Earlier in the week, we got our first look at Transformers One, and it probably didn’t look like what you were imagining. The animated movie, which is meant to serve as an origin story for Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry)—here respectively known as Orion Pax and D-16—is sillier than expected, and predates the Autobot/Decepticon war that serves as the franchise’s foundation. If you’re on the fence after that trailer, director Josh Cooley’s here to assuage your concerns, and also give some more insight into how the movie will serve its characters.
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Talking to IGN, Cooley explained that the trailer’s comedy focus was in part to help audiences “fall in love with [Orion and D-16] as brothers and friends” before things hit the fan. “They’re from the same generation and have a very tight relationship,” he continued, “[and] something happens on their planet that they both have two different reactions to. By the end of this film, there’s some serious stakes.”
In D-16’s case, those stakes involve treating him like he’s not automatically booked to be a villain. Cooley described the future Megatron as someone who should be “very real and fully rounded. D-16 takes [things] to a place, just a lot of anger, but you understand why.” With Henry’s insight, the team ensured that audiences would relate to D-16 and get where he was coming from before an undescribed event changes his outlook on Cybertron in ways that lead to a “natural split” with Orion. Cooley hopes that before the credits roll, fans and newcomers will view D-16 and Orion’s conflict as a very real and tragic split between old friends.
As for Orion, he’s described by Cooley as someone who’s driven, but doesn’t always put the drive to its best use. He’ll have to discover how to earn the name Optimus Prime, and what being Optimus Prime really even means. “Like anybody else, there is a level of maturity that we don’t have unless we’ve gone through something. […] We’re really taking these characters to heart and treating them with the respect that they deserve and knowing where they’re going to end up. It’s just seeing how they get there.”
Transformers One comes to theaters on September 20.
There’s a lot of video games set to get TV or film adaptations in the next few years, and even more that seem like they’d be ripe for the picking. Bungie’s Destiny franchise seemed like a viable candidate, especially after the studio was acquired by PlayStation in 2022, but it sounds like any plans to bring the games to a new medium are have currently been dashed.
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According to Forbes’ Paul Tassi earlier in the week, Bungie was reportedly “tossing around” ideas for an animated Destiny series on Netflix before things fell apart.. Allegedly, this was in development prior to the aforementioned PlayStation acquisition, during which Sony said it would help Bungie “nurture the IP they have in a multi-dimensional manner.” (For extra context, this statement was made a few weeks before the Uncharted movie released and became a decent box-office success.) In regards to why it didn’t go forward, Tassi wasn’t sure, though he did say it just may not have gone farther than the scripting phase.
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Before Sony bought Bungie, the developer brought on Derrick Tsai as its transmedia head. Tsai was a producer and director at Riot who helped pave the way for Arcane to get made and become a hit over at Netflix. He departed around this time last year, after which the studio hired Warner Bros. alum Gabriel VanHuss to serve as the Destiny’s head of linear media. VanHuss holds that position to this day, and his duties involve expanding the franchise in TV, comics (which it’s previously done), movies, and so on. It’s hard to know where this hypothetical show currently stands: Bungie’s currently focused on the Final Shape expansion dropping in June, its new Marathon game, and still reeling from its highly publicized layoffs (to say nothing of possibly working on Destiny 3). According to Tassi, if the hypothetical show isn’t fully dead, it’s not coming “anytime remotely soon.”
The idea of Destiny getting a TV show seemed like a cool idea two years ago, but it’s a little more dicey now. Bungie’s hoping to turn things around for both Destiny 2 and the company at large with Final Shape, and revealing a TV show weeks after the expansion drops could easily take things from “we’re so back” to “oh, it’s over” in a heartbeat. The series certainly has the potential to thrive in other mediums, but it’ll unfortunately have to be a waiting game until the smoke clears around The Final Shape.
Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games?
Variety, Deadline, and the Hollywood Reporter all shared the news, with THR including this statement from Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke: “Jonah [Nolan, co-producer], Lisa [Joy, co-producer], Geneva [Robertson-Dworet, co-showrunner and writer], and Graham [Wagner, co-showrunner and writer] have captivated the world with this ground-breaking, wild ride of a show. The bar was high for lovers of this iconic video game and so far we seem to have exceeded their expectations, while bringing in millions of new fans to the franchise … We are thrilled to announce season two after only one week out and take viewers even farther into the surreal world of Fallout.”
The renewal confirmation comes on the heels of reports in Variety and elsewhere that season two will film in California to take advantage of $25 million in tax credits—a shift that will definitely add fuel to speculation that the show could continue its adventures in New Vegas, as seen in the games.
THR also has a quote from Nolan and Joy, whose previous sci-fi projects include the prematurely cancelled Westworld: “Praise be to our insanely brilliant showrunners, Geneva and Graham, to our kick-ass cast, to Todd and James and all the legends at Bethesda, and to Jen, Vernon, and the amazing team at Amazon for their incredible support of this show. We can’t wait to blow up the world all over again.”
Last summer, Marvel Comics boldly announced that it would return to “The Most Notorious Spider-Man Story Ever Told,” to which the world cried out “You’ll really have to be more specific!” After quickly clarifying that it was a sequel to Spider-Man: Reign, the world cried out again: “Oh. The one with the radioactive jizz?” Now, we know a little more about the hows and whys.
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Today, Marvel announced that Spider-Man: Reign II would begin this summer, a five-issue miniseries that sees Reign’s original writer/artist, Kaare Andrews (for whom Reign was his first major comics work), return to the world of his 2006 story—an alt-future tale that starred an older, grizzled Peter Parker. Peter grapples with a long life lived as Spider-Man, that, as previously mentioned, is now mostly remembered derisively for its revelation that in this continuity, Peter’s radioactive bodily fluids were responsible for giving his wife, Mary Jane, the cancer that ultimately took her life. Peter recounts this information to Mary Jane’s corpse, having just dug it up out of the cemetery.
It’s a lot—but Andrews recognizes that, and sees a return to Reign as a seasoned creative as chance to, well, reign in some of the impulsive tendencies of his younger self. “Reign was full of tragic and dark absurdity that only a young creator could come up with. A way to challenge the idea of personal power and responsibility,” Andrews said in a statement. “But as I’ve grown older, and after sitting with this story for so long, I started to ask myself this question, ‘What if there was a way to go back and change what happened? What if I could fix everything?’”
