Lazarus Review: Cyberpunk Action That Hurts

With Lazarus, the creators of Cowboy Bebop and John Wick channel their rage at our current world with bone-crunching action in a cyberpunk setting.

The truth is everybody here has delivered better work before—it’s an astoundingly high bar, with the talent present—but Lazarus is nevertheless a very fun ride that’s worth watching.

In the year 2052, the world is nearing a state of utopia. A new drug called Hapna has entered the market that can heal any kind of pain with no side effects whatsoever. It’s cheaply available, and you’d struggle to find anyone who isn’t enjoying its benefits. But it’s too good to be true. Three years after the introduction of the drug, its inventor, Dr. Skinner (David Matranga), has a message for humanity. It turns out there’s one side effect after all. He has designed the drug to be lethal three years after the first injection. With only 30 days left until the first people start dying, a cure is needed fast. Otherwise, the world is doomed to end.

The problem is Dr. Skinner disappeared off the face of the earth years before, and he’s the only one who could deliver a cure. To find him, a special team is formed: Lazarus. It’s made up of five agents chosen for the mission, all of whom are criminals and have taken Hapna. The setup is reminiscent of the Suicide Squad. The protagonist of the story is Axel (Jack Stansbury), who has a prison sentence of 888 years. If he joins Team Lazarus and helps save the world, he’s a free man. He tries to escape from the prison one last time (it’s basically a hobby of his at this point), and when that fails, he begrudgingly becomes one of their agents.

The team has a fun dynamic. They’re a band of misfits thrown together against their will on a mission none of them seem to really care about. The result is a lot of banter and unconventional approaches to their missions. Why bother overcomplicating things with elaborate plans if you can just walk into a building and start fighting the security guards? And maybe sometimes you need to just sit down with someone’s grandmother and eat some baklava to figure out some information. Lazarus takes familiar story beats and twists them just enough to avoid feeling like tired clichés.

Each of the five episodes made available to me by Adult Swim follow the same structure. It starts with a monologue from a team member explaining why they started taking Hapna. Then it’s established what the newest idea is to gain information about Dr. Skinner’s whereabouts. And two parallel missions with rotating team formations begin. This pattern is only sort of broken in episode five, where they try to lure Dr. Skinner out instead of hunting him down. I hope that’s a sign that moving forward they will start switching it up more. The adventures are fun, but it feels like we’re moving in circles. There’s basically no progress made in the story. They haven’t gotten any closer to finding Dr. Skinner, and we haven’t really deepened any of the characters either.

As expected, the highlight of every episode is the action. That’s what you get when you put Chad Stahelski in charge of it and let MAPPA animate his choreography. Characters rarely use weapons; it’s a lot of hand-to-hand combat. It’s acrobatic in a way that could never be replicated in real life, with very dynamic movement and motions that flow together seamlessly. And yet there’s so much weight in the animation that every punch and kick can be felt. There’s some parkour as well that’s highly energetic and fun to watch.

One of the first things many will notice when they watch Cowboy Bebop is the soundtrack. While Yōko Kanno, who composed the music for Cowboy Bebop, unfortunately didn’t return this time around, there’s another jazz-infused soundtrack waiting for you in Lazarus. Created by jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington with producers and DJs Bonobo and Floating Points, the soundtrack is another explosion of wild amusement. No track here reaches the heights of Cowboy Bebop’s “Tank!”, but what does?

What surprised me most about Lazarus is how angry of a show it seems to be. Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me; it’s a staple of the cyberpunk genre. But creator Shinichirō Watanabe makes his stance clear. An entire episode seems dedicated to taking shots at scummy crypto bros and people who use AI, while a trans female side character is treated with utmost respect. Some of the opening monologues paint a picture of a disillusioned youth plagued by depression with nowhere to go except a drug like Hapna. And law enforcement is frequently depicted as completely incapable with a justice system that makes no sense. Even though the show hasn’t presented any details about Dr. Skinner’s motivations yet, it’s moving in a clear direction: a society that is accepting of long-term deterioration in favor of short-term gain deserves to crumble.

After watching the first five episodes, a little under half of the show, I have two primary concerns. The first is that I know barely anything about any of these characters. And the second is that we’ve been moving in circles with barely any progression in the plot. At least the latter point seems to be changing, with the ending of episode five showing a way forward. And I’m hopeful! Because the rest of the show seems to be delivering an entertaining cyberpunk adventure that sounds great and looks even better.

The Season Premiere of Lazarus will be released on Toonami on Adult Swim on April 5, 2025 at midnight, and will be available to stream on Max from the next day. The rest of the episodes will be released weekly, with the Finale airing on June 28, 2025.