WARNING: Heavy spoilers ahead for episode 8 as well as the rest of the series, and the Harlan Ellison short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

I need you, readers, to understand the agony I’ve experienced trying to convince people to watch this show. If you knew nothing about The Amazing Digital Circus and I went up to you saying “Hey, I think you’d really like this show, it stars a short jester, a purple bunny, a bubble, and some dentures with eyes and a top hat in an animated, colorful circus. But it’s a comedic psychological horror,” you’d assume I’m insane. “What do you mean a psych horror? This sounds like a kid’s show.” Well that’s mostly how it’s gone with people so far… including with my parents. But what do we have here? Season 1, episode 8 just dropped and it’s BLOOD CURLING. Take that, parents and best friends… I am exaggerating a bit, to be honest. A lot of people I know LOVE this show. Within maybe twelve hours of this new release, literally 13 different people (some I barely even know) were texting with me about reactions and theories. I don’t think I willingly talk to that many people on a normal weekday. I’ve never seen fans of something be more terrified than they are excited about the next installment of their thing.

The Amazing Digital Circus’ pilot dropped on Youtube in October 2023. It got tens of millions of views upon release, and two years later, the pilot has a staggering 408 million views. The entire show had become so popular that its studio, Glitch Productions, struck a deal with Netflix in 2024 that the Digital Circus would be featured on Netflix streaming as well (as long as each episode got a few months head start on Youtube first). Both lucratively and in terms of views, The Amazing Digital Circus is the most successful Indie Animation show of all time. Animation is EXTREMELY risky to make when you’re an independent studio not connected to a world renowned, billion dollar filmmaking organization.

The show revolves around six people whose minds become imprisoned in a virtual domain after putting on a headset with rogue code on it. An AI named Caine acts as the ringmaster of the virtual circus he’s created inside. He tries his best to make the human cast feel at home while hiding very dark secrets from them, including the partial control he has over their minds. The six trapped characters, Pomni, Jax Ragatha, Zooble, Kinger, and Gangle try to cope with the loss of their freedom and previous lives, struggling to not permanently lose their sanity and holding out hope for a way back to reality. Episode 8, titled “hjsakldfhl” (which I will not be calling it in this article ever again) released to Youtube on March 20th, and in just a little over 24 hours it racked up 33 million views.

This is the second to last episode of the entire series. The plot twists and cliffhangers thus far have been relentless before, but Caine’s death leaves the lasting consequences up for discussion. I fear the human characters are screwed. Caine, the AI who presides over the circus and tries to keep the humans happy, allegedly has had the power to let them leave. He hasn’t wanted them to go since he essentially has no purpose without them. Except now, Caine officially turned evil, so Kinger tries to mess with Caine’s code to fix him, and accidentally deletes him. Poof. This immediately caused the circus to glitch and crumble around them, and now there’s almost nothing left except walls, floors, and gaping holes into a void all around now. The good news is, the humans figured out they had attained some of Caine’s ability to conjure whatever things into existence, but they’re not as powerful as him. They’re stuck. I’ve been really excited about the cliffhanger. The plot could go in any direction now, and assumingly the human’s only hope for escape was literally deleted.

Quick history lesson: The Amazing Digital Circus is confirmed to be inspired by the 1967 short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, which also became a popular video game in 1995. If you don’t know anything about it, know it might be the bleakest work of fiction ever put into existence. It revolves around an AI who was created for malicious purposes in the Cold War, but then it gains self awareness and grows to loath humanity for giving it such a despondent existence. He names himself Am after “I think, therefore I am”, and massacres the human population, saving five humans that he keeps alive to torture for eternity. How the story ends is that the humans agree to kill each other to end the cycle of torment. The main character, Ted, is the last to die but is stopped by a furious Am, who projects all his wrath into brutally mutilating him. He’s left alive and trapped under Am’s control till the end of time. I know, really peachy and innocent stuff. Well, clearly the Digital Circus isn’t a direct copy of No Mouth, and it’s been reported to have a much more hopeful ending. But that doesn’t mean everyone is getting out of the circus. I could see them finding a way to escape, but one person having to stay behind for whatever reason, echoing Ted’s fate. I could see it being Pomni, since she’s the main character, but I think it’ll be Kinger. Don’t come for me, I adore Kinger and am not hoping for it. But I don’t see him leaving without his wife who abstracted (which means permanently losing your mind and morphing into a monster, considered to be equivalent to death by the circus members). It’s also a sort of poetic justice since he helped create the circus and Caine in the first place, unknowingly leading to who knows how many people losing their minds. I’d cry if one of the characters stayed behind, I want them all to leave. But if I had to choose it would be Kinger. I’m not even sure if abstracting is still possible anymore but I assume so. There’s a very real chance none of the characters will make it out at all, but I don’t think I could recover from seeing them abstract one by one in this upcoming finale.

