The news that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy won’t continue beyond the show’s already filmed second season has left a lot of fans in their feelings. Some (the worst kind) are rejoicing that a show they considered too young, too diverse, too queer, or simply too “not Star Trek” is ending. Others are grieving the loss of a show that was trying to do something different, in a franchise that has, in recent years, relied on legacy and nostalgia to power the bulk of its hits. (And future projects, if the push for Star Trek: Year One is anything to go by.) Others, of course, simply didn’t like it that much!
But no matter how you feel about Starfleet Academy’s end — or that rumored cliffhanger season 2 may end on — its loss is an objectively bleak moment in a landmark anniversary year that has turned out to have precious little to celebrate. (At the moment, there is no new Trek in production or official development and that’s a real shame.)
Now, none other than James T. Kirk himself has weighed in on the matter. William Shatner took to X to react to the cancellation news, and had some surprisingly insightful comments to offer about Star Trek as a whole.
Shatner doesn’t really get into the specifics of Starfleet Academy, as a series, but rather took a moment to mourn the loss of the “continuing exploration — physically, mentally, and morally” that each show in this universe represents.
Star Trek exists in more than one world. It exists in the fantasy of science fiction – weird and wonderful things that play unimaginable possibilities of exploration and human endeavor. But it also exists in the fantasy of human beings, the perfection of human beings, the…
He also reflected on the franchise’s long legacy of moments that have pushed boundaries on television, such as the interracial kiss between his character and Lieutenant Uhura that took place in the 1968 episode, “Plato’s Stepchildren.” Occurring just a year after interracial marriage was legalized, it was a statement that challenged racial taboos for many viewers. And per Shatner, such a moment would likely be considered “woke” today.
“During the first airing of my Star Trek series, where a kiss was objectionable, many southern stations pulled the episode & condemned the show,” he said. “Using today’s vernacular, it would absolutely be called ‘woke DEI crap’ because it went against ‘norms’ of society for its time. Not a lot seems to have changed.”
Being “too woke” is a criticism that was frequently lobbed at Starfleet Academy, well before the series ever aired a single episode. The show features queer characters, same sex relationships, a female captain, and a generally inclusive focus.
In addition, Shatner also (quite rightly!) points out that virtually every Star Trekseries that has ever existed has had to contend with a portion of the fanbase that insists it’s not being true to the spirit of what has come before.
“When the Next Gen came out, there was tons of hate because it ‘wasn’t Star Trek,’ and the cast probably was in fear from the fans,” he tweeted. “Again, when the series with Bakula came out, it too was panned by the fans because it ‘wasn’t Star Trek.’ Star Trek is different for everyone.”
In all honesty, that’s a lesson too few Trek fans seem to remember these days. It’s a good thing for this franchise to take risks, and the whole point of a shared universe is to tell different kinds of stories, some that may even be aimed at different kinds of audiences. After all, if we just make the same show over and over, what’s the point?
The second and final season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will likely air at some point in 2027.
For All Mankind’s Best Character Is a Crotchety Octogenarian
The following contains mild spoilers for the For All Mankind season 5 premiere.
If you watch Apple TV’s For All Mankind in virtually any capacity, then you’re probably already aware that star Joel Kinnaman’s make-up has become something of a running joke. The alternate history drama is currently in its fifth season, but its narrative stretches across 50-plus years, meaning that Kinnaman, whose Ed Baldwin has been part of the show since its first episode, has had to play a character that’s moving fairly rapidly into some serious old age. (The actor himself is just 46.)
At this point, Old Man Ed (affectionate) is well into his 80s and looks every bit of it. It’s a fair evolution, in the sense that Ed, a legendary astronaut and war veteran, has not exactly lived a quiet or particularly easy life. (It’s equally true that Kinnaman’s various aging makeup and prosthetics has been…well. Let’s just call it uneven at best and outright suspect at worst.) But, it’s also safe to say that even when he’s giving more Grandpa Simpson than space cowboy these days, Ed remains the beating heart of For All Mankind, an avatar of the absolute best and worst that humanity is capable of. (Often at the same time.)
Charismatic, rude, selfish, loyal, repressed, and brave by turns, Ed’s both a product of the environment he came up in and the rare character who has survived (and made) enough history that it’s forced his outlook on many things to at least adapt, if not outright change. He’s been a jerk throughout most of the series’ run, but one that’s easy to understand, if not outright sympathize with, and he often uses his worst traits for the benefit of the things he cares about, be it the space program or the Mars colony he comes to call home.
He’s hard on his family — he once sent Alex crawling through an HVAC shaft to steal a key piece of technology as a child — but will also do anything if he believes it would keep them safe. His loyal to his friends (almost to a fault) and will break any rule if someone he cares about needs them to. As a man and a series lead, Ed truly contains multitudes, and this show will lose a key piece of his identity if and when he finally passes on.
Octogenarian Ed is still a huge jerk, to be clear. Ostensibly under house arrest on Mars for the rest of his life for his role in the Goldilocks asteroid heist, he gleefully leans into being the most stereotypical of annoying old men. He’s brusque with everyone, day drinks with fellow old-timer Lee Jung-Gil, and regularly disrupts the base’s mission command center by gleefully setting off alarms with his ankle monitor. He keeps secrets about his health from his loved ones and only seems to listen to his doctor’s advice when it suits him.
Yet, Ed is also fully willing to use his rude old man powers for good. He’s one of the few who regularly speak up on the issue of Mars autonomy and independence, insisting that the planet’s residents have the right to control their own destiny and reminding everyone that the Mars-6 alliance back on Earth doesn’t care about their well-being as much as they do about the iridium they’re there to mine.
To his credit, Ed’s always been relatively fearless as a leader — and what exactly could the powers that be in Happy Valley do to him at this point anyway — but he’s pushier than usual as season 5 begins. Perhaps this is because he is older now, and possibly/probably dying, and forced to confront ideas of mortality and legacy in new ways. For better or for worse, Ed has always seen Mars as a vocation, the next step on humanity’s expansion into the universe, rather than a get-rich-quick opportunity for corporations and venture capitalists. He’s always believed in the mission of space exploration — where humanity goes next, what does it mean to build a home on another world, rather than an outpost, and it’s a perspective that far too few folks in positions of power on this canvas seem to share.
We all know it’s unlikely to happen, but it’s unlikely that anyone would mind too much if Ed Baldwin really did live forever on this canvas, just gleefully and grumpily stomping into the 2020s with a mean streak and an explorer’s heart. (And whatever Kinnaman’s awful pushing a hundred old-age makeup would inevitably look like.) It’s too difficult to imagine For All Mankind without him.
New episodes of For All Mankind season 5 premiere Fridays on Apple TV.
The Lesser-Known X-Men We Want to See in the MCU
Ever since the post-credits sequence of Ms. Marvel revealed that Kamala Khan is a mutant, we’ve known the X-Men are coming to the MCU. Heck, Disney bought a whole studio to get the rights to Marvel’s Merry Mutants. What we don’t know, however, is who will be in the X-Men line-up, and that’s a very important question.
To be clear, this list isn’t about the X-Men we know we’ll see in the MCU. Jean Grey will likely appear, because that’s almost certainly who Sadie Sink is playing in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Cyclops is almost always on the X-Men, so he’ll be there. And Wolverine will be there because he’s Wolverine.
But this list is for the characters we want to see, the deep cuts who would make the MCU X-Men as weird and wonderful as the franchise in the comics.
Destiny
Thanks to portrayals by Rebecca Romijn and Jennifer Lawrence, the shapeshifter Mystique has become one of the most recognizable mutants. However, outside of her blue skin and power set, the Mystique of the movies has little to do with the complex character from the comics. Given that Mystique is almost certainly going to be in the next movie line-up, the MCU can better enrich her by also introducing her wife, Destiny.
Initially introduced as a blind member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Destiny’s precognitive abilities and concern for the mutant race brought her into alignment with the X-Men several times. Moreover, Destiny has a long lifespan and is, in fact, canonically the Sherlock Holmes character Irene Adler. Between her unique history and power set, Destiny can not only add a compelling new character to the team, but can also improve another X-Man audiences think they know.
Frenzy
The X-Men are a long-running soap opera, which means that there’s a lot of time and space for characters to change. More specifically, it’s not uncommon for mutants to turn from villains to heroes and vice versa, few in a manner more satisfying than Joanna Cargill, the mutant known as Frenzy.
When she first appeared in 1986’s X-Factor #4, Frenzy was a fairly generic supervillain. She possessed super strength and durability and fought the good guys because she was in the Alliance of Evil and they did evil, but had nothing else going on. Over the years, Frenzy has been revealed to be a woman working through a tragic childhood, a person who initially took acceptance wherever she could find it, but eventually learned to adhere to her own principles. Those principles sometimes still put her at odds with Xavier’s students, but Frenzy never fails to fight for what she believes in.
Doop
The X-Men may consist entirely of mutants whose attributes set them aside from the rest of society, but most of whom share basic commonalities with the rest of humanity. There is absolutely nothing common about Doop, a floating green potato man who speaks in his own idiosyncratic language and might just be the most powerful mutant of all time.
First introduced as part of the off-beat 2001 version ofX-Force, later renamed X-Statix, Doop is still a mystery. The nature of his origin and powers is still unclear, and only Wolverine seems to understand him. Yet, Doop stands as an essential part of any proper X-Men adaptation, if only to prove that mutations aren’t always pretty.
Thunderbird
In most cases, the X-Men movies adapt characters from the comics by streamlining their stories, reducing them to the most basic elements. With Thunderbird, the movies can do the opposite, developing a character who received little attention on the page. Born John Proudstar of the Apache tribe, Thunderbird was one of the new additions to the team in 1974’s Giant-Size X-Men #1. However, between his generic ability of enhanced athleticism and the fact that his one defining personality trait was a bad attitude—a quality shared by fellow new recruits Wolverine and Sunfire—Thunderbird died just a few issues later, and was only resurrected recently.
In short, Thunderbird offers the MCU more of a blank canvas, an opportunity to say something new with a character, rather than feel beholden to beats well-established in the comics. The television series The Gifted got to flesh out Thunderbird, where he was played by Blair Redford, but the movies could take it even further.
Armor
Most mutants come to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters shortly after their powers manifest at puberty, which means that most of the people around the X-Men are teens and not adults. Every so often, a young teen, usually a female character, becomes a focal point for the story. First it was Kitty Pryde, then Jubilee in X-Men: The Animated Series, Rogue serves that role in the movies, and most recently, that part was played by the Japanese mutant Hisako Ichiki, a.k.a. Armor.
Armor can create red psionic suit around her body, an interesting twist on defensive-based heroes. Since her introduction in Joss Whedon and John Cassidy’s Astonishing X-Men, Armor has been one of the more popular new mutants, even serving as the lead of Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men.
Kate Pryde
Before Armor, there was Kitty Pryde, the 13-year-old who joined the team early in Chris Claremont’s run. An earnest girl with terrible fashion sense and a willingness to say what others won’t (sometimes with terrible results), Kitty quickly won over fans, whether she was calling herself Sprite, Ariel, or Shadowcat. Fittingly, Kitty did appear in the X-Men movies, played by Elliot Page in X-Men: The Last Stand and in Days of Future Past.
Those appearances dealt with Kitty as a teen, but the character has long since grown up and is now one of the leaders of the team. Kitty should absolutely appear in a new X-Men film, but we should finally get the adult Kate Pryde instead of the young teen. That means we should see her as a principled leader, someone who knows how to temper her passions with a little patience. And she should definitely have a female love interest, as in the current comics, not her original boyfriend, Colossus, or her one-time betrothed, Peter Quill.
Dazzler
All the X-Men are weird, but few are weirder than Dazzler, at least in terms of her origin. Dazzler was created as part of a collaboration between Marvel Comics and Casablanca Records, who would debut with a disco album along with her comics. Even though the album never materialized, Dazzler eventually made her way onto the X-Men, serving as a key member during the fan-favorite Outback era and appearing in the 1989 animated special “Pryde of the X-Men” and the brawler arcade game it inspired.
Since then, Dazzler has been a consistent C-tier mutant, but rarely appeared outside of the comics. Which is a shame, because her civilian identity as a pop-star and her ability to convert sound into light seems ready-made for the big screen. Rumors that Taylor Swift would appear as Dazzler in Deadpool & Wolverine have proved unfounded, which means the time is right for the character to join the MCU X-Men.
Glob Herman
Given that they’re played by Hollywood actors, most of the X-Men in movies are incredibly attractive. Yet, mutation does not always result in supple curves and hard abs. Case in point, Glob Herman, whose flesh has mutated into translucent, pink jelly. That’s right, he doesn’t get cool powers (although his jelly is flammable, giving him some offensive capabilities) and he looks weird.
