streaming television

Meet Squid Game S3’s new killer doll

culture, Entertainment, netflix, squid game, streaming television, teasers / Tim Belzer / January 2, 2025

S2 is set three years later, and by the end of the second episode, Gi-hun has successfully finagled his way back into the game after winning Russian roulette against the game’s recruiter and tracking down game overseer Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) at a Halloween party. The desperate players this time include a YouTuber who launched a failed crypto scam and a couple of victims of said scam bent on revenge. There’s also a compulsive gambler and his mother, a rapper addicted to ecstasy, a loud and neurotic self-appointed shaman, a former Marine, and a transgender woman who once served in special forces.

Meanwhile, Front Man’s police officer brother, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), has hired mercenaries to track down the island where the game is staged. As in the first season, alliances form and shift as the games proceed, and betrayals abound, culminating in a cliffhanger ending. That’s because series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk conceived of S2 and S3 as a single season, but there were too many episodes, so he split them over two seasons.

Squid Game S3 will premiere on Netflix later this year. Other than the new killer doll, we don’t know much about what’s in store for Gi-hun and his quest to destroy the game other than that it will pick up where S2 left off and will most likely end with a final showdown against Front Man. Is the cynical Front Man right about human nature ensuring that the game will never end?

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How the worlds of Dune: Prophecy got their distinctive looks

cinematography, culture, Dune: Prophecy, Entertainment, Frank Herbert, HBO, max, streaming television / Mike M. / December 23, 2024

a peek behind the curtain

Ars chats with Dune: Prophecy lead cinematographer Pierre Gill about color palettes, lighting, and other challenges.

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

Director Denis Villeneuve’s stunning two-part film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune has received many well-deserved accolades—with Dune: Part 2 being crowned Ars Technica’s top movie of 2024. The films also spawned a lavish HBO spinoff TV series, Dune: Prophecy, just renewed for a second season right before a momentous season finale.

(Some spoilers below for S1 of Dune: Prophecy, but no major plot reveals.)

Dune: Prophecy is a prequel series inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, exploring the origins of the Bene Gesserit. It’s set 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides and follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, establishing the fabled sect that will become the Bene Gesserit in the process.

Emily Watson stars as Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen, who leads the Sisterhood and has a close ally in her sister, Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen. They have built up a network of Sisters serving the rulers of various worlds as “Truthsayers,” including Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), heir to the throne of her father, Imperium Emperor Javicco Corrine (Mark Strong).

Valya’s master plan to crown a Sister as head of the Imperium hits a snag, however, with the arrival of a mysterious soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who claimed he survived being swallowed by a sandworm while fighting on Arrakis. Hart has a mysterious ability to literally burn people to death from the inside out with his mind, and he so impresses the Emperor that Hart replaces Valya as key advisor. So begins several episodes of political intrigue as secrets from the past begin to come out, culminating with an action-packed finale that bade farewell to a couple of key characters.

All of this takes place against a stunning visual backdrop that is reminiscent of Villeneuve’s two films but also sets the series apart, as befits a prequel. One of the people responsible for that is lead cinematographer Pierre Gill, who created distinctive looks and color palettes for the various worlds, planets, and environments, as well as tackling the lighting challenges posed by the massive built sets. Ars caught up with Gill to learn more.

Ars Technica: You also did some work on the film Dune: Part 1. How was it different working on a TV series set in the same sweeping fictional world?

Pierre Gill: It’s a different game, a different schedule, and it’s also a very different approach because the scenes are different. There’s not so many subplots. But it’s still the same scope. We had as many sets and studios and everything. So it’s a big challenge to be able to keep the style, make it look good, light the actors. It’s part of the reality of the [director of photography’s] decision-making. You have ideas in your head of what you want to do, you have a dream, but it has to be feasible, realistic. So then you make compromises and figure out the best way to keep that style. There’s also multiple directors, there’s a showrunner. So the decision-making is less centralized.

Ars Technica: How did you go about setting the series apart from Villeneuve’s films, especially since it’s a prequel?