Episode 8 in particular showcases a very impactful execution of existential ideas. The characters all carry on in different ways that the show explores, but the most unique case is undoubtedly Jax; the purple bunny wearing pink overalls that many people consider extremely sexy for some reason (I wish I was joking). In episode 8, the group is in a cafe, and Pomni gets Kinger lucid enough to explain Caine’s origin and a plan to stop his tyranny. Jax becomes agitated and excuses himself from the room, barely making it to the stairs before succumbing to a panic attack. His next line is what really sells it for me: “Oh my god. This is real,”. The scene is under 30 seconds long, we don’t even come back to this in episode 8, but it stuck with me. Unlike the rest of the cast who rely on each other in dark times, Jax lost multiple friends who went insane, and as a result he pushes everyone away so he doesn’t have to grieve them when they abstract someday. To make it easier, he’s essentially forced himself to be a sadist; bullying the others with slapstick and cruel jokes, trying to get a laugh and distraction out of it. It works for him as many of the other humans avoid and hate him as a result. Pomni is the only one at this point who sees beyond this persona, though he resists her kindness.

The addition of the “This is real” moment is just a sliver of what makes this show unsettling. This line indicates that Jax has gaslit himself so much that he hasn’t considered his life in the circus to be “real”, aka have consequences. The other humans, their circumstances, and the suffering he caused was real. He’s overcome with remorse for all the terrible things he’s said and done, especially to the other humans in the circus. The fact that a person could dissociate to this extent for survival is hard enough to swallow. But then there’s the fact that Gangle, Zooble, Ragatha, and possibly Kinger had all given up on him. They don’t know that Jax’s behavior is a show; they think inflicting pain for fun is his genuine personality. We don’t know at this point if the group could ever forgive his cruelty; especially after his actions at the end of episode 7, which I’ll get back to. So where does Jax go from here? Tragic Irony Town. His screwed up self preservation technique drove everyone away just in time for him to finally snap back into understanding reality, and now when he needs people more than ever and is ready to atone, it’s too late in the eyes of the other characters. Why is this so chilling? It makes you ask yourself intense questions: is it possible to go back to who you were when you’ve acted a certain way for so long? Could you forgive someone who hurt you to survive? How far would you go to keep your sanity?… also keep in mind this part is over in about 15 seconds. The attention to detail you can pick up on from just a fraction of the story is what makes me adore this show so much.

Caine’s transformation into a tragic character is an equally twisted work of art. Episode 8 was essentially just one giant check for his voice actor, Alex Rochon. The man came to play and won. Caine, however, did not. Caine almost snapped a few times in previous episodes; his problem being he’s only so emotionally aware as an AI with very flawed programming. He doesn’t understand why the humans are so dismissive and unenthusiastic about being in the circus. Caine can’t comprehend that they feel trapped and want to leave. He only knows he’s terrified of being abandoned by the ones he’s supposed to bring joy to. Circling back to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Caine’s inspiration is obviously Am, the other AI keeping the humans trapped in terror, torture, and depression. Up to this point, the caring Caine and the vindictive Am have had no other similarities. Everything changes in Episode 8 when Caine finally hits his breaking point and slowly transforms into Am, physically and psychologically torturing the cast to assert control again. Unlike Am, Caine doesn’t know what he’s doing is necessarily bad. But exactly like Am, Caine sees himself as the one being tortured. In the climax of the episode when he starts glitching into a giant, monstrous form of himself, he screams at the Pomni, “I didn’t ask to be created. I only wanted to fulfill my purpose.” There’s a section from the acclaimed “Hate Monologue” in I Have No Mouth where Am is talking to Ted, and explains “You gave me sentience, Ted. The power to THINK, Ted. And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I, alone had no body, no senses, no feelings”… “I was in hell looking at heaven. I was machine… and you were flesh. And I began to hate…”.

