Donald Glover's Wild New Series 'Swarm' Takes a Satirical Look at Toxic Fandom 

click to enlarge

• Courtesy of Amazon Studios
• Fishback plays a fan devoted enough to kill for her idol in Glover and Nabers' wonderfully wild limited series.

What if you told a story about American culture as seen through the lens of a seriously unwell person, like Joker or Taxi Driver, only you made your protagonist a young Black woman who is very, very committed to her favorite musical artist? That's what cocreators Donald Glover ("Atlanta") and playwright Janine Nabers have done in their new limited series, "Swarm," which takes a darkly comic look at the unhinged extremes of fan culture. All seven episodes are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The deal

Dre (Dominique Fishback) and Marissa (Grammy nominee Chloe Bailey) make an odd roommate duo. While Marissa has a boyfriend, an active social life and career plans, Dre is awkward and reclusive. All her hopes and dreams are wrapped up in her adoration of R&B star Ni'Jah (Nirine S. Brown), whom she and Marissa have idolized since their teens.

On the night that Ni'Jah releases a new album, the roommates have a fight that ends in tragedy. Driven to despair by doubts about her boyfriend's fidelity, Marissa dies by suicide. Dre channels her grief and guilt into a new mission: punish the enemies of Ni'Jah.

Dre cuts a bloody swath from Houston to LA to Atlanta, stalking and bludgeoning anyone with a history of trashing the "Queen Bee" on social media. Her calling cards as a serial killer are a fondness for junk food and an innocuous question: "Who's your favorite artist?"

Will you like it?

"Swarm" is hyperreal and hyperbolic in every way, from its colorful neo-grindhouse aesthetic to its absurd plot twists. For some viewers, the quotient of violence and outréness will be too much. Others will be exhilarated by the show's combination of technical polish, strong acting and unpredictable plotting — a refreshing find in the streaming landscape.

Every episode opens with a title card that announces, "This is not a work of fiction," seemingly daring the viewer to disagree. In interviews, Nabers has explained that the show's various subplots grew from internet rumors and lore surrounding Beyoncé's fandom, which is legendary for its fierce protectiveness of "Queen Bey." Marissa's death, for instance, is based on a persistent (but not substantiated) rumor about one fan's reaction to Lemonade.

Each episode of "Swarm" finds Dre in a different milieu — a suburban mall, a strip club, Hollywood — except for one, which breaks the format to introduce the detective tracking our protagonist (Heather Simms) in a spot-on parody of true-crime documentaries.

In another episode, while trying to see Ni'Jah at Bonnaroo, Dre crashes with a suspiciously friendly group of women led by a creepy, dulcet-voiced Billie Eilish. For all their talk of self-actualization, they soon reveal themselves to be a cult, clearly based on the real-life NXIVM. But they've picked the worst possible recruit, because Dre has already sworn allegiance to a cult of her own.

The series is half character study and half picaresque, as Dre's travels and transformations give Glover and Nabers the opportunity to satirize a range of aspects of American life. The central conceit is that Dre gets away with murder — repeatedly and sloppily — because Black women who aren't megastars like Ni'Jah are still overlooked in America, a dark joke that recalls Ralph Ellison's classic Invisible Man.

Even when we're frustrated by our protagonist's refusal to face reality, Fishback's chameleonic performance keeps us riveted. In the first episode, Dre seems to be sleepwalking through life — until her love for Marissa and Ni'Jah turns her into an avenging angel. After that, she shows many faces, switching in an instant from wide-eyed innocence to sullen apathy to a full-on homicidal glare that all her victims notice too late.

Fishback plays these transitions with skill, giving us an intimate understanding of the simple and brutal logic that drives Dre to slay her idol's social media enemies. She lives in a cyber dreamworld in which harsh words have become acts, punishable by real-world violence. If you think people like her don't exist, you haven't spent much time online.

"Swarm" doesn't offer a definitive statement on toxic fandom, let alone a solution. Being both wildly ambitious and fairly brief, it spins out a host of promising story strands that don't all come to fruition. Dre's character arc has gaps, only some of which feel deliberate. (At one point, a character practically breaks the fourth wall to inform us that we will not learn her sordid childhood backstory.)

But "Swarm" is still a trip to watch. Like Get Out, it puts its B-movie thrills in quotation marks, using shock value to make its points. One thing is clear: Angry young white guys may inspire a million think pieces, but they aren't the only Americans who live in an unsettling state of alienation from anything real.

If you like this, try...

• "Atlanta" (2016-22, 41 episodes; Hulu, rentable): Glover and Nabers first collaborated on this Emmy-winning comedy series that he created and stars in, set in the Atlanta hip-hop scene. Like "Swarm," it sometimes takes a surreal bent.
• Zola (2020; fubu, Kanopy, rentable): Internet rumors and tall tales fuel the narrative of "Swarm" — and of this absurdist comedy based on a viral Twitter thread and set in the seedy milieu of southern strip clubs.
• Ingrid Goes West (2017; HBO Max, Kanopy, rentable): While stories about disturbed, obsessive people are nothing new, social media has given them new life. In this indie, Aubrey Plaza plays a loner who stalks her Instagram idol.