NASA announced Sept. 16 that the spacecraft had experienced engine trouble on its way to the space station, with the main engine cutting off earlier than planned.
“NASA and Northrop Grumman are delaying the arrival of the Cygnus XL to the International Space Station as flight controllers evaluate an alternate burn plan for the resupply spacecraft. The Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review,” a statement by NASA read.
NASA said that everything else is performing as expected with the spacecraft.
Once the Cygnus spacecraft does arrive at the International Space Station, astronauts Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman will use the space station’s robotic Canadarm2 to grab and dock it.
This mission — refrred to as NG-23 — is the first flight of the company’s new Cygnus XL spacecraft. It is described as solar-powered, larger and a more capable cargo spacecraft compared to previous Cygnus models, which have flown multiple NASA resupply missions in the past.
It is not the first time a Cygnus spacecraft experienced an issue in flight. In 2022, a Cygnus spacecraft flying as part of the NG-18 mission failed to deploy a solar array, putting the spacecraft’s power levels at risk. Northrop Grumman and NASA were able to work around the issue, and the spacecraft was successfully captured by astronauts onboard the station.
As of the morning of Sept. 17, NASA had not released an update on the current issue.
If you were anywhere within 10 feet of a Wi-Fi connection this week, you may have come across the still image of what appeared to be an unstacked Italian nesting doll of dimples and unconventional shoe choices on the Tonight Show couch of Jimmy Fallon (who was wearing extremely conventional shoes under his desk, I’m sure). What you may or may not have known is that the bodies attached to those shoes belonged to three mega-viral TikTok stars—who are, in fact and importantly, all Italian.
Todd Owyoung/NBC
This image, and the interview that went along with it, ripped through the internet like a Costco pizza cutter. First, there was Fallon’s response to his guests, two of whom were children, which ranged from occasional bemusement to borderline tolerance to complete derision for the antics of the TikTok act he had booked on his show. More importantly, there were the optics: Fallon appeared to be hosting the call sheet for a multi-timeline show about a Batman villain. But the final reveal for the uninitiated, which happened entirely post-airing, was what took this piece of the historical record over the edge of virality: This adult man and the two children next to him … who look like the Animorphs book cover of a very specific Italian male species … were not all related.
The large- and medium-sized gentlemen with the eyes of a husky and the vocal cords of the Cookie Monster and Donald Duck, respectively, are the Costco Guys, a.k.a. AJ Befumo and Big Justice, who are obsessed with two things: bulk shopping and going viral. The littlest one to their left, however, was a little more of a mystery to new audiences. First, there was his vibe: quiet, considering, frequently unsmiling, but seemingly there for a pleasant time. Then there were his shoes: neon green, in constant motion, jutting out horizontally from his body, without so much as a suggestion that they’d ever touch the floor. Because he is a child, you see—even despite immediately establishing himself as a person (a person with the distinct aura of a wise and magical toad, but a person nonetheless) deserving of the utmost respect. He somehow seemed like AJ and Big Justice’s elder and Fallon’s boss. He’s 3 feet tall, 8 years old, and probably learning how to subtract in a third grade classroom as you read this. And his name? Is the Rizzler.
If you knew none of this, then congratulations—your algorithm is built different. If you knew any of this before the Rizzler started proliferating through social media at large following the Fallon segment, then you are probably a straight white man. The Rizzler may not be related to the people he makes viral videos with, but he certainly has cultural cousins: Hawk Tuah, Baby Gronk, Theo Von. These are words and names that could kill a Victorian child, but words that I know nonetheless. You could call the Rizzler the human Moo Deng … and you could also call him the baby from Dinosaurs. But if you think you’ll make it far on the internet without calling him the Rizzler—you are wrong.
Yes, visually and spiritually, he’s like if Grogu knew meatball subs existed, but culturally, the Rizzler’s whole bit—other than eating things with two guys who are, again, not related to him—is that he is a child who demands respect. When Fallon asks him to do “the Rizz face” (more on that later), he obliges, I believe, out of the goodness of his heart, and not because he’s a dancing monkey. He does the big booms with AJ and Big Justice because he supports his friends’ ambitions, not because he’s a clown. He offers up that he likes chocolate-covered raisins when Fallon strangely yells at Big Justice, “THEY’RE GOOD FOR YOU!” after Big Justice—a kid—complains about raisins as a Halloween treat. The Rizzler is the head of families he doesn’t even hail from. The Rizzler is an aura bomb, wrapped up in charisma and comic timing, who looks like a Squishmallow and smells like pastrami, but in a good way.
Or that’s what TikTok would tell you when there aren’t enough reverent words in the English language with which to praise the Rizzler (government name: Christian Joseph). Trying to convey this to a Tonight Show audience who thought they might be seeing Zendaya or Ryan Gosling, or even that young “Brat” woman they’ve been hearing so much about, is a Herculean task that no one at TheTonight Show even attempted. When an internet trend hits the harsh, NBC-studio-scented air of the real world, it’s like seeing a teacher at the mall. Or maybe it’s more like seeing the school mascot at the principal’s desk. Something doesn’t quite feel right, and suddenly everyone is asking questions like “Who got fur in the coffee maker?” and “Why are Jimmy Fallon’s ears bleeding like that?” and “What’s a Rizzler?”
On the latter, at least, I can help. No small being has sparked this much curiosity with so few answers since your mom started asking you what Moo Deng was. And I’m certainly not trying to pit round things against each other—that’s billiards, and this is actually bigger than that. Because nothing produces more questions and anxiety over where we are as a culture than when the lawless, lore-driven celebrities of social media meet the tidy, media-trained couches of late night television. So for those just catching up, allow me to answer your questions about how the Rizzler got there (other than, again, by possibly being a magically materializing toad). Let’s start with the obvious and most frequently asked question about the Costco Guys and the Rizzler …
Why doesn’t the big one simply eat the smaller ones to grow stronger and defeat Jimmy Fallon?
Great question with a not so simple answer: In joining forces, AJ, Big Justice, and the Rizzler have created a viral ecosystem that simply doesn’t work without all of the biotic and abiotic components working in unison. Less scientifically speaking, these three are the holy trinity of BroTok. AJ is God, Big Justice is Jesus Chrst, and the Rizzler is the Holy Spirit that keeps us intrinsically connected to them all.
AJ, love him or tolerate him, has been trying to go viral or get famous—whichever comes first—since Big Justice was in “larval form,” to quote a TikTok comment lost to time. Before he started vlogging about his family on social media, AJ was a semiprofessional wrestler who went by “American Power Child, Eric Justice.” But he was also, like … making parody songs and putting Big Justice in his “backbling” (a Baby Bjorn, goodness, this lore is deep) to go shopping. Until something finally stuck: Costco. In March, AJ and Big Justice went mega-viral (56.7 million views and counting) for their “We’re Costco Guys” video, and eight months later, they have more than 2 million TikTok followers and their very own Beans (which is to say, an unrelated minor who maybe lives with them).
The Rizzler is simply a funny kid who seems to like doing characters and bits. It’s a tale as old as time, but whereas I pretended I was a puppy dog for, like, my entire fourth year of life and nothing happened but my parents getting annoyed, the Rizzler went viral precisely this time last year for fully embodying his Black Panther Halloween costume: “Just because I’m Black Panther doesn’t mean I’m going up a ladder! Mommy said it’s dangerous.” As legend goes, Big Justice saw this video and wanted to meet the Rizzler, so he traveled with AJ to New Jersey—shockingly, the Costco Guys are not from New Jersey, but Boca Raton, Florida—and the rest was history …
But realistically, the degree to which AJ was like, “OK, and what if I just got an even smaller guy”and recruited the Rizzler to start making content like he was related to them—something many fans still don’t even realize—is kind of unreal. AJ knew what women decorating homes have always known: Getting the tinier version of something normal-sized is simply more fun. I like tiny bowls because I can put even tinier things in them. And I like the Rizzler because he’s a tiny Big Justice, who is a tiny AJ, and there’s no verifiable proof that they didn’t find an industrial-sized vat of the Substance at Costco that made this all possible.
But where did the Rizzler get his name? The other day I heard the words “sticking out your gyat for the rizzler” floating from underneath my 13-year-old’s door. Are these two things related?
Sort of. But also, gross!
The easiest way to put it is that “rizz” is Gen Alpha slang for “charisma,” and a rizzler is someone who has it in spades. I’ll explain “gyat” just because we’re here, and so you can get your kid to stop listening to that song (but it will never leave your head again, I’m so sorry, it’s like the video from The Ring, you just have to pass it on now). Gyat stands for “girl your ass thick” and is basically a replacement word for “a woman’s butt,” so to stick out your gyat for the rizzler is to show off your behind to attract a charismatic gentleman …
I don’t want you to talk like this, OK? But you need to know that there are people talking like this, and they are mostly under 5 feet tall, and we need to be able to talk to them! We also need to speak this language to understand that, in a matter of months and with a handful of viral videos, this 8-year-old boy went from being a rizzler to being the Rizzler. According to the lore, the Rizzler’s friends started calling him the name before he even knew what it meant, and he started making the face that’s made him famous—“mewing,” as the kids say, or “Chad face,” as the slightly older kids say—even before that.
