In the Stranger Things Finale, Romance Finally Grows Up
This article contains spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.
Though it’s never gotten as much attention as its creative monsters or colorful alternate realities, romance has always been a key element of Stranger Things. After all, it’s first and foremost a coming-of-age tale, and falling in love is a big part of growing up. The show has featured everything from one-sided crushes and mutual pining to school dances, first kisses, and uncomfortable regrets. Break-ups and make-ups span seasons, as characters part, find their way back to one another, or realize their relationships weren’t what either party involved truly needed. For some, love is about duty and memory. For others, it offers validation, strength, and a jumping-off point to new adventures.
Over the course of the series’ finale, love means both sacrifice and possibility. A love triangle concludes with everyone essentially choosing themselves. A pair of long-suffering adults embraces the hope of a fresh start. Heck, even a science teacher and a conspiracy-minded journalist might be making a go of things, if that random shot of Mr. Clarke and Murray at Hawkins High graduation is anything to go by. (Why are they sitting together, anyway??) And two teens unexpectedly prove that, sometimes, real love can be about growing together instead of growing apart.
Max and Lucas may not have ever been the true marquee couple of Stranger Things — their relationship was frequently overshadowed by Mike and Eleven’s frequently cosmic-level drama, Will’s crush on his bestie, or the seemingly unending trauma Joyce and Hopper were asked to endure — but they are probably its most realistic. Sure, they face their share of problems, but they’re relatively human ones: Communication issues, grief, shared loss, a devastating illness (albeit supernaurally caused). Max’s socioeconomic and family background are vastly different from Lucas’. He’s hungry to fit in in a way that she’s not.
Both Max and Lucas go through some difficult experiences over the course of the show’s run. They spend swaths of the series apart or at odds, barely speaking, in different friend groups, and/or trapped in a hell-like dimension inside a psychopath’s mind. But even when things seem bleakest, the two of them never give up on one another, whether they’re technically together romantically or even sharing the same plane of existence. Sure, the show makes a big deal over Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” being the key to bringing Max home — we certainly hear it enough! — but the final season makes it clear that it’s Lucas who is her true anchor, the boy who never stopped believing that she’d find her way back to him.
It makes a certain amount of sense that the Stranger Things finale not only gives these two the happy ending they earned long ago, but also uses their relationship to illustrate how they, and their compatriots, are moving into a new stage of their lives. And it’s one that’s decidedly more grown-up. Max and Lucas finally get to go on their long-promised movie date, bringing things back full circle to the path they’d started on before she was taken by Vecna. But what makes it so special is that while neither is the same person they would have been back then, it’s not an erasure of what they’ve been through, but a promise that they’re going to get past it. To make things even better, according to the Duffer Brothers, the movie they’re seeing is apparently Ghost, complete with Patrick Swayze and sexy pottery. But rather than focus on that bit of nostalgia (for once, the film isn’t revealed onscreen), Max and Lucas’s own love story supercedes the one that’s playing in theaters.
Their graduation day scene not only establishes that they are absolutely that high school couple that’s staying together and probably going to be oh so obnoxious about it, but confirms that their relationship has entered some new territory. Lucas calls Max sexy — in what I’m fairly certain is the first time anyone has ever uttered that word on this show — and pulls her into the kind of embrace that definitely implies things have gone well past PG-13 between them.
Despite the apocalypse, near-death experiences, and heartbreaking goodbyes that have taken place throughout this episode, it is this moment that somehow draws a line between the world that was and the one they’re entering now. It is romantic in every sense of the word, thoroughly grown-up in a way that the series has largely had to avoid up until this point, and so, so earned. Because if anybody deserves a chance to find genuine peace with one another, it has to be these two, who’ve been there as Stranger Things’ quiet heart all along.
All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
Wonder Man: Can Marvel Pivot Past Superhero Fatigue?
Over the past few weeks, Marvel trailers have been impossible to avoid. Each of the teasers for Avengers: Doomsday fully embraces superhero excess, promising over-the-top adventures with familiar faces. The teasers have been about bringing back favorites from movies past, including Captain America, Thor, and the X-Men.
But before we get to Doomsday, we get to meet Simon Williams, the main characeter of the Disney+ miniseries Wonder Man. And if the show’s latest trailer is any indication, Wonder Man is trying to be everything that Doomsday is not. With font and music choices that feel less like a Marvel movie and more like a Wes Anderson film, the trailer shows how struggling actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the one-time Mandarin Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) prepare to star in eccentric auteur Von Kovak’s (Zlatko Burić of Triangle of Sadness and Superman) big screen version of the cult TV show Wonder Man. Along the way, the trailer raises the question of superhero fatuige, the very phenomenon that Marvel created.
For the uninitiated, superhero fatigue is the term used to describe the reason that MCU and DCEU have ceased to dominate the box office like they once did. The term suggests that fans who once happily lined up to watch even deep-cut characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy and made outright disasters like Suicide Squad into box office phenomenons won’t even check out good Marvel shows such as Loki season 2. In particular, audiences don’t come any more because superhero movies have become overblown, formulaic, and convoluted; making people feel like they’re doing homework when watching the films, not enjoying themselves.
Wonder Man seems to address the issue of superhero fatigue not just by having characters talk about the issue, but also by downplaying the superheroic elements. While there’s a brief mention to the fact that Trevor appeared in Iron Man 3 as the false Mandarin, there are no suggestions of larger connections to the MCU: no Avengers, no Doctor Doom, no Spider-Man. You don’t even need to know who the Department of Damage Control is to follow the plot. Moreover, the teaser downplays Simon’s powers so much that no one watching the trailer necessarily understands what Wonder Man can do.
But can the studio that gave everyone superhero fatigue satirize superheroes? Can it make people interested in superheroes again?
If the comics are any indication, Marvel certainly can. Although superheroes dominate Marvel Comics, the publisher has long produced stories across a number of genres, even while remaining in the mainline universe. War series The ‘Nam mostly followed Viet Nam soldiers, but also had appearances by Steve Rogers and a pre-Punisher Frank Castle. In various iterations, The Sensational She-Hulkhas been a post-modern romp, a legal dramedy set in the superhero world, and, recently under author Rainbow Rowell, a romance story. In fact, the Wonder Man series that seems to inspire the show was just as much a Hollywood satire as it was a cape and cowl book, and Damage Control began life as a series about blue collar workers cleaning up after superheroes.
If Marvel can channel the energy of those comics, then Wonder Man can be something different than the same old superhero entry that everyone’s tired of. But if the series abandons the promise of the trailer to embrace the convoluted plotting and generic heroics that built the MCU, then Wonder Man will only increase superhero fatigue, even as Doomsday approaches.
Wonder Man premieres on Disney+ on January 27, 2026.
How Stranger Things Revived the Mass Weapon Trope
This post contains spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.
Hawkins, Indiana, is a long way from the mountains of Mordor, but they share one thing in common. Throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy, we see the great power offered by the One Ring, and its ability to corrupt. Even if someone like Boromir sees the ring’s potential to do good, the wise among the Fellowship know that something that powerful can easily corrupt. Only evil can come from such a weapon.
By the time the credits roll on the Stranger Things finale, we come to understand that Vecna is the product of a similar mindset. The boy Henry Creel was exposed to the Mind Flayer because of the U.S. government’s attempts to learn more about the alternate reality that we come to know as the Abyss. All of the experiments on Henry, Eleven, and Kali stem from the Americans hoping to harness the power of the Abyss and the Mind Flayer to win the Cold War over the Soviets.
Familiar as those tropes are, Stranger Things puts a new spin on them because of its setting. The series doesn’t take place in the high fantasy realm of Middle-earth, in deep space explored by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation of the Alien franchise, or in the MCU’s super-soldier program. It happens in Hawkins, Indiana, where the victims are average American kids.
Stranger Things began with the simplest of hooks. A little boy named Will Byers didn’t come home one night after playing games with his friends. From that premise came a vast story about everything from demogorgons to the psychic kid Eleven to all manner of military personnel, American and Russian, invading Hawkins. As high stakes as the storytelling in Stranger Things could sometimes get, it worked best when it remembered that it remained grounded in its humble Indiana setting.
The Stranger Things finale is no exception. The first half of the 128-minute episode features all of the high stakes storytelling that one would expect. Creel combines with the Mind Flayer to become a giant rocky monster, Hopper and Murray prevent the Abyss from combining with our world, and Dr. Kay and the American military essentially enact martial law in Hawkins. But after Vecna finally dies and El sacrifices herself to cut off the Upside Down, the last 45 minutes focus on Midwestern life, giving us the Hawkins High graduation ceremony, Joyce and Hopper getting engaged, and more.
More than tying up loose ends and giving our favorite characters a happy ending, the extended closing reinforces the central theme of Stranger Things. All of these strange things happen to the most normal, default kids in the United States of America. You could find a quartet like Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin in any American town. Everyone can relate to harried single mom Joyce, to disappointed blue collar guys like Hopper, and the middle class ennui of the Wheelers. So when Vecna and the U.S. military attack the Hawkins crew, it’s like they attack us all.
That’s a distinctive difference from most stories about superweapons. No, most of the crew people on the USS Nostromo were not intentionally looking to capture the Xenomorph for Weyland-Yutani Company, but they are truckers in deep space, inherently doing dangerous work. The Hulks and U.S. Agents and Abominations made through Marvel’s supersoldier program involve scientists and military personnel who know that they’re courting trouble. The hobbits explicitly leave the Shire to carry the One Ring away, hoping that they can keep their idyllic home safe from the forces of Sauron.
Outside of brief excursions to Chicago and Russia, the Stranger Things cast stays in Hawkins. They don’t go on quests, they don’t seek excitement. They didn’t sign up to explore deep space or take on a potentially deadly assignment. They’re simply trying to live their lives when the problems created by the power-hungry people invade their lives.
That distinction helps Stranger Things stand out among stories about the dangers of superweapons. Instead of following the Frankenstein model of punishing those who dabble in domains not made for them, Stranger Things shows how regular people suffer from the decisions made by governments and militaries—who claim to need superweapons to defend those people.
For all of the spectacular strange things that happen in the show, Stranger Things grounds warnings about the pursuit of superweapons better than sci-fi stories like Alien and fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings.
All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
Steve Harrington Got the Best Stranger Things Ending of All
This article contains spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.
Lots of things went down (or Upside Down) in the Stranger Thingsseries finale, from the reappearance of the Mind Flayer and Vecna’s death to Eleven’s (apparent?) sacrifice and even the gang’s high school graduation. The final episode’s nearly hour-long epilogue takes us into the final battle’s aftermath, running down the fates and futures of pretty much every major character before passing the torch — and the Dungeons & Dragons game — to a literal new generation. It’s heartwarming, bittersweet, and hopeful by turns, and (for the most part at least, if we ignore the Eleven of it all) as satisfying as anyone could have hoped for.
Lucas and Max finally get their movie date. Dustin resurrects Hellfire to tell the system to go [expletive] itself one last time. Joyce and Hopper get engaged. Will (presumably) moves to a city that actually has an active queer nightlife. Mike keeps telling stories, of both the fictional and the perhaps not-so-much variety. Nancy drops out of college to chase her journalism dreams, while Jonathan sets out to make what sounds like the most pretentious horror movie on Earth. Everyone appears to be relatively happy and surprisingly well-adjusted, even if most are wrestling with the same bittersweet existential questions that most young people face at such a major transition point in their lives. But only one character appears to be genuinely thriving, both confident in his own identity and secure in the choices he’s made: Steve Harrington.
Steve’s journey over the course of Stranger Things’ five seasons is a fairly remarkable one — particularly considering that he originally wasn’t even supposed to survive its first. A literal zero-to-hero narrative on steroids, Steve’s evolution from selfish jerk to selfless leader is a deeply satisfying ode to the power and possibility of change, a reminder that we can all be something more today than we were yesterday. That he should wind up with the show’s most satisfying ending feels not just right, but earned, a payoff for the years of work he’s done to become something more than he once was — a better leader, a better friend, a better person.
Sure, on paper, it may not seem like much. Steve, after all, not only stays in Hawkins when characters like Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, and Will leave their former lives behind, but he’s literally still employed at the high school they all once attended. But arrested development this is not. In fact, Steve is the character who, by the story’s end, seems most at peace with himself, who is content in a way that it’s not entirely clear any other character on the series’ canvas has yet managed to achieve. Perhaps this is because the events of Stranger Things have already required Steve to confront the person he’s been and the one he wants to become in more direct ways than some of his friends, or maybe it’s just because he’s the kind of person who was always meant for a simpler kind of life. Either way, it works.
Yet, while Steve’s life is perhaps smaller than he once thought it would turn out to be, it’s rich in meaning (and apparently also cash, if he’s already planning to buy real estate at the ripe old age of maybe 20 years old). He’s a teacher and a coach, helping to shape the youth of Hawkins in ways that are less directly related to the potential end of the world but that are no less impactful.
It’s not an accident that pretty much every kid on his baseball team is one of the 12 Vecna kidnapped, meaning that Steve is still shepherding and protecting those who need his help. (His six nuggets have essentially become a dozen at this point.) He’s going on road trips with Dustin during his summer college breaks. He’s dating, frequently and unsuccessfully it seems, but still with an eye toward settling down. (Presumably, he still wants those six nuggets of his own.) And despite everything that’s happened there, he’s still able to see the beauty in Hawkins, enough that he never seems to have even considered making his life elsewhere.
There’s plenty of stuff to nitpick when it comes to the ways that the Duffer brothers chose to wrap up this show. (See also: Eleven’s ambitious disappearance, the inexplicable MacGuffin space rock that corrupted Henry, the over-the-top violence of Vecna’s death.) But the fact that the show does so right by one of its most beloved fan favorites goes a long way to making this finale a success, even if it might leave you wondering why everyone couldn’t be afforded this same treatment.
All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
Stranger Things’ Climactic Battle Went Too Far
This article contains spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.
Vecna had to die. No one disputes that. Over five seasons of Stranger Things, the creature that was once the Boy Scout Henry Creel inflicted all manner of suffering on the people of Hawkins, Indiana, from kidnapping young Will Byers and torturing Eleven to killing Bob Newby and Eddie Munson. Worse, he was completely unrepentant, refusing to the very end the goodness still in him that Will tried to find. So it’s hard to feel bad about Joyce Byers‘ decision to take an ax to the dying Vecna’s neck.
Yet, somehow, Stranger Things found a way. What should have been a moment of catharsis as the characters bring their nightmare to an end instead plays like a community indulging its lust for violence. The presentation of the scene emphasizes retribution and the destruction of an outsider, undermining the good feelings that the scene should have evoked.
The defeat of Vecna occurs halfway through Stranger Things‘ final episode “The Rightside Up,” written and directed by series creators the Duffer Brothers. It takes a team effort to bring down the beast, with Eleven and Will unleashing a psychic attack on Henry while the others chip away at the giant form he takes by melding with the Mind Flayer. At the end, the heroes all convene within the Mind Flayer’s rocky interior as one last blast impales the viney Vecna on a stalagmite.
After his latest batch of young captives are freed, Vecna begins to awaken, which compels Joyce to approach the monster, ax in hand. Joyce drives the blade into the enemy, striking until he’s finally beheaded.
