In the English countryside, dinner had ended, and the company retired to the drawing room. They gathered around the fire as the parson, who sat in a high-backed oak chair, proceeded to tell of goblins and ghosts. The squire, not a superstitious man himself, listened intently as the parson spoke about the crusader who rose from his tomb for a nighttime ride. The old porter’s wife added to the tale with her own of the crusader’s march on Midsummer Eve, when fairies became visible....

But Shatner didn’t “want to turn somersaults.” He wanted to look out the window. What he saw made him think about the sixth extinction, theorized to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact on the dinosaurs. Shatner has been consistent in this warning for the past few years: if Earth sees mankind as a pestilence, it will rid itself of us. In his career on-screen, Shatner traveled to The Twilight Zone, brought his “Big Giant Head” to 3rd Rock from the Sun, and his unbridled curiosity to The UnXplained....

Spider-Man: Far From Home, which officially closes off Marvel’s Phase Three, is another new flavour for the studio: a fresh, youthful romp that also takes things back to basics. Far From Home feels like a Spider-Man movie first and an MCU movie second, and it’s all the better for it. Kicking off with essentially a post-Endgame world explainer, Far From Home finds us in the aftermath of the Snap reversal (“The Blip” as the whole thing is now called)....

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has a ton of personality and heart, but it boils down to a pretty basic plot. It’s a superhero origin story that ends with the good guys having a climactic battle over a maguffin that can blow up all of reality. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and our heroes live happily ever after. The final seconds suggest that there will be more inter-dimensional team-ups later and the ridiculous post-credits sequence backs this up....

But the new (and final) Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer is finally here. And it is perhaps even bigger, wilder, and weirder than anyone expected. And to be honest, we were expecting quite a lot right out of the gate, so that’s saying something. First of all, just in case you’re here and you haven’t even watched the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer yet, allow us to fix that for you....

Going into this event movie weekend, there were a whole lot of fan theories and guesses at what the post-credits scene would be in Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home. Would the worst kept secret in the world—that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back for another inter-dimensional Spidey adventure—give way to extra cameos from Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson and Emma Stone as a resurrected Gwen Stacy?...

Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles SoulePublisher: Del ReyOut now Two centuries before The Phantom Menace, The High Republic is Star Wars’ latest canon expansion, exploring a pre-Empire golden age. Comics writer Soule’s inaugural installment follows Jedi Avar Kriss and comrades as a hyperspace disaster illuminates a new threat. Follow-up novels and comics come from Daniel José Older, Justina Ireland, Cavan Scott, and Claudia Gray (Into the Dark is also out now)....

The emotional and action-packed Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 finale is full of plenty of obvious Easter eggs and references to all versions of the Star Trek canon. Of course, if you’ve seen the episode, you noticed that certain someone shaved their beard, and is wearing a very familiar blue uniform. But, that’s the obvious stuff! In terms of deep-cuts, there were some more even more subtle nods to classic canon in this episode, too....

Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Episode 9 Alea iacta est, it would seem. Star Trek: Discovery finally casts the proverbial die in “Rubicon, an hour that sees DMA destroyed despite Michael’s–and eventually Book’s—best efforts to prevent it, an event that may well kick off an intergalactic war between the Federation and Unknown Species 10-C. Most of us probably figured something like this was going to happen just from the episode’s title, a reference to Julius Caesar’s historical crossing of the Rubicon River that kicked off a five-year Roman civil war....

While we don’t learn much about what’s happened to Bo-Katan since we last saw her on Rebels, “The Heiress” reveals that she’s still trying to liberate Mandalore, a mission she’s been trying to accomplish since we first met her on The Clone Wars. This time, she hopes that the stolen weapons and the Mandalorians she’s assembled will be enough to take back her home planet from what’s left of the Empire....

