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 on Star 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 Worlds kicked 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.

Robert Pattinson Terrifies as Chris Hansen in Full Primetime Trailer

Charlie, the nebbish and ineffectual bridegroom in Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, and Antinous, the smug and oily would-be suitor in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, could not be further apart. However, they share two specific characteristics: they’re both played to the hilt by Robert Pattinson and they’re each in their own idiosyncratic way deeply funny performances.

Even so, I don’t think we’re going to be laughing if the first full trailer of Pattinson’s third major turn this year is to be believed. For here is a movie that’s positioning itself to be a quite uneasy portrait of our media landscape today, and as personified by American journalist, presenter, and To Catch a Predator crusader, Chris Hansen.

As the core subject matter of writer-director Lance Oppenheimer’s Primetime, Hansen remains a polarizing figure from the glory days of cable news journalism. His true crime sting series, To Catch a Predator, lived up to its title by luring multiple probable child predators into incriminating themselves on-camera by showing up to houses where they expected to meet a young teenager alone. But the methods in which the series recruited young actors to play prospective victims (or bait) for these men, as well as many other behind-the-scenes facets of the series, have raised controversy and questions of journalistic ethics. Some of the more unseemly details behind To Catch a Predator’s fall from primetime grace will undoubtedly be dramatized in the new film.

Yet watching the first trailer for Primetime, it is curiously less the “true story” element in this tale of a trailblazer that comes through. The real-life Hansen was a pioneer in the blending and bleeding of “news” with lurid reality TV-adjacent infotainment, but this movie seems to take on a more skewed and almost horrifying perspective while positioning Pattinson’s TV personality as an idol for his 21st century age with piercing, relentless eyes as he commands from on high Superman’s Skyler Gisondo to play the honeypot. 

We don’t know a lot about the film other than it counts among its producers Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen (who collaborated on Hereditary, Midsommar, Eddington, and Bugonia, among others), adding credence to Primetime’s apocalyptic and perhaps darkly satirical tone in the trailer. Yet the film also counts Pattinson among its producers, which is a first for the English actor. This suggests the material might be especially pertinent to the Batman actor who has seen up close the leer of a celebrity obsessed media.

We suppose we’ll know more after Primetime has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it will compete for the Golden Lion. The film, which also stars Merritt Wever, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, and Anna Faris, opens everywhere else on Sept. 25.

One Night Only Review: Dystopia with a Happy Ending

Dating is hard. The modern world has taken this eternal truism and exacerbated it in a sea of apps and swipes—a digital marketplace often stripped of that ephemeral thing old souls call romance. Hell, it’s even hard getting a decent rom-com these days.

Which might be what makes One Night Only cleverer than it has any right to be. Like Will Gluck’s Anyone But You rom-com of a few years ago, here is a somewhat blue love story featuring up-and-coming talent, including one of the supporting pilots from Top Gun: Maverick. Yet unlike Anyone But You, the film’s leads have genuine chemistry and are working from a script that essentially pioneers a depressingly plausible premise for a dystopian view of an America about three clicks removed from the fall of Roe v. Wade and the manosphere’s ascent. What’s most surprising, then, is how this potentially terrifying parable is used as the backdrop for a relatively charming love story—or at the very least a winsome evening of foreplay.

Set in a not-too-distant future where vaguely alluded to “elected officials” have decreed via government mandate that all forms of premarital sex are now a felony—complete with biomedical chips in everyone’s wrists, a la SpaceX chastity belts— it’s a hellscape equal parts Fox News and The Purge. This drills all the way down to the fact that on only one night of the year, single people are allowed to, ahem, explore their options and indulge the new shorthand for the frisky holiday. “Swipe right” has become “mandate me!”

It should be a nightmare, but it also is a high enough concept to raise the stakes of romance to, if not life or death, then a rat race to avoid the new definition of “holiday blues.” Suddenly everyone is off the apps and in the human arena again, but they’re still fighting a ticking clock at the singles bar like Katniss Everdeen making a mad dash to the Hunger Games’ weapons depot. 

It’s in this race we meet Owen and Allie (Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro), two young people whose quest through Manhattan’s nightlife scene is interrupted time and again by the other’s presence. For his part, Owen had no intention to be spending his night out. Alas, his longtime girlfriend (Maya Hawke) waited until this very evening to announce she wants to explore alternatives around town. And their apartment. Meanwhile Allie is the traditional unlucky-in-love rom-com heroine who, despite spectacularly filling out a club-ready dress that her bestie (Sydney Cole Alexander) picked, is deeply insecure about being seen in it. Left to wing the night solo, Allie has reasons to be turned off by Turner’s aw-shucks pizza parlor owner… but he does look like Callum Turner, so you probably know how this is going to go. 

The movie benefits immeasurably by the easygoing energy and warm sense of give-and-take between these two leads. While Gluck’s previous Anyone But You benefitted commercially from the current star wattage of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, Barbaro and Turner’s romance is breezier and far more natural. Their flirtations and exasperations with one another as they keep waylaying the best laid plans go a long way of papering over the problems inherent in Travis Braun’s screenplay.

While the script itself is fairly ingenious in its worldbuilding, spending more real estate than you might expect showing how this premarital sex ban is policed, monitored, and enforced, as well as how it’s created yet further quirks and hang-ups among a generation supposedly allergic to sex, by virtue of its premise, the film is far more about the sensual than the emotional. Allie and Owen’s curiosity feel genuine, but it never quite achieves the grand romantic rush of its aspirations or influences.

The movie wears those touchstones on its sleeve, though, nostalgically recalling 2000s era rom-coms in particular since Allie is introduced as being an out-of-work singer who gigs by doing covers of Natasha Beddingfield’s “Unwritten” for a drug commercial. Later needle drops include Vanessa Carlton’s  “A Thousand Miles” and the slightly more retro “Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes. All of them remind of an era where the rom-com was plentiful, and Hollywood romance between preternaturally good-looking people was as common as car chases and machetes.

And it works better than a mere gimmick here since Barbaro has a lovely singing voice, as revealed when she played Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. Her vocalizations are similarly disarming in a shameless bit of plotting where it’s revealed Allie fears performing in front of people on stage. So guess what a pivotal moment in act two involves?

One Night Only is certainly unafraid of playing the hits, sometimes literally, but there’s something cozy about its half-forgotten familiarity. There remains a bit of the therapeutic as well. While Allie and Owen’s love story is not one for the ages, their eventual meet up at his pizza joint, after each has had their share of failed sex farce misadventures, is tender and wry. Whether it’s the vibes of buddies or soulmates we’ll leave to you to deduce, but it achieves an unlikely grace in the face of its bizarre premise.

So often dystopian parables are about the pain and anguish of living under the yoke of tyranny and oppression. Rightfully, it is the nightmare of anyone supportive of a liberal democracy. Yet likely because those ideals have been corroded so much in real-life over the past decade, One Night Only focuses on the interpersonal, self-care of the equation. Even in a perverse reality a few miles down the river like this movie, there can still be moments of lightness, humanity. Life. In the rom-com’s greatest heyday between the 1980s and 2000s, so many of these elevated high concept fantasies were about restoring a sense of happily ever after. In a far different context, One Night Only suggests chasing bliss, if even for a moment, with frothy abandon is an end unto itself. Whether or not that’s the definition of high romance remains debatable, but it is more than life-affirming enough in these times to be worth a summer night out.

One Night Only opens on Aug. 7.

X-Men ’97 Reminds Us That Gambit Was Always a Traitor

This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 8.

After months of teasing, the penultimate episode of X-Men ’97‘s second season, “Dead Man’s Hand,” finally reunites Remy Lebeau with his beloved Rogue and their fellow X-Men… but not in the way fans would have hoped. As much as Remy appears to retain his pure heart and endless charm behind his new violet facade, the episode finds him pulling sleights of hand and double-crosses that reveal him to be in the thrall of season’s big bad, Apocalypse.

When Gambit reveals his true plan and turns on Rogue, modern viewers of X-Men ’97 are shocked. Ironically, however, those who read Gambit comics in the actual ’90s knew this was coming, because Gambit has always been the biggest traitor among Marvel‘s mighty mutants.

Even Gambit’s first appearances feel like a double-cross. Due to a publishing schedule snafu, Gambit first hit comic book shelves in 1990’s Uncanny X-Men Annual #14, by Chris Claremont and Arthur Adams, the last part of the Days of Future Present crossover. He doesn’t do anything in that issue, which mostly focuses on an adult Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers fighting the hunter from the future Ahab (and, in a strange choice by Adams, a group of thugs modeled on Clarence Boddicker and his gang from Robocop).

Instead, he just hangs around, confusing anyone who hit the comic shop regularly in those days. Gambit first properly appears in Uncanny X-Men #266, released a month later, by Claremont and penciler Mike Collins. In that issue, Storm—temporally reverted back to adolescence—takes cover in a fancy house while running from the Shadow King, the same house where Gambit happens to be lifting fine art. Upon seeing a bunch of adults chasing a teen, Gambit intervenes by using his original power of charging up objects by shooting green lasers from his eyes.

Despite that power set, Gambit arrives mostly as the character we know. He’s endlessly charming and already peppers his speech with French phrases. When Storm informs him that his act of charity has caught him in a larger conspiracy, Gambit takes it in stride, waving away the idea that he’s in great danger by flashing a smirk from his glowing eyes. But even at that point, Gambit was enshrouded in mystery, especially when he officially joined the X-Men. Although willing to stay at Xavier’s and join the fight against the Shadow King, even after the psychic monster’s defeat at the end of the Muir Island Saga, Gambit never revealed to anyone the details of his past.

Behind the scenes, there were two reasons for Gambit’s taciturn nature. First, Wolverine had become a hit in part because we knew so little about his past. Even though much of his backstory remained untold in 1990, especially compared to today, nearly two decades of Wolverine stories had taken away some of the mystery, dulling his cool somewhat. Second, Claremont loved to set up storylines sometimes years in advance, and it was clear that he had a larger narrative in mind for Gambit that wouldn’t be told for a while.

Unfortunately, Claremont had left the franchise mere months after Gambit’s debut. In his place, other writers tried to continue building on Claremont’s model, especially as Gambit grew more popular. Most notably, 1991’s X-Men #8 by Scott Lobdell and Jim Lee sees the first meeting between Gambit and Bishop, who hails from a dark future. Bishop expresses nothing but admiration for the rest of the team, but he gets angry when he realizes that Remy Lebeau has already joined the X-Men. He attacks Gambit, blaming him for turning traitor against the X-Men.

What did Gambit do to earn Bishop’s ire? In the fine tradition of ’90s comics, Lobdell never gets the chance to explain, as he leaves the book before telling that tale. As a result, Gambit’s had a few less-than-honorable moments that could count as the event recorded in Bishop’s history books. One, of course, is the decision to give himself over to Apocalypse and become Death, as discussed next week. Another may be the fact that he stood against Bishop to protect Hope, the first mutant born after the Scarlet Witch wiped out the population—a child that Bishop thought would lead to his horrible future.

But the most obvious reason is Gambit’s participation in the Mutant Massacre, as revealed in Uncanny X-Men #350 (1997), by Steve Seagle, Joe Madureira, and Andy Smith. In that issue, we learn that Gambit had been forced by Mister Sinister to gather the Marauders and lead them to the Morlocks, where they would slaughter runaway mutants in one of the most horrific moments of X-Men history. The revelation severs Gambit from the rest of the team for some time, especially Rogue.

Of course, Gambit is hardly the only mutant to do something awful—just look at Wolverine skewering Rachel Summers, something that comes up in Uncanny X-Men Annual #14. And by now, several members of the Marauders, who actually did the Mutant Massacre, have been accepted onto the X-Men, including Sabretooth and Greycrow. Moreover, Gambit has long since been rehabilitated in the eyes of readers, and is mostly seen now as Rogue’s lovable husband, who happens to have a bit of a naughty streak.

X-Men ’97 gives us a glimpse of that character back when he had more rough edges. Does that make Gambit a more interesting character? The fans will have to decide.

X-Men ’97 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

The Shards Episodes 1 and 2 Review: Meet the Teen American Psychos of Autoerotic Autofiction

This review contains spoilers for The Shards episodes 1 and 2

“This story is fictional. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

We see that fine print a lot, but it’s front and center as we dive into FX’s The Shards, and for good reason: this is a Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis joint.

Murphy, who has been criticized in the past for sensationalizing real-life tragedies and taking creative liberties with the stories of those involved in them, has certainly found a lot of success despite those accusations. American Crime Story, Netflix’s Monster anthology series, and the recent Love Story have already attracted a staggering amount of eyeballs and ire, but this new project is trying something even more risky by bringing on controversial American Psycho author Ellis as a co-creator. Indeed, it’s based on his 2023 horror novel of the same name, which describes the events of his senior year of high school in 1981. Except it doesn’t, because Ellis decided to embrace autofiction and go meta with this one, making up a creepy story set in his own past.

It was a largely positive move. Readers found Ellis’ return to the slick, satirically narcissistic themes of his debut novel Less Than Zero hypnotic and enthralling, and Murphy must have enjoyed it as well. At least, it excited him enough to turn the admittedly overwrought tale into a TV show, which, yes, also follows “Bret Easton Ellis” (Igby Rigney, Midnight Mass) living a privileged life among privileged friends dabbling in sex and drugs as they slowly figure out who they’re becoming. Naturally (for both Murphy and Ellis), events take a grisly turn when a mysterious new student called Robert Mallory (Homer Gere) arrives just as a serial killer called The Trawler happens to start terrorizing the city.

