News Assassin’s Creed The Cast for the Assassin’s Creed Series Continues to Grow The Netflix series is set to start filming in Italy next year By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 15, 2025 Photo: Netflix, FX on Hulu Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Netflix, FX on Hulu The live-action series adaptation of Assassin’s Creed continues to move forward at Netflix. We recently found out that Eden actor Toby Wallace would star on the show. And even more recently, we learned that Lola Petticrew (Tuesday, Say Nothing) would also lead the series with Wallace. Today, one more name has been added to the roster. According to Deadline, Zachary Hart has joined as a series regular. Hart’s previous credits include one-episode stints on shows like The Witcher: Blood Origin, Masters of the Air, and Slow Horses. The roles he and his co-leads are playing, however, remain unknown. One thing we do know is that the show will start shooting in Italy next year, and that Italy will serve as the setting for the show, although the exact time period(s) we’ll see are uncertain. The Ubisoft video game franchise has some convoluted lore, but the crux of it is that there are two factions who have battled each other for centuries over whether humanity should have free will. Part of that battle involves finding and wielding “pieces of Eden,” which are remnants of technology from a technologically advanced species that lived on Earth before humans. It also involves running over a lot of rooftops and certain people (the Assassins) using technology to “travel” back in time to relive the lives of their ancestors and find the aforementioned pieces of Eden (just go with it). No news yet on when the show will make its way to Netflix, and hopefully we’ll get some glimmers on the plot and/or who these actors are playing before then as well. [end-mark] The post The Cast for the <i>Assassin’s Creed</i> Series Continues to Grow appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dust Bunny Dust Bunny Will Have You Demanding That Bryan Fuller Make More Movies Monsters-as-metaphor is a tactic Fuller knows all too well — and he will not be playing by “the rules.” By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 15, 2025 Credit: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lionsgate If you were already a fan of Bryan Fuller—of Star Trek, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Hannibal, and the one good season of American Gods fame—then hearing that he finally made a movie was bound to be exciting, right? How could we not be collectively revved for Fuller’s debut into a new medium? Is it mostly exciting because movies can’t get cancelled halfway through your viewing? Naturally. (But that was hurtful to say, and I apologize.) Dust Bunny is the story of a little girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) whose parents are killed by the monster under her bed—a dust bunny made bloodily manifest. As she knows her building neighbor, Resident 5B (Mads Mikkelsen), is a hitman who can kill monsters, she hires him to destroy it. The trouble is, 5B is having hitman problems of the real-life murder kind, and he’s certain that Aurora’s parents were just good old-fashioned killed with guns in an attempt to get him. This gets further complicated when he eventually learns a few things about Aurora’s past that suggest something else might be amiss. The central mystery of Dust Bunny on its face would seem to be: Is the monster real or a metaphor for one little girl’s trauma? And because it’s Bryan Fuller, that question will not be answered the way you expect. But this setup alone communicates far less than the film achieves. It’s impossible to have watched Pushing Daisies without assuming that this film is set in the same universe; the city we see here is similarly vibrant, all neon and ornate decor and painted wallpaper. The apartments are full of oddities, the human beings move in strangely choreographed synchronization, the music cues are carefully and immaculately selected. The murder and darkness are framed by overt absurdity and humor, and food looks like little plates of artwork. These are all factors that will be familiar to devotees of Fuller’s work, but the tone is what puts Pushing Daisies in mind. Ned and Chuck are likely just a few hundred miles away, selling gorgeous pies and solving other murders. The effect of Fuller’s world-making led to something that was so psychically relieving, I have to give it an aside all its own: Because this world is undeniably separate from ours, Aurora’s bedroom contains no branded material at all. There’s no product placement, no IP markers, no pointed little nods to things kids today are obsessing over. This obviously makes the movie wonderfully timeless in a post-Americana sort of way, but it also forces us to reckon with a creative landscape that rarely allows us any kind of break from being sold to. There’s nothing in this film to distract us from the story itself. Every in it that you see, you are meant to see because it’s part of the story, not some disgusting attempt at brand synergy. It also forces us to reckon with how this same landscape has created a different kind of viewing experience, where audiences are rewarded for going over the background of every shot in a film to find a character’s touchstones, to form a picture of their personality via the minutiae of their environment and what the viewer can identify, rather than zeroing in on the actor’s performance. There are so many wonderful