In addition, Mohan Kapur reprises his MCU role as Yusuf Khan, while Kamar de los Reyes plays Hector Ayala/White Tiger. The cast also includes Michael Gandolfini, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Jeremy Earl, and Lou Taylor Pucci.
The trailer mostly consists of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk (now the mayor) having a tense conversation in a diner now that they’ve both, in Fisk’s words, “come up in the world.” Their conversation is interspersed with other footage from the series, including the trademark brutal fight scenes—complete with bones breaking in various unnatural ways. And yes, we get a glimpse of a bearded Frank Castle/The Punisher in attack mode (“Frank! Would you mind putting the hatchet down?”).
Fisk insists that as mayor, his intent is to serve the city, but Matt “can’t shake the feeling that you’re gaming the system.” Matt admits he abandoned his vigilante ways after “a line was crossed.” Fisk naturally believes we all have to “come to terms with our violent nature” and insists that sometimes “peace must be broken and chaos must reign.” As for Matt, sure, he was raised a devout Catholic to believe in grace, “but I was also raised to believe in retribution.” We’re ready for another showdown between these two.
Daredevil: Born Again drops on March 4, 2025, on Disney+.
It’s just one of the many fascinating insect species featured in the second season of this NatGeo docuseries.
A female giant stag beetle Credit: National Geographic/Darlyne A. Murawski
A plucky male American stag beetle thinks he’s found a mate on a rotting old tree stump—and then realizes there’s another male eager to make the same conquest. The two beetles face off in battle, until the first manages to get enough leverage to toss his romantic rival off the stump in a deft display of insect jujitsu. It’s the first time this mating behavior has been captured on film, and the stag beetle is just one of the many fascinating insects featured in the second season of A Real Bug’s Life, a National Geographic docuseries narrated by Awkwafina.
The genesis for the docuseries lies in a past rumored sequel to Pixar’s 1998 animated film A Bug’s Life, which celebrated its 25th anniversary two years ago. That inspired producer Bill Markham, among others, to pitch a documentary series on a real bug’s life to National Geographic. “It was the quickest commission ever,” Markham told Ars last year. “It was such a good idea, to film bugs in an entertaining family way with Pixar sensibilities.” And thanks to the advent of new technologies—photogrammetry, probe and microscope lenses, racing drones, ultra-high-speed camera—plus a handful of skilled “bug wranglers,” the team was able to capture the bug’s-eye view of the world beautifully.
As with the Pixar film, the bugs (and adjacent creatures) are the main characters here, from cockroaches, monarch butterflies, and praying mantises to bees, spiders, and even hermit crabs. The 10 episodes, across two seasons, tell their stories as they struggle to survive in their respective habitats, capturing entire ecosystems in the process: city streets, a farm, the rainforest, a Texas backyard, and the African savannah, for example. Highlights from S1 included the first footage of cockroach egg casings hatching; wrangling army ants on location in a Costa Rica rainforest; and the harrowing adventures of a tiny jumping spider navigating the mean streets of New York City.
Looking for love
A luna moth perched on a twig. National Geographic/Nathan Small
S2 takes viewers to Malaysia’s tropical beaches, the wetlands of Derbyshire in England, and the forests of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains. Among the footage highlights: Malaysian tiger beetles, who can run so fast they temporarily are unable to see; a young female hermit crab’s hunt for a bigger shell; and tiny peacock spiders hatching Down Under. There is also a special behind-the-scenes look for those viewers keen to learn more about how the episodes were filmed, involving 130 different species across six continents. Per the official synopsis:
A Real Bug’s Life is back for a thrilling second season that’s bolder than ever. Now, thanks to new cutting-edge filming technology, we are able to follow the incredible stories of the tiny heroes living in this hidden world, from the fast-legged tiger beetle escaping the heat of Borneo’s beaches to the magical metamorphosis of a damselfly on a British pond to the Smoky Mountain luna moth whose quest is to grow wings, find love and pass on his genes all in one short night. Join our witty guide, Awkwafina, on new bug journeys full of more mind-blowing behaviors and larger-than-life characters.
Entomologist Michael Carr, an environmental compliance officer for Santa Fe County in New Mexico, served as a field consultant for the “Love in the Forest” episode, which focuses on the hunt for mates by a luna moth, a firefly, and an American stag beetle. The latter species is Carr’s specialty, ever since he worked at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History and realized the beetles flourished near where he grew up in Virginia. Since stag beetles are something of a niche species, NatGeo naturally tapped Carr as its field expert to help them find and film the insects in the Smoky Mountains. To do so, Carr set up a mercury vapor lamp on a tripod—”old style warehouse lights that take a little time to charge up,” which just happen to emit frequencies of light that attract different insect species.
Behind the scenes
Beetle expert Michael Carr and shooting researcher Katherine Hannaford film a stag beetle at night. National Geographic/Tom Oldridge
Stag beetles are saprocylic insects, according to Carr, so they seek out decaying wood and fungal communities. Males can fly as high as 30 feet to reach tree canopies, while the females can dig down to between 1 and 3 meters to lay their eggs in wood. Much of the stag beetle’s lifecycle is spent underground as a white grub molting into larger and larger forms before hatching in two to three years during the summer. Once their exoskeletons harden, they fly off to find mates and reproduce as quickly as possible. And if another male happens to get in their way, they’re quite prepared to do battle to win at love.
Stag beetles might be his specialty, but Carr found the fireflies also featured in that episode to be a particular highlight. “I grew up in rural Virginia,” Carr told Ars. “There was always fireflies, but I’d never seen anything like that until I was there on site. I did not realize, even though I’d grown up in the woods surrounded by fireflies, that, ‘Oh, the ones that are twinkling at the top, that’s one species. The ones in the middle that are doing a soft glow, that’s a different species.'”
