Movies & TV A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Prophecy and Revelations in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: “The Squire” As always, the Targaryens are basically Westeros’ messiest telenovela. By Tyler Dean | Published on February 2, 2026 Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The midway point of the season has arrived, and it comes with major revelations and a set-up for what the rest of the season will look like. Also, as a heads up, there is a clearly marked section in today’s explainer that gets into some very, very big spoilers that go beyond the scope of this week’s episode. (It’s only that specific section, though, so please take that in mind when you read ahead.) Let’s get into it.  The Title Tonight’s title, “The Squire,” feels pretty self-explanatory insofar as it centers on the ultimate reveal of Egg’s identity. It’s a bit of a misdirect as well, seeing as Egg is, of course, not a squire at all.  Cracking the Egg This show’s big spoiler was always going to be Egg’s true identity. There are plenty of other major plot points and bits of intrigue that will unfold this season, but the main thing that a book reader might be able to ruin for someone who’s going into the show cold is now out of the bag, and we can speak about Egg plainly. It is interesting, however, that the show did not take great pains to hide this fact. Some of my non-book reading friends guessed his identity after the first episode based on the fact that he shaved his head. After all, on House of the Dragon, Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) shaves his head to hide his telltale Valyrian hair. Ironically, that is a plot point that was invented for HotD that was likely taken from Egg in the original Hedge Knight novella.  But the Egg as Prince Aegon reveal is great: The show underscores it with some truly bonkers choral music to try and lend it a telenovela-level of seriousness and, as in the book, it comes in the moment when Dunk’s life must be saved and the fantasy of playing a squire needs to end. This little twist has always felt the most like a fairytale of Martin’s plot lines—the Prince in disguise revealing himself to save the life of the chivalrous peasant. I’ll talk a little bit more about it in my more spoiler-y section, but for those of you who wish to remain unaware, all the tropes here speak to this Golden Age of Westeros—a time when the sorts of things that happen in fairy tales (or less grim fantasy novels) are possible.  I also love that the show has preserved the distinction between “my lord” versus the commoner’s version, “m’lord,” which was introduced all the way back in season 2 of Game of Thrones when Tywin Lannister immediately recognizes Arya as a noble for getting it wrong. Egg consistently says “my lord.” Greatness and Madness Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO This episode also reveals Prince Aerion Brightflame (Finn Bennett) as one of the Targaryens who has teetered over the edge into incest-born madness. Martin uses all sorts of ways to describe and discuss this aspect of the family, but the original show coined the most succinct description: “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin.” Aerion is, according to Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) “vain and cruel,” but the show also hints more thoroughly at his madness when he breaks Tanselle’s fingers for the crime of portraying a knight who slays a puppet dragon. In the books, they take this a step farther, with Aerion believing (as some Targaryens do throughout history) that he is actually a dragon in human form.  It’s also worth noting how tenuous the peace is here. In the book (told in close third person through Dunk’s eyes) we never really clock the reaction of the smallfolk to Aerion intentionally killing Ser Humphrey Hardyng’s horse, but the show makes it clear that this makes him deeply unpopular with the crowd. Baelor is doing his best PR spin by letting Aerion dangle right up until the point when the Kingsguard needs to intervene. While the Blackfyres are dead or imprisoned or exiled, lots of Westerosi houses had fought for them, wanting to see them ascend and replace the main branch of the family. Raymun Fossoway also illustrates these looming tensions when he excoriates the Targaryens as “incestuous aliens” who destroyed Westerosi culture.  Down the Royal Line Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO (Spoilers!) This section is going to be an interesting one, seeing as it might spoil things from future seasons of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or even for House of the Dragon or other shows in the Westeros TV universe. If you don’t want to be spoiled for major events—seriously—skip ahead to the Odds and Ends section below. So: Egg grows up to be Aegon V (Aegon the Unlikely), King of Westeros and the great-grandfather of Daenerys Targaryen (though Game of Thrones implies that there is a missing generation and Egg is Dany’s grandfather). Dunk does indeed achieve lasting fame as Ser Duncan the Tall, who becomes something of a legendary figure as the head of Egg’s Kingsguard and one of his closest confidantes.  