toys in Aurora’s room and home, but they are serving the overall design choices of the film as a whole, as support for the work that Sophie Sloan is doing in the role. The same goes for Mikkelsen’s portrayal, aided by a wardrobe full of colorful and flowered track suits and a lamp made from a chicken that nearly steals the movie every time it appears. I’ll admit to being aggravated at the number of people trying to sell audiences on this film by fitting it into a category they think the viewer already enjoys. There’s a lot of buzz going around about how it feels like an older movie, or that it’s a dark fairy tale for those who like that sort of thing, and sure, you can make all those arguments. I will bring up all the movies about scary murder humans who take care of little children down below because it is a genre that’s close to my own heart, so yes, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. But that’s not what makes this movie stunning to behold, what makes it feel precious in an era of sprawling multiverses and “easter eggs” that are nothing but endless deep cuts. What you think when you watch anything made by Bryan Fuller is “I would like to be there right now, thank you.” In a fight for my life, in fear of a monster, eating food that used to be something (or someone) living, it doesn’t matter—I would like to occupy this place. A place full of sacred geometries and coordinated colors and environmental framing. A place where lightbulbs buzz because Fuller knows they do. It is important to note that the first twenty-ish minutes of the film have practically no dialogue whatsoever as we follow Aurora around her little world… and none is needed. We’re getting everything we require by watching and interacting through her vantage point, and a child’s world is so often internal in nature. All of Fuller’s action sequences look like dances, the actors leaping or going deadweight according to what is most visually dynamic in the moment. People get dragged out of frame like marionettes with their strings cut. There is tenderness in how characters attempt to choke each other unconscious, the acknowledgment that acting on another’s body with ill intent is still a deeply personal act. Violence is not about brute force or dominance within the confines of this story, but rather another form of human contact, with all the messiness and confusion that entails. The supporting cast is absolutely stunning on all fronts. Obviously, everyone will be excited to see Sigourney Weaver (and I should add that there’s a face she makes early on in the film that is so jarring, you have a brief moment of wondering if it’s CGI before you realize that she’s perfectly capable of being that unnerving on her own) in the role of Laverne, whose relationship with Mikkelsen is enjoyably bizarre until it’s suddenly not. The performances from David Dastmalchian, Shiela Atim, and Rebecca Henderson are equally captivating, and I hope to see all of them in more Fuller projects going forward. But the core of the film is all about 5B’s unintentional parentage of Aurora, and what this murderer-for-hire will do about the little girl with no parents who keeps telling him the monster under her bed is real. Their dynamic will bring a number of similar films to mind—Leon: The Professional, Gloria, Aliens, The Fall, the Lone Wolf and Cub films, the list is truly endless if you love scary adults who protect kids—but Fuller captures something truly special with these two. It’s not simply about unlikely fatherhood, but about the bonds that help people heal, and how often they come from the most ridiculous places. Try to seek this one out in theaters, if you can. If not, find it on streaming when it hits—older kids will likely be okay to watch provided they’re good with monsters and some stylistic violence. (The R-rating makes no sense on this one, and they received it for a truly goofy reason.) But more to the point, please let Bryan Fuller make more movies. And finish his TV shows. And make more TV shows. Just, stop sleeping on these beautiful realities that have such chicken butt lamps in them.[end-mark] The post <i>Dust Bunny</i> Will Have You Demanding That Bryan Fuller Make More Movies appeared first on Reactor.

News Hokum Adam Scott Is on a Terrible Irish Vacation in the Teaser Trailer for Hokum Ding, dong, there’s a witch and she’s definitely not entirely dead By Molly Templeton | Published on December 15, 2025 Screenshot: Neon Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Neon It is hard to know which part of the too-short teaser for Hokum, the new film from writer-director Damian McCarthy, to focus on first. Adam Scott playing a reclusive novelist? Adam Scott playing a reclusive novelist who is going to Ireland to scatter his parents’—yes, parents, plural—ashes? The witch haunting his inn’s honeymoon suite, which is, you know, very suggestive, quite different from a witch haunting the kitchen or lobby? Or the promise of Scott’s character’s dark past? Personally I’m stuck on “Adam Scott, reclusive novelist,” but of course I am, being a fan of both writing and Adam Scott. Hokum is the third feature film from Oddity director McCarthy. Here’s the synopsis: When reclusive novelist Ohm Bauman (Scott) retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, the staff’s tales of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite take hold of his mind. Soon, disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance draw him into a nightmarish confrontation with the darkest corners of his past. Along with Scott, Hokum stars Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, and Michael Patric. But the trailer is mostly Scott, when it’s not creepy and indistinct flashes of nightmarish stuff. (If there is one thing I know about horror stories, it’s that when there is a white line on the floor—salt, paint, sugar, whatever—you do not step over it.) The slightly fuzzy audio over the whole thing is a bit reminiscent of the poem recited over the first trailer for 28 Years Later, though I am fairly sure there are no zombies here. Hokum is in theaters May 1st, 2026.