If you were paying close enough attention, you may have noticed that on The Tonight Show, the Rizzler taught Fallon and the Roots how to do the eyebrow raise and lip pursing—but not the signature cheek stroke. Some things are simply proprietary.
What we all need to understand is that generational talents used to debut on the Disney Channel with a show about being a tween private investigator who has a medical condition that gives them a wolf’s sense of smell. Now those little talents are on TikTok. The idea that they can all make it to The Tonight Show one way or another is as concerning and alarming (for us) and exciting (for the Rizzler and Chloe Wolfe, PI) as ever before!
But why do people love the Rizzler so much?
It seems to be one part “he’s so cute, I want to eat him like a Haribo gummy,” a dash of “this kid is just innately weird and funny,” and a heavy pour of “this is a child who I see only on social media that I can assign a character to and have a little fun never knowing whether it’s true.”
The cuteness is often rolled out in the Rizzler archives—cute home videos from before he was a mononymous internet personality—and the humor is in the content he makes with the Costco Guys and the extended Costco Universe (more on that later). But the character work is going down in the comments, where Rizzler fans observe a mafia-dom-like energy from this itty-bitty Michelin Man. Any suggestion of an insult is met with an insistence on respect for the Rizzler’s name. Any suggestion that perhaps Costco food taste testing isn’t what children should be doing for their after-school snack is met with a stern “The rizzler doesn’t even eat the double chunk chocolate cookies you fucking moron.” And, in general, something about that Fallon interview: The fact that he was at the right hand of the host, the fact that he sat quietly confident as his colleagues fawned and fretted over their big moment, the fact that it was preceded by starring moments at Knicks and Mets games this month—all of this just kind of made it feel like the Rizzler had moved beyond his corner of the internet and into the mainstream.
And I don’t know what to tell you—the source material is there. I have officially been Rizzler pilled. This third grader simply has the gravitas of Gandolfini or Don Corleone, whether he technically has access to a (toy) horse’s head or not.
On that note, are we sure this is … a child?
Does the Rizzler kind of appear to be an adult wearing shoes on his knees like Gary Oldman in Tiptoes? Yes. But by all accounts, that’s just part of his general aura. It’s not, like, an Andy Milonakis situation. (Although I would be fine with the Rizzler getting his own talk show, maybe even just usurping the Tonight Show gig the next time he’s on. He’s the head of the family now, after all.) There is a strong video trail that shows the Rizzler being an actual baby just a few years ago. Which, it also can’t be overstated that after a summer spent getting wildly internet famous, the Rizzler simply … went to third grade.
Why did it seem like Jimmy Fallon would rather be at a vegan butter-churning festival than play along with the people—two of whom are children—he invited onto his show?
Pretty rich for ol’ James to be annoyed by childlike behavior from two actual children and their kinda-sorta guardian! At various times throughout the interview, Fallon seemed to roll his eyes or attempt to move on from the kind of bombastic, repetitive clownery the Costco Guys intentionally use in their videos—you know, the kinds of things kids like? The internet astutely pointed out that Jimmy should be careful. By disrespecting him, Jimmy was treading awfully close to turning the Rizzler into the Joker.
My pet theory is that Fallon didn’t know, until the second the house lights went down and the stage lights came up, that the Rizzler was a child. Just look at the way he looks to the Rizzler for help when AJ and Big Justice bellow out their 20th Big Boom of the night. Also, Jimmy didn’t help the Rizzler when the kid asked him what to do with the licorice that received only two measly booms, and because he was too polite to put it on Jimmy’s desk, he just had to eat it. That is absolutely no way to treat the Rizzler, a person I learned about four days ago.
Why do theysay “BOOM!” like that, though? Is it a sloppy homage to Emeril’s “BAM”?
You know what, maybe? But sometimes virality really is just as simple as rhyming, and someone like AJ knows that. The Costco Guys invented the “Boom or Doom” scale to rate their Costco findings, immediately abandoned ever “dooming” anything, and resorted to rating everything on a five-boom scale. One boom is no good, three booms is solid, and when something is a home run, it gets “Five! Big! Booms!” The booms must be both verbally and physically performed, and they must be loud (sorry, Jimmy Fallon).
The booms are more native to the Costco Guys than the Rizzler, but he does participate when called upon and always backs them up when they’re giving big booms, even when Fallon is sighing down his neck a foot away. He’s magnanimous that way.
Wait, but if AJ isn’t the Rizzler’s dad, who is? Did he spawn from a Costco baby back rib like Adam?
The Rizzler has parents. His dad is especially present on the Rizzler’s own social media pages, filming and sometimes doing skits alongside him and his little brother (yes, they get even smaller). The Rizzler’s dad even has his own moniker within the Costco Universe: Uncle Savasta.
Sorry, did you say the Costco Universe?
I’m suspicious of AJ and where he falls on the scale of “monetizing your children—and also not your children!—to live out your dreams vicariously through them,” but to be honest, I find his laugh while spending time with his child (and not his child!) so genuine that the jury’s still out. Plus, it’s all such a gender bend of the Toddlers & Tiaras mom trope that I’m almost impressed by the subversiveness …
But I’ll hand this to Costco dad every day of the week: He’s incredible at talent acquisition and world-building. Get this guy out of the amateur wrestling ring and into a Marvel studio. Even before AJ and Big Justice acquired the Rizzler, they’d been branding their entire family and adding newcomers to the Costcoverse. There’s Cousin Angelo, who, like Cousin Olver, seems to be a less preferred member of the crew but who also has an admirer in Vita Coco, which is endlessly funny to me; there’s this guy Makeshift Zach, who gets all the exclusive interviews with the family; and regularly appearing in the videos are MBJ, a.k.a. Mother of Big Justice, and the sister Ashley, who simply goes by Ashley, which I personally find iconic.
And of course, the Rizzler debuted in the Costco Universe at the beginning of the summer, rating chocolate chip cookies (pronounced exclusively: DUWBA CHUNK CHOCK-LUT COOOOKIE) with the gang. Every member of the Costco Extended Universe gets their own added verse in the viral song “We Bring the Boom”; there’s a line in the Rizzler remix that is funnier and more astute than anything a band of bloggers could ever conjure: We’re like the three ev-o-lutions of a Pok-e-mon.
Not to start any beef, but at this point, has the Rizzler become bigger than Costco Guys—bigger than any one fictional universe can contain?
Technically speaking, the Rizzler isn’t bigger than most things. You could roll him up in a ball and save him in your pocket for later, like a jawbreaker.
But in terms of power and influence—yeah. He’s the Steve Urkel of bro-y TikTok: a guest character brought in to jazz things up who stole the show so completely that you’re pretty sure the show was called Steve Urkel. But I firmly believe that the Rizzler needs the structure and support of the Costco Universe as much as they need his star power.
Ok, but, is this … bad? Is it bad to enjoy the Rizzler as a sort of funny little internet character who is, in fact, a child who isn’t really in control of his own online presence? Is this going to haunt me? Is this going to become a Baby Gronk situation?
I assume this tricky final question is payback for telling you about sticking out your gyat for the Rizzler, in which case, I do understand, but wow, what a doozy.
I’ll say this: The feeling I have when I look at the Rizzler is the same one I have when I see a Shiba Inu puppy. Can you please just stay like this forever? Can you be cute just like THIS forever, even though I know the future thing you’ll be is just as good???
And for that reason, I would really love for the Rizzler’s parents (and OK, AJ, too) to talk to the Corn Kid’s parents. Remember him? The 7-year-old with a naturally hilarious way of communicating who accidentally got famous on another person’s social media channel? And then he took a few big brand deals, threw a few baseballs, rode on a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then just … went back to school without usever even learning his last name? Because his mom didn’t want us to know it! And one day, after that kid has hypothetically finished four years of college paid for by one Chipotle ad and the good personality he had when he was 7, if he still wants to be famous, or work for Big Corn, or make viral TikTok videos—he can! (And listen, even with all that care, internet rumors still went viral saying that he died, which Corn Kid had to clear up on Instagram. Which is exactly why it was a good idea for Corn Kid to go back to being just a kid.)
Fame isn’t linear, and nothing can stay golden forever. Nor can it stay perpetually round and fully detached from the Tonight Show floor. Internet main characters, even the young ones, are like the plucky ingenues of the aughts—we lift them up onto pedestals so high, they can only ever fall from them. And while I feel confident in the Rizzler’s Anne Hathaway–like ability to bounce back, I’d love to see him not have to. I’d love to see the adults around him help him avoid any descent that’s too painful. We’ve learned to respect the Rizzler. Let’s—all of us—keep it that way. Because I certainly don’t wanna find out who gets the horse head first.
