Train to Busan Director Yeon Sang-ho on Colony and the Fear of Community

At first glance, the new movie Colony seems to cover a lot of the same ground that South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho explored in his 2016 breakout Train to Busan. In Colony, people transform into rabid killers and invade a public space, this time a shopping mall instead of a commuter train. But where the monsters of Train to Busan remained mindless beasts, Colony features creatures who evolve and learn to communicate and become a single community. And that’s truly scary to Director Yeon.

“For me, zombies illustrate the peril of collectivity,” Director Yeon tells Den of Geek. “They can illustrate artistic ides, but they can also represent the hidden fears of a given time.”

Colony stars Jun Ji-hyun as Kwon Se-jeong, a biology professor known for her brilliance and for her anti-social tendancies. Along with her ex-husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo) Kwon is invited to a tech conference at the prestigious Dongwoo-ri Building, where disgruntled scientist Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) has unleashed a biological weapon. The victims become part of a hive-mind, communicating perfectly with one another and moving as a collective, even as they evolve. To survive, Kwon must work with a motly crew that includes security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook), his wheelchair-bound sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), and Han’s current wife, Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), who monitors the action from outside the Dongwoo-ri Building.

For Director Yeon, the juxtaposition of the makeshift community created by the survivors and the hive-mind of the colony allows him to use horror to explore pressing issues. “In Colony, the zombies represent the outcome of society’s tendency toward collective thinking. It’s made possible by the rapid exchange of information, through social networks and now AI issues,” he points out.

“In the early processes of AI development, the program just mimics being human. Colony symbolizes all of these trends.”

But the threat of Colony isn’t all technological, as Seo uses material from fungi, making the movie’s zombies cousins to the cordyceps seen in The Last of Us. “There are natural organisms existing that show these traits,” observes Director Yeon. “As they develop, they all have the same ideas, and start to exist as one entity.

“However, those organisms also understand the danger of being such a creature. If it gets taken over by some threat, they can all perish at once,” he notes. “I realized that human society also has this mind. You know, it’s nice that we can have consensus on things, and we can think alike sometimes. That’s beautiful. However, if you don’t respect minority opinions, then society cannot be healthy. If society wants to keep functioning in a healthy way, we have to make that balance.”

Thus, while the monsters in Colony represent society at its unhealthiest, the diverse group of survivors represents a healthier society, as do the surprising familial relations on display in the film. The latter points to a theme that Director Yeon has explored throughout his filmography, including the central father/daughter relationship in Train to Busan.

“Family is the minimum unit of society, but not all family relationships are healthy,” he says. “In Train to Busan, especially at the ending scene [in which a now-orphaned young girl (Kim Su-an) bonds with a widowed woman (Jung Yu-mi)], we see that people without blood relations can form a sort of family.

We see something similar in the friendship formed between Kwon and Gong Seol-hee, who only have their connection with Han Gyu-seong in common. “They form this solidarity and make connections. It wasn’t easy for them to do so, but they become friends and collaborators.

“That’s sharply contrasted toward the zombies. They form a collective entity, but without any empathy toward each other,” he continues. “Because in Colony, I use Kwon Se-jeong to show someone who isn’t afraid of being an outsider. She shows that it’s dangerous to join into crowds without making your own contribution just because you’re afraid of being alone. In order to maintain our humanity, we have to be individual and think independently.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Director Yeon opposes all forms of outside influence, as demonstrated by the debt to horror master George Romero, which he acknowledges.

“When George Romero made Night of the Living Dead, he didn’t call the creatures in the film ‘zombies.’ That only came later,” he explains. “Still, I think the zombie film itself represents the underlying and hidden fears of contemporary society, whatever society you’re living in. Zombies help visualize and specify that fear, so you see what it is.”

In other words, as long as society keeps dabbling in dangerous behaviors, zombie movies will be important, and Director Yeon will be there to bring those fears to life.

Colony opens in theaters in the US on August 28, 2026.

Jon Favreau Talks Embracing Natural Storytelling With Nat Geo’s ‘Lion’

Two creative forces from two very different disciplines — one a blockbuster filmmaker with a penchant for spectacle and humanity, the other a nature documentarian with decades of field experience — have formed an unlikely partnership for a new project about the world of nature. Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man and the live-action remake of The Lion King, first formed a creative bond with Mike Gunton, the legendary producer behind Planet Earth II, while both executive produced the Apple TV dinosaur series Prehistoric Planet. 

Now Favreau and Gunton have come together again for Lion, a new National Geographic documentary series following a pride of lions through the eyes of a young male cub named Kio. Part exploration of nature, part royal saga, the doc brings a very human perspective to the lion subjects. 

With a career that has typically involved significantly more agency over what happens on screen compared to documentary work, Favreau had a unique perspective on the subjects of the documentary when he and Gunton were in the early stages of production nearly five years ago. During a press roundtable attended by Den of Geek and other journalists, Favreau jokingly said working on Prehistoric Planet with Gunton gave him a “false positive” about how prepared he was for Lion.

“We identified a few that were potential leads, four female matriarchs that we thought were gonna follow this power struggle,” Favreau said. “Unfortunately, some didn’t survive and next thing you know this little cub Kio was born, smaller than all the others. Of course, as a filmmaker, I’m like, ‘Well that’s who I want to watch.’ Mike forewarned me, he said, ‘You know, the statistics aren’t great, This is not an animated movie.’”

Despite the odds, Gunton and Favreau stuck with Kio. Over the course of the next 1,400-plus days, joined by a highly-experienced crew, the pair would anxiously follow the documentary’s young subject, knowing the whims of nature could very easily turn against him and derail years of work. 

“We’ve had 20 years of anxiety suffered in the last four years,” Gunton said. “Every day you think this could all fall to the ground if Kio disappears or is killed. It’s a pretty intense experience.”

This commitment to Kio mirrors their commitment to embracing the natural storytelling that came with their subjects. Favreau and Gunton both agreed that they wanted the documentary to be manipulated as minimally as possible; the only tools their crew used in post-production were music and editing.  

“I think we’re in a moment — hopefully this will all sort itself out with time — but there’s no transparency,” Favreau said. “So much imagery that’s hitting you, you don’t know what you’re looking at a lot of the time. And so to have this relationship with an audience to say, ‘Hey, sit down, let’s gather around the campfire, we’re gonna tell you a story, and this story is completely organic’ [is important].”

Ultimately, thousands of hours of footage were narrowed down to just under four hours. The four-episode event focuses mainly on the complex, interconnected relationships among the lions of the pride, particularly the bond between Kio and his mother. 

“There was something about that relationship, it was almost as if she knew he was gonna be special and he was gonna be her kind of last chance. Even though he was a kind of a weak little cub, there was something about him that we just thought was amazing,” Favreau said.

Of course, no documentary about a family of apex predators would be complete without at least some action. However, Favreau and Gunton made it clear that this is a documentary meant to educate and inspire an interest in nature without losing its focus on storytelling.

“The natural world is an extraordinary place, but it’s a tough place,” Gunton said. “Every single one of those animals, every single day of their lives isa struggle to survive, but they have this burning flame within them to survive, and I think that is in itself inspiring as well.”

Both of Lion’s executive producers hope the documentary experience will bring people of all ages to a new world with a bounty of flora and fauna, all through the lens of a coming-of-age story. 

“My kids, sometimes they’ll tell me, ‘Dad, go out and touch grass. Get out in the real world, get away from the screen,’” Favreau said. “Even though we are asking you to tune in on a screen, we are showing a world that really exists, and we were very fortunate to have a group of humans that were able to put this together in a way that curates and cultivates this experience that hopefully will introduce people to a world that they might not know so well.”

All four episodes of Lion premiered Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. ET on National Geographic and are available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu now.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: A Guide to the Slasher References

This article contains spoilers for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Jane Schoenbrun‘s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a distinctive film, a mix of surreal postmodernism, gender critique, and surprising humor. It’s also a celebration of ’80s slashers, filled with references to movies that most people dismiss as tasteless trash, even if icons like Jason and Freddy remain in the popular culture.

The specificity in those references reveals Schoenbrun’s deep love for subgenre, as does the movie itself. Among the many other things it does spectacularly well, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma also argues for the value of trashy slasher movies, despite (or maybe because of) their problematic material. So if the argument convinces you to check out more nasty little horror movies from the era, here’s a guide to the most important movies referenced in Schoenbrun’s movie.

Friday the 13th

The single most important movie for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is 1980’s Friday the 13th, and its various sequels. Slasher movies existed before Friday the 13th, most notably the 1978 John Carpenter and Debra Hill movie Halloween. Once Halloween made huge profits on a small budget, studios clamored to cash in with their own stories about holiday-themed killers, and producer/director Sean S. Cunningham got in on the action. Nothing about Friday the 13th matched the skill of Halloween. But the story of camp counselors getting killed by what may be the ghost of the boy who drowned there years ago did big box office numbers, and a franchise was born.

Camp Miasma, the movie-within-the-movie of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, obviously draws inspiration from Friday the 13th, as it too has a drowned boy at its center. Camp Miasma also borrows the other most notorious thing from Friday the 13th, lots of scenes of teens and young adults partying and having sex, complete with shots of nude women designed for the male gaze. In particular, the scene of the killer Little Death (Jack Haven) running his spear through final girl Billy (Amanda Fix as a young woman, Gillian Anderson as an adult) while she has sex with Alex (Arthur Conti) comes directly from Friday the 13th Part II.

Part II also saw the death of Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), another element Schoenbrun references. Crazy Ralph appears in the first two Friday movies, each time warning the counselors about the “death curse” on Camp Crystal Lake, before he gets killed by Jason as well. In the fictional Camp Miasma, a shopkeeper called Rudolph performs that role, played by David Lynch regular Patrick Fischler.

Other Friday the 13th sequels get references throughout Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, particularly in their covers and subtitles. Notably, Kris (Hannah Einbinder) gets a DVD copy of Camp Miasma Part VI: A New Beginning, which she calls a return to form for the franchise. That wasn’t the case with Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, a misfire that tried to replace Jason with another killer. But it was the case for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives!, which brought the masked murderer back as a zombie.

Sleepaway Camp

The other major influence on the fictional Camp Miasma gets referenced almost immediately, during the opening title credits that establish the history of the franchise. As the sequence ends, we see shots of online think pieces reclaiming the transphobic ending of the original film.

That reclamation project recalls similar work done on 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, a truly inexplicable movie written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. Structurally, Sleepaway Camp follows the standard slasher pattern, in which campers around a summer camp end up dead in spectacular ways. But in the movie’s final moments, we discover not only that the killer is the shy girl Angela (Felissa Rose), but that she was born Peter and was raised as a girl by her Aunt Martha. The final shot of the movie, in which a nude Angela stands up to reveal her penis, is treated like a horrifying shock.

Sleepaway Camp is hardly the only slasher movie to treat gender identity as a reason to kill. In fact, it goes all the way back to 1960’s Psycho, the grandfather of the genre, in which Norman Bates’ psychosis drove him to dress like his mother. But Sleepaway Camp most explicitly made gender-nonconformity into something monstrous. Despite this fact, critics have reclaimed the queerness in Sleepaway Camp, not unlike the fictional fans of Camp Miasma.

Obviously, both Schoenbrun and their main character Kris love Sleepaway Camp, as the latter talks about not only the first movie, but also the two sequels starring Bruce Springsteen’s sister Pamela as Angela.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Schoenbrun has made no secret of their love of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. But the high-concept dreamscapes of Wes Craven‘s 1984 film has far more ambition than slashers like Camp Miasma. However, Schoenbrun does work in a few references to Freddy Krueger. The most obvious comes when Kris takes a meeting with producers, who constantly compare her Camp Miasma reboot to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

Released in 1994, New Nightmare operated as something of a first draft for Scream. New Nightmare starred Heather Langenkamp not as Nancy, the final girl she played in the first movie. Rather, she plays herself, as do Robert Englund and Craven himself. According to New Nightmare, Freddy is in fact a real dream demon who influenced the creation of the 1984 movie. As Freddy became more silly on screen, the demon’s strength weakened, so he begins attacking the creators in the real world to make the world fear him again.

One of the things that made the “actual” Freddy so angry also gets a nod in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. During the opening credits, we see that Little Death became a not-scary public figure who spoke out against drugs and even cut a rap album. The same thing happened in our world, as Freddy Krueger had a 900-number, did a rap song with the Fat Boys, and even appeared on the 1987 novelty album Freddy’s Greatest Hits. However, as anyone who remembers Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare can tell you, Freddy left the anti-drug PSAs to Johnny Depp.

Amityville 3D, Hellraiser: Bloodline, and Silent Night, Deadly Night

During the title sequence, we get a glimpse at some of the later Camp Miasma sequels, all with high concepts that suggests producers were getting desperate to keep Little Death relevant past the ’80s. The fourth Camp Miasma film embraces 3D tech, while a much later movie sends Little Death to space. Both of these things also happened to Jason Voorhees, who finally got his famed hockey mask in the 3D movie Friday the 13th Part III and who slaughtered teens on a spaceship in Jason X.

But the Camp Miasma versions have more in common with films from other franchises, neither of which are really slashers. The cover for Camp Miasma IV features a hand reaching out of the screen and toward the viewer. That’s almost exactly the poster for 1983’s Amityville 3D, which embraced the era’s 3D craze and also featured a young Meg Ryan. The sci-fi Camp Miasma movie seems to be from the 1990s, which means that it’s not exactly like 2001’s Jason X. Instead, the images bring to mind 1996’s Hellraiser: Bloodline, which has scenes in the present and the past (in which a young Adam Scott plays as a devious French dandy), but is most famous for scenes of someone solving the Lament Configuration in deep space.

The last desperate genre hop made by the Camp Miasma franchise doesn’t match anything from Friday the 13th, but it does at least mirror a slasher movie. Camp Miasma producers made a holiday-themed horror movie, complete with Little Death in a Santa cap. To date, Terrifier 3 is the most well-known slasher movie to do a holiday-themed sequel and dress its killer like Santa, but that’s too recent for Camp Miasma to reference. Instead, Schoenbrun’s probably thinking of 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night, a mean-spirited film that horrified critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who already hated slashers.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in theaters worldwide

Stephanie Williams Talks Bringing the Smile Entity to the Gridiron In New Comic Series

Few things are as sweet as a smile. It’s a sentiment most of us believe or, at the very least, have heard time and time again through songs, poems, or films. American filmmaker Parker Finn had other plans for that idea when he unleashed Smile in 2022, turning the universal expression of warmth into something you’d never want to see creeping across another person’s face again. 

The film’s simple yet devastating premise, that trauma itself is a curse that can be passed from person to person with just a grin, struck a nerve within the horror community, and its 2024 sequel only widened the crack Finn had opened in audiences’ sense of safety when it comes to someone bearing their teeth. 

Since then, Finn has been happy to let other storytellers step into his nightmare and build their own additions onto it. The first to take on the challenge was Hannah Rose May, whose comic series Smile: For the Camera, dragged the entity into the cutthroat world of high fashion modeling.  

May’s series, illustrated by Miriana Puglia, was proof that the Smile mythology could travel well beyond movie theaters, and that other writers could find just about any dark corners of the world to plop the entity into. 

“Parker, with Smile, made it that we’re aware that it’s a debt chainmail essentially,” May tells Den of Geek. “That’s how I see Parker’s world in the sense of, ‘you see it, you pass it on.’ Other than that, he’s danced around the mythology but hasn’t gone in too deep, so it made it an open playground for the likes of me, which was very nice.” 

Now, the franchise is expanding again with Any Given Smile, a five-issue comic series from IDW Dark. It’s written by Stephanie Willaims, who made history this year as the first Black woman nominated for Best Writer at the Eisner Awards, and has numerous Marvel and DC titles under hit belt.

