News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: When Bryan Fuller Makes a Movie, You Go See It Plus: Volcano Daughters and evil Santas. By Molly Templeton | Published on December 12, 2025 Photo: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Lionsgate Yes, it’s The Holiday Season, and never fear—even my Scroogey self can’t resist including one holiday viewing treat in this weekend’s recommendation. I have one holiday tradition, and it’s Finnish. Keep reading, and you’ll see. (Okay, okay, fine, I’m not actually that Scroogey. I do love a Christmas bar. Seriously. And sparkly lights of all denominations.) If you, like me, have a weird case of senioritis with this year—do we not all just want to lie on the ground for a few days at this point?—take heart: The solstice is only ten days away. The light will return. It can’t rain all the time. Get a warm beverage, call your reps, and curl up with a cozy blanket. There’s good stuff to watch, I promise. The Magicians Is Turning 10, Somehow? I recently rewatched the first four episodes of The Magicians, and holy shit did they hold up. There are ways in which they feel entirely Of An Era—the opening party scene being set to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend” is somehow hilarious, and not just because of the on-the-nose nature of the title—but the cast remains outstanding, the relationships precisely written, the setup with Eliza and the Dean tantalizing. The way Eliot says Quentin’s ridiculous name? Perfection. (I still don’t understand why Hale Appleman isn’t a major star.) And yet, somehow, due to the baffling passage of time, it’s been almost exactly ten years since the first episode premiered. It arrived on December 16, 2015—an inauspicious day for a series that went on to run for five years and still ended too soon. I feel like I just wrote my eulogy for its ending, and yet even that was five and a half years ago. I went into this series so skeptical, not least because people kept comparing it to my beloved Buffy, and yet by the time it was over, it was one of my absolute favorites. (Maybe even more so than Buffy, in the end.) Bless you, Sera Gamble and John McNamara, for understanding how to take the source material and make it more and different and bigger and punchier and funnier, and for finding that cast.  The Magicians is streaming on Prime, Tubi, and The CW. Dust Bunny: When Bryan Fuller Makes a Movie, You Go See It While Bryan Fuller just keeps talking about the projects he wants to revisit—Hannibal, Pushing Daisies—he also has new things in the works. Like, for instance, Dust Bunny, a film in which Mads Mikkelsen plays a hit man who is hired by his young neighbor to kill the monster under her bed. One gets the sense that things do not exactly go as planned. Along with Mikkelsen, the film stars an appealing power trio of actors: Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and Rebecca Henderson. IndieWire loved the pairing of Mikkelsen and his young co-star, Sophie Sloan, writing, “Mikkelsen, in one of the most tender performances of his career, and Sloan, whose expressive eyes stay impossibly wide for the duration of the film, craft an easy chemistry together, his mordant humor matching hers like a glove.” Sounds like just the thing for a holiday-season outing to the theater, no? “The Coca-Cola Santa is just a hoax”: It’s Rare Exports Season! It’s cold, it’s dark, people are shopping like their lives depend on it… this means it is time. Time to rewatch Rare Exports. The 2010 Finnish horror (sort of) comedy (definitely) went under the radar on initial release, but it has a passionate fanbase, and it often gets shown at indie theaters as a holiday treat. If this happens near you: GO. Look, this movie is less than 90 minutes long and stars the most charming child, who pads himself up with hockey gear in order to avoid being thrashed by a very un-jolly figure he is pretty sure is real. He is not wrong.  There’s a greedy American, a whole lot of naked elves, heart-warming hijinks, and a genuinely surprising ending. (There are also almost no female characters, which still bums me out a little.) Those who’ve watched director Jalmari Helander’s Sisu films will recognize those movies’ star, Jorma Tommila, in a rather different sort of role. (Helander also cast two of his Rare Exports stars in the peculiar Samuel L. Jackson action flick Big Game.) I have never had someone come back to me, after I recommended this movie, and tell me it wasn’t worth their time. If you want to take that as a challenge, go ahead. I mean it as the most sincere recommendation. Listen to the Ghost Girls: The Volcano Daughters If you’re looking for an excellent book from this year’s crop, Reactor’s reviewers (myself included) have a lot of recommendations for you. But reading doesn’t always neatly follow timelines, you know? And lately I find myself thinking a lot about an incredible novel from last year: Gina María Balibrera’s The Volcano Daughters, a novel which made me rethink my entire opinion about historical fiction. It’s never been my thing, I thought. Except maybe it is. Especially when there’s another layer to it. (I’ve loved more than one historical fantasy lately!) The Volcano Daughters is the story of two sisters coming of age in El Salvador—sisters whose childhoods were very different. One grew up with their soon-to-be dictator father; the other is brought to his side to serve as his oracle. Their friends, from their village, were not so lucky. But those girls, the ones who never got to grow up, they narrate this novel, a chorus of ghosts with attitude and wisdom. This book is vivid, rich, layered, mythic, and historical at once, and it’s a debut novel. I am so anxious to see what Balibrera does next! But if you haven’t read this, you’re in for a treat.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: When Bryan Fuller Makes a Movie, You Go See It appeared first on Reactor.

