Love, Death + Robots: Spider Rose Ending Explained, and Why It’s Different From the Book

Cats. vs. Satan. Dolphins approving of the decimation of the human race by aliens. Talking vibrators. Yes, it’s another season of Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots, the anthology of science-fiction-leaning animated shorts created by Deadpool director and Blur Studio co-founder Tim Miller. The series’ fourth season — which Miller says “has something for everybody” — is its most diverse yet, mixing animation styles, genres, and tones, and even features an episode that’s predominantly live action and another that’s a big swing as a music video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (in CGI puppet form) directed by executive producer David Fincher.  

One of the standout episodes is “Spider Rose,” an adaptation of a short story by sci-fi author Bruce Sterling that appeared in 1996’s Schismatrix Plus. The short is set in the Sterling-created Shaper/Mechanist universe that was also the basis for the Love, Death + Robots Volume 3 episode “Swarm,” and follows a Mechanist — a being enhanced by mechanical augmentations — named Spider Rose who lives alone and dreams up ways to enact revenge on the Shapers — Mechanists’ rivals, who are enhanced by genetic modifications — who killed her husband. 

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Spider Rose is visited by aliens known as Investors, a trade-heavy race with advanced technologies, who leave their pet Nosey (real name: Little Nose for Profits) with Spider Rose while she considers a deal for a precious gem she owns. Nosey helps Spider Rose through her loneliness and even aids her in fending off a Shaper attack. But just when it’s looking like another heartwarming and cheesy case of “I didn’t save my pet, my pet saved me,” Spider Rose and Nosey are left stranded in space with dwindling supplies, and things take a very twisted turn. 

Nosey eats Spider Rose.

“It’s definitely a dark twist,” director Jennifer Yuh Nelson tells TV Guide. “It’s different than the original short story, and it’s one of those rare cases where we’ve always tried to adhere to the short story as much as we can, because we love the short stories; that’s why they’re chosen. So diverging from the original short story’s ending was not done lightly at all, but the thing that happens in the original short story was just very hard to show visually and not leave people feeling, you know, really, really upset.” 

It’s hard to disagree with her. In Sterling’s version, the dining is swapped: Spider Rose eats Nosey. But even though we’ve become desensitized to violence against humans on our TV screens, modern humans are still conditioned to feel compassion toward cute creatures, so chomping on Nosey — who is adorable, in that “ugly cute” way, as Yuh Nelson describes it — was a no-no. 

Beyond the culinary carnage, both endings are sneakily sprinkled with a sense of hope and compassion. Nosey has a special biological feature that allows it to incorporate some of the genetic material that it ingests, so in a way, Spider Rose gets to live on, as seen in Love, Death + Robots when Nosey emerges from a cocoon aboard the Investors’ ship with some of Spider Rose’s features at the end of the episode. In fact, Spider Rose seems to tell Nosey that it’s OK to eat her in a sweet surrender. Likewise, in Sterling’s story, Spider Rose is altered after eating Nosey, combining their genetic material into one being. 

“The idea of flipping it so that Nosey is the one that actually survives was done very much because if this very short, compact, concentrated moment of bonding between these two characters is something that you buy into, that ending has to pay off on that,” Yuh Nelson explained. “And personally, I think that it allows it to be dark and horrible, but also it gives you a little bit of hope, and that’s why it was switched over that way.”

“The ending was one of the few things that Jennifer and I disagreed on,” added Tim Miller, the creator of Love, Death + Robots. “I was team original ending, and she was team the ending that you see right now. And so, you know, they taped forks to our hands, and locked us in a room, and we fought it out, and she won, and in hindsight, she she was right and I was wrong. I think the ending is great as it is.”

When asked about whether or not the Investors planted Nosey in Spider Rose’s lair knowing that Nosey would consume her, leaving the gem free for the taking for the Investors, no payment necessary, another disagreement came about. Yuh Nelson thinks it was all part of the Investors’ plan. “I don’t think it ever ends well with Nosey,” she said. 

Miller, a huge fan of Sterling’s works, is more of a believer in the Investors. “I don’t think it was [their plan],” Miller told TV Guide. “These aliens in Bruce’s books, they honor the deal as much as they can. But, you know, it’s a little bit of monkeys paw, where you make that Faustian bargain, and it never works out quite the way you think it’s going to work out.”

Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 is now streaming on Netflix.