Image: Kaare Andrews/Marvel Comics
“Many call it the most infamous Spider-Man story ever told. But for me, what’s kept it relevant is the love behind creating that book,” Andrews added. “This is the character I grew up with, the one that taught me how to be a man, how to live with failure and keep standing back up, the unrelenting force of trying to make things better.”
Little else is currently known about Reign II, other than it will introduce older versions of both Felicia Hardy, aka the superthief Black Cat, and Miles Morales as a second Spider-Man. As you can see from the alternate cover art for the first issue above, the fact that Miles is replicating the infamous cover to Reign #1, this time hugging Peter’s grave instead of Mary Jane’s, suggests maybe there’ll be an even grimmer ending for Peter than, well, hugging his wife’s decaying body.
We’ll find out when Spider-Man: Reign II begins on July 3.
No Google AI Search, I Don’t Need to Learn About the “Benefits of Slavery”
“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations,” said a Google spokesperson in an emailed statement to Gizmodo. “We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”
Google claims these protests impeded other employees’ work and prevented them from accessing facilities. No Tech for Apartheid tells Gizmodo that 19 of the employees fired on Wednesday did not directly participate in the sit-in protests, but were associated with the movement.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” said a No Tech for Apartheid spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor.”
In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, shared by The Verge, Google’s head of global security, Chris Rackow, said “behavior like this has no place in our workplace.” The memo also claims the protestors defaced Google’s property and “made coworkers feel threatened.” Rackow concludes his message by telling employees to “think again” if they expect Google to overlook conduct that violates its policies.
A Google spokesperson tells Gizmodo the cloud computing contracts at the center of these protests, Project Nimbus, are not directed at highly sensitive military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services. However, Time reported last week that Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The report claims the tech giant has recently negotiated a deeper partnership with Israel during the war in Gaza.
These 28 workers are not the first Google employees to be fired for protesting the company’s contracts with Israel. They join Eddie Hatfield, a Google software-engineer who was fired after disrupting an Israeli tech conference by yelling, “No tech for apartheid!” while a Google executive was speaking.
There’s some discrepancy over why these workers were fired. Google listed “bullying” and “harassment” as the reasons for the worker firings. However, No Tech for Apartheid allege their protests were peaceful, and claim the workers themselves feel bullied by Google’s response.
No Tech for Apartheid’s protest represents an increasingly loud voice within Google and Amazon opposing big tech’s cooperation with Israel. The movement’s New York protest gathered over 100 protesters on Tuesday and reportedly dozens more in Sunnyvale, California. The movement claims to have the support of “thousands of colleagues” within Google and Amazon. Organizers say they will continue protesting until the company drops Project Nimbus.
If you’re looking to fill your life with more sound, there’s nothing like a good speaker. After thorough testing, we have a reliable list of the best speakers you can buy in 2024. Our list includes everything from $60 portable ones to $450 lounge speakers. It also covers a variety of use cases — from music production to easy listening in the shower.
The editorial staff of Gizmodo independently tests and reviews each product found in our Buyer’s Guides. If you purchase something using our affiliate links, G/O Media may earn a commission. Affiliate linking does not influence our editorial content.
If you’re new to Sonos and unsure about committing to this pricey speaker ecosystem, I’d say the Roam is the best option to see if the whole Sonos thing is your vibe. The $169 Roam may be the cheapest Sonos speaker. Not only is it relatively affordable, but even if the smart features aren’t your jam, at least you still have a great portable Bluetooth speaker.
At 6.6 inches long and 2.4 inches wide, the Roam is small enough to fit in your hand easily. Its triangular shape and matte finish also feel natural when you’re toting it around. It weighs in at slightly less than a pound, which feels substantial enough in your grip, but it’s not so heavy that you’re tempted to leave it at home. When you’re not moving around, you can stack it either vertically to save room or horizontally for more stability.
In terms of durability, the Roam is rated IP67 for dust and water resistance. I stuck it in a bowl of water for 30 minutes, and while it sprayed water all over my kitchen counter, it still worked afterward. It’ll be fine if you get caught in a downpour or accidentally knock it into a pool. Just don’t dilly dally when retrieving it. Read More — Victoria Song
The criteria for portable Bluetooth speakers are not complicated. They’ve got to be easy to carry, sound decent, and not get trashed if you have butterfingers or get caught in the rain. The Sony SRS-XB13 ticks off all these boxes. It’s not without flaws, and you’ll have to compromise. But considering it’s only $60? It’s easy to forgive its shortcomings.
The XB13 is actually portable. It’s a tiny, squat lil guy, measuring 3.43 by 3.43 by 4.41 inches. In-person, the speaker is way tinier than I thought it would be when Sony initially sent over the official images. It also weighs a mere 11.7 ounces, which is noticeably lighter than the Sonos Roam (15 ounces). It also has a removable strap so you can easily hook it onto a bag or off a tree branch—whatever, I’m not judging. Also, it fits in a cup holder for road trips!
It has an IP67 rating and did not die when I purposefully dropped it into a pool. So there’s that. Long story short, this speaker is ideal if you’re on a budget, spend a lot of time outside, or are particularly clumsy. Read More — Victoria Song
Considering this is the first-ever speaker to feature both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, it’s probably the smartest speaker you can get your hands on. Not only does it feature both assistants, it does it incredibly well. It’s impressive how seamlessly the Authentics 300 manages to juggle both while some speakers struggle to get even a single assistant to work flawlessly.
This speaker is gorgeous and justifies its $450 price tag. You get a premium leather-coated body with subtle golden accents on the front. There’s also a helpful handle for easy portability. Though, at around 11 lbs, it’s better suited as a lounge speaker that lives in one place. It lasts around 8 hours on a full charge, though, so if you ever need to move it for an event briefly, you can do that without having an ugly cable sticking out of it.
This speaker means it when it claims that it will fill your space with music. Its sound carries immense power and is always more than enough for my two-bedroom apartment. It never sounds muddy, even at higher volumes, and retains that strength regardless of how much pressure you put it in.
