Swarm

The “Swarm” finale may not satisfy all viewers – it’s somewhat open to interpretation and not concrete – but it is a fitting finale to easily one of the year’s best, most outrageous series.

A sharp, introspective style — relying on disturbing ambient sounds, changing color gradients and consistent shifts to Dre's first-person perspective — allows for the audience to have a way in. And Fishback's performance, mysterious and unsettling while also tapping into measures of deep pain and sadness, completes the picture.

Fishback's work channels the same way those characters have revealed the ids of their time period and left an unforgettable mark. Every pop culture movement creates its own killer. "Swarm" is just getting in formation.

It’s a spellbinding horror story about our fascination with celebrities and the loneliness and isolation many feel when they are stuck on the outside of a star’s inner circle. ... Expect Fishback to be collecting awards for her take-no-prisoners performance.

Donald Glover proves he can do horror too with Swarm, anchored by a dazzling lead performance from Dominique Fishback.

Glover and Nabers have crafted a production that looks past the fan and shows the heavily-damaged person behind her, but without trying to make her likable or justifiable. I binged the season almost without break, and I'm sure a lot of others are going to do that too.

Seven episodes is maybe one more than we needed, and the finale runs out of steam. Episode 6, “Fallin Through the Cracks,” will certainly have its fans, though its loose construction needed further refinement to better justify such blunt (but effective!) choices. Still, with Fishback a riveting constant, well-deployed gallows humor, and more to the story than meets the eye, the buzz around “Swarm” is worth hearing out.

It’s the tension between the show’s satirical elements and what it tries to achieve outside of them that makes it so engaging.

A spectacular showcase for Fishback. ... The only true misstep comes in the back half of the season, which features a big stylistic swing that not only fails, but manages to break the morbid trance the show spends so much time earning. ... That one miscalculation aside, “Swarm” is a trip worth taking.

The vivid imagery, absurdist humor, and intelligent homages will do well to ensnare an audience to “Swarm.” While Dre’s erratic and compulsive behavior may be hard for some to stomach. Although the show only really scratches the surface of pop culture infatuation, it still manages to be a wild ride into the dark side of pop culture infatuation.

“Swarm” certainly isn’t for everyone, and without spoiling anything, viewers should be forewarned that it is dark, violent and occasionally unsettling. Yet the theme that the show tackles feels significant enough to deserve a hearing in this age where people form communities around Internet-connected passions, and Fishback is one of those performers who can keep you riveted without uttering a word, speaking volumes with the pain and longing in her eyes.

Fishback is the key to the watchability of Swarm. As her character becomes a more experienced killer, Fishback becomes more confident in her performance. The show is definitely stylishly shot (Glover directed the first episode), but much of that would be empty without Fishback’s performance.

Swarm is an incredibly bizarre series that’s definitely going to split opinion, and it’s easy to imagine a lot of people failing to make it to the end. That being said, if you can get on the same wavelength of such a strikingly unique, relentlessly eccentric, oftentimes emotionally manipulative, and relentlessly singular approach, then cult favorite status surely beckons.

Fishback is scintillating, giving a performance that had me rewatching laugh-out-loud or heartbreaking beats. ... It’s a performance of deliriously bizarre choices anchoring a show of deliriously bizarre choices, and I wish I could be as confidently effusive about Swarm as I am about its star.

"Swarm" plays with form the way "Atlanta" was able to completely switch styles from one episode to the next, and it finds freedom in its narrative looseness. If only it had more going on underneath its hood. ... But at least with Fishback in the driver's seat, the ride is never dull.

Though Swarm is diverting enough, it concludes with the sense that it hasn’t done much more than lightly sketch a portrait of the extremes of stan culture.

Fishback menacingly gleams in an incredible performance. ... Too committed to its goal of depicting a scandalous faction of fandom while making a light mockery of the world around it to really come away with much of a point—or even an engaging question. ... When Swarm lets go of its premise a little, that actually helps it achieve its goal, allowing us to finally cash in on the show’s promise.

Fishback succeeds in making Dre both terrifying and vulnerable. .... Swarm lacks cohesion, nervously treading a tightrope between pure voyeuristic horror and black comedy.

Swarm feels boldest when it wonders when person-to-person devotion becomes abstract glorification, and what inner mechanics inspire someone to give themselves over to another. ... By separating Dre from one hive and dropping her into the orbit of another queen, Swarm sharpens its conflation of love and family with control and coercion. It’s too bad, then, that the series abandons the commune so quickly to put Dre back on fury road.

It feels as if no one really knew where they wanted to take things. In the balance of the season, the viscous, seductive ambience and dream-logic storytelling mostly fade out, replaced by high-concept, tonally garish episodes that hold your attention but stand alone like neon billboards, adding little to our understanding of Dre beyond the facts of her back story.

As a showcase for Fishback, Swarm is ideal. As cultural criticism, it can be intriguing and occasionally profound. But in its psychological underpinnings, the show conflates identity with pathology in some truly facile, potentially destructive ways. Although this is hardly the only charge that could put Glover in the crosshairs of the BeyHive, it’s the one that makes me doubt Swarm was worth the trouble.

There are fascinating, even thrilling, aspects of Swarm, first and foremost a fantastic lead performance by Dominique Fishback (The Deuce). But the show never quite hangs together, creating a whole that’s substantially less than the individual parts.

Delirious and tense, the seven-part season is strongest in the early outings, when it’s unclear where Dre is headed and the writers more often buck plot conventions. Those episodes also suffer less from the series’ tonal messiness. ... But even her [Fishback's] marvellously versatile performance can’t make up for the wan character development and the tonal wobbliness that sink the series.

It’s the sort of series where you wonder if the ending will unleash a revelation that tells you that you’ve missed the point, but then Swarm ambles over the finishing line, as inert and forbidding as it’s been throughout.