r/PantheonShow

Bro I had to pause the show mid episode and seek out clarity that I wasn’t insane for DESPISING every single member of this family. It made me literally cringe inside and out. I was so compelled to turn the show off or do literally anything else.

The dad / husband is a troglodyte. The sister is the most condescending and rude freak. The kids are SO VERY annoying, maybe entitled (and I would say SPOILED AS HELL but I’m trying to give them leeway as they’re children). And Josephine? REALLY?

Caspian: “I can save your life and make you a god. I’m just worried because this is literally the fate of humanity at stake” Josephine: “its MISS to you, and go fuck yourself I don’t need to prove anything to you kid” EXCEPT YOU LITERALLY DO BRO

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA LIKE I FEEL LIKE IM LOSING MY MIND HERE. Sorry. Idk if it’s bad writing or if I just need more patience or WHAT but I had to vent, I’ve loved every moment of this show literally until the moment those kids stole the backpack. Then it’s like the family were on a mission to out HORRIBLE the last member. Ok! Back to watching 😁😁😁😁😁

Rewatched season 1 and I can't stop thinking about how the show handled India. One genuinely clever choice buried under a pile of lazy stereotypes. Let me explain.

The one thing they actually nailed (probably by accident)

India firing the nuclear strike is low-key brilliant narrative engineering. >!Think about it — if the US fires a nuke, the whole show becomes an allegory about American militarism. China or Russia?!< Every viewer's WW3 anxiety kicks in and the story derails. India? The audience absorbs the horror and moves on. India has full hard power credentials but the global image is warm and philosophical enough that it doesn't hijack the plot. The writers needed maximum destruction with zero narrative fallout. India was the cleanest slot available. Honestly kind of a backhanded compliment.

Everything else though...

The India in this show was assembled from exactly three ingredients: Slumdog Millionaire aesthetics, Indian nuclear capability, and an Ambani stand-in as the villain. That's it. That's the whole country.

The specific things that made me cringe

That music is NOT the Gayatri Mantra. The Gayatri Mantra is a hymn to the sun — about enlightenment and knowledge. Using it as ominous corporate background music is like playing Gregorian chant every time something shady happens in America. Completely wrong vibe, looked it up in 30 seconds.

Mumbai doesn't look like that anymore. The chawl and slum aesthetic is 20 years stale. BKC, Worli, Lower Parel — the city has glass towers and arterial highways. Any Indian watching immediately clocks it as the Slumdog visual dictionary that Western audiences still apparently expect.

An Ambani-like assassination causing nationwide riots? That's not India. India has absorbed genuinely massive political shocks with remarkable stability. The show is basically applying a completely different country's instability template to India and hoping nobody notices.

And Jio crashing would not cripple the country. BSNL, MTNL, Airtel, Vi, Tata — the telecom redundancy is enormous. The writers clearly read one Bloomberg profile of Mukesh Ambani and concluded India = Jio monoculture.

The thing that actually frustrates me most

Pantheon is literally about ordinary people navigating systems designed to exploit them — corporate surveillance, concentrated tech power, identity being digitised without consent being understood. That is EXACTLY modern India. UPI processes more transactions than Visa. Aadhaar is biometric identity for 1.4 billion people built by the state. The EPF system, GST, digital public infrastructure — hundreds of millions of people bumping against opaque algorithmic systems every single day.

The real India is more Pantheon than anything the show depicted. They had the richest possible material and instead went with vibes from a 2008 Danny Boyle film.

My theory on why

NRI consultants. The Silicon Valley cohort that intersects with a show like this carries a frozen image of India — the snapshot from when they left, preserved in amber by 15 years in California. More chaotic, more Mumbai-centric, more hierarchical, more spiritually exotic than current reality. And when you're explaining your home country to a writers room of Americans, you unconsciously reach for the dramatic stories. The functional suburban rail network doesn't make the cut. The slums next to towers does.

Those stories are true. They're just not the whole picture. In a writers room they become the entire picture.

The actual India

Massively decentralised. 28 states with real legislative power. Caste structures that operate completely independently of the state. A federal system that makes the US look straightforward. The show treats India like a corporation with one decision-maker at the top — that's China's governance model, not India's.

Also — and this doesn't get said enough — Indians are genuinely among the most chilled out people on the planet. High tolerance for ambiguity, chaos, and broken systems. The catastrophism the show imagines (one company fails, everything collapses) is a very American anxiety being outsourced to a brown aesthetic.

Anyone else notice this stuff or am I being too harsh? Would love to hear from actual Indian viewers especially.

Really enjoyed S1, but S2 isn't hitting the same. On S2:3 and I'm just enjoying it nearly as much as S1.

Does it get better?

What. The. Fuck. Haven't felt this way since evangelion, judging from the nerv sticker on Maddie's laptop they loved that shit too lol. Anyways loved it and how quickly it escalated to something so so deep and philosophical, one thing I didn't get is the role of safe surf on the ending.

At one point I legit felt so bad for the future of humanity and how quickly the physical world got discarded also Maddie just felt so alien on the ending, a being that lived that long and expirenced so much.

One thing I absolutely despise is the way most UIs look on the net omg dude genuinely awful.

I just saw the show for the first time. Am I understanding the ending correctly:

Maddie saved her dad and her son and brought them to the UI world to live forever. She then takes Caspian, her sons dad, and leaves because she has decided she does not want to live forever, she wants to feel pain and love etc.

So her mom and dad and son keep living as UIs forever, while she enters another version of the world and starts over.

Isn't that incredibly mean, she just realised she does not want that fate for herself, but then she forces that fate on the rest of her family? Abandoning them so they will never knew what happened to her, and they will live forever. She left her son, she took her son's dad with her.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding something because that seems like a terrible ending.

It’s from the world to come.

Given the current job situation with rapid AI involvement in tech roles, my mind keeps going back to this dialogue and trying to understand how this change would happen.

How did taxing UI work supported normal people?

Can it be applied to current situation if it really works?

Any thoughts on this?

This show is literally so good!!!!! Its criminally underrated even now. Its so sad to see since not that many animated shows which aren't for kids or comedies get made so its rare when one does come out and its rarer when its this good. This is probably the best animated show ive ever seen except for maybe a few animes. I seriously want everyone to watch this because people are missing out. Its so lonely being a pantheon fan. Like we should all come together or something to promote this series, like send clips about it and refrence it in places idk. It might be annoying to some people tho. I seriously think if more people seen this show it could be very popular but due to poor advertising and distribution it became more niche. It would be nice we we saw more talk and discussion around this show like we do with stuff like the boys or invincible. Do you think we could generate enough hype to convince people at large to watch this show?

Edit: does anyone want to make a group chat so we can coordinate something, idk how much help I will personally be since I can be pretty busy?(I don't want to make this something spammy and annoy people)

Just watched for the first time season one, the rest of my day will be spent watching season 2.

Second time hearing about the concept of Upload, just like in the serie UPLOAD, also available on Prime.

Wish me a good rest of my day 🤣

Just finished Pantheon, 5 stars. I think this is my new favorite show of all time