The 5 Marvel Superhero and Star Wars Character Meetings We Most Want to See
The prophecy foretold by one Patton Oswalt on a 2013 episode of Parks and Recreation has finally come to pass. Elements of the rambling rant his character Garth Bludnen launched as part of a town hall filibuster have already made it into Disney canon, including a near-perfect prediction of Boba Fett’s return (intentionally so). But so far, the Marvel Universe and Star Wars galaxy that he described have stayed far, far away from one another.
Yesterday, Marvel Comics announced Hope Assembles, a five-issue miniseries written by Kevin Smith (of course) and penciled by David Marquez. Of course, the crossover isn’t a huge surprise, as Marvel published the first Star Wars comic adaptation in the ’70s, and now both universes are under the Disney umbrella. And the first promo image, featuring Marvel heroes and villains alongside characters from the original trilogy, looks great. But for Hope Assembles to really be something that will do Garth Blunden proud, then we need to see these five interactions.
Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker
No matter how much good he does, no matter how many lives he saves, Peter Parker will always have to live with the fact that he could have stopped the man who killed his Uncle Ben, and chose against it. Not many people on Earth can understand Pete’s struggle, but there is someone on Tatooine who knows the feeling. Luke Skywalker ignored his Uncle Owen’s insistence that he stay on the farm and keep his head out of the sky. As a result, storm troopers arrived and didn’t even leave Luke with a loving auntie like Peter, just a pair of smoldering skeletons.
Tragic origins aside, both Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker know a thing or two about responsibility and hope. Both are just small-town kids who find themselves called by destiny, no matter how much it hurts. But where Luke embraces his path as a Jedi master, give or take the occasional break to save his friends, Peter faces it all with a wry joke. Maybe Peter can teach Luke how to lighten up a little, something that might come in handy if, say, a beloved pupil starts acting kind of evil and one maybe gets the idea to kill him in his bed, leading to years of self-imposed exile and bad faith takes online.
Doctor Doom and Darth Vader
Despite their shared penchant for armor and dark arts, Doctor Victor Von Doom would see little of himself in Darth Vader. After all, Vader allowed himself to be Grand Moff Tarkin’s lackey, an unthinkable move for a man who once became a god and found it beneath him. For his part, Vader would be skeptical of Doom, as the Latverian dictator never learned to let go of his mother, something that the one-time Anakin Skywalker had to do when he returned to his sandy planet to reunite with Shmi, before giving himself to the dark side.
Yet, that thin line between recognition and repulsion could make for an exciting story. Doom, of course, would not underestimate the power of the dark side, and would do anything to take the power for himself. Vader would do the same, convinced that Doom’s reliance on technology represents a disturbing lack of faith. Worst of all, the two have very different experiences with young love, as the loss of Padmé pushed Vader all the way to the dark side while Doom sent his Latverian girlfriend Valeria (after whom the Richards’ daughter is named) to Hell in order to get enough power to destroy the Fantastic Four. That will give them a lot to yell at each other about when they’re trading electric blasts.
The Punisher and Cassian Andor
Ideally, Cassian Andor will never be seen again in any Star Wars tie-in media. No matter how much we enjoy the comics and video games and toys, Andor was too perfect to be used as grist for endless spinoffs. But… if Cassian had to show up in a Marvel crossover, he should be with someone who understands the weight of the world as well as he did. And no one in the Marvel Universe is more world-weary than Frank Castle, the Punisher.
Of course, the story would have to begin with the requisite gun fight, because Frank can’t meet any other hero without firing first, and Cassian has no problem shooting back. But eventually, the blasters and bazookas would stop and the two men could have a conversation like the broken people they are. Cassian could reminisce about his missing sister Kerri and the devastation wrought on his people. Frank would talk about his wife and children, how they may have been gone from his life even before that day in the park. And then, they would understand one another. Because in all of the Marvel Universe, only Frank has learned the lesson that Luthen Rael taught Cassian, that one must give up all chance at inner peace and make their mind a sunless place so that others can talk about hope.
Nick Fury Jr. and Mace Windu
Okay, we all see the obvious pairing here. George Lucas cast Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi Master Mace Windu after hearing the actor proclaim his love of Star Wars on a talk show. Jon Favreau cast Samuel L. Jackson as superspy Nick Fury after seeing Bryan Hitch’s rendition of the character in the alternate universe comic The Ultimates. Fury’s MCU portrayal became so popular that Marvel Comics revealed that the mainline Nick Fury, a crusty old World War II soldier kept eternally youthful through super-science, had a secret son who just so happened to look like SLJ. Within a few years, corporate synergy did what Hydra never could, and Nick Fury was put to pasture, replaced by his movie star son.
Yet, despite their physical similarities, Windu and Fury would have very little in common, and that’s where things get interesting. Mace Windu presented himself as the perfect Jedi master: cool, calm, collected, lopping off Jango heads with ease. And yet, he went out like a complete fool, missing the phantom menace of Darth Sidious. Secret Invasion notwithstanding, Nick Fury would never let such important intel slip, nor would he let himself be taken down so easily. Even if Marvel won’t let the two launch any f-bombs, the insults they would hurl at one another would shake two universes.
Rocket Raccoon and Babu Frik
Babu Frik has been in twomovies, and they have both been terrible. And yet, that hasn’t prevented Babu Frik from being the uncontested breakout Star Wars character of the past decade. We love watching a cute little guy work on machines while muttering to himself. Rocket Raccoon has certainly been in his share of bad comics, but he’s only been in movies that are good to great, and he’s been recognized as one of the most beloved parts of the MCU. Why? Well, because of the incredible voice acting by Bradley Cooper, because of his rich and complex back story, and, truthfully, because he’s a cute little guy who works on machines. Mostly guns, but still.
So what could be better than seeing these two pint-sized gear-heads hanging out and causing trouble in one another’s universe? We’d love to see Babu Frik go from planet to planet with Rocket, tinkering with every piece of Stark tech and Nova helmet he encounters. We’d love to see Rocket go with Babu to try and steal Luke’s mechanical arm or General Grievous’s… everything. Because what’s the point of a crossover if not to put a couple of troublemakers together?
Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles releases January 2027.
X-Files Creator Chris Carter: ‘Vrach Frankenshteyn’ Director’s Cut Is More Horror, Less Romance
The 2020s are shaping up to be a good decade for fans of The X-Files. In the years following the mixed reception of the two revival seasons in 2016 and 2018, fans felt like Fox Mulder himself, relegated to empty corners of pop culture, all-too-aware that nobody else cares that we know about the Flukeman and Clyde Bruckner. But things are starting to change. Not only is Ryan Coogler producing a relaunch of The X-Files, with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel in the leads, but creator Chris Carter is getting to fix one of the series’ worst mistakes.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe—Vrach Frankenshteyn comes to Hulu and Disney+ on Friday, August 14, offering a director’s cut of the beleaguered 2008 movie. For Carter, the difference between the cuts has everything to do with understanding the essential nature of the show… a show that isn’t about the romantic relationship between Mulder and his skeptical partner, Dr. Dana Scully.
“The first movie, 1998’s The X-Files: Fight the Future, made money, but the producers weren’t necessarily fans of the show. So they wanted us to hit the relationship between Mulder and Scully really hard,” Carter tells Den of Geek. “I felt like the relationship took away from the horror of the story.”
Audiences who saw I Want to Believe in 2008 did certainly get some horror, as the FBI pulls Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) out of retirement for a special assignment. Mulder and Scully reunite at the request of agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Mosley Drummy (Xzibit) to help them work with disgraced former priest Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a sex offender whose psychic visions may lead to a missing agent.
In both the theatrical cut and the director’s cut, it’s Scully who coaxes Mulder out of hiding. But where the theatrical cut spends more time dwelling on the duo’s romantic attachments, the director’s cut gets right into the horror. In fact, Carter foregrounds the new cut’s emphasis on horror with the subtitle Vrach Frankenshteyn, Russian for “Doctor Frankenstein.”
“The movie begins with a search party following Father Joe and he digs up a hand in the snow. That was an ambiguous beginning to the movie, unless you know that it’s a Frankenstein story,” Carter points out. “But once you know that, it draws you in to the story. This cut is really the Frankenstein story we set out to make.”
Confusion around the severed hand was just one of the things in the theatrical release that has irked Carter since 2008, but he never really allowed himself to entertain the thought of a director’s cut. “Even after people running 20th Century Fox movies said we should do a director’s cut, I never thought it was going to happen. I just assumed they’d come up with a reason we couldn’t do it.
“But it was full-speed ahead from the moment we showed them the trailer we cut. They were over the moon about it, and with this subtitle I’ve added, Vrach Frankenshteyn. I think it helps viewers into the movie in a way they couldn’t before. We wanted to make a Frankenstein movie, but the theatrical cut only had a passing reference at the end, just a newspaper clipping.”
Carter may have wanted to make a Frankenstein movie. But when the studio heads at 20th Century Fox saw his original cut back in 2008, they associated I Want to Believe with a very different, and far less reputable, type of horror film.
“We screened it for the studio, and when the lights went up, they were outraged,” recalls Carter. “They said, ‘This is not the PG-13 movie you promised us. This is torture porn!’ They talked about it as if it was part of the Saw series or a slasher movie. And this was after we gave it to the MPAA and already cut it down to get a PG-13 rating.
“Now the executives were asking us to cut it more, and that was a hard criticism to take. We made a good, scary X-Files story, and this wasn’t what we intended. Today, people have so much access to virtually anything that’s been made, including the Saw franchise. People are somewhat inured to the horror genre and to science fiction, so the gore is less shocking than it was in 2008.”
Of course, Carter also has the advantage of real life being stranger than fiction. He got the idea for the movie’s organ-swapping villain Janke Dacyshyn (Callum Keith Rennie) from real-world events.
“I read about a doctor who transplanted the head of a monkey on to another monkey. My antennae are always up for things that sound like X-Files territory, and that was an X-Files story. I actually flew to Cleveland, Ohio, to meet with him. He told me how he did it and how it was a successful transplant.
“That experience made its way into the show. We played with those ideas, and with issues of faith and medical science. Those are all elements of a good X-Files story.”
What isn’t an element of a good X-Files story? The relationship between Mulder and Scully. At least, not as a primary concern. “We never thought about the relationship first,” declares Carter. “The show’s mythology was a great way to explore Mulder and Scully’s relationship because it was so personal for him, because of his sister Samantha and the very reason for the X-Files to exist.”
“If something about the relationship made sense in the story we were telling, then we would explore it,” he continues. “We’d look at the relationship in so many different ways before it was consummated. That was part of the fun of the series. Even in a newer story, where Mulder and Scully are sleeping together, they’re bound by the story.
“In the theatrical cut of I Want to Believe, I felt like the relationship was in competition with the actual case that Mulder and Scully were investigating. The movie put a lot of weight where we didn’t need it. But now, we’ve had two extra seasons of the show, and that gave the audience a lot of the Mulder and Scully relationship. So, for Vrach Frankenshteyn, I just focused on making a good, scary movie.”
These days, with his intended version of I Want to Believe now available, Carter is focusing on a new movie called Queens for a Day, “a horror fable/odyssey” in his words, which he hopes to have out this fall. Shooting Queens for a Day in Vancouver has also brought Carter close to The X-Files again—but not too close.
“Ryan Coogler was up there making the new show,” Carter reports. “He’s been really secretive about this version he’s doing, and I appreciate that. You don’t want to let the cat get out of the bag. But we had one crew member who had worked on the show with him, and I would get little secrets and tidbits. They’re always exciting, but that’s really as much as I know about what he’s doing.
“I’ve made a point of not reading the script because I want to watch it with everyone else,” he says with a smile. Of course, that’s made easier by the fact that Carter isn’t necessarily done with Mulder and Scully, should he be given another chance to revisit the characters. “I have a big story to tell, whether as a series or as another movie,” he teases.
Just don’t expect it to be a Scully and Mulder romance.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe—Vrach Frankenshteyn streams on Hulu on Friday, April 14, 2026.
Coyote vs. Acme Review: Justice for the Looney Tunes Is Here
The most feel-good story at the movies this year isn’t happening just on the screen. By virtue of merely playing out of cinema projectors, Dave Green’s Coyote vs. Acmefeels like a miracle before even the title card; it’s a Cinderella story if Cinderella was a rabbit in a gown and wig doing their best Ingrid Bergman impression. In a world where movies like Batgirl have vanished forever inside a Warner Bros. vault to justify a corporate tax write-off, Coyote vs. Acme will be playing coast-to-coast on big screens across the country.
That is something to savor, as is both the online fan demand which made it happen and Ketchup Entertainment distributing the picture when Warner Bros. Discovery would not. So the reality that the Looney Tunes movie this all happened over is simply pretty good, is almost negligible. Pretty good is indeed quite marvelous in a world where the last Looney Tunes movie that WBD released under its own banner was the wretched synergetic slop of Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Unlike either Space Jam and so many other corporate mascot revivals, Coyote vs. Acme understands the appeal of these Looney Tunes characters and commits to the bit. So much so that I’m fairly positive the movie is set in New Mexico solely so that in the third act, when a character boards a plane, his pilot can announce, “Apologies for taking a wrong turn out of Albuquerque.” If you get the reference, you’re going to smile ear-to-ear like a tuxedo cat who caught the canary when watching Coyote vs. Acme. Or a coyote.
As the title suggests, Coyote vs. Acme is the story of one exasperated Wile E. Coyote and his decades-long quest to devour the Road Runner. The film goes so far as to open on a lovingly modernized variation of the classic Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese Road Runner cartoons, updated both in terms of live action (at least via the desert background vistas behind the animated coyote and road runner), as well as that when this Wile E. Coyote uses a magnet glove, it looks suspiciously like a Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible gadget. The thing even ends up flying him into the sky where he gets attached to a military jet’s Acme missile.
The glove is of course an Acme product to, as is everything Wile E. Coyote uses to catch the Road Runner. Alas, every device down to the last pair of rocket skates proves dysfunctional, backfiring and hurting the desert dog with one more violent indignity. It’s for this reason he eagerly takes up the command of a janky local law firm’s TV commercial to sue Acme for recompense. The law firm’s co-founder, Kevin Avery (Will Forte), is no crusader for the little guy, however. He’s a former Harvard Law alumni who has found himself comfortably washed out to bottom, filing small-ball claims against corporations that would happily rather settle for a few hundred dollars per accusation than deal with any serious litigation. And despite the idealism of his law school-studying niece, Paige Avery (Lana Condor), Kevin has no intention of really trying to hold the malfeasance of corporate America accountable.
Wile E. Coyote is a little more ambitious.
The canine will force his lawyer, kicking and screaming, to demand satisfaction for years of pain, humiliation, and hunger. Kevin will even come face-to-face with Acme’s high-priced legal team, including college nemesis Buddy Crane (John Cena) and the reigning rooster in the Acme hen house, Foghorn Leghorn. But the more Wile and Kevin dig into the company’s books, the more apparent a conspiracy exists that includes informants, missing celebrities, and corruption that goes all the way to Washington, D.C.
Right down to its title and the amusing bit where the film opens with a “Based on a True Story” title card, the cleverest thing about Coyote vs. Acme is how straight it plays its legal thriller trappings. The movie is a love letter to those who grew up watching Looney Tunes cartoons, yes, but it’s just as much a winking throwback to the kind of courtroom dramas and John Grisham potboilers which populated TNT when pint-sized millennials like a younger Dave Green were flipping between Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.
These familiar beats in smoke-filled law offices and mahogany-encased halls of power gain an unexpected earnestness, too, thanks to the movie’s best live-action asset: Will Forte. A comedic character actor who never quite got his full due, even after an Oscar nomination for Nebraskaand bragging rights for being your main man with the plan, MacGrubes, Forte pours deep pathos and insecurity into a middle-aged bloke who is terrified of one day gaining enough perspective to admit he became a loser somewhere along the way. There’s a needy pitifulness to the guy who, like the Coyote, never caught the grand prize he chased all his life.
It adds a foundation of sweetness to the film that gives the intentionally arch courtside melodrama something approaching substance. It also, perhaps less warmly, ends up the stronger half to a dramedy that struggles with the zany comedic elements that should be the core of the film.
Green and his screenwriters Samy Burch—working from a story by James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, who in turn got the idea from a satirical article of the same name by Ian Frazier in an issue of The New Yorker—reveal an unmistakable wealth of affection and knowledge for the Looney Tunes cartoons of yore. The first animated character we meet in their movie looks suspiciously like Peter Lorre, the Golden Age Hollywood character actor who was once a favorite face to caricature and homage in the 1940s Warner Bros. animation department. And all of the animated denizens of Coyote vs. Acme’s Albuquerque offer familiar winking asides to their iconography’s history.
The way they are woven into the larger legal framework, however, is more bemusing than it is uproarious, regularly inviting a wry smirk but never a belly laugh guffaw. The movie seems set 90 years down the line in the same world as the sublime Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where toons and humans live side by side, but the cartoons remain akin to second class citizens—albeit nowadays a few of them, like Foghorn and other cameos, have risen to greater levels of prestige by the time Coyote has rolled around. But Roger Rabbit was more than just an ingenious melding of film noir tropes with cartoon icons; it also translated the anarchy of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, et al. to a film that included Bob Hoskins as a grizzled gumshoe who knew how to go wacky and join the circus.
By comparison, Coyote vs. Acme gets so enmeshed in its legal thriller setup, it forgets the gonzo glee that should be in the punchline. A bit like an actual New Yorker joke, it impresses the mind, but the humor never quite spreads to the gut (or heart) despite some rather elaborate set pieces in the third act.
Nonetheless, Coyote vs. Acme is a marvel in its own right. Like a much-aggrieved coyote, it deserves to be championed rather than henpecked for not being the perfect witness. Not since the days of Roger Rabbit on the big screen, and perhaps Steven Spielberg-produced series like Tiny Toons and Animaniacs on the small screen in the early ‘90s, has anyone so clearly understood the appeal of these Looney Tunes treasures. And like their onscreen characters, the filmmakers had to fight, dodge, and legally wrangle the impossible in corporate America to get their story out into the world. Despite caveats and quibbles, it is a compelling testimonial that earns its day in the sun.
For once, it feels great to see the little guy catch his road runner.
Coyote vs. Acme opens in theaters on Friday, Aug. 28.
007 First Light’s Cast Shares the Secrets Behind James Bond’s Latest Game
This article contains plot spoilers from 007 First Light.