[end-mark] The post Adam Scott Is on a Terrible Irish Vacation in the Teaser Trailer for <i>Hokum</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV It: Welcome to Derry IT: Welcome to Derry’s Season Finale Is Chaotic, But Mostly Satisfying Plus there’s an appearance by a Very Special Ghost. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on December 15, 2025 Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO This week’s season finale of IT: Welcome to Derry, “Winter Fire”, was written by Jason Fuchs and directed once again by Andy Muschietti. The episode manages to wrap a lot of the plot points up into a surprisingly satisfying ending, given how much story they had to get through. As Brief a Recap as a King Adaptation Will Allow A sinister grey fog rolls over Derry. Townsfolk, all the ones who were so calm yesterday after the white supremacist hate crime, are thrown into a frenzy, running into shops, slamming doors—even though they’re not sure what these clouds are. The leaves on the trees shrivel and the grass turns brown, but there are no monsters hiding in the fog. But that’s because the monster is already at the school. A totally normal sounding announcer tells the kids that classes are cancelled for the day, that upperclassmen are dismissed, but underclassmen should report to the auditorium for an assembly. Once all the kids are milling about a teacher walks stiffly out and tells them there’s going to be a special performance. The teach transforms into the principal, and then there’s Pennywise, ripping his head off and punting it out the door, throwing the man’s blood-spurting body at the students, and locking them all in as he does his crazed dance and Deadlights them. As the clouds become thicker, Pennywise trundles away in his circus wagon, almost all the children of Derry floating in a hypnotized line behind him. He’s playing a tuba, and whacking a pedal drum that has a severed hand chained to it. I love this fuckin’ clown, man. Margie, Lilly, and Ronnie are up on the Tower when they see the cloud. When they come down, they find “Missing” posters for every kid in town, and understandably freak out—but then they find a poster for Will. Then, they find the principal’s decapitated corpse at the otherwise-empty school “I wanna kill that fuckin’ clown,” Margie says. The kids spot a milk truck, and Margie, who has really blossomed in the last few days of horror, decides she can drive it. And she does! For a while. The kids give chase until a nefarious pothole throws them off the road and Lilly drops the dagger. Lilly then Gollums the fuck out over the dagger, they realize it’s driving her mad, and after some screaming and wrestling they agree to pass it between them so no one loses their mind. Meanwhile, the adults are having their own problems. Pennywise calls the Major and puts “Will” on the phone. Leroy isn’t afraid, but he is furious, promising “I’ll rip your fucking heart out!” as the line goes dead. I think Pennywise may have taunted the wrong adult. Leroy goes straight to Dick Hallorann’s quarters. Dick is not doing well. The ghosts are everywhere, they won’t stop whispering to him. As Leroy pounds on the door, Dick puts his gun in his mouth. Leroy breaks the door in just in time, and looks around wildly as Dick screams “Shut up! Shut up!” at the ghosts surrounding him. Dick points the gun at Leroy, and says “You got my mind all fucked up,” but he pauses when Leroy breaks down. “Please, please, it’s got Will. I’m begging you to help me find him. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but help me find my baby.” Dick, slowly, puts the gun down. Unfortunately the General and his underlings gets the report that the two men have escaped pretty quickly. Who the hell was supposed to be keeping Hanlon on base, anyway? Wasn’t that a direct order from the General? We cut to Charlotte at Rose’s, pounding on Leroy’s chest and slapping his face as she learns what’s happened. He promises they’ll get him back, but Rose, initially, thinks it’s a lost cause. Leroy says that Dick can find them, and Rose throws a plan together: if Dick can mentally link with the dagger, as he did before, he can lead them to the children. They just have to do it before IT manages to walk through the bounds of ITs old cage. And then maybe, maybe, the dagger can replace the destroyed pillar and act as a new lock. They give Dick a tea made with maturin root, and faced with the possibility of shutting the ghosts up, he drinks it in one gulp. It works almost instantly, to the extent that he doesn’t hear whatever Rose is trying to warn him about because time stretches and she becomes unintelligible. They throw Dick in Taniel’s van, and everyone piles in to find the kids. They strategize as they go, following Dick’s directions, and asking if he could try to get into Pennywise’s mind again. The kids, meanwhile, have found Pennywise and his wagon, rolling up the now-frozen river, headed