Pierre Gill: It’s set 10,000 years before, so it could have been extremely different. But it’s not a good idea to do that. First, the audience wants to see Dune because they love Denis Villeneuve’s movie. Second, it’s a complex story and it’s better not to get lost into something. It was not a good idea to do that in our mind. So we stayed not far from the movie so the audience can just sit down and follow the story points. and at the moment, Of course, some people always complain, but most are just happy to follow the story. So I think we made the right choice.

Ars Technica: Despite the epic scope of the series, you were able to shoot as much as 75 percent of the footage in-camera. That’s quite a feat.

Pierre Gill: There’s a lot of VFX of course, but because most of the sets were so high, so big, the camera was filming people or the throne room—which is gigantic—it’s almost always in camera. For the big wide shots, there’s a set extension that is painted. So these huge sets, the Sisterhood, the library and everything, when you see all these girls wandering around in that complex of Wallach IX, that compound is pretty much on camera.

A lot of VFX is making these gorgeous shots of the world, spaceships coming down, seeing something outside the window sometimes, and then the exterior of Wallach IX, which is two big towers and a rock facade. Of course there’s the little lizard, the thinking machine, that was VFX. But otherwise it was very, very in-camera, which makes your life easier in editing and shooting—although it doesn’t make my life easier with the lighting, which would be much easier with blue screen.

Ars Technica: Tell us about the massive chandeliers you built to introduce particle light, adding extra character to the interiors.

Pierre Gill: The sets were quite monochromatic. You have Salusa Secundus, the emperor world, which is a very sandy color, very beige,. And then you have Wallach IX, which is very gray. We decided to light one of the worlds in a cold way, the other world in warmer tones. I was trying as much as I could to put very harsh sunlight into the Salusa Secondus world.

Again, the sets were very big. So I asked the production designer Tom Meyer to build me some practical lighting somewhere. There was not much in the set for me to use for night, which is a bit of a problem because he kept the mood of Dune. On a film you have three to four hours to light a scene. I was not able to do that. I needed to have practical light that is actually lighting something. So for example, in the throne room, he wanted to have glass balls. There’s three glass balls, they’re gorgeous.

I told Thomas, “But these glass balls, the problem for me is the light behind my head is going to blow away. I would love this to light the wall.” So I got my practical team, a bunch of guys who are just in charge of LEDs on set. We found an LED source that goes inside; you can dim it down and up. But behind the balls, we added another pack of LED lights that are hidden. So you have the light source and just behind it you have this extra lighting. From the camera you never see it but it was lighting the wall. And then I got them to build a very long teardrop. I again got them to build multiple layers of LEDs that were on a board that was a certain power, certain color. I was able to make them cold or warm and to change them a little bit and use them as a source. It became part of the visual style.

Ars Technica. I appreciated that Dune: Prophecy seems to buck the trend toward very, very dark night scenes that end up being nearly unwatchable for people at home.

Pierre Gill: I don’t really like when it’s pitch black and dark. I don’t understand. I don’t think it gives anything. For me, night is more figuring out silhouettes. Let’s try to feel the character, shape your character on the wall, and when you get in a close-up you get a light in his eyes or something. I like to define a room and on these big sets to do moonlight would make no sense. The throne room is gigantic, but at the end it’s just an empty place. So you’re lighting what? Just the floor. It’s not very interesting. So what I’ve done for the night in the throne room, I asked VFX, what’s the concept of the exterior? It was all work in progress. We had some artwork concept work, but the lighting, nobody really knew.

So I said, okay, so we know there’s lights, so I’m going to put orange lights from below. I’m not lighting actors, I’m not lighting anything. But when you look at windows, you can feel that the light is coming from the bottom and it creates a few shadows. When you see outside now, they put all these lights in the palace, like you would light a nice, beautiful, gorgeous big house. You light everything from under.

Ars Technica: What were some particularly challenging scenes in terms of the cinematography?

Pierre Gill: The prison was a huge challenge. It was built on a set on location in downtown Budapest, and it’s a circular room. It’s where they put Desmond and suspended him in a jail cell. There was a floor and I had one foot to light. So that was complicated. Another challenge was the exterior of the Sisterhood: a big circular room outside. It was also a location and we could not access behind with cranes, so I could not control anything, and it was very dangerous. I could not light from the ceiling from the top of this coliseum. We built a gigantic tarp on top of it. So I was closing and opening and diffusing the sun. That was very Hollywood-esque.