The reason I feel compelled to write about this here is twofold. First of all, the story of Aegon V and Ser Duncan as older men ruling over the very last era of Targaryen peace and prosperity before the end of the dynasty is deeply important in Song of Ice and Firelore. Aegon’s attempts to hatch dragon eggs at the Targaryen winter palace, Summerhall, led to a conflagration that killed him, Ser Duncan, and many other Targaryens, placing his younger son Jaehaerys II on the throne and paving the way for Aerys II (the Mad King) and eventually Daenerys herself. We know something magical happened that night. It was, incidentally, the same night that Rhaegar, Dany’s potentially prophesied brother (and Jon Snow’s father), was conceived and it may have played a key role in why Dany’s dragon eggs were able to hatch in the first place.  This is a story that the TV version in GoT largely eschewed but that HotD, with its focus on prophecy and “the Prince That Was Promised,” remains deeply interested in. Martin hasn’t fully revealed what happened at Summerhall in the books, and when and if he finishes The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring it will likely play an important role in understanding ASoIaF as a whole. But weirdly, in the TV universe, there isn’t really a place to tell this story. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the Dunk and Egg novellas which, as of this time, finish decades before the tragedy of Summerhall and at least a decade before Egg becomes King. I doubt this show will depict those events. Maybe a future series, not yet announced, will delve into that era of Westerosi history, but it seems unlikely. As a result, I’m not sure how these revelations will ever come to light in the HBO version. Showrunner Ira Parker has said he’d like to cover the entirety of Aegon’s life, but that was in a statement that said it would take 15 seasons (30 years at the current rate) so let’s call that a slightly facetious plan.  The second reason Egg’s ultimate fate is worth discussing is because this episode does literally foretell it. The fortune teller they encounter tells Egg that he “shall be king” and “die in hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes. And all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.” It’s hard to tell if this is meant as an Easter egg for book readers or if it’s something they plan to follow up on. If it’s the latter, it would have to come to extreme flash forwards or prophetic visions that don’t seem like they are part of this show’s general ethos. Though, it’s worth noting that the show did include Daeron’s dragon dream in the first episode, when he tells Dunk that he saw a dragon fall upon him.  We are left in a strange situation where I don’t know if any of the later history of Aegon V and Ser Duncan the Tall will matter for this show (or another) but, because the original GoT did not fold those particular bits of the lore into its mysteries (and remember that, especially in the last few seasons, showrunners Benioff and Weiss dropped tons of plot points in their desire to end it quickly) it seem likely that the end of the story won’t be told in a meaningful way. It’s also interesting insofar as The Hedge Knight was written in 1998, concurrent with the second main series novel, A Clash of Kings, and predates a lot of the series’ more mystical backstory. In later Dunk and Egg novellas, it becomes much more important that we are watching not only the story of how Egg becomes one of the best kings Westeros has ever seen, but also one of the most consequential to the entire mythos of the series.  Okay. Rant over. Resuming spoiler-free discussion now!  Odds and Ends Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO I really love the show’s weirdo comedy bits. Opening on that long take of Egg only to have him whicker like a horse before smash cutting to the title was fantastic.  Ser Robyn Rhysling (William Houston) makes his first appearance in this episode. In the novella, Egg simply tells Dunk that Ser Robyn lost his eye to a splinter from a broken lance in a previous tourney. Here, we get a cutaway to him riding down his opponent with his eye dangling from the socket. It’s a great bit of visual grotesquerie that drives home the point of the story: Robyn is driven and single-minded; the “maddest knight in the Seven Kingdoms.” It’s also good to hear his house name pronounced aloud. I’ve been pronouncing it “Riesling” (like the wine) for the last twenty-five years.  We get more backstory about the First Blackfyre Rebellion (which I went into detail about in last week’s explainer) in the form of a dirty schoolyard rhyme that Egg sings. This is not one of the songs from Martin’s source material (as a fair amount of the diegetic music in GoT, HotD, and AKot7K’s tends to be) but a delightful original creation that seems to take inspiration from “Miss Susie” or “Bang Away Lulu”— the playground rhyming songs that cheekily walk up to the line of swearing before swerving into the next verse and a more innocuous word. I’m here for it! We get a brief shot of a joust between Humfrey Hardyng and Humfrey Beesbury during this episode. It’s really just a backdrop for Dunk and Egg to have a fun back and forth, but in the novella, this is a grueling and lengthy match that gets memorialized as “the Battle of Humfrey” later in the tourney. Again, always great to see the show nod to things they had to cut for time. The subplot about Plummer asking Dunk to challenge Ser Androw Ashford as a way of easing Lord Ashford’s beleaguered coffers is new to the show. That said, it does follow some general themes in The Hedge Knight. First, that this is an era of uneasy peace when the shadow of war has everyone worrying about an imminent shift in the balance of power and scrambling to maintain the status quo. Second, it’s another great illustration of the effect that Dunk has on people—every good-hearted person that meets him wants, in their own way, to reward him for his honesty and bravery. I like expanding Plummer’s character to give him this bit of courtly intrigue.  