News Amazon New Kindle Feature Uses AI to Answer Questions About Books—And Authors Can’t Opt Out The new feature, called Ask this Book, is already drawing controversy and unanswered questions. By Molly Templeton | Published on December 12, 2025 Photo: Tatsuo Yamashita via Wikimedia Commons Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Tatsuo Yamashita via Wikimedia Commons At present, there are multiple cases in which authors are suing AI companies for scraping their works without payment or permission. While these legal battles have been going on, Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app—a feature that “lets you ask questions about the book you’re reading and receive spoiler-free answers,” according to an Amazon announcement. The company says the feature, which is called Ask this Book, serves as “your expert reading assistant, instantly answering questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow.” Publishing industry resource Publishers Lunch noticed Ask this Book earlier this week, and asked Amazon about it. Amazon spokesperson Ale Iraheta told PubLunch, “The feature uses technology, including AI, to provide instant, spoiler-free answers to customers’ questions about what they’re reading. Ask this Book provides short answers based on factual information about the book which are accessible only to readers who have purchased or borrowed the book and are non-shareable and non-copyable.” As PubLunch summed up: “In other words, speaking plainly, it’s an in-book chatbot.” Amazon did not answer PubLunch’s questions about “what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature was not answered, nor did they elaborate on the technical details of the service and any protections involved (whether to prevent against hallucinations, or to protect the text from AI training).” Perhaps most alarmingly, the Amazon spokesperson said, “To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out.” It also sounds as though authors and publishers were, for the most part, not notified of this feature’s existence. Amazon is already in the news this week for its flawed AI recaps of television shows. After a Fallout recap was “garbage filled with mistakes,” as io9 called it, the company paused the feature. A similar thing happened earlier this year with Amazon’s AI dubs for anime series. As PubLunch says of Ask this Book, “Many rightsholders and creators are likely not to want an in-book chatbot without their specific review and approval (or at all), and we expect that message will be getting delivered to publishers and Amazon loud and clear in the ensuing days. And many people would deem the outputs of generative AI analyzing a particular copyrighted work as the very embodiment of a derivative work (or simply a direct infringement).” Ask this Book is currently only available in the Kindle iOS app in the US, but Amazon says it “will come to Kindle devices and Android OS next year.”[end-mark] The post New Kindle Feature Uses AI to Answer Questions About Books—And Authors Can’t Opt Out appeared first on Reactor.

Books john varley Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025 Where to start reading — or rereading — Varley’s many series and stories. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on December 12, 2025 Comment 1 Share New Share John Varley has died, alas. For readers of my vintage, John Varley was a formative author. He drew on classic SF traditions but also embraced more contemporary concerns and trends. For example, he set his fiction in the Solar System as revealed by space probes, not in the Barsoomian planets of older SF. His settings featured newer tech and more forward-looking social mores1. Other authors had imagined space colonies; Varley imagined space colonies whose inhabitants were free to pursue self-actualization in quite unconventional ways. Varley’s fiction was well received, as a look at his ISFDB page should make clear. Many awards! It has been seven years since Varley’s most recent novel. Fame is fickle and younger readers may be unfamiliar with his works. For the Varley-curious, here follows a brief guide to his works, starting with the novels. Varley published three standalone novels and three series, as well as a cornucopia of stories (most of which are quite good and some of which are great). I will start with the standalone novels. Millennium (1983) Mistakes were made! Radiation-damaged, chemically mutated terrestrial humanity is doomed! Time travel offers an escape clause: viable colonists can be snatched just before the disasters in which history says they perished, and dispatched to the off-world colonies. It’s a perfect plan provided that none of the overworked teams responsible for doing the snatching make a fatal error, and as long as no investigators in the past prove all too canny. One slip and causality itself is imperiled. This book took a toll on Varley. Actually, it wasn’t so much the book as it was the terrible movie based on it, and the experience Varley had working on the movie. Someone, I don’t remember who, once compared working in Hollywood to placing one’s testicles in a vise and being handed a hundred dollars to endure until the pain became unbearable. Pre-Millennium Varley was a much more optimistic writer than he was after this dire experience. Mammoth (2005) A frozen mammoth is an amazing discovery, but not as amazing as the two human corpses next to it, one of whom is wearing what appears to be a modern wristwatch. Time travel seems implausible but what other explanations can there be2? It’s up to a billionaire scientist to work out what happened. You know, if I knew that some time traveller was going end up frozen in ice tens of thousands of years ago, the last thing I’d do is work on time travel. Let someone else look at an icesheet from the inside. Slow Apocalypse (2012) A well-meaning scientist successfully weans America off foreign oil through the simple expedient of an oil-destroying bioweapon. In less time than it takes to say “the sudden, brutal end of civilization,” the bioweapon spreads across the Earth, rendering all oil unusable and modern civilization as dead as a dodo. Screenwriter Dave Marshall lacks the necessary skills to keep himself and his family alive. Nevertheless, Dave is determined to try. Eight