Vikings Season 5 Episode 12 “I am what I have always been, Christ’s warrior on Earth.” What begins as an episode examining the doubts and fears of leadership, quickly devolves into a study of political survival as the exiles from the north settle into their new lives in Wessex while their former friends and neighbors learn to live under the rule of a new king in Kattegat. Vikings wastes no time laying out what’s at stake here, and tonight’s cold open presents a young King Alfred determined to employ the values taught him by his late grandfather King Ecbert....

We got at least one big reveal in the seventh episode of Marvel’s WandaVision, and though it was indeed a key turning point that we’d been expecting since the series began, it wasn’t quite what some fans hoped for. There are still two episodes to go, however, and we suspect there might be more huge reveals left to come, and yet more wild commercials that many of us will spend hours picking apart....

Riverdale Season 5 Episode 13 Nearly every episode title of Riverdale references a major pop culture work, usually a film, and the latest installment, “Reservoir Dogs,” is no exception. Given the fact that this hour features nods to everything from Saving Private Ryan (thanks to Archie’s hilariously anachronistic war flashbacks) to Coyote Ugly and Jesus Christ Superstar, it feels like a bit of a deliberate mislead to give the ep the same moniker as Quentin Tarantino’s breakthrough hit....

So, there’s kind of a happy ending to the Suicide Squad movie, right? Diablo gets his redemption, Deadshot gets time with his daughter, Harley gets to spend quality time with her beloved Mister J, and to hear some critics tell it, the fact that the movie ends at all is a happiness in itself (we mostly liked it, though). The Squad will live to fight another day, and ARGUS will continue to meddle in superhuman affairs via their own, kinda shady methods....

Jeremy (Freddie Fox) is moving to cremate his families’ bodies, while DS Stan Jones (Mark Addy) is desperate to prevent any more crucial evidence from being destroyed, in part three of ITV’s superior crime drama based on the real life White House Farm murders. It’s a race against the clock element that adds an extra layer of tension to the carefully unfolding cat-and-mouser between the son of a dead family initially thought to have been a murder-suicide committed by his sister Sheila, and the gentle but persistant cop who sees too many loose ends to let it go....

“Is he gone?” It’s the solitary line spoken by Olga Kurylenko’s Antonia Dreykov, a tragic figure who until the end of Black Widow had been programmed by her father to be a ruthless killing machine. Yes, this is Dreykov’s daughter, a victim of an attack by Natasha Romanoff herself when Antonia was just a child which caused her severe facial scarring. Her father put a chip in her head, we are told, made her cover her face with a mask, and forced her to act as his weapon under the name Taskmaster....

That’s the thing that remains so shocking about the title some 20 years later. It’s not that Nintendo greenlit a “mature” game for the N64: it’s that the game they approved utilized the visual and design conventions of family-friendly titles and emphasized the kind of humor that was most popular among two distinct audiences: the kids who played Nintendo games and whispered fart jokes on the playground and frat boys....

Reynolds has had a busy 2021, and will have shown up in no less than four movies by the time the year comes to an end. In addition to Spirited, he starred earlier this year in The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, the surprise summer smash Free Guy, and will also be seen in Netflix’s upcoming action comedy Red Notice alongside Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot. So it’s hardly shocking that the dude wants to stay home for a while, adding that he’ll be overseeing some of his other business concerns and will “probably be away from film, or at least shooting films, till the end of the summer....

“With a performance target of 1440p at 60 fps, our expectation is that developers will not ship their highest level mipmaps to Xbox Series S, which will reduce the size of the games,” Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald told IGN. “Ultimately the controls in the developer’s hands. We’ve had this technology for a while that allows developers to intelligently choose which assets to install on which device they’re playing on....

But how does it compare in height to other household items? The internet has asked this question many times. The Xbox Series X’s monolithic shape and height has been compared to a fridge, a toaster, a rocket launcher, and many other things. Yet, with the arrival of The Mandalorian season 2 tomorrow, it’s clear there’s still one thing missing. How does the Xbox Series X compare in size to little Baby Yoda?...