I saved the best for the last. You can (low-key) DJ on this by tweaking your music in real time. Thanks to a pair of huge bass and Treble dials on the top of this speaker, you can customize exactly how much low and high end you want and on which track. My friends and I sometimes like to constantly play around with them during tracks for a fun and hands-on listening experience. I can promise you that the dials work and aren’t just a marketing gimmick. In fact, maxing out the bass will make your entire floor vibrate.
These speakers scream that they’re studio monitors. They have an 8-inch woofer and standard tweeter ensconced inside an unusual oval cone that works to shape the sound. Bass response is excellent and the resulting stereo projection of having two of these in a close position to your mixing desk or computer is amazing. They are big at 15.5 inches high and 13 inches deep and weigh a hefty 21.38 lb.
I tested it using a number of song genres, from techno to jazz. Playing these songs through the VM-80 was like running a DJ booth in my attic office. I had excellent reproduction through most volume levels, and even at max volume, the sound wasn’t muddy or confused. Read More — John Biggs
The Sonos Era 300 is an impressive speaker, even at its eye-popping price point. But don’t think about it unless you’re in an Apple-dominant household.
It has one forward-firing tweeter routed through what the company calls a “custom waveguide” and one tweeter firing upward so that sound bounces off the ceiling. There are also two side-firing tweeters, one on each side, plus two woofers underneath those. I was impressed by the speaker’s ability to thump through deep bass while listening to techno with the volume up high.
I compared the Sonos Era 300 to the discontinued Google Home Max. I also listened to it against the second-gen Apple HomePod, which is not as loud as the Era 300, though it has similar specs (five tweeters and one woofer vs four tweeters and two woofers). In almost all cases, I preferred the way the Era 300 sounded to the aging Home Max and the second-gen HomePod.
But with no Google Cast integration, this speaker doesn’t make a lot of sense in a Google-led household. I would have to rebuild my entire smart ecosystem to integrate the Sonos Era 300—and even then, it would only work with the few AirPlay-capable devices rather than the mass of Google cast devices I have throughout my abode. Read More — Florence Ion
Suppose you’re willing to splurge just a little bit or can split the cost with roommates/a significant other. In that case, the Kohler Moxie is actually a convenient way to get a nicer showerhead and a good quality shower speaker in one easily installed package.
Initially, I was nervous about installation, but it was so easy that even a disaster-prone klutz could do it. All you have to do is unscrew your current showerhead and screw this one on. That’s it!
The speaker’s sound quality was also pretty good, which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been super surprising as it’s the result of a partnership with Harman Kardon. Once I enabled Amazon Alexa, asking Alexa to play a certain artist or playlist was very easy. Sometimes, it struggled with less common names, but for the most part, Alexa got the job done. It was also nice that I could ask what events were on my calendar or opt for a little news update.
However, if it creeps you out that some Amazon stooge is listening to you in the shower, know you can use this speaker without ever enabling Alexa. Read More — Victoria Song
This list is updated regularly with new recommendations and product forecasts.
U.S. officials pledged not to pursue the death penalty against Julian Assange if he’s extradited from the UK to face charges related to his publication of documents highly embarrassing to the U.S. government, according to a report from Australia’s ABC News Tuesday. But that will be cold comfort to some in the British legal system who have argued U.S. prisons are so inherently cruel that sending Assange to America, even with such a guarantee, would still amount to an inhumane act.
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American officials at the U.S. embassy in London reportedly sent a note to British officials on Tuesday in a bid to address several concerns about what may happen to Assange if he’s ultimately extradited to the U.S., according to several news outlets. The 52-year-old WikiLeaks co-founder faces computer hacking and espionage charges first brought by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department that have been continued into the Biden era.
President Biden signaled last week he’d be open to dropping the case against Assange, saying “We’re considering it” when asked about a request from the Australian government. Assange is an Australian citizen, though he hasn’t lived in the country for some time and one of the questions addressed in the diplomatic note is whether the First Amendment applies to people outside the U.S.—an issue the U.S. insists Assange’s lawyers can “raise,” without elaborating too much.
Megan Specia, a reporter for the New York Times in London, tweeted the three-page note on Tuesday including two carefully-worded assurances, quoted below:
1. ASSANGE will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing. Specifically, if extradited, ASSANGE will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.
2. A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on ASSANGE. The United States is able to provide such assurance as ASSANGE is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.
Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019 and a British judge ruled in 2021 that he shouldn’t be extradited due to America’s extremely brutal prison system. The UK’s Judge Vanessa Baraitser cited Assange’s depressive state and risk of suicide in the conditions he would face in the U.S. when she first argued Assange shouldn’t be extradited in a surprise ruling.
“Mr. Assange faces the bleak prospect of severely restrictive detention conditions designed to remove physical contact and reduce social interaction and contact with the outside world to a bare minimum. He faces these prospects as someone with a diagnosis of clinical depression and persistent thoughts of suicide,” Judge Baraitser wrote back in 2021.
The judge’s ruling also noted that Assange could be stuck in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day while awaiting trial in the U.S., a punishment widely considered by other wealthy countries to be torture.
Julian Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, released a statement on Tuesday in response to news of the diplomatic note sent by the U.S. to the UK, calling them “blatant weasel words” that don’t actually guarantee Julian can claim protections under the First Amendment as a foreign citizen.
“The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future—his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in U.S. prison for publishing award-winning journalism,” Stella Assange said, according to the AFP.
Lawyers for the U.S. and Assange are scheduled to reconvene in a British court on May 20, though it’s still unclear how many chances the WikiLeaks co-founder may have to appeal any decision that could see him finally shipped to the U.S.
Warhammer 40,000‘s grimdark world of horrors both human and alien has developed a complicated relationship with elements of its audience over the years. What was once a biting satire of Britain’s conservative government in the late ‘80s has, in iteration after iteration of lore and retcons, become a messy extrapolation of the fascism and its imagery, and what it means to present that from a marketable perspective—and what that in turn means for cultivating elements of a fandom that interprets those ideas in a very different manner.
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This is a tightrope Warhammer’s owner, Games Workshop, has had to balance for years at this point—but this past weekend it found itself rocked from its balancing act as the game became the target of right-wing fans and culture war proponents eager to grift on the so-called threat of “wokeness.” The cause? A single short story in a new rulebook, or “Codex” as they are called in Warhammer 40,000, for the Adeptus Custodes faction.
