Netflix’s ‘Splinter Cell: Deathwatch’ Will “Rip The Spine Out Of The Source Material”, But “Keep The Brain And The Heart”
On the one hand, Netflix’s upcoming Splinter Cell: Deathwatch will see Sam Fisher dusting off his night vision goggles for the first time in over a decade – but on the other, like most video game adaptations, it will also play a bit fast and a loose with Ubisoft’s original series canon.
Following its initial announcement in July 2020, Netflix and Ubisoft would maintain radio silence on the animated series’ development for the next five years before finally declassifying its first trailer this past August 21st as part of this year’s edition of the annual Anime NYC convention.
Per Ubisoft’s official synopsis, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch finds Sam (CV: Liev Schreiber – Kingpin in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) “drawn back into the field when a wounded young operative Zinnia McKenna (CV: Kirby Howell-Baptiste – Dr. Mae Turner in Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous) seeks his help.”
“Despite the agent’s visibly older appearance, Fisher is still as stealthy and dangerous as ever.”
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Official Teaser Trailer (2025), Netflix
Disclosing additional information on Sam’s return at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2025, Ubisoft Film & Television Development Associate Producer Carl Tamakloe told Variety that the spec ops franchise’s next mission would explore the way warfare has evolved in the 20+ years since the original Splinter Cell released in 2002.
“Since 2002, the world has evolved, and that is something that we wanted to integrate from the start,” the Ubisoft Film & Television development associate producer told Variety. “Technology has turned old strategies into hybrid warfare with fake news, energy challenges and corporate involvement.”
“It’s a whole new world that Sam has to navigate in our project,” he acknowledged. “We also wanted to turn this US-centered saga into a European-centric thriller, which is why we chose the road trip format to tell this 8-episode story. It felt like a good way to immerse our viewers into known settings with a brand new adventure”
Curiously, despite the series’ relative popularity, one piece of intel that they did not choose to highlight in all their ‘trailer debut’ hype is the fact that, as detailed by French news publication L’Info Tout Court, “Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is canon to the rest of the video game franchise.”
“Set in 2025, Sam left the command of Echelon 4,” added the outlet, as machine translated by DeepL. “Now a solitary farmer in Poland, he will have to return to service in what is sold as a road trip across Europe (the animators have also faithfully recreated Polish and Danish cities like Copenhagen)…. but above all an adult dark thriller!”
In light of Ubisoft’s reluctance to highlight Deathwatch‘s place in the overall franchise, showrunner Derek Kolstard was recently asked by IGN if he could clarify whether or not the Netflix animated series was actually canon, to which he replied that while he couldn’t couldn’t give a confident answer, Ubisoft’s approach towards their collaboration suggested it was.
“I hope so,” he told the outlet’s Jim Vejvoda. “[Ubisoft’s] got a stranglehold on their IP for good measure because they’ve got some of the best titles. But there were some things that along the way [where they] were like, ‘Don’t do that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ And they’re like, ‘Hey, we got other plans.’”
“Again, I only get to peer behind part of the curtain for what they’re thinking [in the ] the long run,” the John Wick franchise creator noted. “But for what I want to do with the anime and talking in the future of any other spinoff they want to do, it’s going like, ‘This fits the mold.’”
Providing further insight into Deathwatch‘s potential canon status, Kolstard later revealed that Deathwatch would, in fact, be making some changes to the events of 2005’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – and not only that, but that he himself had a generally malleable view of the series’ original narrative:
“Even though we have elements of that game referenced there, it’s hopefully small enough and the changes therein minute enough [that fans won’t be upset],” said the John Wick franchise creator. “But the other thing you have to look at with an adaptation, especially when it’s the first time in this medium, you have to rip the spine out of the source material,” he continued. “Keep the brain and the heart, entertain the soul, and do your best to actually build it into something that works.”
Produced by Ubisoft Film & Television and featuring animation from studios Sun Creature and Fost, Splinter Cell’s first animated mission will be penned by Kolstard and helmed by co-directors Guillaume Dousse and Félicien Colmet-Daage.
All eight episode of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch are set to emerge from the shadows exclusively on Netflix this October 14th.
