Note: This is actually way better if you’re first seeing it during a Dollhouse commercial break on Hulu, without the spoilers of the youtube video title and static screen (below) giving away what you’re about to see.

In the course of just 30 seconds the ad takes you on a ride of intrigue and suspense that manages to tell a whole epic saga (literally) in a highly entertaining, insightfully modern way. No wonder the campaign is called “Search Stories.” It’s like “Hamlet: (Facebook News Feed Edition)” meets The Usual Suspects. And just as you’ve put the pieces together, and it’s dawning on you who the Kaiser Soze behind these searches is, it’s over.

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Makes you want to watch it a second time.

Search Stories is such a smart response to the Microsoft’s “It’s time to Bing and decide” campaign earlier this year for their new search engine. Because the truth about how we search for things online, is the truth about how we think about and live our lives — as exemplified here by Bruce Wayne’s. Life is an ongoing story we create. It’s not simply a string of isolated queries and decisions, it’s a series of searches and discoveries.