By itself, there’s nothing upsetting or even unusual about a final standoff between the big bad and the heroes. Stranger Things is fundamentally a fantasy show, so even if we’re largely opposed to violence in the real world, we understand that a series like Stranger Things interprets conflicts between good and evil only through spectacular fights. The problem is the way the Duffers choose to depict Joyce killing Vecna.
Before each blow Joyce strikes, the Duffers cut to a close-up on one of the main cast members, accompanied by a flashback that shows how Vecna harmed them. So when the camera pushes in on Dustin, we see Eddie Munson getting killed. A push in on Holly is matched with a flashback to a demogorgon attacking Karen Wheeler. After each flashback, the camera cuts to a close-up of the ax landing on Vecna’s neck.
One gets the sense that the Duffers intend the moment to be cathartic, to remind us that so many people have suffered at Vecna’s hand and now that suffering can come to an end. But instead, the combination of a wrong done followed by a blow of the axe makes the scene feel like a celebration of retributive violence. Each member of the community is bound not by how they suffered, not by the way they support one another, but rather by the fact that they inflict violence on Vecna. Moreover, the editing of the scene suggests that the slow killing of Vecna achieves some sort of balance through the violent act.
That presentation undercuts the cathartic feeling that the Duffers want to achieve with the scene and the long denouement that follows. Across the last 45 minutes of the finale, we see how the main characters have found some sort of peace and even prosperity after the events of the show. No, they don’t want to forget what Vecna did to them or all that they lost—that’s the main point of Dustin’s valedictorian speech. But they do want to move on, no longer living in the fear and suffering they experienced while Vecna was free.
By building Vecna’s death scene around the rhythm of remembering grievances and Joyce’s ax strikes, the climax emphasizes retributive violence. It suggests that healing doesn’t come just from the diverse group of weirdos who make up the show’s heroes coming together, or even from overcoming Vecna and the Mind Flayer. Instead, the scene emphasizes the dismembering, suggesting that healing comes only through retribution through blood. It’s not enough to stop and defeat Vecna. He must be methodically punished, ritualistically dismembered.
The concept of a community inflicting distributive violence against a single person undermines much of the appeal of Stranger Things, which is to watch how the oddball main characters find a community among one another. Even when they make mistakes, even when they hurt one another, Mike and Eleven and Max and the others find acceptance with one another. And yet, the finale asks that ragtag community to come together and slowly cut Vecna as punishment for his wrong doings.
Vecna had to end for Stranger Things to end. The show would have felt unfinished if he was still out there to return at any time. But Stranger Things shouldn’t have ended by making our heroes just as vengeful and bloodthirsty as the monster they were fighting.
All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar
Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond.
We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us!
Please note that all times are ET.
Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.
DATE
SHOW
NETWORK
Friday, January 2
Land of Sin
Netflix
Monday, January 5
The Wall Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, January 5
Spring Fever
Prime Video
Tuesday, January 6
Pokémon Horizons Season 3 – Rising Hope Part 1
Netflix
Tuesday, January 6
Finding Your Roots Season 12 (8:00 p.m.)
PBS
Tuesday, January 6
Best Medicine (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Tuesday, January 6
Will Trent Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Tuesday, January 6
High Potential Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Tuesday, January 6
The Rookie Season 8 (10:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, January 7
Unlocked: A Jail Experiment Season 2
Netflix
Wednesday, January 7
The Masked Singer Season 14 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Wednesday, January 7
Hollywood Squares Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, January 7
The Price Is Right at Night Season 7 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, January 7
Harlan Coben’s Final Twist (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, January 8
His & Hers
Netflix
Thursday, January 8
Love Is Blind Germany Season 2
Netflix
Thursday, January 8
The Traitors Season 4
Peacock
Thursday, January 8
The Hunting Party (10:00 p.m.)
NBC
Thursday, January 8
The Pitt Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
HBO Max
Friday, January 9
Alpha Males
Netflix
Friday, January 9
A Thousand Blows Season 2
Disney+
Sunday, January 11
The Night Manager Season 2
Prime Video
Sunday, January 11
Miss Scarlet Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, January 11
All Creatures Great and Small Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, January 11
Industry Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
HBO
Sunday, January 11
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal Season 3 (11:30 p.m.)
Adult Swim
Tuesday, January 13
The Boyfriend Season 2
Netflix
Tuesday, January 13
Tell Me Lies
Hulu
Wednesday, January 14
The Queen of Flow
Netflix
Wednesday, January 14
Hijack Season 2
Apple TV
Thursday, January 15
The Upshaws Season 7
Netflix
Thursday, January 15
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
Netflix
Thursday, January 15
Love Through a Prism
Netflix
Thursday, January 15
To Love, To Lose
Netflix
Thursday, January 15
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Paramount+
Thursday, January 15
Ponies
Peacock
Thursday, January 15
Animal Control Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Thursday, January 15
Going Dutch Season 2 (9:30 p.m.)
Fox
Friday, January 16
Can This Love Be Translated?
Netflix
Friday, January 16
No Tail to Tell
Netflix
Sunday, January 18
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (10:00 p.m.)
HBO
Monday, January 19
Judy Justice Season 4
Prime Video
Wednesday, January 21
Drops of God
Apple TV
Wednesday, January 21
Steal
Prime Video
Thursday, January 22
Finding Her Edge
Netflix
Thursday, January 22
Team Mekbots Season 2B
Prime Video
Saturday, January 24
Kingdom
BBC America
Monday, January 26
American Idol Season 24 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Monday, January 26
Wild Cards Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)
The CW
Monday, January 26
Extracted Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Monday, January 26
Memory of a Killer
Fox
Tuesday, January 27
Wonder Man (9:00 p.m.)
Disney+
Wednesday, January 28
Shrinking Season 3
Apple TV
Thursday, January 29
Bridgerton Season 4 Part 1
Netflix
Monday, February 2
Below Deck Down Under Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
Bravo
Thursday, February 5
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4
Netflix
Sunday, February 8
Super Bowl LX (6 p.m.)
NBC
Sunday, February 8
The ‘Burbs
Peacock
Wednesday, February 11
Cross Season 2
Prime Video
Sunday, February 15
Like Water for Chocolate Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
HBO Max
Sunday, February 15
Dark Winds Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
AMC
Thursday, February 19
The Night Agent Season 3
Netflix
Friday, February 20
The Last Thing He Told Me Season 2
Apple TV
Friday, February 20
Strip Law
Netflix
Monday, February 23
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, February 23
The Voice Season 29 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, February 23
CIA (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, February 25
Survivor Season 50 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, February 25
Scrubs Season 10 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, February 25
The Greatest Average American (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Thursday, February 26
Bridgerton Season 4 Part 2
Netflix
Friday, February 27
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2
Apple TV
Friday, February 27
Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, March 1
Actor Awards (8:00 p.m.)
Netflix
Sunday, March 1
Y: Marshals (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, March 4
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
Disney+
Wednesday, March 4
America’s Culinary Cup (9:30 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, March 5
Ted Season 2
Peacock
Friday, March 6
Outlander Season 8
Starz
Tuesday, March 10
One Piece Season 2
Netflix
Wednesday, March 11
Scarpetta
Prime Video
Sunday, March 22
The Bachelorette Season 22 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, March 22
The Faithful (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, March 22
The Forsytes (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, March 22
The Count of Monte Cristo (10:00 p.m.)
PBS
Thursday, March 26
Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole
Netflix
Friday, April 3
Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2
Apple TV
Wednesday, April 8
The Boys Season 5
Prime Video
Wednesday, April 29
Widow’s Bay
Apple TV
Friday, May 15
Berlín and the Lady with an Ermine
Netflix
If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!
Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.
Oscars 2026 Frontrunners and Contenders
Happy New Year. As hard as it might be to believe, 2026 is really here and we are all forced to slowly return to life after what was hopefully a long holiday. However, if you are in the trenches of awards season coverage—or, worse still, participating in the races(!)—there has been nary a moment to catch your breath.
Already we’ve had the Gotham Awards, the announcement of the New York Film Critics Circle’s winners, the same for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, plus many, many more. And come Sunday night, the first major televised ceremony of the new year kicks off with the Critics Choice Awards, which will be shortly followed a week later by the Golden Globes, and eventually SAG, the other guilds, and one day long in the distance, the Academy Awards.
Tired yet? Or perhaps you’re just curious about what is in contention and what will have to be content simply with buzz that goes nowhere? If so, you’re in luck. We’ve rounded up below a list of the biggest players, as well as the most eye-catching also-rans. We’ve ranked them in order of those most likely to win (or be nominated) for Best Picture to the least, but in each film’s section we’ll note other major awards the movie is likely in the running for or might win. So sip one more glass of bubbly, kick back, and enjoy!
One Battle After Another
A bit like the year of Oppenheimer, it is almost unfair to rank these by likelihood of winning Best Picture since the top prize is close to a foregone conclusion. One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s subversive epic in the era of Trump and the darling of every major critics group to date, appears destined to carry on winning Best Picture at each ceremony between now and Oscar night.
Admittedly most years we tend to draw a distinction between the films that critics fall behind and those chosen by folks who actually work in the film industry. For example last year we were confident The Brutalist hype would fade, albeit we wrongfully leaned toward Conclave instead of Anora picking up steam as the dark horse alternative. However, the perceived frontrunner this year isn’t a nihilistic indie indictment of American capitalism; it is a film produced by that very market as a commercial spectacle with breakneck action and Hollywood royalty in the cast bill, even if the film is fairly dissident in its own politics.
Industry watchers will continue to debate for years to come whether WB in the long run made money on this pricy gamble (the pic cost a reported $135 million to make, sans marketing or Oscar campaigning, and grossed $205 million worldwide), but it still played in front of a healthy general audience and will likely continue doing so in the streaming era. It also is a throwback to the type of movies that won Best Picture in the ‘90s: splashy, star-led spectacles intended for adult audiences who like car chases and entertainment in their introspective character studies lamenting the racist oligarchical hegemony secretly oppressing American life.
OBAA also has significant awards season narrative hype that you can bet is already being pursued/exploited by talented PR machines. The first is that writer-director PTA is due after never winning a single statue for Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, or Phantom Thread. Additionally, the movie can be viewed as a possible last hurrah for Warner Bros., the auteur studio of yore, basking in a golden year before it is probably swallowed whole by Netflix.
All of which makes it a shoo-in for Best Picture and likely Best Director. We’d also say Leonardo DiCaprio is the frontrunner for Best Actor, though that is less than a done deal, as is Benicio del Toro for Best Supporting Actor where one of his biggest competitors might just be fellow Oscar-darling Sean Penn for the same movie. Meanwhile Teyana Taylor is the likely frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress. We expect it to likewise be competitive in, if not win, Oscars for Cinematography, Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Also kudos to Chase Infiniti for sticking to her guns and campaigning rightfully as Lead Actress. She’ll get an Oscar nomination in the correct category for it.
Hamnet
If one must select a plausible possible dark horse narrative to unseat OBAA, then Chloé Zhao’s Hamnetis probably a decent bet. Certainly more reserved and elegiac than PTA’s highbrow actioner, Hamnet also checks a lot of boxes for Oscar voters. After all, the same body also in the ‘90s famously snubbed the populist choice of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan for another movie about William Shakespeare in Love. Granted, that was a different time and and different Academy, as indicated by the fact Spielberg produced Hamnet.
The reason we think this theoretically could get some greater industry love, however, is Zhao is already a rightful favorite within the business, and we truthfully think that despite the critics throwing all their flowers toward Rose Byrne (including myself as a CCA member), Jessie Buckley still is going to walk home with the Best Actress Oscar come March. It is a tremendous, career-defining essay of a mother in grief learning to live again through the power of art, and it’s so good that it won Hamnet the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, one of the best indicators of Oscars’ taste on the festival circuit. Previous TIFF audience winners include The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and La La Land. And the last time a TIFF darling won the Oscar for Best Picture? Another Zhao picture: Nomadland.
Also expect nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay (which it could win), Score, Costumes, Production Design, and probably Paul Mescal for Best Supporting Actor, although that’s less locked. Zhao might likewise be the most likely to upset Anderson in Best Director.
Sentimental Value
Perhaps the most noticeable thing about the modern Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the 2020s is how much more international its voting body and tastes have become—at least when it comes to favoring European cinema. Parasite becoming the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture in February 2020 is the most striking example of this, but look also to other Best Picture nominees that 10 years ago would’ve seemed unthinkable: Anatomy of a Fall, Triangle of Sadness, and even French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s horror Cannes darling, The Substance.
Joachim Trier’s exquisite Cannes Grand Prix winner, Sentimental Value, is poised to continue that tradition, and we suppose if there is a counter-narrative of something unseating OBAA, Sentimental Value might have the second most persuasive one. The international quarters of the Academy’s acting branches could rally behind this film for Best Picture, although another international Cannes favorite complicates that narrative (scroll further down for more). But this really is an actor’s and writer’s film, and the former is the largest branch in the AMPAS.
For evidence, expect Sentimental to pick up nominations for every major performance in the film: Renate Reinsve for Best Actress (which she can win, although the competition of Byrne and Buckley is fierce), Stellan Skarsgård for Best Supporting Actor (ditto), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Best Supporting Actress (trippo?), and Elle Fanning for the same category (it will be an honor just to be nominated). The film will also certainly be nominated for Best Director, Original Screenplay (which I suspect it might win), and Best International Film (which it will definitely win). On paper it’s a long-shot for the top prize given both its Scandinavian nature and languages, as well its subtlety. But in a decade where Anora can be a Best Picture winner, we’d argue there is something about this material and its subject matter of artists and families that appeals innately to general Academy interests.
Marty Supreme
If we might allow for one more dark horse with a shot at gaining steam for a late-arrival upset, folks should not sleep on Marty Supreme. Easily one of the best movies of the year, it is also now the one with a feel-good Cinderella story in the holiday season box office. While no Avatar, this Timothée Chalamet-led indie still grossed an impressive $27 million over the long Christmas weekend based purely on the strength of Chalamet’s popularity, its word-of-mouth, and an inventive marketing campaign rolled out by A24 and the star.
Oscar voters love a winner, and here’s one that is also incredibly satisfying. So maybe an irrepressible winner’s narrative about an irrepressible ping-pong player could lead to it gathering momentum in the Best Picture race? But, truthfully, we suspect that narrative will mostly help it in securing Chalamet his first Oscar over his mentor DiCaprio, and perhaps get director Josh Safdie his first Oscar nomination, as Safdie is currently on the bubble according to odds-makers. The film also should gain nominations for Original Screenplay, Editing, Casting, and if there’s any justice, Best Original Score.
Sinners
We admit putting Sinnersthis far down on a Best Picture-probability ranking is risky. Not only will Sinners possibly be the most popular and widely seen movie nominated for Best Picture this year—at least barring a debatable nod for Avatar 3—but it’s also one that has everything going for it that we ascribe to One Battle After Another: a splashy ensemble led by a bonafide movie star in Michael B. Jordan; a mixture of serious themes (in this case America’s eternal history with violence and race, particularly in the South) with audience friendly genre storytelling; and it’s even from that same storied studio about to be subsumed by a streaming service.
