Movies & TV Stranger Things

Critical Hits and Misses of the Stranger Things Finale

Let’s talk about what worked, and what really didn’t, in this final season.

By Tyler Dean

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Published on January 6, 2026

Credit: Netflix

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Credit: Netflix

So… the Stranger Things finale was pretty good? It avoided most of the major pitfalls it had set up for itself, threaded the majority of its needles, and ended with a big dose of John Hughes and Stephen King—not the King of It or The Mist or ’Salem’s Lot, but the sappy, sometimes even treacly King of Stand by Me and The Life of Chuck. 

In a world of endlessly franchisable IPs and superhero fatigue where nothing can ever truly end for its characters, Stranger Things, despite having multiple spinoffs in the works, managed to make its ending feel final, reverent, and complete. Mostly. So let’s get into it and talk about what worked and didn’t work, both in the finale and the series as a whole…

Natural Twenty: Queerness

In the end, Stranger Things came through in its representation of queerness. Between Robin and Will, the show managed to have marginalized characters (eventually) be centered, thoughtful, and happy. Even though Will’s coming out scene ultimately feels like it was written as a laundry list of ’80s nostalgia experiences (I’m just like you! I also love capitalist products and mainstream pop culture!), it’s pretty heartwarming, even if the show makes it a little weird by having Will come out not only to his closest friends and family but also his brother’s girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend who he’s never spoken to, his physics teacher, and a random conspiracy theorist/smuggler. 

But if there were some hitches in the lead-up to the finale, the show does an excellent job in how it chooses to end Will’s story. In Mike’s hopeful narration for what he wants for his friends, we see Will, sometime in the early ’90s, in a bar that, if not a gay bar, is certainly queer-coded, meeting up with a boyfriend. Mike’s narration is clear that the sort of ending Will deserves is only available far away in “the bustling city of Vallaki” (we could nitpick here and say that Vallaki is hardly a bustling city in the Ravenloft adventure they’re playing and also note that it was only added with the 2016 publication of Curse of Strahd, but let’s get back to Will). There is a definite cut against the wish fulfillment fantasy of Will finding happiness in Hawkins with the friends he’s grown up with. But that is part of the magic of coming out for those lucky enough to be able to leave their bigoted small towns behind—the world is much larger than where you grew up, and there are better people in it than you thought possible.

Natural One: Thinking About Race

My surprise at how well Will and Robin’s character arcs worked out is, in part, because the show handled race (and, to a lesser extent, gender) with less-than-deft hands. In general, this took the form of ignoring race entirely. Other than one or two unfollowed-up-upon racist comments aimed at Lucas and Erica (mostly in earlier seasons), the fact that they are Black in rural, mid-’80s Indiana seems completely immaterial. See my previous discussion of season four for some further exploration of the ways in which the show really doesn’t seem to understand Lucas and privilege. 

The finale follows up on this vague lack of understanding about its characters of color with its treatment of Kali/Eight (really? Kali?). While I do think that bringing her back showed an admirable commitment to not simply memory-holing plot points that didn’t fully work in previous seasons (I will also admit to some malicious glee at seeing Kali’s gang of too-quirky misfits and lazy punk stereotypes getting gunned down), the show seemed to never fully acknowledge that Kali’s outlook might have been partially shaped by being a woman of color in a hostile nation. The fact that Stranger Things not only uses her as their annual sacrifice-a-secondary-character-to-provide-drama figure but also places the nihilistic argument that she and Eleven both have to die in order to put an end to the government’s experiments in Kali’s mouth feels simultaneously ahistorical, cruel, and more than a little bit tone-deaf given the Duffer Brothers’ misunderstandings of how race in America worked in the ’80s and still works today. 

As a final note, it also feels more than a little weird that Kali’s death is partially the result of Hopper choosing to leave her behind when she and El are both incapacitated by the military’s sonic weapons. It feels in character for Hopper and he does, eventually, go back for her, but it does so in a way that seems like it needed to be discussed and reckoned with later. Because it’s the finale, there isn’t time to do so. But we are left with a character of color sacrificing themself so that a white character can live, and this is made more troubling because it comes at the end of a long line of some uncomfortable characterizations that make me less generous in assessing the finale.

Critical Hit: A Lack of Wish Fulfillment

I’ve long complained about the plot armor of Stranger Things protagonists and the ways in which the show often compromised an interesting story to work in a bit of wish fulfillment or a badass sequence. To its confounding credit, the finale managed to avoid almost every pitfall it looked like it was setting itself up for. It pulled back from the inclination of breaking up Nancy and Jonathan so that she could get back together with Steve; it resisted giving Will a last-minute love interest so that everyone could be paired off; it left Robin and Vickie’s relationship up in the air (Robin makes mention of an overbearing significant other in her final scene, but that may or may not be Vickie); and it refused to give Mike or Hopper any clear sign that Eleven had survived.

But, more than just resisting its worst impulses, the show leaned hard into the uncertainty of growing up. For the D&D group, we have Mike’s hopes for his friends, paired with footage that seems to confirm these hopes without actually giving us proper epilogues. It asks us to want happy endings and to suggest they are possible, but never goes so far as to goofily mandate them. For the older kids, we get a rooftop meeting where they promise to always remain in one another’s lives despite how much they already seem to be drifting apart. It’s the sort of scene that plays, for adult viewers, as the last time these characters will all be in the same place at the same time. Perfectly underscored by Cowboy Junkies’ “Sweet Jane” (my favorite needle drop in the entire show), it’s elegiac and fulfilling, even as it refuses to assure us that these relationships will continue. 

And that all dovetails with Eleven’s possible escape from her apparent death. There’s a plausible explanation for how she might have survived and there are enough clues in the moment that seem to support it (the illusory Eleven doesn’t have a nosebleed or her Hawkins Lab tattoo). And, while the revelation that a central character may secretly be alive could invite a certain amount of eye-rolling, this honestly feels like the perfect way to let go. She is forever barred from finding her friends or family but she gets to start anew. Mike gets to move on and live a somewhat normal life. Hopper finally has to process the grief of losing Sarah and Eleven, in telling him that she isn’t a replacement, gifts him the ability to live a life that isn’t spent in the shadow of a child he believes he failed.

Critical Miss: Dr. Kay

Not much to say here other than if you’re going to cast national treasure like Linda Hamilton, you have to do something with her. Much like Carey Elwes in season three, this particular bit of ’80s nostalgia stunt casting ended up squandering its considerable potential.

Critical Hit: Processing Trauma

I’m not talking about Joyce’s “you fucked with the wrong family.” That line seems to be yet another listless stab at the iconic “Get away from her, you bitch” moment in which Ryder’s esteemed Alien franchise costar faces off against the Xenomorph queen (and which has been redone to the point of parody—over and over again. Besides, Nancy being styled like Ripley and kicking ass with a shotgun feels like a much better homage). But, as Joyce hacks off Vecna’s head, the show flashes to each of the main characters in turn as they consider the awful things they’ve endured. Their expressions aren’t about closure—the characters are, if anything, triggered by what they are seeing. The deaths, abuses, indignities, and gaslighting they have suffered though are still very present and it’s clear that the show ends only as the healing begins…a long and arduous journey outside of the purview of the finale itself. 

The whole thing pairs nicely with the end of Will’s arc as a survivor. In the finale, we learn that Henry Creel is not the mastermind puppeting the Mindflayer, but rather another victim who became a forced accomplice over years of abuse and torture. When Will discovers this, he draws the obvious parallel—“you’re just like me”—but Henry scoffs at this, too far down the path of capitulating to monstrousness to imagine the possibility of redemption. A last-minute face turn from Vecna would have been unbearable, but allowing Will to empathize with him is the final proof of his moral convictions. It’s a great end to Will’s journey towards self-acceptance and an ameliorating corollary to the show’s idea that nostalgia comes from trauma observed at a temporal remove.

Critical Miss: Tie-ins with the Play

From everything I’ve heard, Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a real mess. Like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (which was also co-written by The First Shadow playwright Jack Thorne), it’s a lot of spectacle and nostalgia crammed with as many references to its source material as possible. Like the laziest of fan fiction or the most soulless of corporate cash grabs, it risks ruining its plot by obsessively tying itself in with a more beloved story—in this particular case, by making Henry Creel a high school classmate of Joyce, Hopper, the Wheelers (weirdly retconning the fact that Ted Wheeler is supposed to be significantly older than Karen), and Sean Astin’s Bob Newby. With Creel firmly tied in with Hawkins Lab and the Creel family massacre being a part of the town’s mythos, it truly makes no sense that Henry is also the old classmate of two of the show’s main characters. 

It’s even weirder that the show both doubles down on the canonicity of the play while never once acknowledging that Joyce decapitates her old drama club buddy. As a result, the Stranger Things finale feels like it’s both paying off plot points it didn’t set up (like Joyce’s profoundly weird school play set) while also treating previously available information like it’s a reveal (Henry’s experiences in the cave are detailed in the play but have to be treated as new information because of how few show viewers had actually seen it). That’s pretty messy. And, again, this all feels like it’s in service to a play that was largely panned for everything unrelated to set design and visual effects. The inclusion of that material makes the show more confusing at best and much, much less compelling at worst. 

In Conclusion

All in all, Stranger Things stuck its landing better than I could have possibly imagined. There might have been some low expectations going into season five, but the show managed to treat its characters with respect while never sinking into the pointless, fan-service reverence that previous seasons seemed to be angling towards. It played its nostalgia for pathos rather than winking reference and was, in the end, the ending to a much better show than it had been in ages. But what do you think? Did it satisfy your craving for Stephen King-esque ’80s horror? Did you also like the eleventh-hour reference to Krull where the final fight with the monster takes place inside the brutalist body of a larger monster? What were your favorite or least favorite parts of the whole thing? Let me know in the comments![end-mark]

The post Critical Hits and Misses of the <i>Stranger Things</i> Finale appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch

Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Exercise of Vital Powers”

Garibaldi finally meets his new employer, while Dr. Franklin discovers that Lyta can influence the modified telepaths…

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on January 5, 2026

Credit: Warner Bros. Television

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Credit: Warner Bros. Television

“The Exercise of Vital Powers”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by John Lafia
Season 4, Episode 16
Production episode 416
Original air date: June 2, 1997

It was the dawn of the third age… The rebel fleet has moved on from liberating Proxima to liberating Beta Durani colony and the Mid-Range Military Base. In a personal log, we hear Garibaldi lamenting that Sheridan is really doing this. This concerns him sufficiently that he has gone against a long-ago-taken oath to never return to Mars.

He and Wade are in a transport tube, heading to Edgars’ Mars home. Wade insists that Garibaldi put on a blindfold, as Edgars values his privacy. Garibaldi thinks that’s absurd and that he’ll look silly. Along the way, they babble about various things, including Wade surprising Garibaldi with the revelation that he has a Masters Degree in English Literature.

On B5, Franklin is continuing his efforts to free the telepaths from Shadow influence, but nothing is working. Allan, who is there on other business, asks for an update. After Franklin tells him, and expresses his frustration, particularly with the fact that Sheridan has yet to tell him what, exactly, is the hurry. Alexander arrives, Allan having asked her there to scan the victim of an assault, who’s having trouble remembering his attacker and wishes some psionic assistance in doing so. While there, Alexander makes telepathic contact with Franklin’s patient, who gets up and walks toward her and doesn’t go crazy or try to destroy everything or reach out to control the equipment.

It only lasts a moment, and as soon as it’s over, Alexander buggers off. Franklin tracks her down, and she apologizes for messing up his experiment, but Franklin gleefully explains that this is the first progress he’s made in ages, and asks her to come back when she’s done with her current job. She reluctantly agrees.

On Mars, Garibaldi arrives at Edgars’ palatial home—Edgars apologizing for how small it is, saying his place on Earth is way bigger. But domed space is at a premium on Mars. However, because he owns businesses on Mars, Edgars has to live on the red planet for half the year to make use of the tax benefits.

Edgars wants to know why Garibaldi was so eager for a face-to-face right now, and Garibaldi explains that he’s concerned about Sheridan. Yes, Clark’s bad news, but Sheridan’s military attack will just tear Earth apart. Garibaldi also seems to think that Sheridan has designs to take over Earth himself. But Garibaldi absolutely does not want to turn him over to Clark. He’d rather Edgars do it. He’ll be seen as a hero, and that will be capital that will be useful to him.

Over the course of the next few days, Garibaldi and Edgars have several conversations. It’s clear that Edgars doesn’t trust Clark, and is especially concerned at how much power he’s given to Psi Corps. He makes it clear that the megacorps have really been running things, and they suspected that Clark had Santiago assassinated long before B5 released the footage proving it.

One of those conversations happens in the middle of the night, with Garibaldi forcibly taken from his bed and brought to a room with a telepath (Edgars wants him frazzled and out of sorts so he’s less likely to hide his thoughts). Edgars asks him several pointed questions, with the telepath showing with a nod whether or not Garibaldi is telling the truth. Garibaldi says he doesn’t trust telepaths.

On B5, Alexander is able to help Franklin find a way around the Shadow implants, though Alexander also has to stop the patient from killing himself. When Sheridan checks in with Ivanova, he transfers down to medlab, at which point Franklin demands to know what he needs the telepaths for so urgently. Sheridan only tells him in private on a secure coded channel—and does so off-camera, so we only see Franklin’s devastated reaction. He then asks if Alexander is available for a long-term gig that will involve travel to Mars.

On Mars, Edgars eventually reveals that he’s incredibly concerned about telepaths. Both he and Garibaldi agree that there will be a reckoning, and Edgars’ concern is that it won’t be a war in the military sense, but rather a war of information and privacy—or lack of same. Plus, Clark has given Psi Corps a great deal more power, and they won’t just give that up once Clark is out of power.

They also agree that Sheridan needs to be stopped. Edgars needs Sheridan off the table to that Clark will relax and lower his guard. He’ll read Garibaldi completely in on what he has planned once he knows for sure he can trust the erstwhile security chief. And his condition for gaining that trust: to turn Sheridan over to Clark. Garibaldi initially refuses, as Clark will kill him, but Edgars assures him that he’ll want to capture Sheridan and gain the propaganda value of having him as a prisoner.

Garibaldi then reveals how to capture Sheridan: through his father David. Edgars says that Clark’s been turning Earth upside down to find David to no avail, but Garibaldi knows how to do it. David suffers from a blood disease that requires a Centauri drug called tenasticin. Find a bogus prescription of that, and you’ll probably find David.

We also see Edgars and Wade looking in on three patients, who are obviously dying, their bodies covered in lesions. Edgars instructs Wade to put them down, as if they were sick pets, as they shouldn’t have to suffer anymore and they have all the information they need.

Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is nervous because everything is going so well. Both Franklin and Garibaldi talk about how much he’s changed since returning from Z’ha’dum.

Ivanova is God. The episode opens with Ivanova’s “Voice of the Resistance” broadcast filling in the viewer on the rebel fleet’s progress. In addition, she reports to Sheridan that Clark sent two destroyers to take B5 but as soon as they arrived, they defected.

The household god of frustration. Garibaldi makes it clear that he knows that Edgars is up to something more complicated and dangerous than he lets on, mostly by the very fact that he hired Garibaldi. If he just wanted to keep his shipments safe from his competitors, he’d buy a ship and keep it off the radar. He needed secrecy from everyone, which is why he hired Garibaldi.

If you value your lives, be somewhere else. When Ivanova tells Sheridan that Delenn is finishing up her business on Minbar and will be returning to B5 soon, Sheridan gets this goofy grin on his face. It’s very adorable.

The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander is able to telepathically help the Shadow-infested psis. Meantime, the poor telepath that Edgars hires to polygraph Garibaldi is “paid” by being shot and killed by Wade.

The Shadowy Vorlons. Alexander hears the sound of a Shadow vessel when she scans Franklin’s patient. Also, according to Edgars, the Shadows’ interest in Psi Corps is what prompted Clark to keep them close and make them a bigger part of his administration. Garibaldi doesn’t bother to explain the reasons to Edgars—that the Shadows are vulnerable to telepathy—probably because the Shadows aren’t really a factor anymore.

Looking ahead. Sheridan’s use for the Shadow-infested telepaths will finally be revealed in “Endgame.” Edgars’ full plan will be revealed next time in “The Face of the Enemy.”

No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. The last question Edgars asks Garibaldi while in the room with the telepath is if he’s still in love with Lise. Garibaldi lies and says no. Later, Garibaldi and Lise have a fraught conversation in which it’s clear that Garibaldi still loves her and that she needs more than a declaration, especially since it’s clear that he’s married to the job first, and any relationship is secondary.

Welcome aboard. Back from “Conflicts of Interest” are Denise Gentile as Lise and Mark Schneider as Wade. Back from “Moments of Transition,” and actually appearing in front of the camera and credited for the first time, is the late great Efram Zimbalist Jr. as Edgars. All three will return next week in “The Face of the Enemy.” In addition, Shelley Robertson does excellent work with her facial expressions and actually gets credited despite having no dialogue as the telepath.

Trivial matters. The episode title derives from Aristotle’s description of happiness, which Edgars quotes: “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

Edgars mentions times in history when the people of a nation let fascists take over, citing Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1939 (which actually happened, though it would’ve been more accurate to say Germany in 1933, which is when Hitler was elected chancellor), and also Russia again in 2013 and Iraq in 2025 (which didn’t happen), as well as France in 2112 (which still might). Edgars also makes reference to the Nazi party and the Communist party, as well as the “Jihad party,” which one assumes is supposed to be one in our future and the show’s past.

Garibaldi mentions that three times Mars tried to kill him. One would be when he and Sinclair trekked across the surface of Mars, mentioned in “Infection” and dramatized in the “Shadows Past and Present” storyline that ran through the fifth through eighth issues of DC’s B5 comic book by Tim DeHaas & John Ridgway.

The echoes of all of our conversations.

“Did you know this place was named after the god of war? Its rising foretold the death of kings, the collapse of empires. It was a very bad sign. Now there are two million people living here.”

“It’s still a bad sign.”

—Wade and Garibaldi discussing Mars.

The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Everybody lies.” As with “Conflicts of Interest,” we have Michael Garibaldi as a twenty-third-century Dashiell Hammett character, with his manly demands and his cynical voiceovers and his weepy scene with Lise and his macho posturing and his reluctant descent into betrayal.

And it’s actually kind of fun. Jerry Doyle in particular sells the character’s disgust at having to return to Mars. Denise Gentile is a little too melodramatic, but given the awful dialogue she’s stuck reading, there’s only so much she can do.

The episode is, however, owned by the mighty Efram Zimbalist Jr. Edgars has to deliver a lot of exposition, and the dialogue he has as written could very easily have devolved into didactic droning. But his silken voice and relaxed delivery absolutely sell it. It’s a magnificent performance.

Overall, this is a very quiet, talky episode, the calm before the storm, and almost entirely setup. It sets a lot of important things in motion, many of which will pay off next time. On its own it just barely works, mainly due to the frank discussions about telepaths between Edgars and Garibaldi, which Doyle and Zimbalist Jr. make more compelling than they might be in the hands of lesser talents. Still and all, these discussions do a nice job explicating the ethical issues that would come up if a subset of humanity developed the ability to read minds.

Mention should also be made of Shelley Robertson, who has a superb gift for facial expressions, conveying quite a bit without saying a word as the telepath who serves as Garibaldi’s polygraph.

Next week: “The Face of the Enemy.”[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Watchlist

Here Are All the Genre Movies Premiering in January!

This month’s releases feature a variety of zombies, an alien time loop, and a super-powered dog…

By Petrana Radulovic

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Published on January 6, 2026

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There is a lot of entertainment out there these days, and a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror titles to parse through.  So we’re rounding up the genre movies coming out each month. 

January is apparently a great month for bloody horror and post-apocalyptic sci-fi. The sequel to 28 Years Later hits theaters, along with movies about vampire cops, murderous chimpanzees, and haunted nursing homes. There are also two horror video game adaptations: Return to Silent Hill and Iron Lung. 

The Home — in theaters January 1

Pete Davidson stars in this psychological horror film, playing Max, a troubled graffiti artist who works at a retirement home as part of court-ordered community service. Max is cautioned not to go to the fourth floor of the home. But he soon starts to notice disturbing things happening to the residents and begins to investigate. 

We Bury the Dead — in theaters January 2

A grieving woman searches for her husband in a military disaster zone. She joins a body retrieval unit, still hoping to find him alive. But things begin to take a terrifying turn when some of the corpses she’s retrieved start to stir. They become more and more violent as the mission goes on. 

Greenland 2: Migration— in theaters January 9

Five years ago (in 2020’s Greenland) a comet destroyed most of Earth. Now the survivors, including the Garrity family, must leave the safety of their shelter in Greenland and trek across the wastelands of what was once Europe in order to find a new home. 

Primate — in theaters January 9

After being bitten by a rabid animal, a pet chimpanzee named Ben goes on a violent rampage, turning a tropical vacation into a bloody fight for survival. Ben is smarter than the average chimp and can use his tablet to communicate, which leads to some chilling moments in the trailer with the repeating robotic voice.

Starbright — in theaters January 9

During an eclipse, a star crashes to earth and a young woman becomes its guardian. The trailer shows the star as a small fairylike creature and the footage starts off like a typical fantasy, with the young woman twirling around in a fancy dress and dancing with a handsome stranger. But things take an action-packed turn with various shoot-outs and explosions. Apparently guarding a star isn’t for the fainthearted. 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple — in theaters January 16

Like the rest of the movies in the post-apocalyptic horror 28 Days series, The Bone Temple takes place in a world where a virus induces homicidal rage and eventually causes the collapse of society. Characters from the previous installments return—including Cillian Murphy’s Jim from the 2002 original movie.

Killer Whale — on VOD January 16

While on a tropical vacation, two young women take a getaway to a secluded lagoon. But their blissful retreat takes a bloody turn when a vengeful orca finds them and decides that it wants revenge for years in captivity. Orcas aren’t usually violent towards humans in the wild, but this one has an agenda. 

All You Need Is Kill — in select theaters January 16

In this surreal animated sci-fi action flick, adapted from a Japanese light novel of the same name, a young woman is caught in a time loop. Every morning she wakes up and battles monstrous alien creatures, dying in the process. And then she wakes up again and again. She’s not sure how to escape till she crosses paths with a young man also trapped in the same time loop. If this sounds familiar, All You Need Is Kill was previously adapted in the 2014 live action movie Edge of Tomorrow.

The Confession — in theaters January 16

A musician returns to her childhood home only to find a taped murder confession from her late father. Dead animals start showing up around her home and her son starts acting erratically. What links them might be a strange town folktale about a man who lured children like the Pied Piper. 

Charlie the Wonderdog — in theaters January 16

Owen Wilson voices a dog who gets abducted by aliens and then gains superpowers. His human family is understandably surprised—but also concerned about his safety. But Wonderdog just wants to save the day. And when an evil cat starts plotting for world domination, he’ll need to step up his hero game. 

Night Patrol — in theaters January 16

An LAPD officer learns that one squad of officers is hiding a dark supernatural secret: they’re vampires who prey on unsuspecting victims in poor neighborhoods. He must team up with some of the street gangs from his childhood neighborhood in order to fight the vampire cops. 

Cosmic Princess Kaguya! — on Netflix January 22

Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is a modern musical reimagining of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. In this version, the mysterious (and very hyperactive) princess crashlands from the moon into a regular high school student’s apartment. The two bond over music in a virtual world, where they’re able to pursue their dreams away from the stress of day-to-day life.

Mercy  — in theaters January 23

In the near future (the scary year of 2029), a detective must prove to an AI judge that he did not murder his wife. Chris Pratt stars as the wrongfully convicted detective, with Rebecca Ferguson as the advanced artificial intelligence overseeing the trial. 

Return to Silent Hill  — in theaters January 23

Return to Silent Hill specifically adapts the second Silent Hill game. It will be the third movie based on the popular horror video game franchise. In this one, a widower named James receives a letter from his deceased wife which urges him to go to the mysterious town of Silent Hill. While there, he learns the town has been clouded in a strange supernatural fog, with monsters lurking within. 

Mother of Flies — on Shudder January 23

After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, a young woman seeks out a strange witch in the woods of the Catskills, who claims she can trick death. But the price of her cure is high—will it be worth the supernatural costs? Mother of Flies comes from the Adams family, a family of indie horror directors who also star as the main characters in the movie.

Iron Lung — in select theaters January 30

The feature film debut of popular YouTuber Markiplier (real name Mark Fischbach), Iron Lung is based on a sci-fi horror game of the same name. In a distant post-apocalyptic future, a convict (played by Markiplier) is sent to explore an ocean of blood on a distant moon in a tiny, poorly constructed submarine.[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Watchlist

Here Are All the Genre TV Premieres Airing in January!

New recruits enroll at Starfleet Academy, a college student tries his hand at vigilante crime-fighting, and a struggling actor becomes the MCU’s newest superhero

By Petrana Radulovic

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Published on January 5, 2026

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There is a lot of entertainment out there these days, and a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror titles to parse through. So we’re rounding up the genre shows coming out each month.

It’s the start of winter anime season, which means a lot of new anime, including the return of some favorite titles like Jujutsu Kaisen and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and spinoffs of some popular anime like Trigun and My Hero Academia. A new Star Trek show also launches this month, along with the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe series, and a Game of Thrones spinoff.

The Outcast — Crunchyroll (January 2)

(Season 6) A college student discovers a supernatural world after stumbling into a tiny village and being attacked by zombies. A mysterious sword-wielding girl saves him, but that’s only the beginning of his adventures. This anime is based on a Chinese webcomic called Under One Person. 

Sentenced to Be a Hero — Crunchyroll (January 3) 

In this fantasy world, criminals are sentenced to acts of heroism—and this condemned criminal must battle endless hordes of monsters. When he dies, he’s simply resurrected and forced to fight them again. But there might be a way out, if he allies with a mysterious goddess…

Kunon the Sorcerer Can See — Crunchyroll (January 4)

A young blind man named Kunon decides to hone water magic in order to create a new set of eyes. Kunon begins to show great skill in his magic training, even surpassing his mentor in ability. But even as his magical ability grows, his main goal remains out of reach—will he ever be able to see? 

Noble Reincarnation: Born Blessed, So I’ll Obtain Ultimate Power — Crunchyroll (January 4) 

A very powerful six-year old has been reborn as the child of an emperor. He has a ton of powers, which increase with every loyal follower who pledges themselves to his cause. But all this wealth, power, and privilege has a hidden cost, especially when it comes to the royal court’s political machinations. 

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes —  Crunchyroll (January 5) 

In a world where most people have some sort of superpower, only a few are chosen to go on and become heroes. But one unlicensed college student decides to test his luck and becomes a vigilante. This series takes place five years before the events of popular anime series My Hero Academia.

The Demon King’s Daughter is Too Kind!! — Crunchyroll (January 6) 

Demon King Ahriman wants to conquer the world—till he’s stopped by his compassionate daughter Dou. She’s just such a sweetheart that everyone who meets her melts immediately! Jahi, the king’s loyal secretary, decides to train Dou into a proper, terrifying demon—but can she overcome Dou’s adorableness and kind heart? 

There was a Cute Girl in the Hero’s Party, so I Tried Confessing to Her — Crunchyroll (January 6)

In this comedic enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance, a demon unexpectedly falls for a beautiful priestess. He’s supposed to destroy her adventuring party, but now all he wants to do is confess his affection for her—even if that means going behind the demon king’s back.

Isekai Office Worker: The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter — Crunchyroll (January 6)

An office worker is transported to a fantasy kingdom… but instead of becoming a hero, he plays to his strengths and gets a job in the palace’s accounting department. His skills attract the attention of the handsome, but icy, Knight Captain and soon a romance blossoms between them. 

Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord — Crunchyroll (January 7)

Van, the child of a marquis, realizes that he has immense knowledge from a past life and becomes a prodigy in magic. His snooty battle magic-favoring family doesn’t care for his crafting magic skill, so they banish him to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. But Van uses this banishment as an opportunity to maximize his crafting magic and tap into the memories of his past life so that he can revitalize the tiny village. 

An Adventurer’s Daily Grind at Age 29 — Crunchyroll (January 7)

Though he grew up poor and hunting for food, Hajime Shinonome enjoys a comfortable life as the local village’s resident adventure: he gets money and food in exchange for going on quests and fending off monsters. But his life takes a bit of a turn when he rescues an orphaned girl from a monstrous slime and decides to adopt her. Adventuring isn’t so easy when you have a hyper sword-wielding child tagging along. 

A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation — Crunchyroll (January 7)

A chancellor in a fantasy realm gets transported to another fantasy realm. But he’s not about to let this kerfuffle get him down. In fact, he’s determined to use this as a chance to get some much needed rest and relaxation from his noble duties. 

Jujutsu Kaisen — Crunchyroll (January 8)

(Season 3) Following season two’s catastrophic Shibuya Incident arc, the third season of Jujutsu Kaisen sees the sorcerers enter the “Culling Game”—a twisted battle royale conducted by ancient sorcerer Kenjaku as a way to evolve humanity. The sorcerers and cursed users must battle each other to the death across different sections of Japan.  

The Holy Grail of Eris — Crunchyroll (January 8)

After a terrible betrayal, kindhearted Constance Grail is sentenced to death. But as she awaits execution, the ghost of Scarlett Castiel, a noblewoman executed for trying to poison the prince’s lover, whispers to her and offers her a chance at salvation. Together, the two of them unravel a conspiracy hiding in the kingdom. 

Roll Over and Die — Crunchyroll (January 8)

Even though she’s prophesied to hold great power and defeat the Demon Lord, Flum doesn’t really understand her abilities. Her party leader sees her as a liability and ends up selling her into slavery. But when Flum is thrown into a gladiatorial death match against some monsters, her power finally ignites.

The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife — Crunchyroll (January 8)

Akira Tounome, a polite invisible man, runs a detective agency with the help of Shizuka Yakou,  a mild-mannered blind woman. As they work together day after day, a slow romance begins to blossom between them. After all, Shizuka can always tell where Akira is, even though he’s invisible and she can’t see. It’s a sweet slice-of-life with a magical spin. 

Fire Force — Crunchyroll (January 9) 

(Season 3: Part 2) In a world where people spontaneously combust and turn into fiery monsters, a group of pyrokinetic fire fighters is entrusted to protect humanity. This new season sees the main characters uncovering a big secret, but before they can stop an impending disaster, they’re branded as traitors. 

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar — Crunchyroll (January 9)

In this quiet seaside town, the most popular boys at rival prestigious academies just so happen to be vampires and werewolves respectively. When a new student transfers to the vampire boys’ school, both sets of popular boys find themselves inexplicably drawn to her…. Based on the popular webtoon of the same name, it’s like Twilight, but with even more boys.

Trigun Stargaze — Crunchyroll (January 10)

In the distant future, humanity is forced to leave Earth and searches the stars for habitable planets. On one distant arid planet, an outlaw named Vash wanders the wastelands, hiding from his hostile brother. This series, which is a sequel to Trigun Stampede (itself a reboot of a ‘90s anime), picks up two and a half years after the first show and finds Vash hiding out in a remote village after a catastrophic tragedy. 

Dead Account — Crunchyroll (January 10)

A contentious online streamer who purposefully trolls his viewers with ragebait is actually a soft-hearted older brother who just wants to take care of his little sister’s medical bills. He doesn’t care if the world hates him, so long as the money from his streams helps out his sister. But when the unthinkable happens, he finds himself pulled into the world of digital exorcists who fight digital evil spirits and ghosts who possess the accounts of the deceased. 

Fate/strange Fake — Crunchyroll (January 10)

The Holy Grail is a magical wish-granting device capable of fulfilling any desire—which means people desperately want it and wage full wars to obtain it. After the end of the Fifth Grail War in Japan, rumors point to a new grail in the United States of America. Mages start to gather and a new battle for the grail begins. 

A Misanthrope Teaches a Class for Demi-Humans — Crunchyroll (January 10)

A grumpy, misanthropic teacher takes a new job at a remote mountain school, hoping that it will be a relaxing experience. But he quickly learns the school is for demi-humans—werewolves, mermaids, half-rabbit creatures, oh my! His new job is to help them learn to blend in with humans! 

Primal — Adult Swim (January 11)

(Season 3) From legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, Primal takes place in a fantastical version of the past, where Neanderthals and dinosaurs coexist. It follows a neanderthal man named Spear who bonds with a female t-rex named Fang. The two bond after both losing their families and form a partnership as they encounter different humans, like Vikings and Ancient Egyptians, and dangerous animals. 

Hell’s Paradise — Crunchyroll (January 11) 

A group of death row convicts are sent to search for the coveted elixir of life on a mythical and dangerous island. In this new season, the main characters arrive at the castle that belongs to the monsters who rule the island. Meanwhile, other expeditions have arrived on the island, also seeking the powerful elixir. 

Kaya-chan isn’t Scary — Crunchyroll (January 11) 

A precocious five year-old constantly gets in trouble in kindergarten… but it turns out that it’s because she can see evil spirits! Her way of getting rid of them is punching them, which is why she’s been getting into trouble! A new teacher aims to help her out. 

The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom — Crunchyroll (January 11) 

A girl is reincarnated into her favorite romance video game! But as the main villainess, instead of one of the main characters! The game’s story progresses as normal, but things take a turn when the prince of a neighboring country swoops in and unexpectedly proposes to her. 

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess — Crunchyroll (January 12)

A warrior princess is captured by a demon army, expecting to be tortured. But the torture comes in the form of delicious food! Can she resist these tempting treats and keep the secrets of her kingdom? 

Oshi No Ko — Crunchyroll (January 14) 

(Season 3) The twin children of a tragically murdered pop idol are actually reincarnated fans of hers, who were also brutally killed. They make their way in the entertainment industry, while also trying to solve the murders of their mother and their former lives.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy — Paramount+ (January 15)

The newest Star Trek spinoff series follows a class of Starfleet cadets as they train to be officers. Starfleet Academy takes place in the far-future timeline of the Star Trek franchise and this class of cadets is the first one in over a century. The students, made up of humans and aliens alike, are taught aboard the USS Athena, which docks in San Francisco. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End — Crunchyroll (January 16)

(Season 2) One of the most evocative fantasy anime out there, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End follows the titular elven mage who has outlived all the members of her original adventuring party. She’s determined to journey to the land of the dead, so she can pay final tributes to her old friends. Now, she travels with two young heroes. The show dives into the ramifications of long-lived fantasy races and doesn’t hold back in getting really poignant about the passage of time.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — HBO (January 18)

The latest prequel to Game of Thrones adapts George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas. The stories follow Sir Duncan the Tall (or Dunk), a lowborn knight, and his young squire, Prince Aegon Targaryen (known as “Egg”). And yes, Egg is one of those Targaryens. 

The Beauty — FX/Hulu (January 21) 

Ryan Murphy’s latest is a sci-fi body horror series about a sexually transmitted virus that transforms regular people into absolutely gorgeous ones, but with gruesome and terrifying consequences. Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall star as FBI agents looking into the bloody deaths of international supermodels. 

Wonder Man — Disney+ (January 27)

Struggling actor Simon Williams lands the lead role in the remake of an in-universe superhero flick—and eventually gets superpowers himself. Apparently, in the MCU’s version of Hollywood, superpowers are looked down upon, so Simon has to hide his newfound abilities. He’s joined by Trevor Slatterly, the actor who once “played” the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 and also returned for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings after being kidnapped by a criminal organization for impersonating the Mandarin. Hopefully, he can finally catch a break![end-mark]

The post Here Are All the Genre TV Premieres Airing in January! appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Dust Bunny

A Family of Monsters: On Dust Bunny and Fighting for the Love We Deserve

Okay, the monster IS a metaphor. Just not the one you think.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on January 5, 2026

Image: Lionsgate

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Image: Lionsgate

Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny has been hailed by many as a grim fairy tale of the sort that doesn’t get much play these days, which seems a fair assessment: Unless you plant yourself firmly in the horror genre (a la Stranger Things), most of our modern fantastical stories with children steer clear of darker themes. Yet fairy tale—the old kind with blood and death and dread—is pretty firmly where Dust Bunny resides.

Having said this, I didn’t find Dust Bunny’s darkness to be what set it apart, despite the focus on hitman shenanigans and parent murder. Nor was I particularly interested in what kind of fairy tale it is so much as whose. But there’s another layer here that hopefully isn’t getting missed in the excited chatter—namely, I can’t say that I’ve run across too many fairy tales that center entirely on building your ideal family, and the trials that come with it.

And I’m not just saying this because I happen to be a queer writer talking about the work of another queer writer and filmmaker, knowing that queers are famously fans and proponents of found family narratives. I’m saying it because Dust Bunny is genuinely one of the most moving treatises on the value and importance of found family that I’ve ever experienced. Because, in this story, family is something hard won and frightfully difficult to assemble. You don’t just stumble across your family and enmesh seamlessly—you must be willing to fight for the privilege of having one.

That’s important because the narrative of (straight, cisgender, heteronormative, biological, nuclear) family is very much the opposite: You are born into a family; you are made from bits of the people who created you; you grow together and, therefore, you must all love each other. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t entirely get along or what hurts occurred in the past because this structure is built-in, unassailable, and sacrosanct. Betraying the pact of familial bond is portrayed as evil of the highest order in our society—take a look at the recent backlash against children who choose to sever contact with their parents, if you doubt it. Only a monster would ever consider doing so.

But Dust Bunny is a story about monsters.

It’s a story about monsters who love monsters, and perhaps how we’re all just monsters desperately reaching out for other monsters who will care for us. How do I know this? (Aside from the the fact that Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal was telling the same story, using very different relationships?) Well, when I reviewed the film, I pointed out that one of the central questions the story posed was whether the monster under Aurora’s bed was real, or simply a metaphor for her own lived trauma. Thankfully, what we find is so much more beautiful than that. But to fully explain what I’m getting at, we’ll have to dig a little deeper.

To recap briefly: In a large unnamed city, Aurora lives across the hall from Resident 5B, and is guided toward him by a wish. She follows him into the dark one night and learns that he’s a killer, but misunderstands what sort—she believes he kills monsters (fantastical), when 5B is actually an expert at killing human beings (a different kind of monster). When the monster under her bed devours her parents, Aurora hires 5B to kill it. 5B inspects her home and believes that her parents were murdered by someone who meant to kill him and got the wrong apartment number. His handler insists that 5B must kill Aurora because she’s seen too much, but he’s adamant about keeping the girl safe, so everything gets messier from there as more assassins come after both him and the girl. Aurora continues to insist that the monster is playing a part in these affairs, while 5B insists that it’s imaginary, created to help her cope with being witness to so much violence and death.

The movie eventually reveals that the monster is real, of course. But I would argue that the monster is still a metaphor—just not the one we’ve been trained to expect. Aurora’s monster is, in fact, a metaphor for her and her own monstrosity. The monster is still absolutely real in the tangible sense, still an agent of murder and chaos. But the monster is also a piece of the little girl who created it.

It is a tacit understanding of this that prompts 5B to tell Aurora at the end of the film, “It’s your monster. You have to live with it.” And he would know better than anyone, wouldn’t he? 5B has his own monster to contend with—the one that lets him kill other people for money after being trained to do so by his mother. You see? Monsters and more monsters, not simply one furry monster who lives under the floor, waiting for tasty parents to eat.

There are hints to this connection all over the place, right from the beginning: When Aurora follows 5B and witnesses his slaying of a monster (in truth, several people under a New Years’ dragon costume) in Chinatown, she watches from a nearby building rooftop while wearing a bunny mask she finds in a trashcan. Year of the Rabbit or not, the mask is our first clue that the dust bunny under her bed is aligned with Aurora in some way. But it is perhaps more important to note that the monster comes into being because Aurora wishes it into existence; in effect, Aurora is less a human child protagonist in this tale, and more of a magical creature herself.

So, whose fairy tale is this?

When I ask this question, I’m not asking which character maintains the focal perspective—that is largely Aurora throughout the story. There are moments where the audience gets to witness 5B’s activities away from her, but the POV (in terms of narrative journey, at least) is pretty evenly split once Aurora and 5B meet. What I mean is that fairy tales often center on a character or characters who come into contact with magical, terrible things: witches, wolves, evil queens, people turned into animals. Those magical things can make the lives of these characters better or worse, but they are still the figures the fairy tale enacts its mechanics on.

There’s an argument to be made that Dust Bunny is 5B’s fairy tale. Both he and Aurora are missing something in their lives, but he is not a magical being unto himself, no matter what Aurora thinks—he’s a huntsman or woodsman, an outside party that comes into contact with the extraordinary and lets it change him. And to some extent, I think that the movie agrees with this reading because the structure of its opening supports the theory pretty flawlessly.

Put it this way: Dust Bunny has practically no dialogue until Aurora enlists 5B’s services to kill the monster under her bed. We get very basic, rote lines between Aurora and her foster parents, platitudes and worry and a child’s fearful pleading. But characters in the film don’t really start talking to each other—don’t come alive as complex people—in any meaningful way until Aurora is sitting in 5B’s kitchen, telling him what happened to her parents. She pays him with money she steals from a Sunday mass service in the city; decked out in cat eye sunglasses, scarf over her hair, Aurora takes the offering plate and runs out into the sunlight, elated and grinning.

In stories such as these, evoking the Church (which was relatively common, in an oblique sense after a certain point in time) and so pointedly going against it would almost guarantee comeuppance on the someone who did wrong. After all, Aurora stole money that would have been put to Godly use, donated by humble, hardworking believers. But we never hear another word about it—5B doesn’t even bother to scold Aurora for theft when she tells him where the money came from. If you’re some stripe of Christian, you might assume this means that the money went to its rightful use in helping a kid who just lost another set of parents. To me, it can’t help but read as one very powerful little girl stealing from an institution that has absolutely no hold over her. She’s got nothing to worry about from that crew.

You know, like the old fairy tales. Where coding morality wasn’t really the point of the exercise.

We eventually find out from Brenda, the FBI agent posing as a social services worker, that Aurora has lost several sets of parents—three to be precise. (It’s a little fuzzy on whether they were three sets of foster parents, or if the first set to die were her biological parents.) When 5B questions Aurora about these deaths, she admits that they are her fault; she wished for a monster to kill her first parents. When he asks why, she only says, “They weren’t very nice to me.” The allusion is to some form of abuse, though it’s possible that their crimes were less severe… not likely, I’d wager, but possible.

It gets uglier when her latest foster parents are added into this picture, however. Though they seem relatively benign at the outset, a later view of their living room shows a portrait with the two of them… and a blank-faced little girl with long brown hair. Dollars to doughnuts, this duo had been “shopping” for a child in the foster system, and already decided what they wanted her to look like. Presumably Aurora’s face would have been added to the painting if they’d decided to go through with the adoption. (Let’s not even get into the fact that they were having her call them “mommy” and “daddy” before said adoption took place. If you know anything about foster care, you know that’s not a great call unless the child requests it.)