Nearly three months after its launch, 007 First Light is a decided hit for its developer and publisher IO Interactive, earning largely positive critical and user reviews while selling over three million copies in less than a month. As the first James Bond video game since the disastrously received 007 Legends in 2012, and with new big movie news in sight, 007 First Light stands as the biggest bright spot for the franchise in years. With the game and its sweeping origin story for Bond out, we sat down with its cast and director Martin Emborg for a spoiler-filled talk about 007 First Light.
For Priyanga Burford, who also appeared in a supporting role in the 2021 movie No Time to Die, the opportunity to be a part of the iconic franchise in multiple iterations is something she recognizes as a rare privilege. One of the big things that Burford noticed in common between the two productions was that they both employed top-notch creative talent in every step of the process, from writers to the art designers in putting both projects together. In 007 First Light, Burford plays M, who is relatively new at her job leading Britain’s greatest intelligence agency, only to find it under attack from within.
“I really enjoyed this new version of M and exploring her at this stage of her life before she becomes this seasoned operative that we’re used to seeing,” Burford observes. “She’s also a new venture and has got some risks to take in her own context for this story because she’s trying to do something a little bit unconventional as well. I actually felt like her and Bond were initiated somewhat together.”
One figure within MI6 who fundamentally disagrees with Bond being recruited into the agency, at least at first, is John Greenway. Played by fan-favorite actor Lennie James, Greenway is a veteran 00 Agent who sees Bond as a reckless addition to the program and makes his displeasure regarding his presence vocally clear for much of the game. However, Greenway warms up to the new recruit as they begin working together on the field, weathering triumph and tragedy as Bond’s evolution into the secret agent that we know and love is noticed by his mentor.
“A scene we shot quite early on is where Greenway lays out the reasons why Bond is a bad idea. It is spoken by someone who believes it,” explains James. “Over time and circumstance, Bond proves him wrong. The strength of Greenway is to admit that. Greenway, almost against his better instincts, starts to care about Bond. I think that’s a testament, not only to Bond, but the Bond that [Patrick Gibson] has created, that you believe that journey and transition is possible. He gives you an understanding of why we like Bond and why we’re on his side.”
Complementing the MI6 ensemble is the agency’s genius quartermaster and inventor Q, with Alastair Mackenzie delivering an unflappable yet warm performance as the quirky gadget expert. Q quickly recognizes Bond’s potential and welcomes him into MI6 and provides him with the signature hi-tech tools to give him the edge on the field. Mackenzie relished what recording his performance entailed, with so much of his character’s appearance and world around him being digitized after his delivery, it let him rely on his imagination and acting instincts. Mackenzie also appreciated how clear of a motivation and moral compass that Q has in his role at MI6.
“He’s an inventor and he’s got a calling for these extraordinary adventures and purpose for all of it – he’s saving the world,” Mackenzie shares. “He’s got a high calling, which I find interesting. I find the idea of having a clear moral sense of purpose right up my alley. I like the Saville Row idea of it as well, that he’s well-put together but that he’s not vain. There’s no vanity to it, he’s just proper.”
For director Martin Emborg, working with such a talented cast elevated the material, especially as the actors added their own spin and observations on the characters that weren’t necessarily present in the original script. Having lived with the story in his head for so long during the development process, the chance to share it with the cast and see them work with the material was an enlightening one. As the creative team got a feel for the story’s tone as the production continued, they found themselves revisiting certain moments to make the experience flow better, particularly with the systemic dialogue within the game.
“We had a few scenes with Bond where it became a little too somber and serious,” Emborg explains further. “It is a balancing act. Because the story goes through a lot, with a lot of tonal shifts in it, you have sections that are very informed by darkness and sections that are very playful. So, we had a few scenes that we had to do again because it didn’t sit well in the flow of things.”
To move over to spoiler territory, one of the darker and more serious moments in the game is the death of Greenway, mortally wounded during a thrilling set piece in a Vietnamese quarry. As the two operatives enjoy a rare quiet moment between the explosive action to reflect before Greenway passes away, he urges Bond to not let the world of espionage change him as a person. The scene is one of the most emotional in 007 First Light, with James explaining that the moment marks the passing of the torch between 00 Agents in the shadow of soul-taxing global intrigue and spycraft.
“It was about the connection between Bond and Greenway and what is Greenway going to leave with this kid that he’s finally come to a place of giving a shit about,” James notes. “Greenway is a 00. He is who Bond is going to be. He has traveled, killed, deceived, calmed, and he’s saved. He’s been all the things that Bond is going to be and he wants Bond to be better than him. In that moment, it’s about generosity. It’s not about a man dying.”
One character who is still shrouded in considerable mystery is Isola, whose real identity, motives, and employer all remain an ongoing secret after the conclusion of the game’s main story, who remains at large in whereabouts unknown once the game is saved. Actor Noémie Nakai also enjoyed the creative possibilities of performing through the video game medium but initially found her character to be something of an enigma based on the information she received. Working closely with Emborg, Nakai found her character and her place in the wider story.
“Because I didn’t know that much, I was a bit worried that we wouldn’t have time and space in the story to show different aspects of her,” Nakai recalls. “I realized that, with a game, there would be so much more chronological and temporal space to explore all of that. Martin did sit me and Anthony Howell down one day to talk us through the whole story. He took a full sip of coffee and then he did it in one breath.”
IO Interactive has already unveiled its plan for 007 First Light across its first year after its launch, including additional story missions, challenge simulations, and in-game cosmetics. A fair amount of this additional content has already been released for the game, including new TacSim missions and weapons for players to try their hand at. With even bigger plans for the game planned ahead of its one-year anniversary, this is a game that definitely has an increasing replay value as more of its secrets come to light.
Developed and published by IO Interactive, 007 First Light is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 release planned for later this year.
X-Men ’97 Season 2 Underused its Most Versatile Mutant
This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 9.
How many is too many X-Men? That’s the eternal question for the creators of X-Men ’97 and its predecessor, X-Men: The Animated Series. Even when that first series began in 1992, Marvel had enough mutants to fill five monthly comic books, and yet the show narrowed the list down to seven regulars. Across two seasons, X-Men ’97 has taken advantage of a public more conversant in superheroes to not only fill out its main roster, but to include two side teams, X-Force and X-Factor, and countless deep cuts in crowd scenes.
Yet, as much fun as it is to see big setpieces built around Gambit and Jubilee, as cool as it is to see Glob Herman and Dust get some screen time, X-Men ’97 still only has a handful of 30-minute episodes each season. They have to be judicious about who gets attention, and how they use it. All of which makes the appearance of Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man in the season 2 finale “Survival of the Fittest” disappointing. There must be more X-Men ’97 can do with its most versatile mutant, even on an overcrowded stage.
As a member of the government-sponsored team X-Factor, Madrox has been a constant presence throughout season 2 of X-Men ’97. Under the leadership of Cyclops’s brother Havok, X-Factor has been tracking down mutants. Even if good intentions drive their actions (an echo of the original team’s comic book motivations), X-Factor often clashes with X-Force and, in the finale, with the X-Men.
Those clashes lead to the scenes in “Survival of the Fittest” in which Madrox and his teammates fight against Gambit. Along with X-Force’s Cable, X-Factor is convinced that Gambit remains infected by Apocalypse and thus poses a threat. Gambit makes short work of Madrox’s teammates Wolfsbane, a teenager who can transform onto a wolf, and Strong Guy, who transforms kinetic energy into muscle mass. But Multiple Man gives the ragin’ cajun pause, creating numerous duplicates (or “dupes”) of himself to overwhelm Gambit. Yet, in the end, Gambit charges enough cards and knocks the dupes together, forcing Madrox to revert to a single person.
The fight scene isn’t terrible, at least from Gambit’s end. It may not match his heroics in the season 1 stand out “Remember Me,” nor even of Jubilee’s firecracker blast in the season 2 X-Force-focused episode “A Force to Be Reckoned With.” But it still lets Gambit flip around, charging up items and decking enemies with his staff. He comes off looking really cool, while Multiple Man looks like he has the power of making dummies for Gambit to knock over.
And that’s an utter waste. Granted, it took over 15 years for Marvel to figure out what to do with him after his first appearance in 1974’s Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4. During most of that time, Madrox worked as a lab assistant for scientist Moira MacTaggert on Muir Island, creating duplicates to better do tasks around the room. However, when writer Peter David took over X-Factor with issue #71 in 1991, the multitudes of Multiple Man became clear. It’s not just that David wrote Madrox as an unrepentant prankster, who used his powers and an unopenable jar of mayonnaise to trick his teammates. It’s also that the team’s first adventure involved fighting a rogue dupe who had aligned with Mister Sinister.
Over the years, David came back to Madrox again and again, making him the chief character in the revival X-Factor series from the 2000s. A rich, and often unpleasant series, X-Factor cast Madrox as a noir detective, someone who sent dupes around the world to gather knowledge, but who also refused to learn about himself. Madrox’s ability to create dupes allowed David to dabble with different genres, letting him redefine Madrox as a person as different aspects of his personality moved to the forefront of different dupes.
In the 2018 Multiple Man miniseries, Matthew Rosenberg and Andy MacDonald took Madrox’s powers into the multiverse. In his attempt to stop dying—something that happens a lot in X-Men comics—Madrox ends up altering reality, to the point that every person in the Marvel Universe is a duplicate of Madrox: Deadpool, Cable, Hulk? They’re all Madrox.
Obviously, X-Men ’97 doesn’t have the space or the time to make its most popular characters into variants or Madrox, or to even become a murder mystery show. But it does have space to do more with a guy whose power is to make copies of himself. That sort of thing should be a dream for an animator, giving inspiration for at least a cool fight sequence (like those enjoyed by Nightcrawler this season) if not a big set piece. He certainly deserves to be more than a punching bag generator for other, more popular characters. Surely, there’s room for a guy who can fill a room by himself, even in a show as crowded as X-Men ’97.
X-Men ’97 season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.
The End of Oak Street Review: The Best Dinosaur Movie in Decades
If you’re a fan of the Jurassic Park films (and the franchise’s global box office suggests many of you are), you might have always wondered what it would be like if their dinosaurs roared, chomped, and smashed around suburbia on the big screen. Though Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park certainly gave us a little taste of the urban fallout of a dino attack back in the ’90s, subsequent Jurassic films have largely been preoccupied with going bigger or getting bogged down in the “Park” part of “Jurassic Park.”
Luckily, The End of Oak Street is here to show us exactly what might happen if a variety of roaming dinosaurs had the opportunity to pick the bones of a suburban neighborhood clean, and it’s pretty damn spectacular. Perhaps even more surprisingly, director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) seems to be capable of making a better and riskier Spielberg film than Spielberg himself in the year of our lord 2026.
Indeed, there are plenty of charmingly old-school Amblin vibes in The End of Oak Street, which sees a family on the verge of falling apart transported to dangerous dinosaur times along with the rest of their quaint neighborhood, leaving a block party in 1982 behind with no idea what happened or why. Anne Hathaway plays teary matriarch Denise Platt, yearning for a more rewarding life while Ewan McGregor’s Greg Platt is the upbeat father who would rather try to fix everything himself than let the cracks show. Their kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), are fully aware of the tension between the two parents, sensing that their picturesque life is one argument away from the flutter of divorce papers.
Mitchell pushes the boundaries of the movie’s PG-13 rating to its absolute limits as he subjects the rocky Platt family to a string of sudden, violent dinosaur incursions, but first he spends a good chunk of The End of Oak Street introducing his characters and letting us hang out with them. The writer-director understands that we actually need to care about the Platts to want them to live through his wild science fiction tale and force us to the edge of our seats during their most perilous encounters, especially since the reason they’ve found themselves in this mess is hand-waved away because it doesn’t really matter.
Once rumored to be yet another Cloverfield tale from producer J.J. Abrams, The End of Oak Street is actually more than happy to embrace its “what if?” Twilight Zone and Ray Bradbury influences—Frank Frazetta would have had a whale of a time illustrating the book cover for this one—and trusts you to simply climb aboard the ludicrous adventure of it all instead of weighing the script down with unnecessary exposition. Frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air in an era where Hollywood feels that the audience needs to have its hand held through every plot point and character nuance.
The dinosaurs themselves are also impressive. More accurately depicted than in the Jurassic Park movies, they hunt the Platts’ neighborhood and are a genuinely scary natural force. Industrial Light & Magic has pulled out all the stops to make the film’s CGI as believable as possible, and Mitchell cannily draws on his It Follows experience to build tension as the dinos sneak up on his characters. Sometimes, we see just a brief flash of threat when they’re distracted; they’re always in danger, and Mitchell relies on this constant dread to propel the film through its white-knuckle third act.
He’s playful with it, too, peppering The End of Oak Street with pleasing split diopter shots and other flourishes that would feel right at home in Jaws, The Goonies, or E.T. Not content to flatten the richness of his immaculately recreated 1982, Mitchell also steers clear of the sort of muddy color grading that could have seen the film feel right at home on streaming. Instead it looks and feels like a real movie made for the projector, and has a score to match its ambition, with Michael Giacchino in fine form channeling ’80s John Williams and knowing his deeper Lost and Fringe bona fides are absolutely the correct match for this sci-fi story and its visuals. It weds well with popcorn cheer moments like when a ferocious Hathaway takes aim with a shotgun at a Tyrannosaurus.
The End of Oak Street’s trailers have hidden all the best bits of the film—at a cost. When you sit down to watch it, you’ll find that a bunch of its shocking, hilarious, and truly unexpected moments pay off when the lights are down and the audience around you is along for the ride, but there will likely be many people who saw a clip online or playing before another movie and shrugged, including me. I had no interest or intention of seeing The End of Oak Street until the screening invitation, but I’m so glad I gave it a chance. Yet facing similar levels of anticipation from casual audiences, Warner Bros. will either have a surprise hit on its hands buoyed by word of mouth or a total flop. It would be a real shame if it’s the latter, but that’s the gamble of getting back into the original movies game.
As I left the theater, I heard a group of younger audience members chatting through their own The End of Oak Street impressions. “You’ve made a movie set in 1982 starring Ewan McGregor, and you don’t make a Star Wars reference? What a missed opportunity,” one of them cried. Therein lies another problem. Unlike some of us aging Amblin heads, there are a lot of people out there who have been Stranger Things pilled up the wazoo, and the mere idea of setting a movie in the 1980s and not overstuffing it with pop culture references for people to point at seems wrong somehow. The End of Oak Street’s design allows for a few quality needle drops, the odd film poster on a bedroom wall, and a dog named Starbuck, but it isn’t interested in celebrating its period setting the way that Stranger Things does. Rather its intention is to feel like it was actually made alongside the best sci-fi movies of the era.
Mitchell is more successful in that endeavor here than Abrams was with 2011’s Super 8, but it still might be too earnest an approach for anyone more interested in a broader meta sci-fi swing. For those who want to check out a genuinely great rollercoaster of a dinosaur movie this summer, however, The End of Oak Street delivers the best one in decades.
The End of Oak Street opens on Friday, Aug. 14.
X-Men ’97 Just Redeemed the Worst X-Men Storyline of the 1990s
This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 9.
As it wraps up with the finale “Survival of the Fittest,”X-Men ’97‘s second season falls a little bit short of its predecessor. Of course, it isn’t entirely fair to compare the two. X-Men ’97 initially seemed like little more than a nostalgia play, a revival series that would bring back good memories but wouldn’t tell an exciting story. Instead, what we got was a propulsive show that combined dynamic action scenes with sharp social commentary. All of that is still present in season 2 of the series, but it’s a little less sharp, a little less immediate.
Still, whatever one thinks about the season overall, there’s one thing that no one can dispute. “Survival of the Fittest,” in which Apocalypse takes over Gambit’s body to become some unholy mixture of the two, works a heck of a lot better than the last time En Sabah Nur melded with an X-Men. Last time, he mixed with Cyclops in an absolutely awful story called Apocalypse: The Twelve.
The Twelve ran across the final two issues of the two X-Men series in 1999, as well as issues of Wolverine, Cable, and X-Man (a comic about an alternate universe Nate Grey). The story saw the X-Men learn too late about a plan that Apocalypse had hatched to obtain ultimate power and eventually achieve godhood. Apocalypse has prepared a list of 12 uniquely qualified individuals, whose powers, when combined, would provide just the right combination for the first mutant to ascend.
Much of the storyline focuses on various X-Men looking for potential members of the Twelve. The potential suspects include obvious choices, like Wolverine (he was in everything in the ’90s) and Franklin Richards, son of Fantastic Four leaders Reed and Sue Richards, who was then still a near omnipotent mutant.
On just those grounds, The Twelve would be a solid X-Men story. Since the days of Chris Claremont, X-Men stories have been full of secret societies and hidden prophecies. Moreover, the storyline checks in on some fun, weird parts of X-Men lore, including Master Mold—the giant robot that poops out Sentinels—and Mystique’s wife Destiny, a soothsayer whose spooky diary drives the plot.
The problem with The Twelve wasn’t the concept. It was the execution. The story often feels aimless, as if the process of gathering 12 individuals wouldn’t provide enough material to fill 10 issues. It shoves in unnecessary distractions like a Skrull impersonating Wolverine, who was the Horseman of the Apocalypse Death, and revisiting Cyclop’s marriage to Madelyne Pryor. And then there’s the actual final line-up of the team, a grab-bag that feels at once obvious and haphazard: Bishop, Cable, Cyclops, Iceman, Living Monolith, Magneto, Phoenix, Polaris, Professor X, Mikhail Rasputin, Storm, and Sunfire.
As in “Survival of the Fittest,” The Twelve climaxes with Apocalypse melding with an X-Man, namely Cyclops instead of Gambit. Cycopalypse looked kind of cool, in a blobby sort of way. But it proved a disappointing big bad for the storyline, even if Cyclops died in the process of defeating him. Of course, Cyclops came back a year later, rendering the entire thing a waste of time.
Before this season of X-Men ’97, one might be forgiven for thinking that The Twelve might have been a victim of circumstance. Even though X-Men: The Animated Series and various video games made Marvel’s mutants a pop culture sensation, the actual quality of the comics suffered, especially as the cash-strapped Marvel Comics tried to exploit them for full profit potential. The X-Men crossovers that felt so electric in Claremont’s tenure now seemed cheap and underdeveloped, and readers in the late ’90s just got through the dismal Onslaught, which involved the entire Marvel Universe. Could any storyline come off well with so much stacked against it?
