Movies & TV Widow’s Bay Inside the Twisted Museum, Retro Offices, and Fake Lighthouse of Widow’s Bay The show’s production designer and set decorator talked with Reactor about creating the island’s unique look. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on July 28, 2026 Credit: Apple TV           Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV           When I watched the first episode of Widow’s Bay, I wasn’t sure what time period the show was in. There are landline phones, old cars, and a Rolodex, of all things, on Tom Loftis’ desk! That worn, thrifted look was intentional. “I’ve been in a lot of places caught in time, where you go into houses and old businesses and they just haven’t changed,” the show’s production designer Steve Arnold told me in a joint interview with the show’s set decorator, Jennifer Engel. I talked to Arnold and Engel about various sets on Widow’s Bay, including Tom’s office, that basement room with the Clockwork Orange-style chair, the items in the museum, and the lighthouse, which they had to build in a parking lot. Read on for our full discussion. Credit: Apple TV This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. How did you approach creating that nebulous feel in terms of the time period for the island, specifically the office building?   Steve Arnold:  I have some instinct about island remote living because I’m on an island and my family is born and raised on an island and all of that, so I know the remote island thing. But I looked at the exterior of the building we used, which was built in the 1800s, and thought—maybe it had been refurbished in the ‘50s and was caught in time. Nothing had changed since then. So there’s wood paneling, and there’s some little clear story windows above the hallway, things like that that were trendy back in the ‘50s. And also Jennifer was able to find all of these old computer monitors and telephones, the Rolodex on the desk, that old typewriter—a lot of young people don’t even know what those things are. They’re museum pieces now, and [showrunner Katie Dippold] had set this very specifically in the ‘70s or ‘80s, so we were following the lead of that. I’ve been in a lot of places caught in time, where you go into houses and old businesses and they just haven’t changed. We used that as a jumping off point. Jennifer Engel: Yeah, I feel like Katie drove that initially. We were using references from Jaws and The Shining, and those felt like from the ‘70s and ‘80s. But it was more vintage, because the show takes place now, so we were able to lean into the thrifty New England, keep-it-going aesthetic, where if it works, don’t replace it. And then like in Ruth’s kitchen, her sink and fridge and stove are from probably the ‘40s, but her landline phone is from the ‘90s. I tried to think about how, when do you replace stuff, what does that look like visually? So it was inconsistent—it wasn’t of a specific period, but everything was worn and old and used and maintained. Credit: Apple TV And where did you find those items, like the landlines and the computers and things like that? Jennifer Engel: There’s a wonderful prop house in Worcester, which wasn’t far from where our stages were, called Westermans, and they are an amazing and generous resource that we really took a lot of advantage of. We also got a lot of stuff from estate sales and yard sales and thrift shops and eBay and Etsy and antique stores, and really just tried to keep everything not new in order to have a pre-existing patina where everything is worn and lived in and loved and used. Steve Arnold: It pushes the remoteness of this place. You can’t get anything delivered by Amazon—it removes that accessibility, and that helps influence how these things are kept, because maybe they are old, but you can’t get another one right away, and so you just keep it. And it’s interesting,  because in the first episode we’re introduced to the town, but there’s the teaser at the end where you go down to the basement with the chair, which is a very different vibe. How did you approach creating the look of that space, in contrast with the rest of the island? Steve Arnold: Again, Katie was pretty specific. It was described as a stone room, and there was the thought that there was something hidden, some underground world in some way. We shot that at the very end, even though they put it in the first episode. When we did the basement of the town hall, we worked with the idea that there are these giant stone foundations underneath houses and buildings of all sorts, because that’s what was available before people were pouring concrete and things like that. We then had a layer of brick on top of that, like it had been refurbished or redone, or maybe it burned down somewhere along the line, and then they rebuilt it, and we carried that down into this whole tunnel system. There’s a bunch of tunnels that have a vaulted ceiling, which was a period of time much later than the 1600s in in U.S. The technology to do that was in the maybe 1800s or so, on this island. Credit: Apple TV And that was a set build, right? Rather than on location? Steve Arnold: Yes. There was an enormous amount of set build on this on this show. The interior of the town hall we built on stage because we would go back to it many times. The Salty Whale was all built interior on stage. What’s called the rectory or the church office, where the Reverend is, we built that on stage. Then we built the Breakwater Inn, the lobby, the parlor, the hallway, the Captain’s Suite, the basement of the inn, the crawl space, we built all of that on stage. Then we had Patricia’s upstairs, downstairs. We had Ruth’s on stage. And we took the basement of the inn and expanded it for the basement of the town hall, and then we had all the tunnel systems down there. We had Tom Loftus’ house on stage, and many more. Any I’m missing, Jennifer? Jennifer Engel: We built the lighthouse in the parking lot. That’s amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about the lighthouse and the parking lot? Steve Arnold: We had a tough time finding the perfect lighthouse. They’re part of the Coast Guard and they’re controlled by governmental agencies and they’re kind of off limits. You can’t just wander around and make a movie there. We found one that had closed down, and we used that for the bit where the lighthouse keeper gets on the bicycle and he rides away. But then we needed the lighthouse keeper up there for that big storm, and we needed Tom to go up there and figure out what was going on, and to do the storm at night with a rain rig and everything else, we