In 40K, the Custodes (the chosen army of occasional actor and full time Warhammer fan Henry Cavill) are a specific branch of the Imperium of Man’s martial forces dedicated to the protection of the God-Emperor, the desiccated husk that maintains the religiofascist domination of Humanity and its territories across the stars from atop a golden throne that has kept him alive for thousands of years through the daily sacrifice of legions of people. Clad in golden, red-plumed armor, they are even above the mighty Space Marine chapters of the Imperium’s forces, and the direct right hand of the Emperor’s will. As with many elements of the game, for many years, they have so far been presented in Warhammer’s fiction from a masculine perspective, but a new story in the Custodes’ latest codex, updated for the game’s 10th edition, introduces us to a Custodian named Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh, who uses she/her pronouns: the first ever female-identifying Custodian in Warhammer fiction.
Kesh does not have a dedicated model in the Adeptus Custodes line, nor does she appear elsewhere in the new edition of Codex: Adeptus Custodes. The new book was only introduced alongside a single new miniature for the Custodes this past weekend—a Shield Captain that can be built with either a masculine head or a non-gendered helmet, as is the case with many of the Custodes models. No one knows yet if she will appear in Warhammer fiction again, but her very existence has made Codex: Adeptus Custodes the flashpoint of a new front in the online culture war, one that grew even brighter when Games Workshop addressed the “controversy” of her existence on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with a simple statement: “There have always been female Custodians.”
The statement, and ensuing backlash from people eager to paint the decision as an example of “woke” ideas in entertainment, marks an inflection point of several issues Games Workshop has had to struggle with in its fanbase in recent years. The first is the very existence of female characters within elements of its fiction. Although the concept of female Space Marines has never been “canon”—Games Workshop went as far in the 2022 updated rulebook for its prequel-spinoff game, Horus Heresy: The Age of Darkness, to state that Space Marines are raised from genetic stock described as the “biological makeup of the human male,” drawing ire from audiences who perceived the language as adjacent to gender-critical ideas around sex—it has long existed as an idea among fans who have developed their own lore and ideas for custom chapters and factions, and has been debated over almost as long.
Games Workshop has modernized its models and redeveloped factions over the years, and sometimes that has included presenting more options for female-presenting characters and infantry across the board—whether they’re for alien armies, the forces of Chaos (which in and of itself has a bunch of wild, genderless demons from beyond the constraints of physical space, let alone any perceived constraints of a gender binary), or the forces of the Imperium. The Custodes themselves received something of a sort with the introduction of the Sisters of Silence in Warhammer 40K’s 7th edition in 2017, an all-female allied faction that, in the lore, became the left hand of the God-Emperor’s elite armies to the right hand in the Custodes.
Image: Games Workshop
In turn, elements of lore established in years past have likewise endlessly been rewritten and updated as the story of the fiction has expanded, with Warhammer’s concept of what is and what isn’t “canonical” almost always in flux, things changing from one updated supplement to the next. Yes, that Games Workshop would say the existence of female Custodians has always been a thing, despite us only having just been introduced to the first-ever named one, is indeed a retcon, but that’s also just how Warhammer fiction has always worked. The Horus Heresy, the interstellar civil war that set the stage for Warhammer 40K’s world as we know it today—and now considered an important, fundamental cornerstone of the fiction—simply didn’t exist in the earliest versions of the setting. Things always change: few Warhammer fans actually familiar with the material could be pressed into saying that the original lore for the Space Marines presented in the original iteration of the game, Rogue Trader—where they’re closer to armored cops on the frontiers of the Imperium, policing gang worlds and punks, rather than the quasi-Roman fundamentalist crusaders of the modern fiction—are one and the same to the idea of the Space Marines as we know them all these decades later.
And yet, in spite of all this, Games Workshop finds itself once again having to navigate another struggle with its audience that has increasingly become a problem in recent years: how its portrayal of the fascism at the heart of Warhammer 40,000‘s biggest faction has invited opportunities for people who align themselves with that ideology in real life to believe that they have a safe space within Warhammer’s community to share and support those beliefs. Multiple incidents recently, from showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 to a European tournament prevaricating over whether or not to disqualify a player who showed up to play in clothing depicting Nazi iconography, have seen Games Workshop release statements rejecting hate groups and their place in the Warhammer community. But those statements in turn have relied on an increasingly precarious argument: that it should be clear to bigots who believe that Warhammer’s world supports them that, in fact, the setting is a satirical extrapolation of conservative ideology to its most evil and absurd heights, and that, in turn, it is making fun of their beliefs.
“The Imperium of Man stands as a cautionary tale of what could happen should the very worst of Humanity’s lust for power and extreme, unyielding xenophobia set in.Like so many aspects of Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man is satirical,” a blog post released by Games Workshop on the official Warhammer Community website in 2021 titled “The Imperium Is Driven by Hate. Warhammer Is Not” reads in part. “For clarity: satire is the use of humour, irony, or exaggeration, displaying people’s vices or a system’s flaws for scorn, derision, and ridicule. Something doesn’t have to be wacky or laugh-out-loud funny to be satire. The derision is in the setting’s amplification of a tyrannical, genocidal regime, turned up to 11. The Imperium is not an aspirational state, outside of the in-universe perspectives of those who are slaves to its systems. It’s a monstrous civilization, and its monstrousness is plain for all to see.”
Image: Games Workshop
This may have been true in Warhammer’s earliest days, but as we said: the franchise has grown and changed in the years since Rogue Trader’s satirical extrapolation of British conservatism nearly 40 years ago. For as much as Games Workshop can state that Warhammer 40K’s satire is clear for all to see, in reality, its clarity of purpose is far murkier. The Imperium is an explicitly evil organization, responsible for mass genocide, xenophobia, and bigotry across Warhammer’s stars—but the Space Marines are Games Workshop’s poster child. Their perspective is presented as heroic and noble, and as the default, in the vast majority of its fiction. Beautifully rendered artwork of their legions is plastered across posters and displays inviting newcomers to walk into Warhammer stores and learn how to play the game. They are the stars of children’s books, they are the face of merchandising efforts beyond the models themselves, they are the protagonists of dozens upon dozens (upon dozens) of video games. For as evil an entity as it is, the Imperium, and its vanguard in the Space Marines, has been romanticized as something that looks cool. Space Marines are giant, brightly colored power-armored soldiers with guns that shoot the equivalent of artillery rounds in a hailstorm of bullets and literal chainsaw swords. They fight monsters and things that look far, far worse than they do. They are meant to look cool, because that then sells you an awful lot of Space Marine models, and rulebooks, and fiction books—and soon, presumably, an Amazon TV show.
