Purnell, Goggins, MacLachlan, and Moten all return for S2, along with Moises Arias as Lucy’s younger brother, Norm, and Frances Turner as Barb Howard, Cooper’s wife and a high-ranking Vault-Tec executive. Justin Theroux joins the S2 cast as Mr. Robert House, founder and CEO of RobCo Industries, as well as Macaulay Culkin (possibly playing Caesar) and Kumail Nanjiani, both of whom appear briefly in the new trailer.
The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has been searching for his family for 200 years. YouTube/Prime Video
The trailer opens with Maximus chatting with another denizen of the wasteland, who insists that while he’s seen lots of crazy and unnatural things in his struggle to survive, he’s never seen good people. Maximus has met one good person: Lucy. But his acquaintance isn’t having it. “I would be a good person too if I grew up in some cozy impenetrable home,” he says. “Wouldn’t have to steal and stab and fib all the time just to get by.”
Lucy, of course, has been challenged to hang onto her fundamental decency while navigating the brutal surface world, hardening just enough to do what’s necessary to survive. She’s now looking for her father with a new motive: to bring him to justice, “so people know that how they conduct themselves matters, and they don’t give up hope.” (We catch a few glimpses of Hank, most notably experimenting on a mouse in the lab, with disastrous results.) The Ghoul, for his part, is looking for his family; it’s the only reason he’s hung around for 200 years. Meanwhile, civil war is brewing, and you just know our main cast will all end up caught up in the conflict.
The second season of Fallout premieres on December 17, 2025, on Prime Video.
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.
We have our first teaser for the upcoming third season of Foundation.
It’s been nearly two years, but the third season of Foundation, Apple TV+’s epic adaptation (or remix) of the Isaac Asimov series, is almost here. The streaming platform released an action-packed teaser of what we can expect from the new ten-episode season: the onset of the Third Crisis, a galactic war, and a shirtless Lee Pace.
(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)
Showrunner David S. Goyer took great pains in S1 to carefully set up his expansive fictional world, and the scope only broadened in the second season. As previously reported, Asimov’s fundamental narrative arc remains intact, with the series taking place across multiple planets over 1,000 years and featuring a huge cast of characters.
Mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) developed a controversial theory of “psychohistory,” and his calculations predict the fall of the Empire, ushering in a Dark Age period that will last 30,000 years, after which a second Empire will emerge. The collapse of the Empire is inevitable, but Seldon has a plan to reduce the Dark Ages to a mere 1,000 years through the establishment of a Foundation to preserve all human knowledge so that civilization need not rebuild itself entirely from scratch. He is aided in this endeavor by his math prodigy protegé Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell).
The biggest change from the books is the replacement of the Empire’s ruling committee with a trio of Eternal Emperor clones called the Cleons—a genetic triune dynasty comprised of Brother Day (Pace), Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton). Technically, they are all perfect incarnations of the same man at different ages, and this is both the source of their strength as a team and of their conflicts. Their guardian is an android, Eto Demerzel (Laura Birn), one of the last surviving androids from the ancient Robot Wars, who is programmed to protect the dynasty at all costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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+.
We’ve got a shiny new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31, the long-awaited spinoff film that brings back Michelle Yeoh’s magnificent Phillipa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film will give us the backstory for Georgiou’s evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people.
As previously reported, Yeoh’s stylishly acerbic Georgiou was eventually written out of Discovery, but fans took hope from rumors of a spinoff series featuring the character. That turned into a spinoff film, and we’ll take it. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film. Meanwhile, Yeoh’s older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31, while dealing with all the blood she’s spilled in her past.
Any hardcore Star Trek fan will tell you that Section 31 was first introduced as an urban legend of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Apparently Ira Steven Behr—who came up with the idea of a secret rogue organization within Starfleet doing shady things to protect the Federation—took inspiration from Commander Sisko’s comment in one episode about how “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” The name is taken from Starfleet Charter Article 14, Section 31, which allows Starfleet to take extraordinary measures in the face of extreme threats—including sabotage, assassination, and even biological warfare.
The Wheel of Time returns to Prime Video in March.
Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for its fantasy series The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The series is adapted from the late Robert Jordan‘s bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels, and Ars has been following it closely with regular recaps through the first two seasons. Judging from the new teaser, the battle between light and dark is heating up as the Dragon Reborn comes into his power.
(Spoilers for first two seasons below.)
As previously reported, the series center on Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. Magic, known as the One Power, is divided into male (saidin) and female (saidar) flavors. The latter is the province of the Aes Sedai. Long ago, a great evil called the Dark One caused the saidin to become tainted, such that most men who show an ability to channel that magic go mad. It’s the job of the Aes Sedai to track down such men and strip them of their abilities—a process known as “gentling” that, unfortunately, is often anything but. There is also an ancient prophecy concerning the Dragon Reborn: the reincarnation of a person who will save or destroy humanity.
In S1, Moiraine befriended a group of five young people—Egwene, Nynaeve, Rand, Mat, and Perrin—whose small village has been attacked by monsters called Trollocs, suspecting that one of the young men might be the prophesied Dragon Reborn. She was right: the Dragon Reborn is Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) whose identity was revealed to all in the S2 finale. That second season was largely based on story elements from Jordan’s The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn. We don’t yet know which specific books will provide source material for S3, but per the official premise:
Severance returns to Apple TV in January for its sophomore season.
Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it “one of the best shows on TV.” Needless to say, we have been eagerly awaiting the second season next month. Prime Video just released the official trailer at CCXP24 in São Paulo, Brazil and it does not disappoint.