had to do that in the parking lot. So we built the top of the lighthouse up on a scaffold, and we shot that in in the parking lot because we needed that amount of control. How long did that take to put that all up? Steve Arnold: We rarely have a lot of time, so we threw it together in probably in a month or less. It’s a lot of metal work, a lot of engineering to get the light to turn. It had to light up and do all those things, and we were copying the top of that existing lighthouse that we shot for the exterior. Credit: Apple TV I also want to talk about the museum. There’s so much in the background of those scenes that viewers can take in. Jennifer, can you talk about dressing that space and the different details you put there? Jennifer Engel: We had these amazing display cases that were about nine feet long. They were from the turn of the previous century and were in beautiful condition, and then we just tried to fill them with old stuff. The parameter was to make it creepy, like formaldehyde jars of body parts and teeth and critters, and then different surgical tools. Creepy and old was what was driving all the filling at the historical society museum. And then we needed some bigger three dimensional stuff—we had those crazy mannequins with the bloody dresses. Steve kept saying, “More blood, more blood!” Steve Arnold:  And we actually got a straitjacket that I thought would be good, and if you look over the reporter’s shoulder you will see a mannequin wearing a straitjacket. And then of course all the graphics on the wall: Our graphics designer found things, and we found things like a whale eating someone, and there were specifics in the script about some kind of burned out house with somebody staring out from inside. Coming up with some of the things from the script was a little bit tricky because Katie did have very specific things written there, but we did find some pretty creepy stuff. Credit: Apple TV And finally, the games at the inn: I would just love to hear about the creation of those games, the names, everything. Steve Arnold: They were very specific in the script from Katie. She had very specific ideas, but I have to give recognition to our graphic designer Ellen Lampl, who was working remotely and had the same information we did. We had the name Daddy’s Home and that they’re probably going to play this game, and it should look like it’s an old game. And then there was Teeth, and there was the Run Game, and other games. They went through many iterations with Ellen. I don’t know how many teeth things she did. We would show them to both Katie and [director Hiro Murai], and a lot of times Hiro would be very specific. But Ellen, our graphics designer, really hit it out of the park. And then, of course, the props department got involved in making the actual games once they were designed, so that we had the right pair of pliers in the tooth box and all of that. The first season of Widow’s Bay is now streaming on Apple TV.[end-mark] The post Inside the Twisted Museum, Retro Offices, and Fake Lighthouse of <i>Widow</i>’s<i> Bay</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Will Make You Miss the Animated Series Which wasn’t exactly the point of the exercise, but it’ll do. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on July 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share As the first on-screen adventure of the original Team Avatar in nearly twenty years, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender had a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of hopes to live up to. Unfortunately, the film leaked ahead of schedule, taking the wind out of its theater release sails and confining it to a narrow selection of screens. Most fans were likely to watch on their televisions instead. This isn’t to say that watching the film on a television was more likely to make audiences root for a return to the show’s original form—Paramount and Nickelodeon certainly put the money in the make the first Avatar Studios film feel like it needed a big screen. With the use of Deep Canvas tech (the same animation technique used for films like Treasure Planet and Tarzan, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire), the world is given a three-dimensional depth that the initial series could never achieve. The soundtrack goes bold, with composer Jeremy Zuckerman back and making the most of the sizable canvas. There are several extensive action sequences that make use of a movie’s runtime, and build out what was already made possible in the shows. But it does feel as though pieces are missing. There have been reviews and comments that suggest this is due to aging up our core characters, but that couldn’t really be further from the truth—any charm lost is more due to a lack of time and the desire (or perhaps need) to provide film-style spectacle. There are plenty of laughs to be had, plenty of sharp character moments, but the truth of the matter is that ATLA was an ensemble piece at heart; with a movie’s parameters, it really only has time to focus on its title character. The recast of the original crew to more accurately reflect the diversity of its characters works out for the film as a whole: Eric Nam infuses Aang with all the necessary warmth and silliness that make the character recognizable, even as age and time have brought a worn sadness. While we don’t see nearly enough of them, Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Román Zaragoza), and Zuko (Steve Yeun) have lost none of the sparkle of their original iterations—if anything, they just feel more anchored, having sunk into their personalities. Dionne Quan not only plays an adult Toph to perfection, but is also the only blind actor to have ever portrayed the character. Image: Paramount+ The film covers a period thirteen years after the series ended, when Aang learns that there might be a staff from a previous, forgotten Avatar named Sonam (Frieda Pinto) that created new Airbenders. Desperate to revive his people and still reeling from guilt at their demise, Aang races a group of violent non-benders calling themselves the Denied to the staff’s location, and instead finds Tagah (Dave Bautista), an ancient acolyte who was given airbending by Sonam. Tagah is eager to show Aang airbending traditions and abilities from his era, and to help him find the staff. Tagah is not all that eager to discuss the fact that he was frozen for millennia in ice, an act that only could have been completed by the Avatar… well, it’s more than a little obvious where this story might be headed. The fact that the narrative beats