 Set 10 years before May’s run, Any Given Smile trades runways for arena football, with art by GLAAD Media Award-winning artist Pablo M. Collar and colors by Tríona Farrell. 

The comic takes place in January 1995 and the whole town of St. Augustine, Florida, has championship fever. The American Arena League title game is a week out and the Sharks backup quarterback, Maximilian Dupree, finds himself turned into a sudden superstar. There’s just one problem: Max is drowning in gambling debts. 

His solution? Throw the biggest game of his life to make it all go away. Unfortunately for Max, the debts he owes are the least of his worries as the Smile entity has found its way into the local betting underworld too. 

Leaving a trail of hallucinations and suicides in its wake, the entity works through everyone and anyone tied to Max. Meanwhile, a sports journalist starts digging into the deaths piling up around the championship, while Max spirals closer to kickoff and even closer to losing his grip on reality. 

“Hannah and team did an amazing job laying a foundation for how to translate that world to comics and make it work. I thought of it as different Halloween houses, essentially,” Williams tells us. “Each issue is a different section of that haunted house. Basically the same thing for Any Given Smile, kind of treating it the same way and setting things up differently so that you’re getting a different scare.” 

That different scare comes down to pacing, trading the entity’s quick hop from model to model in May’s comic run for a slow burn that lets tension build toward the championship game. This approach also gave Williams room to flesh out a cast of characters who feel lived in long before the entity ever comes for them.

Rather than centering the horror entirely on Max, Williams wanted the people orbiting his story to carry their own weight too, each one caught up in the same web of gambling and desperation slowly closing in on the town. Throughout the comic, she features characters who feel like “…people just trying to get by in life, and the various battles that they have to face in order to do that.” 

“We have a cocktail waitress working at the casino, who is trying to help her son get the medication he needs. We also have a radio personality who, on the surface should not need to do anything shady on the side, but he gets sucked into that because that is just his vice,” Williams says, speaking on a couple of the secondary characters introduced in issue #1, which Den of Geek got an early look at ahead of its September 23 release date. 

Williams’ character philosophy echoes something May has said about her own approach to the Smile franchise: that horror only lands if the trauma underneath it feels real. 

“Smile is trauma. The entity is trauma,” May says. “For [people] to die, you have to see what’s traumatic to them, what their past trauma is on the surface. It allows for very fully fledged, interesting characters that have meat on the bones, essentially.” 

That dedication to horror has now landed May a new comic series, Fatal Fest, and a film adaptation of her masterwork comic The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, currently in development with Blumhouse-Atomic Monster. 

That same belief, trauma as the real engine of the horror, is what makes Williams’ next tackle at the franchise feel less like a stretch and more like the obvious next step. Dropping the Smile entity straight into the world of professional sports is a pairing that, on paper, sounds a bit odd but in practice Willaims argues it might be one of horror’s most natural playgrounds. 

“What could be more scarier than going from being the guy on the bench to being thrust into playing the biggest game of your career?” Williams asks. “That’s a dream come true, but we’re just turning it into a nightmare.”

Williams points to the pressure that comes with that kind of spotlight, the years of training funneled into a single moment, and the unsettling question of what comes after. “All of these things, I would believe, would lead to somebody having an existential crisis. Or it could be scary in that way.”

For Williams, the hope is that readers will walk away seeing athletes a little differently. “I want the takeaway to be as much as you are enjoying the teams going out Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and sometimes Friday now, that you’re remembering that these are real people who have a job, of course, they’re doing what they love, but at the end of the day, they’re still putting themselves on the line,” she says. “Kind of like modern day gladiators.”

Williams also isn’t shy about admitting the job of writing horror comes with its own strange risks, mainly when it comes to dreaming up new ways for the entity to torment its victims. “I was trying to come up with the deaths…so my internet search tab, I hope no one ever needs to see that,” she laughs. “It’s really bad. But also, I guess at the same time, fun, so it’s got me looking at myself a little bit differently.” 

That fascination with guts and gore goes back further than this series for Williams, though. “I’ve always been a fan of horror,” she says, “but definitely more so in my adulthood. I love a creature feature, and I remember the very first time I saw the entity, the Smile entity, appear at the end of the first movie. I fell in love essentially with this horrific thing.”

It’s a sentiment May shares with us too, tracing her own love of the genre back to her small Irish hometown surrounded by nothing but cornfields. “Horror shaped me. That was the God honest truth. I’ve always loved the medium. I’ve always wanted to partake in it to some degree.”

That shared love of the genre is exactly what makes the entity itself such a gift to write. To Williams, it even belongs on the same pedestal as some of horror’s most iconic creations. “I just think the Smile entity is one that is going to stand out for a very long time for me in the same way that Michael, Jason, and xenomorphs do,” she says. 

Wrapping up the conversation with some thoughts about the first issue preview, Williams discussed something she got to do that May couldn’t in her own Smile run. Without giving away exactly how or when, Williams was granted permission to bring the entity into frame earlier than fans might expect, a decision she said was meant to upend whatever assumptions readers would walk into Any Given Smile with following May’s series. 

“I was thinking about it like a roller coaster ride. What was it? The Velociraptor at Universal Studios! I love a roller coaster and there’s a point in the ride where it’s like ‘Oh, ok, we’re almost done,’ then they shoot you off again at 70 mph. So, that was kind of the approach for this,” Williams teases. “I wanted readers to feel as though, ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ No you’re not!” 

Issue #1 of Any Given Smile kicks off on September 23, 2026.

Explosive New Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Story Highlights Netflix’s Anime Release Calendar

“What kind of edgerunner are you?”

That’s a question asked…nay, screamed midway through a brand new first look at the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 (styled Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2), the next standalone installment set in Netflix’s anime adaptation of the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. It’s a good question too, as fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (which includes notable names such as Cyberpunk tabletop RPG creator Mike Pondsmith and acclaimed video game industry visionary Hideo Kojima) have also wondered what kind of edgerunner they’re going to get to see next.

The first season of the Netflix series provided an open-and-shut case, which means the 10-episode second season must introduce new characters and a new plot all set within the same familiar techno-dystopian universe. Thanks to the aforementioned Cyberpunk: Edgerunner 2 teaser from Netflix, we now have a better idea of how things will go down. Give it a look below.

So how will Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 look and sound? The answer to that question is: very, very loud. This is a bracing, bombastic 80-second clip that serves as more of a hype reel than a proper introduction to the show’s new faces. Fortunately, the hype reel is quite hype indeed. Set to an urgent, synth-fueled score from DOUDOU, viewers are entreated to fast-pasted glimpse of fresh violence and chaos in Night City and enigmatic text like “In Night City The Lines Between Redemption and Revenge Will Blur” and “Night City Will Burn Again.” It all culminates with a little boy innocently asking a man “You’re a weapon? A weapon made out of people?” Now that, my friends, is cyberpunk.

While the clip is light on plot and character details, Netflix has already provided a preview of precisely who and what fans can expect to see via its socials (and in a special issue of Den of Geek magazine as well). Joining the fray in Night City this time around are Weak Kingsley (Clancy Brown), a veteran edgerunner living in the shadow of his former glory; Talia Yang (Kimoy Lee), an augmented and battle-hardened member of Maelstrom; D (Nazeeh Tarsha), a nomad netrunner in search of revenge; and Roman Carax (Valeria Rodriguez), a young cinephile and filmmaker looking to document the real Night City.

Along with the exciting new trailer, Netflix also revealed that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 will premiere all 10 episodes on Tuesday, October 20.

In addition to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 news, Netflix also provided a bevy of other announcements and updates from Anime NYC regarding its upcoming anime-inspired animation slate. Key bits are as follows…

Bass X Machina S1. Brian Tyree Henry as Bass Reeves in Bass X Machina S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

Bass x Machina, the “steampunk spaghetti Western” from Brian Tyree Henry, received several new photos and a fresh trailer.

"Animated person with blue eyes and brown hair in a blue robe, standing outdoors on a dock at sunset, looking intensely forward; another figure partially visible on the right." Blue Eye Samurai S2. Maya Erskine as Mizu in Blue Eye Samurai S2. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2026

The second season of Blue Eye Samurai was confirmed for a January 2027 launch window with a slick new teaser.

"LEGO character in dynamic running pose, wearing a helmet and armband, stirring up dust in a bright outdoor jungle setting with a large stone monument and trees in the background." Lego One Piece S1. Jacob Romero as Usopp in Lego One Piece S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

LEGO ONE PIECE unveiled a new trailer with Straw Hat Pirate Usopp taking over narration duties.

SAKAMOTO DAYS introduced a bevy of new characters for its second season.

The biggest news, however, was saved for Fool Night. A brand new anime based on Kasumi Yasuda’s popular manga, the story imagines a world in which a lack of sunlight has led to “transfloration,” a process in which some humans choose to transform into plants rather than endure a world with diminishing oxygen supplies. In addition to a first trailer, Netflix unveiled a two-minute featurette that dives deeper into the desolate, yet colorful world.

From cyberware-enhanced freedom fighters to plant-shaped people, Netflix has a little bit of anime everything coming up.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Celebrates the Problematic Pleasures of Trash Cinema

This article contains full spoilers for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Trailers for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma made clear that the film would celebrate ’80s slashers. What’s more surprising is the fact that Jane Schoenbrun‘s latest is also about junk food. Not only do up-and-coming director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) and reclusive actor Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) eat a lot of candy throughout the movie, but a stand-out scene involves the latter seductively placing pieces of KFC on a silver platter to serve to the former. While preparing the meal, Billy half-apologizes for serving take-out, speculating that Kris would be vegan or otherwise opposed to such crass food. But when Kris admits that she loves fried chicken, Billy purrs, “Right answer.”

The KFC scene, with its sensuous shots of the women smearing dipping sauce on breaded chicken, echoes Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma‘s central point about ’80s slashers like Friday the 13th (1980) and Sleepaway Camp (1983). Yes, they are problematic. Yes, they deal with harmful tropes. Yes, they often objectify women. But they sure are fun. Moreover, viewers of slasher movies don’t just passively take in their stories. Rather, the transgressions in the movies invite the viewers to define themselves in ways that trash movies could never imagine.

Beyond Good Camper and Evil Killer

Unlike their previous films We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024), Schoenbrun gives Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma a fairly straightforward narrative. After a promising breakout film that deconstructs slasher tropes, the sort of elevated horror film synonymous with A24, Kris has been hired to revive the Camp Miasma series, which was a massive hit in the ’80s but eventually went fallow after a host of increasingly lackluster sequels. Kris seeks out Billy, the series’ original final girl, and coaxes her out of the self-imposed retirement she’s been in for decades. But as the two connect and revisit the first movie, they find that there’s something deeper in the Camp Miasma franchise than anyone expected.

In a particularly telling scene, Kris and Billy watch the first movie together, which more or less follows the plot of 1980’s Friday the 13th: a group of partying counselors visit a summer camp that closed down years ago, when a camper drown and a killer called Little Death (Jack Haven) later attacked. Before the first night of partying can truly commence, one of the counselors (Zack Cherry) gathers his colleagues around a campfire to tell the story of the legend of Little Death. According to the counselor, Little Death was once a camper whose parents dressed them as a different gender every other day, which confused his fellow campers so badly that they drowned him in the lake.

“They had to do it,” insists the counselor, which his fellows all agree with and the fictional movie Camp Miasma seems to accept. But when Kris leans over to Billy and whispers, “This part is transphobic,” the actress hisses back, “Hush.”

Notice that Billy doesn’t tell Kris that she’s wrong. The counselors’ description of the non-binary camper, the actions of the other campers, are all transphobic. And that’s a completely acceptable read of not just the fictional movie Camp Miasma, but also the films that inspired it. In particular, Camp Miasma also echoes Sleepaway Camp, in which gender confusion drives the killer, and the reveal that the killer Angela (Felicia Rose) has a penis is treated as something more horrifying than the fact that she’s cradling a boy’s severed head.

Obviously, it’s wrong for any movie to suggest that anyone should be killed or feared because of their gender identity. But when Billy shushes Kris, she isn’t thinking about morality. She’s drawing attention to something deeper.

Our Killers, Our Selves

As Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma unfolds, we learn that Kris is not just interested in recruiting Billy to reprise her role. Rather, she wants to know more about a key scene from the original movie, in which Billy (played by Amanda Fix in the 1980s scenes) sexually climaxes while being stabbed by Little Death. In particular, Kris focuses on a shot from the film, an extreme close-up of Little Death reflected in Billy’s widening eye.

Through the surrealism that follows, Kris learns from Billy how to sexually release by identifying with both Little Death the killer and with Billy the victim, something that Billy herself did when playing the role years ago. That lesson comes through reality-bending scenes in which fiction and reality merge, to the point that Little Death may in fact be a mad god who watches humanity suffer for entertainment, and emerges through a hole in the lake to stave off boredom by killing innocents.

The movie builds not just to a climax in which Little Death invades the real world to kill for his own enjoyment, but also with Kris becoming a stereotypical final girl herself, running away from the killer in her underwear in a slow-motion shot that emphasizes her heaving breasts.

To be sure, there’s an inversion at work here, in which the intelligent and multifaceted filmmaker transforms into a one-dimensional sex object as defined by the male gaze. But the movie doesn’t degrade or victimize Kris in the transformation. Rather, it retains her agency, positioning her becoming a stereotypical final girl as an identity that she’s taking on as a way of making sense of the world. Moreover, she also identifies with Little Death in those moments, learning from Billy how to see herself as both the victim and the killer. Or, in the case of her final girl transformation, as both the object of the camera’s desire and the desiring subject.

In that moment, it doesn’t matter if Camp Miasma is moral or immoral, if it’s transphobic or inclusive, or anything else. In that moment, Kris has gone beyond enjoying Camp Miasma to embodying and transcending it, using the film and its tropes as a way to form her own identity and navigate the world. She becomes Kris, the sexualized victim in her underwear, but also Kris who is one with the killer Little Death, who is, in fact, the god of this world.

The Joy of Trash

The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma establishes the history of the Camp Miasma franchise via winks to real-world slasher movies. The covers to the VHS tapes and many of the subtitles come directly from Friday the 13th movies, while jokes about Little Death cutting a rap album recalls the 1987 A Nightmare on Elm Street novelty record Freddy’s Greatest Hits. But a lot of the DNA of Camp Miasma recalls other, less reputable films, knockoffs like The Mutilator, Blood Rage, and, of course, Sleepaway Camp.

Most of those slashers were made on the cheap and sought quick profits by delivering base thrills. Sexism, homophobia, and racism were not uncommon. And a surprising amount of them followed the lead of Psycho and made gender-bending a sufficient reason for someone to start killing people.

And yet, as Schoenbrun’s film so powerfully illustrates, this bad behavior doesn’t brainwash moviegoers. Instead, indulging in something transgressive can open space for redefinition and even agency, whether it be the joys of watching an innocent camper get killed or luxuriating in the Colonel’s special blend of eleven herbs and spices.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’s Puppet Episode Is the Height of Silly Trek

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 5.

The title of the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Level Five Transporter Accident,” brings to mind one of the most upsetting moments in franchise history. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a transporter accident results in two people merging into one, screaming in agony as they die a painful death. Yet, what actually happens in “Level Five Transporter Accident” doesn’t come anywhere near horror, despite the fact that Pelia gets sliced in half by Orion pirates.

Instead, “Level Five Transporter Accident” pushes Star Trek to its silliest limits, even by the standards of modern Trek. By turning everyone on the Enterprise into puppets—excluding Spock, but including his hijinks-avoidant sometimes fiancée T’Pring—the episode leans heavily into the goofiness of things going wrong in deep space. “Level Five Transporter Accident” illustrates everything great about a silly episode of Star Trek, while also showing that not every potential premise makes for a good story, even with a sprinkling of Trek themes.

