Anne Hathaway Leads Black Mirror Comparison in Solos' 7-Part Cast
Prime Video’s black mirror-adjacent anthology Solos gave Anne Hathaway, Anthony Mackie, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman one episode each across seven parts in 2021. The series was built as a near-future sci-fi showcase, but it never turned into a wide-audience hit.
That makes Solos an unusual streaming case: a seven-part release with a major cast, a 44% critics score and a 71% audience rating, then little visible momentum after launch. It is the sort of show that looks designed for conversation and ends up as a footnote instead.
Anne Hathaway opens the series
Anne Hathaway stars in the first episode as a physicist who makes contact with the future and ends up in conflict with her future self. Anthony Mackie follows in the second episode as a frustrated businessman dying of a terminal illness who butts heads with his robotic replacement, while Helen Mirren leads the third episode.
Uzo Aduba, Constance Wu and Nicole Beharie take the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes, giving the series a run of single-episode showcases before Morgan Freeman closes the finale. The format gives each story a clean star turn instead of stretching any one premise across a full season.
Freeman, memory and regret
Morgan Freeman’s finale pushes the premise furthest: he plays an Alzheimer’s patient who has stolen a bunch of people’s happy memories to replace his own regrets. Dan Stevens plays one of his victims and wants his memories back, while Jack Quaid voices a futuristic smart house and Chris Diamantopoulos plays a technician who downloads people’s memories.
That mix of devices is why the series was compared to Black Mirror and Pluribus: it uses near-future technology to stress-test personal identity, memory and connection. It also helps explain why the ensemble mattered more than any single plotline; the cast was the selling point.
44% critics, 71% audience
Solos had a 44% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics and a 71% rating from audiences, a split that suggests viewers were more willing than reviewers to stay with the concept. The show did not attract a very wide audience and was promptly forgotten about after release.
The clearest takeaway is simple: if you want this kind of anthology, Solos is worth sampling for the cast and the premise, not for the promise of a larger franchise. It never got a second season, and the numbers make the case for why it stayed a one-off.
