News Starfleet Academy Why Nus and Anisha Won’t Return in Starfleet Academy Season 2 The Starfleet Academy team still hope to bring Paul Giamatti and Tatiana Maslany back for a hypothetical third season By Matthew Byrd | Published on March 12, 2026 Photo Credit: Miller Mobley/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Miller Mobley/Paramount+ This post contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Starfleet Academy just finished its debut season, but the show’s cast and crew are already talking about what’s ahead. And in a series of recent interviews, we learned that Nus (Paul Giamatti) and Anisha (Tatiana Maslany) will not appear in Starfleet Academy season 2.  “No, not in season 2,” says Star Trek Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman in an interview with TVInsider regarding whether Giamatti’s Nus will return. “There’s nothing we want more than to bring Paul back, and there’s nothing Paul wants more than to come back, so we are going to figure that out in season 3.” Giamatti did previously say (spoil, really) that he won’t be returning for season 2 but would be very interested in doing so in the future should the opportunity arise. Specifically, he noted that Nus is still alive (another spoiler at the time) at the end of the show’s first season and that “something could be done with him.” It really does seem to come down to immediate opportunities. As Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau tells TVInsider, Nus’ arc and his spiritual relationship with Holly Hunter’s Captain Nahla come to a pretty definitive stop in season 1 that ends with Nus’ imprisonment. So, it seems like they simply don’t have anything more for the character to do in the next season relative to the bigger story they are trying to tell. Kurtzman goes on to explain that Anisha is in a similar situation, though there is a more specific story reason why the character isn’t coming back right away. “We still have plans for Anisha, and we’d love to bring her back,” Kurtzman says. “But that didn’t, I think, instinctively feel like a story that wanted to, just the search for mom, go beyond one season.” In an interview with Collider, Kurtzman elaborates that he believes Nus and Anisha’s storylines are ultimately “not complete.” He also reiterates that he’d love to bring them back and that they “certainly have plans for that.” The wording of all of that is quite interesting in the context of bigger things going on with Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, and Paramount. As Paramount looks to acquire Warner Bros. as part of a massive and incredibly controversial deal, the future of Star Trek remains uncertain. Many things will need to be reexamined as Paramount looks towards its future, and it’s not clear how Star Trek fits into that future. In a recent interview with TrekMovie, Alex Kurtzman stated that he has had “conversations about the future of Star Trek” and that he has received “nothing but support.” Kurtzman later adds that the Star Trek projects he is discussing with Paramount and its affiliates include “new shows” and “the shows we already have.” But as it stands, Starfleet Academy has not been approved for a third season. So while it seems like there is theoretically room for Nus and Anisha in Kurtzman’s plans and hopes for the future of the show, the talk of them potentially coming back in season 3 remains merely a nice idea barring a more substantial update. [end-mark] The post Why Nus and Anisha Won’t Return in <i>Starfleet Academy</i> Season 2 appeared first on Reactor.

News Man of Tomorrow Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart Will Be in Superman Sequel Man of Tomorrow We’ll first see Pierre in the DC Universe in the HBO series, Lanterns By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on March 12, 2026 Credit: John Johnson/HBO Max Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: John Johnson/HBO Max The DCU show Lanterns has yet to premiere, but we’ve got news that we’ll be seeing more of Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart beyond the series. Today, The Hollywood Reporter shared that Pierre will also be in the Superman sequel film, Man of Tomorrow. He’ll undoubtedly be playing John Stewart once again, who will also likely be a more seasoned Lantern after the events of the television show. The news confirms James Gunn’s desire to have the DC Universe be a cohesive whole that encompasses both film and television (with a special carve out for Matt Reeves’ Batman films). Having Pierre in Man of Tomorrow also fits in well with that movie’s plot, which centers around Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and Superman (David Corenswet) having to begrudgingly work together to defeat Brainiac (Lars Eidinger), a villain who, like the Lanterns, likes to hang out in outer space. Man of Tomorrow will also see the return of many characters we saw in Superman, including Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo). It’s not clear if that other Lantern, the bowl-cut-coiffed Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) will be returning as well, though we will see him in the upcoming Lanterns series, which is set to premiere on HBO sometime this August. We’ll have to wait longer to see Man of Tomorrow, which is currently slated to come out in theaters on July 9, 2027. [end-mark] The post Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart Will Be in <i>Superman</i> Sequel <i>Man of Tomorrow</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News KPop Demon Hunters KPop Demon Hunters Directors Officially on Board for Sequel The news comes just before the first film is expected to do well at the Oscars By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on March 12, 2026 Credit: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Netflix We already knew that Sony Pictures Animation and Netflix were moving forward with a sequel to the insanely popular KPop Demon Hunters. Today we have more unsurprising news on that front: directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans are returning to helm that sequel. And for those who want to know more about Kang and Appelhans’ careers, we also got word that they’ve signed a multi-year deal, meaning we’ll likely see more projects from them in the future. “With KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie and Chris didn’t just reach audiences, they ignited a global fandom that crossed languages, generations, and genres. We’re incredibly proud to deepen our partnership with them and, together with our partners at Sony Pictures Animation, build this universe in ways that will surprise and delight fans all over the world,” Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria said in a statement via Netflix’s website, Tudum.   “I feel immense pride as a Korean filmmaker that the audience wants more from this Korean story and our Korean characters,” Kang told Tudum. “There’s so much more to this world we have built, and I’m excited to show you. This is only the beginning.” Appelhans added, “These characters are like family to us, their world has become our second home. We’re excited to write their next chapter, challenge them, and watch them evolve—and continue pushing the boundaries of how music, animation, and story can come together.” The news is well-timed. The Oscars are happening this weekend, and KPop Demon Hunters is expected to justifiably do well there. We don’t have details yet on what the sequel will be about, and it’s not confirmed yet whether Mark Sonnenblick, the songwriter from the first film, will be coming back. There’s still plenty of time, however, so odds are good that he might join the project in the coming months. We’ll have to wait several years, sadly, to see the sequel. Animation projects take time, and even the projected release year of 2029 might be too optimistic. The first feature, of course, is currently streaming on Netflix. [end-mark] The post <i>KPop Demon Hunters</i> Directors Officially on Board for Sequel appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Adults These Days — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “Rubincon” By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on March 12, 2026 Credit: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount+ There is a great deal that I loved about the excellent finale to Starfleet Academy’s first season, including that they followed the formula that was so successful in “Kids These Days” and “Come, Let’s Away” and put Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti in a room together for significant portions of the episode. But the moment that got me was when Ake brought up something that was a minor part of Anisha and Braka’s trial back in the during-the-Burn teaser for “Kids These Days,” one that is easily forgotten in the hugger-mugger of Anisha and Caleb being separated and Giamatti chewing a ton of scenery: Braka and Anisha’s actions that they were on trial for led to the death of a Starfleet officer. One of Star Trek’s biggest issues as a franchise has been the redshirt problem, the disposable side characters who die to show how dangerous things are, but whose deaths never impinge on the main characters. There were occasional mitigations of the phenomenon (the original series’ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” TNG’s “The Bonding,” DS9’s “The Ship”), but in general, we didn’t see the shows trending away from it until Enterprise, with the current crop of shows doing an excellent job of avoiding the redshirt phenomenon (with occasional reversions like SNW’s “All Those Who Wander”). The pilot who died because of Braka and Anisha’s actions is a classic redshirt. We didn’t know anything about him, didn’t even see him. He was an abstraction. Until Ake tells us about him. The bulk of the episode is a show trial that Braka is running, and broadcasting to the entire quadrant. It’s a pure propaganda piece, with Braka trying to convince everyone that the Federation is an oppressive regime and he’s a bastion of democracy. (He doesn’t actually say that he’s going to make the galaxy great again, but yeah.) The centerpiece of his argument is Ake separating Anisha from her then-six-year-old son a decade-and-a-half ago, though he also couches Caleb’s enrollment in the Academy as a setup by Ake rather than a rescue, making it seem like she arranged for his capture and imprisonment instead of the reality that she saved him from that. Because Braka is pretending this is a fair trial, he lets Ake defend herself, and her method of doing so is to remind Anisha—and the audience, both the quadrant-wide audience for the trial within the episode and the TV audience watching an episode of SA—about the guy who died. Where’s the justice for his family? Yes, Ake caused the Mir