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The NBA struck gold at All-Star weekend in 2024. While the game itself was bad enough that the league is considering a major shake-up in its format and the Dunk Contest was a dud, a shooting contest between Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu injected a whole lot of excitement into the festivities on Saturday night — Curry was able to win, but it was awfully close.

With the 2025 edition of the All-Star Game taking place in the Chase Center, it would make a ton of sense for the league to run back a Steph vs. Sabrina shootout. According to Shams Charania of ESPN, that is, indeed in the works, but there’s a catch: They may not be the only NBA and WNBA players involved.

Curry and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty participated in the first NBA versus WNBA 3-point challenge at All-Star Saturday night this February in Indianapolis. Curry and Ionescu are in strong conversations to return in a variation of the shootout, which could include other NBA and WNBA players such as Klay Thompson of the Dallas Mavericks and Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever, sources said.

Expanding on the competition and including Thompson and Clark always made far too much sense, so it’s good to see that the NBA might do something that would obviously be a huge draw.

Last week’s edition of the Uproxx Music 20 column shined a light on Nigerian singer FAVE and her new EP Dutty Love. This week, we’re staying on the African continent, but heading over to Kenya where the spotlight shifts to Xenia Manasseh. The 27-year-old singer is actively exploring the heights and depths of love. It’s a journey that began in 2023 with the release of her debut album Love/Hate Pt. 1. Through that album, Manasseh preached that “it’s okay to be vulnerable and to confront how they feel and see that there’s a lot of beauty that can come out of that.” That confrontation can come through acceptance or a fight to preserve, but acknowledging that it’s all in the name of love makes it worthwhile.

That sentiment remains true on Love/Hate Pt. 2. The project, which Manasseh released back in September, arrives presents a fiercer version of the singer. Yes, they are free-spirited and lively moments like “Asali” and “Longer,” but ferocity guides the bulk of the album. “Dare You” with Waye captures Manasseh on the offensive as she warns an ex of what lies ahead as she remains scorned from their past foray in romance. “Fire” places Manasseh on a well-deserved pedestal and out of the shadows of insecure men, while “Sober” capture an alcohol-fuel spiral that snowballs despite her desire to go cold turkey.

A few removed from the release of Love/Hate Pt. 2, Uproxx found a moment to chat with Xenia Manasseh who is this week’s Uproxx Music 20 artist. Scroll down to learn more about Xenia Manasseh’s inspirations, aspirations, and influences.

• FAVE Begins Her Best Chapter Yet With The Freeing ‘Dutty Love’
• Skylar Simone’s Growth Is As Remarkable As Her Voice On ‘Shiver’
• Fergie Baby Blends Nostalgia And Innovation On The Prideful ‘Harlem River Drive: North’
• Dylan Sinclair’s ‘For The Boy In Me’ Champions The Beauty Behind Love And Intimacy
• Jaz Karis’ ‘Safe Flight’ Is A Soaring Debut And A Tasteful Melting Pot Of R&B Flavors

What is your earliest memory of music?

My earliest memory of music is playing the piano in kindergarten.

Who or what inspired you to take music seriously?

Not really sure I was necessarily inspired by someone else to take it seriously, I like to think me and music chose each other.

Do you know how to play an instrument? If so, which one? If not, which instrument do you want to learn how to play?

I can play the piano, guitar, bass, and drums. I started playing all of these (except bass) when I was much younger, but I just don’t get the chance to practice enough.

What was your first job?

Probably being a “secretary” for my grandma.

What is your most prized possession?

My heart.

What is your biggest fear?

I try not to use the word fear anymore because I truly believe that it manifests everything that comes with it into my life.

Who is on your R&B Mt. Rushmore?

Brandy, India Arie, Erykah Badu, and Alex Isley.

You get 24 hours to yourself to do anything you want, with unlimited resources: What are you doing? And spare no details!

I’d love to be in the mountains or by the beach somewhere in a big house with a fully equipped studio and just spend the day making music and having fun with the homies.

What are your three most used emojis?

,, and .

What’s a feature you need to secure before you die?