Turns out, the answer is “Yes.” X-Men ’97 streamlines The Twelve and makes it a sharp, character-focused story instead of a wild goose chase. “Survival of the Fittest” may not pack the same punch as season one’s climactic battle with Bastion, but at least it evolves from the original storyline.
X-Men ’97 season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.
X-Men ’97 Season 2 Episode 9 Review: Middling Mutant Mayhem
This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 9.
The first season ofX-Men ’97 blew away all expectations. It delivered on the nostalgia we expected, and it dug deeper into weird mutant lore, taking advantage of an audience primed by the MCU to accept comic book nonsense. But the first season fully embraced the mutant metaphor, reflecting the rise of reactionary politics in the United States with stories about governments and individual actors who hate the mutants simply because they exist.
At times, season 2 of X-Men ’97 has followed its predecessor’s lead, especially with the Nightcrawler-centric standout “Strange Land, Savage Heart.” In that way, it’s fitting that the season ends with Kurt making the ultimate sacrifice for his sister and his friends. But for the most part, season 2 has veered away from political relevance in favor of spectacle and superhero soap opera. So it’s just as fitting that the finale “Survival of the Fittest” mostly consists of mutants beating up on one another.
As we saw last week, X-Force and X-Factor have joined forces, with Cable and Val Cooper convinced that Gambit still poses a threat, despite the fact that Xavier and Rogue pulled his consciousness from Apocalypse’s grasp. In this episode, the X-Men must take their stand against the two rival teams, who storm X-Corp headquarters with a SHIELD helicarrier and a legion of Sentinel Squad O*N*E fighters in support.
At the same time, Rogue, Beast, and Nightcrawler investigate Apocalypse’s Ship to see if they can find a clue to their plan. Upon reactivation, Ship reveals the Celestial Shrine, the same object that En Sabah Nur entered to transform into Apocalypse, as seen in the ancient Egypt episodes at the start of the season. Despite the risk of corruption, Rogue enters the Shrine to face the Celestial Eson the Searcher. Upon seeing Rogue’s determination to save Gambit, pushing her to even attempt to fight the Celestial, Eson grants her incredible power… as long as she’s willing to sacrifice herself when the threat has completed.
The juxtaposition of the mutant-on-mutant action in the A story and Rogue’s confrontation with Eson in the B story captures everything that this season of X-Men ’97 has done right. The mutant rumble in the A plot are all ecstatic showcases for the characters to show off their powers. Strong Guy and Bishop pummel each other, each absorbing the other’s kinetic energy. Morph changes from Wolverine to Doctor Octopus to distract Psylocke and Archangel, allowing the real Logan to attack. Cable blasts at Jean’s force fields with his guns while using his own telekinesis to pull off Cyclops’s visor.
It’s excessive and silly, mostly accurate to the characters’ established power sets (Cyclops’ optic blasts shouldn’t work on his own son, and the kinetic energy caused by Gambit’s charges should force Multiple Man to make more duplicates, but that’s just nerd grouching). And it’s a lot of fun, all animated so smoothly that we almost forget the clunky look of the original series’ final seasons.
Conversely, Rogue’s encounter with Eson is all light and eerie quiet. All sound except the vocals drop out, even the words spoken by the characters feel flat and dry. A minuscule Rogue floats in front of Eson’s face, Jack Kirby‘s original design made all the more abstract because of the size, and the colors are saturated with white light. The story seems to call for Rogue to disintegrate as she challenges Eson, which the animators depict by having layers of her skin peel off, revealing red splotches beneath, a somehow even more disturbing effect.
At the episode’s climax, Cable makes his way to Gambit and shoots him in the face, horrifying everyone. Well, everyone except Apocalypse, who has been empowered by the death of Gambit to finally take control of the body, becoming some horrific mixture of Remy and himself. No sooner does Gampocalypse transform the mutants into new X-Men than Rogue arrives in her new Celestial gear, a gloriously Kirby-esque design, to face off against the bad guy. The face off takes… approximately three seconds? In no time at all, Rogue has pulled Apocalypse’s essence back out of Gambit and trapped it in a gem, which she just hands over to Cable.
Beautifully animated though the final stand-off may be, it resolves far too quickly, undercutting the fun of the episode’s battles and revealing the stakes to be non-existent—not just for “Survival of the Fittest” but for the entire season. Apocalypse felt terrifying when he destroyed Magneto earlier in the season, and Gambit was even more menacing in the previous episode. But here, he’s a minor inconvenience easily handled by Celestial Rogue. For all the first four episodes did to establish Cable as the son of Cyclops and Jean, and even the previous episode better fleshed out their connection and conflict. Even the fights between the X-Men, X-Force, and X-Factor paled in comparison to dust-ups in previous episodes.
Thus, “Survival of the Fittest” operates less as the culmination of X-Men ’97‘s second season, and more like a replay of the greatest hits. Nowhere is that more true than when Xavier rebukes Apocalypse’s survivalist ethos. For Apocalypse, Earth only survives the judgement of the Celestials if the strong cull the weak. Xavier contends that survival comes from care for one another, even to the point of sacrificing one’s self.
All of the points track for the characters, but the speeches don’t match the power of En Sabah Nur’s visions at the start of the season. It doesn’t reflect Xavier’s grief and growth after Magneto’s death. It doesn’t account for the moral quandaries raised when Nightcrawler defended Graydon Creed, or by the differing approaches of X-Factor and X-Force. The speech doesn’t even resonate with the last words Xavier spoke to him, when he praised En Sabah Nur’s mother for abandoning her child. It simplifies all the knotty questions raised in the preceding episodes and reduces them to simply stalling for time, waiting for Celestial Rogue to arrive and save the day.
All this makes the final scene feel like more of a cheat. Of course Nightcrawler would sacrifice himself to save his sister, as he does here, when he returns to Eson to pay the debt owed by Rogue. His faith is beautiful, as is the closing montage of the X-Men living happy lives because of what he’s done. But that doesn’t quite answer the questions of evolution and survival raised by everyone from Magneto to Graydon Creed to Eson the Searcher himself.
In the end, “Survival of the Fittest” is a fun episode with cool visuals and fun character moments. But X-Men ’97 in general, and even season 2 in particular, has been so much more. Let’s hope the show can find a way to truly evolve for season 3.
All of X-men ’97 season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.
X-Tra Thoughts
The bits of Rogue having her skin pulled away was gnarly for a kid-friendly cartoon show, but it worked as a rejoinder to her earliest appearances. Rogue used to be Empowered before Empowered, and it seemed that every time she used her abilities, her clothes would go flying off.
Given all of the X-Factor stuff this season, I should have been expecting something from their successor, the Unity Squad from Uncanny Avengers in the 2010s. But Rogue’s face-off with Eson and her Celestial form recalls her battle with Exitar in Uncanny Avengers #18-22.
I really wish the show would have done more with Val Cooper, and not just because I love ’90s X-Factor. As opposed to someone like Henry Peter Gyrich or Cameron Hodge, Cooper’s betrayal of mutants hits harder because she was truly sympathetic to them. Yet, as happens all the time in reality, an ally stands in solidarity only so far. As soon as mutants became inconvenient to her, she turned against them.
Speaking of Val, she’s dead! Or at least shot by Mystique, who will likely go after her son Graydon Creed, the new American president. Hopefully, this means season 3 of X-Men ’97 will get a little more political. Overall, season 2 of X-Men ’97 was still good, but a definite step down from the first season.
House of the Dragon’s Most Shocking Book Change Has Infamous Real History Roots
This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3.
Power resides where men believe it resides. This famous nugget of wisdom, spoken between Lord Varys and the Imp of Casterly Rock, is virtually a thesis statement for Game of Thrones and the larger George R.R. Martin universe. However, it also speaks to one of the most turbulent, and occasionally blood-soaked, political struggles that persisted throughout Europe’s actual medieval period: the balance for control between church and state.
That tenuous see-saw action has played a major role in both Game of Thrones and its prequel series House of the Dragon, but never more so than in the latter’s season 3 finale. For it was in this climactic hour that Rhaenyra Targaryen, First of Her Name, took a step that her literary counterpart would never dare: she ordered Alyn of Hull to essentially assassinate the ranking septon who served in King’s Landing. In effect, she’s burned the bridge between the secular world of Targaryen kings and queens and the ecclesial one presided over by powerful priests.
It’s an stunning murder that even Alyn hesitates committing. As the holy man in question warns, “I am the High Septon of the Faith. To harm me is to declare war on the Starry Sept, to damn your soul to the deepest of the Seven Hells!” Yet Alyn reluctantly takes Rhaenyra’s command to heart, as she soothes his doubts by telling him he is the blood of Old Valyria, and thus unburdened by the rules that govern men or the Seven-Faced Gods. It’s part and parcel for the entire power trip Rhaenyra is on in the finale, complete by announcing to thousands of gathered King’s Landing smallfolk and royal attendants that she is a savior-like figure foretold by her father and Aegon the Conqueror; “the Prince That Was Promised” who will redeem Westeros from the threat of monstrous evils far to the North and beyond the Wall!
For the record, none of this happens in the book, so the ramifications for what it would mean for Rhaenyra and Westeros are profound. But before folks start drawing their pitchforks and torches for showrunner Ryan Condal and the House of the Dragon writing team, know that like the best shocks and twists in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” saga and Fire & Blood, the latter of which serves as the inspiration for House of the Dragon, this development has real-world precedent. Aye, the series seems to be adapting to its own purposes one of the most infamous scandals in English history whereupon a 12th century king ordered the murder of his former best friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
A Kingsman Kills God’s Man
The king and archbishop in question were Henry of House Plantagenet, a.k.a. Henry II, and Thomas Becket, and they were in fact once thick as thieves before Henry handpicked his drinking buddy to be the most authoritative voice of God on Earth, at least this side of the English Channel. There is a special irony in this for fans of George R.R. Martin as well, because Henry II was the son of essentially Rhaneyra’s real-life counterpart, the Empress Matilda. She was the first woman who attempted to assert her right to rule as Queen of England after being selected for the job by her father Henry I—a succession that English lords, including her cousin Stephen of Blois, sought to deny and usurp.
So the murder of an archbishop came a little later in the actual English history that roots Game of Thrones lore, but its addition to the Dance of the Dragons gets back to the essential question Varys and Tyrion Lannister mused over in Game of Thrones: Where does power reside, with a king, a priest, or the people often asked to do the killing for either?
In the case of Henry II and Thomas Becket, at a glance it initially went to the secular world. After years of Becket growing openly antagonistic of the crown’s brute exercises of power, the Archbishop of Canterbury excommunicated three of the king’s men who crowned Henry’s eldest son, also named Henry, as the Young King. Henry II would officially co-rule with his son, but by coronating this living junior, the elder king defiantly usurped the Archbishop of Canterbury’s authority and privilege to annoint English monarchs.
So after his men were excommunicated (and thus condemned to Hell), Henry II uttered on Christmas Day a statement that everyone in the room interpreted as a command to murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, although the most famous version of the declaration—“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”—is an apocryphal bit of poetry passed down to us from the 18th century. Whatever he said, four knights picked up the general drift and made haste to Canterbury.
On Dec. 29, 1170, Becket was hacked to death on the grand floor of his cathedral by four knights while making his prayers, the crown of his head literally severed from his face.
A quick overview cannot undersell how seismic a scandal this was, with the King of England seemingly ordering the slaughter of a man English lords and peasants alike viewed as the voice of God. The fallout drifted all the way to Rome where Pope Alexander openly flirted with excommunicating Henry, thereby condemning his soul to hellfire eternal. Instead Henry allegedly atoned for his deed by humbling himself before the eyes of God and men. He walked in shameful barefoot penance before the power of the Church, and the witness of his peasantry, at Canterbury Cathedral. This included being flogged by local monks.
Meanwhile the four knights who seemed to be carrying out his will were excommunicated. They traveled all the way to Rome to plead their case to the Pope, and in an attempt to save their souls were ordered to spend at least 14 years in exile in the Holy Lands during the period when the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem still stood. We are told none of them lived to return home to England.
Fallout for House of the Dragon’s Dance
All of which should figure prominently into House of the Dragon season 4, despite some question marks that remain around exactly what occurred in the finale.
For the record, in Fire & Blood, the powerful septon who denied Rhaneyra’s coronation until Aegon II’s body was found is Septon Eustace, a crucial figure in Martin’s literary Dance of the Dragons. Indeed, Septon Eustace not only denied Rhaenyra the full vestige of her power on the page, but lived to tell the tale! He became one of the key chroniclers who provided a biased historical record of this civil war’s events, putting in ink Team Green’s version of events. Yet the literary Rhaenyra would not bring herself to kill Eustace, probably because she did not have proof Aegon II was dead or alive at this point in the Dance.
In the show’s defense, though, they seem to be notably embracing Martin’s dreaded “butterfly effect” when it comes to book changes. Unlike the text, in the show Rhaenyra and the whole realm have discovered Aegon II and his crippled dragon Sunfyre are alive. So it is mayhaps believable that Septon Eustace would openly defy Rhaenyra’s legitimacy to her face if he knew the male claimant whom he previously crowned still lived.
However I am not 100 percent sure that this was Eustace whom Rhaenyra ordered murdered. In fact, he might literally be an analogue for Pope Alexander instead of merely Thomas Becket!
“Killing the High Septon is insane,” co-producer/writer Ti Mikkel said in the post-show wrap up of House of the Dragon season 3. “You know, she’s killed the Pope.”
I’m not exactly sure how that works in Westeros since during the period the series is set, the High Septon lives in Oldtown—a bit like the Pope being distant from English monarchs while living in Rome. So the politics of the event in the show are a bit looser and more frustratingly opaque than actual history or how Martin pens his plot twists.
Nevertheless, there is a grand opportunity here since Game of Thrones, set roughly 200 years after the events of House of the Dragon, also went beyond its literary source material when it featured another power-hungry ruler, Cersei Lannister, orchestrating the murder of the High Septon, a religious fanatic modeled after Girolamo Savonarola in a period when the High Septon was living in King’s Landing. Yet as was the original show’s wont after it surpassed the narrative of Martin’s books, the political ramifications of murdering a Pope-like figure and blowing up King’s Landing’s version of the Sistine Chapel to boot was hand-waved away. Cersei should have faced open rebellion in the streets of King’s Landing after killing the smallfolks’ religious shepherd. But it was never mentioned again.
My hunch is House of the Dragon is going the other direction. When word spreads that Alyn of Hull rid Rhaenyra of this turbulent priest, the fallout among the denizens of King’s Landing will be intense, especially when coupled with news that one of her Dragonseeds reportedly burned civilians at Tumbleton. Granted, that wasn’t on Rhaenyra’s orders, but rumors and whispers have a way of ignoring little things like facts.
This action should deeply undermine Rhaenyra’s position next season, although frankly I’m not sure how Alyn of Hull will ever be able to fulfill his literary destiny when whoever the next High Septon is will demand his head on a spike—or at least his exile like the murderers of Thomas Becket.
… Also, to chase one more butterfly to its end, how did the North not enshrine into stone their chosen queen revealing the Targaryens were sent here to defend the Wall from a great evil? Henry II’s maybe-culpability in Becket’s martyrdom was so great that we still misquote him about it nearly a thousand years later. One would think the North would definitely remember by the time of Game of Thrones that on the day she killed “the Pope,” Rhaenyra warned something’s coming and must be stopped…
Whatever! Makes You Happy: Meet The Married Couple Crafting Nostalgic Accessories for Gen Z
Derrick Baca and Liz DeSilva, founders of pop culture collectible brands Whatever! Makes You Happy and Otonagai, joined Den of Geek at San Diego Comic-Con to talk all things geek. A subbrand of Whatever! Company focusing on accessory collabs with licenses and artists, Whatever! Makes You Happy caters to Gen Z and millennial nostalgia through an offering of bags, charms, blind boxes, apparel, and other accessories. Their collections include IPs like Peanuts, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Care Bears, bringing the fun childhood colors and characters into adult fashion.
Before launching Whatever! Makes You Happy, the married duo worked at Loungefly as senior vice presidents of creative/innovation and were part of the team that grew the brand into a major player in the apparel and accessories scene. After departing Loungefly, the couple took a year off, searching for the right place to start their own imprint, and they ended up finding themselves in familiar territory.
“The company that we’re working with now [Whatever! Company], I actually knew the owner 20-plus years ago, and we almost went to this company before we went to Lounge[fly]. It just was a matter of timing and place, the stars aligning and all that. We always kind of joked that we wanted to work with each other,” says Baca.
The husband and wife’s creative chemistry is undeniable, as Baca handles creating the storylines for their Otonagai blind box characters and the descriptions of their products while DeSilva handles the aesthetics and design around the accessories and characters.
Both aspects of their creative process, along with help from their artists and employees, ties their nostalgic collections together. The couple also emphasize how important it is for them to provide their employees with an environment that stimulates their creative processes, “We believe in remote [work],” Baca says. “We believe people do better when they’re in their environment, especially artists. Because I always thought that most artists, their worst thing is to go into this office and they put their headphones on. They want to turn the light off. They just want to be in their zone.”
Since their addition to the Whatever! label, which launched in August of 2025 with Miffy and Strawberry Shortcake collections, Baca and DeSilva have rapidly expanded their company in its first year of operation and have created their own nostalgia accessories branch. This includes a long list of impressive and exciting collaborators that the duo shared excitement for.
“We’ve got almost every studio license there is, except for Disney — we literally work with almost everyone . . . we have probably over 150 licenses,” Baca says.
Adds DeSilva, “We have Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Viacom, Sanrio, Domo, Snoopy, Cupy, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, Mattel. . .There’s a lot.”
The duo even gave Den of Geek exclusive looks at upcoming projects, including a batch of accessories surrounding horror franchises Universal Monsters and Terrifier that just launched August 6.
While they prioritize feeding fandoms with desirable merchandise, they also work with their own IPs. Through their second company, Otonagai, they have launched 15 different IPs, including their works with independent creators from around the world. This includes the artist So Lazo, located in Berlin, with whom they recently collaborated.
“We’re trying to make merchandise and get merchandise into specialty retail shops accessible for artists who can’t afford to bring in inventory and pay to manufacture goods,” DeSilva says. “So what we do is we sign them on almost like a license, and then we give them a royalty. Derrick and I work with them to get like new assets every quarter to create these like collections, and we sell them to Hot Topic, Box Lunch, Besters, Urban Outfitters.”
