Floor is Lava, a new game show that dropped on Netflix on June 19, is a TV adaptation of the popular parkour game that kids play in their living rooms usually when their parents aren’t at home.
Players imagine that the floor is hot lava and they avoid touching, walking, or falling into the imaginary molten rock by climbing on furniture then jumping from one piece to the other.
The “floor is lava” game began trending on the internet during coronavirus quarantine, with people posting videos of themselves and family members playing the game while observing social distancing at home.
Justin Bieber uploaded a video clip on his Instagram that shows him playing the “floor is lava” game in his living room while isolating with his wife Hailey.
The video went viral, receiving more than 11.2 million views.
Netflix’s Floor is Lava adapts a popular children’s game
Netflix’s Floor is Lava Season 1 takes contestants through different rooms of a family home — the basement, kitchen, study room, and bedroom — in 10 episodes.
According to the synopsis of Floor is Lava by Netflix, the show involves teams competing “to navigate rooms flooded with lava by leaping from chairs, hanging from curtains and swinging from chandeliers.”
Netflix’s claim that the rooms are “flooded with lava,” is, of course, only tongue-in-cheek. The rooms aren’t flooded with real lava.
The trailer (see below) shows contestants navigating an obstacle course over a floor filled with a bright red, bubbly liquid that is certainly not hot lava.
Where did contestants who fall into the lava go?
The contestants who fall into the “lava” while trying to navigate the obstacle course sink and disappear into it. We don’t see the contestants emerging from the lava after falling into it.
The other show contestants feign horror and pretend they believe that their teammates have been permanently sucked into the bubbling “lava,” and that they have perished.
We know that no one perished inside a pool of hot lava in real life, but the show does not explain where the contestants went after they became submerged in the liquid.
So, some viewers might have been wondering where the contestants go after falling and sinking into the lava.
Observant viewers will notice that the film cuts immediately after a contestant disappears into the lava, and the other contestants continue as if their fallen teammate is lost forever.
The cut suggests that they edited out the part where the contestant emerges from the lava and exits the obstacle course, presumably to watch the rest of the show from the sidelines.
Floor is Lava is streaming on Netflix.