Ever since the release of Love, Death + Robots on Netflix in March, viewers have been going crazy for it.

The 18-part anthology series is a combination of wonderful storytelling and brilliant animations, making every episode a joy to watch.

Plenty of viewers have also compared it to the highly rated Black Mirror Series (and some even say they’ve enjoyed it more!).

Here at Brandwatch we’ve had some heated discussions about which episode was the best. We all had our personal favorites. Some of us liked certain episodes because of its storytelling, while others were enthralled by the stunning visuals. My personal favorite was  ‘The Witness’ – one of the more visually appealing episodes – where the witness of a murder and the murderer set upon an exciting cat and mouse chase across a futuristic Tokyo.

Given how everyone has different tastes, I wanted to know what the internet’s overall verdict was.

Here, I’ve ranked the episodes based on a few metrics to see how each episode fares.

Metric 1: Volume of mentions

This is very simple – we looked at the number of mentions on social media for each episode over the last couple of weeks.

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by volume of social mentions

Ranking Episode name Number of mentions
1 Sonnie’s Edge 3110
2 The Witness 2934
3 Zima Blue 2302
4 Three Robots 2039
5 Suits 1611

Sonnie’s Edge, being the first episode, set the tone and benchmark for the rest of the series.

It was so good that, apparently, it needs its own Netflix adaptation!

Metric 2: Joyful mentions

This relates to mentions falling under ‘joy’, as categorized by Brandwatch’s emotion classifier.

 

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by social mentions categorized as joyful

Ranking Episode name Number of joyful mentions
1 The Witness 844
2 Three Robots 560
3 Zima Blue 546
4 Suits 533
5 Beyond the Aquila Rift 435

Here’s someone who shares the same sentiment as me:

Metric 3: Mentions of “Blew my mind”

Again, a simple metric – how many people said an episode had blown their mind on social media?

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by volume of social mentions relating to minds being blown

Ranking Episode name Volume of Mind blown" mentions"
1 The Witness 78
2 Sonnie’s Edge 54
3 Beyond the Aquila Rift 53
4 Zima Blue 52
5 Suits 49

Beyond the Aquila Rift makes its first appearance in the top three here – it was a pretty good episode with the story revolving around a space crew that experienced a routing error in their journey back home. It’s pretty mind blowing stuff, according to the internet.

Metric 4: Mentions relating to quality storytelling or narrative

Here we solely look at mentions that talk about how good the story is.

Ranking Episode name Number of narrative-related mentions
1 Sonnie’s Edge 660
2 Good Hunting 409
3 Beyond the Aquila Rift 331
4 Three Robots 320
5 Zima Blue 319
Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by volume of social mentions relating to quality narrative

Good Hunting  makes its first appearance on one of our top fives here. It tells of a friendship between a highly skilled engineer and a shape-shifting spirit.

Metric 5: Mentions relating to quality visuals

Here we simply look at mentions that talk about how good the visuals are for each episode.

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by volume of social mentions relating to quality visuals

Ranking Episode name Number of visual-related mentions
1 The Witness 1326
2 Sonnie’s Edge 660
3 Beyond the Aquila Rift 605
4 Zima Blue 580
5 Suits 516

I’m biased and I do not apologize for it.

Metric 6: IMDB ratings for each episode

We bought in another data source from outside Brandwatch Analytics to add to the weighting – here are the top 5 episodes according to IMDB ratings:

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by IMDB rating

Rank Episode Name IMDB Score
1 Beyond the Aquila Rift 8.7
2 Sonnie's Edge 8.4
Zima Blue 8.4
4 The Secret War 8.3
5 Good Hunting 8.2
(Correct at time of writing)

Final ranking: The Best Episodes of Love, Death + Robots

From top to bottom, here’s how all those rankings look together.

Sonnie’s Edge, the first episode, has won the title of ‘best episode’.

Love, Death + Robots episodes ranked by social metrics

Ep number Ep name Volume Joy Mind blown Narrative Visuals IMDB ranking Total Ranked best to worst
1 Sonnie's Edge 1 8 2 1 2 2 16 1
3 The Witness 2 1 1 7 1 7 19 2
7 Beyond the Aquila Rift 6 5 3 3 3 1 21 3
14 Zima Blue 3 3 4 5 4 3 22 4
2 Three Robots 4 2 6 4 6 6 28 5
4 Suits 5 4 5 6 5 9 34 6
8 Good Hunting 7 7 7 2 7 5 35 7
13 Lucky 13 10 6 10 8 10 8 52 8
10 Shape-Shifters 9 11 13 9 8 10 60 9
18 The Secret War 11 10 11 13 11 4 60 10
12 Fish Night 13 12 8 11 9 16 69 11
16 Ice Age 8 9 15 14 13 12 71 12
17 Alternate Histories 12 16 9 10 12 15 74 13
11 Helping Hand 14 13 12 12 15 11 77 14
5 Sucker of Souls 15 14 14 15 14 14 86 15
15 Blind Spot 17 15 16 17 17 17 99 16
9 The Dump 16 17 17 16 16 18 100 17
6 When the Yoghurt Took Over 18 18 18 18 18 13 103 18

I highly recommend not missing out on any of the episodes, and I think this is the main thought that lingers on most watchers’ minds: