Based on 2 seasons, 20 episodes · through February 17, 2019
Counterpart is a science-fiction spy show about Howard Silk, a quiet worker at a secret UN agency in Berlin. He discovers his agency guards a portal to an alternate dimension, leading to a dark spy conflict with parallel versions of himself and others. The show features strong, highly competent female agents who outsmart the men around them. It also highlights visible LGBTQ+ elements, including a major female assassin character who has prominent lesbian romantic relationships and on-screen intimate scenes.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Counterpart.
Woke representation / casting
The casting features several prominent diverse and competent female characters, including Betty Gabriel as the brilliant Black Muslim investigator Naya Temple, Nazanin Boniadi as Clare, and Nicholas Pinnock as Ian Shaw. The show heavily emphasizes LGBTQ+ representation through Baldwin, a major female assassin character who is openly lesbian, with on-screen romantic relationships and intimate scenes with other women. An alternate version of another character, Lambert, is also depicted as gay.
55%
Woke political dialogue
The show generally avoids modern activist buzzwords or preachy left-wing political dialogue. The dialogue remains focused on the cold-war style espionage plot, existential questions about identity, and agency bureaucracy.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
The main story themes focus on classical philosophical questions about choice, fate, and meeting alternative versions of oneself, rather than modern social justice. However, some subplots feature identity-driven elements. This includes Baldwin's search for herself and her on-screen lesbian romances, alongside Naya Temple's perspective as a Muslim woman working in a high-stakes intelligence environment.
35%
Western institutional / cultural critique
The show's criticism is directed at cold, secretive government bureaucracies and Cold War espionage tactics, which is standard for the genre. There are some portrayals of weaker, compromised men contrasted with highly competent female operatives, but this serves the psychological thriller plot rather than a modern feminist or anti-Western political critique.
25%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant as the series is an original creation rather than an adaptation of existing IP.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
The show did not cause a massive mainstream political backlash, but some conservative viewers and online tracking sites flagged it due to the inclusion of lesbian sex scenes and romantic subplots. Niche complaints argued that the queer romance subplots felt out of place and unnecessary to the main espionage narrative.
30%
Creator track record context
Creator Justin Marks has a very low score of 7, with no public record of social justice activism. While a few writers and producers on the crew have a history of supporting LGBTQ+ and diversity-forward storytelling, the majority of the large creative team focuses strictly on conventional genre storytelling and physical production.
24%
Production
