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Deep into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda Maximoff (also known as Scarlet Witch) is on a murderous rampage across the multiverse. Driven by rage, grief, and love, Wanda invades the home base of The Illuminati, a group of superheroes in an alternate reality who protect Earth. This particular version of The Illuminati exists purely as fan service, with cameos from Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter, John Krasinski as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, and Patrick Stewart as Professor X from the X-Men films. One by one, a bloodied Wanda easily kills every single member. Using her mind, the Scarlet Witch easily shreds Reed Richards like a paper shredder and explodes the mouth of some guy called Black Bolt. I don’t know who Black Bolt is, but I enjoyed seeing his head explode.

In order to spend her life with the children she created with her magic in WandaVision, Wanda intends to steal the power of traveling through the multiverse from America Chavez. The process will kill America, but Wanda sees her as collateral damage; a means to her happy end. Within the MCU, Wanda has experienced a tremendous amount of pain. She lost her parents in a bombing when she was a child, she lost her brother in a battle against Ultron, she accidentally killed civilians when she lost control of her powers and as a result, was put on house arrest by her friends, and she had to remove the life source from Vision, the love of her life, in order to save the universe from Thanos. The 2021 limited series WandaVision was about Wanda’s grief, and her journey in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a continuation — or, more so the consequence of her actions in WandaVision.

The Illuminati massacre is Elizabeth Olsen, who has played Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch since 2014’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, at her most terrifying and most vulnerable. Wanda is seduced by dark magic but motivated by good intentions. She’s goal-oriented, which explains the murder spree, but deep down the hero buried deep inside of her is conflicted about the damage she’s causing and the many lives she’s responsible for taking. Olsen conveys all this with her face. A glance, a widened eye or mouth quiver behind a face covered in blood. In this moment, and several other moments throughout the film, I found myself rooting for Wanda. In both WandaVision — which earned Olsen an Emmy nomination last year— and Doctor Strange Into the Multiverse of Madness, Olsen delivers a performance undeserving of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Olsen’s striking, impassioned performance, a perfect balance to co-star Benedict Cumberbatch’s quiet one, anchors the film. Likely aided and influenced by (real) visionary director Sam Raimi, Olsen believably captures the grief of a mother longing for the children she cannot have with elements of horror and manages to deliver iconic villain moments and, ultimately, an earned return to heroism. Elizabeth Olsen is one of the few actors in MCU history who can tell a story with their face while moving their hands and body to unintelligible visual effects, and who can perform expositional dialogue effectively. Olsen does more than deliver quippy one-liners in a tight costume. The MCU isn’t completely lacking in good performances. But that’s just it: they’re good at best, with a few exceptions including Tom Hiddleston as Loki (a performance so powerful that the character was brought back from the dead several times), Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther, who together brought a necessary human element to the franchise.

While Olsen is most known for playing Wanda Maximoff, her other, lesser-known performances prove she’s a force and one of the best actors of her generation, including 2011’s Martha Macy May Marlene, her mesmerizing feature film debut, the Facebook Watch original Sorry For Your Loss, Ingrid Goes West, and Wind River opposite fellow Avenger Jeremy Renner. Olsen is also a fun, brutally honest celebrity, between a Harper’s Bazaar skincare video in which she notes that she is from Los Angeles but does not own crystals, and criticizing the criticism of Marvel movies in a good way: by celebrating the crew members who make these movies happen. “I’m not saying we’re making indie art films, but I just think it takes away from our crew, which bugs me. “These are some of the most amazing set designers, costume designers, camera operators ― I feel diminishing them with that kind of criticism takes away from all the people who do award-winning films, who also work on these projects,” she told The Independent.

Anything can happen in the MCU – especially when your character is as popular as Wanda/Scarlet Witch has become – but Wanda’s fate in Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness suggests, for now, that Elizabeth Olsen is up for grabs. While she’s free from the IP monolith, it’s time for Olsen to be in conversation with her Oscar-favorite peers including Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.

The turnover from autumn to winter last year saw Drake and Kanye West apparently set aside their longstanding differences. It was a surprising time for many who had been paying attention to the many chapters of their relationship, as it all seemed to happen so fast. The two hip-hop heavyweights quickly agreed to perform at the LA Coliseum in a concert dedicated to Larry Hoover and appeared like the best of friends on stage, sharing high fives, side hugs, and covers of each other’s songs. Among the many confused was Grammy-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, though it was more personal for him.

On the new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, K Dot’s first solo LP since 2017’s Damn, he addresses the reunion and what it reveals about his own maturity as a man. “When Kanye got back with Drake, I was slightly confused / Guess I’m not as mature as I think, got some healin’ to do,” he says on “Father Time,” which features Sampha.

Drake and West threw jabs at one another for years but their bubbling tension reached its peak in 2018, when Ye produced Pusha T’s Daytona album, which included “Infrared,” a shot at the 6 God for his ghostwriting allegations, among other things. Drake replied on the very same day with “Duppy Freestyle,” a two-birds kind of approach that fired back at both of them. What would ensue from there is Pusha responding with “The Story Of Adidon,” revealing to the world that Drake has a son, and a lot more subtle shots over the years between the three until this past year.