And Carr was as surprised and fascinated as any newbie to learn about the “femme fatale” firefly: a species in which the female mimics the blinking patterns of other species of firefly, luring unsuspecting males to their deaths. The footage captured by the NatGeo crew includes a hair-raising segment where this femme fatale opts not to wait for her prey to come to her. A tasty male firefly has been caught in a spider’s web, and our daring, hungry lady flies right into the web to steal the prey:
A femme fatale firefly steals prey from a rival spider’s web.
Many people have a natural aversion to insects; Carr hopes that inventive docuseries like A Real Bug’s Life can help counter those negative perceptions by featuring some lesser-loved insects in anthropomorphized narratives—like the cockroaches and fire ants featured in S1. “[The series] did an amazing job of showing how something at that scale lives its life, and how that’s almost got a parallel to how we can live our life,” he said. “When you can get your mindset down to such a small scale and not just see them as moving dots on the ground and you see their eyes and you see how they move and how they behave and how they interact with each other, you get a little bit more appreciation for ants as a living organism.”
“By showcasing some of the bigger interesting insects like the femme fatale firefly or the big chivalrous stag beetle fighting over each other, or the dung beetle getting stomped by an elephant—those are some pretty amazing just examples of the biodiversity and breadth of insect life,” said Carr. “People don’t need to love insects. If they can, just, have some new modicum of respect, that’s good enough to change perspectives.”
The second season of A Real Bug’s Life premieres on January 15, 2025, on Disney+.
Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Spoilers ahead! This imaginative sequel to WandaVision is a reminder of just how good the MCU can be.
Kathryn Hahn stars as Agatha Harkness, reprising her WandaVision role. Credit: Disney+
The MCU’s foray into streaming television has produced mixed results, but one of my favorites was the weirdly inventive, oh-so-meta WandaVision. I’m happy to report that the spinoff sequel, Agatha All Along, taps into that same offbeat creativity, giving us a welcome reminder of just how good the MCU can be when it’s firing on all storytelling cylinders.
(Spoilers below, including for WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness. We’ll give you another heads up when major spoilers for Agatha All Along are imminent.)
The true identity of nosy next-door neighbor Agnes—played to perfection by Kathryn Hahn—was the big reveal of 2021’s WandaVision, even inspiring a jingle that went viral. Agnes turned out to be a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, who had studied magic for centuries and was just dying to learn the source of Wanda’s incredible power. Wanda’s natural abilities were magnified by the Mind Stone, but Agatha realized that Wanda was a wielder of “chaos magic.” She was, in fact, the Scarlet Witch. In the finale, Wanda trapped Agatha in her nosy neighbor persona while releasing the rest of the town of Westview from her grief-driven Hex.
Then Wanda presumably died in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (and count me among those who thought her arc in that film was a massive fail on Marvel’s part). What happened to Agatha? It seems the hex is still in place but went a bit wonky. Agatha All Along opens like a true crime serial (cf. Mare of Easttown) with Agatha/Agnes as the rebellious, socially challenged tough detective called to investigate a body found in the woods outside Westview. Then a young Teen (Joe Locke) breaks the hex and asks her to show him the way to the legendary Witches’ Road, a journey involving a series of trials. The reward: at the end of the road, the surviving witches get what they most desire. Agatha wants her powers back and Teen—well, his motives are murkier, as is his identity, which is guarded by a sigil.
Agatha and Teen first have to assemble a coven: Lilia (Patti LuPone), a divination witch; Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata), a potions witch; Alice (Ali Ahn), a protection witch; and Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp, reprising her WandaVision role), standing in for a green witch on account of her gardening skills. They sing the spell in the form of a ballad—”Down the Witches’ Road,” a killer earworm that recurs throughout the series and is already spawning lots of cover versions. The entrance appears and the journey begins. As if the Witches’ Road weren’t dangerous enough, Agatha is also being pursued by her ex, Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), a powerful green witch, as well as the Salem Seven, vengeful wraiths of Agatha’s first coven, who (we learned in a WandaVision flashback) she killed by draining their powers when they attacked her.
Trapped in a reality-warping spell, Agatha is apparently a detective now. YouTube/Marvel Studios
A large part of WandaVision‘s delight came from the various sitcom styles featured in each episode. Agatha All Along has its own take on that approach: each trial takes on the setting and style of witches from popular culture (even the ending credits play on this). One evokes the New England WASP-y style of the 1998 film Practical Magic; another plays on Stevie Nicks’ Bohemian “white witch” phase with elements of the 1972 film Season of the Witch; yet another trial dresses the coven in high school summer camp 1980s garb.
There are nods to the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda from the Wizard of Oz, Malificent, and the hag version of Snow White’s Evil Queen in the seventh episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine.” It might just be the best single episode of all the Marvel series. This is Lilia’s trial, requiring her to use her divination skills to navigate a deadly tarot reading. Every wrong card releases one of the many swords suspended above the table.
Throughout the journey, Lilia has uttered seemingly random nonsensical things. Here we learn this is because she experiences life out of temporal sequence, moving between past and present while peering into the future. Suddenly all those earlier sprinkled breadcrumbs make sense, a testament to the skillful writing and directing—not to mention LuPone’s powerful performance. (Apparently she requested a script with the events in linear order to better evoke the necessary emotions when shooting scenes out of sequence.)
To glory at the end
(WARNING: Major spoilers below. Stop reading now if you haven’t finished the series.)
By this time the coven has already lost two members: Sharon Davis (who didn’t even last the first trial), replaced by Rio; and Alice, who tried to help Agatha when the latter was briefly possessed during a ouija board trial—only to have Agatha do what she always does and drain Alice of all her power. Lilia’s tarot reading reveals that Death has been traveling with them all along in the form of Rio. Yes, Agatha’s ex is Death, aka “the original Green Witch.” They end up losing Lilia, too; she sacrifices herself to take out the Salem Seven after letting the surviving coven members escape. We see her falling to her death and then show up as a child in her homeland for her very first divination lesson—the cycle of life and death come full circle.