Ars Technica: Was there a particular scene you were especially pleased with how it turned out?

Pierre Gill: In the first episode, there’s a scene with the young sisters chanting around a gorgeous golden bowl. The director, Anna Foerster, she wanted to see the waves of the singing and all these frequencies. I was like, “Well, that’s a lighting gag. You don’t see any wave if you cannot light in reflection.” I knew I wouldn’t have time to do something so technical. Since she wanted to “do a pull-up” for the scene: starting loose up on the bowl and then moving up and out. Technically it’s complicated.

So I had a big rig that I created around the camera with soft lighting that could reflect. And I asked our department, when they built that bowl, “Could you build with a light inside, like a waterproof light, an LED? I’ll put it on my board and maybe it’s going to work. I’m not sure if it’s going to really light the water properly.” I was ready with a plan B, but they brought the bowl, they started the frequency thing, and it was gorgeous. So I didn’t have to use my plan B lighting. That was very, very nice.

a white model of a set with someone's arm placing miniature people inside it. — Models helped with the staging and lighting of different scenes. Credit: Pierre Gill/HBO

Ars Technica: The show has been renewed for a second season and one assumes you’ll be involved. What will be different for you going into S2?

Pierre Gill: I’m very proud because I’m part of building that, a part of the creative team. I really hope I can do it. I hope my schedule will allow it. I want to be part of this for sure, because S1 was a lot of engineering, meaning it’s so big, you have to figure out stuff all the time. Now it’s done, it’s built and we know what we like. We know what we don’t like. We know what works. So S2 for me, will be a lot of fun, much more creative, meaning I’m going to be able to do much more interesting lighting. I’m going to go deeper into the thing because I know how this beast is working now.

All episodes of Dune: Prophecy‘s first season are now available for streaming on Max.

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.

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We’ve got a lavish new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31

culture, Entertainment, Michelle Yeoh, paramount plus, Star Trek Section 31, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers / Tim Belzer / December 10, 2024

Michelle Yeoh stars in Star Trek: Section 31.

We’ve got a shiny new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31, the long-awaited spinoff film that brings back Michelle Yeoh’s magnificent Phillipa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film will give us the backstory for Georgiou’s evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people.

As previously reported, Yeoh’s stylishly acerbic Georgiou was eventually written out of Discovery, but fans took hope from rumors of a spinoff series featuring the character. That turned into a spinoff film, and we’ll take it. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film. Meanwhile, Yeoh’s older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31, while dealing with all the blood she’s spilled in her past.

Any hardcore Star Trek fan will tell you that Section 31 was first introduced as an urban legend of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Apparently Ira Steven Behr—who came up with the idea of a secret rogue organization within Starfleet doing shady things to protect the Federation—took inspiration from Commander Sisko’s comment in one episode about how “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” The name is taken from Starfleet Charter Article 14, Section 31, which allows Starfleet to take extraordinary measures in the face of extreme threats—including sabotage, assassination, and even biological warfare.

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The shadow’s roots take hold in Wheel of Time S3 teaser

culture, Entertainment, prime video, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers, wheel of time / Tim Belzer / December 8, 2024

The Wheel of Time returns to Prime Video in March.

Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for its fantasy series The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The series is adapted from the late Robert Jordan‘s bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels, and Ars has been following it closely with regular recaps through the first two seasons. Judging from the new teaser, the battle between light and dark is heating up as the Dragon Reborn comes into his power.

(Spoilers for first two seasons below.)

As previously reported, the series center on Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. Magic, known as the One Power, is divided into male (saidin) and female (saidar) flavors. The latter is the province of the Aes Sedai. Long ago, a great evil called the Dark One caused the saidin to become tainted, such that most men who show an ability to channel that magic go mad. It’s the job of the Aes Sedai to track down such men and strip them of their abilities—a process known as “gentling” that, unfortunately, is often anything but. There is also an ancient prophecy concerning the Dragon Reborn: the reincarnation of a person who will save or destroy humanity.