However, its genre trappings are horror, and no matter how much the voting pool changes at the AMPAS, they seem to be permanently overpopulated by stuffed shirts who never give horror its due. Look to last year at the many Oscar voters who anonymously admitted to not watching or being repulsed by The Substance—in the same year that the Academy failed to nominate the equally exquisite vampire film Nosferatu for anything beyond Cinematography. The first and last horror movie to win Best Picture was Silence of the Lambs more than 30 years ago, and that movie didn’t touch the third rail of American racism told from a genuinely Black perspective.
Still, Sinners will and should be nominated for Best Picture, it better see Ryan Coogler nominated for Best Director, and it should lead Jordan to his first Oscar nod. We also think it might very well win for Best Original Screenplay (though we might give the edge to Sentimental Value), Cinematography, Score, Casting, and possibly Editing. This possibility of winning for scripting operates on the curious tradition of Oscar voters giving Screenplay wins to the movies deemed too strange for Best Picture. Hmph.
It Was Just an Accident
Here we have the other international film likely to find its way floating up to the Best Picture race: It Was Just an Accident. The film is an act of literal bravery since Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi made this on the streets of Tehran under the nose of an authoritarian and theocratic regime that presumably would detest the picture’s portrait of everyday citizens haunted by their wrongful imprisonment and torture by the Revolutionary Guard. It is that experience which leads the film’s central characters to kidnap a man who might have been their torturer—although it’s unclear since they were all blindfolded and are basing their suspicions on what they think is the sound of his voice.
While the film makes for a potent thriller, we suspect the real-life act of bravado filmmaking has more than a little to do with it being this year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes. And in the 2020s a Palme win increasingly means an invitation to the Oscars Best Picture dance. Nonetheless, we also suspect the movie’s heavy-handed resolution and the fact Sentimental Value will be getting the lion’s share of international cinema votes means this movie’s invite will be of the token variety.
Ken Woroner/Netflix
Frankenstein
Another movie we are fairly confident will be nominated for Best Picture, even if it has little chance of winning, is Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Admittedly the Academy has a problem with horror movies, as indicated when only one got in last year and the similarly Victorian era-set Nosferatu got snubbed. But then, del Toro’s Frankenstein is not a horror movie; it’s a tragic drama from one of the masters who’s already in the Academy’s club after winning Best Picture and Director for The Shape of Water, and seeing major nominations in the past for Pan’s Labyrinth and the divisive (and terrific) Nightmare Alley.
Best Picture should be a lock, and if there’s any justice in the world Jacob Elordi’s sensitive portrayal of the Creature will also land him in the Best Supporting Actor race, although that is more on the bubble. The film might pick up a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination too, but honestly we have our doubts. Where the movie should clean up is in technical, below-the-line categories where we place Frankenstein as the frontrunner to beat in Best Production Design, Best Costumes, and Best Production Design.
Train Dreams
Another Netflix release we suspect will probably get into the Best Picture race is Clint Bentley’s sensitive ode to the working men who built this country, Train Dreams. A quiet and introspective film, Train Dreams features lovely paeans to the wilderness of North America and the industrial revolution technology which conquered it. That beatific framing is also why we suspect it’s a lock for a nomination in Best Cinematography, although it will never win when contrasted with the flashy IMAX and VistaVision work of Sinners and OBAA. There is also a narrative where Joel Edgerton gets into the fifth slot of the Best Actor race, but we have our doubts.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Now we come to the movies on bubble of getting into the Best Picture race. In fact, there is an argument to be made that it is tone deaf to include Avatar: Fire and Ash in our ninth slot since the film has been largely snubbed and ignored by most critics groups so far this awards season, even the fairly populist and star-friendly Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes.
But while the Academy might be most populated by actors, it is still dominated by producers, as indicated by the fact that the Producers Guild award remains the best bellwether for determining what will win Best Picture on Oscar night. And the producers are going to celebrate a darling of their branch, James Cameron, producing and directing four films in a row that will have crossed $1.5 billion in theaters. At least. In a time when moviegoing feels increasingly endangered, Cameron’s apparent financial invulnerability will continue to make him an industry fave, including on Oscar night. Otherwise don’t expect too much for this film beyond the obvious win for Best Visual Effects and probably a nomination for Best Sound.
Bugonia
Another film on the bubble that we think is likely the one to squeak into that 10th nomination slot is Bugonia. While the movie is mean, weird, and kind of like if a Twilight Zone episode was made by, say, Yorgos Lanthimos, it is still nonetheless a Lanthimos joint that stars Emma Stone. And when you ignore their weird little side project last year, Kinds of Kindness, the Academy has been fully onboard with their previous collaborations: both The Favourite and Poor Things scored Best Picture nominations, as well as nods for Stone, who won for Poor Things (whilst her co-star Olivia Colman won for Favourite).
Bugonia is an odder, crueler movie than either of those, so we don’t think it will mark Stone’s third Oscar win so soon after Poor Things and La La Land inside of a decade. But we have a hunch Stone will beat the doubters and pick up the fourth or fifth nomination for Best Actress, making her the most nominated Millennial performer to date with five acting nominations before she’s 40. The film also will likely get a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay for Will Tracy.
Wicked: For Good
A bit like predicting Avatar: Fire and Ash getting in, suggesting that Wicked: For Good is even on the bubble as a movie that might displace either Avatar or Bugonia for one of the bottom two slots is a risk because, frankly, Wicked: For Good isn’t very good. It’s in fact so “mid” that its quality has lowered what a year ago looked like frontrunner status for Ariana Grande in Best Supporting Actress.
Well, Grande is still definitely getting in for Best Supporting Actress (where she won’t win), and there is an argument that this still quite popular musical blockbuster sneaks into the Best Picture race based purely on the success of its box office and goodwill to the last movie. If we were putting down money, we’d obviously give the nudge to the above two films, but recognize that Wicked will still benefit from Ari’s nomination, as well as a slew of technical nods that include Best Costume Design, Production Design, Hair and Makeup, and Best Original Song.
The Secret Agent
Another international favorite of Cannes, there are plenty of prognosticators who will tell you Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian period piece thriller is getting into the Best Picture race. I don’t see it since the top race already has two foreign-language films all but locked in. With that said, the element that keeps winning The Secret Agent awards, from Cannes to the New York Film Critics Circle, is Wagner Moura’s lead performance and that will be where the film probably gets recognized by the Academy, though even that could be challenged. I’d place him in the fifth (vulnerable) slot, with Edgerton in the wings and on the bubble. Do absolutely count on a Best International Film nomination though.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Now we’re getting into films that will not be nominated for Best Picture but could dominate in other categories. In the instance of Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, that is represented by a stunning tour de force by Rose Byrne as a mother dealing with everything terrible about being a parent happening all at once… if only in her own mind. It’s a high-wire act of a turn that has impressively won nearly every major critics group prize thus far and is hence the de facto frontrunner going into the industry awards. My instincts suggest this movie is too peculiar and mean for general Academy tastes, however, which is why I’d give the edge to Buckley in Hamnet. Nevertheless, I’d be happy to be wrong since Byrne gives the performance of the year.
Blue Moon
Another film that will get a lot of attention for a specific performance is Richard Linklater’s wistful and lovely Blue Moon, a tragicomic toast of Scotch to underrated musical wordsmith Lorenz Hart. It features arguably the best performance of Ethan Hawke’s career, and one which I’m a little surprised hasn’t gained more traction with awards voters. It will probably be nominated in the “fourth” slot for Best Actor though.
Weapons
One more film that will likely get a lonely Oscar nomination is the supremely entertaining horror-ish mystery film, Weapons. While the movie is marketed around Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, it’s a surprise and unrecognizable appearance by Amy Madigan that has left audiences speechless. She’s so good that she absolutely will get a Best Supporting Actress nomination, although given the movie’s horror status, I do not buy the fan theories about her winning. The film might also earn a Best Original Screenplay nomination, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
KPop Demon Hunters
Sorry BLINK and Huntr/x nation, KPop Demon Hunterswill not be nominated for Best Picture. However, the Sony Pictures Animation project, and Netflix release, will probably win Best Animated Feature as well as Best Original Song, courtesy of “Golden.”
No Other Choice
While No Other Choice is one of my personal favorites of the year, it pains me to admit the Academy is unlikely to agree about Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy/thriller. This parable about an upper-middle class paper executive in Korea, who discovers he will literally kill to escape unemployment and the loss of his family’s creature comforts, has more than a touch of Hitchcock about it. But that means it’s just genre enough to not appeal to traditional AMPAS tastes, at least when it comes to above the line categories. Still expect it to be nominated for Best International Film and (hopefully) Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie is a great filmmaker. He co-directed one of the best movies of this century with his brother Josh when they made Uncut Gemstogether. So it’s a bit tough to admit that Marty Supreme has wholly overshadowed Benny’s own solo act in The Smashing Machine, an introspective (and at times unfortunately inert) character study about an MMA fighter named Mark Kerr. Dwayne Johnson is campaigning hard for a Best Actor nomination and he is good in the movie. Meanwhile Emily Blunt is even better as Kerr’s volcanic girlfriend Dawn Staples. It’s unlikely either will be nominated though after Smashing’s muted reception with both critics and ticket-buyers. With that said, it should earn a Best Hair and Makeup nod for Johnson’s physical transformation.
The Testament of Ann Lee
Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee is a big swing of ambition: a somber, meticulously researched historical drama that also has musical elements while tracing the life of an unlikely but real-life matriarchal leader of an 18th-century religious movement (and which others might have called a cult): the Shakers. Amanda Seyfried gives a memorably poignant performance of this woman, but we don’t honestly see it as likely to be nominated for Best Actress or perhaps much else come Oscar time. The movie’s oddness and, shall we say, earthly feet may prove too divisive or baffling.
Jay Kelly
Marriage Story’s Noah Baumbach made a movie about Hollywood royalty George Clooney playing what seems like a version of himself (and maybe a few of his fellow movie star pals) in Jay Kelly. On paper this should be an Oscar darling. In practice it most definitely is not.
A House of Dynamite
Another Netflix release from one of Oscars’ favorite filmmakers, Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite premiered on the streaming service with maximum fanfare. Alas, this heavy-handed and hammy PSA will quite possibly get no nominations.
Die, My Love
Jennifer Lawrence is a favorite of the Academy. But Rose Byrne and Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You tackled similar material to Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love and, we’d argue, did it better. It seems many agree since Byrne’s ascent means Die, My Love is getting snubbed.
After the Hunt
Julia Roberts reportedly turned down Marty Supreme and instead made After the Hunt, an anti-cancel culture movie from regular awards darling Luca Guadagnino. Unfortunately for them, Tár did the same thing much better three years ago. Whoops.
The Marvel Characters We Most Want to Spend New Year’s With
When it comes to year-end celebrations, holidays like Christmas provide a fairly clear script. One is supposed to gather together with family, sip egg nog, and watch Christmas Vacation and/or It’s a Wonderful Life for the 67th time. New Year’s, bless it, is a bit more anarchic.
We’re all welcome to celebrate the twin billing of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in whichever manner that we see fit. For some of us that means hitting the bars. For others, it’s all about cuddling up on the couch and watching football before the ball drops. Here at Den of Geek, however, we’ve decided to consign 2025 to hell the only know we know how: by tying it all back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Since we know how we’ll be spending the end of next year thanks to Avengers: Doomsday‘s Dec. 18 release, let’s take a moment at the end of this one to fantasize about which Marvel characters present the best New Year’s hang.
Doctor Strange
I’m not really into New Year’s Eve as a concept, and I’m pretty confident that Stephen Strange feels the same way. The man’s grumpy about a whole lot of things, so I can’t imagine New Year’s Eve is any different. Still, I reckon he’d be a good person to spend it with, despite the sarcastic eye rolls he’d give any celebratory countdowns or “new year, new me!” speeches. He’d at least be honest about the year’s triumphs and mistakes.
Location-wise, the Sanctum Sanctorum also has some nice party vibes, with its open foyer, roaring fireplace, and fascinating ancient trinkets to explore. But even if it sucked, Strange could just open a portal to anywhere, and we could head off there quicker than you can say “the whirling winds of Watoomb.” Plus, time would be on his side. If we got bored with one place, he could just rewind things with the Time Stone so we could experience New Year’s somewhere new. Imagine jumping through endless sparkle circles to different parties in different dimensions where midnight never comes. – Kirsten Howard
Steve Rogers
Let’s face it, if the past year hasn’t been so great for you— and, if we’re honest, that’s most of us lately — New Year’s Eve can be kind of a downer. Yay, let’s celebrate the end of 12 months that have punched us all repeatedly in the face! Cheers! We’re definitely looking forward to a chance to do that all over again with a new date on the calendar. (Narrator voice: We’re so not.) But you know who probably is? Steve Rogers. And, maybe, given… well, everything, it really is time to call in the big guns for some help this year. (He’s back for Avengers: Doomsday after all.)
Need a reminder that you are still a good person, no matter how many times you failed last year? Steve’s got you. A heartfelt ode to believing in yourself? He’s on it. A motivational speech about picking yourself back up after a failure? He can do this all day. Plus, you just know his ideal New Year’s Eve plans are super cozy and traditional — and if you’ve got to watch the zombified corpse of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with anybody, it might as well be someone who looks like Chris Evans. — Lacy Baugher
Darcy Lewis
Don’t let her astrophysics expertise fool you, Dr. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) knows how to party. While the MCU movies establish Darcy as a valued friend to Jane Foster and a steadfast ally to Thor Odinson, Marvel TV offering What If…? reveals her rager bona fides. Thanks to the aptly named Party Thor, Darcy Lewis parties so hard, in fact, that she gets hitched to Howard the Duck, eventually giving birth to (or hatching??) their son Byrdie.
But where does New Year’s Eve factor into all of this? Look, Kat Dennings is very attractive and I want what she and that duck have. Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you satisfied that you made me admit it? I, Alec George Bojalad, am jealous of a fictional water fowl and I want to elbow in on his New Year’s Eve plans with his beautiful human bride. Happy now??? – Alec Bojalad
Luis
New Year’s is a time to look forward to the future, but it’s also a time to look back and celebrate the past year. And when it comes to recapping past events, no one in the MCU does it better than Scott Lang’s best pal, Luis. Played with delightful energy by Michael Peña in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, Luis has an eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, which managed to turn conversations between random people into the stuff of legend.
Just imagine what Luis could do recapping even the mundane parts of my life? He would make my frustration while watching Star Trek: Section 31 sound like an epic struggle. According to Luis’ narration, reading issues of Absolute Wonder Woman would be akin to pouring through some ancient tome. Even my New Year’s Eve celebrations—which usually consists of watching a hockey game and going to bed at 10 p.m. —would sound like the stuff of legend when Luis describes it. – Joe George
Rocket Raccoon
New Year’s Eve and Day are about many things: the past, the future, and if we’re being completely honest… the party. And we cannot imagine a better critter in the multiverse to throw down with than Bradley Cooper’s wisecracking Rocket. Tony Stark has got the money and toys for a swanky shindig, and Peter Parker the coolest off-the-wall parlor tricks this side of Fred Astaire, but Rocket is rocking the heart. Well that, plus a spaceship to go across the cosmos to the funner hives of scum and villainy this side of Tatooine.