Agatha likes her new look for this trial. Marvel/Disney+
We soon discover that Rio/Death is mostly there because of Teen. There was much fan speculation about his identity in the run-up to the series release and fans guessed correctly: it’s Wanda and Vision’s son, Billy Maximoff, whose soul found its way into the body of a dying teenager named William Kaplan just as Wanda’s hex was unraveling him and his twin, Tommy, out of existence. That’s why he went on the Witches’ Road: to find Tommy. But this also makes him an aberration in Death’s eyes that must be removed to restore the balance. The catch: Billy has to sacrifice himself; in this unusual case, Death cannot simply take him.
Agatha initially agrees to manipulate Billy into doing just that, then has a last-minute change of heart. She kisses Rio/Death and thereby embraces her fate, sacrificing herself so Billy can live. From the start she had a soft spot for the teen, accompanied by references to her long-dead son. The backstory is quite moving and key to Agatha’s unexpected change of heart. Her son’s fate was revealed in the finale. Death came for him when Agatha was in labor but agreed to grant her “time.” How much time? Six or seven years, during which mother and son bonded and wandered from village to village, with Agatha occasionally killing more covens to absorb their power. But Death did not forget, and with Nicky (Abel Lysenko) gone, Agatha indulged all her worst impulses.
Which brings us to the Big Twist: Agatha and her son made up the ballad of the Witches’ Road, singing it in local taverns and slowly building up the legend. The Witches’ Road never existed. Agatha used the legend over centuries to lure witches into a trap to steal their powers. That was her intention at the start of the series, too, except this time—a portal opened. Billy, it seems, inherited Wanda’s ability to warp and shape reality, even subconsciously. He wanted the road to be real and so it was.
The reveal is skillfully done and ties everything up in a nice satisfying bow, with one exception. The writers just couldn’t let Agatha go completely; she returns as a ghost and joins Billy on his search for his brother Tommy. That’s a creative choice that leaves the door open for a second season, and I strongly suspect we’ll get one. But Ghost Agatha will be a tough plot point to crack. And it rather undercuts the pivotal moment of Agatha’s sacrifice—actually doing something that doesn’t directly benefit herself. On the whole, though, Agatha All Along is marvelously entertaining, binge-able fun with just enough emotional resonance and heartbreak to add some depth.
All episodes of Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
New NatGeo documentary was directed by the same duo who brought us the Oscar-winning Free Solo.
The intact stern of the good ship Endurance. Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust
The story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s failed 1914 expedition to be the first to traverse the continent of Antarctica has long captured the popular imagination, as have the various efforts to locate the wreckage of his ship, the Endurance. The ship was finally found in 2022, nearly 107 years after it sank beneath the ice. The stories of Shackleton’s adventures and the 2022 expedition are told in parallel in Endurance, a new documentary from National Geographic now streaming on Disney+.
Endurance is directed by Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo). According to Vasarhelyi, she and Chin had been obsessed with the Shackleton story for a long time. The discovery of the shipwreck in 2022 gave them the perfect opportunity to tell the story again for a new audience, making use of all the technological advances that have been made in recent years.
“I think the Shackleton story is at the heart of the DNA of our films,” Vasarhelyi told Ars. “It’s the greatest human survival story ever. It really speaks to having these audacious objectives and dreams. When everyone tells you that you can’t, you want to do it anyway. It requires you to then have the actual courage, grit, discipline, and strength of character to see it through. Shackleton is that story. He didn’t sensibly achieve any of his goals, but through his failure he found his strength: being able to inspire the confidence of his men.”
As previously reported, Endurance set sail from Plymouth on August 6, 1914, with Shackleton joining his crew in Buenos Aires, Argentina. By the time they reached the Weddell Sea in January 1915, accumulating pack ice and strong gales slowed progress to a crawl. Endurance became completely icebound on January 24, and by mid-February, Shackleton ordered the boilers to be shut off so that the ship would drift with the ice until the weather warmed sufficiently for the pack to break up. It would be a long wait. For 10 months, the crew endured the freezing conditions. In August, ice floes pressed into the ship with such force that the ship’s decks buckled.
The ship’s structure nonetheless remained intact, but by October 25, Shackleton realized Endurance was doomed. He and his men opted to camp out on the ice some two miles (3.2 km) away, taking as many supplies as they could with them. Compacted ice and snow continued to fill the ship until a pressure wave hit on November 13, crushing the bow and splitting the main mast—all of which was captured on camera by crew photographer Frank Hurley. Another pressure wave hit in the late afternoon on November 21, lifting the ship’s stern. The ice floes parted just long enough for Endurance to finally sink into the ocean before closing again to erase any trace of the wreckage.
When the sea ice finally disintegrated in April 1916, the crew launched lifeboats and managed to reach Elephant Island five days later. Shackleton and five of his men set off for South Georgia the next month to get help—a treacherous 720-mile journey by open boat. A storm blew them off course, and they ended up landing on the unoccupied southern shore. So Shackleton left three men behind while he and a companion navigated dangerous mountain terrain to reach the whaling station at Stromness on May 2. A relief ship collected the other three men and finally arrived back on Elephant Island in August. Miraculously, Shackleton’s crew was still alive.
Icebound
Ernest Shackleton aboard the Endurance. BF/Frank Hurley
Hurley’s photographs and footage—including Hurley’s 1919 feature documentary, South—were a crucial source for Vasarhelyi and Chin, as was the use of supplementary footage from 1920s and 1930s films depicting polar expeditions. The directors even convinced the British Film Institute to let them color-treat some of the original expedition footage.