Richard Gere’s son Homer is not the only nepo baby in The Shards. Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford, plays Bret’s just-out-of-reach childhood best friend Susan Reynolds, while Evan Rachel Wood pops up as the messy mother of his horny, coke-sniffing girlfriend, Debbie Schaffer (pop singer Hayes Warner). The good news is that some of the more questionable casting choices fit the vibe of the piece, where money and connections are flowing freely. Bret’s extremely dominant and occasionally irritating narration often jabs at both yet stretches a lazy arm around them in between 80s pop needle drops, pulling them (and us) closer in these first two episodes, where we get to know our beautiful characters’ foibles and traumas, mainly through his eyes.

The eyes with which we personally see Ellis’ sprawling, autofictionized past are in for a treat, it turns out. 1981 Los Angeles has been meticulously reimagined through some truly impressive and eye-popping production design. The sets, costumes, makeup, and props are exquisite, and directors Murphy and Michael Uppendahl (Marvel’s Legion) pleasingly linger on the details. Every room we slide into feels surprisingly unique and flawless, even as the sickness of all The Shards’ insidious excess and horrifying violence builds in our stomachs, roiling like a silt of acidic sludge under the most beautiful scenes imaginable.

There’s a touch of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet here, a touch of The Bling Ring, a touch of The Great Gatsby. And a touch of everything Murphy and Ellis clearly love to dramatize about the darkness within, power dynamics, rewritten pasts, and sexual identities. “You always embellish everything,” Susan says, mocking Bret’s suspicions about new boy Robert, who is acting seriously sus from the get-go. “I’m a writer; it’s my job,” Bret fires back. Nothing about The Shards is subtle.

The performances aren’t subtle either, save for Rigney (who looks so much like a young Topher Grace it’s unsettling). He gives everything to his version of an on-edge Bret as he avoids coming to terms with being gay in a society that just won’t accept that lifestyle yet, effortlessly adopting some of the author’s real mannerisms and still making the role his own.

We watch Bret try to impress his perfectly coiffed girlfriend’s married, predatory father (a delicious Wes Bentley having the time of his life) as he clings to hopes of becoming an important writer. We watch his pained expression as he has sex with said girlfriend while “inspired” by the jacked body of his male friend, seen dancing in slow motion as pool water and sweat drip down his abs in the balmy LA night. We watch him struggle to be blasé as he tries to force down his feelings. We watch him follow the squirrely Robert around as he yearns to uncover both him and his secrets.

Robert taunts him, intrigues him, frightens him. When he gets his claws into Bret’s stoner fuck buddy, Matt, we know Bret’s investigative mind will stop at nothing to figure out what really happened. But is Bret becoming obsessed with a serial killer, or is Robert just another handsome Tinsletown distraction? It’s a fun premise that would be even more fun if The Shards didn’t keep getting bogged down in telling, not showing. “I drove home carefully because I kept crying so hard,” Bret’s narration tells us over a shot of Bret driving home carefully because he keeps crying so hard. Like a lot of the excess in Bret’s circle, it feels unnecessary and infuriating; the unfortunate narrative impact of consuming TV and movies while doomscrolling.

Though we might feel reasonably unsure at times with some of the other stuff this show seems determined to explore—after all, Murphy and Ellis are lifting bodies, living and dead, of “fictional” teenagers from the pages of Ellis’ novel—the genre, characters and story are there to acknowledge this for us. For all its issues, The Shards is glorious and compellingly trashy. You probably won’t be telling your cooler, more discerning, prestige TV-loving friends about how good it is (they’d probably call it “The Sharts” and laugh, which you’d have to admit was a pretty good joke), but you’ll keep watching it because there’s a part of you that simply can’t look away.

Murphy has, for better or worse, done it again.

New episodes of The Shards premiere Wednesdays on FX.

20 Years Later, Pan’s Labyrinth Still Reflects the Reality You Want to See

The world of Pan’s Labyrinth unfolds with tenderness, pain, and spirit over its two-hour runtime. Each frame of the film displays a care and intentionality that few other cinematic experiences achieve. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Den of Geek attended a Hall H panel celebrating the now-classic film’s 20th anniversary, caught up with several folks who helped bring it to life, and took in an exclusive access screening of two 3D scenes ahead of the movie’s imminent re-release.

Del Toro’s magnum opus, the 2006 war drama-meets-dark fantasy upended what cinema could be upon its release. Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl who moves with her mother (Ariadna Gil) to a new home in Francoist Spain’s countryside with her stepfather, the sinister Captain Vidal (Sergi López). While the conflict between the fascist Spanish government officers and the Maquis, a resistance force against the Franco dictatorship, is igniting around her, Ofelia is caught in a fantastical adventure to prove she is Princess Moanna of the fairy realm. Guided by sprites and Faun (Doug Jones), a forest spirit with vague intentions, Ofelia must face the fantasy and human worlds together. 

Pan’s Labyrinth flits between fairy tale and war story, with each plot feeling distinct yet connected by a young girl perceiving two struggles separated by magic. That girl, expertly played by an at-the-time 11-year-old Baquero, is the emotional core of the film. Baquero and del Toro each went to great lengths to ensure the link between the two worlds was understood, and that even the mature themes were processed.

“I was prepped going into it,” Baquero tells us. “Guillermo del Toro made it a point to really make sure that I understood the world and there was a lot of inspiration that we drew from. He sent me a bunch of comic books and movies to watch so I was aware of Ofelia’s world and the pain that she had to go through. I was very much present and connected to the material, and Guillermo guided me through that.”

Depicting the contrasting worlds of fantasy and fascism was not an easy task, but the Oscar-winning cinematographer behind Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo Navarro, sought out ways to distinguish both narratives visually. 

“The real reality we addressed as real reality, in the fascist world and in the people’s fighting world. Since we had another narrative to take care of we have to differentiate them very well,” Navarro says. “Going through one to the other, we ended up finding the tools to navigate that.”

This differentiation, Navarro says, manifests in the film’s color palette; the real world is drenched in dark blue hues and shadows, while the fantasy realm is well lit and warm toned. Additionally, Navarro said the camera crew used nature (tree trunks, leaves, etc.) to transition between the two narratives in the film. 

In addition to being a timeless vessel for themes of violence and childhood, Pan’s Labyrinth also introduced several iconic creatures. Faun and the Pale Man, both portrayed by Jones, have each become symbols of del Toro’s religion of monsters. Jones weighed each character’s motives and narrative purpose when playing them in front of the camera.

“The ambiguity of the Faun really attracted me because you don’t know if he’s a good guy or bad guy till the very end,” Jones says. “Is he leading her down a good path or a bad path? We don’t know. Turns out he’s a good guy in the end, and he just needed to put (Ofelia) through the tests.”

He contrasts this with the Pale Man, a much less ambiguous creature and a now-iconic antagonist, but also jokingly points to the suspected financial motivations del Toro had when tapping him for both roles.

“The Pale Man is just pure evil, but he doesn’t know he’s evil,” Jones said. “He just woke up hungry and children seem to be his appetite. I thought that Guillermo was being a cheap ass to just get, you know, two characters for the price of one.”

Pan’s Labyrinth was always going to be a special movie, but few — if any — people working on it thought it was going to be the figurepiece it is today in film history, according to Baquero. 

“I don’t think anyone knew that it was going to be what it’s become,” Baquero says. “A lot of people obviously believed in the movie very much and fought for the movie to be made, and I was well aware, but the impact it had back then, but also how much of a movie it has become, I think no one expected that.”

The stars of the film each brought life experiences into the proceedings while taking new ones away from it. As time has gone on, those lessons have evolved alongside the movie’s cultural impact. This allows the retrospective looks at their performances to reveal new angles of their various creative choices. 

“It’s like being a parent and a grandparent now,” Jones says. “I know what it’s like to guide a child to the right decision, hopefully. And so the Faun character, I felt very playful with him, but I wanted her to test and to trust her own instincts. Here’s a task for you to do (or however many tasks I had set forth in front of her), let’s just see how you play this out. Maybe you’ll make the right choice, maybe you won’t. Let’s find out in a very playful sort of way. So he could relate to the child in her.”

At the Hall H panel, del Toro, Navarro, Jones, and Baquero shared stories from the set, discussed the film’s legacy, and began hyping up the theatrical re-release audiences can look forward to in October. In particular, del Toro vocalized the reaction to the film that has been his favorite: that of the young painters, musicians, and writers who are inspired by it.

“Art saves your life sometimes,” del Toro said. “You know, sometimes, especially when you’re young, you’re vulnerable, and you’re down and you’re crushed; in comes a piece of music, a song, a movie, an illustration, an image, a character that tells you ‘Hang on, hang on. It gets better.’ This movie connects like that with artists.”

The re-release will be a touched-up version of the movie, with the ability to see it in 3D for the first time, and will be released on October 9, a birthday present for del Toro himself. 

Q&A with E.M. Wilson: A Chat With The Writer Behind Viral Book ‘Situationship’

During this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Den of Geek co-hosted a writing event alongside original fiction platform Wattpad. Bestselling romance author E.M. Wilson, who got her start on Wattpad, sat down to talk about her unconventional path to finding her voice and reflecting on the way the platform changed the trajectory of her career. Known for her 2025 breakout novel Situationship and the publication of her most recent novel Breakup for Two, Wilson’s journey is only beginning, especially with Situationship’s recent adaptation in a webtoon comic series.

From architect to author, E.M. Wilson is now a part of the newest generation of storytellers to design an era of impactful literature via a platform that has redefined fiction and fandoms for years to come.

Den of Geek: Where did your career as a writer start? 

E.M. Wilson: That’s my favorite question, honestly. My degree is actually in architecture, so all through school, all I read was textbooks. When I got out, I was like, ‘You need some fiction.’ I need some downtime, at least. So I started reading a bunch of romance. And then had this sense that I could probably tell a story like that too. I started writing to see where it went. It seemed like it wasn’t gonna go anywhere at first, and then I joined Wattpad and found out that it had some potential.

Do you think that architecture has structured your writing process?

In a strange way, yes, because I see the formula of romance as very specific, actually. There’s a very specific structure that you follow, especially when it comes to reaching that happily ever after. For me, I see that in math. Everything is a three-part formula because you have a beginning, middle, and end for everything – from the whole book itself to every chapter as well. In that way, I’m like, ‘let’s math it out. Let me see if my pieces are correct. Let me see if that’s the right answer.’

How did you get started on Wattpad? 

I originally started off-platform, by which I was writing for myself and submitting to some agents. Then I finally got someone to get back to me on something, and they reamed me [laughs]. It was meant to be helpful, but they basically told me to give up. They were like, ‘Hey, you know, not everybody has the strength of writing. You don’t really have an author voice that’s discernible. So maybe take a step back and see if this is something you really want to pursue.’ And I was like, ‘OK, well, I guess I’ll pack it up.’ 

Then Wattpad was very much a place where, at the time that I joined, people were starting there, finishing a draft, getting feedback from people, and then pitching it. So I was like ‘At least I can have somebody tell me how to get better in some way,’ rather than ‘You suck, move on,’ right? So that’s how I joined that. 

A few books later, I was picked up for publishing, and under the umbrella that is Wattpad/WEBTOON. Everything’s kind of gone hand in hand, especially in traditional publishing: the book itself, audiobook, international deals, and now the webcomic. It’s just one big happy [family] for me. 

How does it feel to have loyal fans and an actual “fandom?”

It’s crazy, honestly, because most of the time I’m just at home writing in a dark corner of my house, you know? People are enjoying this? Why? I think there’s definitely a different culture on all the apps too. On Wattpad, especially when I started, it was very intimate. Like I knew everybody that was following me at first. I started with zero, and then I exploded to 30,000 pretty quickly. 

I still maintain that inner circle because we have a certain number of followers of people who read, and then there’s only a certain number of people who like it. Only a certain amount, like about one-to-five percent of people actually comment. So I’m having actual conversations with those people about my work in the comments and it’s just irreplaceable feedback. Of course, we bond over the parts that I put in the book that meant a lot to me, and they see themselves in it too. You build little relationships, and I have people, my OGs, who I’m still in contact with. They DM me all the time, so it’s nice. It’s lovely.

I also think that’s such a unique situation for an author too. Like you can’t say Stephen King, James Patterson, or even like Maya Angelou had that. That generation of authors didn’t have rapid feedback from their audience. 

It would usually come from critics, agents, publishers, all of that. When you’re on Wattpad, people are just enjoying the story and talking about it. So you’re seeing how they’re reacting to the good parts of it, rather than looking at the words for words’ sake – not really seeing the forest for the trees that they’re looking at. You get a lot of passes for bad grammar, punctuation, spelling. People go in knowing it’s a draft, and so it really is like a plot level type of interaction with people, which is beautiful.

Do you prefer actual critic feedback or fan feedback?

Fan, 100 percent. Especially once you are published. Once it’s out there, I can’t do anything about it. You know, at least on Wattpad, I can edit it six million times and it’s perfectly fine. Somebody says, ‘Hey, I don’t like this word anymore.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s gone.’ But once it’s out in the world, it’s out and it’s no longer mine. I’ve written it. I’m in love with it. I want to keep it out there, but it’s my gift to the world. So anything you have to say about it, feel free. But for me, my job’s done. There’s nothing I can do. 

At that point, there’s no such thing as constructive criticism, because at that point, I can’t do anything about it. There’s no way I can reconstruct any part of it. So at that point, all of it is criticism, which I just can’t do anything with. That has its place, but having that before is when I can do something.

Have you encountered any really impactful fan testimonies, or just people who have really connected to your stories in emotional ways? 

Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve cried with people before. Yes, I have since the book has come out, initially with a new audience. I think a lot of people connect with Teagan and her experience either being an eldest daughter themselves, or being an international adoptee, being raised as your only Black friend, or having white parents without that identity yourself. 

There are multiple facets to her that I think a lot of people see themselves in, and knowing that she’s somewhat based on me loosely, I can relate in a lot of those ways as well. But I’ve had people DM me. Someone-  not only did she grow up the same way my main character did— where she was a prep school kid; she went to Columbia; she was studying law— but she looks exactly like the cover too. 

So she sent me a picture of her in the store buying it, and she’s posing next to it. Looks exactly like Teagan. And then she had gone to some formal event with her parents, and she had almost the same outfit she wears on the cover. And I was like, ‘Cool, I’m gonna cry now. Oh, that’s amazing.’ She said, ‘Thank you for writing something that I could relate to; I’d never see myself in books.’ I’m like, ‘I’m sobbing.’”

I appreciate women of color in writing so much, especially in recent years. I feel like we’ve seen so much of us. 

It’s so beautiful because there’s such a zest to stories when you’re not going just for the commercial aspects of it being kind of like a basic love story. You’re getting into the social topics. As well as the difficulties of existing, but then also when you avoid some of those things, it’s like being loved out loud and being able to enjoy life in the face of all of this. I just find so much reward from i t- not just seeing yourself in a story, but also just having that other side of humanity that you get to experience in literature too. I just… I love it.

Situationship and Breakup for Two are now available on Amazon. You can read the Situationship comic for free on Webtoon.

X-Men ’97 Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Playing a Bad Hand

This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 8.

The first season of X-Men ’97 played an impressive trick on fans. The show took Gambit, a divisive character ever since his first appearance back in 1990, and leaned so hard into his charms that even his biggest detractors had to pay respect. His full triumph came in the episode “Remember It,” in which Gambit sacrifices himself to take down a murderous omega mutant, without ever losing his signature smirk.

That season ended with Apocalypse finding one of Gambit’s cards, signaling to comic book fans that he would return in the form of Death, one of Apocalypse’s horsemen. Post-credits scenes from the previous two episodes have shown us that transformation, and now he’s here in full in “The Dead Man’s Hand.” Perhaps it’s that sense of inevitability, perhaps it’s the still-lingering high of “Remember It,” but “The Dead Man’s Hand” feels a bit perfunctory, a lower point in an otherwise excellent season of superhero television.

After a flashback to Rogue’s final moments with Gambit in “Remember Me,” we find Xavier and the team enjoying a poker game. The moment of levity, which both sets the gambling motif repeated throughout the episode and acts as one more Star Trek: The Next Generation reference, breaks with the arrival of X-Force. Cable and his team have come to inform the X-Men that they’ve found a charred playing card next to the corpse of Apocalypse, and the mutants agree to investigate together.

The resurrected Gambit is three steps ahead of them, returning to his old New Orleans stomping grounds to visit his former fiancé Bella Donna and his brother Bobby in the Assassins Guild. Using new, still undefined powers, Gambit transforms the Assassins Guild into new Horsemen and sets them on a mission to recover a jewel that Apocalypse gave to the X-Ternal long ago.

At this point, “The Dead Man’s Hand” could have collapsed. The Assassins Guild and the Externals both come from the ’90s impulse to introduce shadowy conspiracies with ties to mysterious heroes, specifically Gambit and Cable. They were exactly the sort of thing that made Gambit so tiresome to some fans, the sort of thing that the first season of X-Men ’97 made us forget by emphasizing Remy’s charm.

Fortunately, “The Dead Man’s Hand” follows suit with season 1 and puts Gambit at the center, particularly his relationship with Rogue. Voice actors A. J. LoCascio and Lenore Zann, the latter of whom has been playing the character since the original series, do standout work here. LoCascio doesn’t overplay the danger presented by Death Gambit, but he does soften the character’s one-liners, adding a layer of sadness. Likewise, Zann subtly transitions from sorrow to hope to anger, as she finally reunites with her beloved, only to be turned into a pawn by the malevolent force controlling Gambit.

Even before Xavier engages in psychic warfare with Gambit, we know the evil behind him: Apocalypse. How and why Apocalypse has possessed Remy isn’t clear yet (some longtime readers may recall the storyline the The Twelve… sorry), but the mystery suits Gambit, as does his final moments with Rogue.

The episode doesn’t quite earn its climaxes, in which the power of love allows Rogue to free Gambit’s consciousness from Apocalypse—and, in an even less developed plot point, allows Cyclops to inspire Cable to join his telekinetic powers with those of Jean and Psylocke to save the team. But these shortcomings are mitigated by some solid fight scenes, which include a transformed Nightcrawler taking out his teammates and, of course, a psychic fight with Xavier.

Astral plane battles are always a highlight of X-Men stories, and X-Men ’97‘s higher budget and better animators give the show a chance to make those scenes stranger, more psychedelic than anything we’ve seen before. While it’s cool to see Xavier don a version of the psychic armor he’s worn since fighting the Shadow King in the 1980s comics, the battle itself feels a bit rote. Outside of the glowing auras around them, little happens in this fight that couldn’t occur in the real world.

By the end of “The Dead Man’s Hand”,” the stage has been set for the final episode. Apocalypse has reestablished himself as a threat, the X-Men have come together again around Gambit, but X-Force doesn’t believe that Remy’s completely himself, which is enough for them to join forces with X-Factor against their fellow mutants. All exciting stuff, even if it took a lesser episode to get there.

X-Men ’97 season 2 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

X-Tra Thoughts:

  • The backstory of Apocalypse’s relationship with the X-Ternal basically continues from the original animated series. However, given how much X-Men ’97 has gestured at Krakoa-era comics, I was surprised that we didn’t get something like a wink at Arakko. But, then again, given how much I just griped about Assassins Guild and Externals lore, I should be glad that they kept things streamlined.
  • That said, I’m shocked that X-Men ’97 didn’t take advantage of the fact that Psylocke was a underused in the original series to follow the comics and just make her Kwannon. Betsy Braddock’s butterfly psychic effect always looks cool, but with the comics openly admitting that it was gross to have a white woman take over the body of an Asian woman, I’m surprised that this Psylocke still has purple hair and an English accent.
  • One more comics fan gripe: I can accept that Nightcrawler can teleport constantly without getting tired out on the show, because it makes for some cool fight scenes. But I cannot accept that he can bamf away with two entire superhero teams. Kurt has limitations!
  • “News was freaking the kid, so I put on The Exorcist.” J. P. Kallark is killing it this season, and we aren’t getting nearly enough Morph.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Reframes The Organic Web-Shooters Fan ‘Debate’ in Ironic Ways

Even a quarter-century later, David Koepp is still pretty much in awe of James Cameron’s audacity. While Koepp is the lone credited screenwriter of the first live-action Spider-Man movie from 2002, not every innovation and wrinkle in that landmark film came via the Jurassic Park scribe. In fact, the most contentious element was something Cameron dreamed up back in the ‘90s when he penned an 80-page “scriptment” (part screenplay, part treatment outline) for a Spidey film. Back when he gave the hero organic web-shooters.

“He pushed the metaphor of adolescent sexual development really far,” Koepp told Variety during the movie’s 20th anniversary in 2022. “There’s a great moment where Peter wakes up in bed with web strands all over himself. It was like, ‘Wow, I don’t know if we can do the wet dream thing, but that was pretty funny!’”

It’s a metaphor about growing up, adolescence, and all the icky bits Stan Lee avoided when he decided on having Peter Parker build mechanical web-shooters in the original comics. Still, even though Koepp and eventual director Sam Raimi demurred from Cameron’s most suggestive innuendos, their maintaining the allegory triggered an early internet firestorm that nearly divided the House of Marvel fandom in half. Which makes for an interesting contrast 25 years later on the other side of Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s release.

Without diving into spoilers that weren’t already revealed in the Brand New Day trailers, the latest Tom Holland spin around New York is bringing the organic web-shooters back. And unlike Koepp’s bashfulness, Holland and company are leaning into the icky bits, with Holland’s hopelessly frustrated-in-love Peter waking up one morning to find himself cocooned upside down in a big ball of web.

He also realizes to his initial horror that it’s webbing coming directly from his wrists. While there is a token acknowledgment to his forebears with Holland’s hero saying, “Peter Two had organic webs and he was pretty cool,” referring to the nickname for Tobey Maguire’s reality-hopping Spidey in No Way Home, Holland takes things further when he shoots webs from his wrists in such a gooey manner that our current “Peter One” appears ready to upchuck.

It’s a great gag and the beginning of a larger narrative about accepting natural changes in your body. It also has not only been welcomed by fans but treated as almost a non-event online. After so many years, and so many Spidey films across the multiverse, nobody really cares about “organics vs. mechanical web-shooters” today.

That’s now how it went down the first time.

“I don’t think that the fans thought I was the right person to direct Spider-Man in general,” Raimi told Variety in the same retrospective. “And then the organic web-shooters—when the fans found out I was going that way, they tried to have me removed from the picture.”

Also looking back on that moment, Koepp is right to suggest it was an inflection point that signaled things to come.

“There was an internet culture that was just starting to flex its ability to be ugly,” the screenwriter said. “That was probably my first experience with what we’ve come to deal with all the time now, which is the distraction of people telling you what they think your movie should be before, during, and after you’re making it, and doing it very publicly.”

There is, indeed, a lot of that going on at the moment. Whether it’s the vocal online contingent who spent close to a year bemoaning Lupita Nyong’o’s casting in The Odyssey, or many of the same critics drawing knives in advance for the ultimately poorly received Supergirl or, conversely, the beloved Barbie a few years earlier.

What’s changed is both the organization and amplification of online noise for films potentially still years away from cinemas, as well as how studios respond. In 2000, when it first leaked that Spider-Man would feature organic web-shooters, battle lines were drawn in the sand online, and internet websites like Superhero Hype! or Ain’t It Cool News would see hundreds or more users weighing in about “organics vs. mechanical.” Meanwhile the filmmakers just… went ahead and ignored them, releasing a well-made superhero movie back when that was a rarity into theaters and reaping years of box office and critical success for the effort.

So much so that when the much more revered Marvel Studios incorporates organic web-shooters into their fourth solo Spidey flick in 2026, it’s no longer something that needs to be hidden or defended; it’s in fact a selling point in the marketing that appeals to multiple generations who grew up with the Maguire’s Spider-Man.

It’s interesting to compare that to how studios these days are more inclined to buckle in fear to a divided fanbase following, say, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and afterward make a follow-up that backtracks on the “controversial” elements. In a world where early internet forums and comment sections have been replaced by X, Instagram, and TikTok, the last thing most studios try to do is tune out the noise.

Maybe they should if they want to make something so loved it’s getting homaged 24 years later by Tom Holland?

Star Trek: SNW’s Ethan Peck and Paul Wesley On Forging of Kirk and Spock’s Friendship

At its core, Star Trek is the story of humanity embracing an optimistic future, overcoming their petty differences to learn how to go boldly into unexplored parts of the universe. The original show has gone on to launch numerous spinoff series and movies with various crews and missions, opening space for lots of adventures and philosophical discussions. But for many, the appeal of Star Trek comes down a friendship, more specifically the friendship between James T. Kirk and his first officer, Mr. Spock, originally portrayed by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

Kirk and Spock haven’t quite hit that point on the prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But for Ethan Peck, who plays Spock, and his co-star as Kirk, Paul Wesley, the show is already laying the groundwork for a legendary friendship. “We get to bring a lot of our off screen chemistry to screen,” Peck says during the cast and crew’s visit to Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con. “I enjoy the job of scrutinizing Kirk and his brash decision-making and impulsive behavior.”

“I feel like you enjoy doing that to Paul,” interrupts co-star Christina Chong, who plays La’An Noonien-Singh, to which Peck agrees. “Yes, and I get to bring that from off-screen and onto the screen,” he asserts.

Set on the USS Enterprise in the years leading up to Kirk’s command, Strange New Worlds stars Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, who leads a team of explorers that includes first officer Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) and helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia). Although he still serves on the USS Farragut during the period covered by Strange New Worlds, Kirk finds himself visiting the Enterprise a few times every season, giving him a chance to get to know the most human soul he’ll encounter on his travels. And already, they see the personality traits that will bring the two together.

“Kirk has this trust in Spock right away. And he’s kind of amused in Spock’s very skeptical and uncertain of way of being,” explains Peck.

“Kirk is drawn to Spock and he’s not sure why,” adds Wesley. “It’s interesting,” he says with skepticism as he turns toward Peck. “Like our friendship.”

For Wesley, Kirk’s relationship to Spock is just one of the ways the show explores the man who will become one of the greatest heroes in sci-fi history. “For my character, the whole point of this prequel is to dig into the vulnerabilities of Kirk and understand why he is the way he is on The Original Series. There, he’s a much more poised, decisive man who seems infallible, in a way. We wanted to show the vulnerabilities that led him to embrace the sort of shell that he creates later.

“The second episode, ‘The Griffin Incident,’ is a perfect example of some of the trauma he experiences,” Wesley points out, referring to a story that sees Kirk wrestling with his relationship with his infant son, David.

Kirk and Spock may be the primary draw for causal viewers of Strange New Worlds, but they’re hardly the only characters who have grown over the show’s four seasons. In season 4, Ortegas gets pushed out of her comfort zone for a whacky adventure with another classic character, engineer Montgomery Scott, played now by Scottish actor Martin Quinn.

“We’re going to see more of a beef between engineering and the pilot,” teases Navia. “I look forward to fans seeing Erica play alongside Scotty more, because I love getting Erica off the bridge as much as I love being on the bridge with her.”