Despite helping numerous artists and working with over 100 licensing partners, the pair still seem to never run out of ideas.
“I’ve been in the business almost 30 years,” Baca says. “I’m old. I’ve worked with Nightmare Before Christmas for almost all those years, and you think to yourself, ‘How can you do it differently again?’ We did at Loungefly. Every year was a challenge. “Like, ‘OK, same Halloween properties. How do we make them different?’ We probably did 200-300 [Lilo & Stitch] bags. And just when we thought we would have no more ideas, we’d have another one, and it would outsell the others.”
According to the spontaneous duo, one of the keys to finding inspiration is traveling.
“We travel. We trend shop. We’re constantly out because sometimes, we go to the mall, or we go to an antique store, and we’ll see something that will spark something totally random and unrelated to that, like a vintage item or home goods, or a ‘Oh yeah, we love that.’ That gives us a million ideas,” DeSilva says.
Despite their ample flow of creativity and upcoming collaborations with high-end collaborators, they are determined to stay affordable for their consumers.
“All of our bags are under $75,” Baca says. “That’s a big thing. We’re trying to make really fun bags at a price point that people can still afford to buy groceries. We want people to be able to celebrate their fandoms without breaking the bank. It’s hard, but we’re trying to keep our stuff low,” DeSilva says.
Bacca and DeSilva are making nerdiness affordable while also serving underrepresented areas of nostalgia evident in their Yo Gabba Gabba!and Care Bears collections. The Yo Gabba Gabba! collection that they mention retailers being not so certain about, since it isn’t a show with years of big merchandising sales behind it. Despite this, they are determined to listen to the nostalgic desires of millennials and Gen Zers that populate the internet.
“We pay attention. We watch what’s cycling in terms of what people are recollecting. We were watching the fandom groups, and we were like, ‘OK, we believe in this,’” DeSilva says.
While adults may be too old to play with toys, no one ever gets too old to wear them.
The Last House Ending and Meaning Explained
This article contains The Last House spoilers
Louis Leterrier’s The Last House hit the ground running on Netflix, becoming the number one movie on the streaming service in its first week of release. The Now You See Me and Fast X director has swerved away from fast cars and magic for his new sci-fi thriller, which sees a family forced to survive in their home after being trapped by a sudden rainstorm.
If you’ve finished The Last House and feel like you missed something (or you’ve turned off some way through and just want to know how it ends), we’re here to help, breaking down the ending of the Netflix movie and hopefully answering some of your lingering questions…
Why Were the Family Trapped in Their House?
The Delgado family in The Last House are struggling financially, with father Jason (Wagner Moura) currently unable to make a living as an engineer. When he fishes, he notes that he also hasn’t caught any big fish for months.
After he gives up on catching any fish for supper, he returns to his home, which is sinking into the ground and relying on its chimney for stability. Jason soon realizes that the storm that initially encouraged him to go back inside with his family has somehow sealed them in their home. Doors won’t open, and windows won’t break. Phones and the internet no longer work.
The family begins to understand that the rain is generating a sentient force field that responds to human touch, and Jason’s daughter Ruth (Riley Chung) suggests that this force field might be more benign than they think. However, Jason and his wife Ann (Greta Lee) watch as their neighbors slowly perish indoors, stuck in the same situation, and a neighbor who was outside during the original storm is also attacked and dragged away in front of their window by a shadowy monster. Jason and his family realize they must stay out of sight whenever it starts to rain.
The family try to make do with what they have inside their home, but they soon have to come up with new ideas when their food cupboards run dry. Jason sets up a kind of “fishing” system through the gap in their chimney, trapping squirrels, skunks, and other animals who stray into their garden, and Ann starts growing fruits and vegetables in the soil under the house.
Five years pass until Ruth gets bitten by a ferret, and the family is forced to find a way into their neighbor’s home to look for antibiotics, which leads to a climactic confrontation between the family and the creatures.
What Were the Creatures and How Did They Control the Weather?
The creatures are not aliens, as some characters in the movie first guess. Instead, they appear to be from the nearby ocean. They have tentacles and are dripping, and it’s hinted that overfishing or poisoned seawater may have forced them inland to survive. Ruth thinks they are simply reclaiming Earth and are similar to her family in that they are just trying to get by on what little they have. “80 per cent of the ocean is unexplored,” she says. “What if these things aren’t from outer space? What if these tales of sea creatures are real? What if that’s why they can control the rain? They’re not conquering our world. This is their world.”
The creatures seem to understand that trapping humanity and keeping them away from the sea is the only way to restore the planet’s equilibrium. It’s unclear how exactly the creatures control the rain, but they are sentient and much more advanced than any other sealife, so it may be that they discovered that they were capable of doing so when they were given no other choice but to wield that power and fight for survival.
How Does The Last House End?
After managing to hide from the creatures for years, one of them finally enters the house and destroys the family’s food and water supply. Jason and Ann break through to the neighborhood sewage pipe in their desperation to find antibiotics for Ruth, and Ann ends up shooting one of the creatures. Knowing that they are now aware of their presence and will return, the family gets some weapons together to fight them off in a final showdown.
Inevitably, a rainstorm begins, and the broken pipes flood the house. Jason, Ann, and their children try to get to high ground, moving to the attic, and they forge a plan to trap and kill one of the creatures that comes for them. Against all odds, they manage to do so, but when the time comes to kill the creature, hunter-fisherman Jason is moved by his daughter Ruth’s pleas to spare its life. He remembers some of the times he has killed other animals and feels regret, ultimately deciding not to kill the creature. The creature responds by opening the front door and allowing them to finally leave their house. Other creatures move in to attack Jason and his family, but the creature warns them off, apparently communicating a joint agreement of mercy between the two species.
The family then stumbles across their dead neighbor’s abandoned boat and sails into a flooded Earth, reaching out to any other survivors on the radio. The film ends with one responding, “Hello?”
What Is the Meaning Behind The Last House?
Initially, the Delgado family makes the best of their scary situation by connecting with each other through a new routine, playing games together, and returning to physical media. Being trapped inside brings them closer together, and viewers have found this hits quite close to home as they remember the events of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were asked to stay home and abide by social distancing.
Wagner Moura, who plays Jason in The Last House, has also compared the vibe of the film to the pandemic and told CinemaBlend that he hopes the family in the movie realize that good things will come out of the changes to their world. “I think that we came out of COVID when, when COVID sort of happened in the end of the whole pandemic, I was like, ‘Okay, the world is gonna change. We are gonna come out of this with a different mindset.’ And I don’t think we did. So I hope it’s different for the characters of the film.”
That “different mindset” might also be to stop killing the creatures we share our planet with. There seems to be quite a strong message about humans’ effect on the Earth, and how it forces the creatures in the film to act. “After humans overconsumed, polluted the environment, raised global temperatures, and began ‘boiling the oceans,’ the creatures finally emerged from the depths,” Netflix confirms.
So while there is a personal message about the importance of reconnecting with our families and neighbors in The Last House, there is also a broader message about the disastrous effects of global warming, overfishing, and pollution.
The Last House is now streaming on Netflix.
The Odyssey’s Wild Success Echoes Core Batman Lesson for Christopher Nolan
The Odysseyis now officially the highest grossing movie in Christopher Nolan’s career. The filmmaker of Inception, Oppenheimer, and three different Batman pictures capped that milestone Sunday when Odyssey crossed $1.1 billion at the global marketplace, topping a benchmark last set by The Dark Knight Rises 14 years ago.
In one sense, the scale of popularity for this film should not be too surprising. It was long ago when Nolan reached the rare heights of a director who is a brand unto himself. (Think Hitchcock, Spielberg, Cameron.) What is striking, though, is how strongly the movie immediately entered the zeitgeist, triggering headline-grabbing debates among classicists about the film’s interpretation of xenia—the Ancient Greek custom of hospitality called “Zeus’ law” in the movie—and gaining instant frontrunner status in the Oscar blogosphere. More remarkable still is how swiftly the film mooted months of engineered anger, resentment, and outright racism and transphobia that stalked the movie online for months.
To be clear, this is not to say the film is above criticism. Dr. Emily Wilson, whose 2018 translation of Homer’s Odyssey was a major cited resource for Nolan, has been scathing in her multiple critiques of the movie. Yet the highly specific, and loud, echo chamber of hysteria shadowing the film’s prerelease has been largely defanged. Those anticipating a backlash against the film on X, YouTube, TikTok, and other social media apps have ended up looking like dejected politicos, moping at a concession speech party.
This contingent is likely best represented by sometime-trillionaire Elon Musk, who summed up on his X app in March why so many were convinced the movie would fail: “Chris Nolan is an anti-White racist,” he wrote. He then doubled down again last month right before the movie’s release by adding, “Chris Nolan desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar.” Musk is definitely the loudest and most powerful of this noxious narrative, but he was champinioning an already thriving chorus of YouTubers and X sycophants outraged at the casting of Kenyan actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and that trans actor Elliot Page appears at all in the movie. In their minds, the vague “wokeness” of the flm could only result in failure.
They were obviously wrong.
And yet, as amusing as that is, we’d argue the limpness of such hateful and narrow-minded interpretations of artists—or really just our fellow men and women in general—has always been a subject on Nolan’s mind. That applies to The Odyssey with its portrait of a man in Matt Damon’s Odysseus who undermined Zeus’ law and thereby helped hasten the decline of civility and civilization itself. But the same lesson can be traced as far back as the film that made Nolan a household name with casual moviegoers, The Dark Knight.
During that Batman movie’s climax, Nolan and his co-writer brother, Jonathan Nolan, orchestrate an elaborate social experiment sequence which pits the bottomless nihilism of the film’s Joker (Heath Ledger) against the Nolans’ interpretation of our shared humanist values. The film’s supervillain, very much coded as both a terrorist in a post-9/11 context as well as the lone shooter (which today might be called an incel), has created a scenario where he expects “innocent civilians” to murder a boat full of convicts to save their own necks. Instead neither ferry explodes, leading to Christian Bale’s Batman to taunt the Joker: “What were you trying to prove? That deep down everyone is as ugly as you? You’re alone!”
The sequence in The Dark Knight feels almost akin to utopian-thinking, particularly in a film that earlier showed more than a handful of Gothamites ready to assassinate a stranger if it might save a loved one in the hospital. But the scene’s core tenets speak both to a recurring optimism about humanity that runs throughout Nolan’s oeuvre, as well as a categorical rejection of the type of vitriolic nastiness that can lead people to seethe in rage at seeing Black, Latino, trans, or otherwise non-white, hetero faces in the media.
None of which is to say Nolan is explicitly political in most of his films. There is in fact a deliberate aloofness to his work that caused some to view the aforementioned Batman trilogy as conservative wish fulfillment—including when The Dark Knight Rises was accused in 2012 of being a smear against the then-prevalent Occupy Wall Street movement, despite the movie having been written and already filming before the first Occupy Wall Street protest occurred. Those Batman movies, much like the concept of superheroes themselves, are certainly supportive of law and order, and the use of authority.
But I’d contend Nolan doesn’t seem as interested in making a capital “P” political statement with his films—be it “woke,” “conservative,” or otherwise—as he tends to engage with what he perceives to be shared and cross-cultural humanist values. The climax of The Dark Knight is not a full philosophical expression about what we need or deserve; it’s a comforting entertainment where the renewal of social order is established by broken systems and institutions working again.
If there is indeed a common political thread throughout Nolan’s work, it’s in the belief that likeminded, well-intentioned people (often with high levels of expertise and credentials) can come together to achieve great things for society. Yes, Batman saves Gotham City, but he does it with a lot of help from public servants and civic leaders, repelling together the forces of chaos and misanthropy; the storyteller similarly mirrors NASA’s mid-20th century national project ambition during the space race when the same agency again pools its resources and the wisdom of experts to save humanity in Interstellar. Meanwhile Dunkirk recounts a pivotal historical moment when thousands of British citizens risked their property, and in many cases their lives, to rescue UK forces stranded in France during the Second World War.
More recently Nolan has turned to WWII again to offer a bleaker flip side to this equation. His J. Robert Oppenheimer saw the great achievement of his work with so many brilliant minds on the Manhattan Project become the possible end of the world. It’s a grim epiphany that carries over to Nolan’s vision of Odysseus as a man with the literal weight of the Bronze Age collapse on his shoulders.
Nonetheless, the twin pole of this recurring theme is a protection of social norms and civilization from destabilizing forces. The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t anti-Occupy Wall Street; it’s an expression of Nolan’s fear of another variation of social collapse. If Joker was the lone gunman, and Batman Begins’ shadowy “League of Shadows” a thin comic book variation on al-Qaeda in the mid-2000s, then Rises’ Bane (played by Tom Hardy) is Robespierre in comic book drag. He’s the populist radical who uses genuine grievances about economic inequality and corruption to his own ends: the literal obliteration of social norms, including by overthrowing political institutions and ushering in authoritarian rule.
The menace of social decline, be it from supervillain terrorists and strongmen, climate change (Interstellar and Tenet), or a very large wooden horse, is the common theme. But this threat is met time and again by the humanist values Batman taunts the Joker with: people generally want to believe in good. As long as they remember their shared values, they can be better than the rage-filled nihilists who would seek to manipulate them, be it in a mob in front of a government building or on X. That carries through in The Odyssey where neither Odysseus or his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) forget their values and customs, even as the society around them loses a shared sense of empathy for strangers. Odysseus also breaks Zeus’ law by killing Penelope’s shameless suitors, but order is still restored, at least in Ithaca, when their son Telemachus (Tom Holland) becomes king.
Odysseus and Penelope, meanwhile, find peace by preserving their humanity and belief in “good,” complete with the small comfort that (rather miraculously) Odysseus can foresee how Greek civilization will rise again with a renewed faith in literacy and intellectualism, and in the shared customs that make us a decent society. It’s what keeps us from being so bitterly alone.
The Odyssey is playing in theaters now.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Finale: Steve Toussaint On Corlys’ Shrewd Politicking
Nobody has it particularly easy onHouse of the Dragon. But even with a high bar for misery in place for a Game of Thrones spinoff, Lord Corlys Velaryon a.k.a. the Sea Snake had himself quite a hard time in the show’s third season.
It all started in the premiere, in which Corlys led a fleet of his House’s ships against the Triarchy of Essos. In the process of “winning” that naval battle he lost his nephew and queen’s heir, saw his home of Driftmark (filled with priceless valuables from across the world, mind you) put to the torch, and was flung overboard into the unforgiving narrow sea.
Having survived that whole ordeal, Corlys was rewarded with Queen Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) refusal to honor his request to legitimize his bastards Alyn (Abubakar Salim) and Addam (Clinton Liberty), thus endangering the future of his House. He was then kidnapped by the odious Ormund Hightower (James Norton) and had one of his fingers rudely removed and mailed to Alyn as a grim proof of life.
With all that in mind, the fiery events ofHouse of the Dragon season 3’s finale are damn near a relief for Corlys and Steve Toussaint, the actor who portrays him. Yes, things go very poorly in Tumbleton but at least Corlys gets to mostly sit on the sidelines and take it all in. He doesn’t even lose any more fingers!
We caught up with Toussaint to discuss Corlys’ season 3 arc, his thoughts on the finale, and what he hopes to see from animated Sea Snake prequel spinoff Nine Voyages. That conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Den of Geek: From a practical, performing perspective, what’s it like missing a finger?
Steve Toussaint: [Laughs] Do you know what? I think I’ll have a better idea when we get to the next season. Because for this one, it was literally only a couple of scenes – one in the cell and then in the scene with Daemon and Gwayne with that brick [of a bandage] on my hand.
It wasn’t much fun, I can tell you that much. I remember in season 1, Paddy Considine had to wear a green glove because Viserys lost some fingers. I used to think, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ And now I’m in the same boat. Why couldn’t they just take his ring? Why did they have to cut his finger off?
One thing from this finale that I’m glad we got to see was a little bit of Corlys as a diplomat and statesman. When Gwayne presents his peace plan to Daemon, Corlys has some fairly shrewd alterations to it. Do you remember what it was like, playing that scene? What do you make of what Corlys brings to the table there.
I like to show that side of him. One of the things that I’ve often said about Corlys is that he is good at politicking, he just doesn’t like it very much. I don’t think he thinks it’s very honorable. But what I liked about that was that I don’t think that he had planned to do that when first being dragged out there by Gwayne to see Daemon. I like that he listened to what Gwayne was saying and thought, ‘What this guy is saying is nonsense, but there is a kernel of truth in it. Let me take over.’ I did like that to show that other side of him: that he is a thinking man and that also is his reputation. The reason why he was chosen to be Hand is justified.
If Daemon weren’t Daemon, I think that plan would have worked. Rhaenyra stays queen, Daeron gets to be Warden of the South, and everyone is happy.
Yes, I think you’re absolutely right. But the minute that Corlys says ‘You have to decide what you want: whether you want Rhaenyra on the throne or a mountain of dead Hightowers,’ he knows the minute it comes out of his mouth, he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s Daemon.’
Of course Daemon wants the mountain of dead Hightowers! Corlys doesn’t really participate in the Battle of Tumbleton but here’s there. What was it like being on set for those sequences? Did all the fire from the dragon pyrotechnics make it hot?
It was a hot day anyway. I didn’t get to see the whole of that battle where Ulf has turned. I get that bit where I look up and see the dragon coming and I run and hide. We were in this geographical bowl, this massive field, like a valley. It feels massive and large and epic. Our director Andrij [Parekh] would scream ‘There’s the dragon!’ and then you run and dive. But then, when we were getting ready to shoot the scene where I pull Daemon out of the battle, you see all of the corpses that they have strewn everywhere. It’s quite shocking. It’s great because it helps you. No acting required, basically.
A lot of viewers genuinely believed that Corlys might be dead, not captured, after episode 6. Do you recall having a similar reaction reading that script? Did [showrunner] Ryan Condal pull you aside?
Yeah, I did think that when I read it.First of all, reading the first episode and it ends with Corlys tumbling into the sea, you think, ‘Oh wow, is that how he goes?’ And then later on this thing again. But I think that’s the same as everybody else. You just thumb through [the scripts] and hope that you’re alive at the end.
