In “Battle Scars,” another familiar face returns and a clock counts down to zero. The Bad Batch head to an old Jedi cruiser to remove their inhibitor chips. While it’s too early to count out the Scrapper Guild patrols who control the starship graveyard, the real threat this week comes from within. Wrecker’s control chip activates, plunging him into an Order 66-induced rage. The Batch needs the help of an old friend to remove their chips once and for all....

Back in 2011, the novelist Karen Russell made a perfect observation about why we love orphan narratives in fiction. Speaking about her 2011 novel Swamplandia!, which tells the story of a group of teens working in an alligator-wrestling theme park, Russell said: “I think it’s expedient to get those authority figures out of the way. What if they had really authoritarian overprotective parents? Nothing would happen in the book. They would all apply to college!...

EW broke the news that Shipp will appear as Jay Garrick in the ninth episode of Stargirl Season 2, in what is called “a pivotal flashback episode” which places “the Golden Age Flash as a member of Earth-2’s Justice Society of America.” It’s a notable inclusion, since Garrick has been a founding member of the JSA in the comics since the team’s first appearance in 1940, but no live action version of the team has yet to feature the original Flash....

Supergirl Season 6 Episode 9 A number of much-loved shows are coming to an end, or have recently, that in some ways could have pushed their luck, but in other ways were a product of a moment – a moment that they looked up to find had passed. VEEP stands out as a clear example, as does Brooklyn 99, which is doing its best to be a fun cop show that knows cops aren’t good guys without – losing all its levity or becoming a documentary....

To be sure there are plenty of pleasant actors doing pleasant enough work in Superintelligence, from McCarthy as everywoman Carol Peters to Bobby Cannavale as her dude bro, professorial ex; Jean Smart is the president; and Brian Tyree Henry is Carol’s BFF. And then of course there’s James Corden, who voices the sardonic computer overlord with a gift for gab. But between them there is nary a chortle, guffaw, or chuckle....

The 100 Season 6 Episode 3 “Children of Gabriel” is so packed with mythology, politics and new dynamics for the Earthlings to sort out that it makes everything else feel like mere preamble. At several points, people from Sanctum or Children of Gabriel say lines where we don’t understand at least 50% of the words in the sentence because this world is so new and fully developed. It’s a fun feeling of discovery to have this far into a show, and one that rarely comes this genuinely....

The 100 Season 6 Episode 4 Sanctum’s Naming Day – an occasion for making amends – is perfectly timed for our Kru to do some much-needed exploring of their feelings. As Bellamy points out, they lost Monty and Harper just three days ago, which means the valley, the torture, and the fighting pit were mere days and weeks before that. Clarke goes on an apology tour to Raven and Bellamy, and after three episodes of Raven’s huffing and puffing, it was so satisfying to hear her tell Clarke off accurately, taking her to task for hurting everyone over and over, making her apologies feel meaningless....

The 100 Season 6 Episode 5 The 100 continues to embed more world-building per minute this season than I could have possibly imagined. It never feels like eating our exposition vegetables – on the contrary, I find myself pausing and rewinding to make sure I haven’t missed any of the precious nuggets the writers have seen fit to drop in, like in the old days with Lost or Battlestar Galactica. It’s hard to layer in this many kinds of details, about our new physical world, Sanctum and its secrets, the politics between Sanctum and those who live beyond its borders, and whatever else might be happening in a given scene....

As a project which made waves at Cannes in 2018—where it triggered a bidding war due to the sheer star wattage and talent of its five leads—the film arrives almost three years later in the ignominious release window of the first weekend of January. This is a timeframe that’s long been associated with low attendance for new releases, even before Omicron. And in its finished, entirely rote form you can see the ambitious idea Chastain and company were going for as five great actresses lead their own spy ensemble saga, playing in a genre traditionally dominated by white male leads....

The Affair Season 4 Episode 10 “It takes time…” “Are you okay?” It’s a very simple question, but it’s kind of the antithesis of what this finale — and the series as a whole — is all about. As The Affair checks in with these characters one last time this year, it wants to examine how everyone is doing as they prepare to ride off into the horizon. Tragic events have shaken up everyone’s world and so it’s only natural to look at the consequences of those events, but this has been a fundamental question ever since the start of the series....