“Level Five Transporter Accident” is hardly the only Trek episode to deal with the iconic technology going wrong. Some of the most famous incidents lead to more dramatic beats, such as the split of Kirk’s personalities in “The Enemy Within” from The Original Series, the creation of Thomas Riker in the Next Generation episode “Second Chances,” or the merging of Tuvok and Neelix in the infamous Voyager episode “Tuvix.”

But it’s just as often led to shenanigans, even in the era of classic Trek. One of the best examples occurs in the season six TNG episode “Rascals,” in which Picard, Keiko, Guinan, and Ro Laren get turned into 12-year-olds and must repel a Ferengi invasion of the Enterprise. “Rascals” often falls among fans’ least-favorite episodes of the show, thanks to its high concept and uneven performances from the young actors. Yet, there’s no denying that “Rascals” adheres to the standard Trek formula: the crew faces a problem brought on by their mission to explore space, and they must work together and draw on their expertise to overcome the issue.

The same is true of “Level Five Transporter Accident.” Here, Scotty’s attempts to push transporter technology result in some merging of the crew’s DNA with that of a puppet he keeps with him for motivation. After they realize that they’ve all become puppets, the bridge crew convenes in Pike’s ready room to come up with a solution. When Orions attack the ship, the crew finds that their standard forms of fighting back fail, and thus must work together to find a different way to repel the invaders.

The animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks built some of its best episodes out of this approach. Take, for example, season four’s “Twovix,” a sequel to the infamous Voyager episode. Once again, two unlikely shipmates combine, Dr. T’Ana and Chief Billups, creating a new form called T’Illups. Aware of what happened to Tuvix on Voyager, T’Illups fights back by creating more hybrids that combine two, three, and even more crew members into a single individual.

“Twovix” illustrates what Lower Decks did so well, telling a story that’s funny, self-referential, but ultimately very Trek. Even in the face of such absurd stakes, Captain Freeman (the best captain in all of Star Trek, don’t deny it) does her job, putting professionalism first, even if she does so without grandiosity. She orders all of the hybrids separated because that’s what the mission calls for, even in spite of the absurdity and high emotions.

Freeman’s exasperation with the hijinks on the Cerritos helped Lower Decks feel like Star Trek, even thought it was a comedy show made to be as wacky as possible. Conversely, Strange New Worlds features a ship under the command of Captain Pike, whom Anson Mount plays as a supportive big brother, not the put-upon bureaucrat who Dawnn Lewis voiced on Lower Decks. Pike gleefully plays along with wackiness on his ship, leaving only T’Pring to object, and even she gets into the nonsense by the end.

Perhaps that’s why “Level Five Transporter Accident” is destined to the same fate as Strange New Worlds‘s previous most audacious episode, “Subspace Rhapsody” a.k.a. “the Musical Episode.” That episode once again had a proper Trek premise (an anomaly forces the crew to sing their feelings) and requires the crew to apply logic and professionalism to deal with a threat, namely invading Klingons. For some, “Subspace Rhapsody” pushes Trek forward, using the premise to go boldly into new genres and story styles. For others, it’s tedious and an excuse to shove an extraneous genre into Star Trek.

“Level Five Transporter Accident” won’t work for everyone. From its puppet silliness to the broad voice acting by the main cast to the guest appearances by comedy veterans Rachael Harris and Joe Lo Truglio as Orions, the episode goes big not just when looking for laughs, but also when conveying the wonder of space exploration. But that fact simply puts it alongside “The Enemy Within,” “Rascals,” and “Tuvix,” episodes that often get quite unintentionally silly and don’t have too many defenders, but are still firmly within the franchise’s canon. “Level Five Transporter Accident” is a silly episode, and it may not be a great episode, but it is undeniably an episode of Star Trek.

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

Marvel’s Third Wolverine Origin Comic Tries to Repair the Mystery it Ruined

Wolverine is the best at what he does, and what he does is talk about his past, apparently. Marvel has announced Wolverine: Origin III – The Dark Age, an upcoming miniseries written by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by CAFU, which will explore Logan’s actions in the 1950s, leading to his recruitment into the Weapon X program that gave him his famous adamantium skeleton. Marvel’s pitching the series as a look into an unexamined part of Wolverine’s history, which is true enough. But when they also present Origin III as a 25th anniversary celebration of the original miniseries Origin, by Jenkins and Andy Kubert, and that’s where things fall apart.

As its name suggests, the 2001 Origin miniseries laid bare the full history of Wolverine, most famously that his was born the sickly James Howlett III and took the name Logan after the brutal groundskeeper who may be his biological father. So successful was Origin that it spawned a 2005 ongoing series Wolverine: Origins, which ran for 25 issues, as well as 2014 sequel by Kieron Gillen and Adam Kubert. In short, we know basically everything there is to know about Wolverine. And a third Origins miniseries can’t help but remind us of what we’ve lost.

Wolverine has always been defined by mystery. Even before he first appeared, in a cameo in the very last panel of Incredible Hulk #180 (1974), military folks in that same issue talked in ominous tones about the secretive Weapon X. We didn’t see him without a mask for another two years, in 1976’s X-Men #98, it took another five issues for readers to learn that his name was Logan (information revealed by a leprechaun, as a matter of fact). Over the next decade, more and more hints about Logan’s past dropped: his connection to the Canadian team Alpha Flight, his relationship with Sabretooth, his knowledge of Japanese culture, and, of course, what happened with Weapon X.

Each bit of information promised to tell the story, but instead just raised questions. So landmark stories, such as the gorgeous “Weapon X” storyline that Barry Windsor-Smith told in 1991’s Marvel Comics Presents #72–84, or 1992’s Wolverine #50, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, served to only deepen the mystery. Canonically, Wolverine suffered from “memory implants” that made his past hazy, allowing writers to contradict previous stories and making his backstory all the more opaque.

And that matters, because it turns out that the coolest thing about Wolverine wasn’t his claws or his healing factor or his bad attitude. It was the fact that we knew nothing about him. He seemed so much more untameable, so much more dangerous when we knew he was burdened by sins so unspeakable that he couldn’t speak them. He seemed so much more compelling when we knew that some new revelation could undo all the work he’d done to tame the beast inside of him.

So effective was Marvel’s strategy with Wolverine that they tried to replicate it with other characters. Both Cable and Gambit were introduced as heroes with unspeakable pasts, and writers initially doled out bits of information slowly and in contradictory ways.

But by 2001, Marvel decided that Wolverine needed to come out of the shadows. Perhaps it was the modest success of the 2000 X-Men movie and the promise of more films to come, perhaps they just got bored. But whatever the reason, Origin cleared the shadows, making way for Wolverine himself to remember all of his past at the end of the 2005 House of M storyline, as well as the aforementioned Origin sequels. By the time we get to the 2022 twin series The X Lives of Wolverine and The X Deaths of Wolverine (granted, the latter is more of a Moira MacTaggert story, but still), written by Benjamin Percy and illustrated by Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini, revisiting Logan’s past felt more like a trip down memory lane than a set of new revelations.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t stories to be told about Wolverine’s history. Jenkins is still a strong writer, and it’s always worthwhile to flashback with a character as old as Logan. But to treat Origin III as a further exploration into a mysterious character isn’t just disingenuous—it reminds us that Wolverine was so much more compelling when we knew nothing about him.

Wolverine: Origin III – The Dark Age #1 hits comic book shelves on December 16, 2026

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 5 Review — Level Five Transporter Accident

The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 5.

We’ve known that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was going to do an episode that involved the cast turning into Jim Henson Company-style puppets since last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, during which Paramount dropped a teaser clip featuring a felt version of Anson Mount’s Captain Pike with majestically coiffed hair. And, honestly, at this point in the series’ run, nobody should be surprised about it—this is the kind of story this show lives for, a boundary-pushing romp that’s both ridiculous and heartfelt, silly and strangely moving by turns. 

Weird stuff happening in space is, in many ways, the beating heart of almost every Star Trek episode, and that goes double for Strange New Worlds, which has so gleefully played with different kinds of genres and storytelling styles. Episodes have been reimagined as fairytales, musicals, 1960s-esque sitcoms, film noir thrillers, and bodyswapping comedies of manners. At this point, why not puppets? Particularly because while the crew may look quite a bit different than we’re used to, the larger messages of the episode still embrace deeply familiar themes. That it’s a Spock episode is just the icing on the cake, if only because he’s somehow the character who seems to most need to hear that it really is okay to be who you are, even when that person is complicated.

To be fair, Spock has been going through it lately. In the wake of the events on the ghost ship USS Griffin, he’s been suffering from something that looks an awful lot like PTSD, and is desperate to reconnect with his more logical side in the hopes that it gives him some much-needed perspective on all that he’s been facing. He’s planning to spend a few days on Vulcan to do so, but his best-laid plans are derailed when Scotty, determined to push the boundaries of transporter technology and break a record held by a former classmate, accidentally manages to turn the entirety of the Enterprise crew into puppets using a nightmarish doll from his own childhood. (For the record, Little Ricky definitely seems to have more in common with, say, Chucky than Kermit the Frog.)

Happily—and no thanks to Little Ricky—the Muppet-style versions of each Strange New Worlds cast member are crazy adorable, so much so that you have to wonder if there’s not a significant merchandising opportunity being left on the table here. And the individual flair given to each puppet is such fun: Apparently nothing can subdue Carol Kane’s chaotic curls. Do some of the puppet gags go on a bit too long? Yes. (We get it, we get it. They’re small!) Is it enough to take away from the fun of the episode? Not for a second. A puppet Christopher Pike getting hurled through the air like a Hail Mary pass is always going to be great.

Spock being forced to play the straight man to a bunch of freakish human shenanigans is a plot device that’s as old as time in this franchise, and Ethan Peck acting alongside a bridge full of stuffed cloth creatures that are each maybe a fourth of his size is fantastic television. He’s particularly great at conveying the Vulcan’s exasperation and steadily growing frustration with the fact that his now-puppet shipmates are essentially useless at almost every aspect of their jobs. (Tiny felt hands aren’t great at touchscreens, apparently.) As Spock races from station to station trying to do everything from piloting the ship and handling communications to fixing engineering problems, well…let’s just say it’s not great for all that anxiety he’s been having lately. And things get even more complicated when the Enterprise crosses paths with an Orion pirate ship, whose captain—upon learning the Federation vessel is currently being crewed by puppets—decides to take over the ship for herself. 

What follows is…basically chaos, as the puppets battle (what ought to be) life-threatening injuries, conquer seemingly impossible obstacles (namely, doors), and fully embrace the absurdity of their situation to survive. Puppet Pike even gets thrown out an airlock—complete with a heartfelt farewell that’s basically a riff on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—before someone realizes that puppets don’t actually need to breathe. A story about teamwork, thinking outside the box, and the freedom that comes with embracing your inner weirdness, “Level Five Transporter Accident” rejects the darker tones that its title implies in favor of lighthearted silliness and wonder. (It’s not an accident that it’s Pelia, a delightful freak on her best day, who immediately takes to being a puppet.) And it seems that Spock, on some level, may need to learn to roll with his real life in the same way. Or, at least, that’s what his apparent dreams seem to be trying to tell him. 

Much of Spock’s journey over the course of Strange New Worlds has been about finding a comfortable balance between the human and Vulcan sides of his personality, a necessary quest if he’s to become the man we know him to be on Star Trek: The Original Series. This has played out in a variety of ways onscreen, most often through an irritating hyperfocus on his love life. (He even gets dumped by La’an in this very episode!) But thanks to a little help from his sometimes fiancée, sometimes ex, T’Pring, he seems to gain something that feels like perspective. (For now, at least.) Gia Sandhu is such a quiet MVP throughout this hour, her bone-dry delivery and consistent side-eye serving as a necessary counterweight to some of the more ridiculous puppet-based hijinks. (Also her puppet fashion is great.) Strange New Worlds has added a lot of necessary depth to Spock and T’Pring’s relationship, and it’s easy to see how good the two actually are for one another, whether its as friends or something more.  

This is why it’s so unfortunate that the episode ends with the question of their romantic status once again up in the air. (In his dream, Spock kisses Puppet T’Pring, but doesn’t mention it to her afterward.) Their relationship is extremely charming—in all honesty, I’m kind of rooting for these crazy kids at this point—but with the clock ticking down to Strange New Worlds’s end, the “who should Spock be with romantically” plots are wasting time that could be better spent elsewhere. 

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on September 24.

Lanterns Is a Gamble That DC Needs to Make Again in the Future

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 1.

The first episode of the HBO series Lanterns has received praise from almost everyone who watched it, from critics to casual fans to many comic book readers. But there’s one group of people who are not happy with the Green Lantern show, particularly what happens in the final moments. It’s not just that fans of Hal Jordan hated that the first episode ended with their hero dead from a bullet in his head. It’s that the series killed Hal after keeping him almost entirely out of costume, unmasked, and only making a few constructs with his ring.

Those fans had a suspicion of whom to blame, a guy who had many times before taken DC Comics characters and reimagined them in wildly different ways in service of an unusual narrative. Those suspicions were confirmed this morning, when showrunner Chris Mundy told The Hollywood Reporter, that Tom King came up with the initial hook. “Tom basically had the 30,000-foot view: ‘What if you did Green Lanterns True Detective-ish?,'” he revealed. While some may hate the thought of turning intergalactic space cops into gritty sleuths, King’s unconventional, canon-defying approach may be exactly what the DCU needs to survive.

As we’ve talked about a lot here at Den of Geek recently, Green Lantern is a weird franchise. It’s a series about people across the galaxy chosen to wield powerful rings that allow them to create whatever they can imagine. It’s a strange concept, and one that asks the reader to suspend disbelief. But for those who buy in, Green Lantern is one of the most compelling hero concepts in the DC Universe, one that lends itself to straightforward superhero action, or mind-bending, high-strangeness storytelling, as Al Ewing is demonstrating in the current Absolute Green Lantern series.

Those who buy in are extremely passionate about the concept in the characters. So when Hal Jordan shows up in a panel of the 2018 miniseries Heroes in Crisis and admits, “I don’t even know what the hell ‘will’ is,” fans were furious.

Furious, but unsurprised. Because Heroes in Crisis came from Tom King, a writer who has made his name with audacious stories that often treat canon and prior characterization as optional. His Batman run killed off Alfred, temporarily turned Nightwing into an amnesiac called Ric Grayson, and famously built to a marriage between Catwoman and Batman that never happened. In Strange Adventures, King turned Silver Age adventurer Adam Strange into a lying war criminal, forever hen-pecked by his Lady MacBeth-like wife. Heroes in Crisis may be the worst offender of all, in which the Flash Wally West gets so distraught about losing his family through the latest multiversal reboot that he kills a bunch of his friends, including fellow Teen Titan Arsenal (they got better).

Yet, for all that King angers some fans, he constantly gains the respect of others, largely because he disregards canon in search of big storytelling hooks. King first got widespread attention for his 2015 series Vision at Marvel, in which he reimagined the titular Avenger as a would-be suburbanite trying to live the American Dream. That series downplayed Vision’s heroism and previous connections, including his marriage to Wanda Maximoff, and instead saw him create his own nuclear family of androids. He followed it up with Mister Miracle in 2017, in which the super-escape artist created by Jack Kirby finds himself trapped in depression. The rest of the New Gods made appearances in the story, and although the title character and his wife Big Barda were multifaceted in their portrayal, others—such as the warrior Orion—were one-note and exaggerated.

For the most part, it worked with Vision and Mister Miracle. Not only were they very effective stories, but they took place out of continuity, in their own little world. But when King made the Flash into a madman in Heroes in Crisis or turns Wonder Girl into a glorified babysitter in his current Wonder Woman series, then people get mad. He’s messing with the “real” world.

Which is why King’s participation with Lanterns has been so distressing for some. Lanterns is fully part of the DCU. Not only does it introduce a character John Stewart, who will appear in next year’s Man of Tomorrow, but it may be the way that James Gunn sets up the DCU beyond Earth and perhaps even the origin of evil. It is setting the canon of this new universe, and that’s the last place that some people want Tom King to be in.

