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The Justice League is not impressed in Peacemaker S2 teaser

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Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Stroma are all back for S2, along with Nhut Lee as Judomaster and Eagly, of course. Robert Patrick is also listed in the S2 cast, reprising his role as Chris’ father, Auggie; since Chris killed him in S1, one assumes Auggie will appear in flashbacks, hallucinations, or perhaps an alternate universe. (This is a soft reboot, after all.) New cast members include Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr. (Grillo voiced the role in the animated Creature Commandos), now head of A.R.G.U.S. and out to avenge his son’s death; Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury; and Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux.

Set to “Oh Lord” by Foxy Shazam, the teaser opens with Leota driving Chris to a job interview, assuring him, “They’re gonna be doing backflips to get you to join.” It turns out to be an interview with Justice League members Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabel Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), but they are not really into the interviewing process or taking note of Chris’ marksmanship and combat skills. They even diss poor Chris while accidentally keeping the microphone turned on: “This guy sucks.” (All three reprise their roles from Superman and are listed as S2 cast members, but it’s unclear how frequently they will appear.)

The other team members aren’t faring much better. They saved the world from the butterflies; you’d think people would treat them with a bit more respect, if not as outright heroes. Leota is “living in the worst level of Grand Theft Auto,” per John Economos; Emilia Harcourt has anger management issues and is diagnosed with “a particularly severe form of toxic masculinity”; and Vigilante is working in the food service industry. There’s not much detail as to the plot, apart from Chris going on the run from A.R.G.U.S., but the final scene shows Chris walking through a door and encountering another version of himself. So things are definitely about to get interesting.

The second season of Peacemaker will premiere on Max on August 21, 2025.

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Netflix drops Wednesday S2 teaser, first-look images

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Jenna Ortega is back in the titular role for S2 of the Netflix series, Wednesday.

It’s been a long, long wait, but we’re finally getting a second season of the Netflix supernatural horror comedy, Wednesday. The streaming giant dropped the first teaser and several first-look images to whet our appetites for what promises to be an excellent follow-up to the delightful first season.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, director Tim Burton famously turned down the opportunity to direct the 1991 feature film The Addams Family, inspired by characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker in 1938. Wednesday showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar—best known for Smallville—expected Burton to turn them down as well when they made their pitch. He signed up for the project instead.

This was an older, edgier, and even darker Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) than the dour young girl Christina Ricci made famous in the 1990s. Aloof, sardonic, and resolutely independent, she was very much the problem child, even by Addams standards, having been expelled from eight schools in five years. Hence her enrollment at Nevermore Academy, a haven for so-called “outcasts” and the alma mater of her parents.

Wednesday struggled to fit in at first, clashing with her cheery werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers) and the school queen bee, a siren named Bianca (Joy Sunday). Then she began investigating a string of brutal murders, leading her to resolve some long-standing family issues and delve into the school’s dark history. It all added up to a winning formula—basically a very good eight-hour Burton movie with a spooky murder mystery at its core.

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New simulation of Titanic’s sinking confirms historical testimony

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NatGeo documentary follows a cutting-edge undersea scanning project to make a high-resolution 3D digital twin of the ship.

The bow of the Titanic Digital Twin, seen from above at forward starboard side. Credit: Magellan Limited/Atlantic Productions

In 2023, we reported on the unveiling of the first full-size 3D digital scan of the remains of the RMS Titanic—a “digital twin” that captured the wreckage in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions conducted the scans over a six-week expedition. That project is the subject of the new National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, detailing several fascinating initial findings from experts’ ongoing analysis of that full-size scan.

Titanic met its doom just four days into the Atlantic crossing, roughly 375 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland. At 11: 40 pm ship’s time on April 14, 1912, Titanic hit that infamous iceberg and began taking on water, flooding five of its 16 watertight compartments, thereby sealing its fate. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished; only around 710 of those on board survived.

