Season Review: Secret Level Season One Episodes 1-13

Gaming and animation is a history that goes back decades. At one point they used to be considered the same sides of the same coin, media conglomerates would use both to further extend a popular toy brand like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Nowadays, gaming has far surpassed toys and even television and film as resources for new stories, deep with their own mythos and fandoms and communities. Streamers like Netflix and Prime Video know this and have been volleying back and forth on who can gobble up the most IP to leverage for more content and 2025 doesn’t look any different. The year 2024 gave us animated adaptations of Tomb Raider and most recently we saw the wrap of Arcane inspired by League of Legends. The year 2025 expect to see adaptations of Devil May Cry, Castlevania from Netflix while Prime Video’s Secret Level debuts animated adaptations of a secret Playstation short and Mega-Man, neither of which are covered in this review which will only cover the first 13 of 15 episodes of the anthology series that features over a dozen shorts inspired by games that are featured by PlayStation, Amazon Games, and a number of classics.

The Tim Miller-directed and Blur Studios produced series not only features animated adaptations of known gaming IP, Secret Level features a bevy of some of the biggest Hollywood names featured in them. I don’t even want to give away where they show up, I think I’d rather let you be surprised, but various teaser trailers scattered across the internet have already showcased the likes of Keanu Reeves in an animated adaptation of Armored Core (more on this later) and other talent like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Heaven Hart, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Michael Beach, Emily Swallow, and Claudia Doumit.

Secret Level not only features a love of the gaming IP in each and every episode, but also a love of gaming itself. Jokes about respawning, leveling up, “extra lives”, and games that forced you into trial and error to figure out how to get through it are here that helps balance out the series that also features breathtaking action sequences, exquisitely choreographed fight scenes, and space battles that would make George Lucas cream in his pants. In order to help deliver those action sequences, you need believable vocal performances and they are here as well. For my money, the best short I’ve reviewed thus far that I think is going to everyone talking is the Keanu Reeves-starring Armored Core that sees the John Wick actor turn in an Emmy-qualifying performance that I think sits right at the top of some of his best, and that’s in the same month as the release of a third Sonic the Hedgehog movie of which he will also be starring in as the adversarial Shadow. Another performance that shouldn’t go unchecked, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comedic chops haven’t gone away, so those that are fans of his work in movies like Kindergarten Cop, Twins, and more of the like will be laughing their ass off as he portrays an angry conqueror in an adaptation of New World that needs to learn more about worldbuilding and patience.

Secret Level improves upon Tim Miller’s previous Netflix work in Love Death + Robots and that show was a serial Emmy winner. For my money, the storytelling in each of the presented shorts featured far more depth, a good amount of levity, and a respect for a gaming industry that’s about to go through another metamorphosis in the coming year or so. Without even having seen other highly-anticipated shorts from the likes of Playstation and Mega-Man, I can confidently tell you that Secret Level is in a tier of its own and there should be more where this came from.