Season 1

Adam, Mira, and Kai are three teenagers who awaken in a room with no memories of themselves or each other; the only clue to their identities are their names written on small slips of paper in their pockets. After emerging from an underground bunker they find themselves in a deep forest and venture forth to discover who they are and how to get home.^[8]

Along the way, they encounter a strange character that they call "Weirdie" or "the Weird Guy", who teleports them to different regions whenever they ask 'help please'. Each region, however, harbors dangers and obstacles that the group struggle to overcome, while also discovering that they each possess superpowers; Adam has both super strength and agility, Mira can communicate with animals, breathe underwater, and swim like a mermaid, and Kai can cast and manipulate fire, as well as being a technical whiz.

The trio encounters a large, talking tree who offers to send them home if they can retrieve a stolen branch of hers that has been turned in to a dangerous weapon called the Ishibo. While attempting to retrieve it, they also encounter another trio of teens: Vanessa, Reeve and Skeet; each with their own superpowers who compete with them for possession of the Ishibo.

Regardless of the trials and setbacks that follow, the trio emerges victorious over their rivals and claim the Ishibo. However, Adam's theory that they are in a virtual reality game is confirmed by Weirdie who warns them that the glitches they have seen are a sign that the game's code is corrupted and is on the verge of crashing, and that they must quickly escape the game.

After returning the Ishibo to the Iron Tree, she enables them to enter a region where they must fight a dragon. After the dragon's defeat, they enter a portal in the building the dragon was guarding. Once through the portal, they wind up in the same room they started in, except for the fact that there was a green button. They press it, and exit the game, waking up in a VR tournament (filmed as live-action) where they are greeted by the Weirdie (revealed to be the show's host) and cheered by the live audience for winning the game, "The Hollow." However, as the rival team wakes up, Kai notices Vanessa's eye slightly glitching.

Season 2

Adam, Kai and Mira wake up in a place that is visually identical to their homes, but they still believe they are in the Hollow. While exploring this world, they individually find that no one has ever heard of the Hollow. When they first meet, Adam is running away from his childhood bullies, who have remained the same age. They realize that all of their greatest fears, the bullies for Adam, a giant chicken for Kai, and a Victorian-era doll for Mira, have been manifested into the real world. While fighting these fears, they realize that they still have their powers from the Hollow. Adam and Mira agree that they should go to Hollow Games Headquarters, the headquarters of the company that created the Hollow game and tournament, the next day. While Mira is on her way home, she sees Skeet, and decides to go to Hollow Games Headquarters without Adam and Kai. When Adam and Kai meet to go, Mira doesn't come, so they leave for the headquarters, suspecting that she's there. While they're there, they find a portal, like the ones that appear in the Hollow game, and jump into it.

Once they go through the portal, they arrive on an island of primitive parrot people, where they find Skeet. They then go to a nuclear power plant and see another team of teens with powers. One of the members of this team is shot and killed, so the Weird Guy appears in order to remove the team from the game. When Adam, Kai, and Skeet see the Weird Guy, they attempt to get his attention, but aren't able to. While escaping from the power plant, they go through a portal with Mira. Together, they fight a giant snail, but it kills Skeet and they are unable to revive him. The owner of the snail, a scientist, invites them to stay with him. While there, they find Reeve and Vanessa, who are seemingly under mind control. They defeat the scientist, releasing Reeve and Vanessa from his control. After leaving the scientist's manor, they find a poster, which features the Weird Guy, and decide to go find him, in order to get answers. On their way, they run into the other team from this game, who have their equivalent of the Ishibo, and battle them. When they find the Weird Guy, he thinks that they are "coding errors," so he uses a portal to send them elsewhere.

The crew attempt to find the Weird Guy to get his help, and they convince him that they're real by using his real name, Gustaf. He reveals that the crew are digital copies of their physical selves consciousnesses, taken by the Hollow Game Company for a new game, Hollow Life, that lets players experience an environment populated by NPC versions of past winners of the Hollow. They convince the Weird Guy to disconnect the Hollow Life server from the Hollow game so they can live there in peace. He tells them that while he is doing it, they must not let the game's other team leave the game, by winning or losing.

Vanessa reveals to everyone that she cheated in the tournament by using special contact lens to retain her memories to have a better shot at winning the game, which caused the glitch and made their copied consciousnesses self-aware. She is kicked out of the group by Adam, Mira, and Reeve. She sees that the other team is moving on to the final part of the game, and she follows them. Adam, Kai, Mira, and Reeve go to the final level and start battling the other team. Vanessa rejoins the group and, at the same time the other team wins, the Weird Guy tells them he's finished and opens a portal. They make it through. The final scenes of the season are Adam, Kai, Mira, Reeve, and Vanessa having a barbecue at Mira's home, followed by a shot of the snail from the Hollow game in the Hollow Life world.

LGBTQ representation

This short-lived series, The Hollow, featured various LGBTQ+ characters. On May 8, 2020, the show's second season premiered on Netflix. The first episode of that season, titled "Home", features one of the show's protagonists, an Asian girl named Mira, was shown to be adopted by her two fathers named Paul and Curtis and a brother named Miles. The second episode featured a Hispanic boy named Adam who was revealed to be homosexual, as he said that Mira, a female protagonist, is "not his type".^[9] Prior to this, in the trailer for Season 2 the LGBT pride flag was seen in his room, leading some fans to speculate he was gay.^[10] (This flag is also seen right at the beginning of the first episode of Season Two). Also, the unfolding of the events in the series makes it very likely that Reeve, a Black boy, is gay and a former love interest of Adam. Some critics stated that while this was somewhat clear in season one, there is little or no "romantic entanglement" for the show's characters in the show's second season, with the show focusing on "difficult and dramatic friendships" instead.^[9]

Season 1 (2018)

Season 2 (2020)