These are King’s heroes, his protagonists that act as a line of defense between sanity and the creatures of unknowable corruption that slither between the cracks of King’s stories. They walked through the valley of the shadow of death and oh, they feared evil, but these heroes kept their heads held high. A perfect example of King’s heroes is the Losers’ Club from It, a group of kids who are forced to face one of the writer’s greatest villain, a monster known as Pennywise who terrorizes the cursed town of Derry....

These days, nearly every console manufacturer has its own proprietary digital convention. Thanks in no small part to the lagging interest (and recent cancelations) of E3, the gaming industry lacks that powerhouse unifying event that gamers used to regularly be able to rely on. This year’s summer of game reveals started with PlayStation’s State of Play event, but that was only an appetizer for what Summer Game Fest 2022 is shaping up to be....

Superman & Lois Episode 12 Ever since Morgan Edge was unmasked as a Kryptonian (and not just any Kryptonian, but Superman’s biological half-brother), Superman & Lois has been revealing more and more about the villain’s plan, and by extension exploring the nature vs. nurture debate that has been the centerpiece of so many stories that explore the nature of the Man of Steel’s power. But Superman & Lois has been brilliant at misdirection from its very first episode, and the latest episode, “Through the Valley of Death,” might be the first example that we haven’t really had a complete understanding of what Edge/Tal-Rho has been planning all along....

For their first full-length feature, they take a very specific image of a man riding a farting corpse across the water like a jet ski and expand it into a full feature that plays with some of the ideas set forth in films like All is Lost and Castaway. In this case, drama is kept to a minimum in favor of absurdist humor. It opens with images of items floating on the open sea with hand-scrawled S....

The 100 Season 5 Episode 5 This episode relied on the usual strategy ploys and shifting dynamics that make The 100’s conflicts so satisfying. It’s still early enough in the game that the pieces are shifting drastically to get all the teams aligned, though I have a feeling the days are numbered for many of these alliances. The show continues to call to mind its own past, with secret defectors and the torture of captives....

The Walking Dead has come a long way since its first episode dropped on Halloween 2010, with new cast members, jaw-dropping character reveals, devastating goodbyes to fan favorites, and big bads that could inspire terror in even the bravest survivors. Yet, at the heart of it all is Rick Grimes, the man that kicked off the whole eleven-season shebang with “Days Gone Bye,” wandering the zombie apocalypse after waking up alone in an abandoned hospital and slowly but surely drawing together a group that would become closer than family....

The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 22 The hardest loss of The Blacklist season 9 finale was not Marvin Gerard’s death, but the graveside announcements of Agents Aram Mojtabai and Alina Park that their characters’ journeys are leading them away from the Task Force. Aram plans to bike around Brooklyn, take a needed break and see some Broadway shows while Alina manages her ongoing migraines, grows a new life and builds a family....

Nobody puts Baby Yoda in the corner. Well, other than Luke Skywalker. In Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett, “From the Desert Comes a Stranger,” Luke gives Grogu a choice so impossible that several million Star Wars fans cried out in terror, and, as of now, have not been suddenly silenced. By forbidding Grogu his love of his foster-father, Din Djarin, Master Skywalker seems to be repeating the mistakes that led to his father’s own downfall....

As Scott N. Brown, general manager of audience measurement at Nielsen, states of the latest results: Yet, that doesn’t necessarily diminish Mulan’s #10 placement, since—unlike the other top 10 entries—it happens to be a premium offering on Disney+, for which subscribers must fork over $29.99 in addition to their subscription cost to view the film, granting the viewer perpetual streaming access. Thus, despite the array of qualitative criticism and its problematic attachment to Sino-American geopolitics, the amount of people who capitulated to the paywall was seemingly significant enough for the film to place in the top 10....

Their cuddly dog Sadie, a smart hound who will not even step foot inside the farmhouse, is dead by the end of the first night. And things just go downhill from there. Before long, creepy children’s voices are luring Carolyn into the basement for the worst game of hide-and-seek on record and Nancy Perron (Hayley McFarland), the eldest of Roger and Carolyn’s five daughters, is being dragged by the hair across the living room....