When that evil is presented as cool, it is no longer satire: it’s just something that looks cool. And in being something that looks cool, it in turn invites people who see the Imperium’s ideas about hating things that are different, controlling people through vile doctrines, and its terrifying religious dogma as ideologies that are actually worth supporting, and to feel like they and their awful beliefs have a place in Warhammer’s community, regardless of what Games Workshop says. These are the same people who blow up at the very existence of a character of a non-masculine gender, or a character of a non-white racial background, regardless of how minor or fleeting their existence ultimately is—the same people that now Games Workshop finds itself being harangued by for purportedly turning Warhammer 40,000 “woke.”
Satire without clarity is not effective satire—and not an effective defense for someone to claim as they try to push back against a hateful co-option of a universe like Warhammer’s. If Games Workshop wants a world where it can mention the existence of a diverse array of characters in its fiction without delving its fanbase into arguments and harassment, it can no longer sit back and claim satire as its guiding principal, and instead must actively push back against these bigoted elements and forcefully prove to them that they have no space in its community. To do so, it has to recognize something many people within and without the company have already noticed: Warhammer has changed since its origins, and it will always continue to do so. Defending it from becoming another front line in the endless culture war requires Games Workshop to adapt or face consequences of its own making.
Steve Buscemi at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.Photo: Rob Kim/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival (Getty Images)
Wednesday was a huge hit for Netflix, breaking records for the streamer and pulling in Emmy nominations. So it’s no surprise a second season is on the way—or that the cast is adding another big name to a slate that already includes Jenna Ortega, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Christina Ricci: Steve Buscemi.
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Variety broke the news that Buscemi will be joining the Tim Burton series, a spin-off of The Addams Family that follows Ortega’s goth teen at the supernaturally bedeviled (and, in season one at least, murder-plagued) Nevermore Academy. The trade notes “exact character details are being kept under wraps, but sources say Buscemi will play the new principal of Nevermore Academy.” In season one, the principal—shapeshifter Larissa Weems—was played by Gwendoline Christie.
So far there’s no word on when Wednesday season two might arrive—like many projects, it was delayed by last year’s Hollywood strikes—but next year seems likely, as does the possibility that we’ll be hearing more casting news soon. You can watch Wednesday season one on Netflix.
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most massive stellar black hole known in our galaxy, weighing in at an impressive 33 times the mass of our Sun.
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A team led by Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, has uncovered the most massive stellar black hole ever detected in the Milky Way. Gaia BH3 dwarfs the previous record holder, Cygnus X-1, which weighs just 21 solar masses. The findings are detailed in a paper released today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
BH3 is now the heaviest of the three largest known black holes in the Milky Way.Image: ESO
Gaia BH3 is in the constellation Aquila, roughly 2,000 light-years from Earth. The team discovered it during a review of data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, a space-based observatory that has been operational since 2013. Gaia’s ongoing mission is to construct the most detailed three-dimensional map of our galaxy. The star orbiting BH3 was already known to astronomers, but its status as the companion of a black hole came as a complete surprise, and the resulting weight even more so.
“When I saw the results for the first time, I was convinced there was a problem in the data. I could not believe it,” Panuzzo told Gizmodo. “Now, I feel I’ve really done the discovery of my life!”
The discovery was backed by a suite of ground-based observatories and sophisticated instruments, including the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, the HERMES spectrograph at the Mercator Telescope in Spain, and the SOPHIE high-precision spectrograph in France.
The astronomers used Gaia’s precise measurements to determine the size of the orbit and the time it takes for the star to circle around the black hole. They then applied Kepler’s laws, which are principles that describe the motions of planets and stars, to calculate the black hole’s mass from the orbit’s size and period. They employed two methods: astrometric measurements, which track the slight wobbling movements of the companion star as it appears to shift positions in the sky, and spectroscopy, which uses the Doppler effect to measure the speed at which the star is moving toward or away from us.
Stellar black holes are remnants of massive stars that collapsed under their own gravity, typically forming black holes about 10 times the mass of our Sun. Gaia BH3’s significant mass suggests it originated from a metal-poor star, which retained more mass over its lifetime and could thus form a larger black hole upon its death, according to the new research.
By contrast, supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, parked at the galactic core, is vastly larger, with about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. These behemoths do not form from the collapse of a single star but likely grow from the merger of smaller black holes and the accumulation of gas and stellar material over millions of years.
The stellar black hole “formed by the gravitational collapse of a massive star—a star probably 40 to 50 times more massive than our Sun—at the end of its life,” Panuzzo explained. “These kinds of stars have a short life, a few million years, compared to the 10 billion years of the Sun, and they end their life with a supernova, leaving behind a black hole. This is why we call them ‘stellar’ black holes, to not confuse them with the supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxies.”
Panuzzo said it’s “quite probable” that even larger stellar black holes exist in our galaxy. Previously, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational telescopes detected the merging of black holes of more than 80 solar masses in distant galaxies. Indeed, heavy stellar black holes have been detected before, but in other galaxies and using alternative methods of detection. These faraway black holes are identified through gravitational wave astronomy, which observes the ripples in spacetime caused by the mergers of stellar black holes. I asked Panuzzo why we’ve been able to find huge stellar black holes in galaxies far, far away, but only recently spotted one in our own galaxy.
“There are two reasons,” he said. “The first is that the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational telescopes are able to detect black hole mergers very far away, probing billions of galaxies. The second one is that these black holes are produced by massive stars that have a low metallicity,” that is, stars composed almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, with only traces of the other elements. “These stars were present in our galaxy only in its infancy, so we cannot see the formation of new massive black holes in our galaxy anymore,” according to Panuzzo.