Titanic remained undiscovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean until an expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard reached the wreck on September 1, 1985. The ship split apart as it sank, with the bow and stern sections lying roughly one-third of a mile apart. The bow proved to be surprisingly intact, while the stern showed severe structural damage, likely flattened from the impact as it hit the ocean floor. There is a debris field spanning a 5×3-mile area, filled with furniture fragments, dinnerware, shoes and boots, and other personal items.

The joint mission by Magellan and Atlantic Productions deployed two submersibles nicknamed Romeo and Juliet to map every millimeter of the wreck, including the debris field spanning some three miles. The result was a whopping 16 terabytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to create the 3D digital twin. The resolution is so good, one can make out part of the serial number on one of the propellers.

“I’ve seen the wreck in person from a submersible, and I’ve also studied the products of multiple expeditions—everything from the original black-and-white imagery from the 1985 expedition to the most modern, high-def 3D imagery,” deep ocean explorer Parks Stephenson told Ars. “This still managed to blow me away with its immense scale and detail.”

The Juliet ROV scans the bow railing of the Titanic wreck site. Magellan Limited/Atlantic Productions

The NatGeo series focuses on some of the fresh insights gained from analyzing the digital scan, enabling Titanic researchers like Stephenson to test key details from eyewitness accounts. For instance, some passengers reported ice coming into their cabins after the collision. The scan shows there is a broken porthole that could account for those reports.

One of the clearest portions of the scan is Titanic‘s enormous boiler rooms right at the rear bow section where the ship snapped in half. Eyewitness accounts reported that the ship’s lights were still on right up until the sinking, thanks to the tireless efforts of Joseph Bell and his team of engineers, all of whom perished. The boilers show up as concave on the digital replica of Titanic, and one of the valves is in an open position, supporting those accounts.

The documentary spends a significant chunk of time on a new simulation of the actual sinking, taking into account the ship’s original blueprints, as well as information on speed, direction, and position. Researchers at University College London were also able to extrapolate how the flooding progressed. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the bow hit the ocean floor with so much force that much of it remains buried under mud. Romeo’s scans of the debris field scattered across the ocean floor enabled researchers to reconstruct the damage to the buried portion.

Titanic was famously designed to stay afloat if up to four of its watertight compartments flooded. But the ship struck the iceberg from the side, causing a series of punctures along the hull across 18 feet, affecting six of the compartments. Some of those holes were quite small, about the size of a piece of paper, but water could nonetheless seep in and eventually flood the compartments. So the analysis confirmed the testimony of naval architect Edward Wilding—who helped design Titanic—as to how a ship touted as unsinkable could have met such a fate. And as Wilding hypothesized, the simulations showed that had Titanic hit the iceberg head-on, she would have stayed afloat.

These are the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from the 3D digital model, according to Atlantic Productions CEO Anthony Geffen, who produced the NatGeo series. “It’s not really a replica. It is a digital twin, down to the last rivet,” he told Ars. “That’s the only way that you can start real research. The detail here is what we’ve never had. It’s like a crime scene. If you can see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is, you can actually piece together what happened. You can extrapolate what you can’t see as well. Maybe we can’t physically go through the sand or the silt, but we can simulate anything because we’ve actually got the real thing.”

Ars caught up with Stephenson and Geffen to learn more.

A CGI illustration of the bow of the Titanic as it sinks into the ocean. National Geographic

Ars Technica: What is so unique and memorable about experiencing the full-size 3D scan of Titanic, especially for those lucky enough to have seen the actual wreckage first-hand via submersible?

Parks Stephenson: When you’re in the submersible, you are restricted to a 7-inch viewport and as far as your light can travel, which is less than 100 meters or so. If you have a camera attached to the exterior of the submersible, you can only get what comes into the frame of the camera. In order to get the context, you have to stitch it all together somehow, and, even then, you still have human bias that tends to make the wreck look more like the original Titanic of 1912 than it actually does today. So in addition to seeing it full-scale and well-lit wherever you looked, able to wander around the wreck site, you’re also seeing it for the first time as a purely data-driven product that has no human bias. As an analyst, this is an analytical dream come true.