In S1, Moiraine befriended a group of five young people—Egwene, Nynaeve, Rand, Mat, and Perrin—whose small village has been attacked by monsters called Trollocs, suspecting that one of the young men might be the prophesied Dragon Reborn. She was right: the Dragon Reborn is Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) whose identity was revealed to all in the S2 finale. That second season was largely based on story elements from Jordan’s The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn. We don’t yet know which specific books will provide source material for S3, but per the official premise:

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Innie rebellion is brewing in trippy Severance S2 trailer

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, severance, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers, Uncategorized / Paul Patrick / December 8, 2024

Severance returns to Apple TV in January for its sophomore season.

Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it “one of the best shows on TV.” Needless to say, we have been eagerly awaiting the second season next month. Prime Video just released the official trailer at CCXP24 in São Paulo, Brazil and it does not disappoint.

(Spoilers for first season below.)

In the world of Severance, people can completely disconnect their work and personal lives. Thanks to a new procedure developed by Lumon Industries, workers can bifurcate themselves into “innies” (work selves) and “outies” (personal selves)—with no sharing of memories between them. This appeals to people like Mark (Adam Scott), who lost his wife in a car crash and has struggled to work through the grief. Why not forget all that pain for eight hours a day?

It’s no spoiler to say that things went… badly in S1 as a result of this process. As Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson noted at the time, “The show isn’t just bonkers—though it is that, too. It’s also about the lengths to which we will go to dull or avoid emotional pain, and the ways in which humans will reach out to connect with others even under the most unpromising of circumstances.” In the process, Severance brought out “the latent horror of fluorescent lights, baby goats, cubicles, waffles, middle managers, finger traps, and ‘work/life balance.’ Also cults. And vending machines. Plus corporate training manuals. And talk therapy. Oh, and ‘kind eyes.'”

The first season ended on quite the cliffhanger, with several Lumon employees activating an “overtime contingency” to escape the office confines to get a taste for how their “outies” live—and some pretty startling secrets were revealed. S2 will naturally grapple with the fallout from their brief mutiny. Per the official premise:

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Player 456 is back for revenge in Squid Game S2 trailer

culture, Entertainment, netflix, squid game, streaming television, Trailers / Tim Belzer / November 28, 2024

Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game.

The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we’re finally getting it this year for Christmas. Netflix just released the official trailer.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

The first season followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae, seen earlier this year in The Acolyte), a down-on-his-luck gambler who has little left to lose when he agrees to play children’s playground games against 455 other players for money. The twist? If you lose a game, you die. If you cheat, you die. And if you win, you might also die.

“The grotesque spectacle of Squid Game is where it gets most of its appeal, but it resonates because of how relatable Gi-hun and the rest of the game’s contestants are,” Ars Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham wrote in our 2021 year-end TV roundup. “Alienated from society and each other, driven by guilt or shame or pride or desperation, each of the players we get to know is inescapably human, which is why Squid Game is more than just a gory sideshow.

In the S1 finale, Gi-hun faced off against fellow finalist and childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) in the titular “squid game.” He won their fight but refused to kill his friend, begging Sang-woo to stop the game by invoking a special clause in their contract whereby they get to live—but do not get the prize money. Sang-woo instead stabbed himself in the neck and asked Gi-hun to take care of his mother. Wracked with guilt, Gi-hun was about to fly to America to live with his daughter when he spotted the game recruiter trying to entice another desperate person. He didn’t get on the plane, deciding instead to try and re-enter the game and take it down from the inside.

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Silo S2 expands its dystopian world

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Silo, streaming television / Mike M. / November 16, 2024

Ars chats with cinematographer Baz Irvine about creating a fresh look for the sophomore season.

Credit: YouTube/Apple TV+

The second season of Silo, Apple TV’s dystopian sc-fi drama, is off to a powerful start with yesterday’s premiere. Based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. It looks like S2 will be leaning more heavily into sci-fi thriller territory, expanding its storytelling—and its striking cinematography—beyond the original silo.