The result of all these potential parents getting gobbled up is that Aurora believes herself “wicked” and thinks that the monster is eating her subsequent families (and potentially her now) because she doesn’t deserve family after what she’s done. But 5B doesn’t agree with this assessment. He looks at Aurora and sees her for what she is beneath the unlikely circumstances and the magic he doesn’t yet believe in: a frightened child. One so terrified of the beast she called into existence that she won’t even touch the floor in her own home. He’s the wicked one, obviously, him, the hired killer who’s unbothered at the idea of cutting up dead bodies into little pieces and packing them away into cute panda rolly suitcases.

The fact that Aurora wants to watch and help him do this, that she delights in seeing him slay that dragon, well, that’s just normal kid stuff.

5B was a child once, too, of course, and this is where we come to Laverne, his handler and also, unfortunately, his mother. It’s here that a head-to-head is put to incredible use, showcasing the difference in having family through obligation versus family through choice.

Nearly the first words out of Laverne’s mouth are that she’d hug 5B, but that’s not really her thing. He settles for placing his hand over hers; in fact, he’s always seemingly looking for excuses to touch her, to create some outward indication of the bond between them. He is always honest with her, as well, even when it seems obvious that she’s never truly honest with him. She frequently puts down any inkling of emotionality he displays, and every suggestion she makes is truly an order at its heart: Kill the kid; lie low until the heat on you blows over; stop thinking that taking care of a little girl will “fix” your brokenness.

Deep down, 5B knows his mother will never be kind of the familial connection he keeps seeking—at one point, he tells Aurora that he used to think his mother was “the most beautiful woman in the world” before realizing that this was a sort of trick played on him by his brain to blind him to her faults. Even so, he reaches out for connection, closeness, a shared rapport with the woman who made him. 

Laverne’s only true ways of connecting with him are by trying to murder a child he keeps telling her to leave alone, and sharing food. Even in this, it’s important to note the contrast: 5B feeds Aurora, too, but always as nourishment and with the intent to share, a growing affinity built on a foundation of dim sum and sliced apples. Laverne likes to use food to placate and quiet—she frequently asks if 5B wants food when she’s trying to redirect him, and then does the same to Aurora after telling the girl point blank that she’s not old enough to be a whole person in Laverne’s eyes. (Aurora’s vindictive plucking of flowers from the vase at their table afterward might be her biggest power move of the whole film.)

This difference then goes one step further: When Laverne tries to quiet Aurora by asking if she wants a sandwich, 5B replies that the girl doesn’t eat pork. Aurora is visibly shocked that he remembers this—he only knows it from one conversation that they had about cutting up a dead body. When 5B told her that it was like a butcher cutting up a pig, she told him, “I like pigs.” …And that was all it took. Because love is consideration, and consideration is often simply keeping details about people in your mind so you can better care for them.

How little has Aurora been loved that she found this one instance of remembrance so jarring?

It’s here that we reach a pivotal turning point in the story, though nothing truly momentous seems to have occurred. Aurora invaded this lunch between 5B and Laverne to tell her hitman off for trying to leave her behind, but leaves that meal knowing that something has altered between them. She doesn’t want to be a hiring client anymore—she wants to be family.

The rules of engagement have changed.

‘Found family’ is such a funny term because it evokes the opposite of what it is—as though you could just stumble across a box in an alley that is full of all the love and connection you’ll ever need. But a found family is built of a deliberate choice that people make together, over and over. 5B has already chosen Aurora, whether he realizes it or not, in his willingness to fight for her and his desperation to keep her safe, his exasperation and gentle structure. Now she—magical creature that she is—has to fight for him.

Perhaps it seems awful to say that a child should ever have to do anything to be loved, but here’s another place where the importance of fairy tales comes into play. Because fairy tales are a special type of story, one that often acknowledges that children aren’t idiots, and that their lives are just as hard as adult ones. This isn’t about what’s right or fair for the kid. It’s just about what’s true.

Aurora starts strong straight away. At dim sum, she suggests that 5B could become her father, then insists that she’s his kid when the Conspicuously Inconspicuous Man shows up to throw down the hitman gauntlet. He sees Aurora and balks, then tells 5B that he doesn’t mean to question the guy’s parenting, and Aurora readily replies, “Then don’t.” When they leave the restaurant, she tries out holding 5B’s hand, and he allows it.

But a hit squad follows them home. And there’s still an ever-hungry monster under the floor to contend with—the one ready to swallow Aurora whole for her wickedness, screams and all.

There’s give and take in the final showdown at Aurora’s apartment. 5B hasn’t fully proven himself either because there’s a final step he must take toward sharing a reality with the girl. That comes when he finally learns that the monster is real, and is eaten by it… but survives due to applying thumb-sucking deterrent to himself (after getting a helpful clue from Brenda earlier in the day). In many ways, that is his most important test—proving that he could survive being eaten by it. By the monster, Aurora’s own monstrosity, a terror made of her own wishes.

When the monster gets another shot as they make to escape, it’s Aurora’s turn. She stands between it and 5B, shields him—and they realize that the monster is hers. She can control it, and it never would have eaten her because she created it. The dust bunny was constructed for and by Aurora, a shade of her own wants and needs and dreams. And it’s then that you notice the equation here was always very simple: Though she didn’t know it, Aurora could have stopped any of her parents from being eaten.

That never happened because it wasn’t until this moment that she ever had family worth defending.

Monster finds monster. Monster wraps shared monstrosity in a bow with apple skins, packs it neatly alongside rabbit dumpling heads and weird bear costumes and hippo rafts that roll down living wallpapered hallways like some sort of whimsical Charon’s ferry. What will the monsters create together, now that they’ve found each other?

The labels here don’t matter, or perhaps they do for their reasoning: Before being eaten herself, Laverne says that being called mom is “hurtful” (wow). But 5B says that he doesn’t want to be Aurora’s dad because “all your dads die.” Again the juxtaposition: One of these things is self-centered and cruel. The other is simply true. So 5B suggests that Aurora will eventually think of something else to call him, and since he can’t pronounce her name right, he’ll default to “little girl.” It’s not father and daughter, and honestly, who cares?

As the film comes to a close, they drive down a highway alongside a field of sunflowers while a peppy, foreboding ABBA song plays for the audience:

And you’d be inclined to assume that the “tiger” is Aurora’s monster, whose shadow is shown galloping beneath their car, following them to their next home. But… did you notice it? Aurora’s outfit?

It’s covered in tiger stripes.

5B found a magical being who changed his life. Always behind him, able to track him down… and exactly who he needed. A fairy tale ending, indeed.[end-mark]

The post A Family of Monsters: On <i>Dust Bunny</i> and Fighting for the Love We Deserve appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV TV movies

Made-for-TV Movies That Mimicked Hollywood, For Better or Worse

Classic stories adapted for the big screen…and almost immediately adapted again for the small screen.

By Robert Repino

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Published on January 5, 2026

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Success breeds imitation. That’s why, ever since the first movie tickets were sold for a profit, the most popular films always portend a swarm of knockoffs, often with comically lower budgets and lesser-known actors.

These days, plenty of movies that seem to pop up on streaming services almost instantaneously in the wake of a big hit movie often have the feel of an imitation. Several tiers below that are the ubiquitous mockbusters, the kind of movie that tends to end up in the DVD bargain bins of convenience stores. Zero-budget and straight-to-video, these movies often have deliberately misleading titles that get conflated with big Hollywood pictures. And whenever a “real” movie is based on intellectual property in the public domain, a mockbuster is virtually guaranteed. And why not? The producers don’t even have to change the title! In fact, the term “mockbuster” appears to have been coined in reference to the movie H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, released by Asylum Films the day before the premiere of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation.

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, however, many of these seemingly redundant movies emerged from the bizarro world of made-for-TV movies. I have written about TV movies before (here and here), and not because I think they’re good. It’s more like processing some traumatic accident. I find myself asking: Why did this have to happen? Who’s responsible? How do I move on?

Shockingly, though, a few of these unnecessary TV movies might nevertheless surprise some viewers. Despite lowered expectations, many of them were serious (if flawed) attempts to tell a story. Of course, as one would predict, many other examples would never even make it to the bargain bin. Here are a few that range from “hey, not bad!” to “what were they thinking?”

Robin Hood (1991)

I’ll start with one that’s worth a shot. In May 1991—about a month before Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves premiered in theaters—the British-made Robin Hood debuted on FOX. This may be a TV movie, but it was not made for TV. Instead, it was intended for release in American theaters until it became obvious that it would get snowed under by the looming Kevin Costner-led blockbuster.

That’s a shame, because this movie features several elements that were fresh at the time, including a “gritty” medieval look, a serious (but not too serious) take on the characters, and a more independent Maid Marian who joins the action rather than waiting to be rescued. The cast has some people worth watching. Patrick Bergin plays a charming Robin Hood. In my recollection (I was 13 at the time), FOX’s relentless ad campaign prominently featured Uma Thurman as Marian. No objection there. Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot) and Jeroen Krabbé (The Fugitive) are the bad guys, and a young Owen Teale (Game of Thrones) is Will Scarlett. Most important, this movie is comfortable with a smaller scale. Rather than telling a globe-trotting story involving the Crusades and court intrigue in faraway London, this is a more focused and realistic narrative about a local conflict.

I always viewed this one as a pleasant surprise, a thoughtful companion to the fun but somewhat overblown theatrical release that arrived a few weeks later. Why choose? You can like them both!

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1997)

By the 1990s, Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame had been adapted so many times that it seemed inevitable that Disney would eventually give it a try. Somehow, they produced a version of this heartbreaking story that featured not only singing gargoyles, but an uplifting theme and a happy ending. Even the most skeptical critics had to admit that Disney succeeded.

A year later, TNT attempted a serious take¹ on the story, with no singing gargoyles. And they brought out the big guns: Richard Harris as the villainous Dom Frollo, Salma Hayek as the gypsy dancer Esmeralda, and a barely recognizable Mandy Patinkin as Quasimodo, the tragic bell-ringer. IMdb has a funny story of how Patinkin tried but hilariously failed to secure the title role for the Disney film, which led directly to him getting the role here. And hey… wait a minute… is that Nigel Terry from Excalibur? Yes! It is!

The production values may not have aged well, but they garnered four Emmy nominations back in the day. More than that, the movie offers some smart, sensitive, and nuanced commentary on class, faith, and human progress. Still, the film is held back by the limited scope of a TV movie. There’s a lot of creative camera work to make the tiny crowd of extras resemble a massive Paris uprising. The big action set pieces are somehow less impressive than a previous made-for-TV adaptation from 1982, starring Anthony Hopkins. And the runtime may be too compact to explore all the relationships, from the unrequited love stories to the fraught mentor-mentee tension between Quasimodo and Dom Frollo. So, your mileage may vary with this one. But if you need more adaptations of this story in your life—like the people who run this blog that I discovered—then it’s worth a try.

Joan of Arc (1999)

In the fall of 1999, director Luc Besson followed up The Fifth Element (1997) with The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, starring his then-wife Milla Jovovich. Critics were not receptive. Many pointed to the disjointed themes: the movie had feminist aspirations, but also casually toyed with the idea that Joan was mentally ill. The most generous reviews tried to compare the film to Braveheart (1995), arguing that it was a clumsy patriotic epic that was meant to be more fun than historically accurate… not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Expectations for a TV movie, however, are mercifully lower. And so the two-part Joan of Arc released on CBS earlier that year enjoyed a warmer reception. Rather than speculating about the main character’s psychological state, this version opts for a paint-by-numbers narrative, no doubt tested to please a wider audience. Joan of Arc plays it so safe that if you search for reviews, you’ll find many conservative-leaning websites praising the film for not bashing the Catholic Church.

At the time, the major networks were on a roll with high-concept miniseries. Among these, Merlin (1998) with Sam Neill might be the best known. Joan of Arc has a similar feel, especially when it comes to the talented cast. Leelee Sobieski takes the title role, supported by Peter O’Toole (who won an Emmy), Olympia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine, and Neil Patrick Harris (back when most people would still point to the screen and say, “Doogie Howser?”) Whereas The Messenger received multiple Razzie nominations, this redundant TV movie was rewarded with four Emmy nominations and thirteen more from the Golden Globes.

I don’t really know what any of that means, though. Miniseries are notoriously bloated, and this is no exception. By the time it reaches its first battle scene, most feature-length films would be over. Joan of Arc might be more useful as an artifact of how religious piety (and zealotry) was depicted in popular culture in the late 20^th century. After all, the movie starts with Joan thanking God while burning to death, an act of fanaticism that I hope would be explored and deconstructed a bit more in the present day. Besides, can anyone really top Jane Wiedlin’s Joan from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? That’s a debate for another time.²

Goddess of Love (1988)

Let’s crawl out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world, where we find a movie that is much closer to the classic mockbuster model that we love to ridicule. I’m talking about Goddess of Love, released by NBC in 1988. Props to fellow Reactor writer Reneysh Vittal for reintroducing me to this mess. I remember that NBC promoted this movie so relentlessly that there was no escaping the ads—even David Letterman satirized the promotional campaign run by his own network.

So here’s the plot: on Mount Olympus, which looks strangely like a backyard in Beverly Hills, the god Zeus (John Rhys-Davies!?) punishes a disobedient Venus by imprisoning her in statue form. Her only way of escaping is to make a man fall in love with her. Centuries later, the statue is delivered to 1980s Los Angeles. Through a silly sequence of events, a hairdresser named Ted places his engagement ring on the statue’s finger, bringing the goddess to life. While Ted dodges her increasingly aggressive advances, Venus discovers the wonders of modern America. And yes, in typical ’80s fashion, that includes a credit card and a makeover.

Goddess of Love is a remake of a comedy from the 1940s, but its inspiration (and much of its script) appears to be drawn from Mannequin, the critically panned but financially successful rom-com released a year earlier. Perhaps the most blatant rip-off involves Mannequin’s main comic relief, Hollywood Montrose (Meshach Taylor), a gay character whose positive portrayal was considered trailblazing for the time. Goddess goes for the same laughs by casting Little Richard in a similar role… but they don’t commit to the bit, leaving him mostly out of the plot.

Even if Little Richard had the chance to carry the movie, he would have been weighed down by the puzzling decision to cast Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White in the lead. I don’t blame them for trying, but the script does her no favors. Maybe this could have worked if, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early performances, she only had to deliver a handful of quippy, memorable lines. But no: she’s expected to be funny, cutesy, sexy, emotional, and sometimes scary. Even for a more experienced actor, it’s a lot to ask. If NBC ever re-ran this one, it was certainly without the relentless ad campaign.

Am I leaving out any redundant, ripped off, or mockbuster-adjacent examples from my list of TV movies? I’m not entirely sure if I want to know, but if you have any that have stuck with you over the years, please add them in the comments. And may the goddess of love have mercy on our souls.

1. This was originally titled, simply, The Hunchback. ︎
2. I’m not entirely serious here, as I’m aware of The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), one of the most important films of all time. ︎

The post Made-for-TV Movies That Mimicked Hollywood, For Better or Worse appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Stranger Things

The Best Moments of Stranger Things

As the series comes to a close, a look back on some of the show’s greatest hits.

By Tyler Dean

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Published on December 22, 2025

Credit: Netflix

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Credit: Netflix

As I said in my recap of season four, Stranger Things is at its best as an in-the-moment watch. It struggles to keep a coherent tone and build compelling character arcs, but excels at crafting individual scenes that elicit tears or screams or shouts of joy. 

Below is my personal list of favorite moments from the show up through the end of season five, episode four. They are a mix of big moments, quiet scenes of character development, and weird little detours that have kept me engaged even at the lower points in the show’s tumultuous nine-year run.

Joyce Plays With Magnets

(Season 3, Episode 5 “The Flayed”) After giving her the iconic Christmas Light set to play with in the first season, letting her play around with an old camcorder in the second and, perhaps, after seeing her brilliant cascade of facial expressions at the 2017 SAG Awards, the Duffer brothers gave her an enduring puzzle with malfunctioning magnets in season three. There is a lot of good, profoundly weird mugging as a wide-eyed Ryder single-mindedly stares at magnets throughout the first half of the season. This comes to a head in episode five, where she tries to ask lovable Russian operative, Alexei, if the demagnetization is due to his countrymen’s operation.

As the subtitles tell us that Alexei understands next to nothing about what Joyce is asking, Ryder babbles excitably, reframing her paranoid and desperate performance, in previous seasons, as something winningly batshit. A scene later, Hopper implies that Joyce is as unhinged as Murray and her performance sells it. Ryder started as the series’ biggest get and while she was tasked with carrying a lot of the show’s dramatic heft in seasons one and two, season three lets Joyce be as funny and weird as Ryder seems to be. It’s great! Magnets!

Murray Plays Matchmaker 

(Season 2, Episode 6 “The Spy”) The first two seasons take their time getting their star-crossed teen couple, Nancy and Jonathan, together. Given how much Nancy’s previous beau, Steve Harrington, became a breakout favorite of the first season who ended up becoming more beloved than either of the other vertices of the love triangle, keeping the momentum alive was more difficult than anticipated. They spend most of season two on a road trip, investigating how they can expose the Hawkins Lab as the responsible parties in the death of Barb. This eventually leads them to conspiracy theorist Murray Bauman who gives them a strategy to take down the USDoE. But his major contribution is a leery, grotesque calling out of the sexual tension between Nancy and Jonathan. Brett Gelman, whether it’s in Fleabag or Another Period, always succeeds at playing profoundly sleazy men with the sort of wry verve that lets you know they are (mostly) harmless. 

Here, his particular brand of ick is applied to plying teenagers with alcohol, demanding they admit they have feelings for one another and calling attention to how much better the sleeping arrangements would be if they shared a bed. It undercuts the seriousness of the Nancy/Jonathan love story in the best way and Murray is the perfect vessel for reminding audiences that the climax of your big love story doesn’t always have to be maudlin and sincere.

Eddie and Chrissy 

(Season 4, Episode 1 “The Hellfire Club”) Eddie Munson and Chrissy have a remarkable chemistry across a few scenes in the season four premiere. While we discover that it’s all just a set up for Chrissy’s death at episode’s end, there is a brief window when the show entertains the idea that all the high school cliques are nonsense (it otherwise demands fairly strict allegiance to the norm—see Dustin’s speech about how Erica is a nerd in season three, episode six). But more than that, it’s a great showcase for two actors to display something that feels surprisingly genuine. It’s a fitting homage to all the great John Hughes mismatched romances of the 80s—The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful chief among them—with the burnout and the cheerleader discovering that they have more in common than they thought they did. It’s a shame that the show wasn’t particularly interested in exploring this dynamic because it cements Eddie and Chrissy as instant classics and likely went a long way towards cementing Joseph Quinn’s career.

Joyce’s Lights

(Season 1, Episode 3 “Holly Jolly”) The image of Joyce Byers communicating with Will through an alphabet of Christmas lights strung up on her living room wall is as iconic a metonymy for the whole of Stranger Things as anything. But it’s easy to forget that it’s undergirded by real senses of menace and wonder and anchored by Winona Ryder’s excellent portrayal of desperation and grief. The turn from a glimmer of hope in Joyce finally making contact with Will to horror as he lights up “RUN” and a demogorgon tears through the wall, more grotesque and pallid than we’ve seen thus far in the show, is the cherry on top of the sundae.

Harrington Pool Party

(Season 1, Episode 2 “The Weirdo on Maple Street”) Early in its run, Stranger Things felt like it was angling for something more akin to prestige TV. The weekday party at Steve Harrington’s place, with “Melt With You” playing on the radio, Aqua vapor rising off the surface of the water while Nancy, Barb, and their questionable new acquaintances shotgun beers and Jonathan, half in a trance, photographs them from the nearby woods, feels like something more compelling than mere homage or reference (though it is both of those things). 

The vaporwave aesthetic that the show cultivates isn’t really a thing of the ‘80s (even if it has its roots in bands like Goblin and Tangerine Dream), but it so evokes that New Wave, synth-heavy yearning that it’s a perfect fit for an ‘80s nostalgia show. And this slice of life recreation of the mythical past that the show is obsessed with is among its finest encapsulations.

Will the Warlock 

(Season 5, Episode 4 “Sorcerer”) Okay the internet has made this point over and over and it is, ultimately, a bit of semantic nonsense, but this is a hill I am willing to die on. Will is not a Sorcerer (as Mike dubs him in the most recent episode). Sorcerers, in Dungeons & Dragons, are magic users whose powers come from their genetic heritage or magical intervention in their ancestry. A Warlock is a magic user whose magic powers come from a pact made with a powerful being (like a devil or a genie). Clearly, Will is a Warlock with Vecna as his patron (Warlock pacts don’t need to be consensual). And, given that both Sorcerers and Warlocks as DnD classes postdate the era in which Stranger Things takes place (by more than twenty years in both cases), I feel comfortable saying that, given the choice between anachronisms, go with the one that actually makes sense.

That said, the moment in which Will comes into his psychokinetic powers is one of the series’ most transcendent moments. It is the culmination of a personal arc that has been playing out since at least the second season. It’s unclear if the Duffers planned Will’s sexuality from the start but it has been central to his character since season three and largely mishandled (the show leans into a child molestation lens for the ways in which Will is traumatized; you can read my season three review for a more in depth analysis of it). But season five largely redeemed this arc, pairing Will with Robin, its other queer character, and reframing what makes being queer worthwhile away from finding romantic love, and refocusing on self-care. In that regard, the Duffers find some thematic resonance with sorcery (you are already awesome because it’s intrinsic to you, not because you studied for it—and I understand that they want to hammer home the point that gay people are born not made, especially since they already unfortunately paired coming out with molestation) but the reason this moment—Will, eyes rolled back, arms outstretched, breaking demogorgon limbs in the exact way Vecna tortured his victims in the previous season—hit so hard is that it’s the culmination of Will’s relationship to trauma. Whether that’s the trauma of being kidnapped by Vecna or the trauma of enduring ongoing homophobic bullying (both from his father and kids at school), it has made him more than a weak-link (a spy for the Mindflayer as he is called in season two). It’s made him resilient and powerful. Yes, absolutely, being queer is a quality in need of celebration (especially for a rural midwestern kid in the AIDS-stricken landscape of the mid-80s) but what the show has really demonstrated and demonstrates well is that surviving trauma can make you something more powerful than you thought. Will has psychic powers because he endured Vecna’s abuse and came out the other side. In that way, he embodies a DnD Warlock and the show has something much more interesting and important to say about what it means to be a survivor (especially a queer one) than what they draw out of Robin’s advice. 

Snow Ball 

(Season 2, Episode 9 “The Gate”) There’s a lot of climactic fun minutes earlier in the season two finale with Eleven closing the gate beneath the Hawkins Lab, but the real heart of season two is the Jingle Ball—the middle school dance that sees romantic closure for Mike and Lucas. The real joy of it, however, is Nancy’s sweet gesture to a lovelorn Dustin who, despite a stylish new hairdo, courtesy of Steve, is experiencing nothing but rejection and derision. Nancy picks him up for a slow dance and tells him that he’s always been her favorite among Mike’s friends and that, if he sticks it out through middle school, the girls will eventually go nuts for him. 

It’s more than a tender moment of platonic charity. The second season sets up a love triangle between Lucas, Dustin, and Max only to quickly make clear that Dustin is a third wheel. He, painfully, doesn’t realize this until long after the audience has—which feels like a riskier and more honest depiction of the ruthlessness of middle school dating and it makes Nancy’s gesture all the sweeter. The following season Dustin is given a long distance girlfriend and the looming tragedy of his romantic life is tidily dealt with. But there is a great little coda that makes perfect use of “Time After Time”—cheesy and sweet in equal measure and, for once, a moment that doesn’t give in to hollow wish fulfillment.

Never-Ending Duet

(Season 3, Episode 8 “The Battle of Starcourt”) It may be the most controversial of my picks and it’s definitely the dumbest entry on the list, but Dustin and Suzie’s rendition of Limahl’s “Never-Ending Story,” from the iconic ‘80s fantasy film of the same name, is, hands down my favorite moment in season three and a strong contender for my favorite moment in the whole series. 

Wait, where are you going? Come back! Hear me out: it’s very very stupid. Almost exactly the sort of hollow, referential nostalgia-pandering that critics of the show insist it exemplifies. But, in being so thoroughly odd, such a nakedly mercenary scene and treated as such in-world, it’s maybe the most self-aware the show has ever been. Stranger Things, in its dedication to a nostalgic mismemory, loves to hit its on-the-nose needle drops and references (Lucas seriously compares Carpenter’s The Thing to New Coke instead of, you know, the Thing-esque flesh monster currently chasing him), but the inclusion of this pointless reference, where two young Broadway stars belt out one of the ‘80s fizziest and least dramatic anthems, intercut with David Harbour staring—incredulous and dead-eyed—down the endless hallway of the Russians’ secret base, is the closest thing the show has to a tacit admission that most of its raison d’etre is to ask ‘80s kids “hey, remember this?” and does so in the most delicious, troll-y way. 

Robin Comes Out

(Season 3, Episode 7 “The Bite”) Another clever subversion of audience expectations, season three introduces Maya Hawke’s Robin, who feels for most of the season like she’s being set up as a new love interest for Steve. In many ways she feels like the perfect Harrington belle—a woman previously ignored by Steve who doesn’t give him an inch and mercilessly mocks his failures while clearly still wanting to bring out the best in him. It’s perfect then, that she reveals that her past problem with Steve is not that he ignored her advances, but that he dated the woman she had been desperately in love with, dashing her romantic hopes. 

It’s one of the better coming out moments in recent television and it has the added bonus of forcing the audience to identify with Steve—rooting for the straight boy to get the girl before realizing we had gotten it entirely wrong and a better story was in the works. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Hawke is one of the show’s better actors and, in season three, her autism-coded awkwardness was still being played for genuine pathos and not just for schtick. Stranger Things isn’t typically great about portraying its minority characters with subtlety and clarity, but Robin’s bathroom admission is a rare win. 

Hopper’s American Tragedy

(Season 4, Episode 5 “The Nina Project”) Hopper recounting the story of his Vietnam service to Tom Wlascicha’s Dmitri might be the best dramatic monologue of the series. It’s not only a welcome ameliorative to season three’s Red Dawn inspired jingoism, but showcases the ways in which the show knows it can’t exist purely as an exercise in nostalgia. 

Sarah Hopper’s cancer death is a long shadow hanging over the series—the original death of a child that gives real stakes and sorrow to all the subsequent child endangerment. To explain that its likely cause is the result of American military hubris, its lack of regard for the safety of its own citizens in the face of its imperial aims, is the closest the show has gotten to a real thesis. After all, the Upside Down is the result of scientific recklessness papered over by a callous American government. Lurking underneath the show’s reverence for the ‘80s is the acknowledgement that the veneer of safety and prosperity was built on some of the darkest inclinations of a Cold War that implicated both America and the Soviet Union. Harbour’s gut-wrenching performance weds the personal and political in the tightest thematic moment the famously scattered show has ever had. 

But what do you think? What have I left out here? Do you like the “Running up that Hill” moment as much as the whole internet seems to? Am I over-concerned with the quiet moments on the show and not as into what’s obviously kickass? Let me know in the comments.[end-mark]

The post The Best Moments of <i>Stranger Things</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dust Bunny

Dust Bunny Will Have You Demanding That Bryan Fuller Make More Movies

Monsters-as-metaphor is a tactic Fuller knows all too well — and he will not be playing by “the rules.”

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on December 15, 2025

Credit: Lionsgate

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Credit: Lionsgate

If you were already a fan of Bryan Fuller—of Star Trek, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Hannibal, and the one good season of American Gods fame—then hearing that he finally made a movie was bound to be exciting, right? How could we not be collectively revved for Fuller’s debut into a new medium?

Is it mostly exciting because movies can’t get cancelled halfway through your viewing? Naturally. (But that was hurtful to say, and I apologize.)

Dust Bunny is the story of a little girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) whose parents are killed by the monster under her bed—a dust bunny made bloodily manifest. As she knows her building neighbor, Resident 5B (Mads Mikkelsen), is a hitman who can kill monsters, she hires him to destroy it. The trouble is, 5B is having hitman problems of the real-life murder kind, and he’s certain that Aurora’s parents were just good old-fashioned killed with guns in an attempt to get him. This gets further complicated when he eventually learns a few things about Aurora’s past that suggest something else might be amiss.

The central mystery of Dust Bunny on its face would seem to be: Is the monster real or a metaphor for one little girl’s trauma? And because it’s Bryan Fuller, that question will not be answered the way you expect.

But this setup alone communicates far less than the film achieves. It’s impossible to have watched Pushing Daisies without assuming that this film is set in the same universe; the city we see here is similarly vibrant, all neon and ornate decor and painted wallpaper. The apartments are full of oddities, the human beings move in strangely choreographed synchronization, the music cues are carefully and immaculately selected. The murder and darkness are framed by overt absurdity and humor, and food looks like little plates of artwork. These are all factors that will be familiar to devotees of Fuller’s work, but the tone is what puts Pushing Daisies in mind. Ned and Chuck are likely just a few hundred miles away, selling gorgeous pies and solving other murders.

The effect of Fuller’s world-making led to something that was so psychically relieving, I have to give it an aside all its own: Because this world is undeniably separate from ours, Aurora’s bedroom contains no branded material at all. There’s no product placement, no IP markers, no pointed little nods to things kids today are obsessing over. This obviously makes the movie wonderfully timeless in a post-Americana sort of way, but it also forces us to reckon with a creative landscape that rarely allows us any kind of break from being sold to. There’s nothing in this film to distract us from the story itself. Every in it that you see, you are meant to see because it’s part of the story, not some disgusting attempt at brand synergy.

It also forces us to reckon with how this same landscape has created a different kind of viewing experience, where audiences are rewarded for going over the background of every shot in a film to find a character’s touchstones, to form a picture of their personality via the minutiae of their environment and what the viewer can identify, rather than zeroing in on the actor’s performance. There are so many wonderful toys in Aurora’s room and home, but they are serving the overall design choices of the film as a whole, as support for the work that Sophie Sloan is doing in the role. The same goes for Mikkelsen’s portrayal, aided by a wardrobe full of colorful and flowered track suits and a lamp made from a chicken that nearly steals the movie every time it appears.

I’ll admit to being aggravated at the number of people trying to sell audiences on this film by fitting it into a category they think the viewer already enjoys. There’s a lot of buzz going around about how it feels like an older movie, or that it’s a dark fairy tale for those who like that sort of thing, and sure, you can make all those arguments. I will bring up all the movies about scary murder humans who take care of little children down below because it is a genre that’s close to my own heart, so yes, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. But that’s not what makes this movie stunning to behold, what makes it feel precious in an era of sprawling multiverses and “easter eggs” that are nothing but endless deep cuts.

What you think when you watch anything made by Bryan Fuller is “I would like to be there right now, thank you.” In a fight for my life, in fear of a monster, eating food that used to be something (or someone) living, it doesn’t matter—I would like to occupy this place. A place full of sacred geometries and coordinated colors and environmental framing. A place where lightbulbs buzz because Fuller knows they do. It is important to note that the first twenty-ish minutes of the film have practically no dialogue whatsoever as we follow Aurora around her little world… and none is needed. We’re getting everything we require by watching and interacting through her vantage point, and a child’s world is so often internal in nature.

All of Fuller’s action sequences look like dances, the actors leaping or going deadweight according to what is most visually dynamic in the moment. People get dragged out of frame like marionettes with their strings cut. There is tenderness in how characters attempt to choke each other unconscious, the acknowledgment that acting on another’s body with ill intent is still a deeply personal act. Violence is not about brute force or dominance within the confines of this story, but rather another form of human contact, with all the messiness and confusion that entails.

The supporting cast is absolutely stunning on all fronts. Obviously, everyone will be excited to see Sigourney Weaver (and I should add that there’s a face she makes early on in the film that is so jarring, you have a brief moment of wondering if it’s CGI before you realize that she’s perfectly capable of being that unnerving on her own) in the role of Laverne, whose relationship with Mikkelsen is enjoyably bizarre until it’s suddenly not. The performances from David Dastmalchian, Shiela Atim, and Rebecca Henderson are equally captivating, and I hope to see all of them in more Fuller projects going forward.

But the core of the film is all about 5B’s unintentional parentage of Aurora, and what this murderer-for-hire will do about the little girl with no parents who keeps telling him the monster under her bed is real. Their dynamic will bring a number of similar films to mind—Leon: The Professional, Gloria, Aliens, The Fall, the Lone Wolf and Cub films, the list is truly endless if you love scary adults who protect kids—but Fuller captures something truly special with these two. It’s not simply about unlikely fatherhood, but about the bonds that help people heal, and how often they come from the most ridiculous places.

Try to seek this one out in theaters, if you can. If not, find it on streaming when it hits—older kids will likely be okay to watch provided they’re good with monsters and some stylistic violence. (The R-rating makes no sense on this one, and they received it for a truly goofy reason.) But more to the point, please let Bryan Fuller make more movies. And finish his TV shows. And make more TV shows. Just, stop sleeping on these beautiful realities that have such chicken butt lamps in them.[end-mark]

The post <i>Dust Bunny</i> Will Have You Demanding That Bryan Fuller Make More Movies appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch

Babylon 5 Rewatch: “No Surrender, No Retreat”

Sheridan once again mobilizes for war…

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on December 15, 2025

Credit: Warner Bros. Television

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Credit: Warner Bros. Television

“No Surrender, No Retreat”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 4, Episode 15
Production episode 415
Original air date: May 26, 1997

It was the dawn of the third age… B5 is back on a war footing. The Starfuries are running drills under the direction of Corwin, while Sheridan has an early-morning meeting with the representatives of the various non-human nations on B5. Sheridan is calling in a favor in return for the patrols of their borders by the White Star fleet: he’s asking that they sever their ties with Earth Alliance and only respond to calls for humanitarian aid, but not to provide any military aid. He also asks for one capital ship from each of them to protect B5 itself.

G’Kar speaks out in favor of this, pointing out that Earth promised to help Narn in exchange for the weapons that Narn sold them during the Earth-Minbari War. Yet Earth’s aid was nowhere to be found when the Centauri attacked and conquered them, nor did they help out with the Shadow War.

Cole comes to the war room with intelligence from Proxima III, which is the first step of their campaign, to take that world back. There’s a blockade of six Omega-class destroyers in orbit, two of which—the Heracles and the Pollux—are the ones that fired on civilians. Sheridan doesn’t know the commanders of those two ships—Captain Trevor Hall and Captain Elizabeth Morgenstern, respectively—so he figures they’re new and loyal to Clark. Cole also reports that ships are trying to run the blockade despite the very low likelihood of success because that blockade is working—people on Proxima are starving to death.

Sheridan intends to attack from multiple sides, but he also wants to know if there are any vessels that have deliberately avoided firing on civilians. Cole promises to find out. Sheridan also asks Franklin to get the telepaths they rescued from the Shadows and have in stasis ready to be moved. Ivanova and Corwin continue to do drills with the Starfuries, reminding them that all orders must be in the proper code. EarthForce has Sheridan and Ivanova’s voiceprints on file, so they can fake verbal orders.

Vir has fallen asleep doing paperwork. He is awakened from a nightmare by the arrival of Garibaldi, who needs a favor from Mollari. Vir offhandedly mentions the “new offensive,” which surprises Garibaldi. His surprise, in turn, surprises Vir, who assumes that Garibaldi is going to join back up for the fight. When Garibaldi answers in the negative, Vir is confused. Doesn’t Garibaldi want to save his homeworld. Garibaldi says he does, but not Sheridan’s way.

Mollari comes to G’Kar’s quarters with a proposal: he wants them to sign a joint statement in support of Sheridan’s resistance. A joint statement from their two nations that were so recently at war will likely prompt the other nations to follow suit. Mollari wishes to end the acrimony between the two of them, or at least reduce it. To that end, he offers to share a drink as they did before Emperor Turhan’s death. Mollari also offers a belated thanks for G’Kar’s help in getting rid of Emperor Cartagia, even though he knows G’Kar didn’t do it for him.

G’Kar, however, has no interest in Mollari’s thanks, or sharing a drink with him, or the joint statement. Mollari leaves, disappointed.

Sheridan has Ivanova send three White Stars to the sol system to make Clark think they’re scout for an invasion and so he might draw forces away from Proxima, or at least not be able to send reinforcements there. The main fleet heads to Proxima, with the White Star ships painted with B5’s logo.

Three White Stars jump into the far side of the system. Hall, who is in charge of the fleet and who is very much a Clark loyalist, sends the Pollux and the Nemesis after them.

Sheridan then sends in more ships on the near side, and finally the main fleet through the system’s jumpgate behind the Heracles. The Vesta, under the command of Captain Edward MacDougan—an old comrade of Sheridan’s—breaks radio silence. MacDougan tries to convince Sheridan to withdraw; Sheridan tries to convince MacDougan that the orders Clark is giving are clearly illegal. Sheridan reminds MacDougan of ethics classes he taught at the Academy.

Hall orders the Heracles and the battle is joined.

Sheridan’s orders are crystal clear: do not fire unless fired upon. Notably, the Furies does not respond to a flyby and the Juno withdraws from the battle completely, leaving the system. Hall orders MacDougan’s first officer, Commander Robert Philby, to take command and fire on the White Stars. Philby does so eagerly, prompting a wry comment from MacDougan about how he didn’t realize his XO wanted a promotion that badly. However, Philby’s time in command lasts about seven-and-a-half seconds before the rest of the crew mutinies and restores MacDougan to command. The Vesta then immediately stands down.

One White Star and the Pollux are both destroyed with all hands on both ships lost. The Nemesis surrenders, having taken heavy damage. Hall refuses to go down without a fight—especially since he’s dead no matter what happens—but his first officer, Commander Sandra Levitt, refuses to let him take the crew down with him. She orders Hall put under arrest and she broadcasts a surrender to Sheridan.

Sheridan requests that the four remaining ship commanders come to the White Star 2 to discuss what happens next.

On B5, Mollari is joined at the bar by G’Kar, who takes Mollari’s drink, gulps it down, and agrees to the joint statement—but only if they sign on different pages. Mollari agrees.

On the White Star 2, Sheridan meets with MacDougan, Levitt, Captain Yoshi Kawagawa of the Nemesis, and Captain Stephanie Eckland of the Furies. Sheridan just wants to remove Clark from power and then let the people decide if their actions were justified. Levitt is no fan of Clark, but she’s no fan of open rebellion, either. MacDougan says they need to discuss it amongst themselves. They make their decisions: Levitt will make like the Juno and withdraw, taking the Heracles to Beta IX for repairs, keeping Hall under arrest, and staying out of it. Eckland will keep the Furies at Proxima to now defend the colony against retaliation by Clark’s forces. MacDougan and Kawagawa agree to join Sheridan’s fleet.

On B5, Ivanova goes on the Voice of the Resistance to announce both the liberation of Proxima and the joint statement by the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic supporting the resistance.

Garibaldi leaves the station for Mars to meet up with Edgars. He tells the customs guard that he has no plans to return. (Yes, this paragraph also appeared last week in the rewatch for “Moments of Transition,” because your humble rewatcher is a big honking doofus and conflated the end of this episode with the end of that one. Derp derp.)

Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan has to tread a fine line here, as he doesn’t want to be seen as an invader, but a liberator. He is also devastated by the destruction of one of the White Stars and the Pollux, and refuses to refer to what happens at Proxima a victory—merely that they achieved their mission objective, which was to liberate that world.

Ivanova is God. At one point, Corwin comments that the operational phrase is “Trust no one,” but Ivanova says no, it’s “Trust Ivanova, trust yourself—anybody else, shoot ’em.”

The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is not very convincing when he tells Vir that he wants to save his homeworld, just not Sheridan’s way.

If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Sheridan insists that this be a “clean fight” when queried by Levitt as to why his non-human allies aren’t part of his fleet. But his actual fleet are Minbari-designed ships that use Vorlon tech, and which are mostly staffed by Minbari…

In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari is trying very hard to redeem himself, and he also raises a toast to the humans, who have provided a bridge between the Centauri and the Narn.

Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. It takes G’Kar some time to see past his loathing of the Centauri in general and Mollari in particular to see his way to understanding that the joint statement is a very good idea. G’Kar’s support was already helpful in getting the League of Non-Aligned Worlds on board with supporting the resistance over the Clark regime, and he eventually sees the wisdom of Mollari’s plan. That it takes a while is very understandable, of course…

We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole is the one who gets intelligence on what’s happening on Proxima from the people there.

Looking ahead. Sheridan’s plan for the cryogenically frozen telepaths will finally be revealed in “Endgame.”

Welcome aboard. The three big guests are Marcia Mitzman Gaven as Levitt, the great Richard Gant as MacDougan, and Ken Jenkins, warming up for his role as Dr. Bob Kelso on Scrubs as Hall. Gant will return in “The Face of the Enemy.” Also Joshua Cox is back from “Z’ha’dum” as Corwin; he’ll next be in “No Compromises.”

The extras who play Eckland and Kawagawa are never identified. Philby is played by Neil Bradley, one of the regular background actors on the show—amusingly, this is the only one of Bradley’s ten roles on B5 and Crusade in which he’s not in a ton of makeup, as his other nine roles are as Drazi or Narn.

Trivial matters. Clark ordering civilians to be targeted by EarthForce was revealed at the end of the prior episode, “Moments of Transition.” The White Star fleet started patrolling the borders of the Centauri and the Narn in “Conflicts of Interest” and the nations of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds in “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies.” Mollari’s referring to humans as a bridge between opposing factions echoes comments Delenn has made about humans in both “And Now for a Word” and “Lines of Communication.”

The title of this episode was also the title for the whole season. (It also always tweaks your humble rewatcher, because as a Bruce Springsteen fan, I expect “no retreat” to be before “no surrender.”)

The echoes of all of our conversations.

“Captain, I wasn’t about to let Captain Hall get the rest of my crew killed defending Clark’s policies—I happen to disagree with those policies. But that doesn’t mean I agree with your actions, either. It’s not the role of the military to make policy.”

“Our mandate is to defend Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now Clark has become that enemy. Your oath is to the alliance and to the people back home, not to any particular government.”

“You’re splitting that hair mighty thin, John.”

—Levitt, Sheridan, and MacDougan discussing military ethics.

The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Enough is enough.” This has always been one of my favorite episodes of the show, because as great as “Severed Dreams” was as an episode, it missed out on one very important aspect of this entire plotline: the difficult decisions that EarthForce personnel would have to make. In that episode, the ships that tried to take B5 were not given faces and barely given voices. But here, we see Hall and Levitt and MacDougan and Philby, and they represent different approaches to this. Hall’s the true believer, the perfect fascist tool, sneering that MacDougan “doesn’t have what it takes” and more concerned with saving his own skin than the welfare of his crew. (Casting Ken Jenkins was a masterstroke, as few actors sneer as well as he does.) Philby is obviously mostly just in it for his own command, following orders like a good little drone. Levitt is primarily concerned with the welfare of her crew, which is more than her CO can say.

And then we have MacDougan, magnificently played by Richard Gant. He’s walking the line between obeying general orders and not carrying out specific ones, and Sheridan forces him to fall off that high-wire, at which point it’s just a matter of in which direction he goes. It’s to his credit that he falls in the right direction. It’s also to his credit that he’s the only commander who tries talking to Sheridan, though that’s partly motivated by their history. We know it’s a good history, too, as Sheridan lets loose with a smile when Cole mentions that the Vesta is part of the blockade.

