What Happened At the End of Longlegs?

The ending of Longlegs ties together a truly evil story. Throughout the film, FBI Agent Lee Harker is shown making awkward contact with her mother, Ruth, while trying to track down Longlegs. Their conversations are brief and ominous, and the relationship is obviously strained. As Lee makes impressive strides in what was originally an unsolvable case for the FBI, viewers begin to understand that the titular Longlegs (played monstrously by Nicolas Cage) is letting Lee make her discoveries, such as when he leaves a cipher translator in her house in a truly unsettling sequence. The film sets up an interesting relationship between Lee and the killer, as the ominous opening of the film hints at a deeper connection than Lee initially realizes.

It’s no surprise that Perkins dedicated this film to “moms who lie.” It is revealed during the ending of Longlegs that although Longlegs is using what might be a form of satanic magic to carry out his murders without being at the scene of a crime, it was Lee’s mother who acted as a disciple of his work. Dressed as a nun, Ruth would place the satanic dolls created by Longlegs in people’s homes under the guise of mainstream Religious charity. The automatic trust these families showed in what they thought was someone after their own faith leaving them a gift would be their downfall. The dolls would, in some ambiguous way or another, influence the father of the family to brutally murder his own children and wife before eventually ending his own.

Ruth worked with Longlegs to supposedly spare her daughter’s life, as the killer originally had the young Lee in his sights. Unfortunately, this past connection was seemingly wiped from the agent’s mind until her investigation. Eventually, Cage’s Longlegs is captured and comes face to face with Lee. It’s in this interrogation scene that most of what was hidden before comes to light: Ruth made a literal deal with the devil to ensure that she and her daughter were not the next victims. She lied to Lee repeatedly about knowing Longlegs before. Then, in a petrifying monologue performed by Cage, it’s revealed that Lee is expected to take on the mantle of Longlegs.

Longlegs kills himself right then and there in front of Lee, all but confirming his belief that he is done and the mantle is now her’s. Lee proceeds to attempt to bring her mother in for questioning, only for Ruth, once again in nun attire, to kill an FBI agent as well as shoot the head of the doll that resembles a young Lee. The dolls were revealed earlier in the film to be carrying a seemingly empty black ball inside their heads, transmitting some sort of wavelengths that influence violence.

Related: The Bear Season 3 Ending, Explained

.In the final sequence of the film, Lee attempts to stop her mother from delivering a doll to her boss’ house as they are celebrating their daughter’s birthday. After this terrible discovery, she is even shown waking up in Longleg’s hiding spot, which turned out to be in the basement of her childhood home this entire time. Unfortunately, Lee is too late, as Detective Carter butchers his own wife and is killed by Lee before he can hurt his daughter. Ruth attempts to kill the daughter as well, forcing Lee to shoot her in self-defense. In the final scene, Lee stares down the doll version of Carter’s daughter and attempts to shoot it, only to have seemingly run out of bullets.

Ending with a “hail satan” from Cage’s Longlegs before the credits roll, Harker’s fate is left ambiguous. Not only that but the methods of the murders and Lee’s own supposed “psychic” abilities are left unanswered. Director Perkins is less interested in confirming the exact nature of evil than he is in showing how it can spawn from the most noble of intentions. While Ruth may have started her evil and sickening partnership with Longlegs out of the wish to protect her daughter, the fact that she goes out of her way to try and kill again even after Longlegs is dead speaks to how wicked she has become herself.

In the end, it may very well be that Lee is unable to shoot the doll at the end because she is now trapped in some satanic ritual. Or, she simply ran out of bullets, and the cycle of evil begetting evil stops with the death of her mother. Either way, Longlegs is an exercise that demonstrates our capacity for darkness and cruelty and the nature of evil as something that we all have the potential for. It is, without a doubt, one of the darkest films of the year.

And that’s the ending of Longlegs, explained.