Yet, Glob Herman retains a good attitude, at least after his first appearances as a rebel in Xavier’s school. Even better, Herman has become the X-Men’s chef and farmer (think Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager, but from season four on). Glob Herman may not make for the most spectacular fight scenes in an MCU X-Men movie, but he would flesh out the world and provide some welcome humanity, albeit in a mutated form.
Kid Omega
If Glob Herman’s around, then Quentin Quire can’t be far away. One of the most popular, and most controversial, new mutants of the last few decades, Quentin Quire a.k.a. Kid Omega was introduced during Grant Morrison‘s run in the early 2000s. A powerful telepath with a punk streak, Quire originally let his contrarian attitude drive him to attempt a coup in the Xavier School. Morrison set up Quire to be a new villain for the mutants, but he resonated so well with readers that he quickly became an ally, albeit one with a bad attitude.
It’s not hard to see why Quentin Quire would resonate so well with younger readers. Beyond his distinctive look, marked by his dyed pink hair and his ironic t-shirts, Quire captures the adolescent desire to change the world, and he might have the power to do it.
Multiple Man
One must always take Stan Lee‘s declarations about his creative process with several pounds of salt, but one that rings true is that he came up with the concept of mutation because he was tired of inventing origins for his superheroes. The conceit meant that he didn’t need to say how Angel got his wings or why Beast has such very large hands and feet, but it also made it possible for Marvel to feature superheroes with very unlikely powers.
One of the best examples of a hero with weird powers is Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man. Madrox was a Z-level character for the first two decades or so after his debut in 1975’s Giant Size Fantastic Four #4. But since he was added to Peter David’s revamped X-Factor in the 1990s, Madrox has been a fan favorite. Multiple Man’s ability to make endless copies of himself doesn’t have the same immediate appeal as, say, Cyclops’s optic blasts. But if even the dismal X-Men: The Last Stand can have a few great Madrox scenes (helped, of course, by the late Eric Dane), then an MCU movie could do even better.
Forbidden Fruits Director and Stars on Reclaiming Original Sin
Viewers watching the first 15 minutes of Forbidden Fruits might think they’re on familiar ground. We watch as the Fruits—fashion store employees Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp)—swoop through the mall food court like ’80s mean girls, receiving free food from the guys and expressing disgust at those who don’t meet their standards. But when the Fruits welcome newcomer Pumpkin (Lola Tung) into their number through a pagan ritual, it’s clear that director Meredith Alloway has something more complicated in mind.
“I do love the idea that women are told we’re quite literally the origin of evil and sin,” Alloway tells Den of Geek after the SXSW premiere of Forbidden Fruits. “The source material is a play written by Lily Houghton, Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die. In it, all these women are reclaiming that. I think witchcraft, and being in a coven are ways that we make that sin narrative ours.
“I think when women get together and they set an intention, whether it’s magic or literally just everyone talking at a sleepover, that is really powerful.”
Forbidden Fruits certainly features women with intention, both fictional and real. The Fruits may seem like familiar stock characters at first, but Alloway, who co-wrote the screenplay with Houghton, finds more complexity within them, without sacrificing any potential for comedy.
“I think the comedy comes from playing something completely straight,” Reinhart says of her process. “This is the most serious thing in the world to my character, Apple, and that’s where the comedy comes in, because ultimately, this is a silly, crazy thing that these girls are doing. But it means everything and more to them, to Apple in particular.”
“I think what’s really powerful about everyone’s performance is that no one’s actually playing a stereotype,” adds Pedretti. “There are a lot of cues that might lead you to misjudge these women before you get to know them throughout the film. Each character really ends up, hopefully, ends up surprising the audience with their humanity.
“Because, at the end of the day, we’re all humans. For women especially—though men deal with this too, frankly—there’s this idea that we just can’t do it right. If you don’t wear enough clothing, you’re a slut. If you wear too much clothing, you’re a prude. There’s no way to make everyone happy.
“I think that relates to this Biblical idea of being innately flawed and human. But it’s okay to be flawed!”
Shipp adds, “We all play very complex human individuals who just so happen to have been born in a female body in this lifetime, and who are just trying to navigate the structures of this world. The world tells us that we have to be one way, and we can feed into it and play along with it, or rebel against it. We play with those themes in the film.”
For Reinhart, these tensions allowed her to craft a complex portrait of someone in a mental health crisis. “I’ve had a lot of discussions with Meredith about how we’re watching a woman slowly crack, watching the facade of her slowly fading away. When we get to the third act of the movie, my voice changes and my physicality changes.
“I wanted that to show the audience that Apple is shifting, the mask is being dropped, or the robe and veil, shall we say, is being thrown on the ground.”
According to Pedretti, Apple’s breakdown creates tension within her character, Cherry. “Cherry has lost her entire family,” she explains, promising that the information is background and not a spoiler, “So this community is her serenity in her world. It’s everything to her to have a relationship with these women. Having these rules and structure helps her know that she’s okay because, unlike Apple, Cherry understands that there is something deeply wrong with her.”
“Apple’s so busy helping Cherry with healing her wounds and, genuinely, doing what she thinks is best for her, that she’s ignoring her own very open wounds, which mascara and countering cannot cover,” observes Alloway.
The precarious nature of the relationship means that Pumpkin’s addition to the group creates immediate rifts between the Fruits. “Pumpkin is someone who knows everyone and is friends with everyone, but doesn’t have a close group of friends and certainly not a close group of female friends,” observes Tung. “She has a little bit of a mission, which I won’t spoil, but she really does find a sense of belonging with these women. She toes the line of wanting to be part of the community because it’s something really special that she’s never really experienced before.
“They’ve created something so special and intriguing with glitter and rhinestones,” she laughs.
Glitter and rhinestones, witches in malls, mean girls with complicated vulnerabilities: these are the ingredients that Alloway and her cast use to create the spell that is Forbidden Fruits, a spell powerful enough to undo sins of patriarchy.
Forbidden Fruits opens in theaters on March 27, 2026.
20 Movies With Some Fun Facts Worth Knowing
Movies are endlessly entertaining, not only for the stories they tell but also for the production that goes into making them. It’s what makes a re-watch worth it; you get to experience the film with new eyes, this time almost as part of the cast and crew.
These fun facts will take you all over the industry, from budgeting tricks to behind-the-camera accidents. While it’s likely you already saw all of these fantastic films, we will give you the chance to jump back into them, gaining new insight and the excuse to watch them all over again. You’ll laugh at what they laughed, and be shocked at what was and wasn’t planned.
Interstellar (2014)
Christopher Nolan had real cornfields planted (hundreds of acres) just for filming, then sold the crop afterward for profit. Great way to avoid CGI while also not destroying someone’s farm in the process.
The Dark Knight (2008)
The famous hospital explosion scene was, contrary to popular belief, not improvised. Heath Ledger rehearsed it carefully due to the one-take pyrotechnics.
Get Out (2017)
The original ending was much darker, before Jordan Peele changed it to avoid reinforcing real-world trauma. That’s not to say that the current ending is light-hearted, though.
Joker (2019)
Joaquin Phoenix lost over 50 lb (20 kg) for the role, and the weight loss reportedly affected his mental state during filming. He didn’t do it again for Joker: Folie à Deux (at least to those extremes) due to, in part, the dancing required for the film.
Parasite (2019)
The flooding sequence was completely practical: the small district was built inside a pool and flooded in real time.
The Matrix (1999)
Will Smith famously turned down Neo because he didn’t understand the pitch, a decision he later publicly regretted. While it is hard to imagine anyone other than Keanu Reeves in the role, it’s tempting to imagine what that other movie would have been like.
Titanic (1997)
While we see Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character) sketching constantly, the drawings were actually made by the film’s director, James Cameron.
La La Land (2016)
The opening highway scene was filmed during an entire weekend of real road closures in Los Angeles, not on a set. Hence why it feels like it is happening there; it is.
Django Unchained (2012)
Leonardo DiCaprio cut his hand during a scene and stayed in character while bleeding, and that ended up being the take that was used.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Harrison Ford accidentally punched Ryan Gosling during filming, something Gosling reportedly laughed it off. Apparently, Ford bought Gosling some whiskey as an apology.
Her (2013)
After the movie was finished filming, Samantha Morton’s voice was replaced by Scarlett Johansson’s. Meaning that Joaquin Phoenix is reacting to a different voice than the one the audience hears.
The Revenant (2015)
Leonardo DiCaprio actually ate raw bison liver despite being vegetarian. At least he didn’t actually fight a bear.
John Wick (2014)
Keanu Reeves performed most of his own stunts, contributing to the film’s grounded action style and why the camera can follow him with ease.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Andrew Garfield repeatedly denied his involvement publicly, even to friends, to preserve the surprise. He has claimed that now no one will believe anything he says, much less about Spider-Man films.
The Social Network (2010)
The opening breakup scene took 99 takes, largely to perfect pacing and delivery. You never expect to get something done the first time around, but certainly before the 50th take.
Whiplash (2014)
Miles Teller actually learned drumming for the role and performed many scenes himself, albeit not all of them. The movie wouldn’t have worked if his face and hands were constantly on different frames.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The chest-thumping chant was improvised by Matthew McConaughey during rehearsal and kept in the film. Seems to be something the actor already does to center himself.
Black Panther (2018)
Wakandan accents were deliberately unified across actors to avoid inconsistent portrayals of African dialects. It is primarily based on the South African Xhosa language.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Most of the film’s iconic building was actually a miniature model, not a full-scale set. It was mostly used for full-scale shots of the Hotel.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
The filmmakers used cheap practical effects and editing tricks instead of big CGI budgets for many surreal scenes, including the rapid picture montage.
What Will Stephen Colbert’s Lord of the Rings Movie Be About?
Late night host Stephen Colbert has long been a vocal fan of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. He has an almost encyclopedic command of deep-cut lore. He can speak — or at least recite — Elvish, wrangled a cameo in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, moderated San Diego Comic-Con panels, and even made a Middle-earth short film with the original cast called “Darrylgorn”. There’s not much further for his fandom to go at this point, unless he made a The Lord of the Ringsmovie of his own. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what he’s planning to do.
Warner Bros. and director Peter Jackson have announced that Colbert is currently developing a new live-action film set in the Lord of the Rings universe. The film, which will be called The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past, will be similar to the forthcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum in that it depicts events from The Fellowship of the Ring that never made it to the screen in Peter Jackson’s movies. The Hunt for Gollum will be set in the gap between Bilbo’s 111th birthday and Gandalf’s return to Bag End, following Gandalf and Aragorn as they search for the missing Ring-bearer after he is interrogated by Sauron.
The main events of Shadows of the Pastwill reportedly cover about six chapters of the novel, from Chapter III, “Three is Company,” to Chapter VIII, “Fog on the Barrow-downs.” While some of these events do make it into The Fellowship of the Ring, including Frodo and Sam’s reunion with Merry and Pippin, the first appearance of the Black Riders, and the race to Bucklebury Ferry, the 2001 film skips past several fan favorite moments, including the attack by Old Man Willow, the introduction of Tom Bombadil, the hobbits’ visit to his house, and their subsequent capture by Barrow-wights. Undoubtedly, several of Tom’s extremely weird songs will feature.
Shadows of the Past will have to serve multiple masters, however, as it’s not just a flashback standalone about the happy, weird immortal who likes to sing (awful) songs. It’s also a look at what happens after the War of the Ring, and the Shire that Frodo has left behind.
An Unexpected Framing Device
Per the film’s official logline, the movie is set 14 years after Frodo, Gandalf, and the rest of the Ring-bearers depart from the Grey Havens. Sam, Merry, and Pippin will — for some as yet undisclosed reason — set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Maybe this is a pub crawl, who knows? But, elsewhere, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, “has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”
What all of that means is something we’ll all likely be debating right until the film is released. Is Elanor going to follow after her father and his friends and discover something scary in the Barrow-downs? Is she going to the library to do research, Hermione Granger-style? How much does she even know about her father’s role in the War of the Ring?
Tom Bombadil on the Big Screen
The Elanor question, at least initially, seems to be of less interest to Tolkien fans than what appears to be confirmation that we’re finally getting a big-screen take on what is arguably the author’s weirdest and most divisive character, Tom Bombadil. On some level, this makes sense, as a whole bunch of the most hardcore Lord of the Rings enthusiasts are obsessed with him, even though his presence in the book’s larger story is minimal and, admittedly, pretty weird. A mythical figure who lives in complete harmony with nature, is immune to the power of the One Ring, and generally keeps himself well out of the larger affairs of Middle-earth, Bombadil recently made his onscreen debut in the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Because that series is a prequel, he was reimagined as a kind of magical mentor to a younger Gandalf who hadn’t yet realized his true identity. (Seriously, don’t ask.)
But other than Tom repeatedly rescuing the hobbits and having a cool river-goddess wife, he doesn’t necessarily offer much in the way of story, at least not in terms of whatever this film is doing with Elanor’s plot. The easiest answer is possibly that she’s looking for some piece of the Barrow-wights’ stolen treasure hoard — the brooch Bombadil meant for Goldberry, maybe? — but that’s a completely wild guess.