family tremendous trauma, but that pilot had a family, too. Indeed, this was his last mission before a planned retirement to spend time with that family. What about their trauma? And it brings Anisha up short. It’s also the first time that Anisha sees Ake as anything other than a monster. The episode opens where last week left off: Anisha in Athena’s sickbay, being confronted by Ake for the first time in fifteen years. As always, Tatiana Maslany plays it magnificently, as Anisha wants absolutely nothing to do with Ake or Starfleet or the Federation. Ake rather patiently explains that, under normal circumstances, she’d let Anisha go anywhere she wants, and take Caleb with her if that’s what he wants, but right now they’ve got bigger problems. Reno is able to punch a comm signal through the wall of omega-47 particles Braka has surrounded the Federation with and Ake, Vance, and Lura discuss the situation. My hopes for a Discovery cameo are dashed, as Ake asks if the spore drive can get around the barrier, but Vance puts the kibosh on that, as they can’t be sure it won’t also set off the minefield. (I’m glad it was at least brought up.) Credit: Paramount+ They figure out—with Anisha’s help, despite the fact that she’s as uninterested in looking at Vance’s face as she is Ake’s—that there’s a way to shut down the minefield, but Braka will have defended against it. They have to find Braka and shut it down from wherever he’s controlling it—which, knowing Braka, would have to be on or near his person. Then his person shows up in the form of a fleet that batters the shit out of the Athena saucer, beams aboard, and takes Ake and Anisha hostage. (The cadets hide in the airlock, using the same trick Jay-Den and Tarima used last week to hide their lifesigns.) Reno and the EMH then use holographic trickery, by plugging the EMH’s mobile emitter into the ship itself, creating the illusion of the ship’s destruction. (When he hands over the emitter, the EMH very quietly asks Reno to be gentle with it, as he’s had it for a thousand years now, though the technology itself is only two hundred years old, so I’m surprised he didn’t replace it with a newer model. Then again, sentiment is a thing…) Meanwhile, Braka takes Ake and Anisha to the atrium, which he’s captured and trashed, for his show trial. The portion of the plot that takes place on Athena, with Reno in charge of the cadets, is magnificent. Tig Notaro is—by her own admission—not an actor, and she’s been playing Reno as Tig Notaro + technobabble since she was introduced in Discovery’s “Brother.” Indeed, her backstory established in that episode—that she was stuck on the Hiawatha for ten months in a busted ship with a dead and dying crew—plays a big role here, particularly in a pep talk she gives Caleb, who is, for obvious reasons, a bit distracted by the fact that his mother that he finally found after fifteen years and the mentor he’s come to care about have both been kidnapped by a shithead. Reno’s role as a teacher also remains prevalent, as she never passes up an opportunity for a teachable moment with the cadets. And Notaro absolutely nails it. After four seasons on Discovery and a season here, she’s turned into an actor, and brava to her. The folks on Athena have the usual Trek task of science-ing the shit out of things to solve the problem. Being plugged into the ship has given the EMH insight in how to bring down the minefield, but being plugged into the ship also mucked up his vocal matrix, so he’s talking nonsense. However, Jay-Den, Genesis, and SAM are able to work their way through said nonsense to figure out what he’s actually saying. (The episode’s title of “Rubincon” isn’t a typo for “Rubicon” as I feared, but one of the EMH’s nonsense words that actually means something important.) In the midst of that, we also get a nicely done resolution of the minor rift that SAM opened up last week between her and Genesis when the hologram announced that she was getting a single room next year. She views Genesis’ friendship with the previous iteration of SAM through a rather harsh lens, and Genesis has to convince her that that’s not the case, that Genesis values her friendship with SAM, not as her inferior but her equal. Kerrice Brooks and Bella Shepard play the scene beautifully, the former in particular continuing to show how SAM has changed by retconning a childhood into her life. Points also to Brooks and Robert Picardo, whose dynamic is completely different now, and totally a joyous father-daughter relationship. Credit: Paramount+ All the cadets get their moment to shine—Darem gets to do some nifty piloting, Genesis gets to be in charge and help figure stuff out, Jay-Den has the breakthrough regarding the EMH’s aphasia, Tarima is able to use her telepathic bond with Caleb to find Anisha and therefore also find Braka, and SAM is the one who implements the plan to shut down Braka’s minefield—but Caleb gets the most to do. I will give Sandro Rosta credit for being far less annoying in episode ten than he was in episode one, though he’s still the person in the cast I care the least about. However, the episode’s climax is Caleb showing up at the trial to testify. He gets Braka to let him do so by reminding him of his bullshit about democracy and openness and he should let Caleb speak freely if he really believes that. Unable to back off that without losing face, Braka lets him talk, which