I had been assured that it was going to be a good season for me. That’s what Ryan had told me at the very beginning. And so when I read that, I was like, ‘This is his idea of a good season? That I die?’ But thankfully, I didn’t, and I’m waiting with bated breath like everybody else to see what is in store for Corlys next season. And, in fact, how far into next season he gets.
This is your first full season working as Corlys without Eve Best as Rhaenys. What was that experience like – being the Sea Snake without his other half?
I can’t say it was bad because everyone else is so lovely, but it was tough. Eve and I were such good friends, and we were thick as thieves. We were partners in crime and even when we weren’t shooting, we’d have wonderful conversations and we got on so well together. So it was very weird to not have her there.
Having said that, it also informed some of the scenes because Corlys is still grieving. There are still unresolved issues for him. It was brought home again, of course, when we were promoting the show. Because normally it would be myself and Eve and now it was me and Abu [Salim], which was great too. But yeah, I did miss her.
Is there anything in particular from Coryls’ remaining arc in Fire & Blood that you’re really looking forward to?
I haven’t actually checked out Fire & Blood. I purposely chose not to read the books when I got this job because I thought, ‘I’m going to play the script as opposed to playing the book.’ But in terms of what I would like for him, I would like to see him continuing his relationship with his sons and also a deepening of the relationship with his granddaughters. I don’t know whether that’s going to happen, you know. It’s Westeros, we don’t get happy endings, but that would be nice.
I often say that Corlys gave up being happy when Rhaenys died. When we look back over the scenes of the three series now, the only time that he was really sort of playful or smiling a lot was when he was in her presence. Of course, she’s no longer there. The rock is gone. I would love to see him… maybe not happy, I don’t think he’s going to be happy, but content that he’s done the best he can for his children.
Do you recall your favorite moment from filming this season now that it’s in the books?
I think it’s probably way back in episode 1. It’s the scene between Corlys and Alyn before the battle begins. Alyn is in Corlys’ cabin and Corlys basically apologizes for being a terrible father. I like that because it showed that he had evolved. He apologized. He doesn’t apologize to anybody except to his wife. He showed vulnerability. I think that still remains my favorite scene to play this season.
Have you heard any more about the potential Nine Voyages spinoff? Is that something that you’d like to be involved with, even if it’s animated?
Oh, I would love to be, but I’ve heard nothing. I think the last that I heard about it was at the launch of HBO Max in Germany. I had a chance to chat with George [R.R. Martin] there and all he could say was, I think his phrase was, ‘It’s in the works.’ So what that means, what stage that is, I have no idea. But yes, I would love to be involved. I like this character so it would be nice to be at his genesis. We’ll see.
All eight episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 are available to stream on HBO Max now.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8 Review: All the Things You Care About Are Ugly
This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 8.
The problem with the House of the Dragonseason 3 finale isn’t necessarily the finale itself, but everything that precedes it.
While that may seem like an unfair way to judge a singular episode of television, most season finales – particularly season finales of Game of Thrones shows – can’t reasonably be described as standalone experiences. House of the Dragon season 3 episode 8 (the name of which we won’t find out until well after press time… just one of the series’ many microaggressions against me specifically) doesn’t exist solely for its own sake. It exists to pay off the ambitious, yet at times frustrating, seven episodes leading into it.
And it does not do so… for the most part.
This is certainly not for lack of trying. Just as the season opened in bombastic fashion with the Battle of the Gullet, it closes with another major martial chapter in the Dance of Dragons civil war: the Battle of Tumbleton (ominously known as the First Battle of Tumbleton in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood source material). And what a battle it is!
Ormund Hightower (James Norton), smell-averse Dennis Reynolds-eque goober that he may be, was undoubtedly correct in his theory of mind regarding his opponent Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy). For the man with the hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And for the woman with many dragons, every fortified city teeming with innocent life looks like a Harrenhal ready to be torched. Ormund’s intentions with the occupation of the strategically insignificant market town were always clear. He was inviting a fiery spectacle that would turn the smallfolk against their queen. But even he couldn’t have anticipated just how much fire Rhaenyra was unwilling to unleash… or more accurately: how much fire she had the capacity to control.
There is much to love about the show’s depiction of Tumbleton’s fall. Ormund’s introduction of literal child soldiers is both grimly logical and strangely hilarious (*cue Always Sunny music* “Dennis Hires Child Soldiers”). It’s also to the script’s credit that it’s bold enough to allow these child soldiers to suffer real harm. There is no deus ex machina that saves these kids at the last minute. The poor lads literally piss their pants, then get cut down in droves and burned alive by turncoat Ulf (Tom Bennett) and his dragon Silverwing. Hell, even our old friend Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), he of the supposed heroes in the North, sinks his axe into a pre-teen’s skull! And then just goes about his day.
Prior to that moment, the man they call “Roddy the Ruin” was our most reliable source of comedic relief. When Daemon asks him pre-battle if he and his men are still prepared to die for their queen he responds with a terse and sincere “can’t fucking wait.” We then get to see how much he meant those words as Lord Cregan’s Winter Wolves respond to every victory in battle with disappointment that they’re not yet dead and remain one more aging mouth for Winterfell to feed. Thankfully, Roddy does get his wish in the end – down one arm but no less fearsome – he pukes blood in Ormund’s face, stabs him through the ass, and then welcomes Silverwing’s cleansing fire with raucous joy. R.I.P., you absolute weirdo.
Epic and satisfying violence aside, the Battle of Tumbleton is also burdened with several contrivances like many fellow House of the Dragon skirmishes before it. Gwayne (Freddie Fox) and Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) have little to do here other than attempt a Hail Mary peace plan involving Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) that goes nowhere fast. Daemon’s (Matt Smith) inclusion adds little to the proceedings other than to get a friendly face involved and for Ser Jon Roxton (Joplin Sibtain) to have someone notable to swing his Valyrian sword Orphan-Maker at, reminding us that he exists before his presumably expanded arc in the fourth and final season. The battle also just kind of… ends? Corlys convinces Daemon that the town is lost and they must leave following the turning of Ulf’s cloak. Yes, Daemon is clearly experiencing a post-traumatic stress response in the wake of Silverwing and Caraxes’ destruction but surely the opportunity to snap Ulf’s neck would be too juicy to pass up.
Even the circumstances that bring Daemon to Tumbleton’s doorstep in the first place are hard to fully square away. Ormund was indeed shrewd in knowing that Rhaenyra would cave and attack her ostensible allies in the Reach but he couldn’t have possibly anticipated that Aegon’s survival would have been the inciting event. This is where the House of the Dragon season 3 finale begins to buckle under the sins of previous episodes. It cannot be said that no one saw devolution of Rhaenyra’s psyche into paranoid fascism coming. The show has certainly put in the effort to prepare us for this moment. It just feels like it hasn’t prepared us enough.
A tired, broken, and desperate Rhaenyra, clad in Joan of Arc-style chainmail and darkened eyes, is visually striking stuff. And her speech to the smallfolk of King’s Landing, in which she reveals the nature of the prophecy her father shared with her is undeniably compelling. I’ve been known to quibble (re: scream myself hoarse and roll around on the ground pounding my fists) about the show’s changes from Martin’s text but every choice that showrunner Ryan Condal and company have made regarding the prophecy has been effective.
Rhaenyra speaking aloud the details of Aegon the Conqueror’s dream and going so far as to describe herself as “The Prince That Was Promised” discloses more about her true state of mind than any other line of dialogue or killing of clergy could. In a conference call with reporters before the finale aired, Condal even put forward an entirely logical reasoning as to why the particulars of the queen’s speech wouldn’t have made it into the historical record.
“Targaryens say crazy shit all the time,” Condal said. “So much of their existence is self-aggrandizement. It could just sound like somebody trying to make something of themselves. [The smallfolk] have no idea of the ‘real history.'”
See, that’s a thoughtful, measured way of approaching a story that presents itself as an historical text. Slightly less thoughtful and measured, however, is the show’s interpretation of what’s really going on in Harrenhal. Alys Rivers’ (Gayle Rankin) conversation with Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), in which she lays bare her true magical nature as the cursed wife of Black Harren, doomed to haunt the halls forever for seeking out unnatural cures to her child’s dragonfire injuries, is a creative explication of the character’s witchy nature. But as is the case with so many other reveals on this show, the opening of one narrative door also happens to close so many others.
Alys’ story is more fascinating as a possibility than it is a reality. Yes, Gayle Rankin gets the opportunity to deliver an emotional monologue (which she crushes, naturally) but going forward what else is there now for Alys to do now that the trick’s prestige has arrived? She even seems somewhat diminished in the first scene following the revelation when the risen Aegon arrives at Harrenhal to confront (but not to kill) his brother. Though that could just be that no performer or character could possibly find purchase on screen when a scarred Tom Glynn-Carney is joyfully tearing into lines like “I’m aliiiiveee, imbecile.”
Ultimately though, what really sinks this finale is its treatment of the show’s best (or at least most likable) character. Why did Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) have to die? That’s not rhetorical, I’m genuinely asking.
In his now-infamous (and since-deleted) blog post deriding House of the Dragon‘s adaptation choices, George R.R. Martin went ahead and brazenly spoiled the events of the then-yet-to-be-released third season of the show, writing: “In Ryan [Condal]’s outline for season 3, Helaena still kills herself… for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen.”
At the time, many suspected that George, bless him, was being a bit of a drama queen. After all, the whole reason for that blog post in the first place was the show’s removal of a very minor character, Aegon and Helaena’s youngest child Maelor. But now that we’ve all seen the episode, does it not seem as though the “A Song of Ice and Fire” steward might have had a bit of a point?
While it’s not fair to say that Helaena self-defenestrates for no particular reason, her actual reasoning is murky at best. Leaning in to Helaena’s status as a prophetic Targaryen “dreamer” has paid off immensely throughout the show’s run and made her into one of the more eminently watchable characters onscreen but it also may have backfired here at the end.
All good prophetic dreams are inherently unclear and up for interpretation. Helaena’s however, are simply too unclear to make any sense of her fateful decision. Was it the sight of a grey mare appearing in the courtyard that convinced Helaena her death was necessary? Was it the remote psychic damage endured from all the souls lost in Tumbleton? Or was it simply the awful taste of the porridge Rhaenyra had force fed to her?
I genuinely do not know. And I don’t feel as though the invisible hand of the story has handed me the tools to properly interpret it… or if it even wants me to try. There’s certainly something to be said about a precognitive character like Helaena understanding that her time as a thread in a richer tapestry has ended. On some level Helaena and the story itself are one and the same – or at least they understand each other better than most.
If anything, it seems as though Helaena dies not for the story, not for herself, not for her children, but for Rhaenyra. The Queen on the Iron Throne isn’t wanting for autocratic eurekas in this saga. The gods have not only killed two of her children and heirs but have now brought her rival back from the dead. And yet, Rhaenyra has never looked more resolute as she has when gazing down the parapet at her half-sister’s broken body. Could only Helaena’s death make that final fracture of humanity happen? Was she aware of that? Is that why she took the fall… so that Rhaenyra could one day take hers?
I, and say it with me now, don’t know.
Helaena Targaryen was not only the best of her family, she was also the only one left with a tangible connection to their Valyrian past, present, and future. Getting her out of the way now makes sense for the story as it sets up the final chapter for the dynasty’s downfall. I just wish I understood why it made sense for her.
All eight episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 are available to stream on HBO Max now.
The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 3 Review – Dillard, No!
This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 3, “Emigrants”
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Well, Maggie and Renata lit up Lady Liberty’s lamp, and the poor, huddled masses certainly came, but of course they had beef because things are hardly ever easy—or what they seem—on The Walking Dead, and this week, Dead City’s third season delivered an episode that felt almost eerily hopeful until its final moments, when everything got suuuuuper disturbing very quickly. We simply can’t have nice things.
But before Dillard showed us all his stomach-churning bedroom secret (more on that in a bit), it did at least feel like the hospital’s growth plan was working out pretty well, all things considered. To be sure, the arrival of two feuding, rival communities left Maggie, Renata, and Negan with some difficult choices. After hitting each other hard, their collective injuries flooded the hospital, and their leaders couldn’t just let bygones be bygones. Yet this dangerous, precarious situation gave us some fantastic scenes that played out like an episode of The Pitt or ER if those shows were set during a zombie apocalypse, which made for a really tense and thrilling watch.
Hershel has also finally been coming into his own as a character this season, helping Luis save wounded patients with his new medical training and adding to the taut action. As random patients died of their injuries and immediately roared to life as walkers, the infected got a new lease of life too as the scariest things on the show, in a way they haven’t for a while. Hershel and Luis’ determination to save everyone they could, regardless of faction, gave both Maggie’s son and our new hospital gang a vital, immediate sense of purpose. Hershel even had to deal with the classic medical show trope of a low-priority patient dying anyway. Maggie watched on proudly, as well she might: imagine Dr. Robby trying to intubate while a raging zombie snaps at him! Hell yeah, Hershel is definitely starting to live up to being the son of two of our all-time favorite Walking Dead characters, and I’m hyped to see more ways he’ll rise to the occasion as this season goes on.
Surprisingly, Maggie and Renata’s plan to plough Central Park also started to come to fruition in this episode against all odds, with the rival communities putting aside their differences to help build the farm, and Negan ultimately proved wrong about their chances of success.
It’s not the only surprise Negan’s got coming, as we soon discovered. Having pushed Dillard to rid his bar of his walker friends, whom he said he could talk to and understand, perhaps I should have sensed that there might be more to his disillusionment, or even one walker he couldn’t quite part with, but I didn’t see the final reveal of the episode coming at all and sat here feeling quite icky for a while afterwards. Negan and Dillard’s interactions leading up to the reveal were so fun, and that misdirection definitely worked on me. From their “Ride of the Valkyries” singsong as they got ready to confront the masses to Dillard playing along with Negan’s fake-out game of human piñata, I found myself regularly thinking, “Love these two!”
Even toward the end, when Negan was happily chatting to Dillard about finding someone to make them a never-ending supply of booze and giving him pep talks so he’d keep socializing with real people instead of walkers, I was still very pro-Dillard. Jimmi Simpson’s addition to the cast has been great; he’s brought some terrific energy to the group’s dynamic, and the bar has been a fun new location for the show. I certainly wasn’t expecting to scream “Dillard, no!” in the episode’s final moments, but that is indeed what happened after The Walking Dead brought us one of the franchise’s most disturbing moments ever.
There are no two ways about it: Dillard is keeping a female walker tied up in his room. He believes he can communicate with her, and it’s heavily implied that he believes he’s in a romantic relationship with her. The implications of this are nauseating. For the first time, we hear what he hears when he looks at walkers. He hears this female walker desperately ask him to stay and be with her, and it’s awful.
We don’t know if there’s any key context to this twisted revelation yet. Did Dillard know this woman before she turned, or has he just picked up a walker to…keep him company? Either way, it’s super gross, problematic at best, and has been largely a taboo subject in The Walking Dead until now.
Negan may think everything’s going great with his new hang-time bestie, but as infuriated as he is by Dillard’s bar walkers, he ain’t seen nothing yet. Dillard is truly unwell, and since we’re the only ones who know just how unwell he is, we’ll be seeing all his scenes with fresh eyes from now on.
New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 premiere Sundays on AMC.
The Best Movies of 2026 (So Far)
There is something to be said about taking stock and counting your blessings at a year’s midpoint. For most that demarcation moment comes at the end of June, which is, after all, the year’s literal halfway mark. Yet we’ve always preferred taking stock in the dog days of summer, at least when it comes to movies.
While the summer blockbuster season is technically still in its final waning hours, culturally the film calendar is already transitioning between the high heady days of summer box office season and the awards movie season that kicks off in earnest in less than a month with a slew of September festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Telluride. In other words, it’s a great time to catch our breath, reflect, and think about the best movies we’ve seen this year. Below are our favorites listed in alphabetical order.
Black Zombie
In a media landscape where The Walking Dead and The Last of Us still prowl cable networks, and Resident Evil remains as popular as ever in video games, the zombie archetype seems as innocuous as it is ubiquitous. One senses that director and documentarian Maya Annik Bedward shares an affection for what “Z-culture” has become, even as she also reveals a deep understanding for the history of colonization and exploitation that has been reworked over a century of reinvention… and erasure.
Black Zombie explores this paradox in illuminating fashion, right down to a title evoking what was one of the most popular Hollywood horrors of nearly a hundred years ago, White Zombie (1932), a Bela Lugosi feature that was, in turn, based on a William Seabrook novel that offered a deeply exoticized, inaccurate, and racist “glimpse” inside the world of “Haitian Voodoo.” Working with both academics and historians, as well as real-life practitioners of Vodou ritual in modern Haiti, Bedward carefully essays the menace of such cultural appropriation, which to this day affects Haiti. She also observes how time, generations of people, and creativity can transmute something oppressive into radical and subversive works of art. It should not be missed. – David Crow
The Death of Robin Hood
An overlooked gem that deserved a greater share of Sherwood loot, Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hoodis a challenging film. It’s also deeply rewarding for those with an open mind. Moving beyond mere revisionism or deconstruction, the film stars Hugh Jackman as a grizzled 13th century bandit without an ounce of heroism in him. This is very much a villain who at one point in the film seems to be genuinely weighing the murder of a child.
Nevertheless, Sarnoski’s movie is thoughtful, elegiac, and profoundly beautiful as this rogue who’s built a myth of lies around his exploits finds some penance, if never redemption, when ending his days on an island run by an enigmatic prioress (a sublime Jodie Comer). Theirs is a big-hearted story about mortality, the delusions we tell ourselves, and perhaps more crucially in a modern context, the comforting delusions we create that obscure our sins and raise lasting horrors. It’s a small movie that leaves a big impact. – DC
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Featuring a 20-year-later legacy comedy on a best of list (even at the midyear) might seem a dubious thing. But anyone who works in journalism or publishing will tell you there is a lot more than boozy mimosa laughs to appreciate in Devil Wears Prada 2. It is of course remarkable how effortlessly a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci can slip back into the rhythms and archetypes they played two decades prior.
