Splinter Cell’s dedicated fans have noticed that the new Netflix animated series, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, has been featuring callbacks to the death of Douglas Shetland, a character from the Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory games. Now, Ubisoft has confirmed that Deathwatch is canonical to the world of the video games, with some minor exceptions.
“[Deathwatch] follows the timeline and characters set by the mainline games,” an Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN. “While Deathwatch respects the source material, some creative liberties were taken with certain events for television.”
Essentially, this means that there have been some retroactive changes that can’t be spoiled yet, but the events of the series largely line up with what happened in the games.
“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],” added John Wick creator Derek Kolstad, who serves as showrunner for Splinter Cell: Deathwatch.
Kolstad previously said the animated series’ creators had to “rip the spine out of the source material,” and “keep the brain and the heart, entertain the soul, and do your best to actually build it into something that works.”
The most recent trailer for the series revealed that Shetland’s death haunts Sam Fisher (Liev Schreiber) decades after the fact, especially now that Shetland’s daughter, Diana Shetland, has emerged as the CEO of Xanadu. Diana is Sam’s latest enemy and her corporation is pulling the strings of a new crisis.
Netflix will debut Splinter Cell: Deathwatch on October 14. For gamers looking forward to a new title, there is a Splinter Cell remake in development, but there hasn’t been many updates about that game since it was announced in 2022. Earlier this year, Ubisoft added Steam achievements to Splinter Cell: Blacklist, which was released in 2013.
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