Admittedly a bit moody at times, in a post-Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 context where Rocket is contented with leading the titular ragtag gang of multiple Han Solos (that now includes a cute talking Golden Retriever), we’re willing to bet the racoon is a lot mellower while still liking a good den of inequity to play cards, drink bubbly, and play an entirely safe and non-lethal prank at. He promises. Plus, he’s got all the best jams now courtesy of that Microsoft Zoom in his pocket. So make room, Nebula and Adam Warlock, we’re coming aboard! – David Crow
M’Baku
Do you know how hard it is to stand out as a performer in any given movie? Now think of how hard it is to pop off the screen in a film that also contains Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Angela-Freaking-Bassett. And yet, Winston Duke as M’Baku somehow doesn’t get swallowed up in all the star power in 2018’s Black Panther. In fact, he enhances it.
New Year’s Eve is a celebrity’s holiday. It’s the time of year to be seen out on the town, handing your expensive winter coat to a valet as you enter into an exclusive party. And when it’s time to shrug the $75 blue Eddie Bauer Men’s XXL off my shoulders, I want the Jabari tribe leader by my side. M’Baku is quite simply an elite hang. The man has humor, the man has swag, and most importantly: the man has stories. There’s a whole unheard history of Wakanda waiting to be told. Who better to tell it as we sip champagne and wait for the ball to drop than the current king of Wakanda? – AB
Heated Rivalry Stars Are Doing a New Project Together
Heated Rivalry fans have something to keep them busy until season two finally arrives!
Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, best known as hockey players Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander on the hit Crave streaming series, have reunited for a brand-new project called Ember & Ice on the Quinn audio erotica platform, and you can listen to the first two episodes today.
Storrie and Williams voice two fae princes from the legendary Solari and Lunare kingdoms who start as rivals but soon discover that sparks can turn into passion. The audio romance is set to revive the Heated Rivalry stars’ chemistry between your ears before they’re back in action onscreen.
“Hudson and Connor have a really special chemistry, and we feel incredibly lucky to work with them,” Quinn CEO Caroline Spiegel remarked in a statement. “The way they connect with audiences and show up in the cultural conversation is exciting to watch.”
In Heated Rivalry, Storrie and Williams’ characters are pro hockey players who’ve spent years hating each other on the ice while secretly falling for one another off it. Part of the queer romance show’s appeal comes from its hockey backdrop, which evokes the real-world NHL rivalries of generational talents like Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, but gives them a classic enemies-to-lovers arc.
The show is based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers books and has become a real cultural moment, with fans making various “Stranger what…?” jokes online as the series gained popularity amid Netflix’s final Stranger Things rollout.
Williams also credits social media users with whipping up the show’s success during its early episodes.
“I heard a statistic that between week one and week two, there was, I think, a 600 per cent increase in viewers,” he told Harper’s Bazaar. “And I really think the TikTok editors, especially, were on one. I don’t know how old those people are, or who taught them how to edit that well, but it’s so impressive. They’re free trailer editors and doing it on their own dime. I am very grateful, because a lot of times I’ll see an edit or, like a Tweet, and it’ll make me fall in love with a different part of the show that I overlooked.”
Terry Gilliam Slams Time Bandits TV Show Failures
Time Bandits was a rare “one and done” series for Apple. The show, based on the 1981 fantasy-adventure film by Terry Gilliam, was abruptly cancelled last year despite fairly decent reviews.
Gilliam thinks he knows why. In a typically outspoken interview with la Repubblica (via World of Reel), the often controversial director says that the show’s failure was down to its lack of little people in the cast, many of whom were featured in the original film. Gilliam also claims execs said that casting actors of short stature wouldn’t work for a teenage audience.
“They kept it from me for months that there were no dwarves in the series – something I consider structural to that story,” Gilliam explained. “When I found out, it was too late, and that’s why the series failed.”
It seems Gilliam was also unhappy with the direction the new series was taking after finally reading some scripts, explicitly calling out the show’s co-creator and star, Taika Waititi, as someone he was initially glad to see take the reins of a new reimagining of his film, but who he suggests ultimately let him down.
“They brought me in as a non-writing executive producer, and I thought I had a bit of control, but when I read the scripts, I didn’t like them,” he said. “Taika Waititi, the director whose Jojo Rabbit I loved and to whom I thought I was handing the project, wasn’t really involved; his subsequent films were disappointing.”
Waititi, who shot the new version of Time Bandits over in New Zealand with longtime collaborator Jemaine Clement and star Lisa Kudrow, told Entertainment Weekly last year that the show never got a second season simply because it was “too expensive” to make.
Time Bandits was the first installment in Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination,” followed by Brazil in 1985 and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1988. The film was a critical and commercial success, and is often cited as one of the best family movies ever made. A sequel was planned in the 1990s but shelved after several cast members passed away.
Ryan Coogler Reveals the Story He Wrote for Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther 2
Ryan Coogler has opened up about the original script he wrote for Black Panther 2 before its star, Chadwick Boseman, died from cancer in the summer of 2020.
During a new installment of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Coogler explained that Boseman was too sick to read the script by the time he’d finished writing it, but that he’d put a lot into that version of the Marvel sequel because he’d gotten to know Boseman better as a performer.
Coogler, who went on to make an updated MCU entry that explored the grief following Boseman’s passing through the eyes of its characters, also discussed the plot of the scrapped script, which he “loved” but featured a different version of Namor than the one we got in his completed film, Wakanda Forever.
“The big thing about the script was that it was this thing called the Ritual of Eight,” Coogler told host Josh Horowitz. “When a prince is eight years old, he has to go spend eight days in the bush with his father. Amongst those eight days, they have to go into the bush without any tools. And the prince has to listen and do everything that’s asked of him by his father, but the rule is, for those eight days, the prince can ask the father any question. And the father has to answer.”
“So during the course of those eight days, Namor launches an attack,” Coogler added. “So that was what the movie was. He had to deal with somebody, and it was a different version of Namor in that script, but he had to deal with someone who was, like, insanely dangerous. But, because of this ritual, his son had to be joined at his hip the whole time. So while he was engaging in negotiations and fights, his son had to be right there, or else they’d have to violate this ritual, which had never been broken.”
The director also spoke about making his 2025 hit horror movie Sinners and his return to Marvel for Black Panther 3, which is eyeing a June 2026 production start.
“I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart,” he said, while acknowledging that some people might be surprised by the move. “Yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this fucking dude making another one of those?’ But that’s totally fine, that question makes sense. And it’s my job as a filmmaker to show why.”
Black Panther 3 is expected to be released in 2028, following Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Marty Supreme Is the Quintessential American Story for Its Creators
For screenwriter Ronald Bronstein, the scenes where Timothée Chalamet picks up a ping-pong paddle are among the most moving and pure in all of Marty Supreme. That is saying something since by his own admission, Bronstein was never an athlete. In fact, the filmmaker—who also co-edited and produced the table tennis epic—concedes he was that “obnoxious kid” growing up, the kind who “made not being interested in sports into a part of my identity.”
Even so, when he witnesses Chalamet become ping-pong prodigy Marty Mauser, and his co-writer/editor Josh Safdie step fully into the director’s chair, Bronstein is awed by what he describes as an Olympian elevation of a sport. “I find the actual table tennis playing in the movie itself to be, for me, the most beautiful passages of the film.”
Compared to Bronstein and Safdie’s previous collaborations, which include the grim and cynical Uncut Gemsand Good Time among their ranks, there is indeed something euphoric and faintly giddy to Chalamet finally facing his rival (at least in his own mind) in war-torn Tokyo circa 1952. Yet in the minds of the men who made the 150-minute ping-pong portrait that’s become the indie blockbuster of the holiday season, the film is about more than just a sport or the athlete winning.
Marty Supreme can, quite literally, be surmised by that climactic silhouette: the lone American, standing loud and proud on a stage in the ruined lands of a former rival, proving something to his own sense of self-worth, even when the rest of the world stares in apprehension or insists he should sit down.
“To me, it’s [about] the America that emerges as victors after World War II,” Bronstein considers, “and all of this political rhetoric from that era which just insists on the greatness of the country, and that greatness is predicated on individual initiative and personal freedom. I was like, ‘Wow, I see Marty as a sort of inflamed, Kabuki Theater version of that rhetoric.’ Like how you can take the myth of rugged individualism, and the myth of the individual, and the myth of personal freedom, and turn it into its most extreme, dangerous version of itself?”
The climactic table-tennis match of the film is even only a slight artistic liberty. While the character Chalamet plays is ultimately a fictionalized epitome of the American dreamer who refuses to stop striving and trying, despite it damaging every meaningful relationship and opportunity in his life, he is heavily inspired by the real-life Marty Reisman, a mid-20th century hustler from the Lower East Side’s ping-pong halls of yore. Similarly, the antithesis of Chalamet’s Marty, Japanese champion Koto Endo (played by real table tennis champ Koto Kawaguchi) is a fictional character who represents the polar opposite of Mauser: he’s quiet, shy, literally deaf, and humble enough to keep his day job as a factory worker helping rebuild his country. However, he is also based on 1952’s men’s singles champion, Hiroji Satoh.
“What is true is that Japan came out of the war and came out of the occupation—meaning the first time that the travel ban was lifted, and the Japanese culturally re-entered the world stage—through table tennis,” Bronstein explains. “That happened in India, where the world championships were that year. So we’re again not being historically accurate. But that idea is very attractive to me in a kind of Adam Curtis-ian way where you find these footnotes in history, or footnotes of footnotes, and you zoom in on them and take a sort of worm’s eye view on how these individuals either represented the flow of history or changed history in some way.”
Penning a Legend
Zooming in has, of course, been a crucial part of Bronstein’s creative approach with Josh Safdie over the years. The way Bronstein tells it, Josh is more of the historical and research junkie of the two, whereas Bronstein sees himself as “a brooder by nature” that’s better drawn to the virtues and vices of human nature. So while Marty Supreme is the pair’s first outright period piece film with a setting of more than a few years in the past, the scribe is quick to point out “human beings, in terms of our emotional capacity for feeling and our intellectual capacity, stopped evolving [about] 60,000 years ago.” The crucial thing, then, is the micro-scaled chaos and ecstasy of being alive, whether that is as a middle-aged gambling addict in Manhattan’s 2010s Diamond District, or as the world’s best (and most overlooked) table tennis player of 75 years ago.
The latter nonetheless marked something of a surprise for Bronstein when it became the subject matter of his next movie. The shock began when Safdie dropped a copy of Marty Reisman’s obscure 1974 memoir, The Money Player, The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Player and Hustler, on Bronstein’s desk in 2019.
“When Josh sort of burst into the room and said we have to make a movie about the world’s greatest table tennis player, I was just like [huh?!],” Bronstein recalls with a slight smile. At the time, he obviously knew about ping-pong, but only insofar of it being a “basement activity.” Meanwhile the years-long process of making Uncut Gems alongside Josh and Benny Safdie, the latter of whom also co-directed and co-wrote that picture, left Bronstein spent.
“When we finish a movie in general, we treat these projects like existential receptacles, like body bags that you can just throw any life experience into. And when we’re done with them, we don’t even have two ideas to rub together. So I just go into a completely dormant state, and I kind of rely on Josh and his sort of natural exuberance to kind of body-check me out of it.”
Still, for the non-athlete, and non-research-fixated Bronstein, the access point into Marty’s story was the widespread indifference for what many consider to be a frivolity; a child’s game; a basement activity.
“I thought I could just lean into the lack of seriousness of even the word ping-pong,” Bronstein remembers. “Ping-pong just as a name seems like it was designed to humiliate somebody who would be enthusiastic about it. It’s almost like if you think of the word ‘movie.’ That’s been grandfathered into our consciousness, so we don’t think about just how stupid and silly any kind of onomatopoeia is. But I could just lean in and double down on how frivolous and trivial sounding it is, at least in the popular imagination.”
They would make a movie about a guy who won the lottery of genetics for being the best in the world at a sport that no one around him respects, and that the greater international community of said sport might likewise not respect his arrival in. Says Bronstein, “What a great conduit to explore all of the costs that would be associated with any pursuit where one’s identity is fused with the pursuit.”
The writer cannot estimate how many drafts he and Josh ended up tackling for Marty Supreme. The process was iterative and continuous, even after it was almost scrapped in the early 2020s.
“We started writing right after Gems and we wrote for a few months, and we knew what the story should be—like you could squint at it and you could see it—but it wasn’t coming out right. It was actually coming out way too close to Gems in very specific ways. So we put it aside and we wrote something else, a massive script [that was] like a three-part, 700-page story that we ended up not making, partly due to the writers’ strike. At some point, we just looked at each other and were like, ‘Marty is the one to return to.’”
One of the keys to why Safdie and Bronstein appear to work so well together as both screenwriters and editors is an appreciation for capturing a mania and chaos that feels as spontaneous as it is scripted.
“We’re trying to create work that feels like it’s being written while it unspools in the projector while it’s playing,” Bronstein explains. “So when you’re writing dialogue down, I’m trying to capture the way people speak. It’s a completely artificial thing. But I want it to feel like the universe is giving those ideas to me so I can take them for granted, and not as something I mandated and stamped onto the universe. Anytime a performer brings a piece of themselves to the dialogue, changes the syntax and grammar just enough to heat it up, it feels like it didn’t come from my brain or Josh’s brain, but it came from them and came from the universe.”
The process continues all the way into the editing suite where Bronstein and Safdie get one more go at essentially revising their own work. Says the former, “The beauty of being both a writer and an editor is that when you get into the edit, you don’t have to have any respect for the writer or the writing, and you can just really use it as an opportunity to completely rewrite the material as if you were trying to impose intentionality onto found footage.”
The Uncut Gems Comparison
The result is a movie that, similar to Good Time and particularly Uncut Gems, has a pressure-cooker sense of tension placed on its protagonist. But Bronstein is wary to dwell too heavily on comparisons or similarities within the works.
“Out of all the things that I respect or look for in an artist, probably range is pretty low on my list,” says Bronstein. “You look for range in the full gamut of human beings out there, but each individual has a narrow set of preoccupations that defines them. So when I think of my favorite artists, whether it’s a Lynch or Robert Crumb, I’m not really looking for range. I assume that there’s going to be overlap from work to work that’s going to connect them. In a sense, each work is just them narrowing in on those preoccupations like a shark circling its prey. So how this movie connects to Gems, and how it doesn’t connect to Gems, is a negotiation that I’m trying in my life to avoid thinking about.”
With that said, the filmmaker does allow himself to note one crucial distinction: “The main difference between Howard and Marty is, Howard is more [suffering from] a disease. He’s a gambling addict, right? That’s pathology. While there are obviously pathological components to Marty that are fueling him to make the decisions he’s made… he feels this obligation to see this god-given talent through. I think there’s something much more positive at the core of Marty, because he has that talent.”
The core is to be able to again zoom in on that person, in all their talent and pathology, and as the scribe puts it, “Get enough of a sense of what their circumstances are and how those circumstances are affixing them into a position, so that it’s hard not to just sob your heart out.”