are so obvious means that none of this adventure ever feels particularly dangerous or weighty. It’s possible that allowing the film a longer runtime (it clocks in at 99 minutes), or even simply setting the story over a longer period of time, might have prevented such a truncated feeling—even Legend of Korra managed to get deeper into its themes with shorter seasons. But even saying so, the plot feels like less of a concern than actually spending time with the characters who have been so missed. The film doesn’t have a lot of time for Team Avatar, and that’s a shame because everything we get from them is what makes the movie enjoyable at all. Katara is working tirelessly alongside Aang to make Republic City work, and still one of the greatest masters of the age. Sokka never stops inventing or telling good stories (Zaragoza has that delivery down). Toph and Zuko are both clearly a little bored in the duties they’ve given themselves, and happy to get a distraction from Aang, who is still sending paper letters to his blind friend (which has got to be a joke at this point, right?) and letters that start out “Flameo Hotman!” to his pal the Fire Lord of the whole Fire Nation. (Does Aang put personal details in the letters knowing they’ll get read out loud to the court, or is he just that clueless about how public Zuko’s day-to-day would be? Either option is excellent, I should point out.) There’s also the team’s entire reaction to Tagah on rescue, where Aang is awed by his existence, Toph is blatantly horny for muscles, and Zuko proves he might be more than a little bit queer. (You saw the bit in the trailer about bone structure. The case is already rested.) The group’s work during a stormy sky-chase action sequence with the Denied right on their tail is frankly the best in the film, proving that the team sans Avatar is perfectly capable of holding its own and with all its members now old enough to trust in this working dynamic implicitly. Why is Aang not available to help them? Well, he’s unsurprisingly doing whatever Tagah recommends, and while he does get a brief lecture from Katara on the subject, there’s again not enough time in the film for everyone to point out to Aang that he needs to do some work on a few very specific hangups. The movie is ultimately working toward that end—toward Aang realizing what he can do to preserve his people’s memory and toward some self-forgiveness about the whole iceberg hiatus—but seems to get there with very little effort on anyone’s part. The machinations simply play out and Aang Learns Something Important(tm) on the way. Image: Paramount+ There are some strange worldbuilding questions provoked by the film as well, including the arc from the Denied to the Equalists that we see in Korra’s time, a need for more information about Airbender culture, and some strangeness around Appa—the beloved sky bison gets hijacked by Tagah toward the end of the film in a manner almost identical to Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon’s sequel, but it’s never explained or communicated in a manner that satisfies. Places where there’s a lack of explanation loom a bit larger than they might in part because the worldbuilding for the original show had so much detail carved out. The film is still a fun journey for the fact that it’s enjoyable to see all these characters and this world again, with a scope to match its ambitions. With a new series on the way, following Korra’s successor Avatar Pavi, it’s relieving to know that this universe is heading back to its proper place on television as animated shows. But I wouldn’t say no to a series about Aang’s generation growing up and working so hard to reconfigure the world they fought so hard for.[end-mark] The post <i>Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender</i> Will Make You Miss the Animated Series appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Sovereign of a Lost Land: Katherine Arden’s The Unicorn Hunters The Unicorn Hunters is a driving, atmospheric fantasy that will entice you and then not let go. By Sasha Bonkowsky | Published on July 27, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share The year is 1490. The peninsula of Brittany is fiercely independent, and would very much like to remain that way. However, having lost the Mad War two years prior, their duchess Anne is contracted to marry the French King, Charles VIII. When she does there will be no more Brittany, only France: a great engorged kingdom stretching from the Rhine in the east to the stormy seas in the west. Anne, disarmingly pretty and politically calculating, does not want this. She promised her father on his deathbed she would never wed France; together with her bastard brother Henri, her stubborn younger sister Isabeau, and Nantes’ population of loyal Bretons, she has a plan: She will marry in secret Maximilien, King of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, pay off the Pope to uphold it, and use his armies to keep Charles away. On a personal level, Anne benefits little; she will still have to live at her husband’s court, leaving her family and her verdant Brittany behind, her duties reduced to producing male heirs. But Brittany will survive; it is the role of a sovereign to give all they are for their people. (Isn’t it?) It might work. There is no love lost between Austria and France; with time to move his armies and prepare, Maximilien will defend her. But the French envoy is pressing for marriage now. Anne needs to buy herself that time, which she does with a story of a unicorn spotted in the mysterious forests of Brocéliande: the noblest and rarest prey in all Europe, whose horn and hide would dazzle the throne room of any king, and whose hunt requires a virgin of unimpeachable birth and high virtue. Anne can’t even entertain talk of marriage if they are to hunt it. Of course she’s lying through her teeth—there hasn’t been a unicorn seen in over twenty years—but France’s envoy, the light of greed in his eyes, buys it. Off they trot, Anne doing everything she can to slow the proceedings. Anne means to use the magical nature of Brocéliande as no more than a shield, sending France on a wild goose (well, unicorn) chase and performing her proxy-marriage ceremony with Maximilien there, where diviners cannot see. But the magic of the Lost Lands is unpredictable and capricious: The convent where Anne stays is beset by ghosts (“anaon”, the unquiet dead), the moon will not shine correctly, and, deep in the glades of Brocéliande, what stumbles into Anne’s path but a real unicorn, pursued by a fey hunt. Anne rides with it