right out of his unlocked mystical cage. They try to wake Will up from his Deadlighted sleep, until Pennywise comes down from the circus wagon. “You’ve decided to join the circus! The fool, the freak, the failure. But… who’s who? It doesn’t matter, there a spot for you all!” Ronnie wields the dagger and Pennywise backs off, but darts around them cackling and shrieking. He grabs Margie and drags her away from the others. And here’s where something that should have been obvious to me comes to light. Pennywise looms over her. “Margie Tozier! But not Tozier yet!” he screams. OH. Oh. He waves the future Richie Tozier’s missing poster in her face. “His friends bring me my death! Or is that death a birth???” He babbles about past present and future all being the same to him as Margie freaks out and tries to understand what he’s saying. “Beep, beep, Margie!” he howls, lunges at her, all his teeth out. And then he freezes. Stops dead, right above her. She scrambles away. The kids all fall to the ice and begin to wake up. The New Old Losers embrace Will, just in time for the adults to reach them. They load them into the van and Taniel tells the rest of the children to run to the North shore. He and the Major set out to bury the dagger in the blasted tree that marks the edge of IT’s cage. But then. General Shaw and his men appear on the shore, and both Taniel and the Major are shot. The Major holds Taniel while he bleeds out from a neck wound, and they’re surrounded, the General ordering another soldier to go get Halloran. The General himself? He spots Pennywise, still as death on the ice, and decides it’s a fabulous idea to walk on over there and say hello. We go inside ITs mind, where Pennywise is woken up inside the wagon by the other circus folk. They’re all calling him Robert Crane. “Who else might you be, Peter Rabbit?” When Pennywise tells the boss that he’s a “god” the boss smacks him and tells him he must have hit his head harder than he thought. Pennywise is very confused. Will has reached his dad, and the Major gives his son the dagger. When Will protests that he can’t get the dagger to the tree because he’s too scared, the Major replies, “You don’t have to be me. Just be you. I love you. I love YOU.” The kids wrestle the dagger to the tree as it fights with them every step of the way. The General is standing directly in front of Pennywise now. “All these years wondering if you were real…whatever Halloran’s done to you, we’re gonna fix it.” Wow. Just… wow. Inside ITs mind, the cracks start to show. IT is able to peel Dick’s mask off and reveal the terrified man inside, just as in the outside world, we see him being thrown onto the ice by one of the soldiers. Pennywise wakes up. The General tells him he’s free to go. Pennywise recognizes in the General the smell of the terrified boy at the circus, transforms into the old monster and screams “NOW YOU SEE IT!” as the General yells at him to stand down, and then Pennywise eats his head. As the screams drift over the ice, the adults try to convince the soldiers that maybe they have a bigger enemy. As Pennywise slow motion runs past them toward the kids, giggling, they use the distraction to launch themselves at the soldiers and wrestle their guns away. Major Hanlon goes after IT and shoots him, which succeeds in knocking him down at least, but then IT deadlights him. The kids can’t force the dagger into the base of the tree—it’s simply too strong for them. The adults, watching, start to break down in despair. Until… Dick sees the Necani on the ice. And she’s brought… Rich??? Rich’s ghost??? “What do you see?” Rose asks. “A mutherfuckin miracle,” Dick breathes. The ghost runs across the ice, gleefully flicking IT off as he passes, and helps the kids shove the dagger in the rest of the way. As the dagger finally goes into the base of the tree, beams of light from all the pillars shoot up into the sky. IT molts through a series of forms. “Lively crowd,” IT mutters, before turning into light and shooting back down toward the sewers. Leroy wakes up, Rose collapses sobbing next to Taniel’s body, and sings to him, and the kids embrace each other and agree that they all felt another pair of hands helping them. Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO We cut to Rich’s funeral. Margie gives a brief eulogy about how even though they weren’t friends for very long, some people “build houses in your heart”. She leaves a pair of drumsticks on his casket. Walking down Main Street after the funeral, she sees one of his balsa flyers in a tree—one of them made it! Lilly visits her father’s grave for the first time in a long time, and tells him that she’s made some new friends. And Dick sees Rich’s spirit standing with his parents by the graveside, plucks up his courage, and sits beside them to tell them what he sees. It seems to help. “Who are you, sir?” Rich’s father asks. “I’m still working on that,” Dick replies. Back at the tower later, Margie tells Lilly about what Pennywise said to her—that she’d have a son that would kill IT. She worries that if time is truly meaningless to IT, IT could go back and kill their parents so they’d never exist at all. Lilly meets this worry with some stellar philosophy: “It’ll be someone else’s fight, then.” The Hanlons are packing their house up. Charlotte and Leroy share an actual kiss, and he actually smiles after her as she goes up to get Will, and the two of them seem better than they have all season. These two crazy kids might just make it, if they steer clear of evil