“The BFI had lovingly restored the footage and been great custodians of it, but they also had been very strict about never color treating the footage,” said Vasarhelyi. “We made our argument and it shows what great partners they were that they agreed. It’s not colorized, it’s color treated, which is a slight difference. It just added drama and personality where suddenly you could kind of see the faces in a way that you couldn’t just by adding contrast. It was just trying to animate and identify and connect audiences with this story.”
The directors filmed original re-enactments for those parts of the Shackleton story that Hurley was not on hand to visually document firsthand, because he left his equipment behind when the crew was forced to abandon the Endurance. All he had after that was a small pocket camera. And Hurley wasn’t with Shackleton for the final rescue expedition. Most of the outdoor re-enactments were shot on location in Iceland, while some interior re-enactments were shot on a soundstage in Los Angeles.
This involved shooting under harsh freezing conditions on Icelandic glaciers in January and required building replica boats and sourcing period-specific costumes. Fortunately, “Burberry, who had made the original Shackleton gear, had the pattern still and they knew what type of leather it was,” said Vasarhelyi. “And so they made us 11 costume outfits that are the real costumes. We were able to source models of the real artifacts. The ice was freezing on the Burberry coats. The [re-enactors] had 9-millimeter wetsuits inside the Burberry outfits.”
Chin and Vasarhelyi also relied on the diaries of various crew members to capture the events in the crew’s voices. “The proper way into the Shackleton stories is through the diaries because you have primary accounts from many different points of view of the same events,” said Vasarhelyi. “But how to make it feel… vivid was the question.” The answer: using AI to reproduce the voices of Shackleton and others as preserved in historical recordings. They were able to sample those original voices and build an AI model from that, applying it to present-day voices (selected for their similarities to the original voices) reading the text.
Vasarhelyi acknowledges this was a controversial choice but defends the decision because it brought another dimension of immediacy to the final documentary. “Every part of me thinks that we have to educate ourselves; we need to regulate it,” she said. “I support our guilds in trying to protect our creative rights. But in this case, it was a good tool to use. For me, there was a real goosebump moment, watching Frank Hurley’s footage and you realize that you actually are watching real events that are 110 years old that were filmed by guys who survived two years in the ice without their boat. And then you add the tools of sound design and there is just something magical about it.“
The hunt for Endurance
The S.A. Agulhas II surrounded by sea ice as it makes its way toward the coordinates to find the Endurance. Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/James Blake
People had been hunting for the wreckage of the Endurance ever since its sinking. Shackleton’s brilliant navigator, Frank Worsley, painstakingly calculated the coordinates for the position where Endurance sank using a sextant and chronometer. He recorded that position in his log book: 68°39’30” south; 52°26’30” west. But there was some question as to the accuracy of the marine chronometers he used to fix longitude, which would have affected the final coordinates.
Organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, the $10 million Endurance22 expedition team set sail from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February on board the icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II. They arrived at the search area 10 days later. To account for any navigational errors by Worsley, the search area was quite broad. The team used battery-powered submersibles to comb the ocean floor for six-hour stretches, twice a day, augmented with sonar scans of the seabed to hunt for any protrusions. There was a limited window to find the wreck before the ice froze up and trapped the S.A. Agulhas II (the expedition vessel) in the ice, much like the Endurance.
There was a moment when the 2022 expedition members thought they had succeeded, but the object glimpsed in the data turned out to be a debris field from the vessel, not the vessel itself. Still, it was a promising sign, and the expedition persevered. After all, “How can you be associated with the Shackleton story and give up?” said Vasarhelyi.
One sticking point was determining the direction of drift after the Endurance sank. The team had the idea of combining the original 1914 observations with an AI weather model created by the European Union and essentially running it backward to narrow the search further. “That’s another ‘good’ AI moment,” said Vasarhelyi. “It was one of those moments where the past spoke to the present that the whole movie turns on. But there is an argument that they could have maybe looked at this data a little earlier.”
Finally, as the search was coming down to the wire, the Endurance22 team finally found the long-sought wreckage 3,008 meters down, roughly four miles (6.4 km) south of the ship’s last recorded position. The ship was in pristine condition partly because of the lack of wood-eating microbes in those waters. In fact, the Endurance22 expedition’s exploration director, Mensun Bound, told The New York Times at the time that the shipwreck was the finest example he’s ever seen; Endurance was “in a brilliant state of preservation.”
Once the wreck had been found, the team recorded as much as they could with high-resolution cameras and other instruments. Vasarhelyi, particularly, noted the technical challenge of deploying a remote digital 4K camera with lighting at 9,800 feet underwater, and the first deployment at that depth of photogrammetric and laser technology, resulting in a stunning millimeter-scale digital reconstruction of the entire shipwreck. “The payoff [was] seeing that incredible 3D imagery from 3,000 feet below the Weddell Sea,” she said.
What lies beneath
The Endurance as discovered underwater during the 2022 expedition. Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust
Chin and Vasarhelyi skillfully wove together these parallel storylines for their documentary: Shackleton and his men struggling to survive and Expedition22 racing against time to find the wreckage of the Endurance. “Because they actually found it, the 2022 expedition gave us an amazing payoff to this story,” said Vasarhelyi. “But the stakes of both narratives are very different. One is mortal stakes, and the other one is reputational. I think that the reasons why individuals find themselves in these circumstances are really interesting because normally they’re pretty personal, and people can identify with that.”
It was challenging to decide how much to include of both narrative threads; the directors certainly had enough material for five or more hours. They chose to focus on the broad strokes augmented by personal moments of humanity and occasional humor—not to mention heartbreak, such as the moment when Shackleton and his men are forced to kill their sled dogs for food. “We had a debate about whether to include the dogs, and I was like, ‘We have to,'” said Vasarhelyi. “It shows how desperate they were, and it also is a great character moment. That must have been awful, but it was the right thing to do, almost a merciful thing instead of letting them starve to death.”
