Apple’s Most Underrated Sci-Fi Saga May Have An Endgame Soon
Even an assassin has to retire eventually.
Apple TV is a safe haven for sci-fi shows that might be deemed too “weird” for other streamers. Post-apocalyptic mystery series based on a self-published ebook? Absolutely, have four seasons. An alternate history series following a completely different take on the space race? Get the old age makeup out because that show will cover literal generations. Strange corporate sci-fi series starring a beloved comedy star? Hope you have room in your trophy case for those ten Emmys.
But perhaps the weirdest sci-fi series on Apple TV is Murderbot, the series starring Alexander Skarsgard as a security droid who has hacked its own protocols and now staves off the boredom of its job with space soap operas. It’s a show with a very specific tone, provided by Martha Wells’ hit books as source material. However, this show may have a finite shelf life — and it could be shorter than we first thought.
The Murderbot Diaries may end after the upcoming ninth book.
For any fan of a sci-fi series based on a source material, there’s one fear that looms over the entire narrative: what happens when you run out of books? Thankfully, it looked like Murderbot wouldn’t have to consider this problem for a while, as the eighth book in The Murderbot Diaries is set for release in May, and a ninth book is already greenlit.
However, that may be it for this saga. “It'll probably be the end of the year, at least, before I start the next Murderbot,” Martha Wells told Polygon. “I've got some vague ideas for it, but I'm not really sure what it's going to be yet. And that may be the last book.”
Still, nine books are a good chunk of source material, so that should keep the show going for a while, right? Unfortunately, it appears as though the show will burn through these books a lot quicker now that Season 1 has covered the first book, All Systems Red. “The plan would be to have a mash-up of the future books because I think that, hopefully, like audiences, we fell in love with the characters, of the team in the first book, and we wouldn’t want to do a season without them,” co-showrunner Chris Weitz told ComicBook in May 2025. “So it would be some combination of maybe [books] two, three, and four, I think, would be a second season.” At that pace, Murderbot could maybe eke out four seasons before running out of story.
Murderbot’s unique style, including its show-within-a-show, relies on Wells’ source material.
Of course, the show could still continue even past the source material, but that approach comes with a big cautionary tale: Game of Thrones. Like Murderbot, it seemed like the source material for HBO’s hit fantasy series was vast, but it didn’t last long, and everything that came after it was subject to criticism, leading to a now infamously badly-received final season. In 2026, nobody wants their show’s endgame to be compared to that.
But Murderbot shouldn’t extend that long anyway. The (albeit mechanical) heart and soul of the series is Murderbot itself, and only Wells can truly echo its voice. With the knowledge of the Apple TV series, when she eventually sits down to pen book 9, it can be with the knowledge that it may be the show’s endgame as well.