The Captain America: Brave New World trailer focuses on the dynamic between Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson and Harrison Ford’s Thunderbolt Ross. It even pulls an Iron Man 2 and addresses the fact that Ross looks different. Between all the quips, though, the first look showcases how the new Captain America is still trying to find his place in the world following the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Standing in his way will be Giancarlo Esposito’s mystery villain, who pops up a couple times in the trailer, and The Leader, who was notably abscent from the first look outside of a line of dialogue and a brief shot from behind. His prescence is still felt, however, as the tag shows off the Red Hulk. Of course, in the comics, Ross turns himself into a giant monster to battle Bruce Banner, but this time around, he’s taking on Captain America for unknown reasons.

Related: Can You Buy Deadpool 3’s Necklace in Real Life?

Fighting a Hulk is no easy feat, but Captain America will have help in the form of the new Falcon, Joaquín Torres, played by Danny Ramirez, and Isaiah Bradley, played by Carl Lumbly. However, it doesn’t appear Bucky will be by Sam’s side this time around, as he’ll be busy with the Thunderbolts.

With Deadpool & Wolverine hitting theaters this month, it’s going to be a long wait before the next Marvel Studios movie, as Brave New World isn’t releasing until February 14, 2025. However, that’s probably for the best, given the MCU’s recent track record. The powers that be need all the time they can get to get things right.

The New Shapeshifter in The Boys Season 4, Explained

The Boys catch wind of a new Supe on the scene via A-Train. Sage is meeting with them about taking out the president, and after the team scopes out the Supe’s apartment, they figure out why. The Supe is a shapeshifter who has to rip their skin off to change their appearnce. Their true identity remains a mystery, but there are some clues in Season 4, Episode 7 to at least make a guess.

There’s already been a prominent shapeshifter in The Boys, Doppelganger. However, despite Homelander using them to pull off his sexual fantasies after Madelyn Stillwell’s death, the leader of The Seven kills them, meaning they aren’t a candidate. That means it’s time to dive into The Boys comics to see whether Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson added another shapeshifter to their twisted lineup.

Related: The Boys: Who Is Tek Knight’s Old Sidekick?

The only shapeshifter in the source material is Malchemical, who can not only change his appearnce but his material and density. Malchemical fix isn’t exact fit for the new shapeshifter, as he is a lot more like DC’s Metamorpho, but Prime Video’s series has been known to take creative liberties with its characters. No matter their true identity, though, answers are sure to come in the final episode of The Boys Season 4, as this new Supe has their sights set on the president and is currently impersonating Starlight.

And that’s who the new shapeshifter is in The Boys Season 4.

The Boys is streaming now on Prime Video.

It feels strange to start off an article where I’ll be complaining about a show with effusive praise, but it is important to acknowledge that Star Trek: Prodigy is an absolutely fantastic show. The series at this point could be in contention for the best non-comedic Star Trek show since Star Trek: Discovery relaunched the franchise on Paramount+. It takes everything that’s great about Trek and dilutes it down wonderfully while still developing a cadre of fantastic, diverse, and engaging characters into a crew. Of all the current running shows, it quite possibly “gets” Star Trek the most.

However, criticizing something that’s great does not mean it isn’t great; it just means we can see how it can be better. And Star Trek: Prodigy‘s second second season has a worrying flaw that was handled so much better in its first season: nostalgia.

Star Trek: Prodigy’s Nostalgia Is Nothing New

Using nostalgia to help draw in an audience is nothing new to Star Trek: Prodigy or Star Trek itself. The franchise has been using it in one way or another since The Next Generation brought Scotty back for a very special episode. One of Deep Space Nine‘s best and most beloved episodes was a time-traveling crossover with The Original Series‘s “The Trouble with Tribbles.” This is even more true for the current run of Paramount+ shows, which are all heavily connected in one way or another to the past TV series, whether that be directly with Picard basically being three seasons of fan service (for better or worse) or indirectly with the plethora of references and cameos in Lower Decks. The point is that nostalgia, crossover, and cameo are tools regularly used in Trek, and a lot of the time it’s to great affect.