The data used in the study were initially intended for the next Gaia data release, expected by the end of 2025. Due to the significance of the discovery, however, the team opted to publish the findings early. “This discovery has a lot of implications for the stellar evolution models and the gravitational waves field,” Panuzzo explained. “It was considered that this exceptional discovery could not be kept hidden to the community for two years waiting for the next release.” What’s more, by disclosing it now, the scientific community can perform follow-up observations earlier, he added.
To that end, future observations with the GRAVITY instrument on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer will aim to determine if this black hole is pulling in matter from its surroundings, offering deeper insights into its nature and behavior.
People watch Saturday Night Live to laugh, of course, but there are laughs and then there are sketches that last forever. This past weekend, Ryan Gosling hosted SNL and the episode may have featured one of those all-time sketches. What starts as a discussion of AI then turns into one of the most absurd and random pop culture references imaginable as two audience members who look like the characters from Beavis and Butt-Head derail the whole thing.
Spoilers of the Week | June 17th
If the sketch felt random, well, not only was that by design, it’s because its writers had been pitching it for the past five years. Here’s the hilarious sketch to get everyone on board.
Beavis and Butt-Head – SNL
The sketch was written by Mikey Day, who plays Butt-Head above, and Streeter Seidell. A pair who—according to cast member and host of the sketch, Heidi Gardner—have been wanting to do this for a while.
“It was a sketch that had been put up at table reads and rehearsals for about five years prior to this,” Gardner told Vulture in a new interview. “Previously, I was in the sketch but as an audience member. I can’t remember the other castings of it. It never made it to a dress rehearsal.”
This week though, it didn’t just make it to dress rehearsal, it made it to air. “Every so often, because of timing or the stage it’s in, a sketch might be cut on a Friday night as opposed to a Saturday. That’s what happened the time before,” Gardner continued. “I had never seen the costumes. It was a sketch that Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell kept on pitching, like, ‘Before the end of our time here, we have to do the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch.’ It was their white whale; they really wanted to do it. Knowing Ryan is always so down for fun and playful things, my guess is they thought he would be into it.”
Oh, and though it didn’t make the episode itself, Gosling also followed up his famous Avatar-centic Papyrus SNL sketch with an online-only sequel, and it’s fantastic.
Papyrus 2 – SNL
But in the months and years ahead, one just kind of feels it’ll be the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch that people will still be talking about. And rightfully so. Read much, much more about its conception and some behind-the-scenes stories over on Vulture.
Throughout its first season, Fallout tees up what seemingly are a bunch of mysteries that are either not connected at all or by the loosest of threads—why is the Ghoul so fascinated when he learns Lucy’s full name? What’s going on with dwellers from Vault 31? How did Moldaver make her way from the pre-war days to lead the New California Republic, and just what did she need from Wilzig the Enclave defector? What really happened to Lucy’s mom, and will she be able to save her dad? Will Maximus be able to make his way back to Lucy—and away from the Brotherhood once and for all?
All this smashes together in the finale (appropriately called “The Beginning”) to reveal that actually everything is much messier, more personal, and interconnected than anyone thought. As Lucy comes face to face with what was always her goal from the moment she left Vault 33, we and she alike get to learn, thanks to a flashback to Cooper’s perspective, that it was Vault-Tec itself, spearheading a conglomerate of multiple pro-war companies, that fired the first bombs that set off the apocalypse, ensuring their products would be used. Also, along the way, Vault-Tec froze all of its managers—from the lowest assistants to the highest bosses—to control the world that came after the fallout and ensure that capital remains in their own hands. And not only that, we’ve met a bunch of those Vault-Tec staffers throughout the season, like Betty, and of course, Hank himself—revealed as the assistant to Cooper’s wife, Henry, in pre-war times.
It does a lot to make clear the way the show views Fallout’s world, while once again putting all three of the main characters together, if not ideologically or geographically, in just how related to all this mess they each are.
Okay so maybe don’t hit Kyle McLachlan with the CG-deaging-ray but still, in spite of that, it all works!
To screen record on your iPad, you must first add the feature to your Control Center.Navigate to Settings > Control Center > click on the green plus icon next to Screen Recording. This will add the feature to your Control Center.
To access it, swipe down on your display and tap the icon with two circles on it. There will be a three-second countdown, and your screen recording will start.
When you’re done, swipe to your Control Center and hit the icon again. Or you can tap on the red screen recording icon at the top of your screen and hit ‘Stop.’
You will get a notification informing you that your recording has been saved. To view it, head to your Photos app.
For a more detailed explanofion on how to screen record on an iPad, check this guide out.
Back in its heyday, Game of Thrones looooooved killing off characters. Whether they were sad, hilarious, or kind of dumb, those ends have been memorable in their own ways, the mark of a good show filled with great actors. And who can forget the death of Jack Gleason’s Joffrey Baratheon, one of the show’s most disliked (in a mostly good way) antagonists?
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On April 13, 2014, HBO aired the second episode of Game of Thrones’ fourth season. At the end of “The Lion and the Rose,” Joffrey and Margaery Tyrell get married and celebrate their new union at the Red Keep. Everything seems to be going well—relative to the show’s last wedding, I guess—and then in the middle of insulting Tyrion, Joffrey starts choking before blood runs down his nose as he seizes up and dies in his mother’s arms, but not before silently accusing Tyrion of poisoning his wine. Cersei puts Tyrion under arrest, and the episode lingers on Joffrey’s bloody, colorless face. Musical crescendo, cut to black, the audience cheers.
Game Of Thrones (Season.4 ep.2) Death of King Joffrey.
In real life, “Lion and the Rose” received critical acclaim at the time of its airing, with many calling it one of the series’ best episodes ever. Come awards season, it received five Emmy nominations, with two in the acting categories for Lena Heady (Supporting Actress in a Drama) and Diana Rigg (Guest Actress, Drama), and winning one for best costuming. Moreover, this episode set up some plotlines from the books…some of which ended up not getting used. Whoops. And within the show itself, Joffrey’s death caused a domino effect for the rest of the season, resulting in even more deaths and Tyrion getting hell out of dodge to avoid getting his head chopped off. It also paved the way for some of the show’s big moments later on and other members of his family to get some wins of their own. (Well, until theydied.)