Brandy.

If you could appear in a future season of a current TV show, which one would it be and why?

Avatar The Last Airbender: Live Action because this is my favorite show ever and just to say I was a part of the franchise. I’ll give number 2 to Abbot Elementary, top tier humor.

Which celebrity do you admire or respect for their personality and why?

A public figure I’d probably like to sit down and have lunch with is Sadh Guru. I enjoy talking & learning about life and its philosophies & I feel like we’d do that but also actually have a lot of fun together.

Share your opinion on something no one could ever change your mind about.

Avatar The Last Airbender is the best show in the world.

What is the best song you’ve ever heard in your life and what do you love about it?

That’s a hard one to answer I can think of so many… but it always comes down to the writing and it’s always a love song.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform, and what’s a city you’re excited to perform in for the first time?

Nairobi [is my favorite]; Paris & Tokyo.

You are throwing a music festival. Give us the dream lineup of 5 artists that will perform with you and the location where it would be held.

Brandy, Alex Isley, Khadja Nin, Manana, and Lucky Daye.

What would you be doing now if it weren’t for music?

Playing sports or dance.

If you could see five years into the future or go five years into the past, which one would you pick and why?

I have no clue, I’m happy with the present moment, this is where I heal and learn from the past and also build for the future.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

It’s okay to let go, life will always go on and it is 100% what you make it.

It’s 2050. The world hasn’t ended, and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

I won’t be that old, so I hope it’s still a reminder of this crazy journey we call life. Hope I continue to see my growth through it and that it remains a reminder that it’s okay to feel.

Love/Hate Pt. 2 is out now via Manasseh Entertainment LLC. Find out more information here.

Well, an updated Carrie take was not on the bingo card for followers of Mike Flanagan adapting Stephen King works. In fact, this intersection of horror fanbases wasn’t entirely thrilled about those The Exorcist reboot plans interrupting their hopes that a long-gestating The Dark Tower series would be announced as the launching point of Flanagan’s Prime Video/Amazon deal after he departed Netflix.

Did that proclamation happen? Not yet. Flanagan himself is surely holding out hope that he will eventually do more with his previewed vision for The Gunslinger‘s opening moments to kick off a broader The Dark Tower series. For now, however, audiences can look forward to another Carrie. Really? Believe it. Let’s review how this happened and what to expect.

Plot

Everybody who has dabbled in Stephen King books and adaptations is aware of Brian De Palma’s 1970s adaptation starring Sissy Spacek. Pig’s blood and foreshadowing with tampons certainly are visuals that stick in moviegoers’ minds, along with Carrie’s telekinesis-powered, homecoming-queen revenge upon those who ceaselessly bullied her. Multiple attempts have been made to repackage this terror-filled story, and those efforts included a TV movie in the aughts, an incredibly short-lived Broadway musical (perhaps the “worst” musical in Broadway history) that lost millions of dollars, and a forgettable 2013 remake starring Chloe Moretz.

Carrie has arguably been done “to death,” so how, exactly, did an eight-episode series version (as revealed by Deadline) of the story become Mike Flanagan’s introductory Amazon MGM Studios project? While speaking with Movieweb (via Screenrant), Flanagan revealed how Amazon actually reached out because they were interested in a retooling (“they said, ‘Hey, would you have any interest in Carrie?’”). Flanagan didn’t immediately see the value in this project (either), but he warmed up to the idea:

“I had to think about it, because my first instinct is always — why? It’s been done perfectly by De Palma, it’s then been done three other times after the fact. Why do it again? Carrie White is a story about high school violence and bullying, and that feels immediate and important today, unfortunately, even more kind of sharply relevant than I think it was when he wrote it.”

Did he say “more relevant”? Flanagan sees tech as key to a remake’s spirit. Hmm:

“So there felt like a chance for some true modernization beyond just changing the time period, and to use it to talk about the issues that affect high school kids in America today. You know, Carrie White walking through a metal detector is interesting to me. Carrie White with social media. The iconic scene in the locker room is very different when people have phones in their hands. So that was the first germ of an idea, like, there is room for this to actually have a lot to say that’s very relevant.”