From the moment humans decided to stop all that tiresome hunting and gathering, opting instead to settle down and get civilized, there’s always been a nagging fear. When you agree to live in a community with other people, you are also tacitly agreeing there are simply some things you can’t do anymore. If you want to take advantage of indoor plumbing and a centralized food supply, you can’t walk around naked all the time....

But time has been kind to the N64, with more modern gamers praising the system for the quality and innovation of its games (even if it lacked in quantity of titles). As Nintendo’s first dedicated 3D console, the N64 also gave us plenty of epic boss encounters that its predecessors could never handle. Many of these boss battles still continue to influence games to this day, while others simply deserve to be remembered more than they often are....

Through much of Prime Video’s surprisingly plentiful and revealing marketing material, the show has teased out the answers to many of those questions and more. One query, however, has not really been addressed: How’s Homelander (Antony Starr) doing? Vought Corporation’s ubermensch is not always entirely mentally sound, even on the best of days. But going into season 3, Homelander is decidedly far from the best of days. The man formerly known as John fell in love with a dashing new feminist hero Stormfront (Aya Cash) in season 2 only to discover that she is an ancient secret Nazi....

Judd Apatow’s latest comedy for Netflix, The Bubble, is not only another example of this trend, but it also uses the realities of making a movie during quarantine as a means of showbiz satire. The premise is that a small group of actors, played by Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, Leslie Mann, and Keegan-Michael Key, among others, are holed up in the English countryside to film the latest installment of a mega-franchise....

Although Rosenfeld is a male character in the James S. A. Corey novels upon which The Expanse is based, both he and the television version act as a voice of reason within Marco’s inner circle. “She’s an established character [from the books], one of the Free Navy,” says Franck. “But more than anything we needed somebody for Marco to have conversations with and to be plotting and strategizing with, and he’s kind of killed all of his other allies....

While WandaVision is busy keeping everybody guessing with its mysterious sitcom-inflected weirdness, the Super Bowl just reminded us that there’s a more relatively straightforward superhero action show coming to Disney+ next month. Right after WandaVision finishes its nine episode run, Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will hit the streamer on March 19, telling the tale of the uneasy partnership between Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, and the ongoing quest to fill Captain America’s boots and wield the shield....

These photos show a much brighter suit than previously worn by The Flash star Ezra Miller, something much closer in tone to the costume that Grant Gustin has worn playing the Flash on the CW series. More notably, the costume appears to consist of a single piece, as opposed to the more piece-meal suit Miller had in Justice League and the “Knightmare” sequence at the end of Zack Snyder’s Justice League....

The Flash Season 7 Episode 3 When we initially learned that the last three episodes of The Flash’s Season 6 would be rolled over into its seventh, some of us (read: me) were hopeful that it might serve as an impetus to rethink Season 7 entirely and build these additional installments into some sort of larger story that worked as a cohesive whole. But, unfortunately, it’s very obvious that “Mother” was meant to serve as The Flash’s sixth season finale – for all the good and ill that designation entails....

Such has been the case with the series of movies collectively known as The Purge, which in many ways have never outgrown their original recipe as a hard, violent shell of low-budget action/horror wrapped around a viscous, somewhat self-contradictory center of socially conscious speculative fiction. Yet whatever flaws one may find in the now five films in the series (we have not watched the two-season TV show, so we won’t bring it into this discussion), the vision behind the narrative—primarily that of creator James DeMonaco, who has written all five pictures and directed three of them—has remained remarkably consistent, often frightening, and right on the nose when it comes to the news....

While many have pointed out that The Haunting of Bly Manor is not quite as scary as its predecessor, it certainly has a more satisfying conclusion. The Haunting of Hill House seemed to lose its nerve in the final hour, delivering an ending that was too saccharine and unearned. On the flipside, Bly Manor concludes its story in heart wrenching, then bitter sweet fashion, revealing the identity of the series’ mysterious narrator, detailing the fates of the 1987-set characters, and expelling the spirits of the titular manor....