{"id":362889,"date":"2025-11-07T19:57:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T19:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/362889\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T19:57:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T19:57:15","slug":"the-mass-effect-tv-show-will-tackle-what-happens-after-the-original-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/362889\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Mass Effect’ TV Show Will Tackle What Happens After the Original Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

We still don\u2019t know a lot about Amazon\u2019s planned TV show adaptation<\/a> of\u00a0Mass Effect, so there\u2019s already been plenty of speculation about just what a thorny path to adaptation of a series defined by player choice<\/a> (for good and ill<\/a>) could even look like in the first place. Well, now we have some semblance of an idea\u2026 but if anything, it\u2019s only going to make all that speculation even more fervent.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a> released today on the BioWare website to mark \u201cN7 Day,\u201d Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble briefly touched on the development of Amazon\u2019s TV series, in lieu of providing much, if any, tangible updating on the development of the long-awaited fifth game in the series. \u201cWe\u2019ve been partnering closely with Amazon on it,\u201d Gamble said, \u201cand we\u2019re really excited with what the talented team over there is coming up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did, however, confirm a couple of crucial details about the show: it will tell an original story within the\u00a0Mass Effect universe that takes place some time after the events of the first three games in the series, and it will explicitly not be a \u201cretread of Commander Shepard\u2019s story.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

While many fans had expected that, if a\u00a0Mass Effect show were not to adapt the events of the Reaper invasion seen across the first three games, it may establish itself as a prequel, perhaps exploring humanity\u2019s first real contact with interstellar civilization and its early days on the galactic stage, it\u2019s surprising to see that the show will instead go\u00a0after those events and explore an as-yet-unseen period of time, no matter how far after\u00a0Mass Effect 3 it goes (Andromeda, the fourth game in the series, takes place in the titular Andromeda galaxy<\/a>, 600 years after the first three games).<\/p>\n

But even knowing that it will be at some point after Mass Effect 3 raises plenty of fascinating questions. Over a decade on from the legacy of\u00a0Mass Effect 3<\/a>\u2018s controversial ending, even moving on from its impact on fans still means the\u00a0Mass Effect TV show will now have to, in some way, touch upon the different ways the Reaper saga came to an end.<\/p>\n

While there are broad similarities across a majority of Mass Effect 3\u2018s three primary endings (which was part of that longstanding controversy in the first place)\u2014the seeming sacrifice of Commander Shepard, the end to the Reaper threat, the implication of the broad loss of the galaxy\u2019s primary FTL transit system, the Mass Effect Relays\u2014how each of those endings reached that conclusion had very different, long-reaching ramifications that would presumably impact the TV show in significant ways. Does synthetic life like the Geth still exist, or has it been redeveloped in the wake of the \u201cDestroy\u201d ending? Did all of galactic civilization become transformed into a hybrid techno-organic society like in the \u201cSynthesis\u201d ending? Or will the show adapt \u201cControl,\u201d in which Shepard transforms the Reapers into a dominated thrall army that their spirit now commands?<\/p>\n

Whatever the show chooses, fans will no doubt have something to say about their own choices in the trilogy no longer feeling \u201ccanon,\u201d even if the show is set hundreds or even thousands of years after (but at that point, are you still necessarily making a\u00a0Mass Effect show people could get invested in if it\u2019s so disconnected?). That is, seemingly, why the show wants to avoid Shepard\u2019s story in the first place\u2014\u201dbecause after all,\u201d as Gamble writes in his blog post, \u201cthat\u2019s YOUR story<\/a>, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Time will tell just how the show will tackle this untapped part of\u00a0Mass Effect\u2018s world, even if we now have a slightly better picture of what it\u2019s planning to do. But maybe it wouldn\u2019t be\u00a0Mass Effect if fans didn\u2019t do a lot with a little to enact some feeling of trepidation over the future of the franchise.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We still don\u2019t know a lot about Amazon\u2019s planned TV show adaptation of\u00a0Mass Effect, so there\u2019s already been…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":362890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2431,18797,18796,8266,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-362889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-bioware","10":"tag-mass-effect","11":"tag-prime-video","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115510185120410298","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}