Along with the tremendous courage and perseverance displayed by Shackleton and his men, Vasarhelyi said she was impressed with their grace under pressure. “I was astonished by the civility that Shackleton and his men depended on to preserve their humanity while they are in this dire circumstance, be it [putting on] burlesque shows or listening to the gramophone,” she said. “The story has an audacity and a strength of will that is inherently human and a view of leadership that felt so daring. This is really the holy grail of survival stories.”
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Jude Law stars as Force-user Jod Na Nawood in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.
It’s no secret that the new spinoff series, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, was inspired by the 1985 film The Goonies. Executive Producer Kathleen Kennedy (who co-produced The Goonies) has publicly confirmed as much. The latest trailer really leans into that influence: The series feels like something not created specifically for kids, but rather telling a story that just happens to be about kids going on an adventure.
As previously reported, the eight-episode standalone series is set in the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Per the official premise:
Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy, crossing paths with the likes of Jod Na Nawood, the mysterious character played by [Jude] Law. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.
Jude Law leads the cast as the quick-witted and charming (per Law) “Force-user” Jod Na Nawood. Ravi Cabot-Conyers plays Wim, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays Fern, Kyriana Kratter plays KB, and Robert Timothy Smith plays Neil. Nick Frost will voice a droid named SM 33, the first mate of a spaceship called the Onyx Cylinder. The cast also includes Fred Tatasciore as Brutus, Jaleel White as Gunther, Mike Estes as Pax, Marti Matulis as Vane, and Dale Soules as Chaelt. Tunde Adebimpe and Kerry Condon will appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
And in the end, the ratings just weren’t strong enough, especially for a Star Wars project. The Acolyte garnered 11.1 million views over its first five days (and 488 million minutes viewed)—not bad, but below Ahsoka‘s 14 million views over the same period. But those numbers declined sharply over the ensuing weeks, with the finale earning the dubious distinction of posting the lowest minutes viewed (335 million) for any Star Wars series finale.
Writing at Forbes, Caroline Reid noted thatThe Acolyte was hampered from the start by a challenging post-pandemic financial environment at Disney. It was greenlit in 2021 along with many other quite costly series to boost subscriber numbers for Disney+, contributing to $11.4 billion losses in that division. Then Bob Iger returned as CEO and prioritized cutting costs. The Acolyte‘s heavy VFX needs and star casting (most notably Carrie Ann Moss and Squid Game‘s Lee Jung-jae) made it a pricey proposition, with ratings expectations to match. And apparently the show didn’t generate as much merchandising revenue as expected.
As the folks at Slash Film pointed out, The Acolyte‘s bloated production costs aren’t particularly eye-popping compared to, say, Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, which costs a whopping $58 million per episode, or Marvel’s Secret Invasion (about $35 million per episode). But it’s pricey for a Star Wars series; The Mandalorian racked up around $15 million per episode, on par with Game of Thrones. So given the flagging ratings and lukewarm reviews, the higher costs proved to be “the final nail in the coffin” for the series in the eyes of Disney, per Reid.
Enlarge/ A shot from Agatha All Along, an upcoming Disney+ exclusive.
Marvel Studios/Disney+
A leak of data from Disney points to the Disney+ streaming service making about $2.4 billion in revenue in its fiscal quarter ending on March 30. Disney doesn’t normally share how much revenue its individual streaming services generate, making this figure particularly interesting.
Leaked data
In August, Disney confirmed that it was investigating the leak of “over a terabyte of data from one of the communication systems” it uses. In a report this week, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said it looked over files leaked by a hacking group called Nullbulge that include “a range of financial and strategy information,” apparent login credentials for parts of Disney’s cloud infrastructure, and more. The leak includes over “44 million messages from Disney’s Slack workplace communications tool, upward of 18,800 spreadsheets, and at least 13,000 PDFs,” WSJ said.
“We decline to comment on unverified information The Wall Street Journal has purportedly obtained as a result of a bad actor’s illegal activity,” a Disney spokesperson told WSJ.
$2.4 billion
According to WSJ, financial information came via “documents shared by staffers that detail company operations,” adding, “It isn’t official data of the sort Disney discloses to Wall Street and might not reflect final financial performance for a given period.” That means we should take these figures with a grain of salt.
“Internal spreadsheets suggest that Disney+ generated more than $2.4 billion in revenue in the March quarter,” WSJ reported, referencing Disney’s fiscal Q2 2024. “It underscores how significant a revenue contributor Hulu is, particularly as Disney seeks to buy out Comcast’s stake in that streaming service, and as the two sides spar over its value.”
The publication noted that the $2.4 billion figure represents “about 43 percent”—42.5 percent to be more precise—of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue that Disney reported that quarter, which totaled $5,642,000,000 [PDF]. In its Q2 report, Disney put Disney+, Hulu, and Disney+ Hotstar under its DTC umbrella. DTC revenue in Q2 represented a 13 percent increase compared to the same quarter in the prior fiscal year.
Further, subscriber counts for Disney+ and Hulu increased year over year in Q2. The leaks didn’t specify how much revenue Disney’s streaming businesses made in Q3, but Disney reported that DTC revenue increased to $5.8 billion [PDF].
Right before announcing its Q3 numbers, though, Disney announced price hikes across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ by as much as 25 percent. As we wrote at the time, the price hike seemed like an attempt to push people toward bundle packages offering a combination of Disney+, Hulu, and/or ESPN+ (bundles are supposed to make subscriber churn less likely). Disney CFO Hugh Johnston tried convincing us that Disney’s streaming catalog meant that it had “earned” the streaming price hikes.