space clowns. Dick Hallorann slouches into the doorway, giving Leroy an only slightly sarcastic salute. The former Major is getting an honorable discharge as long as he keeps his mouth shut about…everything… and Dick is going to London to try out as a cook at his friend’s fancy hotel. “How much trouble can a hotel be?” he asks, and I groan, but who am I kidding, I’ve been waiting all season for a joke like that. The two men hug, and Dick asks Leroy to stay in touch let him know how Charlotte and Will are. He reluctantly admits that maybe he does care—just don’t tell anybody. As they pack cars over at Rose’s place, Charlotte tells Hank Grogan how to meet with Rose’s people at the border, so it seems like at least one family is getting a happy ending. Mostly. Rose invites Leroy and Charlotte to join the circle of people who watch over IT and protect Derry. She’s selling the farm—it’s too much without Taniel—and she thinks they’re the perfect people to take it over from her. But the Hanlons think maybe they need to get out of Derry while they can. Ronnie and Will sit on a bench a few yards away from the house. They talk about how they might forget each other when they leave, and go back and forth on whether that’s a good thing. But then Ronnie grabs Will and finally kisses him. That complicates things. Once everyone’s in the car, Charlotte suddenly raises the idea of taking Rose’s offer. “Maybe the next damn fool mission needs to be together,” she says to Leroy. As the two of them tease each other about who’ll take care of the sheep, Will leaps out of the car and immediately begins a letter to Ronnie. Maybe if he writes to her all the time she won’t forget? But when we see a carefree Ronnie in the car with her dad and grandmother, two lollipops in her mouth, well, it seems like forgetting might be inevitable, and young love or no, it might be for the best. We cut to Juniper Hill. Ingrid is straitjacketed, screaming about wolves at the two orderlies who are attending her. They drop the needle on her favorite old-time record and she calms down. We fade out and back in to the same music playing in October 1988, as a much older Ingrid paints a clown on a canvas—still in the asylum. There’s screaming down the hall, and Ingrid shuffles over to find Alvin and Beverly Marsh, sobbing on the floor at the feet of Elfrida Marsh, who has, apparently, hanged herself. Alvin, ever the charmer, shoves Bev away, and she locks eyes with Ingrid, who tells her not to worry. “You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies.” Ingrid’s eyes widen in glee as Bev’s widen in horror. As the end titles come up, the words IT: Welcome to Derry—Chapter One appear, which I’m guessing is their super fun way of telling us to expect another season. Do We All Float? Credit: HBO This was kind of what I expected from the finale. There’s a lot of action and rushing so everyone can converge on a single point. Also, while Bill Skarsgård is impeccable in the role, IT has to work on your deepest, weirdest fears. Just seeing him out and about undercuts the terror. Having said that I still think they wrapped all the plot points up well, maneuvering everyone around to set up the rest of the story without showing the strings too often. The visual of the wagon rolling along through fog and ice, hypnotized children floating behind, was gorgeous. And as much as I’ve mentioned the diminishing returns of “IT runs at you really fast” I’ve never gotten sick of the Deadlights. I think the effect is so beautiful it actually captures how entrancing it would be. I feel ridiculous for not realizing that Richie was Margie’s future kid! But now it all makes sense. What I think the episode did extremely well was bring the relationship between Leroy Hanlon and Dick Hallorann to a perfect close. The scene between them is incredible—the two are in different worlds, emotionally. Dick, coiled into himself, eyes flickering constantly to take in every ghostly threat, as Leroy finally cracks open and sobs, realizing he may have sealed his child’s doom by bringing him to Derry. The two performances play off each other perfectly, and really underline the idea that these two men inhabit different worlds. Dick’s visions force him to be half in the spirit world at all times, and he simply has no real care for the world of the living. Until, finally, he does. It’s been lovely to watch him become the man we meet in The Shining. And Leroy finally throws off any loyalty he has to the U.S. military, and faces the fact that he needs to reprioritize everything if he wants his family to make it. #JustKingThings Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO I’ve been telling people that the show is fixing a lot of what I didn’t like in IT: Chapter II, and I’m pleased to say that it mostly has. By centering the story on the Grogans, the Hanlons, and Hallorann, it showed a different side of Derry. It created enough context for the hate crime at the Black Spot that it feels like part of Derry’s terrible history, influenced by the evil of IT, but largely the work of white supremacists. It also adds more nuance and depth to the fictional Shokopiwah, fixing one of Stephen King’s clumsier attempts at inclusivity. It shows us the cycle of horror, how it carries forward into the Losers Club that will form in the 1980s, but it also shows us that people have been fighting IT the entire time. Turtles all the Way Down The tea Rose gives to Dick is Maturin root, presumably named for the mystical cosmic turtle who is trying to help humanity fight IT. Mike Hanlon’s Photo Album Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO We learn that Margie is Richie’s future mom! Most of you probably already guessed that! Where have I been! And we see the future missing poster with Finn Wolfhard’s face. Later, we fully meet Bev Marsh, played by Sophia Lillis. Is she coming back for another season of this show? How will that work, given that people grow and age? Ridiculous Alien Spider, or Generationally Terrifying Clown? Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO As I said, the Deadlights are excellent. The concept of the kids being trapped in the auditorium with Pennywise is great. All the moments when we’re trapped in ITs mind as it gets increasingly furious about how people are treating IT is hilarious. And the transformations as it chases the children are fun. Where I think I wanted more was in ITs confrontation with the General. After all the horror that man caused, I wanted IT to linger over eating him, and I wanted the camera to linger with IT. And, again, the threat of IT is always scarier than seeing IT. Spending so much time one the ice with IT as the rest of the plot roiled around kind of undercut the fear for me.[end-mark] The post <em>IT: Welcome to Derry</em>’s Season Finale Is Chaotic, But Mostly Satisfying appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “No Surrender, No Retreat” Sheridan once again mobilizes for war… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on December 15, 2025 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “No Surrender, No Retreat”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Michael VejarSeason 4, Episode 15Production episode 415Original air date: May 26, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… B5 is back on a war footing. The Starfuries are running drills under the direction of Corwin, while Sheridan has an early-morning meeting with the representatives of the various non-human nations on B5. Sheridan is calling in a favor in return for the patrols of their borders by the White Star fleet: he’s asking that they sever their ties with Earth Alliance and only respond to calls for humanitarian aid, but not to provide any military aid. He also asks for one capital ship from each of them to protect B5 itself. G’Kar speaks out in favor of this, pointing out that Earth promised to help Narn in exchange for the weapons that Narn sold them during the Earth-Minbari War. Yet Earth’s aid was nowhere to be found when the Centauri attacked and conquered them, nor did they help out with the Shadow War. Cole comes to the war room with intelligence from Proxima III, which is the first step of their campaign, to take that world back. There’s a blockade of six Omega-class destroyers in orbit, two of which—the Heracles and the Pollux—are the ones that fired on civilians. Sheridan doesn’t know the commanders of those two ships—Captain Trevor Hall and Captain Elizabeth Morgenstern, respectively—so he figures they’re new and loyal to Clark. Cole also reports that ships are trying to run the blockade despite the very low likelihood of success because that blockade is working—people on Proxima are starving to death. Sheridan intends to attack from multiple sides, but he also wants to know if there are any vessels that have deliberately avoided firing on civilians. Cole promises to find out. Sheridan also asks Franklin to get the telepaths they rescued from the Shadows and have in stasis ready to be moved. Ivanova and Corwin continue to do drills with the Starfuries, reminding them that all orders must be in the proper code. EarthForce has Sheridan and Ivanova’s voiceprints on file, so they can fake verbal orders. Vir has fallen asleep doing paperwork. He is awakened from a nightmare by the arrival of Garibaldi, who needs a favor from Mollari. Vir offhandedly mentions the “new offensive,” which surprises Garibaldi. His surprise, in turn, surprises Vir, who assumes that Garibaldi is going to join back up for the fight. When Garibaldi answers in the negative, Vir is confused. Doesn’t Garibaldi want to save his homeworld. Garibaldi says he does, but not Sheridan’s way. Mollari comes to G’Kar’s quarters with a proposal: he wants them to sign a joint statement in support of Sheridan’s resistance. A joint statement from their two nations that were so recently at war will likely prompt the other nations to follow suit. Mollari wishes to end the acrimony between the two of them, or at least reduce it. To that end, he offers to share a drink as they did before Emperor Turhan’s death. Mollari also offers a belated thanks for G’Kar’s help in getting rid of Emperor Cartagia, even though he knows G’Kar didn’t do it for him. Credit: Warner Bros. Television G’Kar, however, has no interest in Mollari’s thanks, or sharing a drink with him, or the joint statement. Mollari leaves, disappointed. Sheridan has Ivanova send three White Stars to the sol system to make Clark think they’re scout for an invasion and so he might draw forces away from Proxima, or at least not be able to send reinforcements there. The main fleet heads to Proxima, with the White Star ships painted with B5’s logo. Three White Stars jump into the far side of the system. Hall, who is in charge of the fleet and who is very much a Clark loyalist, sends the Pollux and the Nemesis after them. Sheridan then sends in more ships on the near side, and finally the main fleet through the system’s jumpgate behind the Heracles. The Vesta, under the command of Captain Edward MacDougan—an old