Listen to “Father Time” above.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. Get it here.

Post Malone is an “ugly-ass motherf*cker,” according to himself in a 2020 GQ interview. While he’s currently admired by millions of fans, he may still feel some insecurity about his appearance: Malone was a guest on The Tonight Show yesterday and noted during his conversation with Jimmy Fallon that it is only in certain moments that he remembers how “strange-looking” (his words) he is.

While talking about Malone’s upcoming album Twelve Carat Toothache, Fallon asked Malone if he literally has twelve carats of metal and jewelry in his mouth. Malone didn’t have a definitive answer to that question but he did note after Fallon asked if he just stares at his mouth: “I’m such a strange-looking individual. Every time I look in the mirror, I don’t notice anything, but then I’ll have a couple Jägers or we’ll play [a drinking game] and I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll be like, ‘Dude, you’re such a weird guy!’”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Malone noted he has been corresponding with Bob Dylan. Fallon asked if they’ve met and Malone answered, “I have not met Bob Dylan but we have been… hmm, I don’t how much I’m at liberty to discuss. We’ve been chatting.” He added, “He’s always just been a voice in my head. Always just appreciated the music and appreciated the songwriting.

Check out the interview above. Malone, as he tends to do on The Tonight Show, played a drinking game with Fallon, so watch that below.

“My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose,” Donald Trump once said. This was before he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, but if you still found that quote inspiring, the former-president has an expensive new grift for you. Trump is haunting the country with the American Freedom Tour as “a new way to milk his ex-presidency — and test another — [by] hitting the lucrative motivational speaking circuit with more fervor than any other active U.S. politician in history,” Axios reports.

Trump will make his next stop on the tour in Austin on Saturday. According to the AFT website, there are a dozen different price options to attend, each with its own level of access. Ticket prices start at $9, for the Satellite tier. That includes a spot in an overflow room at the venue to watch the program on a TV screen. Presidential tier tickets cost $4,995. That includes early access to the event site, admission to a reception and a photo-op with Trump’s son Don Jr., as well as premium seating to watch Trump.

There’s also a vague-sounding “Patriot” tier, which includes roundtables with Mike Pompeo and Trump, and a “photo op” with the former-president. No price is listed, but it’s probably however much it costs to fix a private plane.

American Freedom Tour founder Chris Widener wouldn’t say how much Trump is getting paid to share his motivational wisdom (like, “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich”), but he did say that “most all of our speakers get paid an honorarium for the event.” Plus, free Diet Cokes. Widener added that the tour is not “a Trump-aligned operation,” and the message is “Faith, Family, Finances, and Freedom.” But there’s one “F” that’s missing.

Here’s the kind of speech you can expect:

(Via Axios)

What a difference a year—and a new book—makes. On January 6, 2021, Lindsey Graham spoke with Jonathan Martin, a reporter for The New York Times, about the calamitous events of that day and placed the blame squarely on outgoing president Donald Trump’s shoulders. Now, as Mediaite reports, Graham is changing his tune.

On Tuesday, Martin and his fellow Times writers Alexander Burns chatted with Anderson Cooper on CNN about their new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, and shared audio of their chat with Graham, who trashed Trump for the role he played in the Capitol insurrection while praising Joe Biden and expressing hope that he could right the ship:

We’ll actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. It’ll take a while. People will calm down. People will [say] “I don’t want to be associated with that.” This is a group within a group. What this does, it’ll be a rallying effect for a while, where the country says, “We’re better than this.”

When Martin asked whether Graham thought that Biden could help in lifting the country back up, his response was forthright: “Totally. He’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”

When confronted with his own words on Thursday night by Fox News host Jesse Watters, however, Graham cried mea culpa. “I was wrong,” said the South Carolina senator. “I’ve known Joe for 30 years. He’s a nice guy, but he’s been a disaster as president. This was literally happening on the day of January the 6th and I was hoping that President Biden could bring us together. Common sense tells you you want the president to be successful. But not only has he failed to bring us together, he has made us less safe.”

You can watch Graham’s interview with Watters at Mediaite here.

(Via Mediaite)

Elon Musk‘s purchase of Twitter just took a major hit, which is reigniting speculation that the whole thing was just a giant troll. Early Friday morning, Musk announced that the deal is on hold because he now doesn’t believe the social media’s numbers on the amount of fake accounts.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” Musk tweeted. “Still committed to acquisition.”

Musk’s announcement arrives on the heels of both a cryptocurrency crash and news that Twitter shares have dropped significantly below Musk’s purchase price. Musk’s announcement that the deal is on hold caused Twitter shares to drop even further, and analysts now believe Musk is using Twitter’s disclosure on fake accounts to weasel out of the deal. His leveraging of Tesla never quite made sense, and now, that calculus is proving to be even more precarious. Via The Wall Street Journal:

The tweets come as many big tech stocks have been falling on Wall Street, including shares of Tesla, which are down 29% over the past month. Mr. Musk is using his Tesla holdings to help fund the Twitter deal. Meanwhile, Twitter’s stock price had traded below Mr. Musk’s offer price as investors wondered if the deal might get reworked or not get done.