Bruce Boxleitner is also superb here, and J. Michael Straczynski writes Sheridan perfectly as well. Throughout, Sheridan is bending over backward to not do what Clark’s been wanting EarthForce to do. He starts out by talking, asking the EarthForce ships to withdraw peacefully (an offer that only the Juno takes him up on, and then only after hostilities have broken out), and he refuses to fire on anyone until they fire first. On top of that, the only ships he will initially identify as hostile are the two they know have fired on civilian targets and are therefore viable targets. He refuses to fire on the Furies once it’s clear they won’t engage.

In the end, he also defaults to understanding and compassion and staying within the bounds of military protocol. He just wants to restore things to what they were before Clark introduced fun stuff like NightWatch and firing on civilians. It’s particularly to his credit that he gives the ships options both before and after the battle: withdraw peacefully, defend Proxima, or join them.

It’s very rare that the portions of an episode that feature Mollari and G’Kar are an afterthought, but this is one of those exceptional instances, as I had to keep reminding myself that there were scenes with those two—and they were really really good scenes, too! As ever, both actors just knock it out of the park. Peter Jurasik gives us an exhausted Mollari who is trying so desperately to crawl out of the murderous hole that he dug for himself (I mean, yeah, Morden gave him the shovel, but still…), while Andreas Katsulas gives not a millimeter in the scene in G’Kar’s quarters. The quiet intensity with which Katsulas has G’Kar rebuff every single overture made by Mollari is superlative, and you don’t see the conflict until the later scene in the Zocalo when G’Kar has finally come to—very reluctantly—accept that Mollari’s notion is a good one. And even there, he refuses to give in completely, insisting on their signatures being on separate pages…

In general, I love that this particular storyline will take several episodes to play out. Nature favors the destructive process—what Sheridan is trying to do is rebuild something that Clark has destroyed, and that’s a much longer, more laborious, more difficult thing to achieve.

This is the last Babylon 5 Rewatch of 2025. Thank you all so much for continuing to follow me on this journey through the dawn of the third age. We’ll be off for the next couple of weeks, coming back on the 5th of January 2026 with “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year![end-mark]

The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “No Surrender, No Retreat” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays The Twilight Zone

Good People Also Get What’s Coming to Them: Revisiting The Twilight Zone’s Christmas Episodes

The Twilight Zone’s Christmas episodes may seem like anomalies, but they get to the heart of the sci-fi series

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on December 17, 2025

Image: CBS

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Image: CBS

What do you think of when you think of The Twilight Zone? An omnipotent Don Draper-like figure narrating with a cigarette in his hand? A malicious cookbook? A broken pair of glasses? Or is it simply the idea of a twist ending that reveals why everything is not what it seems? There’s no wrong answer. The sheer variety of possibilities speaks to the creative depths of the anthology series that was unlike anything else on television when it premiered in 1959 and remains a powerful show to this day.

Yet, you would rightfully draw a few curious glances if you said The Twilight Zone made you think of hope for humanity. Though a fundamentally humanist show at its core, The Twilight Zone often aspired to teach us lessons about what not to do by taking the worst aspects of ourselves to extreme, often supernatural degrees. The tragic reason why The Twilight Zone has aged so well is that it was rarely directly about the individuals and scenarios of its time. Instead, it looked deep within our souls to identify the parts of ourselves that caused the same evils to appear in slightly different forms, time and time again.

The Twilight Zone was not beyond hope, though. At the heart of the series was the hope that we would look at these tragedies from another dimension and find a way to prevent them from happening to us yet again. And on occasion, the series would show us a better world. Not one that is entirely fantastical, but rather the kind you might find if you look hard enough at the lives of those who never stop believing in something better. In The Twilight Zone, those occasions were called “Christmas.”

There have been several Twilight Zone episodes set on or around Christmas across the show’s original run and numerous revivals. Some, like the brilliant “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” are slightly more traditional stories with a holiday twist. From the show’s original run, though, there are two Christmas episodes that stand out: “Night of the Meek” and “Changing of the Guard.”

“Night of the Meek” stars comedian Art Carney as a mall store Santa named Henry Corwin. Henry is at the end of his rope. He’s drinking too much, looks like he’s barely slept or showered, and just lost his once-a-year gig due to his poor condition. The idea of depicting Santa Claus (even a part-time Santa) in such a state drew some controversy at the time, though it certainly feels more common now.

But Corwin is no bad Santa. He hurts because he’s tired of only being able to be Santa for a small part of the year, during which he still must watch children and other innocents struggle. As he says to a group of onlookers who realize he is drunk on the job, “I find of late that I have very little choice in the matter of expressing emotions. I can either drink, or I can weep, and drinking is so much more subtle.”

Corwin’s desire for the hopeless, dreamless, and meek to finally experience the joy Christmas should bring takes a fascinating turn when he discovers a sack of gifts in an alley. Curiously, the gifts inside are both infinite and exactly what their recipients want. Even when Corwin is arrested over suspicions of theft, the bag produces worthless junk rather than potentially damning evidence. For just one night, Corwin gets to give people not just the gifts they want but the joy they have been denied.

In a Twilight Zone twist, though, we learn that Corwin’s bliss doesn’t need to end there. It seems that the North Pole needs a new Santa. Not just for a season but for life. And who better to fill those boots than the man whose greatest desire in life is to see everyone else be happy? With the tears in his eyes freezing on his face as he ascends to the heavens in a bright red sled, the visions that dance through Mr. Corwin’s head are not of sugar plums, but rather the knowledge that nobody will need to suffer through another Christmas where they are forced to watch others have so much while they want for a sense of belonging.

“Night of the Meek” is the most overt expression of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s love for Christmas. Born on December 25, 1924, Serling’s daughter Jodi later recalled that he would refer to himself as “an unwrapped Christmas gift” who entered the world on Christmas Day. Though hardly a dour man, Jodi says her father expressed a joy typically reserved for children around the holiday. “Night of the Meek” was born from Serling’s love of the holidays as well as his own Christmas wish to watch Art Carney play Santa. Serling’s other daughter, Anne, later recalled that watching that episode became something of a Christmas tradition for the family. It’s a true Christmas classic delivered, much like one of Corwin’s gifts, with equal joy for the recipient and giver.

“Changing of the Guard” initially appears to be something else entirely. It’s set at Christmas, but the holiday is the backdrop for the story of Professor Ellis Fowler: a beloved teacher who is being forced to retire after fifty-one years of service. Fowler is suddenly struck with the fear that he did nothing over those years but the basic requirements of his job. “I was an abject, dismal failure,” he laments to his secretary. “I moved nobody. I motivated nobody. I left no imprint on anybody. Now, where do you suppose I ever got the idea that I was accomplishing anything?”

Unable to see what comes next and ashamed of his vision of the past, Professor Fowler decides to kill himself on Christmas Eve. He is stopped by the ringing of phantom bells that draw him to his old classroom. There, he encounters the spirits of some of his former students. Fowler is initially disheartened to learn that some of his favorite pupils died so young, but the spirits soon tell him of the wonderful things they accomplished in life. They saved others in wartime, they launched groundbreaking new research initiatives, and, to hear them tell it, all of it is because of what they learned in that classroom. Not just the lessons, mind you, but the thirst for knowledge and appreciation for life that their professor instilled in them.

In that moment, Professor Fowler realizes he has lived up to the words of his idol Horace Mann who once suggested that we should be “ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” The victories were not his own, perhaps, but are reflected in the accomplishments of his pupils gone by and in the futures of the students who have gathered outside of his office to sing a carol for their favorite teacher.

If you know me, you’ll know I’m a sucker for stories about teachers. So when I watch one suddenly realize their life was not only worthwhile but invaluable… well, I cry every time I watch “Changing of the Guard.” But besides its ability to reduce me to tears, “Changing of the Guard” initially appears to have relatively little in common with “Night of the Meek.” It’s set around Christmas, yes, but “Night of the Meek” is an overt classic Christmas story, whereas “Changing of the Guard” would have theoretically worked during any time of the year.

Except that’s not entirely true. As it turns out, Christmas is a special time in The Twilight Zone as well. Not just a time of miracles in the supernatural sense, but a time for us to look at the things and people in our lives and consider them from a different viewpoint. In these episodes, The Twilight Zone did not subvert its messaging so much as it inverts one of the defining themes of the show: “People get what is coming to them.”

Professor Fowler and Henry Corwin are fundamentally unselfish souls. They want better things for all good people rather than just themselves. That alone makes them atypical Twilight Zone protagonists. If they have a moment of selfishness, it comes when they realize that they may not live to see the good they’ve done (or aspire to do) reflected in the world around them. We find them at their lowest when they come to believe that they haven’t done enough and will never be able to do enough. And at Christmas no less.

And before you entirely dismiss the idea of that time wielding any magic or suggest that the universe is indifferent, consider the context of how we often wish to see others get what is coming to them. We typically reserve it for our enemies who have thus far eluded all forms of conventional justice. At least forms of justice we can see. It is as much of a curse as it is a prayer that the karmic balance of the universe we often primordially hold onto will finally kick into action.

These Twilight Zone Christmas episodes invite us to change our perspective. What if the weak, the wary, the meek, and the good also get what is coming to them from time to time? By watching them get their cosmic desserts with tears in our eyes, perhaps we will be reminded that the path to a better world is paved not just through cautionary tales of the consequences of greed, hate, and selfishness, but ensuring that good people are rewarded for their actions rather than being taken for granted once more.

In that sense, these episodes are not the anomalies they may appear to be. They are variations on a theme that remind us that hope does exist even in The Twilight Zone. Every now and then, good people also get what is coming to them. And if we remember to show those people we are not indifferent to their contributions, such instances need not be limited to Christmas or The Twilight Zone.[end-mark]

The post Good People Also Get What’s Coming to Them: Revisiting <i>The Twilight Zone</i>’s Christmas Episodes appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Wake Up Dead Man

Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man

Digging in to the nuances of religion, faith, and grace tucked inside the latest Benoit Blanc mystery

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on December 15, 2025

Credit: Netflix

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Credit: Netflix

I shy away from stories that throw “Grace” around too much. The name is too heavy with meaning, too easy a symbol, the concept too nebulous and contentious. The only time I’ve really loved its use was in Lord of the Rings. Obviously, Tolkien knew how to show his characters trying to earn grace (in subtle ways that you don’t have to see as you read) and then he showed them receiving unearned grace, and what that would actually look and feel like. The reason it works is that grace doesn’t feel like a gooey, light-filled, Hallmark-Christmas-movie miracle—it feels like having part of your hand bitten off while your best friend drags you out of lava.

I knew I was going to like Wake Up Dead Man, but I didn’t know I was going to love it. I didn’t know it was going to make me cry more than once—a thing I do not do—and I didn’t know that I was going to see it in the theater five times. I didn’t know that as the end of December loomed, I would consider it the most important film I’d seen in years.

I mentioned in my non-spoiler review that with Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson really made two movies woven together. The first is one of the zippy, starry mystery films that have become semi-regular holiday outings for a lot of us—proof that movies for grownup can still exist. This time the mystery is gothic, and almost becomes horror for about ten minutes before Benoit Blanc steers everyone back to reality. I’ve seen some people say the mystery plot isn’t as strong this time out, but I think I disagree? This one just takes a few more viewings to reveal all of its clues. Now that the movie’s on Netflix, it’ll be interesting to see if people watch it on a loop a few times to catch everything.

I’m going to be talking about the second movie. The second movie is about storytelling, it’s a conversation between “faith” and “rationality”, and it’s about American Christianity, made by someone who used to be part of that world, and now isn’t, but wants to take it seriously.

The film is framed by storytelling. The first thing we see is Blanc reading Father Jud’s narrative, his story of The Good Friday Murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Blanc meets the flock through Jud’s eyes, through Jud’s retelling of the stories they told him—the stories they’ve been telling themselves about why they tolerate Wicks. When we finally see Jud and Blanc meet (40 minutes into the film) the two men debate storytelling, with Blanc saying that Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, in all of its architectural glory, “is shouting a story [I] do not believe” and that he wants a story he “can swallow without choking”. Jud listens to him, and doesn’t argue, but counters that maybe the story isn’t exactly a fairy tale, but asks of the symbols: “do they resonate with something deep inside us that’s profoundly true? Something we can’t access any other way, except storytelling?”

The story Johnson is telling is about faith. He layers in imagery, religious references, and metanarrative to gives us a movie with as many facets as the diamond that proves so important. I’ve seen a few people say that this is a “faith-based film” or even a Christian film—it isn’t. It’s also not an attack on faith or a deconstruction of it. I don’t think any of the people who have some sort of faith at the beginning lose it in the end—quite the opposite.  

A caveat that in this essay I will talk about Jesus occasionally like he’s a real historical person who said the things attributed to him, and that a bunch of the things recorded in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament happened (that’s easier then typing “maybe” every time) and I’m working from the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, of the HB/NT because I think that’s the translation Fr. Jud and Msgr Wicks would use.

Let’s start with sex.

Name a piece of priest/nun media—Exorcist II, Fleabag, Nothing Sacred, The Rosary Murders, I Confess!, Sister Act, Benedetta, Priest, The Thornbirds, Stigmata, Keeping the Faith—whether it’s suspense or comedy or horror or drama, in most films and television shows, a priest’s job, their life, is defined by their vow of celibacy.

But in Wake Up Dead Man, Father Jud is never defined by that.

Note that I’m not talking about the marketing or the meta narrative: Josh O’Connor stars in the movie with Hot Priest Andrew Scott, he’s been considered an internet boyfriend since at least Challengers, plenty of people ran to A03 after watching this movie, and there are neck tattoos to contend with. But in the world of the film, there is not one mention of Jud’s sex life—no flirting, no “Father What-a-Waste”, no former lover mentioned, visited, or called. We don’t know if Jud’s queer or straight, if he was married in Syracuse and got divorced, if he broke up with a boyfriend in Buffalo to answer God’s call, if he was a himbo in Rochester before he saw the light.

Celibacy is not his stumbling block—anger is.  

In a lot of movies and TV shows about priests, there will be a moment, or a season, when they’re so overwhelmed by sexual desire that they take up jogging, boxing, swimming—any sort of physical activity that will exhaust their bodies without breaking their vows. Here, Jud’s Chekov’s boxing gloves pay off when he attacks Samson’s punching bag—but it isn’t a “comic” moment of sexual frustration, but a moment when his anger toward Martha becomes so strong that he slaps her hand out of his face during an argument.

Should she be wagging her finger in his face? Absolutely not. But it was his violent temper that got him sent to Monsignor Wicks in the first place, it’s part of what’s made him such an easy target for framing, and he clearly still hasn’t learned to control it. It almost proves his undoing—he can all too easily fall into the lie that he murdered Samson, because the story he’s been telling himself since he was a teen is that he’s in constant battle with the hate in his heart.

The way sexuality does come into the story is through Wicks’ faux confessions.

Wicks presents himself as an obsessive, addicted masturbator and exploits Jud’s good faith because (a) he’s dealing with a younger man who might still be working the celibacy thing out for himself, (b) it implies a certain uncontrollable virility on Wicks’ part, and, (c) he knows his assistant pastor can’t do a fucking thing about it.

He knows Jud can’t talk to anyone else about what he’s saying because of the Seal of Confession. While excessive jerking off is a normal thing to confess, the detail Wicks goes into is clearly designed to embarrass a person who is, essentially, his junior coworker. Wicks turns the sacrament of confession into sexual harassment.

Wicks continues this emotional and sexual abuse until Jud finally pushes back, at which point the elder priest switches to physical abuse, knowing that once again he has Jud either way: Jud holds to his pacifism and lies on the ground and takes it, in which case Wick proves Jud’s “weakness” and wins, or Jud fights back, and even if he beats Wicks to a pulp, having betrayed his deepest beliefs, he allows Wicks to win even more.

Which brings us to why Jud is a white man.

Misogyny!

In the other two Benoit Blanc Mysteries, Blanc has helped a young woman of color who’s been wronged by powerful white people. Blanc is a famous handsome white man who’s been on The View, lives in an apartment in Manhattan, and drives a Mercedes. We’re not dealing with Lt. Columbo here. Blanc could move among the rich and powerful with no friction at all. But he’s also queer, the son of a Southern sheriff, with a mother who was extremely religious—and while Blanc says they were close in his childhood, the relationship seemingly soured. It’s pretty easy to sketch a portrait of a person who grew up Different In The South, expected to conform to a societal hierarchy and religious life that he didn’t agree with, noticing things other people didn’t notice, who eventually… moved to Manhattan to get away from all that. Who allies himself with more vulnerable people because he knows they need him.

On the surface Jud Duplenticy is a handsome white male priest. He would seem like a sharp break from the usual Rian Johnson Protagonist.

But one of the undercurrents of the film that rises and rises until it finally becomes the real point, is the horrific misogyny of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. It’s right there in the name—women are meant to endure. They keep their mouths shut, they do what they’re told, they endure whatever pain the men inflict on them. When they step out of line they’re branded “harlot whore” or “faithless” or “your father’s nightmare”.

The women we meet in this film have bought into this world. Martha’s whole personality revolves around being “the good one”—in contrast not to the only slightly younger Jefferson Wicks, her actual childhood peer, but with Jefferson’s fully adult mother, who was living her own life and shouldn’t have had to give a single flying fuck what a ten-year-old thought of her choices. Martha’s held on to her story about herself, even editing Prentice’s death and her final conversation with Grace to uphold the idea that she’s morally pure. She tells the story of the Harlot Whore not with sorrow or regret or hope for the woman’s peace in death or any of that, but with glee. Relish. (And her memory of Grace’s final act, all washed in red light and sweat, makes it pretty fucking clear where she thinks Grace is now.) Martha is Wicks’ right-hand person. She takes care of all the chores a wife would, seems not to have any real relationship with the other women of the parish, she also calls Nat’s ex a “harpy” in the same monologue where she calls Nat “weak”. (She also has a relationship with Samson despite, seemingly, not being married, so I guess it’s not harlot-whoring if it’s with the church groundskeeper?)

Vera Draven goes along with her dad’s orders to raise Cy, and seemingly doesn’t even manage to exert enough influence to turn him away from the manosphere—and in the end gets called a “hag” when she finally stands up for herself. Simone holds her nose and sits through Wicks’ version of Mass, and watches other young women like herself storm out, clutching the chance he can heal her.

And Jud? Well, Jud’s a woman. Kind of. Since Johnson set his story in a Catholic parish, he had to have a male protagonist to have a little priest. But Jud is empathetic, caring, emotional, welcoming. When he meets people he asks them about themselves, and really listens. We learn, because Jud tells us, that he’s a formerly unhoused recovering addict with a murder in his past. (The mention of murder is the one time Nat and Lee show any interest in him.) He could hide all of it, he could edit it, but he confesses it openly to his parishioners in good faith, to set an example. In the world of the film—the world of Wicks and his followers—Jud’s emotional bravery makes him soft, a “simpering child from Albany”, who doesn’t have the strength to fight for his faith against a world full of wolves. To them his confession is a weakness they can exploit, his empathy a crack in his armor.

It even carries through into the murder plot. In Martha’s dark(er) reimaging of the crucifixion and resurrection, it’s Jud who witnesses the death. And when the second part of the plan unfolds, and the tomb cracks open, a man impersonating a gardener is the first to greet the risen “Wicks”—a shadow of what happened last time.

And who’s the second one on the scene? The new Magdalene?

Father Jud of course.

Names! (And Titles, But Mostly Names.)

Johnson also tells his story through names—given names, titles, and what people choose to call each other.

On the most obvious level: Samson has shaggy hair, and is really incredibly strong. (He’s a little like a kinder, gentler Wicks, actually, which says more about Martha than I want to think about right now.) He’s also a recovering addict, he also boxes, at least with a punching bag, and he’s able to knock former professional Father Jud out with one punch.

Martha’s also a pretty obvious one: the famous Martha of the New Testament is the sister of Mary (not Mother-of-Jesus Mary, Not Magdalene Mary, but a secret, third Mary) and Lazarus, and she initially appears in The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10. Martha and Mary offer hospitality to Jesus, and while Martha bustles around preparing food and cleaning, Mary sits with Jesus and listens to him speak. Martha finally snaps and asks Jesus to tell her sister to help with the housework, but he replies: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Our Martha has dedicated her life to the minutiae of the parish: the filing, the cleaning, the gossip, the telling and re-telling of Prentice’s Death, the telling and re-telling of the Story of the Harlot Whore. But has she ever actually studied a single freaking word of the religion she supposedly subscribes to?

Like I said, I tend not to like the use of Grace. But Grace Wicks’ father, Prentice, chose to become a priest after he was widowed despite having an enormous family fortune and a kid. It implies a certain level of devotion, and explains why he’d give his daughter such a significant name. It’s also clear that he’s a fanatical tyrant who oppresses and gaslights his daughter until she has a psychotic break and dies from an aneurysm. Grace does what she can to act against her name, and the story others tell about her inspires the better people of the parish to pity, until the words “that poor girl” pass from character to character like a bead through fingers. Her story is what saves Martha’s soul in the end. When the church is renamed, it’s partly in her honor, in order to rewrite The Tale of The Harlot Whore. But she never gets to tell her own story—her short desperate life is refracted through everyone else’s telling.

The name Monsignor Jefferson Wicks is apparently a riff on a character in a Pynchon novel, but it’s his title, Monsignor, that’s really important. He insists on being called his title by everyone, even Jud, never Father—also a title, sure, but a far more friendly and familial one. Monsignor Wicks = OFFICIAL TITLE + LAST NAME, at all times, even after his death. The only two who break that are Martha, who calls him Jefferson right before he’s about to die (because she’s one of the two people who know he’s about to die) and Blanc, who refers to him as “Monsignor Jalapeño, I don’t care!” in one of my favorite moments in the whole movie. 

Father Jud, meanwhile, is always Father Jud: friendly, familial title, + first name.

Except once.

Blanc, turning up at a church to meet a murder suspect and suss him out, catches that murder suspect crying, partly from fatigue and fear, but mostly because their brief conversation about faith “made [him] feel like a priest again”—I think we can assume it’s the first time he’s felt that way in about eight months.  

And Blanc, faced with this vulnerability from someone he doesn’t even know yet, calls him “son.” We already know that Jud’s been on his own, at times living on the street, since he was 17. Benoit doesn’t know that—he hasn’t asked Jud to write the letter yet. How long has it been since Jud heard anyone call him “son” with concern or affection? How long has it been since anyone acted like they cared about him at all?

Finally to get into that last important thing about names, I’m gonna have to talk about Jesus Christ. Bear with me.

Or actually hang on. I need to be clear: When I studied Religion, I focused primarily on American Religious History, which mean a lot of reading about the real-life versions of people like Jefferson Wicks (often) and Jud Duplenticy (goddamn do I wish we had more of those) but I did all of my work in English. Everything I’m trying to parse out in the following paragraphs, I’m doing through translation, and this is also an extremely stripped-down history, I’m leaving a lot of nuance and context on the table to get to a point.

[deep breath]

“Jesus Christ”, as a name, evolved over a couple of centuries, and four different languages, from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English.

“Jesus” is the anglicization of “Iesus”, which is the Latin version of “Iēsous”, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew name “Yeshua”. Yeshua is an alternate version of the name Yehoshua. Both mean “he who rescue/saves”, and both were pretty popular names during the Second Temple period of Judaism (516 BCE to 70 CE). “Jesus” never caught on as a common children’s name in English, but the modern anglicization of Yehoshua is “Joshua.” As for Christ, that’s the Latin version of the Greek “Khristos”—there are two versions of Khristos, one a given name, and one a title. The title Khristos means “anointed one”, and was used to translate the Hebrew word “mashiach” or “messiah” into Greek. The Latinized spelling, with a “Ch” instead of a “Kh”, gradually became standard in English-speaking countries. So “Jesus Christ”, the common way of talking about this person in English, is a mashup of Latinized Hebrew first name, “Yeshua” (“he who rescues/saves”), and a Latinized Greek title “Christos” (“the Anointed One”). The first word is a given, familiar name, the second word a formal title. Basically: “Josh, the Anointed One”.

Throughout Wake Up Dead Man, when Father Jud talks about his religion, he doesn’t use the word God or Lord too often, but tends to say Christ. Christ, specifically. He’s not referring to a nondenominational monotheism. (Given who he is, I think he’d be a delightful member of an interfaith council, but he also knows what he is, and he doesn’t hide it.) Even knowing I was walking into a priest movie, I was startled by how much Jud used that particular title in a mainstream, non-faith-based film, because in our current climate it’s actively weird to hear it used by someone who doesn’t want to electrocute me into being straight, or deport brown people for no reason. But what caught my attention, even more, was when Jud didn’t use that title.

When Jud talks about his sense of divinity with other people, he uses “Christ” almost exclusively. That’s how he experienced a sense of salvation and forgiveness after he hit rock bottom. But when he’s at the end of his rope, desperate and alone and sure that he’s about to be arrested for a murder he can’t prove he didn’t do—and, maybe worse, reckoning with the fact that he’s happy Wicks has met with a violent death—what happens? He walks into his empty church and collapses on the floor in front of the blank spot on the wall that used to hold a crucifix. And when he speaks to that empty space, he doesn’t say “Christ”, he says “Jesus.”

This is vulnerability. Intimacy. A way of speaking with this person that I’m guessing only happens when he’s alone. This is exactly how this character would speak in this situation. It’s a perfect, shining detail in a beautiful script, and it’s also the first time the movie made me cry.

The visual language Johnson developed with cinematographer Steve Yedlin also comes through here. I won’t spend much time unpacking the use of light: warm light often falls on Jud when he’s reaching out to people; colder light or even darkness and shadow envelope Wicks; Blanc, meanwhile, is often lit by firelight, single lamps, and finally by a blast of sunlight—his search for truth is lit by human handiwork, and when so fine a brain has a Damascus Thing it lights up the whole fucking room.

But I need to stay in this scene for a little longer.

Lights, Cameras, Angles

When Jud collapses to pray, at dawn, on Easter Sunday, we’re not perched comfortably behind a God’s Eye camera, looking down at him and his empty church from a distance. We’re not at crucifix height, looking down at a believer prostrate at our feet. We’re not even in the pews, the congregation watching like the theater audience they used to be.

Nope, we’re on the fucking ground with him. We’re directly in front of him, crying on the ground. We can’t look away from his anguish. There is no distance between us at all.

And then the door opens, and Blanc pops his head in and yodels “Hellooo?” and the light of the sun pours in with him. It’s a hilarious puncturing of the scene, and the script seesaws back and forth between humor and raw emotion for the rest of the Blanc and Jud’s meet-cute/spiritual wrestling match.

Josh O’Connor, who is quite tall, is vulnerable, covered in grime and tears, and looks almost fetal compared to the striking unruffled Daniel Craig, who strolls up the nave in the first of several impeccably tailored suits.

We stay with Jud, we see him wipe his eyes and get up, when Blanc asks if he’s “open” we see the nanosecond of Jud wishing he could say “No”, could tell Blanc to go away, and be alone with his misery. We see him gather himself and say “Always.” (Man, my own belief system may be ever-shifting lava, but I sure as shit believe in the acting of Josh O’Connor.) Jud pulls himself together for the guest and says “It’s hard to be in here and not feel His Presence.”

By this point we know that Jud’s time here has been bad. We’ve seen parishioners ostracize and gaslight him, we’ve heard the nightmarish Tale of the Harlot Whore, we’ve seen Wicks psychologically torment him and even physically attack him. After all that, is he saying it’s “hard” because he doesn’t feel God’s love, in his moment of extreme need? Or is he saying that he does still feel God’s presence, even after everything? (I think it’s the second thing, but I enjoy the ambiguity.) It would be understandable for Jud to feel despair in this moment, but this is still the opening line that he offers to a stranger, whose own beliefs he doesn’t know—he extends a welcome that will be read as an invitation to worship by a believer, even if he’s using it as a quiet barb against himself.

This leads directly into the first religious debate between the two of them, which is also a conversation about storytelling. Jud doesn’t know it, but he’s being analyzed by the keen mind of Benoit Blanc, Gentleman Sleuth, but along the way the two challenge each other. If Blanc was expecting Jud to get offended or hurt by his anti-religion monologue, well, Jud only came to religion himself after a life of hardship. He would never judge someone for their lack of belief. And if Jud thought that he was speaking to a polite Southerner who would “go along to get along”, well—Blanc is not that. Jud gently tries to create pathways for his visitor to open up about his family if he wants to, and Blanc analyses Jud’s appearance and demeanor until he’s pretty sure the young man’s innocent. What’s great, what makes this movie great, is that by the end of their conversation they both like and respect each other so much that they’re happy to give each other space to be.

From then on, when Blanc says things he think might offend Jud, he apologizes to Jud, because he doesn’t want to hurt him, not because he ever wavers in his atheism. When Jud pushes back on Blanc he never turns smug, or says that Blanc the heretic simply can’t understand the mysteries of faith, or any of that bullshit—he tries to help him understand because he wants his new friend to understand him.

(Speaking, parenthetically, as a person who’s been on both sides of this conversation at various points in their life: THIS IS SO GOOD I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.)

Religious Imagery Jamboree!

Johnson tells a lot of his story through riffs on religious imagery, and there’s a LOT here, but I’ll just touch on a couple of my favorites.

The Devil/Wolf imagery—seeding the idea of the “World is a Wolf” during Jud’s hearing, only to have Nikolai’s weird horned-wolf-head lamp fixture become a murder weapon used both against the Bad Sheperd that is Wicks and the Good Sheperd that is Jud, was just… fun.

One of the first acts we see at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is somebody literally whitewashing a tomb. Later, Jud says that if Wicks’ parishioners can’t confess their deepest sins to him, then “This whole place is a whitewashed tomb!” For anyone who doesn’t know what that phrase means, in Matthew, Chapter 23, Jesus refers to rule-obsessed scribes and Pharisees as “like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.” The context being that there isn’t much point in performing holiness if you’re not doing the work to be a good person. Who cares if you’re polite to people if every thought you have about them is dripping with acid? Who cares if you bring cookies to the church bake sale if you gossip about everyone else in the congregation? Who cares if you confess to Monsignor Wicks faithfully every Sunday, if you only tell him half-truths because you fear his retribution?

And of course, in the literal sense, the Wicks family tomb houses the proof of Prentice’s hatred for his own daughter, and then the evidence of Martha’s murder plot—a giant whitewashed metaphor made reality.  

And speaking of religious riffing, the film’s entire plot hinges on an attempt at a sloppy rewrite of Easter—the thing that brings Blanc onboard in the first place, as presumably he’s intrigued by the idea of picking a fake miracle apart even before he meets Father Jud and realizes the boy needs saving.

Martha’s attempt at a manufactured, neat, camera-friendly miracle is the thing that lures Blanc to town. On top of all the other problems with it, Martha’s plan is a bad story. It’s a derivative echo of a way more interesting original. Instead of Jesus rising from the dead, she gives us a fake Wicks. The side wound is created with a tacky devil-wolf knife, not a Centurion’s spear. The gardener at the tomb is a counterfeit gardener. There’s only an accidental Magdalene, because in Martha’s worldview there’s no role for independent women, and no redemption for “harlots”. (Here’s my usual caveat both that Magdalene wasn’t a harlot, canonically speaking, and that harloting is A-OK.) As she says, Jud was “most certainly not” supposed to be there to play the role of the First Witness. But see, the interesting thing about the OG miracle of the Resurrection is that Jesus was a poor person, part of an oppressed minority, who prioritized love, practiced radical compassion, and refused to resort to violence—the idea that that guy came back from the dead, and beat the relentless machine of the Roman Empire? That’s surprising! It’s emotionally satisfying! It makes sense, dramaturgically.

(OK I mean, technically he “beat” the Roman Empire a few hundred years later when the Emperor adopted his followers’ symbol, credited a military victory to that symbol, and declared the followers’ religion official—at which point those followers, who had been oppressed for hundred of years in his name, started oppressing the shit out of everyone who didn’t agree with them. But let’s sidebar all that.)

Martha’s story doesn’t have any of the startling cosmic justice of the original story. Wicks is rich white man, a symbol of the overwhelming power of Catholic hierarchy, an agent of the conservative thread of that denomination that occupies a whole bunch of seats of power in religious and secular spheres at this moment. He’s a bully who threatens and betrays everyone, physically attacks at least one person, emotionally oppresses and subjugates his followers. There’s no twist to him once again beating the system and regaining the control he lost for like three days while he was dead. It’s boring! Like when a rich person says they’re gonna buy an election and then they successfully buy that election—where’s the drama?

The thing that feels more like that OG miracle? Blanc shows up in Jud’s church just as Jud asks for help.

But again, the film is very careful to leave room for rationality and the Holy Spirit. We don’t know where Blanc was coming from when he came to Chimney Rock. We know that Detective Elliot (yay!) gave Chief Geraldine Blanc’s number, and that she must have called him about the case at some point on Good Friday or Holy Saturday. We know that he checked in with her, and then found Jud at his church, somehow waltzing in exactly at the moment the young priest broke down and asked for help. Was this a case of Blanc taking a case, packing a trunk of impeccable suits, booking a tasteful Chimney Rock B’n’B, and then getting lucky with the traffic as he left his and Phillip’s place in Manhattan for Upstate New York? (I mean, that’s its own kind of miracle.) Or was this divine intervention nudging a bureaucratic domino two days earlier so that the tormented priest would finally get some help on Easter?

Blanc knows it’s the first thing, I suspect Jud believes it’s the second, and one of the many things I love about the film is that it leaves that there for the audience to make up their own minds.

But I think my very favorite bit of religious symbolism was L’Eveil Apple itself. (Sure, the idea of Prentice swallowing a diamond, and said diamond somehow not coming to light during an autopsy, is a little much—but the symbolism!) The Apple stood in for the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and is seen in Christianity as a sign of humanity’s disobedience, the end of the innocence of Eden, and the inception point of humanity’s ability to sin. A few thousand years later, the Garden of Eden gets a rewrite in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus chooses of his own free will to be arrested and executed by the state, which, in Christianity’s worldview, erases the sin of Eden, and allows humans a path back to immortality.

In Johnson’s version, that apple is transformed into the ultimate symbol of Mid-Twentieth-Century capitalism—a giant, multi-faceted diamond in a Fabergé box. This diamond, this symbol of hatred and misogyny and doom, lies in the heart of the whitewashed tomb for decades before finally being unearthed in the midst of a murder plot. But Father Jud, having gone through his own personal Garden of Gethsemane and come out the other side, transforms that apple into Jesus’ heart. I… might have teared up.

The biggest meta narrative happening here is that Rian Johnson wanted to use a murder mystery to talk about Modern American Christianity.

I clocked that Rian Johnson had a complicated history with religion while I was watching The Brothers Bloom the first time—something in the vibe made me sit up. I’m interested in people with complicated religious histories because of my own shit, but more so, because I’ve been studying the intersection of religion and pop culture in the United States, somewhat seriously, since the early 2000s. (A fun time to get in the game! Ha! Ha!) There are various movements that have been trying to turn this country into an autocratic theocracy since the early 1980s, and they’ve… just about succeeded, now. And I mostly don’t think we’re going to be able to stop it, and I think we’re probably fucked, and I think that’s why this movie is landing like a punch in the moments it doesn’t feel like an embrace.  

Someone who has been dealing with his stuff in a quiet way in his films just walked into the coliseum and grabbed the lion by its friend-shaped ears.

But Let’s Get Back To Grace

And I’ve seen a few people say that the religious tyrant aspect of the film is a little on-the-nose, but I say, as long as there are people who are right now trying to remake the Catholic Church in their own facile images, why not have a fucking movie about it.

I used to spend a lot of time at a place called Family Christian Bookstore. I went there to keep an eye on trends (and buy Veggietales merch—and I want to be very clear here that the Phil Vischer-era of Veggietales is not part of the problem) and it was impossible not to notice that, on top of the ironclad gender roles, there was a weird undercurrent of anger and fear. Lots of Biblical action figures of David and Goliath and Daniel in the Lion’s Den, shelf upon shelf of Left Behind books and their spinoffs promising all the trials and tribulations of the End Times, and the one I’ve thought about most often in the years since: the Full Armor of God.

Like a lot of stuff that gives me pause, this image may have come from noted self-insert fanfic writer Saint Paul in The Letter to the Ephesians, though there are doubts about his authorship. Two thousand years after people used metaphorical imagery to make themselves feel brave in the face of torture and death, parents who were part of the largest, most powerful religion in their country were buying plastic armor so their children could cosplay subjugation.

This was the story the fastest-growing religious movement in the U.S. was telling itself—a tale of fighting oppression with violence. An overwhelmingly white, middle-class-and-up group of people, who had every societal advantage at their back, were telling themselves that they were under siege, and that they had to fight until their enraged, all-powerful God sent his son back to kick some ass.

I mention this because Johnson has Wicks use that line about wearing the Armor of God and being “ready to fight the world until my last breath”. Wicks talks about being a “warrior” and about fighting the world outside his parish. Wicks’ self-appointed, hacky St. John, Lee Ross, sitting beneath a painting of the crucified, dying Christ, explicitly says that the church needs “warriors” like Wicks because: “We’re fighting an existential war here, where the end justifies the means. The church doesn’t need some pussy who’s gonna lie down and take it—we need a warrior. And I believe that God chose Monsignor Wicks to be His warrior. So you and your son have my sword”.

(Which, the temptation to get a back tattoo of that scene rendered as like a comics panel…)

All I can think about is how, for over 30 years kids have been raised with this particular version of Christianity, this weird American stew of oppression and martyrdom and dominance and lust for power over the secular world and promises of retribution. And a number of those people have risen to positions of great power in this country over the last decade, and, of every film I’ve seen in the last few years—and I watch a lot of movies—Wake Up Dead Man is the one that seems to be dealing with this reality in the most helpful way.

There have been a few films over the last few years that have tried to deal with our current religious moment, however obliquely. Silence, A Hidden Life, Conclave, First Reformed, even The Phoenician Scheme. And while I love all of those films, one of the reasons Wake Up Dead Man knocked me out so much is that it isn’t the story of a beleaguered Christian fighting oppression/modernity/capitalism/whatever—it’s a beleaguered Christian fighting the rotten elements of his own church, with a significant assist from a queer atheist detective and a Jewish sheriff. We’re with Jud, but we’re also with Blanc. And while there are some terrible people in this movie, their terribleness comes from somewhere. You can see why they’re acting the way they do, and have sympathy for them—but also, you know, everyone in this movie is an adult, well past the age of reason, and they should know how to act. One of my favorite things is the way, right up to Martha’s final confession, Jud is gently pushing all of them to accept their own failings and deal with them so they can atone and actually be better, more fulfilled people. (Martha’s correct: He’s really good at his job.)

Father Jud’s arguments for faith are well-reasoned, beautifully stated, obviously thought-through. He’s spent years thinking about his past, his conversion, his relationship to his faith—not just feeling it. He’s not a rube or a bumpkin or a smug bastard who thinks he’s found The Truth. He’s found his Truth, and he wants to share it with people, but only with their enthusiastic consent. But, while Jud is great, and right about a lot of things, he also isn’t perfect. Rather than being martyred by a tyrannical government, he allows his own past remorse, his isolation at Chimney Rock, and, to be fair, extreme fatigue, to push him into a sense of self-martyrdom to the point that he turns himself in for a crime he didn’t commit—twice!—rather than give Blanc like half an hour to think through some stuff and figure who-actually-done-it.

Blanc has a “Damascus Thing”, yes, but his Damascus Thing is him admitting that Father Jud’s forgiving, redemptive path will work better, in this one case, than Blanc’s own customary summation. Allowing Martha to make her confession kills a bunch of doves with one stone:

• on the earthly plane, Sheriff Geraldine hears Martha’s confession and Father Jud is finally off the hook;
• Martha looks back on the story she’s told herself, the consequences it wrought, and finally has a good, supportive spiritual experience with a caring pastor;
• which, according to her faith, allows her to truly atone and at least have a shot at one of the lower rungs of Purgatory instead of where she was headed;
• it allows Blanc to conclude a difficult case with an act of true friendship toward a young man whom he doesn’t always understand, but whom he’s clearly come to love;
• Jud fulfills his role as a priest again, in a mirror to his conversation with Louise, except in this instance he’s having to do the slightly more difficult work of pushing Martha to acknowledge her foul treatment of Grace, and after nine months in the wilderness, he brings a member of his own flock back to God.

Wicks would say that Jud’s theology is to “go along to get along” with the modern world. But in the end, we see just how much he’s misunderstood the younger priest. Jud could have heard Martha’s confession and, knowing by then that she only had minutes to live, granted her absolution immediately. Instead, he pushes her to remember her behavior toward Grace, he waits until she’s finally repeated the film’s own rosary of “that poor girl”—then, and only then, he recites the prayer of absolution to reconcile her to her God. Just under the wire.

This is where I think the film flies up my list past all the other “religion movies” as a path forward for people of good faith.

But there’s also the phone call with Louise.

A story that gets tossed about with regards to Rian Johnson is that he subverts the genres he works in. At a talk I attended, he said that working within a genre creates “…a known chessboard between you and the audience. You both know the rules, and when you break them, it becomes a dialogue”. Some people love this; some people use words like “destroyed my childhood”. Here the subversion comes in the dead center of the movie, and blindsides us.

It starts as a very typical comedy moment: Protagonist in a hurry (for a very good, plot-relevant reason) runs up against the brick wall of a person who, for whatever reason, refuses to match their urgency. We’ve all seen versions of this, and whatever the Kafka-esque or Brazilian or Zootopian situation, our sympathy is supposed to lie with the protagonist. The slow voice on the other end of the line becomes our enemy. Every time I’ve seen Wake Up Dead Man in the theater, the first lines of Bridget Everett’s dialogue brought a cascade of laughter as people recognized the trope.

But then Johnson has to go and make the voice on the other end of the line a person.

We hear her helping Jud, and, let’s be clear, she’s patient with him. She has no way of knowing why this information is so important, she’s offering to help in the best way she can, and trying to make polite small talk with someone she doesn’t know. She’s also, crucially, the first Chimney Rock resident to congratulate Jud on his gig at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, and the first to openly chastise Wicks, calling him “not a nice man”. She also, crucially says that she’s still “sorry he—yikes!—died?” and tells Jud that she’s sorry for his loss. She’s trying to be kind to Jud. Meanwhile, he’s the one being rude, cutting her off and talking over her until  she finally says “excuse me”, which was the bit when Josh O’Connor’s politely pained expression and Daniel Craig’s ever-more-furrowed brow got the biggest laughs.

And then just as he’s about to hang up, Louise asks if the priest can do something for her. He has the phone most of the way off his ear at this point. In another movie he might have already hung up. But he refocuses and asks what she needs. And when she asks him to pray for her, in every theater I’ve been in, all giggles, all laughter, all of it, stopped. I’ve heard gasps, I’ve heard “aww”s—but in every theater you could feel the audience responding by sitting up straighter.