This doesn’t immediately sound like groundbreaking material — many horror films have attempted commentary on compounding technology for better and worse — but if anybody can pull this off and make Carrie work, 50 years after the fact, it’s Mike Flanagan. And hey, it’s also worth noting that this news came five years after FX announced a limited series that never surfaced, so it’s honestly likely that somebody would make a TV show, and and the world does not need another bad King adaptation, so if this has to happen, Flanagan is the man because horror audiences trust him more than anybody with King’s material.

Flanagan also chatted with CinemaBlend to reiterate that he found it essential to answer the “Why?” for himself (one that King agreed with) before signing onto to a reboot:

“One of the only questions I had when it was first put on the table was ‘Why?’, and if I couldn’t answer ‘Why do this again?’ for myself, then there was no point in pursuing the project. It’d the same muscle. I will say that it’s the same feeling I had when we approached The Turn of the Screw, which had been adapted dozens of times. And it’s like, ‘Okay, how do we do this completely differently?’”

Prime Video/Amazon hasn’t released an update synopsis yet, but Flanagan’s got this.

Trailer

Obviously, we will not see a trailer for awhile, but looking back at how Flanagan handled Prospero’s death scene in The Fall Of The House of Usher, he’s got hellish dance parties in his back pocket for miles.

Cast

No confirmed cast members have been named yet, but a Sissy Spacek cameo feels like an essential tribute to the Brian De Palma film. We can also expect Flanagan to recruit some of his usual suspects, including Carla Gugino, Annabeth Gish, Rahul Kohli, Mark Hamill, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Victoria Pedretti, Henry Thomas, and Kate Siegel.

Could he perhaps include freaky Midnight Mass vampire-priest Hamish Linklater as Principal Morton? This has to happen.

Release Date

Once Flanagan begins production on a project, he works fast, as his Netflix TV series run (which arrived on an efficient annual clip) proved. As a result, this series could go into overdrive next year with a 2026 arrival.

The last really good NBA All-Star Game was in 2020, which was both the first year of the Elam Ending format and just a few weeks after Kobe Bryant’s tragic death. Players took the game more seriously than we’ve seen in quite some time, as it was a league-wide celebration of the Lakers legend, but since then the game has fallen back into old habits of being a glorified pickup run with barely a hint of defense being played.

That has led to fans tuning out and TV networks being upset, and Adam Silver seemed like a broken man after last year’s game was the highest scoring in history, handing Giannis and the East the All-Star Game trophy with the glowing praise of “you scored the most points. Well, congratulations.” The truth is, the All-Star Game just isn’t important enough for players to go all-out, especially with how much money is at stake for them nowadays. It’s no longer the biggest national stage some of them will get to show out and build their profile, and the result is a bunch of guys trying not to get hurt while producing a few highlights.

For that reason, the league needs to get creative. We offered our thoughts on what that should look like last year, as they’ve bounced back-and-forth between formats and how they pick teams to varying degrees of success. This year we might see a significant change to the format, as ESPN’s Shams Charania brought word that the league is in deep discussions on a new format that would be similar what they did with the Rising Stars Game, breaking the All-Star rosters into 4 teams and having them play a semifinal game and then the winners of those playing in the final. The teams would be 3 teams of 8 All-Stars and the winning team of the Rising Stars Challenge from Friday.

Charania highlights how discussions around this format started at Summer League and have included league personnel, team executives, players (including Stephen Curry), and coaches, with significant momentum towards being adopted for the 2025 game in San Francisco. At the very least, you could bet that whatever team of All-Stars got matched up with the Rising Stars winners would likely have a little more juice to not lose, which would yield the intended results of raising the level of competition.

I think anything would be an improvement over a regular four-quarter game, and the Rising Stars games have been improved as a result of this format change. Even if they aren’t suddenly the greatest basketball games in history, they move quicker and when it’s close late the competitive juices get flowing in a way we don’t see often in the current All-Star format.