comrade of Sheridan’s—breaks radio silence. MacDougan tries to convince Sheridan to withdraw; Sheridan tries to convince MacDougan that the orders Clark is giving are clearly illegal. Sheridan reminds MacDougan of ethics classes he taught at the Academy. Hall orders the Heracles and the battle is joined. Sheridan’s orders are crystal clear: do not fire unless fired upon. Notably, the Furies does not respond to a flyby and the Juno withdraws from the battle completely, leaving the system. Hall orders MacDougan’s first officer, Commander Robert Philby, to take command and fire on the White Stars. Philby does so eagerly, prompting a wry comment from MacDougan about how he didn’t realize his XO wanted a promotion that badly. However, Philby’s time in command lasts about seven-and-a-half seconds before the rest of the crew mutinies and restores MacDougan to command. The Vesta then immediately stands down. One White Star and the Pollux are both destroyed with all hands on both ships lost. The Nemesis surrenders, having taken heavy damage. Hall refuses to go down without a fight—especially since he’s dead no matter what happens—but his first officer, Commander Sandra Levitt, refuses to let him take the crew down with him. She orders Hall put under arrest and she broadcasts a surrender to Sheridan. Sheridan requests that the four remaining ship commanders come to the White Star 2 to discuss what happens next. On B5, Mollari is joined at the bar by G’Kar, who takes Mollari’s drink, gulps it down, and agrees to the joint statement—but only if they sign on different pages. Mollari agrees. On the White Star 2, Sheridan meets with MacDougan, Levitt, Captain Yoshi Kawagawa of the Nemesis, and Captain Stephanie Eckland of the Furies. Sheridan just wants to remove Clark from power and then let the people decide if their actions were justified. Levitt is no fan of Clark, but she’s no fan of open rebellion, either. MacDougan says they need to discuss it amongst themselves. They make their decisions: Levitt will make like the Juno and withdraw, taking the Heracles to Beta IX for repairs, keeping Hall under arrest, and staying out of it. Eckland will keep the Furies at Proxima to now defend the colony against retaliation by Clark’s forces. MacDougan and Kawagawa agree to join Sheridan’s fleet. Credit: Warner Bros. Television On B5, Ivanova goes on the Voice of the Resistance to announce both the liberation of Proxima and the joint statement by the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic supporting the resistance. Garibaldi leaves the station for Mars to meet up with Edgars. He tells the customs guard that he has no plans to return. (Yes, this paragraph also appeared last week in the rewatch for “Moments of Transition,” because your humble rewatcher is a big honking doofus and conflated the end of this episode with the end of that one. Derp derp.) Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan has to tread a fine line here, as he doesn’t want to be seen as an invader, but a liberator. He is also devastated by the destruction of one of the White Stars and the Pollux, and refuses to refer to what happens at Proxima a victory—merely that they achieved their mission objective, which was to liberate that world. Ivanova is God. At one point, Corwin comments that the operational phrase is “Trust no one,” but Ivanova says no, it’s “Trust Ivanova, trust yourself—anybody else, shoot ’em.” The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is not very convincing when he tells Vir that he wants to save his homeworld, just not Sheridan’s way. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Sheridan insists that this be a “clean fight” when queried by Levitt as to why his non-human allies aren’t part of his fleet. But his actual fleet are Minbari-designed ships that use Vorlon tech, and which are mostly staffed by Minbari… In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari is trying very hard to redeem himself, and he also raises a toast to the humans, who have provided a bridge between the Centauri and the Narn. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. It takes G’Kar some time to see past his loathing of the Centauri in general and Mollari in particular to see his way to understanding that the joint statement is a very good idea. G’Kar’s support was already helpful in getting the League of Non-Aligned Worlds on board with supporting the resistance over the Clark regime, and he eventually sees the wisdom of Mollari’s plan. That it takes a while is very understandable, of course… We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole is the one who gets intelligence on what’s happening on Proxima from the people there. Looking ahead. Sheridan’s plan for the cryogenically frozen telepaths will finally be revealed in “Endgame.” Credit: Warner Bros. Television Welcome aboard. The three big guests are Marcia Mitzman Gaven as Levitt, the great Richard Gant as MacDougan, and Ken Jenkins, warming up for his role as Dr. Bob Kelso on Scrubs as Hall. Gant will return in “The Face of the Enemy.” Also Joshua Cox is back from “Z’ha’dum” as Corwin; he’ll next be in “No Compromises.” The extras who play Eckland and Kawagawa are never identified. Philby is played by Neil Bradley, one of the regular background actors on the show—amusingly, this is the only one of Bradley’s ten roles on B5 and Crusade in which he’s not in a ton of makeup, as his other nine roles are as Drazi or Narn. Trivial matters. Clark ordering civilians to be targeted by EarthForce