Worlds Aliens attack! Billions perish as terrestrial technology is suppressed! But that’s boring history to the protagonists of these books, who live long after the Invasion, on worlds overlooked by the Invaders. For these people, equipped with fantastically powerful technology, the post-Invasion era would be a golden age… if not for the need for plot. The Eight Worlds novels fall into two sets: (1) The Ophiuchi Hotline, written contemporaneously with the Eight Worlds short stories (which I will get to later) and (2) the three later Metal novels. Varley didn’t want to look at his old notes when he restarted the series after a long hiatus; as a result, there are many continuity glitches. I consider this a series with an asterisk. Perhaps not a series in the purest sense. The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) The Eight Worlds are cheerfully transhumanist (aided by alien information provided by the hotline mentioned in the title) but there are limits. Prior to the novel’s beginning, protagonist Lilo was arrested, tried, and condemned for a capital crime involving human DNA. The penalty is as final a death as the Eight Worlds can arrange. Survival is possible but at a price: Lilo is sentenced to work for a zealot whose determination to drive the Invaders out of the Solar System is in no way inhibited by the fact that the Invaders possess nigh-godlike power, while humans do not. Hotline marks Varley’s transition from writing mostly short fiction (where the money ain’t) to novels. IMHO, Hotline is a bit of a mess but at least it’s a very energetic mess, with several novels’ worth of ideas crammed into a slender 237 pages. Steel Beach (1992) After a long hiatus, Varley wrote three more Eight Worlds novels. They aren’t quite consistent with the first book and they are considerably more pessimistic. (Thanks, Millennium.) It makes sense to distinguish between Hotline and the last three books. It’s been two centuries since the Invasion, long enough for space-based humanity to have solved every existential problem… so why are so many people miserable? Plucky reporter Hildy Johnson discovers mounting evidence suggesting that something has gone very wrong with lunar civilization. Whether that’s something a civilization entirely dependent on artificial life-support can survive remains to be seen. The Golden Globe (1998) Kenneth “Sparky” Valentine is a talented actor of dubious morals whose endless peregrinations across the Solar System are driven in part by his disinclination to discuss with police precisely how his father died, and even more so by the relentless Charonese assassins who dog his heels. It’s not a sustainable life, but escape seems impossible. As revealed in flashbacks, Valentine comes by his profound flaws honestly, having had one of the most memorably awful fathers in science fiction. Irontown Blues (2018) After the Big Glitch, traumatized former cop Christopher Bach reinvented himself as a detective in the Philip Marlowe mold. Only problem: nobody on the Moon seems to need a PI, not even one with an adorable cybernetically enhanced dog like Sherlock. Bach is canny enough to realize that supposed client “Mary Smith” is lying about her name, and no doubt much more… but not the scale or purpose of her stratagems. The Gaean Trilogy This series comprises Titan (1979), Wizard (1980), and Demon (1984). They focus on former American astronaut Cirocco Jones and her troubled relationship with the moon-sized alien Gaea, who is both nigh-godlike and also barking mad. Titan (1979) The crew of the Ringmaster is delighted to discover a twelfth moon of Saturn. They are less delighted when on approach to the enigmatic object, Ringmaster is grabbed and dismantled and its crew kidnapped. Cirocco Jones wakes alone and naked inside what turns out to be an immense, living torus filled with a wonderous and diverse ecology. Finding her crewmates will not be easy3. Wizard (1980) Gaea offers humanity biotechnological miracles. Thus, where prudence might suggest avoiding or even destroying the 1,300-kilometer alien, humans prefer to trade with Gaea. Humans have nothing tangible to trade. Luckily, the bored god craves entertainment and humans are if nothing amusing. At least when prodded. It’s Jones’ unhappy lot to play intermediary between insufficiently prudent humans and a dubiously sane god. Demon (1984) Working for Gaea is sheer misery. Jones decides that the only way to free herself is to bring down Gaea. That may sound impossible but really, how hard could it to defeat a mad god? Note that Wizard was written before Millennium; Demon came out after Varley had been put through the Hollywood wringer. Hence Wizard is much more cheerful than its sequel, Demon. An interesting historical note: this series features many lesbians and bisexual women. That sort of inclusivity wasn’t often the case forty years ago. Unfortunately, these women seem to have been crafted to please a male gaze, but still may be of interest for those interested in LGBTQ+ representation in older SF. Just as an overall note, I should mention that not everything in Varley’s fiction has aged well, including the tendency of love interests to be alarmingly young, and readers may want to be aware of that along with the various merits of these works. Thunder and Lightning The Thunder and Lightning series is consciously retro, evoking the good old days when a single misunderstood genius could open up space, provide boundless cheap energy, and upend civilization… given only pluck, super-science, and a crew of teens. IMHO, it’s an attempt to emulate Heinlein4. Red Thunder (2003) An overlooked design flaw imperils Ares Seven, the first American expedition to Mars. The only way for help to reach the astronauts in time is for an inarticulate genius to invent an unprecedented space drive and for a collection of space-obsessed teens to kit-bash a spaceship together from spare parts. What are the odds of that succeeding? Red Lightning (2006) A generation after Red Thunder, Mars is a frontier no more, much to the distress of teen Ray Garcia-Strickland. What hope has he of interplanetary