Category: News

Generally speaking, crashing the stage at a concert is a bad idea. Security guards tend to get pretty jumpy whenever a fan climbs into an artist’s space uninvited — and for good reason, considering all the shenanigans that can happen up there (even the performing act isn’t always safe). But, every so often, drunk and/or overconfident showgoers emerge unscathed with triumphant stories to tell their friends — if they can remember anything the next day — and, even more occasionally, a great souvenir or two for the road.

That was the case during Lil Uzi Vert’s set at Outside Lands this past weekend, where a young man found his way onstage just as Uzi was set to perform their verse from Playboi Carti’s “Wokeuplikethis.” Although security acted quickly to surround the intruder, Uzi paused the show, asking the guards to wait one second, asking the fan for his phone, and offering to take a selfie with him. Security then directed him safely off the stage so Uzi could get back to performing. It looked like it could have been a tense situation, but ultimately, everything turned out okay.

Now, please do not take this as a license to go jumping on just any stage, even Uzi’s. Just because the Philly rapper was nice this time doesn’t mean they want their safety taken for granted or their kindness abused. And with anyone else… well, if you play stupid games, you win painful prizes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Bringing the Lord of the Rings to screens is now Amazon’s problem, but Peter Jackson will never truly be able to shake free of the J.R.R. Tolkien series and its seismic impact the films had on the Hollywood landscape. Amazon Prime’s hefty budgeted TV series is gearing up for release later this summer, but the director of three film adaptations of Tolkein’s work is certainly interested in how the series will shake out.

And unlike those movies — and a few Hobbit-related films to boot — Jackson won’t have anything to do with the show. Which means he can enjoy them as a fan. Well, maybe. It’s extremely hard to separate work from ring-related recreational viewing when you already have several films set in the same universe. And it’s something Jackson has grappled with in the Tolkien-verse before.

As IndieWire detailed, Jackson appeared on the Hollywood Reporter podcast Awards Chatter and lamented that he put so much time and effort into the film trilogy that he never truly got to enjoy them as an impartial observer.

“When we did The Lord of the Rings movies I always felt I was the unlucky person who never got to see as a coming-out-of-the-blue film,” Jackson says. “By the time there were screening I was immersed in it for five or six years. It was such a loss for me not be able to see them like everyone else.

Jackson’s award-winning efforts for the films were obviously worth all that work, but he claims he really did try to figure out a way to enjoy them for himself. And he landed on one thing: hypnosis.

“I actually did seriously considered going to some hypnotherapy guy to hypnotize me to make me forget about the films and the work I had done over the last six or seven years so I could sit and enjoy them. I didn’t follow through with it, but I did talk to [British mentalist] Derren Brown about that and he thought he could do it.”

It’s difficult to say that Jackson is kidding when he uses words like “seriously” and also name-drops a hypnotist, so it’s safe to say that he really did some preliminary digging here. But it would be extremely interesting to live in a world where a legendary director was living out his own Severance-like existence just so he can enjoy Lord of the Rings movies like the rest of us.

[via THR]

Picking a winner in the AFC North is not always easy, as the division specializes in having four teams that beat up on one another in a season-long war of attrition. That’s especially the case this year, as all four teams have legitimate aspirations of making it to the postseason, and the only team that might not be able to make it, the Pittsburgh Steelers, are masters of finding a way to outperform what’s expected of them.

Today, we’re taking a look at the division and identifying the biggest question that each team faces.

Cleveland Browns: Who is their quarterback?

The Browns acquired Deshaun Watson in a gigantic trade with the Houston Texans — then decided to give him a monster contract extension — with the full understanding that he was going to face some sort of suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy in light of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct. After being handed a 6-game suspension by an arbiter, the league decided to appeal, and we should find out the results of that soon. Perhaps he will avoid getting handed the indefinite suspension of at least one year he wants, perhaps the 6-game suspension sticks, who knows. But one thing is for sure: The Browns made their bed by going all-in on Watson, and for some period of time, they are going to have to lie in it. We’ll see how long presumed backup Jacoby Brissett will start as a result.

Cincinnati Bengals: Can their defense build on a heroic playoff run?

