News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Spaces, Both Liminal and Outer Plus: Somehow, Darth Maul returned By Molly Templeton | Published on April 10, 2026 Photos: A24 and Sony Pictures Classics Comment 0 Share New Share Photos: A24 and Sony Pictures Classics Here on the West Coast, we are so deeply into spring that yesterday I looked outside and momentarily thought it was snowing. The small white flakes swirling around the sky were in fact the petals of the many, many, many blooming trees—beautiful tree pals that are in a constant battle with my sinuses. May you always have allergy pills on hand, friends; may your eyes not water and your face not itch. If your eyes are watering, how will you read the absolute bumper crop of books out this week? I am eyeing L.D. Lewis’s Year of the Mer and S.L. Huang’s The Language of Liars especially. But if you have not yet picked up a round of brand-new books, there are plentiful other things to read and watch, either in the sun or while hiding from the pollen! We’re spending some time in space again this week; can’t imagine why that would be. Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the sky; call your reps and hug your buds. Backrooms Inspires a Writer To Coin a Term That Seems Like It Should Have Been There All Along I don’t know that I’m the audience for the movie Backrooms. I’m a horror baby. I’m totally oblivious to the previous existence of “Backrooms” because I view much of YouTube with a great deal of suspicion. But I love this piece at The MIT Press Reader that places the “Backrooms” phenomenon in a whole lineage of weird-ass manmade spaces. Shira Chess writes, “There’s a surprisingly deep history behind ‘Backrooms.’ It’s one that touches on everything from Gothic literature to internet folklore to video game culture to ’80s nostalgia. But above all, ‘Backrooms’ captures a feeling — and one that I would argue has become a defining condition of life under Corporate America: dread.” Chess goes on to talk at length about liminal aesthetics, which I think expand beyond the 2010s internet she talks about—vintage airport terminals and empty bowling alleys also feel entirely of the circa-2000 emo scene I loved so intensely!—and goes on to talk about the “Institutional Gothic,” which is a term that made immediate sense to me. “Where the traditional Gothic is dark and looming with ornate architecture, the Institutional Gothic occurs in winding or otherwise empty office spaces, consumed by machine-made mundanity and the unforgiving gaze of noisy overhead fluorescent lighting,” Hess writes. Did you read Eat the Ones You Love? Watch Severance? Institutional Gothic! I’m so here for this. Anyway, I’m going to shut up. But you should read the whole piece.  Darth No Longer: Maul: Shadow Lord I keep forgetting there’s a new Star Wars movie next month. In May! Which is only a few weeks away! This seems, you know, a little worrying! But first there’s a new Star Wars cartoon, which—to be honest—I might be more excited about. Maul: Shadow Lord premiered this week, and I haven’t watched it yet, because Monday is a weird day on which to debut a show. But it’s basically more Clone Wars, sorta, except not; it’s about no-longer-Darth Maul, who has really been through a lot (spider legs! Crime syndicates!) and is really mad about stuff. Justifiably. To be honest I have sort of lost track of Maul in the convoluted Star Wars timeline, but the idea that he’s now going to team up with a Jedi Padawan … it appeals to me. I’m here for it. It is my strongly held contention that Rebels is the best Star Wars, so I get excited about these animated shows, you know? This one, like all the others, is on Disney+. Moon. Moooon. Moooooooon. Moonmoonmoonmoonmoon If you would like to go to fictional space, but aren’t feeling Maul; if you have the moon on the mind, what with the regular stream of incredible images from Artemis II; if you just feel the need for some excellent original science fiction: Duncan Jones’s Moon is currently on Hulu. It stars the incredible Sam Rockwell, returning to space long after Galaxy Quest, as a man working alone on the moon. He works three-year terms, which is something of a red flag, as that is a very long time to be alone, with only a robot for company. I haven’t watched Moon in a very long time, and only remember the vague shape of it; if you have never seen it, do try not to get spoiled. It’s a strange, eerie, excellent film, made in that era when you could make strange, eerie, excellent independent films for a mere $10 million bucks. Is this a pile of money? Yes. Is this a small fraction of the budget of any number of bloated franchises? Bigger yes! Imagine how many Moons you could make on a Marvel budget. Space is the Place (to Read About) I’m probably not alone in that while I read a lot of science fiction, I don’t read a lot of science. Which is probably silly! There are so many good science books lately! One of those looks to be Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. (This is Prescod-Weinstein’s follow-up to The Disordered Cosmos, which also looked great.) According to Time, this new book “distills the knowns and unknowns of our universe in a heady brew of astronomical observation, complex calculus, personal anecdote, and political polemic.” Chapter one is called “How to Live Safely in a Science Factual Universe,” which means I already love this book; I will love any book that references Charles Yu’s excellent How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. According to the cover copy, the book references popular culture “from Langston Hughes, Queen Latifah, and Lewis Carroll, to Big K.R.I.T., Sun Ra, and Star Trek.” You can read a Star Trek-related excerpt at Popular Science.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Spaces, Both Liminal and Outer appeared first on Reactor.