What does the ending of each episode of Love, Death & Robots mean? Netflix's new anthology series is an experimental production, featuring 18 sci-fi short films, each told in a different style of animation - occasionally in live-action - with all of them maintaining a self-contained plot.

With producers including David Fincher and Tim Miller, Love, Death & Robots is an R-rated take on the Black Mirror formula, not holding back on the sex, nudity, or violence. But among all the depravity are some chillingly existential concepts, with subject matter ranging from the darkly fantastical to the outright dystopian, and back again.

Related: Love, Death & Robots: Every Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

Even the shortest episodes of Love, Death & Robots, as well as the most comedic and straight-forward, offer some philosophical food for thought, picking at our collective psyche to show who we really are. As usual, what's revealed in Love, Death & Robots doesn't show the human race in a positive light.

Sonnie's Edge

Love Death & Robots Sonnies Edge

The first episode of Love, Death & Robots is "Sonnie's Edge" and it sets the tone as a dimly-lit, cyberpunk, CG-animated cross between Pokémon and Pacific Rim centered on a monster fight between two psychically-controlled beasts. The challenger is a new, scrappy, female contender who brushes off a bribe to lose before coming out victorious. Her briber, none too keen on the refusal, pays her a visit afterwards and finds out her real identity. As it turns out, the new combatant was really her creature all along - after a brutal beating, her conscience was transferred into the animal's, and she uses a reverse form of the psychic link to control a human puppet so nobody's the wiser. By the time her latest assailants see this, of course, it's too late - she goes in for the kill to keep her secret, ready to make every man who stands in her way pay for what happened to her.

Three Robots

Love Death & Robots Three Robots

Buddy comedy episode "Three Robots" is one of the cheerier cuts of Love, Death & Robots; a Wall-E-inspired jaunt through a post-apocalyptic city featuring a trio of androids. The three chat and deride each other as they discuss the various weird behaviors of the now extinct human race, bodies littering the streets and technology sitting under layers of dust. The cutesy escapade becomes something darker when the cat they've befriended reveals, in perfect English, that after humans gave cats opposable thumbs through genetic engineering, the household felines took over, implying mankind died off fighting both them and the irreparable side effects of climate change. "Pretty heartless," one of the robots retorts.

The Witness

Love Death & Robots The Witness

This Ghost in the Shell-inspired short is one of the more impressive Love, Death & Robots episodes on a technical level. The 3D animation is somewhere between characterized and uncanny, giving the whole thing a heightened sense of realism, bolstered by seeing actual spit and breathing on the screen in parts. A woman goes on the run after witnessing a murder in an apartment across from her own. The murderer, who's confused by his witness looking exactly like his victim, gives chase in search of answers. She leads him to an illicit sex shop where she procures a gun as he continues to give chase until they circle back to her apartment. She kills him, looking out to window to see an exact clone of him has now seen what she did, an endless stream of copies of the man and woman caught in a sort of loop - except they appear to routinely switch places every time.

Suits

Love Death & Robots Suits

Most of Love, Death & Robots hinges on final shots that send chills through the viewer. "Suits" is a great example of why these endings don't need to be particularly deep to still be effective. After the main battalion of farmers in the titular mecha suits have successfully beaten back an alien invasion, there's a standard Hollywood ending of the community returning to normal following near devastation. Then the camera pulls back and viewers see the invaders are actually the planet's native species and the farmers are part of a colony on another planet, with many other force-fielded colonies shown on the surface. How they got there and for how long is anyone's guess, but rather than an alien species trying to infest Earth, it seems "Suits" turns the tables and has humans as an unwanted infestation on another planet.

Sucker of Souls

Love Death & Robots Sucker of Souls

More science-fantasy, Love, Death & Robots' "Sucker of Souls" is a spin on Dracula where the vampiric creature is an imprisoned monstrosity unleashed by an archaeological dig. Scientific in the Indiana Jones sense, the central notion of "Sucker of Souls" is that we should be careful where we search for answers, because the next wild discovery could be our last. Once this demonic Dracula is set free, the small band of mercenaries just barely escape alive before realizing they're in a nest of other vampires the overlord created over the years. An effective homage to '90s comic violence.

When The Yogurt Took Over

Love Death & Robots When The Yogurt Took Over

The shortest Love, Death & Robots episode is "When The Yogurt Took Over". This episode uses a Pixar-type aesthetic for a strange little yarn about sentient yogurt first solving all our problems and then flying to space. The five minute Love, Death & Robots episode, along with its easy visuals, present some harrowing material - including a baby corpse - but what's here doesn't leave much to think about. Humans invent a higher form of intelligence in "When The Yogurt Took Over", and it soon grows tired of the human race and leaves.