That love means also letting fans see the more difficult side of her character, especially as she works through the emotional fallout of the season 3 standout episode “Terrarium,” in which Ortegas survived only by bonding with a Gorn. “The PTSD and grief Ortegas experienced in season 3 is always underneath the things she does, just like everything she does. All those feelings are still there, and you’re going to see tension as she tries to figure out if it’s coming form a place of hurt, a place of anger, or places of things we haven’t seen yet,” Navia observes. “But that’s Star Trek, right? Finding yourself amid the chaos.”

Like Ortegas, La’an has been going through chaos for the past few seasons, dealing with her legacy as a relative of Khan Noonien Singh, recently becoming a Romulan, and navigating her relationships with Kirk and Spock. Difficult as it has been for her character, Chong has one word to describe the experience.

“Fun! It’s fun because I get to express myself more,” says Chong. “In season 1 especially, La’an was emotionally repressed. But season 2 opened her up a little bit, and then she had a romance with Spock in season three. And as I grow as an actor, I’m able to have more fun playing her.

“We’ll see where that ends up later this season,” Chong teases. “You’ll see where she stands in episode nine.”

Even beyond the promise of more development for La’an, Chong’s hint excites viewers because every episode of Strange New Worlds has been so different. But for showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, that’s all part of the franchise, whether they’re making an episode about a courtroom hearing, a battle with aliens, or a musical.

Myers explains, “We start with Star Trek and we end with Star Trek. We look back at TOS and then The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. All along the way, we make notes of the many times they tried and succeeded at doing different types of stories. I think the critical thing is, A) Make it Star Trek, and B) Make sure there is a genuine human story to perform.

“No matter how terrifying, scary, or funny the episodes are, we try to emphasize the heart of the people going through it. That’s the real trick, making sure that by the time the episode ends, the viewer feels like they’ve been on a human journey that they can understand on some level. They can understand why the characters do the things they do.”

Myers can talk about the process of making Strange New Worlds with such confidence because this five season journey is done, at least for the people making it. The fifth and final season, which won’t air until next year, is already “done and finished,” says Goldsman. “We were very fortunate, because a weird evolution of circumstance made it seem like season 4 would be our last. So we did everything that we really wanted to do in season 4. And then when we weren’t canceled, when we negotiated a reprieve to say goodbye.

“So the last season, abridged as it is, is meditation—a Strange New Worlds meditation, so it’s not very meditative—on how we say farewell. We have given it a lot of feeling, and a tremendous amount of heart, so we can say goodbye in the best possible way.”

Thoughtful as Goldsman’s observation is, Myers brings it back to the point, joking, “In fairness, we did the last season to keep Ethan and Paul from having to separate because they got too teary.” So while the full depth of Kirk and Spock’s friendship may be ahead of them, behind the scenes, they’re already more than shipmates.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.

Pens, Prose, and Pints: Recapping Wattpad’s SDCC Writing Club

San Diego Comic-Con is known for its massive exhibit halls and blockbuster panels, but tucked away from the convention center chaos, Den of Geek and Wattpad carved out something different this year: a night built entirely for writers. 

The partnership took shape as Wattpad Presents: The SDCC Writing Club, led by Wattpad Head of Content Alessandra Ferreri, which transformed Mission Brewing into what organizers called the ultimate writing lounge for the night. The event welcomed everyone from seasoned professional authors to aspiring storytellers and fanfiction writers eager to try their hand at something new. 

The stakes of the night went beyond inspiration, too. Attendees who posted their own Writing Club stories to Wattpad using the tag #SDCCWritingClub were entered for a chance to be featured in Den of Geek magazine. One winning story, chosen jointly by the Wattpad and Den of Geek teams, will receive up to a four-page printed excerpt complete with professionally commissioned artwork as well. 

Writers in attendance also had the chance to meet Wattpad author E.M. Wilson and walk away with an advance, signed copy of her newest novel, Break Up For Two. 

Three authors spoke with Den of Geek during the event, and while their paths into storytelling varied, their advice converged again and again on the same principle ideas: growth as a writer requires discomfort, deadlines, and an honest relationship with one’s own work. 

The first of those authors was Punko, creator of Stagtown and Cinderella Boy, who spent much of the night discussing her creative philosophy. She was candid about the necessity of criticism in an artist’s development, urging writers to seek feedback rather than avoid it.

“Your goal as an artist and a writer, as a creator, is to create the best possible stories you can. You will not do that if all you do is seek out praise, because you don’t grow from praise; you grow from criticism,” she said. “It can be painful, but it’s necessary. It’s like riding a bike; you’re going to fall off of it, but if you don’t do that, then you’ll never learn.” 

The same clear-eyed approach carried into how she talked about balancing personal creative instincts with audience expectations. “What’s interesting for you to write as a writer is not always interesting for the audience to enjoy, and you have to know the difference between the two,” she explained. 

Beyond advice, Punko also shared exciting news about Stagtown‘s film adaptation. When asked how much involvement she would have in the project, Punko spoke warmly about partnering with LuckyChap Entertainment, the production company founded by Margot Robbie, and filmmaker Benjamin Brewer.  

“I feel extremely blessed that Margot and everybody at LuckyChap are very interested in working with the creators, like the source material, and really staying honest to their vision. And we have a terrific director, Ben Brewer. I’ve spoken to him on Zoom. He’s funny; he’s great,” she said. 

Derek V. Song, author of Fantasy High, brought a craft-focused perspective to the night, breaking down the two archetypes writers tend to fall into. “They say there’s two styles of writers; there’s architects and gardeners,” he explained. Gardeners let the story unfold as they write and, in Song’s words, “scare the fuck” out of him, while architects plan everything out before putting pen to page, which is more his style. 

Song offered a refreshingly practical take on writer’s block too, arguing that it’s often a symptom of too much freedom rather than too little. 

“I think writer’s block is almost like a liberty, you know? If I’m working on something that’s just me that has no deadline, no expectations, that’s where writer’s block comes in,” he said, which contrasts heavily with when the writer works on his WEBTOON series, “where readers are expecting a new episode every Monday.” 

In those cases, “there is no room for writer’s block” according to Song. 

Song also spoke of how innovative WEBTOON was when he first discovered it. After reading Lore Olympus, a well-known cultural titan, and discovering the WEBTOON format for the first time, Song remembered marveling at the virtual scroll and effect features on the app. 

“[WEBTOON] was doing things I had never seen before…I remember reading [Lore Olympus] for the first time back in 2019 and thinking, ‘Holy shit,’ like this is so new, so different,” he recalled. 

Rounding the night’s lineup was author E.M. Wilson, who, before signing copies for attendees, spoke with us about her career and time with both WEBTOON and Wattpad. Her road to publication, however, was far from smooth. Reflecting on her early attempts to break into traditional publishing, Wilson recalled a discouraging round of feedback from an agent. 

“They basically told me to give up… ‘Not everyone has a strength in writing, like you don’t really have an author voice that’s discernible,” Wilson remembers being told. 

Rather than quitting after that reflection, however, Wilson turned to Wattpad. “At the time that I joined, people were starting there, finishing a draft, getting feedback from people, and then pitching it,” she said. “So it was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s where I’m at. At least I can have somebody tell me how to get better.” 

That decision eventually led to a publishing deal under the Wattpad/WEBTOON umbrella, spanning books, audiobooks, international deals, and now a webcomic. “It’s just one big happy family for me,” Wilson concluded happily. 

And so, after a night of drinking, drafting, and dreaming, it was clear the Writing Club had done exactly what it set out to do: get people to write, be creative, and have fun! 

Grimm Stars Reunite for 15th Anniversary, Reveal Where the Movie Stands 

NBC’s Grimm captivated the urban fantasy genre in 2011, riding a wave of supernatural storytelling inspired by shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. The show, along with peers like The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf, is part of defining a decade of series that ignited the romance fantasies of millennials and Gen Z. 

The show, which aired from 2011-2017, centered around Portland, Oregon homicide detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli), who learns he descends from a line of hunters who keep the balance between humanity and supernatural monsters, known as “Wesen,” the German word for “creature.” The hunters, known as Grimms, are the only ones who can see the true forms of the Wesen, who stay cloaked in human facades to blend in with the world. 

Throughout the series’ six seasons, Burkhardt made allies in the form of his partner Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby), who learns the truth of the supernatural occurrences he’s witnessed in season 2; and Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), a reformed werewolf-like Wesen called a Blutbad. As Burkhardt navigates the world of the supernatural — he quickly learns that some Wesen are dangerous killers while others want to live peaceful lives. 

As the show progresses, we are introduced to other important characters like Rosalee Calvert (Bree Turner), a fox-like Wesen called a Fuchsbau, and an apothecary who aids Burkhardt and his team with potions and knowledge. Also turning up are Nick’s fiancée Juliette Silverton (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch), whose story takes many pivotal twists and turns, and police sergeant Wu (Reggie Lee), whose dependable and witty nature earned him the role of fan favorite. Not to be forgotten is the main antagonist, Captain Renard, played by Sasha Roiz, whose mysterious connections to the supernatural are detrimental to Burkhardt and his crew.

While Grimm has been off the air for nine years now, this year marks the show’s 15th anniversary and the cast reunited at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to celebrate the milestone with a Hall H panel and a trip to Den of Geek’s interview studio. The cast is as close and playful as ever – giving fans hope for future projects, thanks to their continued enthusiasm and love for their characters and the show. Yet, despite the announcement from Peacock over a year and a half ago of a Grimm movie in development, all projects to continue the Grimm legacy are currently in limbo. A fact that has been corroborated by the cast. 

“We don’t know what’s happening,” Giuntoli replies when asked about his character’s fate in the project. 

“That has not been greenlit,” Tulloch adds. “Maybe it will be now. Maybe if we get everyone excited, there’ll be a revival.”

While the future of the urban fantasy is still up in the air, the cast can take some educated guesses on what their characters have been doing since viewers last saw them — hopefully, even giving some fans some much-needed inspiration for their AO3 fan fics. 

“We can hypothesize, yeah. Nick wouldn’t be throwing high kicks anymore. He wouldn’t be doing that,” Giuntoli says. “He would have a face like mine except the beard wouldn’t be colored dark. It would just be silver. A lot of scenes he would brood; it would be 100%.”

Though Burkhardt wouldn’t be a spring chicken, it is fair to say that Captain Renard will stay, well, Renard. 

“Look, he’s always going to be up to something. You know, he’s a pretty self-involved individual,” Roiz says. “It’s hard to pin him down. I think that’s why he was like a character that fans love to hate and love to love and back and forth. I enjoyed that ride, and I think he’d probably continue on something similar. He’s only as loyal as he needs to be, and then he’ll back himself again.” 

“He’s kind of like a school criminal,” Hornsby adds.

While the cast is hopeful for more years of playing these amazing characters, they are equally grateful for the 15 years with the show and the loyalty of its long-time fans. 

“There’s always a dream that the cast that you fall in love with, they’re all friends in real life. I don’t think that’s always true. In our case it really is. What you’re seeing on the screen is genuine love,” Ginutoli says. “And we wanna say thank you so sincerely to the fans.”

“The best out there. We love you. Thank you. Thank you so much,” the cast collectively adds in agreement.. 

It would seem the cast is already starting to get their wish, as the videos of the Grimm reunion are gaining impressive viewership numbers across social platforms. A TikTok showing the cast behind-the-scenes of a photoshoot has already amassed 464.8k views and an interview with Variety Events has garnered 63k more. 

Hopefully, fans can see their favorite characters, both the kind-hearted and shiesty ones alike, back on their screens soon.

Composer Bear McCreary Talks God of War, AI, and His Film Music Inspirations

The line between the musical world and the cinematic world has always been blurry for Bear McCreary. The celebrated composer behind scores spanning a plethora of mediums has an oeuvre rich with grandeur and storytelling.

At San Diego Comic-Con 2026, McCreary sat down with Den of Geek to discuss his newest album, The Singularity: Ekleipsis, as well as his work on Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, his upbringing in the peak cinema scores, and more.

Den of Geek: Your music is an integral part of the worldbuilding for many of the projects that you’ve worked on. How do you go about shaping your music to kind of mirror those universes that it exists in?

Bear McCreary: The lucky thing about my job is that I get to take part in universes that already have so much detail filled out whether we’re talking about a film, a television show, a video game. So I try to find an in, something like God of War, or, I did a pirate drama called Black Sails. If there’s a historical or geographic component, well, that’s a great place to start. 

Things like The Walking Dead or Battlestar Galactica, it’s more of a challenge because you could do anything. So I try to find a way to create a voice for a project, a musical voice that is  memorable and stands out. 

I probably learned this from my mentor Elmer Bernstein, who was my mentor for like the last 10 years of his life. One of the things he taught me was you have a few seconds to grab an audience’s attention. Now, in his experience, he’s talking about the opening logos of a film. If you go look at his opening logos and main titles for To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s this gentle little piano played by one finger as if a child is playing it. It tells you a lot about the movie you’re about to see. In Magnificent Seven, you see this vista and the magnificent orchestra blast coming in. But what I took away from that is, you only have two seconds to get someone’s attention and teach them. A lot of what I’ve done to help build musical worlds, it can be boiled down to something you hear in two seconds.

The Walking Dead main title is maybe my most famous two seconds ever written. You know the sound of a nyckelharpa in God of War, the sound of a taiko drum in Battlestar Galactica. So it’s, it’s almost like boiling it down to a haiku, like the shortest, most essential piece of information. Once you figure that out and it’s clear and it fits, then you can grow everything out of that.

I love the haiku comparison.