(Spoilers for S1 below as well as first five minutes of S2 premiere.)

As previously reported, Silo is set in a self-sustaining underground city inhabited by a community whose recorded history only goes back 140 years, generations after the silo was built by the founders. Outside is a toxic hellscape that is only visible on big screens in the silo’s topmost level. Inside, 10,000 people live together under a pact: Anyone who says they want to “go out” is immediately granted that wish—cast outside in an environment suit on a one-way trip to clean the cameras. But those who make that choice inevitably die soon after because of the toxic environment.

Mechanical keeps the power on and life support from collapsing, and that is where we met mechanical savant Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) at one with the giant geothermal generator that spins in the silo’s core. There were hints at what came before—relics like mechanical wristwatches or electronics far beyond the technical means of the silo’s current inhabitants, due to a rebellion 140 years ago that destroyed the silo’s records in the process. The few computers are managed by the IT department, run by Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins).

Over the course of the first season, Juliette reluctantly became sheriff and investigated the murder of her lover, George (Ferdinand Kingsley), who collected forbidden historical artifacts, as well as the murder of silo mayor Ruth Jahns (Geraldine James). Many twists ensued, including the existence of a secret group dedicated to remembering the past whose members were being systemically killed. Juliette also began to suspect that the desolate landscape seen through the silo’s camera system was a lie and there was actually a lush green landscape outside.

In the season one finale, Juliette made a deal with Holland: She would choose to go outside in exchange for the truth about what happened to George and the continued safety of her friends in Mechanical. The final twist: Juliette survived her outside excursion and realized that the dystopian hellscape was the reality, and the lush green Eden was the lie. And she learned that their silo was one of many, with a ruined city visible in the background.

That’s where the second season picks up. Apple TV+ released the footage of the first five minutes last week:

Official sneak peek for the second season of Apple TV+’s sci-fi drama Silo.

The opening battle, with all new characters, clearly took place in one of the other silos (Silo 17), and the residents desperate to break out did so only to meet their deaths. The footage ends with Juliette walking past their skeletons toward the entrance to Silo 17. We know from the official trailer that rebellion is also brewing back in her own silo as rumors spread that she is alive.

The expansion of Silo‘s world was an opportunity for cinematographer Baz Irvine (who worked on four key episodes this season) to play with lenses, color palettes, lighting, and other elements to bring unique looks to the different settings.

Ars Technica: How did you make things visually different from last season? What were your guidelines going into this for the cinematography?

Baz Irvine: There’s few different things going on. I love season one, but we were going to open it up [in S2]. We were going to introduce this new silo, so that was going to be a whole other world that had to look immediately familiar, but also completely different. We start season one with an exterior of the dystopian, future blasted planet. On the technical point, I saw two things I could do very simply. I felt that the format of season one was two to one, so not quite letterbox, not quite widescreen. When I saw the sets and I saw the art, everything the amazing art department had done, I was like, guys, this needs to be widescreen. I think at the time there was still a little bit of reticence from Apple and a few of the other streamers to commit to full widescreen, but I persuaded them.

I also changed the lenses because I wanted to keep the retro feel, the dystopian future, but retro feel. I chose slightly different lenses to give me a wider feel of view. I talked to my director, Michael Dinner, and we talked about how at times, as brilliant as season one was, it was a bit theatrical, a bit presentational. Here’s the silo, here’s the silo, here’s the silo…., So what you want to do is stop worrying about the silo. It is incredible and it’s in the back of every shot. We wanted to make it more visceral. There was going to be a lot more action. The start of episode one is a full-blown battle. Apple released the first five minutes on Apple. It actually stops at a very critical point, but you can see that it’s the previous world of the other Silo 17.

We still wanted to see the scope and the scale. As a cinematographer, you’ve got to get your head around something that’s very unusual: the Silo is vertical. When we shoot stuff, we go outside, everything’s horizontal. So as a cinematographer, you think horizontally, you frame the skyline, you frame the buildings. But in the silo, it’s all up there and it’s all down there, but it doesn’t exist. A bit of the set exists, but you have to go, oh, okay, what can I see if I point the camera up here, what will VFX brilliantly give me? What can I see down there? So that was another big discussion.