With Joffrey dead, Gleason used his character’s exit to take a break from professional acting, which he’d been doing since he was 8 years old. Despite that, he wasn’t gone for too long: after appearing in the 2016 short film Chat, he’s gradually returned in the last several years, appearing on a few episodes of Sex Education and Out of Her Mind. Along with his appearance in last year’s The Famous Five on BBC, he was in 2021’s Rebecca’s Boyfriend and 2023’s In the Land of Saints & Sinners.
Even if you didn’t watch Game of Thrones back then, you probably knew who Joffrey was and how much folks wanted him to get got. “The Lion and the Rose” gave audiences what they wanted and then some, and it’s still one of the most satisfying moments in the show. RIP Joffrey, but at least you went out on such a nice day.
Do you still think Sucker Punchwas just shy of being a truly great work? If so, Zack Snyder agrees with you—and he’s ready to make its Snyder Cut a reality.
Spoilers of the Week April 11-15
Talking to Empire earlier in the week, the director was asked about what he’d change from any of his movies. (Other than the one he already did that with, of couse.) He picked his 2011 action flick, which he says “never really got finished correctly. […] If I had the chance, I would fix that movie.” What’s stopping him from whipping up those changes is, accoring to him, both the resources and explicit permission to do it.
“They have to let me put it together,” he explained, presumably referring to Warner Bros. or Legendary Pictures. “I have the footage already shot. […] We ask every now and then, [and] we have to ask again. I think there has to be a window when no one’s got the movie.” He further implied that fans could help get the ball rolling faster, saying “if they want to start a campaign, that’s alright.”
Sucker Punch originally released in 2011 and starred Emily Browing as Babydoll, who gets sent to a mental hospital after accidentally shooting her sister while trying to fight off her abusive stepfather. Upon learning she’ll be lobotomized, Babydoll and her fellow patients—played by Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, and Jamie Chung—enter a number of fantasy worlds to find items that’ll help them escape in the real world. With negative reviews and an $89.8 million box office (on an $82M budget), it wasn’t really well-liked at the time, not helped by the flak it caught for its elevator pitch of girls fantasizing about killing monsters with swords and guns as they do erotic dances IRL.
Times have changed, though, and it’s possible the film would be better (or just more interesting?) if it’s been retooled. But would fans want to will that one into existence like they did with Justice League? That may be a little harder to determmine, since it’s yet to receive a widespread reappraisal like other movies lately.
I never thought I’d see the day I’d become a “wearables” person, and it’s because I’ve spent so long on the Android side of things. For years, Android users waited in vain for manufacturers to make smartwatches that fit nicely and didn’t peter out after a mere eight hours off the charger. It wasn’t until these last few years after Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch 4 that Android-based wearables offered feature parity to one of the most popular wearables, the Apple Watch.
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Thankfully, there is plenty more choice for wearables, not just between Apple and Android. Although some companies have left the connected wearables game—RIP Fossil and your delightful hybrid watches—plenty more remain, including mainstays from the fitness industry. Here’s a look at some of the latest smartwatches we’ve covered and which ones are worth buying if you’re shopping for one. iPhone users, you already know which one we’re going to suggest.
The Apple Watch Series 9.Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: you should have an Apple watch if you use an iPhone. Other smartwatches work with the iPhone, particularly for those of you who want more of a training device rather than a remote accessory for your smartphone. But for everyone else wielding an iPhone, the Apple Watch is it.
The Apple Watch has maintained a consistent price point throughout its lifetime. The Apple Watch Series 9 currently costs $400 for the 40mm size and $430 for the 45mm size. There’s also the Apple Watch SE, a pared-down version of the flagship Apple Watch, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2, meant for rugged types who spend time outdoors or don’t mind wearing a bigger watch for the battery life.
The battery life of Apple Watches and the best ones for Android users is about the same. You’ll almost get two full days of notifications and time-telling, mainly if you use energy-saving modes. Apple has also done some work between generations of the Apple Watch. Siri’s common commands are available offline on the Series 9—something Google is still working on with Wear OS.
It took two generations, but Google finally delivered on its smartwatch promises with the Pixel Watch 2. The watch is comfortable for most wrists and pairs well with any of the dozens of available Android devices. Google also offers several different watchbands and finishes. The only downside is that the watchband employs proprietary connection mechanisms. Finding quality third-party watchbands is not as easy, and some of the Google Store’s offerings are pretty pricey.
The Fitbit app is what makes the Pixel Watch 2 a worthy wear. Its robust offerings include a daily readiness score, overnight body temperature tracking, sleep coaching, and stress monitoring. (Some features require a Fitbit Premium subscription, though they can be bundled in with Google One if you’re an all-in Android user.) The only drawback is that even with Health Connect, Fitbit doesn’t sync up with many popular third-party wellness suites without the help of a few other additional apps. I’m still trying to figure out how to count my Peloton workouts toward my weekly stats on Fitbit without manually entering the data.
Battery life is pretty average among most smartwatches available right now. Most of today’s Android-compatible smartwatches last as long as the Apple Watch—about a day and a half with the always-on display off. You can set the watch to a power-saving mode to eke out more time with it. But generally, smartwatches the size of the Pixel Watch 2 won’t make it two full days off the charger.
I used a Galaxy Watch 4 with a Pixel smartphone and the OnePlus 8, which was fine. However, the latest Galaxy Watch 6 has exclusive capabilities available only to Samsung smartphone users, including blood pressure and ECG monitoring, facilitated by apps available only through the Galaxy app store.
Like the Pixel Watch 2, the Galaxy Watch 6 can detect irregular heartbeats, track your sleep, measure your skin temperature as you sleep, and track your sleep patterns. It offers a larger display than the Pixel Watch 2—1.3 inches on the Galaxy Watch 6 versus 1.2 inches on the Pixel Watch 2—with less bezel. The Galaxy Watch 6 also uses a universal clasping mechanism so that you can buy watchbands anywhere.