T-Pain has a message for the music fans deriding his and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s cover of Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz’s 2003 hit “Get Low“: “Touch grass.” The cover, which Zuck and Pain released as “Z-Pain” on DSPs earlier this week, has drawn criticism for — among other things — being a painfully corny acoustic rendition of a song from Zuck’s college years. It also features, well, a class of character that many Americans aren’t too enthused about considering Facebook’s role in the last nine utterly terrible years and the ongoing ensh*ttification of the internet as a whole.

It hardly matters that the song was meant as a sweet gift from Zuck to his wife of 12 years, Priscilla Chan; fans who want to see the rich end up on their dinner plates haven’t got anything nice to say about it. On Instagram, T-Pain defended the effort, saying, “It is impossible for some people to have fun. I’ve learned how to not worry about what y’all are talking about. Why y’all hate happiness so much? Y’all don’t like when people do wholesome things, y’all don’t like when people do stuff for their wives.”

In the caption, he advises fans to “go climb a tree” instead of wasting time hating, but I don’t Faheem… seems like Zuck could have used that advice when he suggested this idea. I’m all for serenading your lady love, but why inflict it on the rest of us? The fact it was added to DSPs, where it could potentially turn a profit, would seem to taint the sweet gesture it’s intended to be; that Zuck keeps trying to humanize himself in the face of all the horrible societal effects of his various companies sorta takes the wind out of my sails for this recording. Billionaires, by and large, suck, and the world would be better off with more musicians and fewer self-important businessmen trying to pass themselves off as anything but.

There’s this fun thing I like to do sometimes that I affectionately call the Barry Bonds game. How it works: You go onto baseball-reference, pull up the page for the legendary San Francisco Giants slugger, and just look at how ridiculous it was that Bonds was able to put up the numbers he did during his prime. Yes, steroids, I know, but even with that caveat, individual players are not supposed to break their sport the way that Barry Bonds was able to break the game of baseball.

We’re not fully there yet, but going onto Nikola Jokic‘s basketball-reference page is getting to a similarly very silly point. Ever since becoming the no-doubt cornerstone of the Denver Nuggets back in 2018-19, Jokic has consistently put up some of the wildest numbers in the league. His last four years feature three MVPs and a second-place finish while averaging 26.1 points, 12.2 rebounds, 8.7 assists, and 1.4 steals in 34.1 minutes per game while shooting 58.8 percent from the field and 36.4 percent from three. The advanced stats especially love him — scroll on down to the “Advanced” section, a lot of stuff is bold (led the league) and a few things are gold (all-time career marks).

There is no one quite like Jokic, and there has never been anyone quite like Jokic. His career True Shooting percentage is third in league history, behind only Rudy Gobert and DeAndre Jordan, while attempting 1,942 more three-pointers than those two combined. His career total rebound percentage is 15th, right in between ABA legend Mel Daniels and Marcus Camby. He’s 25th all time in assist percentage — the three names directly behind him are Ja Morant, Ricky Rubio, and LeBron James. The dude just has his fingerprints all over games in a way that no one has ever consistently matched.

I say all of that to say this: Somehow, someway, on a team that needs him more than ever (which says a lot as the entire franchise is built around having him), Jokic has raised his game through the first stretch of the 2024-25 season. This should not be possible. It’s not even like he’s suddenly adding something new to his bag of tricks, he’s just better than ever at being Nikola Jokic.

Small sample size caveats are prominent here, but here’s some stuff to consider:

Points per game: 29.7 (fifth in the NBA, his current career-high is 27.1 PPG)
Rebounds per game: 13.7 (leads the NBA, current career-high is 13.8 RPG)
Assists per game: 11.7 (leads the NBA, current career-high is 9.8 APG)
Steals per game: 1.7 (t-9th in the NBA, current career-high is 1.7 SPG)

The only players to ever average a triple-double over a full season, of course, are Oscar Robertson (once) and Russell Westbrook (four times). Neither of them, in any of their triple-double seasons, were in the same galaxy as Jokic’s current True Shooting percentage of 66.7 percent — both guys, funny enough, posted a TS% of 55.4 percent in their most efficient season with a triple-double. And all of the advanced stats that tend to show that Jokic is a marvel (PER, win shares per 48 minutes, box plus/minus) are outrageous — if the season ended today, he’d post the highest single-season PER (33.31) of all-time, the highest BPM (15.02) of all-time, and the fourth-highest WS/48 of all-time behind some guys named Kareem and Wilt.