And yet, we need look no further than the last major Green Lantern project to see how wrong things can go when adherence to the comics is paramount. Green Lantern (2011) had a script co-written by Geoff Johns, one of the architects of DC Comics at the time, and it included important Lantern characters like Hector Hammond, Parallax, and Sinestro. And yet, it absolutely sucked because it didn’t know how to tell a good story.

Tom King knows how to tell a good story. Or, if he doesn’t, he knows how to borrow from a good story. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow earned accolades by putting the Maid of Might into the Rooster Cogburn role of True Grit. Rorschach had little to say about the grittiest member of the Watchmen, but instead told a compelling meta conspiracy story, complete with shocking cameos by real-world creators like Frank Miller. The very next year, Human Target took the goofy Justice League International and puts them into a hard-boiled detective story, transforming the demure Ice into a proper femme fatale.

To put it another way, Tom King excels at finding recognizable narratives and placing DC Comics characters within them. That’s sometimes tough for those who love the characters (Mike Grell never made Travis Morgan into the dirtbag we saw in Danger Street), but it allows other people to get to know those same characters.

And that’s exactly what the DCU needs right now. Lanterns is grabbing fans because they understand how a True Detective story works, and they’re growing more interested in the Green Lantern lore that exists on the periphery. Supergirl failed, in part, because it abandoned the True Grit structure for a basic superhero story, the type that Gunn had done before and had done better.

As the DCU grows, it needs to take more pages out of Tom King’s book and embrace the experimentation his approach affords. Will we lose some nuances in the process? Absolutely. This writer isn’t ready to reform H.E.A.T., but I’m an old Hal Jordan fan who really wanted to see him do more than just die. But I still have all my old Green Lantern comics and I can read them anytime. By opening the form and worrying less about canon, more people can access the characters and get involved in the stories. And maybe they’ll come to love dearly departed Hal Jordan as much as I do.

Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.

Ed McBain: The Writer Who Invented the Police Procedural

Turn on a television, stroll the bookstore, walk through a movie theater, and you’re bound to see a cop. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching Spider-Man touch base with Jean DeWolff in Brand New Day, enjoying Jake Peralta goof around on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or reading the latest John Sandford thriller to pass the time at the airport, the police are everywhere. Moreover, they’re almost always the heroes—certainly flawed, often beleaguered, but at the end of the day, effective and morally good.

But that wasn’t always the case, at least in film and literature. While several different events sent cops to swarm American popular culture, no one person deserves credit or blame more than Evan Hunter, who wrote 55 novels in the “87th Precinct” series under the pen name Ed McBain. McBain’s grumpy and flawed professionals and his attention to detail transformed hard-boiled fiction into something legitimate, setting the stage for everything from Michael Connelly’s Bosch novels to endless Law & Order spinoffs.

From Genius to Gumshoe

Ed McBain states his thesis on police work early in 1956’s Cop Hater, the first of the books in the 87th Precinct series. There, veteran detective Hank Bush tells his younger partner Steve Carella, “it doesn’t take much brains to be a cop.” Instead, he goes on, “All you need to be a detective is a strong pair of legs and a stubborn streak. The legs take you around to all the various dumps you have to go to, and the stubborn streak keeps you from quitting. You follow each separate trail mechanically, and if you’re lucky, one of the trails pays off. If you’re not lucky, it doesn’t. Period.”

Bush’s statement might surprise modern readers, who are used to watching brilliant sleuths like Lieutenant Columbo or dedicated detectives like Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler. Film and books of the era tended to portray police more realistically, less interested in selling an image to the public and more concerned with reflecting American’s suspicions of armed officers in their midst.

The first significant change in pop culture depictions came with Dragnet, the radio show created by and starring Jack Webb as strait-laced Sergeant Joe Friday. Webb worked with the LA Police Department to secure access to case files—access granted with the chief’s approval of scripts—which allowed him to sell the show as a collection of true stories about crime and punishment. As middle-class white Americans moved from the cities to the suburbs, and televisions became an expected modern connivence in every home, Dragnet made the jump to TV, where fans tuned in every night to gain assurance that professional police kept the bad guys from entering their neighborhoods.

Friday and his partners weren’t geniuses like Sherlock Holmes. They solved mysteries not with intellect, but with professionalism and a lack of emotion, ensuring faith in the legal system. And that made them boring and unrealistic for Evan Hunter, and something he would need to change when he started writing under the name, Ed McBain.

More Than Just the Facts

Every entry in the 87th Precinct series begins with the following sentences: “The city in these pages is imaginary.
 The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.” With that introduction, McBain signals his interest in both realism and fantasy, the two impulses that led to the creation of the series.

McBain’s first success came from drawing from his own experience, as he drew from his time teaching in an inner-city school to write the 1954 novel Blackboard Jungle (under the name Evan Hunter), which became a hit film the next year. So when he was contracted to write a trio of crime novels, McBain looked to realism first. Only police would realistically and regularly encounter crimes, so police had to be his subject.

Moreover, he wanted his police to be realistic. That meant following the model of Dragnet to a certain degree, including doing research by riding along with actual officers and interviewing them, getting to know their routines. Evidence of that knowledge appears in the facsimiles of reports, forms, and documents that his characters encounter as part of their jobs. In 1966’s Eighty-Million Eyes, detective Bert Kling must document an assault that one suspect committed upon another, and that report—complete with margins and typewritten information—appears in the book. The text of 2002’s Fat Ollie’s Book is regularly interrupted by excerpts from a novel that the titular character writes, contrasting the realities of police work to his imagination.

The focus on detail is a hallmark of the police procedural, something McBain picked up from Dragnet and that has been carried on by everything from S.W.A.T. and The Rookie to Bad Boys and Zodiac. These stories about the work of policing, the various techniques and operations that make up an officer’s day.

But McBain wasn’t interested in just getting the details right. He was also interested in characters, which is what distinguishes his work from Dragnet, and what sets the model that everyone else followed. McBain filled his novels with complex, compelling characters, partially drawn from archetypes of hard-boiled fiction of the preceding century.

His main character is Steve Carella, a large man capable of violence, but who more often solves cases through determination and dumb luck. After getting married early in the series, McBain introduced Cotton Hawes, a tall redhead of Puritan stock, who becomes the romantic lead. Carella often works alongside Meyer Meyer, a Jewish detective whose legendary patience stems, in part, from the silly name bestowed upon him by his jokester of a father. There’s the aforementioned Bert Kling, who worked his way up from being a beat cop but who suffers endless calamities in his relationships. One of those relationships is with fellow detective Eileen Burke, whose undercover work puts her in danger.

This small sampling of characters gives you an idea of the breadth of the 87th squad, which is McBain’s most important innovation. Even though Carella serves as the main character of the series, McBain always wanted the squad room itself to be the main character, with different officers working different cases within the same novel.

That focus on the community and the changes within it allows the police procedural to evolve past Webb and Dragnet. For all of its popularity, Dragnet channeled all of its stories through the single and impersonal view of Sgt. Friday. McBain showed that police work is done by people, lots of people, who have sometimes wildly different ways of doing their jobs and, thus, can tell different types of stories.

Beyond the 87th Precinct

In the 1987 novel Lightning, the slovenly, but effective, detective Ollie Weeks complains to his fellow officers that he had been watching Hill Street Blues, the hit television series, and noticed some familiarities. The main character was an Italian guy called Frank Furillo. There was a gruff but lovable desk sergeant, not like the 87th’s own Dave Murchison. The bullpen included detectives of Jewish and African American descent, which reminded him of his co-workers Meyer Meyer and Arthur Brown.

Even though they come from one of the more reprehensible people in the station, Ollie’s observations match those of McBain himself, who complained that Hill Street Blues ripped off his series. McBain may overstate his case (for example, the put-upon Henry Goldblume who Joe Spano played on Hill Street Blues has none of the patience or gregarious Meyer Meyer), but he was right in general.

McBain’s books showed that stories about police work still needed to be stories, that they needed to have compelling characters. He may have maintained ultimate faith in the police as an institution, but he showed that the people who do the work are complicated and messy, often falling short of their noble intentions. Without McBain, we wouldn’t just lose some archetypes on Hill Street Blues. We wouldn’t have The Wire or The Shield, we wouldn’t have The French Connection or The Departed. For better or worse, the police procedural would have faded away without regular trips to the 87th Precinct.

Noomi Rapace Talks Surreal New Sci-Fi Film and Prometheus’ Reappraisal As a ‘Masterpiece’

Hot Spot isn’t an easy movie. Directed by Polish auteur Agnieszka Smoczyńska—best known for The Lure, a horror/musical take on The Little Mermaid—Hot Spot explores pressing issues like AI, state surveillance, police violence, and immigration. But it does so through a surreal, sci-fi lens, one that takes time out for ecstatic dance sequences and animal transformations. Hot Spot may baffle as many viewers as it thrills, but that’s nothing new for star Noomi Rapace. After all, she was in Prometheus, the highly-anticipated Alien prequel that turned out to be a mediation on humanity’s relationship to God.

“I love Prometheus. I think Prometheus is a masterpiece,” Rapace declares to Den of Geek. “Ridley Scott is a genius, and it was an amazing experience for me. Some movies I’ve done are not masterpieces, and they still do really well. I’ll hear something I’ve done is number one on Netflix, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, my god!'” she jokes. “But, what’s beautiful with films and storytelling is that something like Prometheus can find a new audience 10, 20, 30 years later.”

A Rebel in an Artificial World

Such knowledge gives Rapace the confidence to work on a bold project like Hot Spot. Set in the near future, Hot Spot stars Andrzej Konopka as Jan 623, a detective who works for the Head, the AI system that controls every part of human life. Jan’s job sometimes exposes him to the worst parts of humanity, but he considers the toll worthwhile if it makes things safe for his wife, musician Ayka (Reika Kirishima), and their son Zen (George Aurimas Cris). But when a brutal murder brings him in contact with the mysterious Rana (Rapace), Jan must face truths about society he’d rather ignore.

“Rana is a cyber witch, she calls herself a witch,” explains Rapace of her character. “She doesn’t want to be cyber witch, but she’s lived through a lot of trauma and experienced a lot of violence and chaos. She’s traveled from country to country because she’s had to keep moving throughout life.

“She’s used to battlefields, but, when we meet her in the movie, she’s a voice of love and peace. She leads a group called the Neo-Souls, but she doesn’t want to see herself as a leader because she sees the group as a community, a collective. The Neo-Souls move in peace in a world where the only crime they commit is refusing to be hooked up to Big AI, to the Head. They don’t carry passports, they don’t have an identity that belongs to a country or a regime or a religion. They just move and walk through the world, praying and preaching love.”

For as peaceful as Rana may be, the experience of playing her has forced Rapace to confront a very different aspect of herself. “I’ve been thinking about my own rage,” she admits. “I grew up being angry at the world, at injustice and racism. This movie makes me think I want to change my approach. I’ve tried being angry and shouting and fighting, and it’s obviously not working because there are always people who are louder or crazier or more violent. That way is not working.

“So we need to find a way in this crazy world right now to meet people with empathy, with curiosity, to try to listen. I need to find a way to speak my truth but not force it upon people.”

Those questions only become more pressing when Rapace faces something like AI, a major element in Hot Spot. “We have to think about who we are and what we are,” she insists. “We’re so attached to technology and our phones. My phone is in my hand all the time, or it least it was. But I had to ask myself, ‘What about hearing your own thoughts? What about being on your own or being bored? What happens then?’

“So, I’ve been reflecting on my own behavior, and that of people around me. It’s made space for loads of conversations with really interesting people.”

Unfamiliar Forms

Although Hot Spot can create the type of change that Rapace has already integrated into her own life, she also acknowledges that such a weird, surrealistic movie can elicit a whole range of emotions. Structurally, Hot Spot follows the beats of a police procedural, in which the detective Jan learns about a crime and begins questioning suspects, including Rana. That familiar format could lend itself to misunderstandings, and Rapace is okay with that.

“Hot Spot’s a fun ride. And it’s a fantasy, a fairy-tale for adults,” she says. “Viewers can enter the movie through its humor and madness, because it’s a trip. It’s not the type of movie where you go in to understand everything. You can’t demand to know the narrative and have clear understanding of what happens at the end of each act.

Rapace insists, “I trust the audience. I think the audience is really smart. The audience is used to being force-fed very simple premises with no loose ends, but I think they get bored easily. After twenty minutes, they realize they know what’s going to happen next. So when something’s new, they’re like, ‘Okay, wow!’

“My son has seen the Hot Spot trailer a couple of times, and he’s been asking a lot of questions. He’s curious, because he plays a lot of games and kids, young adults, they live in a different reality where there is no straight narrative. They have visuals and events and lots of things happening. But they don’t think it’s too much. They keep moving, they go with the flow.

“I think that makes for a different way to watch a movie. You should just allow yourself to go on a journey and maybe not think so much. Hopefully, some emotions will come up that you can deal with or understand later, rather than trying to be rational and put the pieces together to understand it.”

Rapace knows the value of going on a journey with Hot Spot because she’s already done it, going back to when she first received the script, credited to Robert Bolesto.

“Hot Spot‘s not a normal movie,” she says. “Even when I read this script, I kept asking, ‘Wait, what? What’s going on?’ The script was only 65 pages, instead of 90 to 130 pages. But Agnieszka worked with the environment to give it voice and character. The place where we shot tells me about the time, and it almost feels like dancing to make the movie.

“The madness and the humor drew me to the project. It’s dystopian, neo-punk and rebellious. It’s wild. But it’s not pointing fingers at you. It’s just asking you to think about your life, and reflect a little bit about who you want to be, to what extent you want to be hooked up and connected. How much of your own freedom and privacy are you ready to sacrifice?

“The movie’s throwing out those questions, but it’s not telling the audience to do this or that.”

Navigating the New By Reconsidering the Old

Which is exactly what Rapace wants in a film role. “I’m looking for complexity,” she points out. “I want something that connects with the questions I’m asking myself and thinking about, something that hooks into me.”

“Sometimes, that’s the director. Agnieszka Smoczyńska is brilliant as a person, a woman, an artist. She’s so brave and curious and strong. I was obsessed with The Lure, because it’s so sexy and strange. So getting a chance to work with Agnieszka, and go on a journey to her was a big draw to Hot Spot.”

Of course, Rapace also had some guidance in the form of the characters she played in the past, which informed her take on Rana. “Rana’s got a little bit of Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, because she’s an outsider going up against the system, particularly a system run by computer. She’s also Elizabeth Shaw from Prometheus, asking questions about who we are and the nature of truth. There’s even a bit of Mother Teresa, who I played in Mother (2025, directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska), asking if I’m good or bad.

“Rana is a cocktail of different characters that I’ve played before. And she’s a lot of me, because she’s someone who keeps moving and keeps asking herself questions to evolve and deal with things in a new way.”

And in that way, Rana is like us filmgoers too, because we too are always evolving—whether that’s finding new ways of engaging with films, new challenges in the world in which we live, or simply reconsidering films that may have disappointed us a decade and a half ago to realize that, yes, Prometheus is a masterpiece.

Hot Spot releases to theaters on August 21, 2026.

TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar

Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond. 

We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us! 

Please note that all times are ET. 

Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.