They probably weren’t expecting this. I certainly wasn’t.

As Jud leaves to speak with Louise, we stay with Blanc, then we cut to Blanc, clearly later enough that it’s gotten dark. When Blanc goes into the rectory’s firelit living room, Jud is only just then praying with Louise—the thing she asked him to do in the first place—presumably because he’s been listening to her talk about her mother, and illness, and grief, for a while.

(Yes, this is the other other bit when I cried. I’m not even mad about it.)

Louise has shown Father Jud grace by being patient with him despite his rudeness, and, in a metaphysical sense, by reaching out to him and trusting him to hear her. He is allowing grace into their conversation by stepping away from his own needs to be present for her.

It’s a weird job, being a religious figure. Really what you are, if you’re good at it, is a conduit for a sense of divinity that anyone can have access to. And if you wear a particular uniform, you’re on call all the time. This is something Johnson thought about a bit as he researched the film, and it’s this detail that I think really brings his movie to life. If someone’s wrestling with religious trauma? You’re walking through the cereal aisle and they see your collar, and you might be the target of their (completely justifiable) anger and pain. Someone has a sick child, a recently dead parent, an impending test result? You might have just gone out for a coffee, but now you’re holding that person’s hand, and trying to tug on the sleeve of an Unknowable Omniscience. And the real part of the job is that you don’t ever let the person you’re helping know how much this weighs on you. You take your own pain to a fellow priest, who takes it to their own fellow priest, etc. etc. all the way up to the guy who hears the confessions of the Pope. What this scene shows (possibly better than any film since Diary of a Country Priest) is that Jud is a priest because he loves this part of the job.

Blanc of course doesn’t see that. He’s focused on his own vocation, and, in another important element—Blanc is wrong about Jud’s faith. His read on it is actually shallow, and more informed by his own past experiences than by listening to Jud. (Even then, Jud explains Damascus, thinking he has to, but of course Blanc already knows what a Road to Damascus Thing is, as a story—he just doesn’t think it was a miracle.) It takes Jud yelling “God loves me when I’m guilty” in his face, and, finally, his determination to confess “of [my] own free will or it won’t mean anything” to finally push Blanc past his own prejudices, to see that whether he agrees or not, Jud’s faith doesn’t mean he’s hiding from life’s harsher truths, just that he’s processing them in a different way.

This is why Wake Up Dead Man is actually important. It allows enough space for that phone call to play out the way it should. It allows for Jud to address Jesus the way he would, and to talk about Christ’s love even if it makes people uncomfortable, in the same film where Blanc declares God a fiction. It allows us to see just how filled with rage and pain Wicks and his followers are—but it doesn’t let them off the hook because of trauma. It shows the importance of actual remorse and repentance, the need to draw a line in the sand with people who think the Empire were the good guys, the need to create space for both devout Catholics and those who worship at the altar of the rational. To be able to end with a scene where the believer and the proud heretic share a hug, but one can offer a good faith invitation to Mass, and the other can cheerfully reply with “there’s nothing I’d rather not do” and they still love each other. Where the concept of grace can be explored in both the deeply religious and the utterly secular sense, and no one has to check their brain or their soul at the door.[end-mark]

The post Entirely Too Many Thoughts About <i>Wake Up Dead Man</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Stranger Things

What to Watch After Stranger Things Season 5

The end of Stranger Things doesn’t have to mean the end of kids on bicycles adventures

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on January 5, 2026

Photo: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Gunpowder & Sky

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Photo: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Gunpowder & Sky

Much like a Netflix executive, you just finished Stranger Things and have no idea what to do next. Hey, it happens. Watching the end of a beloved long-running show is always a bittersweet moment that leaves you asking if it’s truly possible to fall in love with another series quite so soon.

And while you may eventually be able to move on to something entirely different in the next chapter of your life, the best thing to do right now may be to find some rebound shows and movies that remind you of your beloved in some way. Because you’ve already watched Stranger Things, so may we recommend some better things? I kid. I kid because I love.

Explorers (1985)

The biggest influences on Stranger Things are undoubtedly the movies that have come to be known as “Kids on Bicycles” adventure films. It’s the genre tag used to identify works like E.T., Stand by Me, and The Monster Squad that helped define ‘80s pop culture thanks to their portrayals of latchkey kids getting into adult and supernatural adventures with the help of their preferred mode of transportation. Well, Joe Dante’s 1985 movie Explorers may just be the most underrated example of that genre.

Explorers opens with a teen dreaming of an advanced schematic they can’t quite understand. With help from his friends, he reconstructs that schematic and uses it to slowly construct what turns out to be a spaceship. I won’t spoil what happens next, though I will admit that the film’s finale falls short of its incredible set-up (despite its plethora of Stranger Things-appropriate pop culture references). But it’s that brilliant premise that both invokes some of the best parts of Stranger Things and those irreplaceable moments we spent when we were young knowing that imagination and friendship could make anything possible.

Paper Girls (2022)

Amazon Prime Video’s Paper Girls has proven to be one of the most fascinating series to emerge from the post-Stranger Things boom. Set in 1988 (at least initially) and based on the Brian K. Vaughan comic series of the same name, Paper Girls stars a group of paper deliverers who find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict between various factions of time travelers. 

It’s an ambitious idea that gradually grows into something far more interesting as the girls are forced to confront their own futures (or at least some version of them) during their travels. The series has done an exceptional job of expanding upon its already ambitious premise without compromising the playful charms at the heart of its story. It is perhaps your best post-Stranger Things option, even if the show’s second season is in limbo.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Traces of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise can be found throughout Stranger Things. The villainous Vecna is partially a Freddy Krueger tribute, Robert Englund joined the show’s cast in season four, and the series is packed with small visual and audio callbacks to the foundational horror movie franchise. While it’s generally a good idea to watch as much Nightmare on Elm Street as possible, it’s Dream Warriors that should shoot to the top of any Stranger Things fan’s watchlist.

One of the greatest horror movie sequels ever made, Nightmare on Elm Street 3 focuses on a group of teenagers at a psychiatric hospital who are soon targeted by Freddy Krueger. However, the teens (aided by Nightmare on Elm Street protagonist Nancy Thompson) gradually begin to realize that they too can utilize powers in their dreams that allow them to fight Freddy. The camaraderie that revelation sparks recalls the “friends battle evil” story at the heart of Stranger Things, while also making Dream Warriors the best X-Men movie ever made that isn’t technically part of the X-Men universe.

Travelers (2016)

Though its connections to Stranger Things are, admittedly, loose, Travelers is quite simply among the best sci-fi shows on Netflix that many haven’t seen. 

This series’ unique set-up revolves around a group of time travelers from the future who are tasked with returning to the past to prevent a series of apocalyptic events. The twist (at least one of them) is that they are forced to take over the bodies of people who are close to death in order to follow a series of directives, which largely prevent them from making unnecessary alterations to the past that could unintentionally compromise the mission. It’s a brilliant and engaging concept that sets up what proves to be a thrilling adventure that often draws from the best elements of Person of Interest and other modern sci-fi masterpieces across three wonderful seasons. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Dungeons & Dragons has proven to be a surprisingly substantial part of the Stranger Things experience. While there are many swords and sorcery movies that capture the D&D spirit (as well as movies featuring people playing D&D), there are two recommendations in that realm that rise above the pack. 

The first is the 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (the duo behind the brilliant comedy Game Night), Honor Among Thieves is both genuinely funny and surprisingly genuine in its portrayal of various unlikely adventurers trying their best to come together and complete a quest. The movie does a fantastic job of capturing the unique attributes of its various character classes while accurately portraying the zany chaos that most D&D adventures ultimately result in. 

Critical Role (2015)

Your other, and most substantial, option for a Dungeons & Dragons fix is to start getting into Critical Role. 

What began as a group of voice actors and friends livestreaming their D&D game nights has grown into a phenomenon. Over dozens and dozens of hours of broadcasts, Critical Role shows some of the most engaging D&D players in the world participating in some of the wildest showcases of the tabletop role-playing game’s creative potential. Don’t have quite that much time to fall down this rabbit hole? The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein animated series do an excellent job of condensing and adapting some of these stories. 

Summer of ’84 (2018)

Yes, Summer of ’84 is a pretty on-the-nose recommendation for fans of Stranger Things. It too is a nostalgia-driven “Kids on a Bicycle” horror film that drapes itself in ‘80s references. To be entirely honest, the movie often gets a bit too cute with those references and sometimes comes across as a cheaper imitation of the movies it is paying tribute to rather than something that stands tall on its own. 

But aside from being tailor-made for some Stranger Things fans, there are qualities (both intentional and perhaps otherwise) that elevate this movie. It functions best as a tribute to the pulpy horror YA paperbacks that helped shape ‘80s and ‘90s culture. Even the movie’s posters feel like variants of a Fear Street or Goosebumps book cover. So if you allow yourself to treat this as an expanded, missing Are You Afraid of the Dark? segment, you may be ready to approach it on its terms. 

Tales From the Loop (2020)

Tales From the Loop is based on Simon Stålenhag’s art book of the same name. That wonderful book uses striking visuals and simple pieces of text to create a universe in which characters (largely children) wander through alternate universe landscapes populated by advanced machinery and prehistoric creatures as a result of experiments done at a facility known simply as The Loop. 

You may think that a series that expands on that concept would reveal too much and ruin some of the magic of the mysteries behind those images. You’d be wrong. Set in the fictional town of Mercer, Ohio, Amazon Prime Video’s Tales From the Loop does a remarkable job of showcasing the (relative) origins of that world via a time-bending narrative as smart and emotional as any recent sci-fi series. The adventures of its mostly young protagonists often resemble the Stephen King-esque dark adventuring at the heart of Stranger Things. 

The Vast of Night (2019)

One of the most surprising streaming releases in recent years, The Vast of Night debuted via Amazon Prime Video on May 29, 2020, to little fanfare and unfortunate timing. Set in New Mexico sometime during the 1950s, the movie follows two teens (one who works as a switchboard operator and one who works at a radio station) as they both become aware of a strange audio signal that turns out to be the harbinger of something much bigger. 

While it’s set in the ‘50s rather than the ‘80s, The Vast of Night is one of the best sci-fi love tributes to a particular time and place in recent memory. The atmosphere is compelling and the performances are believable, but the unlikely highlight of the movie is watching its leads utilize the very analog nature of their respective communication devices. It’s one of the greatest uses of the trappings of a period within the confines of a sci-fi story for reasons other than nostalgia. 

Lockwood & Co. (2023)

To get the bad news out of the way, Lockwood & Co. is one of those series that Netflix cancelled after one season despite seemingly respectable viewership numbers and widespread acclaim. The good news is that the show is very much worth watching despite the almost inevitable heartbreak you’ll feel when it ends. 

Lockwood & Co. is set in an alternate version of Britain where the reanimated spirits of the dead have been killing in droves and slowing societal progress to a halt. This incident (which is cheekily referred to as “The Problem”) is only kept in check by a group of teenagers who can see the ghosts and have organized various agencies that offer their invaluable services. The show focuses on the titular agency Lockwood & Co.: a rather low-profile group who get a sudden burst of talent when a young woman with exceptional abilities joins them. Based on the Jonathan Stroud book series, this show blends humor, horror, and character in ways that, yes, will leave you screaming “What is wrong with you Netflix? Why are you like this?”[end-mark]

The post What to Watch After <i>Stranger Things</i> Season 5 appeared first on Reactor.

Books Pluribus

What to Read After You Watch Pluribus

Hi Carol, we have some book recommendations for you

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on December 29, 2025

Photo: Apple TV

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Photo: Apple TV

Life after Pluribus feels pretty lonely. Expectations were high for Vince Gilligan’s next show, and Pluribus has quickly proven to be one of the best new sci-fi series since Severance. Yes, Pluribus was heavily inspired by numerous genre works that came before (most notably Invasion of the Body Snatchers), but the show’s vision of a post-apocalyptic landscape run by an intergalactic hivemind has rarely been exactly what you think it’s going to be. The twists, the dark humor, the quiet moments of reflection, absolutely everything that Rhea Seehorn does… there really is nothing quite like Pluribus.

If you are struggling to fill that Pluribus-shaped hole in your life, though, then your best option may be to pick up a book. It’s not only appropriate given that Pluribus protagonist Carol Sturka is a romantasy writer (more on that in a bit), but there are some tremendous novels that present their own fascinating visions of unusual doomsday scenarios while offering at least an element of what makes Pluribus so special (as well as their own charms).

Severance by Ling Ma (2018)

A mysterious illness is tearing through the United States. The infected continue to live their lives, but only as a shell of their former selves. With no cure in sight, a young woman named Candace and other immune survivors navigate an uncertain future. Like Pluribus, Severance imagines a different kind of apocalypse in which the world continues to spin and efforts are made to retain “normalcy” even as such a concept begins to feel increasingly absurd. 

The Seep by Chana Porter (2020)

Earth is upended by the arrival of an alien force known as the Seep. Their takeover is swift, but proves to be oddly peaceful. Much of Earth becomes an unlikely kind of utopia in which the Seep connect people and gift them with the knowledge that anything is possible. In that world, a trans woman named Trina Goldberg-Oneka and her wife Deeba embark upon a mind-bending journey of self-discovery. There’s a fever dream quality to The Seep we haven’t seen in Pluribus yet, but it too raises incredible questions about what is lost and gained when our identities are blurred. 

All Better Now by Neal Shusterman (2025)

Stop me when you’ve heard this before, but All Better Now imagines what would happen if humanity were suddenly infected by a virus that washes away all negative feelings and leaves everyone feeling entirely happy. Yes, Pluribus drew connections to All Better Now before its release, and both certainly deal with the downsides of what initially appears to be a utopian (if disturbing) scenario. Spoiler alert, but it turns out a little conflict can go a long way. 

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (1963)

Many post-apocalyptic stories (including Pluribus) deal with the pain of isolation. Few address that theme as overtly and effectively as Marlen Haushofer does in The Wall. It follows a woman who suddenly finds herself cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible wall that mysteriously appears one day. Her time is then spent trying to find a way out, making the most of the world around her, and, gradually, trying to accept her circumstances. It’s a powerful examination of our relationship with other humans, nature, and the sheer will to survive at the heart of it all. 

The Host by Stephenie Meyer (2008)

Imagine, if you will, what may happen if we were all taken over by an invading force of parasitic beings known as “souls.” Most of the world is essentially hijacked by these creatures, but your invader has a harder time taking over your body. Instead, you and your invader engage in a prolonged battle of wills that ends up impacting both of your fates as well as the rest of the world. That core premise drives Stephenie Meyer’s The Host: a novel that overtly deals with the relationship between the body and soul while emphasizing the value and scarcity of a true home. 

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (2012)

The Age of Miracles is one of those fascinating sci-fi novels that explores the effects of a quieter kind of extinction. Here, the inciting event is an unexplained phenomenon that causes the world to spin more slowly than before. The immediate results are fairly trivial things like slightly longer days. As the effect continues and escalates, though, people begin to react to it in drastic (though not altogether shocking) ways. Much like The Leftovers, the hooks in this page-turner come not from its biggest moments but rather by watching how the people caught at the center of it all gradually reshape their lives as well as the world around them. 

The Bees by Laline Paull (2014)

There are many sci-fi stories that deal with the concept of a hive mind, but there are few such stories quite like The Bees. That’s because its protagonist is an actual bee living in a literal hive. It sounds gimmicky, but it’s so much more than that. Often compared to Watership Down, The Bees is an adventurous exploration of both the intricate inner workings of a collective (which often reads like palace intrigue) and the power of an individual life within that environment. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

Station Eleven is a story about what keeps us going. Not just the instinct to survive, but the idea that life (much less civilization) must include things that are finer and greater than our primal needs and urges. The “present day” chapters of Station Eleven largely focus on a group of traveling performers trying to bring hope and joy to the world through art and entertainment. Their adventures are juxtaposed with flashbacks of the terrifying early days of the deadly flu that wiped out much of society, which underscore both how much was lost and the importance of finding it again. As a bonus, Station Eleven received an exceptional HBO adaptation that remains tragically underrated, partially due to its proximity to our own global pandemic. 

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)

A classic of the genre that was later adapted into the Village of the Damned movies (one of which was great, one of which was… well, we still love John Carpenter), The Midwich Cuckoos is often described as a cozy kind of catastrophe. Granted, that’s an odd way to describe a story featuring villainous children inexplicably born across the world in droves following the appearance of a mysterious object in the sky. Yet, there is something darkly quaint about this story of a powerful group that nefariously works its way into our world which recalls some of Pluribus’ more quiet and menacing moments.

Bloodsong of Wycaro by Carol Sturka (2025)

Finally, this list would feel incomplete without mentioning Bloodsong of Wycaro: the third entry in the Winds of Wycaro series. Yes, Apple released a real section from Carol’s fictional romantasy book series in the Pluribus universe. While the section’s real author remains a mystery I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of, it is a remarkably entertaining standalone work that also adds a little context to the Pluribus universe. And hey, maybe it’ll be your gateway into the exciting world of pirate romantasy.[end-mark]

The post What to Read After You Watch <i>Pluribus</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV It: Welcome to Derry

IT: Welcome to Derry’s Season Finale Is Chaotic, But Mostly Satisfying

Plus there’s an appearance by a Very Special Ghost.

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on December 15, 2025

Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO

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Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO

This week’s season finale of IT: Welcome to Derry, “Winter Fire”, was written by Jason Fuchs and directed once again by Andy Muschietti. The episode manages to wrap a lot of the plot points up into a surprisingly satisfying ending, given how much story they had to get through.

As Brief a Recap as a King Adaptation Will Allow

A sinister grey fog rolls over Derry. Townsfolk, all the ones who were so calm yesterday after the white supremacist hate crime, are thrown into a frenzy, running into shops, slamming doors—even though they’re not sure what these clouds are. The leaves on the trees shrivel and the grass turns brown, but there are no monsters hiding in the fog.

But that’s because the monster is already at the school.

A totally normal sounding announcer tells the kids that classes are cancelled for the day, that upperclassmen are dismissed, but underclassmen should report to the auditorium for an assembly.

Once all the kids are milling about a teacher walks stiffly out and tells them there’s going to be a special performance. The teach transforms into the principal, and then there’s Pennywise, ripping his head off and punting it out the door, throwing the man’s blood-spurting body at the students, and locking them all in as he does his crazed dance and Deadlights them.

As the clouds become thicker, Pennywise trundles away in his circus wagon, almost all the children of Derry floating in a hypnotized line behind him. He’s playing a tuba, and whacking a pedal drum that has a severed hand chained to it.

I love this fuckin’ clown, man.

Margie, Lilly, and Ronnie are up on the Tower when they see the cloud. When they come down, they find “Missing” posters for every kid in town, and understandably freak out—but then they find a poster for Will.

Then, they find the principal’s decapitated corpse at the otherwise-empty school

“I wanna kill that fuckin’ clown,” Margie says.

The kids spot a milk truck, and Margie, who has really blossomed in the last few days of horror, decides she can drive it. And she does! For a while. The kids give chase until a nefarious pothole throws them off the road and Lilly drops the dagger. Lilly then Gollums the fuck out over the dagger, they realize it’s driving her mad, and after some screaming and wrestling they agree to pass it between them so no one loses their mind.

Meanwhile, the adults are having their own problems.

Pennywise calls the Major and puts “Will” on the phone. Leroy isn’t afraid, but he is furious, promising “I’ll rip your fucking heart out!” as the line goes dead.

I think Pennywise may have taunted the wrong adult.

Leroy goes straight to Dick Hallorann’s quarters. Dick is not doing well. The ghosts are everywhere, they won’t stop whispering to him. As Leroy pounds on the door, Dick puts his gun in his mouth. Leroy breaks the door in just in time, and looks around wildly as Dick screams “Shut up! Shut up!” at the ghosts surrounding him. Dick points the gun at Leroy, and says “You got my mind all fucked up,” but he pauses when Leroy breaks down. “Please, please, it’s got Will. I’m begging you to help me find him. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but help me find my baby.”

Dick, slowly, puts the gun down.

Unfortunately the General and his underlings gets the report that the two men have escaped pretty quickly. Who the hell was supposed to be keeping Hanlon on base, anyway? Wasn’t that a direct order from the General?

We cut to Charlotte at Rose’s, pounding on Leroy’s chest and slapping his face as she learns what’s happened. He promises they’ll get him back, but Rose, initially, thinks it’s a lost cause. Leroy says that Dick can find them, and Rose throws a plan together: if Dick can mentally link with the dagger, as he did before, he can lead them to the children. They just have to do it before IT manages to walk through the bounds of ITs old cage. And then maybe, maybe, the dagger can replace the destroyed pillar and act as a new lock.

They give Dick a tea made with maturin root, and faced with the possibility of shutting the ghosts up, he drinks it in one gulp. It works almost instantly, to the extent that he doesn’t hear whatever Rose is trying to warn him about because time stretches and she becomes unintelligible.

They throw Dick in Taniel’s van, and everyone piles in to find the kids. They strategize as they go, following Dick’s directions, and asking if he could try to get into Pennywise’s mind again.

The kids, meanwhile, have found Pennywise and his wagon, rolling up the now-frozen river, headed right out of his unlocked mystical cage. They try to wake Will up from his Deadlighted sleep, until Pennywise comes down from the circus wagon.

“You’ve decided to join the circus! The fool, the freak, the failure. But… who’s who? It doesn’t matter, there a spot for you all!”

Ronnie wields the dagger and Pennywise backs off, but darts around them cackling and shrieking. He grabs Margie and drags her away from the others.

And here’s where something that should have been obvious to me comes to light. Pennywise looms over her. “Margie Tozier! But not Tozier yet!” he screams.

OH.

Oh.

He waves the future Richie Tozier’s missing poster in her face. “His friends bring me my death! Or is that death a birth???” He babbles about past present and future all being the same to him as Margie freaks out and tries to understand what he’s saying. “Beep, beep, Margie!” he howls, lunges at her, all his teeth out.

And then he freezes.

Stops dead, right above her.

She scrambles away.

The kids all fall to the ice and begin to wake up. The New Old Losers embrace Will, just in time for the adults to reach them. They load them into the van and Taniel tells the rest of the children to run to the North shore. He and the Major set out to bury the dagger in the blasted tree that marks the edge of IT’s cage.

But then.

General Shaw and his men appear on the shore, and both Taniel and the Major are shot. The Major holds Taniel while he bleeds out from a neck wound, and they’re surrounded, the General ordering another soldier to go get Halloran.

The General himself? He spots Pennywise, still as death on the ice, and decides it’s a fabulous idea to walk on over there and say hello.

We go inside ITs mind, where Pennywise is woken up inside the wagon by the other circus folk. They’re all calling him Robert Crane. “Who else might you be, Peter Rabbit?” When Pennywise tells the boss that he’s a “god” the boss smacks him and tells him he must have hit his head harder than he thought. Pennywise is very confused.

Will has reached his dad, and the Major gives his son the dagger. When Will protests that he can’t get the dagger to the tree because he’s too scared, the Major replies, “You don’t have to be me. Just be you. I love you. I love YOU.”

The kids wrestle the dagger to the tree as it fights with them every step of the way.

The General is standing directly in front of Pennywise now. “All these years wondering if you were real…whatever Halloran’s done to you, we’re gonna fix it.”

Wow. Just… wow.

Inside ITs mind, the cracks start to show. IT is able to peel Dick’s mask off and reveal the terrified man inside, just as in the outside world, we see him being thrown onto the ice by one of the soldiers.

Pennywise wakes up. The General tells him he’s free to go. Pennywise recognizes in the General the smell of the terrified boy at the circus, transforms into the old monster and screams “NOW YOU SEE IT!” as the General yells at him to stand down, and then Pennywise eats his head.

As the screams drift over the ice, the adults try to convince the soldiers that maybe they have a bigger enemy. As Pennywise slow motion runs past them toward the kids, giggling, they use the distraction to launch themselves at the soldiers and wrestle their guns away.

Major Hanlon goes after IT and shoots him, which succeeds in knocking him down at least, but then IT deadlights him. The kids can’t force the dagger into the base of the tree—it’s simply too strong for them. The adults, watching, start to break down in despair.

Until…

Dick sees the Necani on the ice. And she’s brought… Rich??? Rich’s ghost???

“What do you see?” Rose asks.

“A mutherfuckin miracle,” Dick breathes.

The ghost runs across the ice, gleefully flicking IT off as he passes, and helps the kids shove the dagger in the rest of the way. As the dagger finally goes into the base of the tree, beams of light from all the pillars shoot up into the sky.

IT molts through a series of forms. “Lively crowd,” IT mutters, before turning into light and shooting back down toward the sewers.

Leroy wakes up, Rose collapses sobbing next to Taniel’s body, and sings to him, and the kids embrace each other and agree that they all felt another pair of hands helping them.

We cut to Rich’s funeral. Margie gives a brief eulogy about how even though they weren’t friends for very long, some people “build houses in your heart”. She leaves a pair of drumsticks on his casket. Walking down Main Street after the funeral, she sees one of his balsa flyers in a tree—one of them made it! Lilly visits her father’s grave for the first time in a long time, and tells him that she’s made some new friends. And Dick sees Rich’s spirit standing with his parents by the graveside, plucks up his courage, and sits beside them to tell them what he sees. It seems to help.

“Who are you, sir?” Rich’s father asks.

“I’m still working on that,” Dick replies.

Back at the tower later, Margie tells Lilly about what Pennywise said to her—that she’d have a son that would kill IT. She worries that if time is truly meaningless to IT, IT could go back and kill their parents so they’d never exist at all.

Lilly meets this worry with some stellar philosophy: “It’ll be someone else’s fight, then.”

The Hanlons are packing their house up. Charlotte and Leroy share an actual kiss, and he actually smiles after her as she goes up to get Will, and the two of them seem better than they have all season. These two crazy kids might just make it, if they steer clear of evil space clowns. Dick Hallorann slouches into the doorway, giving Leroy an only slightly sarcastic salute.

The former Major is getting an honorable discharge as long as he keeps his mouth shut about…everything… and Dick is going to London to try out as a cook at his friend’s fancy hotel. “How much trouble can a hotel be?” he asks, and I groan, but who am I kidding, I’ve been waiting all season for a joke like that. The two men hug, and Dick asks Leroy to stay in touch let him know how Charlotte and Will are. He reluctantly admits that maybe he does care—just don’t tell anybody.

As they pack cars over at Rose’s place, Charlotte tells Hank Grogan how to meet with Rose’s people at the border, so it seems like at least one family is getting a happy ending. Mostly.

Rose invites Leroy and Charlotte to join the circle of people who watch over IT and protect Derry. She’s selling the farm—it’s too much without Taniel—and she thinks they’re the perfect people to take it over from her.

But the Hanlons think maybe they need to get out of Derry while they can.

Ronnie and Will sit on a bench a few yards away from the house. They talk about how they might forget each other when they leave, and go back and forth on whether that’s a good thing. But then Ronnie grabs Will and finally kisses him.

That complicates things.

Once everyone’s in the car, Charlotte suddenly raises the idea of taking Rose’s offer. “Maybe the next damn fool mission needs to be together,” she says to Leroy. As the two of them tease each other about who’ll take care of the sheep, Will leaps out of the car and immediately begins a letter to Ronnie. Maybe if he writes to her all the time she won’t forget?

But when we see a carefree Ronnie in the car with her dad and grandmother, two lollipops in her mouth, well, it seems like forgetting might be inevitable, and young love or no, it might be for the best.

We cut to Juniper Hill. Ingrid is straitjacketed, screaming about wolves at the two orderlies who are attending her. They drop the needle on her favorite old-time record and she calms down. We fade out and back in to the same music playing in October 1988, as a much older Ingrid paints a clown on a canvas—still in the asylum. There’s screaming down the hall, and Ingrid shuffles over to find Alvin and Beverly Marsh, sobbing on the floor at the feet of Elfrida Marsh, who has, apparently, hanged herself.

Alvin, ever the charmer, shoves Bev away, and she locks eyes with Ingrid, who tells her not to worry. “You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies.” Ingrid’s eyes widen in glee as Bev’s widen in horror.

As the end titles come up, the words IT: Welcome to Derry—Chapter One appear, which I’m guessing is their super fun way of telling us to expect another season.

Do We All Float?

This was kind of what I expected from the finale. There’s a lot of action and rushing so everyone can converge on a single point. Also, while Bill Skarsgård is impeccable in the role, IT has to work on your deepest, weirdest fears. Just seeing him out and about undercuts the terror.

Having said that I still think they wrapped all the plot points up well, maneuvering everyone around to set up the rest of the story without showing the strings too often.

The visual of the wagon rolling along through fog and ice, hypnotized children floating behind, was gorgeous. And as much as I’ve mentioned the diminishing returns of “IT runs at you really fast” I’ve never gotten sick of the Deadlights. I think the effect is so beautiful it actually captures how entrancing it would be.

I feel ridiculous for not realizing that Richie was Margie’s future kid! But now it all makes sense.

What I think the episode did extremely well was bring the relationship between Leroy Hanlon and Dick Hallorann to a perfect close. The scene between them is incredible—the two are in different worlds, emotionally. Dick, coiled into himself, eyes flickering constantly to take in every ghostly threat, as Leroy finally cracks open and sobs, realizing he may have sealed his child’s doom by bringing him to Derry. The two performances play off each other perfectly, and really underline the idea that these two men inhabit different worlds. Dick’s visions force him to be half in the spirit world at all times, and he simply has no real care for the world of the living. Until, finally, he does. It’s been lovely to watch him become the man we meet in The Shining. And Leroy finally throws off any loyalty he has to the U.S. military, and faces the fact that he needs to reprioritize everything if he wants his family to make it.

#JustKingThings

I’ve been telling people that the show is fixing a lot of what I didn’t like in IT: Chapter II, and I’m pleased to say that it mostly has. By centering the story on the Grogans, the Hanlons, and Hallorann, it showed a different side of Derry. It created enough context for the hate crime at the Black Spot that it feels like part of Derry’s terrible history, influenced by the evil of IT, but largely the work of white supremacists. It also adds more nuance and depth to the fictional Shokopiwah, fixing one of Stephen King’s clumsier attempts at inclusivity. It shows us the cycle of horror, how it carries forward into the Losers Club that will form in the 1980s, but it also shows us that people have been fighting IT the entire time.

Turtles all the Way Down

The tea Rose gives to Dick is Maturin root, presumably named for the mystical cosmic turtle who is trying to help humanity fight IT.

Mike Hanlon’s Photo Album

We learn that Margie is Richie’s future mom! Most of you probably already guessed that! Where have I been! And we see the future missing poster with Finn Wolfhard’s face.

Later, we fully meet Bev Marsh, played by Sophia Lillis. Is she coming back for another season of this show? How will that work, given that people grow and age?

Ridiculous Alien Spider, or Generationally Terrifying Clown?

As I said, the Deadlights are excellent. The concept of the kids being trapped in the auditorium with Pennywise is great. All the moments when we’re trapped in ITs mind as it gets increasingly furious about how people are treating IT is hilarious. And the transformations as it chases the children are fun.

Where I think I wanted more was in ITs confrontation with the General. After all the horror that man caused, I wanted IT to linger over eating him, and I wanted the camera to linger with IT.

And, again, the threat of IT is always scarier than seeing IT. Spending so much time one the ice with IT as the rest of the plot roiled around kind of undercut the fear for me.[end-mark]

The post <em>IT: Welcome to Derry</em>’s Season Finale Is Chaotic, But Mostly Satisfying appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: This Terrible Movie Is Actually Amazing

Hands down the greatest movie ever made about Martians kidnapping Santa.

By Kali Wallace

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Published on December 17, 2025

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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) Directed by Nicholas Webster. Written by Paul L. Jacobson based on the story by Glenville Mareth. Starring John Call, Leonard Hicks, Vincent Beck, and Bill McCutcheon.

By the time the villainous Voldar says, “One false move and your little ho ho ho man will be destroyed!” I had already decided this is the greatest movie ever made about Martians kidnapping Santa Claus.

I’m not much of a bad movie aficionado. I know there are people who seek out bad movies for fun. I am friends with and have hung out with such people, which is why I’ve seen such gems as Troll 2 (1990) and The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) and even Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977). That last one has lead to some awkward moments, because carelessly referencing Death Bed: The Bed That Eats in casual conversation raises questions one might not be prepared to answer in certain company, such as, “Why did you watch a movie about a demonic bed?” and “But how does the demonic bed eat people?” and “Are you sure that’s a real movie and not a weird dream you had?”

My point is, I don’t seek out movies with “so bad it’s good” reputations on my own, but I do understand and appreciate their appeal. Pretty much all I knew about Santa Claus Conquers the Martians before I sat down to watch it is that a lot of people put it in that category.

They are right to do so. This is not a good movie, but it is an amazing movie. It’s so incredibly stupid. It’s delightful.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is the brainchild of the film’s producer and screenwriter Paul L. Jacobson, who has no other film credits to his name. Not before, not after. In a 1964 New York Times article about upcoming films, Jacobson explains that he wanted to make a Christmas movie for kids: “Except for the Disneys, there’s very little in film houses during the season that the kids can recognize and claim as their own.” The same article notes that well-known film producer and financier Joseph E. Levine had agreed to distribute the film; Levine was the man who had brought Godzilla (1954) to the United States as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), and he would later be responsible for the distribution of movies such as The Graduate (1967) and The Producers (1967).

From the very small number of articles that mention the movie, it seems that having Levine linked with the film had people expecting a fairly normal Christmas movie, even if it came from a first-time producer and screenwriter. Jacobson hired Nicholas Webster, a well-regarded documentary filmmaker, to make the movie on a shoestring budget in two weeks at a studio on Long Island.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians made a healthy amount of money when it came out, but I haven’t been able to find any contemporary reviews, so it’s hard to figure out what critics thought of it at the time. It was released and promoted in November of 1964 and stayed in theaters across the U.S. for several months, even after the Christmas season was over; it would subsequently be rereleased at Christmastime over the years. The success led to more opportunities for Jacobson, but he fumbled every one and never made another movie.

From what I can tell, the film was in the public domain upon release because of the omission of a notice of copyright. That is not a terrible uncommon omission in the history of film; I’ve mentioned it before with The Brother From Another Planet (1984). In the case of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, its public domain status eventually led to the film getting a longer life in various television and home video releases, which is how it found its way into the childhood traditions of a great many people. It was eventually shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1991, thereby cementing its place among people who love to laugh about silly movies.

Because it is a silly movie. It is such a silly movie.

Here is the story: The people of Mars are worried about their children. The leader of Mars, Kimar (Leonard Hicks), and his wife Momar (Leila Martin), have noticed that their two children are acting glum and listless. Bomar (Chris Month) and Girmar (Pia Ziadora, about twenty years before her brief, unsuccessful Hollywood career and her more successful pop music career) have lost interest in eating, although eating meals on Mars consists of swallowing food pills, so who can blame them. They now spend all their free time watching television programs from Earth. This includes a news broadcast from KIDTV in which a reporter visits the North Pole to interview Santa Claus (John Call). A real news broadcast, that is—in the world of this movie, everybody knows Santa is real.

Also present in their household is Dropo, who is played by Bill McCutcheon, one of the very, very few recognizable actors in this film. I couldn’t figure out why he looked so familiar to me, not until I read his obituary and learned he had played the recurring character of Uncle Wally on Sesame Street during the 1980s. It’s not clear what role Dropo plays in the home of Kimar and Momar. He might be some kind of servant. Do the Martians have slaves? Is Mars a slave-holding society? Already I have so many questions.

Also, before we go any further, I just want to point out that “Kimar” is shortened from King Martian, Momar from Mom Martian, and Bomar and Girmar from Boy and Girl Martian. I have no idea if Jacobson thought he was being clever or just never bothered to give them names, but I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Kimar wants to help the depressed children of Mars, so he does what any parent would do, which is get together other community leaders and go to a cave to summon and talk to an 800-year-old man named Chochem (Carl Don). (“Chochem” is a variant spelling of hakham, a Hebrew word for a wise man or scholar, and more proof that Jacobson did not bother actually naming his characters.) Chochem tells Kimar and the others that the children of Mars are so unhappy lately because they have information beamed into their brain from the moment they are born and have forgotten how to be kids who run around and play and have fun. Chochem does not turn to stare pointedly into the camera while he says this, but it feels like he does, even watching from a safe distance of 61 years in the future.

Chochem also says that children need a Santa Claus-like figure to teach them the whimsical wonders of childhood. So Kimar and the others do what any responsible leaders would do and head to Earth to kidnap Santa. Among the group of abductors is Voldar (Vincent Beck), who does not think Mars needs Santa Claus, does not want children to be whimsical and playful, and wants Mars to regain its glory days as a planet of war. How and why actual Martians, who have never visited Earth, not only know that Mars is named after the god of war but also take pride in that fact, is never explained. Maybe their ancestors interacted with the Romans in the past? In any case, Voldar spends the entire movie trying to murder Santa.

(Beck is the other recognizable actor in the film, as under his Martian antennae is a character actor who had parts in dozens of television shows through the ’60s and ’70s.)

Upon arriving on Earth, the Martians encounter siblings Billy (Victor Stiles) and Betty (Donna Conforti), who helpfully explain that the innumerable Santas ringing bells on city streets are merely helper Santas, while the real Santa is toiling away in his North Pole workshop. Naturally, the Martians decide to go to the North Pole, but they have to abduct the children to stop them from telling anybody.

When they arrive at the North Pole, Billy and Betty overhear the Martians talking about kidnapping Santa Claus, so they sneak out of the spaceship to warn him. They endure the freezing cold, encounter the greatest polar bear puppet in the history of cinema, narrowly avoid being crushed to death by a robot named Torg, and still don’t manage to warn Santa Claus in time.

The Martians successfully kidnap Santa and head back to Mars, but they leave Mrs. Claus (Doris Rich) and several elves behind as witnesses. They also abandon Torg the killer robot, because it malfunctioned upon entering Santa’s Workshop and is now, according to the Martians, a toy. What happens between Mrs. Claus and the seven-foot-tall robotic “toy” in Santa’s absence is left up to the viewers’ imaginations and PornHub search histories.

The movie then spends about five minutes of its 70-minute runtime showing scenes of planes taking off, which is how we know the whole of Earth has mobilized to get Santa back. It never leads to anything, though, because the rest of the action takes place on Mars.

On the journey through space, Voldar tries to murder Santa and the kids by putting them in the spaceship airlock. Santa finds this to be a very amusing escapade. I am beginning to have my doubts about Santa’s mental stability and risk assessment capabilities.

It turns out that Santa’s plan to bring the magic of Christmas to Martian children is to get both the Earthling children and the human children to work in a Martian toy factory. Santa even complains that the work is too easy because it’s all automated; he merely pushes buttons while the children do the work of future Amazon warehouse employees and fulfill the orders. I am fascinated by the ethical and philosophical implications of deciding that children toiling away at unpaid labor is more beneficial to their childlike senses of whimsy than watching TV about life on other planets or learning how to travel through space.

Meanwhile, Voldar is still trying to kill Santa and the kids, but he’s bad at it, so he and his henchmen accidentally abduct Dropo, who is wearing a Santa costume. They also sabotage the Martian toy factory so that it produces only scrambled up toys, such as a doll and a teddy bear with swapped heads. By pure coincidence, two weeks after Santa Claus Conquers the Martians premiered in theaters in 1964, the Rankin/Bass stop-motion film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer aired on television for the first time. I hereby propose the theory that the Martian toys out of the sabotaged factory are the ones that populate the Island of Misfit Toys.

There is a bit of a fight in the Martian toy workshop, but of course Voldar and his henchmen are overpowered, and Kimar agrees to send Santa, Billy, and Betty back to Earth. And that’s the very abrupt end of the movie. It just ends.

Do the Martian children learn to frolic and play? We have no idea. We only ever see Martian children working in the toy workshop. Does Dropo become the Martian Santa? Probably! Do Santa and the children get home safely? We don’t know. Did Earth actually send astronauts to Mars in an untested spacecraft? Maybe! What happened to them? No idea! Maybe they died! We never find out.

Did the Martians just leave their killer robot at the North Pole for good? It’s possible. Did Santa’s workshop really produce toy rockets with real rocket fuel? I hope so. Why did the elves already know what Martians look like? I suspect a conspiracy. Why did the Martians invent a device called the Tickle Ray? I have so many questions, but I might not want the answer to that one.

Is the entire message of this movie about how toys are the true meaning of Christmas? Sure seems like it! Does Santa Claus conquer any Martians? No! Nobody gets conquered at all!

And finally: Will I now incorporate “One false move and your little ho ho ho man will be destroyed!” into my holiday vernacular at every possible opportunity? YES. Obviously.

It’s so, so ridiculous. The ridiculousness is never-ending. Voldar is so determined to straight-up murder Santa and those kids. Santa is so jolly about everything, even attempted murder, that it starts to look like pharmaceutical mood enhancement after a while. But most of all I can’t get over how the whole premise of the movie is that Martian kids need to learn how to be kids, but we never see them playing. They just work to make toys for other kids. It’s so unintentionally bleak that it goes right back around to being funny.

There was a brief period in the late ’90s when there were rumors of a remake, to be produced by David Zucker and written by Ben Edlund. A lot of places say Jim Carrey was attached to the project, but I can’t find a proper source for that, just a lot of people repeating the rumor. In the years since, the rumors have evolved to involve Cynthia Webster, daughter of director Nicholas Webster and a film cinematographer in her own right, as the director, and based on the IMDb page there might be a treatment or a script in existence, as there are screenwriters listed, but nothing else.

I have no opinion about this. I don’t actually care about Christmas movies, and now that I’ve watched one (1) this year, I’ll go back to not caring about them. The movie business is gonna do what the movie business does.

In conclusion, I can easily see why Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has been both a childhood favorite and a movie snarking favorite. It works on both levels. It’s so stupid, and it gave me a great many laughs, and that’s more than enough.

What do you think of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Is that obnoxious jingle now stuck in your head? It’s stuck in my head. It has been for days.

With Cops Like These, Who Needs Criminals?

The Science Fiction Film Club is now taking a break for perfectly normal and innocent reasons, and definitely not to go kidnap Santa Claus and bring him to Mars. We’ll be back in January to watch a selection of films about the dark, disturbing, and violent overlap between science fiction and law enforcement.

January 7 — Mad Max (1979), directed by George Miller

Remember how the original Mad Max was a highway patrol officer? Yeah, I forgot too, until recently.

Watch: Check streaming sources. A lot of streaming sites shuffle things around at the start of the year.

View the trailer.

January 14 — Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg

In 2002, the idea of walking into The Gap and having the store’s computer recognize you and immediately give you targeted ads was science fiction.

Watch: Check streaming sources.

View the trailer.

January 21 — Outland (1981), directed by Peter Hyams

It’s High Noon in space.

Watch: Check streaming sources.

Trailer.

January 28 — RoboCop (1987), directed by Paul Verhoeven

Pretty much the only sci fi satire about American law enforcement that matters.

Watch: Check streaming sources.

View the trailer.