Young Justice Season 4 Episode 5 I’m a little bit concerned by how much the newest season of Young Justice is dragging. We’re about a fifth of the way through and it’s still not at all clear what this season’s story is, and while we’ve had some nice character moments (for Tigress now, after four episodes on Mars with Beast Boy, Miss Martian, and Superboy), there’s not enough happening to feel like the time investment has been justified....

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a lot of movie. It’s four hours plus of superhero action with some heavy mythological overtones. And it’s ending isn’t even a single ending to this story…it’s multiple endings. And each of these multiple endings is meant to set up a host of spinoff movies and Justice League sequels that we will unfortunately never get to see! We’ll consider the “main” ending of the film, the one that wraps up the initial story begun in 2013’s Man of Steel, to be the defeat of Steppenwolf....

Still, none have come close to dethroning Mario Kart as the king of kart racers. Even after eight mainline entries, the series is still going strong with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, which is currently in the midst of receiving four dozen new tracks. While there are obviously numerous factors that have contributed to Mario Kart‘s incredible success over the years, the quality of the games themselves should be considered the franchise’s greatest asset....

Then again, the thing that separates the best RPGs from the rest is that they never really make you feel like you’re in a rush to “beat” them or move on to the next thing. They grab you by the hand and take you on a journey defined by character building, storytelling, world design, and, most importantly, the very convincing idea that you are no longer simply yourself but rather have the chance to truly become the kind of legendary figure you used to only be able to daydream about....

Tell me, how was dinner? Before diving back to the gloomy past, A Discovery of Witches took a gulp of fresh air in the modern day and dropped in on Sept-Tours. With Sarah and Em there under Ysabeau’s protection, the table was being laid for what promised to be a primo scene between the mortal-enemies-turned-housemates (Alex Kingston vs Lindsay Duncan, yes please thank you). And then… pouf, nothing. It was straight back to the 16th century for another round of bad Matthew....

Diana’s schoolteachers had it right: “exceptionally goal-oriented” is the perfect description of Dr Bishop, an over-achiever who steams through to-do lists, brooking no argument and effortlessly attracting devotees along the way. While Matthew and the boys were coming up against a brick wall in New Orleans, Diana and Phoebe (if ever two history nerds needed to start a podcast, it’s them) tracked down another page from the Book of Life....

Based around a single gimmick—blind aliens who hunt their human prey by sound, thus making staying quiet essential—the film was full of contrivances designed to get its central Abbott family from one terrifying predicament to another (the worst offender being the Abbotts conceiving and having a baby—yes, a crying baby—in the midst of an apocalypse). But it also did achieve a certain amount of suspense through its premise and Krasinski’s taut direction, making audiences think they were watching something fresh, even as the movie relied on tried and true tricks the more it went on....

Yet, this era of savvy horror films has come with a small compromise. While movies like The Babadook are indisputably intelligent, they’re not always as viscerally scary as exceptional funhouse fare like The Conjuring. They’re incredible pieces of horror to analyze and praise on a technical level, but they sometimes sacrifice those jolts of absolute terror in favor of something more refined. That is just part of the reason why A Quiet Place feels so special....

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will arrive to Prime Video’s servers on Sept. 2, 2022. This Lord of the Rings prequel, set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age, is in many ways the kind of TV property that Prime Video must have always wanted. It’s certainly the TV property most fitting with the company’s largesse and riches. The Rings of Power will cover the creation of the titular rings and many important events from Tolkien’s lore (condensed into a more TV-appropriate timeframe)....

Barbaren – to give Barbarians its original German title (which you should, because then you can sing it to the tune of The Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann) was a massive hit for Netflix. It came out of nowhere in the last week of October 2020 and whipped straight into the streaming service’s Top 10. It follows then, that Barbaren was quickly renewed for a second season, which began filming in September 2021....