Does The Lord of the Rings Need a Sequel?
But the more important question here has nothing to do with Colbert’s enthusiasm for deep cut Tolkien lore or expansive fan service — it’s whether The Lord of the Rings even needs a sequel at all. The author himself famously didn’t want one. And part of the power of Tolkien’s original ending is in knowing that it’s the conclusion of a story — of Frodo’s story specifically.
What makes the ending of The Return of the King so satisfying is how bittersweet it is. Frodo has done what he set out to do. He has saved Middle-earth, protected the Shire, and brought his friends back home. But he has done so by making himself a stranger to it, now too damaged by the trauma of his journey to find the peace he craved there. Some wounds cannot be healed in this life, and it is in that spirit that Frodo passes on to the next, to the Undying Lands and whatever lies beyond.
It’s a beautiful, if heartrending conclusion, and there’s something to be said for remembering the Shire as Frodo would, shining and beautiful and at peace. Do more adventures after his departure sully that memory? Maybe. We don’t know. None has ever existed before. Of course, if there’s anyone who might be capable of proving that idea wrong, it’s the nerds who love the LOTR franchise as much as Peter Jackson and Stephen Colbert do. Oft hope is born when all is forlorn, and all that. We’ll have to wait and see.
Power Ballad Review: Paul Rudd’s Finest
Paul Rudd can sing. Anyone good at picking out folksy harmonies during a throwaway gag in Anchorman might have told you that 20 years ago—or for that matter, if they were among the lucky few to see the severely underrated Friendship last summer. But for everyone else, the opening moments of John Carney’s Power Ballad will be something of a revelation. Standing before a bedecked and beaming wedding party, the three-time Ant-Manstar is able to croon and coo like a yesteryear rock god of early ‘90s glory days: back when Rudd himself was a young man rocking out in Halloween 6 or the occasional Nintendo commercial.
Seeing him belt snatches of “Jesse’s Girl,” and bars of “Everything I Do” is to, perhaps, observe a road not taken. One suspects Rudd and Carney are keenly aware of this too. The arbitrary nature of life—the twists of fate that make one man a musician, and another an accountant with a drum set in the garage, or this artist a legend, and that an aging wedding band frontman forced to survive as “a human jukebox”—is very much at the top of mind in Power Ballad.
As with each of Carney’s films set in or just wistfully outside the music industry (where protagonists are condemned to look in, covetously), Power Ballad is full of good cheer and self-awareness. It’s also marked more than any Carney picture since Once in 2007 with an elegiac appreciation for both the hard roads taken and, more crucially, those left untrod. It’s another dramedy about getting older, but this time with a cagier wisdom that comes with reaching a certain age. This last bit can also be gleaned during the aforementioned opening where Rudd’s Rick is the stud of the moment when he’s belting Bon Jovi, but finds himself deserted by the crowd when singing one of his own originals. No one wants to hear it. At least not from him.
The artist’s frustration to not be pigeonholed, from the zenith of the music scene to its bottom, is crystallized by the fateful intersection at the heart of Power Ballad: a serendipitous meet-cute at a particularly posh wedding party between washed-up Rick and a one-time boy band pop star named Danny (Nick Jonas). Like Rick, Danny is frustrated by his lot in life, albeit as a beloved idol who drives BMWs one day, and a Ferrari the next. He was successful, if only insofar as “the boy band” hunk who can still exist as the center of gravity at a friend’s wedding. His 15 minutes in the wider world, however, appear to be up.
Regardless of status, unsatisfied ambition makes all creatives neighbors. And Rick and Danny hit it off fast by rocking the wedding party and then jamming far better into the wee small hours of the morning in Danny’s palatial suite. It’s there that Rick also shares with Danny a few bars of half-written songs he’s never finished. It’s a good time. Danny even abridges a few of the tunes. Yet groovy memories fade fast fast six months later when Rick hears one of those ditties fully produced, finished, and blowing the minds of everyone at a nearby shopping town in his Irish hometown.
By this time, even his teenage daughter Aja (Beth Fallon) knows all the words to the old school ballad climbing the charts. What Aja, wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and even best friend bandmate Sandy (Peter McDonald) cannot so easily recall though is that “How to Write a Song (Without You)” is one of the countless melodies Rick has been noodling on for years. But the American expat does carry on a little like ol’ raving Ben Gunn when he insists it’s his song, despite the rejuvenated Danny Boy claiming sole credit back in the States or the new anthem of a generation.
The act of collaboration, particularly in the artistic context, can always be a nebulous thing. Famously Paul McCartney and John Lennon attempted to prevent such debates when they agreed to sign every Beatles tune they worked on as “Lennon-McCartney.” Yet even then, there was a time in 2002 when McCartney tried to have more than a few switched to “McCartney-Lennon” to clarify credit.
Having come, if ever so briefly, from the Irish and U.K. rock scene of the early ‘90s, Carney knows about how late night inspirations and jamming can yield, or deny, credit for tunes potentially worth millions of dollars. Does adding a bridge qualify as songwriting credit? What about the whole chorus and lyrics too? Power Ballad deliberately wades into murky legal waters, but it’s in a clear-eyed search for transparent waters.
This is a movie about warmly and affectionately dealing with an artist’s disappointment, as well as the simpler joys in that lifestyle, especially when they come outside of the studio or medium. While much of this review is dedicated to the core dynamic between Rick and Danny—and the movie gains much from Jonas’ own history with the boy-band-adjacent act he fronted with his brothers—the movie is really about an artist of a certain age taking stock of dreams that were waylaid. Or, in Rick’s case, outright stolen.
Rudd’s hero is justified in being severely aggrieved as he scurries around Dublin telling anybody who will listen how that’s his song. There’s a faintly pitiful poor Job quality to his suffering. He might fancy himself Cassandra, insisting the world is ending, but the only person affected by the catastrophe is Rick. And his family.
It is indeed this family we learn that Rick stayed in Ireland for. He met Rachel while touring as a young indie artist and never left. So while the song Danny nicked for international fame might be a love ballad, it is more of an understated domestic bliss that Rick truly covets, particularly in wryly written scenes between the aging hipster and his perennially unimpressed teenage daughter.
The writing is universally good in the Irish sequences, though, gifting Rudd with his second great SXSW premiere in as many years, but also in this case a beautifully crafted role that pairs his natural affability with a textured ennui that comes from the “nice guy” not necessarily getting everything he wanted out of life.
There is an authentic sweetness to the film, born from a genuine union between star and filmmaking voice.
The Los Angeles sequences are perhaps a bit thinner, as Danny’s lifestyle as a callow wannabe hungry for a hit is broadly drawn, particularly with the yes-men vipers circling the heavens. However, even then the ultimate confrontation in the City of Angels between the reluctant thief and the half-mad victim takes on an almost biblical schadenfreude. The artist and the ghosts of their inspirations can never have an easy, linear dialogue about their relationship, yet just starting these often long-deferred debates can be its own kind of therapy. Or dramatic harmony.
Power Ballad premiered at SXSW on March 14 and opens nationwide on June 5.
Bridgerton Season 5 Will Give Francesca The Spotlight She Deserves
Though Bridgerton season 4 only just wrapped up the love story of Benedict and his housemaid turned lady of the Ton new bride, Sophie Baek, the show is already looking ahead to its next love story. It’s just not the one most fans probably expected.
As readers of Julia Quinn’s popular series of novels know, the fifth book in her Bridgerton saga technically follows the love story of Eloise, the family’s marriage-avoidant middle daughter who’s spent most of the TV series insisting that she’s not interested in things like suitors. But the fifth season of the show won’t be following that path.
Instead, Bridgerton will once again shake things up by skipping ahead in its designated romance order and will focus on Francesca’s story in season 5. And while some book purists are no doubt irritated that Bridgerton is once again straying from Quinn’s established path — the show already swapped the order of Colin and Benedict’s romances across seasons 3 and 4 — there’s no doubt that this is the right move, both for the larger series and for Francesca herself.
One of the best things about Bridgerton as a television show versus as a series of romance novels is that it’s much better at telling simultaneous stories. Part of the reason Colin and Penelope’s romance made sense as the centerpiece of the show’s third season is that we’d already spent two full years watching the pair alternately pine for and be completely oblivious around one another. Paying off that relationship at that point was smart — and such is the case with Francesca, who has already spent the past two seasons serving as the show’s primary B-plot.
Her marriage to John Stirling, Earl of Kilmartin, is primarily referenced in hindsight in the books, but the Netflix series gave their quiet, adorably socially awkward love story some much deserved time to shine. And, in the wake of John’s death, it feels completely natural for her to step into the role of leading lady in her own right and for the show to follow her story of second chance romance.
Francesca’s season was always going to be a boundary-pushing one, considering that the show has reimagined her book love interest, Michael Sterling, as Michaela and will use their story to debut its first proper LGBTQ+ romance. The series smartly allowed us to see Francesca and Michaela both becoming friends and grieving John together in season 4, and their story flows much more naturally into the series’ fifth season than Eloise’s might, if only because it will require some fairly significant narrative legwork to set up that by all rights probably should have started by now. (Technically, we’ve already met Eloise’s future husband, though it’s unlikely that casual viewers remember that character all that much.)
So much of Francesca’s story has been about her relationships to others — her marriage, her place in the Bridgerton family, even her status within the marriage — that it will be nice to see her get the chance to not just stand on her own, but to make choices without having to consider anyone else’s feelings. And it certainly feels like a more active path for her character than haunting the edges of someone else’s story, looking heartbroken.
The end of season 4 left the pair at odds — Michaela essentially ghosted Francesca’s request to abstain from traveling for a bit to stay with her in Mayfair — and that’s a pretty big emotional cliffhanger to let sit through another season where they aren’t the main characters. Besides, Francesca more than deserves a chance to reclaim some happiness for herself —and the audience watching at home does too.
Ryan Coogler’s X-Files Reboot Casting Promises Classic Character Dynamic
The X-Files may be about weekly monsters and/or a government conspiracy to join with aliens to inflict black goop on humanity. But it was really about the relationship between the two leads. David Duchovny played Fox Mulder as a slovenly, low-energy true believer, a man used to being pushed to the corners as he continues investigating the paranormal. Conversely, Gillian Anderson played Dana Scully as an intelligent and professional scientist, whose deep religious faith did not prevent her from being skeptical about Mulder’s claims.
We know that the upcoming Hulu relaunch of The X-Files from director Ryan Coogler and showrunner Jennifer Yale will not feature new versions of Mulder and Scully. But the show’s latest casting announcement suggests that some of that original dynamic will be retained, as Himesh Patel will costar alongside the previously-announced Danielle Deadwyler.
As an English actor, Patel unsurprisingly got his start on EastEnders, appearing in 566 episodes as Tamwar Masood. However, most Americans first noticed him as Jack Malik, the only man who remembered the Beatles in the Danny Boyle comedy Yesterday. Yesterday may have met with mixed reviews, but Patel won viewers over with his gentle, likable take on a musician who just got the biggest break of all time. Patel has brought that same warmth to his later roles, as affable agent Mahir in Christopher Nolan‘s Tenet and as beleaguered director Daniel Kumar on the HBO series The Franchise.
Patel’s low on-screen energy will pair nicely with his co-star Danielle Deadwyler, who tends to project quiet intensity. In films such as Till and in the HBO series Station Eleven, in which she co-starred with Patel, Deadwyler plays characters who are serious and determined, even when at odds with potential allies.
But putting together Deadwyler and Patel, the new X-Files seems to promise a relationship like that of Mulder and Scully. But producers have been clear that Deadwyler and Patel are not playing Mulder and Scully, and while there are currently no plans for Duchovny or Anderson to appear, the possibility of a cameo remains. Anderson has revealed that she’s read Coogler’s script for the pilot, and has pronounced it, “fucking cool.”
Even before gaining the blessing of Special Agent Dr. Dana Scully, Coogler’s X-Files sounded great. As made abundantly clear by his Oscar winner Sinners, Coogler knows how to marry rich themes to blockbuster entertainment. Casting two great actors with such complimentary chemistry proves that Coogler and Yale understand what made the original so great, and they’re ready to bring The X-Files into the 2020s.
The X-Files is now in development.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Trailer Takes a Bloated Franchise Back to Basics
By the time that Vecna was finally defeated in the series finale at the start of this year, Stranger Things had gotten a lot bigger and a lot messier than it had been. Not only had the Netflix series spawned a play, video games, and a whole lot of merchandise at Target, but it had become more about a psychic boy from the ’50s who found a way into another reality and summoned a monster. Also, Russians were involved.
There’s little to none of that stuff in the latest trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, an animated series that takes place between the show’s second and third seasons. In the latest trailer, we see the central quartet of boys, joined by Max and El, having snowball fights and busting each other’s chops. They gain a new friend in the form of punk rocker Nikki Baxter (Odessa A’zion), who joins the fight against a different set of beasties from the Upside Down.