The Book of Boba Fett Episode 3 One of the most wonderful things about Star Wars is the ability to imagine day-to-day life in that world. On Tatooine, it’s clear mundane life might include buying water and looking out for raiders (Tusken or otherwise) on the horizon. In “The Streets of Mos Espa,” glimpses of relatively urbane Tatooine continue to give the galaxy far, far away the sort of color and texture you can imagine living in....

Only now is Star Wars canon officially designating an era where the Jedi are at the height of their powers. Stronger, more in tune with the Force, and more assured than we’ve ever seen them before, the Jedi of the High Republic era are what Jedi are supposed to be. The High Republic line of books and comics, which will debut on Jan. 5, is set a couple of hundred years before The Phantom Menace....

As one would hope, the series features a number of fan-favorite actors returning to their signiture roles. Although Rosario Dawson has put her own stamp on the live-action version of Ahsoka, first seen in The Mandalorian, the character will be once again voiced by Ashley Eckstein, who originally played the character for the 2008 movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the subsequent series. While Christopher Lee played Dooku in the movies, including The Clone Wars, Corey Burton took over for the television series and will reprise that role for Tales of the Jedi....

Supergirl Season 6 Episode 8 Supergirl is back! But it’s not all ice cream cones and pizza parties just yet. She’s finally reunited with her sister and her team, and she got that long-awaited hug with Lena – without whom she would still be in the Phantom Zone, as she pointed out. But from the first time we see Kara in this episode under the sun lamps, it’s clear that the events of the first half of the season will stay with her for a while....

Superman & Lois Season 2 Episode 10 Superman & Lois returns from its month-long hiatus with what is, pardon the pun, one of its most bizarre episodes to date, an hour that takes us through the proverbial looking glass (or portal, as the case may be), to an alternate reality that looks like it has a lot more in common with Riverdale than Smallville. This “Bizarro World” is the inverse of our own, and these changes are reflected in both its main characters and the society they inhabit....

Superman & Lois Season 2 Episode 3 When it really comes down to it…it was never gonna be Doomsday, was it? The whole mission statement of Superman & Lois has always been to do things a little bit sideways from what the fans expect. Superman mythology is so ingrained in pop culture consciousness that any setting, any tease of a comics story, any new character, is instantly going to give audiences the idea that they know what’s coming....

Since 2015, Taskmaster has aired nine series and one special in the UK, growing from a cult delight on digital channel Dave to a Bafta-nominated, millions-attracting hit about to make its debut this autumn on major broadcaster Channel 4. But all that’s just numbers. In real life, Taskmaster has done much, much more. Ask anyone who loves it and they’ll tell you. This unimprovably silly show in which comedians complete a series of absurd tasks, and then get together to watch the results, be judged, and laugh at themselves, is a holiday from strife....

Taking a beloved ‘80s movie property, The Karate Kid, and reimagining for a new generation focused on the villainous Cobra Kai dojo from the film series? That’s gold! Or at least, we know that’s gold now, having been able to see it through four, soon-to-be-five, wonderful seasons of karate action. Prior to Cobra Kai premiering in 2018, however, very few people had the vision that Karate Kid’s ostensible villain Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) would make for a compelling antihero more than 30 years later....

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 1 From the very first notes of music, Versace is operatic. It has fantastic sets and locations, and it knows it. It has a justifiable reason for using opera music in primetime, and it flaunts it. The opener is directed by Ryan Murphy, and the most creative shots are loving, unexpected portrayals of the places where these two men, killer and killed, belong. The most revealing moment, and one that speaks to the larger themes of the show, shows barely any of Darren Criss’s face as killer Andrew Cunanan, accompanied by horns that sound more like a klaxon or warning than the brass section of the orchestra....

Well, that obviously did not happen in The Dark Knight Rises, but with the arrival of WB’s The Batman trailer, it feels like the studio and the fans are finally getting The Dark Knight sequel they wanted the first time. Director Matt Reeves’ film is also of course its own animal, and if anything looks poised to be an even darker, more ruthless interpretation of the Batman’s mythology than Nolan’s previous “grounded” and hard-nosed vision of Gotham City....