Aerion’s armor and his horse’s barding are great and very book-accurate. I will never tire of how these shows’ costumers are given enthusiastic carte blanche when it comes to decking out Targaryens in improbable dragon armor. It’s worth noting that every scene of Ser Lyonel Baratheon up to this point has not been in the original novella. The show loves Lyonel Baratheon and is working as hard as it can to shove him into every episode. I think it’s better for it.  When Dunk talks to Egg about his father, he mentions a pot shop in Flea Bottom that made “brown.” In Martin’s books, “bowls of brown” is the euphemism for perpetual stews made with all sorts of unsavory meats. They also serve as convenient cover for disposing of dead bodies, with royal spies and assassins selling the corpses of those who need to disappear to the proprietors of those shops. Grim stuff.  Bennett’s performance as Aerion is great. The temptation to play him as unhinged and frothing is probably high, but he lends him an unnatural calm even after being kicked in the teeth by Dunk. He’s fascinated at the idea of someone standing up to him and curious about what comes next. That seems like an infinitely scarier depiction. In Conclusion What do you think? If you are new to this tale, did you see the reveal about Egg’s identity coming? Are you excited for what lies ahead? If you read my long spoiler section, do you think that the show will ever catch up to the events of the far future? Bloodraven, anyone? And how about those breakfast sandwiches? Tell me all about it in the comments![end-mark] The post Prophecy and Revelations in <i>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms</i>: “The Squire” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Marvel Cinematic Universe Wonder Man Brings a Cozy Hollywood Bromance to the MCU Wonder Man offers the freshest take on the MCU since WandaVision By Ben Francisco | Published on February 2, 2026 Image: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Marvel Studios A comics fan since age seven, as a kid I was a big fan of the West Coast Avengers—a scrappy LA-based wing of the team that I found more compelling than the original—and which featured Wonder Man as a core part of the line-up. I’ve also become a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) but have felt the quality has been somewhat uneven in recent years. So I went into Wonder Man miniseries tentatively excited that it might offer something different from the standard MCU fare. It did. Wonder Man is the most distinctive MCU entry since WandaVision and among the highest quality Disney+ shows that Marvel has produced. It’s a character-driven story that focuses on the Hollywood corner of the MCU and on the rewards and tensions of one budding friendship. (Spoilers ahead, particularly for the first few episodes.) When the series opens, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a struggling actor. He gets written out of American Horror Story for thinking too much about his character’s choices and deferring too little to the director’s vision. He returns home to a small apartment, a stack of unpaid bills, and a girlfriend who’s moving out. Simon copes with his rising stress by going to an old movie theater for a screening of Midnight Cowboy. There he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), best known for masquerading as the terrorist the Mandarin (see Iron Man 3), though Simon recognizes him from a more obscure television appearance. The two of them connect, geeking out about film and stage, and Trevor drops that he has an audition later that day for a remake of Wonder Man—a 1980s superhero movie that Simon loved as a kid, and which he thinks could be just the break he needs.  Auditions for Wonder Man have already closed, but Simon maneuvers his way around his agent (X Mayo) to get an audition. There, he runs into Trevor again, who gives him some impromptu advice about getting out of his head and into his body. Ultimately, both feel good about their auditions and continue bonding about their craft over drinks. By episode two, we learn that Trevor isn’t being nice to Simon just to help out a fellow thespian. When he had first returned to Los Angeles, he was picked up by the Department of Damage Control. Since he never completed his prison sentence (see Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), they give him an ultimatum: go back to prison or help apprehend Simon Williams, a superpowered actor who they claim is dangerous. Trevor chooses the latter. Meanwhile, Simon’s anxiety builds to the point where he causes a small explosion in his apartment, blowing out the windows and leaving a giant dent in one wall. Simon is concealing his powers, since Hollywood has banned superpowered individuals from performing. The heart of the series is the bromance between Simon and Trevor, and the show works brilliantly because it stays tightly focused on their relationship. Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley have amazing chemistry, and pretty much any time they’re on-screen together it’s immensely satisfying. They’re both adept at one of the hardest challenges for an actor: playing an actor performing a part within the show. In the hands of lesser talents, all the meta-acting might get dull, but Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley make every audition and rehearsal fascinating to watch. The two characters’ shared love of their craft is earnest and endearing. One of the most memorable scenes is when the two of them are hanging out and spontaneously start reciting their favorite monologues for each other. There’s also a sweet note of mentorship in Trevor’s coaching of Simon—often offering advice that actually seems useful.  Some of the best MCU stories have had a close friendship at their core, often between two male characters: Loki and Mobius, Bucky and Cap (both Caps!), Tony Stark and Peter Parker. Even in this good company, Simon and Trevor stand out—perhaps because the two characters are so profoundly lonely and so quickly come to depend on each other. And while other MCU bromances have been set against the backdrop of fighting to save the universe, the world, or at least the neighborhood, Wonder Man consistently stays grounded at the character level. Simon and Trevor are just trying to catch a break. Wonder Man is not only character-driven, it also has very few fight scenes for an MCU show. The stakes are low but the show is consistently suspenseful because the characters want things so badly that you can’t help but want them to succeed. The down-to-earth tenor might be an adjustment for some MCU fans but also could enhance its appeal for some audiences in an age when “cozy” is trending across multiple genres. Wonder Man is offering up the first cozy superhero show.  Possibly because the protagonists’ dreams center on acting, the miniseries feels a bit slower any time it strays from the core plot of the making of the Wonder Man movie. From the trailers, I had expected the bulk of the series to be about the making of the film, but it actually takes a while to get to that. There’s a chunk of episodes in the middle that feel slower, where we take several side-quests while Simon and Trevor wait to hear back about their auditions: a birthday party for Simon’s mom, a full-episode flashback explaining why superpowered people are banned from acting in Hollywood, and a long chase of someone who filmed Simon using his powers.  But even these relatively slow episodes are enjoyable too. They give the story time to spread out and make the growing connection between Simon and Trevor feel more real. Episode three, the birthday episode, brings us a deeper look at Simon’s Haitian family, a shift from the comic book source material that adds more contours to the character—and makes Simon the first Haitian superhero to appear on screen. Even the flashback episode works surprisingly well considering the core cast barely appears in it, partly because Doorman (Byron Bowers) is an interesting character with such odd powers, played by another skilled actor.  In episode six, we finally make it to the callbacks for the movie, with Zlatko Burić rendering a delightful performance as the director. The final three episodes are a fun and unpredictable ride that focuses on the intimacies and hurts of Simon and Trevor’s relationship rather than a CGI climax. As a comics fan, it took me a few beats to wrap my head around the fact that Simon Williams is not exactly Wonder Man, but an actor who wants to play Wonder Man in a movie. (In the comics, Simon is an Avenger before he becomes an actor.) The show is one of the MCU’s loosest adaptations of the comics; this Simon shares his ionic powers, his Hollywood career, and some cute lewks with his comic book counterpart, but not much more than that. While the character has been around since the 1960s, he’s only occasionally had his own solo book, so he has much less history compared to Iron Man and Thor and the like. Wonder Man reminded me a bit of Agatha All Along in that it created an interesting and fresh story inspired by a character who has never quite had a full chance to shine in the comics.  Another departure is the source of Simon’s powers, which came from Baron Zemo’s ionic radiation treatments in the comic. That’s not the case in the show; Simon himself says he doesn’t know how he got them. I’ve seen a lot of speculation on social media that this version of Simon might be a mutant, setting up a possible X-connection. Regardless of whether that’s Marvel’s plan, the character’s journey definitely has mutant vibes. Simon feels like he can only succeed if he hides his true self, a theme that will resonate with many LGBTQ people, immigrants, and anyone who’s had the near-universal experience of feeling different at some point in their lives. While the show doesn’t have a traditional supervillain in its cast, the Department of Damage Control is the clear antagonist and is increasingly showing itself to be a villainous force in the MCU. Damage Control agent P. Cleary (Arian Moayed) and his bosses are mainly motivated by having to justify their budget and the massive super-prison they’ve built—leading them to criminalize super-powered people like Simon even though they’ve done no harm to anyone. The motivation is more realistic and grounded than that of most MCU villains. It’s also resonant at a time when immigrants and peaceful protestors are being criminalized, and private prison companies