I gotta give credit, that one is from Rob Minkoff, director of The Lion King. Rob Minkoff, he and I did an animated movie that Mel Brooks produced called Paws of Fury. He talked about how, in animation, there’s no wasted frame. There’s no, “We’ll see what happens at the end of that take.” You only animate what you need to, and he says you’re trying to be the most efficient storyteller you can. It’s like a haiku.

That clicked. That’s not just animation. That is the art of storytelling as concisely and clearly as it can be. That’s where you put your best ideas. My agent had another way of describing it. He called it the 24-second rule. What does that mean? He’ll listen to something for 24 seconds and refuses to listen beyond. So aspiring composers send him music. He’ll literally, even if they’re in the room, stop and go, “I don’t like it.” “But you haven’t gotten to the good part!” “I don’t care. I gave you 24 seconds. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, twice as much time as you need to impress me.”

All of this is circling that same thing about being clear and direct, both with your creative partners, but also with the audience, right? Like, be clear in what you’re trying to say, and then the audience will trust that they’re in good hands.

You said in an interview pretty recently that you think very melodically. Since you were talking about storytelling, how do you bridge that gap between thinking melodically and then thinking in terms of an arc and a narrative structure?

The thing about melody is that it’s memorable, and it’s got this sticky glue-like quality. It will associate itself with things that you experience. I can listen to a song that I haven’t heard in 30 years and suddenly I’m 16-and-a-half, I just got my driver’s permit, and I’m driving down the street with the sunroof open in a car listening to that song. It’s incredible the power that music has and melody is a big part of how that works. 

So you make those assignments. Look at the God of War scores. When that first was unveiled to the world in 2016, Kratos walks into the screen and you hear “bom bom bom.” To the point of almost being a joke, like, literally every time he walks in a room, I do that. I am not subtle about it, right?

It’s conditioning. That melody teaches you something about him. It sticks to him, and then you can use it in other contexts because you’ll always have all those memories. So I think that I try to be thoughtful about how I assign a melody to a certain aspect of a story.

Similarly, your work on The Rings of Power score is really, I think, pretty awesome. There’s already a lot of storytelling and a lot of feeling, especially that comes with anything associated with Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings. Was there a lot of pressure for you when you were going through that process of making that music?

The short answer is, I didn’t feel any significant increase in pressure, but only because I really just couldn’t allow myself to. It is not useful. Scoring a project is already very difficult. You need to be in a childlike state of wonder and look at this footage and think, what would 13-year-old me want from this footage?

If I added to that, “Oh, also, you’re going to be compared to one of the greatest works of cinematic writing and scoring in history, so be good like that,” I wouldn’t even get out of bed, man. I would just pull the covers over and, and shiver in the fetal position.

So, no, I just wrote the score that I wanted to write. The pressure was definitely internal. This story means a lot to me. These characters mean a lot. These magical species mean a lot to me. I want to write music for the people of Númenor, for the Harfoots, for Sauron, for Gandalf, and I want to write music that is meaningful to me, that lives up to my standard and makes me feel something. And, if I do that, I feel confident it will make other people feel something, but I have to put blinders on to the rest.

You mentioned in that answer, “13-year-old you, what would he want to hear?” If I’m doing my math right, you grew up in the ‘80s, ‘90s, correct?

Yeah, (it was) so great.

OK, good. I’m not great at math, but I try my best.

Bro, I’m February 1979. I am technically a child of the 1970s.

Well, you grew up then in a really great time for film scores and just music in general.

The best. Yeah, I know that “Old man yells at cloud,” nostalgia goggles, but I literally grew up in the greatest era of film music since sound joined film. I was born two years after Star Wars came out. So we’re already seeing that ripple effect.

Every weekend, I went to the movies. There was no internet, so I didn’t know what I would go see. I just went to the movies and I would hear new music by Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, John Berry, Elmer Bernstein, Alan Silvestri, Danny Elfman, Basil Poledouris, Shirley Walker, John Carpenter.

I mean, even the bad movies. I went and saw The Shadow three nights in a row. Three nights in a row! And on the third night I went, “I don’t like this movie.” But it’s that Goldsmith score, because Jerry Goldsmith was like, “I see you, Danny Elfman. I got you. You do Batman. I’m going to do The Shadow, here it comes,” and it’s incredible. Incredible score. And that was what ignited my imagination. I’m sorry, did you have a question?

Yes, I know, that’s actually perfect because while you’re doing that, you also have Guns N’ Roses and a lot of huge, huge bands. And you have a rock album coming out.

Yes, ‘80s rock music.

I think that’s super interesting that you grew up in a time where there was a huge peak for film music, but then also a huge peak for rock music. So how are you bridging that together in your latest album?

It’s a great question. I definitely viewed them as the same. I was immersed in film music. I didn’t listen to pop music. I didn’t listen to rock music. As I got a little older, got into high school, it was through film and film music that I started discovering other things. I saw Highlander on VHS. And I was like, excited because of the music, because there’s a Michael Kamen score in there. Michael Kamen’s score is going to be great.

And then I go, “Wait, what’s this band Queen? These songs are pretty good.” I saw The Wall. “Wait a minute. Music can do this, rock music can do this.” I was a huge and remain a huge James Cameron fan. I saw Terminator 2, and there’s this Guns N’ Roses song in the end credits. And I go, “I’m a hop, skip, and a jump away from that song to November Rain.” I hear November Rain and I go, this is film music. This is film music. That’s what this is. It’s emotional. It’s wearing its heart on its sleeve.

I discovered that rock and metal to me sound like John Williams. It triggers the same thing. So you fast forward a couple of decades and, after I did a lot of work in film and TV, I decided to make a rock record and that first one came out in 2024 and had Slash on it. My new one that comes out on July 31 pairs up Slash with Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses, Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’ve got Stewart Copeland from The Police. I’ve got Joe Dulantier from Gojira, Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria.

I mean, so many great cinematic rock artists Steve Vai, Tim Henson, Guthrie Govan all have guitar solos. Oh, Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy. I can’t even stop myself. It’s so many great collaborations that got to take place, and I feel like with every one of these artists I get to explore the kind of cinematic side of their personalities.

I’m a big fan of this French metal band Gojira, and I thought when I got in touch with the lead singer, I pitched him and said, “Hey, let’s write a metal song and combine you with the National Bulgarian Women’s Choir. Does that sound like fun?” Because I also thought, “Look, if this doesn’t sound like fun, then we’re just not going to be friends, right?” If you’re like, “Bear, that sounds awful,” then we’re not a good fit. But needless to say that worked out.

So obviously you’re pretty open to new ideas and definitely through a lot of very human innovation. With the rise of generative AI, do you fear that that’s hindering where the music film industry is going in terms of scoring?

Fear is a strong word. I’m very hesitant about it. I personally have no interest in it. I can say definitively I have never seen a piece of AI footage that held my interest for more than 15-20 seconds. I think it’s detrimental to creativity. I think that the pieces of art that we remember are the ones that only a human being could have come up with. 

William Friedkin looking at his [Exorcist] footage and deciding not only should tubular bells be this music but he’s going to take Lalo Schifrin’s score, one of the great composers of the ‘70s, pull it up off the tape machine and throw it in the street. Because tubular bells is what belongs in The Exorcist. No AI would have ever done that.

AI emulates his idea, right? There have been 10,000 killer shark movies (I’ve even got one coming out July 27) but with Jaws, John Williams remembered this Dvorak symphony. Spoiler alert: it starts off with a hal- step moving up in the low strings, but it’s like that was his experience, right?

So while I don’t think generative AI is a threat, I think it’s a crutch, and you don’t use a crutch unless you can’t walk, right? So for me, I am very excited to look at a drawing on the back of a napkin. I’ll listen to your poem. I’ll listen to your song that you sing into your iPhone.

Personally, I have no interest in using AI or in really even consuming it – other than recognizing it speeds up certain workflows, and I’m not naive enough to say that’s a bad thing. Peter Jackson and his team were famously involved with a piece of software called Massive for Lord of the Rings so they could generate 10,000 Orcs.

It’s the same thing, right? Nobody goes, “Well, Peter Jackson destroyed art with his Lord of the Rings film.” So obviously, there’s a gray area I recognize. I can just say, as a consumer, I’m waiting for that [AI] film that resonates with people. Haven’t seen it yet. I’m waiting for that [AI] song that really resonates with people. Hasn’t happened yet. I’m just sort of waiting.

Bear McCreary’s album The Singularity: Ekleipsis is available for purchase now on digital, CD, and vinyl. From Sept. 8 – 18, McCreary will be on a West Coast tour performing music from God of War, Battlestar Galactica, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and his album.

New Indie Horror Trailer Imagines a Satanic Panic That’s Actually Worth Panicking About

The Devil. Lucifer Morningstar. Beelzebub. Whatever you choose to call him, Satan himself was damn near everywhere in the ’80s and ’90s. That’s because the United States was in the thrall of what would come to be known as the “Satanic panic.”

Intimidated by frightening new technologies like audio cassette tapes that transmitted heavy metal music into young people’s ears and 8-bit home video game consoles that allowed youth to perform creatively violent fatalities on their friends, folks saw Satan lurking around every corner in the burgeoning analog era. Parents, clergy, politicians – no corner of adult society was immune to Puritan brain worms.

While the concept of a Satanic panic may seem silly to modern sensibilities, the second-order effects of it were often anything but to those who were around to experience it. One particularly destructive example of the moral panic gone haywire was that of the West Memphis Three. Now an indie horror movie inspired by that real life true crime tragedy is set to depict a terrifying reality within the Satanic panic era… and Den of Geek can exclusively premiere its first trailer. Check out the first look at Carry the Darkness below.

“These games teach a child to enjoy inflicting torture,” narrates Senator Joe Lieberman (who is one of the chief reasons the United States doesn’t have a public option for universal healthcare, by the way) as we see lead character Travis Baldwin (Joel Meyers) enjoy some harmless heavy metal music and Mortal Kombat mayhem.

As the rest of the trailer reveals, however, Travis’ small town is experiencing a string of murders and his interest and the macabre and penchant for dark attire have made him a chief suspect. The film’s official synopsis reads:

Set in 1993, Carry the Darkness follows Travis Baldwin, a misunderstood teenage metalhead living in the shadow of the Satanic Panic. When a mysterious entity begins wreaking havoc in his small town, Travis becomes the prime suspect. Hunted by suspicion while the true evil remains hidden, he must protect himself and his friends before paranoia and darkness consume them all.

Blending supernatural horror, coming-of-age drama, and small-town mystery, Carry the Darkness captures the paranoia of the Satanic Panic through the lens of a generation raised on heavy metal, The X-Files, and Twin Peaks. Atmospheric, emotionally resonant, and steeped in ’90s nostalgia, the film explores the high cost of moral panic—and the monsters it creates.

Carry the Darkness is written and directed by Douglas Forrester and stars Joel Meyers, Jaden Gant, Helen Laser, Hollis Fox, Autumn Breaud, and David Boldt. Travis Bacon composed the score. The film will receive its streaming premiere to BloodStream on Friday, August 14, 2026 and will be available for digital rent or purchase via via Amazon, Apple TV, Direct TV, Google Play, Vimeo on Tuesday, September 8, 2026. A Blu-ray release (with audio commentary and deleted scenes) will be available Tuesday, September 8, 2026. The Horror Collective will expand the release to Free TV platforms such as Tubi and Xumo starting December 1, 2026.



Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla Writer Talks Power Scaling Impossible Crossovers

Nick Marino joined his fellow comic writers in San Diego at Comic-Con, a short trip from his comic book store in Los Angeles, to promote the new highly anticipated crossover Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla. The first issue, which came out this July, features a fight between the Sonic gang, Doctor Eggman, and Mechagodzilla. Marino’s humor, creativity, and sense of collaboration is vibrant in the first issue, leaving promising potential for the upcoming saga. We had the opportunity at SDCC to catch up with him and chat about his creative process and what it took to get this comic to the world. 

Marino explained that his ideas often come to him in the early morning, “What’ll happen is when I’m trying to fall asleep again, I’ll say to myself, ‘Oh, I’m gonna think about this next script I have to finish,’ and I’ll start letting my mind wander.” He adds that Transformers tale The Morphlings specifically came to him when he went back to sleep and had a lucid dream. 

When asked to reminisce back to the very first comic he ever wrote, it didn’t take much digging for him to think back to his “golden book” for school.

“When I was eight, I wrote my own book called Toxic Killer, and it was very similar to what I write now,” he says. Toxic Killer features the main character getting kidnapped and having to find out where he is and escape. “There’s a car chase. There’s all kinds of weird stuff.” But Marino revealed that he “didn’t think of himself as a writer after that” until further into his adult life. 

For Sonic the Hedgehog x Gozilla, Marino was inspired and excited to experiment with the “scale of life” between the drastically different sized characters. 

“Power is not based on size. Power is based on what you’re capable of doing at your size,” he muses.The first issue of the comic displays Sonic’s advantage through his control and agency by making his first instinct in an attack to save the citizens on the ground that could be stepped on by Mechagodzilla. Marino adds that teamwork is another core part of why Sonic and his team are strong and capable for their size, “I find with that core four of Team Sonic [Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy], I really enjoy them for the ways that they complement each other.”

Marino has his own team that helped bring this comic to life. Jack Lawrence and Reggie Graham were behind the art and colors and helped Marino visualize this “scale of life” theme. He says he “was so lucky” to work with Lawrence and Graham and emphasized that they have “to be together because that’s their magic, it’s their alchemy.” The collaborative discussion among them did not need to be expansive because he makes an effort to entertain them through his writing and, “make them fully immersed in the illusion to the point where they are drawing from a place of feeling.”