Hello, Chive Nation, and welcome back to the second ‘WUU’ post that helps put the spotlight on our shared humanity. ‘What Unites Us’ is a gallery solely dedicated to reminding us all that despite the bitter squabbling and divisive rhetoric the media pushes, we are so much more alike than the talking heads would have us believe.
So help the masses stay uplifted this election cycle by sending in fun photos straight from your own Camera rolls!
No submissions are off the table so long as the images are Universally Positive! Send in all those images through our iPhone; or Android apps to get featured on theCHIVE! Or you can send images directly in through our submit page HERE!
Use #whatunitesus during the submission process to help your chances of getting featured in all these galleries!
We’ve also created an email landing page specifically for this themed gallery, aptly named whatunitesus@thechive.com.
In a spring and summer that has been dominated by female artists, Nora and Nathan talk about some of the male artists that have managed to break through on the charts: Post Malone, Zach Bryan, and Eminem. They discuss Post Malone’s forthcoming country album and what it tells us about the evolution of Nashville’s music scene (1:00), Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene and his rebellion against the music industry (27:16), and Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) and whether the rapper has the capacity to shock anymore (53:48).
Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen
For two decades, the words “cinematic” and “blockbuster” have been, for most game directors, synonymous. During this window, which stretches back to the original God of War and Halo, we’ve enjoyed (or, for others, endured) big-budget video game creators aspiring to emulate their blockbuster film counterparts.
If — somehow — you’ve never seen the films of Steven Spielberg or Michael Mann, you’ve nonetheless experienced them via contact highs from Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto, and practically every other Big Game released this millennium.
But Indika, a game that sounds like a weed strain and plays like being stoned and scrolling through the Criterion Channel, has me hopeful that we’re approaching, with narrative video games, a turning point for what it means for a game to be “cinematic.”
What fuels that hope is Indika’s creative similarities to a micro-budget indie horror film from the ’90s.
The Blair Witch effect
Is it possible for one game to change the look of an entire medium? And why would it be Indika, a game most readers haven’t played, or even heard of?
25 years ago, The Blair Witch Project inspired countless parodies with a single shot. You know the one. You can see it in the trailer, the poster, or at the top of this story. The lead actress-slash-camera operator holds a cheap camcorder inches from her face. Tears well in her eyes, and a flashlight casts hard shadows across her dry skin.
She’s terrified. She’s a mess. She’s barely in focus or even in frame.
At that time, few commercial directors would film a shot so crudely, nor would a celebrity offer the audience such an intimate look inside their nostrils. Filmgoers expected movies to conform to a certain look, sound, and feel. But The Blair Witch Project didn’t resemble anything in theaters; it looked like a cheap documentary you’d find on the local PBS station. It looked real.
Photo: Haxan Films
With that emphasis on “realism” above all else, the amateur camerawork accomplished its goal — scare the shit out of people — better than any expensive shot on an industry-grade camera could.
The filmmakers had taken the empathic visual language of the documentary form and weaponized it. Look again at the shot. You don’t see an actress staring into the camcorder; you see a person. And so, as happens when you look someone in the eyes, a connection forms. This person, you think, could be you. Alone. In the woods. Something unknown stalking through the branches.
The camerawork of The Blair Witch Project wasn’t cinematic, not in the classical sense. But in time, what audiences expected film and TV to look like would change to meet that image. Do we have the sprawling found-footage horror genre without it? Or the mega-popular docu-sitcoms like The Office and Modern Family?
The creators of The Blair Witch Project, because of their limitations (no money! No sets! No actors!) looked for inspiration where others didn’t have to, and wouldn’t choose to. The film’s success then gave future creators big and small permission to follow its lead, forever changing what a Hollywood movie could look and feel like.
Indika and the film school games
Indika, the fantastic new adventure game from Odd Meter, tells the story of a young nun who loses her grip on reality in an alternate-history version of 19th-century Russia. Tortured by a voice in her head that may or may not be a demon, Indika partners with a sickly man who may or may not be divinely chosen by God. Together, they embark on a perilous road trip through beautiful forests, abandoned towns, and literalizations of biblical allegory.
Indika is the latest — and one of the most impressive — examples of a sea change in the look and feel of cinematic games.
You don’t have to play Indika to see what I mean (though, hey, you really should). In the announcement trailer, the game’s creators borrow liberally from filmmakers rarely associated with games. These directors, who can’t afford the spectacle and scale of big-budget filmmaking, rely on more audacious (and affordable) craft to distinguish their work.
“We tried to use a standard limited set of [virtual camera] lenses to depict the limitations of inexpensive auteur cinema,” Indika game director Dmitry Svetlow told Polygon over email. He cited Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos, Russian filmmaker and slow cinema pioneer Andrei Tarkovsky, and former Monty Python member and infamous weirdo auteur Terry Gilliam as inspiration.
Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things.Image: Searchlight Pictures
In Indika, the stark exterior landscapes and cold architecture resemble the striking but antiseptic sets of Lanthimos. In the game’s nunnery, a SnorriCam shot — in which the camera is strapped onto the actor and aimed at their face — recalls Blair Witch, of course, but also the works of ’90s music video director turned ’00s filmmaker Spike Jonze and Robert Webb’s comedy sketch series Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
Where Blair Witch borrowed the documentary aesthetic to force audiences to straighten their backs and pay attention, Svetlow and company are reaching into the toolbox of low-budget filmmaking to do something similar with games.
Or, to put it crassly, Indika doesn’t just look like art films but feels like them. The story opens with the player inhabiting the habit of the titular young nun and fetching a pail of water from a well, then doing it again. And again. And again and again. Her steps up and down a grimy, snow-crunched slope in the abbey echo Tarkosvky’s long shots (like this one of a man carrying a candle for seven minutes) that were intentionally tedious, forcing us to feel time passing not just in a movie or a game, but in our life as we experience them.
To make the game more cinematic, Svetlow wrote the team needed a “greater focus on dramaturgy, on the quality and depth of characters, as well as the necessary level of presentation of events.”
In Indika, you don’t save the world or nail sick headshots. You accumulate poorly hidden collectibles and earn points, though they’re worth nothing and, by the standards of other games, a waste of time — something the game’s loading screens emphasize any chance they get. (“Don’t waste time collecting points, they are pointless.”) Sometimes Indika comes across a bench, and if you direct her to sit down on it, the game hands over the “film editing” to the player, allowing them to swap between different camera angles, some of which Indika doesn’t even appear in.
You could move on, directing Indika to stand back up and continue about her business. Or you could let the camera rest, your mind wandering as your eyes lock onto a field of mud and snow. In a medium full of realistic 3D worlds rife with kinetic empowerment, Indika encourages you to indulge in a moment of peace and ceding of control.
Change happens slowly and then all at once
Can we be certain games like Indika will influence their big-budget peers? They already have.
Here’s just one example: In 2009, Naughty Dog released Uncharted 2, a game rife with some of the most iconic blockbuster moments in the history of video games. Its opening, in which the hero climbs up a train that dangles off a cliff, may have inspired the latest Mission: Impossible, which ends with Tom Cruise doing something very, very similar.
But tucked into Uncharted 2 is a sequence meant to contrast with these sorts of set-pieces. Around the midpoint, Nathan Drake hikes through a Tibetan village. He doesn’t climb any deadly cliffs. Nothing blows up. Nobody gets shot. This was, in its time, unusual — a moment in which the player could exist in a beautiful 3D environment without being required to destroy the village or its population.
The Tibetan village sequence (and I swear this was acknowledged publicly, though now I struggle to find any quote) was cribbed from 2008’s The Graveyard, a short art game from the now-defunct micro studio Tale of Tales. In the game, an elderly woman walks the path of a graveyard, sits on a bench, reflects, and then returns from where she came. To younger readers, this will sound tedious. But to game critics at the time, this scene dropped into our minds like a new drug — a total shock to the system.
Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2.Image: Naughty Dog/Sony Computer Entertainment America
With The Graveyard and Uncharted 2 and many other (mostly indie) games of that time period, the video game industry witnessed a surge in what would be dubbed “walking simulators,” a somewhat derisive term for a powerful idea: You make a beautiful, rich virtual space, then afford your players some time to exist within them.
If The Graveyard could reshape the assumptions of cinematic video games, then why shouldn’t Indika help to bring the style of low-budget and arthouse filmmaking to Indika’s many peers?
That’s the magic of this moment in video games: Indika isn’t alone in its ambitions to challenge our assumptions of what makes a game cinematic. Indie developers have been steadily pushing against the confines of what games look and feel like for over a decade. To the Moon. El Paso, Elsewhere. Disco Elysium. I could double my word count with nothing more than titles.
But what’s different now, and what Indika reflects, is the independent games scene accelerating up an exponential hockey stick of creative output.