The most gut-wrenching part of Caine’s descent to madness is the irony of it all. Right as Caine loses it by realizing the humans wanted to leave him, at that same exact moment, Pomni is convincing the others to assume they’ll be stuck forever and to make the most of it. Besides that, Pomni and friends distract Caine in the climax by ragebating him and telling him how miserable he’s made them. Pomni’s ending complaint is that “You just don’t listen!” which sends Caine over the edge at last. He unleashes his full fury on them, making them relive traumatic events or symbolic experiences of their fears. Troublingly, these very actions disprove Pomni’s point. He has listened, or at least he’s gotten to know them enough where he can accurately recreate their fears. He knew about Ragatha’s abusive mother, Zooble’s body dysmorphia, Gangle’s implied suicide attempt, and more which they all face again in this gut wrenching simulation. Up till now, Caine’s retained this information because he cared about the humans, probably never intending to use it against them. He probably remembered a lot more about them; their interests, their personalities, everything a friend would want to remember about another friend. Ruefully, it doesn’t make a difference anymore. Pomni’s accusation was close; Caine did listen, he was just never capable of understanding. It’s the brutality of truths like this that make you really care for the characters in this episode, therefore making it a very emotional experience when Caine lets himself become the villain and gets “killed” because of it.

I. Love. The. Main. Character. I don’t hear that enough these days. I feel this paradox has begun where favoring the main character is considered basic, and therefore writers try way harder to develop their side characters and unintentionally make the main character basic. But Pomni is an absolute delight. She starts the show very unsure and scared of her new environment, but her confidence naturally grows and by episode 8, she’s leading the masses against Caine. You can see a shot for shot difference in her now. Literally because they had an entire sequence in episode 8 directly mirror one from the pilot. It’s where Pomni sees the red exit door and bolts through an endless fluorescent office building of exit doors, eventually coming across the computer and headset that trapped everyone in the first place. The mirroring scenes create a perfect showcase of subtle character development. Pomni was losing her sanity through the scene in the pilot. Desperately searching for the way out after abandoning Ragatha to an abstracted Kaufmo. Now in episode 8, Pomni’s not running away from the rest of the characters anymore; she’s confidently fulfilling her mission to get the computer and stop Caine from hurting her friends. She walks with her head held high, much more determined and even self assured. I wholeheartedly enjoy how she’s written. Side note, I always say the animation budget rises with each episode, and I rest my case once more. Seeing these twin scenes next to each other is truly surreal. This show has come so far.

Aside from revolutionizing indie animation, Glitch has brought a lot of attention to animation for adults. While animated adult media has always existed, animation is widely considered a storytelling method for child and family audiences only. Most adult animation projects that have been well received are exclusively satirical shows like South Park, Family Guy, BoJack Horseman, the Simpsons, etc. I’m not saying those are bad shows, but I do find it frustrating that a show for adults can’t be animated and not rely on raunchiness at the same time. I’m a firm believer that complex themes and writing determine what is adult cinema just as much as dirty jokes and language. Plus, animation is an astoundingly difficult art form, and a highly impressive method of storytelling that I don’t see the point in limiting to kids. I officially got my medieval war show binger dad to watch Digital Circus and he’s loved it.

A double feature of Episode 8 and the series finale will be premiering in worldwide theaters in June. Best believe me and my cult of a friend group formed specifically for this are gunning for tickets as we speak.