Getting published is a notoriously challenging feat, and Marino says that this comic, “took a lot of force of will to stick with this project because there’s a lot of people that you need to be patient with.” The people in question are the number of editors and brand executives that have to get on board when they already have busy schedules with projects in the works.

“You’ve got to empower your editors to empower their superiors to all work together to empower the approvals people at the American or international branches to inspire their bosses at the Japanese branches to say yes,” Marino says of a long process that he nevertheless had patience for, and a team of “kind and open” editors that aided him in the publication process. 

Marino’s excitement to explore the themes of size and dynamic between Sonic and Godzilla are what ultimately got him to stick with the project, “I get so much motivation from playing with themes that fascinate me. So I was so excited to play with the scale dynamics and try to imagine ‘How does this small creature with great speed perceive a creature with great scale?'”

The prospect of future readers also keep Marino motivated and inspired in the writing process, “That’s great to have your story, your narrative inspiration, but the other thing you have to do is hold on to the self belief in your story, It’s one thing to feel like I will be entertained, it’s important to hope they [the audience] will be entertained.”

Marino’s debut to this epic crossover in the first issue of Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla is an exciting display of his and his collaborators creativity and inspiration behind the iconic characters, and how Sonic and Godzilla’s different sizes and mentalities play out on the page. 

Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1 is available in comic book stores and via IDW Publishing now.

 Todd McFarlane Talks Expanding the Spawn Universe Ahead of its Big Anniversary

As Image Comics prepares for its 35th anniversary next year, 2027 also marks 35 years since the debut of Spawn. The creator of both iconic comic entities, Todd McFarlane, remains incredibly busy as these celebratory dates loom. The Image Comics co-founder and founder of McFarlane Toys keeps a lot of plates spinning but thankfully took the time to speak with us at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to provide an update on his latest projects. In an exclusive interview with Den of Geek, McFarlane teases what’s next for Spawn, unveils the latest product line at McFarlane Toys, and offers his thoughts on the long-gestating Spawn cinematic reboot.

The next big thing for Spawn on the immediate horizon is Spawn 77, a comic book limited series by McFarlane and collaborator Mark Spears set to debut this September with a 64-page supersized inaugural issue. The series is based on the original sketches McFarlane made of Spawn as a teenager in 1977, 15 years before the superhero made his official comic book debut. While McFarlane Toys has since released an action figure based on these sketches, it was Spears’ idea to release a comic book story surrounding this version of the character. Spears provides the comic book with gorgeous painted interior artwork while co-writing the story with McFarlane and its exploration of the hellish world before Al Simmons took on the mantle of Spawn in 1992.

“One of the things that he wanted to do, as a tribute, was set it in 1977 New York, which is the gritty, ugly world of New York that you see in all of those cool movies I watched as a kid when I was growing up,” teases McFarlane, while explaining the storytelling rules he provided Spears in respecting the main series’ established mythology. “I don’t want to diminish the character of Al Simmons. I don’t want the world to think that there was a hellspawn 15 years earlier, because it diminishes him. If we can come up with a story that is true to the mythology of what I’ve set up about the legend prior to Al Simmons, because he hasn’t come yet, and it’s not a true hellspawn.”

Spawn 77 joins a growing number of Spawn comic book series published through Image that have significantly expanded the fan-favorite superhero universe over the past several years. All linked in the same continuity, these titles explore different facets of the world that McFarlane created, from the popular Wild West character Gunslinger Spawn headlining his own book to other hellspawn getting their own adventures. For McFarlane, there wasn’t a worry that this would dilute Spawn but instead let the character resume his focus on solo adventures while adding to the universe.

“It felt like Spawn was becoming a little bit like a team-up book,” McFarlane recalls. “I think Spawn works best when he’s a solo act. As part of that expansion, I also gave Spawn another book, King Spawn. Now that I’ve got even more breathing space to show who Spawn is. Gunslinger Spawn, who I thought could be a breakout character, deserved some more room. The Scorched, to me, was a place where it was technically a team-up book and I could rotate different characters coming in and out.”

On the McFarlane Toys end, the company has unveiled a new line of highly detailed and accessory-loaded figures under the banner McFarlane Elite Edition. With the price of, well, everything increasing, the line was created to cater to toy collectors rather than compromising on the quality of the toys themselves. While retailing for a higher price point, the toys are not only more impressively rendered but include features like signed items that are more than worth the price of purchase alone.

“It’s us being able to make the toy exactly the way that we think the toy should be made,” McFarlane observes. “Instead of doing everything more cheaply, what if we made another division called the Elite Division? The price is going to go up, but it’ll let us make the figure the way that we want, give extra accessory pieces and get the articulation down, maybe throwing in a card or a signature in there. We’re actually doing a value box that hopefully people will respond to, saying that they got a lot for their money.”

One of the longstanding projects that McFarlane has been working on is a cinematic reboot of the character, following the 1997 superhero movie. With Jamie Foxx attached to play the hellish superhero, McFarlane notes that the project is still very much in the scripting phase, and the creator is looking for a screenplay that captures his dark and creepy vision for the character. Without having to worry about the property being tied to a corporate entity like DC and Marvel’s library of characters, McFarlane is holding out until the project goes all-in on how vicious and twisted Spawn can truly be.

“I’m not bound by having to worry about some big licensing program that’s out there in the world. I just want a cool movie and if that means I don’t sell a single T-shirt, that’s okay.” McFarlane notes. “Jamie can still do that level of intense acting that I think needs to come. There’s a love story component to the Spawn character and if you watch something like Django Unchained and you see the scenes in that movie where he sees them doing something to his wife but he can’t do anything about it, I feel the burn in his eyes. I feel that anger welling up inside of him as a character and that’s what I’m trying to harness.”

Written by Todd McFarlane and Mark Spears and illustrated by Mark Spears, Spawn 77 #1 is published September 9 by Image Comics.

Marvel’s New Strategy Shift May Put an End to Its Live-Action Shows

Marvel’s Disney+ era has been a mixed bag, to say the least.

When the burgeoning streaming service first rushed to fill its roster with post-Avengers: Endgame content for a hungry Marvel fandom mourning the halcyon days of Iron Man and Captain America, audiences were certainly treated to some real live-action gems from Marvel Studios as the pandemic lingered and kept many people inside glued to their screens.

WandaVision captured people’s imaginations by provoking endless theories, while Loki gave us some fantastic retro-futuristic visuals and time-traveling adventures. Meanwhile, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier brought Steve Rogers’ winged sidekick Sam Wilson and a traumatized Bucky Barnes together for some pricey, globetrotting action.

People wanted more, and they got more. Hawkeye returned for his own solo show, and Phase 4 soon introduced Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk. Opinions were hit-or-miss, but became more miss than hit when Phase 5 began with the disastrous Secret Invasion and continued with two more underwhelming projects: a “Marvel Spotlight” spinoff for Echo and the long-awaited Ironheart. Even the Netflix-Marvel era got time to shine again as Daredevil returned to screens, but that didn’t make much of a splash either.

With the exception of Agatha All Along and the rather left-field Wonder Man, Marvel’s recent live-action series just haven’t matched the quality of the ones it dropped onto Disney+ in its infancy. Disney and Marvel also seem to have realized that too much content has diluted Marvel’s brand. The MCU just hasn’t felt as “special,” not when you can watch its endless superheroes arrive with a new project at home every few months alongside its blockbuster movies. It’s all been too much. Too many sequels, too many characters, too many plotlines, and too many post-credits scenes teasing things that may or may not ever be revisited.

In response to its own whiff of “superhero fatigue,” Marvel’s strategy shift has been to dial back the number of projects it’s putting out. Head honcho Kevin Feige recently addressed that shift in strategy at SDCC while promoting the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, saying, “A lot of it is a strategy we’ve talked about for a while, of focusing on quality. We always try to focus on quality, but when quantity is so much, you get spread thin. We didn’t want to be spread thin, and the Avengers is as important as it comes.”

But this shift in strategy isn’t just about generating fewer MCU movies; it also seems to have been applied to the studio’s Disney+ output. Wonder Man recently saw its season 2 renewal revoked, and Nova is now set to become a movie instead of a show. Indeed, after this year’s WandaVision trilogy-capper VisionQuest, the only live-action show in the works is an already-wrapped third season of the viewership-challenged Daredevil: Born Again.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that third season of Born Again was its last. Nor would I be surprised if Marvel puts an end to its live-action Disney+ shows completely. While the studio seems committed to continuing its foray into animation, with further seasons of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies, and X-Men ’97 on the way, it appears ready to take a well-earned break from its live-action projects.

Would this really mean no more live-action Marvel projects heading to Disney+? Perhaps. I do think the studio might be swayed by further one-off passion projects or “Special Presentations” like Werewolf by Night or the recent Punisher: One Last Kill in the coming years, but with quality over quantity in mind, all of Marvel’s focus needs to be on making the MCU feel like an exciting reason to visit the multiplex again. The studio will be encouraged by Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s incredible box office and pre-sales for Avengers: Doomsday, but only time will tell if Marvel can build the MCU back up to its former glory and put the lows of its Disney+ crunch era behind it.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Jean Grey Reveal Resurrects Abandoned Marvel Comics Story

This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

By the time Spider-Man: Brand New Day made it to theaters, the revelation that telepath Jean Grey was behind the attacks on the Department of Damage Control didn’t shock anyone. Those who don’t know the name Jean Grey just nodded along, and those who recognized the name as belonging to one of the most important X-Men characters have likely been aware of recent speculation about the role Sadie Sink would play.

What did come as a surprise was the motivation behind Jean Grey’s actions. Jean attacks Damage Control because they captured her sister Sara, a character who existed in the comics. However, the film goes on to reveal that Sara Grey shares the same power set as Jean and in fact taught her how to use her telepathic abilities. That twist deviates from the comics that Marvel published, but it also brings to mind a storyline that could have been one that X-Men writer Chris Claremont would have preferred.

The Other Grey Sister

Sara Grey first appeared in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #136 by Claremont and John Byrne, one of the final issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Having been fully transformed into the Phoenix and already wrestling with the consequences of her vast power, Jean returns to her home to speak to her family one last time. Sara thrills to see her sister as a superhero, but Phoenix’s powers scare her parents. Aftereward Jean’s father orders her out of the house. She and her parents appear a few issues later for Jean’s funeral, but Sara doesn’t really get attention until the story “Phoenix” by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum in 1981’s Bizarre Adventures #27, a black and white magazine intended for more mature audiences.

“Phoenix” follows Jean and Sara two years before the latter’s death, shortly after she developed her Phoenix abilities. The sisters take a boating trip that goes wrong when they’re attacked by the Atlantean supervillain Attuma, who transforms them into underwater-breathers to become his brides. Jean changes into the Phoenix to defeat her enemies and escape with her sister, eventually using those powers to restore Sara to her natural state. But the event only intensifies Sara’s fears about mutants, and her worry that her young son will also be a mutant and deal with the same bigotry Jean faces. After that, Sara only has one brief appearance before she dies in X-Men #36 (1994), subsumed into the techno-organic alien species known as the Phalanx. A few flashback issues later on fill in some details about Sara’s life, revealing that she and her husband became mutant rights activist who clashed with Friends of Humanity leader Graydon Creed, but that’s pretty much all there was to Sara Grey.

But there was almost so much more, and it goes all the way back to the Dark Phoenix Saga.

The Sara Grey Saga

Originally Claremont and Byrne had wanted Jean to overcome the Phoenix and have a redemption arc, even after she destroyed a planet. But for Marvel’s EIC at the time, Jim Shooter, Phoenix had gone too far. She needed to die, so Claremont and Byrne wrote her bravely sacrificing herself to save her teammates.

The Dark Phoenix Saga was instrumental in helping Claremont make the X-Men into the premiere superhero team, and its huge sales numbers got Marvel hankering for more spinoffs. An informal brainstorming session between Shooter, artist Jackson Guice, and writer Bob Layton led to the idea of X-Factor, a new team consisting of the four surviving original members of the X-Men—Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel—with a new fifth member to take the place of the late Jean Grey. But Shooter saw a promotional opportunity, which trumped his demand that Phoenix must die. When X-Factor #1 hit stands in 1985, it would feature all of the surviving OG X-Men, plus a resurrected Jean Grey.

The idea may have excited readers, but it irritated Claremont. Beyond the irritation that a major X-book was launching outside of his purview, Claremont had used Jean’s death to mature and advance his other characters. In particular, Cyclops had, by this point, retired from the X-Men, married another redhead named Madelyne Pryor, and had a son with her, the infant Nathan Christopher. To resurrect Jean and send Cyclops running back to her would be to ruin all the character development he had done.

So Claremont offered a compromise: instead of bringing back Jean, what about having Sara’s mutant powers manifest? Claremont had always toyed with the idea that Sara had latent abilities, which never manifested for a few reasons. Sara never had a triggering traumatic event, unlike Jean, who watched her childhood friend die in front of her. Furthermore, Sara’s internalized fear of mutants would keep her from exploring those abilities. In this version of X-Factor, a traumatic event would cause Sara’s powers to fully manifest as an adult, and the original X-Men would convene about her to help her work through it.

No New Day

Of course, Shooter said no. Instead Jean was brought back to life, Cyclops ditched his family to be with her and join X-Factor, and we got a few utterly terrible comics. Eventually X-Factor sorted things out and the entire situation led to some compelling stories for Cyclops and Jean… but not for Sara. Still, Brand New Day gives a look at what could have been, in another universe, where mutants were still feared and hated. A world where Sara embraced her destiny alongside sister Jean.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Box Office Puts Wallcrawler in League of His Own Among Superheroes

*Editor’s note: This article was written and originally based on the weekend estimates. It has been updated with the final numbers in revealing Spider-Man: Brand New Day broke the opening weekend record in the U.S.