DATESHOWNETWORK
Thursday, August 20Outer Banks Season 5Netflix
Friday, August 21Conan O’Brien Must Go Season 3HBO Max
Wednesday, August 26One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part TwoNetflix
Wednesday, August 26Death of the Pastor’s WifeNetflix
Tuesday, September 1The Varnell Hill ShowParamount+
Wednesday, September 2LovesickNetflix
Wednesday, September 2Turning Point: Generation 9/11Netflix
Wednesday, September 2LEGO Star Wars: The MandalorianDisney+
Thursday, September 3The Gentlemen Season 2Netflix
Thursday, September 3Chad Powers Season 2Hulu
Friday, September 4Earle Meets WorldNetflix
Sunday, September 6The Marlow Murder Club (8:00 p.m.)PBS
Sunday, September 6Marble Hall Murders (9:00 p.m.)PBS
Tuesday, September 8DANG!Netflix
Tuesday, September 8Fauda Season 5Netflix
Tuesday, September 8The Real Housewives of New York City Season 16 (8:00 p.m.)Bravo
Tuesday, September 8The Drop: A Snowfall Saga (9:00 p.m.)FX
Wednesday, September 9Last SeenApple TV
Wednesday, September 9The Paper Season 2Peacock
Thursday, September 10The Perfect LieNetflix
Thursday, September 10Crew GirlNetflix
Thursday, September 10Colin from Accounts Season 3Paramount+
Friday, September 11Stolen HeartbeatsNetflix
Friday, September 11Physical 100: ItalyNetflix
Tuesday, September 15Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence BritBox
Tuesday, September 15Dancing With the Stars Season 35 (8:00 p.m.)ABC
Tuesday, September 15R.J. Decker Season 2 (10:00 p.m.)ABC
Wednesday, September 16The DollNetflix
Wednesday, September 16NeagleyPrime Video
Wednesday, September 16Slow Horses Season 6Apple TV
Wednesday, September 16Golden AxeParamount+
Wednesday, September 16The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 7 (8:00 p.m.)Bravo
Wednesday, September 16South Park Season 29 (10:00 p.m.)Comedy Central
Thursday, September 17Monster: The Lizzie Borden StoryNetflix
Thursday, September 17The FixersNetflix
Thursday, September 17Not a StrangerNetflix
Thursday, September 17Plastic BeautyNetflix
Thursday, September 17Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 2Netflix
Thursday, September 18The Traitors: New BloodPeacock
Friday, September 18Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2Starz
Friday, September 18MobLand Season 2Paramount+
Sunday, September 20American HostageMGM+
Monday, September 21Celebrity Name That Tune Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)Fox
Monday, September 21The Voice Season 30 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Monday, September 21Celebrity Weakest Link Season 2(9:00 p.m.)Fox
Monday, September 21Line of Fire (10:00 p.m.)NBC
Tuesday, September 22Minerva AcademyNetflix
Tuesday, September 22Best Medicine Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)Fox
Tuesday, September 22Doc Season 3 (9:00 p.m.)Fox
Wednesday, September 23Habeas CorpusNetflix
Wednesday, September 23Wonka’s The Golden TicketNetflix
Wednesday, September 23BrothersApple TV
Wednesday, September 23Survivor Season 51 (8:00 p.m.)CBS
Wednesday, September 23The Floor Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)Fox
Wednesday, September 2399 to Beat Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)Fox
Thursday, September 24A Different WorldNetflix
Thursday, September 24DelusionNetflix
Thursday, September 24My Sad DeadNetflix
Thursday, September 24Team Moms: BaseballParamount+
Thursday, September 24Hell’s Kitchen Season 25 (8:00 p.m.)Fox
Thursday, September 24Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test (9:00 p.m.)Fox
Thursday, September 24American Horror Story Season 13 (9:00 p.m.)FX
Friday, September 25Steel Ball Run JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: 2nd-3rd StageNetflix
Friday, September 25The Final Problem Netflix
Friday, September 25SWAT ExilesStarz
Friday, September 2520/20 Season 48 (9:00 p.m.)ABC
Friday, September 25Dateline Season 35 (9:00 p.m.)NBC
Sunday, September 27The Simpsons Season 38 (8:00 p.m.)Fox
Sunday, September 27Animal Control Season 5 (8:30 p.m.)Fox
Sunday, September 27Universal Basic Guys Season 3 (9:00 p.m.)Fox
Sunday, September 27Grimsburg Season 3 (9:30 p.m.)Fox
Tuesday, September 29LEGO ONE PIECENetflix
Wednesday, September 30The ArenaNetflix
Wednesday, September 30Sacrifice Season 2Paramount+
Wednesday, September 30Scrubs Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)ABC
Wednesday, September 30Shark Tank Season 18 (9:00 p.m.)ABC
Wednesday, September 30The Amazing Race Season 38 (9:30 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, October 1East of EdenNetflix
Thursday, October 1War (9:00 p.m.)HBO
Friday, October 2Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 7 (8:00 p.m.)ABC
Friday, October 2Kill JackieAMC+
Sunday, October 4Marshals Season 2 (8:30 p.m.)CBS
Sunday, October 4Tracker Season 4 (9:30 p.m.)CBS
Monday, October 5FBI Season 9 (8:00 p.m.)CBS
Monday, October 5CIA Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Monday, October 5Harlan Coben’s Final Twist (10:00 p.m.)CBS
Tuesday, October 6Bass x MachinaNetflix
Tuesday, October 6NCIS Season 24 (8:00 p.m.)CBS
Tuesday, October 6NCIS: New York Season 1 (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Tuesday, October 6NCIS: Origins Season 3 (10:00 p.m.)CBS
Wednesday, October 7CarriePrime Video
Wednesday, October 7Chicago Fire Season 15 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Wednesday, October 7Abbott Elementary Season 6 (8:30 p.m.)ABC
Wednesday, October 7Chicago Med Season 12 (9:00 p.m.)NBC
Wednesday, October 7Chicago P.D. Season 14 (10:00 p.m.)NBC
Thursday, October 8BelowNetflix
Thursday, October 8Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, October 8Eternally Yours (8:30 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, October 8Law & Order: SVU Season 28 (9:00 p.m.)NBC
Thursday, October 8Elsbeth Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, October 8Cupertino (10:00 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, October 8Law & Order Season 26 (10:00 p.m.)NBC
Friday, October 9Avatar: Seven HavensParamount+
Friday, October 9Sheriff Country Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)CBS
Friday, October 9Fire Country Season 5 (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Friday, October 9Boston Blue Season 2 (10:00 p.m.)CBS
Wednesday, October 14The Lowdown Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)FX/Hulu
Wednesday, October 14Helluva BossPrime Video
Wednesday, October 14VisionQuestApple TV
Thursday, October 15Crystal LakePeacock
Thursday, October 159-1-1 Season 10 (8:00 p.m.)ABC
Thursday, October 159-1-1: Nashville Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)ABC
Thursday, October 15Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 (10:00 p.m.)ABC
Sunday, October 18Maigret (9:00 p.m.)PBS
Sunday, October 18The Gold (10:00 p.m.)PBS
Wednesday, October 21The Terminal List Season 2Prime Video
Friday, October 23Lupin Part 4Netflix
Friday, October 23Happy’s Place Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Friday, October 23Newlyweds (8:30 p.m.)NBC
Friday, October 30NocturneApple TV
Monday, November 2St. Denis Medical Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Monday, November 2The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins Season 2 (8:30 p.m.)NBC
Wednesday, November 4The GreatestPrime Video
Wednesday, November 11The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerPrime Video
Thursday, November 12The Good DaughterPeacock
Sunday, November 15The ChosenPrime Video
Thursday, November 19The AltruistsNetflix
Friday, November 20Yellowjackets Season 4Paramount+
Friday, November 20Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3Disney+
Wednesday, November 25Blade Runner 2099Prime Video
Friday, December 25Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s StoneHBO Max
Thursday, January 1Run AwayNetflix
Thursday, January 1The Cult of the Real Housewife TLC
Monday, January 5The Wall Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)NBC
Friday, January 22NeuromancerApple TV

If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!

Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.

It Ends Review: NEON’s Brutally Clever Cosmic Horror

Introverts and extroverts view the world in different ways. For most extroverts, a road trip with friends where small talk transforms into the random minutiae of a wandering mind sounds like a blast in eight-hour chunks. To an introvert, the prospect of spending even a fraction of that time “shooting the shit” can be its own special type of torture.

In writer-director Alex Ullom’s debut horror movie, It Ends, both sides of the mind find common ground in a cosmic hell that is as fresh as it is economically clever. It’s the story of four childhood friends who, now as young adults, are preparing to spread off into different directions of life. Three are bound for different colleges, and one is already back from joining the U.S. military. But despite the best laid plans that you might have at the beginning of a journey, the road often proves to have a will of its own. A cruel, malignant will at that, which like a Lovecraftian deity might care little about the innocence or aspirations of a well-lived life.

Such is the predicament that James (Phinehas Yoon), Tyler (Mitchell Cole), Day (Akira Jackson), and Fisher (Noah Toth) find themselves in. We meet them in medias res, driving down a road after helping one in their group move into a dorm. Despite the movie working as the aforementioned introvert’s worst nightmare, Ullom reveals he has a great ear for characterization and chatty dialogue, using the written word to provide lots of color into a film that tends to largely exist within the confines of Tyler’s cramped Jeep Grand Cherokee, which is frequently driving at night. The film establishes dynamics quickly, too, as pseudo-intellectual and provocateur James attempts to fill lulls in the conversation by asking who would win in a fight: a hunter with a high-powered rifle or a flock of hundreds of eagles?

We learn much by how Day or Fisher humor this flavor of BS, and how Tyler will not as he realizes before anyone else that their GPS is wrong: they’ve been driving for hours down a two-lane road in the woods and never saw the turn-off they expected. James and Day try to razz Tyler as he turns the car around and speeds back, searching for the turn they missed. But no one’s laughing when they realize the road they were driving on all night just… ends, vanishing into thick woods from the direction they came. Before they can even properly debate whether they’re lost, their parked car also begins hearing noises in the woods, whispers that turn into cries as hundreds of souls come begging, pleading, threatening, to be let in the car with foursome.

Our quartet of heroes escape this first brush with being overrun, but for the rest of the film all they have before them is an open, seemingly endless road into the wilderness. And if they ever dream of stopping again for longer than 90 seconds, maybe even to explore the woods around them, they’ll have to contend with the ceaseless horde of the damned or forgotten. It’s unclear where this road will end, but each character has to process in their own manner the discovery of abandoned cars along the way that came from the other direction, each with speedometers exceeding a million miles—or at least two years down the road if you drive nonstop without sleep and taking turns behind the wheel.

There are levels of ingenuity to Ullom’s premise. The first and most obvious is how elegantly it avoids the lack of resources a first-time indie film like It Ends might have. (Before being acquired by NEON, it was a small genre sensation at SXSW.) The movie is almost entirely four characters in a car, along with some deceptively picturesque camera work and drone shots of the wilderness outside, driving forward, always forward. Like Sisyphus condemned to push a boulder up a hill, the kids must bear what is some kind of inexplicable divine judgment or cosmic cruelty by remaining in constant motion. Or at least their car does while they watch the world pass by from their seats.

Also a bit akin to the sinister thought experiments James might never get back to in his philosophy classes, the apparent futility of this exercise demands our heroes to ask the bigger questions about themselves. It’s a credit to Ullom’s script, then, that it allows all four characters to be varying degrees of self-aware. Before the first act in the taught 89 minutes is over, they’re debating if this is Hell and whether they are dead. But if it is, indeed, the House of Perdition, what could any of them have done to deserve this kind of listless existence?

It Ends presents existential challenges, but also banal ones as the characters slowly run out of spiritual, and then trivial, things to discuss. Slowly and surely all that’s left is to simply evaluate what their relationships are… or were as silence becomes more inviting.

This is my first encounter with any of the four actors who collectively do solid work, though Yoon gets the lion’s share of anguish to explore since James remains the only one of the group who will not let go of the dream that the road ends, and that there is a reason they’re here. In their own ways, the other friends stay engaged by savoring the smaller things, like a sharpie discovered in an abandoned vehicle that lets them redecorate the Jeep’s interior, or the chance to scream into the void during one of their 60-second breaks outside the car every morning. Yoon, however, gets to play a character who breaks the hardest because he holds on the longest.

It does not take much squinting to recognize the larger metaphor at work—the optimism and naiveté of young minds who thought their journey would go one way, and who never reached that goalpost. Instead they find themselves on a path they cannot reconcile or explain. To search for meaning in that can be as fruitless as the aforementioned Sisyphus and his boulder. Demanding answers from existence has always required a bit of self-flagellation.

It Ends is a shrewdly crafted first-time film in the horror genre that reveals enough arresting sense of style and tone to fill 90 minutes in a Jeep with all the terrors, joys, and minor indignities of living. It’s enough to get the introverts to lean in, and the extroverts shudder with dread while searching for the exits. It does indeed end, but the parable lingers with you after the credits.

It Ends opens on Aug. 21 in the U.S.

X-Men Has Already Got Its Mister Sinister Right With Nathaniel Milbury

When Adam Driver was announced as the villain of the upcoming X-Men movie, fans felt both relief and confusion. Driver is one of our best working actors, someone who shines in indie films like Marriage Story and Paterson, but who can also bring depth to genre pictures, as his Kylo Ren was one of the best parts of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Moreover, it was nice to see a villain who wasn’t Magneto announced for the first movie, with Driver stepping into the thigh-high boots of Mister Sinister.

At the same time, fans were confused to hear the name given to Driver’s character. He was announced as “Nathaniel Milbury.” Mister Sinister’s true name is Nathaniel Essex. Who the heck is this Milbury guy? Turns out, the Milbury alias does come straight from the comics. Moreover, it proves that Marvel already understands how to handle a villain as confounding and fun as Mister Sinister.

Mister Sinister made his way slowly into comics, appearing in shadow initially in 1986’s Uncanny X-Men #213 before finally appearing in full—with an extreme close-up on his screaming face, no less—in 1987’s Uncanny X-Men #221, by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri. Moreover, over the next several issues, we learn that Sinister has been operating behind the scenes even before we met him, masterminding the horrific events of the Mutant Massacre.

That opening forever set the stage for Sinister, one of the X-Men’s most evil and mercurial villains. Initially, Claremont imagined Sinister as the psychic projection of an 11-year-old mutant, the manifestation of everything a kid would find scary and imposing (Gambit was first designed as that same boy’s heroic manifestation, which is why Remy LeBeau was first a kid’s notion of edgy and cool).

However, over time, Sinister became a perfect genetic manipulator, someone willing to do anything to play around with fascinating mutant genes, particularly those of Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops and his family. Sinister famously cloned Jean Grey to make Madelyne Pryor, mother of Cable, and weaseled his way onto the Quiet Council that led the mutant nation of Krakoa. All the while, he did it by cackling and vamping like the perfect baddie.

Sinister wasn’t always sinister, nor was he always a mutant. Originally, he was a 19th century scientist named Nathaniel Essex, who became interested in genetics after learning about mutants. Driven by death of his wife Rebecca, Sinister sought a way to bring her back to life, which he did by cloning her and, eventually, himself. The more he learned about mutants, the more he wanted to share in their power, so he began incorporating their DNA into his own, becoming more mutant with each clone. Upon meeting Apocalypse and learning about En Sabah Nur’s centuries-long battle with Cable, Essex became obsessed with the Summers family.

Which is how Nathanial Milbury came to be. We first meet Milbury in 1993’s X-Men #27, written by Fabian Nicieza and penciled by Richard Bennett. While Beast, Rogue, and Iceman wait by the bedside of the one-time villain Infectia, who has been infected with the Legacy Virus (a clunky AIDS metaphor that was a major part of ’90s X-Men comics), they are greeted by the attending physician, Dr. Milbury. Milbury presents himself as a fierce ally of the mutants, someone who will work tirelessly to save those dying of the Legacy Virus.

Yet, across several X-Men comics published throughout the ’90s and 2000s, we learn that Dr. Milbury is in fact Mister Sinister himself. Furthermore, he used the Milbury alias, which he took from the estate where he and Rebecca lived in England, to form in Project Black Womb, an early genetics think-tank where Charles Xavier was sent as a child. Through Project Black Womb, Milbury learned about the orphanage where Scott Summers was raised and began developing his Mister Sinister identity.