What surprises, however, is the way Wendy Finerman’s screenplay snapshots the real-time hollowing out of professional journalism at even once titanic publications like Runway magazine, a fig leaf nom de plume for Vogue. As much love letter, if not wake, for the vanishing media landscape that once made figures like Streep’s Miranda Priestly demonically powerful, but also divinely important in shaping and passing on cultural knowledge, Devil 2 is a rare thing among modern Hollywood blockbusters: an adult-aimed comedy with more on its mind than costumes and stunning locales. But those are fabulous too. – DC
The Drama
If writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s English language films have a recurrent theme, it is the grueling cosmic horror we inflict on ourselves while seeking the outside world’s validation, plus the deeply amusing gallows mockery such vanity invites. Yet one half the soon-to-be married couple in The Dramadoes not care an iota about what strangers think. Even when it comes to planning her first dance as a wife, Emma (Zendaya) wants to be honest and have fun. She literally calls the choreographed steps that she and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are paying to learn “performative.” But for Charlie, all of life is a stage performed for the outside world.
Unfortunately, that includes his own impending marriage when he learns a devastating secret about Emma’s past that she unwisely shares over too many drinks and gossipy stories about “the worst thing you’ve ever done” with Charlie and his friends. The fallout from her confession is catastrophic and certainly invites some deep soul-searching for both Charlie and an audience who lives in the same twisted American culture that makes her mistake possible. Still, it is how both parties, plus the worst friends ever, process this information—with Emma focusing on what it means for their marriage, and Charlie only what others might think or see in him—that turns The Drama into an epic crescendo of cringe comedy dread. Well, that plus a helping dose schadenfreude as we leer at Pattinson’s hopelessly ineffectual bridegroom buffoon. – DC
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
Never have the sex lives of celebrities and the Midwestern freaks who stalk them seemed so utterly wholesome and innocent as in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. Or read: God bless David Wain. He’s the same writer and director who gave us Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models, and now he teams with co-writer Ken Marino for this maximal absurdist retelling of The Wizard of Oz in the Merry Old Land of Hollywood. For it’s there that Zoey Deutch’s aggressively chipper Gail Daughtry sets off on a quest with her little friend Otto (Miles Guttierrez-Riley) to knock boots with her girlhood crush, Jon Hamm. Yes, that one.
There is a nutty benign nobility to Gail’s quest (her fiancé slept with his “celebrity pass,” so the bride needs comeuppance before they tie the knot), but the real joy is how everyone she meets along the way, from budding talent agents to real-life Jon Hamm co-stars like John Slattery, are immediately endeared and then galvanized by her plight. They all join her mission. Come hell or high-water, they will get Gail’s happy ending, but only after exploring every last magical wonderment in a town that boasts its very own Starbucks, McDonald’s, and back alley sex workers. Eat your heart out, Kansas. – DC
Hope
We’re cheating a bit to include this Cannes premiere that is playing right now in South Korea but doesn’t open in the U.S. until September. Even so, writer-director Na Hong-jin’s Hope is good enough to put on your radar right away. A deliberately paced sci-fi epic that is at its best when it gets eyeball-to-eyeball with white-knuckle creature feature dread—which is luckily most of the first and third acts—the film is initially told from the POV of a small town police chief (Huang Jung-min). He’s the kind of authority figure who might have a photo of Roy Scheider in Jaws on his mood board back home, but when put in life-or-death stakes he turns out to be deliciously incompetent. What overwhelms him is mostly left offscreen in the movie’s extended real-time opener, but this mystery monster is wrecking the community and leaving a trail of carnage in its wake.
Relying on both the Spielbergian lesson of keeping creatures hidden for the first half before pivoting to a Lovecraftian sense of scale and cataclysmic spectacle during a grand finale, Na swings for the fences in a movie where every set piece is exquisitely designed for brutal tension, shaky-cam scares that never disorient, and the queasiest stunt work I’ve seen this year. The monster might not be real, but the knot in your stomach is wholly legit when someone’s caught with one leg inside a car and the other on horseback. – DC
The Invite
Forget Christopher Nolan; Olivia Wilde deserves the title of Best Director so far for the feat she pulled off with The Invite. Based on the Spanish film The People Upstairs, and written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, The Invite stars Wilde and Seth Rogen as an embittered married couple who invite their bohemian upstairs neighbors Piña and Hawk (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) for dinner. When Rogen’s Joe starts complaining about the noise the couple generates during their lovemaking, Piña and Hawk reveal that they host sex parties—and would like Joe and Angela (Wilde) to join in.
Wilde could have easily let The Invite become a broad, Dinner for Schmucks style comedy or ask the audience to take sides against one of the four. Instead she guides the viewers through a range of tones, by turns giving each of the characters their moments of comedy and humanity. Rogen’s disengaged persona goes from affable to toxic, Cruz lets her exotic sex therapist snap, and Norton feels designed to play a sincere but annoying proponent of ethical non-monogamy. For her part, Wilde reveals new comic chops she’s never had the opportunity to display onscreen, all while taking the movie through its paces to finally land it on a frank but humane note that rarely makes it into American films. Simply breathtaking work. – Joe George
Obsession
One of the greatest success stories in the history of independent cinema, Obsession’s origin as a YouTuber’s second feature that cost less than $1 million is astonishing. But the cruelty with which Curry Barker inflicts cosmic judgment on his characters is even more impressive.
Mutating the famous Monkey’s Paw parable into something truly sinister, Obsession unpacks the “nice guy” archetype via Bear (Michael Johnston), a meek nerd who innocently wishes with a novelty toy that his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) love him more than anything in the whole world. Unrequited love might seem harmless enough, yet how Bear chooses to address (or ignore) the realization that his magically-induced girlfriend has become an empty vessel, or worse is a demonic presence that’s actively suppressing and/or torturing Nikki, is giving the movie a Rorschach-like value these days. Bear’s culpability has quickly become a dating scene litmus test. Meanwhile Navarrette’s performance is star-making work, with the hitherto unknown talent offering a fearless embodiment of humiliation and physical paranoia that seeps into the marrow. It’s an instant classic. – DC
The Odyssey
The saga of an Achaean king’s desperate need to get home after the Trojan War is one of the oldest stories in world history. It is counted among the bedrock foundations of Western culture. So for Christopher Nolan to adapt The Odyssey in a way that feels thrillingly urgent to the modern world in general, and the filmmaker’s own personal fears and fixations in particular, is a triumph of monumental scale that demands more than one viewing to get your arms around it all. With due respect to classicist Dr. Emily Wilson, The Odyssey has a lot on its mind, even as it modernizes Odysseus into a 21st century hero who must confront ancient perils both mythical and historical.
Deliberately echoing old Hollywood with its stuffed ensemble of wall-to-wall stars and the kind of grand scale moviemaking rarely seen since the days of David Lean or CinemaScope, The Odyssey is designed to conquer the senses with ceaseless IMAX photography and seemingly infinite resolution. However, it also invites a pensive and mournful meditation on the cycles of institutional rise and collapse in a pattern that spans from the Bronze Age to the decline of empathy today. It’s a morality tale couched in a deeply personal portrait of familial loss and restoration—played beautifully by Damon and Anne Hathaway—and a warning still about Greeks, or any who idolize how certain gifts can be given by their descendants. As Samantha Morton’s Circe might say, now back into your disguises. – DC
Pillion
A film we also counted among our favorites in 2025 because of its UK and festival rollout, Harry Lighton’s Pillion only reached the U.S. this year. So at the risk of bending the rules for another great film, Pillionremains one of the more haunted and unconventional love stories you’ll likely ever see on the big screen. It is also tenderly realized thanks to incredible performances by Alexander Skarsgård and an especially soulful Harry Melling.
Melling is the true lead of the film, essaying a young impressionable lad named Colin. Colin lives with his folks in a sleepy English village, making it hard to meet another gay man he feels a connection with. But he does connect to Ray (Skarsgård), a massive, Viking-shaped biker and BDSM enthusiast who loves leather almost as much as he adores submission. Colin is only too willing to provide the latter in a romance that can be deceptively funny and quietly sweet. There is also a bitter melancholy pulsing throughout because of Skarsgård’s intentionally elusive turn. By design, Ray’s motivations and aloof intentions are shrouded in a contradiction that makes the film’s ending both euphoric and depressingly human. – DC
Power Ballad
Admittedly one of John Carney’s minor musical dramedies, there is still so much warmth and affection to Power Balladthat it is difficult to not find yourself singing along. Featuring the best performance of Paul Rudd’s career, the film burrows happily into the no man’s land that exists in artistic creation, often behind a fog of obfuscating litigation. In this case, that lonely terrain is traversed by Rudd’s Rick, a happy family man and ex-pat Yankee living in Ireland with his wife and child when his cover band gets a gig to play at a swanky wedding. It’s there he meets an actual pop star named Danny (Nick Jonas), who appreciates Rick’s musical stylings enough to jam into the night with the middle-aged rocker. They even collaborate on one of Rick’s old ditties that Danny realizes has the makings of an anthem.
The pain of the film’s laughs take on an almost Homeric connotation of their own in this movie, with Rudd’s Rick being a bit of a Cassandra, aware that the song blowing up on the radio and Spotify is his. Yet no one will believe him; even his family begins to doubt as Rudd grows evermore frantic. Hence the third act soujourn from the Green Isle to the distant shores of LA take on a mania that is understandable to anyone who knows the thrill of creation—or the anxiety of seeing that work go out into the world. – DC
Project Hail Mary
Here is the secret for a great movie: Let Sandra Hüller sing karaoke. Her rendition of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” may remind some of Ines Conradi losing herself to “Greatest Love of All” in 2016’s Toni Erdmann, but the stakes are entirely different in Project Hail Mary. When her scientist character Eva Stratt breaks into song, it’s in the company of those about to die trying to save the world, including high school teacher turned reluctant astronaut, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling).
That apocalyptic moment of shared singing is just one of the times that Project Hail Mary can make you cry, which is a shocking thing to say about a warm-hearted and often wacky film about Grace fumbling around space as he makes friends with stony alien dubbed Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz, lead puppeteer of the character). Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, working from a Drew Goddard script that adapts the Andy Weir novel, feel like they’re building the ship as it launches, shifting from set-piece to set-piece despite its dual timeline structure. Not everything holds up when you stand back to think about it, but in the moment—especially moments where Hüller does karaoke—Project Hail Mary soars. – JG
The Samurai and the Prisoner
In the late 16th century, Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyū set down the crucial rules that came to define the nigh mythical chanoyu (tea ceremony). The seventh and final of these kindly commands was to “do things gracefully.” Every action, from whisking the matcha to placing utensils, should be done with care and elegance. Such patient fortitude applies to both the people onscreen and off in The Samurai and the Prisoner, the first period piece from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa—a helmer likely best known in the West for turn-of-the-century horror movies like Pulse.
The Samurai and the Prisoner is about a literal student of Sen no Rikyū, as well as one of the last samurai warlords to resist another daimyo hellbent on reuniting their realm over a throne of bodies during the Sengoku period (the “Age of Warring States”). The tea-smitten Araki Murashige (Masahiro Motoki) yearns to overthrow the hegemony of Oda Nobunaga, even as the Oda clan’s armies slowly take on a siege formation around our hero’s castle. But Araki also seeks to end the violence while preserving as much life as possible, including when he takes hostage Nobunaga’s vassal and most observant strategist, Kuroda Kanbei (Masaki Suda).
Together Murashige and Kanbei make for an unlikely odd couple in a film that at times flirts with being a murder mystery. Each turn of the season brings a new slaying or riddle in Murashige’s increasingly cut off castle. It’s an opportunity to match wits with the trickster in the dungeon, but it is also a greater chance for director Kurosawa’s movie to take a forbearing, painterly, and ever graceful stance on the merits of mercy… and their limits when seeking to be a harmonious aesthete in a starkly inharmonious world. – DC
The Sheep Detectives
The Sheep Detectives looks terrible. I’ll admit it. As a father of four, I’ve long since tired of seeing crass kids movies filled with big name stars who are, it turns out, awful voice actors. The idea of a bunch of sheep banding together to solve the murder of their beloved herder (Hugh Jackman) sounded like a recipe for disaster, sending my kids and I back to the safe and loving arms of Paddington Bear if we want proper children’s entertainment.
Turns out, The Sheep Detectives is the successor to Paddington, the perfect mixture of kind-hearted optimism and frank acknowledgement of the bad parts of the world. Directed by Illumination vet Kyle Balda and written by Craig Mazin of The Last of Us and Chernobyl fame, The Sheep Detectives follows Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Mopple (Chris O’Dowd), two sheep who lead the investigation into the shepherd’s death, following the techniques they learned from the mystery novels he’d read to them. What follows is, of course, a charming adventure full of idiosyncratic villagers in a tiny English town. But The Sheep Detectives also tells hard truths about bad people and dying, lessons children need to learn, but in the kindest, most loving way. – JG
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Peter Parker must suffer! And the Peter Parker of the MCU has had it way too good for way too long. Yeah, he went to prom with a supervillain’s daughter and, sure, his beloved Aunt May was killed at the hands of an extradimensional Willem Dafoe. But he lives a charmed life compared to his comic book counterpart. That changes in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a movie that spends time with the grief that No Way Home glossed over (something Tom Holland himself admits), showing Peter getting sadder and sadder as he lives without contact with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon).
That may sound like a dour gloomfest, but Brand New Day finds the humanity in Peter’s suffering, giving this Spider-Man an everyman quality missing from the franchise since they lost Sam Raimi. Even better, Brand New Day retains this drama without sacrificing the fun of a proper MCU film, complete with appearances by the Punisher, the Hulk, and a few other surprises we won’t spoil here. Spider-Man being Spider-Man, Peter prevails at the end, but not without going through some hard times, and the movie’s all the better for it. As always, bad times for Peter Parker are good times for fans. – JG
Toy Story 5
How, after three decades and a clear peak with the second film does Toy Story keep finding ways of making me cry? A lot of Toy Story 5 doesn’t work as well as one would hope, as the central conflict with Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) is hard to take seriously from the franchise that pioneered CGI over traditional animation. Furthermore, the Toy Story cast has grown so deep that fans are bound to be disappointed by the limited screentime of their favorites.
Still, when it comes to pure storytelling pleasures, Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote the script with Kenna Harris, knows how to play the game. This entry finally puts Jesse in the lead as she rounds up Buzz and Woody, as well as some new pals—including a snarky toilet-training device voiced by Conan O’Brien—to help Bonnie navigate the world-wide web and school bullies. The film delivers with plenty of inventive set-pieces and, of course, more than a few reveals that send adult viewers into their latest round of Pixar-induced sobbing. – JG
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Be it Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park or Mater from Cars, a likable supporting character in one movie rarely makes for a compelling lead in the sequel. So writer Alex Garland’s decision to make Dr. Ian Kelson the lead of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple seemed doomed. Surely, Ralph Fiennes’ gentle physician would no longer be the light in the darkness he was in 28 Years Later, right? His character would flatten out, especially when pit against the absurdly cruel villains led by the Jimmy Savile-inspired, devil-worshipping Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell).
Not so with Nia DaCosta behind the camera. Finally freed of the studio expectations that hobbled Candyman and The Marvels, DaCosta reminds why her debut Little Woods excited everyone, showing off her skills in The Bone Temple and in last year’s Hedda. Not only does DaCosta prove herself an expert director of actors, giving space for Fiennes and O’Connell to find complexities in what could have been one-note characters, but she knows when to lean into extremes. The Bone Temple contains some of the kindest moments you’ll see on screen as well as some of the cruelest via the “charity” that Sir Jimmy and his fingers inflict. Still, none of that prepares viewers for the showstopping “Number of the Beast” sequence, a scene that makes us wish there were 10 more movies about Dr. Kelson. – JG
Invincible Creator Robert Kirkman Is Trying to “Broom the Boring” Out of Comics
Robert Kirkman is not new to creating deeply layered mythologies set in foreign worlds. His pantheon of original characters and planets stretches across the outer reaches of new galaxies and timelines, giving readers a glimpse into cosmic, blood-soaked realities. He builds macrocosms with a few novel ideas and a pen.
This is extremely apparent in the pages of his newest series, Terminal. The comic’s first issue follows Marilyn Howe as she desperately searches for her missing sister, Alessandra, and discovers a secret war between two opposing factions of metahumans that each blur the line between good and evil. Co-written with Joe Casey of Uncanny X-Men fame and featuring art by Andy Kubert, Terminal issue #1 hit shelves July 22, just in time for San Diego Comic-Con 2026 attendees to snag a copy from the massive Image Comics vendor stand in the San Diego Convention Center.
“[Terminal] is similar to Invincible where it’s a very complex universe,” Kirkman tells Den of Geek. “There’s a massive cast of intertwined characters and a lot of cool subplots and. It’s gonna be another evolving story. So hopefully when you’re reading issue 25, and you’re reading issue 50, you’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe issue one of this series is the same book. Everything has changed so much along the way.’”
Kirkman and Casey’s “much darker” and “much more violent” new creation is indeed going to expand into an ornate narrative, drawing inspiration from the edgy, action-packed comic runs of the ‘90s while maintaining a very human emotional core. In particular, Kirkman lists Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, and Chris Claremont, alongside a slew of other X-Men writers and artists, as “firing on all cylinders” during the notably controversial phase of comic book history.
“The ‘90s comics were so focused on staying energetic and exciting and in your face and that’s something that we’re trying to bring back to comics,” Kirkman says. “I think as things have gotten more writer driven, things have gotten a little bit more intellectual, and when I hear ‘intellectual,’ I hear ‘boring.’ We’re trying to broom the boring out of comics as best we can.”
In addition to being the architect of an entirely new world, Kirkman is also bringing momentum to a decades-old intersection of franchises tinged with nostalgia. With the Energon Universe, Skybound Entertainment’s successor to the Hasbro Comic Book Universe, Kirkman is building on keystone properties such as G.I. Joe andTransformers and bringing their legacies to new readers.
Kirkman made waves with his Transformers run when he had Optimus Prime voluntarily release the Matrix of Leadership to Elita One after she challenged his leadership and Earth-centered approach to fighting the Decepticons. Optimus is now no longer a Prime, and Elita Prime is born with immediate plans to bring the fight against the Decepticons back to Cybertron.
The starlit intergalactic space opera that is Kirkman’s Transformers run unfolds just as any longtime Kirkman fan would guess: with twists, turns, and a complicated story. His writing style fits perfectly in the already epic Transformers mythos. What happens on each side of the galaxy, from Cybertron to Earth, will affect both ends of the universe as he delves further into the run. “I love the Transformers, and we’ll keep surprising and introducing new elements and doing some crazy stuff as we keep moving,” Kirkman says.
