Marvel quietly resets, True Detective makes some noise, and more from the week in entertainment

True Detective: Night Country’s finale ended with season-high ratings, according to Variety: 3.2 million viewers tuned in across HBO and its streaming service, Max. That capped off a viewership of about 12.7 million across all episodes, an all-time high for the franchise. As Variety notes, this new generation of True Detective has the benefit of new ways to watch (Max), but it’s undeniable that audiences were plugged in and often enjoying the show’s new direction… except for the series’ creator, Nic Pizzolatto. Read More

Marvel Studios finally announced the cast for its new, highly anticipated Fantastic Four movie last week—with Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm—and everyone seems to agree that the movie could be/should be a perfect opportunity to gently reset the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After all, it’s about an iconic superhero team and it might be a period piece, both of which should give it some freedom to move around without worrying too much about established MCU canon (which, while the movie was fun, did drag down The Marvels quite a bit). Read More

Former Boy Meets World stars Will Friedle, Rider Strong, and Danielle Fishel recently took some time away from recapping the beloved ‘90s sitcom to address a larger conversation happening right now about the ethics of child-led shows. Likely inspired by the upcoming docuseries Quiet On Set, which explores allegations of sexual abuse and grooming at Nickelodeon, Friedle, Strong, and Fishel were joined by a family therapist on the latest episode of Pod Meets World to discuss their relationship with season five guest star Brian Peck. In 2004, six years after the season aired, Peck was convicted of sexually abusing an unnamed Nickelodeon actor and spent 16 months in prison (via Variety). Read More

Ours is an age of mass misinformation, so let’s center ourselves with two objective facts. The first: Biden and Trump are both old—at least to be running for president. At 81 and 77 respectively, they’ll be the two oldest candidates to ever grace the ticket, beating the record they already set in 2020. Second: a lot of very loud people on Twitter/X—no matter on which side they’re on—really hate when people use their platform to present any sort of reasoned and measured critique of our country. Last week, Jon Stewart used his first appearance on The Daily Show in nine years to address the first issue. This week, he was forced to talk about the second. Read More

After throwing a huge tantrum over his disdain for True Detective: Night Country—a show he’s certainly making a good amount of money on—earlier this week, original True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto seems intent on proving he’s even more of an overgrown toddler than previously imagined. At least in the sense that toddlers (hopefully) don’t know how to use the internet, and Pizzolatto seems to be ignorant of its cardinal rule: if you exist, people will hate you. If you ask for hate, they’ll bust down every door trying to comply. Read More

Given that the fourth season of True Detective received a warm critical reception and franchise-high ratings, it’s not at all surprising that HBO has decided to renew the series with this season’s showrunner Issa López at the helm. But what would normally be a run-of-the-mill newswire feels a lot more pointed in the midst of True Detective’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, having some decidedly ungenerous reactions to López’s work. Pizzolatto may have found López’s references to the first season “stupid,” but HBO is signing up for more! Read More

It’s easy to forget, after all the Emmys, Golden Globes, critical accolades and backlashes, etc., that Ted Lasso was originally created as a pitchman for NBC Sports, appearing in a series of ads that operated on the basic premise that it’d be funny to see Jason Sudeikis play a Southern football coach who didn’t know enough to know how little he knew about soccer. We suspect it will not be as easy to forget the origins of Chad Powers, a new TV show that’s just been ordered by Hulu and which seems, as far as we can tell, utterly determined to waste Glen Powell’s charms on one of the worst TV premises we’ve ever heard. Read More

Jenna Ortega may be three syllables away from summoning a very boorish ghoul every time she says the new name of her new film, but even this dire conundrum isn’t stopping her from telling the world how excited she is for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to finally hit theaters. (Oops! Now we’re all in it together.) Read More

The actor also discusses her new show, Constellation

The Tiger King says he just needs two things to turn MGK gay