adventure? Be careful what you wish for: Ray gets all the excitement he could want when a relativistic object impacts Earth, endangering his terrestrial loved ones. Rolling Thunder (2008) This novel focuses on Ray’s daughter, a young Martian Navy lieutenant (who seems to be subtly modeled on Heinlein’s Podkayne). This younger Garcia-Strickland hates living on Earth. She hates dealing with the endless stream of Earthers who want to emigrate to Mars. The summons that calls her back to Mars is a welcome relief. The opportunity to venture on to Europa is even more promising… because neither Podkayne nor any other human suspects what’s waiting for humanity on Europa. Dark Lightning (2014) The starshipRolling Thunder sets out for the stars… only for Jubal, the man who gave humans cheap space and abundant power, to announce midtrip that the ship must halt mid-voyage or be destroyed. This proclamation sets in motion the inevitable fate of every generation ship: deep space mutiny! …Unless two plucky twins can somehow save the day. Superheroes (1995) In addition to the novels in the precis above and the short works I will discuss below, Varley edited a single anthology: Superheroes, co-edited with Ricia Mainhardt. I mention it for the sake of completeness, but it is an odd duck that I don’t think I ever reread—please chime in if you have! The Short Works As diverting as Varley’s novels could be, he made his mark as a short story writer. Unfortunately, such money as there is in writing is in novels. Thus, Varley pivoted to novels in the late 1970s. Despite the iron hand of the market, Varley still wrote an impressive body of short works. In fact, it’s to these short works I turn when I want to reread Varley. They are where I would recommend readers new to Varley should begin. The shorts are too numerous to go through story by story—ALTHOUGH I COULD!—but my favourites include “Options” (a study of the early days of on-demand gender change), “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” (a tale of holidays gone wrong, a frequent theme in early Varley), and “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)” (a short but memorable exploration of what atomic war could mean to you). A decade ago, I’d have advised readers new to Varley to snap up Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories, and The John Varley Reader, which between them5 had almost every Varley short work. Alas, while Reader is still in print, Robinson Crusoe does not appear to be. Used copies can be had but they don’t seem to be cheap. As I see it, new readers should keep their eye out for the two collections above or the older trio of collections, The Persistence of Vision (1978), The Barbie Murders (1980) AKA Picnic on Nearside (1984), and Blue Champagne (1986). The older collections appeared as mass market paperbacks in an era of vast print runs, and should be easy to track down. Or perhaps some publisher could release a comprehensive Varley collection. Hint, hint. It would be a fitting tribute. In the meantime, what are your favorites? Which novels or stories would you recommend to a first-time reader?[end-mark] In retrospect, those shiny futurist mores were merely 1970s hijinks with bigger tail fins. However, it was hard to notice that in the 1970s. Thank goodness that modern SF has finally settled on some truly timeless notions. Nothing written today will ever seem dated. ︎Yes, yes: spacemen from an exploded fourth planet is another explanation but not the correct one. ︎And in one case, undesirable. ︎Seriously? “Podkayne” isn’t already in my Word dictionary? ︎I can say this for Varley: there doesn’t seem to be much overlap in his contemporaneous collections. Varley wasn’t the sort of author to make readers buy the same story twice. ︎The post Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025 appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Pluribus Interview: Pluribus Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look In an interview with Reactor, Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan dishes on the fashion sense of the hive mind By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 12, 2025 Credit: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus raises a lot of questions. A lot. Those questions can vary from existential to more practical, such as how does a hive person decide what to wear when they wake up in the morning. Luckily for you, there’s a concrete answer to the latter question: “At that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots,” Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan told Reactor in an interview. Bryan also said that show creator Vince Gilligan “wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies.” Mission accomplished! Bryan also revealed details on Carol Sturka’s author look, her inspiration for Diabaté’s garb, as well as some cameos that may make you want to rewatch a certain scene. Read on for our full discussion, though be warned that this interview contains very mild spoilers from the first two episodes (and frankly, you’ll get more out of it if you’ve seen those two episodes before reading below). Credit: Apple TV This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. This must have been such a fun project. I would love to hear how it was pitched to you. When we wrapped on Better Call Saul, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified, just like when we wrapped on Breaking Bad, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified. So it first started off with crew members gossiping on set. We went on hiatus, and then I got a call. By that time, it was becoming clear that [show creator Vince Gilligan] was up to something. So he called me, and he goes, “Hey, Jen, so I got this thing, and Rhea [Seehorn] is gonna be our lead.” From there, we got a little bit more formal with it. We went to a meeting, and he basically pitched the draft of the project; that it was sci-fi, Rhea was going to be our lead, and it was going to have a global aspect to it. He was going to use actors from different parts of the world. At that time, the