Prodigy is no different. In fact, its first season was one of the best uses of nostalgia the franchise has ever had. In that season, the show pulled Captain Janeway in to the series to help establish and teach new viewers just what Star Trek was all about. By inserting a holographic Janeway into the series, the show not only connected with the past for fans but also grounded itself squarely in the universe without requiring a PhD in Star Trek lore to understand what was going on. Hologram Janeway, acting as the guiding teacher for not just the young crew of the Prodigy but for the audience as well, could be any Captain for newcomers but was also a wonderful return for fans of the series. Nostalgia here was used perfectly, without the mess of continuity or the requirement of previous knowledge.

The series could then focus on Prodigy’s crew of ragtag escapees as they crossed the universe, not only learning about Star Fleet, friendship, and the bigger universe but also evolving themselves. Of course, by the end of the first season, the show started to pull in the actual Captain Janeway and hints of the second season’s bigger issue with nostalgia began to crop up.

Nostalgia as a Barrier to Entry in Star Trek: Prodigy

With Star Trek: Prodigy‘s second season, the creators dive hard into nostalgia in a way that’s far different from its first. In this season, the crew of the Prodigy is interacting directly with Star Fleet as they are pulled into a time travel plotline that involves not just the actual Admiral Janeway but also Captain Chacotay, The Doctor, Wesley Crusher, Beverly Crusher, and Voyager itself. That is a lot of lore to know for a series meant to be an introduction to Star Trek. This is especially true for Wesley, who has a convoluted and complex history involving becoming what is basically a time god. These cameos are all clearly far more played toward already-established fans of the show.

And, to be fair, it’s played really, really well, outside of The Doctor being mostly useless. Again, I’m pointing out an issue for sure, but for fans of Star Trek, this is an incredible season of television that gives us even more fantastic Janeway, explored a new side of Chakotay, and finally gave Wesley’s story arc at least a little closure. His exit from TNG left so many questions open thanks to that series’ episodic nature that even his cameo in Picard wasn’t truly enough to put a cap on his tale. Prodigy finally gave him and Beverly some closure, but at the cost of this season turning into far more of a fan love letter than a season of Prodigy.

The biggest cost of this, outside of the possible alienation of newcomers, is to the new Prodigy characters. Dal, Gwyndala, Murf, Rok-Tahk, Jankom Pog, Zero, and newcomer Maj’el lost some of the attention of the series as it dove into nostalgic storylines. This feels like even more of a shame because these are some of the best-developed characters in all of Trek, with actual evolution and growth throughout these two fantastic seasons of television. Season 2 of the series offers some truly great arcs, including Zero’s growth into a corporeal being and Dal and Gwyn’s growing relationship, but that just highlights the issue even more. It feels like we could have gotten more of it all if the show wasn’t so tied into a storyline focused on expanding the universe and emphasizing the past.

The fault here is not one in show construction or plotting, but a worrisome trend by Star Trek to veer into its past instead of constructing for its future. The crew of the Prodigy didn’t need a full season devoted to unpacking past storylines and characters because it had already delivered a season that gave us wonderful new characters. It’s a hard point to argue because Season 2 is truly fantastic, but it hints at an unfortunate overall issue with Trek‘s reliance on the past that Prodigy was so good at avoiding in its first season.

The Future of Star Trek: Prodigy Is Ditching the Past

All is not lost, however, especially given fans praise of the show. The minds behind some of Star Trek seem to understand that nostalgia will only get you so far. While Picard‘s final season was basically just an updated episode of The Next Generation, Discovery learned quickly that being pulled into the continuity of the past wasn’t going to work and launched the entire crew into the future so they could chart their own course. Did it work? Not all the time, but it definitely made the show better.

Prodigy seems to understand this as well, if the conclusion of the second season is any indication. While we don’t know if we’ll actually get a third season as, Netflix has yet to greenlight one, the show concludes with the Prodigy’s crew getting a revamped version of the ship and being sent off to explore the universe while Star Fleet struggles with the fallout of the synthetic attack on Mars. Of course, that attack is yet again a bit of continuity from Picard but the message is that the characters, along with hologram Janeway, will be on their own journey.