Marty Supreme is in theaters now.
The Terrible X-Men Costumes We Dare Avengers: Doomsday to Adapt
The latest teaser for Avengers: Doomsday doesn’t tell us anything about Doctor Doom’s evil plan to deal with the incursions destroying the multiverse. Nor does it even involve the Avengers at all. Instead, the minute-long teaser just catches up with three of the X-Men, bringing back Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, and James Marsden as Cyclops.
The sight of these old favorites is enough to appease those hoping for more Doomsday details, especially because of their costumes. Instead of the black leather the actors wore in their first appearances throughout the 2000s, Stewart, McKellen, and Marsden are outfitted in comic book accurate uniforms. Leaked images of their co-stars Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Channing Tatum (Gambit), and Kelsey Grammer (Beast) also show the characters in comic book suits.
But, of course, a true comic book fan knows that these costumes are just one of many sartorial choices the characters have worn over the year. If Avengers: Doomsday really wants to impress us, then they’d give their stars one of these get-ups straight from the pages of Marvel Comics.
Professor X in Action Gear
In the public imagination, Professor Charles Xavier is a kindly paraplegic who wears a smart suit while delivering advice and instruction to his young charges. One doesn’t have to read too far in the comics to find that Xavier doesn’t always have those qualities. Not only is Professor X famously a jerk, but he often takes a more active role with the X-Men. If he’s still bound to his wheelchair, then Xavier tends to wear the jumpsuit that Stewart has in the teaser. But when he regains the use of his legs, which happens on a regular basis, then Xavier makes some stronger choices.
Easily the worst of the bunch is the costume he wears when he first decides to be a field member of the X-Men. With his ability to walk returned by his girlfriend’s alien people, Xavier chooses a hideous yellow get-up with blue gloves and boots, and a pair of belts making an “X” across his chest. Xavier already feels out of place going on adventures with his students, but putting him in that costume makes Professor X seem like the teacher who goes to his student’s parties and gets a look to friendly with some of the girls.
Magneto as Erik the Red
To be clear, Magneto hasn’t really ever had a bad costume. The sleeveless, long-gloved get-up he wore during his trial isn’t for everyone, and some may take exception to the flowing blouse he donned while serving as headmaster of Xaver’s school, but for the most part, Erik Lehnsherr knows how to make purple work for him.
So to ding the Master of Magnetism, we need to look at an identity he briefly donned when everyone thought he had been de-aged turned into a hot, young good guy called Joseph (spoiler: Joseph was a clone). Happy to let Joseph divert attention, Magneto took the identity of Erik the Red, which also was an identity that Cyclops used while outside the X-Men and that an alien named Davan Shakari once used.
None of that convoluted backstory explains why the Erik the Red costume is so hideous. It looks like a slightly more armored version of Sean Connery‘s Zardoz get-up with a horned helmet. Ugly as it is, I bet the always game McKellen would make it look amazing.
Cyclops the Mutant Buster
As mentioned above, Cyclops also wore the Erik the Red costume, but we had to give that one to Magneto, so we’re actually talking about the second worst outfit Scott Summers wore. And because this is the X-Men, a convoluted story comes with it. Well, actually, Scott’s worst costume is his original X-Factor getup.
X-Factor was the name of the team that the original five X-Men formed in 1986, when they reunited after Jean Grey’s resurrection. Not only did Marvel editorial want the original five on their own team, but the publisher wanted to ride the wave of Ghostbusters mania sweeping the nation. So instead of making X-Factor just another superhero team, Marvel decided that the team would pose as mutant hunters. When they found a mutant, X-Factor would actually help the poor kid they found.
Fortunately, Marvel dropped the conceit, but not before forcing us to see Scott in his mutant buster gear, a horrible blue sweat suit that seems designed for a light aerobic workout or doing nice breakdancing moves.
The Amazing Nightcrawler
The legendary artist Dave Cockrum originally designed Nighcrawler for a Legion of Superheroes spinoff comic. When Cockrum jumped from DC to Marvel to help relaunch the X-Men, he and writer Len Wien remade Nightcrawler into Kurt Wagner, the German swashbuckler we know and love. For that reason, few of Nightcrawler’s redesigns stray too far from what Cockrum did.
That said, the one time that Nightcrawler had a very different costume, it also had a fantastic design… because it’s Spider-Man’s. Yes, in the mini-series Uncanny Spider-Man, Nightcrawler took Peter Parker’s place for a while. Crazy as it sounds, Uncanny Spider-Man is pretty fun and it only lasted a few issues, so we can’t be too mad at it. Still, it would be bold for Marvel to make Nightcrawler into Spider-Man in Doomsday.
Mystique Embraces the ’90s
In the comics, shapeshifter Mystique has an incredible design, a cool sleek white dress to match her blue skin and red hair. For some reason, the movies decided she should be just naked and scaly, a design they kept when Jennifer Lawrence stepped in to replace Romjin in the role. The comics did sometimes adapt the naked scaley version of Mystique, but most of her looks stick to the white and blue look.
Strangely, the worst variation isn’t black sports bra that she briefly wore in the 2000s. Rather, it’s the ’90s nonsense that Mystique had while serving in X-Factor. The costume has the usual white base, but it’s covered with extraneous red belts and pouches. Now, to be clear, lots of superheroes had extra belts and pouches in the ’90s. But it really makes no sense of Mystique, a shapeshifting spy. The belts and buckles make the otherwise lithe character seem clunky and clumsy.
Gambit Goes Yellow
Unlike the other characters on this list, Gambit has rarely had a good costume. He’s so defined by his famous pink head sock and leather coat look that even attempts to update him retained those ’90s qualities.
But even by those standards, the yellow and red duds he wore as part of a later incarnation of, you guessed it, X-Factor. This incarnation of X-Factor was a corporate espionage outfit, and Gambit needed a fashionable new costume to match. Yet, for some reason Gambit’s corporate overlords put him in the most hideous yellow and red suit, made all the worse for the dumb red lenses over his eyes.
The outfit works a bit better when paired with his signature duster, but Gambit’s X-Factor look has us longing for the headsock.
Beast Clashes Colors
Honestly, the boldest thing for the MCU to do would be putting 70-year-old Kelsey Grammer in Beast’s usual costume, which is just underwear. If The Marvels is any indication, however, Grammer will just be a vocal performance for a CGI Beast. And that means if we want to find a weird costume for Beast’s next MCU appearance, we’ll have to turn, of course, to X-Factor.
Even movie fans probably know that Hank McCoy has two looks as the Beast. In one, he’s mostly humanoid, albeit with large hands and feet. In that mode, Beast wears superhero tights, including a brown and yellow suit that he can’t quite work as well as Wolverine. Hank’s other mode came after he performed experiments on himself, which first gave him grey fur and later blue fur. He sometimes gets a stylish coat when he’s blue and furry, which Grammer had in X-Men: The Last Stand.
But then, there was that one time in X-Factor that Hank decided to combine the two. Still blue and furry, Beast put on a variation of his brown and yellow duds. The clash of colors did not work, reminding us that Dr. McCoy is a great scientist, but not a great fashion designer.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.
Avengers: Doomsday Can Finally Give X-Men’s Leader the Respect He Deserves
In 2005’s Astonishing X-Men #8, Marvel’s Mighty Mutants discover one of their age-old enemies on the lawn of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, a giant mutant hunting robot called a Sentinel. While Wolverine, Colossus, and other heroes try to evacuate the school and beat the Sentinel in the usual way, Cyclops a.k.a. Scott Summers chooses a more extreme method. He pulls the visor off his face, unleashes his full optic blasts, and obliterates the foe.
“Every now and then, Summers…” says Wolverine, his look of shock and admiration clear in artist John Cassaday’s illustration. “I remember why you’re still in charge.”
That scene gets recreated in the third teaser for Avengers: Doomsday, which focuses on the X-Men. Set to the piano version of Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme, also used in the Captain America and Thor teasers for Doomsday, the camera moves through the dusty Xavier mansion to find Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) sitting together. The scene then cuts to James Mardsen as Cyclops, pulling off his visor and letting loose his optic blasts.
Although it brings back actors from 2000’s X-Men, the Doomsday teaser shows that much has changed since that movie released. In X-Men, Cyclops was at best a footnote, a milquetoast wet blanket to get in the way of the romance between Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey and Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine. By the time Mardsen’s Cyclops died in X-Men: The Last Stand, even the character’s fans were happy to see this bland rendition of the team leader put to rest.
In many ways, the 2000 movie’s treatment of Cyclops matched the status quo at the time. Introduced as the team leader in 1963’s X-Men #1, Scott Summers developed into a complex, mature character under writer Chris Claremont’s decade-plus run. Claremont intended for Summers to retire after the death of Jean Grey in the Dark Phoenix Saga, giving him a wife and a son. But when Marvel editorial decided to bring Jean back from the dead, against Claremont’s wishes, Cyclops was written as abandoning his family to return to his old girlfriend.
The decision ruined Cyclops as a character for decades, so much so that few complained when the animated X-Men series portrayed him as a dull block of wood. However, Cyclops was finally rehabilitated over the 2000s, starting with the aforementioned Astonishing X-Men series by Joss Whedon and Cassaday. Through that series, and especially the runs that followed by Warren Ellis, Mike Carey, and Brian Michael Bendis, Cyclops became a radical, a former child soldier so devoted to the cause of mutant liberation that he could accomplish what neither Professor X nor Magneto ever could.
These days, fans recognize Cyclops as a complex character, a highly competent strategist and morally principled hero, whose convictions sometimes make him clash with humans and mutants alike. In short, he’s a far cry from the guy that Marsden had to play in the Fox X-Men movies. If the X-Men scenes from Doomsday are borrowing from those moments from the comics, then the viewers will finally learn what even fan favorites like Wolverine always knew, that Cyclops deserves to lead this team.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives on December 18, 2026.
Who Will Die in the Stranger Things Finale?
The Duffer brothers have been preparing us for the Stranger Things finale for a while. The show’s creators have promised a concluding episode that “doesn’t feel painful but feels satisfying” and said they’re not trying to shock or upset anyone by pulling a “Red Wedding”-style Game of Thrones scenario that kills off a lot of the cast.
Still, it seems unlikely that all of our faves will survive a final battle with Vecna, so we’ve been looking at the current state of their journeys and trying to decide if any are more likely to bite the bullet than others.
There’s certainly a long list of characters who are less likely to die because they just simply haven’t had much to do this season and aren’t being set up as key players in the finale. Lucas has spent quite a while just trying to get Max back, and now he has. Joyce has largely been fretting about Will, as usual. Jonathan and Nancy finally broke up after realizing their relationship wasn’t working. Max has been a big focus of this season, but now that she’s back in the real world, her story is pretty much done. Other characters, like Dustin and Robin, have been keeping the plot rolling with their quick thinking, but it doesn’t seem like there’d be any narrative weight to gain by killing them off.
However, some characters may still be at risk in the final episode…
5. Hopper
Hopper has already tried to sacrifice himself once this season in an effort to save Eleven, and he’s had one fake-out death in the past. Is it time for him to hit the old dusty trail once and for all? Well, we’d suspect not, because Joyce has had to deal with one boyfriend dying and to put her through another seems like overkill for a woman who’s really been going through the wringer since the show began!
That said, Hopper could now be in further danger if Kali sees him as standing between Eleven and doing the “right thing” by eliminating their bloodline. Could Kali end up removing Hopper from the equation? Or is it more likely that Hopper will take out Kali to save Eleven? Eleven’s fate seems to be up in the air, but Hopper is definitely spoiling for a fight, one way or another.
4. Steve
Steve was supposed to be killed off all the way back in season one, but will the Duffers finally make good on their abandoned plan to get rid of him? The pair have played coy over Steve’s fate recently, but have said, “It would be the next logical step. He keeps getting beaten up more and more. The only way we could take it further is death.”
It’s true that Steve has taken plenty of hits and kept on ticking, but a heroic sacrifice from Steve feels like it could be earned at this stage, especially if it means saving Dustin. The duo have both promised that “you die, I die” going into the series finale, but when push comes to shove, Steve will do anything to save his friends, no matter how reckless.
3. Mike
Mike really hasn’t had much of anything to do in Stranger Things for a while, but killing him off to shift both Will and Eleven into vengeance mode is undoubtedly a path the show could take.
Mike’s senseless death at Vecna’s hands could act as the ultimate emotional trigger for Eleven, because her abilities have always been closely tied to her feelings. Losing someone she loves so dearly could amplify her powers to unprecedented levels, giving her the edge needed to destory someone like Vecna. Meanwhile, Will losing his best friend and former crush could enable him to tap more deeply into his hive mind connection to either fight back or guide Eleven strategically.
2. Eleven
Killing off Eleven in the finale would carry narrative and emotional weight, which is why fans have been speculating about it for a while.
The character has been pivotal in the fight against the Upside Down since the beginning. A final confrontation with Vecna may require a sacrifice only she can make, and it could bring her story full circle to save Hawkins, even at the cost of her own life.
Though Eleven’s death would surely make the finale unforgettable and cement her arc of courage and selflessness, it also might be sad and painful, something the Duffers have said they want to avoid at the end of the series.
1. Vecna
Vecna is the big bad that the Hawkins gang have been chasing for two seasons, blending icky body horror with psychological torment and using the kids of Hawkins as his personal playthings. Chief amongst them has been Will Byers, who has now opened up to his family and friends and seems ready to fight Vecna from the inside out.
Although it’s not clear how much of Henry Creel’s business has been puppeteered by the Mind Flayer over the years, Vecna is almost guaranteed to be killed or neutralized forever in the final battle, whether that’s by Will, Eleven, or anyone else who could stop him.
Hey, if Vecna won, the series would have quite a downbeat ending, wouldn’t it?! No, he’s toast!
5 Things the Stranger Things Finale Needs to Avoid
We have no idea what the Stranger Things finale has in store for us. We know that the Hawkins gang are heading towards a final battle with Vecna, but we don’t really know what that will entail, and there are plenty of mysteries still surrounding the villain and his Lovecraftian plan to merge dimensions. We also know that with Kali back in the mix, Eleven may have to make a choice between living an idealistic life with Hopper and Mike, or making sure that the bloodline (and the military threat) is gone for good.
While there are plenty of things that we would like to see play out in the series finale, there are also things that we would prefer not to see. Here are the main pitfalls that the show should probably avoid…
A Significant Time Jump
It feels like it would be nice to see what happens to these characters in the future. Perhaps Steve and Nancy eventually end up married with six little nuggets. Perhaps Eleven and Hopper start their own secret squad to right the world’s wrongs in the shadows. Perhaps Dustin becomes super famous in the gaming world. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But should the finale make a significant time jump and show us where all our faves end up, it may fall into several traps.
On the business side, if Stranger Things were to ever be resurrected (in a legacy sequel series or movie, for example) the writers would be tied to those surprising future glimpses rather than left with the ability to deploy or alter them. However, there’s also the believability of aging the cast so that they look 30 or 40 to reflect a significant time jump, which always looks dodgy no matter how good the makeup is. The series has been struggling with its child actors aging out of their characters already, but aging them into future versions of those characters is just as tricky.
