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Following the divisive, and at times toxic, debate over the previous installment, 2017’s The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker has been tasked with the unenviable challenge of not just providing a satisfying finale to the current trilogy, but also to the entire nine-film storyline that encompasses the Skywalker family melodrama and a galactic battle between good and evil. It also needs to please a plethora of fans with many different ideas of what this thing is supposed to be....

Today’s offering is Star Wars-themed, and d’you know what? Not sure we’ve ever covered a Star Wars deepfake before, so this will be a unique entry into the Den of Geek library. It’s a very silly library. We don’t enforce a ‘no talking’ rule, so feel free to yell in the comments as standard. “What if a young William Shatner had been cast as Luke Skywalker?” certainly isn’t a question we thought we’d be asking ourselves this week, but a new Empire Strikes Back video from DeepFaker has brought the question to our attention, much like a cat might bring a dead mouse to your doorstep on a brisk autumn morning....

Despite being called The Bad Batch, much of the story of the latest Star Wars animated series actually revolves around Omega, a mysterious clone who runs away from Kamino and the Empire with Clone Force 99 at the start of the show. Once just a medical assistant working in the cloning facilities, Omega is now a fugitive on the run from both Imperial forces hunting the Bad Batch and the bounty hunters sent by the Kaminoans to retrieve her....

With The High Republic series, which also consists of the young adult novel Into the Dark, middle-grade book A Test of Courage, and comics from Marvel and IDW, the team of authors reverse engineers the MCU model, introducing dozens of new characters at once, and then digging into their personalities and backstories later. It means Light of the Jedi is refreshingly free of info-dumps: the scenes themselves illustrate new ideas....

See, you’re not really able to climb a ladder (or anything else for that matter) in most Bethesda RPGs. At least you can’t climb them in any traditional way. You can walk up ladders, mountains, and other vertical obstacles in those games, but there isn’t actually a “climbing” animation for any of those actions. As Bethesda’s Todd Howard explained during a 2016 Quakecon panel, the team just never figured out how to incorporate that animation/feature into the studio’s old engines without messing up the A....

If Stargirl has succeeded at one thing with its finale–and it achieved a lot–it was introducing some very exciting new concepts and characters for season two. The biggest hint at where we’re headed next is the late-stage tease of a new Injustice Society member who brings the promise of danger, mystery, magic, and maybe… time travel. Say hello to the Shade. During the Golden Age of comics, the DC Universe was filled with weird and wonderful characters who shaped the massive comic book company into something magical and otherworldly, far from the street level noir heroes that the industry is now known for....

Supergirl Season 6 Episode 3 On Supergirl Phantoms are on the loose, literally spreading misery and despair like a metaphor for unchecked grief. After a vampiric phantom slowly drains your soul, it will eventually cost you your life force. Meanwhile the Super Friends took on their own grief in varying ways, and not a moment too soon. Alex is barely keeping her head above water with her sister in the Phantom Zone, J’onn is burying himself in the work of getting her back, and Lena’s hiding from it by worrying about what to do about Lex, while Brainy doesn’t know what to do with his uninhibited feelings....

Supergirl Season 6 Episode 4 To vanquish the Phantoms and escape the Phantom Zone, Supergirl motions toward horror with its body-snatching plot in National City and eerie quest over in the Phantom Zone. With the Prime Phantom still terrorizing National City and Kara and her father still trapped, the Super Friends had their hands full while still trying to come to terms with the emotional aspect of losing Kara, mostly by consuming Scotch or doughnuts....

Supergirl Season 3 Episode 2 When they broke Supergirl for the season, the show’s staff would have had no way that the episode “Triggers” would air during what has been a very triggering time for many of their viewers. As women and girls share their stories of harassment and assault using #MeToo, there are no doubt some Supergirl viewers who have struggled with their own panic attacks, just like the woman from Krypton did in this episode....

Thanks to current pop culture, when the average reader thinks of fairy tales, something very specific probably comes to mind: Beautiful princesses. Cute animal companions. Handsome princes. Perhaps most of all, a happily ever after. Much of that is thanks to the Walt Disney Company, whose family-friendly retellings of classic tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White are careful to remove the darker and more problematic elements from the stories, sanitizing them to the point where many modern viewers are most likely completely unaware of the popular films’ complicated – and often shocking – roots....

AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) was the closest thing that the otherwise cheerful Ted Lasso had to a villain in the beginning. Following a tough divorce from the awful Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head), Rebecca took it upon herself to hurt her ex in the cruelest way she could imagine: by destroying his beloved football team. As the new sole owner of Richmond, Rebecca brought in American college football coach Ted Lasso to torpedo the team’s chances of success....

It’s also not an unreasonable proposition because, unlike a lot of anime which is serialized throughout, the majority of Bebop episodes are standalone adventures. Even episodes that delve into the backstories of protagonists Spike, Jet, Faye, and Ed before their time together on Jet’s ship, the Bebop, mostly function on their own. So, technically speaking, blasphemous though this may sound to fans, if you’ve never checked out the anime, just watch these ten and you’ll be getting all you need....

Turns out, more than you would think. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reeves is among many filmmakers, including The Suicide Squad director James Gunn and Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson, pitching ambitious DC projects to Warner Bros. The outlet reports that Reeves wants to make movies “focused on Batman rogue’s gallery, both established and more obscure, with characters ranging from the Scarecrow to Clayface to Professor Pyg.” While THR emphasizes that these projects are all “in the very early stages of gestation,” it does clarify that Reeves is talking about movies, not HBO Max series similar to the upcoming Penguin series starring Colin Farrell....

The trailer for Episode 8, ‘What I Know’, finds Homelander landing in a field somewhere before cutting to Hughie warning Billy “we can’t just kill everyone!” Mr Butcher doesn’t appear to have the same qualms, replying “that is exactly what we’re going to do.” If you’re a fan of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic, you probably remember Billy being behind a few major supe massacres over the years, so this casual response will come as no surprise!...

The idea of the superbeing not as an aspirational figure but a cautionary tale is one that predates even the concept of the superhero. Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel about a superhumanly strong and tough man, Gladiator—a key influence on Superman—isn’t one of high adventure and happy endings. Long before they brought the Man of Steel we all know and love to life, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s 1933 “Reign of the Superman” wasn’t about a heroic character at all, but rather a mad scientist whose experiments grant a man telepathic powers who is soon corrupted by his gifts....

The Possibility of an Expanse Season 7 The Possibility of an Expanse Movie While The Expanse team went into Season 6 knowing it would almost certainly be the show’s last, they chose to tell the story that included a Laconia-set subplot adapted from Expanse novella Strange Dogs. Unlike basically every other the story in Season 6, the Laconia subplot about a girl named Cara and her efforts to save brother Xan with the help some alien creatures was very forward-focused....

The Flash Season 8 Episode 7 To what will likely be the surprise of many, The Flash is still keeping things remarkably low-key in its second episode back from its lengthy post-Armageddon hiatus. “Lockdown” is clearly another of what showrunner Eric Wallace likes to refer to as “interlude” episodes, or more standalone stories that aren’t clearly part of the larger, more interconnected “graphic novel” arcs. And you know what? The surprisingly low-stakes hour feels exactly like what The Flash needs more of these days....

While The Game Awards has become one of the best sources for new game announcements and trailers outside of E3, the show still focuses on honoring the year’s best games. Granted, 2020 has been an unusual year, to say the least, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at the list of The Game Awards 2020 nominees, which include not only the year’s best games but some of the best games in recent memory....

While the Game Awards team has been hyping up a series of major reveals that have fans buzzing, nobody is entirely sure what we can realistically expect from this year’s show. The Game Awards crew has done a great job of keeping that ship from leaking too much, and even the most “solid” rumors about the event come with a disclaimer that reminds us that absolutely anything could happen. With that in mind, here are a few Game Awards announcement/reveal predictions that feel like fairly safe bets (as well as a couple of big swing predictions thrown in there just for fun)....

In all seriousness, trying to make a shortlist of the best games of the year is a difficult and often thankless task that becomes even more thankless and difficult when you happen to be responsible for the biggest awards show in a particular medium. This has also been an especially strange year for video games as many notable titles were delayed (or perhaps rushed to release) due to the difficulties of developing and releasing games during the Covid-19 pandemic....