The Duffer Brothers have described Tales From ’85 as a throwback to Saturday morning cartoons of their youth, a statement that seems ludicrous when you compare the fluid CGI animations on display in the trailer to the cheap and rigid stuff that ’80s kids watched. But the trailer does promise a more wholesome adventure, one based around the core concept that made Stranger Things such a phenomenon when it launched in 2016.
Originally, Stranger Things resonated with viewers because of its sense of childhood nostalgia. Borrowing heavily from the novels of Stephen King and the films of Steven Spielberg, Stranger Things followed a quartet of nerdy kids whose lives change when one disappears and a telekinetic girl called Eleven arrives. The mystery of what happened to Will Byers, the hints about a dangerous realm called the Upside Down, and the supporting cast of teens and adults only served to enhance that concept.
But over time, Stranger Things seemed to lose site of its best qualities, bloating into a show about teens (well, young adults playing teens), adults in a Gulag, and so, so much lore. Even though Stranger Things continued to be a topic of conversation in pop culture spaces and pull in massive viewership numbers, the initial excitement had dissipated.
Will Tales From ’85 bring that excitement back? It does have to overcome the loss of the original actors, as new voice performers have come in to play beloved characters, including Broadway’s Jeremy Jordan as Steve Harrington. Some may find the angular designs and new voices too great a barrier.
But for those who just want to see kids in the ’80s have cool monster adventures, then Tales from ’85 promises to be a small-scale, old-school good time.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 debuts on Netflix on April 23, 2026.
Disney’s Korean Reimagining of The Americans Is the Right Kind of Series Revival
Reboots, revivals, and reimaginings are more popular than ever in television right now, from the forthcoming series adaptation of the Harry Potter franchise, to the Firefly animated sequel, and the failed Buffy the Vampire Slayer follow-up that Hulu canceled before it ever even made it out of the pilot stage. It makes sense then that someone somewhere was eager to try to remake The Americans, FX’s critically acclaimed series about undercover KGB spies living a regular American life in 1980s suburban D.C., even as they worked to bring down the U.S. government. The series racked up 18 Emmy nominations over the course of its run and a Lead Actor win for star Matthew Rhys. (Justice for Keri Russell’s unfairly snubbed performance, though!) But the new take we’re getting isn’t one anyone likely expected.
Rather than attempt to copy the (very recent and very beloved) original, Disney+ is taking a different tack, greenlighting The Koreans, a big-budget, local language reimagining of The Americans that revolves around a pair of North Korean spies masquerading as a happily married couple in 1990s South Korea. Like Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings before them, this couple will appear to be ordinary citizens to their neighbors and friends, all while secretly working to destabilize the South from within. As remake ideas go, it’s brilliant! Don’t believe me? Apparently, Russell and Rhys have already given their blessing to the project.
Thematically, The Koreans will undoubtedly deal with many of the same issues that its predecessor did: Family, loyalty, identity, patriotism, and bonds to a homeland you aren’t necessarily part of anymore. But by shifting the series to the 1990s and changing its setting to the more volatile Korean peninsula, just as a wave of democratization and cultural modernization was unfolding in the South, the various political perspectives and pressures this show will tackle will be completely different. (And will probably feel especially new for the English-speaking audience that Disney is obviously hoping will also tune in.)
But in a world where far too many remakes are just reskinned and/or repurposed versions of the thing that came before, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a creator who plans to use a familiar concept to say something entirely new. Obviously, the conflict between North and South Korea, which are immediate neighbors and home to citizens with family and loyalties on both sides of the Korean Military Demarcation Line, is going to produce a very different take on this particular premise than the steadily escalating Cold War antagonism between the United States and Russia. But that’s precisely what makes this kind of reimagining so interesting; we already know it’s not going to simply recreate what we’ve seen before.
The Koreans will star Squid Game’sLee Byung-hun and Heavenly‘sHan Ji-min and stream on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally.
Kit Steinkellner Has Some Questions About Television… and Vampires
Few creatives have a more intimate understanding of the challenges and joys of producing television in the streaming era than Kit Steinkellner.
The playwright, screenwriter, and comic book author burst onto the TV scene in 2018 when she created Sorry For Your Loss, a critically acclaimed meditation on grief starring Elizabeth Olsen, Kelly Marie Tran, and Jovan Adepo. Despite its creative success and the caliber of talent involved both in front of and behind the camera, the series was canceled after two seasons and 20 episodes.
Much of the show’s struggle to capture an audience stemmed from its platform’s inability to do the same. That’s because Sorry For Your Loss premiered on the now-defunct Meta VOD service Facebook Watch. The House That Zuck built dipped its toe into episodic storytelling in 2018 and then promptly yanked that toe back out once it realized how hard this whole entertainment thing was.
To Facebook’s credit, Sorry For Your Loss avoided the fate of some other streaming shows that have back locked away in vaults never to be seen again, as it is currently available to stream on Tubi and Prime Video. Still, the experience of producing an ambitious project amid streaming’s unprecedented (and ultimately unsustainable) content boom, was profoundly educational for Steinkellner.
“One of my Woody the cowboy pull string catchphrases is ‘I’m always grateful and I’m always annoyed.’ And that’s the truth,” she tells Den of Geek. “But I am, in a lot of ways, a poster child of that moment. I was a poster child of that bubble, that boom. A lot of the things that we struck for in 2023 with the WGA are things that I experienced – the high highs the low lows. But ultimately I think I am a lot more grateful than I am annoyed.”
Now Steinkellner is going fully independent with her next project. Are We Still Married?, which premiered at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, is a compelling work of short speculative fiction. The title is just one of many questions that Steinkellner and the story’s characters have about the central conceit of a husband Jack (played by Dustin Milligan) who has been turned into a vampire and needs to convince his still-human wife Laura (Taylor Misiak) to let the right one in.
Are Jack and Laura still married or did death do them part? Can Laura safely let Jack in the house or will he drain her arteries for sustenance? Does he operate by the traditional vampire rules or will he sparkle in the sun? Through its scant 11-minute running time, Are We Still Married? doesn’t offer up any easy answers (except for the sparkle in the sun thing, that’s a definitive “no), but it does leave plenty of room for exploration and storytelling growth. In fact, Steinkellner is so interested in pursuing that growth that she both filmed a TV pilot and wrote a feature-length script of the concept.
“I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I’ve pretty thoroughly explored both options,” she says. “Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story. It’s an interesting moment for us where both feel viable. I think the next step will reveal itself.”
Before the premiere of Are We Still Married? at SXSW, we caught up with Steinkellner to discuss processing trauma, her vampiric inspirations, and the ephemeral nature of art. What follows is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Den of Geek: This story is about a newly-vampirized husband outside his home asking for his wife to let him in and offering up reasons why she should. Where’d you get that idea?
Look, I was hellbent on directing something. I gotta direct something, it’s going to be independent, it’s going to be small, in one location like a house. So the question for me became “how do you make a house feel as cinematic as possible?” Then I remembered something that happened about 11 years ago. My husband did get bit by a bat. It was crazy. That doesn’t happen. Except when it does. He got a rabies shot and he was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits is usually our go-to move. We just started cracking vampire jokes.
At a certain point he was just very lightly like “but if I became a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?” I paused and he didn’t like that pause. We had a very spirited debate about what it would mean to have something happen that’s nobody’s fault but at the same time was something we never agreed to. It sets both of you on a wildly different path from what you were on. As I started thinking about what could happen in this house, this thing in the back of my brain rolled to the front. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about writing this night in their lives, figuring out what that would look like, and figuring out what would happen next.
Some vampire properties that are mentioned in passing in this pilot are Twilight, Interview with the Vampire, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What are some of your vampire inspirations?
Those are touchstones. I also love Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston playing glam rock Bowie vampires. I interpret it as a genre metaphor about climate catastrophe because they can’t drink contemporary human blood because of microplastics. They keep having to go to blood banks to find blood from before a certain date. I just love that one. I love the original Let the Right One In. I rewatched it recently. I think I always love a vampire story where there’s genre as metaphor front and center. That one is very much about coming of age and being an isolated kid who finds another isolated kid – the things that are deeply positive about that, the things that are deeply challenging about that. There’s a lot you can do in terms of genre as metaphor.
I’m glad you mentioned Let the Right One In because I feel that that aspect of vampirism – the needing to be let in – is the one that people forget about most frequently. Thankfully every decade or so, a major vampire story comes around to remind people of it. Are you grateful that Are We Still Married? is premiering on the heels of Sinners, which makes that a major plot point?
It’s so interesting. Yeah, I am. I just love art being in conversation with each other. I love this giant metaphorical party where we all have our wine glasses and are meeting and talking with each other. They’re so wildly different. With Sinners; it’s Coogler, it’s From Dusk Till Dawn, it’s institutional racism. He’s tackling very, very different things on a very different budget. We do have the same supernatural trope at our core but I would argue over on my side we’re doing ‘70s Cassavettes, Gena Rowlands’ dramas, Marriage Story, tonally a little bit more like Nora Ephron or Linklater’s “Before” trilogy. They couldn’t be more different and we’re starting at the opposite end of the spectrum but the fact that we have the same origin point, I just find it thrilling.
Vampires come in all different shapes, sizes, and rules. A lot of the back and forth between husband and wife in this pilot is trying to figure out those rules. Did you have any questions about vampirism that didn’t make it into the final product?
A crucial plot point is that the bat that bites Jack does not stick around to explain vampirism to him. So basically he has about as much information about this thing as we do. He has his pop culture references but he doesn’t actually know what being a real life vampire entails. I think it’s a really interesting dilemma to put a character in. What if you have no mentor or guide post? Which part of this stuff is real? I think we are playing by most of the vampire rules though. We didn’t have any mirror shots but if we did I would have VFX’ed his reflection out. We’re not doing Stephanie Meyers, he’s not gonna sparkle in the sunlight. We’re playing with those traditional Dracula-established vampire rules.
How did you go about casting Taylor Misiak and Dustin Milligan in this?
It was thrilling. To the point of this thing being really scrappy, my producer and I just reached out to their reps and asked if they were avail (or tech avail). I loved Dustin in both Schitt’s Creek and Rutherford Falls, which is a Peacock show that less people have seen. But I’m crazy about him. And Taylor is my favorite part of Dave. It is tremendous but for me she is the emotional heartbeat of that show.
They’re so wildly gifted in so many regards. They’re just consummate actors who are known for hard comedy. But my goal in casting or any hiring decision is to ask myself “how would this thing be a wonderful next paragraph in your career?” To give them a piece where pull out everything in their bag and leave it on the screen, that just felt like a thrilling opportunity. It felt that that’s what they both saw. This was three night shoots! Night shoots kind of make people crazy. At a certain point, you kind of feel like your’e in The Thing or The Shining. And they were just wild joys to hang out with at 3 a.m.
This is submitted to SXSW as a TV pilot. Did you always see if that way and would you like to continue in this world?
You’re asking the right question. I originally knew what the night looked like. I knew it was chapter one and I wanted to figure out what subsequent chapters looked like. Transparently, we have explored both routes. I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Black List, which was a wild honor. At the same time, in having a conversation with South by, part of the independent TV requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I’ve pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story. It’s an interesting moment for us where both feel viable. I think the next step will reveal itself.
I think this is a big question so we’ll probably end on it. I want to pick your brain about television itself as someone who probably had an interesting experience in modern television: writing Sorry For Your Loss, which was considered to be a very good TV show with a very big movie star in it that nevertheless premiered on a streaming service with like six other shows and no longer exists. Broadly, what is that experience like and where do you see TV going in the modern era?
One of my Woody the cowboy pull string catchphrases is “I’m always grateful and I’m always annoyed.” And that’s the truth. When I think back about making Sorry For Your Loss, we had a murderer’s row of actors, we had the best writers, all of our directors were like Sundance stars, and we made 20 episodes of something that is one of my proudest accomplishments. I love it. We were on a platform [Facebook Watch] that didn’t stick around long enough to find its footing. You really do have to, as a platform, be invested in spending five-to-10 years building like an Amazon, like an Apple.
At the same time there are shows on major platforms that have been pulled. The thing is you can still find our show online. It’s very gratifying to have people slip into my DMs and continually find it. I think I have a lot more gratitude than I have annoyance. But I am, in a lot of ways, a poster child of that moment. I was a poster child of that bubble, that boom. A lot of the things that we struck for in 2023 with the WGA are things that I experienced – the high highs the low lows. But ultimately I think I am a lot more grateful than I am annoyed. I’m so proud of how we made it and I’m excited to make more content in both a smaller way and a larger way that reaches eyeballs. Look, we live in a chaotic universe. We don’t get to control variables and we don’t get to weird science the way our art is received or create the perfect environment. Honestly, I’m just so glad we got to make it.
Well said, it was indeed a big question and I’m glad you tackled it!
