Alien planets: just never a place you want to end up. Maybe there are dinosaurs. Maybe there are, uh, Aliens. And maybe something super weird is happening and no one knows what or why and then there’s body horror, too? That appears to be the premise of Scavengers Reign, a new animated series coming from Max, and I say “appears to be” because this teaser is all vibes: image after image of things that don’t quite make sense and definitely don’t connect. But it’s interesting!
Molly Templeton
There’s a New Toxic Avenger In Town
Our first look at the new Toxic Avenger—a remake of the 1984 cult film—comes in the form of a kitschy news report, which feels entirely appropriate. “The freaky folk hero” remains at large, says one reporter in this mashup of pretend-news-coverage, in which interviewees say all kinds of wacky stuff about the guy who’s out there doing some vigilante justice. “He looks like a fucked-up hot dog!” says one voice. One impression is a potato with a scrawled-on face.
You never actually see the face of said Avenger in this short peek—just Peter Dinklage looming in a doorway. But you certainly get the gist.
Normality Flits Terrifyingly Away in the First Teaser for Leave the World Behind
“There is no going back to normal,” warns G.H. (Mahershala Ali) in the teaser for Leave the World Behind, Sam Esmail’s adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel. Though brief, the trailer offers all kinda disconcerting imagery: wrecked boats, stopped cars, maybe a tidal wave, and whatever it is that Clay (Ethan Hawke) sees in the sky. Red things in the sky can’t be good. Something has gone terribly awry, and four strangers (plus children) are staring at the end of something.
Patrick Stewart Had a Different Vision for the End of Star Trek: Picard
Image: CBS / Paramount+
The final scene of Picard gave a lot of people a lot of feels. There was almost no way for this not to happen, given the Next Generation reunion that was the series’ third season, but there was something just right about it, something that went beyond nostalgia; it had comfort and familiarity without being too sentimental. And everyone looked so happy.
This was not, however, the way Patrick Stewart wanted it to end. In an excerpt from his memoir, Making It So, Stewart details the way he saw the series ending—and how maybe there’s one more Picard story to tell. Just one, though.
Maybe Reading Goals Are Actually Good
Photo: Glenn Carstens-Peters [via Unsplash]
It would be really nice to be able to think about reading without thinking about all the ways reading is hard right now. This is, to be clear, not a real problem. It doesn’t even appear in tiny font on the very bottom of the universe’s list of current problems. But if you’re a reader, it feels weird to not be reading, and just about every reader I talk to lately has some version of this complaint. Time is fake. Our attention spans are shattered. What even are books?
I want to push back on this feeling. I want to turn pages, rapt. I want to find ways we can all still fall into books, if and when we have the time and even the faintest inclination to do so. And I keep wondering if, despite my wariness of them, some reading goals might help.
Neil Gaiman Is Writing Good Omens 3 — Though It Hasn’t Been Renewed Yet
When it comes to the possibility of a third season of Good Omens, perhaps there’s no one more optimistic than Neil Gaiman himself. In August, the novelist and screenwriter said that if Prime Video didn’t renew the series, he would write a sequel as a novel. But now, with the writers’ strike resolved, he’s writing the series again. Even though it hasn’t officially been renewed.
Bryce Dallas Howard’s Spy Novels Come to Life in Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle
If Sandra Bullock’s character being kidnapped into one of her own novels in The Lost City wasn’t enough action for you, Matthew Vaughn is here to help. The director (most recently of Kingsman: The Golden Circle) returns to the big screen with Argylle, the story of a novelist whose tales of dramatic espionage are apparently telling the future, maybe, sort of? And some people don’t like the way she sees it.
Also there’s a cat. And Sam Rockwell, action hero, which is frankly worth the price of admission.
Work Sucks and Then You Probably Die in the Trailer for Hulu’s The Mill
Not every new job is a good one. And the job Joe (Lil Rel Howery) is given in Hulu’s The Mill is particularly bad: a successful businessman, or so he thinks, he finds himself in an open-air space where a computer voice tells him he needs to work an ancient grist mill. How did he get there? Is this some kind of perverse demotion? Who knows! It’s all very Sisyphean, really, other than the fact that he’s not pushing the stone up a hill (circles aren’t much better)… and that there are screams and whispers coming from all around.