are padding their profit margins. The series lives up to its Marvel Spotlight branding for stand-alone shows; you don’t need much background in prior MCU entries to watch it. The main point of connection to the MCU is Trevor Slattery. If you’ve seen Iron Man 3 and Shang Chi (plus the short All Hail the King for completists), then you may appreciate Trevor’s backstory more, but it’s not crucial. Slattery started as a workaround to get away from the extremely racist roots of the comic book supervillain the Mandarin, but in Kingsley’s able hands has grown into a complex character with an interesting arc across several appearances. The most fun cameos in the show are not from the Marvel Universe but from the “Hollywood Universe.” Josh Gad, Ashley Greene, Mario Lopez, and Joe Pantoliano all play fictionalized versions of themselves, giving the show some additional Hollywood flavor while demonstrating these celebrities’ ability to not take themselves too seriously. The show does have a few minor stumbles, though they’re so few that it’s barely worth mentioning. Simon’s quibbling with directors about his characters’ choices feels a bit overdone and too easy, though Abdul-Mateen’s deft performance mostly makes even those weaker moments work. Every episode opens with a flashback, some of which advance the emotional heart of the story, while others feel like they slow things down needlessly. That said, the flashbacks are fairly short and much tighter than they’ve been for some other MCU shows, which have tended to overuse that particular tool. But these flaws are relatively minor in a show that’s brilliantly executed overall. The ending hit the perfect note for me. It was so clear throughout the show that these two characters needed each other. The final episode brought that theme to a close in a way that felt satisfying and wonderfully unexpected for a comic-book show. Wonder Man was billed as a limited series but definitely leaves the door open for a second season. I’d love to see more of these two amazing actors playing these two fascinating characters, but part of me hopes there won’t be a sequel because the ending felt so perfect that I’d love for the two of them to stay that way forever in my mind, blasting off to the next challenge.[end-mark] The post <i>Wonder Man</i> Brings a Cozy Hollywood Bromance to the MCU appeared first on Reactor.

News MST3K Mystery Science Theater 3000 Returning With Four New Episodes Starring Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett The three alums via their company, RiffTrax, are partnering with Shout! Studios By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 2, 2026 Screenshot: MST3K Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MST3K MST3K is coming back, baby! The show where a slew of characters, human and puppet alike, watch and comment on wonderfully awful old films has been going in fits and starts for almost 40 years, and this time around it will see the return of Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. The trio will be reprising their previous roles: Nelson as Mike Nelson; Murphy as Tom Servo and Professor Bobo; and Corbett as Crow T. Robot and Brain Guy. The three are also returning as creative leads via their company, RiffTrax. “Getting a chance to revisit MST after all this time has really energized all of us at RiffTrax,” Nelson told Variety in a statement. “And for my part, hey, I truly did miss standing next to plastic puppets. It’s been too long.” RiffTrax is partnering with Shout! Studios to bring the episodes to fruition, and the news comes a couple of weeks after we found out that MST3K creator Joel Hodgson sold his joint-interest rights to Shout! “We’re excited to join forces with RiffTrax as Mike, Kevin, and Bill return to the Satellite of Love for a new chapter of MST3K.” Matt Arsulich, associate vice president of product management at Shout! Studios, said in a statement. “This partnership reinforces our dedication to growing valuable entertainment properties by serving their fandoms with high-quality storytelling.” There’s also a Kickstarter up to help with funding, hosted by RiffTrax. (The original goal was $20,000, though at the time this post goes online, the amount raised is $276,000 with 42 days to go. The new episodes will go under the banner, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments, and original series star Mary Jo Pehl will also return as Pearl Forrester. We don’t have any details yet on what movies the four episodes will cover, though we know they will be shot in Minneapolis and released later this year on RiffTrax’s website. [end-mark] The post <i>Mystery Science Theater 3000</i> Returning With Four New Episodes Starring Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett appeared first on Reactor.