Ars Technica: One of the most visually arresting images from James Cameron’s blockbuster film Titanic was the ship’s stern sticking straight up out of the water after breaking apart from the bow. That detail was drawn from eyewitness accounts, but a 2023 computer simulation called it into question. What might account for this discrepancy? 

Parks Stephenson: One thing that’s not included in most pictures of Titanic sinking is the port heel that she had as she’s going under. Most of them show her sinking on an even keel. So when she broke with about a 10–12-degree port heel that we’ve reconstructed from eyewitness testimony, that stern would tend to then roll over on her side and go under that way. The eyewitness testimony talks about the stern sticking up as a finger pointing to the sky. If you even take a shallow angle and look at it from different directions—if you put it in a 3D environment and put lifeboats around it and see the perspective of each lifeboat—there is a perspective where it does look like she’s sticking up like a finger in the sky.

Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper, and master mariner Captain Chris Hearn find evidence exonerating First Officer William Murdoch, long accused of abandoning his post.

This points to a larger thing: the Titanic narrative as we know it today can be challenged. I would go as far as to say that most of what we know about Titanic now is wrong. With all of the human eyewitnesses having passed away, the wreck is our only remaining witness to the disaster. This photogrammetry scan is providing all kinds of new evidence that will help us reconstruct that timeline and get closer to the truth.

Ars Technica: What more are you hoping to learn about Titanic‘s sinking going forward? And how might those lessons apply more broadly?

Parks Stephenson: The data gathered in this 2022 expedition yielded more new information that could be put into this program. There’s enough material already to have a second show. There are new indicators about the condition of the wreck and how long she’s going to be with us and what happens to these wrecks in the deep ocean environment. I’ve already had a direct application of this. My dives to Titanic led me to another shipwreck, which led me to my current position as executive director of a museum ship in Louisiana, the USS Kidd.

She’s now in dry dock, and there’s a lot that I’m understanding about some of the corrosion issues that we experienced with that ship based on corrosion experiments that have been conducted at the Titanic wreck sites—specifically how metal acts underwater over time if it’s been stressed on the surface. It corrodes differently than just metal that’s been submerged. There’s all kinds of applications for this information. This is a new ecosystem that has taken root in Titanic. I would say between my dive in 2005 and 2019, I saw an explosion of life over that 14-year period. It’s its own ecosystem now. It belongs more to the creatures down there than it does to us anymore.

The bow of the Titanic Digital Twin. Magellan Limited/Atlantic Productions

As far as Titanic itself is concerned, this is key to establishing the wreck site, which is one of the world’s largest archeological sites, as an archeological site that follows archeological rigor and standards. This underwater technology—that Titanic has accelerated because of its popularity—is the way of the future for deep-ocean exploration. And the deep ocean is where our future is. It’s where green technology is going to continue to get its raw elements and minerals from. If we don’t do it responsibly, we could screw up the ocean bottom in ways that would destroy our atmosphere faster than all the cars on Earth could do. So it’s not just for the Titanic story, it’s for the future of deep-ocean exploration.

Anthony Geffen: This is the beginning of the work on the digital scan. It’s a world first. Nothing’s ever been done like this under the ocean before. This film looks at the first set of things [we’ve learned], and they’re very substantial. But what’s exciting about the digital twin is, we’ll be able to take it to location-based experiences where the public will be able to engage with the digital twin themselves, walk on the ocean floor. Headset technology will allow the audience to do what Parks did. I think that’s really important for citizen science. I also think the next generation is going to engage with the story differently. New tech and new platforms are going to be the way the next generation understands the Titanic. Any kid, anywhere on the planet, will be able to walk in and engage with the story. I think that’s really powerful.

Titanic: The Digital Resurrection premieres on April 11, 2025, on National Geographic. It will be available for streaming on Disney+ and Hulu on April 12, 2025.

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

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.

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Creating a distinctive aesthetic for Daredevil: Born Again

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Ars chats with cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera on bringing a 1970s film vibe to the Marvel series.