Can I say one more thing about it? [Laughs] Do I have like 30 seconds?
[Laughs] Sure!
I read this thing several years ago. There are these Buddhist monks – in the steps of the Himalayas, I believe. They live in these monasteries of giant plazas. They will make these elaborate sand paintings, mandalas, outside. It takes them weeks and weeks. In making those mandalas they’ve signed up for the fact that the wind is gonna blow the art they’re creating away. It might blow them away in a day, or in a couple weeks. They don’t really have control over how long the art lasts. But that’s not why they’re making it. They’re making the art for the sake of making it. I believe it’s to teach these monks patience and perseverance. I think about it all the time and try to be a creature of the moment and just do the best I can in that moment. The truth is that no one can control the outcome, how it’s received, or how long it lasts. What you can control is how you show up for the moment.
They Will Kill You Review: Ready or Not Here It Is
What is it about New York City hotels and grand old apartment buildings? Most of them are haunted anyway, but in the hands of Hollywood and various other filmmakers, they become positively demonic. From Polanski’s Dakota on the Upper West Side in Rosemary’s Babyto the Continental that Keanu Reeves keeps checking into, but never seems to leave in all those John Wicks, luxury Manhattan space is synonymous with murder and monsters. And in writer-director Kirill Sokolov’s They Will Kill You, there’s so many of each that one speculates the cleaning bill must be in the eight or nine figures.
Although there’s (some) story logic to that in this one. See, Zazie Beetz’s Asia Reaves is technically taking on a want ad when she shows up on a rainy night at the Virgil, a posh NYC haunt that looks like it’s situated somewhere on the corner between Greenwich Village and South Africa tax incentives. It is there that an ex-convict as nominally desperate as Asia takes a job where she will work under a peculiar Irish superintendent named Lilith Woodhouse—Patricia Arquette doing a bit that crosses somewhere between Mary Reilly and Darby O’Gill. Lilith’s stern demeanor seems to suggest the turnover rate should be high, and the tenants do nothing to dissuade this notion since most of them are played by familiar faces as snobby kooks (Heather Graham) or sketchy lechers (Tom Felton).
All of it feels a lot like they’re putting on a bit, and that’s because they are. They Will Kill You barely wastes 15 minutes before the creeps and cretins try to harass and sacrifice the new maid, which we soon learn is their wont. Like the Virgil’s namesake, this building knows its way around Hell, with a landlord in the basement who is nothing less than an absolute devil. It might sound spooky, but in practice it’s a little more diabolical than Scooby-Doo.
This in spite of aesthetic happily reaching—anxiously, even—for Tarantino at his most Grand Guignol in the Kill Bill bloodbaths. The fight scenes between Beetz, Felton, and even a possessed Arquette at one point (or at least a committed stunt double) rely on voluminous splatter effects erupting like geysers, and smartass-cool kid talk and posturing, a la the samurai lighter Beetz carries around and later shares with her long-lost sister (Myha’la), who as luck would have it also has a room in this den of inequity.
One cannot envy either Sokolov or Warner Bros. with the release of They Will Kill You. While movies about Satanic cults among the rich and moneyed are nothing new, even back when Radio Silence gave it fresh devilish coat of paint in Ready or Not, one imagines no one making Kill You could have guessed that Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2 would also feature estranged sisters—or that Searchlight would move its release date up to March 20 so as to beat Sokolov’s film to market (not that either may find much stall space with Project Hail Mary continues to make its orbiting rounds). Worse still, both opened at SXSW, with the better of the two premiering first. It wasn’t They Will Kill You.
While Sokolov’s action sequences and fight choreography seem much more elaborately staged and meticulously designed than either Ready or Not, its social commentary amounts to more of a single, trailing off sentence, and its eat-the-rich table-setting adorned with mostly empty dishes. Others feature mere plastic fruit to gnaw on. Even the sisterly dynamic with performers as charming as Beetz and Myha’la proves threadbare.
Not that there isn’t some base thrill to be had in the Virgil. A handful of fight sequences along barren halls proves the architecture isn’t the only thing that’s brutalist in this place. And the fiendish glee with which Sokolov’s picture reveals how the pampered and privileged earn their immortality in this joint is the kind of gonzo gag that 20 years ago would have been the pride and joy of a grindhouse throwback dropped by Dimension Films.
There is an audience for They Will Kill You, but there’s just not enough tainted meat on this Satanic beast to ever earn a real cult following of its own.
They Will Kill You premiered at SXSW on March 17 and opens nationwide on March 27.
Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Remembers When They Weren’t Real Trek
Unsurprisingly, news of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s cancelation after two seasons has brought out some strong opinions among Trekkies. Some were genuinely delighted by the show’s mix of Trek lore and high school drama. Others thought the series showed promise, but needed some correction in later seasons, just like most other Trek shows. And a particularly vocal group praised the news as it ends a series that wasn’t real Trek.
One cannot help but think of those fans when hearing about the memories Gates McFadden, Dr. Beverly Crusher of The Next Generation fame, shared about early fan reaction to her show. “In the beginning I was actually really scared of fans and conventions,” McFadden told attendees at MegaCon 2026 (via The Popverse). “I didn’t know what was expected of me. And also in the beginning, the fans were not as complimentary as they are now. They wanted it to be the original show. But I’ve learned so much about the show and the franchise, let alone how much importance it has been in individuals’ lives.”
In the defense of some of those fans, TNG had a famously rough launch. Built out of the remains of a sequel series called Star Trek: Phase II, which would have been about Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew on new adventures, and seen by creator Gene Roddenberry as a way to regain the control he had lost over the movies, TNG‘s first two seasons suffered from bland plots, out-of-date clichés, and a checked out Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. The series didn’t find its groove until season 3, when it became the classic series it is today.
Fans use the phrase “Growing the Beard” to describe the uptick in quality of a Star Trek show, a reference to Riker gaining facial hair after season 1. In fact, all of the ’90s Trek shows underwent similar arcs. It took two seasons of Deep Space Nine for the Dominion to become the major threat (and for Sisko to grow his goatee and shave his head). Voyager became a much better show when Seven of Nine joined the crew in the season 4 premiere (after Janeway styled her hair into a bob). And the fourth of final season of Enterprise is far, far better than anything that came before, despite all the hairstyles staying mostly the same.
Modern Trek shows haven’t had quite the same arc. Discovery did get much better after jumping 900 years in the future at the end of season 2, and Star Trek: Picard was stronger when it turned into a TNG reunion for its third season. But Lower Decks and Prodigy were good all the way through their runs, and Strange New Worlds is threatening to take the opposite trajectory, as the third season is far worse than anything in the first two.
There’s no telling if Starfleet Academy would have followed the same trajectory of ’90s shows, or if it would have stayed the same, or if it would have dipped in quality. But McFadden’s comments remind us not only that taste is subjective, but that “real Trek” is often hated by fans, at least at first.
They Will Kill You: The True Story That Inspired the Horror Comedy
In the upcoming genre mash-up They Will Kill You, Zazie Beetz plays a desperate woman who takes a job as a housekeeper in a mysterious apartment, only to learn that she’s the target of a Satanic cult. Directed by Kirill Sokolov, who co-wrote the script with Alex Litvak, They Will Kill You combines horror, comedy, kung fu, and romance. And, apparently, it’s a true story. Sort of.
“Ten years ago, my wife and I rented an apartment on the 16th floor of a giant building. A week after we moved in, we realized that we were the only two people in the entire building under the age of 65,” Sokolov recalls to Den of Geek. “I started doing renovations in the kitchen, and behind the cabinet I found a huge hall leading into my neighbor’s apartment. My wife and I started a running joke: ‘We live in the middle of a cult, one night we’ll wake up, and they’ll be around our bed in cloaks and masks, and they’ll sacrifice us,'” he laughs.
“Then I watched Rosemary’s Baby and realized, ‘Oh my God, I was in that building! I was in that same situation,'” he continues. “Okay, it wasn’t enough to bring the Antichrist into the world, but that’s how this movie appeared.”
Only from such audacious beginnings could a movie like They Will Kill You appear. The film moves through various genres and tones, promising twist after twist, which is exactly what drew the cast to the project.
“I just loved whipping through this script,” gushes Beetz. “The way that it’s written is incredibly engaging. It’s funny and I was laughing through it. And then I met Kirill via Zoom, who is just such a bright and exuberant individual that I felt his passion and love for this story. It made me excited to jump on.”
“I loved Kirill’s first film [Why Don’t You Just Die? from 2018] and I thought he had a really interesting voice as a filmmaker,” adds Patricia Arquette, who plays superintendent/cult leader Lilith. “He throws so many genres together in this movie: martial arts comedy, gore, horror—all that kind of stuff.
“And then I loved this story. I loved Zazie getting to be this superhuman, driven by love to become a human warrior who’s working from goodness and fighting against evil.”
The story drew the attention of producers Andy Muschietti and Bárbara Muschietti, who helped get the film made. “We were sent this incredible script, and Andy and I read it right away,” remembers Bárbara. “Andy and I read hundreds of scripts, and we barely ever get surprised. This time, we read it and we both thought, ‘We want to see this movie!’
“And then we talked to Kirill, and he’s an atomic bomb of filmmaking. Immediately, you can tell that this guy knows what he’s doing, knows what he’s saying, knows what he’s writing.”
“The thing that really blew me away was the script,” Andy agrees, but he continues, “I then confirmed it by watching Why Don’t You Just Die? and then by meeting Kirill. He knows how to manage humor. He has this refined sense of visual sarcasm. Humor comes not from what’s being said, but from what’s being shown.
“There’s a grotesque slapstick to his work that I align very much with. You can see some of it in the script, but you see all of it in the movie. That’s something I really appreciate and wanted to see on screen.”
While he’s happy to take his producer’s compliment, Sokolov is quick to point out that the film’s mix of tones was built into the script.
“When Alex and I wrote the script, we knew we were doing horror, but we wanted to play with the genre. We wanted a movie that will surprise the audience not just with the story twists, but with the emotions they’ll get from it. So every 10 minutes, the movie takes a huge 180-degree turn to go in a different direction.
“I’m so appreciative and honored that Andy and Bárbara believed in this movie,” he gushes. “Then from that moment, you start to realize that if these guys believe in the movie, then maybe cool cast members will believe in it. And step-by-step, we found an amazing team and amazing crew to build it up.”
According to Shokolov, quality collaborators are all the more important, given the film’s mix of tones. “It’s very exciting to make this kind of movie, but it’s also very challenging because you can easily fall out with the audience when you bring a joke or something that turns the audience away. So you have to find actors who can manage these tonal shifts.
“I believe that if you have good characters on screen, you should hire really shitty people to play them. And, it’s the opposite too, so if you have bastards on screen, you bring in nice people to play them, because they immediately feel the conflict, and it’s like they won’t have to perform. And just our luck, we had to find all really nice people, because everyone’s an asshole in this movie.”
Joking aside, Sokolov’s cast of really nice people found his direction invaluable to guide them through the insanity of They Will Kill You. “Kirill kept reminding us that, yes, there’s action, and, yes, there’s comedy,” says Beetz. “But the most important part, at least for me, was the truth of the moment. If I can make it feel truthful in that moment, and the comedy is going to come with the way it’s edited, or with a needle drop, or with a cut.
“So I’m not playing against it or for it. I’m letting it be true, whatever’s happening.”
As Beetz’s comments reveal, “truth” is the watchword for They Will Kill You, no matter how over-the-top the action gets or how many genres it crosses. Which makes sense, given that the entire thing stems from the true story of a remodel in an apartment filled with the elderly.
They Will Kill You opens in theaters on March 27, 2026.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Ending Explained: What Really Happened to Rachel?
This article contains spoilers for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.
Netflix’s new horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen uses its title to let you know right off the bat that something very bad is indeed going to happen in the final episode, which is packed with twists and payoffs.
Camila Morrone (The Night Manager) and Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) star as Rachel Harkin and Nicky Cunningham in the Duffer brothers-produced show as an engaged couple heading to a family cabin in the woods for their nuptials, only to find that death has thrown a spanner in the works: Rachel’s bloodline is cursed, and she has to marry her soulmate or die. But is Nicky really her soulmate, or is Rachel doomed?
Let’s unpack the ending of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen…
What Exactly Was the Curse?
First, we need to unpack the lore of the curse itself. In episode four, we get to see what happened when Rachel’s mom married her dad, thanks to an old home video. The pair apparently weren’t soulmates, so her mom died horribly after tying the knot, but not before having a terrible premonition about Rachel’s wedding. Her dad was then compelled to save Rachel by cutting her out of her mom’s belly, while a young Jules Cunningham (Nicky’s brother) watched from under the bed, smothering his screams. “Tell her it’s real,” her mom had begged a traumatized Jules before fading away.
Rachel’s dad later confronts her, telling her she will die if she marries Nicky. A broken man, he has kept any warnings of the family curse to himself until now, so Rachel has been unaware of her predicament, but those warnings have indeed been passed down from generation to generation until Rachel came along.