was revealed at the end of the prior episode, “Moments of Transition.” The White Star fleet started patrolling the borders of the Centauri and the Narn in “Conflicts of Interest” and the nations of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds in “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies.” Mollari’s referring to humans as a bridge between opposing factions echoes comments Delenn has made about humans in both “And Now for a Word” and “Lines of Communication.” The title of this episode was also the title for the whole season. (It also always tweaks your humble rewatcher, because as a Bruce Springsteen fan, I expect “no retreat” to be before “no surrender.”) The echoes of all of our conversations. “Captain, I wasn’t about to let Captain Hall get the rest of my crew killed defending Clark’s policies—I happen to disagree with those policies. But that doesn’t mean I agree with your actions, either. It’s not the role of the military to make policy.” “Our mandate is to defend Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now Clark has become that enemy. Your oath is to the alliance and to the people back home, not to any particular government.” “You’re splitting that hair mighty thin, John.” —Levitt, Sheridan, and MacDougan discussing military ethics. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Enough is enough.” This has always been one of my favorite episodes of the show, because as great as “Severed Dreams” was as an episode, it missed out on one very important aspect of this entire plotline: the difficult decisions that EarthForce personnel would have to make. In that episode, the ships that tried to take B5 were not given faces and barely given voices. But here, we see Hall and Levitt and MacDougan and Philby, and they represent different approaches to this. Hall’s the true believer, the perfect fascist tool, sneering that MacDougan “doesn’t have what it takes” and more concerned with saving his own skin than the welfare of his crew. (Casting Ken Jenkins was a masterstroke, as few actors sneer as well as he does.) Philby is obviously mostly just in it for his own command, following orders like a good little drone. Levitt is primarily concerned with the welfare of her crew, which is more than her CO can say. And then we have MacDougan, magnificently played by Richard Gant. He’s walking the line between obeying general orders and not carrying out specific ones, and Sheridan forces him to fall off that high-wire, at which point it’s just a matter of in which direction he goes. It’s to his credit that he falls in the right direction. It’s also to his credit that he’s the only commander who tries talking to Sheridan, though that’s partly motivated by their history. We know it’s a good history, too, as Sheridan lets loose with a smile when Cole mentions that the Vesta is part of the blockade. Bruce Boxleitner is also superb here, and J. Michael Straczynski writes Sheridan perfectly as well. Throughout, Sheridan is bending over backward to not do what Clark’s been wanting EarthForce to do. He starts out by talking, asking the EarthForce ships to withdraw peacefully (an offer that only the Juno takes him up on, and then only after hostilities have broken out), and he refuses to fire on anyone until they fire first. On top of that, the only ships he will initially identify as hostile are the two they know have fired on civilian targets and are therefore viable targets. He refuses to fire on the Furies once it’s clear they won’t engage. In the end, he also defaults to understanding and compassion and staying within the bounds of military protocol. He just wants to restore things to what they were before Clark introduced fun stuff like NightWatch and firing on civilians. It’s particularly to his credit that he gives the ships options both before and after the battle: withdraw peacefully, defend Proxima, or join them. It’s very rare that the portions of an episode that feature Mollari and G’Kar are an afterthought, but this is one of those exceptional instances, as I had to keep reminding myself that there were scenes with those two—and they were really really good scenes, too! As ever, both actors just knock it out of the park. Peter Jurasik gives us an exhausted Mollari who is trying so desperately to crawl out of the murderous hole that he dug for himself (I mean, yeah, Morden gave him the shovel, but still…), while Andreas Katsulas gives not a millimeter in the scene in G’Kar’s quarters. The quiet intensity with which Katsulas has G’Kar rebuff every single overture made by Mollari is superlative, and you don’t see the conflict until the later scene in the Zocalo when G’Kar has finally come to—very reluctantly—accept that Mollari’s notion is a good one. And even there, he refuses to give in completely, insisting on their signatures being on separate pages… In general, I love that this particular storyline will take several episodes to play out. Nature favors the destructive process—what Sheridan is trying to do is rebuild something that Clark has destroyed, and that’s a much longer, more laborious, more difficult thing to achieve. This is the last Babylon 5 Rewatch of 2025. Thank you all so much for continuing to follow me on this journey through the dawn of the third age. We’ll be off for the next couple of weeks, coming back on the 5th of January 2026 with “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year![end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “No Surrender, No Retreat” appeared first on Reactor.