This is the correct direction, even if the excuse to have a crew of kids on a starship is ludicrous, and if the show gets a third season and does indeed go into a series focused solely on this crew, much like Trek before the Paramount+ shows, the future of Star Trek: Prodigy, if there is one, looks bright.

Star Trek: Prodigy is available to watch now.

The response comes from a line that dropped in the first trailer released for the upcoming film in which Reynolds, as Deadpool/Wade Wilson, insists that the only line Feige said the film couldn’t cross was drug use, specifically cocaine. That, however, was evidently just a punchline. In a Variety piece about the new film – which features Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and director Shawn Levy – Feige was asked about restrictions Disney or he may have put on the film, and the head honcho of all Marvel films said there were none.

“We were open to anything,” Feige explained. “Maybe I’m slightly prudish when it comes to drug use, but I was like, ‘Eh, it’s not that funny.'”

Related: Can You Buy Deadpool 3’s Necklace in Real Life?

“There’s a line in the red-band trailer — you don’t have to write this in the article, for crying out loud! — about pegging,” Feige went on, providing an example of how new R-ratings and Deadpool are to the MCU. “I know what pegging is — it’s in the first Deadpool movie. But there were people I work with who didn’t know what it was. I had to explain it to them.” 

Obviously, there hasn’t been anything like Deadpool in the MCU. Yes, She-Hulk broke the fourth wall in a major way, but that was all pretty tame humor. Deadpool & Wolverine is a whole different beast, and it’s clear that the film is pulling no punches. Heck, even the interview that these comments are from features teabagging, cursing, and enough potty humor to warrant a parental advisory.

Deadpool & Wolverine will be in theaters on July 26.

Lost’s Worst Episodes Are Still a Part of Its Tapestry

For Nikki and Paulo’s haters, their episode was at worst an hour more torturous than anything Sayid Jarrah conceived of while working for the Republican Guard and at best the filler episode to end all filler episodes.

“Exposé” might very well be the filler episode to end all filler episodes, but when did filler become such a dirty word? It used to be a privilege to invite the characters we love into our homes every week to spend time with them, whether that time was spent advancing the plot or not. The act of binarily sorting episodes into filler and non-filler proves inherently faulty with its implication that the most load-bearing pillars of the medium—sitcoms and procedurals—are worthless investments. When one of the most beloved and iconic entries into the television landscape was proudly touted as “a show about nothing,” an aversion to filler reads as an aversion to television.

It might seem strange to examine Lost under the lens of arguably one of its worst episodes when the series gifted television with masterpieces like “The Constant” and “Through the Looking Glass”, but “Exposé” serves as an ideal microcosm for the show’s high-risk/high-reward nature. In 2004, ABC invested over 10 million dollars in Lost‘s pilot – a price tag never before conceived of in television. Moreover, the network was betting on an unproven and completely original concept, setting a precedent for risk-taking and innovation. But innovation did not always equate to perfection, and not just in critically panned episodes like “Exposé”. Lost‘s freedom to take creative risk meant it was rife with flaws, but to dub those moments skippable (or watchable at 1.5 speed) is an act of airbrushing history.

Television is designed to tell episodic stories, and while many of the best entries do service to an overarching narrative, they still maintain a distinct beginning, middle, and end of their own. In a binge model where an entire season of television is designed to be consumed in one sitting, episodes closer resemble micro-acts of an extended film rather than individual pieces of art. However, the most acclaimed television episodes of the past decade, like The Bear‘s “Fishes” and The Last of Us‘ “Long, Long Time” more closely resemble the storytelling model deployed in “Exposé”. While this risk didn’t pay dividends in “Exposé”, it doesn’t mean that filler, experiments, or deviations from a show’s main story aren’t worth experiencing because they’re a part of a show’s voice for better and for worse.

Lost’s Flaws Represent a Feature of Television, Not a Bug

Much like The Swan station’s pantry, Lost was stuffed with all the essential supplies to sustain a fandom-oriented audience – puzzle box mysteries, intriguing lore, genre tropes, and a vast ensemble of engaging characters. Though Losties feverishly flocked to their television sets from 2004-2010, the show’s contemporary devotees are much more defensive of its shortcomings than the ones swapping polar bear theories on message boards in the early ‘00s. In the streaming era, Lost has been reclaimed as more than a mere show, but as a symbolic bastion of network television as a whole. To many television lovers, Lost exemplified television as an art form not just despite its messiness, but because of it.