working title was Wycaro, which was named after the books that [Seehorn’s character, Carol,] wrote. It was going to be set in Albuquerque, but then it would go to other parts of the world. And I thought, “Vince is never going to leave Albuquerque. Maybe we go to another part of New Mexico that looks like another part of the world.” Well, to my surprise and delight, we ended up in the Canary Islands, and we ended up in northern Spain. He wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies. Credit: Apple TV You mentioned Vince said he didn’t want them to look like zombies, which makes sense having seen the show. Did he give you get any direction about what the hive was like? Or did you create a story for yourself about a hive person who wakes up in the morning, and sometimes they put on a TGI Friday’s outfit, sometimes they put on cycling gear? Vince gave me some movies to watch—there was a Kurosawa, and there was I Am Legend. And then, of course, because he said he didn’t want to be looking like zombies, I also wanted to watch what he didn’t want. So Walking Dead fell into that category. I decided that they were of hive mind; they did not have the luxury of personalizing their clothing. So what I pitched to [Gilligan] is that I reduced clothing to something that was surely not decorative, no adornment. It’s not going to show where you lived, globally. It’s not going to show your religion. It’s not going to show your status, whether you’re rich or middle class, a shoe shine guy or a CEO. It’s not going to show any of that. All of those messages that clothing transmits to people around you I’m going to strip away. And at that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots. They don’t care. Now why do you see different occupations represented, different walks of life? They got zapped in a moment when they were doing a thing: when they were waitressing at TGI Fridays, when they were delivering that package for DHL, when they were in the lab and doing night cleaning of the lab. It had to look real in that in that moment when they were frozen and made that transition. If they were a surgeon in a hospital, they would have had on scrubs and a surgical cap. And then in with all of that, then you get the more ordinary, nondescript clothing that we all know, and also clothing might be coming from another part of the world, so it could be a Scottish kilt that might be worn with a Hawaiian shirt. They don’t recognize those boundaries. They’re gone. Image: Apple TV Can you talk about deciding what Carol would wear for the pilot? I’m sure the yellow leather jacket has come up in conversations. The first look that I had for her was on her book tour. So she had to have that middle-aged romance novelist, kind of a vibe. Vince had suggested that I look at some of the well-known romance, pulp fiction novelists, like Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland, those women going back who were really prolific in that genre of writing. I remember pitching to Vince that it should look relatable to her book-signing audience, her fans, but slightly elevated so they could still relate to her, but look up to her. So she wasn’t over the top, but just in that sweet spot where [the fans] could think, if they had a little money, they could probably buy a suit like that. Or maybe they’ll go to the hairdresser next time and go, can I get my hair cut like that? Then, when she sheds that facade and is now her real self… I knew that she was going to have a lot of action, and we needed to add a jacket, and so I decided it needed to be a leather jacket, and it needed to be a bit cropped so that she could do all of those moves. So I came up with the idea of a hybrid cropped jacket that I designed. It was hybrid of a motor jacket, but not quite. And I decided on the color because I knew those scenes were going to be shot in the dead of night, very dark, and I needed her to pop. And also, the yellow is the color of caution. So I would like to think that subliminally, it might have sent a message to the viewers that something is slightly unsettling. Credit: Apple TV I’d also love to talk about the other characters who haven’t joined. Diabaté [played by Samba Schutte] must have been a fun one. He was one of my faves. Samba Schutte is from Mauritania. And I realized that he was quite a dandy, and that was a perfect opening for me to use one of my favorite groups of people in clothing and costume. In the Congo, which they still do this in Brazzaville, there is a group of men called Sapuers; they are modern day dandies that dress to the nines in top designers. They may be a plumber and live in a little tiny house, but when he steps out of his little house in his not-so-affluent neighborhood, these dudes are off the chain. And I told Vince about these guys, and I said, it’s perfect, because it is African modern-day culture. It goes back to the colonial times when they would copy the French colonialists in their garb and make fun of them. And then it got elevated. So when he gets off the plane, what else would I put him in but an African-print tuxedo? Credit: Apple TV And what about Zosia [played by Karolina Wydra]? Zosia was very interesting. She was, for me, the most transformative within her storyline. At first, we’re not sure where she comes from, except we figured out that is seems to be North Africa, which it is, Tangier, Morocco. And so we see her in traditional Northern African clothing, and she has that on, and it’s like a symphony, she just moves from one environment into the other, but her clothing has to fit into each one. So she flies that plane. And that was Karolina taxiing. I mean, the pilot was off camera in case, but that was her on the runway. And then she lands in Albuquerque, and strips off because she knows she’s now on the real mission, which is to meet this woman, and have her feel comfortable so that [Carol] Sturka doesn’t immediately kick her out her backyard. So she walks into the shower, and the three people that attend to her to shower are me, Cheri Montesanto, our makeup artist, and Trish Almeida, our hair stylist. And I think that was very considerate of Vince, because he wanted this to be real, but he wanted Karolina to feel very comfortable with the people around. So we got our little cameos. New episodes of Pluribus premiere on Apple TV on Fridays.