I feel pretty confident that Joe Burrow, Joe Mixon, and Ja’Marr Chase are going to continue to all be very good, in part because their offensive line should be better. Their trio of offseason acquisitions up front — La’el Collins, Alex Cappa, and Ted Karras — are not world-beaters, but should keep Burrow from running from his life, which he had to do far too often in 2021. But ultimately, the thing that got them to the Super Bowl last year was a defense that was just lights out in the postseason. They only allowed 313 yards against the Rams in the Super Bowl, while their second half and overtime performance against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs was the stuff of legends. Outside of losing standout defensive lineman Larry Ogunjobi, the team brings back basically everyone, although they do need to figure out a contract extension with star safety Jessie Bates. Between all that and a draft class with three defensive players in the first three rounds, Cincinnati may be dangerous on defense.

Baltimore Ravens: Will Lamar Jackson’s contract situation loom over the team all year?

Normally signing the quarterback who you acquired with a first-round pick and became a league MVP to a lucrative, long-term contract extension is pretty standard practice. But so far, the Ravens have been unable to come to terms on a new deal with Jackson, who is in the final year of his deal. Now, Jackson is saying all the right things about getting a deal done and he hasn’t tried to force any hands by sitting out until a new deal is done, but he has made clear that he has a cutoff date to get a deal done with the team. Jackson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy whose play will suffer based on his contract situation — he’s really good, he knows it, and everyone around him knows it — but with how the NFL works, every single time something happens with the Ravens, questions will pop up about whether or not Jackson’s lack of an extension is to blame. Of course, there’s a pretty easy way to avoid that: Baltimore can just pay him, and based on the long-term deals that guys (who, it must be mentioned, are not former MVPs) like Watson and Kyler Murray got this offseason, it’s going to be for a whole lot of money.

Pittsburgh Steelers: What does their offense look like with someone other than Ben Roethlisberger at QB?

To put it plainly, Roethlisberger has held Pittsburgh’s offense back the last few years. He was old, slow, immobile, and lacked any sort of arm strength that could keep a defense honest, but because he’s a franchise legend, Big Ben kept starting games, but even with his numerous flaws, at least the team had a pretty good idea of what it was going to get out of him. Now that he’s gone, the Steelers need to figure out which member of its quarterback room is going to be the man: first-round pick Kenny Pickett, longtime backup and occasional starter Mason Rudolph, or free agent acquisition Mitchell Trubisky. It’s safe to assume that Pickett, who was a Heisman finalist at the University of Pittsburgh, will be the starter at some point down the road, but can he win it from one of the veteran guys in camp? And once they get that all sorted out, how does their offense change from what it was with Roethlisberger pulling the strings?

He’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. Brad Pitt is coming to your movie — unless you cast someone he doesn’t like.

While accepting the 2022 Excellence Award Davide Campari at the 75th Locarno Film Festival, Aaron Taylor-Johnson discussed what it was like working with his Bullet Train co-star, Brad Pitt, who he called a “humble and gracious human being.” Taylor-Johnson believes Pitt is “in a new chapter of his life” and that he “just wants to bring light and joy into the world and be around people who are there to have a good time.”

The Nocturnal Animals and Avengers: Age of Ultron actor continued:

“You work with many actors and after a while you start making notes: ‘I am definitely not working with this person ever again.’ Brad has this list, too: the ‘good’ list and the sh*t list.”

Great. Now I’m going to spend the rest of my day wondering who’s on Brad Pitt sh*t list. It’s not Sandra Bullock, who he recently called “an old friend” who he “could call for favors over the years, and I have done many, many times and she’s always there.” It’s not his favorite actor Robert De Niro, either (they were both in 1996’s Sleepers). So, who could it be? It’s gotta be someone who Pitt has only worked with once and — I know!

It’s the taxi from Meet Joe Black. Such a diva.

(Via Variety)

If you thought Alex Jones getting hit with over $50 million in damages would stop him from spreading wild conspiracy theories, think again. The InfoWars host stopped by Steve Bannon‘s podcast on Monday morning, mere days after being humiliated in court, and proceeded to gin up a wild new conspiracy theory about… Barack Obama?

When asked by Bannon if he’s “concerned” about the midterm elections, Jones opined that Obama could unleash a terrorist attack to tilt the results in the Democrat’s favor.

Via Raw Story:

Jones replied: “I’m worried that the Biden controllers, the third administration of Obama — I’m worried that Obama and his people may provocateur some type of big terror attack. They might launch a cyber attack and blame it on the Russians. They might start a major war.”