If you think we’re wrong on this one, think back to how you felt seeing the kids of the Harry Potter franchise play late-30s adults in Deathly Hallows – Part 2…
Setting Up a Spinoff
Stranger Things is a golden goose – an extremely popular IP that could keep laying golden eggs for years. Make no mistake, nothing is ever really over when there’s money to be made! As such, there’s an animated Stranger Things spinoff on the way, and a live-action spinoff series is already in development that apparently won’t involve Hawkins or any characters from the main series.
As there are currently no plans to continue this particular story, the finale has two hours and change to wrap everything up and say goodbye to Hawkins, along with all the people we’ve come to know and love. Although we’re used to seeing franchises get busy with reeling audiences in for future installments, it would be a bit of a shame to spend a portion of our remaining time in Hawkins setting up a spinoff after we’ve committed to five seasons of this story.
Characters in Heaven
We do hope the show doesn’t opt to bring any dead characters back using mystical or religious means in the finale. We don’t need to see Eddie smiling down at us like Mufasa from the clouds, or see everyone reuniting in a heavenly dimension where they can play Dungeons & Dragons for infinity.
When Supernatural finally ended after 15 seasons, we had to see brothers Sam and Dean reuniting in heaven. The main cast of Lost embraced in a collective afterlife when their times came. On the movie side, Jane Foster’s death from cancer in Thor: Love and Thunder was very sad, but Marvel tacked on a post-credits scene to show that everything was alright really, because she made it to Valhalla.
Showing us characters in the afterlife often undermines their lives and sacrifices, and it’s just super cheesy. No more, please!
Cringy Fan Service
There are many things people want from a series finale, but a rehash of what’s come before is almost certainly not it. We don’t need to see the characters saying any of their iconic lines again (“friends don’t lie!”), we don’t need needle drops from any of the songs that have become permanently linked to their journey like Dustin and NeverEnding Story, and we definitely don’t need any surprise celebrity cameos.
To be fair, the chances of Kate Bush popping up to help slay a Demogorgon are slim, but Stranger Things is well known for bringing in actors who were popular in the 1980s for supporting roles (Winona Ryder, Sean Astin, Matthew Modine, Linda Hamilton, etc.) and we wouldn’t put it past the Duffer brothers to throw in one more surprise for the road.
A Cliffhanger
Fans have waited nine long years to see the conclusion of Stranger Things, so it feels important to give the story a proper ending that doesn’t have an “aha!” moment. One of the series’ strengths has always been its balance of suspense and heartfelt resolution. Ending on a cliffhanger risks turning any carefully built satisfaction into frustration.
We’ve all been looking forward to seeing the fates of Hawkins, the Upside Down, and the central characters, but there’s also that final confrontation with Vecna/Henry Creel that the last two seasons have been setting up. He can’t keep running back to his weird dimension and licking his wounds, the guy has gotta be stopped once and for all!
The Upside Down might exist forever (and so might the Mind Flayer) but Henry’s final run for glory needs to play out in full. No Tony Soprano ambiguity for that blonde rapscallion!
Event Horizon’s Scariest Scene Has No Blood, Guts, or Gore
Critically-panned box office flop Event Horizon is now considered a space-horror classic, with many of its gruesome scenes becoming iconic since its 1997 release.
Interestingly, the cut of the film we got was much less violent than its director intended. Around 30 minutes of footage was trimmed after the studio and test audiences found the first version simply too horrific, but there are still enough disturbing moments to pack a punch.
If you close your eyes (you won’t need them to see), you might be able to pick out a few of those moments from your own mysterious core right now. Sam Neill’s Dr. Weir, his face all torn up. Chief Engineer Justin, clutching desperately as blood pours from his eyes in the depressurized airlock. D.J. vivisected on the operating table. Then there’s the video retrieved from the log of the Event Horizon’s original crew, which includes the captain holding his own eyeballs in his hands and all manner of other nasty crap.
Good stuff! But the scariest scene in Paul Anderson’s cult sci-fi gem doesn’t need any of that to shit you up. No blood, gore, or guts. It’s what we don’t see that’s terrifying.
Anderson sets up the scene by gathering the crew of his reluctant rescue ship, the Lewis and Clark, to hear some lengthy exposition from Dr. Weir, who originally designed the Event Horizon and wants to explain how she travels in space. The crew jokes around and trades friendly barbs in their brightly lit quarters. We’re told that the Lewis and Clark is running perfectly before being introduced to them one by one, culminating with “gloomy Gus” D.J. (Jason Isaacs), who seems more downbeat than the rest.
The Event Horizon has been missing since its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri seven years ago, and uses an experimental gravity drive to fold spacetime and travel vast distances, Weir tells them. It has now mysteriously popped up in orbit around Neptune, so the Lewis and Clark has been sent to investigate its distress signal.
Now that we understand who these people are and what they’re all doing here, Anderson cuts to a scene where Weir is ready to play the Event Horizon’s distress signal to the crew. This transpires in a deeper, darker part of the ship’s bridge. The bright lights of the previous scene are gone, replaced by blinking computer screens, glowing buttons, and shafts of light streaming from overhead fans.
With his back to the camera, Neill’s troubled Dr. Weir quickly leans forward and plays the transmission received from the Event Horizon. If it’s not a collection of the worst sounds you’ve ever heard in your life, it could at least make the top ten. Howls, screams, and a low voice uttering some desperate words.
“What the fucking hell is that?” asks Sean Pertwee’s pilot, Smitty, who speaks for all of us. Weir responds by isolating the human voice in the recording, and D.J. translates it from Latin as “Save me.”
There’s no ominous score accompanying this short scene. Just the hum of the ship’s engine and the terrifying audio from the Event Horizon being played repeatedly. After D.J. translates it, a loud alarm interrupts the conversation, and the crew scramble to their stations. They’re about to get a taste of the journey that the Event Horizon has been on. Only a few will save themselves from Hell.
Anderson doesn’t need to show us any visual nastiness to provoke the kind of dread that the distress signal effortlessly evokes. Our imaginations do most of the work, conjuring up explanations for why the crew of the Event Horizon would scream like that. None of the Lovecraftian horrors that we see later can match the sheer terror of the unknown, however gross.
We are wired to fear uncertainty because unpredictability makes it harder to plan and prepare for what might happen next. Plenty of scientific studies show that people experience more stress in situations where the outcome is unknown than in ones where they know they’re going to face something bad. This uncertainty triggers alarm responses in the body and mind because we prioritize safety and quick reactions to potential threats, so the unknown feels like a risk even when the actual danger is low.
It’s likely just an evolutionary development to keep us out of harm’s way, but the horror genre is very good at using it against us. It’s why we never see the witch in The Blair Witch Project, and why Alien and Jaws try to keep their monsters hidden or confined to the shadows for as long as possible.
The Event Horizon’s distress call puts us in a stressful holding pattern within the first 20 minutes of the film. What follows is upsetting and often disgusting, but our fear never reaches the same heights as it does in this scene, which uses its genius sound design to set the stage and scare us into submission.
Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.
How Simu Liu and Melissa Barrera Crafted Their Spy Duo in The Copenhagen Test
On most film or television sets, walking only a few paces can snap you back into reality. Beautifully detailed sets adorn fake walls and wooden frames, yet tucked around the corner are skilled craftspeople and production personnel resetting for the next shot or moving on to their next task. Inside the set of Peacock’s new espionage thriller, The Copenhagen Test, the set tour took us to fully built out sound stages that gave off an immersive, disorienting sneak peak into the high concept original series.
The spy-fi series follows intelligence analyst Alexander Hale, played by Simu Liu, whose position at a clandestine government intelligence agency called The Orphanage is compromised when he suspects his own brain has been hacked by unknown enemies. The loyalty of Hale, a first-generation American, is called into question and only further complicated when he realizes both the enemy and The Orphanage having complete view into his vision and hearing. In a deal cut with The Orphanage, Hale needs to put on a performance around the clock to uncover the threat to U.S. intelligence and save his own life in the process.
It’s inside the striking Orphanage set where Den of Geek, along with several other press outlets, is seated for a press day. We’re on a raised platform hovering above the high-tech computers meant to track Hale and other agents. Liu, who also produces the series, sits down below us in a director’s chair, and we fire questions from above, almost like an interrogation. The room is dim and completely enclosed, making it easy for lose ourselves in the world of The Copenhagen Test. Later, we were joined by Liu’s co-star, Melissa Barrera who helped us piece together more details on her tightly wrapped character, Michelle. Below are the transcripts of both interviews.
Simu Liu as Alexander in Peacock espionage thriller The Copenhagen Test. (Photo by: Amanda Matlovich/PEACOCK)
Simu Liu Interview
Where is Alexander when we enter the story? Where is he emotionally and physically?
Simu Liu: Alexander begins the story from a place of extreme competency, but also very unfulfilled about where he’s at in his career. He’s someone who’s proven himself on multiple occasions but just doesn’t seem to be put up for advancement in the same way as some of his peers. We really wanted to start things off with a bang and open with a really strong sequence that shows the audience and the viewer exactly what the character is capable of.
You’re playing Alexander Hale, but you’re playing multiple versions of him. What’s it been like to find the many faces of Alexander in this while he’s still trying to have his own agenda?
SL: It’s easy to get caught in the different layers of how Alexander would act if nobody was watching versus if he knew someone was watching. It’s an endless spiral, and that’s what makes the show so juicy. We want the first watch to be compelling and propulsive, then once you understand how everything unfolds, you’ll go back and re-watch moments that tell you different things. A lot of my conversations with [showrunners] Jennifer [Yale] and Thomas [Brandon] are about how to be the right amount of confusing and get the audience to ask the right questions at the right time.
With such a high‑concept story where perspective is key, how are you, [and showrunners] Jennifer [Yale], and Thomas [Brandon] working together to keep that perspective clear for the audience?
SL: There’s a reason Hollywood adapts so much. It’s a little easier working with existing IPs because the creatives know what they’re looking for. The Copenhagen Test is an original idea Thomas came up with, and it’s been a privilege seeing it come to fruition. It’s been a long process of figuring out the lore and tone, with many iterations along the way. Seeing the evolution since I came on board has been really eye opening. Thomas has such a treasure trove of ideas, and it’s been incredible getting to work with him and Jen to bring those ideas to life.
When you were learning the special forces-style choreography for this show, what was the biggest adjustment for you as a performer?
SL: The most exciting thing about this role was getting to work with firearms. It’s not something growing up as a Canadian we have a whole lot of exposure to, so I was fascinated by it and wanted to go head first into that training. The other part was crafting how Alexander moves as a hand-to-hand fighter, which is very different from something like a Shang-Chi. Working with [fight choreographers] Chris and James [Mark], we’d go through choreography and stop because we’d be like, “That feels like a Shang-Chi move.” We would think about what someone would have to do in special forces training. It’s a lot of elbows, very close and guarded, and all about maximum impact. There’s something very brutalist and utilitarian about the way Alexander moves.
There’s an interesting dynamic to navigate with Melissa Barrera’s character because you have to build chemistry with your co-star, but as characters, you also have to build chemistry in this world. What was that experience like?
SL: The best on-screen partnerships come very easily and effortlessly. It was something we knew we were going to have to work on from the beginning, but it just started with lunch and coffee. We talked about what motivated us and what drew us to the roles, then had conversations about life so we understood each other’s entry points as artists. Once we learned that, it became very easy. Barrera is very generous on set. She’s just the best kind of co-star.
Your character is the son of immigrants, which makes him a first-generation American. What cultural elements were important to keep in mind while playing Alexander?
SL: It’s always a balance playing a role like this. You want to balance cultural specificity. There are moments where Alexander and his parents speak Mandarin and Hakka, but we didn’t want that to become the overarching theme. It’s more about this universal feeling that you’re capable of more. We wanted Alexander to feel relatable in a very universal sense. His background is always a part of him, and it’s an element of the show I’m very proud of. We’re excited to introduce the world to their next great spy, even if that spy looks different than you might imagine.
Melissa Barrera Interview
Your character Michelle is a secret agent called in to play a fake girlfriend. What is her background, and has she done this work before?
Melissa Barrera: She’s been an agent in different organizations and is new to this one. Her background is so bad I don’t even know it. There are hints toward the bad stuff that happened to her. We know there’s a reason she’s stuck in this position and has to continue this lifestyle because she did something really bad in the past. The character is a mystery, and in every episode you learn something new about her. I was reading each episode trying to construct her out of the crumbs because she’s such a mystery.
How do you balance not knowing your character’s past completely, and also this pragmatic nature that she has?
MB: A lot of people have experienced trauma. Michelle is very good at compartmentalizing, and part of her has been desensitized, which really informs how I play her on the job. She’s almost like a robot. You don’t get to see much of the real her. It’s been fascinating playing a character like that.
What is [Michelle’s] fighting style? How does she approach a situation where she’s turning on her partner?
MB: She’s a little ruthless and highly trained, but not in the military. I worked with Chris [Mark] on the stunts to make her style different. Maybe trained in Asia, not in a military setting, and less like how a man would train. She’s an elbow girl. We developed a style where she uses her elbows to win fights against bigger opponents. Punching could hurt her hands, but elbows let her go for it.
It sounds like Michelle has a life that she’s trying to get back to. Did you create a backstory for yourself? Did that help you add a layer of sadness to your character’s motivations?
MB: I created a backstory for her, but we never know if it’ll match up. There’s a lot of pain behind her motivations, but she doesn’t allow herself to dwell. She’s very practical. You rarely see what’s going on inside her. A few moments may seem like a glimpse, but they’re not. Everything has to feel genuine, though. I have to play Alexander and the audience. You have to believe her and that she likes Alexander.
I’m wondering if there was anything that pushed you to a limit that you didn’t know you had in you?
MB: I’ve never done so much hand-to-hand combat, so that was the challenge. I wanted it to look good, like a woman who’s highly skilled. I like doing all the stunts, though my stunt double is amazing and takes the big hits. Training was a real physical challenge, as well as the emotional challenge of not knowing my character’s background.
The Copenhagen Test is now streaming on Peacock.
Avengers: Doomsday – Who is Thor’s Love?
The latest teaser for Avengers: Doomsday turns its attention from Steve Rogers to Thor, the God of Thunder. While Captain America‘s teaser is all warm nostalgia, desperation marks Thor’s moment. In particular, the teaser is built around a prayer that Thor makes to his father Odin, begging for a chance to see his love once more.
For those who haven’t followed the MCU closely since Avengers: Endgame (i.e., the audience that Marvel is trying to get back for the Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans-led Doomsday), that prayer might seem a bit odd. Who, exactly, is Thor’s love? The answer may be obvious to those who watched Thor: Love and Thunder, but there may be even more to Thor’s prayer than one would think.
One might assume that Thor’s love is Jane Foster, the romantic interest played by Natalie Portman in the first two movies, or perhaps the Lady Sif, a fellow Asgardian warrior, portrayed by Jaimie Alexander. Heck, certain corners of the internet are convinced that Thor loves no one as much as he does his adopted brother Loki, and I’ll leave it up to you to search out those very detailed stories and illustrations.