So, yeah, Jokic is a joke, the single best basketball player in the world today and the guy spearheading a Nuggets team with some flaws that came as the result of a talent drain over the last few years to an early 7-3 record and, as of this writing, the longest-active winning streak (five games) in the Western Conference. And here’s the funny thing: If Denver did not have Jokic playing like this, they would be in some serious trouble. Have a look at how dire things get when he is not on the floor, via PBP Stats:

There is a reason why, when asked what the ideal number of minutes is for Jokic to be on the floor for the Nuggets, Michael Malone said “48.” We’ve seen plenty of teams over the years be totally helpless when the sun around which everything revolves goes to the bench — LeBron’s teams in his prime were famously horrendous when he would sit, the Sixers have an organizational commitment to being awful without Joel Embiid, etc. — but seeing as how Jokic is either scoring or assisting on nearly half of all the points that Denver scores, well, it’s pretty important that he never comes off the floor. That’ll have to change at some point (well, probably), but Jokic playing like this means it’s easier for the Nuggets to slowly bring along their young guys who have to take on bigger roles this season — although it must be said that Christian Braun has impressed as the de facto Kentavious Caldwell-Pope replacement. They can also afford to be patient with Jamal Murray, who still hasn’t quite looked like himself on the heels of a pretty nasty run of injuries that made his postseason and Olympic efforts hard to watch at times, but just got paid in a big way and absolutely has to get on track.

Of course, at some point, Denver is going to need to totally round into form, even if there are some really encouraging signs beyond Jokic. Aaron Gordon has been awesome so far this year when healthy, while Michael Porter Jr. continues to just do his thing as a huge dude who can shoot the hell out of the basketball. When 75 percent of the core your team is built around is playing at a high level from the start of the year — and that final member of your core has a reputation for saving his best for when the lights get brighter — you’re usually in a pretty good spot.

There are still big picture questions that can only be answered when the playoffs roll around, which is the curse of being a team with title-or-bust aspirations. In the meantime, all anyone can really do is sit back, watch, and marvel at the spectacle that is Nikola Jokic, the best player in the world at the very height of his powers, someone who keeps finding ways to break the game of basketball, and an all-time great who stands shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the greatest players to ever set foot on the hardwood. And the scary part? As the early portion of this season has shown, if anything, he’s only getting better.

Depending on who you ask Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet was the album of the summer (if you ask me, that honor goes to Charli), and with the album debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, viral videos for the singles “Please Please Please” and “Taste,” the near ubiquitousness of Espresso (I couldn’t go into an Uber, a gym, or a store this year without hearing it blasting from speakers), nobody can deny that 2024 has been the best year in Sabrina’s career.

Even though summer is over, if you’re a Carpenter — what Sabrina affectionally calls her fan base — Sabrina has been keeping you fed. For her Short ’N Sweet tour, Sabrina is making headlines and filling social feeds with her fun, light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek stage show, her kitschy meme-worthy merch, and a series of pop-up takeover cafes that have hit New York City, Chicago, and this weekend, Los Angeles.

The LA Short N’ Sweet Cafe will run from November 15-17 between the hours of 9 AM – 7 PM and is being presented at Melrose’s Verve Coffee Roasters (a solid coffee shop in its own right) and offers limited edition merch, a full Sabrina-inspired menu, and all sorts of staged photo opportunities that look… straight out of a Sabrina Carpenter music video. The pop-up was made in partnership with Cash App, which we’re only mentioning because using the app will score you a 30% discount on a single transaction.

We hit up the Short N’ Sweet Cafe to give you the full details on what to expect.

What’s The Vibe?