Page 2 of 3: Love, Death & Robots Episodes 7-12

Love Death & Robots Beyond the Aquila Rift

Beyond The Aquila Rift

Another technical wonder, the uncanny valley is in full effect for "Aquila Rift", which features human-like CGI. A space captain wakes up from a hypersleep to find his ship drastically off course and stationed at a leftfield checkpoint. During a fling with an old love interest, Gretta, he begins to question what's actually happening; Gretta eventually drops the facade. It turns out they're nowhere near human civilization, now stuck in some biomechanical, insectoid hellscape where an arachnid with telepathic powers is creating a comforting reality for him to exist in, presumably until he dies. Several other ships can be seen within the sprawling nest, a literal hive taking in stragglers as it slowly expands in its own bleak corner of space.

Good Hunting

Love Death & Robots Good Hunting

Love, Death & Robots' "Good Hunting" shares a thematic link with "Sonnie's Edge", in that it's all about female autonomy and vengeance. The short is something of a reversal, beginning as a demon hunter versus a shape-shifter in the colonial Hong Kong era of the 1800s to the 1930s before becoming a steampunk alternate history of China that sees Britain forge a much stronger colonial presence within the Asian state. Liang is an apprentice hunter who grows up to be a great inventor, maintaining a friendship with shape-shifter Yan who's losing her powers as technology infests the natural land. Becoming a sex worker to survive, one of Yan's clients kidnaps her and turns her into a robot for his pleasure. After escaping her captivity, she turns to Yan for support, and Yan turns her robotic body into a shape-shifting mechanism that allows her to transform into a ferocious fox that now hunts predatory men on the streets of Hong Kong.

The Dump

Love Death & Robots The Dump

It was only a matter of time before gentrification showed up in a compendium like this, and show up it does – in a literal garbage dump in the Love, Death & Robots episode "The Dump". A luckless land inspector is sent to get Ugly Dave to sign off on leaving his dump home as a new development doesn't fancy being near all the trash. Dave agrees so long as the inspector listens to his story of his pet, Ollie. No ordinary trash-diving pest, Ollie is a mutant blob of rubbish that consumes sentient life to stay alive. This sounds ludicrous to the inspector, but he isn't doubting it much when Ollie swallows him at the end. A simple reminder of the lives that are forgotten as the corporations dig a deeper hold.

Shape-Shifters

Love Death & Robots Shape-Shifters

Naturally, the wars in the Middle East also get a look in Love, Death & Robots, with "Shape-Shifter" being a video game-type concept of the US military using human-canine mutants for war. A base of soldiers finds out the enemy also have quasi-werewolves, and after his partner lycan is killed, Decker chooses not to reveal the whereabouts of his opposing wolfman so that he can have the pleasure of killing it himself. Once he gets his revenge, Decker quits and walks out on the Marine Corps, becoming one with the wild once he gives his friend a proper burial. Doesn't say anything novel about the ongoing American presence in the region, but it doesn't need to.

Helping Hand

Love Death & Robots Helping Hand

"Helping Hand" is a shorter, George Clooney-less version of Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-winning Gravity. A female astronaut is stuck floating in space when her suit is damaged by floating debris, forced to stare as the space station she needs to get back to lies just out of reach and help too far away for her to rely on. Eventually she has a brain-wave – make airtight seal around half her arm so she can detach part of the sleeve and throw it, propelling her towards solace. When the first throw doesn't work, she's then forced to be more drastic, shattering off her own forearm to have something else big enough to throw; the second try does the trick. Missing an arm, she checks back in with home base and begins her journey back to Earth, having seen both the beauty and horror the vacuum of space has to offer.

Fish Night

Love Death & Robots Fish Night

A father-and-son are visited by a sea of aquatic ghosts in the middle of the Arizona desert in "Fish Night", the spirits of the life that existed when the sand plane was filled with water. The pair are naturally enamored, but the son gets too excited, stripping naked and swimming among the multi-colored ghosts. A blood-red shark spots the son and goes on the prowl, and the father's cries falling on deaf ears until it's too late. The shark gets its prey and the incredible light-show disappears with the son's body, leaving the dad all alone in the quiet desert heat.