and sets it free, but its passage leaves something else behind: a diviner named Julian Moreau, pale and thin and horrified, who tells them all he’s been trapped in the Lost Lands for two hundred years. Worse, the Lost Lands’ magic trails them back to Nantes, threatening to unravel all of Anne’s careful planning. Emperor Maximilien is haunted in Flanders by his dead wife Mary; he refuses to leave her behind to sail to Anne’s aid. Omens of pouring saltwater and rushing flames herald—according to Moreau—that the fey king also has marriage designs on the duchess of Brittany. And Moreau himself, a man steeped in that magic more than anyone else living, has his own loyalties; it seems he may not have stumbled back to the human realm fully by accident. Buy the Book The Unicorn Hunters Katherine Arden Buy Book The Unicorn Hunters Katherine Arden Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Anne of Brittany was a real person, but her story is a tragic one. Born under the cloud of encroaching French rule, her sister Isabeau killed by pneumonia at eleven, she nevertheless attempted at thirteen to break free by means of proxy marriage to Maximilian I of Austria. However, Maximilian was too busy in Hungary to come to her aid; France invaded Brittany again, laying siege to Rennes for two months, and at fifteen Anne was forced to marry Charles VIII of France. She did everything she could through the marriage contracts to maintain Brittany’s independence, but she would spend the rest of her life almost continuously pregnant, and died at thirty-six. Nevertheless, Katherine Arden writes in her afterword: “It is impossible to read about this young woman and not admire her… what if everything were different? What would have happened had this young and brave and passionate girl had the power to chart her own destiny?” Of course this reminded me of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Written on the Dark, another alt-history story of medieval France that seeks to rewrite some of its ignobler moments, in this case the assassination of Louis I, Duke of Orleáns, and the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc. It’s an enticing idea to take the injustices of history, correct them, and allow the clever, cornered, outmatched poets and duchesses to win out over the forces of money and power and steel. Not quite our own world, not quite fantasy; a world that only might have been. But where Written on the Dark spans decades, interested in how events cascade and ripple through years, The Unicorn Hunters takes place over no more than two months, focused on a single moment in time that could have—should have—been better. Arden’s admiration for Anne of Brittany also shines through in the character work: Anne is a deeply charming, entertaining protagonist, taking advantage of those who underestimate her to navigate 15th-century court politics. Even without knowing her history when first reading The Unicorn Hunters, it’s not hard to want her to find a way out of the quagmire she’s been stuck in. Take her first interaction with the French envoy, La Trémoille, told from his perspective. Just pages ago we were introduced to Anne, cheerful but sober and with a sharp mind for statecraft, waiting impatiently for Austria’s messenger. But La Trémoille is given a childish banquet of sweet foods and marchpane, and when Anne receives him she is breathless, blushing, and utterly guileless, earnestly confiding in him the secret of the unicorn. The reader is in on the joke—we snicker along at La Trémoille’s blithe ignorance that this empty-headed girl could have ulterior motives—and when the scene’s concluded, Anne’s brother Henri sums it up best: “Lord, how do you do it? One moment my sister is there, and the next there is a ninny blushing on cue… [La Trémoille] had no idea what struck him.” Levity, adventure, and magic balances out the precarity of the book; Anne is forever outrunning a dozen different dooms (including that of her real-life history), carrying all of Brittany on her shoulders. The Unicorn Hunters is a driving, atmospheric fantasy that, like its Lost Lands, will entice you and then not let go.[end-mark] The Unicorn Hunters is published by Del Rey.Read an excerpt. The post Sovereign of a Lost Land: Katherine Arden’s <i>The Unicorn Hunters</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV House of the Dragon No Glory, No Songs, Only Butchery: House of the Dragon, Season 3 Episode 6 Well… that ended badly. But on the bright side: mystery eggs! By Tyler Dean | Published on July 27, 2026 Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO The antepenultimate episode of the season is an exploration of the ways in which everyone’s best-laid plans come to nothing when they collide with the vicissitudes of the real world. Criston, Alicent, Daemon, and Rhaenyra all discover the limits of what they can accomplish without terrible sacrifice. There are more branching paths from the novel, possible answers to enduring mysteries in the books, and at least some of the dark fate promised by last week’s episode. Let’s get into it below! The Title Episode six is entitled “Faceless Men.” It’s an interesting choice of title because it, very obviously, does not include any reference to or plot point involving the mysterious order of assassins known as the Faceless Men. Those were the priests of the Many-Faced God (an amalgam of all the different death gods of the world’s pantheons) whom Arya first encountered in the second season of Game of Thrones. According to legend, the Faceless Men were founded by slaves that toiled in the volcanic mines of the Valyrian Freehold who embraced murder as a gift given to other hapless members of the ancient civilization’s underclass.  In last night’s episode, the phrase most obviously applies to the plain-faced Baratheon assassins Rhaenyra sends to kill Daeron and Ormund. But it also refers to the waves of mercenaries coming to Harrenhal to kill Aemond. It refers to the many-headed hydra that is Ormund’s King’s Landing insurgency. It refers to the men Rhaenyra plans to send alongside Alicent to kill Aemond. It even refers to the men who die at Criston Cole’s side, falling namelessly in service to the lords, even as Criston Cole himself returns to the faceless state of a common man, little remembered by history.  