Enthusiasm was understandably high for Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel’s revival of the hugely popular series in the Netflix Defenders universe. Not only was Charlie Cox returning to the title role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, but Vincent D’Onofrio was also coming back as his nemesis, crime lord Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. Their dynamic has always been electric, and that on-screen magic is as powerful as ever in Born Again, which quickly earned critical raves and a second season that is currently filming.

(Some spoilers for the series below, but no major reveals beyond the opening events of the first episode.)

Born Again was initially envisioned as more of an episodic reset rather than a straight continuation of the serialized Netflix series. But during the 2023 Hollywood strikes, with production halted, the studio gave the show a creative overhaul more in line with the Netflix tone, even though six episodes had been largely completed by then. The pilot was reshot completely, and new footage was added to subsequent episodes to ensure narrative continuity with the original Daredevil—with a few well-placed nods to other characters in the MCU for good measure.

It was a savvy move. Sure, fans were shocked when the pilot episode killed off Matt’s best friend and law partner, Foggy Nelson (Elden Hensen), in the first 10 minutes, with his grief-stricken law partner, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), taking her leave from the firm by the pilot’s end. But that creative choice cleared the decks to place the focus squarely on Matt’s and Fisk’s parallel arcs. Matt decides to focus on his legal work while Fisk is elected mayor of New York City, intent on leaving his criminal life behind. But each man struggles to remain in the light as the dark sides of their respective natures fight to be released.

The result is a series that feels very much a part of its predecessor while still having its own distinctive feel. Much of that is due to cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera, working in conjunction with the broader production team to bring Born Again‘s aesthetic to vivid life. Fyfe Spera drew much of her inspiration from 1970s films like Taxi Driver, The French Connection, The Conversation, and Klute. “I’m a big fan of films of the ’70s, especially New York films,” Fyfe Spera told Ars. “It’s pervaded all of my cinematography from the beginning. This one in particular felt like a great opportunity to use that as a reference. There’s a lot of paranoia, and it’s really about character, even though we’re in a comic book environment. I just thought that the parallels of that reference were solid.”

Ars caught up with Fyfe Spera to learn more.

Karen, Matt, and Foggy enjoy a moment of camaraderie before tragedy strikes. Marvel Studios/Disney+

Ars Technica: I was surprised to learn that you never watched an episode of the original Netflix series when designing the overall look of Born Again. What was your rationale for that?

Hillary Fyfe Spera: I think as a creative person you don’t want to get too much in your head before you get going. I was very aware of Daredevil, the original series. I have a lot of friends who worked on it. I’ve seen sequences, which are intimidatingly incredible. [My decision] stemmed from wanting to bring something new to the table. We still pay homage to the original; that’s in our blood, in our DNA. But there was enough of that in the ether, and I wanted to think forward and be very aware of the original comics and the original lore and story. It was more about the identities of the characters and making sure New York itself was an authentic character. Looking back now, we landed in a lot of the same places. I knew that would happen naturally.

Ars Technica:  I was intrigued by your choice to use anamorphic lenses, one assumes to capture some of that ’70s feel, particularly the broad shots of the city.

Hillary Fyfe Spera: It’s another thing that I just saw from the very beginning; you just get a feeling about lenses in your gut. I know the original show was 1.78; I just saw this story as 2.39. It just felt like so many of the cityscapes exist in that wide-screen format. For me, the great thing about anamorphic is the relationship within composition in the lens. We talk about this dichotomy of two individuals or reflections or parallel worlds. I felt the widescreen gave us that ability. Another thing we do frequently is center framing, something the widescreen lens can really nail. Also, we shoot with these vintage-series Panavision anamorphics, which are so beautiful and textured, and have beautiful flaring effects. It brought organic textured elements to the look of the show that were a little out of the box.

Ars Technica: The city is very much a character, not just a showy backdrop. Is that why you insisted on shooting as much as possible on location?

Hillary Fyfe Spera: We shot in New York on the streets, and that is a challenge. We deal with everything from weather to fans to just New Yorkers who don’t really care, they just need to go where they’re going. Rats were a big part of it. We use a lot of wet downs and steam sources to replicate what it looks like outside our window every day. It’s funny, I’ll walk down the street and be like, “Oh look at that steam source, it’s real, it’s coming out of the street.”