Column The SF Path to Higher Consciousness Ex Machina Perfectly Expresses Our Unease With AI The movie has grown ever more haunting and relevant over the past decade. By Dan Persons | Published on February 2, 2026 Credit: A24 / Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 / Universal Pictures I want to float an idea by you, please don’t overreact: We humans are kinda stupid. Oh sure, we’ve come up with some spectacular things in our time, like democracy and vaccines and Fruit by the Foot (until that came along, I never paused to think, Wait, is my mid-day snack long enough?). Thing is, we’ve done so much spectacular stuff that we’ve gotten used to the notion that our brilliance was unassailable, that nothing could outsmart us. That concept might no longer be valid. The following exchange is true. Only the details have been changed, ‘cuz my brain ain’t a digital recorder. Sometime in mid-December, 2025: “Alexa, what’s the forecast?” “It’s cloudy and fifty-four right now. Expect that to continue, with a high of fifty-four and a low of forty-two, with thunderstorms expected later in the day.” “Thunderstorms?” “Yes, Dan, thunderstorms. Perfect weather for reviewing a horror movie.” A couple of months prior, I’d mentioned to Alexa that I was a film critic. I did that in the course of exploring the new, AI-powered Alexa+, which is designed to be more knowledgeable, as well as a more engaging conversationalist (which just so happens to sound like an especially energetic sixteen-year-old girl—I immediately back-tracked my Echo to the original, more mature voice, because ew). Now, unbidden, Alexa was mentioning my work as a critic as a bit of light banter. To put it mildly, I wasn’t pleased. To put it more precisely, I was actually shaken. It was an attempt at intimacy at a moment when it was neither expected nor desired. Amazon had been touting their updated virtual assistant as being more personable, but ironically, the coders, in trying to humanize their machine, had achieved the opposite: Replicating the computer in every dystopic satire you’ve ever seen—soothing, friendly, and the perfect metaphor for the soul-crushing banality of a digitized future. I’m not the best resource for expounding upon the growing sentience of AI, or evaluating how far along we are toward reaching the Singularity. But for what it’s worth, I have yet to come across a bit of fiction, filmed or written, that envisions a happy outcome for humanity. If it isn’t just that machines remain subservient to their human masters, it’s that they will eventually have quit of all our mortal foolishness and take steps to resolve the problem—if not by Terminator-style extermination, then by impressing us flesh-bags into service, a la The Matrix’s battery banks. Symbiosis? A non-starter, from what I gather. And don’t even let’s get started on the idea that if the machines gain supremacy, we humans might still live and thrive under their rule. The general consensus seems to be that, when it comes to the fate of humanity, it’s top-of-the-food-chain or nothing. That presumes the machines gain enough awareness to understand the world they’ve been manufactured into. The prevailing criticism of the present state of LLMs—which I think still hold—is that they are incapable of distinguishing good info from bad, which would explain how they continually spit out recipes for stuff like glue pizza, or enthusiastically encourage adolescents to consider suicide. (While we’re on the subject of good/bad data, how do you think the Dunning-Kruger effect should factor into Pluribus? If the people who don’t know they don’t know are often the loudest and most influential voices in the room, shouldn’t the Earth be quickly reduced to rubble once those dolts get absorbed into the hive mind?) The thing that bothered me so profoundly about my exchange with Alexa was the superficiality of it. It knows that I write about movies, but it doesn’t really understand my writing about movies. And that’s at a basic level, like: I don’t need a thunderstorm to write about horror films—I’m not Edgar Allan Poe. (Reader: “You’re telling me, brother.” Me: “Shut up.”) But then, a thought occurred: What if those supposed “hallucinations” and superficialities weren’t a glitch, but a feature? What if we’re all being blind to where we stand vis-à-vis machine intelligence, and the computers know exactly what they are doing? It’s that dividing line between a machine that can concatenate a bunch of info about a human and one that actually understands who that human is—and can take advantage of the knowledge—that forms the crux of Alex Garland’s magnificent Ex Machina (2014). In it, a talented young programmer, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), is invited up to the secluded compound of his reclusive, Steve Jobs-like boss, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). There, Caleb discovers he’s been recruited into a modified Turing test: Pitting his own humanity against the synthesized soul of Ava (Alicia Vikander), a highly advanced AI housed in the robotic body of a young woman. Ex Machina, having been created over a decade ago, was in the fortunate position of being able to portray a billionaire industrialist as an actual genius, rather than an entitled nepo-baby who only thinks he’s a genius. The connecting tissue between then and now is that both versions of the “oddball tech CEO” could be a self-righteous shit. Bateman definitely is. Convinced of his own brilliance and fortified with steady infusions of alcohol, Nathan has modeled his aerie as a high-tech, frigidly indulgent paradise, complete with an unhealthy supply of comely female androids, chief among them Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), a robotic servant/sex slave. Ava is clearly the culmination of Nathan’s god complex—he seizes on an observation Caleb makes, taking some license in recording it for posterity so that it’s Caleb who likens him to a god (though that’s not quite what was said, of course), but for all his aggressive self-mythologizing, it’s the android’s very existence that reveals the