Sabrina Carpenter is the vibe. Cute outfits, perfect makeup, get your poses ready — I showed up to the pop-up wearing what I thought was an okay outfit, but I felt a little underdressed considering all the super fans and influencers who were dressed to impress.

What we’re trying to say is, don’t slump on the fit — you might be visiting a coffee shop in the middle of the day, but almost everyone is dressed like they’re hitting the club after.

The Menu

As a coffee connoisseur, I was thoroughly impressed by the menu, which featured all sorts of delicious iced and hot lattes named or themed after Sabrina Carpenter songs and lyrics. The menu also has several pastries, but they were sadly unavailable at the preview event.

I tried two drinks, the Honeybee Draft Latte and the Heartbreak Jamaica. The Honeybee featured a mix of lavender, honey, espresso, and milk, and featured a floral and herbaceous flavor that hovered nicely over vivid toasty coffee notes.

The Heartbreak Jamaica couldn’t be more different despite being iced. The drink featured hibiscus and coffee cherry, providing a flavor that was well-balanced between tangy, sweet, floral, and bitter-tasting notes.

I honestly wanted to try the full menu but I was buzzing on caffeine after the two drinks.

The Merch

The merch was typical concert fodder: shirts, bags, hoodies, socks, as well as coffee mugs, but everything is very, well, Sabrina. For example, one shirt featured a graphic print of lacy lingerie over a plain white t-shirt cut. It’s a sleep shirt that lets you have things both ways, which feels kitschy and very in line with the Short ’N Sweet aesthetic.

Prices for the merch go as low as $15 and as high as $80.

The Photo Ops

Aside from the menu, the photo ops are the real draw of the pop-up experience. There are several stage set-ups with vintage-inspired furniture that recalls the ’50 and ‘60s that’ll have you looking like you’re starring in your very own Sabrina Carpenter video.

But in my opinion, it’s the more naturalistic sets that use the Verve coffee shop architecture that look the best. Posing in front of a Sabrina-emblazoned backdrop on a lip-shaped couch is one thing, but sitting on beautifully paved steps while sipping coffee with the sunshine hitting your perfect fit? That’s some straight-up Gossip Girl Blair Waldorf shit.

All in all, the Short ’N Sweet Cafe offers a lot for die-hard Sabrina Carpenter fans, and a good enough menu that even non-fans will find something to enjoy.

The Short ’N Sweet Cafe can be found at Verve Coffee Roasters in Melrose, 8925 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

It’s unclear whether Jessie Reyez is preparing to release a new album soon, but the Toronto singer has certainly increased her output lately, suggesting that may be the case. In May, she teamed up with Big Sean to share “Shut Up,” a bold, boastful banger, then, in August, the dropped “Ridin” with Lil Wayne, smoothing things out for a more lusty approach. Today, she shared another unexpected collaboration, moving away from rappers to fellow R&B chanteuse Ari Lennox, who duets with Jessie on “Just Like That,” a Latin-accented love ballad that promises her loyalty despite the attention she gets as an international recording star.

“Got blue checks in my request / But I don’t pay them no mind,” she croons on the chorus. “‘Cause the last time left me broken / But you came by, and we vibed.” The song’s a testament to the healing power of true love in the wake of a bad breakup, a running theme through both artists’ output to date.

While fans wait to see what Reyez has in store for her next release, Lennox is unfortunately asking for a release from her current recording contracts, citing a lack of support. She made the request shortly after releasing her own new single, “Smoke,” the video for which reflected her growing interest in addressing mental health concerns.

You can listen to Jessie Reyez’s new single “Just Like That” featuring Ari Lennox above.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon recently concluded its second season with Daryl and Carol headed to Spain with more to come. Before that happens, Maggie and Megan’s ill-advised Manhattan adventures will return for their second season. This darkness-soaked, streetwise, and brutally back-to-basics spin off last left off with Maggie trading Negan to the Duma and the Croat in exchange for her son, Hershel Rhees. To her surprise, this wasn’t a happy reunion, and Hershel called out Maggie’s singular vision for what it was, an obsession with vengeance, which is whittling away her soul.