Shooting a show of this scale and with its demands in a practical environment is such a fun challenge, because you have to be beholden to what you’re receiving from the universe. I think that’s cool. One of my favorite things about cinematography is that you can plan it to an inch of its life, prepare a storyboard and shot list as much as you possibly can, and then the excitement of being out in the world and having to adapt to what’s happening is a huge part of it. I think we did that. We had the confidence to say, “Well, the sun’s setting over there and that looks pretty great, let’s make that an element, let’s bring it in.” Man, those fluorescent bulbs that we can’t turn off across the street? They’re part of it. They’re the wrong color, but maybe they’re the right color because that’s real.

Ars Technica: Were there any serendipitous moments you hadn’t planned but decided to keep in the show anyway? 

Hillary Fyfe Spera: There’s one that we were shooting on an interior. It was on a set that we built, where Fisk has a halo effect around his head. It’s a reflection in a table. That set was built by Michael Shaw, our production designer. One of our operators happened to tilt the camera down into the reflection, and we’re like, “Oh my God, it’s right there.” Of course, it ended up in the show; it was a total gimme. Another example is a lot of our New York City street stuff, which was completely just found. We just went out there and we shot it: the hotdog carts, the streets, the steam, the pigeons. There’s so many pigeons. I think it really makes it feel authentic.

Ars Technica: The Matt Murdock/Wilson Fisk dynamic is so central to the show. How does the cinematography visually enhance that dynamic? 

Hillary Fyfe Spera: They’re coming back to their identities as Kingpin and Daredevil, and they’re wrestling with those sides of themselves. I think in Charlie and Vincent’s case, both of them would say that neither one is complete without the other. For us, visually, that’s just such a fun challenge to be able to show that dichotomy and their alter egos. We do it a lot with lensing.

In Fisk’s case, we use a lot of wide-angle lenses, very close to him, very low angle to show his stature and his size. We use it with a white light in the pilot, where, as the Kingpin identity is haunting him and coming more to the surface, we show that with this white light. There’s the klieg lights of his inauguration, but then he steps into darkness and into this white light. It’s actually a key frame taken directly from the comic book, of that under light on him.

For Matt Murdock, it’s similar. He is wrestling with going back to being Daredevil, which he’s put aside after Foggy’s death. The red blinking light for him is an indication of that haunting him. You know it’s inevitable, you know he’s going to put the suit back on. It’s who these guys are, they’re damaged individuals dealing with their past and their true selves. And his world, just from an aesthetic place, is a lot warmer with a lot more use of handheld.

We’re using visual languages to separate everyone, but also have them be in the same conversation. As the show progresses, that arc is evolving. So, as Fisk becomes more Kingpin, we light him with a lot more white light, more oppression, he’s the institution. Matt is going into more of the red light environment, the warmer environment. There’s a diner scene between the two of them, and within their coverage Matt is shot handheld and Fisk is shot with a studio mode with a lockdown camera. So, we’re mixing, we’re blending it even within the scenes to try and stay true to that thesis.

Ars Technica: The episodes are definitely getting darker in terms of the lighting. That has become quite an issue, particularly on television, because many people’s TVs are not set up to be able to handle that much darkness.

Hillary Fyfe Spera: Yeah, when I visit my parents, I try to mess with their TV settings a little. People are just watching it in the wrong way. I can’t speak for everyone; I love darkness. I love a night exterior, I love what you don’t see. For me, that goes back to films like The French Connection. It’s all about what you don’t see. With digital, you see so much, you have so much latitude and resolution that it’s a challenge in the other way, where we’re trying to create environments where there is a lot of contrast and there is a lot of mystery. I just think cinematographers get excited with the ability to play with that. It’s hard to have darkness in a digital medium. But I think viewers on the whole are getting used to it. I think it’s an evolving conversation.

