General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Fired on Mars

Fired on Mars is an American adult animated comedy television series created by Nate Sherman and Nick Vokey for HBO Max. It follows Jeff Cooper, a graphic designer for the space start-up Mars.ly who takes a one-way trip to the company's Martian office colony, only to have his role eliminated, leaving him jobless and unable to return to Earth. The eight-episode first season premiered on April 20, 2023 and concluded on May 11, 2023.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Adult animated workplace comedy, TV-MA, one season of 8 episodes of roughly 25–26 minutes¹^•³
Network and run	HBO Max (US), April 20 – May 11, 2023; status listed as ended or canceled²^•⁴
Creators	Nate Sherman and Nick Vokey, also executive producers with Carson Mell and Brian A. Miller¹^•⁵
Premise	Graphic designer Jeff Cooper is fired at the Mars.ly colony and stranded, forced to reinvent himself in a corporate landscape he cannot leave⁶
Lead cast	Luke Wilson as Jeff Cooper, with Stephen Root, Leslie David Baker, Cory Loykasek, and Cedric Yarbrough¹
Origin	Based on the creators' 2016 animated short film of the same name⁷
Reception	Average Tomatometer of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes; audience Popcornmeter based on 100+ ratings⁵

Spoilers

Premise

The series is set on the Martian campus of Mars.ly, a tech company that has begun colonizing Mars by relocating dozens of workers to the planet. Jeff Cooper (voiced by Luke Wilson) relocates about 155 million miles for the job, and shortly after arriving his bosses eliminate his position. Because he cannot return to Earth, he remains adrift in the sprawling office colony, trying to find meaning and reinvent himself in what the show's publicity describes as a dangerous, alien, yet all-too-familiar corporate landscape.⁶^•⁸

The show presents itself as an existential and irreverent workplace satire, exploring the relationship between work and identity. Common Sense Media describes the central satirical idea as a corporation colonizing another planet while importing the norms of office life, with gags such as the company slogan "Yeah, we went there" and a landline telephone labeled "Phone."⁸

Episodes

Season 1 ran for eight episodes between April 20 and May 11, 2023, released in pairs on Thursdays.²

#	Title	Air date
1	The One Way Trip	April 20, 2023
2	The Book of Reagan	April 20, 2023
3	12 Rules for Extraordinary People	April 27, 2023
4	Banana Express	April 27, 2023
5	The God of War	May 4, 2023
6	Back In The High Life Again	May 4, 2023
7	The Fibonacci Sequence	May 11, 2023
8	Marsiversary	May 11, 2023

The finale, "Marsiversary," centers on the colony's Marsiversary celebrations, with the character Crystal searching for a missing Jeff.³

Origin in the 2016 short film

The series grew out of a hand-drawn animated short of the same name that Sherman and Vokey released in 2016. In the roughly seven-minute film, Jeff is fired from his job on Mars more than 30 million miles from home and, with no prospect of re-employment, consoles himself with DVD box sets and chips while his wife on Earth drifts away.⁹ The filmmakers said the hook came from the "one way trip" aspect of hypothetical Mars missions, and that they wanted to transpose the feeling of dull, techno-corporate alienation to the most alien place possible.⁹ A contemporary write-up in It's Nice That noted the short's Tintin-influenced drawing style and its deadpan corporate details, including an all-company email reporting that a gravity accident had decapitated a human-resources employee.¹⁰

Vokey, who described the short as a side project made while he worked at The New Yorker and MIT Technology Review, has said the film won awards at the New York Television Festival and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, which helped open doors in the entertainment industry, and that the series took years to develop after the short's release.¹¹ HBO Max ordered the show to series, with trade coverage in 2021 listing it among the platform's adult-animation slate.¹²

Cast and production

Luke Wilson voices Jeff Cooper. The main voice cast also includes Stephen Root as Mark, Leslie David Baker as Hubert Danielson, Cory Loykasek as Jonathan, and Cedric Yarbrough as Jaxton Olivier, with guest voice appearances by Pamela Adlon, Thomas Haden Church, Tim Heidecker, Frankie Quinones, Emily Watson, and Sean Wing.¹^•²^•¹³ Sherman and Vokey served as executive producers alongside Carson Mell and Brian A. Miller.⁵ Episode directors credited on the season include Edmund Fong, Ira Sherak, John Martinez, Crystal Chesney, Zach Bellissimo, and Dwayne Carey-Hill.¹⁴

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an average Tomatometer of 84%, based on a small number of critic reviews, and a Popcornmeter score drawn from more than 100 audience ratings.⁵ Critics were divided in emphasis: a Cultured Vultures review rated the season 5/10 and wrote that the show suffered from an identity crisis, feeling like a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces from different pictures, while also crediting it with a unifying story and character arcs.¹⁵ Common Sense Media called it a promising workplace comedy with a finely tuned sense of corporate life's details, while noting frequent profanity and some cartoonish violence.⁸ Viewer discussion frequently compared the show's corporate satire to Severance and Office Space, and one background artist on the series received a 2023 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for background color.¹⁶

Cancellation status

The season's final episode aired on May 11, 2023, and no second season followed. Streaming guides list the series as ended or canceled after one season.²^•⁴ A March 2025 report stated that HBO had not formally announced either a renewal or a cancellation, and that with two years elapsed since the finale the prospect of renewal looked bleak.⁷ The series remains available to stream on Max (formerly HBO Max) in the United States.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Animated television series (individual series) › Adult animated comedy series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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