That anticlimactic ending actually served the show well with the second season poised to take Maggie back into an urban hellscape like no other. We will soon find out what showrunner Eli Horne and franchise chief Scott Gimple have in store for this series after Negan attempted to make things right, only to have that quest blow up in his face. Let’s talk about where this show’s chess pieces are poised to go in Dead City‘s second season.

Plot

It doesn’t take a leap to realize that Maggie will rethink her decision to leave the rehabilitated Negan to certain doom. As for what Negan is doing and how he will cope, Jeffrey Dean Morgan previously admitted, “I feel like we find him in a spot that he’s never been in before. He’s a lot more vulnerable and he’s in a sticky situation, sort of needing Maggie to come save his ass, really.”

However, a teaser trailer shows that Negan might have decided to be his own “Savior” by reverting to being Bad Negan. That trailer also shows Maggie reacting to what looks (and acts) like seventh-season TWD Negan, who infamously bashed her husband’s brains into a pulp. What will this do to her “rescue” mission in process? That probably depends on whether Negan is simply going through the motions with a new Lucile by wrapping another baseball bat in barbwire (after the old Lucille splintered into pieces). There’s the possibility that not even even Negan knows how far he will in order to survive.

Morgan has been having a ball with that ambiguity regarding Lucille’s presence. Earlier this year, he told SDCC’s Hall H (via Variety), “There’s something about that sweet girl that I love… It makes me turn into Negan [who has] has a love-hate relationship with her.”

This twisted chess game will be further complicated by new characters, but first, here’s the second season synopsis:

In season two, in the growing war for control of Manhattan, Maggie and Negan find themselves trapped on opposite sides. As their paths intertwine, they come to see that the way out for both is more complicated and harrowing than they ever imagined.

Newly revealed strategists within Manhattan’s war include Dascha Polanco (Russian Doll, Orange Is The New Black) as Major Lucia Narvaez.

And because this show cannot have enough villain types, Kim Coates (Sons Of Anarchy) will be on hand as “fierce” gang leader Bruegel, who Deadline reports “is more manipulative and intelligent than we might have assumed.”

Also at NYCC, Scott Gimple said that this series isn’t saying “never” to any old human characters making an appearance in New York City, probably in future seasons if it happens. “I’m not telling you not to expect it,” he told the audience (via Variety). “But it’s a layered universe and so much of the history is important to the present. So it’s gonna be super satisfying when I say this – you never know. It’s an option and a possibility.”

Cast

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan continue as Negan and Maggie with more of the Dama (Lisa Emery) and the Croat (Željko Ivanek) to keep things menacing. Will Logan Kim also be back as the ungrateful Hershel Rhees? Presumably, but confirmed new cast members not only include Dascha Polanco and Kim Coates but also Keir Gilchrist and Pooya Mohseni.

Release Date

The gritty walkers of the city will return in Spring 2025.

Trailer

Negan is off to the showman races in this teaser trailer from NYCC.

2020 brought Hey U X, Benee’s debut album, and she followed it in 2022 with a new EP, Lychee. It appears the gears are turning on a new project: She released “Sad Boiii” in September and today (November 15), she has shared “Animal.”

Benee says of the song in a press release:

“‘Animal’ is a song I wrote when I felt extreme existential dread. When flying in a plane on tour, looking down onto what looks like an ant-like world really inspired the lyrics. How huge something feels when you’re in it, but zoomed out so SMALL. I love thinking about life like that.

I thought about this concept long and hard, and I feel we can only be playful with the thought of how insignificant and small we are compared to the universe. There’s peace in not knowing what anything is here for. It makes me want to enjoy everything in life even more.”

She also said of the video, “We shot the ‘Animal’ video in Sydney when I was there on tour. Directed by Keith Herron and shot mainly on green screen, there was so much we could do creatively in post. We had a lot of fun with the story and creating a crazy visual world to live beside the song!”

Meanwhile, it was just announced that Benee will open for Tate McRae on the European dates of her Miss Possessive Tour.

Watch the “Animal” video above.