The post <i>Santa Claus Conquers the Martians</i>: This Terrible Movie Is Actually Amazing appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays The Muppets

The Secret Weirdo Underbelly of The Muppet Christmas Carol

Holiday fun, or a roleplay gone wrong? You decide!

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on December 16, 2025

Image: Jim Henson Productions

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Image: Jim Henson Productions

The last time I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol, I had a thought. It is the sort of thought that will ruin some peoples’ days and infinitely elevate others’, so I give you (somewhat) fair warning. The thought was this:

The frame device of this film is that we’re being forced to watch a kink roleplaying scenario between Gonzo and Rizzo.

Sorry.

Sorry! But hear me out.

I can feel you rolling your eyes. It’ll only take a minute.

All muppet movies are a treasure, but I have a special spot reserved in my heart for movies where the muppets aren’t playing themselves. The conceit of every muppet movie (and, indeed, their eponymous variety show) is that the muppets are technically actors and performers, and the question of how many fourth wall breaks we’re supposed to infer in that is entirely up to the viewer. For example: Are the backstage shenanigans on The Muppet Show a part of the show itself? Or are we actually seeing what goes on backstage when we’re not supposed to? How do you know your interpretation of this is correct?

It’s part of what makes muppet stories so delightful—you genuinely can’t know what the narrative intends, or when you’re observing their “reality.” You can decide for yourself in the moment, but you can have a completely different viewing experience if you decide something new at a later date.

So I love the movies where the muppets aren’t playing themselves because it plays further into their conceit as actors and creates even more layered opportunities for fourth wall breaks and metatext. But, obviously, some muppets are better at playing parts than others. Or, I should say, more willing. Which is why, when The Muppet Christmas Carol opens, Rizzo is perplexed to find Gonzo insisting that he’s Charles Dickens.

On its face, the device is genius for tackling one of the most difficult parts of film adaptation: the loss of authorial voice. While it certainly isn’t necessary (or preferential) to place swaths of written narrative into a film, it is often the most prominent aspect that separates the two mediums out. In a movie or television, the author of the story can no longer set scenes, give the audience essential information, or add a sly aside. For certain authors, this can feel like a much greater loss—there’s a reason The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie took great pains to preserve Douglas Adams’ narrative sidetracks within the film itself, and even then, the film still lacked much of his style (and so many of his best jokes).

Charles Dickens famously used to perform A Christmas Carol in public for audiences during the season; his readings of the book are part of the story’s legacy and historical makeup. And there’s something about how Dickens unspools this story in particular that captures the imagination—this isn’t the only version of A Christmas Carol to figure out ways of shoving his exposition into a movie, though that’s perhaps a discussion for another time.

The point is that having a muppet take on this role to narrate the tale makes sense on multiple levels. It doesn’t change the fact that Rizzo is baffled that Gonzo has decided to be Charles Dickens in this instance. In fact, the suggestion via their opening dialogue is that Gonzo was possibly intended to be “the narrator” of the movie, without an explicit character to take on. He begins by simply saying “I am here to tell the story,” but then gives us a name that is not Gonzo the Great, which puts Rizzo in a tizzy:

Gonzo insists upon the character, and then his grasp of the narrative forces Rizzo to concede and play along. By the end of the sequence, he’s referring to Gonzo as “Mr. Dickens,” albeit with scathing sarcasm. When Gonzo later can’t see into the window of Scrooge’s office, he uses Rizzo’s body to wipe the window clean, and Rizzo adds, dejectedly, “Thank you for making me a part of this.”

Part of what, Rizzo? A part of what?

And this would be the end of my (extremely lacking) argument, if something peculiar didn’t continue from that point on: Gonzo is Charles Dickens for the rest of the film… but he’s also Gonzo. He has to be because of Rizzo’s presence, which keeps reasserting his true identity within the context of the film. In the midst of the narrative, Gonzo keeps acting on Rizzo’s body for the purposes of humor and pushing his boundaries into scenarios that don’t feel safe to Rizzo: going ice skating together; using Rizzo as a bellows to stoke a fire mid-narration; promising to catch Rizzo on a jump from a fence and failing; accidentally lighting him on fire and dropping him into a bucket of ice water. It’s this interplay that makes me absolutely certain my interpretation is correct.

Rizzo is humoring Gonzo in this really strange kink he wants to try for the evening.

If it only ran in one direction—Rizzo being dismayed at Gonzo demanding this scene—I’d be less confident in my analysis. But Gonzo also cares about Rizzo’s investment in what they’re doing. At one point, our narrator gets so put out by Rizzo finding the jelly beans he’d been searching for all scene in his pocket that Rizzo has to kiss him on the nose to make up for it.

I’m sure “Charles Dickens” loved being kissed on his furry blue nose.

But it gets more absurd. When they follow Scrooge into Christmases Past, the duo get dragged through the area via a connecting rope and manage to pick up a chicken. This leads to a particularly damning exchange:

Uhhhh. Sorry, did The Muppet Christmas Carol just subject us to a scene where Rizzo is annoyed with Gonzo for getting his ex a part in the movie?

A reminder on muppet lore: Gonzo loves chickens, in general. It’s a little weird how much, namely due to the marked species preference and the fact that the chicken muppets don’t talk? He was in a relationship with Camilla the chicken for a long while, and it’s suggested that he flirts with and dates chickens pretty frequently. (He gets distracted by another one while looking for a place to shatter the ice popsicle that forms around Rizzo’s body following the ice bucket incident.) So exactly how are we meant to read Rizzo’s irate, long-suffering “We’ve met” as anything other than what is she doing here?

And why is it in the movie?

There are countless exchanges where Rizzo checks in with Gonzo about their continuing shenanigans to let him know how he feels about being dragged into this scenario without proper prep. Lots of “I suppose I should be grateful?” and “I suppose you enjoyed that?” There’s also my personal favorite—when Rizzo complains at falling down the Cratchits’ chimney and landing on their “flaming hot goose,” Gonzo sits down heavily beside him and replies, “You have all the fun.”

Yet by the end of the film, Gonzo is taking Rizzo’s needs into consideration with the lengthy scene he’s strong-armed him into. He even lets Rizzo opt out of the Christmas Future segment entirely—and opts out with him for solidarity purposes.

That’s how you take care of your partner! And the payoff is worth it: By the ending musical number, Rizzo is thanking “Mr. Dickens” for the story, and all is well.

And I think I have further proof that Gonzo went “off-script” here, metatextually speaking… but you’ll have to take the following film into consideration. Because Muppet Treasure Island is also based on an old novel with reams of exposition that could be mined for setup. But is Gonzo playing author Robert Louis Stevenson in that movie? He is not.

He’s playing himself. Just like Rizzo.

Which would seem to indicate that someone took Gonzo aside and let him know he needed to stay on-book for this one. (This seems even more likely when you notice that the joke “How does he/she do that?” gets used in both films—but in Christmas Carol it’s directed at Gonzo’s omniscient narrator abilities, while in Treasure Island it’s directed at Jennifer Saunders’ Mrs. Sarah Bluveridge, the woman who owns the inn that Jim Hawkins works at. They’re repurposing his schtick.) They even let him and Rizzo be best pals with the main character in Muppet Treasure Island to achieve that end.

Some folks might point out that it’s weird for Gonzo and Rizzo to never get “characters” to play within these films where most of their buddies are acting, but that actually makes more sense in terms of Gonzo’s artistic style within the muppet troupe. It’s easy to forget, but Gonzo’s initial work on The Muppet Show was as a highly abstract performance artist who created acts the audience did not understand. Gonzo’s not really an actor in the traditional sense, unlike the rest of his friends. Neither is Rizzo, for that matter—he sort of detached himself from the rat muppet group, only to reattach at Gonzo’s side. (There are real-world human performer reasons for this, of course, but they don’t apply to the muppets-as-performers meta narrative.) Their double act is largely happenstance, an accident built on great chemistry.

And yes, I do mean chemistry.

Sorry!

So you can ignore the clear extraneous layer of narrative weaving its way through The Muppet Christmas Carol, if you like. For my part, the story is better when you enjoy that layer the whole way through. Because nothing quite says “the holidays” like the myriad things we do to make our loved ones happy. Even if those things happen to be extremely weird, and should probably come with safewords.[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Best of 2025

Some of Reactor’s Best Articles About TV, Movies, and Pop Culture in 2025

We’re looking back at some of our favorite non-fiction articles from the past year, highlighting essays focused on visual media.

By Reactor

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Published on December 17, 2025

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We’re back with our yearly overview of some of our favorite essays from the past twelve months! In case you missed it, there’s a separate list for articles about fiction, writing, reading, and all things book-related; the list below focuses on discussions about other aspects of media and pop culture, and particularly film and television.

As always, we’ve focused on standalone essays and articles, here, but we’re also quite proud of the many reviews and all the film and television coverage we’ve published all year long, as well as our regular columns and rewatches, including our newest series, such as Tyler Dean’s ongoing ’80s Fantasy Film Club, which has covered everything from Willow and Return to Oz to Fire and Ice and The Beastmaster so far, with much more to come! Also new to the site this year are Petrana Radulovic’s excellent Watchlist articles, rounding up all the genre-related TV and movies premiering each month. In July, we also welcomed News Editor Matthew Byrd, who has been overseeing all of our news coverage and implementing new feature, including our regular “What to Watch and Read” recommendations.

We hope that you enjoy the selections below, and hope that you’ll take a moment to tell us about the articles and columns (and movies and shows) that struck a chord with you over the last year…

The Highs and Lows of Superheroes

Thunderbolts* Delivers the Best Marvel Villain in Years
by Leah Schnelbach
May 13, 2025

The villain of this superhero movie is depression. (And shame, guilt, trauma, PTSD, the whole merry gang — but mostly depression.)

A Realistic Take on a Fantastic Family: Revisiting James Sturm & Guy Davis’ Unstable Molecules
by Paul Morton
July 22, 2025

Looking back at a darker version of the Fantastic Four — a work of metafiction, which tells the “true story” of the superhero team and their “actual” origins in the late 1950s.

We Don’t Love Superman Because He’ll Save Us
by Emmet Asher-Perrin
July 24, 2025

Superman gives audiences hope — but not as a straightforward savior narrative.

Are the Fantastic Four Leading a Planet-Wide Cult?
by Emmet Asher-Perrin
July 29, 2025

“Are the Fantastic Four a cult? Perhaps their entire planet has been drugged? Or their history lends itself to easy global indoctrination? There’s just sooo much lead in everything on Earth-828, and no one has noticed? Please, I’m just trying to understand…”

Superman Fights for a Better Tomorrow — Even for His Enemies
by Rachel Kessler
August 5, 2025

“Is Superman a perfect movie? Probably not! At the same time, the film’s core message about radical kindness and hope speaks to something deep in my soul. We live in a moment when we frankly need a celebration of radical decency.”

The Lois Lane Test
by J.L. Akagi
August 25, 2025

“When it comes to a Superman movie, there is one thing that makes or breaks an adaptation: Lois Lane. […] How she’s portrayed offers a telling test of each film’s emotional stakes and overall vision of heroism.”

What Can Superheroes Do in the Face of Entropy?
by Leah Schnelbach
October 21, 2025

Three recent superhero movies respond to disorder, uncertainty, and other existential threats…

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All Things Star Trek

We Need Corny Star Trek Now More Than Ever
by Joe George
February 3, 2025

Idealism, not cynicism, is how we persist in building a better future.

Some Thoughts About Spock’s Chest Hair
by Emmet Asher-Perrin
July 17, 2025

“When Spock appeared shirtless in Strange New World’s third-season I sat up and took notice. Not for the reason you’d think, though.”

In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Is Biology Destiny?
by Lily Osler
September 9, 2025

Vulcans are logic machines, Gorn are monsters… or so Strange New Worlds might have us believe.

Master and Commander Is a Great Star Trek Movie in Disguise
by Don Kaye
September 10, 2025

Guided by naval structure and a captain who adores his best friend (the ship’s doctor), the two series have more than a few items in common.

Star Trek: TNG’s Borg Collective Is the Perfect Monster for Our Time
by Surekha Davies
September 24, 2025

35 years on, what can we learn from the Borg and “The Best of Both Worlds”?

Star Trek Needs New (and Better) Villains
by Jaime Babb
October 14, 2025

The “villains” of Trek are meant to be foils to the Federation’s worldview, not blindly evil antagonists.

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Exploring the Personal and the Political in SFF

I Finally Figured Out the Problem: Angel Hates Sex
by Jenny Hamilton
January 27, 2025

“In the landscape of this show, sex is disappointing at best, predatory almost always, and at worst it’s going to kill someone or kickstart the apocalypse.”

Severance Is the Future Tech Bros Want
by Tenacity Plys
February 26, 2025

The characters in Severance haven’t just divided their work and private selves, they’ve been severed from the life of the mind as well.

The Worldbuilding of Andor’s Ghorman Speaks Volumes
by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw
May 6, 2025

The site of an Imperial misinformation campaign, Ghorman has been carefully constructed to remind us of another revolution in particular…

Andor’s Participation in One Tired Trope Is Uniquely Infuriating
by Emmet Asher-Perrin
May 22, 2025

Those final shots really pull the rug out from under the whole thing…

Enemy Mine Is the Queer, Anti-War Sci-Fi You’ve Been Missing
by Meg Elison
May 27, 2025

’90s Star Trek may have tackled issues of gender, race, and interstellar war — but Enemy Mine got there first. 

Creativity vs. Control: Bridge to Terabithia, The Boy and the Heron, and A.I. “Art”
by Wendy Xu
August 19, 2025

What happens when fictional main characters are forced to confront the fundamental unfairness of life, which cannot be escaped even through fantasy?

Serenity and the Myth of “Getting Out the Signal”
by Rachel Kessler
October 1, 2025

We want to believe that knowledge will change the world for the better, but it’s not always that simple.

Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever
by Asa West
October 7, 2025

Witches teach us how to push back — and raise hell — in the face of authoritarianism.

Pluribus Reimagines 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers for a Generation With Nothing Left to Sell Out
by Matthew Byrd
November 25, 2025

Philip Kaufman’s Body Snatchers asked what happens when you trade your identity away. Pluribus lives in the world that bargain resulted in.

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Thoughts on Grief and the Insidious Horrors of Nostalgia

The Grammar of Memory: On Mike Flanagan’s Oculus
by Julia Armfield
January 23, 2025

“Mike Flanagan is a filmmaker whose preoccupations tend towards the half-remembered. This is certainly true of his 2013 movie Oculus—a film I have found myself recommending over and over again at book events and online, always with the caveat that yes it is a movie about a magic mirror…”

Digital Doubles Halve the Grief: Black Mirror and Severance Are Kindred Spirits
by Natalie Zutter
April 17, 2025

The sci-fi anthology series’ digital “cookies” walked so Lumon’s innies could run.

Folk Horror Is Having a Moment — And That Makes Perfect Sense
by Ellery Weil
June 24, 2025

Horror always reflects that current moment — so why is folk horror resurging?

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The Potent Magic of Music

Let’s Talk About the Irish Music in Sinners
by Leah Schnelbach
April 29, 2025

How director Ryan Coogler uses the Irish vampire Remmick and his three songs — two of which are Irish standards, and one of which very much is not — to shape the film’s plot.

KPop Demon Hunters Understands the Joyous Power of Music
by Kali Wallace
July 2, 2025

“I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about KPop Demon Hunters. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was, and I didn’t know if I needed to temper my expectations. You see, I am a K-pop fan. A pretty serious one…”

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Memorable Characters and Unlikely Heroes

David Lynch and the Art Life
by Leah Schnelbach
January 22, 2025

Two documentaries that celebrate Lynch’s unique art, and his devotion to his work.

How I Found an Unlikely Millennial Icon in The Last Unicorn
by Asa West
February 11, 2025

“Molly is middle-aged and sour-tempered. Her hair is uncombed and her soup is watery. While the unicorn has never felt regret, Molly is steeped in it, spending her days taking care of a gaggle of men who take her for granted.”

Animated Animals and the Post-Human World
by Paul Morton
February 18, 2025

Examining three films that break with animated traditions of anthropomorphic animals, and explore a world beyond ourselves.

Farscape and the Princess Fallacy
by Constance Fay
March 11, 2025

Farscape’s princesses were never what — or who — they seemed.

I Didn’t Expect Gurathin to Be My Favorite Part of Murderbot
by Leah Schnelbach
July 22, 2025

I’d offer Dr. Gurathin a hug, but he’d HATE that.

Hope and the Loser Heroes of Bong Joon Ho
by Elaine U. Cho
October 22, 2025

Director Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi films — such as The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja — feature flawed heroes, but he never loses a sense of hopefulness.

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As always, there’s much more to talk about, so let us know what you think about all of the above, and please recommend any favorite shows, movies, or articles that haven’t been mentioned yet! And of course, if you’re feeling nostalgic or just looking for more deep dives into pop culture, you can always check out our “Some of the Best…” article round-ups from previous years. Thanks for reading![end-mark]

The post Some of Reactor’s Best Articles About TV, Movies, and Pop Culture in 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

Lists Mysteries

An Infallible Ranking of Crime-Solving Clergy

There’s a surprising amount of crossover between sleuthing and pastoral care.

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on December 11, 2025

Credit: Netflix

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Credit: Netflix

I am a simple person: Rian Johnson releases a new Benoit Blanc mystery, and I see it as often as possible during its theatrical window, and then stream it on Netflix. Wake Up Dead Man is one of my favorite films of the year, and its main character—Father Jud Duplenticy—has inspired me to round up some of the best holy sleuths I could find.

As always this is subjective. Be assured that Father Jud is #1 in my heart if not on this list.

#15. Father Michael William Logan — I Confess!

This is a Hitchcock movie in which Montgomery Clift plays a young hot priest in Quebec City who is framed for murder by his church’s groundskeeper. I’m including it here because Father Michael William Logan becomes very glancingly involved in the investigation of the murder before he himself is too much of a suspect. I expected a taut thriller, but this movie is a bit bumpy—the plot is extremely convoluted, there are multiple subplots about the priest’s former girlfriend and blackmail, so there are only a few sections that really dig into what to me is the most interesting part: since the groundkeeper confessed his murder, the priest is bound by the seal of the confession and can’t clear his own name.

There is one sequence that I think really takes the film to the level it needed, where Clift wanders through Quebec City framed by religious iconography. He starts outside a cemetery. Later, as he walks up a hill, Hitchcock shoots him from across the street, where there’s a statue of Jesus carrying the cross up Golgotha flanked by Roman soldiers. A few minutes later, Clift seeks refuge in a different church, walks in, and fixes his eyes on the crucifix which is, after all, a graphic record of a body broken by state violence. There’s no escape for him, and he knows that.

#14. Assorted Priests — Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James

Fathers Martin, Sebastian, Peregrine, and John don’t actually do too much investigating in P.D. James novel Death in the Holy Orders, as they leave most of it to DCI Adam Dalgliesh. But they do try to assist as they can. And then, in the adaptation of the book for the Channel 5 series Dalgliesh, Father Martin is cut out entirely and his actions divided among the other three. But I still wanted to include them as the book itself is an interesting take on a religious mystery.

In both the book and television versions, DCI Dalgliesh is the son of a rector with “a stubborn streak of rationality”, whose history with religion bubbles under the surface of his stoic exterior. While the plot is pretty convoluted, the book gets into some interesting shades between the Church of England, starker Protestantism, and Anglo-Catholicism, but in both cases I think the story could have done with a bit more theology and church details to hammer home how St. Anselm’s, the site of the murder(s), was a unique site for the crimes that occur, and how those crimes would have affected the faculty and students’ faith and livelihoods.

#13. Lady Lupin — Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggins

Lady Lupin is the bubbly, adorable, scatterbrained new wife of Canon Andrew Hastings. I have to assume she’s a slight parody of Agatha Christie’s Griselda Clement (who appears a little further up the list), as she’s a gorgeous blonde 21-year-old, straight out of London society, who is about as unprepared for the vicarage as anyone could be. But, on the night her longterm society boyfriend was going to propose, she met the 38-years-old, silvering-at-the-temples Canon Hastings at a dinner, and by the end of the night the two were completely twitterpated.

When Andrew’s pompous young curate, Andrew Young, dies from poison on Christmas Eve (so inconvenient!) Loops takes it upon herself to investigate, with help from her London friends Duds and Tommy, and Andrew’s nephew Jack. Lupin is… well, now, in our technology-addled world, her miniscule attention span and talent for non-sequitur would seem perfectly normal, but at the time author Joan Coggins was writing a gentle parody of un-upperclass woman, kindhearted, but flighty and always focused on exactly the wrong details—until those details turn out to be useful in a murder investigation. It’s easier to just show you what we’re dealing with, so here’s a brief excerpt of Lupin trying to speak with her nephew about a certain Miss Oliver, who might be a murder suspect:

“She is a tiresome woman, I hate people who wriggle, and she was rather nasty about June and Diana.”

“Why?” asked Jack sharply.

“I don’t know, I’m sure. I suppose she was born like it. Where was I?”

“You didn’t say, but I gather it was somewhere with Miss Oliver.”

“Oh yes, so I was, unfortunately. We were in my sitting room. I know we were there because of the housekeeping money.”

“What housekeeping money?”

“The money that was stolen, of course.”

“You never said anything about any money being stolen.”

“Well, I suppose I had forgotten. One can’t think of everything. There was Duds cutting her hair off after telling me she had grown it, and then the carol service, and now poor Mr. Young being dead. It would seem heartless to begrudge ten pounds.”

The whole book is like this! It’s great! Lupin doesn’t so much help solve the case, as much as free associate her way down the right path, so she can’t be too high on the list.

#12. Merrily Watkins — Midwinter of the Spirit

Here again, I’ve seen the ITV adaptation, and haven’t yet read Phil Rickman’s books. Merrily Watkins (Anna Maxwell Martin) was a promising character in an interesting premise, but the execution left her fairly low on this list.

She’s already an Anglican minister, recently widowed and trying to navigate her relationship with her daughter, who’s grieving much more than she appears to be. As the series opens, she’s training to become a Deliverance Minister, the Anglican Church’s somewhat more empathetic and holistic take on the role of exorcist. The show shifts in tone between suspense, family drama, and occasionally straight-up supernatural horror.

The problem is that Merrily waffles constantly about whether she should even be a Deliverance Minister. (Her “mentor”, a Minister named Huw Owen [David Threlfall], explicitly tells her she’s not cut out for it.) She allows a malevolent spirit to get its hooks in her immediately, and then ends up helping to investigate a series of deaths said spirit may have caused. She doesn’t make any friends in the police force, because the two police officers we deal with walk Merrily into the site of a horrifying occult ritual, complete with corpse and a plethora of anti-Christian imagery, with no warning whatsoever, and she’s utterly traumatized. They don’t seem to have any reason to do this, she isn’t a regular consultant.

As the show continues she develops a sort of demonic stigmata (which, cool), and seems possessed at time. Her daughter gets caught up in the occult… cult… and for obvious reasons Merrily devotes more time to that than the case, so a local social worker and Merrily’s mentor end up doing far more of the investigating than she does, although she does come back into the investigation toward the end. But on top of that, aside from the one time when she possible got possessed by an evil spirit during an attempted  Deliverance, we don’t really get to see the inner workings of Deliverance Ministry, and we never see Merrily actually vicar-ing. OH and the cops continue to suck and take her to a second occult site with no warning, but she handles it better the second time. But also, why? One other thing I found interesting—there is a cross-shaped clean spot on the wall above Merrily’s bed, which the show doesn’t address, but which seemed fairly reminiscent of the similar cross-shaped clean spot on the wall of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks’ church in Wake Up Dead Man.   

#11. Father Robert Koesler — The Rosary Murders

Much as in I Confess!, the main drama engine here (aside from, y’know, murder) is the seal of confession. The murderer confesses to the murders, and Father Robert Koeslar (Donald Sutherland) is then unable to go to the police for protection, because telling them anything would break the seal. He tries to solve the mystery on his own, hoping to get the man to turn himself in (also as in I Confess!) but as the murderer has legitimate beef with the Catholic Church, there’s no way he’ll be so obliging. The crime directly involves priests whom Koeslar knows, and the murderer plants replicas of his dead daughter’s black rosary on each victim, ratcheting up the psychological torment for the embattled priest, who was already having doubts about continuing in his line of work.

Father Koeslar does a decent job of tracking down clues, and in the end does far more to solve the mystery than any of the police do, or the journalist who shows up to do research/tempt him away from his vocation. (A really tired trope that does NOT turn up in Wake Up Dead Man!) In the end, the whole crime turns on the confession, though, and the one time Sutherland tries to hint to his superior that something’s up the man harshly rebukes him. Ultimately while it’s not always successful as a sexy thriller, the film becomes a really interesting meditation on a kind of spiritual doom, and Father Loesar proves pretty good at amateur sleuthing. Also? A pre-teen Jack White makes an appearance as an altar server!

#10. Father Jud Duplenticy — Wake Up Dead Man

This blurb is short because until Wake Up Dead Man hits Netflix this Friday, I am not spoiling a single thing about this movie! I will say, however, that Father Jud Duplenticy is my favorite film character of the year. For a while, he proves to be an excellent natural detective. He notices clues—even a few that elude the great Benoit Blanc—connects dots, and draws on his deep knowledge of his parishioners to weigh their potential murdery-ness.

But the reason I love this movie so much is that at a certain point he quits playing detective to re-focus on his calling as a priest. And ALSO without spoiling anything, as in a few of these mysteries, the rite of confession proves pivotal to the mystery, and to Jud’s arc as a person, as does the concept of grace. Jud would have been an excellent sleuth, but I’m glad he picked the career path he’s on.

#9. Canon Clement — Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

I sometimes forget that Agatha Christie is hilarious. But this book is full of zingers, deadpan wit, and smirking asides. Canon Clement is a delightful narrator, a middle-aged reverend who claims to be utterly baffled by his decision to propose to his wife, the wild, funny, entirely unsuitable Griselda. Griselda can neither cook, nor manage a household, and revels in the kind of snark that is unbecoming to a vicar’s wife—and I can only assume she inspired the aforementioned Lady Lupin. But it’s clear that Canon Clement is absolutely besotted with her, and that’s our first clue that Clement might be slightly unreliable as he describes his small parish.

What’s extra fun is that as the book goes along, we get the increasing sense of Clement as a person—welcoming, non-judgmental, but with a streak of moral belief that comes out in a fiery sermon that leads straight into the book’s climax. The only reason he’s so low on the list is that, well, he’s trying to play amateur sleuth in a book that has Miss freaking Marple in it. She walks into a tea at the vicarage with seven main suspects already in mind (he’s shocked at the number) and then spends the book on the edges of the story, working through possibilities, observing human nature, and finally solving the whole thing with just enough time to help the police apprehend those responsible, and hopefully, save the life of a hapless victim. While Clement is the narrator, and a fantastic one, Miss Marple is the star.

#8. Father Dowling & Sister Steve — The Father Dowling Mysteries

Two things about Father Dowling Mysteries before I go any further: one episode features a disappearing dead body that a news team tries to spin into a miracle, much like Wake Up Dead Man; Father Dowling is threatened with reassignment to Alaska if he doesn’t cut out all the sleuthing, which leads me to believe that Paolo Sorrentino is a fan of the show.

Now as for why Fr Dowling and Sr. Steve are here—Dowling is a good snooper. He’s great at finding tiny clues and noticing things. Sister Steve, because of her rough childhood, is good at whatever the narrative needs her to be, whether it’s being a flair bartender, picking locks, or hotwiring tractors—but rest assured she also gets super upset at the sight of a dead body, so the audience can be reassured that she’s really a sensitive girl under that tough wisecracking exterior.

However, Dowling also uses his collar to straight up lie to people, to let people make assumptions that he can leverage  assume that he’s there for innocent reasons when he’s not, and there’s a fair streak of “1980s-1990s Television Miracles”—when the narrative shows us that God or whatever is micromanaging things to the extent the a phone rings just when a baddie is about to find our holy sleuths, or illicit lovers decide to hit pause on their mutual seduction just long enough for the hidden nun to escape. Father Dowling also has an evil twin brother, but to be fair every TV character had an evil twin back then.  

#7. Canon Daniel Clement — Murder Before Evensong by Rev. Richard Coles

The Canon Clement mysteries are written by an actual vicar, The Reverend Richard Coles, who used to be in Bronski Beat, had a hit single with The Communards (he the one on the synth), and is one of the inspirations for Tom Hollander and James Wood’s excellent BBC series, Rev. Canon Clement is a pretty good sleuth, the fun of these books is watching him balance that work against the constant maintenance of the parish, his care for his parishioners (be they murderers or no), and his own attempts have an actual spiritual life—a thing that is often not mentioned AT ALL in these kinds of books. (It’s also, obviously, a riff on Agatha Christie’s A Murder at the Vicarage, with a singular Canon Clement rather than Christie’s Canon Clements.)

Where book Canon Clement seems mild-mannered and a bit hapless, in the TV adaptation (which stars Matthew Lewis as the reverend) Canon Clement is obviously reeling from family upheaval, and resentful of his mother, his bishop, and certain members of his flock. This makes the drama hit a bit harder as he tries to be a good pastor even when he feels no one appreciates it. The show also leans much more into the cultural milieu of 1988, as Canon Clements ministers to AIDs patients even though that scandalizes some people in his parish, and his bishop tries to discourage it as political activism rather than basic ministry. The fact that one of the main characters is gay is made more central to the drama, and clearly plays off the fact that Canon Clements is battling homophobia.

In both cases, he takes to detective work immediately, and pieces together clues both on and his own and in tandem with Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo, who tries to turn him into a sort of de facto assistant before realizing that their goals are not quite aligned. The initial murder is surprisingly grisly, with Canon Clement finding a body in his church because his two adorable dachshunds are, er, walking around in, and licking, the victim’s blood, and Clement reveals his own moral core by repeatedly affirming his hope that the killer finds forgiveness just as the town as a whole finds closure. But he gets this spot because in both the book and the TV adaptation, he’s the one who figures out key pieces in the mystery, even before the stalwart DS Vanloo.

#6. Reverend Sydney Chambers — Grantchester

Oh, Sydney Chambers.

Now I have not read James Runcie’s book series yet (I understand they take a drastically different path) and I have not watched the two vicars who succeed Sydney in his post. But in Series 1-4 of the show, Sydney is a good natural detective who gets into the game because he’s unsatisfied by his life as a vicar. For whatever reason, his flashbacks to his WWII service have gotten worse, and he craves distraction—or, I should say, a new distraction, to add to the jazz, whiskey, and revolving door of women that are already distracting him.

It’s astonishing that he ever finishes a sermon.

After being glancingly involved with a police investigation, he pitches himself to grizzled, cynical Detective Inspector Geordie Keating as a sort of assistant: between his collar and his charm, he can get people to tell him things they won’t tell anyone else. Geordie is skeptical but tries it, and soon Sydney is solving cases alongside him all the time.

Where in a lot of these stories, confession is seen as absolutely sacrosanct, and the priest can’t divulge anything their told even at the risk of their own life or freedom, Sydney pops his collar on and listens really hard, and you soon start to wonder If Geordie ever solved any crimes before he acquired his own personal vicar.  

The reason Sydney is so high on the list is because when his season are at their best, they dig into the basic clash between someone who’s supposed to help the guilty find reconciliation with God and society, and someone who’s supposed to catch the guilty and hand them over to a secular justice system. A good example of this is threaded through Series Two. Sydney and Geordie are at loggerheads because a young man is set to be executed for causing the death of a school friend. Geordie thinks executing the boy will be “justice”, while Sydney thinks it’s the state taking “vengeance” after a tragedy. The two men argue over it repeatedly, but come back together when Geordie is implicated in a (really great) locked room murder that he and Sydney solve together. But their sense of unity is immediately shattered when the young man is given his execution date, Sydney goes with him to witness his death at the gallows, and Geordie then approaches Sydney at his church ostensibly to invite him for a drink, but really to needle him about why he aways sides with the “bad ones”. This leads to a knock-down fight that turns the altar into a brawltar

It perfectly exemplifies what this weird subgenre can do, interrogating the idea of justice, asking whether forgiveness is possible, setting the conversation up between a person whose job is just…religion, and one whose job is policing. But then it ends with Sydney’s now-pregnant ex-girlfriend turning up to say she’s left her husband and has nowhere else to go and I’m like GET BACK TO THE ETHICS.

UGH this show.

#5. Reverend Clare Fergusson — In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Clare Fergusson is an ex-Army helicopter pilot who came to the priesthood in her early 30s. In her first real posting, she’s now the first female Episcopal priest of Millers Kill, an upstate New York town that, like a lot of towns in America, is seeing a divide between the corporate people who can afford picturesque Americana, and the families who are falling through the cracks each time another mill or factory closes. Reverend Fergusson’s new parish is run by a well-heeled board who are clearly in the former camp, and clearly are clearly planning to keep her on a tight leash. But then a poor mother abandons a baby on the church doorstep, and Clare realizes she’s going to have to fight back to include people from all sides of the tracks.

In an effort to get to know the town, she goes out on patrol with police chief Russ Van Alstyne, and almost immediately finds a dead body. Over the rest of the book, she applies her empathy and listening skills to find clues that Russ would never spot, and the two essentially work the case in parallel lines, with, once again, the seal of confession causing one or two stumbling blocks along the way,

Over the course of the series, Clare and Russ have to deal with their attraction to each other—which is first complicated by the then-married Russ finding out that Episcopal priest are not, in fact, celibate—Clare has to cope with conservative higher-ups, and the two of them deal with various “controversial” issues in a small town—teen motherhood, generational poverty, immigrant communities, gay-bashing—with Clare being the voice of inclusion and good faith, and Russ sometimes being more close-minded. But the series lets them argue it out, and points out Clare’s occasional naivety as well as Russ’ need to be more flexible.

#4. Rabbi David Small — The Rabbi Small Mysteries by Harry Kemelman

The blurb on one of Harry Kemelman’s David Small Mysteries goes as such: “Why is this Rabbi different from all other rabbis? Because he’s a detective.”

Like several of the other clergypeople on this list, Rabbi David Small ends up investigating a murder because he wakes up a suspect. When a murdered girl is found in the yard next to his Temple, and her handbag is found in his car, he gradually works through his congregation, and much of the small town of Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts, learning everything he can about her life to try to understand its ending. Along the way he forms a friendship with Police Chief Hugh Lanigan and resolves half a dozen skirmishes within his congregation.

But the best bit of the first book, for me, is when Rabbi Small and his wife drop in on Chief Lanigan and his wife, and the quartet spend a quiet afternoon discussing religion over Tom Collinses. (This is while Rabbi Small is still a major suspect, by the way.) Again and again Kemelman stops the plots for human moments, for arguments between neighbors, for inside jokes and longstanding feuds, until the reader understands just how horrible the crimes have been, to disrupt the vibrant life unfolding in Barnard’s Crossing.

Rabbi Small applies his Talmudic training and analytical mind equally to every problem, with an attention to granular detail that makes him one of the best sleuths on the list.

#3. Brother Cadfael — Cadfael

Cadfael takes small town murder mystery tropes and sends them back to a medieval village, complete with high society family drama (except sometimes it’s a literal King), plucky assistants (novitiates) and even a lovelorn, morally ambiguous policeman in the form of “deputy sheriff” Hugh Beringar.

Brother Cadfael himself is a former Crusader, who has seen so much of the world and its evils that his view on society sometimes seem more 1990s than 1290s. Derek Jacobi is, obviously, fantastic. Cadfael uses his deep knowledge of plants and herbs to solve crimes. Cadfael notices everything. He uses his status as a Benedictine Brother to fade into the background, to appear harmless, to allow people to think he’s a naive, innocent man. But as fa former professional soldier, he’s seen human nature at its worst and at its most noble, and he can spot lies from a buttress away. He and the other brothers are forever finding bodies in the river, or having their Compline singing interrupted by people bursting through the church doors with news of murder, the medieval townsfolk seem surprisingly OK with modern procedural work, and it’s great.

#2. Father Brown — Father Brown Mysteries by G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown uses his observation, keen knowledge of human nature, and other peoples’ underestimation of him to solve crimes. Generally the police don’t want his help, and actively discourage it. He is a much more typical priest—he thinks in terms of eternity, sin, justice, judgement, repentance. While in the 2013 series he’s also a war veteran, having served in WWI as a soldier, and in WWII as a chaplain, he still holds his cards closer to his vestments. Not for him the jazz and whiskey beloved of Sydney Chambers, the high-risk shenanigans of Father Dowling (except I guess occasionally in the 2013 series, if his nemesis Flambeau show up), or the highly emotional confessions of Father Jud. The seal of confession often looms large in these stories as his aim is to reconcile criminals with God before he worries about any secular authority. Or, well, to quote a particularly dark Father Brown story, “The Chief Mourner of Marne”:

“We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction,” [Father Brown] said. “We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came.”

Which is also kind of what Wake Up Dead Man is about!

(Also featured in the 2013 Father Brown? A very young Josh O’Connor, in Series 3’s “The Curse of Amenhotep”)

#1. William of Baskerville — The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

William of Baskerville is the brilliant creation of the equally brilliant Umberto Eco. Eco’s character draws on Sherlock Holmes, which creates the fascinating situation of watching someone with a Holmes-level intellect grapple with the 14^th Century. Then he sends William and his novice, the young Benedictine Adso, off to a Benedictine monastery where they’re embroiled in a web of murder, conspiracy, sexual abuse, and fanaticism. The book is nearly 600 pages of dense theological musings and deadpan wit, and it’s sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, which gives me a tiny sliver of hope for the human race I GUESS.

Also? There are six different video games based on this book. If I ever update this list, I am playing all of them.

William has Sherlock’s sharp perception, his deadpan wit, his occasional sharpness with those who can’t keep up, and his taste for “some herb” that he learned about from “the infidels”. When the host Abbot comes to William to ask him to investigate the murder, they first launch into an intricate debate about William’s time as an Inquisitor, in which William, gently but firmly, insists that he didn’t usually credit the Devil with the evil acts of men—because he was too busy trying to prove whether they’d committed the acts, and if so, deliver them over to human, earthly justice. This opening conversation sets the tone of William’s whole outlook on life, where he tries to pursue knowledge for its own sake, and refuses to give in to supernatural fears when natural explanations are right there. And here, too, the seal of confession hides clues that would have allowed Willaim to solve the murders much quicker.

In 1986, The Name of the Rose was adapted into a film by director Jean-Jacques Annaud with Sean Connery as William, F. Murray Abraham as the real-life Inquisitor Bernard Gui, and a VERY young Christian Slater as Adso. The first twenty minutes of the film bring the core theme to the fore, as William, a Franciscan, clashes with some far stuffier Benedictines over whether knowledge for its own sake is an affront to God, whether curiosity is of the Evil One, and whether laughing is a one-way ticket to Hell.  In case you’re looking for something to pair with your next rewatch of Conclave, this movie holds up pretty well!

But the real reason William comes in at Number 1 isn’t even his sleuthing, it’s that, when the monastery’s library catches fire, he risks his life to save as many books as possible.

My deepest apologies if I’ve missed some first-rate detective work, or ignored some terrible investigative blunders—especially in the cases where I only covered the book and not its adaptation (or vice versa). Add them in the comments! Tell me who I overlooked![end-mark]

The post An Infallible Ranking of Crime-Solving Clergy appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Pluribus

Interview: Pluribus Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look

In an interview with Reactor, Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan dishes on the fashion sense of the hive mind

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on December 12, 2025

Credit: Apple TV

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Credit: Apple TV

Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus raises a lot of questions. A lot. Those questions can vary from existential to more practical, such as how does a hive person decide what to wear when they wake up in the morning.

Luckily for you, there’s a concrete answer to the latter question: “At that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots,” Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan told Reactor in an interview. Bryan also said that show creator Vince Gilligan “wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies.” Mission accomplished!

Bryan also revealed details on Carol Sturka’s author look, her inspiration for Diabaté’s garb, as well as some cameos that may make you want to rewatch a certain scene. Read on for our full discussion, though be warned that this interview contains very mild spoilers from the first two episodes (and frankly, you’ll get more out of it if you’ve seen those two episodes before reading below).

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

This must have been such a fun project. I would love to hear how it was pitched to you.

When we wrapped on Better Call Saul, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified, just like when we wrapped on Breaking Bad, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified. So it first started off with crew members gossiping on set. We went on hiatus, and then I got a call. By that time, it was becoming clear that [show creator Vince Gilligan] was up to something. So he called me, and he goes, “Hey, Jen, so I got this thing, and Rhea [Seehorn] is gonna be our lead.”

From there, we got a little bit more formal with it. We went to a meeting, and he basically pitched the draft of the project; that it was sci-fi, Rhea was going to be our lead, and it was going to have a global aspect to it. He was going to use actors from different parts of the world.

At that time, the working title was Wycaro, which was named after the books that [Seehorn’s character, Carol,] wrote. It was going to be set in Albuquerque, but then it would go to other parts of the world. And I thought, “Vince is never going to leave Albuquerque. Maybe we go to another part of New Mexico that looks like another part of the world.” Well, to my surprise and delight, we ended up in the Canary Islands, and we ended up in northern Spain. He wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies.

You mentioned Vince said he didn’t want them to look like zombies, which makes sense having seen the show. Did he give you get any direction about what the hive was like? Or did you create a story for yourself about a hive person who wakes up in the morning, and sometimes they put on a TGI Friday’s outfit, sometimes they put on cycling gear?

Vince gave me some movies to watch—there was a Kurosawa, and there was I Am Legend. And then, of course, because he said he didn’t want to be looking like zombies, I also wanted to watch what he didn’t want. So Walking Dead fell into that category.

I decided that they were of hive mind; they did not have the luxury of personalizing their clothing. So what I pitched to [Gilligan] is that I reduced clothing to something that was surely not decorative, no adornment. It’s not going to show where you lived, globally. It’s not going to show your religion. It’s not going to show your status, whether you’re rich or middle class, a shoe shine guy or a CEO. It’s not going to show any of that. All of those messages that clothing transmits to people around you I’m going to strip away. And at that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots. They don’t care.

Now why do you see different occupations represented, different walks of life? They got zapped in a moment when they were doing a thing: when they were waitressing at TGI Fridays, when they were delivering that package for DHL, when they were in the lab and doing night cleaning of the lab. It had to look real in that in that moment when they were frozen and made that transition. If they were a surgeon in a hospital, they would have had on scrubs and a surgical cap. And then in with all of that, then you get the more ordinary, nondescript clothing that we all know, and also clothing might be coming from another part of the world, so it could be a Scottish kilt that might be worn with a Hawaiian shirt. They don’t recognize those boundaries. They’re gone.

Can you talk about deciding what Carol would wear for the pilot? I’m sure the yellow leather jacket has come up in conversations.

The first look that I had for her was on her book tour. So she had to have that middle-aged romance novelist, kind of a vibe. Vince had suggested that I look at some of the well-known romance, pulp fiction novelists, like Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland, those women going back who were really prolific in that genre of writing. I remember pitching to Vince that it should look relatable to her book-signing audience, her fans, but slightly elevated so they could still relate to her, but look up to her. So she wasn’t over the top, but just in that sweet spot where [the fans] could think, if they had a little money, they could probably buy a suit like that. Or maybe they’ll go to the hairdresser next time and go, can I get my hair cut like that?