For generation after generation, folks have loved Spider-Man. That’s no secret after the O.G. Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire was the first movie, period, to gross over $100 million in a single weekend back in 2002. And before there was Top Gun: Maverick, there was Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 bringing audiences back to multiplexes at the tail-end of the pandemic with its $260 million opening.

Still, nothing could quite prepare us for how big Spider-Man: Brand New Day turned out to be this past weekend. The superhero epic marked Tom Holland’s return to the webs after nearly five years and it absolutely dominated multiplexes around the world. In the U.S. alone, the film opened at an astonishing $360 million, the biggest opening ever, unseating Avengers: Endgame’s $357 million in the long ago times of 2019. More difficult to fathom is that Brand New Day also grossed $932 million worldwide, a bigger global bow than any movie in history, sans Endgame. For context, Christopher Nolan’s wildly successful The Odyssey, which also features Holland, has grossed “only” $911 million total to date after three weekends. And that was with the precious IMAX screens in its camp.

So Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a massive hit, and one that probably could not come at a better time for Marvel Studios. While the film’s production and rewards are shared with Sony Pictures, this is in the ballpark of the mega-blockbuster event that Marvel Studios at its peak in the late 2010s was churning out a few times a year (if BND is obviously at the upper end of that scale). Clearly every once in a while they still can, as gleaned by Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024, which grossed $1.3 billion in its total run. More often, though, Marvel Studios has recently seen a couple of valleys like Thunderbolts* ($382.4 million) and The Marvels ($206.1 million), as well as films somewhere in the middle Fantastic Four: First Steps ($521.9 million).

So another almost instantaneous billion-dollar grosser is a big deal and can do nothing but rekindle fond memories of Marvel heroes ahead of what might be the brand’s most important film of the decade, Avengers: Doomsday, due out in December. While Spidey is still flying high, the sum of Avengers’ many parts could use some of that high-flying Spidey love which hasn’t abated at all in the last seven years. In fact, it seems bigger than ever.

One of the few characters out of Marvel’s 1960s golden age not partially or largely created by Jack Kirby, Spider-Man was purely the idea of Stan Lee and then given eventual shape and crucial detail by Steve Ditko. He’s a superhero who rather than being a golden boy like the DC archetype, or even Marvel’s own Captain America, was closer in age to their kid sidekicks. Save he was just a kid. And an unpopular, self-pitying one at that.

The universal appeal of the underdog, adolescent spirit trying to find their way in the world, even with spectacular powers that let them soar through the canyons of Manhattan like Tarzan, has proven to have eternal appeal as long as every generation has more young people struggling to find their tribe, their love, and/or their careers in a world that will leave us all feeling battered and broken at some point. As pivotal Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr. surmised, the secret of Spider-Man is he offers a soap opera where every once in a while a fight breaks out.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day pinpoints that perhaps better than any MCU Spidey flick to date. And more impressive, the audience seems to prefer it, at least right now. Five years ago, No Way Home was the biggest show in town anywhere in the world because it had the novelty of bringing back all the old villains from the 2000s and 2010s, as well as previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Conversely, even with the Hulk, Punisher, and a secret surprise villain (that probably surprised few hardcore fans), No Way Home is a one-man show hyped up purely on the excitement audiences still have for this character and this interpretation. They didn’t even mind the film was essentially marketed without a villain, which has long been one of the selling points of every Spider-Man movie since 2002.

 It says something about this moment in the ongoing saga of “superhero fatigue.” This phenomenon is definitely present. In the 2010s, almost any superhero movie with a decent marketing budget and some splash page worthy imagery could be a hit. Spider-Man and Batman movies, sure, but also Guardians of the Galaxy with its talking tree and raccoon, or “B-tier” heroes like Ant-Man and Aquaman. Even the not-great first Venom movie grossed over $850 million worldwide. Compare this to Venom: The Last Dance doing barely better than half that in 2024 with $479 million, which is still a lot better than this summer’s other major superhero release, the much maligned Supergirl—a movie we might add also was unceremoniously dropped on PVOD last week.

Audiences seem to be tiring of obscure or middling superhero movies. Luckily, Brand New Day is neither. Instead it proves that even in an era of “fatigue,” some superheroes’ popularity remain bulletproof. And perhaps not surprisingly, swinging to the top of the heap seems to be Spider-Man. Makes you wonder which other heroes might join him there as the genre’s salvation?

Spider-Man: Brand New Day – What Really Happened Between Peter and Ned at the End?

This article contains Spider-Man: Brand New Day spoilers

An amazing and uplifting moment at the very end of Spider-Man: Brand New Day has got Marvel fans talking and unsure of what they really saw when Peter Parker (Tom Holland) finally shook his former best friend’s hand and revealed his real name.

Some people believe that Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) remembers who Peter is in that moment. Others strongly disagree, believing that their iconic handshake is just muscle memory and Ned is simply remembering that MJ let slip that Spider-Man’s real name is Peter earlier in the movie. As one of Spidey’s biggest fans, Ned would certainly be excited to suddenly know he’s actually meeting and making friends with Spider-Man.

So, does Ned remember Peter Parker in those final moments of Brand New Day, or doesn’t he? Let’s dig deeper.

What Do We Actually See Happen?

In the closing minutes of Brand New Day, Peter goes to buy flowers at the bodega after realizing that isolating himself is not the answer. His Spidey DNA has been taking over because he’s been neglecting his own identity, and Peter has decided to make more time for himself so he can find a real balance between being Peter Parker and Spider-Man.

He spots his erstwhile best friend Ned sitting at a table and plucks up the courage to go over and talk to him. Ned can’t remember his name. This time, Peter tells him the truth (not Maynard!) and reaches out to shake Ned’s hand. After they do a traditional handshake, Peter begins transitioning into their special “best friend” handshake moves, and Ned immediately mirrors him. Ned looks up with a surprised expression: “Peter!” Cut to credits.

Was Doctor Strange’s No Way Home Spell Broken?

Spider-Man: No Way Home saw Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) cast a spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker. When MJ (Zendaya) unexpectedly discovers Peter’s letter explaining who he really is and why the spell was cast during the events of Brand New Day, she categorically tells him she can’t remember him and doesn’t love him. She reasons that the spell that Strange performed really did work, and nothing has changed. Being around Peter again, even seeing his face or being in his arms, has not broken the spell.

Ned also has no idea who Peter is, despite being obsessed with Spider-Man and creating a tracker to follow his every move. They build Lego together and banter like old times, but none of their interactions moves the needle. Ned and MJ clearly do not remember Peter, but when Peter tells the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) who he really is while they’re fighting, the Hulk suddenly pauses and backs down. Though Strange’s spell may have worked on Banner, it may not have worked on the Hulk, yet it’s also possible that Peter’s honesty in that moment with the Hulk changed something.

Jean Grey’s Psychic Bubble

We also meet the MCU’s version of the X-Men’s Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) in Brand New Day. At this point, she is in the midst of being able to harness just some of her powers. Jean is not yet an Omega-level mutant, but when she is faced with her sister’s killer at the end of the movie, her fury fuels her powers, and she creates a psychic bubble that traps everyone within a certain radius inside it. MJ and Ned are also trapped in this bubble.

Before this happens, Jean hops into MJ’s mind and possesses her body. She fools Peter into thinking she’s the real MJ, and romances him until they kiss. Peter is horrified when Jean reveals it’s not the real MJ kissing him, and she mocks him for thinking “true love’s kiss” will unlock MJ’s memories of him.

Yet, by the end of the movie, it’s clear that she has come to trust Peter, and even keeps him alive using her powers when he is fatally wounded protecting her from Frank Castle’s sniper bullet. Jean and Peter are perhaps far from friends, but she owes him her life.

Since Jean’s powers can canonically restore repressed or erased memories, it’s possible she may have given MJ and Ned back the opportunity to access their memories deliberately or accidentally, either when they were trapped in the bubble or afterwards, waiting to be unlocked by “true love’s kiss” (or “true love’s handshake” when it comes to Ned).

Ned’s Latent Magical Powers

In Spider-Man: No Way Home, we discover that Ned has some latent magical powers. While it took Doctor Strange months to unlock the simple sorcery of using the Sling Ring, Ned is able to immediately wield it and open interdimensional portals to other universes, bringing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men through into the MCU when he says he wants to find Peter. Ned’s grandmother always believed he was magical, and he tells Strange that he experiences tingling in his hands.

It’s unlikely that Ned remembers that he finds it so easy to perform real magic after Strange’s memory-erasing spell in No Way Home, but his lingering determination to track Spider-Man and his handshake connection with Peter may have unlocked Ned’s magical abilities on some level.

It’s definitely possible that Ned could have accidentally broken Strange’s spell in the handshake moment, but the same honesty Peter used on the Hulk also seems to trigger something in Ned when Peter tells him who he really is. Though that honesty didn’t work on MJ, it could have very well worked on both Ned and the Hulk.

MJ and the Black Dahlia

MJ states she has no memories of Peter, but we see her crying and touching the Black Dahlia necklace Peter gave her in Spider-Man: Far From Home when she is trapped in Jean’s bubble. It feels important that she is still wearing it, and her emotional reaction at this point in the movie suggests she is connecting with what the necklace means to her.

Whether this means MJ is regaining memories of Peter while trapped in the bubble remains to be seen, and there is certainly no clear proof that she has had any of her memories restored during the events of Brand New Day. However, she tells Ned during one of their conversations that she feels like she’s “waiting for something,” and is unable to make any big decisions. Her relationship with her new boyfriend also seems somewhat strained. On some level, she knows that Peter is missing from her life.

We will have to wait and see whether MJ ever unlocks anything beyond those vague feelings, and whether Ned really does remember Peter. Luckily, we have been promised that Spider-Man will return!

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 2 Review – Booby Trapped

This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 episode 2, “Haven.”

This solid and entertaining second episode of Dead City’s third season really offers up some plum visuals. It begins with a shot of the Statue of Liberty’s dilapidated head turning on its side and transitioning into that of a walker flat on the pavement as Maggie unceremoniously sticks a knife in it, and “Haven” makes the neoclassical sculpture a pretty great motif for Maggie’s decision to open up the hospital shelter to anyone and everyone—as long as they’re good people or could potentially become good people.

A happier Maggie is now embracing the notion that those outside her wholesome refuge should have the right to pursue a better life, even if that puts Renata, Luis, and the rest of the hospital’s denizens in danger. The greater their numbers, Negan reasons, the greater the chance they have of enduring. And Negan? Well, no matter what he tells Maggie, he’ll always be there to take out the trash.

My fears after last week’s installment that the show would spend a frustrating string of episodes toying with the concept of killing The Dama were completely unfounded. And I could not be happier to be wrong about that. Indeed, The Dama is almost immediately captured here in a hilarious, Scooby-Doo-esque scene of ineptitude, as she yells at Maggie and Negan from the shadows of a theater before dropping a chandelier on them and almost falling prey to a hungry walker as she scurries away. Maggie inevitably wrings her hands over what to do with their new captive, while Negan looks Maggie dead in the eyes and tries in vain to convince her that The Dama is a lost cause and her death is inevitable.

Negan, having thrown himself into a holding pattern of booze and video games at Dillard’s bar instead of helping the hospital effort, doesn’t know where he fits into this new world. Is he the kind of good person or potentially good person who could fit into Maggie and Renata’s community? Or is he still a one-man justice system who will do the violent things no one else has the balls to do before a real justice system manifests itself? By the end of “Haven,” we have our answer: he’s still very much the latter.

Negan’s own little haven is a good contrast to the sprawling hospital, with its burgeoning teaching program and its many plans of action. Dillard’s bar has been treated to some excellent production design, and its lights and festive decor make it seem like a relatively cool place to hang out in the apocalypse, especially for someone like Negan, who has no plans of action. He doesn’t seem at all distracted by the filth on the floor or the smell everyone keeps yapping about; it’s Dillard’s preoccupation with making the walkers part of the bar’s charm that irritates Negan. He doesn’t want to be reminded of what’s happening out there. When he steps outside for a smoke, he levels his eyes dispassionately on a bunch of rats gnawing at a barely-moving walker on the ground and figures out how he’s going to play things for the time being. That blinking red light and Maggie’s guilt trips mean he can’t fully disassociate from the world, so he falls back on the only way he knows how to maintain.

A future where Negan feels morally torn over offing his enemies is still a possibility …just not today. As he squints at a random painting of “the two hilltops of kinship” and one of The Dama’s minions tries in vain to explain how they “form the foundation of civilized” yadayadayada, Negan can’t help but see some “sweet-ass boobies” instead. And once we see it his way, it’s almost impossible to view the painting as anything other than of two huge, entirely unsubtle tits.

It’s not a subtle character study of the man, but I love how ludicrous his fixation on the “boobs” painting is. It’s no wonder he became The Saviors’ leader. Maggie may implore Negan to “help build something,” but Negan is always going to see her peaceful haven as something other than what it should be, whether that’s a vulnerable target or just a futile effort in pretending the world isn’t deeply fucked. He can contribute to (and even bolster) Maggie’s vision by suggesting she grows her community, yet Negan is living out the timeless philosophical adage of “wherever you go, there you are,” and just doesn’t know who else he can become yet.

When Maggie lights up the Statue of Liberty like the Bat-Signal and attracts the attention of a group of armed people across the water, Negan slips into The Dama’s prison and uses Maggie’s knife to kill her, giving everyone the illusion that she took her own life so they don’t have to deal with whatever consequences she’s got coming. No need to worry about The Dama anymore; Negan’s justice has been served. And would we really have it any other way?