“I mean, they’re going to have an October surprise or a group of October surprises,” he added. “You can bet your bottom dollar on it.”

According to Jones, all of the polls are showing America is heading for a “realignment” because people are tired of “leftism” and “Hollywood,” so the Democrats are going to have to pull some sort of “shenanigans” to not lose in the midterms. Of course, this is a particularly interesting theory coming from Jones (and promoted by Bannon) considering both of them were heavily involved in the January 6 attack, which one might describe as some sort of “shenanigans” to change the results of an election.

It’s almost like the two of them have experience with trying to overturn democracy, but eh, it’s probably just a coincidence.

(Via Raw Story)

As the final season of the long-running zombie apocalypse show The Walking Dead is slowly coming to an end, multiple spinoff shows taking place in the universe are still moving forward, including a Daryl-centric show that is slated for a 2023 release.

While discussing the future of the universe on Talking Dead: The Walking Dead Universe Preview 2022, Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple confirmed some details of the long-awaited Daryl spinoff series led by Norman Reedus, which was first announced in 2020. The untitled series will apparently take place after the eleventh and final season of The Walking Dead, which airs this fall. Via Collider:

The Daryl spinoff takes place in France. [The World Beyond coda] is a bit of a tease of some of the things Daryl is going to face… Daryl is a fish out of water to start with. If Daryl finds himself with new people, he’s a fish out of water. In France, in a country that’s going through the apocalypse, [it’s] an entirely different thing. He finds himself having to reinvent himself again, having to find himself again, and also, not being with — probably — the only people in the world he’s comfortable with.

While Daryl will be making the trek to France, it’s still unclear how he will get there in a post-apocalyptic universe (they cannot just charter a jet at this point, right?), and who, if anyone, he will be with. Will Dog get to go to Europe too?!

Melissa McBride was originally signed on to continue her role as Carol, though she dropped out of the series earlier this year. One thing’s for certain: even though the original series coming to a close, there will still be plenty of Walking Dead content to satisfy fans….for a long time!

The final eight episodes of The Walking Dead premiere on October 2nd.

(Via Collider)

Anyone caught up on Ted Lasso (spoilers incoming, obviously) knows that Season 3 has set the scene for the true emergence of Dark Nate. Or, well, maybe Grey Nate.

The once-lovable kit manager turned assistant coach ended the Apple TV+ show’s second season at the helm of West Ham, a rival Premiere League club that Lasso’s AFC Richmond will now see plenty of in the show’s new season. It was a shrewd move for the frustrated Nate, setting off on his own and looking for revenge after feeling under-appreciated in Richmond. And while some fans were shocked by the seemingly abrupt heel turn, it wasn’t as big a surprise to those who read the tea leaves in his two-season arc.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator and Coach Beard himself Brendan Hunt touched on fan reaction to the heel turn Nate went through in lashing out at Ted and taking a new job. Because while some were a bit blindsided by the finale, those writing the show thought they had enough “bread crumbs” there for fans to see what might be coming.

In terms of would people pick up on it, the Nate bread crumbs, we knew they were there, but we can’t control whether or not people see them. As people were going along and were like, “What’s happening to Nate?!” Well, it’s been happening to him since season one. People having reactions to it, that’s great, because it means people give a shit. For people to be mad or think we’re doing something that’s not earned, well, I don’t agree, but off you go. But I think we were dropping hints — we were worried we were dropping hints that were too revealing, but for a lot of people it was the other way.

It’s a small glimpse into the creative process that comes with writing shows in the first place, as it’s really tough to know just how perceptive fans will be. Any show that gains even a small following will spark fan theories and speculation about where a show’s plot is headed, and if you give too many hints that end up as red herrings, then you could upset people just as much as you may delight them when a plot line ends in a way that satisfies all the story notes that came before it.

When it comes to Nate, however, all the signs that he could be breaking bad become very clear in hindsight whether you saw them in the moment or not. Which is what makes Season 3’s looming Nate storyline so intriguing. We now know that Nate (and actor Nick Mohammed) can play the part of the bad guy. We just don’t know how far things will go in what might be the show’s final season.