Ars Technica: The fight choreography looks like it would be another big challenge for a cinematographer.

Hillary Fyfe Spera: I need to give a shoutout to my gaffer, Charlie Grubbs, and key grip, Matt Staples. We light an environment, we shoot those sequences with three cameras a lot of times, which is hard to do from a lighting perspective because you’re trying to make every shot feel really unique. A lot of that fight stuff is happening so quickly that you want to backlight a lot, to really set out moments so you can see it. You don’t want to fall into a muddy movement world where you can’t really make out the incredible choreography. So we do try and set environments that are cinematic, but that shoot certain directions that are really going to pinpoint the movement and the action.

It’s a collaboration conversation with Phil Silvera, our stunt coordinator and action director: not only how we can support him, but how we can add these cinematic moments that sometimes aren’t always based in reality, but are just super fun. We’ll do interactive lighting, headlights moving through, flares, just to add a little something to the sequence. The lighting of those sequences are as much a character, I think, as the performances themselves.

Ars Technica: Will you be continuing the same general look and feel in terms of cinematography for S2?

Hillary Fyfe Spera: I’ve never come back for a second season. I love doing a project and moving on, but what was so cool about doing this one was that the plan is to evolve it, so we keep going. The way we leave things in episode nine—I don’t know if we’re picking up directly after, but there is a visual arc that lands in nine, and we will continue that in S2, which has its own arc as well. There are more characters and more storylines in S2, and it’s all being folded into the visual look, but it is coming from the same place: the grounded, ’70s New York look, and even more comic cinematic moments. I think we’re going to bring it.

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

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.

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Genres are bustin’ out all over in Strange New Worlds S3 teaser

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns this summer with ten new episodes.

Paramount+ has dropped a tantalizing one-minute teaser for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds., and it looks like the latest adventures of the starship Enterprise will bring romance, comedy, mystery, and even a bit of analog tech, not to mention a brand new villain.

(Some spoilers for S2 below)

We haven’t seen much from the third season to date. There was an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con last summer—a callback to the S2 episode “Charades,” in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock’s half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human, just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee’s parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission but weren’t able to change back.

The S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation’s colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped (La’an, M’Benga, Ortegas, and Sam), along with other survivors of the attack. Pike faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat, or disobey them to rescue his crew. In October, we learned that Pike naturally chose the latter. New footage shown at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise.

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Behind the scenes of The Electric State

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The directors adopted more of a colorful 1990s aesthetic than the haunting art that originally inspired their film. While some fans of Stålenhag’s work expressed disappointment at this artistic choice, the artist himself had nothing but praise. “When you paint or draw something, you can do anything,” Stålenhag has said. ‘There are no constraints other than the time you spend painting. To see a live action movie make something I painted and to see it so truthfully translated impressed me on all levels.”

Bringing a vision to life

The task of bringing that aesthetic to the screen fell to people like Oscar-winning production designer Dennis Gassner, whose many credits include Barton Fink, Bugsy, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Truman Show, Blade Runner 2049, Skyfall, Quantum of Solace, Spectre, Into the Woods, and Big Fish. (In fact, there’s a carousel featured in the design of the Happyland amusement park that Gassner first used in Big Fish.) He and Richard L. Johnson (Pacific Rim, The Avengers) led a team that not only designed and constructed more than 100 sets for the film, but also created a host of original robot characters to augment the ones featured in Stålenhag’s book.

On set during filming of The Electric State Netflix

All the robots featured in the film have their own stories, “distinct personalities and emotional arcs,” per Anthony Russo. The directors wanted the robots to “feel authentic to the alternate 1990s but still had roots in recognizable designs,” according to Joe Russo—the kinds of things one would see in vintage commercials, shopping malls, corporate branding, and so forth. “Everything is story,” Gassner told Ars. “Story is paramount. What story are you telling? Who are the characters in this story? What are their environments? How do they feel within the environments?”