Image: Odd Meter/11 bit studios
Much like The Blair Witch Project (and countless other indie films since its release) was made possible by the first boom of consumer-level cameras and filmmaking tools, Indika and its ilk reflect a new era of game production where a small team — thanks to cost-effective and ultra-powerful dev tools — can take a risk on a personal project. In fact, with modern game engines, indie game developers can accomplish visual feats indie filmmakers could only imagine.
“We recreated a non-existent fairy-tale world; to do this for cinema would have cost an order of magnitude more,” Svetlow told Polygon.
Since I finished Indika, I’ve played three more oddly “cinematic” games — Arctic Eggs, 1000xResist, and Crow Country — and it feels like every week another new game appears, its creators taking a bat to the expectations of what a game should look and feel like. Now and then the bat is bound to connect and pop open this medium, releasing an entirely new style that artists will pounce on, like kids grabbing candy from a smashed piñata.
Perhaps Indika, in time, will reveal itself to be one of these special games. The Blair Witch of video games, launching a thousand projects that build on the arthouse aesthetic. Or perhaps this abundance of creativity will — not with one bold release or one inspirational aesthetic — radically change the idea of what makes a game “cinematic” to the point that we’re less worried about how a game can look like a film, and these interactive narrative experiences that we’d previously compare to great films can have a look that’s recognizably and thrillingly their own.
I hope we get there. In the meantime, I’ll be grateful to play games that aspire to match ambitious and inventive directors, rather than playing yet another video game that could be mistaken for Free Guy.
It’s late evening on March 21 as I sit wide-eyed, waiting in anticipation to listen to Heavy, the fourth album from Top Dawg Entertainment’s R&B reserve SiR. Now, two decades after being founded, TDE remains one of the few modern rap labels that can still generate excitement surrounding artist releases, regardless of who it is. Think of the pure chaos and aggression that comes with the bass on ScHoolBoy Q’s “Ride Out” (from 2016’s Blank Face LP)as he paints the picture of cutthroat confrontation that comes with life as a Hoover Gangster Crip. Think of the foggy and damn near divine Crooklin and D. Sanders–produced instrumental on Isaiah Rashad’s SZA-featured “Stuck in the Mud,” off the vibe that is The Sun’s Tirade, where Rashad details his struggles with substance abuse. Or think of the dreamy soundscape where SZA softly sings of her failed relationships and insecurities on her 2017 album, Ctrl.
That is to say, when it was time to press play on Heavy, I was ready to hear SiR sashay through his latest romantic entanglements with dulcet vocals over airy instrumentals. But then I found out that verse dropped.
TDE’s former franchise player, co-founder of media company pgLang, and arguably best rapper alive Kendrick Lamar seized any and all attention in music and Twitter town hall conversation when he shook the earth’s tectonic plates with a guest spot on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” where he took aim at the other two members of hip-hop’s “Big Three,” fellow rap megastars Drake and J. Cole. On an album laced with subliminals directed toward the Champagne Papi, Kendrick’s verse opened the floodgates for what may be hip-hop’s last great beef. In one night, SiR’s underwhelming fourth project with TDE felt like it came and went.
Very few rappers today carry the gravitas to shift the paradigm with a single verse. Time and time again, Kendrick has proved capable of this, dating back to his now-iconic verse on Big Sean’s 2013 record “Control,” where he attempted to raise the bar of competition in the rap game. With “Like That” as the kickstarter, Kendrick both incited and won the Great War between him and Drake. For those questioning who’s the top emcee between the two rap heavyweights, Kendrick answered the question over the course of four diss tracks viciously dissecting Drake, from the eerie character study “Meet the Grahams” to the indisputable L.A. bop that is “Not Like Us.” The once “good kid” solidified his legacy as the best rapper of his generation with a decisive victory before Drake could even drop “The Heart Part 6.”
On “Push Ups,” Drake dragged Kendrick’s current relationship with TDE founder Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith into their personal beef, taking shots at Top Dawg when attempting to belittle Kendrick’s pockets with, “Extortion baby, whole career you been shook up / ’Cause Top told you drop and give me 50 like some push-ups.” But where Drake may have been attempting to open a wound, the end result may have actually exposed how tight K.Dot and his former employers still are. Kendrick was quick to establish that there’s still love and respect for Top while refuting those claims on his first official full diss record, “Euphoria,” when he remarked, “Aye, Top Dawg, who the fuck they think they playin’ with? / Extortion my middle name as soon as you jump off of that plane, bitch.” This moment and the overwhelming support by TDE artists on social media was a reminder that Top Dawg Entertainment is a family, at least by outside appearances. Yet, when “Euphoria” was put on streaming, the copyright reading “Kendrick Lamar, under exclusive license to Interscope Records,” also a reminder that the relationship with TDE is strictly familial.
Even if extortion seems like an exaggeration, rumors were circulating of Kendrick leaving TDE well before he announced that 2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers would be his final project for the label. While breaking rap streaming records with “Euphoria”—and later, again, with “Not Like Us”—Kendrick made it clear that he no longer needs the same level of support of the label that signed him at 16 years old. The only label he answers to now is Interscope under a new direct licensing agreement, shedding his ties with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, too. (Kendrick originally signed a joint deal with Interscope and Aftermath ahead of the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city.) Publicly, Punch (President of TDE and manager of SZA) and Top treated Kendrick like their baby bird leaving the nest by giving Kendrick their blessing to leave TDE and focus on pgLang, but Kendrick’s 2022 departure from TDE marked the end of their 18-year transformation from mom-and-pop record label to a rap empire. How does one continue to grow their empire after losing the fulcrum that held everything together for all those years?
With Kendrick on the front lines winning a Pulitzer Prize and 17 Grammys while dropping undeniable rap classics bearing TDE’s name for all those years—alongside strong outings from his label siblings ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, SZA, and Isaiah Rashad—the TDE stamp on an artist’s release carries the same weight as a film with the A24 logo flashing at the start of its trailer. Whether that’s seeing Top Dawg sharing 2019 TDE signee Zacari’s single “Don’t Trip” like a Bat signal marking the young singer’s official arrival after he spent years leaving his vocal trail on a plethora of TDE songs. Or seeing newcomer Ray Vaughn on L.A. Leakers sporting a TDE chain under his yellow puffy as he raps his ass off about the night he met Top and Snoop Dogg. Or when “Top Dawg Entertainment” flashes in the opening credits of Doechii’s “Alter Ego” music video, which featured the Tampa-born artist taking viewers through the swamp waters of Florida in a visual that feels so foreign to the L.A.-centric label. When that TDE logo pops up, listeners expect a certain level of hip-hop excellence to follow, even if today’s TDE vastly differs from its earlier incarnation.
In a 2022 interview with Mic, Punch discusses how things have changed since the early days of TDE. The label used to have more synergy amongst its artists, whether that was ScHoolboy Q’s handwriting being included on Kendrick’s good kid album cover or Kendrick showing out on ScHoolboy’s quadruple-platinum single “Collard Greens” less than a year later. You would often see TDE move as a unit, like during their 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher. Today, the extent of TDE synergy comes in the form of the occasional labelmate guest spot that feels less like artists intertwining styles and more like filling in an open 16 bars or hook on a song. Even Punch admits he is far less hands-on with the newer TDE artists. “With those first guys, I’m in there with them every single day, engineering. We started together and came up together. But a lot of the new artists now are coming into a situation that was already built. They have their own teams, and I just come in when they need,” he said.
Outside of Kendrick’s departure, there have been other signs of mild turbulence within the label. In the past, TDE’s current franchise cornerstone and undeniable megastar SZA has cried for help via Twitter—using words like “hostile” when describing her delayed album and occasionally contentious working relationship with Punch—although these statements would often get deleted at some point. Carson, California, rapper Reason seems like he’s been doing everything in his power to get kicked off the label ever since joining in 2018, whether that’s getting into an argument on a podcast with co-president of TDE and son of Top himself, Moosa, or rapping over Drake beats days after the Toronto rapper accused one of TDE’s presidents of extortion.
When comparing TDE to some of the most iconic rap labels of the past, it’s easy to imagine that losing their first superstar is officially where the decline starts. Death Row’s best days were behind them after Tupac Shakur died in 1996, and Bad Boy was never the same after the Notorious B.I.G.’s death the following year. But the untimely loss of those two greats doesn’t fully explain why those labels fell. At Death Row, Dr. Dre had already walked out the doors before Tupac’s murder, but ultimately, Suge Knight going to prison is what led to Interscope dropping the label. At Bad Boy, Mase appeared to be the one to fill the void Biggie left, going quadruple-platinum in 1997 with his debut album Harlem World,before stepping away from music in pursuit of a higher calling from religion. While this wasn’t the end of Bad Boy, it likely played a factor in Bad Boy being unable to pay back and fulfill the $50 million advance from Arista Records based on good faith earned by a lucrative 1997. Simply losing their breadwinner didn’t do those iconic labels in; a flawed infrastructure and unforeseen circumstances sank their respective ships.