The threat of the guild of Faceless Men is their ability (aided by magic) to look like anyone, taking on the faces of trusted friends and allies. But their origins in the slag pits of Old Valyria belie a less fanciful fear. The Faceless men are anyone and everyone—they are the rabble beneath the feet of great Lords, toiling away in the dark, bent but not yet broken. The Valyrians subjugated half the world from dragonback, but the sins of their imperialism and their slavery forged the greatest order of assassins the world has ever known. As Rhaenyra and Ormund and Daemon try to crush resistance beneath their boots and bring their enemies to heel, they are creating the conditions of possibility that make every face—known and unknown—into the one that will end their lives.  Unraveling the Opening Credits I believe that the mysterious panel from last episode shows two men ripping a literal gold cloak asunder. A new panel after it shows a Gold Cloak/watchman being ripped limb from limb by two commoners. Clearly this is referring to the work of Ormund’s catspaw and the unrest simmering in Flea Bottom. The fact that the tear in the tapestry runs straight through the unfortunate Gold Cloak is an especially nice touch.  The Butcher’s Ball Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO Book readers have been looking forward to the Butcher’s Ball, the name Archmaester Gyldayn gives to the final battle between Criston Cole’s men and the combined forces of the Rivermen and Winter Wolves. The show chose to play it out in an interesting way, taking an approach which has both pros and cons (and one particular omission which I think will disappoint some book readers).  In the book, Cole and his army march south from Harrenhal to intercept the Rivermen’s host. It is Cole’s men who are stalked and harried at every turn rather than the other way around. Gyldayn’s narrative depicts him as utterly hubristic in his final march, failing to recognize the Winter Wolves or the Rivermen as a major threat on his final march. While the final interactions between Cole and the Rivermen play out almost word for word as they do in the show, this episode cuts the final line delivered to Cole by the Riverman knight Ser Pate of Longleaf, after Cole proposes to fight the army’s leaders one against two (three in the book) and is struck down by archers: “I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker… there’s tens o’ thousands dead on your account.”  The last line is a pointed twisting of the proverbial knife—making sure that Ser Criston meets an ignominious rather than heroic end. But, of course, the line also lends a kind of mitigating gloss to the event. It tells us that Cole was denied a chance for valor, and if Gyldayn is repeating the story over a century later, that version of his final moments must have stuck. Here, the end is far quieter. Cole is not even given the dignity of an answer, cast aside and ignored by the lords of the realm in exactly the way he’d spent his life resenting, his greatest fear realized. There is the matter of timing. Killing Cole off at the beginning of the episode, after giving him his somber final monologue in the last episode, lends the proceedings some of the off-kilter timing that Martin excels at. Part of the reason the Red Wedding of the novels hits so hard is because it comes two thirds of the way through A Storm of Swords, at a moment when we are not expecting there to be something so thoroughly climactic and awful. In some ways, by moving the Red Wedding to one Game of Thrones’ famously consequential ninth episodes, the writers built in certain expectations that something terrible would occur. Here, Cole’s death takes on the same sort of mistimed quality that makes it feel less like a narrative with a satisfying arc and more like the fickle whims of fate, which do not care if a character has finished speaking before claiming them.  Ser Criston Cole has always been a bad guy. He played the game of thrones ruthlessly and with a twisted misogyny that put the lie to his idea of chivalry. But here at the end of it, the blaze of glory he desperately tried to orchestrate for himself is abruptly unceremoniously snuffed out. In an episode all about the ways in which servants prove themselves useful to their lieges, we open in the fading light of a ravaged Tully camp, where the man who thought he could finally die on his own terms after living his life in the service of others is denied even that. Audiences this season love to hate Ormund Hightower because he is a gleeful, cartoonish parody of an abuser. There is nothing worthy or redeeming in him. Criston Cole is a very different kind of character. Even as many will no doubt be overjoyed by Cole’s death, the show has ensured that it doesn’t leave us with pure catharsis. We may be better than Cole in a thousand ways—kinder, more self-aware, more selfless—but we are closer to him than we ever will be to the high lords of Westeros. Whatever unease you feel, it is a portent of what is coming, ignominiously, to everyone caught up in the conflict. EggWatch Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO We get an exciting bit of connective tissue between House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones in the form of Dreamfyre’s eggs at Harrenhal. Alys tells us that Rhaena Targaryen left them there. This is not Lady Rhaena, Daemon’s daughter (played by Phoebe Campbell), rather it is the woman for whom she is named. She’s one of the best characters in Fire & Blood and mentioning her here is prudent, in part because she did not live during a period of Westerosi history that’s conducive to adapting to television. This is likely the only way we’ll get Princess Rhaena Targaryen in this or any Game of Thrones show. This Rhaena was Aegon the Conqueror’s granddaughter and the original rider of Dreamfyre, Helaena’s dragon. She was also famously uninterested in men. She lived a tragic life: her brother-husband was murdered by her uncle, Maegor the Cruel, who eventually forced her into marriage; her lover, Elissa Farman, eventually absconded with a clutch of Dreamfyre’s eggs and sailed into the mysterious western seas never to be heard from again. Rhaena’s her third husband, Androw Farman—Elissa’s brother—poisoned all of her closest companions out of jealousy; her daughter Aerea died horribly after flying on the back of Balerion the Black Dread to parts unknown (but probably the ruins of Valyria). After all of these tragedies she lived out the end of her days at Harrenhal, taking up residence in(and giving name to) the Widow’s Tower, where her ashes were eventually interred.  