Then, when she sheds that facade and is now her real self… I knew that she was going to have a lot of action, and we needed to add a jacket, and so I decided it needed to be a leather jacket, and it needed to be a bit cropped so that she could do all of those moves. So I came up with the idea of a hybrid cropped jacket that I designed. It was hybrid of a motor jacket, but not quite. And I decided on the color because I knew those scenes were going to be shot in the dead of night, very dark, and I needed her to pop. And also, the yellow is the color of caution. So I would like to think that subliminally, it might have sent a message to the viewers that something is slightly unsettling.

I’d also love to talk about the other characters who haven’t joined. Diabaté [played by Samba Schutte] must have been a fun one.

He was one of my faves. Samba Schutte is from Mauritania. And I realized that he was quite a dandy, and that was a perfect opening for me to use one of my favorite groups of people in clothing and costume. In the Congo, which they still do this in Brazzaville, there is a group of men called Sapuers; they are modern day dandies that dress to the nines in top designers. They may be a plumber and live in a little tiny house, but when he steps out of his little house in his not-so-affluent neighborhood, these dudes are off the chain. And I told Vince about these guys, and I said, it’s perfect, because it is African modern-day culture. It goes back to the colonial times when they would copy the French colonialists in their garb and make fun of them. And then it got elevated. So when he gets off the plane, what else would I put him in but an African-print tuxedo?

And what about Zosia [played by Karolina Wydra]?

Zosia was very interesting. She was, for me, the most transformative within her storyline. At first, we’re not sure where she comes from, except we figured out that is seems to be North Africa, which it is, Tangier, Morocco. And so we see her in traditional Northern African clothing, and she has that on, and it’s like a symphony, she just moves from one environment into the other, but her clothing has to fit into each one. So she flies that plane. And that was Karolina taxiing. I mean, the pilot was off camera in case, but that was her on the runway.

And then she lands in Albuquerque, and strips off because she knows she’s now on the real mission, which is to meet this woman, and have her feel comfortable so that [Carol] Sturka doesn’t immediately kick her out her backyard. So she walks into the shower, and the three people that attend to her to shower are me, Cheri Montesanto, our makeup artist, and Trish Almeida, our hair stylist. And I think that was very considerate of Vince, because he wanted this to be real, but he wanted Karolina to feel very comfortable with the people around. So we got our little cameos.

New episodes of Pluribus premiere on Apple TV on Fridays.[end-mark]

The post Interview: <i>Pluribus</i> Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look appeared first on Reactor.

Column Anime Spotlight

Beast Humane, Beauty Grotesque: The Compelling Contradictions of Hell’s Paradise

A brutal quest for immortality leads to fascinating questions about human nature and connection.

By Leah Thomas

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Published on December 11, 2025

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In my workplace, as in many other workplaces that happen to be schools, brainrot has become a real issue. And I don’t only mean “brain rot” in the definitive sense, when it earned the distinction of being named the OED’s word of the year in 2024: brain rot (noun): “A perceived loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills, esp. (in later use) as attributed to the overconsumption of unchallenging or inane content or material. Now also: content or material that is perceived to have this effect.” Instead, what plagues our school hallways and its impressionable occupants is Italian brainrot, specifically: A series of baffling, not entirely harmless, profanity-laced memes designed by AI has, alongside those damned Labubus, become this generation’s Furby, or Minecraft, or Power Rangers.

And look, I know how old and grumpy I sound. But back in my day, kids were obsessed with schlock that was, at the very least, generated by human minds! My mother never understood the appeal of Pokémon, but she could not say that a Japanese illustrator somewhere was not working hard to churn out those endearing little monsters. And hell, I was never a fan of Homestuck, or Undertale, or whatever else proliferated on Tumblr and infected the minds of my peers years ago now, but you know what? Those things were, again, made with some degree of intention. 

So I don’t really care if it makes me sound like some bitter old biddy at the ripe age of thirty-six. Italian brainrot is, fundamentally, worse than anything else kids have ever been into, unless they’re also into other AI-generated crap. When my parents accused my siblings and me of enjoying mindless content, they were never entirely right. A human mind came up with Salad Fingers, damn it.

But the human mind is absent from Italian brainrot, which exemplifies a disturbing trend in content aimed at children: it is incoherent, brief, and absurd—all things that can be wonderful, when created with intent—but the mindless aspect renders this unsettling. Content created by AI remains fundamentally empty, its popularity a byproduct of a tangible decline in childhood literacy and a growing deficit in children’s ability to regulate emotions. Because most kids are addicted to technology—not hyperbolically but biologically addicted—the brains of our youngest citizens have begun to operate differently, and the consequences scare me.

Anyhow. When I sat down, two years late, to watch the anime adaptation of a manga I read during the pandemic, I did not expect to be reminded of our current Italian brainrot infestation. Because Hell’s Paradise, while often absurd and disturbing, is extremely well-considered and even philosophical, waxing almost optimistic about human nature. 

Its monsters are another story.

Hell’s Paradise tells the story of several condemned criminals who agree to travel to a desolate, twisted paradise in search of the Elixir of Life. Should they die, well, they were slated to anyhow; but should they succeed? The convict who procures the elixir and brings it to the Shogunate will find all their crimes, however heinous, pardoned. Under the watchful eyes of their samurai overseers, the convicts travel to Shinsekyo, a supposed paradise, but they may be risking something far more grotesque and horrifying than death: after all, those few souls who have returned from the island have been neither dead nor alive. Rather, they’ve returned as grinning, rambling mummies, their orifices sprouting beautiful flowers.

We follow Sagiri, executioner and samurai, and Gabimaru, ninja and murderer, as they wander in the verdant tropical forests of Shinsenkyo, or Paradise, but far from being overcome by the beauty of this supposed Eden, they feel squeamish. This mysterious land—somewhere near what Edo-era folks called Ryukyu, but we now call Okinawa—may harbor actual deities. But the monsters that populate all this inexplicable greenery are unsettling disappointments. Like poor counterfeits of Hieronymus Bosch’s work, fish-headed bodhisattvas and centipedes with human fingers for mandibles attack our not-quite-heroes mindlessly, without guile or intent. 

Initially, I was a little put out—I had retained the distinct memory that, in the manga, the weird denizens of Shinsenkyo put me in mind of the beautiful grotesqueries of, say, Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But here, despite MAPPA’s solid animation and the eye of a talented director, they felt flat, animated cleanly but under a slight haze. 

But even my disappointment was probably intentional. These creatures are not supposed to be wondrous. They are supposed to feel vapid, as deliberately without artistic purpose as a Ballerina Cappuccina meme or that damned shark wearing sneakers, and are just as fundamentally empty. If a god created these things, well, he’s no decent god.

This choice—originally made by mangaka Yuji Kaku, and later amplified by director Kaori Makita—to use the bastardization of recognizable lifeforms, symbols, and ideals as a means to humanize characters of dubious morality, was wonderfully deliberate.

Beauty and the Grotesque

Gabimaru, a diminutive, deadpan shinobi assassin, believes himself empty. Everyone else agrees, and his reputation as “the Hollow” precedes him and fills normal people with dread. A man who feels nothing must be more beast than man, they reason, and that is why he has killed so many, so brutally.

Raised by the chief of infamous assassin clan, who brutally murdered his parents right before his infant eyes, Gabimaru has never been anything but desensitized to the work of killing. He has slain more people than he’s ever spoken to. Despite his renown, he falls out of favor with his would-be guardian and, betrayed by his own clan, is imprisoned for his crimes and sentenced to execution.

And Gabimaru, who is so empty? He claims he is willing, or at least indifferent to the prospect. “Dreams? I don’t have any. Purpose? Shinobi don’t have it.” So Gabimaru is decapitated… but it doesn’t take. And then he’s burned at the stake, but the flames don’t burn his skin. He’s drawn and quartered and doused in boiling oil, but no dice. During every attempt, his shinobi training and instincts kick in and steel his skin, protecting him. After a parade of execution attempts impressive enough to make Rasputin blush have failed to end him, Gabimaru is forced to reckon with an irrefutable, confounding question: “Do I… not want to die?”

Given his upbringing, Gabimaru’s struggle when it comes to introspection is not surprising. But this question is easy for his final executioner, the samurai Sagiri, to answer, as is the reason behind Gabimaru’s will to survive: “You love your wife.” 

And she’s right. Because Gabimaru has something that very few anime protagonists have: a wife. The monster who raised him deemed him worthy to wed his daughter, a tenacious young woman with a scarred face and strong convictions. They get married, and she digs into his supposed hollows and pulls the wriggling pieces of a person from deep inside. She is undeterred by his work. “Maybe being accustomed to ugly things isn’t so terrible.” She too is a product of her father’s vicious clan, but she finds the notion of an ordinary life aspirational. And so why can’t Gabimaru learn to feel the same? 

She does a real number on his supposed hollow nature. As Gabimaru says—and likely thinks, every time the memory of her stays his hand—“The heart is such a nuisance.”

Sagiri, who is a woman occupying a position traditionally denied to women (as many men would deny that women are capable of performing the duties demanded of her) understands Gabimaru for all kinds of reasons. Like him, she was raised by a killer: a respected executioner whose swordsmanship was so clean that a rakugo performer he decapitated finished his final performance even after his head was cut from his shoulders, because he “did not realize he was dead.” 

Sagiri is inevitably compared to her father and found wanting. She is told, time and again, by the men who surround her that there is too much fear in her swordsmanship. Any woman knows what this means—she’s too emotional, or her womb is wandering! Women in the Asaemon samurai clan should be birthing children, not courting death. But Sagiri does not see how a life serving men who deliver death is any better than doing the job herself. She would rather have some agency.

And that is the chief difference between Gabimaru and Sagiri, and why this dynamic works so well. Gabimaru has always done what he is told, though he is a criminal; Sagiri has refused to do what she is told, though she is respected; both are killers, even if one is vilified and the other sanctified.

Gabimaru knows Sagiri is right. He loves his wife, and he will fight for that pardon. But how much will these foils begin to merge? After slaughtering a slew of other criminals vying for a place on the ship to Shinsenkyo, Gabimaru—soaked in blood, having torn out a neck or two with his teeth—looks at the appalled samarai gathered on the shore. He asks “Would you approve if I made it pretty instead?” 

Sagiri gasps, and vows she will kill him, but her eyes glisten. She is, somehow, inspired.

And though she initially sees her emotions as a weakness, and Gabimaru sees his tiny sprouts of feeling as a hindrance, together they learn to find strength in their feelings. Not in any romantic sense—another fantastic aspect of this dynamic is that it is written like real camaraderie or friendship rather than love. Sagiri looks at Gabimaru and sees herself reflected.

Neither of them has ever been free from the constraints of societies dictated by strict rules. Now, thrown together into a green place where rules seem incapable of holding firm, they rely on the structure that peering into each other provides.

Heaven?

The fetid flora of Shinsenkyo offers a compelling, unsettling backdrop for a story about life’s purpose. Visitors bitten by the island’s human-headed insects soon transform into beaming tree-people, absorbed into the fabric of the place. For all we know, it was a barren land that only became such a resplendent rainforest over years of reappropriating marooned souls and treasure-seekers into shrubberies. I don’t think many people would argue that being turned into a plant while still living would be preferable to a mundane death, but why is that? I mean, unless you’re a guy who drank green milk in Nilbog, doomed to be turned into a potted plant and then eaten by trolls, wouldn’t becoming a begonia be a kind of immortality in its own right? Didn’t these people say they were seeking immortality? 

…not like this.

When people imagine immortality, they imagine it will not preclude retaining some semblance of humanity. I remember how impossible it was for eleven-year-old me to conceive of death, not because I believed in an afterlife, but because the human brain fundamentally cannot imagine the world without itself being a presence in it. In the case of the absorbed victims of Shinsenkyo’s fabricated, rhymeless forest, who knows whether their minds remain cognizant? Would it be better, or worse, if the grinning Chia-people are aware of their lot?

I think the phobia of unchecked growth is as core to being alive as the fear of fire or darkness. Growth that continues without clear direction is not a healthy thing. Whether it be the spread of swimmer’s itch or the growth of a wart, or as awful as cancer, too much growth is rarely a good thing. To become part of an undying forest without a sense of self intact is not just scary—it is nauseating on an existential level.

But just like every other theme in this anime, this nausea is inevitably contradicted by an opposing perspective on growth: human beings must keep changing, no matter what, or risk stagnation. 

What’s worse, then? Endless growth or the absence of growth?

Pah. It’s a very futile, deeply human thing to wonder about. It portends a headache. So maybe this is why kids prefer brainrot to thinking.

The Others, Equally Considered

A street urchin with a knack for violence is adopted by a blind samurai after a brawl and becomes his best student. They are each other’s only source of solace. The blind samurai, once forced to execute his former apprentice, relishes the chance to start again with a promising new student.

A pair of brothers, abandoned as children, have proven inseparable. When one of them, a lovable bandit, is captured, the other spends years studying the sword. He goes undercover as his brother’s executioner solely so they might escape together.

When her entire clan is wiped out by the ruling shogunate, a survivor blames herself for their demise. Her captor sees she is a victim, not a villain, and becomes her protector rather than her jailor.

All of these stories take place in Hell’s Paradise. All characters are well-considered, their dynamics designed to dissolve barriers. Not many shows seem so determined to measure a cast so fairly. While Gabimaru and Sagiri are the main characters, few of those who wind up in Shinsenkyo are spared a real sense of self. Every one of these people has their reasons for ending up in Hell’s Paradise, and moral quandaries aside, each of them has fought hard to survive.

If criminals are written with as much depth as their law-abiding captors, what difference does goodness really make? And when both are pitted against foes so alien, inevitably they become allies. What difference does goodness make when it comes to defying heartless living gods?

I am reluctant to spoil much about this show, partly because it is a mystery. But more than that, I’m reluctant to give anything away because while Hell’s Paradise was produced by MAPPA during their reign of blockbusters like Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man, it seems that Hell’s Paradise remains somewhat slept on, and remains less well-known than these other series. I would rather people unfurl the lotus petals of this weird horror gem for themselves. Suffice it to say that there are more rules on Shinsenkyo than there initially appear to be, and the rulers are far from magnanimous. 

Excavating Expectations

Hell’s Paradise has its flaws, as all stories do. There were a few moments while watching when I felt it was on the verge of losing out to its basic shounen genre instincts.

When a towering cannibal convict attacks Gabimaru and Sagiri in the forest, having escaped from or killed his samurai guardian, I groaned. I braced myself to stomach a drawn-out battle scene featuring attacks with nonsensical names and overcomplicated dives into the decision-making of our protagonists. I am not the only otaku who dreads the drawn-out fights that are as fundamental to shounen as spiky hair and shouting are. But you know what? Sometimes subversion really sweeps in at the final inning. This confrontation, like the others, provides the grounds for tangible character revelations. In this case, it is this battle that helps Sagiri find confidence in her swordsmanship. 

In another scene that teeters on the edge of cliché, our heroes throw caution to the wind for a dip in the onsen. I cringed, anticipating boob jokes and fan service. Instead, Hell’s Paradise throws viewers into one of its most poignant scenes at that point. Gabimaru speaks words of kindness to a little girl ashamed of her scars. “Scars are nothing to be ashamed of.” Sagiri points out that things are not always so simple for women, but Gabimaru thinks of his wife and disagrees. 

Cheesy? Well, maybe. But it’s effective. Hell’s Paradise is not free of clichés, but I maintain that it handles even its clichés with surprising introspection. 

A Strange Land

For all the themes that are central to Hell’s Paradise, the perennial anime push-pull of opposing forces is paramount. Hell and Paradise, humanity and monstrosity, strength and weakness, goodness and evil, male and female—this is a world that seems fixated on the places where opposing concepts appear to merge. But unlike the haphazard blends of the island’s sloppy monsters, the junctures where characters finally acknowledge each other as people create extremely evocative moments.

People often define themselves by imposing structure, however futile, on their surroundings. It is why Sagiri insists that Gabimaru keep his hands tied even though he can break the bonds on a whim; it is why Gabimaru does not defy the chief when he is commanded to marry his only daughter. But if the rules that society imposes on us can be, by turns, a comfort and a burden, what about the rules we impose on our own humanity?

“See me as a samurai. See me clearly.” This is what Sagiri demands of a cohort that dismisses her. Gabimaru was seen clearly, first by his wife and later by his would-be executioner, and each of those instances helped him become human. These characters need what we all desperately seek and fear in life: to be perceived as we truly are, and then be deemed worthy of life.

Maybe it takes a horrendous quest for immortality to appreciate the beauty of being mortal. Or maybe it’s less obvious than that. Hell’s Paradise offers a wealth of philosophical fodder to chew over, and that’s a much-needed experience to savor in a world so increasingly overridden by hollow, fabricated art.[end-mark]

The post Beast Humane, Beauty Grotesque: The Compelling Contradictions of <i>Hell’s Paradise</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club

Mars Express: Cyberpunk Noir Will Never Die (And I’m Happy About That)

A truly rich, compelling sci movie that’s flown under the radar for too long…

By Kali Wallace

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Published on December 10, 2025

Credit: Gebeka Films

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Credit: Gebeka Films

Mars Express (2023) Directed by Jérémie Périn. Written by Laurent Sarfati and Jérémie Périn. Starring Léa Drucker, Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Njo Lobé, and Marie Bouvet.

Every time I watch a film about artificial intelligence, I start by looking around for information about the history of the concept. And every time I look, I am reminded that the concept is much older and broader than I can reasonably cover in my column, because humans have pretty much always dreamed about building intelligent machines.

There are stories about clever people (or clever gods) building human-like automata in ancient China and Greece, as well as in other cultures and lore from around the world, and while the ideas and style of the stories have evolved significantly over time, they have never gone away. Whether it’s Homer describing the mechanical helpers in Hephaestus’ workshop or Muslim scholar Ismail al-Jazari imagining designs for mechanical servants and musicians or Wolfgang von Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk (which was not an automaton at all, though it was claimed to be for many decades), humans have always wanted to think we could make an artificial guy that acted just like a real guy.

Of course, it has also been a favorite concept in science fiction since the genre’s earliest days, and in science fiction is where it happily resided for a long time. In the last few years, this idea seems to have come back around to something people crave in the real world, not just in fiction. That makes things a bit awkward for people (like me) who love stories about androids, robots, and artificial intelligence, while also having the burning urge to drop-kick anybody who anthropomorphizes shitty chatbots right into the ocean. Thankfully, AI in fiction can still be fascinating, and there are still sci fi writers making the most of it.

Mars Express is a surprisingly wonderful example. Surprising because I haven’t seen anybody talking about it in sci fi or film circles since its release in 2023. I came across the title while I was specifically looking for recent films set on Mars, and I went in knowing nothing about it beyond the briefest summary. It may well have a niche cohort of fans out there, but it seems to have largely flown under the radar.

That’s unfortunate, because this is a great movie. It’s classic cyberpunk noir following in the footsteps of the best of both those genres. It’s tightly plotted with engaging characters in a wonderfully rich world, and it has the guts to not pull any punches about the consequences of living in that world.

Note: I’m going to spoil the premise and some of the cyberpunk worldbuilding in the film, but I’m not going to spoil the entire plot, because I think you should all go watch it.

Director Jérémie Périn is not shy about naming his inspirations. He and co-writer Laurent Sarfati had previously worked on the French animated series Lastman (2016), based on the comics of the same name. (Lastman has been compared to the Dragon Ball franchise, but I don’t know enough about either to say how accurate that is.) For their first feature film they wanted to do something rather different. They went into Mars Express specifically aiming to craft a noir story with all the classic trappings: the hard-drinking private investigator, the contrast between a city’s surface and its underbelly, and characters getting caught up in conspiracies of the rich and powerful. In a 2024 interview with Polygon, he cites neo-noir films like Chinatown (1974) and The Long Goodbye (1973) as models for the idea, as well as political thrillers like All the President’s Men (1976) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

But Périn is an animator, not a New Hollywood auteur working in the 1970s, and an animator interested in neo-noir is inevitably going to be working in the very long shadow of some truly excellent Japanese animation. That influence is also obvious in Mars Express, which has a very ’90s anime visual style in its 2D animation.

Mars Express opens with sudden and shocking violence. Dominique (Angéline Henneguelle), a student at a university on Mars, is murdered in her dorm room while her roommate, Jun (Geneviève Doang), hides in the bathtub. The murderer, who came to the door posing as a cop, also shoots their cute robotic cat, which is how we know he’s really evil.

Then the film moves briefly to Earth, where a hacker named Roberta Williams (Marie Bouvet) and her android sidekick LEM (Thomas Roditi) are welcoming two potential clients in a hotel room. Roberta jailbreaks androids, which is illegal in this high-tech future; there are sentient artificial intelligences everywhere as a part of everyday life, but they are strictly controlled and regulated. We soon learn that jailbroken robots have a reputation for being unstable and even violent. (Alas, they don’t just want to be left alone to watch their shows. But maybe nobody has invented The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon yet.)

Roberta’s clients, alas, are not real clients but a private investigator and her android sidekick. Aline Ruby (Léa Drucker) has been hired by the tech mogul Chris Royjacker (Mathieu Amalric) to find Roberta and retrieve or destroy some information she stole from his company. Aline’s own android sidekick, Carlos Rivera (Daniel Njo Lobé), is the sentient AI backup of her dead partner.

All of that happens in about the first ten minutes. This is not a movie that wastes time, although it never feels like it’s rushing through its 89-minute runtime either.

Right away the film lets us see the tension inherent in the android situation. Carlos died as a human, and he’s still here, as the same person with the same memories, but he’s been demoted from one class of being to another through no choice of his own. It’s obvious that this society really doesn’t know what to do with people existing in that limbo—a limbo the society has created for its own benefit.

Aline and Carlos bring Roberta back to Mars, but her warrant has mysteriously disappeared (she is a hacker, after all), so they have to let her go. Royjacker is curiously unconcerned about this, because he’s certain the data she stole has been destroyed.

Aline is ready to take on a new case. A worried father wants her to find his daughter, who turns out to be Jun, the college student who fearfully hid in the bathtub while her roommate was murdered.

Because this is cyberpunk and noir, the different threads of the story are inevitably connected. Jun went missing after getting into trouble with both the university and the police for jailbreaking a robot at a school lab, although camera footage of that incident makes it’s pretty obvious that something else was going on.

Aline and Carlos’ search for Jun takes them into different parts of the city, which also gives us a look at this vision of the future. This Mars is clean and open and bright, with the tidy city of Noctis existing beneath atmosphere domes. In previous films, we’ve seen Mars as an explored wilderness, a grimly stratified monarchy, a post-apocalyptic ruin, and a gritty slum, but this is the first time we’ve seen a Mars that looks like a pretty nice place to live.

But, in true noir fashion, the attractive surface hides a much more complicated truth, because it’s also a city where a college student will create an android backup of herself to moonlight as a sex worker just to pay for tuition, where people will rent out their unconscious minds to do shady processing work, where wealthy men cheerfully talk about how they prefer robot girlfriends because they can simply turn them off whenever they get needy.

Mars, in cinema and in all sci fi storytelling, has always been a place where we put ideas about humanity that we want to examine in a different context. The version of Mars that we see in Mars Express feels like a natural evolution of this. It’s familiar enough that we can easily see how it might sell itself as the high-tech utopia promised by insufferable tech bros, and it’s just far enough in the future that it’s dealing with problems we can easily anticipate but haven’t quite encountered yet.

Aline is at first presented as the main character, as the hard-boiled private eye at the center of the complex case, but it’s Carlos’ story that hits the hardest. There’s a great deal of pain and discomfort in the way he moves through the world and how he interacts with other characters. In this future, everybody wants the benefits of having fully sentient robots, but nobody wants those robots to have any rights or self-determination—not even when those robots contain the minds and personalities and memories of people who were brought back from the dead. Aline still thinks of Carlos as her partner, and she talks to other robots as though they are people, but she still actively upholds the system that says they can’t be people, and they especially can’t be free people. Carlos’ ex-wife won’t let him see their daughter because it would be too complicated, even in a world where these back-up “ghosts” are fairly commonplace. Other androids and robots reach out to Carlos offering connection—they have their own fragile culture, in a way—but he feels disconnected from them as well.

It all makes for an engaging and effective film. There is no separation between the technological element and the human element, because the intersection of the two is where the story happens.

Cyberpunk and noir are well-matched genres because all crime stories are, on some level, about who gets to be treated as important in a society. That’s also what robot stories tend to be about. For all that humans have always imagined building an artificial guy that’s just like a real guy, we have also always had the self-awareness to know that we will be completely freaking about it when it happens. We can’t even agree that all humans deserve to be treated the same; we sure as hell aren’t going to make it easy when there are sentient machines as well.

What it comes down to is that science fictional technology accelerates and amplifies all of the fundamental human darknesses that make a noir story: greed, violence, inequality, secrecy, conspiracy. There are always rich people treating poor people as disposable for their own gain. There are always people who hold conflicting beliefs about the systems of power they live in. There is always danger involved in confronting and opposing those systems. The details inevitably change as our world changes—and right now, at the end of the science fictional year of 2025, it’s impossible to ignore how much consternation and misery comes from what the richest assholes in the world think technology should accomplish to make them richer.

That makes the story and themes of Mars Express uncomfortably timely, even while its obvious inspirations and the visual style have a retro feel. I love that a French film from 2023 can look like ’90s cyberpunk anime while referencing ’70s American crime films. I don’t mind at all that Périn obviously watched Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Blade Runner (1982) at an impressionable age, and obviously went through a New American cinema cinephile phase, and is now making his own movies inspired by thinking, “Damn, that’s cool, what if…?” I think it’s wonderful when great art inspires other art, and this is especially true when sci fi explores concepts that change as the world around us changes.

What do you think about Mars Express? The whole time I was watching I kept thinking about how many times I’ve heard people in the sci fi community declare cyberpunk a dead genre. I’m glad they’ve always been wrong.

Next week: We close out our exploration of Mars and this year of the Sci Fi Film Club year with the notorious “Worst Movies Ever Made” contender Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It’s in the public domain and available all over the internet. Everywhere. I won’t watch the MST3K version (the last thing I ever want is for some dudes to be interrupting my movie viewing), but I suppose I understand if you want to do that this time…[end-mark]

The post <i>Mars Express</i>: Cyberpunk Noir Will Never Die (And I’m Happy About That) appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Fallout

Everything You Need to Know Before Watching Fallout Season 2

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Also, Fallout is returning. Here’s everything you need to know ahead of Season 2.

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on December 12, 2025

Credit: Amazon Prime Video

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Credit: Amazon Prime Video

The first season of Amazon Prime’s Fallout series proved to be one of the most surprising video game TV shows so far. It was never going to be easy to adapt the Fallout games. Known for their deep lore that revolves around the various factions competing for dominance in a post-apocalyptic wasteland built around Americana philosophies and advanced retrofuturistic technology, those games can be… a lot to take in. However, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner (as well as executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy) have done a remarkable job of adapting that world to a new medium and assembling one of the best casts on television in the process.

Yet, the Fallout TV series remains… a lot to take in. So much so, in fact, that there is a good chance that you’ve already forgotten what exactly happened in the show’s first season, even if you remember many of the broad strokes. With that in mind, here’s a (hopefully) helpful breakdown of nearly everything you need to remember before starting Fallout season two on December 16 (Fallout‘s new season was previously set to premiere on December 17, but Amazon recently announced that they have moved the premiere date up by one day for… some reason).

Who Caused the Apocalypse & Why

We all have theories about what will cause the end of the world. My guess? Pigeons. They ain’t strutting over nothing.

But we eventually learn that Fallout’s apocalypse was caused by a group of executives associated with the Vault-Tec corporation. Well, at least they played a significant hand. On October 23, 2077, Vault-Tec executives and other corporate associates (including Hank MacLean, Barb Howard, and Robert House) approved of the bombing of several American cities to prevent a peace deal from ending the environment of fear they profited from. For what it’s worth, some speculate that the Vault-Tec executives only allowed the bombings to occur rather than dropped the nukes themselves. Regardless, the United States seemingly blamed China, the U.S. retaliated, and the world effectively ended.

Interestingly, this revelation represents a bit of a deviation from Fallout’s video game lore. “Who dropped the bombs?” has long been one of the big, intentionally unanswerable questions in the Fallout games. While there were always theories Vault-Tec was one of the culprits (and other theories that suggest Vault-Tec played a less direct role in nuclear attacks we see in the show than what the series implies), the decision to suggest a definitive origin to the apocalypse is one of the show’s biggest and most controversial alterations so far.

The True Purpose of the Vaults

We later learn that the Vault-Tec vaults aren’t primarily intended to save people. Most were designed to be elaborate social experiments. While we’ve seen few of those vaults in the show so far, much of the series revolves around the experiments conducted in Vaults 31, 32, and 33.

Skipping ahead a bit, we eventually learn that Vault 31 is filled with what are referred to as Bud’s Buds: cryogenically frozen Vault-Tec executives and associates hand-chosen by Vault-Tec Vice President Bud Askins to repopulate and rule the world. Vault 32 and 33, meanwhile, are essentially elaborate breeding facilities for those executives. The executives are periodically unfrozen and elected to lead those vaults to create what Bud believes will be a new generation of superior global leaders.

The residents of Vault 32 and 33 were largely unaware of this arrangement for quite some time (save for the aforementioned Vault-Tec employees). They essentially live the life presented in Vault-Tec propaganda. That dynamic changed when the residents of Vault 32 learned the truth and revolted. Their revolution failed, and the vault residents were murdered. The vault fell into a state of ruin when an outsider named Lee Moldaver managed to lead a team of raiders into it, pose as the vault’s residents, and take the place over.

Lucy MacLean Leaves Vault 33

Shortly before the start of the show, Hank MacLean is unfrozen and chosen to lead Vault 33. He eventually marries a Vault 33 resident named Rose and has two kids: a son named Norm and a daughter named Lucy. Hank told the kids that their mother later died during a plague. The show properly begins in the year 2296 (about nine years after the events of the last chronological Fallout game, Fallout 4) with Lucy’s arranged marriage to a Vault 32 resident named Monty.

To put it lightly, Lucy’s arranged marriage to Monty does not go well. The Vault 32 raiders reveal their deception during an attack shortly after Lucy’s wedding. The attack results in the deaths of various vault dwellers and raiders as well as the abduction of Lucy’s father. Lucy’s training helps her survive the attack. Unaware of her father’s true nature, Lucy ignores the Vault leaders’ orders and leaves Vault 33 to track her father across the wasteland.

Lucy soon learns that the outside world isn’t quite as desolate as she envisioned, though the pockets of civilization that remain largely consist of desperate survivors, monsters, and humans turned into “ghouls” by years of radiation exposure. Lucy interacts with several of those wasteland wanderers during her travels, though there are three worth highlighting.

The first is a scientist named Siggi Wilzig who tries to convince Lucy to return to Vault 33. Ignoring his warnings, Lucy later encounters Wilzig in a settlement called Filly, where he is attacked by a bounty hunter known simply as The Ghoul. With the help of a Brotherhood of Steel soldier named Maximus, Lucy survives the Ghoul’s attack and escorts Wilzig out of town.

However, Wilzig has been mortally wounded and makes a rather odd dying request to Lucy. He wants her to cut off his head. Why? Well, Wilzig was a scientist for The Enclave: a formerly powerful group that used ancient technology to tighten its grip on the wanderers of the wasteland. We later learn that Wilzig escaped an Enclave facility with research into a kind of cold fusion technology that could, among other things, power the wasteland once more. His head contains a device that could enable the use of that technology. Wilzig wants his head (and the device) delivered to Lee Moldaver. Yes, the same Lee Moldaver who kidnapped Lucy’s father.

Before we get to that, you need to know a bit more about the other two figures Lucy encountered in Filly: The Ghoul and Maximus.

A Ghoul By Any Other Name

Through a series of flashbacks and exposition sequences that make up quite a bit of the show, we eventually learn that The Ghoul’s real name is Cooper Howard. Before the nuclear bombs went off, Howard was a famous actor primarily known for his work in westerns. His life took an unexpected (though lucrative) turn when he began appearing in Vault-Tec propaganda promotional pieces. Why the shift? Well, it was largely orchestrated at the behest of his wife, Barb. Yes, the same Barb Howard who helped arrange the attack on the United States.

Cooper only learned the truth about Barb (or some of it) shortly before the bombs dropped. During that attack, Howard lost track of both Barb and their daughter, Janey. Afterwards, he turned into a ghoul. Cooper begins taking on work as a bounty hunter to acquire rare doses of a serum that will prevent him from turning feral and losing all sense of himself. He gradually earns a reputation as one of the most feared figures in the wasteland.

Eventually, The Ghoul is tasked with hunting down Siggi Wilzig. That job, and subsequent encounter with Lucy, begin a new chapter for The Ghoul’s life (or what remains of it).

Maximus & the Brotherhood of Steel

As for Maximus, he’s a squire in the Brotherhood of Steel: a paramilitary group that utilizes advanced technology to operate as morally ambiguous peacekeepers in the wasteland. They will help other, non-mutated humans, though they tend to keep most of the real power to themselves. Maximus (his real name is unknown) joined the Brotherhood when his hometown of Shady Sands was destroyed by a nuclear explosion when he was just a child.

Things didn’t get much better for Maximus from there. He’s regularly mistreated by the other members of the Brotherhood and only becomes a squire through suspicious circumstances involving the injury of another Brotherhood member.

Maximus undergoes various humiliations while squiring for a Brotherhood Knight named Titus on a mission to find and retrieve the runaway scientist Siggi Wilzig. However, fate takes a strange turn when Titus is killed by a mutated bear known as a Yao Guai. Opting to further his deception, Maximus steals Titus’ power armor, effectively assumes his identity, and continues the mission to find Wilzig in the hopes that retrieving him will win the favor of the Brotherhood.

Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus Unite Over a MacGuffin

Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus’ roads all wind in, out, and around each other after Lucy acquires Wilzig’s head. Quite a few things happen to each and all of them after that moment, but here’s a brief breakdown of the need-to-know events:

• Lucy and the Ghoul travel together briefly and learn a little more about each other. They slowly develop a begrudging respect for one another, despite some hostilities (such as The Ghoul cutting off one of Lucy’s fingers). Yet, Lucy decides to leave The Ghoul with doses of the serum he requires to let him know she will never become the monster he is.

• The head goes on a bit of a journey at this point. It gets eaten by a lake monster, only to be “rescued” by Maximus and his newly dispatched squire, Thaddeus. Thaddeus ends up stealing the head from Maximus when he learns that Maximus is posing as a Brotherhood Knight. From there, Thaddeus goes on a series of misadventures that result in him slowly turning into a ghoul. Maximus ends up stealing the head back from Thaddeus further down the road when Thaddeus contracts a debilitating radiation disease. Maximus gives the head back to Lucy. Lucy and Maximus also kiss, which could be significant later.

• The Ghoul goes on a bit of a bender, with many of his scenes coming via flashbacks to his pre-apocalypse life. He eventually takes a wandering dog (which he refers to as Dogmeat, though it’s actually CX404: an Enclave experiment who served as Siggi Wilzig’s secret pet) as a companion. He also learns that Moldaver is held up at Griffith Observatory.

The biggest event during this stretch of the show sees Lucy and Maximus team-up to find the head after Thaddeus steals it. They end in a different vault (Vault 4), which is largely populated by mutants. Maximus quickly adapts to the vault lifestyle, though Lucy is suspicious of the vault’s inhabitants. While snooping around, she finds images of the raider Moldaver. Through a series of reveals, we learn that Moldaver was actually a Vault-Tec employee before the apocalypse. She is the one who convinced Cooper Howard to spy on the company and his wife by telling him about Vault-Tec’s attempts to suppress her research into cold fusion.

Moldaver manages to survive the nuclear weapon attacks and live until the modern age. She helps to form the settlement of Shady Sands: a relatively peaceful place in the wasteland. There, she meets an escapee from Vault 33 named Rose MacLean. Yes, Lucy’s mother. After the nuclear attack on Shady Sands, some of the settlement’s survivors help populate Vault 4, which is now being run by the mutant hybrids who used to be part of the vault’s secret experiment but now simply want a peaceful lifestyle.

Eventually, Lucy and Maximus are gently banished from Vault 4 and make their way to Griffith Observatory. Before we join them, there is another group of vault dwellers you need to know about.

Oh Yeah, What’s Going on In Vault 33?

Much of the time we spend with the remaining inhabitants of Vault 33, which includes Lucy’s brother, Norm, is spent learning about the vault’s secret history and its relation to Vaults 31 and 32. However, a few other significant developments do occur.

Following Hank’s capture and Lucy’s disappearance, Vault 33 is left leaderless. The role of vault overseer eventually goes to Betty Pearson, another former Vault-Tec executive from Vault 31. Among other things, Pearson decides to hold a “lottery” to determine which residents will stay in Vault 33 and which will be sent to repopulate and resettle the cleaned-up Vault 32. Betty’s motivations and methods aren’t entirely explained (though we can assume they are nefarious, given the absolute everything else we’ve seen in the show).

Norm, meanwhile, ends up uncovering most of Vault 33’s secrets via some snooping. He ends the season trapped in Vault 31’s cryogenic freezing chamber by the preserved brain of Bud Askins. Askins tells Norm that the only way to survive is to enter one of the cryogenic tubes. However, we don’t know if he decides to do so.

The other Vault 33 resident of note is Steph Harper. Steph lost an eye during the raider attack and gradually takes on a leadership role. She is eventually named overseer of Vault 32 during the migration period, though it’s not clear what her motivations are, how much she knows, or what kind of leader she will be.

The Showdown at Griffith Observatory

The showdown at Griffith Observatory is visually highlighted by a massive battle between the Brotherhood of Steel and members of the New California Republic: a group that has tried to rebuild civilization but have had their efforts thwarted (to say the least) by Vault-Tec and other factions. Now led by Moldaver, they fight to preserve her vision for a better wasteland run by some semblance of democracy.

What happens inside the Observatory is far more interesting. Unaware of much of what has occurred, Lucy offers Moldaver the head (and the technology it contains) in exchange for her captured father. Moldaver accepts but first tells Lucy who Hank really is. She reveals that Hank is not only a Vault-Tec executive but that he was the one who ordered the nuclear strike on Shady Sands. In the process, he made Maximus an orphan, murdered thousands, and revealed his desire to rule the world in his (and Vault-Tec’s) image. Lucy’s mother technically survived the attack, though the nuclear blast turned Rose into a feral ghoul that Moldaver has chained up near her at the observatory.

Hank escapes his imprisonment but runs into The Ghoul. The Ghoul wants Hank to tell him where his wife and daughter are. Before he can find out, though, Hank steals some Brotherhood of Steel’s armor and flees. The Ghoul asks Lucy to help him find her father, and Lucy agrees. First, though, she kills the feral ghoul that was her mother.

Maximus arrives just in time to be knocked out by Hank and, more importantly, to see Moldaver use the cold fusion tech to activate a new power source. It works, and the power source lights up some of the nearby areas. Other Brotherhood members arrive to find Maximus at the controls of the power station and in control of the powerful technology. They assume he’s the hero responsible for all their newfound fortune.

We end the season with Lucy and The Ghoul chasing Hank across the wasteland. A post-credits scene reveals Hank’s destination: the ruins of New Vegas. What he intends to do there remains a mystery. However, we know from the games that New Vegas was the domain of Robert House: the RobCo Industries founder who was also at least partially responsible for the first nuclear bombs being dropped.

The Most Important Things to Remember Before You Watch Fallout Season 2

Like I said, that is a lot to remember. However, here are the key plot threads to consider ahead of Fallout season 2:

• The Ghoul, Lucy, and Dogmeat are chasing Hank across the wasteland and into New Vegas. The Ghoul is searching for his family, and Lucy is looking for revenge and answers. Dogmeat is down for whatever.

• Hank’s motivations are murkier. It’s likely that he wants something that Robert House had, though it’s not yet clear what that may be.

• Maximus is now one of the leaders of the Brotherhood of Steel. He seems interested in using the Brotherhood’s newfound power to do some good, though the circumstances of his ascent put him in a delicate position.

• The power source and cold fusion technology the Brotherhood controls is now one of the most important things in the wasteland. It will undoubtedly become the centerpiece of future faction conflicts.

• The New California Republic remain players in the Wasteland, though they are at odds with the Brotherhood despite Maximus’ rise. They have a long road ahead if they’re going to try to make the wasteland a better place.

• Thaddeus is seemingly still alive, though he is clearly turning into a ghoul and will not be welcomed back by the Brotherhood. Still, he has a story to tell and secrets to share.

• The residents of Vault 33 and Vault 32 remain largely docile and unaware of what has been happening in the world outside. They’re clearly being set up for something unsavory (especially the Vault 32 dwellers), though it’s not clear what the grand plans are.

• We don’t know what’s left of The Enclave, though they’ve clearly fallen out of power since their heyday years before the start of the show. Still, remnants of their faction could play a part in future events.

• Norm MacLean is trapped in Vault 31. We are left to assume he enters one of the cryogenic chambers, we have not seen him do so yet.

• The Vault 4 residents are seemingly safe and sound once more. It’s not clear what, if any, role they will play next season.

Got all of that? Good. Would you be so kind as to explain it to me?[end-mark]

The post Everything You Need to Know Before Watching <i>Fallout </i>Season 2 appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Percy Jackson

To New Beginnings: Growing Past Percy Jackson

On aging past our childhood heroes, and leaving room for the next generation of fans

By AM Gelberg

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Published on December 10, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

My identification with the characters of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series hit me like a lightning strike—intense, immediate, and singingly powerful. I was twelve years old when I first read The Lightning Thief, and the fact that Percy was also twelve seemed significant to me; the kinship I felt with Percy, Annabeth, and their fellow demigods was inextricably tied to the fact that we were in the same stage of life, all of us teetering on the edge of childhood and adolescence. Percy had monsters, prophecies, and godly parentage; I had my first year of middle school on the horizon. 

I had years to catch up with Annabeth and Percy, to test my experiences against theirs as I aged. In 2014, I turned 17, and so did Percy—The Blood of Olympus was published in October of that year, marking the end of the Heroes of Olympus series, a five-part saga that follows the events of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and spans the length of about a year. After that, I kept aging, but Percy’s timeline slowed almost to a standstill. Since 2017, Percy has been suspended in a kind of narrative stasis. He’s aged about six months in the past eight years; only in The Court of the Dead, a spinoff sequel published earlier this year, do we learn that Percy has finally made it to college.

I am now 29. Nearly six years ago, shortly after the Disney+ Percy Jackson and the Olympians show was announced, I wrote about the ways in which the “Riordanverse” (stories in the linked universe created by Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan) grew with me. I stand by that assessment and remain grateful for the surprising ways in which the Riordanverse has continued to reflect my experiences and identities as I’ve grown older. But I’ve noticed recently, as the Disney+ show aired and as I returned to the Riordanverse books for the first time in several years, that my relationship to these characters and narratives has shifted. When I initially wrote about Percy Jackson, I was a first-year teacher. I am now in my fifth year of teaching, instructing primarily juniors and seniors in my AP English Language and creative writing classes. This means that my students are Percy’s age—and, like Percy, they are in the midst of the transition between high school and college, adolescence and adulthood. When I read Percy Jackson now, I no longer see myself in these stories. I see my students instead.