In the midst of the current rap game, TDE is in rare air. Drake’s OVO Sound is at times more focused on propping up Drake and who Drake loves right now than building the genuine camaraderie (and roster of heatmakers) of a TDE, and while J. Cole’s Dreamville stable has a lot of promise, they haven’t touched the commercial success of TDE’s best. In this era, you may not even think of TDE’s journey or what going from independent to world-renowned means anymore; you’ve come to know TDE as an institution for dope Black music.
Now 20 years old, Top Dawg Entertainment doesn’t show signs of a sharp fall-off just yet. First and foremost, they have SZA, whose latest album, SOS, achieved meteoric commercial, critical, and Grammy success with songs like the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping, five-times-platinum single “Kill Bill.” TDE not only has a compilation album on the way celebrating their anniversary, but Black Hippy member and original TDE rapper Jay Rock also has his fourth album, Eastside Johnny*, on the horizon. ScHoolboy Q’s latest (and most critically acclaimed) album, Blue Lips,is a testament to TDE’s ability to churn out premium bodies of work. And even with Kendrick’s “Like That” verse overshadowing SiR’s Heavy, songs like “Only Human” reflect the singer’s growth as an artist leaning more into his vulnerability. However, the real test for TDE’s prolonged success comes in developing the roster’s future. How much time is needed to turn the Ray Vaughns, Doechiis, and (checks notes to see if he’s still signed) Reasons of the label into stars? And as Isaiah Rashad continues to grow creatively with each new release, one has to imagine he has greater potential working with Warner Records and a sober mind.
Those concerns, for now, feel like minor cracks in a well-oiled machine, with SZA’s superstardom being the engine that keeps it all running—although we hope that talk of her next album, the long-awaited Lana, getting a release sometime in the near future doesn’t have you losing sleep at night. For TDE to keep the empire standing, they must appease their queen. In a 2017 OTHERtone interview, Jimmy Iovine praised the way TDE built a buzz around SZA, leading to TDE’s joint deal for SZA with RCA being a 70-30 split in TDE’s favor. Yet still, SZA has spoken about issues with her situation. How much time is there until SZA’s deal with RCA is up, allowing her to fly out of the nest like Kendrick? And will TDE be prepared if that day comes sooner than expected?
At TDE’s peak—somewhere within that 2016-18 era—every single one of their artists dropped a project, and their franchise player Kendrick Lamar made pit stops on almost every single release, bolstering them up through Damn., culminating with Black Panther: The Album and The Championship Tour. What’s stopping TDE from restoring the feeling with a SZA-centered label renaissance, fueled by guest spots propelling her labelmates’ albums into another stratosphere with divine vocals alone? Top and Punch have proven time and time again that they know when it’s time to strike. And for SiR’s sake, let’s hope Kendrick gives TDE a heads-up next time he plans on starting a rap beef around the time of a TDE release.
Wednesday, Tim Burton’s take on The Addams Family naturally became hugely popular on Netflix. Both are staples of spooky goth teens everywhere, so it was a match made in heaven (or hell?) and the series spent 20 weeks on Netflix’s Global Top 10. Jenna Ortega’s sharp, sardonic take on the character bewitched many — as did her firm stance against love triangles.
“Nobody wants to see her in the middle of a love triangle,” Ortega said to W Magazine back in 2022. “They want to see her torturing people.”
Netflix officially renewed the YA supernatural romp in January 2023, though news has been scant (likely due to the ongoing strikes last year). But with filming beginning this week and some exciting casting announcements, here’s everything we know about Wednesday season 2.
Photo: Netflix
What’s Wednesday season 2 about?
We’re not entirely sure of the plot, but it’ll likely pick up during Wednesday’s next school year at Nevermore Academy. According to the showrunners, the entire Addams family will be coming to the school in some capacity. There were a lot of loose ends last season, including the identity of Wednesday’s stalker and the weird cult that mean girl Bianca’s mom is part of.
Who’s in Wednesday season 2?
Jenna Ortega returns as Wednesday, and this season she’ll also serve as a producer. Other returning cast members include Emma Myers as Wednesday’s perky werewolf roommate Enid; Joy Sunday as school queen bee Bianca; and Hunter Doohan as Tyler, the cute barista who is actually the bloodthirsty monster that killed a lot of people last season.
The other cast members of the Addams family, namely Catherine Zeta-Jones (Morticia), Luiz Guzmán (Gomez), and Isaac Ordonez (Pugsley), have been promoted to series regulars.
“We are thrilled that the entire Addams family will be enrolling in Nevermore Academy this season along with a dream cast of icons and new faces,” showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar said in a statement to Netflix. For Pugsley, this makes sense, but will Morticia and Gomez be teachers or students? Are they going for graduate degrees, perhaps?
Image: Netflix
Who’s not coming back?
Even though Tyler was carted off the jail at the end of season 1, Doohan is still a series regular — clearly there’s some unfinished business! But Jamie McShane, who played his father, will only appear in a few episodes. In addition, Percy Hynes White who played the other bland cute boy Xavier, won’t be returning. This coincides with sexual assault allegations that led to a campaign to remove him from the show.
Anyone new in the Wednesday season 2 cast?
You know it! Some big names are joining the new season of Wednesday as series regulars. According to Netflix Steve Buscemi (Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams) will play a character named Barry Dort and Billie Piper (Doctor Who) will play someone named Capri. Other actors joining as series regulars include Evie Templeton (Return to Silent Hill), Owen Painter (The Handmaid’s Tale), and Noah Taylor (Park Avenue), though their roles are still undisclosed.
Additionally, we’ve got some interesting guest stars, including Christopher Lloyd, who played Uncle Fester in the 1990s Addams Family movies. Last season Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in those movies, was the show’s big bad villain, so it’ll be interesting to see what Lloyd’s involvement is. Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) will play someone named Dr. Fairburn and Joanna Lumley will play the Addams family Grandma. Other guest stars include , Frances O’Connor (The Missing), Haley Joel Osment (The Kominsky Method), Heather Matarazzo (The Princess Diaries) and Joonas Suotamo.
When is season 2 coming out?
Filming began in May 2024, so at the very earliest, Wednesday season 2 wouldn’t come out till late this year. But early 2025 is more likely.
Where can I watch more Wednesday in the interim?
The first season is on Netflix, but if that’s not enough, you can also check out Christina Ricci’s Wednesdayin the 1990s movies, which are both currently streaming on Pluto TV. This will especially prime you for whatever role it is that Christopher Lloyd has in the new season. The 1964 sitcom is also streaming on Pluto TV. Oh, and there’s the 2019 animated movie, but we don’t really talk about that here.
Discworld is one of those strange series that you simply cannot explain to somebody who has not read it before. Sir Terry Pratchett was the greatest fantasy writer of his time, perhaps of all time, and reading his books while I was homeless was one of the few things that brought me enough joy to keep going some days.
This console generation has been pretty short of “next-gen moments” — those dazzling, techy epiphanies when you see a game do things that were inconceivable on earlier hardware. You can make a case for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s lightning-fast loading or Starfield’s potato physics, but there have been relatively few instances where you can watch the future arrive in real time.
There are a few reasons for this. One is that console supply issues and pandemic-driven development delays led to an unusually long cross-generational phase. Until last year, most games were still being released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as their successors. Another is that Unreal Engine 5, the latest iteration of Epic Games’ ubiquitous graphics engine, lagged a little behind the new console generation, and large-scale UE5 productions have been slow to appear, with a couple of exceptions.
All of this is why I wasn’t expecting to experience a next-gen moment when I traveled to Cambridge, U.K., to visit the Ninja Theory studio and play Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. But I got one. It’s an astonishingly lifelike narrative action game that applies UE5’s tech, Microsoft’s resources (the company owns Ninja Theory), and the unique processes of a smallish team of technical artists to create something at once grounded and vividly hyperreal. There’s nothing else quite like it.
This won’t come as a total surprise if you played 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Both Hellblade games blend horrific, quasi-mythological action with a realistic approach to the psychology of their heroine, Senua, an eighth-century Celtic warrior with psychosis. Both games have a photoreal visual style with heavy emphasis on performance capture — an area Ninja Theory has specialized in since collaborating with Andy Serkis on its 2007 action game Heavenly Sword.
Quite a lot has changed for Ninja Theory since 2017, however. In 2018, the studio was acquired by Microsoft. It hasn’t grown much since — with 100 people, around 80 of whom are working on Hellblade 2, this remains a modestly sized team — but Microsoft’s investment is evident in beautiful new offices with a large, dedicated motion capture studio (and, at the insistence of some extremely British local planning regulations, an in-house pub). On my visit, there was no sign or mention of Ninja Theory’s flamboyant founder and Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades. An Xbox spokesperson later confirmed to Polygon that he is no longer with the studio. Antoniades was involved in Hellblade 2 in the early stages, but the game now has a trio of creative leads: environment art director Dan Attwell, visual effects director Mark Slater-Tunstill, and audio director David Garcia.