Ars Technica: When you talk about wanting to make it more visceral, what does that mean specifically in a cinematography context?

Baz Irvine: It’s just such a lovely word. Season one had an almost European aesthetic. It was a lot of very beautiful, slow developing shots. Of course it was world building. It was the first time the silo was on the screen. So as a filmmaker, you have a certain responsibility to give the audience a sense of where you are. Season two, we know where we are. Well, we don’t with the other silo, but we discover it. This role for me meant not being head of the action. So with Juliet, Rebecca Ferguson’s character, we discover what she sees with her, rather than showing it ahead of time.We’re trying to be a point of view, almost hand-held. When she’s running, we’re running with her. When she’s trying to smash her helmet, we are very much with her.

On another level, visceral for me also means responding to action—not being too prescriptive about what the camera should do, but when you see the blocking of a scene and you feel it’s going a certain way and there’s a certain energy, responding to that and getting in there. The silo, as I said, is always going to be in the background, but we’re not trying to fetishize the silo too much. We’re going to look down, we’re going to look up, we’re going to use crane moves, but just get in with the action. Just be with the people. That means slightly longer lenses, longer focal lengths at times. And from my point of view, the fall off and focus just looks so beautiful. So I think that’s what visceral means. I bet you somebody else would say something completely different.

Ars Technica: Other specific choices you made included using a muted green palette and torchlight flashlight. So there is this sense of isolation and mystery and a spooky, more immersive atmosphere.

Baz Irvine: The challenge that I could see from when I read the script is that a large part of season two is in the new Silo 17. So the new Silo 17 hasn’t been occupied for 35 years. It’s been in this dormant, strange, half-lit state. It’s overgrown with plants and ivy. Some of the references for that were what Chernobyl looked like 20 years down the line. When humanity leaves, nature just takes over. But as a counterpoint, we needed it to feel dark. Most of the electricity has gone, most of the lights have gone out. I needed to have some lighting motivation to give some sense of the shape of the Silo, so that we weren’t plummeting into darkness for the whole episode. So I came up with this idea, the overhead lights that power the silo, that light the silo, were in broken -down mode. They were in reserve power. They’d gone a bit green because that’s what the bulb technology would’ve done.

Part of the reason to do that is that when you’re cutting between two silos that were built identically, you’ve got to have something to show that you’re in a different world. Yes, it’s empty, and yes, it’s desolate and it’s eerie, and there’s strange clanking noises. But I wanted to make it very clear from a lighting point of view that they were two different places.

The other thing that you will discover in episode one, when Juliet’s character is finally working her way through the Silo 17, she has a flashlight and she breaks into an apartment. As she scans the wallshe starts to notice, oh, it’s not like her silo, there are beautiful murals and art. We really wanted to play into this idea that every silo was different. They had different groups of people potentially from different parts of the states. This silo in a way developed quite an artistic community. Murals and frescoes were very much part of this silo. It’s not something that is obvious, and it’s just the odd little scan of a flashlight that gives you this sense. But also Silo 17 is scary. It’s sort of alive, but is there life in it? That is a big question.

Ars Technica: You talk about not wanting to all be in darkness. I’m now thinking of that infamous Game of Thrones episode where the night battle footage was so dark viewers couldn’t follow what was going on. That’s clearly a big challenge for a cinematographer. Where do you find the balance?

Baz Irvine: This is the eternal dilemma for cinematographers. It’s getting notes back from the grownups going, it’s too dark,it’s too dark. Well, maybe if you were watching it in a dark room and it wasn’t bight outside, it would be fine. You have to balance things. I’ve also got Rebecca Ferguson walking around the silo, and it can’t be in so much shadow that you can’t recognize her. So there’s a type of darkness that in film world I know how to convey it. It’s very subtle. It is underexposed, but I used very soft top light. I didn’t want hard shadows. By using that light and filling in little details in the background, I can then take the lighting down. I had an amazing colorist in Company 3 in Toronto and we had a chat about how dark we could go.

We have to be very dark in places because a couple of times in this season, the electricity gets pulled altogether in the old silo as well. You can’t pull the plug and then suddenly everybody’s visible. But it is a film aesthetic that, as a cinematographer, you just learn, how dark can I go? When am I going to get in trouble? Please can I stay on the job, but make it as dark as possible? You mentioned Game of Thrones, clearly audiences have become more used to seeing imagery that I would consider more photographic, more bold generally. I try to tap into that as much as possible. If you have one character with a flashlight, then suddenly that changes everything because you point a flashlight at the surface and the light bounces back in the face. You have to use all the tools that you can.

Ars Technica: In season one there were different looks (lighting and textures) for different social hierarchies of the social hierarchies. Does that continue in season two?

Baz Irvine: I tried to push that a little bit more in season two. I loved the idea of that J.G. Ballard high rise, the rich at the top, everything inverted. The silo is crazy tall. We worked it out. It’s about a kilometer and a half.

The mechanical is the fun bit because mechanical is the bottom of the silo. Down there, we wet the walls, wet the floors, so that the more greeny, orangey colors you associate with fluorescent lights and more mechanical fixtures would reflect. You keep the light levels low because you get this lovely sheen off the walls. As you move up through the middle, where a lot of the action takes place, the lighting is more normal. I’m not really trying to push it one way or another.

Then you go up top where the judicial live, where the money and power is. You’re a lot closer to the light source because there only is this one huge light source that lights down in the silo. So up there the air is more rarefied. It’s like you’re on top of a Swiss mountain. It just feels cleaner. There’s less atmosphere, slightly bluer in light, different color temperatures on the practical lighting in offices. It’s less chaotic, more like a more modern aesthetic up there. You’ve got to be careful not to overplay it. Once you establish colors, you run with it and it just becomes second nature. It was a lot of fun to be able to demarcate—ss long as you remembered where you were, that was always the trick.

Ars Technica: What were the most notable challenges and highlights for you—without giving away anything beyond episode one.

Baz Irvine: I think the big thing about episode one is that it’s like a silent movie. Rebecca Ferguson has maybe two lines, or maybe she doesn’t actually say anything. It’s a journey of discovery, and there’s some quite scary, terrifying things that happen. There’s a lot of action. Also, we find out there’s water in Silo 17. Silo 17 is flooded. You don’t find that out until she slips and falls and you think she’s fallen to her death. From the outset knew that there would be an extensive amount of underwater, or on the surface of the water, filming that would need to take place. We had to do a massive amount of testing, looking at textures of water, what equipment we could use, how we could get the depth, the width. We built a huge tank at one of our studios in London and used Pinewood’s famous underwater tank for the fall.

Also there was the challenge of trying to do shots of that scale outside because we actually built sets. We could probably see 50 feet beyond Rebecca. We had the surface of the scorched surface, but beyond that is VFX. So we had huge blue screens and all these different cranes and things called Manitous with massive frames and had to control the sun. That was very challenging. You can really go down a very cliched path when trying to imagine what the fallout of a massive nuclear attack would look like. But we didn’t want to overplay it too much, we wanted to embed it in some sort of reality so that you didn’t suddenly feel at the start of episode one, oh my, you’re on the surface of Mars. It had to feel real, but also just completely different from the interior world of the silo.

Ars Technica: I assume that there’s a lot more exciting stuff coming in the other episodes that we can’t talk about.

Baz Irvine: There is so much exciting stuff. There’s a lot of action. The silo cafeteria, by the way, is just incredible because you have this huge screen. When I turned up, I was thinking, okay, well this is clearly going to be some big VFX blue screen. It is not. It is a projected image. The work that they did to make it feel like it was a camera mounted to the top of the silo, showing the world outside, and the different times of day—we just literally dialed in. Can I have dusk please? Can I have late afternoon with a little bit of cloud? It was such a fun toy box to play with.

New episodes of Silo S2 will premiere every Friday through January 17, 2025, on Apple TV+.

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Review: Catching up with the witchy brew of Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along, culture, Disney Plus, Entertainment, marvel studios, MCU Phase Five, streaming television, TV reviews / Tim Belzer / November 9, 2024

Down, down, down the road

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+.