Page 3 of 3: Love, Death & Robots Episodes 13-18

Love Death & Robots Lucky 13

Lucky 13

Another episode that's just missing a Microsoft logo and a title card to make it a concept trailer for a new game franchise is the Love, Death & Robots episode "Lucky 13". "Lucky 13" is about the kinship between a talented pilot, Lieutenant Colby, and an old ship that's developed a reputation for being unlucky. With Colby at the helm, 13 becomes one of the most trusted members of the fleet, on a fateful day going above and beyond to protect its passengers.

Pinned down by an oppressive wave of opposing forces, Colby is forced to activate 13's self-destruct mechanism to protect her and the other soldiers. 13 goes one step further, though, waiting beyond the countdown so the advancing threat is right on top of it to explode, thus maximizing damage and ensuring Colby and the rest definitely make it out alive. Sometimes all an Artificial Intelligence needs is the right person behind the wheel.

Zima Blue

Zima floating naked in a tank full of water in Love, Death & Robots.

An art journalist gets the interview of a lifetime in "Zima Blue", profiling the great Zima - a withdrawn modern artist whose work had redefined the idea of scale and possibility over the course of decades. Legend had it that Zima was a mortal man who had himself robotically enhanced to explore every kind of environment he could, so that he could grasp the true nature of existence. The truth is something much simpler.

Zima is actually a robot, first built by a young girl to clean her pool. His inventor/mother kept working on him, giving him greater levels of autonomy. He grew to become fully autonomous and eventually became obsessed with the color of the blue tiles he was originally made to upkeep, hence that color being the center-piece of his work. His last masterpiece is the reveal of his mechanical roots, choosing to revert back to his very first form as a simple cleaning tool in a swimming pool, much to the shock of his aristocratic audience. It might not be tomorrow or the day after, but someday, something we invented will start making the art for us, and we'll still be no closer to any real answers.

Blind Spot

Love Death & Robots Blind Spot

The attitude and cartoon-y violence of the '90s weighs heavy on "Blind Spot", featuring a gang of robotic criminals performing a heist. Their robbery of a computer chip from a heavily guarded truck goes wrong thanks to their over-confidence as well as some unexpected defenses. Nothing they can't handle, though, but it's the rookie and the brains who are left standing among the debris. Except the rest of the team had their brains copied so their robotic bodies could all be destroyed without lasting damage. A solid vision of the shape eternal life might take - in the far future - is couched in some enjoyably flippant action.

Ice Age

Love Death & Robots Ice Age

The only real live-action entry in Love, Death & Robots is a sardonic plot of a young couple discovering a civilization living in their freezer. Peaking in at their unlikely tenants, they watch this micro-world zip through the entirety of human history right into achieving the singularity, surviving a nuclear war along the way. Then, once the singularity has been completed and all seems done, the cycle starts all over again; dinosaurs and monkeys co-existing in a primal wasteland. It's the circle of life - maybe climate change is just our own overlords unplugging the freezer?

Alternate Histories

Love Death & Robots Alternate Histories

What if you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler before World War I? Fueling many a lively hypothetical discussion among friends, the question is used here to demonstrate a new app that generates the likeliest scenarios and then animates them for the viewer. Six different timelines are shown - some arguably better, but most worse than what's actually happened - and all are fun to consider. As virtual reality and augmented reality continue to develop, software like this isn't out of the realm of possibility, though the actual version will probably be less charming. That timeline where the squids visit the moon would be well worth a visit, all the same. In the end, though, Love, Death & Robots' "Alternate Histories" is a warning against changing the timeline, because the result may not always be better than what's already happened.

The Secret War

Love Death & Robots The Secret War

Essentially "Hellboy, but Russian", The Secret War" closes out Love, Death & Robots in a suitably grim fashion. A Russian platoon is sent to the snow-choked forests of early 1920s Siberia to hunt down demonic creatures summoned when the Red Army experimented with dark magic. The monsters are uncontrollable, killing anything that gets in front of them, and the only solution is extermination before anyone else finds out what happened.

The efficient squad find one of the main hideouts of these things and rig up explosives, but it isn't enough. Sending one of their younger members to rally for help, the rest engage in a suicide mission to hold the line until a bombing run can arrive. Sure enough, the summoned hellspawn is erased and life carries on as if it didn't happen, with only one soldier left fully aware of what it looked like to be among those things. A dark but apt end to a series all about ideas we don't often like to consider, as "The Secret War" argues the true significance of centuries of conflict.

More: What To Expect From Love, Death & Robots Season 2