But the recently leaked numbers shed a little more light on the situation.
Kathryn Hahn reprises her WandaVision role as Agatha Harkness in the spinoff series Agatha All Along.
Disney introduced the poster and first full trailer for Agatha All Along during its annual D23 Expo earlier this month. And now Marvel Studios has dropped a one-minute teaser that has fans wildly speculating about the possible true identity of one character in particular, who might just be a future Young Avenger.
As previously reported, the nine-episode series, starring Kathryn Hahn, is one of the TV series in the MCU’s Phase Five, coming on the heels of Secret Invasion, Loki S2, What If…? S2, and Echo. Agatha All Along has been in the works since 2021, officially announced in November of that year, inspired by Hahn’s breakout performance in WandaVision as nosy neighbor Agnes—but secretly a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness who was conspiring to steal Wanda’s power. The plot twist even inspired a meta-jingle that went viral. WandaVision ended with Wanda victorious (of course) and Agatha robbed of all her powers, trapped in her nosy neighbor persona. This new series picks up where WandaVision left Agatha, and apparently we can expect a few more catchy tunes. Per the official premise:
The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…
In addition to Hahn, the cast includes Aubrey Plaza as warrior witch Rio Vidal; Joe Locke as Billy, a teenaged familiar; Patti LuPone as a 450-year-old Sicilian witch named Lilia Calderu; Sasheer Zamata as sorceress Jennifer Kale; Ali Ahn as a witch named Alice; and Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Billy’s boyfriend. Debra Jo Rupp reprises her WandaVision role as Sharon Davis (“Mrs. Hart” in the meta-sitcom), here becoming a member of Agatha’s coven. Also reprising their WandaVision roles: Emma Caulfield Ford as Sarah Proctor (aka “Dottie Jones”); David Payton as John Collins (“Herb”); David Lengel as Harold Proctor (“Phil Jones”); Asif Ali as Abilash Tandon (“Norm”); Amos Glick (pizza delivery man “Dennis”); Kate Forbes as Agatha’s mother, Evanora; and Brian Brightman as the Eastview, New Jersey, sheriff.
This latest teaser opens with Billy fanboying over Agatha, newly released from her spell, admitting that he knows “an egregious amount about you”—ever since he discovered her history during “the Salem days.” WandaVision fans will recall that’s when Agatha absorbed all the power in her then-coven, killing them in the process—including her own mother. Billy admires the fact that Agatha is the only witch to have ever survived the Witches’ Road. But when she asks him who he is, a magical script covers his mouth and garbles his answer. Naturally Agatha finds this intriguing.
Given that the squiggly script resembles an ornate “M,” (or possibly a “W” and “V”) fans are speculating that Billy is connected to Wanda Maximoff—possibly a young Billy Kaplan, who goes on to become Wiccan of the Young Avengers, one of Wanda and Vision’s twin sons. Those sons technically ceased to exist when Wanda ended her reality-warping spell in WandaVision‘s finale. But does anybody ever really cease to exist in the MCU? (The twins were eventually reborn in the comics, with Tommy becoming Speed.)
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along drop on September 18, 2024, on Disney+, with episodes airing weekly after that through November 6. It looks like dark, spooky fun, just in time for the Halloween season.
Enlarge/Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal documents the spectacular rise and fall of treasure hunter Tommy Thompson.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Many people dream of finding lost or hidden treasure, but sometimes realizing that dream turns out to be a nightmare. Such was the case for Tommy Thompson, an American treasure hunter who famously beat the odds to discover the location of the SS Central America shipwreck in 1988. It had been dubbed the “Ship of Gold” since it sank in 1857 laden with 30,000 pounds of gold bars and coins—collectively worth enough money to have some impact on the Panic of 1857 financial crisis.
Thompson and his team recovered significant amounts of gold and artifacts to great fanfare, with experts at the time suggesting the trove could be worth as much as $400 million. The euphoria proved short-lived. Thirty-nine insurance companies filed lawsuits, claiming the gold was rightfully theirs since the companies had paid damages for the lost gold back in the mid-19th century. Thompson eventually prevailed in 1996, when courts awarded him and his discovery team 92 percent of the gold they’d recovered.
But actually realizing profits from the gold proved challenging; In the end, Thompson sold the gold for just $52 million, almost all of which went to pay off the massive debt the project had accumulated over the ensuing years. So naturally, there were more lawsuits, this time from the investors who had financed Thompson’s expedition, accusing him of fraud. Thompson didn’t help his case when he went on the run in 2012 with his assistant, living off some $4 million in assets stashed in an offshore account.
Thompson was finally captured by US marshals in 2015 to face his investors in court. A jury awarded the investors substantial compensatory damages, and the court ordered Thompson to hand over 500 commemorative gold coins that had been minted out of some of the Central America gold to meet that judgment. Thompson claimed he had forgotten where he’d stashed them and was jailed for contempt of court until the coins had been recovered and handed over. He’s still in prison as of this writing, and the gold coins have yet to be found.
It’s quite a tale, so small wonder that National Geographic has made a riveting three-part documentary about Thompson’s spectacular rise and fall: Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal, based on the 1998 book by Gary Kinder entitled Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Cursed Gold director Sam Benstead read Kinder’s book and was instantly hooked on the story. “Not only was it a hugely exciting story with many twists and turns, but it was also an emotional story, which left you pulling for Tommy and his crew,” he told Ars. “Tommy came through as an extraordinary character: eccentric, brilliant, someone willing to try things no one else had. When I discovered all the things that had happened after the book, I knew it was a story I had to tell.”
Ship of Gold
Engraving by J. Childs of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America.
Public domain/National Maritime Museum, London
Sonar expert Mike Williamson hard at work during production of Cursed Gold.
