It’s times like this when I realize nothing from my childhood is sacred, not even Pac-Man’s innocent maze travels. According to an exclusive Entertainment Weekly interview with Tim Miller, creator of the upcoming Amazon animated series Secret Level, his new show will deliver what could be the bloodiest depiction of Pac-Man ever.
Secret Level, releasing on Amazon Prime Video on December 10, will be a 15-episode anthology series exploring thrilling adventures based on 15 different classic and upcoming games. Warhammer 40,000, Exodus, Mega Man, and Unreal Tournament are among the properties that will provide the basis for an episode, and the show looks to be employing some visually arresting storytelling to bring them to life. Interestingly, even though the blade-wielding main character of Sifu cuts through a swarm of adversaries in the show’s trailer, Miller attests that the Pac-Man episode is “our bloodiest episode ever.”
In the episode, a swordsman wakes up trapped in a maze he has no idea how he got into, and is told by Puck—a floating golden orb whose name is a reference to Puck-Man, Pac-Man’s original moniker—that he is the one “Chosen” to escape the maze. While no one associated with the episode explicitly tells us what happens that makes it so bloody, the descriptions we have gotten may be enough to give us a hint. Executive producer Dave Wilson says, “Pac-Man is Joe Pesci and the swordsman is Guy Pearce in Memento.” Seeing how Pesci almost exclusively plays homicidal hotheads, and Guy Pearce strangles a man to death in Memento, the 10-minute Pac-Man episode may just live up to its bloody hype if that comparison holds true.
As surprised as you may feel about a violent Pac-Man story, the people behind it point out how the original game isn’t all that innocent. JT Petty, teleplay writer of the Pac-Man episode, describes the game as essentially “eating pills in a labyrinth while you’re being chased by ghosts,” in a world where the ghosts’ eyes return to the center of the game to regenerate and repeat the destructive cycle.
When you look at Pac-Man that way, you can see how there could be a darker side to it; a darker side we’ll have our still-attached-to-our-heads eyes glued to when the episode releases in December.