There is an enduring mystery as to Rhaena’s dragon eggs and where they ended up. This is because Martin has not accounted for where Daenerys Targaryen’s eggs (that eventually hatch into Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal) came from. One theory is that they were from Syrax and taken to Pentos alongside the young princes Viserys and Aegon (whom our era’s Rhaena failed to chaperone on their sea voyage). Another theory is that they were among the eggs that Elissa Farman stole and took across the Sunset Sea; when a young Corlys Velaryon visited Asshai during his nine voyages, he swore that he saw Elissa Farman’s ship, the Sun Chaser, docked in Asshai fifty years after it disappeared. But this episode proposes another possibility: Dany’s eggs are Dreamfyre’s, hidden away for nearly a century in the ruins of Harrenhal. DragonWatch The most prominent dragons in tonight’s episode are Vermithor and Silverwing, Hugh and Ulf’s dragons, respectively. We see them nuzzling one another on the hill outside Tumbleton. This is because they are a mated pair, having once been the dragons of King Jaehaerys and his sister-wife, Queen Alysanne. They are the second oldest dragons after Vhagar and we can see that Vermithor has begun to develop the same neck wattle that she has. Silverwing also has a distinctive cooing, bird-like trill as she calls out to Vermithor. I believe this is the first time we’ve heard her vocalize clearly. The series loves to show bonded dragons—Vermithor and Silverwing, Syrax and Caraxes, Syrax and Seasmoke. It’s a great detail that continues to keep them feeling real. Odds & Ends Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Gyldayn mentions that Criston Cole was most talented with a morningstar. While, for the purposes of being in the Kingsguard and his reputation as the Kingmaker, it makes sense for him to favor a sword, I’m glad the show featured the morningstar for his last brutal fight.  I stated this last season, but Oscar Tully, an invention of the show, is a combination of F&B’s Benjicot Blackwood and three Tully heirs (Oscar, Kermit, and Elmo—the show wisely went with the Muppet name least likely to distract viewers. Benjicot Blackwood is the eleven-year-old lord of House Blackwood whom Martin describes as bloodthirsty and preternaturally skilled in battle. The show seems to have split Benjicot with Oscar and last season’s Willem Blackwood (who had been a bloodthirsty kid first seen in season one). Essentially, they wanted a battle-hardened kid who could be the de facto leader of the Rivermen and Oscar is the result. In this episode he also seems to have merged with Ser Garibald Grey, a knight whose only real distinction in Gyldayn’s narrative is saying the line about building a sept of bones.  We don’t get a clear shot of them, but I assume that Cole’s killer is Alysanne Blackwood, given the coloring and hair.  I didn’t think they would include it, but the Baratheon delegation mentions that Lord Borros has left to fight one of the many Vulture Kings in Dorne rather than actively declare a side in the conflict. There are perpetual Vulture Kings throughout modern Westerosi history. The one Borros is fighting is the third to take on that mantle; 70-ish years from now, Dunk and Ser Arlan of Pennytree will fight against another Vulture King. Fighting one the Vulture King of the moment is a task that always demands some attention from Westeros, while clearly always being a lower priority in the grand scheme of things.  Hot pies mentioned!  Mysaria seems to be tying up loose ends to protect her own perfidy, having the handmaid who’d taken Alicent’s necklace in exchange for helping the queen escape killed. Seeing as how the Tyland Lannister Triarchy plot was invented for the show, so too is Corlys Velaryon hearing rumors of his surviving. Not entirely sure where they are going with this, especially since Aegon seems to have chosen Larys’ option.  Lady Jeyne Arryn’s dry delivery of “never ceases to be fascinating” while watching a man fall out the Moon Door is fantastic.  Rhaena says she saw Moondancer and Seasmoke flying towards Iron Oaks. Iron Oaks is the seat of House Waynwood (Anya Waynwood was minor character in seasons 4 and 5 of Game of Thrones) and is due east from the Eyrie. Baela and Addam are really scouring the whole of the south for Vhagar. Good that they’ve moved up Baela and Alyn’s romance to a bit earlier in the timeline. Making it a part of Baela’s post-Jace healing journey feels like a smart way to keep her in the narrative when she is at a bit of an ebb-tide in the book.  Last week, I was unsure what they were going to do with Ser Gwayne, seeing as he is long dead in the book and had left Ser Criston’s side. This seems like the best possible choice. Giving Darrin someone other than his cousin to play off of is a smart move and lets us see both how Gwayne has failed his nephew and how the two of them are victims of Ormund Hightower’s rages. It did strike me as little bit odd to have Ormund imply Gwayne’s queerness with some small amount of contempt. While Gwayne being gay would explain why he is unmarried, it resonates just a bit oddly against Ormund’s own queer-codedness. Of course, we’ve had plenty of examples in the real world of closeted men at the nexus point of self-loathing and access to state power who have posed an especial danger to others like them. Maybe this is commenting on that.  So much of this season has been about forcing Alicent to reckon with how little she has listened to her daughter’s wishes or set up her up for success or happiness. I like the detail of her keeping Helaena from driving the embroidery needle into her finger—the tiniest intervention in the cycle of anxious self-harm that the Hightower women are prone to.  I have previously written about how HBO’s A Song of Ice and Fire shows fail to capture the horror and dread that are such a large part of Martin’s books. Helaena’s ghoulish embroidery—her brother Aemond, curled up like a fetus inside a bloody, vaginal mandorla, in the heart of a jet-black Harrenhal while Alys Rivers, red-eyed, casts her spells upon him—really gets back to that intersection of folk and cosmic horror that suffuses the novels. For all that it is a story of political intrigue and the horrors of patriarchy, I love that this show takes the time to indulge in the uncanny and unsettling when it suits them.  The Septa who petitions the Queen speaks of a “Motherhouse.” These are female monastic communities in the Faith of the Seven: single-entendre nunneries. The counterparts for male septons are called “septries.” Cutting oneself on the Iron Throne is typically a sign of rejection by it. In the first season, Viserys was constantly cutting himself on the blades, worsening his leprosy. Rhaenyra looks to the statue of Viserys when it happens. As a fun detail, the statue of Viserys holds a version of his miniature Valyria as his royal totem.  