Confusing? Yes, of course. Convoluted storylines are a feature and not a bug when it comes to X-Men stories. But they’re less welcome when brought to screen, which means that we’re unlikely to see generations of various personae adopted by Driver’s character when X-Men hits theaters in 2028.

However, the timeline isn’t really the important thing when it comes to Mister Sinister. Rather, it’s the fact that he has multiple identities at all. Mister Sinister may be the perfect X-Men villain. Yes, Magneto continues to capture the imagination of readers, precisely because has a reasonable worldview and a sympathetic backstory while posing a challenge to the team. But when it comes to pure evil, a guy we cannot like and we want to see punched in the face, it’s hard to do better than Mister Sinister. Sinister sees mutants as little more than living tools for his own ends, the source of genetic material for him to play with, making him both connected to their central origin and irredeemably evil.

Part of the fun with Sinister comes from the fact that he does so much cloning. As demonstrated in the recent Sins of Sinister storyline, in which a bevy of his alternates attacked Krakoa, Sinister has dozens of copies of himself hanging around, and each one of them thinks they’re the “true” Sinister. Moreover, he keeps extra copies of each of the X-Men too, letting him unleash his own versions of Cyclops and Cable whenever he sees fit.

Driver’s character may be called Milbury for more mundane reasons. Perhaps Marvel considers the name Essex tarnished after being teased in the bombs The New Mutants and Dark Phoenix. Perhaps they just think audiences will accept Nathaniel Milbury better than Nathanial Essex. Or, perhaps, Marvel’s showing us now that there will be several different versions of Sinister running around the X-Men universe. And if that’s the case, the movie can call him whatever they want—X-Men has already clearly figured out how to do right by Sinister.

X-Men comes to theaters on May 5, 2028.

The MCU X-Men Needs to Do Right By Storm

What happens to a weather-controlling mutant when she gets put in an X-Men movie? Same thing that happens to every other-weather controlling mutant who gets put in an X-Men movie? She’s largely ignored, except for being saddled with the worst lines in the franchise. In the original X-Men from 2000, Halle Berry had to ask about a toad getting struck by lightning, the payoff of a running gag written by Joss Whedon by excised from the finished film. Alexandra Shipp’s Storm set up the funniest part of X-Men: Apocalypse, asking En Sabah Nur what he was doing with his face pushed against the television, only for Oscar Isaac to growl, “Leeeeearning.”

At no point in any of the films does Storm do anything awesome, like best Cyclops for leadership of the team, despite not having her powers, or destroying the thrones of Mars. For that, one has to go to the comics, where Storm has been consistently one of the best of Marvel’s mutants since her debut in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1. But the casting of Maya Boyd as Ororo Munroe in the upcoming MCU X-Men movie gives the movies one more chance to do Storm right.

As befitting one of Chris Claremont’s favorite characters, Storm has a convoluted backstory and an impressive power set, which can make her a difficult character to write. Storm first appeared alongside Colossus and Nightcrawler in Giant-Size X-Men #1, making her one of the first characters to help Claremont revitalize the franchise throughout the 1970s. Over that time, we learn about her birth in the United States, the daughter of Kenyan princess N’Daré and American David Munroe, and about her relocation to Cairo, Egypt, at a young age.

After her parents’ death at age six, Ororo became an orphan and was forced to survive on the streets by becoming a thief. She abandoned the thieving’ life when her powers manifested at puberty and she set out to wander Africa to help those in need. Eventually, Ororo settled with the Uzuri tribe within Kenya, where she was worshiped as a goddess. That’s when Charles Xavier recruited her to join his new X-Men. However, as Xavier helps Storm develop her powers, she must also work through her crippling claustrophobia, a side-effect of being trapped in rubble as a child.

Thus, by the time that she begins her superhero adventures, Storm has known what it is like to be worshiped and despised. She knows what it’s like to command the winds with a thought and what it’s like to go hungry, not knowing when her next meal will come. She’s experienced American racism, solidarity with her people, and the hatred towards mutants.

That alone makes Storm one of the most complex characters in her class, even when she’s just one of several characters being developed in the 1970s. Claremont quickly realized Storm’s potential and moved her to the front, letting her take a leadership position initially alongside Cyclops, and then in his place when he retires after the Dark Phoenix Saga. In that time, Storm repeatedly demonstrates the expanse of her powers and the depth of her compassion. She’s one of the few characters to silence Wolverine, who was written as a far more feral and untamable person in the ’70s, with just a word, and she would regularly retire to her attic bedroom to care for her plants.

The ability to control the weather easily makes Storm an Omega-Level mutant, among the most powerful on Earth. And yet, some of her best stories don’t involve her powers and occur during the period when a battle with Rogue, initially a villain, left her powerless: she defeats Callisto to take leadership of the Morlocks, she beats Cyclops to remain team leader, and her soul-searching period alone with Forge during the Life-Death stories. Even her more recent best stories don’t emphasize her powers. When she relocated to Mars in the pages of X-Men: Red, she lived along the mutants of Arakko, a group far more powerful than those on Earth, and it was her character that allowed her to lead them, not her strength.

Almost none of that shows up in any of the X-Men movies so far. Sure, Berry’s Storm conjures some tornados, and yes, Shipp’s Storm is a street thief. But they serve such minor roles in the stories that we would forget them, were it not for a few terrible lines of dialogue.

All of which makes Boyd’s casting so interesting. She’s not coming off of a buzzy Netflix show or a hit indie horror film, so Boyd’s receiving less attention than her casemates Sadie Sink, Kit Connor, and Inde Navarrette. In fact, X-Men marks Boyd’s screen debut, after acclaimed runs on stage in Merrily We Roll Along and & Juliet. However, this isn’t the first time an unknown actor with a strong stage background was cast in an X-Men movie, and that worked out pretty great for Hugh Jackman and Wolverine.

Still, the biggest question isn’t with Boyd’s acting. It’s with the abilities of director Jake Schreier and screenwriters Joanna Calo, Lee Sung Jin, and Michael Lesslie. If they can even gesture at the power of Storm, at her strength and vulnerability, then they’ll do better than any of the X-Men films we’ve had so far. And if they can match any of the heights of her best stories, then the MCU X-Men may be the best look at Marvel’s mutants the movie-going public has ever seen.

X-Men will arrive in theaters on May 5, 2028.

Ranking Every Spinoff of The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead may have concluded its run back in 2022, but the universe lives on in a string of spinoffs like Dead City and Daryl Dixon. Not content with waiting for viewers to demand more franchise stories, AMC also explored a few spinoffs while the mothership show was still on the air. But how many of those spinoffs are worth a watch, and how many of them should you feel comfortable skipping?

We’re ranking every The Walking Dead spinoff so you can figure out if you should spend your precious time on them. However, if you’re a true Walking Dead completist and you’ve already seen them all, feel free to have a read through and let us know if you’d rank them differently in the comments!

6. The Walking Dead: World Beyond

Unfortunately, The Walking Dead: World Beyond lands at the bottom of our ranking because its first season was so slow and unengaging. We spent a lot of time following its group of teens as they navigated the universe’s post-apocalyptic world, but this coming-of-age focus sacrificed the gritty survival drama we expected from The Walking Dead universe, and it didn’t help that the characters were extremely unmemorable.

To be fair, some of them did develop as the series went on, but we were way too frustrated by that point. The fact that the show was also marketed as the key to understanding the mysterious Civic Republic Military, but then saved all that good stuff until the second season, only added to its problems.

Still, World Beyond wasn’t all bad. The second season was a decent improvement, with much better pacing and a greater focus on the CRM. And if you’re thinking about checking out The Ones Who Live, it offers some good background on the shady group ahead of Rick’s encounter with them; it’s just not very compelling on its own.

5. Tales of the Walking Dead

Tales of the Walking Dead earned points for trying something different, as its anthology format allowed the show to experiment with different characters and genres without getting bogged down in longer arcs and lore. One highlight was the fascinating “Blair/Gina,” which used a time-loop structure to introduce two new people (Parker Posey and Jillian Bell) who disliked each other at first but grew closer as events repeated. It was a fun and funny installment far removed from the typically grim storytelling of The Walking Dead.

The spinoff also added depth to characters we already knew, like the villainous Alpha (Samantha Morton). In the episode “Dee,” we saw how Alpha’s violent nature initially grew out of a desire to simply protect her daughter, bringing context to some of her terrible actions in the mothership show.

Giving characters one episode to evolve had its drawbacks, though. Some of their development felt rushed and their decisions too convenient, and unlike the mainline series, we often weren’t attached enough to this new blood to care what happened to them. Overall, this made Tales of the Walking Dead feel like a passing amusement that faded into the background quite quickly as the larger storyline came back into focus.

4. The Walking Dead: Dead City

Maggie and Negan’s long-running beef over the murder of Maggie’s husband, Glenn, continues in this lively Walking Dead spinoff, which takes the action to New York and shows how Negan’s mentorship and leadership style have corrupted things there, too.

We’re thrown into a scenario where Maggie’s son Hershel has been taken by The Croat, one of Negan’s old Saviors, so Maggie reluctantly teams up with Negan to rescue him. Negan’s knowledge of The Croat proves useful as he and Maggie run into rival New York factions, and the city’s crumbling skyscraper setting makes everything feel more claustrophobic.

The show paints a tragic portrait of two of The Walking Dead’s most beloved characters. Since the mainline series wrapped up, they’ve both tried to move on, with Negan starting a family but unable to properly care for them, and Maggie trying (and failing) to connect with Hershel while still consumed by vengeance. It’s also quite a visually impactful show, offering a daunting snapshot of Manhattan’s dense urban environment left to fall apart. New York is a dangerous city for Negan and Maggie to be roaming around in, and there are more threats around every corner than ever before, so the tension is always high.

Though the first two seasons of this post-Walking Dead show didn’t reach the philosophical highs of Daryl Dixon or the excitement of bringing back Rick Grimes in The Ones Who Live, it’s still a watchable zombie romp that explores some fascinating themes of redemption and love in this post-apocalyptic world.

3. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

Years after he disappeared in the mothership show, Michonne finally locates Rick Grimes in this “one and done” spinoff that gives us a long-awaited conclusion to Rick’s storyline. It turns out that Rick has been trapped with the Civic Republic Military for a long time, and we get a really emotional reunion between him and his wife before she also realizes that escaping the CRM will prove tricky.

Boasting higher production values than the main series and a more focused story, The Ones Who Live is a satisfying end to Rick and Michonne’s onscreen romance and offers a truly cinematic look behind the curtain at the long-feared CRM baddies. It’s lacking some of the intricate world-building that something like Daryl Dixon manages to pull off, yet it’s still a great watch for anyone who made it through The Walking Dead but really missed Rick after Andrew Lincoln was written out of the show.

The Ones Who Live certainly isn’t a spinoff for newcomers, and the limited nature of the series makes it feel a little rushed at times, which is why it didn’t rank any higher on this list. Despite that, it’s a solid adventure in the Walking Dead universe for OG fans.

2. Fear the Walking Dead

Developed as a companion series to the mothership show, Fear the Walking Dead eventually ran for eight seasons alongside it. Though the first seasons were considered rocky, depicting the start of the zombie apocalypse through the eyes of a new group of survivors, the show got a significant boost after a post-season 3 soft reboot that added a Morgan Jones (Lennie James) casting crossover.

Honestly, we quite liked the vibe of those first seasons. It was interesting to see how ordinary people reacted to the outbreak when it first began. We often heard stories about those events in other characters’ lives, told through their memories, but seeing them play out visually was a real treat. Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) also proved to be a fascinating lead character, initially depicted as a woman trying to save her family, yet evolving into someone more morally grey and complex.

Fear the Walking Dead’s main problems mirrored those that can affect many long-running shows. As the series progressed, the start of the apocalypse slipped into the rearview mirror, and conflicts between rival groups overshadowed the initial struggles. While some episodes were action-packed and fantastic, others slowed the pace to focus on deeper character development instead of moving the story forward, while the show also threw the characters into some entirely unrealistic situations to make things exciting again. The Walking Dead had some of those by that point, but many felt that having two shows set in the same universe on the air with similar pacing and story problems was too much.

Nevertheless, Fear the Walking Dead avoided becoming too repetitive by moving the action from Los Angeles to Mexico and Texas, giving our characters fresh challenges. The Abigail yacht escape and the conflicts on the Mexican ranch particularly stand out as great, memorable scenarios in the series’ tenure and definitely add to the spinoff’s rewatchability.

1. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

At the time of writing, Daryl Dixon hasn’t finished its run, but it’s still the best Walking Dead spinoff by a long chalk. Any future series set in this universe is going to have to pull out a lot of stops to beat it!

After years of stories set in the U.S., the show finally moves the zombie action to France and beyond, and these unfamiliar locations and new pockets of survivors (who Daryl often struggles to understand) make the Walking Dead world feel instantly bigger and more daunting.

The show also flaunts visuals that match its ambition. In the first season alone, we’re treated to sweeping shots of the French countryside, medieval castles, old cathedrals, and ruined cities, and the show uses them to build genuinely great moods and tension – the kind that the mothership series was starting to really lack in its later seasons.

Of course, the spinoff’s central character is a big draw. Norman Reedus has long been one of the franchise’s most popular actors, but this series gives his character room to grow in ways that weren’t always possible in a large ensemble, and Reedus opens up different sides of his character lost in European danger zones while still staying true to the person he’s always been. Later in the show, Carol shows up as well, and the pair’s enduring friendship proves to be never anything less than fantastic.

Daryl Dixon also refreshes the horror elements that made The Walking Dead so fun and scary early on. Its faster, stronger, weirder walkers are truly unsettling, bringing a real sense of unpredictability back to the zombie universe. But ultimately, Daryl Dixon is the best of the spinoffs because it has delivered something fresh and (so far) utterly unique.

Lion: Exclusive First Look at Nat Geo Doc Is a Real Life Lion King Moment

The world of lions is full of shifting power dynamics, fragile monarchies, and feline strife. This applies not only to The Lion King; it extends into the savannas of Africa, where the roiling ecosystems showcase clashes between beasts of all shapes and sizes. 

An upcoming docuseries is set to explore the exciting world of a lion pride in extreme detail. Lion will air Wednesday, August 19 on National Geographic and then hit Disney+ and Hulu on Thursday, August 20. The four-episode series follows a male lion cub named Kio and his four-year journey in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Preserve as he navigates the chaos of lion kings and queens.  

Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, Elf, and 2019’s live-action The Lion King, is lending his blockbuster sensibilities to the world of nonfiction filmmaking for Lion. Favreau will also serve as executive producer for the documentary alongside BBC Studios Natural History Unit’s Creative director Mike Gunton. Composer Hans Zimmer will be scoring the savanna yet again as he, Niccolò Pacella, and George Huston Warren of Bleeding Fingers Music supply the sounds to Kio’s journey, more than three decades after Zimmer composed the score to Disney’s 1994 animated classic.

Lion arrives after more than four years of production. The filmmaking team behind the series is the only documentary crew to spend over 1,400 filming days with a single pride and the first to follow one cub into adulthood, providing natural insights in extreme detail never seen before. 

With that amount of effort, viewers will get to see Kio and his family navigate very human experiences, such as aging and maturity. In an exclusive clip from Lion shared with Den of Geek, we get to see Kio enter young adulthood; he hunts a brightly colored lizard through rocky terrain, playfully jumping around before pouncing on the red and blue reptile. 

“It’s only a lizard, but for Kio, it’s a rite of passage,” O.J. Lynch, Lion narrator and Mufasa in Broadway’s adaptation of The Lion King, says while the young lion munches on his prey. 

After catching the lizard, Kio is treated as more than just a little sibling. He wrestles with his brothers, mirroring the very human experience of playing with friends and older siblings in the summer. Zimmer’s musical contributions crescendo in the background as Kio tackles his older brothers, finally becoming one of the pride and not just a child. 