But Thor’s ultimate love is, well, Love, the girl he adopted at the end of Thor: Love and Thunder. For those who skipped that divisive movie, Love and Thunder finds Thor abandoning his brief tenure with the Guardians of the Galaxy to do battle with the Gorr the God-Butcher, the big bad portrayed by a wonderfully unhinged Christian Bale.
Driven by his deity’s failure to save his daughter Love, Gorr seeks to destroy all gods by entering the realm of the cosmic being Eternity, which will grant him one wish. By the climax of the film, Thor and the Mighty Thor Jane Foster have convinced Gorr to use his wish to resurrect his daughter. But he dies shortly thereafter, leaving Thor to care for her.
If Thor is praying to see Love once again, we might assume that something happens to her in Doomsday, which actually tracks with what we’ve seen from the film so far. The end credit scene to The Fantastic Four: First Steps, taken directly from Doomsday, shows Doctor Doom with Franklin Richards, son of Sue and Reed. The Captain America teaser shows Steve cradling a child, who might also be a target for Doom.
Perhaps Doom’s plan involves kidnapping heroes’ children, and if so, he’s getting quite more than he bargained for with Love. In the pages of Marvel Comics, Eternity chooses a protector of reality and grants them Uni-Power. With that power, the user becomes Captain Universe, an incredibly formidable hero identified by their starfield costume.
Captain Universe has not yet officially entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, close watchers noted that when Love was resurrected, her shadow had the starfield pattern associated with Captain Universe, complete with the constellation that is the Captain Universe logo.
That fact puts Thor’s prayer to Odin into a different context. Of course, he wants help to defeat Doom in order to see his child again, just as any other father would. And if Doom has kidnapped Love like he may be doing with Franklin Richards and the son of Steve Rogers, then that desire would only multiply.
But if Love is Captain Universe, then Thor’s prayer may also be key to defeating Doctor Doom. Maybe by seeing his Love once more, Thor can save reality and prevent Doomsday—certainly a goal worth praying for.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18th, 2026.
The Best Fantasy Books of 2025
While 2025 failed to meet the customer satisfaction standards of many (most?) of us, at least we can say with confidence: Man, the books were good.
It’s been a year full of outstanding titles across genres, no matter whether you tend to gravitate toward contemporary fiction, horror, mysteries, thrillers, young adult titles, or romance. But fantasy fans in particular were absolutely spoiled for choice in 2025, with established authors and exciting new voices dropping a seemingly endless stream of highly-anticipated sequels, new series openers, and buzzy debuts. It’s been a year full of dragon riders and vampires, along with talking animals, burned-out witches, fated lovers, oddball healers, and magical oracles. (And that’s just the books that made this list.)
Here are 12 of the best fantasy books of 2025.
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
The most delightful surprise of the year, historical mystery writer Antonia Hodgson’s epic fantasy debut is the fantasy genre at its absolute, most addictive best. One part murder mystery and one part tournament competition, The Raven Scholar is a 600-plus-page doorstopper with a massive cast of morally complex and richly drawn characters, where every chapter feels not only relevant but utterly necessary.
The story follows titular scholar Neema Kraa, a prickly, socially awkward, and frequently unlikable heroine who finds herself embroiled in a fight for the throne — and the prime suspect at the center of a mysterious death. Hodgson’s sprawling tale delights in upending reader expectations about what kind of story they’re following, wrestling with everything from complex politics to religious history, all while building the sort of fully lived-in universe that exists well beyond the page. It’s an absolute triumph, whose multiple, jaw-dropping twists will leave everyone gagging for the sequel that’s reportedly coming in 2026.
The Dark Mirror by Samantha Shannon
The fifth installment in Samantha Shannon’s sprawling Bone Season series, The Dark Mirror, is simultaneously a road map for resistance, an ode to perseverance, and a bright shining ball of hope in a bleak time. It is both a fantastic next step in the larger story of this fictional universe and a necessary reminder that everyone has a role to play in saving the world — or, at the very least, making it a less overtly dark and frightening place than it is at the present moment.
The story picks up six months from the shocking cliffhanger that closed the series’ fourth book as The Dark Mirror determinedly pivots its story outward, taking dreamwalker Paige Mahoney into the wider (free) world beyond the authoritarian Republic of Scion. As the larger story digs into the global political threats represented by the creeping shadow of the Anchor and the rising threat of authoritarianism, the world of the Bone Season expands in new and intriguing ways, all of which go beyond Paige’s story as Shannon pivots the series toward its endgame. Bonus: The slow-as-molasses burn between Paige and her otherworldly ally-turned-lover Arcturus Mesarthim has never been better or more satisfying.
Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen
The rare final chapter in a YA fantasy trilogy that not only sticks the landing but whose ending elevates the entire series into something greater than the sum of its parts, Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors is emotional, chaotic, and utterly unhinged in all the best ways. It’s also the perfect ending to the story of morally gray, emotionally challenged heroine Vanja Schmidt, a lushly written exploration of power, forgiveness, and self-acceptance that brings almost every aspect of this story full circle.
The sort of finale that not only acknowledges you having read the earlier books in the series, but relies on it, Holy Terrors is full of familiar faces and emotional beats, literally retracing many of Vanja’s steps as Owen questions what might have been had her heroine made different choices at key crossroads of her life. And its emotional core relies on the deep interiority that has been established across the rest of the series – Vanja’s growth feels earned and the story’s ending so satisfying precisely because we’ve been right beside her through every mistake and step forward she’s made. It’s hard to overstate how evident Owen’s care and craft are throughout this tale or how utterly satisfying its conclusion turns out to be.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
At this point, what can’t V.E. Schwab do? She’s written books for almost every kind of audience, penned both standalones and multi-book series, and dabbled in genres that include fantasy, young adult, and literary fiction. Basically, all that most of us needed to be completely sold on her latest novel, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, was to learn that she wrote it. Luckily, the book itself is fantastic, a story of toxic lesbian vampires that feels like the darker cousin of Schwab’s time-bending blockbuster The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. But where Addie was a story of memory and immortality, Bury Our Bones is about rage and desire, a tale that’s haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying by turns.
Told across multiple timelines across 16th-century Spain, 19th-century England, and 21st-century America, Schwab weaves a story of three very different women who share a similar frustration with the lives they’re living. Featuring lush historical details, richly drawn characters, and a slow-burn narrative that deftly explores queer identity, female resilience, and the infuriating ways that women have long been asked to make themselves smaller in order to be accepted by society. Its story often feels like Interview with the Vampire for a new era, but also something refreshingly brand new.
Onyx Stormby Rebecca Yarros
If, for whatever reason, you haven’t dipped your toe into publishing’s megapopular romantasy trend, now’s the time to fix your life. And there’s nowhere better to start than with the Fourth Wing saga — a fantasy romance set at a military college for dragon riders — which helped to launch the sub-genre into the stratosphere this year. (As of early 2025, the three books in the series have sold over 12 million copies to date, and a Prime Video TV adaptation is currently in the works.)
Onyx Storm, the third installment of Rebeca Yarros’ bestselling Empyrean series, is as addictive and propulsive as anyone could ask for, offering fans everything from complex political intrigue, magic, and betrayal to swoon-worthy romance and plenty of spicy sex scenes. (And that’s before you get to all the dragons and their drama.) And its action-packed ending, which featured big twists like a surprise marriage, lost memories, missing dragon eggs, and a hero who may have turned to the dark side, has kept everyone talking since the book hit shelves back in January. Since Yarros has publicly announced she’s taking a bit of a break before continuing the series (she penned the first three books in just under 20 months), the wait for book four seems especially endless. But there’s enough thrills here to power
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
One of the other big trends in fantasy this year is the cozy read, which, given… well, everything happening in the real world right now, makes a ton of sense. A product of the COVID-19 pandemic, these charming, low-stakes stories tend to focus on relationships, romance, and emotional character beats rather than, say, battles for the future of a kingdom with a hard-to-pronounce name. In lots of ways, they’re like a hug given book form, and they offer peak escapism for readers who want something sunny and fun without all the stress and death that can so frequently feature in epic fantasy titles.
This year saw a lot of great books released in this space, from buzzy sequels like Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett to new arrivals like The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst and Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz. But, no other title represents the absolute best of this particular sub-genre like A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, a peak cozy fantasy tale about a witch who lost her powers after resurrecting her great-aunt. Cast aside by the magical communities, she helps said aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she must deal with its bevy of quirky guests, manage the escapades of a semi-villainous talking fox, and maybe, just maybe, find a way to get her life (and her power back on track… with some help from a handsome historian, of course.)
Katabasisby R.F. Kuang
Katabasis is not a fantasy story for the faint of heart. A dense, fantastical, deeply academic tome about a pair of rival PhD students who must descend into Hell, Dante Alighieri-style, in an attempt to locate a recently deceased advisor, it’s a novel that wrestles with philosophical concepts and literary theory as much as it does with individual character traits or the specific rules of the complicated magical system at work in its world. A story that makes academia into a literal hellscape — which, those who’ve ever been part of it can tell you, really does kind of track — Katabasis mixes institutional satire, dark humor, fascinating world building, and thorny moral questions about purpose and progress.
Like Kuang’s previous doorstopper fantasy, Babel, Katabasis has its share of flaws, which those who are regular readers of the author’s work are probably already well aware of. (There’a certain level of preachiness, a resistance to trusting her audience to make big thematic connections without having the ideas spelled out for them, and character development definitely comes second to exploring larger intersections of various literary theories, works, and authors.) But — and again, much like Babel — this book is also precisely the kind of story the fantasy genre needs more of: Big, audacious, ambitious swings that remind us that this is a genre that’s capable of pushing boundaries in a way that most people only ever give literary fiction credit for.
The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
Many fantasy fans have likely heard of author Rachel Gillig thanks to her (excellent) Shepherd King duology blowing up on BookTok, but her latest release, the Gothic-tinged fantasy The Knight and the Moth, is even better. Set in a medieval-esque world where magic is real, gargoyles are sentient, and isolated villages are connected almost solely through the power of belief in their six gods known as the Omens. It follows the story of one of the six mystical diviners at Aisling Cathedral, who are all repeatedly drowned to bring forth mystical visions that foretell the future. But when the Diviners begin to go missing one by one, it’s up to Six — who has sacrificed her name and her identity in service to the cathedral — to find them, with the help of a nonbeliever knight named Rodrick.
A lyrically written exploration of faith, self-discovery, and the power of storytelling, The Knight and the Moth is romantic in almost every sense of the word, from its atmospheric worldbuilding and lush imagery to the slow burn relationship that develops between the story’s protagonists. As Six starches for her missing sisters, she’s forced to confront not only her preconceived notions about who she is and the work she’s spent her life devoted to doing, but also the very idea of belief itself and how the stories we choose to tell about the things we believe can literally shape the world.
The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
A delightfully old-school fantasy epic that feels like a throwback in all the best ways, Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils is for the readers who haven’t wanted to dive into any of the genre’s popular sub-tiers this year. A good old-fashioned adventure romp that follows a team of misfit criminals assigned to escort a street thief turned long-lost princess back to the kingdom she’s never known, the story is bonkers from start to finish, full of political maneuvering, team infighting, betrayals, and surprise twists. But it’s the relationships between and among the characters that will catch and keep your attention throughout the story
The titular Devils — technically known as the servants of the Church of the Holy Expediency — are all working off the various ecclesiastical convictions handed down to them from Her Holiness Pope Benedicta, who believes that even the worst evil can be repurposed in the service of good. Her theory is certainly tested with this group, which includes (but is not limited to) a cursed knight who cannot die, a Scandinavian werewolf, a vampire, and a necromancer. Though their quest faces many challenges throughout the book’s 500-some pages, it stays completely unhinged (complimentary) and hilariously unpredictable from start to finish.
Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Lots of big-name authors took the plunge into new genres this year, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that romantasy was one of the most popular subgenres when it comes to new debuts. Shield of Sparrows marks bestselling romance author Devney Perry’s first foray into the world of fantasy, and it’s an action-packed, swoony enemies-to-lovers ride.
The story follows a princess whose predictably dull world is turned upside down when she’s pledged in a treaty marriage to a rival kingdom in place of the younger sister who’d been preparing all her life for the job. As she journeys to her new home in the monster-infested kingdom of Turah, Odessa must not only endure a crash course in politics, spy for her father without getting caught, navigate an arranged marriage to a husband who barely speaks to her, and deal with his ever-present, constantly lurking magical bodyguard known simply as the Guardian. A refreshingly average heroine who tries her best, a delightfully banter-y slow burn romance, and a fast-paced, twisty plot help Shield of Sparrows stand out in the year’s crowded romantasy pack.
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
If you read Tasha Suri’s (fantastic) Burning Kingdoms trilogy, you already know she’s an author skilled at building lavish fictional worlds and compelling queer romances. But she truly outdoes herself with The Isle in the Silver Sea, a fairytale-tinged fantasy set in an alternate version of the British Isles that is literally fueled by the power of stories, as human avatars of various fictional archetypes are forced to live out their fated destinies across multiple lifetimes.
Simran and Vina are the latest incarnations of the Knight and the Witch, a pair of doomed lovers destined to enchant, betray, and die for one another over and over again. Their story is fated to end with the Knight slaying the Witch and themselves, but this time, they’re determined to break the cycle and find a happy ending. Meanwhile, a mysterious assassin begins methodically killing other incarnates and threatening the very future of the Isle itself. Steeped in medieval folklore and snippets from familiar fairytales, Suri’s ambitious tale is not only a compelling, tragic romance in its own right, but an interesting meditation on storytelling itself, particularly concerning ideas of propaganda, power, and who gets to control the shape of their own narrative. A rare fantasy standalone that probably should have been a duology, it’s a rich and immersive read.
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher (the adult pen name of the children’s author Ursula Vernon) is one of the best fantasy writers that far too few people have heard of. (Consider this an exhortation to fix your life, is what I’m saying.) A writer with a unique gift for using classic tropes and themes from fairytales and folklore to subvert and expand the idea of what fantasy can be and do, her books mix humor, heart, and an occasional dash of horror to create something that feels both timeless and somehow brand new.
Such is the case with her latest novel, Hemlock & Silver, a unique spin on the story of Snow White that transfers the story to an arid New Mexico-esque kingdom of deserts and snakes to follow the story of an oddball healer named Anja and her feline sidekick who are charged with solving the mystery of Princess Snow’s strange illness, which everyone presumes to be poison. Anja makes for a fantastic offbeat heroine, a middle-aged, socially anxious, plus-sized, analytical type, precisely the sort we almost never see in stories like this. The shift to a diagnostic medical mystery makes for a refreshingly novel approach to a tale we’ve heard a million times before, and, as is usually for a Kingfisher joint, the supporting characters are top-notch. Weird, surprisingly creepy in places, and altogether wonderful.
Avengers: Doomsday Is the Perfect Place to Bring Thor to an End
By the time the credits rolled on Avengers: Endgame, Thor was the only founding Avenger in a good place. Iron Man and Black Widow had died. Captain America was an old man. Hakweye had a terrible haircut. Sure, Thor had lost his brother Loki, his pal Heimdall, and many fellow Asgardians, but he at least got to go on and star in a fourth movie, the only MCU hero to do so.