In addition to being a driving force behind the Transformers comic arc, Kirkman is also very much in the driver’s seat of his original EU title, Void Rivals. Void Rivals has been the ideal ongoing series for Kirkman to not only flex his worldbuilding muscles, but also recruit up-and-coming artists to bring characters from a plethora of famous franchises to life. Specifically naming Void Rivals co-creators Andrei Bresson and Lorenzo De Felici, current artist Connor Hughes, and incoming artist Frank Mazzoli, Kirkman praised the comic’s varied art teams.
“Between [Bresson] and [De Fellicci] who did the first 18 issues, it’s just some of the best art teams that I’ve ever worked with on that series, and [Mazzoli] is a worthy addition to that list.”
Just because Kirkman is taking his time to be thoughtful about the worlds he’s orchestrating doesn’t mean he’s forgotten to keep the hordes of Invincible fans fed. On top of working on the highly- anticipated fifth season of the Prime Video series, he’s also using spinoff comic series and the Invincible VS video game to carve a grisly path across the galaxy.
Kirkman keeps his cards close to his vest when asked what the Viltrumites are doing on Earth after Mark and Thragg’s tense truce at the end of season 4 and says (with a hint of irony) that they’re enjoying high-stakes poker. When asked whether we could see a new Invincible Universe comic centered on another character similar to Battle Beast, he only teases “We’ll see what the future holds,” and that he and Invincible co-creator Ryan Ottley “are having such a great time” fleshing out this relatively removed science fiction corner of their original comic.
What details Kirkman was able to share, though, will be extremely exciting for longtime Invincible fans. The ongoing comics — Invincible Universe: Battle Beast, written by Kirkman and drawn by Ottley, and Capes, written by Benito Cereno and drawn by Mark Engler — are sticking around for more stories; Invincible VS is getting new characters, potentially a DLC, and comic appearances from Ella Mental are on their way to Capes.
Most intriguing is Kirkman’s enthusiasm for Invincible season 5, though. It’s palpable in the air when he talks about it, even if he can’t share specifics.
“When you want to tell a long-form story over many, many seasons the way we do with Invincible, it’s great to kind of key in and find those things that it’s like, ‘OK, I know we’re on season 5, but now we’re doing this,’ and it’s very different, it’s very exciting, and it’s bringing new elements into the series,” he says before segueing into a litany of jokes about the fandom’s muted response to season 4’s standalone Damien Darkblood episode. “Season 5 of Invincible, it’s called Invincible: Damien Darkblood.”
The process for adapting the comics for the show’s modern audience has been rewarding for Kirkman. He describes bringing the various story arcs and characters from the pages of Invincible to the screen as viewing the source material “with new eyes” and picking new angles for foundational stories. He assures fans of his and Ottley’s brainchild that, indeed, they will be bringing what readers loved in print to life.
“We’re following the comic book series,” Kirkman says. “Anything that you love about that series that you’re just dying to see adapted, you will see that adapted.”
‘Bane Is Not a Villain’ – Batman: Knightfall Team on Adapting the Comic That Broke the Bat
Knightfall is based on the sprawling early-1990s Batman comic saga in which Bane methodically dismantles the Caped Crusader, both mentally and physically, in order to orchestrate a mass breakout of Arkham Asylum.
The original storyline unfolded across multiple titles and creative teams, making it a beloved but famously unwieldy piece of source material to adapt in its entirety. Choosing what context to include and what to leave behind would be no easy task.
Krieg and Morales didn’t shy away from this challenge, though, resulting in a debut installment that newcomers can easily follow while remaining rewarding for longtime readers.
“That is a challenge,” Krieg said, “because most of us who work on it do know this material really well, and you do have to take a step back and not assume the audience is going to know who these characters are.”
Krieg credited screenwriter Jeremy Adams with helping guide what went and stayed. The goal, he said, was never to hit every beat from the comics exactly, but to capture what fans actually remember about the story so the finished film feels instantly familiar while newer fans still get the big picture.
“Working with Jeremy Adams, who’s our terrific writer, we worked together for years, and the philosophy is: it’s not so much what exactly beat for beat happens in the story. The stories are old enough. What do you remember from the story? What comes to mind? So, the finished product should be like, ‘Oh yeah, that is the story,’” Krieg said.
Because of this, some elements simply couldn’t survive the transition from comic to film. For example, “Quasimodo’s no longer in the Batcave,” Krieg joked, highlighting the need for comprehension above funny nostalgia. Morales added that the Killer Croc-Bane fight from the comics also had to be cut for similar reasons, “it just didn’t make sense story-wise the way we were telling it.”
Other pieces, however, survived against the odds. Krieg singled out the plotline, “Joker as director,” a moment he was thrilled made the cut. Though not in this particular installment, the producer revealed, teasing, “You have to buy all three” films to see everything in store.
While the producers wrestled with structure, Mando was busy stepping into the boots of the film’s central threat, and for him, the role carried a longtime personal weight.
He recalled that his first action figure was Batman and that growing up he had a “warm, personal relationship” with the hero. Mando even bought the bat a Barbie girlfriend as a child, acting as a wingman, a gesture which Krieg jokingly teased Batman would really appreciate.
“From a very young age, Batman’s been part of my life,” Mando explained, so when he got to see the playback of his and Bane’s fight at the climax of the film, the actor had what he described to us as the “biggest geek out” moment of his career. “That’s when it hit me, and I said, ‘That’s my childhood,’” Mando recalls thinking.
That personal connection shaped how he approached Bane on the page. For Mando, building his take on the character meant leaning into Bane’s complexities rather than his brute strength.
Seeing Bane as a twisted reflection of Bruce Wayne, where the former was “imprisoned in poverty and misery” and the latter similarly imprisoned only in “luxury and privilege,” Mando said that contrast was central to making Bane more than a simple obstacle for Batman to overcome physically.
“His point of view is actually very intelligent and relevant,” Mando continued. In his view, Bane’s core belief is that since Batman’s overworld is chaotic and Bruce Wayne’s overworld is corrupt, the power structure needs to change. This mindset isn’t entirely wrong, even if his methods are monstrous.
“Bane is not a villain,” Mando argued, though Krieg was quick to add that, while the character’s motivations make sense, Bane is “terrible; he’s a terrible person.”
That tension between sympathy and menace was exactly the point, according to Morales, who agreed that avoiding a one-dimensional take on Bane was a priority. He praised Bane’s intelligence as an underused trait in past adaptations, saying, “That was the thing about Bane that was most interesting to me; that he could go not just toe-to-toe with Batman physically, but he could also outsmart Bruce Wayne.”
Morales praised how that mental unraveling played out in Mando’s dialogue and delivery, describing Bane’s taunts about Batman’s past failures as his way of “destroying him mentally.” For Mando, that cruelty doubles as self-reflection too. “Which is a reflection of Bane,” he added, “how he feels about himself” for not being able to save his mother. “It’s like a mirror.”
Zooming out from Bane’s brutal campaign, the conversation turned to what’s kept Batman relevant for nearly a century, echoing the late Kevin Conroy’s own reflections on the Dark Knight’s persistence in various media. Krieg spoke warmly about Conroy’s legacy and praised Anson Mount, who voices Bruce Wayne/Batman in the trilogy, for treating Gotham’s guardian as a “fully rounded, sensitive, [and] complicated character” just as Conroy had.
That vulnerability is baked into the very structure of the film, Morales pointed out, since this particular story leans hard into breaking Batman down rather than showing him at his most capable. “The whole first movie is about the destruction of Batman,” he said, noting the story allows only brief glimpses of Batman at full strength before systematically tearing him down. He praised Mount for capturing that collapse convincingly on screen.
Ultimately, Morales sees flexibility, the ability to break Batman down in one story and send him grinning into space in the next, as the character’s greatest strength. “He’s just such a malleable character in that way, and I think that’s why he’s so enduring,” Morales concluded.
With its blend of psychological depth, faithful nods to the comics, and a villain built to be Batman’s true equal, Knightfall looks poised to deliver on decades of fan anticipation, and it’s only the beginning of the trilogy.
Batman: Knightfall – Part 1:Knightfall premieres on digital on August 25, 2026.
TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar
Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond.
We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us!
Please note that all times are ET.
Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.
DATE
SHOW
NETWORK
Wednesday, August 12
Reacher Season 4
Prime Video
Thursday, August 13
Tires Season 3
Netflix
Sunday, August 16
Lanterns
HBO Max
Monday, August 17
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 18 (9:00 p.m.)
FXX
Wednesday, August 19
Average Joe Season 2
Paramount+
Thursday, August 20
Outer Banks Season 5
Netflix
Friday, August 21
Conan O’Brien Must Go Season 3
HBO Max
Wednesday, August 26
One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part Two
Netflix
Wednesday, September 2
LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Disney+
Thursday, September 3
The Gentlemen Season 2
Netflix
Thursday, September 3
Chad Powers Season 2
Hulu
Friday, September 4
Earle Meets World
Netflix
Sunday, September 6
The Marlow Murder Club (8:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, September 6
Marble Hall Murders (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Tuesday, September 8
The Real Housewives of New York City Season 16 (8:00 p.m.)
Bravo
Tuesday, September 8
The Drop: A Snowfall Saga (9:00 p.m.)
FX
Wednesday, September 9
Last Seen
Apple TV
Wednesday, September 9
The Paper Season 2
Peacock
Thursday, September 10
Crew Girl
Netflix
Thursday, September 10
Colin from Accounts Season 3
Paramount+
Friday, September 11
Physical 100: Italy
Netflix
Tuesday, September 15
Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence
BritBox
Tuesday, September 15
Dancing With the Stars Season 35 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Tuesday, September 15
R.J. Decker Season 2 (10:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, September 16
Neagley
Prime Video
Wednesday, September 16
Slow Horses Season 6
Apple TV
Wednesday, September 16
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 7 (8:00 p.m.)
Bravo
Wednesday, September 16
South Park Season 29 (10:00 p.m.)
Comedy Central
Thursday, September 17
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
Netflix
Thursday, September 17
The Traitors: New Blood
Peacock
Friday, September 18
Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2
Starz
Friday, September 18
MobLand
Paramount+
Sunday, September 20
American Hostage
MGM+
Monday, September 21
Celebrity Name That Tune Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Monday, September 21
The Voice Season 30 (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, September 21
Celebrity Weakest Link Season 2(9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Monday, September 21
Line of Fire (10:00 p.m.)
NBC
Tuesday, September 22
Best Medicine Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Tuesday, September 22
Doc Season 3 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Wednesday, September 23
Brothers
Apple TV
Wednesday, September 23
Survivor Season 51 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, September 23
The Floor Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Wednesday, September 23
99 to Beat Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Thursday, September 24
A Different World
Netflix
Thursday, September 24
Hell’s Kitchen Season 25 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Thursday, September 24
Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Thursday, September 24
American Horror Story Season 13 (9:00 p.m.)
FX
Friday, September 25
SWAT Exiles
Starz
Friday, September 25
20/20 Season 48 (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Friday, September 25
Dateline Season 35 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Sunday, September 27
The Simpsons Season 38 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, September 27
Animal Control Season 5 (8:30 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, September 27
Universal Basic Guys Season 3 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, September 27
Grimsburg Season 3 (9:30 p.m.)
Fox
Tuesday, September 29
LEGO ONE PIECE
Netflix
Wednesday, September 30
Scrubs Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, September 30
Shark Tank Season 18 (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, September 30
The Amazing Race Season 38 (9:30 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, October 1
War (9:00 p.m.)
HBO
Friday, October 2
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 7 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, October 4
Marshals Season 2 (8:30 p.m.)
CBS
Sunday, October 4
Tracker Season 4 (9:30 p.m.)
CBS
Monday, October 5
FBI Season 9 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Monday, October 5
CIA Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Monday, October 5
Harlan Coben’s Final Twist (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Tuesday, October 6
Bass x Machina
Netflix
Tuesday, October 6
NCIS Season 24 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Tuesday, October 6
NCIS: New York Season 1 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Tuesday, October 6
NCIS: Origins Season 3 (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, October 7
Carrie
Prime Video
Wednesday, October 7
Chicago Fire Season 15 (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Wednesday, October 7
Abbott Elementary Season 6 (8:30 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, October 7
Chicago Med Season 12 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Wednesday, October 7
Chicago P.D. Season 14 (10:00 p.m.)
NBC
Thursday, October 8
Below
Netflix
Thursday, October 8
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, October 8
Eternally Yours (8:30 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, October 8
Law & Order: SVU Season 28 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Thursday, October 8
Elsbeth Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, October 8
Cupertino (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, October 8
Law & Order Season 26 (10:00 p.m.)
NBC
Friday, October 9
Avatar: Seven Havens
Paramount+
Friday, October 9
Sheriff Country Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Friday, October 9
Fire Country Season 5 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Friday, October 9
Boston Blue Season 2 (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, October 14
The Lowdown Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
FX/Hulu
Wednesday, October 14
Helluva Boss
Prime Video
Wednesday, October 14
VisionQuest
Apple TV
Thursday, October 15
Crystal Lake
Peacock
Thursday, October 15
9-1-1 Season 10 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Thursday, October 15
9-1-1: Nashville Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Thursday, October 15
Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 (10:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, October 18
Maigret (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, October 18
The Gold (10:00 p.m.)
PBS
Wednesday, October 21
The Terminal List Season 2
Prime Video
Friday, October 23
Lupin Part 4
Netflix
Friday, October 23
Happy’s Place Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Friday, October 23
Newlyweds (8:30 p.m.)
NBC
Friday, October 30
Nocturne
Apple TV
Monday, November 2
St. Denis Medical Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, November 2
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins Season 2 (8:30 p.m.)
NBC
Wednesday, November 4
The Greatest
Prime Video
Wednesday, November 11
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Prime Video
Thursday, November 12
The Good Daughter
Peacock
Sunday, November 15
The Chosen
Prime Video
Friday, November 20
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3
Disney+
Wednesday, November 25
Blade Runner 2099
Prime Video
Friday, December 25
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
HBO Max
Thursday, January 1
Run Away
Netflix
Thursday, January 1
The Cult of the Real Housewife
TLC
Monday, January 5
The Wall Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Friday, January 22
Neuromancer
Apple TV
If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!
Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Movie-of-the-Week Approach Is a Streaming Era Bright Spot
In “Human Best Friend,” the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ortegas and Scotty go on a wacky adventure to figure out what happened during an inebriated evening on a pleasure planet. The stakes are low, the gags are broad, and it all wraps up with XO Una Chin-Riley singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in Klingon. This after the Event Horizon-inspired horror of last week’s episode “The Griffin Incident,” which, in turn, followed the heady sci-fi of the season 4 premiere “Valles Marineris.”
For Una’s actor Rebecca Romijn, weaving through tones is a sign of the show at its peak. “We were a little caught off guard with season 3 with the strikes some of the staff changes,” she admits at a press roundtable. “I think we all agree that 4 and 5 are the strongest seasons of the series. We continue with some of the genre bending.” That playfulness in style doesn’t just reveal a show at its best, but a rejoinder to the current norms of streaming television.
What are those norms? To find an answer, we need look no further than the series that gave birth to Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Discovery. Launched in 2017 as the anchor for the service then-called CBS All Access (now Paramount+), Discovery took a familiar franchise and gave it a glossy, modern upgrade, telling a single story about trauma and personal growth over the course of an entire season. Discovery hardly originated those tropes, and although the show grew much better at handling them in its third and fourth seasons, it certainly struggled as much as any other streaming entry.
Streaming and binge-watching has made episodic television all but obsolete. Where Star Trek could once air 24 more-or-less standalone episodes each season, Discovery and other shows told one single story, a bloated movie stretched out into eight-hours and chopped up into unsatisfying segments. The structure forced writers to come up with something like a character arc for each episode, but everything needed to be in service of the big reveal or payoff later on. Thus, seemingly every episode of Discovery asked Michael Burnham to both single-handedly save the galaxy and shed a tear about some memory or trauma, all in the hopes of keeping fans invested until the finale could deal with some multiversal threat.
Strange New Worlds has sometimes been guilty of the same problems (see the ultimate evil the Enterprise faced in season three). And it has carried over storylines across several episodes, especially Spock’s tangled love life and Pike’s knowledge of his fiery fate.
But these long-running stories have been less pronounced than the episodes that standalone. Season 2’s “Ad Astra per Aspera,” still the best Strange New Worlds entry, is a classic philosophical debate in the vein of “Measure of a Man” from The Next Generation, a chance for well-meaning people to consider the merits and problems of Starfleet. Season 2 also gave us the infamous “Subspace Rhapsody,” in which the Enterprise crew finds themselves singing their feelings, and even the weaker third season offered the high sci-fi bottle episode “Terrarium,” in which Ortegas befriends a Gorn.
“I would say that we’ve hit a stride,” declares Christopher Pike actor Anson Mount. “We’re so comfortable in our own machine that we built, and we have confidence in the structure under us now, so that when we play, we really play. Some of the most fun episodes that we’ve ever done are in these next 16 episodes, and they also have some of the highest stakes we’ve ever dealt with.”
For the cast, that means getting to learn skills they never had before. “I was a dancer, but I’ve never done Latin or ballroom dancing before getting on the show,” says Christina Chong, who plays La’an Noonien-Singh, before revealing the type of episode she wished the show could have tackled. “I wanted to visit some kind of underwater world. I pitched that so I could learn how to scuba dive and film underwater, but it never happened.”
“I want to go to a Robocop world, because Robocop is one of my all-time favorite movies,” laughs Spock actor Ethan Peck. “This is a very stupid joke, and it’s not a possibility and it doesn’t happen, so there’s no spoiler there. But that’s my dream. Robocop world.”
It’s hard to think of a modern show so willing to play with multiple genres, where even outlandish ideas such as an underwater planet or a Robocop world would be possible. Only Widow’s Bay, with riffs on Halloween and The Fog, comes close to playing with genres without being an anthology. But as Kirk actor Paul Wesley recognizes, the genre-hopping fits within Strange New Worlds because they hold to the central ethos of Star Trek.
“Every episode has a sense of mission and a sense of purpose,” Wesley observes. “Every time the show explores a world, we’re always wondering how it fits into Trek. And, at the end of the day, the show’s committed to a sense of exploration, imagination, and curiosity. To me, that’s the thing that connects our show and all the episodes, even if they seem off-track.”