Josh Gad Has Some Harsh Words for the Universe in the Trailer for Wolf Like Me’s Second Season
Becoming parents is terrifying when you know you’re having a human baby. When one parent is a werewolf, there are even more things to worry about. Just normal stuff, you know, like what kind of teeth said baby will have. Wolf Like Me, in its second season, tackles all of this and more, as Mary (Isla Fisher) and Gary (Josh Gad) head snout-first into parenthood.
Destiny Is Coming for Donna Noble in the Trailer for the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials
Nothing like starting out the work-week with a whole lot of Donna Noble feelings. There’s a new trailer for November’s trio of Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, and it is just full of classic Donna (Catherine Tate)—including some footage of that time the Doctor (younger David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, as opposed to current David Tennant as the Fourteenth) had to erase her memory to save her life.
She can’t remember him, or she’ll die—which poses a bit of a problem when a spaceship crashes in front of her and an alien turns up in her shed.
The Final Episodes of Doom Patrol Are Overrun With Butts
If you have not been watching Doom Patrol, I’m sorry. You’ve been missing out on a lot, as this baffling yet endearing trailer for the show’s final episodes suggests. Michelle Gomez singing “What the fuck?” in fake opera! Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero) giving a pep talk! A whole lot of attack butts! And a dreaded enemy: the loss of longevity!
Superheroes: They’re just like us.
Beyond “Guilty Pleasures”: When Reading Is Weird, or Hard, or Personal
Painting by George Kars (1911)
At some point in my twenties I broke up with the concept of a guilty pleasure. I had heard enough from guys who wanted to try to shame me for liking bands they didn’t think were good, or for reading books they didn’t think were important enough; I decided that I was going to like what I liked, without feeling guilty about that enjoyment. I enjoy bands that aren’t cool and I love the kind of off-brand candy that comes in a see-through bag for 59 cents. Why feel guilty?
There are plenty of reasons to have complicated relationships with things, though, especially art. There are authors we grew up reading or once loved who turned out to be terrible people. Filmmakers who make beautiful movies through which a thick misogynist streak runs. Musicians who also turn out to be real dicey people. The art is still there, speaking to us, and while sometimes you can put aside the ugly bits, sometimes you just can’t. Art is made by complex, flawed humans; experiencing it is not often simple. Complicated relationships are to be expected. (Claire Dederer wrote a whole brilliant book, Monsters, on this topic.)
But there are still books I feel weird talking about. Not guilty. Not bad. Maybe just … a little self-conscious. Squirmy. And that is all I’ve been reading lately.
Hugh Howey Adaptation Beacon 23 Makes the Jump to MGM+
Screenshot: HBO
MGM+, the streaming platform formerly known as Epix, is adding another adaptation to its lineup: the series Beacon 23, which comes from creator Zak Penn and is based on Hugh Howey’s tale about a space lighthouse. The eight-episode series was originally intended to air on Spectrum Originals, which no longer exists.
All of those details are well and good, but the important one is this: The show stars Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, pictured above) as a “government agent” who finds herself in something of a test of wills with a lighthouse keeper.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Trailer Asks Repeatedly What the Hunger Games Are For
“What are the Hunger Games for?” Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) asks young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) not once but twice in this new trailer for the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The first time, he says the games are to punish the districts. The second time, young Mr. Snow has a military haircut and a whole new bearing, and we don’t get his answer.
It’s very unlikely to be satisfactory, anyway.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Trailer Shows That Things Are Not So Normal When You’re a Demigod
Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) has normal problems—bad grades, bullies—and then some… not so normal problems. Like the harpy that shows up to disrupt a field trip, or the fact that his best friend suddenly has goat legs. “The stories that I told you about Greek gods and half bloods,” his mother (Virginia Kull) says, intensely, “they are real.”
That’s the basic premise of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which is based on Rick Riordan’s beloved books and now coming to Disney+ in an adaptation from Black Sails co-creator John Steinberg and producer Dan Shotz. Riordan is deeply involved—in fact, he wrote the first two episodes. And based on what we see in this teaser, they sound just like the books.