Mr. Musk might be using Twitter’s recent disclosure as a means to get out of or renegotiate the deal, said Daniel Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities. One reason is the impact on Tesla shares since the deal was announced.

While analysts hedge their bets on Musk’s next move, actual Twitter users are being a bit more blunt. Musk is currently being roasted for announcing that the purchase is hold (#ElonsProblems started trending shortly thereafter) and a significant amount of people are convinced Musk was never really going to buy the site in the first place.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Wall Street Journal)

On the new Kendrick Lamar album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, the rapper addresses a lot of topics. One track in particular that’s starting a lot of conversations among fans online is “Auntie Diaries,” on which Lamar raps about a couple of transsexual characters.

Twitter users were quick to praise the song, with one writing, “Auntie Diaries is the first song in major support of the trans community from a rap artist as big as Kendrick and I can’t voice how happy I am for it.” Another, journalist Khari Thompson, also wrote, “Yo ‘Auntie Diaries’ could be some REAL barrier-breaking stuff in hip-hop. Kendrick talking openly about his aunt and cousin transitioning and ‘choosing humanity over religion.’” Another user added, “Kendrick Lamar dropped Auntie Diaries, a song about trans acceptance & intersectionality, while conservatives across the country are pushing a full on assault on all LGBTQIA+ people & their allies. He didn’t have to do this – he’ll probably get sh*t for it – but he did. Powerful.”

Others addressed Lamar’s use of a homosexual slur with a line referencing how commonplace saying it used to be: “Back when it was comedic relief to say ‘f*****’ / f*****, f***** f*****, we ain’t know no better / Elementary kids with no filter however.” In response to those who apparently took exception to the lyrics, fans insist detractors are missing the point.

Listen to “Auntie Diaries” above and check out some more reactions to the song below.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. Get it here.

Chris Rock wasn’t kidding when he said he wouldn’t talk about The Slap until he gets paid.

During a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday, the comedian immediately addressed the elephant in the room… kind of. “I’m OK, if anybody was wondering. I got most of my hearing back,” he joked. But anyone expecting Rock to go further than that was about to be disappointed. “People expect me to talk about the bullsh*t, I’m not going to talk about it right now, I’ll get to it eventually, on Netflix,” he said.

The first time that Rock acknowledged the time that Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars (which seems like it happened 500 years ago) was in late March during a standup show in Boston. “How was your weekend?” he said to kick off his set. “I don’t have a bunch of s*it about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that sh*t. And it will be serious and funny.” And profitable.

Meanwhile, Dave Chappelle’s Hollywood Bowl set, in which he was attacked by a man brandishing a replica handgun, will not be coming to Netflix.

(Via the Times)

Today is both a joyous and sad day for Top Dawg Entertainment: Kendrick Lamar released the feverishly anticipated Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, but as he declared back in August 2021, it is his final album for the label. TDE had been his label home since the mid-2000s, back when he was releasing music as K.Dot and years before his 2011 debut Kendrick Lamar album, Section.80. Now, though, Lamar is moving on, and TDE president Terrence Louis Henderson Jr. (better known as Punch) seems to have no hard feelings about it.

This morning, Punch shared a quick social media post about the album, writing, “Shout out to Kendrick Lamar and co… congrats on the new album. Last one on TDE. We made history! Much love and continued success. [folded hands emoji].”

TDE founder Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith expressed a similar sentiment last summer, writing, “With this being Dot’s last album on TDE, this is more of a VICTORY LAP, a celebration. I know he will be successful in whatever it is he decides to do and will have our FULL support. As for Top Dawg Entertainment, we will continue to grow, develop, and give artists the platform to expand into whatever way they choose. Heart, honor, respect.”

As expected, Kendrick Lamar’s fifth album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers arrived on Friday night. What was unexpected is the music, content, and some of the guest appearances found throughout the project’s 18 songs. Features from the likes of rap legend Ghostface Killah, fellow West Coaster Blxst, cousin and frequent collaborator as-of-late Baby Keem, and PgLang labelmate Tanna Leone were the expected or not-so-surprising contributors to the album. However, appearances from the likes of Summer Walker may have been a bit shocking, but none more than the multiple appearances that Kodak Black made on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.

Kodak Black can be found on three songs from Kendrick’s new album: “Worldwide Steppers,” “Rich (Interlude),” and “Savior.” On “Worldwide Steppers,” which caused some reactions for its own separate reasons, Kodak offers a quick introduction. On “Rich (Interlude),” he delivers a spoken word over sporadic piano keys. Finally, on “Silent Hill,” he steps in for a rap verse after Kendrick delivers one of his own.

Considering Kendrick’s high and practically unblemished status in music and Kodak’s past filled with controversial statements, sexual assault accusations, and run-ins with the law, the rappers’ collaborations on the album had a lot of people talking. Fans of Kodak were excited to see him stand in a bigger spotlight while others were not too pleased with one, never mind three appearances from him on the album.

You can hear the three songs that Kodak Black appears on in the videos above and check for comments from fans below.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. You can stream it here.

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.