Things are moving pretty quickly this season. Maggie is even talking about “ploughing Central Park,” and the hospital will have more than enough resources to support a lot more people. Whether its population will reach a level where it will be hard to take down remains to be seen, but season 3 of the show seems to be dead set on giving Maggie a greater mission beyond vengeance, and that’s a joy to behold.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 premiere Sundays on AMC.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 7 Review: Kill Him, Caraxes

This review for HOUSE OF THE DRAGON season 3 episode 7 contains spoilers.

Say what you will about House of the Dragon (and we do – in great detail – week after week) but one cannot deny that it certainly has some dragons…a whole house full of them, in fact.

Before the Game of Thrones prequel series premiered in 2022, HBO made sure that the fire-breathing inspiration for House Targaryen’s scaley sigil was front and center in marketing. This made sense from a purely promotional perspective, of course, as the beasts serve as the best bit of visual spectacle that George R.R. Martin’s universe has to offer, and therefore its chief appeal for casual viewers who simply want to watch Medieval scenery go up in flame. What a delight it’s been, however, to discover that the centering of the dragons serves tremendous thematic importance as well.

In the immortal words of Ben Wyatt: “You forgot about the essence of the game [of thrones]. It’s about the cones dragons.”

Yes, it turns out that Vhagar, Syrax, Caraxes, Sheepstealer, and friends aren’t just flying nukes (though they are that), they’re also the living embodiment of House Targaryen’s downfall. Both readers of the source material Fire & Blood and watchers of Game of Thrones understood that well enough going in. But the way in which House of the Dragon has used its dragons as independent operators in that downfall (and not merely symbols of royal decadence and hubris) is a pretty remarkable thing.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the opening and closing scenes that bookend the penultimate episode of the show’s penultimate season. Here we begin with Helaena (Phia Saban) sweatily tossing and turning in bed, experiencing several of her prophetic Targaryen “Dreams” (or perhaps the symptoms of Mommy’s Suspicious Soup from last week). After being rudely awoken by Her Grace Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), the two half-sisters share a conversation about prophecy and… what else? dragons. For her part, Rhaenyra wants to know why Helaena no longer rides her mount, Dreamfyre.

“When I was a girl I wanted to fly but now when I’m with Dreamfyre it’s … too much,” Helaena says.
“You believe the dragons alter us in some way?” Rhaenyra questions, undoubtedly thinking of her father’s own skepticism regarding the family familiars.
“You now have many dragons. Are you yourself not altered?” responds Helaena.

Naturally, Rhaenyra does not believe herself to be altered by the presence of dragons in her life. Then, in the scenes to follow, the woman once known as the Realm’s Delight throws her Master of Coin under the bus, gets eaten out by her Master of Whisperers, and takes part in a Mexican standoff with her husband/uncle, her cousin/step-daughter/niece-in-law, her other cousin/step-daughter/niece-in-law, some guy named Addam, and all of their dragons.

So yeah, it’s probably safe to say that Rhaenyra has been altered by the presence of dragons in her life. Part of that alteration is undoubtedly the byproduct of the power dragons represent. They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely and in the World of Ice and Fire there is no power more absolute than a dragon. While that is compelling enough a concept on its own, what House of the Dragon adds to the Westerosi gumbo is even more compelling.

These things quite simply cannot be controlled.

We’ve previously seen examples of How NOT to Train Your Dragon including Aemond being unable to stop Vhagar from chomping down on his cousin Lucerys, and Rhaena proving helpless to prevent Sheepstealer from running roughshod through the Battle of the Gullet like a Border Collie off-leash at the dog park. We see it again now as that aforementioned standoff among Rhaenyra, Daemon (Matt Smith), Baela (Bethany Antonia), Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), and Addam (Clinton Liberty) devolves into a 4 v. 1 beatdown of Sheepstealer for no reason other than Syrax, Caraxes, Moondancer, and Seasmoke deciding that it was their weird Vale cousin’s time to go.

“Call off your dragon!” Daemon yells to Rhaenyra across the battlefield. But she could no sooner call off Syrax than she could take flight herself. In fact, the only command any dragon heeds amid the melee is Daemon’s “Kill him, Caraxes,” to put an injured Sheepstealer out of his misery. Turns out dragons really like that one.

Though the dragonriders of the Dance of the Dragons are the ones in the saddle, they’re not the ones behind the wheel. Even the name of the conflict itself, the Dance, connotes a whimsical pastime for the weapons being deployed, and not the righteous war for the Iron Throne being waged by a very messed up family.

Speaking of a very messed up family: Aegon Targaryen, everybody! In my review from the episode two weeks ago (big thanks again to Mr. David Crow for pinch hitting last week), commenter “yorkslado” respectfully wondered if I was wrong to compare Aegon’s journey through his kingdom to other fantasy examples of a king slumming it with the common folk and coming to better understand their plight. Upon some reflection, I must concede that the yorkslado was right. Aegon’s arc this season isn’t about learning to empathize with the smallfolk. It’s about him learning that they have their place on the totem pole: well under him.

Recall that Aegon never actually wanted the Conqueror’s crown thrust upon him. He enjoyed all the excesses of royalty without any of the responsibility – so much so that Cole and Aemond had to literally hunt him down through the streets of Flea Bottom to bring him back to the Red Keep and sit his ass down on the iron chair. Actually sitting on that seat for a time did little to ignite a passion for rule inside him. Even roughing it out in the country with Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) and Ser Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Lannister) didn’t light a fire under Viserys’ eldest son.

But now Aegon has suddenly found his voice as he screams his identity to a gathering of Rivermen allies of the queen, right before a recovered Sunfyre arrives on the scene and torches them all.

Aegon’s re-embrace of his destiny would feel sudden if it weren’t for that aforementioned reunion with his dragon. Sunfyre means everything to Aegon and this season has done an excellent job of capturing the dynamic described in the book. Sunfyre is not only uniquely beautiful among his kindred creatures, he is also uniquely close to his rider. It’s through Aegon’s bond with something so otherworldly and ethereal that he seems to be fit for the Iron Throne… even if he very much is not.

It’s telling that Aegon grows more confident the closer he gets to Rook’s Rest where Sunfyre’s supposedly slain body lays. It’s also telling that Aegon insists on a path for himself, Larys, and Tyland that brings them nearer to the danger of the Riverland armies en route to a ship to Braavos and not to the sure safety of Tyland’s home at Casterly Rock. It’s also as though… something is drawing Aegon closer for mystical purposes unknown. Within that context, Larys’ defection of the game isn’t about his fear of Black-aligned foes, it’s about his fear of Aegon.

Of course, Aegon should be afraid of Aegon as well. While his declaration of purpose is undeniably cool and will serve as the narration for many hype videos on TikTok, it’s also just words. And as George R.R. Martin always tells us “words are wind.” The real power behind Aegon and his claim is the literal dragon that shows up to kill some folks. Aegon undoubtedly believes that Sunfyre sprang into action to save its master, inspired by his courage and words. But as we’ve seen time and time again, no one truly knows why the dragons do what they do. A groggily-revived Sunfyre could have just as easily been draw to the slaughter by simple sights and sounds and chosen to burn all those men because it was a fun thing to do.

Aegon finally truly believes he should be king. And he believes that because Sunfyre seems to believe it. Unfortunately, Westeros doesn’t have any Blu-ray copies of Jordan Peele’s Nope lying around for a parable on what happens to people who believe they’ve bonded with nature.

While House of the Dragon season 3 episode 7 both opens and ends on a very strong note, the rest of the installment is more of a mixed bag filled with the same cliche dialogue and uninspired direction that has dogged much of the season. Even that climactic dragon confrontation comes along with some “Are you still watching?” streaming prompts like “She was Sheepstealer’s rider! All this time, you knew!” Still, even when this hour isn’t at its best, it remains thematically on point.

A lack of control looms large throughout this chapter, even when the dragons aren’t present. Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), bless him, is now completely in the thrall of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) in Harrenhal. Though he still believes himself a king ready to re-establish his kingdom from the burned out husk of Harren the Black’s old castle, it’s clear that Alys is Aemond’s puppeteer. No, scratch that, she’s something more powerful than Aemond’s puppeteer… she’s his mother.

That much becomes apparent when Aemond’s actual mother makes her arrival at Harrenhal (the Westerosi “fast-travel button” is getting pressed quite liberally these days) to give Aemond that spiced wine that he loved so much as a lad. When Aemond collapses from the poison in the chalice – just like his new mommy Alys wanted him would happen! – she responds with a maternally exasperated “idiot.” Now she’s got to use her river magic to revive her dumbass son, who is also her lover in true Westerosi fashion.

This family, man. Perhaps it’s for the best that the dragons are making all the decisions.

Even the folks who think they’re in control of their destiny are hilariously out of their depth. Ormund Hightower (James Norton), learned man of letters that he pretends to be, has what I’m sure he believes is a productive conversation among equals with a very much alive but very much kidnapped Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). His proposal to the elder statesman is so unclear and ill-considered that it proves to be the catalyst for Ormund’s captive family Gwayne (Freddie Fox) and Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) to finally openly imagine what life without Ormund would be like.

Of course, by episode’s end Ormund will finally make an alliance with one of the few other Dance combatants as dumb as he is. Ulf (Tom Bennett) agreeing to sell out his friends has a distinct “Cypher meets Agent Smith scene in The Matrix” energy. Hell, Ormund even shares Agent Smith’s aversion to bad smells! Combine Ulf’s treachery with Hugh’s (Kieran Bew) disappointing reunion with his wife last week and the (dragon)seeds of treachery have now firmly been planted.

Given House of the Dragon season 2’s unusually truncated ending and season 3’s unusually epic beginning, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of momentum heading into next week’s finale. But if the forecast provided by the dreams and dragons in this penultimate episode are any indication, we should soon have plenty of fire and blood on our doorstep.

The House of the Dragon season 3 finale airs Sunday, August 9 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Shows How to Do a Shared Universe Right

This article contains so many spoilers from Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man finds himself with a bit of a conundrum. He’s heard about something called V-Max, something that a mysterious body-jumper is attacking the Department of Damage Control to find. Even with an AI-driven 3D-printer at his disposal, Spidey lacks the top-secret access to learn about V-Max. So what does he do? He goes to check in with fellow superhero Yelena Belova, aka the new Black Widow.

For some, Florence Pugh‘s brief appearance in a tub and on a zoom screen is everything wrong with modern blockbuster movies, a key-jangly use of a fan-favorite character to distract from loose plotting. But in fact Black Widow’s appearance—along with the appearances of Bruce Banner, Punisher, Jean Grey, and even the Hand Ninjas—are all realistic and reasonable ways to tell a Spider-Man story in a shared universe filled with heroes.

Without question, Brand New Day is stuffed with ancillary characters. The most obvious example is the chief antagonist Jean Grey. Most people know Jean Grey as a flagship member of the X-Men, the central figure in the famous Dark Phoenix Saga. The arrival of Jean into the MCU raises huge questions about the status of mutants in the universe and the future of the X-Men. But here’s the thing: Brand New Day answers none of those queries! It doesn’t even gesture toward the answers. Instead it treats Jean as a reflection of Peter’s story, as the latter finds himself mutating with his arachnid DNA overtakes his human DNA. He fears it will make him something monstrous, and as a mutants Jean and her sister Sara get treated like monsters all the time. So her actions show Peter one path he can take.

And yet, he doesn’t go that way, even as Peter comes to empathize with the young woman who opens his eyes about the moral compromise of aligning with Damage Control.

Brand New Day is a story about characters, chiefly Peter; it’s not a bunch of nods to X-Men lore, nor does it reveal Professor X in a post-credit sequence where the kindly benefactor offers Jean admission to his School for Gifted Youngsters. Why? Because this is a story about Spider-Man. Not Jean.

To be sure, some would prefer that Xavier appear in a post-credit scene. In the early days of the MCU, teasers for upcoming stories heightened the sense of a shared universe and an ongoing narrative. So when Captain America: The Winter Soldier ends with a glimpse at Baron von Strucker holding the Maximoff Twins, few people felt teased or cheated. But at this point, the novelty has long worn off and even the post-credit scene we do get in Brand New Day—which is Spidey-related, but may very well refer to someone other than Tom Holland appearing in Avengers: Doomsday—distracts from the story we just saw.

You know what doesn’t distract? The Hulk, the Hand, or the Punisher. Yes, all of these characters come into the movie with their own agendas and baggage, but none of that matters for Brand New Day‘s overall story. Hulk shows up because Peter needs some advice on genetics and he happens to know an expert, and his presence opens the door for Jean to mind-control him to increase her attack. The Hand are there to show how far Damage Control has gone to expand their reach into super-humans. Even the Punisher shows up to demonstrate how far Peter has ignored his human side, sinking to a point where Frank Castle of all people is his only ally, an ally who warns him against continuing to walk an isolated road.

Sure, all of these roles could have been filled by other types of characters. We could have had Peter visit Curt Connors to discuss genetics, Damage Control could have used the Lobo Brothers as enforcers, and Peter could have brought MJ to the Prowler’s lair to hide out. All of those characters have more history with Spider-Man in the comics, but they haven’t appeared in the Holland movies and thus would have required more exposition. The shared universe allowed Brand New Day to pull in characters that audiences already knew and save time telling their story.

And how does Brand New Day use that time? By focusing on Spider-Man. Whether he’s talking to Jean Grey and fighting the Hulk or reuniting with MJ and Ned, Spider-Man is at the center of the story. It’s good storytelling, made more efficient and effective because of the shared universe.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theaters.