Thus, even though it’s limited to seasons of no more than 10 episodes, Strange New Worlds gives viewers a taste of what used to be the norm of Star Trek series before the streaming era. With 24-to-29 episodes to play with each season, The Next Generation could send the crew to play Robin Hood, Deep Space Nine could stop for a ball game in the middle of a war, and Voyager could explore an idyllic Irish romance, all without sacrificing episodes about seeking out new life and new civilizations.
Every week, Strange New Worlds offers a surprise. We never know what genre we’ll get, but we do know it’s always pure Star Trek.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.
Blue Eye Samurai Season 1 Recap: When We Last Left Mizu…
This article appears in the new issue ofDEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here!
It’s been three years since Blue Eye Samurai debuted on Netflix, and not only is the wait finally almost over, but the second season will be well worth the time taken to develop its return. Created by Amber Noizumi and Michael Green, the award-winning animated series follows a vengeful samurai named Mizu (Maya Erskine) during Japan’s Edo period. Blue Eye Samurai season 2 will up the ante as the narrative scope goes global, all while the action gets even bigger. So let’s take a look at Mizu’s journey so far.
Enemies New and Old
Growing up as a mixed-race Japanese/Caucasian woman, Mizu faced a grueling amount of adversity and discrimination. This fuels a deep-seated fury within her and leads the budding samurai to train under Master Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a swordsmith who forges Mizu’s blade from a glowing blue ore found in a meteorite. As an adult, Mizu travels across the Japanese countryside, putting her expert swordplay skills to use while being tracked by a number of old enemies looking to settle their respective scores.
Among Mizu’s most prominent rivals from Blue Eye Samurai season 1 is Taigen (Darren Barnet), someone who bullied Mizu as a child. In the series premiere, Mizu defeats Taigen in a duel, and the young swordsman becomes obsessed with reclaiming his honor and recovering his wounded pride in a rematch against her. Taigen’s vendetta derails his romance with Princess Tokunobu Akemi (Brenda Song), who instead proceeds with an arranged marriage to the shogun’s son.
Mizu on the Move
Mizu is on her own quest, targeting the four European men who stayed in Japan despite its closed borders, with one of the men being Mizu’s biological father. Mizu blames this quartet for the mark of shame that has plagued her upbringing and vows to track each of them down, including their apparent ringleader, Abijah Fowler (Kenneth Branagh). Fowler plots to overthrow the shogunate and replace it with one more open to foreign influence in Japan, putting Mizu in the surprising position of determining the future of the country as she moves to stop him.
It’s not only enemies and rivals who follow Mizu along her journey. The quest is joined by Ringo (Masi Oka), a handless cook who is inspired after witnessing her in action. Despite her misgivings, Mizu agrees to take on Ringo as an apprentice, and he accompanies her on her adventure like a squire. Though Ringo is shocked by how single-minded Mizu’s thirst for revenge is, he continues to help both her and Taigen when they face a mutual threat in Fowler’s explosive scheme.
A Fiery Victory and Departure
The end of Blue Eye Samurai season 1 is riveting, with Fowler shattering Mizu’s sword before enacting his grand plan, successfully assassinating the shogun, despite Ringo and Taigen’s best efforts. However, Mizu directly confronting Fowler allows the rest of the shogun’s family to escape to safety. However, the fire that she sets to stop the villain also rapidly spreads across Edo. In the aftermath, Akemi decides to remain with the shogun’s family despite Taigen pleading with her to rejoin him. Meanwhile, Ringo relocates to the home of Master Eiji, believing Mizu died in the fire.
Never Alone
Cornered by Mizu, Fowler claims that she will have to travel all the way to London to track down the remaining two men on her hit list. Furthermore, Fowler makes the shocking claim that the woman Mizu believed to be her biological mother was someone who was hired to raise her, triggering even more questions. Mizu is last seen sailing toward London with an alive but captive Fowler in tow as she moves to face the last two figures in her lifelong feud.
To Parts Unknown
Even with this expansion of global scope in the story, Blue Eye Samurai season 2 still has deep roots in Japan. An early clip released from the new season revealed an apparent flashback, with Mizu participating in the storming of a Japanese castle, back when she still had her sword, as deadly as ever. And despite how fiery and intense the season 1 finale was, there are still plenty of living characters poised to join the new faces being introduced throughout the second season.
Blue Eye Samurai has all the intensity and sophisticated storytelling of any number of live-action samurai stories, while taking advantage of the bombastic possibilities of its vibrant and atmospheric animation style. Those qualities are only heightened in a second season that will not just go bigger and bolder with its narrative but deeper into the raw emotional arcs of its main characters. Mizu is out on the high seas, headed for strange lands, but no less determined and utterly driven. And there is still plenty of unfinished business and open questions waiting for her back in Japan, ready to dive into when Blue Eye Samurai returns this year.
Felicia Day Talks The Guild Reunion Movie’s Record-Breaking Kickstarter
Felicia Day is the geeky mastermind behind the massively influential six-season web series The Guild. Now, nearly 20 years after that project’s 2007 debut, she is returning with a celebratory reunion movie.
The crowdfunding campaign for The Guild Reunion Movie: Ren Faire’d launched July 15 on Kickstarter and has raised more than $4 million since, becoming the quickest movie to raise $1 million in the platform’s history (it reached the benchmark in three hours, surpassing Veronica Mars’ four hours). The campaign’s success speaks to Day’s ability to carve her own path in the industry, generating a loyal audience and establishing connections with creators that have the same passion for independent media. She is the founder of Geek & Sundry, an entertainment network known for hosting the now-enormously popular Critical Role from 2015 to 2019. She has also had supporting roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Day started The Guild to rewrite the stereotypes that follow gamers, especially female gamers, in Hollywood. And that goal has blossomed into a whole new space for gamers to connect on the internet. Day stopped by the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to discuss The Guild’s comeback and the processes of creating and funding a hotly-anticipated independent movie.
Den of Geek: You’ve said that you started The Guild because you wanted to reshape the image of gamers in Hollywood. What are some specific stereotypes that you disagreed with?
Felicia Day: Well, back when I started The Guild in 2006, people just thought ‘Teenagers, basements, gamer T-shirts, surly attitudes,’ and that was not ever my experience. It certainly isn’t the experience now, because gaming has grown up a lot and transformed, and is more inclusive and more diverse. But back then, when I said that I was a big gamer in an audition for a TV show or a movie or whatever, they just looked at me like I was such a weirdo.
Over and over again, I would audition for these parts, and I just never fit in anywhere, and it made me feel really isolated and weird. So that was one of the things I wanted to show the world: the true nature of who I was as a girl who gamed. That’s how The Guild started and continues to this day.
You mention feeling super isolated or weird during that time. Were there ever times when you felt defeated or like you kind of had to be what people wanted you to be?
Girl, every Thursday. Now, I will say that the last five or six years, I’ve kind of shed a lot [of that]. I think COVID really was the lesson that got through to my brain. I love working in Hollywood. I love acting and hosting, but for me, pitching TV shows, producing, and writing, it just was debilitating for me as a creator to put myself through trying to change my ideas for other people.
It was particularly hard because my stories were resonating so much on the internet, and yet they meant nothing to this other entertainment area. I think my career has proven that if you find the people who like your stuff, you can keep making it. And, in doing this Kickstarter for the reunion movie, that was the ultimate goal – to just completely unplug myself from expectations, from trying to prove anything.
Even though it’s been 20 years, this project has experienced a lot of support. Is it still crazy to see? Is it overwhelming?
We did a 12-hour live stream at the launch [of the movie’s Kickstarter]. Realizing that people were showing up, and in incredible numbers with incredible support – at one point I just started sobbing.
What was your approach to asking not only the cast to come back, but also getting the fans back again?
I will say do not underestimate the undertaking that is a Kickstarter. I’ve been working on the script for over a year and I have been working with the Kickstarter manager and my producer since the beginning of the year. If I could go back in time, we would have started six months earlier on all of it.
We were overwhelmed with the amount of support. We thought we’d have like four or five days to get more merch out or a week to get new celebrities with a card game announced. So we were kind of caught with our pants down because of this success, which you wouldn’t ever let yourself dream about.
What are some challenges that you anticipate, or maybe have already come into contact with, making The Guild intoa movie?
As far as the writing process, it is no different. Because in past seasons, aside from season 1 when I wrote it initially as a half-hour comedy, every season I wrote as a movie and then put the webcams in. So it’s really not any different structurally or creative wise.
There are a lot of logistical things though. We’re shooting 14 years later, and everything’s much more expensive, especially in Los Angeles. But, knock on wood, we make it so that I don’t have to change the script very much. I hope to make it an epic celebration of the show and also an epic celebration of ren faires, because I love ren faires and I would hate to not do the setting justice.
What is your favorite memory collaborating with your creative team and cast through the years?
Oh man, there are so many of them. I think one of my highlights in The Guild history is, we had a very viral music video called “Do You Want to Date My Avatar”, and it was a surprise. Thank goodness Xbox decided to come in and fund it. They got us a stripper bus and drove us in our costumes to the panel room [at SDCC]. Now they wouldn’t give us a big panel room; it would hold only like 250 people. There were literally 1,000 people outside waiting to get in. We walked in and we played the video, in our costumes, and it was probably the most electric cool moment I’ve ever had in my life.
What is your advice to creators who might be afraid that they don’t have the resources or even the audience for their own stories?
I always want to assure you that you’ve got what you need inside. You just have to dig. Your audience is your power, but it’s not the number of followers, it’s not the number of hits. It’s really a long-term relationship with your fans.
I know people from 2004 from the internet who are still my friends today who are helping me with my Kickstarter. To have those relationships, that loyal audience, you can’t trade it for anything. So don’t look for that external gratification to be the end all. Look at the process of the art. You never know what’s really going to strike your heart, what’s going to strike the audience’s heart. The sweet spot is finding where those meld and to just keep making stuff.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Calls Back to the Goofiest Episode of the Original Series
This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 3
“The Alpha shift is going on shore leave.” When Captain Pike makes this declaration in the cold open to “Human Best Friend,” the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the ears of the bridge crew perk up. So do those of the viewers, especially long-time Trekkies who know “Shore Leave” as a legendarily silly episode from season one of The Original Series, one that features McCoy chasing the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and hanging out with a pair of showgirls. Strange New Worlds invokes the spirit of “Shore Leave” but turns it into a character-building moment, one that exceeds mere callback.
But it wasn’t just fun and games for the people who made the episode, even when it came to choosing the song that Number One performs in Klingon for a karaoke session. “I didn’t get to pick the song,” admits Number One’s actor Rebecca Romijn admits to attendees of a cast roundtable. “The episode was originally scripted with a different song, but they couldn’t get the rights to do it. But I was thrilled with ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,'” she concludes, underscoring the tension that makes both “Human Best Friend” and “Shore Leave” such special episodes.
In addition to invoking “Shore Leave,” “Human Best Friend” plays as an inverted sequel to both last week’s episode “The Griffin Incident” and the season 3 Ortegas-based bottle episode, “Terrarium.” As with “The Griffin Incident,” the crew experiences hallucinations unique to their own personal psychology. But instead of playing on each member’s deepest fears, the planet’s psychedelic atmosphere brings their pleasures to life. Thus, M’Benga gets to be an affable bartender, Spock imagines getting a hug from Kirk, and Uhura takes a journey through a smokey party. And like “Terrarium,” “Human Best Friend” lets Ortegas do something more than fly the ship by pairing her with a TOS character, this time Mr. Scott instead of a Gorn.
And that’s where the “Shore Leave” connections come in. Directed by Robert Sparr and written by Theodore Sturgeon, “Shore Leave” sees Kirk searching for a suitable place for his crew to rest after three grueling months. As he and an away team scout the planet, they encounter surprising visions: McCoy goes chasing after the White Rabbit, Sulu battles a samurai, and Kirk punches out Finnegan, the bully from his days in Starfleet Academy. Eventually, Kirk and co. learn that they’re on a planet operated by a kindly caretaker (not the one from Voyager), who runs the planet like an amusement park.
The Caretaker is just one of many extremely powerful beings that the Enterprise encounters throughout its journey, not unlike the Metron of “Arena” or Trelane of the Q. Even though he creates trouble for Kirk and co., his actions are not malevolent, even accidentally. He’s actively trying to give the explorers what they want and need, even if they don’t realize it.
The same could be said of both episodes’ relationship to Trekkies. “Human Best Friend,” written by Kathryn Lyn and directed by Yana Gorskaya, indulges in lots of goofiness, something that was a lot of fun for the cast. “I tried to get them to give me the Mike Tyson tattoo for real, but they wouldn’t go for that,” Anson Mount jokes about the facial ink that Pike gets in the episode.
Even though production passed on that suggestion, Mount found that “Human Best Friend” gave him lots of room to work. “Really, a lot of what our characters did was left to our interpretation,” he explains. “So I just got to go in there and play whatever type of inebriated Pike I wanted to be, so I made the decision to be the guy at the rave who wants to go to the chill tent and hold your hand and talk.”
Romijn had a more difficult task, given that Una had to sing a song that everybody knows, but she had to say the words in Klingon. “It felt a little overwhelming because I know that there are at least 20 people in the world who speak Klingon fluently. I worked with the dialect coach to make sure I got all the pronunciation correct and the translation correct. I recorded the song first and then sang to playback. It was a massive challenge to me that I never knew I wanted, but I was really proud of myself and I loved everything about it,” she enthuses.
In that combination of hard work and fun that she describes, Romijn captures the ethos at the center of both “Shore Leave” and “Human Best Friend.” Both episodes begin with the crew exhausted, and both episodes emphasize the importance of the crew being at their best. In the case of “Shore Leave,” Spock reminds Kirk that he hasn’t been operating at optimal levels. In “Human Best Friend,” the crew has to be ready for a difficult diplomatic meeting.
And yet, both episodes acknowledge that people can only be their best when they’ve had sufficient rest—and sometimes, that rest takes one to the silliest places. But onStar Trek, silliness cannot be separated from proficiency, making shore leave an important part of any mission.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 3 Review — Human Best Friend
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 3.
Star Trek: Strange New Worldskicked off its fourth season with a pair of relatively dark — at least for this show — episodes. The premiere was a timey-wimey installment that saw the Enterprise crew forced to allow objectively terrible things to happen to preserve humanity’s future, while the season’s second outing was a literal horror story, complete with the sudden reappearance of a missing ship and what may or may not be actual ghosts. It’s about time we get to have a little fun. And that, in a nutshell, is what “Human Best Friend” is all about.
A wildly silly installment that calls back to beloved Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Shore Leave,” the story is both a buddy comedy that forces two at-odds crew members to work together to save the day and a character study about the ways the Enterprise crew chooses to let loose. The result is something a bit like Star Trek does The Hangover, just with more overt lessons about the power of friendship and teamwork involved. In short, it’s Strange New Worlds down to the ground. Is basically everything about this episode completely ridiculous? Absolutely. Is it a great time anyway? Heck, yeah.
“Human Best Friend” sees the ship’s overworked (and deeply stressed out) bridge crew dispatched for a week of relaxation on a pleasure planet that’s calibrated to meet everyone’s individual definition of whatever that term means. Thanks to its unique atmosphere, which essentially renders everyone some variety of inebriated within five minutes of arriving, there are few inhibitions, and basically no rules. Bonus, there’s also no technological record of anything that may or may not happen, since tricorders and other communications devices are locked down upon arrival. On paper, it honestly sounds like a blast. (My only real complaint is that Pelia isn’t somehow involved in this escapade. Imagine.)
Instead, the episode primarily revolves around Ortegas, Scotty, and the bizarre animosity that’s developed between them this season. Their mutual antagonism doesn’t actually make much sense, particularly since it’s difficult to remember them sharing so much as a scene before this season. The specifics of their shared dislike are fuzzy: Ortegas may or may not drive the ship too fast. Scotty may or may not be controlling and overbearing about system warnings. (It’s not a particularly interesting conflict, is what I’m saying.) But Melissa Navia and Martin Quinn make for an unexpectedly entertaining odd couple who must work together when they wake up with no memory of the previous evening — including how Ortegas broke her arm or why Scotty’s in a Mugatto costume. The pair sets off on a quest to find the rest of their crew (and the shuttle they’ve also apparently lost) in time to salvage an extremely important peace negotiation to end an alien civil war.
As they scour the resort for their shipmates, we’re treated to a variety of excellent little character moments for the whole cast. Since the whole trick of the pleasure planet is that it taps into a specific individual’s needs, its various delights are keyed into each crew member’s personal psychology. Uhura rejects structure and rules in favor of going with the flow. La’an finds an outlet for her violent tendencies. M’Benga eschews life-or-death decision-making in the name of mixing drinks. And Una channels her emotions into performing Klingon power ballads. (RIP to the legend Bonnie Tyler.)
Even Pike lets his freak flag fly, making the sort of spur-of-the-moment poor decisions — tattoos! – he would never allow himself to indulge in normally. Though, to his credit, Pike seems like he would probably be the most fun to hang out with, the kind of chatty, overenthusiastic drunk who would definitely help you fix your hair in the club bathroom and tell you your boyfriend sucks.
But, perhaps the group’s most emotionally meaningful moment belongs to Spock, whose brain decides to relax by “hallucinating” a vision of James Kirk, because what he needs most at the moment is a best friend to play chess and spill his guts to. Sure, it might be a little early to drop the BFF label, but the show hasn’t been subtle about the fact that it’s laying the groundwork for a truly generational friendship, and Ethan Peck and Paul Wesley have sold the growing depth of the bond between the two men. That it turns out Kirk was really there — ignore the truly insane contrivance of them both being on leave at this particular location at the same time — and genuinely wants to be someone Spock feels safe turning to in times of need. Well. It’s all very sweet. (And there was a hug!)
The episode builds to a surprisingly dramatic climax, given that its ending also involves a still-inebriated Pike and Una white-knuckling it through complex alien peace negotiations. Granted, Scotty and Ortegas’s plan to sacrifice themselves to save everyone else probably would have hit a little harder had it not involved a character who appears in both The Original Series and seven of the feature films that followed. But, at this point, Scotty’s not alone. Pretty much every major character on Strange New Worlds who isn’t Ortegas or La’an has industrial-strength plot armor at this point, which makes it difficult to take any supposedly existential threat all that seriously. Yet, as a sign of how far these two managed to come in a single episode? That, as the kids say, is growth. Maybe they can sing a duet at karaoke next time.