[end-mark] The post Interview: <i>Pluribus</i> Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Fallout Everything You Need to Know Before Watching Fallout Season 2 It’s the end of the world as we know it. Also, Fallout is returning. Here’s everything you need to know ahead of Season 2. By Matthew Byrd | Published on December 12, 2025 Credit: Amazon Prime Video Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Amazon Prime Video The first season of Amazon Prime’s Fallout series proved to be one of the most surprising video game TV shows so far. It was never going to be easy to adapt the Fallout games. Known for their deep lore that revolves around the various factions competing for dominance in a post-apocalyptic wasteland built around Americana philosophies and advanced retrofuturistic technology, those games can be… a lot to take in. However, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner (as well as executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy) have done a remarkable job of adapting that world to a new medium and assembling one of the best casts on television in the process. Yet, the Fallout TV series remains… a lot to take in. So much so, in fact, that there is a good chance that you’ve already forgotten what exactly happened in the show’s first season, even if you remember many of the broad strokes. With that in mind, here’s a (hopefully) helpful breakdown of nearly everything you need to remember before starting Fallout season two on December 17. Who Caused the Apocalypse & Why Credit: Amazon Prime We all have theories about what will cause the end of the world. My guess? Pigeons. They ain’t strutting over nothing. But we eventually learn that Fallout’s apocalypse was caused by a group of executives associated with the Vault-Tec corporation. Well, at least they played a significant hand. On October 23, 2077, Vault-Tec executives and other corporate associates (including Hank MacLean, Barb Howard, and Robert House) approved of the bombing of several American cities to prevent a peace deal from ending the environment of fear they profited from. For what it’s worth, some speculate that the Vault-Tec executives only allowed the bombings to occur rather than dropped the nukes themselves. Regardless, the United States seemingly blamed China, the U.S. retaliated, and the world effectively ended. Interestingly, this revelation represents a bit of a deviation from Fallout’s video game lore. “Who dropped the bombs?” has long been one of the big, intentionally unanswerable questions in the Fallout games. While there were always theories Vault-Tec was one of the culprits (and other theories that suggest Vault-Tec played a less direct role in nuclear attacks we see in the show than what the series implies), the decision to suggest a definitive origin to the apocalypse is one of the show’s biggest and most controversial alterations so far. The True Purpose of the Vaults Credit: Amazon Prime We later learn that the Vault-Tec vaults aren’t primarily intended to save people. Most were designed to be elaborate social experiments. While we’ve seen few of those vaults in the show so far, much of the series revolves around the experiments conducted in Vaults 31, 32, and 33. Skipping ahead a bit, we eventually learn that Vault 31 is filled with what are referred to as Bud’s Buds: cryogenically frozen Vault-Tec executives and associates hand-chosen by Vault-Tec Vice President Bud Askins to repopulate and rule the world. Vault 32 and 33, meanwhile, are essentially elaborate breeding facilities for those executives. The executives are periodically unfrozen and elected to lead those vaults to create what Bud believes will be a new generation of superior global leaders. The residents of Vault 32 and 33 were largely unaware of this arrangement for quite some time (save for the aforementioned Vault-Tec employees). They essentially live the life presented in Vault-Tec propaganda. That dynamic changed when the residents of Vault 32 learned the truth and revolted. Their revolution failed, and the vault residents were murdered. The vault fell into a state of ruin when an outsider named Lee Moldaver managed to lead a team of raiders into it, pose as the vault’s residents, and take the place over. Lucy MacLean Leaves Vault 33 Credit: Amazon Prime Shortly before the start of the show, Hank MacLean is unfrozen and chosen to lead Vault 33. He eventually marries a Vault 33 resident named Rose and has two kids: a son named Norm and a daughter named Lucy. Hank told the kids that their mother later died during a plague. The show properly begins in the year 2296 (about nine years after the events of the last chronological Fallout game, Fallout 4) with Lucy’s arranged marriage to a Vault 32 resident named Monty. To put it lightly, Lucy’s arranged marriage to Monty does not go well. The Vault 32 raiders reveal their deception during an attack shortly after Lucy’s wedding. The attack results in the deaths of various vault dwellers and raiders as well as the abduction of Lucy’s father. Lucy’s training helps her survive the attack. Unaware of her father’s true nature, Lucy ignores the Vault leaders’ orders and leaves Vault 33 to track her father across the wasteland. Lucy soon learns that the outside world isn’t quite as desolate as she envisioned, though the pockets of civilization that remain largely consist of desperate survivors, monsters, and humans turned into “ghouls” by years of radiation exposure. Lucy interacts with several of those wasteland wanderers during her travels, though there are three worth highlighting. The first is a scientist named Siggi Wilzig who tries to convince Lucy to return to Vault 33. Ignoring his warnings, Lucy later encounters Wilzig in a settlement called Filly, where he is attacked by a bounty hunter known simply as The Ghoul. With the help of a Brotherhood of Steel soldier named