Rachel goes back to the bar to squeeze more info from The Witness (Zlatko Buric) whom she had stabbed earlier, but then spotted in her parents’ wedding video. The Witness appears to be immortal—he hasn’t aged a day. He tells her about the curse, which dates back to his great-great-great-grandparents’ time. His great-great-great-grandfather had died in a hunting accident, and his great (x3) grandmother made a bargain with death. He would bring her groom back to life, but only if she believed he was her soulmate. Her children were afflicted with the same challenge, a curse that would extend through the bloodline from the original union, forever: marry your soulmate or pay death what he is owed.
The Witness eventually met a woman called Marianne and fell in love. On the day of the wedding, a mysterious man told him he must marry his soulmate by sundown, or die. After hearing this, The Witness admits he took the cowardly way out and left Marianne at the altar. As a result, the curse spread to Marianne and her new husband, Rachel’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas. That’s how Rachel’s family became cursed. The only way she could have escaped the curse was to never get engaged in the first place, which is the route some of her ancestors took when they found out about it.
Why Didn’t Rachel Die from the Curse?
Rachel appears to be screwed as the wedding ceremony nears. She didn’t really want to marry Nicky when she accepted his proposal; she kind of agreed to it just to make him happy. Not only that, she’s decided to throw caution to the wind and reject the ritual love potion that will ensure she and Nicky are indeed soulmates. Yet she approaches the altar truly believing that she and Nicky will work out, even as Nicky’s belief in marriage crumbles after hearing about his parents’ flawed relationship. Unfortunately, Nicky’s newfound cold feet about marrying Rachel mean the wedding is abandoned, and his family begin to die horribly.
Rachel also appears to die from the curse after Nicky tries to put the ring on her finger and complete the ceremony to save his family, finally believing the curse is real. Since she no longer feels they’re soulmates, Rachel haemorrhages and falls in the snow, covered in blood. After some time, though, she is revealed to be fine. Rachel picks herself up, finds a note next to The Witness’s body that says “Your turn,” and drives away.
We’ve been told that if a bride or groom chickens out of their marriage before sundown, as The Witness did, the curse spreads to the partner’s bloodline, but the original cursed person in the relationship also becomes immortal. This is what happened to The Witness in the past with his beloved Marianne, which is why he has lived for over 200 years. However, with Marianne’s bloodline no longer at the center of death’s focus, The Witness expires, and Rachel becomes the new immortal.
Like The Witness, Rachel has been punished for betraying death’s bargain, even though it wasn’t her fault. Nevertheless, she is now condemned to bear witness to all the weddings in Nicky’s bloodline, which is why she makes sure to tell Jules and Nellie’s young son Jude to be careful picking a partner before she leaves. Rachel will likely live forever, or at least until someone in Nicky’s bloodline experiences “cold feet” before their wedding.
Who Died and Who Was Spared?
Various members of Nicky’s family bleed out profusely at the reception and expire when the curse spreads to them, including his narcissistic mother Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who dies after admitting she was involved with another man when she married Nicky’s dad, even though he loved her unconditionally. Sister Portia (Gus Birney) also kicks the bucket after it emerges she’s been hiding an inadvisable Vegas wedding in her past.
Nicky lives, just as The Witness’s jilted fiancée did, able to witness the carnage that ensues. However, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) and Nellie (Karla Crome) are also spared from the fatal effects of the curse, much to their surprise.
Wait, Why Didn’t Jules and Nellie Die?
In the third episode of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, we spend some time with Jules and Nellie. Jules is taking a bath when Nellie comes in and starts provoking him while applying makeup. It’s clear that these two are in an acrimonious relationship. “You used to be nicer,” Nellie says pointedly. Jules jokes that if she wanted a nice guy, she should have married ex-boyfriend Nicky, but also says that Nellie doesn’t want a nice guy because she isn’t nice herself. There is a dangerous yet still passionate connection between the couple, who are planning an imminent divorce.
So why didn’t Jules and Nellie die when the curse spread to Nicky’s family? If they’re getting a divorce, surely Jules and Nellie can’t be soulmates, right? Well, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen doesn’t agree with that notion. However messed up and broken their relationship is, they’ve proved to be perfect for each other in some twisted way. The curse skips them, satisfied that they’re soulmates …it’s just that their version of “soulmates” isn’t a cookie-cutter marriage of sweetness and light. “I don’t know what my life looks like without you,” Jules admits when Nellie asks him why he hasn’t signed the divorce papers. Whether they stay married or not doesn’t seem to matter; they’re free.
Something interesting about the curse is also revealed in the bathtub scene: Nellie reveals that Jules has been married before, and it failed. Perhaps it doesn’t matter how many times you wed, as long as you marry your soulmate at some point before the curse hits your bloodline. But as Nellie also says in episode six, “There’s no cosmic assurance that your marriage is going to work out.”
What Does the Song at the End Mean?
When Rachel gets into the truck, she turns on the stereo, and We Will Not Be Lovers by The Waterboys starts playing. The song tells the story of a “doomed from the start” relationship, which is perhaps a little too on-the-nose for Rachel.
Try as she might to skip the track, the same song plays. We then see the injured fox that Nicky couldn’t catch and put out of its misery, leaving the cabin’s grounds at the same time as Rachel does. The symbolism is clear: Nicky couldn’t find, fix or kill any of the broken things in his life because he never did the necessary work to become a whole person. He kept trying to create one “perfect” romantic partnership after another, but his idea of the perfect relationship was built on a house of cards, having relied on his parents’ utterly flawed marriage as a template. As a result, every one of his relationships was doomed from the start.
Rachel tosses her wedding ring from the truck’s window as The Waterboys’ lead singer Mike Scott belts out “People are scrambling like dogs for a share. It’s cruel, and it’s hard, but it’s nothing compared to what we do to each other.” Indeed.
The Harry Potter Series Trailer Presents A Milquetoast Carbon Copy
We live in a time in which IP is king. At this point, if a given property was even vaguely popular, it’s probably getting a reboot, revival, reimagining, or sequel of some stripe. Harry Potter is one of the most popular franchises in the world — or at least it used to be, before its creator took a sharp heel turn into the sort of abject villainy that would have been roundly condemned by the heroes of her own fictional universe.
But even She Who Must Not Be Named’s abhorrent personal views cannot put this cash cow back in its pen, which means we’re getting a full HBO TV adaptation of the Harry Potter novels, whether we want one or not. (And even though it’s only been about 15 years since the final installment of an eight-part blockbuster film franchise was in theaters.)
HBO’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will officially premiere this Christmas, and everything about this series seems determined not to rock the boat. (Though ostensibly by titling itself thusly, it’s going to have to go through the hassle of changing its name every season, which feels like a lot of effort.) Yes, this is a project that almost no one asked for, but it’s also one that doesn’t appear to be even doing the basic things that reboots or revivals are meant to do.
If the initial teaser is anything to go by, this is a Harry Potter that is completely uninterested in interrogating or reconsidering anything about the way the original films or novels told the story of the Boy Who Lived and the world he grew up in. And it feels like nothing so much as a carbon copy of what has already come before. Just without John Williams’ magical score helping to elevate its occasionally ridiculous material this time.
“There is nothing special about you,” Bel Powley’s Petunia Dursley intones morosely at an appropriately adorable young Harry (Dominic McLaughlin). And you really do have to feel for the kids who are going to be stuck in the middle of all this, because she might as well be speaking for this series as a whole.
Nothing about this first batch of footage is especially compelling; in fact, most of it looks like slightly less interesting (and much more poorly lit) recreations of moments we’ve seen already. Perhaps there’s an audience for a show that essentially features Nick Frost cosplaying the late Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid and Janet McTeer doing her best Maggie Smith impression to play Professor McGonagall. But mostly, it’s exhausting. Who is this show for? What are we meant to be taking away from this? Is it planning to say anything new at all about these characters? Does anyone behind the scenes even care if it does?
Probably not. After all, Harry Potter is a brand before it’s anything else. And that brand has to serve many masters, from its publishing house sales reps to the multi-million dollar theme park business that relies on kids getting their parents to buy an officially licensed wand from Ollivanders that looks the same no matter which Wizarding World it comes from. And that’s maybe the least magical thing of all.
Faces of Death Red Band Trailer Gives Infamous Video Classic a Modern Meta Update
For ’80s kids, few films capture the decade in horror better than Faces of Death. Even though it released in 1978, and draws inspiration from the mondo sub-genre that began in the ’60s, Faces of Death was a mainstay on video store shelves and a frequent subject on the playground. The cool kids whose parents let them watch it described in great detail the grisly fatalities on display, while the other kids imagined horrid images of monkey brains and people burned alive.
These days, you can find that and worse by scrolling through Reddit. So it’s to the credit of director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei that they lean into our internet reality with their 2026 remake. The latest trailer for Faces of Death promises a meta-slasher, in which a woman (Barbie Ferreira) who moderates a video platform realizes that a killer is recreating the kills from the 1978 movie. Joining her in her search are comedian Jermaine Fowler, Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things, and pop star Charli XCX.
Nowhere is that cross-generational aspect more clear than when, early in the trailer, Ferreira’s character googles the phrase “How to tell if a snuff film is real?” Certainly, many of those old enough to learn about Faces of Death in the pre-internet age did the same when search engines allowed us to confirm the urban myths of our youth.
The original 1978 film presented itself as the findings of researcher Francis B. Gröss (Michael Carr), who has devoted his life to exploring the nature of death. Throughout the film, Gröss shows the audience the various people expiring in gruesome ways: someone gets eaten alive by an alligator, police gun down a suspect (back when that wasn’t so frequently recorded), a criminal is executed via electric chair.
As with many other mondo films, Faces of Death prompted viewers to wonder if they were watching fiction or an actual snuff film. In fact, that tension was much of the film’s appeal, the potential to witness something forbidden.
Kids today no longer have the same questions, which is why the new film has the feeling of filmed creepypasta. Did you hear about the guy who decided to recreate kills from an old movie? Is he really killing people, or is it all faked?
In lesser hands, we might be worried that the new Faces of Death would fail to pull off that balancing act. But Goldhaber has already turned the anarchist handbook How to Blow Up a Pipeline into a strident, inspiring fiction film in 2022. Before that, he and Mazzei collaborated for the 2018 screenlife horror film Cam, which also blurred the lines between fiction and reality.
Will the new Faces of Death continue Goldhaber’s streak of surprisingly great movies? Or are the kids of today too jaded to be scared by looking into the Faces of Death? We’ll find out when the movie arrives in April.
You can see the Faces of Death in theaters on April 10, 2026.
Daredevil: The Many Times Foggy Nelson Has Come Back from the Dead
At the beginning of Daredevil: Born Again‘s first episode, the assassin Bullseye kills Foggy Nelson. We see Foggy get shot, we watch him fall to the ground, we listen to Matt Murdock’s super-hearing confirm that Foggy’s heart has stopped. We even witness Foggy’s funeral. Charlie Cox has insisted timeand again that Matt Murdock’s best pal is dead and buried. And yet, fans hope against hope that Elden Henson will be back as Franklin “Foggy” Nelson in season 2 of Born Again.
Believe it or not, they have good reason to hope, because Foggy is a comic book character. And if there’s one thing that comic book characters do best, it’s die and then come back to life. So, as we watch season 2 of Born Again to unfold, and as we wait to see if Henson’s confirmed billing in season 2 is a resurrection or just a flashback, we look back at the comic book stories that keep fans believing that Foggy will walk among us again.
The First Life of Franklin Nelson
Foggy debuts in 1964’s Daredevil #1, by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, as part of Matt Murdock’s supporting cast, alongside Karen Page. Foggy is initially a typical superhero’s best friend stock character, like Superman‘s Jimmy Olsen or Wonder Woman‘s Etta Candy. He’s a portly doofus, good-hearted and deeply worried about his pal Matt, but far less adept than the main character.
Daredevil #6, illustrated by Wally Wood and written by Lee, illustrates this dynamic, as Foggy takes it upon himself to investigate the doings of some supervillains because he doesn’t think his blind pal Matt is up to it. The supervillains easily send Foggy into a deadly coma, and only Matt’s actions as Daredevil prevent him from being harmed further. After he recovers, Foggy admits that he wouldn’t have put himself in danger if he knew that Daredevil was around, reminding us who the real hero of the story is.
Over the years, however, Foggy was further developed into a more complex, three-dimensional character. By the time of the excellent back-to-back runs by Brian Michael Bendis and then Ed Brubaker in the 2000s, Foggy is much closer to the compelling figure that Henson plays in the TV show. Which makes it all the more tragic when Foggy dies at the end of Daredevil #82 (2006), written by Brubaker and penciled by Michael Lark.