National Geographic
John Moore is a lead designer of deep-sea robot Nemo.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of crew members looking at monitors in the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of a crew member looking at computer screens in the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of sonar operator John Lettow navigating Nemo from the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction showing Nemo descending to the seabed off the coast of North Carolina.
National Geographic
Gold bars and coins on the bottom of the sea bed off the coast of North Carolina.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Robotic machine recovers gold bars on the bottom of the seabed.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Crew members ogle gold bars on deck after being brought up from the sea floor.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Crew members looking at gold bars retrieved from the ocean floor.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Journalist Dylan Taylor-Lehman looks through case files.
National Geographic
Veteran US Marshal Mark Stroh lifting box of files in a dramatic reconstruction.
National Geographic
Lawyer Quintin Lindsmith works on case files.
Gold bars and coins on the bottom of the sea bed off the cost of North Carolina.
US Marshal Christopher Crotty waits in his car in a dramatic reconstruction.
National Geographic
A case displaying the missing 500 commemorative gold coins.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
A lot has happened to Thompson since Kinder’s book was published in 1998. Benstead and his production team combed through more than 600 hours of archival footage from the original expedition, as well as over 700 pages of court transcripts. “We also consulted multiple figures who we didn’t film with but who helped inform the story,” said Benstead. “In the editing process, National Geographic’s research department, together with our team, worked diligently to do their best to bottom out every fact, every claim. In a story that is so contested, this really helped us feel confident in standing behind the resulting films.”
“One of the main challenges was in condensing an incredibly complex 30-year saga into three films,” Benstead continued. “There were many legal cases and side stories that we had to exclude or could only touch on. And there were areas of the story that were strongly disputed by different sides. Sometimes we had to make choices that didn’t fully satisfy either camp, but we did our best to remain fair to the plurality of viewpoints, while also telling a powerful story.”
The director remains in awe of the original discovery, however badly the adventure turned out. “For the guys on the boat, almost without exception, this period was one of the best times of their lives,” he said. “It was a privilege to relive their struggles and final triumph in finding the gold. I still find it remarkable that they found the SS Central America in almost two miles of water with the resources they had in the 1980s.”
The experience also instilled “a real respect for the people who shared their story with us, especially Tommy’s family members, who have had so much written about them over the years,” said Benstead. “They didn’t trust us easily, and I feel very fortunate that they took part. Whenever people share the deepest, most affecting parts of their lives with you, you walk away carrying a big responsibility. I hope that they feel we have done their side of the story justice.”
Did Benstead come to his own conclusions about whether or not Thompson committed fraud? “Different people have different viewpoints on Tommy, even amongst those on the boat, investors, lawyers, and law enforcement,” he said. “We felt it was very important to allow the series to reflect this diversity and to allow the audience to make up their own mind. My own view is that Tommy isn’t a con man, and to be in prison for approaching nine years for contempt of court feels like a sad reflection on the US justice system. But it is also the case that, albeit under immense pressure, he made certain choices (like going on the run), which contributed to his own downfall. I hope that in the coming years his achievements, which have been obscured by the legal circus, are given the recognition that they deserve.”
Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Enlarge/ We have doubts that any amount of Force powers will bring the show back.
YouTube/Disney+
In news that will delight some and disappoint others, Disney has canceled Star Wars series The Acolyte after just one season, Deadline Hollywood reports. The eight-episode series got off to a fairly strong start, with mostly positive reviews and solid ratings, albeit lower than prior Star Wars series. But it couldn’t maintain and build upon that early momentum, and given the production costs, it’s not especially surprising that Disney pulled the plug.
The Acolyte arguably wrapped up its major narrative arc pretty neatly in the season finale, but it also took pains to set the stage for a possible sophomore season. In this streaming age, no series is ever guaranteed renewal. Still, it would have been nice to see what showrunner Leslye Headland had planned; when given the chance, many shows hit their stride on those second-season outings.
(Spoilers for the series below. We’ll give you another heads-up when we get to major spoilers.)
As I’ve written previously, The Acolyte is set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace. In this period, the Jedi aren’t the underdog rebels battling the evil Galactic Empire. They are at the height of their power and represent the dominant mainstream institution—not necessarily a benevolent one, depending on one’s perspective. That’s a significant departure from most Star Wars media and perhaps one reason why the show was so divisive among fans. (The show had its issues, but I dismiss the profoundly unserious lamentations of those who objected to the female-centric storyline and presence of people of color by dubbing it “The Wokelyte” and launching a review-bombing campaign.)
The Acolyte opened on the planet Ueda, where a mysterious masked woman wielding daggers attacked the Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and killed her. The assassin was quickly identified as Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg), a former padawan now working as a meknek, making repairs on spaceships. Osha was arrested by her former classmate, Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett), but claimed she was innocent. Her twin sister, Mae, died in a fire on their home planet of Brendok when they were both young. Osha concluded that Mae was still alive and had killed Indara. Osha’s former Jedi master, Sol (Lee Jung-jae), believed her, and subsequent events proved Osha right.
Mae’s targets were not random. She was out to kill the four Jedi she blamed for the fire on Brendok: Indara, Sol, Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman), and a Jedi Wookiee named Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo). The quartet had arrived on Brendok to demand they be allowed to test the twins as potential Jedi.
The twins had been raised by a coven of “Force witches” there, led by Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith), who believed the Jedi were misusing the Force. While Mae was keen to follow in their mother’s footsteps, Osha wanted to train with the Jedi. When the fire broke out, both Mae and Osha believed the other twin had been killed along with the rest of the coven. How the fire really started, and the identity of Mae’s mysterious Master who trained her in the dark side of the Force, were the primary mysteries that played out over the course of the season.
(WARNING: Major spoilers below. Stop reading now if you haven’t finished watching the series.)
Enlarge/ The camera moved on a single axis for the wuxia-inspired fight scenes.