You would expect a dedication to craft in any game led by three technical artists, but that still wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary lengths Ninja Theory is going to in its pursuit of realism. In Hellblade 2, Senua journeys to Iceland on the hunt for Norse slavers who are decimating her community in the northern British Isles. As press toured the studio, Attwell explained that the route of her adventure had been plotted in the real world, and locations were captured using a mixture of satellite imaging, drone footage, procedural generation, and photogrammetry. The team spent weeks on location in Iceland, studying the landscape, photographing rocks, and piloting drones. They also studied building techniques of the time and virtually constructed doors out of 3D-scanned planks of wood, rather than modeling them. They even made their own rough wood carvings and scanned them in.
Character art director Dan Crossland showed us real costumes that had been made to fit the actors by a London-based costume designer using period-appropriate techniques, and then scanned in by the studio. Behind Crossland’s desk there was a mannequin plastered in mesh, putty, feathers, and deconstructed scraps of fabric — a spooky, hand-sculpted prototype enemy design.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
Over in the combat team’s section, principal action designer Benoit Macon, a very tall and ebullient Frenchman, explained that the game’s fight sequences weren’t traditionally animated, but 100% mo-capped. I watched stunt professionals act out finishing moves on the performance capture stage while animation director Guy Midgley shot them in a close, roving handheld style, using a phone in a lightweight rig.
The playable results of this fully mo-capped fighting system are quite unique. Combat in Hellblade 2 is one on one only, slow-paced, and very brutal. In the fight scenes of the demo I played — which also featured pattern-spotting puzzles and some atmospheric, grueling traversal — there’s a heightened sense of threat as Senua faces hulking and aggressive opponents, and the characters loom large in the unusually tight camera angles. This might not be the over-the-top combat of DmC: Devil May Cry, but it’s still very effective.
In a small, soundproofed studio on the top floor, Garcia worked with the two voice actors playing the Furies, which is how Senua thinks of the voices in her head who keep up a constant commentary on the action and her state of mind. (As with the first game, scriptwriter Lara Derham has worked with psychology professor Paul Fletcher and with people who have experienced psychosis on the portrayal of the condition’s effects.) The actors prowled around a binaural microphone — essentially a mannequin head with microphones for ears — hissing and murmuring their lines as if at Senua herself. Garcia, a Spaniard with an infectious sense of wonder, is called a “genius” by his co-workers. His growling, chattering soundscapes are players’ principal point of access into Senua’s state of mind, and they’re as overwhelming now as they were in 2017.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
The lengths to which Ninja Theory is going to ground this digital video gamein physical reality might seem quixotic — even contradictory — but the proof is in the playing. The game, which I played on Xbox Series X, looks stunning, whether it’s rendering the black, smoking slopes of an Icelandic volcano or the pale, haunted eyes of Senua performer Melina Juergens. But beyond that, Hellblade 2 has a tactile immediacy that seems to operate at an almost subconscious level. Ninja Theory’s artists are seeking an emotional connection with the player that, they believe, can only form if the player thinks that what they are seeing is real.
“I think that the human mind does [a thing where] you think you know what something looks like, but then actually, when you look at what that thing is, in reality there’s way more chaos in it. It’s not quite the same as what you picture in your head,” Slater-Tunstill said. “If you were just sculpting off the top of your head, the environments or the characters or whatever, it just is going to lose some of that nature, some of that chaos.”
Attwell said that Unreal Engine 5 has made this realist approach more more achievable, both because of the level of fidelity available in the engine’s Nanite geometry system, and because “the turnaround between scanning the thing and putting it in the level is drastically cut, and you can spend that time finessing.”
“You can think more about the composition,” Slater-Tunstill agreed. “And with the kind of lighting volumetrics we can now do, everything just beds in much better. It’s more believable.”
Overall, the sense from the Ninja Theory team is that UE5 has removed a lot of barriers for video game artists, and that players are only just starting to see the results. “It feels like the graphical leap that we’ve managed with this is like… We’re on the trajectory we wanted,” Attwell said.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
You only need to lay eyes on Hellblade 2 briefly to understand that you’re seeing the next evolution of game technology. It’s not just the engine, though — there are a bunch of factors aligning to make Hellblade 2 a tech showcase. For one, the game design is extremely focused. This isn’t some wild open-world simulation; it’s a linear, narrative-first action game. As an Xbox first-party studio, Ninja Theory has the luxury of building for fewer formats. Also, it’s been given the time to experiment. Touring the studio, Microsoft’s investment in Ninja Theory starts to make a lot of sense. The tech giant hasn’t just acquired a boutique developer, but also an R&D unit that explores the technical and artistic frontiers of a specific game-making process.
The result is a game made with an unusual degree of focus. Hellblade 2 won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste with its slow pace, deliberate inputs, and highly scripted, cinematic presentation. It struck me as a modern successor to something like the 1983 interactive animation Dragon’s Lair. As intense and dramatic as the section I played was, it remains to be seen whether the game’s story — a more outward journey for a more mentally balanced Senua — can connect as deeply as Hellblade’s trip into her darkest fears. But there’s no doubting the craft on display, or the immersive sense of presence this game has. It may be a sequel, but it feels like the start of something — like a true next-gen experience should.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released May 21 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.
For a little while, it seemed like The Walking Dead was eager to use its popularity as a platform to create an entire universe of zombified television. First, there was the spinoff/prequel Fear the Walking Dead, followed by The Walking Dead: World Beyond and then the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. Each one intermingled with the original show, but for the most part, they were intent on telling their own stories. Fast-forward to 2024, and the former two series have ended, while Tales got an order for another season last year with no further news.
This leaves us with the question: What do we want out of The Walking Dead now? Because it seems like whatever plans AMC had for a sprawling empire have been whittled back down to focusing on what the central characters of the main show have been up to. Dead City looks at Negan and Maggie, Daryl Dixonis concerned with the titular badass, and The Ones Who Live reunites Rick and Michonne, the franchise’s power couple who previously departed The Walking Dead, leaving it to end in a rudderless, underwhelming fashion. Is the future of The Walking Dead… The Walking Dead divided into three shows?
If it’s a ploy to regain a dwindling audience, it makes sense. At its height, The Walking Dead was a ratings behemoth. Its peers in the “prestige TV” boom of the 2010s might have eaten its lunch in terms of sustained critical appraisal, but at its height, the fifth-season premiere scored 17.29 million viewers. To put that in perspective, the finale of Breaking Bad had 10.28 million.
Going back to the “glory days” with a handful of the characters most associated with them seems to be a good idea in perhaps luring back the viewers that absconded from the show due to its exhausting length or unpopular creative decisions. The debut of The Ones Who Livenabbed 3 million viewers, a far cry from the massive numbers it once landed a decade ago, even considering TV viewership being down in general. However, it’s a marked improvement from the relatively measly audience of the final season. And AMC is happy with the show’s performance on its streaming service, AMC Plus.
As a way to reignite its narrative potency, it’s a more questionable direction. Dead City, in particular, suffers from a “been there, done that” feeling — didn’t Maggie already sort of forgive Negan for whacking her beloved Glenn with a baseball bat back in the original? Do we really need another series where they have to play an apocalyptic odd couple and go through the same emotional arc again?
Photo: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC
Photo: Peter Kramer/AMC
Image: AMC
Daryl Dixon thrives on Norman Reedus’ bottomless well of likability and an engaging atmosphere. And with best pal Carol co-headlining the upcoming season 2 of his spinoff, we’re likely to get something at least somewhat watchable. However, with franchise overseer Scott Gimple seemingly set on one day reuniting the gang, will it eventually feel like Daryl ’n’ Carol are just spinning their (motorcycle) wheels until we can get the Avengers of Walking Dead side projects? And aren’t all of these Walking Dead spinoff leads coming together just… The Walking Dead?
And considering that The Walking Dead ended with a look toward the future, what wider meaning is there for them to reunite aside from a nostalgic group hug? The zombies have become a bit of an afterthought as the world moves toward rebuilding itself, and they mostly serve as a fleshy obstacle course in 2024. There is always some terrific gruesomeness to be mined from The Walking Dead’s consistently stellar makeup and practical effects, but piecing the cast back together for the sole purpose of seeing them beside one another, squaring off against undead hordes, feels a little empty. The Walking Dead managed to shock us in its early years thanks to its commitment to going the distance in showing that no one is safe from the zombies, but a reunion tour of all the people that were clearly safe misunderstands the “glory years” that the creators want to return to.
