Netflix’s newest animated series Bass X Machina takes the legend of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves and drops it into a steampunk Wild West — and the result is a fun, violent origin story with a fresh take on Black history. The full six-episode season is streaming now on Netflix.
Bass Reeves (Credits: Netflix)
The series comes from Studio Mir, the animation studio behind Devil May Cry, X-Men ’97 and My Adventures With Superman — so the action pedigree is real.
Bass X Machina review: a steampunk Bass Reeves origin
Brian Tyree Henry — who also serves as executive producer — voices Bass Reeves, and in episode one (“Until Then… I’m Bass Reeves”), he starts not as a lawman but as a bounty hunter. He’s part machine too, packing a steam-powered arm that replaced his real one at some point in his blood-red past. Quick flashbacks hint we’ll eventually learn how he lost it — but not today.
Reeves narrates the show’s alt-history setup himself: after the Civil War, the Union Army was saddled with thousands of Black soldiers it didn’t know what to do with. Some chose the gun, some became Buffalo Soldiers, and “some legendary few… became lawmen.” The result is an alt-history West where robots and cyborgs are the norm, but the killing stays as ruthless as ever.
Why Bass Reeves matters
The real Bass Reeves was a historic lawman — an ex-slave who became a Deputy U.S. Marshal — and his legend has inspired everything from HBO’s Watchmen to countless films. Bass X Machina isn’t the first to revisit him, but it’s the first to make him a steampunk cyborg, and the premiere shows the concept has legs.
If you’re looking for a short, punchy animated binge this week, this one’s worth your time.
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Source: IGN — read the full story there.