Gassner’s team designed about 175 robots all told, selecting their favorites to be featured in the final film. “It’s like a great casting call,” Gassner said. “So we played a lot, there was a long time of development in the art department between myself and a vast team of artists. We worked very closely with the visual effects department, but what the characters look like are part of the art department, and our collaboration with Joe and Anthony Russo on the study of characters. That was the fun part, getting the shape right, the character right, the color right, the clothing right.”

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HBO drops The Last of Us S2 trailer

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Pedro Pascal returns as Joel in The Last of Us S2.

HBO released a one-minute teaser of the hotly anticipated second season of The Last of Us—based on Naughty Dog’s hugely popular video game franchise—during CES in January. We now have a full trailer, unveiled at SXSW after the footage leaked over the weekend, chock-full of Easter eggs for gaming fans of The Last of Us Part II.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

The series takes place in the 20-year aftermath of a deadly outbreak of mutant fungus (Cordyceps) that turns humans into monstrous zombie-like creatures (the Infected, or Clickers). The world has become a series of separate totalitarian quarantine zones and independent settlements, with a thriving black market and a rebel militia known as the Fireflies making life complicated for the survivors. Joel (Pedro Pascal) is a hardened smuggler tasked with escorting the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsay) across the devastated US, battling hostile forces and hordes of zombies, to a Fireflies unit outside the quarantine zone. Ellie is special: She is immune to the deadly fungus, and the hope is that her immunity holds the key to beating the disease.

S2 is set five years after the events of the first season and finds the bond beginning to fray between plucky survivors Joel and Ellie. That’s the inevitable outcome of S1’s shocking finale, when they finally arrived at their destination, only to discover the secret to her immunity to the Cordyceps fungus meant Ellie would have to die to find a cure. Ellie was willing to sacrifice herself, but once she was under anesthesia, Joel went berserk and killed all the hospital staff to save her life—and lied to Ellie about it, claiming the staff were killed by raiders.

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Andor S2 featurette teases canonical tragic event

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Most of the main S1 cast is returning for S2, with the exception of Shaw. Forest Whitaker once again reprises his Rogue One role as Clone Wars veteran Saw Gerrera, joined by fellow Rogue One alums Ben Mendelsohn and Alan Tudyk as Orson Krennic and K-2SO, respectively. Benjamin Bratt has also been cast in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

The behind-the-scenes look opens with footage of a desperate emergency broadcast calling for help because Imperial ships were landing, filled with storm troopers intent on quashing any protesters or nascent rebels against the Empire who might be lurking about. “Revolutionary movements are spontaneously happening all over the galaxy,” series creator Tony Gilroy explains. “How those come together is the stuff of our story.” While S1 focused a great deal on political intrigue, Genevieve O’Reilly, who plays Mon Mothma, describes S2 as a “juggernaut,” with a size and scope to match.

The footage shown—some new, some shown in the last week’s teaser—confirms that assessment. There are glimpses of Gerrera, Krennic, and K-2SO, as well as Mothma’s home world, Chandrila. And are all those protesters chanting on the planet of Ghorman? That means we’re likely to see the infamous Ghorman Massacre, a brutal event that resulted in Mothma resigning from the Senate in protest against Emperor Palpatine. The massacre was so horrifying that it eventually served to mobilize and unite rebel forces across the galaxy in the Star Wars canon.

The first three (of 12) episodes of Andor S2 premiere on April 22, 2025, on Disney+. Subsequent three-episode chapters will drop weekly for the next three weeks after that.

poster art for Andor S2

Credit: LucasFilm/Disney+

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The revolution starts now with Andor S2 teaser

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Diego Luna returns as Cassian in the forthcoming second season of Andor.

The first season of Andor, the Star Wars prequel series to Rogue One and A New Hope, earned critical raves for its gritty aesthetic and multilayered narrative rife with political intrigue. While ratings were a bit sluggish, they were good enough to win the series a second season, and Disney+ just dropped the first action-packed teaser trailer.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, the story begins five years before the events of Rogue One, with the Empire’s destruction of Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) homeworld and follows his transformation from a “revolution-averse” cynic to a major player in the nascent rebellion who is willing to sacrifice himself to save the galaxy. S1 left off with Cassian returning to Ferrix for the funeral of his adoptive mother, Maarva (Fiona Shaw), rescuing a friend from prison, and dodging an assassination attempt. A post-credits scene showed prisoners assembling the firing dish of the now-under-construction Death Star.