It’s bittersweet to recognize that a story that once resonated with us is no longer “for” us; it belongs, now, to the next generation of children who need this story as much as we once did. As a teacher, I see how profoundly my students are impacted by Percy Jackson and the rest of the Riordanverse. We’ve spent entire class periods discussing favorite characters, beloved quotes, tragic incidents in the narrative. I delight in these conversations, of course. But it’s strange to reckon with the ways in which my relationship to Percy Jackson has changed. Percy, Annabeth, and the others are no longer my peers. Where I once felt kinship and identification, I now feel an almost mentorly connection. After all, I’ve grown up, and they haven’t. When I look at Annabeth now, I don’t see myself. I see my students and their plans for the future, their college applications, their budding relationships. And that’s beautiful, but it’s a little sad, too.

There’s nothing as certain as the knowledge that we cannot go back; I will never be a twelve year old reading The Lightning Thief for the first time again, nor a seventeen year old with college, a career, and my whole adult life ahead of me. But despite that certainty, ours is a deeply nostalgic culture. And fandom is a particularly powerful site of nostalgia. Online, fandom discourse often revolves around that familiar refrain: “This ruined my childhood!”. It’s adult men arguing about Rey Skywalker and Doctor Who fans lambasting the last decade of the show’s run. Nothing is beyond criticism, but so many of these arguments ultimately pin a story’s “failure” on its inability to make a fan feel the way they felt when they were young.

I get it. I really do. It took me weeks to work up the courage to watch the Disney+ Percy Jackson series. I knew that the show would be excellent, and I also knew that it would not feel the way reading The Lightning Thief felt when I was twelve. It was difficult to come to terms with that. I felt almost jealous of the tweens and teens who would get to grow up with this show the way I grew up with the Riordanverse saga. I recognized that the show wasn’t for me, no matter how much I might enjoy and appreciate it, and there was a kind of loss in that realization. I had come to the end of something, and I was watching a story I love enter into a new era, which it couldn’t do without leaving me behind.

Is it possible to let go of the expectations of nostalgia? Modern pop culture seems inextricable from it; we live in an era of remakes, reboots, and sequels. It’s so tempting to recede into the comfort of our childhoods, to attempt to relive the joy and wonder and awe we felt when we were young. But we keep moving forward. The next generation takes our place. And though studios are eager to capitalize on as many audiences as possible—the young and the old(er) alike—the stories are no longer for us; they’re for them. They’re the ones who need them now.

Percy Jackson and the Chalice of the Gods, a 2023 release from the Riordanverse saga, involves a scene in which Percy, Annabeth, and their satyr friend Grover find themselves within a literal nostalgia trap. Hebe, the goddess of youth, runs an arcade and candy shop that magically transforms its patrons, erasing years of their lives and restoring their youth. Nostalgia is a potent magic, Percy learns, and a dangerous one. This episode is a little ironic in a novel that could itself be described as a nostalgia trap; the back cover of the book reads “Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and Grover Underwood are reunited for their first quest together since The Lightning Thief,” establishing this newest installment as a throwback to the earliest days of the Riordanverse. And yet, as Annabeth remarks, “a lot of places sell nostalgia. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” Chalice of the Gods invites me, an aging zillennial, to reminisce upon my adolescence. But for my students who, like Percy, are in the midst of college applications (Percy needs to obtain letters of recommendations from three gods to complete his application to New Rome University), the story is keenly relevant. They, too, are subject to forces and systems larger than themselves: the public education system, the insane bureaucracy of university applications, the fraught challenge of securing favorable letters of recommendation. For them, this narrative isn’t nostalgic. It’s current, present, and real.

Though I may be many years removed from the horrors of high school, I’m able to find meaning in the recent Riordanverse installments; it just looks different from the meaning I found when I was a teenager. Last winter, I finished reading the Trials of Apollo series after a seven-year hiatus. I was shocked at how deeply some of the themes of the series resonated with me; at its heart, The Trials of Apollo—which follows the (mis)adventures of the god Apollo after he’s been cast out of Olympus and turned into a human by his father, Zeus, as a punishment—is about hope and redemption. It’s about the strength by which we break toxic cycles of abuse and the resilience at the core of humanity. To a pessimistic 17-year-old, I’m not sure these messages would have rung true. But as an adult, I see my own worldview reflected back at me in Apollo’s burgeoning understanding of humankind. The series is remarkably complex and nuanced, almost Good Place-ian in its evaluation of the human capacity for change. When Apollo tells the subterranean creatures known as troglodytes that “We have to help one another. That’s the only future worth fighting for,” I believe him with an intensity that took almost three decades of life to cultivate. 

There’s something for me in Riordanverse even now, though I’m no longer the target audience. Sometimes I’m taken aback by a cuttingly specific reference to the chaos of teaching before remembering that Riordan, too, was once a teacher. Sometimes I feel a surprising kinship to characters like the centaur Chiron or Percy’s stepdad, Paul Blofis, who once I regarded only as kindly but insignificant adults who populated Percy’s life. And sometimes I find myself in tears over a particularly beautiful line of prose or a poignant insight into life, mortality, love, or resilience, which in my youth I might have overlooked or ignored.

Stories can be different things for different people. Percy Jackson is no longer mine, but that’s okay. There’s a joy, I’ve found, that comes with stories that don’t age with us. There is the joy of seeing old narratives resonate with new audiences. For me, there’s a joy in seeing my students in the characters to whom I once related. And there’s a joy that comes with establishing new perspectives on beloved characters and a beloved text. 

The dedication to The Chalice of the Gods reads, “To Walker, Aryan, and Leah. Here’s to new beginnings!” We’ve entered a new era, and the future of the Riordanverse belongs to the next generation of young readers, including the stars of the Disney+ series whom Riordan recognizes in this dedication. Chalice is, in many ways, a story about growing up. “If you [grow] older with the people you love, [isn’t] that better than any alternative?” Percy reflects. In a book about wrestling with nostalgia and building one’s future, Riordan takes a definitive stance: to grow older is a privilege. To grow away from the stories we love and leave them for their next readers is, I’m certain, a privilege, too.[end-mark]

The post To New Beginnings: Growing Past Percy Jackson appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch

Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Moments of Transition”

Bester returns to the station with a unique proposal for Alexander…

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

|

Published on December 8, 2025

Credit: Warner Bros. Television

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Credit: Warner Bros. Television

“Moments of Transition”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Tony Dow
Season 4, Episode 14
Production episode 414
Original air date: May 19, 1997

It was the dawn of the third age… Garibaldi is awakened out of a sound sleep by Edgars, who is completely unapologetic, as he himself is on call at all times, and he expects the same of his employees. Edgars wants Garibaldi to get something through B5 without dealing with customs. Edgars also assures Garibaldi that it contains nothing dangerous or illegal, he just wants to keep it on the down-low to avoid issues with his competitors.

Sheridan can’t sleep, and he contacts CnC to see if there’s any news from Minbar, but alas, there isn’t.

Meanwhile, Delenn and Lennier are on Minbar in one of the ancient cities, which is on fire. They’re caring for the many wounded members of the Religious Caste. The Warrior Caste has announced that, if the Religious Caste doesn’t surrender by the following day, they will destroy the city and everyone in it.

Neroon meets with Shakiri, the leader of the Warrior Caste. Shakiri derides the Religious Caste for their naïveté and for getting them into pointless wars like the one with Earth, where nothing was actually gained. He also waxes philosophical about how life and death are just two sides of the same coin and that death is merely the release from obligation, and not something to be derided. Which is good, since he’s threatening to basically wipe out the Religious Caste…

At B5 customs, Allan notices Garibaldi talking to someone with a package, but is then distracted by the arrival of Bester. Bester insists he’s there on personal business that has nothing to do with the senior staff, and isn’t this supposed to be a free port, like the Voice of the Resistance broadcasts keep insisting?

By the time Allan gets Bester sorted out, Garibaldi is still there, but the package is gone. Allan chases Garibaldi down, but the latter denies ever handling a package, and also neither confirms nor denies the rumors Allan has heard about Garibaldi working for Edgars.

Alexander is struggling to find work. She has a good line on a corporate job, but when they find out she’s on the outs with Psi Corps, they say they can’t hire her—it’s a liability issue. Bester then approaches her—she’s why he’s here. He knows she’s been having trouble finding employment—some of her prospective clients have contacted Psi Corps for a reference, which they can’t provide, of course—and he has an offer for her. She can be brought back on as a deep-cover agent, not beholden to the day-to-day yuckiness of the Corps and able to still get corporate work. The only catches are as follows: she has to wear the logo and the black gloves and she has to be willing to donate her body to the Corps after her death. The Vorlons obviously made her a more powerful psi than she was, and until that happened, everyone assumed one’s psi index to be a constant. A rating changing is unheard of, and they want to study Alexander’s mind after she dies.

Alexander tells Bester to go screw himself.

Adding insult to injury, she can’t afford the quarters she has (the Vorlons were paying for them, but the Vorlons have buggered off and are no longer paying their bills), and Allan very reluctantly tells her that she has to move to a smaller space. He then offers her some work: to scan Garibaldi. When Alexander asks if Garibaldi will agree to the scan, and Allan says no, Alexander very loudly refuses. She’s desperate for work, but not enough to betray a friend like that. Allan apologizes, he’s just frustrated by Garibaldi’s behavior.

That, however, gives Alexander an idea: to approach Garibaldi. She can help him with his PI work. Garibaldi was nearby when Alexander and Bester had their talk, so he knows what the alternative is. On the one hand, Garibaldi doesn’t like telepaths and can’t pay that much; on the other hand, it’d piss Bester right the hell off. So he agrees.

Then Bester shows up, and there’s a brief altercation. Bester tries to scan Garibaldi, which Alexander picks up on. Livid, Garibaldi chases Bester down and tries to beat him up, but security stops him.

On Minbar, Delenn tells Lennier that they will surrender, and it may occur at a place and time of the Warrior Caste’s choosing. Neroon informs Shakiri of this, and that he has chosen the Temple of Varenni. It was a place where disputes were settled in the time before Valen, plus it has equipment that can broadcast the surrender to the entirety of the Minbari Federation. Shakiri approves. He also tells Neroon that Delenn will likely return to B5 after this is all over, and they should find a way for her transport there to suffer an accident. They can’t afford to let her live.

After giving Lennier a scroll with instructions in case something happens to her, Delenn officially surrenders—but then she makes it clear that she’s ending the open warfare, not the conflict between the Warrior and Religious Castes. In this temple, in the time before Valen and the formation of the Grey Council, disputes were settled with the Starfire Wheel, a beam of light that grows in intensity and will eventually burn you alive if you stay in too long. In the olden days, the leaders of the castes would each enter the Starfire Wheel, and whoever left last would be the winner.

Delenn steps into the Starfire Wheel. Shakiri refuses at first, not wanting to die like that. Neroon reminds him of what he said about how life and death are equivalent and how death is just a release from obligation, and Shakiri is shamed into entering. While in the wheel, Shakiri offers to share power with Delenn if she agrees to walk out with him side by side, but she refuses. Eventually, Shakiri gives up and leaves the wheel.

And then the other shoe drops: this was Neroon and Delenn’s plan all along. But Delenn has changed the plan because, as Neroon tells Lennier, they agreed that Delenn would depart the wheel after Shakiri proved himself a coward. However, she doesn’t leave the wheel, and Lennier realizes that she’s sacrificing herself to show her devotion. Neroon, perhaps knowing that he’s a guest star and she’s an opening-credits regular, dives in to rescue her and allow himself to be killed by the Starfire Wheel after pledging his devotion to the Religious Caste and urging the people to listen to Delenn.

On B5, Garibaldi gets another late night/early morning call from Edgars, who informs Garibaldi in no uncertain terms that he’s not to employ Alexander. Edgars wants no telepaths working for him, even indirectly. Garibaldi is forced to cut her loose, and she’s forced to accept Bester’s offer. Bester records a bit of exposition personal log expressing delight that things are proceeding apace with Garibaldi, as he’s more and more alienated from his former comrades, and as an added bonus, Alexander is back in the fold.

Delenn, covered in burns, enters the Grey Council chambers on the Valen’tha. She summons the Nine, re-forming the Grey Council. But now, instead of a balance of three from each of the three castes, there are only two each from the Warrior and Religious Caste, and five from the Worker Caste. The people who do the actual work will have more of a say in the Minbari government. Delenn leaves the middle spot open in honor of Neroon and for “one who is to come.”

Garibaldi leaves the station for Mars to meet up with Edgars. He tells the customs guard that he has no plans to return.

Ivanova comes to Sheridan’s quarters with a head of steam: on Clark’s orders, a civilian transport carrying refugees from Proxima 3 was targeted and destroyed by the EAS Pollux. That’s the last straw for Sheridan. They have to take the fight to Clark, they can’t wait any longer. They’re going to take back Proxima, then Mars, then Earth itself.

Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore…

Ivanova is God. Ivanova’s also mad as hell, and she’s not gonna take it anymore, either. To her credit, she waits to put the murder of civilians on Voice of the Resistance until she’s calmed down.

The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is mad as hell at Bester specifically, and his attempt to not take it anymore is frustrated by security. He ends the episode leaving for Mars, with no intention of coming back.

If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Neroon’s sudden-but-inevitable betrayal at the end of last week turns out to be a ruse, as he and Delenn work together to make peace on Minbar, mostly by exposing Shakiri as a piece of garbage.

The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander is mad as hell, and is forced to take it, as she can’t afford her current quarters, and has no job prospects thanks to being on the outs with Psi Corps. Her only option is to be back on the ins with the Corps…

Looking ahead. We finally find out that Bester is at least partly responsible for what happened to Garibaldi between “Z’ha’dum” and “Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?” This will pay off the next time we see Bester in “The Face of the Enemy.”

Also Edgars’ antipathy toward telepaths is more complicated than he lets on, as we’ll also see in “The Face of the Enemy.”

Welcome aboard. Bart McCarthy plays Shakiri. He’ll be back as a Drazi general in “Movements of Fire and Shadow.” Christy Noonan plays Alexander’s potential employer.

We’ve got recurring regulars Walter Koenig, back from “Epiphanies” as Bester, who’ll next be seen three episodes hence in “The Face of the Enemy”; Efram Zimbalist Jr., still unseen and in voice only, and not credited, as Edgars, back from “Conflicts of Interest,” next to be actually seen and credited in “The Exercise of Vital Powers”; and John Vickery, back from “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies” in his final appearance as Neroon. Vickery will next be seen in Crusade’s “Appearances and Other Deceits” in his other role as Mr. Welles.

And in the category of “stunt casting that has aged badly,” Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, appears as the imaginatively named Mr. Adams, who wants to hire Garibaldi to find his dog and his cat, who are trying to take over the world, a not-even-a-little-bit-veiled reference to the strip characters of Dogbert and Catbert. It was only a little bit amusing in 1997, and is mostly just awful now, given what a toilet turd Adams has become in recent times.

Trivial matters. We never will find out who “the one who is to come” is that Delenn refers to. Speculation is that it’s her and Sheridan’s son David, or Sheridan himself, or someone else entirely. It’s possible Delenn was just speaking generally, but nobody ever speaks generally on a show written by J. Michael Straczynski, so that’s likely a plot point that just never had the chance to be explored.

Allan helped Alexander decorate her quarters over pizza in “Epiphanies.” They have clearly become friends. Also, Allan refers to Garibaldi as “Michael” rather than “Chief,” signalling that he no longer believes Garibaldi is coming back to work.

The final scene between Sheridan and Ivanova sets up the next episode—and, truly, the rest of the season, as the fight between B5 and the Clark Administration will dominate the balance of season four.

The echoes of all of our conversations.

“I mean, being a freedom fighter, a force for good—it’s a wonderful thing. You get to make your own hours, looks good on a resumé. But the pay sucks.”

—Bester speaking a bitter truth to Alexander

The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Is it wrong to value life?” One of my biggest complaints with B5, both when it first aired and on this rewatch, is the inability of the show to let us see the characters of Presidents Santiago and Clark. We were told to feel things about Santiago’s assassination in “Chrysalis,” and we’ve been told to have animus toward Clark ever since then, but we have no sense of either one of them as a person.

I mention this only because J. Michael Straczynski understood this with the non-human characters. In just one episode, he was able to make us understand and care about Emperor Turhan. The Centauri monarch’s death in B5’s medlab had meaning quantum leaps ahead of that of a president we’d never even heard speak a line of dialogue dying in a CGI explosion.

And this time around, he does it again with Shakiri. The head of the Warrior Caste is someone we didn’t even have a name for until the end of last week’s episode, but in just a couple of scenes—his grand philosophical conversation with Neroon on the subject of life and death and his acceptance of Delenn’s surrender—he shows himself to be a bloviating jackass with no sense of history and tradition and no consideration for lives lost. Then he proves himself a hypocrite when he refuses to enter the Starfire Wheel, and then tries to super-villain his way out of it by offering to share power with Delenn—the same person he expressed his intention to secretly assassinate earlier in the episode. Delenn, of course, doesn’t accept it, because she, unlike Shakiri, has convictions. So does Neroon, which is why he’s willing to sacrifice himself and save her, though that action smacks of “we can’t let the opening-credits regular die, we gotta kill the guest star.”

Also, it’s not a great look on Delenn that she’s willing to sacrifice herself without even letting her fiancé know what she’s planning. Delenn knows exactly how this feels, having been on the other end of it in “Z’ha’dum,” so you’d think she’d at least drop Sheridan a line and say goodbye, y’know?

The B5 portion of the plot works very nicely. It’s never bad to have Walter Koenig evil-ing it up as Bester, and what’s fun about this is that Bester comes out 100% victorious here. It’s hard for a bad guy to be effective if he always fails, so this is a good way to keep Bester in the worthy-foe category, and also provide pathos for both Garibaldi and Alexander.

One of my favorite lines in a movie is from The Princess Bride, when Inigo Montoya says to Westley, “I work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There’s not a lot of money in revenge.” I’m always impressed when a work of dramatic fiction remembers that people need to feed, clothe, and house themselves. Alexander isn’t part of B5’s working staff like Sheridan, Ivanova, Franklin, and Allan (who get paid by docking and repair fees), and she’s not part of an organization like Cole (it’s not stated explicitly, but the Rangers must have the means to support its members). She’s a telepath who needs to be hired to work, and her main client meandered out beyond the rim several episodes ago. And her one hope is dashed by Edgars’ unwillingness to have a telepath on the payroll in any way (for reasons that will become clear in a few episodes). Patricia Tallman plays it beautifully, too, her sad expression as she looks at herself in the mirror putting the black gloves on is just heartbreaking.

The contract exchange between Bester and Alexander is the only low point, as the whole “I want your body” bit is just puerile nonsense, and Bester explaining why a telepath saying, “Are you out of your mind?” is funny is just awkward and awful. A pity, as the rest of the scenes between the two are gold.

Next week: “No Surrender, No Retreat”[end-mark]

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Movies & TV It: Welcome to Derry

IT: Welcome to Derry Embraces the Power of Fear in “The Black Spot”

Rich + Margie 4-EVA

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on December 8, 2025

Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO

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Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO

This week’s episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, “The Black Spot”, does finally take us to the murders at The Black Spot, but also gives us a glimpse of Ingrid’s childhood, and what will probably be the military’s endgame. It was written by Jason Fuchs & Brad Caleb Kane, and directed by Andy Muschietti.

As Brief a Recap as a King Adaptation Will Allow

We open in 1908, with a long setpiece about Bob Gray’s act as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Far from being mindless slapstick, his act starts as a kind of foreshadowing of Caddyshack as he battles a gopher, then turns into a sweet, silent fable about the death of his wife. The children of Derry are entranced—but as soon as the story ends and the fast dancing music comes back up, they storm the stage and try to tear Pennywise’s wig off.

Across the Midway, we see a small boy watching from a barn.

Backstage, Young Ingrid shows her Papa her extremely elaborate clown makeup and costume. He loves it and tells her to show him the bow, which she does.

He says that soon they’ll work together—“The Pennywise and Periwinkle Show.”

“That was mom’s name,” Ingrid says.

Bob immediately backtracks. “You can change it!”

“No I love it,” she says.

He assures her that “…one day the big tent will come a-callin’ again” and that their “act will be something new.”

This achingly sweet interlude ends as badly as you would expect on this show. Later that night, Bob is leaning against a fence drinking, and staring out into the woods. A scruffy kid who looks like he wandered in off the Insidious poster creeps out of the woods.

“The children seem drawn to you,” the child says, as that’s a perfectly normal thing for a child to say.

Bob comments on that, and the “boy” changes tack, pitching his voice up and saying “I can’t find my parents.”

“Me neither,” Bob Gray replies, and now I’m wishing we’d gotten a whole episode of this fuckin’ guy.

But then there’s screaming in the woods, and Bob leaves the safety of the carnival and the lights, and the “boy” takes his hand and leads him away.

All that’s left to give Ingrid is her Papa’s blood-stained handkerchief, and the interlude closes with a narrowing circle of darkness like a silent film lens.

Back to the Black Spot, the mob have burst in. They wave their guns around, but, well, this is an officially recognized military hangout (kind of) and every man in the place pulls his own gun.

“Ours just happen to be government issue.”

Unfortunately, Hank Grogan does the honorable—and stupid—thing, and tries to give himself up to end the standoff. Reggie and the other men still refuse to let him go with the mob; Clint Bowers (still hidden behind a Dracula mask) convinces the rest of the mob to retreat, only to block the doors and set to work with gasoline and Molotov cocktails, now with the “justification” that the Spot is harboring a fugitive from the law.

The camera POV stays mostly in the club for an agonizingly long time. Heads are split open by the bullets the mob manages to shoot into the windows, arms catch on fire, the fire spreads across the ceiling, onto the bar. The doors have all been blocked by the mob, there is no clear way out. People churn and rush in circles, screaming.

In the midst of this carnage, a dancing figure appears in the background.

Pennywise approaches a sobbing woman, calls her Noreen, and claims he knows a way out. In her shock, she takes the hand of a giant clown and lets him lead her away, and moments later Ronnie Grogan stumbles over them. Pennywise is devouring her, dripping with blood.

“Whatsamatta? Do I have… face on my face?”

(For fuck’s sake, television show. You’re going to make me laugh during this scene?)

Dick, meanwhile, sees a Civil War era (???) ghost and follows it, and finds a way out under the fridge. He starts to climb down alone, but he hears Ronnie’s screams.

Reluctantly, extremely reluctantly, he goes back to rescue more people.

Dick sees the spirit of Necani, the Shokopiwah warrior, wearing a bear pelt, and asks her for help to find the children.

Pennywise spots him. “Seein’ things? I think THEY SEE YOU, TOO.”

Dick manages to get past him and practically throws Will and Ronnie into the passageway, and Ronnie practically drags Hank with her as he fights to try to get others.

And then… that’s it. A wall collapses, and Dick is separated from the rest of the living people. He escapes, but has to leave Rich and Margie behind.

Richie helps Margie into the Coke fridge, and closes it on her just as she relaizes there isn’t enough room for both of them. He lies on top of the fridge.

“Remember what you said about knights? We don’t just pee in pots—we also protect fair maidens.”

He tells her the story of the first time he ever saw her, and they sob out that they love each other as the flames consume the roof.

Back outside, most of the mob has driven away, but Stanley Kirsh realizes his engine is messed up. As he gets out to deal with it, Ingrid flits through the trees. She approaches him.

She is fully done up in her Periwinkle clown gear.

Naturally, she’s the one who informed about Grogan. She set this all up, to lure Pennywise to a site of fear and horror.

She tries to tell Stanley that this is who she really is, but Stanley tells her to go home and take it off unless she wants to be “black and blue”. She seems disappointed in him for a moment, but then…

“Papa?”

Bill turns, and there’s Pennywise. Holding a comically huge meat cleaver, of course. And there goes Bill’s head.

As Pennywise slurps her husband’s brain out of its skull, it seems to occur to Ingrid that things are amiss. She calls Pennywise Papa again, and he stops eating long enough to say “Show me the bow.”

She does, he applauds, and then says he’s going to sleep. When she panics, he reassures her that he’ll come back, but she grabs his arm and begs “Don’t abandon me!”

He drops the act and looks at her with pure malevolence, and she screams that he’s not her papa. Pennywise giggles. “I ate him! He still lives inside of me! I can feel him right now!”

And then he hits her with the Deadlights, and she levitates.

The next morning, the fire department cleans up what used to be The Black Spot. They find Margie, alive in the fridge, and she finds Rich’s body propped up against it. Ronnie and Will come back in from the woods and gather around her.

Later, when the kids are sitting outside, we see Ingrid on a gurney being wheeled into an ambulance, and she seems to be catatonic—until she flicks her eyes toward Will. When Major Hanlon and Charlotte get there, Will tells them that Mr. Hallorann got them out, and Hanlon’s called over to speak with Dick.

Ronnie takes that opportunity to tells Charlotte that her dad’s in the woods.

Dick Hallorann is sitting on a log, his eyes rolling and head shaking as the dead press around him.

Hanlon stands in front of him. “Hallorann! You all right?”

“…nooo? Nooooo.”

(This is not just the best line read on this show, I think it’s the best line read I heard on TV this year. The way these actors wring incredibly dark humor out of their dialogue is amazing.)

“I had to talk to ‘em.” Dick says.

From Hanlon’s perspective, it’s just Dick sitting there. From Dick’s, there are legions of dead people whispering, “Make it right…”

He tells them that IT is gone, or dormant—“It’s like a light went out”—but that he can still lead them to a Shard.

“Now we just gotta follow her,” Dick says, staring past Hanlon.

“Who?” he asks.

“HER,” Dick replies. He’s looking at Necani, who stands in the woods watching him.

Major Hanlon suggests that Charlotte take Hank to their house in Derry, as no one will look for him there.

As morning dawns over Derry, the radio DJ informs the town that an “electrical fire” destroyed “an illegal Colored speakeasy.” He says that among the dead were Stanley Kirsh (“Rest in peace, Stanley. No one could filet a tenderloin quite like you.”) and Hank Grogan. So now at least the town thinks he’s gone. Lilly’s mom glares at her daughter to eat more of her breakfast as they listen to the horror on the radio.

The Shokopiwah meet, and tally up the dead. Twenty-three adults, seventeen children. As some of the newer members of the circle react in horror at the numbers, Rose reminds them to “focus on the lives we protected because we keep this thing in ITs cage.”

Meanwhile, at the latest dig site, that cage is, um…

The military find the Shard that was inside a turtle shell and load it into a truck. Hallorann is told he’s done good work and sent back to base, and Major Hanlon is told to stand down as the plan has changed, and they’re taking the Shard to scientists on the base. When he protests that it’s like “leaving a cage door open” he’s assured that since the entity is dormant, they’ll now be able to study the Shard safely.  

Sure.

Taniel, somehow, has staked out the Shard site and sees them take it.

Ronnie and Margie go to Lilly’s to tell her about Rich, and the three of them go to the Tower to gather his things. Margie starts sobbing again as she realizes that he never got one of his balsa planes all the way to Main Street.

Charlotte has Hank change into one of her husbands old uniforms, and tells Will to stay home because even if IT is asleep, as Mr. Hallorann says, it wasn’t IT that set fire to the Black Spot. She takes Hank to Rose, and tells the other woman that she has contacts in Montreal who could help him start over. They just need help getting him over the border.

“Just a line on a map, right?”

As Rose smiles, Taniel bursts in. “We might have a problem.”

The scientists and military men are slowly putting the Shard into what looks like a barbecue smoker.

Major Hanlon rushes in with a gun to try to stop them, and for a moment they stand down at Shaw’s order. Shaw finally explains his real plan.

The country is “fracturing into jagged pieces”, but “the one thing that makes people listen is fear.” In Derry, after the horrific events at the Black Spot: “The streets are calm today. No rioting, no looting, no unrest. The Fear settles on every living person it touches… like a fog. Like a goddamn anesthetic.”

(I think the streets might also be calm cause Derry’s fucking racist, and the good white people of Derry are pleased about what happened, even if they won’t admit that, and the small Black population knows a protest will only lead to more murder—but I doubt the General’s going to hear that opinion.)

Major Hanlon is, in his way, as horrified at this mask coming off as the kids are when they glimpse IT. “You want to make America Derry???”

He tells Major Hanlon that his actions “may very well have saved this country” and tells him to go home. And as soon as he’s out of earshot he tells his underling to make sure Hanlon never leaves the base.

The phone rings, and Will, trapped at home, runs to it. It’s Ronnie, calling to talk about what happened at the Black Spot—but once she starts describing how delicious Rich’s fear was, Will realizes that his enemy isn’t dormant after all. “I’m done being afraid of you!” he screams, which is easy to say over the phone, but harder when he turns and sees Pennywise crouched on top of the fridge like a particularly menacing cat.

IT Deadlights him.

Do We All Float?

Hoo boy.

I absolutely love the way the show takes the time to give us the long set piece at the circus. Seeing Ingrid’s dad’s artistry, seeing how great he is with her, seeing how, in the midst of this life that was clearly broken down, he was trying to give her acceptance and creativity and magic, makes it all the more horrible when the idyll comes to an end. It goes a little way towards explaining her actions as an adult.

Bob Gray’s silent play is amazing? It created a fascinating cognitive dissonance to see Pennywise perform something so moving.

And then to drop us from that into the horror at the Black Spot was masterful.

By keeping us in the building for the fire, the show doesn’t allow us to look away from what’s happening, it doesn’t soften any of it, and then it shows us the aftermath: the happy white folks of Derry going about their day, the stern white generals informing their Black reportees that what America really needs is more racist massacres. My only frustration here is that Dick only managed to get Will, Ronnie, and Hank out—given how cavalier the show has been about plot armor, it would have been nice if the show had included a couple of background characters escaping to let it work both ways, and add to the realism. The scene with Margie and Rich is just perfect.

After those two sequences, I was shocked to see how much episode was still left. Both of them were so riveting that they felt like entire episodes on their own. But the show still added actual nuance to moments that could have just been plot machinations, with Charlotte finally reaching out to Rose for the friendship she was promised, the kids all coming together to mourn their friend, and Major Hanlon trying to make a giant heroic play only to learn just how high up the evil goes.

In all of this, it’s Dick Hallorann who’s proving baffling. When the spirits tell him to “Make it right”—what does that mean? Surely not to let IT escape. Why would Necani lead him to the Shard, after everything she sacrificed fighting IT? Is this some sort of huge spiritual trap? Or is IT still manipulating him, even though, at this point, he think IT has gone dormant?

Aside from that, I really love how he was going to fully abandon everyone to their fate. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the beginning of the Mr. Hallorann who risks his life for a boy he barely knows decades in the future.

And finally, holy crap, Madeline Stowe as Ingrid. The arc on this character has been beautiful to behold, and the way she says “Papa?” destroys me. All of the acting has been stellar here: Arian S. Cartaya and Matilda Lawler in their final (???) scene together, all the kids coming together to mourn Rich, Bill Skarsgård as Bob Gray. The only way this kind of horror works is if it’s grounded, and these performances have been fantastic all the way through.

#JustKingThings

In the book, the murders at The Black Spot are recounted as a horrible act of racism that becomes part of Mike Hanlon’s generational trauma. I was extremely concerned with how this would be handled, since it could so easily become exploitation, or trauma porn, but the way the show expands on it is brilliant. The massacre is set in motion by a white woman. BUT. She isn’t just acting out of jealousy, racism, or some twisted power game—she sets the massacre up because she wants to draw Pennywise out, to try to save her father.

Which is much more interesting, and even more tragic. This disturbed person uses her lover, who protected her at the risk of his own life, as bait. But not bait for a stupid white power fantasy, bait for an evil alien creature that feeds on fear.

I also have to note that both of the white girls make it out alive—the girl who is recognized and sent home by a mob member, and then Margie, who Rich saves at the cost of his own life. Almost every Black person, and one Cuban boy, are murdered by white supremacist thugs. And as General Shaw notes, there are no riots the next day, because the few people in Derry who have tried to ally across racial lines—all of them quite young—have been terrified into submission.

Turtles all the Way Down

The military finds the shard that was sealed up in a turtle shell, but they seem to be able to take it and barbecue it easily enough.

Mike Hanlon’s Photo Album

We finally see the killing at the Black Spot, and we see the last day in the life of Bob Gray, so it’s kind of the photo album come to life.

Ridiculous Alien Spider, or Generationally Terrifying Clown?

After all the irritating “Pennywise is gonna run really fast now” stuff, the show finally shows us some things that transcend all of that. First the creepy child wandering in from the dark woods, with its strange, obviously performative voice and unblinking Kubrick eyes. But better, I think, is that we simply see IT eating. We see the delight it takes tormenting humans, and the sheer joy IT takes in burying ITs teeth into flesh. After all the bells and whistles of embodying people’s deepest fears, IT is simply a carnivorous animal hunting us and chucking us straight to the bottom of the food chain—the most primal fear most people don’t even know they have. And best of all, ITs sick glee in laughing at Ingrid and ripping away her fantasy that somehow her dad is still in there, able to fight back.[end-mark]

The post <em>IT: Welcome to Derry</em> Embraces the Power of Fear in “The Black Spot” appeared first on Reactor.

Column 80s Fantasy Film Club

Krull Deserves a Bigger Cult Following — Who’s With Me?

Is this a good movie? Debatable. Is it an *awesome* movie? Hell yeah it is.

By Tyler Dean

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Published on December 9, 2025

Credit: Columbia Pictures

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Credit: Columbia Pictures

In this column, we’re looking back at the 1980s as their own particular age of fantasy movies—a legacy that largely disappeared in the ’90s only to resurface in the 2000s, though in many ways, the fantasy films of the ’80s are far weirder and less polished than what we got in the aughts. In each of these articles, we’ll explore a canonical fantasy movie released between 1980 and 1989 and discuss whatever enduring legacy the film has maintained in the decades since.

For a more in-depth introduction to the series, you can find the first installment here, focusing on 1981’s Dragonslayer. Last time, we looked at a singularly dark interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books with 1985’s Return to Oz. This time we are delving into the sui generis fantasia that is 1983’s Krull.

I didn’t see Krull until about seven or eight years ago, but it instantly became one of my favorite films. The film and I are almost exactly the same age (it’s about two months younger than I) which helps me justify the fact that, in 2021, I celebrated my 38th birthday with a socially distanced outdoor screening of this movie. So let’s dive in!

Krull is a strange one. Standing boldly astride the Fantasy/Sci Fi divide, the story is set on the titular planet, a world of magic that has been subjugated by an alien warlord called the Beast. Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall, of Deep Space 9 fame) and his fiancée, Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony—redubbed by Lindsay Crouse) are attacked on their wedding day. Lyssa is stolen away by the Beast and his Slayers, prompting Colwyn to embark on a quest to win her back and topple the Beast’s rule. He is joined by the sage Ynyr (The Elephant Man’s Freddie Jones), the shapeshifting wizard Ergo, a blind seer, along with his young apprentice, Titch, as well as an oracular cyclops and a band of thieves led by the lovable rogue, Torquil (played by Alun Armstrong—RSC member, Penny Dreadful luminary, and star of more than a few BBC adaptations of Dickens novels). Fun fact: Torquil’s merry men include Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane, both relatively early in their respective film careers.

Colwyn and company conquer crystalline spiders, changeling assassins, and the Beast’s laser-toting, armored Slayers on their way to the forbidding Black Fortress, where Lyssa has been imprisoned. Along the way, Colwyn fulfills a prophecy by retrieving the mythical “Glaive,” a weapon that resembles a vaguely sentient, bladed starfish. He finally comes into his full powers after marrying Lyssa, thereby fulfilling another prophecy, and destroys the Beast, liberating Krull and giving the survivors a happy ending. 

So, how does Krull hold up? I already tipped my hand in the intro, but Krull is fucking great! It strikes the perfect balance of engaging and stupid. It takes itself just seriously enough as it’s pushing its absolutely gonzo vision of its fantasy world to be thoroughly enjoyable, even if the viewer doesn’t take it quite as seriously…

If I had to point to a single quality that makes Krull so delightful, it would be a fearlessness with regards to its worldbuilding. Released the same year as Return of the Jedi, Krull clearly takes the Star Wars approach of confidently launching its original story in the kind of lived-in world whose history feels much deeper than what is actually explained on screen. Unlike Star Wars, however, it basically eschews all exposition, to both its credit and its detriment. 

Take, for example, a third act plot point where Ynyr must visit a character who has rated only the briefest mention up to this point in the film: The Widow of the Web, an ancient sorceress (Francesca Annis) who lives in a crystal at the center of a huge web guarded by the aforementioned crystalline spider. We learn, in very short order, that the Widow has some sort of control over the flow of time, that Ynyr and the Widow once had a son which the Widow killed shortly after his birth, that the Widow is also named Lyssa, and that she is willing to sacrifice herself to save the other Lyssa by providing Ynar with just enough time to deliver vital information to Colwyn. That’s a lot of plot, and there is almost no other context for any of it. In most movies, that sort of dense plotting would require an entire act of a film to set up and explore and Krull burns through it in a scene that lasts, at most, five minutes. Imagine if Obi-Wan just shouted out a laundry list of all his past entanglements with Darth Vader in the two minutes before their duel and none of it was ever mentioned anywhere else in the film. 

That’s definitely not to Krull’s credit (and there is a reason taking the same approach as Star Wars doesn’t necessarily lead to Star Wars-esque success) but at the same time, there is something so matter-of-fact and unforced about the whole of Ynar and the Widow’s backstory that one finds oneself intrigued rather than impatient. Krull, despite being an original property (producer Ron Silverman claims the original prompt for the film was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons), feels like it is using remarkable economy of storytelling to cram in details from much more complex and capacious source material. It’s a movie that feels designed to make viewers question if there wasn’t a trilogy of forgotten fantasy novels on which it was based. Everything about the story—from its magical wedding rites and its ancient rivalries between noble houses to the Glaive itself—somehow manages to feel deeper and more engaging than it is.

To this end, Krull boasts a production design that leans, tantalizingly, into its blending of sci-fi and fantasy. Knights wear tunics straight out of a 1960s BBC Shakespeare adaptation alongside smooth, ceramic-looking armor that suggests either that the peoples of Krull have adopted fabrication techniques from the Beast or else were a more technologically advanced society before he came to the planet (Torquil’s spiked collar and chainmail mantle are particular highlights). Likewise, there is a charming faux-Medieval brutalist quality to some of the castle sets that feels inspired by Cedric Gibbons’ in-world sets for Kiss Me Kate (1953) or Mary Blair’s design for the exterior of “It’s a Small World.” 

Some of that geometric, minimalist brutalism also gets repurposed to far more intimidating effect for Lyssa’s scenes in the Beast’s Black Fortress which, from the outside, looks like a glacier-carved rock formation along the lines of Devils Postpile or the Giant’s Causeway. From the inside, the fortress is vaguely implied to be the body of the Beast itself, with apertures shaped like eyes, huge curling bridges studded with teeth, and claw-like spirals through which Lyssa meanders. The film never explains whether the twenty-foot-tall reptilian baboon that manifests as the Beast late in the film is the true body of the creature or if Lyssa has been wandering around its bones and organs the entire time. Similarly, there is no explanation given for the humanoid, glass-helmeted spacesuits of the Beast’s Slayers which release grotesque slug-like creatures, reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing, that burrow into the earth when their shell is damaged. It is implied the slugs are the Slayers themselves and the humanoid suits are mecha they pilot, but any real explanation feels tantalizingly beyond the grasp of the film, not out of laziness, but because the humans and Cyclopes of Krull would have no way to unravel those extraterrestrial mysteries. 

This is not to say the Krull doesn’t have its low points. Neither Colwyn nor Lyssa is particularly engaging as a lead (and, in the latter case, Lyssa is done no favors by the mismatch between her body acting and her dubbed lines), and for every fascinating choice or odd plot point, there is a plodding scene of our adventurers trudging through the grim ocher swamps of Pinewood Studios. Even some of the costume design falls flat: Robbie Coltrane appears to just be wearing a sturdy pair of builder’s coveralls. The presence of two different wise old mentor figures also feels quite unnecessary. Still, there are cast highlights as well. David Battley, who seems to be channeling Eric Idle (with whom he’d worked a few years earlier), manages to mine some charming comic relief from his role as the initially selfish and self-important wizard, Ergo the Magnificent, and gives one of the best line deliveries in B-movie history when, after pestering the seer’s young apprentice for sweets, he introduces himself and lists his many (self-bestowed) titles. The boy responds that it’s all very impressive and introduces himself as simply Titch…a name to which Ergo responds cheerfully, “That’s not impressive, but it is adequate! Adequate.”

All in all, Krull is wildly stylish with only the barest hint of real substance that never actually manifests, but I would argue that still puts it ahead of many other fantasy films of the day. 

Krull was a box office flop and, even if it’s been more fondly remembered in the 42 years since it was released, it has never achieved as extensive a cult status as, say Fire and Ice, or even the far less interesting Beastmaster. So let’s talk about what impact it has had in the decades since. Most of its pop cultural afterlife has been centered around its magical weapon: the Glaive. I want to start out with the obvious. A glaive (sometimes called a glaive-guisarmes) is a real weapon—a polearm culminating in a sword-like blade, similar to a naginata. You will note that the Glaive in Krull is nothing like that. It’s a psychically controlled shuriken that mostly works like a bandsaw. In addition to causing an endless amount of confusion among nerds about what a glaive actually is, the boomeranging throwing star/chakram has been a popular archetype in fantasy games ever since: Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft games prominently feature a “glaive thrower,” a sort of Krull-style glaive-launching ballista; Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has a “killstar” that functions the same way; a personal favorite—2001’s Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura—calls its glaive-type weapon “Azram’s Star;” and so many of the chakram and bladed boomerang-type weapons seen in Xena: Warrior Princess to Secret of Mana to the Smart Discs of the Predator franchise may be directly inspired by, or at least owe some of their raison d’etre to, fond memories of Krull. 

While far from the first piece of media to blend science fiction and fantasy (Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert were doing it back in the ’60s and, obviously, Star Wars was the ascendant speculative fiction of the day when Krull was released) there is a particular subgenre of medieval-ish fantasy worlds invaded by sci-fi forces that feel like they owe much to Krull. The Dungeons & Dragons space fantasy setting Spelljammer certainly seems to have taken aesthetic notes from Krull, as do the foundational Japanese RPG series Super Hydlide and Phantasy Star. While Krull was released a couple years after C.J. Cherryh’s Pride of Chanur, you can see the influence of both in early ’90s fantasy like C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy, or in the way that Games Workshop kept elements of period-specific fantasy when it launched Warhammer 40000, its space opera counterpart to its established Lovecraftian-Horror-in-the-Holy-Roman-Empire-but-make-it-anti-Thatcherite setting.