finally gives Caleb the opportunity to do something he hasn’t really had the time to do prior to this: tell his mother about his life for the last fifteen years in general and the last nine months in particular. Even more than being reminded that she was responsible for ending a life, this has a profound effect on Anisha. So does the next thing, as Ake figures something out. One of the sources of Braka’s animus against the Federation is that he claims that they fired upon the very poor strontium-mining world that he grew up on. Braka’s father made a weapon to fight back and the Federation’s retaliation all but destroyed the world. But Braka’s description of that retaliation sounds wrong to Ake, and she and Caleb—using science, of course—pick apart his story and make it clear that what really happened was that Braka’s father’s weapon went off prematurely and destroyed the world. At first I thought this was going to show Braka’s deception, but it’s more fundamental than that: Braka genuinely believed that it was the Federation. He was just a little kid at the time, but he hung onto that misunderstanding, refusing to think that his Daddy was responsible. On a show that has been all about young people growing into adults, the big bad proves that he never stopped being a little kid lashing out against the people he mistakenly thought were his enemy. By this time, Braka realizes that he’s losing his audience, so he plays his final card: setting off the minefield. However, Caleb’s delaying tactic has given SAM the time she needs to deactivate the mines, and then the fleet—which Vance had sitting and waiting at the edge of the minefield—shows up to take Braka prisoner. There are a couple of tropes here that are kind of annoying, ones that the Secret Hideout era have been guilty of far too often. One is tiresomely high stakes. This show in particular is best when the stakes aren’t high, and they’ve mostly stuck with that, but having Braka threaten the entire Federation is just ridiculous, and a contrivance so that our one ship with its spunky cadets will save the day. Another is director Olatunde Osunsanmi’s ridiculous need to having spouting flames everywhere, in this case on the trashed atrium for Braka’s show trial. But it’s still an effective finale. The bonds of the cadets have grown stronger, the Federation is saved, the Venari Ral are dealt a vicious blow, and Caleb and his mother are reunited. Anisha in the end admits that she kind of wishes that Caleb would go off with her, but she recognizes how good the Academy is for him. And they do get to spend the summer together and, best of all, they know where to find each other now. There’s a lot more to say about this episode and season, but I’ll save it for next week’s season review, from speculation on where they go from here in season two to the endless journeys of that poor Talaxian furfly.[end-mark] The post Adults These Days — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “Rubincon” appeared first on Reactor.

News Disclosure Day New Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day Discloses Very Little Perhaps we cannot yet handle the truth By Molly Templeton | Published on March 12, 2026 Screenshot: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Universal Pictures You’re just going to have to trust him on this one. “This summer everything will become clear,” says the text under the latest trailer for Steven Spielberg’s return-to-aliens new movie Disclosure Day. To be fair, Spielberg has earned some trust over the decades. But still! This new Disclosure Day trailer adds very little to the previous one. There’s a little girl who looks not real hanging out with animals. Josh O’Connor talking about the truth. Eve Hewson maybe being controlled by Colin Firth. Emily Blunt speaking in alien tongues. The unintentionally funniest thing here is the way the trailer is cut to make it seem like the entire world—people on airplanes, a group of nuns, you name it—are watching this random Kansas City morning show. That is clearly not what they’re actually watching. It’s an alien movie! They’re watching aliens! But the editing makes it seem otherwise. All of the text in the synopsis here is just repurposed lines from the film, one of which is a question about whether you would be frightened if you found out we’re not alone. Generally, the vibe here is every question/pop culture bit about aliens, smashed together and reshaped in a Spielbergian way. This trailer introduces Roswell as an element along with a “79-year terror campaign of lies” (as described by Colman Domingo). Everyone is very noble, except Colin Firth, who is playing both with and against type—or at least seems to be. Is he a villain? A government agent? A morally questionable scientist? Whoever he is, he’s got weird blue eyes and some dicey tech. Disclosure Day is written by David Koepp, whose resume includes the glorious (Jurassic Park) and the questionable (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). It’s based on a story by Spielberg, who, of course, directs. Consensus here at Reactor seems to be light skepticism with a dash of hope (and one person’s deep and abiding love for Josh O’Connor). We’ll find out the truth when the movie arrives in theaters June 12th.[end-mark] The post New Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s <i>Disclosure Day</i> Discloses Very Little appeared first on Reactor.