When “Exposé” unsurprisingly made its way onto Vulture’s list of “Lost’s 20 Most Pointless Episodes”, fans even began digging Nikki and Paulo out of their sandy graves. In 2007, complaining about Lost‘s criminal couple was as unifying as mourning favorite islanders or swapping Dharma Initiative conspiracy theories. “We have to go back” has become not just an appropriate mantra from Lost, but one about it as well. Lost invokes a nostalgia for appointment television, water cooler discussions, storytelling routed in original concepts over existing intellectual property, and 20+ episodes seasons that allowed room for zaniness and even the occasional misstep. Because to love Lost is to love television – warts and all.

Lost is available to watch now.

Related: First Trailer for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II Brings Us Back to the Colosseum

Did Gladiator II Replace the Original Movie’s Lucius Verus Actor?

Yes, Ridley Scott has recast the young Lucius Verus in Gladiator II. While Spencer Treat Clark portrayed l’il Lucius in Gladiator, Alfie Tempest fills the role in the sword-and-sandal epic’s sequel. The recasting is particularly obvious in the Gladiator II trailer’s close-ups of young Lucius, which highlight Tempest’s rounder face compared to Clark’s.

Interestingly, Tempest doesn’t just replace Clark in material shot specifically for Gladiator II. The trailer suggests that Scott has digitally inserted him into scenes recycled from the first Gladiator, as well. Tempest’s on-screen mother, Connie Nielsen, also appears in some of these remixed scenes.

Related: Denzel Washington Is Set to Star in Gladiator Sequel

Of course, Alfie Tempest isn’t the only actor to sub in for Clark as Lucius. Paul Mescal plays the adult Lucius Verus in Gladiator II, serving as the film’s protagonist. Lucius’ mom, Lucilla, sent Lucius to live on the coast of North Africa when he was still a kid, and his experiences there have redefined his attitude towards the Roman Empire.

“[Gladiator II is a] very ‘angry young man’ drama in that sense. He can see the way Rome has kind of fallen in on itself,” Mescal explained in a recent Vanity Fair interview. “Rome represents all the personal neglect that he felt as a child. Suddenly he’s thrust back into that world and has direct proximity to all of the things that he thinks he hates and doesn’t feel attached to anymore.”

Why Did Ridley Scott Recast Lucius for Gladiator II?

Presumably, Scott recast the young Lucius role because Gladiator II will include flashbacks to the character’s youth. This also explains why Scott reshot or altered archival material featuring Spencer Treat Clark: he needed the new and existing young Lucius scenes to match. Think of it like 2011’s X-Men: First Class, which employed similar filmmaking trickery to expand on Magneto’s origin story as depicted in 2000’s X-Men.

Related: Gladiator Remains a Celebration of Spectacle, 20 Years Later

What about the older Lucius – why didn’t Scott bring back the now grown-up Spencer Treat Clark? Two reasons. The first is that Clark is too old for the part. Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa envisioned Lucius as only 10-15 years older in Gladiator II, whereas Clark is now in his mid-30s. The second is that Scott loved Mescal’s performance in acclaimed miniseries Normal People, and decided he was the only actor for the part.

Gladiator II fights its way into cinemas on Nov. 22, 2024.

The character portrayals in the first season already sparked a little bit of controversy from fans, especially since Ramsey wasn’t exactly what most fans had in mind for Ellie, and it looks like that trend will continue with season 2. For starters, there are already comments that Ellie’s new arm tattoo placement isn’t accurate to the game, and neither is her bob and tied back hair.

While I’m not exactly particular about the look of the character — it’s near impossible to make a real-life actor look exactly like a video game character after all — I’ll admit the tattoo placement is a little jarring. It’s important to remember that the reason why Ellie got a huge arm tattoo in the first place (aside from looking badass as hell) is that she needed to cover up the bite mark on her arm.