As a final note, Krull is also likely to have had a lasting impact on the twelve couples who were married on a version of the Krull set as part of one of the weirdest promotions in the history of cinema. I’m not saying that I would want to have a Krull-themed wedding—who am I kidding, I would adore that—but I am saying that getting married as a promotion for a film (particularly one that wouldn’t be released for another month or so and wasn’t based on any sort of known franchise) is the kind of thing that we should do more often. Think of the Rebel Moon weddings we missed out on! 

But what do you think? Is Krull an accidentally brilliant piece of ’80s fantasy or is it yet another, plodding dud saddled with an underbaked plot? Do we stan Rell the Cyclops, and his unbelievably drawn-out death sequence? Is baby Liam Neeson’s facial hair worse in Krull or Excalibur? What do you think a glaive is?

Please share your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to join us next time when we go from a film that somehow gives the impression that it’s drawing from a deep (if nonexistent) well of lore and source material to one whose source material is a plotless treatise on dragon physiology with Rankin/Bass’ 1982 animated classic The Flight of Dragons![end-mark]

The post <i>Krull</i> Deserves a Bigger Cult Following — Who’s With Me? appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Holiday Cheer

Five Lesser-Known Horror Movies Set at Christmas

‘Tis the season for jolly jump scares, demonic Santas, and general mayhem!

By Lorna Wallace

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Published on December 9, 2025

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I never seem to tire of rewatching classic or nostalgia-inducing Christmas movies in December—I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the first two Home Alone movies—but as a horror lover, I’m also always on the lookout for films that add some frights into my festive viewing. Black Christmas (1974) and Gremlins (1984) are, of course, staples of the Christmas horror subgenre, but those aren’t the only films that add a little darkness to the bright holiday. Below are five lesser-known horror gems set at the most wonderful time of the year.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

There are two ways to tackle the first two Silent Night, Deadly Night movies. Either watch the first one and then skip the first 40 minutes of the second, or skip the first movie entirely and just jump right into the second. This is because most of the first section of Part 2 is a highlight reel of scenes from the first movie.

I started with Part 2, which kicks off on Christmas Eve with main character Ricky (Eric Freeman) being interviewed in a psychiatric hospital after going on a killing spree. Through flashbacks to the first film, we learn that Ricky’s parents were murdered when he was a baby by a man dressed as Santa. This traumatic event, paired with an equally traumatic upbringing in an orphanage, led to his older brother, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson), also becoming a Santa-clad killer. And now, it’s Ricky’s turn to don the red suit.

Don’t go into this film expecting a serious slasher; it falls firmly into the goofy so-bad-it’s-good category. While this style of movie isn’t for everyone, I think that Eric Freeman’s over-the-top performance—complete with some of the funniest eyebrow acting I’ve ever seen—is a joy to watch.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

Although set at Christmas, Rare Exports is basically devoid of Yuletide cheer, giving viewers a version of Santa that is nothing like the traditional jolly old Saint Nick. But while the halls might not be decked, this Finnish movie features plenty of wintery atmosphere in addition to its unique take on the iconic Christmas figure.

Rauno (Jorma Tommila) and his son Pietari (Onni Tommila) are struggling to connect after the loss of their wife and mother. Rauno is a reindeer herder and after many of his animals are killed, he sets up a pit in attempt to capture the wolves that he thinks were responsible. But on Christmas Eve the trap turns up another prize: Santa Claus. This Santa is essentially a feral animal and Rauno, Pietari, and their crew aren’t exactly sure what to do with him.

Rare Exports is a creative take on Finnish folklore and mixes a dash of dry humor into its fantasy horror concept. The resulting film is certainly strange, but it’s also a refreshing change of pace from the sometimes overwhelmingly capitalistic and saccharine parts of Christmas.

Better Watch Out (2016)

Have you ever wondered what the injuries that Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) inflicts upon Marv (Daniel Stern) and Harry (Joe Pesci) in Home Alone would look like if they weren’t being played for laughs? It’s only a small part of the film, but Better Watch Out goes some of the way to exploring that idea.

The movie starts with Luke’s (Levi Millier) parents going out for a December date night and 17-year-old Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) coming over to babysit. Despite being five years her junior, Luke decides he’s now old enough to have a shot with her romantically—something that she obviously doesn’t go along with. The night is already off to a weird start, but things get even worse when a gun-wielding intruder breaks in.

The rest of the movie’s runtime is filled with twists aplenty, intentionally infuriating characters, and a fair bit of blood splattered onto the Christmas decor.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Anna and the Apocalypse is a zombie movie that’s also a Christmas movie that’s also a musical that’s also a comedy. That’s a lot of different elements to balance, but I’d say the film mostly pulls off the eclectic mix of genres.

The titular Anna (Ella Hunt) is a teenager who lives in the fictional Scottish town of Little Haven. It’s the last day of school before Christmas break, but rather than being a day of festive fun, everything turns to chaos when a zombie virus spreads through the town. Armed with an oversized decorative candy cane filed to a sharp point, Anna bands together with her classmates in an attempt to survive—all while occasionally breaking out into song.

I do wish there were a few more Scottish accents peppered throughout the cast (I’m Scottish, so this is probably just a me problem), but the film more than makes up for that with its zombie gags, creative kills, and catchy tunes.

The Lodge (2019)

If it’s a cold, snowy atmosphere you’re after in your Christmas horror, then look no further than The Lodge. Riley Keough plays Grace, who as a child survived the mass suicide of an extremist cult. She’s now engaged to Richard (Richard Armitage), who she met while he was researching the cult, but his two kids (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) give her a frosty reception.

Richard decides that forced proximity and holiday cheer is just what everyone needs in order to bond, so they all spend Christmas at his snow-blanketed lodge in Massachusetts. But not long after arriving, Richard is unexpectedly called away by work, leaving Grace with two kids who seem intent on hating her. It’s already a nightmare scenario for everyone involved, but it doesn’t take long for their Christmas getaway to take a truly sinister turn.

I’ll not reveal the exact horror elements of this film because I think it’s best to just let yourself be taken on the ride. Just know that while my other picks for this list have leaned into the fun side of horror, The Lodge is a bit more serious and psychologically disturbing.

Although not an over-populated genre, there are definitely other examples of Christmas horror out there, so please leave your own festively frightful suggestions in the comments below![end-mark]

The post Five Lesser-Known Horror Movies Set at Christmas appeared first on Reactor.

Column Superhero Movie Rewatch

“We’re all losers, and we lost” — Thunderbolts*

This movie is an absolute delight — while also dealing with some serious themes.

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on December 4, 2025

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From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.

In 1991, a whole bunch of Marvel’s most popular artists—who’d become fan favorites working on titles featuring Spider-Man and/or the X-Men—decided to quit Marvel and form their own company, where they could produce superhero titles that they owned and controlled. Thus, Image Comics was born.

Trust me, this all relates to Thunderbolts*…

Five years later, the sales on several of Marvel’s flagship titles—those featuring the Avengers and the Fantastic Four—were poor. In a radical move, Marvel decided to outsource those titles to two of the artists who’d gone over to Image, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. In-universe, there was a major crossover called “Onslaught,” which ended with the apparent deaths of the Avengers and FF—but in truth, they were sent to a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards, the child of Reed and Sue Richards of the FF.

Meanwhile, in the mainline Marvel universe, a team of all-new heroes who called themselves the Thunderbolts appeared to fill the gap left behind by the removal of so many heroes. While the team was created by Kurt Busiek & Mark Bagley, they first appeared in Incredible Hulk #449 by Peter David & Mike Deodato Jr., then were seen in their own title by Busiek & Bagley shortly thereafter.

The twist came at the end of the first issue of their title, when it was revealed that the Thunderbolts were, in fact, a bunch of long-time Marvel super-villains in disguise, led by Baron Zemo (posing as Citizen V). They were engaged in a long con, acting as heroes in order to win the trust of the people of Earth before betraying them and taking over.

Eventually, the team became proper heroes, as all the ex-villains—save for Zemo and the Fixer (posing as Techno)—decided they like being good guys more than being bad guys. Hawkeye—himself a reformed villain—took over as team leader for a time.

The outsourcing of the Avengers and FF titles only lasted a year, and they were returned to the mainline Marvel Universe, but the Thunderbolts also remained a going concern. They have gone through numerous incarnations in the two-and-a-half decades since, including being renamed the Dark Avengers for a time.

The notion of adding the Thunderbolts to the Marvel Cinematic Universe originally came from James Gunn, though his interest in doing a Marvel movie about a group of villains doing heroic things waned after he wound up doing something similar for DC with The Suicide Squad. After Black Widow wrapped, that film’s co-writer Eric Pearson pitched a Thunderbolts movie, with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova headlining. While the two villains who formed Thunderbolts groups in the comics—Zemo and Thaddeus Ross—were potentially available, it was decided not to go that route precisely to avoid comparisons to the two Suicide Squad movies.

The seeds for this movie were sown, not just in Black Widow, but also in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Captain America: Brave New World. In particular, the introduction of CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine sets up much of this movie, as de Fontaine’s use of costumed heroes to do black ops is seen in several of the above stories.

Most of the main characters in this film appeared in prior MCU films. The exception is Sentry, a character created by Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, & Rick Veitch for an eponymous 2000 miniseries. A powerful hero who watches over the world to protect it against the Void, Sentry was retconned into Marvel’s history, but had never been seen or mentioned before because the Void erased all knowledge of Sentry and Void—who, it turns out, are two halves of the same person. Sentry has appeared in several Avengers comics since his intro, including the Dark Avengers.

Back from Brave New World is Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier. Back from Wakanda Forever is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as de Fontaine. Back from Hawkeye is Pugh as Belova. Back from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S.Agent. Back from Black Widow are David Harbour as the Red Guardian and Olga Kuryenko as Taskmaster. Back from Ant-Man & the Wasp is Hannah John-Kamen as the Ghost. Introduced in this film are Lewis Pullman as Sentry, Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel, Chris Bauer as Holt, and the great Wendell Pierce (who will next be seen in this rewatch in Superman) as Congressman Gary, who is holding hearings investigating de Fontaine.

Many of the above will appear next in Avengers: Doomsday.

Thunderbolts*
Written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo
Directed by Jake Schreier
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: May 2, 2025

“We’re just disposable delinquents”

Yelena Belova is depressed. She’s just going through the motions—in this case, her latest mission for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She’s to dispose of a lab in Kuala Lumpur. A scientist—who insists that de Fontaine doesn’t understand the reality of what happened with the Sentry Project—tries to stop her with a gun that he isn’t very good at shooting, and winds up with his face blown off. This means Belova can’t get into the lab to destroy the evidence she’s there to destroy, as it’s behind a facial recognition lock. So she blows up the whole lab. (She does save the guinea pig they were using as a lab animal.)

Meanwhile, de Fontaine is being investigated by a congressional committee. (One of the people observing is first-year congressman James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, who has apparently won the Brooklyn congressional seat he was running for in Brave New World.) Prior to being appointed head of the CIA, she was the head of OXE, and while she says she’s divested herself of all holdings in OXE, she’s still on the advisory board. The chair of the committee, Congressman Gary, believes that she’s still more involved, and that OXE is involved in human experimentation in an attempt to create new superheroes. De Fontaine speechifies, pointing out that the Avengers are gone, but threats still exist, plus the last president turned into a big red rage monster.

After walking out of the hearing, de Fontaine asks her assistant Mel for an update. Mel reports that all the evidence is in the vault, and she’s sent all but one of the assets to the vault. De Fontaine guesses who the exception is.

Belova has gone to visit her surrogate father, Red Guardian, who is now living in Baltimore, running a limo company, and pretending to still be a superhero. He and Belova haven’t spoken in a year, and she bares her soul to him, expressing her depression and that she’s thinking of quitting working for de Fontaine. Red Guardian’s response to this is to ask for de Fontaine’s number, as he’d kill to work for her.

Belova then calls de Fontaine, and says that after this next job, she wants a more front-facing job—like her sister. De Fontaine says that, after this next job, they’ll discuss it. First, she has to go to a vault in a mountain in the middle of nowhere, where a rogue agent known as the Ghost is trying to steal OXE’s stuff. Belova is to follow her in, see what she steals, and dispose of her.

When she arrives, she’s surprised to see U.S.Agent, who is targeting her—and Taskmaster, who is targeting U.S.Agent, while Ghost is targeting Taskmaster. In addition, there’s a seemingly unpowered civilian there named Bob. It soon becomes clear that they were all sent there to kill each other, and if they didn’t succeed, they’re going to be incinerated. Alas, they don’t learn this until after Ghost kills Taskmaster. U.S.Agent doesn’t believe this, as he’s a genuine hero, not like the others, plus he’s got a family. (At this point, Ghost and Belova remind him that he stopped being the official Captain America when he killed an innocent civilian.)

The vault is sealed off and the heat starts to rise. There’s a convenient countdown of two minutes.

In D.C., de Fontaine is holding a party for the families of first responders that’s full of Avengers memorabilia. Gary calls her out for her “fake party” as a PR move, while Bucky tries to work Mel, giving her a business card.

Mel then surprises de Fontaine by informing her that the assets that were supposed to either kill each other or get incinerated are, instead, working together. De Fontaine is pissed, and also confused as to who Bob is, instructing Mel to find out.

Back at the vault, they are able to destroy the machine that is keeping Ghost from phasing through the door. Ghost then opens the door just as the room is incinerated. She almost left them behind, but the lift isn’t working, so she decides she needs help.

When they’re blown out of the vault, Bob and Belova make skin-to-skin contact, and Belova finds herself reliving one of the tests she underwent in the Red Room as a child: luring one of her fellow trainees—a little girl—to her death in the forest.

Belova tries to calm a very frightened Bob down, especially since he has no memory of what happened to him. He had been off wandering through Malaysia, agreed to do a medical trial, and the next thing he knew he was in the vault watching these people try to kill each other.

As they’re being driven home in a limo, de Fontaine instructs Mel to send Holt—her chief of security—and his troops to the vault to take care of the assets that had the temerity not to kill each other. Mel also has learned who Bob is: one of the test subjects for the Sentry Project. They assumed he was dead, which is why his corpse was sent to the vault—but apparently, he’s alive. This thrills de Fontaine.

After they leave the limo, we see that Red Guardian is the driver.

U.S.Agent has found a shaft that will lead to the surface. But none of them can fly and it’s too far for even the super soldier serum-enhanced U.S.Agent to jump. Bob suggests they stand back to back, lock arms, and climb up the shaft. This barely works, and then they’re stuck with what to do when they get to the top. U.S.Agent decides to grab Belova’s staffs and use them to get through the hatch, with Ghost able to cling to the side, Belova able to cling to Ghost, and her widow’s line catching Bob.

An unapologetic U.S.Agent helps Bob up, at which point he flashes back to a bitter argument between him and his wife.

Mel calls Bucky and it turns out she does have reservations about what de Fontaine is doing. She encourages him to track her phone.

When de Fontaine and Mel arrive at the vault, the former tells Holt to go non-lethal. Holt is disappointed, as he’d planned for lethal, but de Fontaine doesn’t want Bob to catch a stray bullet.

In the vault, the assets realize they have to get through the troops. Ghost goes off to get them transportation, while Belova plans to knock out the lights with an explosion, then, when Holt’s troops come in with their night-vision goggles, turn the lights back on, blinding them. U.S.Agent doesn’t like this plan, as explosions have too many variables, but Belova insists. U.S.Agent thinks he should be the leader, and cites not just his military record, but also how many presidents he’s shaken hands with and his high-school football record. Belova snarkily counters with the terrible soccer team she played on when she was part of a fake American family in the 1990s, the West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts, sponsored by Shane’s Tire Shop.

Bob sticks with Belova, who continues to try to be friendly and encouraging to him, and also protects him during the ensuing fight.

That fight goes rather poorly, as the explosion fried the lights, so Belova’s plan doesn’t quite work. However, they manage to take out Holt’s troops and sneak out in uniforms, and then head away in a truck Ghost stole. However, they’re stopped at a checkpoint where U.S.Agent utterly fails to bluff his way past the guard.

Bob takes matters into his own hands, grabbing a rifle and shooting randomly. Holt’s people shoot the crap out of him, to de Fontaine’s horror—but then, to everyone’s shock, Bob proves completely immune to those bullets. He then flies into the air, is shocked, starts to run out of air, and passes out, falling to the earth at what would be terminal velocity for someone who wasn’t invulnerable.

The impact crater he makes totals the truck, so Belova, U.S.Agent, and Ghost have to proceed on foot. Eventually, they come across Red Guardian, who warns Belova not to go into the vault, as de Fontaine will incinerate them. Belova initially tries to pretend Red Guardian doesn’t exist, but they all get into his limo to escape. Red Guardian thinks they’re a team, prompting U.S.Agent to snarkily call them the West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts. Red Guardian is thrilled that Belova named them after her soccer team, but they all insist that they’re not a team.

De Fontaine has Bob brought back to the base—not to D.C., as Mel thinks, but to the place in New York. Mel points out that they stopped renovations when they stopped the project, but de Fontaine tells her to start them back up.

Holt’s people catch up to them, and start shooting at the not-as-bulletproof-as-Red-Guardian-says-it-is limo. The same sonic blast they used against the Ghost in the vault is in use here, so she can’t do anything, and U.S.Agent’s shield is the only thing keeping them alive.

Then Bucky shows up, taking out all three APVs, then taking the four of them hostage. He wants to bring them back to D.C. to testify before the committee. He also expresses sympathy to U.S.Agent over his wife and kid leaving him, information that surprises the others.

The place in New York where de Fontaine has set up shop is the old Avengers Tower, which she apparently bought from Stark Enterprises. De Fontaine has brought Bob there, explaining that the others are criminals, and that he should only trust her. He will become the finest superhero in the world, Sentry. At one point they touch, at which point de Fontaine flashes back to her childhood in Italy when her father was killed.

Mel is concerned, worried that someone with Bob’s litany of mental health issues shouldn’t be given superpowers. You give Steve Rogers a super-soldier serum, he becomes Captain America, but you give it to Bob, and you don’t know what you’ll get. After de Fontaine completely dismisses her concerns, Mel calls Bucky, expressing fear about Bob. Bucky has been hearing about Bob from his four new prisoners and not entirely believing them, but now he’s convinced. So they head to New York.

The Thunderbolts arrive at what is now called the Watchtower. At first, they fight de Fontaine’s guards, but then she just invites them upstairs to the same room with a bar where Tony Stark confronted Loki in Avengers. The Thunderbolts plan to take de Fontaine in, but she has a Hulk Sentry. The Thunderbolts utterly fail to even come close to the vaguest possibility of any kind of inkling of harming Sentry. Eventually, they retreat. On the street, they admit defeat, with Belova in particular going on at great length about how pathetic they are. She storms off, but Red Guardian goes after her. She castigates him for ignoring her for a year, and he apologizes, saying he’s here now.

Upstairs, Sentry refuses to go after the Thunderbolts. He wonders why, if he’s virtually a god, he has to listen to what de Fontaine says. With a sigh, de Fontaine is about to throw the kill switch, but Sentry is too fast, and he almost chokes her to death before Mel activates the kill switch, then demands a raise.

Unfortunately, the kill switch didn’t actually kill Sentry, it just allowed his other personality to come to the fore: the Void, which starts seemingly disintegrating people and plunging New York into darkness. Holt’s people go after the Void, which just results in a lot of property damage. The Thunderbolts try to rescue people, but it’s a losing battle, as the Void keeps wiping out more people.

Belova, however, steps into the darkness on purpose. The other Thunderbolts debate whether to follow her in—it’s possible she was simply disintegrated—but they’re getting to the point where they have little to lose…

Belova finds herself back in the forest where she led Anya to her death, which she’d flashed back on earlier. After trying to stop Anya from being killed, and instead reliving it over and over, she manages to escape to another room, where she and other children were locking and loading pistols. Belova was the fastest, and the other girls were whipped for not being first.

Then she sees Bob in a mirror, and breaks through to find herself in a bathroom with a version of herself at her lowest point, drunk and mourning Natasha. She eventually finds Bob in an upstairs attic, where he’s hiding as his abusive father and his mother fight below. He explains that he has no control over the Void, which then uses the furniture and bric-a-brac in the attic to try to kill them—or at least hurt them, as Bob says they can’t die here.

But then the other Thunderbolts show up to rescue them. Apparently, they went through some shame rooms of their own. (Bucky says wryly, “I’m fine—I had a great past, I’m totally fine.”) Bob has said that this attic is the best place here, so Belova suggests the way out is to go to the worst place. They go through several of Bob’s shame rooms—including one where he’s a sign-twirling chicken, during a time when he was on meth—before finding themselves at the same lab that Belova blew up at the top of the film. The Void physically traps the Thunderbolts, then Bob confronts him, beating him up repeatedly. However, that’s what the Void wants, and the darkness starts to claim Bob. Belova manages to break free with Red Guardian’s help and tries to hold Bob back. The others also break free and do the same, and the power of the group hug gets them back onto 42nd Street… the darkness retreating, the people all restored, and Bob once again not remembering anything.

The press de Fontaine had Mel gather to announce Sentry’s defeat of the rogue criminals who blew up an OXE vault are present, and de Fontaine switches gears, announcing that this team that just defeated the Void are the new Avengers. Belova whispers to de Fontaine that they own her now. And the asterisk on the title is finally explained: the real title of the movie is: Thunderbolts* (*The New Avengers).

Fourteen months later, it’s clear that the public has not embraced these new Avengers even a little bit. (Headlines include “Not My Avengers” and “B-vengers” and “The ‘Huh?’ Heard ’Round the World.”) Apparently, Sam Wilson is trying to put together his own Avengers and also has filed for the trademark. (The dialogue says copyright, but it’d be the trademark he’d have to get.) Red Guardian’s solution is for them to call themselves “Avengerz.”

Then they detect a ship that has entered their universe through a dimensional portal. It has a stylized “4” on it.

“Your light is dim, even by Eastern European standards”

This movie is an absolute delight, partly because it doesn’t entirely follow the expected formula. But it’s also got some disappointments, partly because, just like Brave New World, it apes the structure of another, better movie a little too much.

One of the things I like best about this movie is that—like most of the MCU films—it’s not just a superhero movie. Just as Ant-Man was also a heist movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was also a political thriller, Black Panther was also an Afro-futurist tale, and so on, Thunderbolts* is a very powerful treatise on mental health issues in general and depression in particular. It starts with the very first scene, where Belova—who is so lackadaisical toward her work that she isn’t even wearing the battlesuit we saw her wear in Black Widow and Hawkeye, but is instead wearing sweats and a hoodie—is trying desperately to find some kind of meaning.

Indeed, that’s true of pretty much all the characters herein. U.S.Agent is putting up a mediocre front as the operative who has his shit together, but we learn that he’s lost his family and is mostly known by the world at large as the failed Captain America. Bucky is not enjoying being a politician—his response to Gary’s throwing impeachment paperwork at him is to be bored to tears, and he jumps at the chance to do something superheroic instead. And Red Guardian is frustrated as hell by his life as a limo driver living in a crappy house in Baltimore.

Ghost gets short shrift here, and it’s one of the movie’s flaws on two different levels. One is that Hannah John-Kamen is delightful, and it would’ve been nice to do more than pay lip service to her shitty life. Plus, she kills Taskmaster—which is another flaw—and aside from one very brief unsatisfying conversation with Belova, that isn’t even really dealt with. Indeed, one of the interesting things about Black Widow was Taskmaster being freed from the Red Room, with the promise of more development later, since she was underused in that film. Instead, she comes back long enough to be even more underused, getting all of one line of dialogue before she’s shot in the head.

But the movie still works on so many levels, partly due to the sparkling dialogue that is a hallmark of most MCU films, partly due to superlative performances by everyone, and partly due to the climax not being a big-ass battle against a CGI monster of some sort. That last is particularly good, as watching superhero movies for the last eight years has engendered tremendous fight-the-CGI-monster-at-the-climax fatigue in your humble rewatcher. And I love that the method of stopping the Void was, basically, a group hug.

We also have a great villain in de Fontaine. Julia Louis-Dreyfus imbues her with what Loki referred to as “glorious purpose” in Avengers, and her actual big-picture goals are, in the abstract, good ones, but oof are her means awful. She also has the same flaw here that we also saw in Wakanda Forever: she underestimates people. In particular, she puts way too much faith in her ability to control Sentry, something her assistant (who is also magnificently portrayed by Geraldine Viswanathan, whose banter with both Louis-Dreyfus and Sebastian Stan is letter-perfect) has figured out.

The climax is trying a little too hard to ape Avengers, and for the second movie in a row, it doesn’t entirely work. It comes closer to making sense here, because de Fontaine is trying very hard to re-create the Avengers, and her buying Stark Tower and confronting them from the bar plays into that. But the scene doesn’t have anywhere near the verve of the scene in the 2012 film, and it’s never a good idea to remind people of a better movie.

The movie is absolutely made by Florence Pugh and David Harbour, though. The pair of them continue the fantastic work they did in Black Widow, and while the third part of their triumvirate is seriously missed (I will never stop bitching about the idiotic decision to kill Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame), Romanoff’s death also dictates a lot of the character work done with both Belova and Red Guardian. Pugh’s laconic charm and Harbour’s bombastic scenery chewing are superb.

My final complaint isn’t so much a problem with this film as a bit of a continuity issue that is probably at least partly the result of the movies since Endgame being made in the shadow of a global pandemic and two strikes. Both Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the after-credits scene of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings make it seem like the Avengers are still some kind of going concern, but Spider-Man: Far From Home made it seem like the Avengers are gone, while other movies were cagey on the subject. However, Brave New World and this movie have been explicit about the Avengers no longer being a thing, and that makes no sense. I guess we’ll have some kind of explanation next year when Avengers: Doomsday comes out…

Next week, the Man of Steel is back! We take a look at the latest film version of Superman.[end-mark]

The post “We’re all losers, and we lost” — <i>Thunderbolts*</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Eternity

Eternity Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly

If you’re looking for an afterlife romance, this might fit the bill… but don’t expect it to do anything surprising.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on December 2, 2025

Credit: A24

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Credit: A24

As a person who generally enjoys afterlife romantic shenanigans (don’t get me started on Chances Are, I beg you), Eternity seemed catered to my tastes precisely. Here’s a story about a woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who dies and finds out that the great beyond demands she choose an afterlife to reside in… forever. Things complicate themselves from there when both of her husbands—one she spent most of her life with, and one who died young in the Korean War—turn up to ask for her hand in eternity. Sounds fun, yes?

Parts of Eternity are deeply enjoyable, but in a world where these sort of romantic comedies (being the sort where death and love intersect in silly ways) number far higher than you might expect, I was hoping for just a tiny bit more deconstruction. What we get is surprisingly rote and a little simplistic in terms of payoff. Perhaps all the name-checking of Billy Wilder on the press tour should have been a tipoff that surprise wasn’t on the docket so much as nostalgia for a different kind of film.

Part of the trouble is in the film’s perspective choices—Joan’s husband Larry (Miles Teller, in the only role I’ve ever really enjoyed him in, which was a pleasant surprise) is the first one to die, which means that the film’s entire explanation of the afterlife occurs through his eyes, his vantage point. His Afterlife Coordinator Anna (another beautiful turn from Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains that he must choose an eternity within a week, or stay at the “Hub” way station where he’ll have to get a job if he intends to wait for someone.

Each eternity falls into a category, which is where things start to get a little itchy in terms of the worldbuilding; all the eternities were clearly built for the purpose of jokes, which means that they don’t make a ton of sense. There’s “Paris World,” “Capitalism World,” and “Studio 54 World,” and “Weimar Germany With No Nazis! World,” and also “Queer World,” which sounds like it should just be the former world, right? Then there are a bunch of afterlife eternities that are just geographical locations like “Beach World” and “Mountain World.” They each have a cap on residents, and once you’re there, you cannot change your mind. Your eternity is where you spend forever, which means this version of the afterlife is an absolute nightmare for anyone with ADHD who craves novelty, but I digress.

You might think that wouldn’t matter because this is the afterlife, where earthly concerns don’t matter—and you’d be wrong! One of the funnier jokes in the movie deals with Larry’s presumptions about what a soul is, and Anna explains: What you are in life is basically what you are in death. (This is her gentle way of pointing out that Larry being a constantly aggravated grouch isn’t about to change any time soon.)

If you had reservations about the cast all being young, hot versions of themselves once they die, this is explained in a way that makes it better… and also worse? The point is that you revert to the point in your life when you were “happiest,” which means there are a variety of ages running about the Hub. But that still points an odd finger at the central cast: Joan and Larry lived a long and lovely life together, complete with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. While it’s perhaps understandable that Larry would want to revert to a point in time when he had fewer physical aches and pains, the idea that both he and Joan would choose to be a version of themselves possibly before all their kids were even born seems odd. It misses out on the possibility of two younger-appearing men trying to romance an older-appearing woman, or of having Larry and Joan played by older actors while Luke (that’s husband #1) swoops in, in all his baby-faced glory.

The film doesn’t sink into Joan’s perspective until well after she arrives at the Hub, which feels like an error built into the film’s framework. The entire story hinges on her choice between two men—one she only had briefly and one who saw her through every little facet of life, good and bad. The movie does a decent job at showing the pros and cons of both, but without sitting in Joan’s vantage point for the majority of the story, we don’t get to know her well enough to feel out this journey with her. This is Joan’s story,  or it should be. Olsen gives a charming and emotional performance, but the film has forgotten she’s the central character… or worse, was afraid to let her take on that role.

One of the best parts of the film is when Joan finally gets away from both men: Larry and Luke get to hang out and find that they actually like each other very well when they’re not busy vying for an afterlife partner. Joan goes on a bender with recently deceased, secretly gay neighbor Karen, played by the always-effervescent Olga Merediz (Editor’s Note: I have known the actor in question for my entire life, and called her “Auntie Yoga” as a toddler when I couldn’t pronounce her name, so if that impacts your trust of my ability to review her performance… I suppose that’s only fair. I am still right, though—she’s an absolute hoot in this role.) In this section, the film stops worrying about the big overarching plot questions and remembers that people are beautiful for all of their connections to each other, however those connections come about. But then we come up for air, and those same annoying questions linger.

Before you ask, no, polyamory is never seriously considered in this. Which feels wild given the eternity factor, again, but fine. 

Joan makes a choice that briefly seems like a break in the age-old narrative rules, but it’s not for interesting reasons: She’s simply too scared to break either man’s heart. It falls again to Larry to make the right decision for them both, one that sees the story through to its conclusion. But while Larry’s devotion to making Joan feel cared for and adored is a beautiful thing, it still makes for a puzzling experience overall.

What we learn in this exercise is that our lives are made by the people who stand by us through every little curveball life has to offer. Which… I think a lot of us instinctively know, when you get right down to it. What Eternity seems to miss is that eternity itself doesn’t have anything to do with that—at least, not the way “eternity” was conceived of in this use-case.[end-mark]

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Column Science Fiction Film Club

Rocketship X-M: The First Space Adventure of the Atomic Era

Even cheap, rushed sci fi can be surprisingly prescient (at least about some things…)

By Kali Wallace

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Published on December 3, 2025

Credit: Lippert Pictures / 20th Century Fox

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Credit: Lippert Pictures / 20th Century Fox

Rocketship X-M (1950). Directed by Kurt Neumann. Written by Kurt Neumann, Orville H. Hampton, and Dalton Trumbo. Starring Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, and John Emery.

Let’s go back to 1946. World War II had been over for a matter of months, and postwar anxiety about the future is high. The relationship between United States and the Soviet Union, who had been allies during the war, was rapidly degenerating into what would become the Cold War, but exactly what that would look like was still a few years in the future. This was before the Soviet Union began testing nuclear weapons, before the U.S. declared the so-called “Truman Doctrine” for preventing the spread of communism around the world, before the Iron Curtain and the Warsaw Pact, before the Space Race.

In March of 1946, Hollywood screenwriter, novelist, and columnist Dalton Trumbo published an opinion piece in a weekly magazine called Script. Script was a Hollywood-based film magazine with a strongly literary tone and a very liberal political bent; it had been founded by Rob Wagner, an outspoken progressive socialist, and continued in that vein after his death in 1942.

The article Trumbo wrote for Script in 1946 carried the tongue-in-cheek title “The Russian Menace,” and in it he points out that the U.S. and the Soviet Union are making the same aggressive political, economic, and military moves around the world, and he suggests that the anti-Soviet fear Americans feel is echoed by anti-American fear in the Soviet Union.

He was right, of course, but he was also a member of the Communist Party USA, and being right about American politics in 1946 while also being a communist working in the film industry meant he was making a lot of people very angry in Hollywood. That included Billy Wilkerson, the founder and owner of The Hollywood Reporter, who in 1947 wrote a column called “A Vote for Joe Stalin,” in which he named Trumbo and several others as communist sympathizers. A few months later, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) used the names Wilkerson had published to summon the several directors, screenwriters, and actors to appear before Congress. The “Hollywood Ten,” as they came to be known, refused to cooperate with the hearings and were charged with contempt of Congress. Leaders of the film industry got together immediately afterward and put together the first iteration of the Hollywood blacklist.

Trumbo was one of the cited and blacklisted screenwriters; he went to prison for several months in 1950. But he was also one of the few who kept working over the next decade, albeit quietly, without his name appearing on his films. Those films include Roman Holiday (1953), one of the great romantic comedies of all time; Trumbo was not fully credited on the film until 2011, fifty-seven years after he won, but could not claim, an Academy Award for the story.

Just as he had been central to the beginning of the blacklist era, Trumbo would be equally important in bringing about its end, when actor Kirk Douglas brought him on to write Spartacus (1960) and director Otto Preminger hired him to write Exodus (1960). With one of the most prominent victims of the blacklist being properly and publicly credited on two huge films, and the Hollywood studio system in its dying days, that was the beginning of the end for the blacklist era.

Amidst all of those big, world-changing events, it’s almost a quaint little footnote that while he was blacklisted, right before he went to prison to serve out his sentence, Trumbo also did some speedy script-doctoring on a slapdash, low-budget, barely-more-than-a-B-movie sci fi film about going into space.

Rocketship X-M is certainly no Roman Holiday or Spartacus, but it is a movie that sits at an interesting turning point in cinema history, as it was the first science fiction film of the Atomic Era and the first post-WWII film about space travel. But it only holds those distinctions by a hair, because it went into production specifically to capitalize on interest in the film that ended up being second.

That film was George Pal’s Destination Moon (1950), a highly publicized, much anticipated “serious” movie about the practical problems of space travel. Destination Moon was in production for two years, with a respectable budget and a script co-written by Robert A. Heinlein. (Which also means a script with shades of Heinlein’s post-WWII politics, but that’s a topic for another day.) It was also being filmed in Technicolor in an era when about half of American films being made were still black and white. We’ll watch Destination Moon in the future, but what matters now is that without Destination Moon, Rocketship X-M would never have been made.

When news got out that Destination Moon would be delayed, Lippert Pictures decided to take advantage. Lippert was a studio known for making films very quickly and very cheaply, which is exactly what they did with Rocketship X-M. They called up director Kurt Neumann, who had spent some of the 1940s making Tarzan films for RKO Pictures, to talk about a space travel story he’d shopped around.

The problem with the initial script is that it was basically the same story as Destination Moon. As in, it was about going to the Moon, as suggested by the spaceship being called Rocketship Expedition Moon. The switch to send the ship to Mars instead happened after the fact, just like it does in the movie. That’s when Dalton Trumbo was brought on to doctor the script. He’s the one who refigured the Mars scenes—and in doing so, completely changed the tone of the film.

It took Neumann all of nineteen days to film Rocketship X-M, and less than a month later the movie was released into theaters.

And it shows. It shows that this movie was thrown together in a rush. Nobody so much as cracked a middle school science book, much less consulted any scientists. The film uses stock footage of a V-2 rocket launch for the take-off scenes. The gender politics and clumsy romance are such a mess I could physically feel the feminism curling up to die inside my soul. It’s filmed in a handful of interior sets, one of which looks like a classroom. Nuclear cavemen with rocks beat astronauts armed with guns. There is a Texan. There is always a Texan.

(Aside: The outdoor Mars scenes were filmed at good old Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, years before that same location will once again play Mars in Robinson Crusoe on Mars [1964]. I went looking for what else has been filmed at Zabriskie Point, and I learned that parts of Spartacus were filmed there. There is also a film called Zabriskie Point [1970]; in his review Roger Ebert said of director Michelangelo Antonioni, “He has tried to make a serious movie and hasn’t even achieved a beach-party level of insight.” I haven’t seen the film but: ouch. Zabriskie Point is also famously the location of the cover image on U2’s 1987 album The Joshua Tree. I hope you can all recognize it now by sight. This concludes today’s edition of “Know Your Geology Landscapes.”)

Rocketship X-M would be such a silly movie, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s also a dire warning against nuclear annihilation in which all of the explorers die at the end.

The film opens with one of the most unintentionally funny pre-liftoff sequences I’ve ever seen in a space movie. There is a voice proclaiming over loudspeaker that takeoff is just a few minutes away, but all the characters are having a leisurely press conference in the aforementioned classroom. We meet the members of the crew that’s headed to the moon, which includes rocket scientists Karl Ekstrom (John Emery) and Lisa Van Horn (Osa Massen), and the flight crew of Floyd Graham (Lloyd Bridges), William Corrigan (Noah Beery, Jr.), and Harry Chamberlain (Hugh O’Brian). Nobody at the press conferences asks why the actual rocket scientists are going on the trip, but they do ask why a woman would worry her pretty little head with things like chemistry.

The mission heads into space, but on their way to the Moon they run into some problems. First there’s a flurry of meteors around them, then the ship abruptly loses power. Eckstrom and Van Horn decide that a different fuel mixture will solve the power problems, so they sit down to calculate the appropriate mixture on paper. When they come up with different calculations, Eckstrom tells Van Horn her pretty little head must have made a mistake on account of being too female; they go with his calculations instead. Even when Van Horn once again expresses misgivings about the proposed fuel mixture, they forge ahead with Eckstrom’s solution.

This turns out to be a bad idea, because his fuel mixture sends the ship careening off into space at such a high acceleration that it knocks the entire crew unconscious for several days. When they wake up, they realize they have accidentally flown to Mars. Van Horn is a professional so she does not immediately wake up and say, “I told you dumbfucks there was something wrong with the calculation,” but I said it to the television while I was a watching.

After they get over their initial shock, the crew is actually very excited for a chance to explore Mars. And you know what? I believe that. Of course they ought to be excited! They might have taken a wrong turn, but they are on Mars!

They set out to explore, at which point the film switches from black and white to a reddish-pink tint. A Martian filter, if you will. After tromping around Zabriskie Point for a while, they stumble upon the ruins of a Martian civilization. Their Geiger counters tell them the radiation is very high—so high that they immediately know the civilization was nuked to ashes—but they keep exploring anyway.

During their radioactive campout that night, they finally spot some Martians. The Earthlings eagerly go to meet them, but the Martians respond by attacking. Most of these attacks involve throwing rocks down from clifftops. Corrigan the Texan and Eckstrom are both killed, and Chamberlain is badly injured. The three survivors somehow make it back to the ship and head back to Earth—the film skips over the details pretty quickly—but as they near home, Van Horn and Graham realize they don’t have enough fuel to land. They relay what they can about their mission to ground control, then the ship crashes in Nova Scotia, killing the crew.

Afterward, the mission commander on Earth (played by Morris Ankrum) reassures the press that in spite of the tragic end, the mission was not a failure, because they learned a great deal about both space travel and Mars, and can do better next time.

I am absolutely fascinated by this ending. I wasn’t expecting it at all; I assumed Van Horn and Graham would survive to be obnoxiously heteronormative in the worst 1950s fashion. But they didn’t. They get smashed to pieces in Canada! That’s an ending I didn’t see coming.

Rocketship X-M was made specifically to get carried along in the wake of Destination Moon’s promotional blitz and hype. The two films have strongly different politics, and Destination Moon did overshadow Rocketship X-M when it premiered all of twenty-five days later. But Rocketship X-M’s attempt to borrow some of Destination Moon’s hype actually worked, because it was pretty successful in theaters, especially considering how cheap it was to make. (Dalton Trumbo was serving an eleven-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress when Rocketship X-M came out. Years later, in a documentary about the Hollywood blacklists, he would say about his conviction, “As far as I was concerned, it was a completely just verdict. I had contempt for that Congress and have had contempt for it ever since.”)

Rocketship X-M lived on for a while on television, like so many other low-budget black and white sci fi movies of the ’50s, fading but never entirely vanishing.

One of the people who saw it in the early ’50s was Wade Williams, a theater owner in Kansas City. At some time in the ’70s, he set about trying to figure out what had happened to the film he remembered so fondly. He was able to locate a copy of the film—the original copies had degraded, but there were duplicates—and acquire the rights. He wanted to rerelease Rocketship X-M, but he felt that audiences in the late ’70s would look at it very differently than audiences had in 1950. So he decided to contact some Hollywood special effects people to give the film a bit of makeover. The goal was to replace the stock footage of the V-2 rocket launch and add a handful of spaceship exterior shots.

That’s exactly what they did, although I can’t figure out if the slightly expanded film was ever played in theaters in the ’70s. It is more or less the version that made it to home video releases and eventually to streaming. I say “more or less” because a lot of people have pointed out some discrepancies between the descriptions of the added scenes and what’s in modern versions of the film, so it’s possible some of the added scenes were later removed before the film made it to home video and streaming. I don’t think the original 1950 theatrical version of the movie currently exists anywhere we can watch it.

Rocketship X-M is not a good movie, but I like it anyway. It starts out feeling like exactly what we would expect from a quick-and-dirty cash grab designed to take advantage of another movie’s expensive advertising campaign, but it makes a dark turn that I find so interesting. And that pro-science, anti-war tone ends up being a prescient look at the themes sci fi films would be grappling with through the ’50s and ’60s.

For one thing, the film is very clearly saying that nuclear weapons will destroy civilization. A lot of sci fi films that followed in the 1950s have a cautionary tone toward nuclear weapons, but Rocketship X-M goes beyond cautionary and into prohibitionary. When the characters first encounter the Martians, Ekstrom says, “From Atomic Age to Stone Age,” a solemn pronouncement that is treated as the inevitable outcome of nuclear war. When designing the look of the radiation-scarred Martians, makeup artist Don L. Cash is said to have referenced photos from survivors of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film is not being wishy-washy about this matter.

But I’m just as interested in its firmly pro-science stance. In 1950, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union had even launched artificial satellites into orbit, much less tried to send an animal or a person into space. Nobody had died trying to get to space yet. And here is Rocketship X-M, the very first movie with a fictional take on what a space mission might look like, coming right out and saying that people will die, but it will be worth it. That’s not something very many sci fi films say outright.

What do you think of Rocketship X-M? Does anybody recall seeing this one back in the day? Does anybody know why there is always a Texan in cinematic spaceship crews?

Next week: We’re skipping over more than 70 years of cinematic history for something completely different. Watch Mars Express on Apple, Amazon, Fandango, or Plex.[end-mark]

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