The rest of the series promises to frame the adventures of the pride through a human lens. Kio will face many challenges as he grows from a cub to a powerful king in his own right, from royal  uprisings to massive animals to his own family. Favreau’s experience with grand narratives combined with the beautiful cinematography National Geographic is known for makes for an incredible story.

House of the Dragon Season 4 Needs to Let Alicent Be Alicent

This article contains House of the Dragon season 3 spoilers.

In the last month, I found myself rewatching the first season of House of the Dragon. This was done partially to remember details that four years and a dozen-plus episodes can make hazy. But it was also out of nostalgia for a series that I absolutely adored in its freshman year and that, while I still enjoy, has increasingly come with caveats.

It’s been difficult to put a finger on why, but it crystallized vividly during the seventh episode of season one, “Driftmark.” This was the blockbuster hour where, after being aged into full adults, a lifetime of grievances and slights came boiling to the surface between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), the Crown Princess, and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), the stepmother queen. In fact, by this time in the series the latter positively seethed with purpose, eager to supplant her former friend with Prince Aegon, Alicent’s eldest boy by Rhaenyra’s father. It is also the episode where, due to the actions of Rhaenyra’s own second son, Prince Aemond, Alicent’s other boy, lost an eye.

It’s that terrible familial calamity which causes everything to come pouring out and the battle lines within the royal household to finally be made clear before our poor, deluded King Viserys (Paddy Considine). There was no more hiding from the decades of resentment on both sides of the divide between the ascending Black Queen and her emerald-hued counterpoint.

“What have I done but what is expected of me?!” Alicent cries as she attempts to extract a literal eye for an eye for her son with a dagger in her hand. “Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law while you flout all and do as you please—whereas duty, whereas sacrifice is trampled under your pretty foot again?! Now you take my son’s eye, and to even that you feel entitled!”

Ever since I read Fire & Blood some years ago, I’ve happily been a “Team Black” apologist, if one indeed must have a preference between Rhaenyra and the lad whom Alicent eventually helps crown as Aegon II. But that doesn’t mean the rightful queen’s rivals and opponents must agree that Rhaenyra was usurped and betrayed, or that they are not justified to their own sense of indignation.

In the first season, Cooke got to play a far more nuanced vision of Alicent than what is in the pages of Fire & Blood, which by design is never a full picture of any single character. Author George R.R. Martin wrote the fictional history book from the perspective of a scholar centuries later who must wade through contradictory, biased accounts, while still giving us his own biases as a patriarchal and misogynistic medieval mind. But even with all that context, Cooke’s Alicent is by default a different creation than what Martin could ever suggest between the lines. Some years older than Rhaenyra, the literary Alicent was never the Princess of Dragonstone’s friend or confidant. Nor, as far as we know, did she harbor secret doubts about what King Viserys wanted in his succession. Cooke’s Alicent has more texture, more complexity, than the scheming stepmother. But that also makes her moments of cruelty and ferocious defense of her family’s interests all the more compelling.

The show’s Alicent loved Rhaenyra at some point, sure, but in order to protect the lives of her own children, she had no qualms in the first season about discrediting Rhaenyra’s sons by humiliating the princess and demanding the newborn Prince Joffrey be hand-delivered to the queen’s chambers minutes after the boy’s birth—causing Rhaenyra to walk bleeding and barefoot across the Red Keep. And when Alicent is righteously outraged that her son was maimed by one of Rhaenyra’s boys, the Queen Mother’s back is far too against the wall to see the truth that viewers know (Aemond sought to use a weapon against Rhaenyra’s younger sons first). She’s also far too vindicated by the double standard between Rhaenyra’s agency as a royal heir and her own secondary status as “merely a wife,” to be reasoned with.

In a medieval world where to play the game of thrones means “you win or you die,” taking an impartial macro view of things is a luxury Alicent can ill afford, even when she doesn’t have a slippery father whispering treason in her ear. In House of the Dragon, we are told that Alicent never participated in the palace coup until she misunderstood Viserys’ final words, but even before that moment, she rightly is warning her son that as long as Aegon and his siblings live, they will be seen as a threat to Rhaenyra’s claim.

The show’s rather saintly and good-hearted Queen Rhaenyra (at least in the first two and a half seasons) might seem unlikely to plot the murder of her half-siblings, but her avuncular husband Daemon has no problem going behind her back and using violence to supposedly strengthen her claim. Hence the Blood and Cheese fiasco.

Alicent does horrible things in the first season of House of the Dragon to her former friend and to the realm. One of the painful agonies for her in season 3 is even when daughter Helaena asks why did her mother not entertain other suitors for her hand? Alicent and the viewer know that Rhaenyra offered Jacaerys’ hand in the first season, which would have prevented a civil war, but out of pride and hypocritical condensation, the equally adulteress Alicent could not bear the thought of her daughter marrying one of those bastards.

… It was a tragic folly, but given how the character was presented in that first season, the perspective of a Hightower girl draped in the religious dogma of the Starry Sept of Oldtown would absolutely not want to marry a daughter to a bastard. She’d also be protecting her family by proving Joffrey is another strong, brunet son of Rhaenyra’s. Seven Hells, wanting to maim a child in revenge for her own son being half-blinded is downright reasonable in a world where her king is ready to execute a man who calls the strong princelings bastards.

All of which might be a long way to say that when I came to the moment in the penultimate episode of House of the Dragon season 3 where Alicent was wandering aimlessly around Harrenhal, quivering with fear because she just poisoned and attempted to murder the same exact son on Rhaenyra’s behalf, I couldn’t help but sigh at how precipitously the show had from its first year. The same ferocious-when-provoked mama bear who was ready to blind a child on behalf of her second son is now poisoning him to aid a best friend she feels guilty toward like we’re in a particularly soapy episode of Dynasty.

I understand there are thinly-hplotted rationalizations for how we got to this moment: an increasingly unhinged Rhaenyra ordered Alicent to escort one of the Black Queen’s assassins to Harrenhal in order to kill Aemond, all while the monarch keeps Alicent’s beloved daughter Helaena as hostage. Also at this point, the show has tried its damndest to not only make Prince Aemond repellent to viewers—which isn’t too hard to do after he murders a child over the cliffs of Storm’s End—but also grotesque to his own mother. Hence the out of left field moment this season when he tries to seduce mommy into an Oedipal couch of luxury and damned incest.

Nonetheless, it is nigh impossible to watch the first season of House of the Dragon and the third in the same month, and not conclude Olivia Cooke is playing two different characters. In the first season, she is a conflicted, even tormented, usurper who ultimately takes to heart the patriarchal dogma of her world; so, yes, she puts the needs of her family above all others. In the third season, by comparison, she is a voice of reason and conscience in Rhaenyra’s quickly descending court of decadence, a reasonable and empathetic soul who will do anything to save her daughter from the patriarchy, and her friend from self-aggrandizing lunacy. She’d even rather kill a son than scheme with him to use the biggest dragon in the realm to liberate Helaena and reclaim the security of other family members like Prince Daeron and the oft-forgotten granddaughter Jaehaera.

There are the breadcrumbs of a character arc connecting the two Alicents, but it’s both rapidly contrived and ludicrously modernized. While this is by rights a fantasy series, the best seasons of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are rooted in an ancient, medieval worldview that is allowed to have its iconoclasts and rebels—Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Tyrion Lannister—but in the main is rooted by people like Alicent: a person of their times who acts on what is best for them, their house, and especially their children.

Alicent in seasons 3 and 2 doesn’t really seem to do that despite an exquisite performance by Olivia Cooke. She is a woman so tormented by her sense of sisterhood for the woman who once let her son’s blinding go unpunished that she would rather put Rhaenyra’s needs above those of her family. It is the antithesis of not only what we know about Alicent in Fire & Blood, but how she was characterized in the first season. A hackneyed insert scene of Aemond kissing her doesn’t really paper over a character defined by “family,” “duty,” and “sacrifice,” the very words she spits at Rhaenyra in “Driftmark.” Now she is eagerly throwing away those self-identifying touchstones for a childhood bestie whom she turned on 20 years ago and actively undermined nearly every day thereafter.

I feel bad for picking on this one characterization, because Cooke makes incredibly intelligent and subtly arresting choices in her performance. But the writing utilized to get her to the point where she is poisoning Aemond rings as false as Daenerys deciding on an apparent whim to burn all of King’s Landing. The plot strains to justify the intended shock, and the actor is left to pick up the pieces.

It is the most extreme example in a series that has worked very hard until the season 3 finale to keep Rhaenyra’s hands clean, Daemon’s submerged in the filth, and Alicent’s bent and curved in a penitent position as penance for her culpability as a Green woman who put the wants of sons before the needs of daughters.

I like Rhaenyra, I enjoy Daemon from a distance as he guides fans down the primrose path, and I find Alicent to be a hypocrite and tragic woman enamored with her chauvinistic cage. But when all of them spend most of season 3 aware of these dynamics, the series loses the shifting moral ambiguity and nuance of Martin’s world. Whether you’re Team Green or Black, it all begins to resemble a general beige.

With luck the final season will bring back the wide spectrum of morality, culpability, and character nuance that made this Dance so bitterly exciting in the first place. Rhaenyra going the full Henry II on the High Septon is a great start.

Let Dinosaurs Rule Hollywood Movies Again

A few years ago, I had the chance to speak with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the screenwriters who first came up with the idea of A Quiet Place and who wrote and directed the deliciously elevated B-thriller, Heretic. In between those pictures, they also wrote and directed a dinosaur movie that didn’t quite work, the Adam Driver-led 65. It’s a movie with a hell of an elevator pitch—what if a guy who looks like Kylo Ren crash-landed on Earth 65 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the Earth?—but suffered in execution. Even so, I admired the ambition, especially because multiple studios refused to consider making a dinosaur movie on principle.

“Jurassic Park is such a towering achievement that it’s almost scared off anyone in Hollywood from ever doing a dinosaur movie,” Woods told me at the time, “which is a totally valid reaction to that movie. But at the same time, as fans of dinosaurs and as fans of the subgenre of dinosaur movies, we kind of felt like there was a little something missing from the landscape.” It’s an anecdote that lines up with Luke Sparke’s experience as a young filmmaker with a pitch for what became Primitive War, a movie he sold around town before settling on making it as an indie that was released on VOD last year. According to the helmer (via Slashfilm), “Everyone said, ‘Well, Jurassic has the monopoly on dinosaurs, and you are not Steven Spielberg.’”

That’s very true. But then, very few of us are. Spielberg of course has a preternatural intuition about where to place a camera and how to utilize its movements for maximum awe and excitement, but the last time he personally directed a dinosaur movie was nearly 30 years ago via The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Meanwhile all the sequels he produced in that series since have generally been of a precipitous drop in quality—with the notable exception that no Jurassic movie before or since is worse than Jurassic World Dominion, a.k.a. the one that brought back Sam Neill and Laura Dern and then had them chase locusts.

But in spite of that franchise’s glaring problems, studios have treated dinosaurs as essentially copyrighted intellectual property belonging exclusively to Spielberg—so much so that outside of 65, the only other misbegotten attempt to do a Hollywood-backed dino-attack flick in the past three decades was Roland Emmerich’s poor choice to bastardize Godzilla into a Jurassic clone.

But that’s now changed.

Like a bolt of prehistoric lightning, David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street has ironically delivered the best Steven Spielberg dinosaur movie the Beard never made himself. This is not to say Oak Street is another Jurassic Park redo—the happily schlocky picture makes no bones about being a techno thriller, nor bothers to waste a minute lamenting the hubris of man. Instead it’s an older school riff on a different style of Spielbergian cinema; the type he’d produce under the Amblin banner and that would’ve been helmed by Richard Donner or a young Bob Zemeckis in the ‘80s. Mitchell even sets his popcorn in 1982, the same year the writer-director would’ve been eight, and the film’s core family ensemble includes a 13-year-old boy among its ranks.

Made in the vein of Gremlins or Back to the Future with a body count, Oak Street is also meaner than any of the modern Jurassic World flicks. It’s basically a Twilight Zone episode where, rather inexplicably, a whole neighborhood is transported back in time hundreds of millions of years. There’s no rhyme or reason, but there is a literal cast of dozens of American suburbanites who suddenly find themselves on the buffet table for a scaly party that includes Spinosauruses, winged demons, a feathery giant chicken with fangs, and of course a T-Rex. It’s madcap and delightful entertainment in the hands of a director who helped kickstart our current age of “elevated horror” with It Follows.

Mitchell even finds time to craft a simple, but effective, story about a family in crisis as led by Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway, two actors who give the material more gravitas than it needs, but look oh so awesome when swinging sledge hammers and shotguns at attacking dinos.

All of which makes the fact that the movie is being almost quietly jettisoned into theaters at the end of this summer a tad baffling. The thing rips and roars, but neither McGregor or Hathaway have done much press for the movie. Elsewhere the marketing team invested in a woeful AI video focused purely on the adorable dog in the movie doing “a podcast interview” with other AI canines.

Three decades later, Hollywood still seems sheepishly afraid to admit they’re playing in Spielberg’s ballpark. But the thing is Mitchell is only about the fourth guy to do so without Jurassic in the title, and he went ahead and made the best one since Spielberg’s dino-eye roamed Isla Nublar and he shouldn’t be the last.

Dinosaurs are one of the oldest daydreams of movie magic. They have been with us since Gertie the Dinosaur quietly walked across the animated screen in 1914 and wowed audiences when they attacked in “live action” the casts of The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), and the oh, so scientifically-minded One Million Years B.C. (1966) with Raquel Welch’s fur bikini.

Jurassic Park is wonderful, but there is an eternal itch that needs scratching, and if lousy Jurassic World sequels won’t get the job done, hand the boomstick and dino-repellent to the next generation.

New Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Features an Iron Man Callback

Alongside a presentation at D23 last week, Marvel Studios released a new “special look” at its upcoming superhero team-up movie, Avengers: Doomsday. This appears to be the same footage the studio debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, featuring an emotional confrontation between Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) and revealing Doom’s control over a group of Sentinels, the giant robots known to hunt the X-Men.

At the end of the trailer, Doom places his hands on the ground and, through some green-hued magic, awakens the Sentinels, who seem to have been buried in the ground. As they rise up, he turns to the camera and strikes a very familiar pose that calls back to the first Iron Man film in 2008, where we first met Tony Stark (also Robert Downey Jr.) boasting about the damage his Stark Industries Jericho missiles could do for the U.S. military before he had an epiphany and decided that protecting people was a much better direction for his life to take.

Of course, the similarity of Iron Man and Doctor Doom’s poses in the trailer could be a coincidence, but Marvel does love its callbacks, and this huge display of weaponry feels too delicious to be unintentional.

Marvel has not yet confirmed why Tony Stark and Victor Werner von Doom look exactly alike, with Downey Jr. simply pointing out that the difference between the characters goes beyond their proficiency with “the science thing,” noting, “Tony had the trauma that turned him into a hero and Doom’s got the exact opposite, to where it takes the prowess of all of these folks to go up against him.”

While some enjoyed comparing the two shots, others quickly pointed out some notable visual differences beyond Tony Stark’s signature pose in Iron Man and Avengers: Doomsday, with one X user suggesting Marvel had experienced “a generational fall off.”

“Look at how Iron Man is real location with real lighting and color while Doomsday is just a muddy grey blur,” one person replied, while another added, “First one shot on Kodak Vision 2 motion picture film, second one CGI slop.” In response to the negative comments, a user retorted, “They aren’t discussing film techniques nerds, they mean the juxtaposition is peak. Tony acting the same in different universes.”

The visuals of Jon Favreau’s MCU-kickstarting Iron Man certainly do feel old-school compared to Marvel’s later output, but the transition to a heavier use of computer-generated effects didn’t harm the studio’s performance at the box office when it came to its last two Avengers films.