Luckily, The Ones Who Live is tapping into some much-needed emotional territory and making it seem like the event that it wants to be (even if the zombie horror aspect has long since rotted). Rick Grimes, now an established soldier of the paramilitary group CRM, must reconcile with his guilt and survival instincts when Michonne, his sword-wielding partner and the mother of his youngest child, comes back into his life to corral him and bring him home. It’s something that Grimes wrestles with, as heading off might put him and the people he loves in the line of fire from the CRM, who has some serious dirt on him and the community he left behind.
“What We,” the fourth episode of the new show, might be one of the best in the franchise’s history that doesn’t focus on undead bloodshed. A good chunk of it is devoted to Rick and Michonne arguing and finally getting to reflect upon the world-weariness that an experience like this would instill. In particular, Rick finds it hard to return to his family because of what happened with his late son Carl, and The Ones Who Live gives him a chance to properly grieve for the ones who don’t. He doesn’t want anyone to have to go through that kind of pain again, nor does he believe that he’d be able to. They’d all be much safer if he bore the weight of their tragedy alone. It is misguided patriarchal martyrdom, but it makes sense for Rick.
Photo: Gene Page/AMC
Of course, Michonne is able to convince him of the fact that he’s Rick Grimes, that he shouldn’t give up, that there’s more out there for the pair, etc. But Rick Grimes being reduced to an anxious, melancholy shell of a man and giving him an ultimate redemption makes The Ones Who Live feel like a fitting narrative follow-up to The Walking Dead and the closest thing the show has gotten to a proper epilogue. It could have very easily been a hollow attempt to draw in the unconvinced crowd with “Hey, it’s that sheriff guy that you liked!” Instead, it competently grapples with Rick as a character that’s been through so much trauma rather than Rick as a returning action hero.
On a wider level, The Ones Who Live can also serve as a fitting cap to the escalating threats of the show. The “We are the Walking Dead” mindset, where the physical menace of the zombie (amid a pop culture saturation of zombie media at the time) was no match for the terrifying specter of your fellow man, produced bad guys like the unstable Governor, the brutal Negan, and a host of other antagonists that ranged from wannabe cults to cannibals. The CRM, an army equipped with massive firepower that is willing to adjust the world to its specific definition of law by force, is the logical “final boss” of The Walking Dead. By fighting back against them, Rick and Michonne aren’t just taking on a rival group but helping decide the order of the future.
Where this leaves the end goal of The Walking Dead remains to be seen. It could all be pointing toward some eventual grand reunion, given that the original show concluded with Michonne and Daryl both running off to find Rick. But the first seasons of both Dead City and Daryl Dixon end with the shows spiraling off further into their own specific plots, so it will be a while before the gang gets back together again.
Until then, The Walking Dead franchise is in, essentially, its DLC era. What you want out of The Walking Dead depends on how attached you are to certain characters, and luckily, there’s now DLC side quests available for a few of them. It remains to be seen if these threads will ever interconnect again (now that every actor is on their own show, AMC would also have to deal with a truckload of contractual issues if it wanted to then push them back into the same series), so until then, The Walking Dead survives entirely on audience interest in the solo exploits of characters it worked to build together. With 11 seasons of the main show, AMC did plenty of asking for you to wait for plots to be resolved and character arcs to be fulfilled. And now, with the hint of bigger things to come and a host of orbiting spinoffs, it’s asking you to wait just a little while longer. For what? We’ll just have to see.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is now streaming on AMC Plus.
Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss Peacock’s strong start to 2024 and the prospect of a possible joint venture or “commercial partnership” with Paramount+, as reported by The Wall Street Journal late last week. They run through the logistics of a merger, the curious timing of the Journal’s story, the critical role live sports rights play, Warren Buffett’s sale of a third of his stake in Paramount Global, and who is most to blame for Paramount’s struggles. Matt finishes the show with a prediction about John Oliver’s HBO show, Last Week Tonight.
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.
Juliet is back with What’s Up Thursday, where she goes over what’s up in Bachelor Nation, on Bachelor Reddit, and in the broader world of reality TV. This week, Juliet discusses Daisy’s Lyme disease, Lauren’s cake moment, and Jason Tartick’s new book. She also discusses Bachelor Reddit comments, and other reality shows including Traitors, Love Is Blind, and Love Island All-Stars.
Diablo 4 season 3 is going from medieval horror to medieval… machinery? The latest season for Diablo 4 adds robots called constructs, vaults to plunder, and a little buddy that follows you around as a companion.
Here’s when Diablo 4 season 3 starts in your time zone, and details on what to expect from Diablo 4 season 3.
What time does Diablo 4 season 3 start?
Diablo 4 season 3 starts at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday, Jan. 23, according to a Blizzard blog post. Here’s when that is in your time zone:
10 a.m. PT for the West Coast of North America
1 p.m. ET for the East Coast of North America
6 p.m. GMT for the U.K.
7 p.m. CET for Western Europe/Paris
3 a.m. JST on Jan. 24 for Tokyo
Note, however, that Diablo 4 season 2 was delayed by a few hours due to a problem with the update. Blizzard quickly fixed the issue and launched Season of Blood that same afternoon. If Diablo 4 season 3 is similarly delayed, we’ll update this post with the season’s new release window.
What’s new in Diablo 4 season 3?
Much like the seasons before it, Season of the Construct is all about adding new items, activities, and temporary features to Diablo 4. And while this isn’t a full expansion (that’s not coming until later this year, so don’t expect a new region or class just yet), it looks like there’s still plenty of stuff to tuck into with Diablo 4’s first robo-season:
Zoltun Kulle — that jerk from Diablo 3 and one of the first Horadrim — and his infernal machines will be the focus of a new questline
Season of the Construct adds Diablo 4’s first ever companion: a customizable little robot pal called the Seneschal
Vaults are a new activity where you can dive in and attempt to avoid traps for a chance at some bonus loot
Take on new construct enemies in a new outdoor activity: Arcane Tremors
Helltides are now always available, with only a short, five minute break between runs — one of many quality of life changes this season
Leaderboards and the new, weekly Gauntlet dungeon come to Diablo 4 in February.
The Seasonal Realm will once again feature both a free and paid version of the battle pass, each granting various cosmetics.
Final Fantasy 14’s Endwalker patch cycle is coming to a close, but there’s still a bit more in an upcoming patch. Patch 6.55 will be the last update for Endwalker that includes story or any substantial content and it launches soon.
Below, we explain the launch time for FFXIV’s patch 6.55 update and talk a little bit about what the update will have.
When does FFXIV patch 6.55 release and come back online?
FFXIV’s patch 6.55 will be playable starting at these times on Tuesday, Jan. 16:
2 a.m. PST for the West Coast of North America
5 a.m. EST for the East Coast of North America
10 a.m. GMT for the U.K.
11 a.m. CET for west mainland Europe
7 p.m. JST in Japan
Maintenance for the game will start 24 hours before this — so at the same times above on Monday, Jan. 15.
That said, since the game is going to go down on Monday morning before the patch is live, you should make sure you have all your weeklies done ahead of time. If you’ve been putting your Thaleia clear off to the last second, then go run it now before you miss out on that sweet coin.
What content is going to be in FFXIV patch 6.55?
Patch 6.55 will contain the last bits of content for the Endwalker patch cycle. It’ll have a short bit of main scenario quest that’ll show some set-up for the upcoming Dawntrail expansion.
There’ll also be new additions to the Tataru’s Grand Endeavor side quest line, a new trial, and new Hildebrand quests. Since there’ll be more Hildebrand, that naturally also means that there will be a new step to complete for your Manderville weapon. There will also be allied tribe quests, a special quest line you can only complete if you maxed out reputation on the Endwalker tribes (Arkasodara, Omicron, and Loporrits).
There will be some tiny updates to come between 6.55 and Dawntrail, including the crossover event for Final Fantasy 16. Based on previous expansion patch cycles, we’ll also get drop restrictions for Thaleia and the last tier of Pandaemonium removed in future small patches as well. These small patches will likely also have quality-of-life changes and bug fixes, but no big content additions beyond that.
Erika and Steven catch up with each other about their holidays, including everything they watched, and talk about what TV, movies, music, etc. they’re excited for in 2024. Then they do some personal ins/outs for the new year.
If you want to share any culture you’re excited to experience in 2024 or your ins/outs for this year, email us at whataboutyourfriendspod@gmail.com.
Hosts: Erika Ramirez and Steven Othello Producer: Sasha Ashall
Echo season 1 ends with a bang, with Echo (Alaqua Cox) going up against Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) again after confronting him in Hawkeye. Along the way, she reconnected with her roots, her family, and her sense of self, putting her on the track to becoming a hero.
It’s enough to make you wonder where Echo might show up next. So far, Echo has only appeared in Hawkeye and Echo, but with the MCU branching farther than ever, it seems like there are a lot of places a hothead superhero could pop up — including, potentially, a second season of her own show?
Here’s everything we know about Marvel’s future plans for Echo and Echo:
Is there going to be an Echo season 2?