While Joel and Tommy are already aware of her immunity to the cordyceps virus, no one else is, and it’s important to get that plot device right at least.

Still, it’s exciting to see the actors back on set for season 2, especially since The Last of Us Part II takes the story in some pretty fun (and very controversial) directions going forward. We already relived the whole “Was Joel wrong?” discourse with the season 1 finale, and I’m especially looking forward to the dumpster fire that will surely be the season 2 (or 3) finale discourse.

HBO’s The Last of Us season 2 doesn’t have a release date just yet, but be sure to keep it locked to The Escapist for more information and updates on the show, including my diss on the adaptation after having watched Fallout.

What exactly is Hundreds of Beavers though? A quick search will tell you it is a black-and-white, slapstick comedy about a fur trapper who must trap the titular hundreds of beavers in order to win the hand of the girl he loves. That, however, is only the film’s very loose plot, which is mostly just an excuse for an ever-escalating series of slapstick comedy set-ups featuring animation, people in animal costumes, pratfalls, and the kind of comedic violence found in Looney Tunes cartoons. It is, in short, a hilarious comedy the likes of which haven’t been seen on screen since the age of silent film.

That is, in fact, part of the point. The movie is without speech, though not entirely silent thanks to human and animal noises and an incredibly keyed-in score, and is clearly trying to be a silent film. Think a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film meets Looney Tunes meets Monty Python all spinning off into an almost surreal David Lynch-esque conclusion as it spirals out of control into an action-packed finale. I know that sentence had so many descriptive contradictions in it you can’t quite conceptualize how this film could even function, and I’m not sure how either, to be honest, but it does, and it only gets funnier as it goes along.

Almost none of the humor in the movie is anything new in terms of slapstick comedy. Our intrepid hunter, played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, falls into hidden holes, triggers his own hunting traps, and gets hit in the balls (the ultimate form of comedy), but it all works wonderfully. I’m chagrined I had to watch the movie on my own as seeing it in a theater probably would have had me laughing even harder. Part of the reason for that is Tews’ performance as he contorts his face into a cartoon itself — half the humor comes from his own reaction shots, cued up like a silent film actor overplaying every moment perfectly. There is something akin to Cary Grant’s classic mugging in Arsenic and Old Lace to his performance, a comedic style of performance long gone in cinema that’s still hilarious.

However, what ties the film together — what ties any comedy together — is timing, and Hundreds of Beavers‘ comedic timing is nearly flawless. Director Mike Cheslik stitches together what is basically a collection of slapstick sketches into a spiraling, cohesive whole that builds comedy wonderfully. Not just hilarious for some prolific gag timing but constructed so the comedy builds on top of itself, the movie hardly loses a step despite being non-stop slapstick comedy and visual gags. Thanks to the movie getting more and more cartoonish, like a Looney Tunes cartoon taken to eleven, Cheslik is able to increase the comedic visual punchlines to ever more humorous levels.

If there is one complaint about the movie, it may be that the premise can wear a bit thin every now and again, but there is nothing like Hundreds of Beavers in cinemas right now, and there hasn’t been something like it in a very long time. Hell, there probably won’t be something like it in theaters for the foreseeable future either. So now is your chance to see a truly hilarious bit of cinematic uniqueness. Go do it.

Hundreds of Beavers is in limited theaters in the U.S. and will land in the UK on July 9. It is also available to stream On Demand.

Until Dawn’s Original Cinematic Inspirations Are The Shining and Psycho

David F. Sandberg, director of Shazam! and Annabelle: Creation, will direct the Until Dawn movie. Screenwriter Gary Dauberman, known for his horror work on It, The Nun, and Anabelle, will also partake in the project. But what about the original game’s horror influences? What inspired the original storyline?

 The 2015 version of the Until Dawn game came with behind-the-scenes footage. The creators discussed the cast, production design, musical score, and more. But the idea behind a group of teens in a cabin far up in the mountains didn’t come out of nowhere. 