[via THR]

The new film Bullet Train sends Brad Pitt and a host of co-stars playing fellow assassins speeding through the night on a high-speed train heading from Tokyo to Kyoto. Though this exact journey hasn’t served as the backdrop for a film before (there is a 1975 Japanese film of the same name but it follows a train on a different route), Bullet Train is far from the first thriller to take place on a locomotive filled with passengers. Trains have played crucial roles in cinematic thrills even before the 1903 blockbuster The Great Train Robbery, and it’s easy to see why. The tight spaces, the high speeds, the screeching brakes, the spark of wheels on rails, the easy symbolism of a train charging into a tunnel: trains offer all of that and more.

But are trains the best mass transit system for thrillers? Maybe. But before giving trains the crown, let’s consider a few other contenders, the films made about them, and what makes each uniquely thrilling.

The Case for Planes

Planes offer some serious competition when it comes to tense movies about public transportation. Early aviation movies tended to be about aerial combat, high-flying daredevils, and tough-talking airmail couriers working in fictional South American countries (OK, that’s pretty much just Only Angels Have Wings). But the years after World War II saw more and more ordinary folks taking to the sky to see the world — and discover the (mostly imagined) terrors of air travel. While accidents were relatively rare (if less rare than today) they weren’t non-existent. And no amount of reassurances made it possible for passengers to forget they were hurtling through the sky in a metal tube. A lot could go wrong!

In movies, it went wrong pretty frequently. In the 1957 Zero Hour!, half a passenger plane’s passengers and crew (including the pilot and co-pilot) become ill after choosing the fish dinner, forcing a PTSD-stricken ex-fighter pilot to bring the plane down. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because the 1980 parody Airplane! borrowed its plot. But Airplane! had more than Zero Hour! in its sights. The film arrived after a decade of disaster films that included the 1970 hit Airport (based on a novel by Zero Hour! writer Arthur Hailey) and its sequels. Filled with stars, the films imagined all manner of horrible things that could befall airplanes, airports, and those who work there. (The original film includes both a biblical-level snowstorm and a suicide bomber.)

The airborne disaster film was a winning formula, at least for a while, its success predicated on the sense that flying, though largely safe, never really feels safe (and always had the potential to be unpleasant; imagine being seated next to Charo for a transatlantic flight). And sometimes it’s decidedly not safe at all. Whether drawing from real or imagined incidents, films like Sully and Flight put viewers in the center of some harrowing worst-case scenarios. Planes also present all sorts of possibilities for bad guys, from hijackers to terrorists to the jet-destroying gremlins of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (whether in an episode of the Twilight Zone or as the only really successful part of Twilight Zone: The Movie). Maybe you get ensnared in the plot of a charming terrorist, as in Red Eye. Maybe you’re a President of the United States unexpectedly called upon to kick ass, as in Air Force One. Maybe you’re John McClane’s wife and you find yourself stuck in the air until your husband allows your plane to land safely. Maybe you’re an air marshal who received threatening text messages mid-air, as in Non-Stop. Flying: it’s scary stuff!

The Case for Automobiles

The argument for automobiles is largely founded on unmet potential. First, let’s define some terms: yes, cars are thrilling, as one film after another has proven. But cars aren’t designed for mass transit. So that leaves buses. And, yes, as Speed proved, buses can provide a fine setting for thrillers. And you know what other movie does that? Exactly.

There are a few, including a pair in films starring Clint Eastwood. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s Harry Callahan has to contend with “Scorpio” (Andrew Robinson), a Zodiac Killer-inspired madman who kidnaps a school bus filled with kids (a sequence that would later inspire the worst mass kidnapping case in American history). Eastwood’s 1977 film The Gauntlet climaxes with Eastwood and co-star Sandra Locke using an armored bus as a shield against a bunch of corrupt cops. The second A Nightmare on Elm Street opens and closes with a pair of (literally) nightmarish bus sequences.

And, for a while, that was kind of it. Like Airplane!, the 1976 film The Big Bus parodies the era’s disaster movies. The bus setting is part of the joke. Speed proves they don’t have to be, but few other films have taken advantage of the bus’s potential — at least until recently. The best scenes of both Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the Bob Odenkirk action film Nobody both take place on buses. Could a bus-aissance be upon us?

The Case for Others

Boats: There’s a case to be made for boats, sure. Plenty of thrilling movies have been set aboard boats. But, all the doomed immigrants of Titanic aside, boat movies are rarely about public transportation. They’re more often about military vessels, fishing ships, luxury liners, or yachts. Eliminating the many great boat movies set on any of the above doesn’t leave a lot, though the ferry scene in The Dark Knight is pretty great. Sorry, boats.