As of this writing, Disney hasn’t confirmed if there will be a season 2 of Echo. For now, the show is being billed as a miniseries, just like Hawkeye before it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the show won’t be coming back.
When will Echo show up next in the MCU?
So far, neither Alaqua Cox nor Echo have been confirmed to show up anywhere else in the MCU. But there is a Daredevil show in the works (and in the reworks) that seems like an opportunity for her; after all, they had a pretty great fight in Echo.
And if Hawkeye is any indication, this doesn’t have to be the end for Cox’s Maya Lopez. Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop showed up in a teaser scene at the end of The Marvels as Hawkeye’s heir apparent, meaning Echo could find an analogous slot somewhere in the MCU. (Even if, for now, it’s still unclear what Kate will be doing as part of Kamala’s team.)
When might Echo season 2 debut on Disney Plus (or Hulu)?
If there is an Echo season 2, it might be a while before it actually comes out. Echo was first announced in November 2021, right after Cox showed up as Echo in Hawkeye. With the show only getting released some two years later, the earliest we’re likely to see Echo season 2 would be 2026.
What does this mean for the Marvel Spotlight?
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
Echo was a unique release for Marvel, not just because it was the first one to drop on Hulu (and in full) instead of Disney Plus. It was also the first entry in the new Marvel Spotlight umbrella, something Echo producer Richie Palmer says Echo was the right show at the right time to be.
“I think it was us saying, You know what? Echo wants to be its own thing. So let’s allow it to be,” Palmer tells Polygon. “We wanted to figure out, when we were bringing Maya Lopez to life, how do we honor that aspect of the comics? How do we keep it dark and gritty and separated from everything else that was going on?”
“And then Kevin [Feige] came in, as we were editing the show, and we were seeing how dark we were pushing it. And he was saying, Don’t hold back on the violence, don’t hold back on the grit and this grounded tone, it’s what’s making this show so unique and special. So Marvel Spotlight kind of came from Kevin.”
With Spotlight offerings being framed as an opportunity for more casual viewing, even sans any other MCU knowledge, it’s unclear if shows like Echo are being designed (or promised, or even considered for) a second season.
The Midnight Boys are here to ring in the new year and give you their full-on impressions of Marvel’s What If…? Season 2 (08:04). Then, they give out their superlative awards for the best that season had to offer, including Best Episode (39:18). Later, they offer up their big predictions in fandom for 2024 and see who will be right in the new year (73:49).
Hosts: Charles Holmes, Van Lathan, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
The people behind Fortnite, the popular build-and-battle-royale game, have released a new, kid-friendly take on the game: Lego Fortnite. The game uses Lego bricks and characters to give players a different kind of experience that focuses on long-term survival, crafting, building, and online cooperation with friends. It’s a lot like another survival/crafting game, Minecraft, but powered by Lego bricks and familiar characters.
Lego Fortnite was a hit from day one; Millions of players are building and battling monsters together in online worlds full of characters to meet, creatures to slay, and mysteries to discover. It’s also free (unlike Minecraft), and co-developers Epic Games and The Lego Group have gone to great lengths to make it safe for kids to enjoy.
Here’s a quick rundown of what Lego Fortnite is, where to download it, and everything else you should need to know about Fortnite’s popular new spinoff.
What is Lego Fortnite?
While the popular version of Fortnite is a battle royale game where players fight each other to be the last player standing, Lego Fortnite isn’t a shooter or a battle royale at all. It’s a game of exploration, building with Lego bricks, and crafting items (like pickaxes and torches).
In Survival mode, players take on the role of a little Lego hero character. They’ll gather resources, build structures, tools, and weapons, and explore a huge open world. They’ll also interact with other Lego characters who will join their group and help them out with missions. There’s some combat too, but it’s mainly against Lego versions of skeletons, wolves, spiders, and other beasts. This mode is called Survival because players have to gather and craft what they need: food to stave off hunger, wood to build structures and craft tools, and other elements to create more complex items.
There’s also a non-violent Sandbox mode, where players can simply build whatever they want with Lego bricks to get creative and explore the world freely.
How to download Lego Fortnite
Playing and downloading Lego Fortnite is free. You’ll need an Epic Games account to play, which is also free. All you have to do is download the main Fortnite game client, and you’ll find Lego Fortnite on the main screen of a menu that looks like a Netflix library screen.
On game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X, you can download Fortnite by searching each platform’s store, or by using the links below from a web browser:
Note that if you find and download Lego Fortnite from one of the above online stores, you’re actually downloading the full Fortnite game client, through which you can play Lego Fortnite. Confusing, yes, but at least everything’s centralized.
How to get and activate an Epic Games account
To play Lego Fortnite (or any Fortnite game), you’ll need an Epic Games account. You can sign up for one using an email address at the Epic Games website, use an existing login from Apple, Facebook, Lego.com, or Google, or log in with an existing account from Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, or Steam.
You can also create a version of that account called a Cabined Account, which is intended for children 13 years old or younger. Players with Cabined Accounts can play Lego Fortnite, but they won’t be able to access features like voice chat or make in-game purchases with money until their parent or guardian provides consent. You can read more about parental controls in Fortnite games at Epic’s website.
How V-Bucks work with Lego Fortnite (and how to redeem them)
Epic Games’ virtual currency for Fortnite, known as V-Bucks, works in the core version of Fortnite and new experiences like Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival. V-Bucks can be spent on in-game items, like outfits and other virtual items.
If you (or your child) have spent V-Bucks in Fortnite battle royale, most of the cosmetics in that game carry over to Lego Fortnite. There are some exceptions, like characters in Fortnite who have guns as part of their design, but many cosmetics tied to a core Fortnite account can be used across games.
Lego Fortnite multiplayer and playing with friends
You can play Lego Fortnite with friends online. Up to eight players can play together cooperatively in the same game world.
But you can’t play Lego Fortnite (yet) in split-screen mode on the same platform. If you have multiple kids playing Lego Fortnite, they’ll all need their own console, tablet, or PC to play. Lego Fortnite supports cross-play across all platforms, so players on Switch, for example, can play with their friends on PlayStation 5, Android, PC, and anywhere else Fortnite is available.
Do you need a separate online subscription to play Lego Fortnite?
Lego Fortnite, like other Fortnite games, does not require an online subscription like Nintendo Switch Online, PlayStation Plus, or Xbox Live Gold/Xbox Game Pass to play.
Guides for Lego Fortnite
Lego Fortnite is new, but already pretty big. Here’s how to get started, with some answers to a few tricky questions:
Blue Eye Samurai is coming back for a second season at Netflix. The series debuted on Nov. 3, and got renewed a few weeks later. Netflix announced the second season on Monday with a short video.
The show’s renewal comes as no surprise considering it’s popularity. It spent several weeks in Netflix’s top 10, and made several best-of-the-year lists, including the number two spot on Polygon’s own list. On top of that, the show’s first season ends with clear intention for another season. But Netflix didn’t announce much more about what we can expect from season 2, other than that it’s on the way. So, here’s everything we know about the next season of Blue Eye Samurai:
[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for Blue Eye Samurai season 1.]
Is Blue Eye Samurai getting more seasons?
We know for sure that a second season is on the way, but Netflix’s announcement didn’t come with the promise of more than that. While some animated series often get picked up for at least a season or two, it seems we’ll have to wait a while until we find out just how long Mizu’s journey may stretch on for.
When will Blue Eye Samurai season 2 release?
There’s no good way to tell, but the first season was greenlit back in 2020. With pandemic conditions making production harder, and the general difficulty of starting up an animated project, it’s likely we won’t have to wait a full three years before the next season, but turning around another batch of episodes next year would be pretty daunting too. With that in mind, it seems like 2025 is the most likely date for new episodes of the show to arrive.
What will season 2 of Blue Eye Samurai be about?
This one the show is very clear about: We know that Mizu is heading off of London, ready to make her way through a foreign land, which is likely to come with quite a bit of culture shock, in hopes of killing her last two targets. Meanwhile, Akemi is heading to the palace to find whatever influence she can over the future of Japan, while Ringo seems to have found a new master.
All of this should make for a much bigger, more expansive second season, but also one that broadens the show in exciting new ways.
Who will be in the cast for Blue Eye Samurai season 2
Along with the main cast of the first season, who all seem likely to return, Netflix hasn’t made any announcement of additions for season 2. Although, considering the talent that’s involved in the show already, it’s possible some pretty big names could get onboard as the show heads to London.
Is there anything similar to Blue Eye Samurai I can watch while I wait for season 2?
Weirdly enough there is, though we can’t promise it will be good just yet. FX’s new series Shogun is about an Australian who journeys to Japan and becomes a samurai, and its first trailer looks pretty good. The series is set to debut in February and will probably scratch a similar itch to Blue Eye.
If even waiting a few months feels like too much for you, there’s also Vinland Saga, an anime about a Viking seeking revenge for his slain father until he finds out that revenge is much more complicated than he thought.
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