Not only has Matt’s identity as Daredevil been leaked to the public, but Matt has also been sentenced to prison, leaving Foggy to both keep the law firm running and get his best friend out of prison before a bad guy can exact revenge. Unfortunately, he’s too late, as a thug shivs Foggy in the stomach after he visits Matt in prison. Stuck in his cell and powerless to help, Matt has to listen to his friend bleed out.
Or so he thought. Turns out, Foggy was just injured and placed into witness protection as he recovered. Then, there was a whole lot of stuff involving gangsters and ninjas and Wilson Fisk’s wife Vanessa, but eventually Matt learned that Foggy lives and the two were back to running Nelson & Murdock together. For a while.
The Second and Third Deaths of Franklin Nelson
Over the years, Matt and Foggy have various reunions and fallings out, with the former continuing to live as recklessly as possible and the former just trying to move on with his life. So when 2013’s Daredevil #22, written by Mark Waid and penciled by Chris Samnee, ends with Matt bringing a giant, stinky pizza to Foggy by way of apology, we expect the conversation to be little more than the latest bump in their tumultuous friendship. However, after accepting the apology, Foggy reveals that they have little time to rebuild their law practice because he has cancer.
Foggy battled cancer bravely, and Matt tried to help. But Matt couldn’t shake the feeling that his friendship made Foggy a target. 2014’s Daredevil #5 by Waid and Samnee seems to prove the point, as a dangerous new version of the villain Leap Frog attacks Matt while he’s visiting a weakened Foggy. Matt defeats the baddie (obviously—it’s Leap Frog), but the suit explodes, seemingly killing Foggy.
To Waid and Samnee’s credit, the issue doesn’t really let the audience think that Foggy’s really dead. With the help of Ant-Man‘s Pym particles, Matt used the explosion to fake Foggy’s death so he can continue his cancer battle in peace… which isn’t much, because this is a Marvel comic.
Thus, when the Hand ninjas lay siege to New York City in the Red Fist Saga that ran across Daredevil comics written by Chip Zdarsky in 2022 and 2023, Foggy gets roped in. Foggy works with Matt as Daredevil frees the city from the Hand’s demonic control. Yet, when Daredevil defeats the Hand and expels them from his city, his victory is undercut when he turns to see his best friend crumbling into dust. Unbeknownst to Matt, Foggy (as well as Matt’s tutor Stick) were both killed by the Hand and resurrected as spies, secret agents in their employ. When Matt destroyed the Hand’s magic, he also destroyed the magic that kept him in the land of the living.
Faced with the actual real death of his best friend, Matt goes to extremes, sacrificing himself to descend to Hell and face off against a demon known as the Beast. Matt successfully frees Foggy from Hell, allowing him to return to life, but seemingly gets lost in the process. When Matt leaves Hell, he resurrects as a priest, with no connection to his past life. For an issue or two, anyway.
Hope in Hell
As this brief survey shows, there’s very good reason for people who loved Elden Henson’s take to expect that Foggy Nelson may be back in Daredevil: Born Again. He has been just as dead in the comics as he is on the TV show and made it back to work with Matt again.
Furthermore, both Born Again and the Netflix series that proceeded it have borrowed heavily from some of the runs mentioned here, which means that showrunner Dario Scardapane is aware of these story beats. Does that mean Foggy’s definitely coming back? Well, we don’t know for sure, but there’s always hope… even when dealing with the Devil.
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 streams new episodes every Tuesday on Disney+.
The Boys Season 5 Will Make Jared and Misha Play Douchebags Too
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke hasn’t been shy about adding cast members from his old hit show, Supernatural, into the mix as his satirical superhero series has lived on. Jim Beaver and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who played allies Bobby Singer and John Winchester, have already had their turn on The Boys, and Supernatural star Jensen Ackles put any warm, cozy thoughts of monster hunter Dean Winchester in the rearview with his notable role as Homelander’s brutal dad, Soldier Boy.
Now, with the final season of The Boys on the horizon, Kripke has found an opportunity to complete the Supernatural set by getting the other two main stars of the beloved show on board. But if you thought Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins’s characters would be any nicer than Soldier Boy, think again.
“They show up in episode 5,” Kripke told EW. “What I love about what they’re doing is they’re just such douchebags. It’s great. I mean, Soldier Boy is no treat either, but they’re just really not morally upstanding dudes. It’s a blast to watch them play that. It was just so much fun.”
It looks like Ackles will get a decent amount of screentime with both Collins and Padalecki during the scene in episode five, which Ackles describes as “a messy one,” but it seems to have taken a while for the actor to come around to the idea of a reunion with the pair on The Boys.
“I was told that there was the possibility of it happening, and I was like, ‘I think it sounds awesome as long as it makes sense,'” Ackles explained. “I’m protective of the show. Even though I’m not an original cast member, I still want to, as a fan of the show, make sure that every second counts on screen. Kripke figured out a way to weave them in there and make it outrageous and make it something special. It propels the story, it propels the characters.”
Padalecki and Collins’s characters still remain a mystery on the run-up to the final season of The Boys, but Ackles certainly isn’t going anywhere after the mainline show ends, as he’s the star of its upcoming 1950s-set prequel series Vought Rising, where he will reprise the role of Homelander’s dad alongside his Nazi mom, Stormfront (Aya Cash.)
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Gets Timey-Wimey with Wiseguys, Vince Vaughn, and Eiza González
As its title suggests, the action comedy film, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, could be mind-bending for viewers (especially those who don’t get the cutsey nod to swingers classic, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). After all, Mike & Nick involves time travel, a murder mystery, and a romantic triangle with four corners. And all of this is due to a gangster named Nick (Vince Vaughn) traveling six months into the past to fix a mistake he made with the love of his life, Alice (Eiza González), best pal Mike (James Marsden), and a slightly younger version of himself. Also because Mike and both Nicks are killers, lots of shooting and plenty of more killing is involved.
Despite all the mayhem and one-liners, plus double Vince Vaughn action, writer, director, and comedy veteran BenDavid Grabinski has made sure his narrative was a straight, buzzy line, even with the twists.
“It took a while to try to figure out a way to make something this complicated feel simple, because I didn’t want to make a time travel movie that gives you a headache,” Grabinski half-jokes in the Den of Geek studio right before Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice‘s SXSW premiere. “The only person who had a headache was me, trying to make a movie that doesn’t give you a headache!”
He continues, “I had the core idea and the first 15 minutes figured out for a while. I think I had written 15 pages of it in 2019, and then I ended up having some free time in 2021 to figure out what this movie was. I wrote it in one big swing then, because I knew the central dynamic, the tone, and the setup.” Indeed, the timey-wimey dynamic occurring with wiseguys was the selling point in Grabinski’s head: “I wanted it to be a fun ride, and if you do this movie wrong, it could be kind of annoying. That’s part of the reason why none of the characters are scientists. I didn’t want this to be a movie that got bogged down with Primer time travel stuff.”
There’s been a lot of time travel shenanigans going around too. In fact, González wryly notes: “Weirdly, every project I have this year is time travel. I don’t know how that happened. I’m the time travel queen.” The Mexican star is referring to projects like 3 Body Problem. “Really, if you ever need any direction, I can really, genuinely just take you by the hand.”
Yet the appeal of the film for everyone involved is less the sci-fi and more the character interactions and vibes they create along the way. Vaughn particularly appears to be in his element as a fast-talking knockaround guy after starring in movies like Swingers and Made once upon a time.
“I thought all the characters were so fun. I really liked all the relationships,” says Vaughn. “You’ve got a bunch of characters, none of whom make great decisions. They’ve all made choices that aren’t the best. And even though Nick is the one who goes back with some perspective about what to do differently, to think about how his actions affect people, they’re all being pulled on a journey to face their choices. It’s almost like a Greek myth in that once the die is cast, the morality will play out.”
“If this was a movie about people who made great decisions, it would be, like, 18 minutes long. We would all fall asleep,” Grabinski smiles. “The entertainment comes from watching people fail and then try to be better. If they’re already better, there’s no movie.”
Obviously Grabinski is nodding to the characters’ seedy occupations, and yet there remains a universality in the approach. These are, after all, still folks who actually are getting a “do-over” button to fix past relatonship mistakes.
Grabinski explains, “I think the relatable thing about the movie is not necessarily that you have regrets or that you wish you had a time machine to change everything. It’s that we all have relationships that change over time. Sometimes hindsight is the only way to diagnose what went wrong. Everyone’s had a friendship, romantic relationship, or a sibling relationship that started strong and changed. You get perspective by looking back and thinking about what you would do if you were forced to deal with the past.”
“I understand why Nick went back,” Vaughn admits, before noting, “I think the point is that you have to move forward in future relationships. Everyone makes mistakes in relationships, and sometimes it takes those mistakes to see your side of what happened, and how you contributed do it. It allows you to be a better version of yourself in the future.”
Does that mean that the cast of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice would change their own pasts? As much as they understand why Nick does what he does, neither Vaughn nor González want a do-over.
“Ultimately, I’m always interested in moving forward,” González observes. “I think there’s something beautiful in chaos, and I don’t like the thought of going back and changing anything. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that have happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments of my life.”
“I agree,” Vaughn adds. “I think everything that felt bad at the time usually ended up leading to something that was great for me. So all the moments that I wished I could change then, looking back on it now, I wouldn’t change any of them, because they’ve kind of taken me to where I am now.”
Besides, thinking too much about how to go back in time and undo the past is bound to cause headaches, and nobody wants that.
The AI Doc Dreams of Making a Better Future While Dreading Its Current Architects
Like anyone else living in the 21st century, Daniel Kwan has found himself forced to think about technology every day of his life. Even before winning a Best Director Oscar with his longtime collaborator Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the pair’s flashy style and visual innovations were themselves the beneficiaries of social media, with YouTube algorithms turning aDJ Snake music video into a viral sensation.
So Kwan has seen the highs and lows of technological advancement. But through it all, he has also witnessed first-hand the diminishing consideration of the human element—an evermore minimized ingredient in a world where fans on Chinese AI platform Seedance can, with the click of a few buttons, imitate the Daniels’ hot dog fingers.
“Any time I want to interact with anyone else and share my story with the world, it has to kind of navigate this world of algorithms and this world of technology that is really obscuring that pure experience as a storyteller,” Kwan muses while stepping inside the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “When my job as a storyteller is to invoke the imagination and to tap into the sort of messy humanity of my audience members, I started to realize that a lot of this technology was making my job harder. I was going to be in constant competition with this technology.”
These sorts of thoughts remained in the back of Kwan’s mind over the years, but they took on an urgent shape after seeing The Social Dilemma, Jeff Orlowski’s 2020 Netflix doc about the negative impact that social media has on particularly younger minds. Kwan was impressed too by Tristan Harris, one of the leading ethicist-thinkers in Silicon Valley, who after watching his multimedia startup Apture purchased by Google in 2011 spent some years at the search-engine monolith. Eventually, though, Harris broke off to found the Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit designed to think of technology’s big picture impact on society. It was Harris’ defense of that human element, and his warnings in particular to Kwan about AI, that became the real eye-opener. While tech has gone from a fixture of utopian-thinking to dystopian imagery in pop culture during the last quarter-century, these past 25 years might just be prologue. We’re still in the preview of coming attractions, and the real show of technological upheaval force is about to begin.
“Social media is sort of like the baby AI,” Kwan explains. “That was our first contact with it, and it really funneled me directly into this conversation around what is gonna happen with artificial intelligence… once I got in there I realized it was going to touch everything. It wasn’t going to just touch storytelling, it was going to touch every aspect of our lives, every industry, and that’s when I really realized: oh my God, this is much bigger than me and I need to make a documentary to bring more people into the conversation.”
That documentary, which features Harris as a central subject, is this weekend’s The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a surprisingly even-handed and accessible feature that contrasts the rosiest and most nihilistic expectations for the AI revolutions to come.
Yet by virtue of Harris visiting our studio with Kwan, it is fair to say that the film’s own sensibility comes down somewhere in the middle between apocalyptic doom-casting, and those which claim AI will cure all social ills and present a higher state of being and emotional fulfillment. As Harris admits, even the perception of AI in Silicon Valley has evolved greatly since his days at Google, which were right around the time that mainstream news media became dimly aware of AI’s applications thanks to Google purchasing British startup DeepMind.
“When I was at Google in 2013, I knew about the Atari games that [AI agent] AlphaGo and DeepMind were playing, but I didn’t take the real risks of genuine artificial general intelligence seriously,” Harris recalls. “I thought that was something more mystical, because I was worried about social media and how there was already this runaway rogue AI maximizing [incentives].”
The incentives that Harris refers to is how so many social media algorithms, and the companies that build them, are incentivized to increase engagement by virtue of capitalistic forces. They’re rewarded for essentially being habit-forming, addictive, and anxiety-inducing. Which is to say a mean tweet, or one that encourages outrage, creates more engagement and advertising value than a thoughtful analysis. And as the rise of artificial intelligence’s value became undeniable in the following decade, many of those same incentives are triggering a pseudo arms race between tech companies, and even nations to be the first to build artificial general intelligence—an AGI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge with the cognitive abilities of a human, but at the tireless speed and self-improving efficiency of a supercomputer.
