The Sentinels reimagines WWI with French super soldiers
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- The Sentinels enters the alternate history genre with a premise centered on a secret French program during World War I that creates super soldiers using a volatile experimental serum.
- Gabriel Ferraud is recruited from the 1915 battlefield and subjected to the serum, triggering physical mutations and psychological distress while being held captive by the military program.
- Irène, Gabriel’s wife and a journalist, investigates the disappearance of soldiers and confronts Col Mirreau, who controls information about battlefield deaths.
- Dr Marthe monitors Gabriel’s deteriorating condition and questions the ethics of the Sentinels programme, especially after being ordered to experiment on a condemned woman.
- Project Atlas, a shadowy precursor to the Sentinels initiative, is hinted at as part of a deeper conspiracy involving Col Mirreau and the origins of the military’s research.
Why it matters: The series uses its sci-fi framework to explore real human costs—Gabriel’s bodily autonomy is compromised by the state, Irène faces institutional obstruction in seeking truth, and Dr Marthe confronts moral complicity in state-backed experimentation, making the stakes personal and immediate rather than abstract.
