn’t just the collision of Westerns, horror, and supernatural sci-fi.
It’s the way the series refuses to separate its violence from those who live with its consequences.
The series blends fact with imagination to expand a historical landscape by pulling audiences into a fictional world of murder, power, divided loyalties, internal conflict…
And pain.
Immense pain that Bass tries hard to keep down, but nature has its way of bringing darkness to light.
In just six episodes, Bass x Machina transforms the mythology of the American West through breathtaking animation, fight sequences, science fiction, and supernatural horror.
The emotional weight beneath the chaos—the choices people make, the history they carry, and the price they pay to survive—makes Bass x Machina one of the best animated series of the year.
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