The newest trailer from the creator of HBO’s Watchmen finally does justice to a wild premise
Peacock released the first full trailer for Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers) and Tara Hernandez’s (Young Sheldon) upcoming sci-fi thriller series Mrs. Davis on Tuesday and all we can say is hell yeah; that’s more like it. After the first, boring-ass teaser released earlier this month, this new trailer offers a much better look at the bizarre and uncanny world of a luddite nun fighting a war simultaneously against and on behalf of an omnipresent artificial intelligence. This trailer finally does justice by the series’ premise.
As this new trailer covers, and as we wrote about the first teaser last week, Mrs. Davis stars Betty Gilpin (The Hunt) as Sister Simone of Reno, a nun who grows increasingly disillusioned by a world mediated by an overly familiar artificial intelligence who, like Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem, governs all of humanity like a machine of loving grace.
When Simone is repeatedly approached by messengers of Mrs. Davis to accept a “Quest” to find the “Holy Grail” — presumably the A.I.’s servers — she embarks on a journey that crosses paths with Wiley (Jake McDorman). Wiley, her ex-boyfriend, now fights as a resistance leader against the algorithm.
As Simone explores the world in search of the “Grail,” she’s faced with the kind of big questions one would expect from a show produced by the guy behind Lost and The Leftovers. Namely: Which side is she really fighting for? What is Mrs. Davis’ ultimate intention? And would the world as a whole truly be better off if Mrs. Davis was no longer pulling the strings?
It’s a fascinating set up for a sci-fi thriller series, one that falls somewhere equidistant between the high-concept storytelling of Westworld, Made For Love, and Person of Interest and the irreverent ‘20 Minutes into the Future’ context of Lindelof’s Watchmen and Patrick Somerville’s Maniac. Owen Harris, who directed the critically acclaimed Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” and the first two episodes of Peacock’s TV adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, will serve as an executive director on the series and direct the first episode.
Given all the recent talk about the proliferation of AI art generators and “Deep Fake” technology — which has only grown more pervasive, ethically alarming, and legally fraught over the past year — Lindelof and Hernandez’s series couldn’t have landed at a better time.
Yet the biggest question remains: Can Mrs. Davis stick the landing, like the guy on that motorcycle jumping through that giant donut? We’ll just have to wait and see. The first four episodes of Mrs. Davis premiere April 20 on Peacock.