Blimps: There are blimp thrillers, most famously Black Sunday (in which a crazed Bruce Dern threatens the Super Bowl in the Goodyear blimp) and The Hindenburg, a dramatization of the famed airship disaster. And, speaking of the Hindenburg, it serves as the setting for a memorable scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But, again, it’s a pretty narrow pool.

Elevators: Again, there’s potential there (if we want to count elevators as mass transit systems) but not much of a sample size. The great elevator thriller has yet to be written (so consider that a challenge).

The Case for Trains

And so we return to trains, zooming pods of paranoia that have played host to everything from Hitchcock’s twisty espionage thriller The Lady Vanishes (and, of course, key scenes in Strangers on a Train) to the zombie hordes of Train to Busan. They’ve been battlegrounds for James Bond since From Russia With Love and served as settings for everything from classic westerns to the post-apocalyptic future of Snowpiercer. Factor in subway thrillers—and New York subway movies are practically a genre unto themselves thanks to classics like 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Warriors—and the argument grows even stronger.

Pitted against planes they offer the same sense of tight confinement while allowing for greater mobility. (And, unlike planes, you can fight on top of them as well as within them.) As for boats, it’s dramatic to throw an enemy into the ocean but even more dramatic to toss one off of a moving locomotive. Buses and other vehicles might someday offer a challenge but for now, trains look, to borrow the title of another solid train thriller, pretty unstoppable.

As Nicki Minaj slowly gets back into the groove of releasing new music, her decade-plus of classic, game-changing hits will be honored at the 2022 MTV VMAs. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the upcoming show will honor Nicki with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, and she will perform at the show for the first time since 2018. Nicki’s also nominated for a Best Hip-Hop Award thanks to her 2022 singles “Do We Have A Problem?” “Bussin,” and “We Go Up,” as well as her song-stealing feature from Coi Leray’s “Blick Blick.”

Bruce Gillmer, president of music, music talent, programming, and events at Paramount (MTV’s parent company) said in a statement, “Nicki has broken barriers for women in hip-hop with her versatility and creative artistry. She has shifted the music industry and cemented her status as a global superstar with her crossover appeal, genre-defying style, and continuing to be unapologetically ‘Nicki.’” Mrs. Minaj herself told fans, “You don’t want to miss my performance,” on Twitter, sharing a promo clip containing snippets of a bunch of her previous videos. She also asked her Barbz to suggest songs for her to perform, with one caveat — they couldn’t mention her upcoming single “Super Freaky Girl,” which drops on August 12.

The 2022 MTV VMAs will air on 8/28 live from Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey at 8 pm ET. Performers include Anitta, J Balvin, and more, while nominees include Jack Harlow, Kendrick Lamar, and Lil Nas X.

The Sandman arrived on the small screen three decades after its inception within Neil Gaiman’s mind. Let’s get real here: a lot could have gone wrong. The dark-fantasy vibe, for one thing, must have been incredibly difficult to adapt (and this series embraces that trickiness with wildly, effectively exaggerated visuals), and on a story level, The Sandman means so very much to so many people. Everyone who’s read The Sandman remembers how they learned of the series, who recommended it, and whether they dove into the beginning or in the middle (I happened to first pick up the “Calliope” story, and had the distinct pleasure of talking to Neil about how the story began as a take on writer’s block and “the need for ideas” yet transformed into something largely different). Yet the bottom line is this: The Sandman hits everyone hard, and it gifts people with what they’re looking for at the precise moment that they discovered the saga.

One need only listen to Marc Maron’s relevant edition of the WTF podcast, in which he met up with Neil after explaining that he’d spent his own “time with The Sandman,” and that discovery coincided with his own drug use. Maron admitted that he was so amped up that he interpreted both Alan Moore’s Hellblazer and The Sandman as “journalism,” which… it happens. This is a terribly funny admission, and Gaiman responded, “I love that it gave you what you needed at the time that you needed it.” Maron’s take might be out there, but he’s not off base with his devotion and enthusiasm.

Fortunately, there’s also plenty to love about Netflix’s The Sandman, which is at once lugubrious and striking and delicious. Tom Sturridge gives a perfect representation of all of Dream’s angular aspects (both physically and internally). Gwendoline Christie portrays the most regal version of Gaiman’s Lucifer Morningstar on record, and Patton Oswalt (who a devoted Gaiman nerd to the core) swoops into souls as voice of Matthew the Raven. And then there’s Death, who is (as one devotee described to me before I surrendered to the comic book) “a total sweetheart.” Gaiman originally wrote her as an adorable, ankh-sporting goth girl, full of boundless energy and positivity, despite her incomprehensible, difficult job of escorting human souls to the Sunless Lands.