According to the official longline, S2 “will see the characters and their relationships intensify as the horizon of war draws near and Cassian becomes a key player in the Rebel Alliance. Everyone will be tested and, as the stakes rise, the betrayals, sacrifices and conflicting agendas will become profound. “

In addition to Luna, most of the main cast from S1 is returning: Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, a senator of the Republic who helped found the Rebel Alliance; Adria Arjona as mechanic and black market dealer Bix Caleen; James McArdle as Caleen’s boyfriend, Timm Karlo; Kyle Soller as Syril Karn, deputy inspector for the Preox-Morlana Authority; Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael, an antiques dealer who is secretly part of the Rebel Alliance; Denise Gough as Dedra Meero, supervisor for the Imperial Security Bureau; Faye Marsay as Vel Sartha, a Rebel leader on the planet Aldhani; Varada Sethu as Cinta Kaz, another Aldhani Rebel; Elizabeth Dulau as Luthen’s assistant Kleya; and Muhannad Bhaier as Wilmon, who runs the Repaak Salyard.

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Wheel of Time S3 trailer tees us up for Last Battle

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After defeating Ishamael, one of the most powerful of the Forsaken, at the end of Season Two, Rand reunites with his friends in the city of Falme and is declared the Dragon Reborn. But in Season Three, the threats against the Light are multiplying: the White Tower stands divided, the Black Ajah run free, old enemies return to the Two Rivers, and the remaining Forsaken are in hot pursuit of the Dragon… including Lanfear, whose relationship with Rand will mark a crucial choice between Light and Dark for them both.

Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in December. That teaser was notable for Moraine’s prediction concerning her and Rand’s intertwined fates: “In every future where I lived, Rand dies. And the only way he lives is if I don’t.”

The full trailer reiterates that prediction and gives us glimpses of a battle breaking out in the White Tower, the port city of Tanchico, and growing tension between Rand and Egwene (Madeleine Madden), who is troubled by Rand’s romantic entanglement with Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe), a powerful member of the Forsaken who hopes to seduce Rand to the Shadow. It’s all gearing up for Rand’s destiny to fight in the Last Battle.

The first three episodes of the third season of The Wheel of Time premiere on March 13, 2025, with episodes airing weekly after that through April 17.

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Alien: Earth will bring the horror home

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Chandler’s character is named Wendy, and apparently she has “the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child.” The eminently watchable Timothy Olyphant plays her synth mentor and trainer, Kirsh, and here’s hoping he brings some space cowboy vibes to the role. The cast also includes Alex Lawther as the soldier named CJ; Samuel Blenkin as a CEO named Boy Kavalier; Essie Davis as Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gourav as Slightly; Kit Young as Tootles; and Sandra Yi Sencindiver as a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. I think we can expect at least some cast members to end up as xenomorph fodder.

Alien: Romulus was a welcome return to the franchise’s horror roots, and Alien: Earth will bring the horror to our home planet. “There’s something about seeing a Xenomorph in the wilds of Earth with your own eyes,” Hawley told Deadline Hollywood in September. “I can’t tell you under what circumstances you’ll see that, but you’ll see it — and you’re going to lock your door that night.”

As for creature design, “What was really fun for me was to really engage with the creature, bring some of my own thoughts to the design while not touching the silhouette, because that’s sacrosanct,” he said. “But some of the elements as we know, whatever the host is informs what the final creature is. I just wanted to play around a little bit to make it as scary as it should be.”

Alien: Earth premieres on FX/Hulu this summer.

poster art featuring a grinning xenomorph

Credit: FX/Hulu

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The trailer for Daredevil: Born Again is here

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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+.

poster art showing the faces of Fisk and Daredevil, one in gray, the other in red

Credit: Marvel Studios

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