Only time will tell if this forthcoming Avengers installment also has the juice, but anticipation is still building around Doomsday, where Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) will return to help Thor, Ant-Man, The New Avengers, the other Avengers, Black Panther, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four stand their ground against Doom’s multiverse-clashing endgame before a follow-up film called Avengers: Secret Wars arrives in 2028 to potentially conclude the classic Marvel villain’s first arc.

Avengers: Doomsday is set for release on December 18

Lanterns: Guardians of the Universe, Abin Sur, and the Green Lantern Corps Explained

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 1.

At the start of the pilot episode of Lanterns, a young John Stewart watches a television interview with Hal Jordan, the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps. Jordan talks a little about being a space cop, but for the most part, he focuses on the quality that makes him a suitable choice to join the Corps: his absolute lack of fear. The interview sets the model for the rest of the episode, in which Hal trains the adult John by mentioning a few details about the power ring and the importance of willpower, but leaves a lot of the sci-fi points unexplained.

Given that Lanterns wants to appeal to a broad audience, the choice makes sense. The average HBO viewer will have an easier time accepting a True Detective-style gritty mystery with weird elements than it will a space opera. But those wanting more of the sci-fi stuff might come away frustrated that Lanterns only mentions strange aliens without really explaining who they are. If you want more alien fun, but don’t want to pour through decades of Green Lantern comics, be without fear: we’re here to explain it all.

Guardians of the Universe

In the pilot episode, the central tension between Hal and John comes down to the fact that the ring chose Hal when Abin Sur crashed on Earth (more on that in a moment) and that the Guardians of the Universe chose John. Devoted DCU fans might recall that we’ve heard reference to the Guardians before, when Guy Gardner confronted Superman midway through the latter’s first movie. In short, the Guardians are the founders of the Green Lantern Corps, immortal aliens determined to bring goodness into the galaxy.

The Guardians originally hail from the planet Maltus, a peaceful world where its inhabitants discovered immortality and devoted themselves to scientific exploration. However, when a Maltusan called Krona wanted to witness the origin of the universe, he inadvertently introduced evil into the world. As penance, a group of Maltusans sought to contain the evil and protect potential victims, going through several methods before creating the Green Lantern Corps.

That description makes the Guardians sound wise and benevolent, which is more or less how they were portrayed in the first years following their introduction in Green Lantern #1 (1960) by John Broome and Gil Kane. However, over the years, the Guardians have revealed themselves to be easily blinded by their own hubris and given to manipulation. In the comics, both Hal and John regularly butt heads with their bosses, which means that Hal’s skepticism in the show is well-founded.

Green Lantern Corps

As part of their mission, the Guardians divided the known universe into 3600 space sectors, covering all of space except for the lawless Vega System. Each sector is patrolled by at least one Green Lantern, generally a native of the sector who is selected according to the following criteria: the ring-wielder must be fearless, they must be honest, and they must be nearby when the previous Lantern dies or has their status revoked. After selection, the new Lanterns are then brought to Oa, the headquarters of the Green Lantern Corps. There, they receive basic training—most often by the surly Lantern Kilowog—and then are paired with a more experienced Lantern.

In the pilot for Lanterns, the Hal-o-Gram makes a point of saying that Lanterns aren’t trained by people from their own sector, something that makes sense for the show, but isn’t part of comic book canon. In fact, current comic book canon states that each sector should have at least two Lanterns, if not more.

In addition to those who remain in their sector, there are also other, higher-echelons of Lanterns. Traditionally, a select elite group of Lanterns serve as the Honor Guard, stationed on Oa to go on extraordinary missions. Recently, Grant Morrison introduced Alpha Lanterns, a sort of internal affairs of the Green Lantern Corps, who police the police. And then there are the members of The Corpse, the black ops arm of the Corps that does the Guardians’ dirty work.

If that’s not enough, the past 20 years of Green Lantern stories have saw the addition of other Corps, separate from the Green Lanterns, but with similar power sets. The arch-enemy Sinestro formed the Sinestro Corps or the Yellow Lantern Corps, who channel the ability to create fear instead of willpower through their rings. The Star Sapphires use love, while the Blue Lanterns channel hope, and Red Lanterns use their rage. Lanterns doesn’t seem interested in exploring these other Corps, but it’s hard to believe at least one of them won’t be mentioned at some point in the series.

Abin Sur

Outside of Hal and John, the most important member of the Green Lantern Corps for the purposes of Lanterns is one we never see on screen. Hal Jordan became Green Lantern after the death of Abin Sur, the previous Green Lantern of sector 2814, the space sector that includes our solar system. Hal’s description in the pilot more or less matches the canonical events from the comics: Abin Sur crash lands on Earth, sends a beacon to choose a replacement, summons Hal Jordan to him, and promptly dies, leaving Hal to figure it all out.

But there’s much more to Abin Sur than just dying, which may have ramifications for Lanterns. Red-skinned and bald-headed, Abin Sur comes from the planet Ungara and became the Green Lantern of sector 2814 around 150 years ago. He served with distinction, and even worked with an ancestor of Hal Jordan, before eventually training Sinestro, who would, in turn, train Hal.

For all Abin Sur did well during his life, there was always a question hanging over his tenure: why did he fly a ship when his ring allowed for space travel? The best answer came in the story “Tygers” by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, published in 1986’s Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2.

In that story, Abin Sur visits the Hellish planet Ysmault, where he encounters the demonic Qull of the Five Inversions. Qull offers a series of prophecies, which Abin Sur finds himself believing the more they came true. So when Qull predicts that his ring will fail him when he needs it most, open the door for the eventual downfall of the entire Corps, Abin Sur laughs it off, but begins flying via ship instead of using his ring. Ironically, Abin Sur’s dependence on his ship leads to him crash-landing and his ultimate death, a moment of fear that results in his end.

Lanterns seems to be going in a slightly different direction, but the basics are the same: Abin Sur crashes on Earth and gave Jordan the ring. Where we go from there remains to be seen.

Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.

Lanterns Revives One of Classic Green Lantern’s Silliest Concepts

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 1.

John Stewart spends most of the premiere episode Lanterns living in the shadow of his mentor, Hal Jordan. And it’s an unpleasant place to be. Hal never misses an opportunity to needle the young hopeful, whether it’s abandoning him in a crashing car or making him navigate his own way to Rushville, Nebraska. But Stewart does manage to earn the older man’s respect in one case, when he describes the copy that Hal made for himself as a “Hal-o-Gram.” The name makes Hal smile and say, “That’s clever,” before checking himself and saying, “Not that clever.”

“Hal-o-Gram” is a clever name, in part because it’s not one that most Green Lantern fans would use. Instead, longtime comic readers know the backup personality as an “Energy Twin,” a largely forgotten power of Green Lantern Corps members and one of the many Silver Age concepts that make their way into the HBO drama.

Everybody knows that Green Lantern rings channel willpower to create whatever the user can imagine. Usually, that means laser blasts and various bubbles, an aura that protects the user and lets them fly, and various constructs. But throughout comic book history, Green Lantern has used their ring to age themselves up, to change their external appearance (even creating colors other than green, including the dreaded yellow), read and control minds, and open portals through space.

One might blame these wild powers on Silver Age storytelling, a standard practice in the time when Superman would suddenly throw his voice across the room with super-ventriloquism or when Batman just had shark repellent on his utility belt. But it actually stems from the earliest Green Lantern appearances, back when Alan Scott was the Golden Age Green Lantern. Scott’s creators Martin Nodell and Bill Finger intended Green Lantern to be a magical character, and Nodell even originally named him Alan Ladd to riff on Aladdin (he went with Scott to avoid confusion with the Hollywood star of the same name).

In those Golden Age stories, Alan Scott would shoot lasers and create constructs. But he was just as likely to use his ring to walk through walls and make himself invisible. Scott’s ring was a wishing ring, and if the story called for a magic trick, the ring would allow him to pull it off.

Even DC reimagined Green Lantern as a sci-fi character in the 1950s, making the rings a product of advanced alien science instead of deep magic, they still operated the same way. So when Hal Jordan needed to dissuade someone from figuring out his secret identity, he would just use his ring to create an exact copy of himself, allowing the plain clothes Jordan to stand next to an in-uniform Green Lantern. Even though early stories tried to limit the ability to something that only Hal could do, and even then only in certain places—Green Lantern #6 from 1961, by John Broome and Gil Kane, stipulates that the magnetic fields of the planet Aku allowed him to make a double—it soon became standard practice for all GL’s.

Energy-twins were particularly common during Steve Englehart and Joe Staton’s run in the mid-1980s, when several GLs relocated to Earth and the book changed its name to Green Lantern Corps. There, the heroes needed to deal with various issues on Earth while still maintaining contact with Guardians of the Universe on the planet Oa, as well as other deep-space GLs. 1985’s Green Lantern #194 by Englehart and Staton provides a perfect example. Throughout the issue, Green Lantern Katma Tui sends an energy-twin to Oa to report on the events of the Crisis of Infinite Earths from Earth. When the Anti-Monitor launches an attack on Oa and incapacitates the Guardians, Katma’s energy-twin finds itself cut off.

Energy-twins would make scattered appearances over the next few years or so. But by the time that Hal Jordan flipped and became the villain Parallax, killing the Guardians and decimating the Green Lantern Corps, there was no need for energy-twins. The lone Green Lantern Kyle Rayner had no one to contact, and thus never made a twin. But even when Hal was restored and the Corps was rebuilt, energy-twins became a lost art—so much so that it became news among nerds when writer Morgan Hampton brought them back in last year’s Green Lantern Corps #11.

Lanterns was the last place fans expected to see energy-twins return. Creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King want to keep things relatively grounded. But given that energy-twins allow GLs to travel space while staying on Earth, maybe they’re just what Lanterns needs to be a Green Lantern show that appeals to wide audiences.

Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.

Lanterns Episode 1 Review: Hued Detective

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 1.

The first episode of Lanterns begins the way any show with knotty lore should: with a flashback to 1996, where a young John Stewart watches the Green Lantern interviewed on 60 Minutes. Through the interview, we learn about Hal Jordan, the first human member of the intergalactic space cops known as the Green Lantern Corps, who were granted power rings by immortal blue beings known as the Guardians of the Universe. When John’s father sees what his son is watching, he orders John to go outside and places an apple on the boy’s head. “Are you afraid?” the elder Stewart barks to the younger, and draws his revolver. When John Jr. answers, “No,” his father fires, shooting the apple from his son’s head. Satisfied with the boy’s fearless performance, the family goes to lunch to celebrate.

By the time the credits on the episode roll, it’s clear that DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran flinched a bit while making Lanterns, but it’s hard to blame them. Green Lantern may be one of the most enduring and popular superhero franchises, with a character by that name appearing in print and other media consistently for more than 80 years. But it’s also one of the more convoluted and strangerDC properties, and a 2011 big screen bomb starring Ryan Reynolds didn’t help that perception. For the most part, Lanterns creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King face their fears admirably in the pilot, relying on a structure cribbed from HBO‘s True Detective, but keeping a surprising amount of comic book absurdity.

The debt that Lanterns owes to True Detective is immediately apparent. Split mostly across 2016 and 2026, the series follows two squabbling sleuths as they uncover something evil in heartland America. In the earlier timeline, which takes up most of the premiere episode’s runtime, Hal (Kyle Chandler) must reluctantly train John (Aaron Pierre), who has been chosen by the Guardians as his backup. Hal doesn’t trust his trainee, and he takes John’s cool, professional demeanor as something of a personal challenge. But when the two get word of a strange shooting in Rushville, Nebraska, the same small town where Hal’s alien successor Abin Sur crash-landed, they decide to stay and investigate further.

Their point of contact in Rushville is Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald, with an accent that sounds more like she was in Fargo instead of No Country for Old Men). But it’s her father-in-law Will Macon (Garret Dillahunt) who takes particular interest in the Lanterns and the shooting. A sort of Earth-first xenophobe, Will tries to win Hal and John’s sympathies by deploying his impressive resources, which includes a ranch filled with armed militia, his lawyer son Billy (Jason Ritter), and his alluring wife Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan).

The first episode of Lanterns works best when it leans into this mixture of the mundane and the sci-fi. As Hal and John drive onto the ranch, past armed guards and rednecks with machine guns doing training exercises, we think we know what to expect (“If it looks like a duck, shoots AR-15s like a duck, quack, quack, duck,” jokes Jordan). That feeling only increases when we meet Will, whose swagger matches Hal’s energy, but who seems vaguely hostile toward John. Will makes a show of chopping meat in front of the vegan John, and even when Will compliments John for his service as a Marine sniper, one gets the sense that the rich white Midwesterner doesn’t care for the Black man in his home.

Yet, as soon as Will gets the chance to explain his motivations, he uses language familiar to any reader of DC Comics. For Will, Abin Sur’s arrival in Rushville signals an inevitable alien invasion, one he has been preparing to stave off for decades. The climax of the episode sees Hal interrogate what appears to be some bumpkin passing through (Chris Coy), but who confirms that he is an alien on a reconnaissance mission. And, perhaps most delightful of all to this long-time Green Lantern reader, the Hal-o-Gram that John accidentally activates is an Energy Twin, a double that ring wielders make for emergencies.

The show’s frank acknowledgment of weird stuff should satisfy most nerds wanting space opera, without scaring away people who think “Green Lantern” is a dumb name for a superhero. And those still on the fence will surely be won over by Chandler’s incredible performance as Jordan.

Most of the Lanterns pilot serves as a celebration of Jordan as the most incredible jerk in superhero history. He’s arrogant and reckless, he bullies John and Kerry when they get in his way, and he’s completely over the whole superhero thing. And yet, Chandler delivers all of his lines with an aw-shucks drawl and an irresistible twinkle in his eye. Even better, the episode presents Hal as undeniably competent. He assesses the situation before anyone else, knows exactly the right buttons to press to navigate Macon and the alien invaders. The interrogation sequence at the episode’s end proves that Hal has earned every big of his arrogance.

Good as Chandler is, Pierre may be even better in the less showy part of John. A military man raised under a demanding father, forced to learn from Hal Jordan, and stuck in an almost exclusively white Nebraska town, John must keep his head down and stay the course. But Pierre finds ways to register John’s frustration in subtle ways, whether that be the anger he initially expresses in a phone call with his dad or the grimace he lets out upon realizing that the woman he had a one-night-stand with is Macon’s wife.

If Lanterns can continue to give space for Chandler and Pierre to show off their skills and let Hal and John play off one another, keeping the sci-fi stuff present but not overwhelming, then the show can shine brighter than any other adaptation of the comic. But if the showrunners show fear and lean too hard into True Detective grittiness or comic book wackiness, well, it’s going to be just one more superhero show that crashes and burns.

Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

Green Lantern Illuminations:

  • The actual show has a lot more Green Lantern stuff than initial advertising suggested, but I suspect some comic book fans will still be disappointed. In particular, those who only know Green Lantern from the Geoff Johns run onward will be confused, as it lacks anything involving the other Lantern Corps. However, the wandering, plainclothes Hal is consistent with his characterization from the mid-60s through the ’80s, when he would travel around the country, driving a truck, selling toys, peddling insurance, and generally staying out of outer space.
  • It’s interesting that Hal goes public with his identity in the 1990s in the DCU. Canonically, Hal more or less keeps his secret identity, even through today. Conversely, John was the first to stop wearing a mask and make his identity public, soon followed by Guy.
  • Given how they’re modeled after isolationist extremists, Macon and his crew aren’t representative of most Earthlings. But one wonders how the rest of the DCU Earth feels about aliens, given that Hal unmasks almost 25 years before Superman reveals himself, three years before the events of that movie. None of the characters in the Hall of Justice mural shown in Superman are alien (although Gunfire canonically got his powers in an alien invasion). Did Hal pave the way for Earthlings to be more accepting of extraterretials?