Lucasfilm/Disney+
From the start, The Acolyte was a bit of a departure from a typical Star Wars series, weaving in elements from wuxia films and detective stories while remaining true to the established Star Wars aesthetic and design. That alone made it an intriguing effort, with fresh characters and new takes on classic Star Wars lore. And the martial arts-inspired fight choreography was clever and fun to watch—especially in the shocking, action-packed fifth episode (“Night”).
But there were some obvious shortcomings as well, most notably the clunky dialogue—although that’s kind of a long-standing attribute of the Star Wars franchise. (Alec Guinness notoriously hated his dialogue as Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope.) The pacing lagged at times, and there was a surprisingly high body count among the central characters.
Enlarge/ A high body count: All of these Jedi are dead.
Lucasfilm/Disney+
That alone might have made a second season challenging. I mean, they killed off Moss’ Jedi master in the first 10 minutes (although she reappeared in flashbacks), with Torbin and Kelnacca meeting the same fate over the next few episodes. By the time the final credits rolled, almost all the Jedi lead characters were dead. And senior leader Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson) opted to blame the murders on Sol (RIP) rather than Mae’s master, who turned out to be Vernestra’s former apprentice, Qimir (a scene-stealing Manny Jacinto)—now apprentice to Sith lord Darth Plagueis. (This was strongly implied in the finale and subsequently confirmed by Headland.)
Ultimately, however, it all came down to the ratings. Per Deadline, The Acolyte garnered 11.1 million views over its first five days (and 488 million minutes viewed)—not bad, but below Ahsoka‘s 14 million views over the same period. But those numbers declined sharply over the ensuing weeks, with the finale earning the dubious distinction of posting the lowest minutes viewed (335 million) for any Star Wars series finale. That simply didn’t meet Disney’s threshold for renewal, so we won’t get to learn more about the Qimir/Darth Plagueis connection.
Kathryn Hahn seeks a new witchy coven in Agatha All Along.
Disney introduced the poster and first full trailer for Agatha All Along during its annual D23 Expo this weekend. The nine-episode series, starring Kathryn Hahn, is one of the TV series in the MCU’s Phase Five, coming on the heels of Secret Invasion, Loki S2, What If…? S2, and Echo.
As reported previously, Agatha All Along has been in the works since 2021, officially announced in November of that year, inspired by Hahn’s breakout performance in WandaVision as nosy neighbor Agnes—but secretly a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness who was conspiring to steal Wanda’s power. The plot twist even inspired a meta-jingle that went viral. That series ended with Wanda victorious and Agatha robbed of all her powers, trapped in her nosy neighbor persona.
Head writer Jac Schaeffer (who also created WandaVision) has said that the series would follow Agatha as she forms her own coven with “a disparate mixed bag of witches… defined by deception, treachery, villainy, and selfishness” who must learn to work together. And apparently we can expect a few more catchy tunes—one of which is front and center in the new trailer. This new series picks up where WandaVision left Agatha. Per the official premise:
The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…
In addition to Hahn, the cast includes Aubrey Plaza as warrior witch Rio Vidal; Joe Locke as Billy, a gay teenage familiar; Patti LuPone as a 450-year-old Sicilian witch named Lilia Calderu; Sasheer Zamata as sorceress Jennifer Kale; Ali Ahn as a witch named Alice; and Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Billy’s boyfriend.
Debra Jo Rupp reprises her WandaVision role as Sharon Davis (“Mrs. Hart” in the meta-sitcom), here becoming a member of Agatha’s coven. Also reprising their WandaVision roles: Emma Caulfield Ford as Sarah Proctor (aka “Dottie Jones”); David Payton as John Collins (“Herb”); David Lengel as Harold Proctor (“Phil Jones”); Asif Ali as Abilash Tandon (“Norm”); Amos Glick (pizza delivery man “Dennis”); Kate Forbes as Agatha’s mother, Evanora; and Brian Brightman as the Eastview, New Jersey, sheriff.
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along drop on September 18, 2024, on Disney+, with episodes airing weekly after that through November 6.
The Star Wars universe continues to expand on streaming television with the release of the first trailer for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew this weekend at Disney’s annual D23 Expo. The eight-episode standalone series is set in the same time frame as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
Executive producer Kathleen Kennedy was intrigued when series co-creator Jon Watts pitched a Star Wars series inspired by the 1985 film The Goonies. (Kennedy had co-produced that film and co-founded Amblin Entertainment.) She told co-creator Christopher Ford that The Goonies hadn’t been created specifically for kids, instead telling a story that just happened to be about kids going on an adventure. So Ford and Watts wrote Skeleton Crew with the same mindset: a show for everyone that just happened to feature kids as the central characters. Per the official premise:
Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy, crossing paths with the likes of Jod Na Nawood, the mysterious character played by [Jude] Law. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.
Jude Law leads the cast as the quick-witted and charming (per Law) “Force-user” Jod Na Nawood. Ravi Cabot-Conyers plays Wim, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays Fern, Kyriana Kratter plays KB, and Robert Timothy Smith plays Neil. Nick Frost will voice a droid named SM 33. The cast also includes Tunde Adebimpe, Kerry Condon, and Jaleel White in as yet undisclosed roles.
The trailer opens with our young protagonists at school, preparing to take a test that will set the course of their respective futures. At least one of them is bored with the daily routine and longs to do something more exciting. “What if we could go anywhere we want in the whole galaxy?” he asks. “A real adventure. No more pretend.” Naturally they find a mysterious “lost Jedi temple” buried in the woods and soon find themselves rocketing away on a spaceship—and getting lost. Can they survive all the dangers of space and find their way back to their home planet? With the help of Law’s Jedi, we like their chances.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres on December 3, 2024, on Disney+.
