General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Utopia Falls

Utopia Falls is a Canadian teen science-fiction drama television series created by R.T. Thorne, described by its broadcaster as the first science-fiction hip-hop television series. It premiered on Hulu on February 14, 2020, with all ten episodes released at once, and streamed in Canada on CBC Gem the same day.¹ The series was produced by Sonar Entertainment and canceled after its single season.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	February 14, 2020, all 10 one-hour episodes on Hulu; also on CBC Gem in Canada¹
Setting	New Babyl, the last living colony on Earth, hundreds of years after disasters made the planet uninhabitable³
Premise	Twenty-four teenage candidates compete in the annual Exemplar performing arts competition; contestants discover a hidden archive of pre-colony cultural relics, including hip-hop³
Creative team	Creator/director R.T. Thorne; showrunner Joseph Mallozzi; executive music producer Boi-1da; choreographer Tanisha Scott¹
Lead cast	Robyn Alomar as Aliyah, Akiel Julien as Bohdi, with Snoop Dogg as the voice of the Archive¹^•⁴
Episode titles	All ten episodes are named after classic hip-hop tracks, from "The World Is Yours" to "If I Ruled the World"⁵^•⁶
Reception	43% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (14 reviews) against a 92% audience Popcornmeter; Metascore of 39 on Metacritic⁷^•⁸
Status	Canceled after one season; the finale ends on a cliffhanger²^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The series is set hundreds of years in the future, after disasters and war have made Earth uninhabitable, in New Babyl, the last living colony on the planet, which exists under a protective shield.³^•⁹ New Babyl presents itself as a harmonious society in which every person is provided for and history has been deleted; the Complex profile places the setting 300 years in the future.⁹^•⁵

Each year, twenty-four teenage candidates drawn from the city's sectors are chosen to compete in The Exemplar, an annual performing arts competition whose winner becomes New Babyl's cultural ambassador.³^•⁹ Early in the season, the contestant Aliyah (Robyn Alomar), daughter of a city government official, stumbles upon The Archive, a hidden repository of historical, cultural, and musical relics from before the colony, voiced by Snoop Dogg.³^•⁵ Through the Archive she and fellow candidate Bohdi (Akiel Julien) are exposed to hip-hop, which the show's publicity calls "an ancient form of music culture," and the discovery leads them to question everything they have been taught and ultimately to use music to challenge the colony's government, the Authority.³^•¹⁰

The season plays out across the Exemplar competition while the mystery of the Archive unfolds. Episode summaries trace the escalation: Aliyah finds a connection between the Archive and her late mother, leads a civil-rights-movement-inspired protest against Bohdi's imprisonment, ventures to the edge of the city to see if life exists beyond the shield, and finally devises a plan to reveal the truth of New Babyl during the Exemplar finals while Authority Phydra (Kate Drummond) moves to stop her.¹¹^•¹²

Hip-hop as the story engine

Creator R.T. Thorne, a Toronto director who came to television through directing hip-hop and R&B music videos for artists including Sean Paul, Kardinal Offishall, and Snoop Dogg, built the series around a single question: what would happen if one of the most rebellious music forms in the world were reintroduced into a society that had erased the knowledge and culture of its past?⁵ In an interview with NOW Magazine he framed the show as an Afrofuturist answer to science fiction that rarely shows culture in the future, saying "hip-hop was the perfect catalyst. Because hip-hop is the voice of the people."¹³

The hip-hop identity runs through the series' structure. Every episode is named after a classic hip-hop track, including "The World Is Yours," "Can I Kick It," "99 Problems," "Run This Town," "Lose Control," "Hate Me Now," "Lost Ones," "The Light," "Worst Behaviour," and "If I Ruled the World."⁵^•⁶ The soundtrack combines licensed music from artists including Kendrick Lamar, Alessia Cara, The Notorious B.I.G., Daniel Caesar, Jessie Reyez, Bill Withers, and The Roots with original compositions created for the show.¹^•⁵

Music production. Grammy-winning Toronto producer Boi-1da, known for his work with Drake, served as executive music producer, working with composer Nikhil Seetharam on original tracks tied to each episode's narrative; the character Bohdi performs rhymes over Boi-1da's beats written by Toronto hip-hop artist Sean Leon.⁵ Choreography was led by Tanisha Scott, a three-time MTV VMA-nominated choreographer whose video credits include Cardi B, Rihanna, and Sean Paul.¹

Production

Hulu announced the series on January 9, 2020, in partnership with Sonar Entertainment.¹ According to showrunner Joseph Mallozzi, known for Syfy's Dark Matter and the Stargate franchise, he and Thorne spent August 2019 breaking the world, characters, and story arcs, convened the writers' room in October, and world-built and broke all ten first-season episodes over five weeks; prep began in February and production rolled in March 2019's cycle the following year, with the series shot in Toronto.¹⁴^•¹⁵

The cast pairs emerging young actors with established character performers: Robyn Alomar (Riot Girls), Akiel Julien (American Gods), Robbie Graham-Kuntz (Full Out), Phillip Lewitski (Supernatural), Humberly Gonzalez (Orphan Black), Devyn Nekoda (Degrassi: The Next Generation), and Mickeey Nguyen (Make It Pop), joined by Kate Drummond (Wynonna Earp), Jeff Teravainen (Dark Matter), Huse Madhavji (Saving Hope), and Dwain Murphy (The Strain).¹

The show's publicity describes it as showcasing a variety of musical genres and dance styles, including hip-hop, pop, Latin, house, classical, and Indigenous forms, and as featuring themes of Afrofuturism (art blending Black culture and identity with science fiction), youth activism, and eco-awareness.¹ Thorne has said the series was made so that Black and Brown youth could see themselves in this kind of story, noting that Hulu, coming off The Handmaid's Tale's Emmy win, was looking for shows with deeper commentary.¹⁰

Reception

Critical response was mixed to negative. The season scored 43% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 14 reviews, with the site's critics consensus calling it "undoubtedly original, but unfortunately bland" and saying its social commentary too closely resembles an after-school special; the audience Popcornmeter stood at 92% from more than 250 ratings.⁷ Metacritic recorded a Metascore of 39, labeled generally unfavorable, from five critic reviews.⁸ Reviewers singled out the soundtrack and young cast as strengths while criticizing the writing and direction: Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the show "mostly settles for being a killer playlist and a series of fortune-cookie platitudes augmented by mediocre CG," while The A.V. Club's Shannon Miller found flat performances and clunky dialogue behind an ambitious premise.⁷^•⁸

Audience response diverged sharply from the critics' scores. Common Sense Media rated the series appropriate for ages 14 and up, praising its diverse cast in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual identity, age, and socioeconomic status, and its thought-provoking themes of rebellion, courage, and perseverance under an authoritarian government.⁹ An academic abstract on the series describes it as challenging the white-heteronormative-masculine norms of the science-fiction genre with a mostly BIPOC cast, diverse sexualities, and women in authority, and as explicitly aiming to inspire young people into social justice movements.¹⁶

Cancellation and availability

Hulu did not renew the series, and it is listed as canceled after one season.² The tenth and final episode, "If I Ruled the World," ends on a cliffhanger in which Aliyah plans to expose the truth of New Babyl during the Exemplar finals while Authority Phydra closes in on her, a resolution viewers have noted was left unresolved.¹²^•⁷ As of late 2026 the series streams in the United States on Hulu and free with ads on Pluto TV, and can be purchased on Amazon Video in the United Kingdom.¹⁷^•¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Genre and subject-scripted series › Science fiction television series › Dystopian and post-apocalyptic series

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

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