Maximus, Lucy survives the Ghoul’s attack and escorts Wilzig out of town. However, Wilzig has been mortally wounded and makes a rather odd dying request to Lucy. He wants her to cut off his head. Why? Well, Wilzig was a scientist for The Enclave: a formerly powerful group that used ancient technology to tighten its grip on the wanderers of the wasteland. We later learn that Wilzig escaped an Enclave facility with research into a kind of cold fusion technology that could, among other things, power the wasteland once more. His head contains a device that could enable the use of that technology. Wilzig wants his head (and the device) delivered to Lee Moldaver. Yes, the same Lee Moldaver who kidnapped Lucy’s father. Before we get to that, you need to know a bit more about the other two figures Lucy encountered in Filly: The Ghoul and Maximus. A Ghoul By Any Other Name Credit: Amazon Prime Through a series of flashbacks and exposition sequences that make up quite a bit of the show, we eventually learn that The Ghoul’s real name is Cooper Howard. Before the nuclear bombs went off, Howard was a famous actor primarily known for his work in westerns. His life took an unexpected (though lucrative) turn when he began appearing in Vault-Tec propaganda promotional pieces. Why the shift? Well, it was largely orchestrated at the behest of his wife, Barb. Yes, the same Barb Howard who helped arrange the attack on the United States. Cooper only learned the truth about Barb (or some of it) shortly before the bombs dropped. During that attack, Howard lost track of both Barb and their daughter, Janey. Afterwards, he turned into a ghoul. Cooper begins taking on work as a bounty hunter to acquire rare doses of a serum that will prevent him from turning feral and losing all sense of himself. He gradually earns a reputation as one of the most feared figures in the wasteland. Eventually, The Ghoul is tasked with hunting down Siggi Wilzig. That job, and subsequent encounter with Lucy, begin a new chapter for The Ghoul’s life (or what remains of it). Maximus & the Brotherhood of Steel Credit: Amazon Prime As for Maximus, he’s a squire in the Brotherhood of Steel: a paramilitary group that utilizes advanced technology to operate as morally ambiguous peacekeepers in the wasteland. They will help other, non-mutated humans, though they tend to keep most of the real power to themselves. Maximus (his real name is unknown) joined the Brotherhood when his hometown of Shady Sands was destroyed by a nuclear explosion when he was just a child. Things didn’t get much better for Maximus from there. He’s regularly mistreated by the other members of the Brotherhood and only becomes a squire through suspicious circumstances involving the injury of another Brotherhood member. Maximus undergoes various humiliations while squiring for a Brotherhood Knight named Titus on a mission to find and retrieve the runaway scientist Siggi Wilzig. However, fate takes a strange turn when Titus is killed by a mutated bear known as a Yao Guai. Opting to further his deception, Maximus steals Titus’ power armor, effectively assumes his identity, and continues the mission to find Wilzig in the hopes that retrieving him will win the favor of the Brotherhood. Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus Unite Over a MacGuffin Credit: Amazon Prime Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus’ roads all wind in, out, and around each other after Lucy acquires Wilzig’s head. Quite a few things happen to each and all of them after that moment, buy here’s a brief breakdown of the need-to-know events: Lucy and the Ghoul travel together briefly and learn a little more about each other. They slowly develop a begrudging respect for one another, despite some hostilities (such as The Ghoul cutting off one of Lucy’s fingers). Yet, Lucy decides to leave The Ghoul with doses of the serum he requires to let him know she will never become the monster he is. The head goes on a bit of a journey at this point. It gets eaten by a lake monster, only to be “rescued” by Maximus and his newly dispatched squire, Thaddeus. Thaddeus ends up stealing the head from Maximus when he learns that Maximus is posing as a Brotherhood Knight. From there, Thaddeus goes on a series of misadventures that result in him slowly turning into a ghoul. Maximus ends up stealing the head back from Thaddeus further down the road when Thaddeus contracts a debilitating radiation disease. Maximus gives the head back to Lucy. Lucy and Maximus also kiss, which could be significant later. The Ghoul goes on a bit of a bender, with many of his scenes coming via flashbacks to his pre-apocalypse life. He eventually takes a wandering dog (which he refers to as Dogmeat, though it’s actually CX404: an Enclave experiment who served as Siggi Wilzig’s secret pet) as a companion. He also learns that Moldaver is held up at Griffith Observatory. The biggest event during this stretch of the show sees Lucy and Maximus team-up to find the head after Thaddeus steals it. They end in a different vault (Vault 4), which is largely populated by mutants. Maximus quickly adapts to the vault lifestyle, though Lucy is suspicious of the vault’s inhabitants. While snooping around, she finds images of the raider Moldaver. Through a series of reveals, we learn that Moldaver was actually a Vault-Tec employee before the apocalypse. She is the one who convinced Howard Cooper to spy on the company and his wife by telling him about Vault-Tec’s attempts to suppress her research into cold fusion. Moldaver manages to survive the nuclear weapon attacks and live until the modern age. She helps to form the settlement of Shady Sands: a relatively peaceful place in the wasteland. There, she meets an escapee from Vault 33 named Rose MacLean. Yes, Lucy’s mother. After the nuclear attack on Shady Sands, some of the settlement’s survivors help populate Vault 4, which is now being run by the mutant hybrids who used to be part of the vault’s secret experiment but now simply want a peaceful lifestyle. Eventually, Lucy and Maximus are gently banished from Vault 4 and make their way