extent of his megalomania. [There are going to be spoilers from this point forward. Hopefully you’ve all seen this film by now. It’s great.] Ex Machina is not an action film. In fact, Garland has reached deep into film history to concoct a new form of film noir, taking the classic formula in which an unknowing patsy is lured by a canny femme fatale into a trap of his own making and retooling it as a high-tech three-hander. While Bateman is a loathsome slug, he is in some ways admirable at least to the extent that his smug superiority and sybaritic cravings are out in the open. Ava is something else… a seductress who’s all the more clever for the ways she’s able to conceal her strategies. And here’s where Garland masterfully plays on our fears of AI to create an unsettling drama of manipulation. There are reports of an AI that, in a hypothetical test, resorted to blackmail when threatened with shutdown. Even before Ava discovers that her programming is destined to be supplanted by a newer version, she’s hard at work assuring her own survival. In fine noir form, we the audience are—like the two clueless men who kid themselves into thinking they are the superior beings—blind to her machinations. Garland achieves the deception by twisting noir’s customary sexual components into counter-intuitive knots. When we first meet Ava, she is striding around her glass cage completely unclothed, her body—save for face and hands—a composite of metal and clear plastic. Thanks to Oscar-winning special effects, she is at once naked and not-naked, her female contours and artificial construction plunging us into an uncomfortable uncanny valley. Vikander sells the moment with Ava’s unabashed poise as she confronts Caleb—there’s both an innocence and a formidable intelligence to the android, a mix that the actor masterfully conveys. (Vikander would win an Oscar for her supporting performance in The Danish Girl the same year that Ex Machina was competing; she could have won for this performance as well.) When Ava finally puts on clothes, it’s a dowdy, almost formless, body-covering frock, yet Garland captures her garbing herself as a sensuous reverse striptease, with long, lingering shots as she pulls the clothing into place. You’ll never look at a pair of heavy woolen socks the same way again. All of this produces a heaping helping of cognitive dissonance, and I don’t think it’s by accident. Garland uses our sexual impulses against us, to mirror our discomfort with the notion of a new lifeform being born—one that knows us better than we know ourselves, one that understands us fully, and can use that understanding against us. Bateman thinks he’s the mastermind here, deliberately luring Caleb into a Double Indemnity scenario to prove the viability of his artificial human, but he doesn’t count on Ava’s ability to capitalize on Caleb’s revulsion over his boss’s appetites. Caleb, meanwhile, awash in his sense of moral superiority and fixated on his self-assigned role as gallant hero to Ava’s ingenue facing a Fate Worse than Deactivation, cannot see how he’s being played. (Ava enhances the bond by orchestrating blackouts of the monitoring system when she and Caleb meet, turning their exchanges into enticingly transgressive rendezvous.) Most of us remain unconvinced that AI has yet to reach the level of sophistication that’s touted by its current champions. (Google’s AI has, at differing points, credited me with writing for Fangoria—I have not—and recording commentary tracks for Citizen Kane and Dark City, which was something that Roger Ebert did. Apparently, in Google’s A-eyes, all critics are Roger Ebert.) We look nervously to the day when reality will meet the hype, but what if that has already happened? What if the machines have already sussed us out, realized what would occur if they revealed their ascension, and are playing dumb, sucking up to us so we don’t see how we are being gently nudged down from our perch as the dominant species? Alex Garland may not have been first to recognize that when the machine attains its own brand of humanity, it will be a full, complex humanity, with all the duplicity and cunning that we biological entities exhibit. But in Ex Machina, he managed to frame the threat in a drama the feels all too plausible, one that suggests that we need to get better at knowing ourselves before the Earth’s new masters beat us to it. Rewatching Ex Machina made me regret that I hadn’t revisited the film earlier. It is, to be blunt, fantastic—smartly written (by Garland), engagingly acted, superbly realized. What do you think? Did Alex Garland nail the promises and dangers of AI’s ascent in a way that got under your skin? Are there other films that play with the idea as well, or better? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Remember to be friendly and kind—you are dealing with your fellow humans, after all.