Judging by the second teaser for Avengers: Doomsday, things may get much worse for the God of Thunder. In voiceover, we hear Thor praying to his father Odin to live just a little longer, long enough to see his Love. While his end will certainly be dramatic and heartbreaking, Thor’s MCU story needs to come to an end, and Doomsday will be the perfect place to do it.
Few characters have evolved as much as Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. In both 2011’s Thor and the 2013 sequel Thor: The Dark World, he’s a serious and arrogant powerhouse, who speaks in an elevated English accent, befitting his origins as a comic book take on Norse mythology for whom Stan Lee wrote pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue. While the quippy nature of Joss Whedon‘s writing gave him a few jokes in The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor really transformed in Thor: Ragnarok. Driven by the comic timing that Hemsworth demonstrated in the Ghostbusters reboot and by director Taika Waititi’s sensibilities, Ragnarok transformed Thor into a big lovable goofball, far from the stoic man we first met.
But that’s less a character arc and more of a shift in how Marvel uses the character. Emotionally, Thor’s maturation has been much more subtle, especially compared to his comedic turn. As in the Jack Kirby story that introduced the character in 1962’s Journey into Mystery #83, Thor began as an arrogant, reckless youth, cast to Midgard (a.k.a. Earth) by Odin to learn some humility. To be sure, he learns aspects of that humility in each of the movies, as when he sacrifices himself to save Earth in the first film and comes to terms with the loss of Mjolnir in Ragnarok.
However, the most profound close to Thor’s story came in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Infinity War begins with Thor, who had just learned in Ragnarok that his thunder powers were independent from the destroyed Mjolnir, failing to stop Thanos from destroying the Asgardians. He then goes on a mission to build Stormbreaker and channel his powers, only to fail to kill Thanos, aiming for the chest instead of the head. He gets his revenge in Endgame, finally lopping off the Mad Titan’s head, but it’s not enough. Throughout Endgame, Thor’s depressed and refuses to acknolwedge it.
Thor’s character arc comes to an end when he visits the events of The Dark World during the time heist portion of Endgame. When he reunites with his mother Freya, Thor learns a lesson he never could have accepted before, not even during The Dark World. He learns that even when he uses his power for good, his value does not come from power. When he reaches out and receives Mjolnir again, Thor realizes that he’s worthy, even after failing, even as an emotional and physical wreck.
To be sure, Love and Thunder builds off of that point, sending Thor to find something new instead of simply recreating the Avengers with the Guardians of the Galaxy or trying to replace Asgard. Furthermore, it is possible to give a character a second, satisfying arc; just look at Tony Stark, who had ceased being the selfish person he first was by the end of Iron Man 3, and yet found a new arc when he started worrying about a “suit of armor around the world” in Age of Ultron.
But it seems unlikely that Hemsworth will commit to two more Thor movies, especially given the lackluster response to Love and Thunder and the extreme change in tone that will come with Waititi’s departure. So rather than letting a founding Avenger twiddle his thumbs in the background, it’s time to let Thor go to Valhalla. His story is done.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives on December 18, 2026.
Will’s Big Stranger Things Moment Involved Too Many People
Stranger Things has had to serve a lot of masters in its final season, balancing what often feels like a dozen competing plot threads and steadily expanding mysteries. But its most satisfying decision has been to finally put Will Byers back at the center of the action. The boy whose original disappearance started this whole adventure seems poised to help bring it to an end, as he and his friends prepare to face off against Vecna and confront the next stage of their lives. And, for Will, part of that journey has necessarily involved accepting who he is.
The show has been teasing out Will’s exploration of his sexuality for several seasons now, primarily by way of his obvious crush on his best friend Mike. The show has smartly never mocked him for his feelings or made them into some sort of joke that the character’s not in on, an uncomfortable joke for his friends or the audience watching at home to laugh at. Instead, Stranger Things gave Will a much-needed queer mentor in Robin, who offered him a real-world example that he could be both true to himself and happy. And now, in its penultimate episode, Stranger Things finally addresses the issue directly, allowing Will to finally claim the identity he’s so long been afraid to name. “I don’t like girls,” he says. “I mean…I do. Just…just not like you guys do.”
To be fair, it almost feels cruel to criticize Will’s big moment here. Noah Schnapp sells the heck out of a genuinely moving monologue that doesn’t pull its punches about what a big, earthshattering deal it would have been for a kid to come out in the 1980s. This isn’t to say coming out isn’t an equally important experience for LGBTQ youth in 2025, merely that we’re — thankfully — a long way from an Indiana in the early days of the AIDS crisis when Will would have had precious few public role models for how to decide who he wanted to be. This is, truly, a big deal. It matters. And that’s why the way Stranger Things chose to handle it feels so clunky and unfortunate.
Will doesn’t come out in a one-on-one conversation with the mother who’s always adored him, the brother who’s protected him, or any of the core group of friends who’ve been by his side for most of his life. Instead, he’s forced to bare his soul in front of what feels like half the town, including several people he’s barely shared any screentime with. What is Kali doing as part of this moment? Or Murray? What value does Vickie’s presence add, beyond her being queer herself? Has she ever even met Will? At this point, they might as well just go on and wheel Karen in here from the hospital so she can take part as well!
Don’t get me wrong, it was really nice to see Will finally get a big group hug of support – that boy is going to need so much therapy when this show is over, presuming he’s still alive — but the sheer volume of people involved means that we didn’t really get much focus on the moments that mattered the most. (Even though Will’s confession indirectly references his feelings for him, we get almost no reaction from Mike — he’s technically the last of the main group to stand and hug him — even though they’re ostensibly the show’s closest besties.) It’s frustrating because this is such a big, important scene that the show’s been building toward for years, and outside of Joyce’s immediate and unequivocal support and Jonathan’s heartfelt tears, almost nothing about it went the way that most of us likely wanted it to.
It’s also unfortunate that his coming out occurs several episodes after the events of “Sorcerer,” in which Will had a much more powerful moment of self-acceptance and self-actualization that directly led to his development of superpowers. He freaking possessed Vecna! That Stranger Things almost immediately decided they’d made Will too powerful and had to re-weaken and sideline him (again!) to make the final run of episodes work is frustrating in and of itself, even more so when you realize they did so by having Vecna prey on his (very natural) fear of homophobia and hatred from those closest to him. Hasn’t this poor kid been through enough?
But, hey, at least Will’s now confident enough in his truth to face the final battle, which seems to be all the Stranger Things cares about as its story hurtles toward its end. We’ll have to wait and see whether he’ll get the space to actually talk to Mike on his own before everything inevitably (and potentially literally) goes to hell.
Stranger Things season 5 episodes one through seven are now streaming on Netflix. The series finale premieres on December 31, 2025 at 8 p.m. ET.
Stranger Things Season 5 Is Failing Its Best Characters
This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5.
Why do people like Stranger Things? Even the biggest superfan may find themselves asking that question somewhere around the 140 minute mark of season 5 volume 2, when very little has happened on a plot level and another couple starts monologuing about their feelings. As the stakes get higher and the runtimes get longer, Stranger Things feels like its lost the magic of that first season, when three foul-mouthed kids in the Midwest went looking for their missing friend.
That sense of bewilderment is even more frustrating because it didn’t need to happen. Yes, Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin had to grow up, especially as their adolescent actors aged over the nine years of between seasons 1 and 5. But the series has done a great job of introducing a next generation of kids, especially in season 5. Well, it had been doing a great job of introducing them… until volume 2 decided to largely ignore them.
Let the Children Lead Them
In season 5, Mike and Nancy’s younger sister Holly comes into focus, one of several kids targeted by Vecna. Holly has been around since season 1, but this is the first time that she’s established as full character, and it all works perfectly. She’s a normal Midwestern kid who becomes the target of Vecna and gets drawn into a supernatural/sci-fi plot, just like the original Stranger Things heroes. Also like them, she has her own nerdy obsession, which becomes a tool for understanding the oddities occurring around her. For Mike and his friends, it was Dungeons & Dragons. For Holly, it’s A Wrinkle in Time.
Holly isn’t alone. She’s one of many kids targeted by Vecna, including the season 5 standout Derek. Derek has all of the smart-mouth attitude that made Mike in particular so popular, and he’s played with aplomb by Jake Connelly. He’s joined by his older sister Tina, who has a connection to Erica Sinclair, the original Stranger Things: The Next Generation star.
All of the best parts of season 5 have been about these younger characters. Holly’s encounters with Mr. Whatsit have been weird and frightening, while the pie-eating sequence and the school escape sequence combined humor with scares. In short, Stranger Things season 5 actually found a way to recreate its prime appeal while continuing to move toward a final showdown with Vecna.
Well, volume 1 of season 5 found a way to keep moving forward. The same can’t be said of the three episodes in volume 2. These episodes push the new kids to the back, forcing them to stand around while the series deals with dangling plot points involving older characters, most of which the audience stopped caring about long ago.
Was there anyone really worried about the romance between Jonathan and Nancy, a relationship that stopped being interesting when they were reporters in season 3? Dustin and Steve used to be one of the best parts of the show, and the two performers still have chemistry. But season 5 has turned Dustin into a sad kid who can’t stop mourning Eddie Munson, a character change that leads him to fight with Steve instead of buddying up with him. And why do we need Hopper, the best adult character of the show, to once again complain that Eleven has outgrown him, a complaint he’s been making since the end of season 2?
These older characters have had their time and that time has passed. Now, it’s the kids’ turn.
Trapped With the Big Kids
Nothing illustrates the problem more than the decision to pair Holly with Max in Camazotz. Volume 1 of season 5 established Holly as a great Stranger Things hero. She used her nerd knowledge ofA Wrinkle in Time to navigate the world with Mr. Whatsit, making her brave and competent without sacrificing any of the series’ scares.
But as soon as she found Max, Holly became a sidekick. Now, it was Max who understood the world of Henry’s memories, and it’s Max who knows what to do. Holly’s just along for the ride.
Worst of all is the moment that Max abandons Holly to reenter the real world. Leaving aside the ridiculous moment in which Max, who heretofore had been telling Holly that they would escape Camazotz together, now tells Holly that she must go alone, the entire scene subordinates Holly to Max while acting like its the younger girl’s big moment. Max tells Holly that she cannot follow, that the escape signaled by “Running Up That Hill” is for Max alone. To encourage the younger child, Max explains that Holly has to find her own point of connection to the real world, and that she can do it no matter what anyone else says.
Although Max’s words make it sound like the moment is all about Holly, the filmmaking is all about Max. She’s the one on the camera, her performer Sadie Sink gets all of the lines, and, ultimately, Max is the only one with agency. After Holly leaves, supposedly to find her own way as her own person, the show effectively ignores her focus entirely on Lucas protecting Max’s body, Max returning to her body, and then a tearful reunion between Max and whichever character she meets. Holly is just is a footnote.
The Kids Aren’t Alright
In the final moments of episode seven, the last part of volume 2, Holly and the other kidnapped children sit around a table and join hands. Despite her attempts to resist, Mr. Whatsit has overcome them and now, he allows a sinister smile as the children’s eyes go white and they throwback their heads.
This scene will go directly into the Stranger Things finale, which is good news for fans of Holly and Derek. Even though Dustin talks a big game about blowing up the Upside Down, and even though Erica’s stuck with Mr. Clarke for some reason, at least some of the younger kids have something to do in the two-hour-plus last episode. If the finale has some good moments featuring the next generation, then Stranger Things might end on a high note, in the same way it began. But if it doesn’t and if the older characters get the spotlight again, then it will be just one more disappointment in a series that has lost its way.
Stranger Things season 5 volumes one and two are now streaming on Netflix. The series finale premieres December 31 at 8 p.m. ET
Yes That Stranger Things Breakup Actually Happened
The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5.
Stranger Things season 5 has dealt with everything from Henry Creel’s past to the truth about the Upside Down and Vecna’s larger plans for multiversal domination. But as the episodes tick down to the grand finale, fans are likely just as interested in the fate of the various relationships at the series’ center, and how the show plans to provide some closure to the stories of the kids we’ve been watching for the better part of a decade. Max is (finally) back in her own body. Will confronts his fears about his own sexuality. Dustin and Steve patch up their bromance. Mike is… there! And Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers have decided to call it quits.
What… what?
Yes, if you too were wondering what exactly happened during Nancy and Jonathan’s latest near-death experience, allow us to explain. Trapped in a room full of steadily rising exotic matter goo with no obvious plan to escape, the pair genuinely believe they’re going to die, which is apparently what it takes for the two of them to have an honest conversation at long last. In this chat that’s well over a season overdue, they both admit that they want different things from life and their relationship, and maybe don’t have all that much in common besides a boatload of shared trauma.
Jonathan admits he never applied to Emerson. Nancy says she’s always hated The Clash. He doesn’t actually like reading her articles. She hates it when he gets stoned. They air a whole laundry list of all the reasons they don’t really work together, despite how much they genuinely love one another, and it’s a strangely liberating moment for them both. To be clear, it makes a certain amount of sense that each has been clinging to this relationship despite the obvious red flags flying all over the place. Who else could possibly understand either them now, or the things that they’ve been through? What potential future partner(s) could hope to live up to the memory of the ex they faced down demogorgons and military occupation alongside?
But then Jonathan follows up this moment of clarity with an “unproposal”, in which he pulls out a ring and asks Nancy to not marry him, an offer she giddily accepts. It’s a strange, confusing, and fairly unnecessary moment that muddies the waters about what exactly is happening between them. In theory, the ring that Jonthan’s been carrying around like a bomb in his pocket has become an unexpected symbol of how much he doesn’t want the life it promises. Yet he decides to give it to Nancy anyway? So she can reject it? As they tearfully reaffirm their love for each other? Sure, why not!
Unsurprisingly, after all of that… it’s not especially clear whether or not that heart-to-heart marks the technical end of their relationship. The pair certainly never says so onscreen, either when they’re expecting to die or after they’re rescued.. But, according to the folks behind the scenes, “Jancy” is officially over.
“That’s a breakup,” Matt Duffer confirms to People. “They are broken up.”
Your mileage may vary on whether or not a break-up that viewers aren’t even really sure happened is the best way to honor the multi-season journey of one of the series’ marquee couples. But, hey, that’s at least one mystery we know the actual answer to heading into the series finale. Of course, that still leaves the question of where things stand with Nancy and her ex, Steve.
During her conversation with Jonathan, Nancy certainly implies that she’s pulling something of a Kelly Taylor, choosing independence and a chance to figure out what she really wants her life to look like over the promise of romance of any kind. (Steve wants six kids; she’s not so sure.) But given that the show almost immediately follows this admission with an extreme close-up of Steve and Nancy’s hands clasping as he helps her out of the goo room, Stranger Things clearly still has some interest in this connection and whatever it means for both of them.
After all, the pair have grown closer in recent seasons, and Steve’s evolution from zero to hero is both well-documented and satisfying. Does that mean he’s done the work to earn another shot with Nancy, or will the entire series end with everyone opting for a chance to find out for themselves what life outside of the shadow of Vecna and Hawkins looks like? Only one more episode until we find out.
Stranger Things season 5 episodes one through seven are now streaming on Netflix. The series finale premieres on December 31, 2025 at 8 p.m. ET.
