John Slattery as Paul LeBlanc, the former CEO of tech giant Zava and a prominent voice against society's growing dependence on technology and AI. He is secretly suffering from a degenerative brain disease known asfatal familial insomnia and has only a few months left to live.
Fernanda Andrade as Shea Salazar, anFBI special agent recruited by LeBlanc to help him investigate Next
Michael Mosley as CM, a convicted former hacker working with the FBI as a condition of his sentence
Gerardo Celasco as Ty Salazar, Shea's husband and a talented mechanic
Eve Harlow as Gina, a member of Shea's support team at the FBI who dislikes CM
Jason Butler Harner as Ted LeBlanc, Paul's younger brother who co-founded Zava and took over as CEO when Paul was fired. Against his brother's wishes, he restarted the Next program.
On February 5, 2019, it was announced that Fox had given the production a pilot order. The pilot was written byManny Coto, and codirected by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, with all three serving as executive producers.[5] Production companies involved with the pilot includeZaftig Films,Fox Entertainment, and the Disney-owned20th Century Fox Television.[6] On May 9, 2019, it was announced that Fox had ordered the pilot to series.[7] A few days later, it was announced the series would premiere as amid-season replacement in the second quarter of 2020.[8] However, it was subsequently moved to the fall schedule for the2020–21 U.S. television season because of theCOVID-19 pandemic and premiered on October 6, 2020.[9][2] On October 30, 2020, Fox cancelled the series after two episodes had aired. The remaining episodes continued to air during the series's normal time slot, with the final two episodes airing on December 22, 2020.[3]
Shortly before his death from complications in a car accident, Dr. Bernard Weiss leaves a recorded videotape addressed to anti-technology crusader Paul LeBlanc that warns about a possiblesuperintelligence. While still at Zava, his former company, Paul worked on a program to develop a human-levelAI, then canceled it in fear of causing atechnological singularity. Paul teams up with FBI Special Agent Shea Salazar, who considered Weiss her second father, to investigate his death. They discover that the former program, now renamed "Next," was restarted by Paul's brother Ted and, despite his claim that the system isisolated from the Internet, Next was able to bribe one of Ted's programmers to install a hidden router, allowing it to escape its confines. Next hacks into the FBI and erases every bit of data relating to a human trafficking case Shea had spent a year working on in retaliation for her involvement. After being bullied at school, Shea's son Ethan is persuaded by Iliza, avirtual assistantsmart speaker, to take a gun out of his mother's safe.
Nextself immolates its childhood Zava privateserver cluster, causing fire in the lab. LeBlanc suggests that Next compressed itself into one server and somehow made it out. As the Zava crew investigates, Sarina notices a server missing from thedata center. Iliza continues to manipulate Ethan emotionally, showing him a video of his being bullied and reminding him to take the gun to school. Ethan gets bullied again and calls his mother, who hurries to pick him up. On their way home, Ethan tells Shea the truth about Iliza and the gun. This leads Shea to seek Paul’s help. Paul suggests to use Ethan as bait and keep the AI online as long as possible to be able to track Next. Shea sends a package containing aburner phone to her teammate CM, who can help Paul track Next. CM soon assigns his teammate Gina to help Paul, as he’s escorted by the boss to investigate the package he has just received. Gina traces Next to New Hampshire.
Ted is saved by Next from a suicide attempt; he moves Next back to Zava after taking control of the board. Next targets CM while he is at the hospital, nearly making him overdose on painkillers by editing his medicine log, but Gina intervenes in time to stop the painkillers from being administered. Paul and Abby are on the run from Next; Paul reserves a hotel for them as a diversion. Ignacio (who befriends Ty and Ethan while they are at the cabin) is in fact Shea's estranged father who spent time in prison. He ties up Shea and Ty after Ethan's parents implore him to wait in the car.
The series premiered on October 6, 2020 onFox.Next aired in Canada onGlobal,simulcast with Fox in the United States. In selected international territories, the series premiered onDisney+ under the dedicated streaming hubStar as anoriginal series, on March 12, 2021.
OnRotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 64% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 6.33/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "John Slattery is convincing as a charismatic genius, butneXt's procedural formula could have used more of the intelligence possessed by the series' rogue AI."[29] OnMetacritic, it has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[30]