The World’s Strangest Heroes are a dense, intricate bunch, but we’ve examined them closely and are happy to introduce you to them ahead of their arrival on DC Universe. WHO IS THE DOOM PATROL? Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani introduced the Doom Patrol in the pages of My Greatest Adventure in 1963. Titans did a surprisingly good job of summing the Doom Patrol up in the episode that introduced them....

The deceptively simple story, first realized by William Peter Blatty’s 1971 bestselling novel and later in his faithfully adapted screenplay, is almost a straight line of brutal narrative efficiency. A sweet, innocent little girl named Regan (Linda Blair) is the child of a messy secular marriage when she begins behaving strangely, and then demonically. The doctors say she has a brain lesion, but that seems like the wrong diagnosis when she can speak in reverse and move her bed and furniture off the ground....

In the Beginning Season three ended with the opening of the mysterious ring gates, and the 1300 habitable systems beyond them. Holden feared the beginning of ‘a blood-soaked gold rush’. It’s a fear shared by UN Secretary General Chrisjen Avarasala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who wants everyone to stay put. The UN’s stance is backed by the Martian Congressional Republic (MCR) and many of the Belters. The balance of peace and power in the Sol system is precarious, and a mass exodus could destabilise human civilisation....

The Expanse Season 5 Episode 9 The stories in The Expanse season 5 have run deep, pulling characters’ emotions and backstories forward, but has this plumbing of the depths been at the expense of driving action? As a full picture of the season begins to form, the high points are moments that reinforce the personalities, both strengths and flaws, of the characters involved. Even though “Winnipesaukee” contained a frantic firefight, for example, the emphasis was on the moral decisions that led up to it....

The Expanse Season 6 Episode 6 Is it really over? Watching the series finale of The Expanse was an exercise in denial with longtime fans trying to soak in every last moment, pretending the show would continue the way much of the narrative seemed to imply. Now, being able to see season 6 as a whole, it’s clear that the writers made the only choice they could by acknowledging that the protomolecule is still out there while involving the alien forces directly in the defeat of Marco Inaros....

Some established connections, such as the intimacy between Holden and Naomi, are seen to have been reforged since the circumstances that separated them in The Expanse season 5, but one powerful image that highlights a new bond appears when Amos smiles at his rescued former enemy, Clarissa “Peaches” Mao. Later in the trailer, Naomi is shown hesitantly smiling at her new crewmate, whom it’s likely she will have a difficult time trusting given her mission of revenge against Holden in seasons past....

As the coalition forces prepare to storm the ring station in The Expanse series finale, the Rocinante crew is running through its systems check, and voices are heard in the background signaling their readiness. “Thrace ready!” we hear, and our ears perk up. How unusual to share the name of one of the most badass space dogfighters ever, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace of Battlestar Galactica. When that’s followed by “Ripley ready!...

Thankfully, the TV landscape won’t be without Marvel content for long. March 12 sees the arrival of the behind-the-scenes documentary Assembled: The Making of WandaVision. Then the following Friday, March 19, is the premiere of the second Disney+ Marvel series: The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. As those who can still remember a pre-2020 world know, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was intended to be the first Marvel series on Disney+ before pandemic-related scheduling delays convinced Marvel to lead with WandaVision instead....

The Flash Season 7 Episode 1 It’s likely that most of us are so glad to have The Flash back on our screens that the Season 7 premiere could probably have featured our faves doing system updates on the STAR Labs computers and we would have been fine with it. Thankfully, although “All’s Wells That Ends Wells” is not necessarily the hour that many of us would have chosen to kick off the series’ seventh season, it is still a charming and emotional showcase for stars Grant Gustin and Tom Cavanagh that’s more than entertaining enough....

“We were really intrigued with the idea of doing a true ensemble. It’s not like there’s a lead and they have friends. No, it’s just about the friends. We’re following all of their stories equally.” Friends would never have worked if Crane, Marta Kauffman, and Kevin Bright hadn’t gone six for six in the casting of the titular friends. One or two solid choices wouldn’t do it. Neither would four or five....