In the ongoing Audible The Sandman series, Death is portrayed by Kat Dennings, who told us that she asked Neil how to play Death, and he honest-to-God told her to “be yourself.” She totally did that, meaning that she maintained Death’s bubbly and “bright side at the forefront” aura with a bit of a darker vibe simmering underneath, and since Death’s duties are very grim, Kat was “playing a little bit against what is happening in these scenes.” And I absolutely dig the way that Kat portrayed Death, who turned out spot-on for the audio-only version of her story.

Fast forward to The Sandman‘s recent arrival on Netflix, and I fired up the 10-episode season and mostly enjoyed the first five episodes, but I shall not lie: Death’s impending arrival was what I really wanted. She would make or break this adaptation for me, and my god, I was not disappointed. The Netflix version strikes a different tone for the character with the same ultimate effect, which is suitable for the onscreen Death, who arrives in Episode 6, “The Sound Of Her Wings.” It’s an episode that’s not as gorgeously rendered in an aesthetic sense as the rest, but emotionally speaking, it’s a masterpiece.

Death was always going to be the hardest character for anyone to pull off, and die-hard fans of The Sandman (damn well) spotted Dream sitting on this park bench and waited for Death to appear alongside him. In hindsight, I’m realizing that the most effective approach to Death (in live-action form) was for her unyielding positivity to be understated, and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (who is obviously not a pale goth girl) nailed this role. Here’s where I must mention how (last year) Neil saw the (ridiculous) backlash following Kirby’s casting and promptly declared, “I give zero f*cks about people who don’t understand/haven’t read Sandman whining… that Death isn’t white enough.” He further urged, “Watch the show, make up your minds.” Enough said, and it’s also worth noting that Death, Dream, and the rest of the Endless do not have a specific race.

Death, as Kirby portrays her, takes on a wisdom-filled, warmer glow, rather than an overwhelmingly perky one. One particularly well-known line — “You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification in this or any other plane!” — rolls right out of her British accent like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She’s a cocksure version of Death, tossing out the “fat pigeons” joke with droll humor. She’s also got the right amount of swagger to pull off those moments when the bros fawn all over her, including one dude who’s so excited at her promise to meet again (“soon”) that the interactions come off as tragicomic.

Oh, I did grow teary-eyed when Death comforted a baby immediately before the child died from SIDS. As well, Dream seamlessly bounces right off Death, with Tom Sturridge somehow doing nothing and everything all at once while he observed his sister going about her unfathomable duties. These humans desperately needed to feel her presence as they faded away from the realm of the living.

The team of Death and Dream delivered pure magic in the season’s best episode, one that serves to remind everyone about how much The Sandman helped people get through life’s tough episodes. Gaiman has spoken about how people frequently speak to him with gratitude for helping them “get through dark times.” And I’d be willing to bet that Death’s introduction (and Dream’s reaction) is what comes to mind for a majority of these people when they thank Neil Gaiman for the entire saga.

One more thing that this episode pulls off: translating Gaiman’s infusions of history and mythology in perfect lockstep with the saga’s spirit. To that end, this episode heads back in time to witness Death and Dream back in 1389, when they first met up with Hob Gadling, the rambunctious bar brat who became immortal. His adventures began thanks to the gifted siblings, including Dream looking like the third Oasis brother. These period costumes are more enjoyable than they have any right to be.

All of this arrives with lessons for every character, other than Death, who’s already the wisest sibling of the Endless. And I’m pleasantly surprised at how the season as a whole turned out because I admit to feeling apprehensive as heck on whether Netflix could rise to the occasion. Because we all know that Netflix is having difficulties lately, and I really couldn’t bear the idea of The Sandman becoming The Pentaverate: Part II. Yet Neil Gaiman’s genre-stretching, sprawling comic gook series has finally come to deserving life. Mind you, Gaiman once stated that “I’d rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie.” It’s safe to assume that he felt the same way about a TV series, and although this show’s about much more than Death, Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s spin on an iconic Neil Gaiman character makes The Sandman a real stunner.

The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix.