Featured Essays Dimension 20 Imagining a More Caring Apocalypse in Dimension 20: Gladlands While most post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on survival and toughness, Gladlands is all about tenderness. By Leticia Urieta | Published on May 7, 2026 Credit: Dropout TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Dropout TV Dimension 20, a creation of Dropout TV, has been a source of laughs, imaginative characters and emotional touch points for fans of Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPG’s over twenty seven campaigns. Planned and led by the brilliant Game Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan, each season of Dimension 20 includes a rotating cast of Dropout TV comedians and special guests playing characters from fae to fantastical high schoolers to dark fairy tale beings. In the most recent season of Dimension 20: Gladlands, Brennan leads players through a post-apocalyptic land called the Gladlands, with Mad Max-style characters who are part of a “Carer Van” roaming the lands, but instead of pillaging and killing, they are committed to helping those they meet along the way. Oscar Montoya plays Poppy Persona, a drag queen scholar from the History Heap and caretaker of the Carer Van’s Truthbrary, who believes that storytelling and fantasy are just as important to people’s well being as gathering truth and knowledge from the “before times.” Jacob Wysocki’s character Kokomo, is a Totoro-esque being full of warmth, perception about people’s needs, and of course, big hugs. Ally Beardsley plays Quinn Wedbush, a cage-headed misfit trying like hell to be a good friend despite her troubled bunker past (which she can’t help but blurt out at every opportunity). Zac Oyama’s character, Conner Kawasaki, is an awkward catastrophizer who gets into scrapes, but also offers bits of off the cuff insight as only Zac can. Kimia Behpoornia’s TessTube5 is a hybrid hottie with the rockin’ body of a surfer dude and the head of a cockroach, always eager to help, and flirt if the occasion calls for it. And Vic Michaelis’ character Hugi, an impossibly tall crow-like figure in a plague doctor’s mask, is a mortician responsible for caring for the dead of the Gladlands and ensuring that they receive proper tribute. There is a hearty mixture of humor and playfulness for these comedians, much of which works because they have the comedic improv language built from playing with their friends. Most post-apocalyptic fiction focuses heavily on survival and toughness, not on tenderness—but in this season, the players roles and choices in this game are less about combat or completing a particular challenge and much more about leaning into their intuition to meet the needs of the people they encounter, while also not burning out themselves. Instead of their character strengths being based on charisma, stealth, or battle skills, they are based on “warmth,” “awareness,” “resilience,” “determination,” and “creativity.” Equally important, throughout each episode, Brennan is quick to remind the players that their choices are not just about the success of a particular mission to different regions of the Gladlands, but about maintaining the “Good Goo,” a purple test tube that measures the harmony and emotional well being of the Gladlands, as well as the “Bummer-O-Meter”, measuring the outcomes of a particular group action. While the action in this season is much more subdued as the characters get into funny hijinks and awkward moments with the folks they meet, the stakes are as high as ever with the characters working towards maintaining not just the survival but the emotional balance of the Gladlands. While each episode of D20: Gladlands has poignant moments, Episode 3: “Collabotage” speaks to the kind of awareness and care as the blueprint for creating sustainable communities. Despite the sometimes bleak, survivalist landscape of the Gladlands, there is an emphasis on treating these communities as opportunities to begin anew with a focus on helping one another. This episode centers on the Carer Van visiting Rotglob, a toxic swampland full of skilled folks doing important work. Rotglob is where food is grown and foraged for the Gladlands and where the Maternity Mound cares for newborns. There are also many folks responsible for harvesting moss from the swamps, and for building homes for others. When the members of the Carer Van arrive, the community is gearing up for their annual chili cook-off, the one day in a long time when the folks of Rotglob can stop working and celebrate good food, and one another. But underneath this festive mood burnout and resentment fester, and many of the characters, through Brennan’s incredible acting, slowly reveal to the members of the Carer Van how much their responsibilities weigh on them. Only the characters of the Carer Van—as outsiders—have the wherewithal to understand how much the community members of Rotglob are struggling and undercutting their own dreams and needs in order to serve others. From Thagomizer, an aging craftsman who worries he isn’t good enough to participate in the chili cook-off, to Clawed Een, the only skilled maternity nurse who doesn’t even have time to stop and eat a bug taco as she cares for the newborns of the Gladlands, even with Kokomo’s help. Hugi becomes responsible for the cremation of Bub Mildew, an older Rotglobber who died, leaving behind his friends, Furnst and Clap, who are grieving the complicated man. Hugi begins to spiral themselves as their repeated failures to sculpt a statue of Bub out of the metal formerly embedded in his body for his friends, demonstrating how easy it is to fall into patterns of heightened self-criticism and emotional repression when others are depending on you and your skills. Justin Sheffield, a newer member of Rotglob, confesses to Quinn and Conner his panic over the pressure to provide enough food for others in the Gladlands and what taking a break, even just to celebrate with a chili cook-off, means for their communal workload. Justin’s character represents an important and often overlooked aspect of community building: that not everyone will be well-liked, and not everyone is good at communicating what they need. As Justin tells Quinn, “it sucks to be the loud one.”  The Dusty Dogooders all fundamentally understand that the community covenant has fractured in Rotglob. Kokomo declares to Poppy, “they need a summer,” his cryptic way of signaling that the people of Rotglob need rest, and something to be hopeful for, but the members of the Carer Van are not united in how to address so much need, making them feel insecure about their own abilities to help. Midway through the episode, Brennan declares a hard truth: the Carer Van fractures and the Good Goo descends. It is not until the group comes back together with the rest of the community for the chili cook-off, where Kokomo is an excited judge and Ash, Tess’ bug-hybrid sibling and Thagomizer are competing, does their shared goals for the people of Rotglob become clear. Through some clever “collabotage,” that is incredibly sweet and hilarious, Tess and Poppy convince Ash that she has found a family in them, and can devote time to helping Thagomizer, who wants to win the cook-off and show everyone what he can do. The episode’s emotional arc comes when Poppy and Parcel build and unveil the Dome of Dreams for a post-cook-off performance, and the community gathers to watch the members of the Carer Van in a skit written by Poppy about little inchworms collaborating to make food and shelter for one another. The story is inspiring to the folks in Rotglob, but there is a lack of action behind this inspiration. Then, in a surprising moment of initiative and insight, Quinn takes the mic and identifies the rot at the heart of Rotglob: that everyone is struggling with their workload, and hiding how they feel from one another. She tells the crowd, “Sometimes it is braver to say you can’t do something.” This emotional moment is both heart-wrenching and a beautiful moment of vulnerability that viewers can relate to, as so many of us harbor feelings of guilt, even resentment, when we feel overwhelmed but know that others are struggling too.  Once Quinn opens the floor for vulnerability, Furnst steps forward. Inspired by his deceased friend and ornery complainer Bub, Furnst’s confession of frustration at his workload opens the floodgates, and soon several others, including Justin Sheffield and Clawed Een, step forward to unburden themselves, creating a new annual tradition, “Bub Day.” This practice represents the resistance to a culture of abandonment, instead embracing the vital tenet that everyone’s lives are equally important and worth caring for.  The Carer Van has created a sense of found family when so many of the characters have lost their loved ones in the “before times.” Their world has changed so much that there are moments in the game where they must contend with the grief in remembering and understanding artifacts of the past. They are a rag tag group of friends, each with their own baggage and insecurities, but each with a deep wish to do good, even if they don’t always understand how best to help or how their roles in community may have to change. It’s easy to watch D20: Gladlands and laugh, cry, and then go about your day, appreciating it as good storytelling, and the much needed distraction we need in these dark times. But much of this season, and this episode, mirrors the real struggles of community building in dire times; the overwhelm, the burnout, the grin and bear it mentality that folks, whether they are experienced organizers are not, struggle with. It also shows the power of storytelling like this. The act of radical imagination work can be present both in this episode and in this entire season of Dimension 20. In her book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, author and cultural worker adrienne marie brown describes how imagination is imperative to community building,”This is a time travel exercise of the heart. This is collaborative ideation-what are the ideas that will liberate all of us.” In conversation with brown’s words, Tricia Hersey discusses imagination as liberatory practice in Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, when she talks about the “Dreamspace,” an individual and communal space of radical imagination and futurity people can only reach when they rest and resist the structural harms of capitalism and white supremacy culture. Rob Hopkins echoes this idea in How to Fall in the Love with the Future, iterating that we must “act towards creating a future we want, not just preventing the one we don’t want.” D20: Gladlands is engaging in this kind of radical imagination, and this episode provides examples of how a more caring society operates. And what is D&D or TTRPG if not an exercise in collective imagination? What is depicted in this episode mirrors the resistance and community building happening both in the United States and internationally in the face of fascism, occupation, abandonment and increasing state violence. I think of the ways in which activists and regular community members in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and Minneapolis are showing up for one another in this way every day, distributing zines and whistles to alert neighbors to ICE presence in their neighborhoods and organizing mutual aid initiatives for community members who are afraid to leave their homes. A D&D meetup in Minneapolis even became a place where folks began to organize against ICE violence to protect their immigrant neighbors! Or folks organizing Little Free Pantries and food bank donations for folks affected by cuts to their SNAP benefits.  The incredible writing and performances in Dimension 20 remind us that art has always been political, and that community is intentional, created time and again with messiness and care. The best art is a Dome of Dreams, making space to dream what is possible, and collectively imagine a better world. The post Imagining a More Caring Apocalypse in <i>Dimension 20: Gladlands</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Planet of the Apes Matt Shakman Is the Next Director to Visit the Planet of the Apes Franchise Perhaps he too will find his destiny on the Planet of the Apes By Molly Templeton | Published on May 7, 2026 Image: 20th Century Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 20th Century Studios You can’t keep a good ape down, I guess. It’s been almost two years since the last time humanity—or at least moviegoers—ventured into the Planet of the Apes series, in 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. That film, directed by Wes Ball (who’s now busy with The Legend of Zelda), was a potential trilogy-starter set 300 years after the previous Apes movie. Now, a new film is in the works, though it’s entirely unclear if it will follow that narrative path or head in some new direction. Variety has the news that Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman will shift from superheroes to super-apes for the next film in the franchise. He’s reteaming with Fantastic Four: First Steps screenwriter Josh Friedman, who also wrote Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes—which certainly suggests that the potential trilogy may become a reality. But plot details might as well be on another planet. As Variety notes, Friedman is “a company man” for 20th Century Fox, which has been making all these monkey movies. He has story credits on the last two Avatar movies, which he worked on with Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, who are shifting from writing roles to producing roles on the Apes films (the pair were key in the franchise’s return to screens, developing and writing 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes). Shakman, of course, also directed WandaVision. In the wake of that show’s success, he was tapped to direct a new Star Trek film—but clearly that film series remains grounded. Other than Fantastic Four, Shakman has done a ton of TV work that ranges from Game of Thrones to You’re the Worst to The Boys to Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. No timeline has been announced for the new Apes film.[end-mark] The post Matt Shakman Is the Next Director to Visit the <i>Planet of the Apes</i> Franchise appeared first on Reactor.

Column Anime Spotlight The Unexpected Genius of Princess Tutu It’s easy to underestimate this series and its characters, but you’d missing out on something wonderful. By Leah Thomas | Published on May 7, 2026 Credit: Hal Film Maker Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Hal Film Maker I will admit that the first time someone told me to watch Princess Tutu, I responded with thinly veiled disdain: “Honestly, princesses and tutus are not really my thing.” “But it’s my favorite anime of all time, and it’s really amazing, and you should watch it.” She was a college roommate, and she was odd, and she kept a rabbit in her bedroom. Princess Tutu was her long-standing hyperfixation. I thought I would be magnanimous and indulge her by watching a few episodes. At the time, I took myself very seriously, and could only allow myself to enjoy anime if I could be an obnoxious fucking hipster about it. In the early aughts, it was one thing to be a Lord of the Rings nerd who had a Tim Burton shirt for every day of the week; it was another thing entirely to be caught watching Naruto. I was embarrassed about liking anime, and had to convince myself I was interested in it for artistic reasons.  This roommate—let’s call her Odette—was unabashedly nerdy in a way I envied. She drew malformed fan comics on a Facebook page, and no matter how hard she practiced, she never got better at digital art. She’d grown up in the tiny unincorporated neighborhood of Davisburg, Michigan, which hosts an annual Scarecrow Decorating contest. Odette was a former ballerina herself and practiced locally with a few classmates from her minuscule religious school, where she’d been one of 18 students in her graduating class. I raised my eyebrows at that because I was a bitter asshole, and she didn’t look like a ballerina to me, and I assumed she must have been terrible because, having come from a Michigan village myself, the bar was probably pretty low in Davisburg. I told myself I felt sorry for Odette and agreed to watch her silly favorite anime to make myself feel like a nice person. Credit: Hal Film Maker I have since realized that I spent years of my life avoiding stories featuring female protagonists. Perhaps because I hated myself, or because my brand of queerness made it hard for me to feel like I had a lot in common with other girls, I gravitated towards shows with traumatized, disabled, and gay male leads instead. My own writing reflected this disconnect, too. It wasn’t until my third novel that I wrote characters who could be described as heroines. Others have spoken more eloquently about this phenomenon, and it often boils down to this: a lot of fiction does a poor job of presenting women as developed characters. I think, subconsciously, even though I am a woman, I was conditioned to believe that stories about women were not as worthy. Fuck you, patriarchy. Sitting down with Odette to watch a childish Ugly Duckling retelling felt beneath me. But I thought I could tolerate the high voices and endless lovelorn gazes of a girl who is actually a duck who is also a heroic shojo princess who dances ballet. I could put up with the object of said lovelorn gazes, a prince named Mytho, who is an emotionless husk because he shattered his own heart to trap his enemy, a vicious crow. See, Mytho and the crow’s daughter—and Duck herself—are actually storybook characters who escaped the confines of their story when their author, a magical eccentric named Herr Drosselmeyer (like in The Nutcracker, yes), died before finishing their book. And I could pretend to appreciate the levels of unique theatrical expertise on display, ranging from thorough knowledge not only of a dancer’s movements, but also the folktale origins of the most famous ballets in existence: Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty. I could fake some appreciation for a series that seamlessly incorporates iconic composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Strauss, and Delibes into a metacognitive fairytale about trauma and identity. And hey, I used to study German and half my family emigrated in the 1930s, so I could enjoy the episode titles being auf Deutsch, and the entire series being set in a bizarre, timeless little village populated by real and fictional people. And honestly, it’s not hard to love that our characters attend an arts school where several of their classmates are talking animals—not anthros, but actual animals in school uniforms—who take part in ballet lessons without any great fuss being made about them. Crocodelia, Anteaterina, and Arma-Dylan? You own my whole heart. And you know, it’s kinda neat that the would-be villainess of the series is actually a tragic character herself, abused by her menacing father because she had the misfortune of being born in a “hideous” human body. Oh, and then there’s Fakir, Prince Mytho’s knight and protector, who cannot quite commit to his role because it means being sliced in half if he sticks to the storybook script, and who can blame him for being reluctant to go that far?  … Well, fuck. This show is actually a work of genius, isn’t it? I was happily, beautifully humbled. You got me big time, Odette, and I am sorry for my deep-rooted self-hatred. This show was exactly what I needed. Will You Dance With Me? Credit: Hal Film Maker Princess Tutu has enjoyed cult status ever since its two perfectly measured seasons aired on NHK starting in 2002. Created by legendary character designer Ikuko Itoh, who worked on Sailor Moon, the anime focuses on students attending Gold Crown Academy, in the heart of Gold Crown Town, the displaced European-esque village where reality and stories intermingle. Those who arrive in Gold Crown Town feel no desire to leave it behind, and they probably couldn’t even if they did, because mysterious walls appear at its borders if they try. It’s not always apparent which aspects of Gold Crown Town are fictional and which are real, and for the most part, the characters themselves rarely question their existence.  Duck, however, questions her existence from the very get-go, and that makes her the perfect tool for a writer. Drosselmeyer, who managed to preserve some of his consciousness beyond his own death by building a cogwork writing machine that would continue his work, is an omnipresent narrator and commentator throughout the story. His presence is whimsical but sinister. Like all writers, he seeks to entertain, and even though his characters have come to life, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered about their fates so long as it makes for a good yarn. When he spots a small yellow duck looking sadly at his fugitive heartless prince, he sees the potential for a real tragedy. He gives Duck an amulet that allows her to transform into a girl, and the girl the power to transform into Princess Tutu, who is the only one who can gather the shards of the prince’s broken heart, make him whole, and allow the story to end. Drosselmeyer wants this, but what does ending the story mean if his characters are now alive? Drosselmeyer can throw story elements at them or set them up for violent deaths or impossible choices, but the characters have free will, and things rarely go to plan. Creators sometimes describe the feeling of losing control of their own characters, and sometimes it’s only then that great writing takes place. Princess Tutu takes this idea literally, and even though it’s a story about stories within a story, it avoids becoming convoluted with masterful panache.  The writers tiptoe along an impressive tightrope. The metacognitive aspects are always present, but cannot be allowed to eclipse the story’s suspense. Duck and the others must be allowed to shape the plot through their own actions, regardless of their creator’s interference. Somehow, too, the episodes have to surprise audiences even though each one starts with clear foreshadowing of events to come, because every episode starts with a quick summary of whatever folktale inspired its storyline. Every episode has similar beats, too, because this is a magical girl anime. There’s the storybook intro, credits, and exposition that leads to a new heart shard being found. Then Duck transforms into Tutu, dances—or dance-battles—with the keeper of the shard, and her heartfelt empathy and the act of dancing liberate the dancer and the heart shards, too.  All of this narrative orchestration—and actual orchestration, too, because smarter people than I have dissected the ways ballet and classical music are intricately woven into the plot—could easily have drifted into heavy-handedness. And sure, there are some moments where Drosselmeyer’s commentary on genre and story and the roles princes and princesses play gets a little old—but isn’t that the point? He’s trying to confine real people to the unreal expectations of the story, while they are fighting to be themselves. For this reason, the formula never grows stale. But if the characters aren’t precisely who Drosselmeyer wants them to be, well, they’re not necessarily who they themselves want to be, either. The Troupe Credit: Hal Film Maker Four characters form the pillars of Princess Tutu: Duck, Mytho, Rue, and Fakir.  Duck is more than she believes herself to be, and not just because her alter ego is a hero. In her daily life, she is clumsy, not especially good at ballet, noisy, and scatterbrained. As Tutu, she is elegant, insightful, and powerful, and she appeals to the best aspects of human emotions in order to persuade her opponents to see her perspective. Because Duck lacks confidence in herself, much of the series is about the dissonance that forms between the three roles she inhabits: is she just a duck, as she repeatedly insists in her low moments? Is she really just Duck, the messy student? Certainly, she thinks, she cannot be Tutu. But such is the greatness of her characterization that the audience realizes before she does that she can be all three of these personas and none of them. No matter what role Duck is inhabiting, the most important aspects of her goodness remain unaltered. She is passionate, brave, and deeply empathetic, regardless of whether she’s a princess, a girl, or a duck. She’s a fantastic heroine who struggles with self-confidence but inevitably saves the day without ever losing herself. She cannot see that her heart remains unchanged, but others do, eventually. If Duck is emotion personified at the start of the series, Mytho is her foil. His self-sacrifice has rendered him as charismatic as a wet sock, but even when he’s stripped of his personality, his fundamental response to encountering a creature in harm’s way is to protect it. Unfortunately, the first pieces of his heart to return are negative emotions. He first regains the feeling of bitterness, followed by loneliness, sadness, and fear. Mythos goes from an empty vessel to a creature composed solely of pain, and it takes a long time for him to become a whole person. Duck’s devotion to Mytho—often at her own expense—would be frustrating if he were undeserving of love. But if Mytho has a tendency to protect the vulnerable, Tutu has it too, and he’s the most vulnerable of all. Mytho’s roommate, Fakir, is his other protector, another fantastic, nuanced character. Fakir is abrasive towards and possessive of Mytho, initially framed as a potential antagonist. His fierce overprotectiveness is a product of tying his life’s purpose to saving the storybook prince. His mother died when he was young, and he was charged with keeping the wandering, empty prince thereafter. Every time Mytho regains a piece of his heart, he changes, and that terrifies Fakir, who has only ever known the blank Mytho. Change, even for the better, is a scary thing. Theirs is a troubling love, but a love all the same. Fakir is only human, and his actions are not entirely selfless. Fakir also fears his own fate. Drosselmeyer has written him a role that should end in sacrifice, a tragic character who exists to propel the plot and make readers sad. Fakir sees himself as cowardly for rejecting that fate, and it takes incredible willpower for him to resist it. Through his interactions with Duck, to whom he shows kindness even when she is in her duck form, he is revealed as the show’s second hero. Fakir deserves more than the story Drosselmeyer assigned him. And when it comes to resisting fate, no one has more right to try than the series antagonist, Princess Kraehe. She’s the prima ballerina of the school by day: a beautiful, haughty girl named Rue. It is a given that she and Mythos should be dating, as the two best dancers in the school. Rue is reluctant to make friends, although Duck is very persistent. As Rue’s exterior begins to crack, tragedy strikes—she remembers that she is not a real person, but the crow’s daughter, Princess Kraehe. To fulfill the role she’s expected to fill, she doesn’t get to have friends or be a heroine. She is pressured by her father to harm Mytho, dehumanizing herself to try to earn her father’s approval or what passes for his love. Kraehe comes to believe Rue never existed. Duck knows otherwise: “You must have existed, because you were my friend.” Like all the other characters, Rue will have to reframe the concept of love and embrace its myriad forms to find herself again. Characters Among Us Credit: Hal Film Maker A great joy in the series is identifying which stories have inspired its characters and plotlines. Mr. Cat, the ballet teacher, would be a creep if he weren’t more of a joke to his students. He threatens erring students with the prospect of marrying him in every episode, in an apparent nod to Puss in Boots.Whether this is solely to motivate them to do better or because he genuinely wants to marry a student is sort of dependent on the episode, but it’s the sort of running gag that only works because the characters treat it as ludicrous. Whenever he is rejected, Mr. Cat goes from upright teacher to actual cat, stress-grooming or running in circles around the room. And yet even this character has moments of pathos. In one of Duck’s moments of lowest confidence, he holds her back from practicing with toe shoes. “Duck, have you given up the idea that you can do anything?” he asks, seeing right through her. And when he recalls the ballet dancer who inspired him to dance, his love for the art form is weirdly touching: “Everyone must practice the basics to succeed.” Duck, for whom things never come easily, who very much has to practice to get anywhere, is no less a ballerina for having worked harder. And the class savants are not any happier because it comes easier to them. And I was no happier than Odette, even if drawing was easier for me. People who try and fail and try again have grit. Those who don’t pursue what they love for fear of ridicule have only regret. Another notable side character is Miss Edel, a curious woman who plays a barrel organ, offers peculiar advice to Duck, and gives gems to passersby. Edel is an actual puppet sent by Drosselmeyer to influence the narrative, but when shown affection, even she begins to develop feelings of attachment toward Duck and the others. The idea that emotions can be shared between people, just as dances can be, impacts even inanimate objects. Drosselmeyer would be obnoxious if it were not obvious that he truly loves stories more than anyone else. It feels hypocritical to judge the narrator when we’re watching him tell the story, too, looking for entertainment. The philosophical elements of Princess Tutu grow more apparent as the story unfolds, ends, and starts again. Can a story ever really end, if not even death can end it? And should Tutu succeed, is that even a good thing? What will become of this town that exists between truth and fiction, and is it worth sacrificing in the name of a story? Somehow, this cutesy-looking, pastel-coated ballerina show manages to contain as much existential extrapolation as Evangelion, as much symbolism as Utena, and as much artistry as it could muster under limited circumstances. As Odette told me at the time, “They did the best with the small budget they had.” And did they ever… The stylized character designs, the careful rendering of backgrounds, and saving the best animation for the dance sequences, cartooning the rest and using still frames as art rather than an encumbrance, make it feel more like something you would see on a stage. It doesn’t feel cheap when the still frames appear. It feels like a tableau. There are shows twenty years newer that look ten times worse. I imagine the storyboards for Tutu are wondrous to behold, akin to riffling through the Ghibli archives. I was unsurprised to learn that this trippy fairytale nightmare dreamscape thing was the project that Aria director Junichi Sato worked on before he took us all to Neo-Venezia.  The Story, Unfinished Credit: Hal Film Maker Princess Tutu is a trip in the best of ways—a trip I never would have gone on without the encouragement of a person I dismissed, just as people dismiss Duck. Its insightful characterization, the questions it raises about heroism, love, and villainy, and the message that the things that make us real are not the roles we are assigned but the actions we take, make it a masterpiece. Like Duck, Kraehe, Fakir, and Mytho, many of us spend our lives trying to understand ourselves and feel appreciated. And if we’re fortunate, we can reflect on the stories we’ve lived so far and find we have danced a lot longer and more beautifully than our old selves ever dreamed we could.[end-mark] The post The Unexpected Genius of <i>Princess Tutu</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Lists The X-Files The 15 Best X-Files Monsters of the Week One week on television, a lifetime in our hearts By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 7, 2026 Photo: 20th Century Fox Television Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: 20th Century Fox Television The X-Files didn’t invent the “Monster of the Week” format. Series like The Outer Limits, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and even Scooby-Doo had already experimented with weekly villains when The X-Files debuted in 1993. What ultimately made The X-Files popularly associated with that term (besides the many series it eventually influenced) was the contrasting nature of its MOTW episodes. The show hooked viewers with its serialized conspiracy narrative and filled the remainder of its run with largely one-off episodes that saw Agents Mulder and Scully investigate a seemingly endless series of unexplained events that usually revolved around some kind of monster. As the age of serialized storytelling on television evolved, it became easy to look back on such stories as necessary filler in the age of 20+ episode seasons. Yet, those MOTW episodes feel more magical than ever because they are the antithesis of modern serialized storytelling styles. The X-Files “mythology” episodes could often let you down. Towards the end, they usually did. But when this show decided to throw random spooky bullshit at you, it did so with glee. Either you were going to watch a generational TV masterpiece or something inexplicable that escaped the light of a frustrated writers’ room and somehow found its way onto television. We simply do not have enough of that glorious creative chaos in the buttoned-upped “prestige” era of television. But mostly, those episodes were about the monsters. That’s who we’re here to celebrate today. So while an episode’s overall quality often impacted how memorable the monster itself was, these rankings are ultimately based on the creatures themselves. Be they men, bugs, mutations, or aliens, they were all monsters who deserved so much more than a mere week. 15. The Were-Monster Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” Season 10, Episode 3) The idea that the 10th and 11th seasons of The X-Files were strictly bad is a monster unto itself. It’s a conspiracy worthy of Mulder’s paranoia. Those seasons weren’t all bad; they were just mostly bad. But as any X-Files fan knows, the series’ darkest hours often hide gems waiting to be discovered years later by those patient enough to look for them. And for all their flaws, those revived seasons featured a few genuinely great monster-of-the-week episodes. “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” is undoubtedly the best of those episodes. Written by the legendary Darin Morgan (the man behind some of The X-Files’ most memorable stories), “Were-Monster” is a comedic exploration of Mulder’s growing disillusionment with the often blind faith in the unexplained that propelled his character throughout much of the show. The episode is a giant Easter egg, and at the center of it all is the Were-Monster: a seemingly charmingly conventional monster who, like Mulder, is in the midst of an existential crisis. The Were-Monster, much like the rest of the episode, is a classically amusing terror that takes us back to the show’s best days while making the most of modern sensibilities to feel truly evolved. If only we could say the same of more of the revival episodes. 14. Gerry Schnauz Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Unruhe” Season 4, Episode 4) While not the fourth season’s most disturbing episode (we’ll get there), “Unruhe” is one of those fundamentally unnerving adventures people tend to forget about when remembering The X-Files‘ best, and often most wonderfully absurd, episodes. But what makes this episode, and its villain, a serial killer named Gerry Schnauz, work is the way it gave writer Vince Gilligan an excuse to explore some primal fears.  Inspired by tales of real-life serial killers and the common fear of dentists and dentist chairs (dispense with the pleasantries and double my Novocaine, you floss peddler), Gilligan utilizes Schnauz as a vehicle for a series of upsetting visuals and concepts. The scene where he hides under Scully’s car with a syringe, his fondness for administering lobotomies, the way he runs away on stilts (what the fuck was that, Vince?)… Schnauz is every dark thought you’ve ever tried to push out of your mind placed in the body of a serial killer even Ryan Murphy couldn’t love. His ability to take photographs of victims which represent the most troubling thoughts in his own mind is just the sci-fi cherry on top. 13. The Camouflage Creatures Image; 20th Century Fox Television (“Detour” Season 5, Episode 4) Mulder and Scully are on their way to an FBI team-building retreat, which is, remarkably, not the monster of this episode. That honor belongs to a collection of creatures who have a Predator-like ability to blend into their surroundings to surprise their victims and make you, the viewer, regret ever romanticizing the idea of living in the woods. This underrated episode actually captures some of the best things about The X-Files‘ greatest MOTW adventures. It’s a field trip episode (almost always a good time), it has that incredible Pacific Northwest feel (despite being set in Florida), and it nails the dread of venturing into a remote area best known as the home of a legend that locals treat as a fact. The X-Files often explored the folklore terror of cryptids, but “Detour” really captures the feeling of suddenly finding yourself surrounded by something you don’t understand and can’t possibly prepare for. The effect of the creatures’ camouflage (achieved through a blend of digital and practical techniques) is also one of the show’s most effective monster designs. 12. The Tulpa Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Arcadia” Season 6, Episode 15) The series that launched a thousand ships teases viewers with this episode that sees Mulder and Scully pose as a married couple in order to investigate strange happenings in a suburban community. Braced for the paranormal, the agents soon find themselves at the mercy of a Homeowners’ Association who needle the new residents with an increasingly inane series of rules and regulations. Though the average HOA is an effective enough monster of the week, this particular organization is ruled over by a man who is so desperate to maintain suburban order that he summons a Tulpa to enforce the group’s rules under penalty of death.  Yes, “Arcadia” is a comedy episode, but the monster at the heart of it all is the perfect payoff for a story that is otherwise content to examine the suburbs as a vacuum-sealed piece of falsely utopian Americana. Though The X-Files never shied away from using a monster to embody a message, the show rarely paid off such a premise as effectively as “Arcadia” reminds us that cul-de-sac is just another way to say dead end. 11. Eddie Van Blundht Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Small Potatoes” Season 4, Episode 20) Vince Gilligan said his primary motivation for writing “Small Potatoes” was to deliver an episode that brought some levity to the series’ especially dark fourth season and to challenge his reputation as one of the show’s most reliable sources of disturbing tales. To be fair, this is an often funny story that pokes fun at many of the show’s tropes. Specifically, it really takes a hard look at Mulder as a person in the world rather than an iconic character. Yet, it is also an episode about a man who uses his ability to manipulate his appearance to rape several women and force them to have children that share an unusual physical trait: a tail.  Watching and enjoying this episode forces you to come to terms with an intentionally comedic script based on a morbid premise that wasn’t given the weight it deserved. In that contrast, though, we find a hard truth. Perennial loser Eddie Van Blundht uses his incredible ability not to change the world or acquire great wealth but to rape and impregnate women. It is, to put a woefully inadequate word to the situation, pathetic. But it is Blundht’s pathetic nature which invokes a twisted form of pity. The horrors of his actions are dismissed by the absurdity of his abnormality and a society that is so eager to label him as pathetic or even tragic that they can’t see him for what he really is. And behind all the laughs and the feel-good main character revelations are women whose lives have been changed forever by a monster who will never be taken as seriously as he should be.  10. Luther Lee Boggs Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Beyond the Sea” Season 1, Episode 13) The X-Files often featured monsters that were ultimately just twisted men capable of horrible things. The Norman Bates-like Donald “Donnie” Pfaster is often remembered as the most effective example of such a horror. While Luther Lee Boggs is not quite as memorably terrifying as some of the show’s other serial killers, he is one of the show’s most effective examinations of the dark allure of a monster in the shape of a man that we as a culture have increasingly fallen victim to.  As portrayed by the irreplaceable Brad Dourif in what is arguably a career-best performance, Luther Lee Boggs is a death row inmate using his final days to try to convince Mulder and Scully to help him secure a commuted sentence in exchange for information. In something of a twist, it’s actually Mulder who calls out Boggs as a fraud and doubts his psychic-like ability to know things he shouldn’t. Scully, meanwhile, falls deeper into Boggs’ spell. Despite her best instincts, the very idea that Boggs could help her speak to her dead father as he swears he can is too appealing to simply dismiss. Boggs is undeniably a reflection on how easily even the wisest among us fall victim to scammers who prey on our humanity. One could also see him as a warning of the corrupted allure of the supposed brilliance of a dangerous mind that perhaps even more people fall victim to in the glorified true crime era.  9. The Parasite Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Roadrunners” Season 8, Episode 4) You can raise your hand if you think of The X-Files’ eighth season as “the one without Mulder.” You’re among friends here. But for all its many, many flaws, that season of the show best emphasizes the value of the monster-of-the-week format. Forced to essentially start from scratch, the show’s writers often used this season as a chance to explore some pretty wild concepts that may or may not have been tucked into the back of a drawer during previous seasons.  Vince Gilligan’s “Roadrunners” is by far the best example of such an episode. It follows Scully and Robert Patrick’s Agent Doggett as they investigate a deeply religious small town that has recently played host to a disproportionate number of strange occurrences. A familiar set-up, perhaps, though things take a turn for the bizarre when we learn that the townsfolk worship a parasitic being that they believe is the second coming of their lord. Those who harbor a childhood fear of the slug scene in Wrath of Khan will do well to steer clear of this deeply disgusting adventure that blends shock value with a generous helping of paranoia. It’s also the episode that makes Doggett a far more interesting character, though you stay for that and come for the slug. 8. The Flukeman Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“The Host” Season 2, Episode 2) There’s something endearing and charming about The Flukeman: a mutated skin sack of a horor that lives in the sewers of New Jersey (arguably our filthiest sewers by whatever metric you determine such honors). Though it belongs in any respectable gallery of grotesqueries, there is a purity to The Flukeman that invokes a simpler time for both The X-Files and the concept of modern monsters in general.  The Flukeman is the kind of perfect embodiment of an urban legend. It lives in a place just close enough to you (the sewers) yet far enough away from your normal life that you wouldn’t dream of actually going to look for it (the sewers). The idea of Mulder and Scully (mostly Mulder, in this instance) pursuing such a thing recalls the irresistible promise of the show’s early premise and its monster-of-the-week adventures. Here are two capable agents who are going to seriously investigate every legend you heard growing up that was never proven nor entirely disproven. It just so happens that this particular legend is very real, more terrifying than anyone could have imagined, and born of circumstances that tie in wonderfully to the show’s greater government conspiracy narratives.  7. The Mites Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Darkness Falls” Season 1, Episode 20) Though I do not wish to find myself face-to-face with a towering skin sack monster (a statement one rarely gets the chance to make), my greatest fears are often the things I can’t quite see. That is especially true of insects. If I see a spider and fail to catch it, I will assume that it now lives under my blankets until the end of time. So yes, I do somewhat resent Chris Carter for writing this episode all about a group of loggers who encounter a group of microscopic creatures that can paralyze and cocoon you before you even know they’re there. Strangely, this episode almost feels like a soft remake of another X-Files season one episode, “Ice.” Both deal with Mulder and Scully finding themselves trapped in an isolated area with civilians as they try to survive a terror that cannot easily be identified or fought. But rather than rely quite so heavily on paranoia, this episode ups the ante by isolating our protagonists and forcing them to outlast MICROSCOPIC BUGS THAT PARALYZE AND COCOON YOU, I CAN NOT SHOUT ABOUT THIS ENOUGH! Praised for sneakily addressing serious environmental protection topics, this episode’s greatest accomplishment may be the ways it allows you to bench your fears of global collapse just long enough to entertain a new phobia. 6. Big Blue… Sort of Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Quagmire” Season 3, Episode 22) Others have rightfully observed that one of the biggest problems with remaking The X-Files for the modern age is finding a way to present Mulder’s conspiratorial nature as a charming bit of skepticism rather than as the Alex Jones-like disillusionment it can sometimes read as today. Yet, it’s easy to forget that the original X-Files episodes often used MOTW episodes to counter the “truth is out there” philosophy the serialized episodes typically emphasized. In “Quagmire,” we find an essential example of the show’s writers having a little fun at Mulder’s expense.  In response to a call about missing locals, Mulder and Scully soon find themselves in a small Georgia town built around a lake that many residents believe contains a monster known as Big Blue. This information tickles Mulder who soon exhibits a charmingly childlike fascination with this potentially prehistoric entity. Yes, the very idea of that creature takes us back to a time when the National Enquirer had otherwise reasonable adults treating the Loch Ness monster as a fact. But there is something much more timeless about the sheer joy Mulder exhibits at the possibility of a camping trip that ends with an incredible discovery. This episode’s twist may take a jab at Mulder’s inability to see the forest from the trees, but its final moments pay homage to the power of a legend.  5. Greg Pincus/The Bug Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Folie à Deux” Season 5, Episode 19) “Folie à Deux’s” (no, not that one) greatest trick is convincing you that its monster does not exist. It begins with Mulder investigating a telemarketer’s claim that his boss is a quite literal monster who is zombifying his co-workers. Mulder’s dismissal of this claim is soon complicated by the employee’s decision to take everyone in his office, including Mulder, hostage. But before you can say “serial killer of the week,” the employee is killed shortly after “gifting” Mulder with the ability to see that Mr. Pincus is, in fact, a giant cricket-like insect in disguise.  Yes, the title of this episode gives away the early twist somewhat, but it does little to diminish the full impact of watching Mulder take a turn as the damsel in distress as Scully desperately tries to convince the rest of the FBI he is not crazy. Brilliant psychological tormenting and commentary on workplace cultures aside, this episode gets a surprising amount of mileage out of creature design that is, at a glance, somewhat ridiculous. The problems with that design and costume actually forced the team to limit its screen time, which only makes the moments when you catch a glimpse of it climbing up walls and across ceilings that much more effective.  4. Ronnie Strickland/The Vampires Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Bad Blood” Season 5, Episode 12) In retrospect, it’s surprising that it took The X-Files five seasons to deliver a proper vampire episode. While the legendary monsters were referenced in prior storylines, Mulder and Scully never really encountered a proper creature of the night for much of the show’s early run. But before you can Van Helsing the writers’ praises for finally delivering the real deal, the show throws an all-time great twist your way. Soon after their first encounter with the living undead, Mulder faces an internal investigation for allegedly murdering an innocent man who was only posing as a vampire.  The vampires of “Bad Blood” (yes, they are real… spoilers, I suppose) are especially effective because they toy with our tendency to dismiss claims of vampirism. Previous episodes of The X-Files cited instances of vampire-like activity only to show that such instances were, in fact, the result of something else. The nomadic and secretive vampires of “Bad Blood” survive on the idea that we are not prepared to recognize and accept what they really are. When we are forced to confront the indisputable, we find a classic, almost cliche concept that is somehow more terrifying than ever.  3. The Peacock Family Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Home” Season 4, Episode 2) Throughout the ‘90s, we saw the rise of edgier media in film, television, and music that capitalized on a series of cultural trends, which pointed towards a growing hunger for shock value. The idea was to test the limits of what you could get away with to see how many people would watch you do it. Much of the edgy media from that era has aged like that high school yearbook photo. On the surface, this formerly “banned” episode of The X-Files about mutant, hillbilly, inbred murderers sounds like a prime example of one of those things that takes you back to a different time in the worst way possible.  But “Home” was, remains, and perhaps will forever be a genuinely terrifying piece of television. The Peacocks, for all their James Patterson-like obviously cheapily creepy characteristics, feel like something from a different world in a show that is hardly unfamiliar with the concept of extraterrestrial visitors. It’s as if Mulder and Scully suddenly find themselves investigating the antagonists of a particularly seedy ‘70s grindhouse movie when they expected to find another X-Files episode. Do you know what’s really funny? One of the episode’s writers (James Wong) has arguably tried for years to recapture the pure terror of this deeply disturbing clan and their fondness for wholesome music that doubles as a prelude to their next atrocity. Yet, little that has followed in this episode’s footsteps can match its visceral effectiveness. 2. Eugene Tooms Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“Squeeze” Season 1, Episode 3; “Tooms” Season 1, Episode 21) Eugene Tooms is, in fact, a monster of two weeks: a rare honor given to X-Files horrors that appeared in multiple episodes. He is also the show’s first proper monster of the week, which ended up being a bit of a double-edged sword for the series. Though Tooms demonstrated the potential of that idea incredibly early on, he also set a precedent for that concept that the series wouldn’t top for quite some time (if ever).  Eugene Tooms has the remarkable ability to manipulate his body in ways that allow him to fit into the most unlikely of places. In his debut episode, we discover that Tooms navigated through a ventilation system to eat a man’s liver (how very Hannibal of him). Yes, Tooms is ultimately just a man. We learn as much from Agent Scully who quickly establishes her willingness to shoot down Mulder’s paranormal theories even at the cost of overlooking some really weird shit. But our introduction to that man is quite simply the scariest episode of television many had ever seen up until that point, and arguably the most grotesque. History lessons aside, Tooms remains an undeniably effective example of a kind of monster just absurd enough to inspire unspeakable dread yet not quite unbelievable enough to ensure you don’t find yourself thinking twice about him when you hear a noise off in the distance in a room where nobody should be.  1. The Cockroaches Photo: 20th Century Fox Television (“War of the Coprophages” Season 3, Episode 12) “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is one of those quotes that seems to reveal a powerful truth about the human condition, but falls apart the moment you consider the cockroach. The only thing worse than suddenly seeing a cockroach scurrying across the floor is remembering that those bugs are most commonly associated with the widely accepted myth that they can survive a nuclear war. They are disgusting, fast, and possess an aura of invincibility. So when Mulder and Scully are called to investigate a small community that lives in fear of an apparent super breed of cockroaches… well, no explanation needed.  Except, this really is a story about the fear of fear itself. It’s not that this town doesn’t have a roach problem. It’s just that its residents (and at least one of its visiting agents) soon find themselves succumbing to a bit of mass hysteria that is ultimately disproportionate to the problem at hand. These cockroaches perfectly represent real-life incidents of mass hysteria and moral panic which often begin with a kernel of truth that explodes into something else entirely. In that sense, they, and the various ways they are interpreted and perceived throughout this episode, represent the very idea of monsters the show’s MOTW episodes were based on. But they are also still cockroaches.[end-mark] The post The 15 Best <i>X-Files</i> Monsters of the Week appeared first on Reactor.

News Daredevil: Born Again Why Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 Will Adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D” Showrunner Dario Scardapane says Born Again has been building towards the story for quite some time By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 6, 2026 Image: Disney Plus Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Disney Plus This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Despite some previous speculation to the contrary, Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 has been greenlit, is currently being filmed, and is expected to be released sometime in 2027. And after that pretty incredible second season finale, there’s little doubt that the show’s next season will adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D”: the famous 2006 Daredevil story from Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark which sees Matt Murdock in prison. Actually, there was little doubt that the show would eventually head in that direction after a series of leaked season three set photos essentially confirmed as much. In case you’re wondering, Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane wasn’t exactly a fan of those leaks. “Yeah. This is what hurts about leaks,” Scardapane said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly regarding the build to a “Devil in Cell-Block D” storyline. “[It’s] what we all really wanted to build, and it’s there in the whole season… We realized very, very quickly that it floats us right into one of my favorite runs of all time. Until the latest round of leaks, I’d always said to everybody, ‘Watch the last 5 minutes of episode 8, and you’ll know what we’re doing in season 3.’ And I stand by that.” In some ways, the decision to at least partially adapt “Devil in Cell-Block D” is kind of a no-brainer. It’s been identified as the logical follow-up to the Born Again storyline for quite some time, and it’s also really, really good. Beyond that, Scardapane feels it’s an especially pressing storyline for both the character and the times we live in. “The idea of Matt, the lawyer, going into the justice system on the other end of it to pay for his crimes as a vigilante, that’s extremely rich territory,” Scardapane says. “Also, because we try to be somewhat topical, the current stress and strife at Rikers Island is pretty real, and the idea of building a flawed world that neither vigilante nor a lawyer can have any effect on, yeah.” Interestingly, Scardapane notes that “sharp-eyed viewers” will see “which Fisk run” the show will do next as well. He doesn’t spell out what that means, though behind-the-scenes photos of Vincent D’Onofrio with a long beard suggest that Fisk will be a fugitive on the run in the next season. That could mean we’re getting a version of the “Return of the King” Fisk arc. We may even just see some of the events that followed the “Devil’s Reign” storyline (which Born Again‘s second season heavily drew from) come into play. Regardless, Scardapane told Variety that we should expect to see a very different version of the villain. “At the end, both of these men are in prisons of their own making. We have never seen this version of him. I don’t want to hype it too much. ‘Feral’ is the word that I can use.” Speaking of those behind-the-scenes photos, they also gave away Luke Cage’s surprise return and hinted at the upcoming return of Finn Jones’ Iron Fist. Scardapane even notes that “The establishment of the street-level characters in Netflix’s Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, Punisher, that’s the world that this is all heading towards, in my opinion.” We’re still left with some unanswered questions about Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 and the upcoming Punisher spin-off, One Last Kill, with regard to both the show’s timeline and the overall timeline of the MCU, though. Namely, it’s still not clear how all of this leads into Spider-Man: Brand New Day (which is set right after the events of Born Again Season 2 and the upcoming Punisher special). As far as that goes, Scardapane suggests even he doesn’t quite have all the answers. “I don’t know a ton about what goes on in Brand New Day, and I know very well where we left [The Punisher] at the end of Punisher season 2,” Scardapane tells Variety regarding the upcoming Punisher special. “I think this tells the story of what happened next after Punisher and before and during the events of [Born Again] season 2.[end-mark] The post Why <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Season 3 Will Adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D” appeared first on Reactor.