Exploring Identity and Destiny in the Assassin’s Creed Series

As a series that has been bouncing between development hell and confirmed but not yet active projects since the dawn of time (at least as far as the internet’s memory can recall), Assassin’s Creed finally has a confirmed project heading to Netflix.

The move has been in the works since 2020 at the very least, but the series has since experienced some internal reshuffling before now greenlighting a live-action TV series. Showrunners Roberto Patino and David Wiener are in charge now, with Patino writing for FX’s Sons of Anarchy and HBO’s Westworld, while Wiener is most notably involved with the Paramount+ Halo show and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead.

The series’ official confirmation also came with a statement on behalf of Ubisoft, Netflix, and the series’ writers and producers.

“We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since its release in 2007. Every day we work on this show, we come away excited and humbled by the possibilities that Assassin’s Creed opens to us,” they said in the statement. “Beneath the scope, the spectacle, the parkour and the thrills is a baseline for the most essential kind of human story—about people searching for purpose, struggling with questions of identity and destiny and faith. It is about power and violence and sex and greed and vengeance. But more than anything, this is a show about the value of human connection, transcending cultures and time. And it’s about what we stand to lose as a species when those connections break.”

As for what that means? Patino and Wiener added they’re working with Ubisoft and Netflix to “deliver the best version” of Assassin’s Creed on screen possible and had nothing but praise for the rest of the show’s creators.

“The Ubisoft film team is amazing, and you are in the hands of an elite group of creators,” they said. “You are witnessing the birth of something undeniable for fans all over the planet.”

Assassin’s Creed: A Series Rich in Lore and Past

The Assassin’s Creed series has been running since at least 2007. The franchise started as a “social stealth” video game, with the first game being set during the Crusades.

Assassin’s Creed’s first three games were “medieval” focused, but it was the Renaissance Italy trilogy of Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations that put the series on the map, introducing protagonists Ezio Auditore and a cast of supporting characters, as well as a new mix of historical context, societal philosophy, and acrobatic action.

Since then, the franchise has ballooned to 14 core titles, slowly morphing from a stealth game with an emphasis on not getting caught into a full-fledged open-world RPG. The locations have taken the Assassins and their Templar adversaries through the American Revolution, the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean, Revolutionary France, Victorian London, Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Viking-era Britain, and, most recently, Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age.

The series’ latest game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, finally brings players to the fan-demanded feudal Japan and has been praised for honing in on its newer RPG-focused design while keeping the elements fans know and love. In part, that’s because Ubisoft delayed the release of the game in order to ensure it had a higher level of quality, something fans of the series will be hoping Netflix will take to heart with its adaptation.

So Far, So Good

To be fair, fans haven’t really gotten many specifics on what this particular adaptation of the series will look like beyond what’s already been stated by Patino and Wiener. The game’s story follows an ongoing secret war between the Assassins and Templars, with both of these organizations wielding significant influence on the course of human history and determined to steer the course of human destiny.

In the present day, modern-day Assassins and Templars use the Animus, which connects the present to their ancestral memory, allowing them to relive events to solve mysteries from the modern day and usually putting them in significant historical moments throughout the world.

While the series has not yet confirmed casting or even a specific route into the franchise’s lore, some fans are already beginning to speculate on the possibilities of whether the show will focus on existing Assassin’s Creed characters or if this will be a more expansive telling of lore, new players can get into. The 2016 film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Justin Kurzel took a different route than any of the games, so it’s assumed that this Netflix series will do the same as well.

As such, it’s unknown whether this show will acknowledge the film or not. Fassbender’s film was a critical and financial flop but was at least a minor hit, which leads fans to wonder if this upcoming series is aiming to please. In any case, the series seems primed to hit at a time when both game adaptations and lore-heavy world-spanning sagas are in demand by streaming services.

Netflix and Ubisoft may be taking a risk in Assassin’s Creed, but with the framework of a massive audience and high production value, it’s hard not to hope that they’ll succeed.