Furious Review: Hulu's Perfect Score

I'll be honest, "FBI agent hunts a serial killer" is a premise I've seen enough times that I almost skipped this one entirely. What actually pulled me in was one specific scene in the first episode, and once I saw it, I understood why this show is sitting at a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes right now.

The scene that actually hooked me

Early on, two FBI agents, Alice and her boss Nora, are talking about how the justice system treats victims of sexual violence, and Nora brings up Medusa, raped in Athena's temple by Poseidon and then punished for it, turned into a monster who petrifies any man who crosses her. It's a genuinely striking piece of writing, because it's not just a clever mythology reference, it's the entire thesis of the show laid out in one conversation: when people are denied justice, rage is all that's left, and rage either rots you from the inside or it turns you into something else entirely. I wasn't expecting a crime thriller to hand me its argument that directly, that early, and pull it off without feeling like a lecture.

Emmy Rossum is doing career-best work here

I've liked Rossum in plenty of things, but there's a flatness she plays in Alice's eyes here, a kind of permanent emotional distance, that genuinely got under my skin. This is a woman who can't take a shower without falling apart, because of what her ex-boyfriend, a fellow cop, used to do to her, and the show never turns that into melodrama, it's just there, quietly shaping every scene she's in. Multiple critics have called this Rossum's most viscerally raw performance since her decade on Shameless, and having watched it, I'd go further, this might just be the best work she's ever done.

Lola Petticrew's Catherine is genuinely unsettling, in the right way

Catherine first shows up in a cat mask on Halloween night, which is a genuinely eerie image to open on, and the show does something smart with her throughout: it never makes her a larger-than-life monster. She's small, unassuming, almost effervescent in how she talks her victims into lowering their guard, and that's what makes her scary, not some theatrical villain energy, but the specific, human plausibility of how she gets people to trust her right before she kills them. There's one image that's stuck with me since watching it, one of her victim's bodies laid out next to locks of hair arranged with real care, and it's the kind of quiet, disturbing detail that tells you this show isn't interested in shock for its own sake.

Where the show could have stumbled, and mostly doesn't

I went in worried this would lean too hard on "both women are secretly the same" as a shortcut, since Alice and Catherine are both trauma survivors and the parallel editing between them makes that connection obvious early. A few critics have flagged this as almost too neat, explaining their bond a little too cleanly. I felt that too in a couple of stretches, but the show keeps pulling back to character specifics rather than resting on the theme alone, and by the time Alice and Catherine actually share scenes together near the finale, the energy between Rossum and Petticrew is genuinely electric enough that I stopped caring whether the thematic parallel was too tidy.

Is this actually about more than just its premise?

Yes, and this is where the show separates itself from the "damaged woman hunts a killer" shows that came before it. Furious is explicitly angry about how institutions protect the people who cause harm rather than the people harmed, and it lands specifically because it doesn't treat that anger as background noise, it's the entire emotional engine of every episode.

One honest warning before you start this

This deals directly, repeatedly, and without flinching in sexual violence, trafficking, and domestic abuse. It's not gratuitous, but it is unrelenting, this isn't a show you put on as background noise, and if those themes are a genuine limit for you, no amount of critical acclaim should talk you into pushing through it.

Frequently asked questions

Who stars in Furious? Emmy Rossum leads as FBI Agent Alice Black, alongside Lola Petticrew, Scoot McNairy, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, and Jake Lacy.

How many episodes does Furious have? Eight episodes total, with the first three released together on July 27, 2026, then weekly through the August 31 finale.

Is Furious based on a true story? No, though it's loosely inspired by the 1987 film Black Widow, it's an original story, not based on real events.

What is Furious's Rotten Tomatoes score? A perfect 100% based on 37 reviews at the time of writing.

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