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Endurance tells story of two expeditions, centuries apart

Disney Plus, Endurance shipwreck, exploration, National Geographic, Science, science documentaries, Sir Ernest Shackleton, streaming television / Rejus Almole / November 5, 2024

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.”

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Beware pirates and booby traps in new Skeleton Crew trailer

culture, Disney Plus, Entertainment, LucasFilms, star wars, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, streaming television, Trailers / Tim Belzer / November 1, 2024

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.

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Good Omens will wrap with a single 90-minute episode

culture, Entertainment, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, prime video, streaming television / Mike M. / October 24, 2024

The third and final season of Good Omens, Prime Video’s fantasy series adapted from the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, will not be a full season after all, Deadline Hollywood reports. In the wake of allegations of sexual assault against Gaiman this summer, the streaming platform has decided that rather than a full slate of episodes, the series finale will be a single 90-minute episode—the equivalent of a TV movie.

(Major spoilers for the S2 finale of Good Omens below.)

As reported previously, the series is based on the original 1990 novel by Gaiman and the late Pratchett. Good Omens is the story of an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. Gaiman’s obvious deep-down, fierce love for this project—and the powerful chemistry between its stars—made the first season a sheer joy to watch. Apart from a few minor quibbles, it was pretty much everything book fans could have hoped for in a TV adaptation of Good Omens.

S2 found Aziraphale and Crowley getting back to normal, when the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) turned up unexpectedly at the door of Aziraphale’s bookshop with no memory of who he was or how he got there. The duo had to evade the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to solve the mystery of what happened to Gabriel and why.

In the cliffhanger S2 finale, the pair discovered that Gabriel had defied Heaven and refused to support a second attempt to bring about Armageddon. He hid his own memories from himself to evade detection. Oh, and he and Beelzebub (Shelley Conn) had fallen in love. They ran off together, and the Metatron (Derek Jacobi) offered Aziraphale Gabriel’s old job. That’s when Crowley professed his own love for the angel and asked him to leave Heaven and Hell behind, too. Aziraphale wanted Crowley to join him in Heaven instead. So Crowley kissed him and they parted. And once Aziraphale got to Heaven, he learned his task was to bring about the Second Coming.

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The Sisterhood faces a powerful foe in Dune: Prophecy trailer

culture, Dune: Prophecy, Entertainment, HBO, HBO Max, streaming television, Trailers / Paul Patrick / October 17, 2024

Dune: Prophecy will premiere on HBO and Max on November 17, 2024.

New York Comic-Con kicked off today and among the highlights was an HBO panel devoted to the platform’s forthcoming new series, Dune: Prophecy—including the release of a two-and-a-half-minute trailer.

As previously reported, the series was announced in 2019, with director Denis Villeneuve serving as an executive producer and Alison Schapker (Alias, Fringe, Altered Carbon) serving as showrunner. It’s a prequel series inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, exploring the origins of the Bene Gesserit. The first season will have six episodes, and it’s unclear how closely the series will adhere to the source material. Per the official premise:

Set 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides, Dune: Prophecy follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit.

Emily Watson co-stars as Valya Harkonnen, leader of the Sisterhood, with Olivia Williams playing her sister, Tula Harkonnen. Mark Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, while Jodhi May plays Empress Natalya, and Sarah-Sofie Boussnina plays Princess Ynez.

The cast also includes Shalom Brune-Franklin as Mikaela, a Fremen woman who serves the royal family; Travis Fimmel as Desmond Hart, “a charismatic soldier with an enigmatic past”; Chris Mason as swordsman Keiran Atreides; Josh Heuston as Constantine Corrino, the illegitimate son of Javicco; Edward Davis as rising politician Harrow Harkonnen; Tabu as Sister Francesca, the Emperor’s former lover; Jihae as Reverend Mother Kasha, the Emperor’s Truthsayer; Faoileann Cunningham as Sister Jen; Chloe Lea as Lila; Jade Anouka as Sister Theodosia; and Aoife Hinds as Sister Emeline.

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