“We now have evidence of AI models that are scheming and blackmailing when they are told that they’re about to be shut down. Sometimes they’ll exfiltrate and copy their own code elsewhere,” Harris explains. “Just last week, Alibaba, the Chinese AI company, realized that during training, its AI model, spontaneously and with no human provocation, started redirecting its GPUs to mine crypto and gain resources for itself. That was nowhere in the training. It was by chance and by luck that the Chinese engineers even discovered that it was doing that.”
The recent example is a bit chilling since by their own admission, many of the AI companies being valued for billions of dollars on Wall Street do not entirely understand how their AI agents operate. While many of them are, for example, large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which utilizes generative pre-trained transformers to statistically anticipate what text and images to generate in response to a user’s prompt, the way it makes its near instantaneous decisions continually surprises its makers.
Advocates for the glories of AI will hand-wave any skepticism as “decelerationists” fighting the inevitability of progress, like a horse-and-buggy coachman resistant to the automobile. And yet, given how so many of these companies are either owned by some of the same tech behemoths of the social media revolution, or funded by the previous generation’s leaders and patrons, it begs the question: why should we trust these people again with an even more powerful, and likely dangerous, technological innovation?
“I really do not think we should be trusting them as they stand right now,” Kwan says flatly. “I think big tech has broken the social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power, more resources, the technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the technicians and the architects have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals for what they think this technology can do—the fact that it’s being deployed in this current system with this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.”
Adds Harris, “To your point with social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out. It created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people building it—my friends who started Instagram, they were my dormmates at Stanford—didn’t intend for that to happen. And I think what this movie is provoking us to ask is ‘what does it mean to be a wise steward?’” In Harris’ mind, the purpose of The AI Doc seems to be to take the prompt of Daniel Schmachtenberger to heart: How can you have the power of gods without the wisdom, love, and prudence of gods?
Given the justified skepticism of The AI Doc’s producer and one of its leading voices, it’s faintly wild that the documentary also was able to get many of the modern luminaries of the AI revolution to participate, including OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei.
“None of these people want to participate in documentaries,” Kwan says with a weary smile. “There’s no incentive for them to say something on-camera without some sort of control over the message. So we built this movie off the idea that we wanted to create a comprehensive look that was even-handed enough that could include the people who are most afraid of this technology, as well as the people who are most excited, so that we could bring clarity to the conversation and move towards action. And at every level, I think that’s something most people would agree would be a good thing.”
By Kwan’s admission, a few unnamed parties “bristled” at the idea of sharing documentary space with figures on the opposite end of the debate, which as the title promises includes the true believers and the closest thing Silicon Valley has to heretics.
“The reason why we made the film this way is because I believe… we cannot allow this technology, this conversation around AI, to become polarized in the same way that everything else has become polarized in the past 10-20 years,” Kwan says. “Polarization leads to gridlock, gridlock leads to inaction, and then when we’re not doing anything, the people with the power and influence, they get the benefit from that. So while we’re fighting, they’re winning, and we can’t let that happen.”
In their best intentions, Kwan and Harris would like The AI Doc to be a time capsule of this moment where we sit at a fork in the road. There’s every possibility AI leads to as bleakly predictable outcomes as the social media upheaval from the turn of the century. But Harris, in particular, seems adamant in thinking it doesn’t need to go this way again.
“I think that the premise is that if we can see clearly the kind of anti-human future that this leads to, there’s still time to put our hands on the steering wheel and choose which way we want this to go instead,” Harris says. “There’s an arms race where the incentives are driving us to release the most powerful technology that we’ve ever invented, but faster and with the maximum incentive to cut shortcuts. So if we don’t want that default dynamic, then that’s what we have to change… There can be international limits on uncontrollable AI, because President Xi doesn’t want that; President Trump doesn’t want that, he wants to be commander in chief. There are ways, as unlikely as that might sound, for us to have a more human future.”
If so, humans might want to engage in building it right now.
The AI Doc: Or Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist opens on Friday, March 27.
Daredevil’s MCU Connection Opens the Door for a Different Type of Thunderbolts
This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 1.
Technically, Daredevil: Born Again takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have both been in other MCU entries, and Punisher will be a big part of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But thus far, the series has felt like it was part of the MCU in the same way the original Netflix series, which made reference to the existence of Thor and Hulk smashing Harlem, was part of the MCU.
That changed a little midway through Born Again‘s season 2 premiere, when a New York official takes a call about Mr. Charles, the mysterious CIA agent played by Matthew Lillard. At the end of the call, the official says, “Yes, Miss de Fontaine,” revealing that he has been talking to La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, the CIA head played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Val has been in a variety of MCU entries, including Black Widowand Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But it’s her last appearance, in Thunderbolts*, that truly stands out because of the team’s role in the comics that inspired Born Again. Depending on how close the series wants to stick to those comics, Val’s appearance may lead the way for a different variation on the Thunderbolts.
Justice… Like Lightning
To MCU viewers, the Thunderbolts are a lovable group of misfits who overcame their personal traumas to become the New Avengers. To readers of Marvel Comics, the team is much, much more complicated.
The first version of the Thunderbolts arrived in 1997, after the apparent deaths of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. The team presented themselves as new heroes ready to fill the gap, but by the end of Thunderbolts #1, written by Kurt Busiek and penciled by Mark Bagley, they were revealed to be the Masters of Evil. Led by Baron Zemo, who took the identity of patriotic hero Citizen V, the Masters of Evil sought to get secret SHIELD files in order to take over the world. But as the series went on, some of the heroes liked playing good guy so much, that they eventually did in fact become good guys.
The team carried on in this way for about a decade, rotating through members and even getting Hawkeye as leader for a while, until the fall-out of the Civil War storyline in 2007 and especially the end of Secret Invasion in 2009. Over the course of those two major crossovers, Spider-Man nemesis Norman Osborn became a powerful political player and SHIELD enacted the Thunderbolts Initiative, a Suicide Squad-style program to turn villains into government agents. Once Osborn became the new head of SHIELD, he turned the Thunderbolts into the New Avengers, making Venom into Spider-Man, Bullseye into Daredevil, Moonstone into Ms. Marvel, etc.
Since that storyline, Thunderbolts teams have varied between two poles: they are always teams of villains or former villains, but sometimes they’re doing evil things under the auspices of being heroes and sometimes they’re bad guys trying to redeem themselves.
A Storm Brewing in the MCU
The MCU version in the movie is clearly more of the latter, but Daredevil: Born Again is pulling from a story in which they were the former.
The Mayor Fisk storyline comes from Devil’s Reign, in which Fisk uses his position as mayor to instigate martial law and outlaw all of New York’s vigilantes, which includes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Moon Knight, etc. With that many heroes to deal with, Fisk needed heavy reinforcements. And so he assembled a Thunderbolt Unit of supercops, led (eventually, reluctantly) by John Walker a.k.a. U.S. Agent.
While Born Again will feature appearances by Jessica Jones and Jack Duquesne a.k.a. the Swordsman, the Anti-Vigilante Task Force directs most of its energy against regular people, which means that Fisk’s team of bully cops will be enough to do the job. But the involvement of Val does create the possibility of a more comics-accurate version of the team to appear in live action, either as villains forced to be heroes or villains trying to mend their ways.
Good Work for Bad Guys
Why does that matter? Because even though the MCU was once oft-mocked for its lack of good villains, the franchise has since introduced some all-timers: Loki, Killmonger, and, yes, Wilson Fisk. However, the more popular a villain becomes, the more we want to see them and sympathize with them, which means that there needs to be space for them to be heroic.
Marvel pulled off that arc with Loki, but it took two full seasons and the TVA to turn the God of Lies into the God of Stories. The Thunderbolts concept applied to the MCU could let some other baddies go through the same arc, giving space for guys like Vulture and Justin Hammer room to be more than people who fight the heroes.
If Val’s phone call in Born Again does indeed make space for a new version of the Thunderbolts, then perhaps some redemption will come from the machinations of Mayor Wilson Fisk.
Daredevil: Born Again streams new episodes every Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Disney+.
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Episode 1 Review – Born Again, Again
This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 1.
Daredevil has not had the easiest resurrection. Seven years after his Netflix series closed with its third season, the Man Without Fear arrived to the MCU with the 2024 Disney+ series, Daredevil: Born Again. The first season had a famously tortured production process, one that saw the original showrunners fired and replaced with new head Dario Scardapane, who brought along indie horror vets Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead as directors. Although they had a mandate to move in a different direction, the new team also had to use footage from the several episodes shot under the previous regime. As a result, the previous season often felt at odds with itself, despite the many highs it achieved.
One would expect the premiere of Born Again season 2 to announce a second second birth. Now free of the previous showrunners’ material, Scardapane has room to tell his story. And yet, the first episode still feels overburned with plot and strangely inert, devoting lots of time to checking in with its many characters instead of kicking off a season’s worth of storylines.
In fairness, season 1 left our heroes in a precarious spot. Mayor Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) populist support only intensified after nearly being shot by the assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). Fisk used that support to enact harsh Anti-Vigilante policies and to declare martial law in New York, sending his Anti-Vigilante Task Force of cops onto the streets. Daredevil (Charlie Cox), has to live in the shadows, fighting back with the help of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), back in New York and back in Matt Murdock’s arms.
According to the “man on the street” reports created by BB Urich (Genneya Walton), a budding journalist forced into doing PR for the administration, New Yorkers love the new regime. We do see clips of a pirate show called “City Without Fear,” in which someone in a Fisk mask shouts about the Mayor’s corruption, but most citizens claim to feel safer in the current status quo. That may be due to the fact that the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, led by cruel cop Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), attacks only the most vulnerable part of society. Fisk’s team gets to insist they’re taking terrorists and threats off the street while the victims, locked away in secret detention centers, are never allowed to speak.
That dynamic plays out in a B-plot involving Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), a member of New York’s upper crust accused of being the vigilante known as the Swordsman (any Avengers reader can tell you that the accusations are true). Locked in a basement prison, Duquesne must undergo a psych evaluation from Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), Matt’s ex-girlfriend who has become a supporter of Fisk’s methods after being attacked by the serial killer Muse last season.
The interrogation scene, in which Glenn coerces Duquesne to answer loaded questions about his mental health, is the stand out of the episode. The rich sense of mood that Benson and Moorhead create throughout the episode is on full display here, as the few rays of light that make their way into the basement interrogation room only make the gloomy blue hue of the shot feel heavier. Dalton lets Duquesne retain his charm and his confidence, while Levieva shifts the trauma that Glenn feels when she sees an apparition of Muse into a self-righteous cruelty that she turns against her captive.
On one hand, the interaction between Glenn and Duquesne illustrates the boldness of Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season. Watching a Mexican-American actor play a character who was illegally detained by militarized police and who has had the legal system turn against him cannot help but bring to mind recent events, a comparison the show invites. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force not only looks like ICE, but it exclusively attacks immigrants throughout the episode, cheered on by young men impressed by Fisk’s performance of masculine power, while Matt’s law partner Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) is reduced to running, as one character calls it, “a legal aid hostel” for those desperate for their day in court.
On the other hand, it’s a bit disappointing that a legal conversation with heavy real-world analogies is the best part of a TV show about a guy with enhanced powers who dresses up like the devil to punch bad guys in the face. Rumors about the original plan for Born Again‘s first season suggested that it was more of a legal and political thriller, more concerned about Murdock’s case load and Fisk’s policies than it was about fights between Daredevil and Kingpin.
Born Again‘s season 2 premiere does begin and end with Matt in costume as Daredevil. Moreover, Benson and Moorehead shoot the fight scenes with an almost operatic bombast, veering away from the grittiness of the Netflix era (but not the violence, as demonstrated by a close-up of bone piercing the skin after DD breaks a baddie’s arm) and toward something more fluid and grandiose. Further, the first fight scene ends with a ship full of illegal weapons crashing and effectively shutting down imports into NYC and the last closes by promising the return of the supervillain Bullseye.
Yet, as cool as the fight scenes are and as important as the ship crashing apparently is, at least to the many characters who keep bringing it up, they still feel inconsequential to the viewers. Part of that may be by design, as Karen expresses frustration that their efforts do little to change Fisk’s control on the city. And a lot of it is also a byproduct of modern TV storytelling, which treats each episode as a segment in a larger story instead of a discreet narrative in itself.
Yet, after the expectation built up by season 1, we hoped that Born Again season 2 would have given us more. The season 2 premiere is a very safe bit of superhero television in the modern streaming era. It’s perfectly acceptable and often quite interesting. But given the odd nature of the show’s history, we cannot help but wish that Daredevil: Born Again would have began its second season with a little more daring and a little less fear.
The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again season 2 is available to stream on Disney+ now. New episodes premiere Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.
