Sense8 is about love and sex. Sense8 is about violence and connection. Sense8 is about pain and family. Sense8 is about all of these things and none of these things in particular. In my final verdict, Sense8 is a show about 8 lives intertwining and spiraling outwards to touch the lives ot those around them.
The premise of the show is pure J. Michael Straczynski. The writer broke on to the scene in 88′ winning the Bram Stroker award with his first novel, Demon Night. He went on to make Babylon 5–one of the most tightly woven series in the genre of intergalactic sci-fi. This show is the brainchild of him and the Matrix co-creator Lana Wachowski. Together they dreamed up a tale of groups of 8 people who are mentally connected and can share each other’s experiences and inhabit each other’s bodies. This would be a wonderful thing if not for the fact that each of these people in this particular sense8 is a cast-off from society in some way. They are racially, socially, and sexually marginalized including black, asian, hispanic, gay, poor, transgender to name a few.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an adventure if not for the fact that another Sense8 is led by a maniacal villain who wants to use his power to rule. Drama ensues and the group is forced together to face this evil and the conflict within themselves. In the end they succeed, but not without scars.
In truth the idea of verdict is anathema to the idea of Sense8. This is a show about the lack of judgement. This idea is best encapsulated near the show’s final scene where the story’s most uptight character relaxes her sense of judgement and in that moment reflects the hopes of the show’s co-creator, Lana Wachowski, who built this show around the idea of her own shift in gender and the hope that love and sex of all types can be appreciated without verdict.