to Griffith Observatory. Before we join them, there is another group of vault dwellers you need to know about. Oh Yeah, What’s Going on In Vault 33? Credit: Amazon Prime Much of the time we spend with the remaining inhabitants of Vault 33, which includes Lucy’s brother, Norm, is spent learning about the vault’s secret history and its relation to Vaults 31 and 32. However, a few other significant developments do occur. Following Hank’s capture and Lucy’s disappearance, Vault 33 is left leaderless. The role of vault overseer eventually goes to Betty Pearson, another former Vault-Tec executive from Vault 31. Among other things, Pearson decides to hold a “lottery” to determine which residents will stay in Vault 33 and which will be sent to repopulate and resettle the cleaned-up Vault 32. Betty’s motivations and methods aren’t entirely explained (though we can assume they are nefarious, given the absolute everything else we’ve seen in the show). Norm, meanwhile, ends up uncovering most of Vault 33’s secrets via some snooping. He ends the season trapped in Vault 31’s cryogenic freezing chamber by the preserved brain of Bud Askins. Askins tells Norm that the only way to survive is to enter one of the cryogenic tubes. However, we don’t know if he decides to do so. The other Vault 33 resident of note is Steph Harper. Steph lost an eye during the raider attack and gradually takes on a leadership role. She is eventually named overseer of Vault 32 during the migration period, though it’s not clear what her motivations are, how much she knows, or what kind of leader she will be. The Showdown at Griffith Observatory Credit: Amazon Prime The showdown at Griffith Observatory is visually highlighted by a massive battle between the Brotherhood of Steel and members of the New California Republic: a group that has tried to rebuild civilization but have had their efforts thwarted (to say the least) by Vault-Tec and other factions. Now led by Moldaver, they fight to preserve her vision for a better wasteland run by some semblance of democracy. What happens inside the Observatory is far more interesting. Unaware of much of what has occurred, Lucy offers Moldaver the head (and the technology it contains) in exchange for her captured father. Moldaver accepts but first tells Lucy who Hank really is. She reveals that Hank is not only a Vault-Tec executive but that he was the one who ordered the nuclear strike on Shady Sands. In the process, he made Maximus an orphan, murdered thousands, and revealed his desire to rule the world in his (and Vault-Tec’s) image. Lucy’s mother technically survived the attack, though the nuclear blast turned Rose into a feral ghoul that Moldaver has chained up near her at the observatory. Hank escapes his imprisonment but runs into The Ghoul. The Ghoul wants Hank to tell him where his wife and daughter are. Before he can find out, though, Hank steals some Brotherhood of Steel’s armor and flees. The Ghoul asks Lucy to help him find her father, and Lucy agrees. First, though, she kills the feral ghoul that was her mother. Maximus arrives just in time to be knocked out by Hank and, more importantly, to see Moldaver use the cold fusion tech to activate a new power source. It works, and the power source lights up some of the nearby areas. Other Brotherhood members arrive to find Maximus at the controls of the power station and in control of the powerful technology. They assume he’s the hero responsible for all their newfound fortune. We end the season with Lucy and The Ghoul chasing Hank across the wasteland. A post-credits scene reveals Hank’s destination: the ruins of New Vegas. What he intends to do there remains a mystery. However, we know from the games that New Vegas was the domain of Robert House: the RobCo Industries founder who was also at least partially responsible for the first nuclear bombs being dropped. The Most Important Things to Remember Before You Watch Fallout Season 2 Credit: Amazon Prime Like I said, that is a lot to remember. However, here are the key plot threads to consider ahead of Fallout season 2: The Ghoul, Lucy, and Dogmeat are chasing Hank across the wasteland and into New Vegas. The Ghoul is searching for his family, and Lucy is looking for revenge and answers. Dogmeat is down for whatever. Hank’s motivations are murkier. It’s likely that he wants something that Robert House had, though it’s not yet clear what that may be. Maximus is now one of the leaders of the Brotherhood of Steel. He seems interested in using the Brotherhood’s newfound power to do some good, though the circumstances of his ascent put him in a delicate position. The power source and cold fusion technology the Brotherhood controls is now one of the most important things in the wasteland. It will undoubtedly become the centerpiece of future faction conflicts. The New California Republic remain players in the Wasteland, though they are at odds with the Brotherhood despite Maximus’ rise. They have a long road ahead if they’re going to try to make the wasteland a better place. Thaddeus is seemingly still alive, though he is clearly turning into a ghoul and will not be welcomed back by the Brotherhood. Still, he has a story to tell and secrets to share. The residents of Vault 33 and Vault 32 remain largely docile and unaware of what has been happening in the world outside. They’re clearly being set up for something unsavory (especially the Vault 32 dwellers), though it’s not clear what the grand plans are. We don’t know what’s left of The Enclave, though they’ve clearly fallen out of power since their heyday years before the start of the show. Still, remnants of their faction could play a part in future events. Norm MacLean is trapped in Vault 31. We are left to assume he enters one of the cryogenic chambers, we have not seen him do so yet. The Vault 4 residents are seemingly safe and sound once more. It’s not clear what, if any, role they will play next season. Got all of that? Good. Would you be so kind as to explain it to me?[end-mark] The post Everything You Need to Know Before Watching <i>Fallout </i>Season 2 appeared first on Reactor.