My favorite part of Samsung Health is the new medication reminder offering, which simultaneously blasts the phone and smartwatch to hold me accountable for my pill. It’s louder than Apple Health and the Apple Watch’s quieter medication notifications. It functions like an alarm, and if you don’t take a second to mark whether you’ve taken your medication, it will nag you until you dismiss it entirely.
The OnePlus Watch 2 is a decidedly better smartwatch than the first-generation OnePlus Watch. But it is a big watch, and it is only available in one size. If it looks too big for you from the picture featured here, that’s because it is. However, if you think this honker of a wearable is something you’d sport after all, let me tell you the best part of the OnePlus Watch 2: it has the best battery life I’ve seen in a Wear OS watch in a long time.
With the always-on display off, the OnePlus Watch 2 lasts up to 100 hours off the charger. OnePlus employs two processors: one to handle the smartwatch’s lighter loads, like step counting and touch input, and one to take on the heavier loads, like apps and workout tracking. OnePlus’s health suite isn’t as robust as a Pixel Watch 2 with Fitbit or the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 with Samsung Health. But at least it syncs up with Health Connect.
Since 2014, Russell Dauterman has been an artist mainstay of Marvel comics, and one of the best working at the publisher today. From working with Jason Aaron to tell the story of Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor to giving stylish looks to the X-Men for their annual Hellfire Galas (RIP), his work has consistently been pretty damn good, and it’s now being collected into a whole book you can have on your shelf.
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Earlier in the week, BacketKit announced an upcoming Kickstarter campaign for The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman. The 216-page hardcover will collect the past decade of his work, including covers (regular and variant), interiors and design work—from X-Men to Scarlet Witch and Thor, he says the book will include “as much as I can.” For those who are fans of his costume variant covers, he confirmed all of those would be featured, including one for Thor that hasn’t been seen before now. The book will also include commentary from Dauterman himself and other extras he says will feature “some things a few of you have asked for! I’ve been working on this for awhile,” he added, “[and I] eally hope you enjoy it!”
Dauterman first came into comics in 2011 with The Mis-Adventures of Adam West (written by Darren G. Davis, Reed Lackey, and West himself) and Annie Automatic (Sam Scott). After a brief stint with Boom! and DC Comics, he started at Marvel with Greg Rucka’s short Cyclops run before going to Aaron’s Thor book, and the rest is history. Since going to Marvel, his art has always been eyecatching, and the publisher knows it; his contributions have consistently been featured on outlets like The View and Entertainment Weekly.
The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman Kickstarteer will begin soon—April 23 or 24, if the countdown math is right—and more details about what’s included in it and when it’s arriving—will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Legos are everywhere these days, including criminal enterprises. Earlier in the week, California’s Organized Retail Crime Taskforce performed a series of raids against an illegal fencing operation spread across four buildings in LA and Orange counties. During those raids, authorities found a collection of Lego sets estimated to be worth $300,000 overall.
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Various items were stolen from popular retailers like Target and Lowe’s, but the Legos were said to make up the bulk of stolen product. According to CBS News, there were so many boxes that they were lined up across the walls of the buildings, and in some cases, were able to touch the ceiling. (As an ex-retail worker, lemme tell ya: nightmare scenario having to pull from the middle section of those stacks.) Lego sets can get pretty pricey the more elaborate they are, and boxes can take up a lot of space, so it’s easy to image how packed those buildings must’ve been.
Four arrests were made in connection to the fencing ring, whose ages range from 35 to 47 years old. The suspects were then charged with organized retail theft, grand theft, and conspiracy to commit a crime. Per the LA Times, the quartet would go from store to store, with two of them swiping limited edition box sets before stashing them across their various safehouses before selling them in-person or online.
If you weren’t aware, this has actually been going on for quite some time. In December 2023, Inside Edition published a piece on what’s effectively the Lego black market, wherein thieves stole Legos during the holidays and sell them for a decent price, particularly the limited edition sets. A Lego store in Las Vegas got hit four times within a month of opening, and the store owner at the time said $2,000 worth of product was stolen.
Similar theft rings exist for stuff like Magic: The Gatheringand Pokémon, so it’s not too surprising to hear this is happening with Lego. Some retailers are trying to add some friction to the process, mainly by locking the toys behind a case or wrapping them in a security bind you have to remove directly at the register.
Finding Loki’s glorious purpose finally came full circle at the end of Loki season two in ways perhaps the God of Mischief turned God of Stories couldn’t have imagined. Tom Hiddleston discussed his 14-year journey as Loki on a recent Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance, during which Kimmel asked if it’s really the last we’re seeing of the iconic Marvel anti-hero.
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Hiddleston has said goodbye to Loki before with deaths that didn’t quite stick—including Avengers: Infinity War, which turned out to be a variant death. But the Avengers-era Loki who made a break for it in Avengers: Endgame ended up being the Loki we followed in the Loki series. So, is this the end for Loki? “I don’t know, I really don’t know,” Hiddleston told the host, who asked if he was contractually lying (I don’t count him out for Deadpool & Wolverine, to be honest). He added, somewhat cryptically, “I know that we’ve reached some sort of narrative conclusion with season two, which feels very satisfying to me.”
Loki’s redemption as the glue that literally holds the multiverse together as the God of Stories might mean he can only exist outside of the timeline, sure—but is that proof that Loki is a full-fledged hero now, considering the villainous start of his journey? (I mean, is the Battle of New York still hard to give him a pass for?) Hiddleston thinks so. “I’m aware that he’s made some interesting choices, which could be accumulated into a picture that looks like he’s a villain, and once upon a time, he was making some misguided choices,” he shared. Anyone who has followed Loki on the Disney+ series knows he went through a huge multiversal ass-kicking and ego breakdown, what with having to learn how to fix time and everything in the multiverse over the course of hundreds of years and the loss of everyone he knows—ultimately saving many more people than he carelessly unalived in Avengers.
Hiddleston continued. “You know, trying to take over New York and the Avengers having to assemble to stop him, that was a bad day in the office,” he said, comparing it to the grand scheme of his destiny weighted bymore burden than glory. “I’d like to think that, you know, 14 years later, he’s making some slightly more generous, loving, and heroic choices.”
Do you think Loki’s sacrifice to save everyone in the end has earned him a place in the pantheon of Marvel heroes? Let us know in the comments below.
