The new Splinter Cell: Deathwatch trailer is action-packed, but there's a Michael Ironside-shaped hole

A bearded Sam Fisher loads a silenced pistol.

(Image credit: Netflix)

A trailer dropped today for Netflix's animated Splinter Cell show, and it's all guns and glory. Bloody fistfights, car chases, a diving tackle through a window—all to unravel a mystery that hits awful close to home for our grizzled protagonist. "Sam Fisher is back and this time, the mission is personal." Again!

It hits all the narrative and aesthetic beats I expect out of a modern spy thriller, and through that lens, I think it looks pretty neat. There's a mysterious wristwatch with coveted blueprints inside it somehow and yes, they plug it into a giant wall of green monitors, and yes, I eat that kind of thing up. But short of a few referential nods, I think the trailer is sadly a little light on Splinter Cell vibes specifically.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Deathwatch | Official Trailer | Netflix - YouTube

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It's a lot of action and energy for largely methodical, unhurried stealth games. My favorite moments in Splinter Cell never involved big fist fights or car chases, they involved silently panicking as guards circled me hiding in the one safe shadow in a patrol-filled room. Guns and brawls were a sign things had gone wrong, and I was most elated when the only enemies that ever saw me ended up unconscious in a crate somewhere.

Okay, maybe that wouldn't make great TV. But our main character feels a little off, too, given that he's not played by Michael Ironside. In Chaos Theory, for example, Sam Fisher isn't so much a gruff action-man badass as he is a wry cynic. Sure, he beats the daylights out of people and dismantles international terrorism plots or whatever, but most of his dialog is blasé piss-taking and smug quips. Ironside's performance had a venerable, benign sensibility to it; Liev Schreiber's performance sounds good, but it also sounds a lot more like the archetypal movie spy.

Granted, that probably works for a much older, scruffier Sam Fisher. But I find myself a lot more interested in new agent Zinnia McKenna, played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste, who we have much more to learn about (and doesn't have to live up to a 20-year history of being conventionally cool). I'm not convinced by this trailer the show will have much new to say about Sam Fisher, so hopefully there are some newer ideas and characters in the mix that can make a fun watch of Deathwatch.

Deathwatch will be available to stream on Netflix on October 14, 2025.

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Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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