The overhead shot of the Iron throne with the surrounding blade slag sure looks like a dragon’s wings. Ormund’s King’s Landing catspaw (Richard Pepper) calls the newly minted monarch “Daeron the Daring.” In the novel, that is Prince Daeron’s sobriquet, earned by his valor in fighting the Blacks from dragonback en route to King’s Landing. I love the show making it Ormund’s propagandist invention.  When Rhaenyra learns about Helaena’s powers, she invokes Daenys the Dreamer whose foresight brought the Targaryen family to Dragonstone and away from Valyria. I wonder if part of the reason Helaena was able to communicate with Daemon last season and why she is so linked to Aemond is because her own dragon’s eggs are at Harrenhal.  We are well and truly off-book here with the kidnapping of Corlys Velaryon by Bold Jon Roxton at episode’s end. Part of this is likely about creating plot for central characters who have very little to do for long stretches (both Corlys and Alicent have very little going on during this time in the book—and Ser Criston could easily have been killed off by the second episode of the season without expanding on his doomed campaign). But what else it might portend, and who else it might involve are pretty opaque to me. Fascinating.  In Conclusion Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO I literally jumped for joy upon hearing Alys mention the historical Rhaena and Dreamfyre’s eggs. Aemond, who now has the dagger that will eventually end up slaying the Night King, is positioned in the center of a sinister web of prophecy. I’m a sucker for this show at its most weird and mystical, and it seems intent on delivering. But what did you think? Were you satisfied by the death of Ser Criston? Will you miss Fabien Frankel on the show? Are you excited to see what happens in the AemAlys shipper community? Let me know in the comments below![end-mark] The post No Glory, No Songs, Only Butchery: <i>House of the Dragon</i>, Season 3 Episode 6 appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Sleeping in Light” Sheridan feels his life force ebbing away, and invites some old friends for a final gathering… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on July 27, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Sleeping in Light”Written and directed by J. Michael StaczynskiSeason 5, Episode 22Production episode 422Original air date: November 25, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… It’s twenty years after the end of the Shadow War, and on Minbar, Sheridan—who has retired as IA president and is now serving as Ranger One, with Delenn the new president of the IA—keeps having the same dream where he remembers what Lorien told him about only having twenty years of life left. His time is probably coming. He has the Rangers send out messengers. He also gets up early to watch the sunrise, something he’s never done in the two decades he’s lived on Minbar; Delenn joins him. On Earth, Ivanova, who is now a general, is going over her schedule of public appearances with an aide when the invitation comes. She’s angry that her assistant tried to keep the Ranger out of her office because she was in a meeting, reminding him that Rangers always get let in. When she sees the invitation, she cancels everything and requisitions a ship to Minbar. On Mars, Franklin is visiting Garibaldi, having gotten his ass kicked in tennis by Garibaldi’s daughter Mary. A Ranger arrives to deliver a message to Garibaldi. Franklin knows what it is before Garibaldi can say, and the doctor assumes that there’s one waiting for him on Earth. They both clear their schedules and set up a lift to Minbar. On Centauri Prime, Emperor Vir’s late-night debauchery with several Centauri women is interrupted by a Ranger. Vir’s annoyance at the coitus interruptus burns to ashes when he realizes what the message is. On Minbar, Franklin examines Sheridan, and he can’t be too specific, as he still, two decades on, has no idea what Lorien did, exactly, but best he can tell, Sheridan has a week or so left to live. (It is not stated on what he is basing this diagnosis.) They all gather for a meal. Garibaldi tells a story about a drunk pak’ma’ra, Vir tells a story about Mollari, and then Sheridan toasts their friends who’ve died: Mollari, G’Kar, Lennier, and Cole. Credit: Warner Bros. Television After dinner, they gather in the garden to babble at each other. Ivanova and Delenn talk privately, with Ivanova expressing dissatisfaction with her life as a general. Delenn offers her the job of Ranger One after Sheridan dies. In bed together, Sheridan says he wants to leave early in the morning on a White Star and go for a Sunday drive. He doesn’t want to die on Minbar, he wants to die in space. The next morning Sheridan—wearing his Army of Light uniform for the first time in decades—says a tearful goodbye to Delenn. Sheridan’s first stop is B5, which is being decommissioned. He bumps into Allan, who came out of retirement to help oversee the decommissioning, which explains to Sheridan why the Ranger messenger couldn’t find him on Earth to invite him for the dinner. He then heads to the Corianus system, which is where the final confrontation with the Shadows and Vorlons took place. He chooses there because of a message Kosh left for him from beyond the grave. Sheridan feels himself growing weaker, a diagnosis confirmed by the ship’s computer. Then Lorien shows up, saying the First One haven’t forgotten him. There’s a flash of light and then Sheridan is gone. On B5, Ivanova, Garibaldi, Franklin, Delenn, Vir, and Allan attend the decommissioning ceremony before the station is inexplicably blown up. Ivanova mentions that Sheridan’s White Star was found with all the airlocks sealed, but no body on board. Ivanova narrates a final voiceover, during which we see that Allan is now an advisor to Vir on Centauri Prime, Garibaldi and Franklin are back in their lives on Mars and Earth, respectively, and Ivanova has agreed to take over as Ranger One. And every morning for the rest of her life, Delenn got up before dawn to watch the sun rise. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan finally runs out of hit points. His father used to go on Sunday drives when he was a kid, and that inspires him to go on his final journey. Ivanova is God. Ivanova describes her current life as a general as being “an old war horse, trotted out after a parade so all the kids can point at it.” She eagerly accepts the job of Ranger One. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi seems to be doing quite well as the head of Edgars Industries. He also has a daughter, who is really good at tennis. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is now the president of the IA. Her and Sheridan’s son David is apparently in the midst of Ranger training, and so he doesn’t come to the dinner, even though his father’s about to, y’know, die. In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… As predicted, Vir is now emperor. Centauri Prime certainly looks a lot better than the last time we saw it… We live for the one, we die for the one. The invitations to Sheridan’s farewell dinner are all delivered by Rangers, which, if nothing else, gives them a level of access to people that regular delivery services might not get. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Vir is really taking advantage of the sexual perks of being an absolute monarch… Credit: Warner Bros. Television Welcome aboard. Wayne Alexander returns as Lorien, back (in that role) from “Into the Fire.” He played a Drazi and a Drakh in the interim, and appears in the movies River of Souls and A Call to Arms in other roles. Romy Rosemont plays Ivanova’s aide, David Wells plays the last commander of B5, Sharon Annett plays Mary, and, in a cutesy bit of symbolism, J. Michael Straczynski his own self plays the worker who shuts down the power to the station before it goes boom. Trivial matters. This was originally filmed as the fourth-season finale when the existence of a fifth season was in doubt. It was punted forward a year and replaced by “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” when TNT picked up the final season. The opening credits—which are, in fact, shown at the very end—are that of the fourth season, so Tracy Scoggins is out and Claudia Christian and Jason Carter are back in, though Carter does not appear; neither do Bill Mumy, Patricia Tallman, Peter Jurasik, or Andreas Katsulas, though they too are credited. The billing for each actor has two side-by-side shots of their first and final appearances (for Carter, amusingly, his final “appearance” is a labeled stasis chamber). Lorien gave Sheridan enough hit points to survive for twenty years in “Falling Toward Apotheosis.” G’Kar and Mollari died in the flash-forward in “War Without End Part 2,” which takes place three years prior to this episode. Cole died in “Endgame.” It is unknown when or how Lennier died. The final battle in the Corianus system occurred in “Into the Fire.” Kosh passed on the message to Sheridan from beyond the grave to return to the end of the beginning when the long night comes in “Day of the Dead.” Vir picked up the emperor’s seal after G’Kar and Mollari killed each other in “War Without End Part 2.” This episode confirms what that implied: that Vir would succeed Mollari as emperor of the Centauri Republic, as predicted by Lady Morella in “Point of No Return.” This episode was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1999. It was nominated alongside the films Star Trek: Insurrection, Dark City, and Pleasantville, and they alllost to The Truman Show. This is the first time J. Michael Straczynski has been in the director’s chair. His only other directing credit to date is the two episodes of The Lost Tales (which this rewatch will cover after Crusade). The echoes of all of our conversations. “It changed the future and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly, though, I think it gave us hope, that there can always be new beginnings—even for people like us.” —Ivanova waxing poetic about the B5 station in her closing voiceover. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “To absent friends.” Had this come at the end of the fourth season as originally planned, it would’ve been the perfect coda. After a pretty relentless season full of stuff, having a quiet, elegiac epilogue would’ve been a nice way to end things. Instead, it came at the end of the fifth season, which was relentless in a much less pleasant way, and “Sleeping in Light” turns out to be the fourth straight quiet, elegaic epilogue, and I’m about ready to beat my head against the wall. Okay, let’s start with what I liked about the episode. It was absolutely fabulous to see Ivanova again. Clauda Christian’s presence has been sorely missed this season, and all of her scenes are absolute gold. Sheridan’s journey to the death that he’s seen coming for two decades is very well played by Bruce Boxleitner. More to the point, Boxleitner and Christian are the only ones who go out of their way to make their characters feel like they’re twenty years older than the last time we saw them. (In Mira Furlan and Stephen Furst’s defense, Minbari and Centauri are longer-lived than humans, so their not playing much older is defensible. Jerry Doyle, Richard Biggs, and Jeff Conaway have no such excuse.) So much else of the episode doesn’t entirely work, alas. I get that the events of the “War Without End” two-parter require that this take place after G’Kar and Mollari have finished killing each other, but not having Peter Jurasik or Andreas Katsulas in the finale makes it feel incomplete, somehow. There is, however, no excuse for the lack of the character of David Sheridan anywhere in this episode. The excuse that David’s in the midst of Ranger training and Sheridan promised not to give his kid special treatment in the Rangers is nonsense—his father is dying. He fucking well should be present for his final days! The worst, though, is blowing up the station. The stated reason—that it’s a navigation hazard—is absolute purest idiotic nonsense. As Douglas Adams famously reminded us, space is big—really big. A five-mile-long station is at once nowhere near big enough to be a navigation hazard when it’s easy enough to fly around it, and at the same time big enough to be easy to see and, well, fly around it. You wanna know what’s a huge navigation hazard? Random bits of debris flying off in all directions scattered about the Epsilon system, which are much harder to see than a five-mile-long station. But B5 blowing up has been the station’s destiny from jump—it was predicted by Ladira in “Signs and Portents” and seen in a flash-forward by Sinclair in “Babylon Squared,” and dammit, J. Michael Straczynski was gonna blow up the damn station no matter how little sense it made given the way the story evolved. Finally, having spent three straight episodes saying goodbye to people in this cast, to spend a fourth on it is just tiresome. Next week: Fifth season overview.[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Sleeping in Light” appeared first on Reactor.