The storyline was written by filmmaker and writer Graham Reznick along with Larry Fessenden (filmmaker and owner of Glass Eye Pix). Both had already worked together on several projects; Graham had worked with Ti West on sound production and Larry on different indie horror films. 

“The production design for Until Dawn started with the great teen horror script that sets the characters in a Canadian winter mountain lodge. Being a contemporary setting with visual clues derived from classic films of that genre. Such as Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Shining’,” Lee Robinson, Production Designer of Until Dawn stated in the footage.

Both The Shining and Psycho plots take place in pretty deserted places. In The Shining, Jack Nicholson’s character takes his family to a resort high up in the Colorado mountains. As the plot gets thicker and more snow begins to fall, he goes crazier, and it becomes clear there’s no way Nicholson and his family are coming out of the Overlook Hotel untouched.

As for Psycho, it’s clear this isn’t a Bates Motel, but there’s an underlying feeling that something unwelcoming is lurking. And it’s only a matter of time before one of the characters goes insane.

In Until Dawn’s case, the story unfolds at one of the characters’ ski lodges in Canada. As one of them puts it, “for their annual Blackwood winter getaway.” The premise is similar: it’s freezing outside, and characters are bound to stay inside and fight their fatal destiny. This makes the characters more vulnerable to their surroundings in their quest to survive.

Of course, these aren’t the game’s only cinematic references. Other horror classics that resemble the game’s plot are Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and the original Friday the 13th saga. On a side note, actress Hayden Panettiere, who plays final girl Samantha “Sam” Giddings, also played Kirby Reeds in Scream 4. 

The movie adaptation of Until Dawn is set to release later in 2024. 

The trailer opens with a series of flashbacks, revealing that this is indeed a sequel to the first film, though, interestingly, those flashbacks don’t have much of Russell Crowe’s Maximus character. The new film takes place long after the original, with a grown-up Lucius (Paul Mescal) fighting in the arena. Much like his father, Lucius is living a peaceful farm life when General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invades his home under the command of some really evil emperors. It looks like the nuance of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is going right out the window with these guys, and instead, the complex villain role will be handed off to Pascal’s character.

It also looks like there were plenty of prolific battles in the Colosseum, including a sea battle. That may seem ridiculous, but the Romans could actually flood the Coloseum and have ship battles on it. Things are definitely getting cranked up to the extreme this time around, judging from not just that battle but the one with the rhino as well. All of this plays out as Macinus (Denzel Washington) uses Lucius to ignite his own revolution, though his reasons seem less virtuous than Proximo’s in the original film.

Related: House of the Dragon: What Potion Does Grand Maester Orwyle Give Alicent Hightower?

The highly anticipated film also stars Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Rory McCann, Lee Charles, Lior Raz, and Derek Jacobi. It is directed by Scott from a screenplay by David Scarpa based on a story by Scarpa and Peter Craig.

Gladiator II will hit theaters on November 22, 2024.

Back when Disney+’s MCU television shows were still fresh and exciting, WandaVision kicked everything off with a show that gave us one of the MCU’s best villains, Agatha Harkness. Played perfectly by Kathryn Hahn, the character became quite the hit, and Marvel Studios jumped on board to do something more with Hahn, announcing Agatha All Along a few years ago (though it was called something different). It’s taken a while, but we now have our first look at the series, which will see Agatha team up with some other witches to get her powers back after Wanda defeated her and trapped her.

Related: Deadpool & Wolverine Teaser Features a Long-Awaited Mutant Battle

Pivoting Agatha into an anti-hero shouldn’t be too hard as Hahn has enough charm to make anything work, but it definitely looks like this story will play into both the dark side of Agatha’s character and Hahn’s comedic ability. That seems to be in full force as she’s knocked out of the pocket reality that Wanda trapped her in by Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), which is probably an easier feat given the conclusion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Once free, she goes on a quest to retrieve her powers, partnering with a collection of characters played by Joe Locke, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Debra Jo Rupp, and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. Emma Caulfield Ford is also returning from WandaVision.

Agatha All Along will drop its first two episodes on September 18 and air weekly after that.