Leviathan: Giant airships, bio-engineered beasties, and an alt-history that’ll blow your gears off (TV).
Hold on to your top hats and goggles, folks! Leviathan is storming onto Netflix in 2025, and it’s bringing an entire airship full of bioengineered nonsense and alternate history with it. Based on Scott Westerfeld’s 2009 steampunk novel (complete with Keith Thompson’s illustrations, because what’s steampunk without someone sketching Victorian cyborgs?), this series promises to be an oddball cocktail of World War I, flying mutant whales, and enough teenage drama to power a small dirigible.
For the uninitiated (seriously, where have you been?), Leviathan is set in an alternate 1914, just before the Great War – or, in this case, the Great “Wait, did that airship just flap its wings?” War. Our star-crossed duo features Alek, a runaway Habsburg prince whose family tree is more complex than the plot of Inception, and Deryn, a girl in disguise because obviously women can’t pilot giant, sentient airships in this reality. Together, they hitch a ride aboard the HMS Leviathan, a flying whale-ship hybrid, on a mission to rewrite history, dodge war, and probably engage in some light YA romance because, well, it’s Netflix.
Now, let’s talk about the crew bringing this leviathan of a project to life. Christophe Ferreira is directing, and with credits like Eden and Star Wars: Visions, we can expect some glorious visual insanity. Also on board are Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi, known for scoring Metal Gear Solid 4 and Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045, which is shorthand for “you’re going to hear some epic, techno-orchestral bangers while sky-whales and mech-walkers duke it out.” And if that’s not enough, the legendary Joe Hisaishi, the guy who gave us the heart-melting music from Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky, is doing original songs. So prepare for soaring melodies as our bio-engineered beasties flap majestically through the clouds, just before explosions happen, obviously.
Speaking of beasties, the HMS Leviathan is a bioengineered airship – a phrase that’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. In Westerfeld’s world, the British have ditched traditional airships in favour of flying around inside living organisms that seem more whale than Zeppelin. (How does that work, you ask? Just smile and nod. This is the land of steampunk, where logic takes a backseat to aesthetics and over-complicated gadgets.) Meanwhile, their opponents, the Clankers, have gone full-on mecha with their dieselpunk-inspired war machines, because what’s a good alt-history war without giant, clanking robots throwing down with living dirigibles?
The production studio behind Leviathan, Orange (yep, the BEASTARS people), has a history of stunning CG animation, so we’re expecting the whole series to look like someone dumped a steampunk convention into a blender and hit “puree”. There’s a strong chance they’ll give us a Leviathan that’s so detailed, you’ll spend half the show wondering if you’re supposed to be rooting for the heroes or just admiring the creature’s bioluminescent tentacles.
The only question remaining is how faithful the adaptation will be to the source material. Will Netflix give us the proper amount of steampunk weirdness, or are we in for a watered-down version where the airships look disappointingly solid? Given Westerfeld’s wild world-building, the sheer absurdity of flying ecosystems, and the fact that our two teenage heroes are the kind of plucky underdogs who survive through sheer narrative necessity, we’re betting this show’s going to lean into the wackiness. But, then again, it’s Netflix – it might also end in a cliffhanger right when the whale-ship gets interesting.
Either way, one thing’s for certain: Leviathan is shaping up to be a glorious, gear-clanking, whale-singing, robot-stomping, alt-history romp. And if you’re a fan of flying whales, war machines, or simply enjoy watching teens upend entire empires, this might just be your next binge-worthy obsession. Get ready for 2025, because this one’s going to be a (sky) whale of a ride!