(Spoilers for first season below.)
In the world of Severance, people can completely disconnect their work and personal lives. Thanks to a new procedure developed by Lumon Industries, workers can bifurcate themselves into “innies” (work selves) and “outies” (personal selves)—with no sharing of memories between them. This appeals to people like Mark (Adam Scott), who lost his wife in a car crash and has struggled to work through the grief. Why not forget all that pain for eight hours a day?
It’s no spoiler to say that things went… badly in S1 as a result of this process. As Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson noted at the time, “The show isn’t just bonkers—though it is that, too. It’s also about the lengths to which we will go to dull or avoid emotional pain, and the ways in which humans will reach out to connect with others even under the most unpromising of circumstances.” In the process, Severance brought out “the latent horror of fluorescent lights, baby goats, cubicles, waffles, middle managers, finger traps, and ‘work/life balance.’ Also cults. And vending machines. Plus corporate training manuals. And talk therapy. Oh, and ‘kind eyes.'”
The first season ended on quite the cliffhanger, with several Lumon employees activating an “overtime contingency” to escape the office confines to get a taste for how their “outies” live—and some pretty startling secrets were revealed. S2 will naturally grapple with the fallout from their brief mutiny. Per the official premise:
Ncuti Gatwa officially begins his tenure as the Fifteenth Doctor in May, when the new Doctor Who season premieres.
Heads up, Whovians! We’ve got a newly regenerated Fifteenth Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa and a new season of the long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who on the way. Judging by the latest trailer, we’re in for another wild ride of time-traveling hijinks, punctuated by an irresistibly charismatic Gatwa sporting some very colorful outfits with confident aplomb.
(Spoilers for most recent seasons and specials below.)
Look, I loved Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation of the Doctor, but her tenure was hampered by the unavoidable fact that showrunner Chris Chibnall just didn’t give her a lot of great material to work with. Among other issues, there was an unfortunate tendency toward didacticism and preachiness in the writing at the expense of genuine emotional resonance. While there were a number of notable episodes, and Chibnall gamely trotted out all the fan-favorite monsters and tropes, nothing ever fully captured the imagination in quite the same way as the show has always done at its best. Whittaker deserved better.
But then the BBC announced the return of Russell T. Davies—who revived the series in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor—as showrunner, setting up another reset of this beloved series. When Gatwa’s casting was announced, everyone assumed Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor would regenerate accordingly at the end of “The Power of the Doctor.” Instead, the newly regenerated Fourteenth Doctor was played by none other than David Tennant, everyone’s favorite Tenth Doctor—a little older with a few tweaks to his trademark look.
It was great casting for the 60th anniversary specials, in which Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor reunited with Donna Noble (Catherine Tate)—one of my favorite companions. Donna had her memories of the Doctor wiped by the Tenth Doctor to save her life since she had taken on some Time Lord knowledge that human beings just aren’t designed to carry. Donna now had a teenage daughter named Rose, and of course, a major crisis forced the Doctor to restore the erased knowledge to save London yet again. Donna should have died, but her Time Lord knowledge ended up being safely split between her and Rose instead.
The Doctor and Donna next encountered an abandoned spaceship filled with doppelgängers (Not-Things) in “Wild Blue Yonder.” In “The Giggle,” they faced off against the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), and during the climactic battle, the Fourteenth Doctor was shot. Fans expecting the usual regeneration were in for a surprise. The Fourteenth Doctor “bigenerated” instead, resulting in both a Fourteenth Doctor and Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor, a separate physical entity.
Ncuti Gatwa is ready for his first full season as the Fifteenth Doctor.
YouTube/BBC
His new companion is Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).
YouTube/BBC
“Space babies!”
YouTube/BC
The Doctor and the dinosaurs.
YouTube/BBC
Going full-on Bridgerton.
YouTube/BBC
“We are going to rock through time…”
YouTube/BBC
Sporting a snazzy tangerine-colored knit.
YouTube/BBC
Looking very Mod Squad, Doctor!
YouTube/BBC
Recreating a famous album cover because why not?
YouTube/BBC
The two Doctors teamed up to defeat the Toymaker and then figured out how to duplicate the TARDIS by drawing on the power of the remnants of the villain’s reality-warping domain. And Gatwa’s Doctor embarked on a fresh adventure with the 2023 Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road,” which also introduced us to his new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).
All of that brings us to season 14. All we really know about this new season is that it will have eight episodes, beginning with the Davies-penned “Space Babies” and “The Devil’s Chord.” Davies wrote six out of the eight episodes, in fact, closing out with “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and the finale, “Empire of Death.” The latest trailer doesn’t give us much more than some exciting visual teases of what’s in store, including the aforementioned space babies, dinosaurs, a mysterious spacecraft—and all those outfits.
The Fifteenth Doctor is apparently something of a clothes horse. Each incarnation of the Doctor has always had a trademark “look,” but costume designer Pam Downe decided to broaden the scope for Gatwa, incorporating design elements from previous Doctors all the way back to Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, whose style Gatwa particularly admired. That Regency-era burgundy velvet jacket is definitely a nod to the Third Doctor. There’s even a 1960s suit and Afro reminiscent of the Mod Squad or Austin Powers (with a sly allusion to The Beatles’ Abbey Road). Gatwa is clearly having a blast, which bodes well for the upcoming new season.
Season 14 of Doctor Who premieres on BBC and Disney+ on May 10, 2024, in the US and May 11 in the UK.