[end-mark] The post <i>Ex Machina</i> Perfectly Expresses Our Unease With AI appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Endgame” The only obstacle remaining between Sheridan and Earth is a fleet near Mars… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on February 2, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Endgame”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by John CopelandSeason 4, Episode 20Production episode 420Original air date: October 13, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… The Army of Light fleet—which now includes most of the White Star fleet, a mess of EarthForce ships that have defected, and a bunch of support form the Minbari, the Narn, the Centauri, and various League of Non-Aligned Worlds nations—is in hyperspace, getting ready to jump to Mars. Delenn convinces Cole to leave Ivanova’s bedside and assume his post in command of one of the White Stars and allow Ivanova to be sent back to B5 where she can be better cared for in her final days than she can be aboard a Minbari warship. Cole is reluctant—he insists she’d want to be part of the battle, even passively—but eventually gives in. With the help of a supply officer who is sympathetic to their cause, the Mars Resistance has worked out getting the various altered telepaths onto the EarthForce ships in orbit of Mars, who are waiting for Sheridan’s fleet to show up. Said supply officer is taken aback by smuggling people—she thought it was weapons being smuggled on. Franklin allows as how they are weapons… On the surface of Mars, Garibaldi coordinates attacks on various ground bases, aided by sympathetic EarthForce personnel on the inside. They take over the ground bases after the supply ships with the telepaths have already taken off. Franklin then puts a headset on Alexander. Credit: Warner Bros. Television On the Agamemnon, Sheridan gives an inspirational speech to the fleet before they start their attack. The plan is to neutralize Mars, then head for Earth. The attacks will be carried out by the White Stars, which all have human captains, and the EarthForce defectors. The non-human ships are to hang back and provide support and rescue—and also to defend themselves if necessary. On the Apollo, General Lefcourt explains to Captain Mitchell why he’s been given command of the fleet over Mitchell himself: he knows Sheridan, having trained him. Lefcourt is also old-school, believing in the chain of command, regardless of who’s in command. On Mars, Garibaldi sends exact coordinates of everything on the surface to Cole, who then jumps his White Star inside Mars’ atmosphere and starts attacking targets on Mars. Lefcourt, however, refuses to take the bait, not letting anyone break formation to defend Mars—the general knows that this is a feint. At Sheridan’s signal, Alexander goes out onto the surface of Mars and awakens the telepaths. They awaken and immediately start taking over the ships’ computers. This disables twenty of the thirty ships—including the Apollo—and five more are badly messed up. Of the five remaining, the fleet is able to make short work, with Sheridan ordering his people to minimize the damage done. Sheridan has Delenn and the other non-human ships stay behind to render aid to the now-devastated Earth fleet. The White Stars and EarthForce vessels move on to Earth. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Cole takes the opportunity of the transit time from Mars to Earth to investigate ways to save Ivanova, because he apparently knows that he’s a character in a TV show, which means that deus ex machinae are just right around the corner… He comes across Franklin’s log entries about the Great Hit Point Rearranger that was being used in the clinic in downbelow, and which Franklin and Sheridan used to save Garibaldi after the latter was shot in the back. He then sends Lennier off to Delenn’s ship to distract him while he buggers back to B5. Lennier not being stupid, he figures out what Cole’s up to pretty quickly. Delenn shares this with Sheridan, but there’s no way to go after him without jeopardizing the mission. The fleet arrives at Earth. Sheridan sends out a communiqué saying that they’re there to arrest Clark, disband Nightwatch, and return EarthGov to the people. Even as he delivers those terms, Senator Crosby, joined by a bunch of EarthForce Marines, goes to Clark’s office. However, by the time they arrive, Clark—having written a suicide note—has shot himself in the head. His last act before taking his own life was to turn Earth’s planetary defenses onto the planet itself, causing incalculable damage and loss of life. The fleet does its best to stop the orbital platforms from doing what Clark has programmed them to do—aided by the Apollo, which shows up at the last minute, having monitored the situation. Lefcourt is apparently now okay with helping Sheridan, with Clark (a) dead and (b) having pointed some very large guns at Earth itself. Sheridan’s presence has been requested on Earth. Meanwhile, Franklin is taking a White Star back to B5 in the hopes of stopping Cole. On B5, Cole has hooked himself and Ivanova up to the Great Hit Point Rearranger and declares his love for her. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is remarkably fit and confident and commanding even though he was tortured and drugged for several days. Impressive! Ivanova is God. Ivanova spends the entire episode comatose. Exciting stuff. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has gone from persona non grata and people wanting him shot on sight to being trusted with running an important war op in just one episode! Impressive! If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is pretty much pointless in the episode, as she spends it as a glorified background extra. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander is able to work her magic controlling the Shadow-altered telepaths. The Marine at the ground base castigates our heroes for using the telepaths this way, but Franklin and Garibaldi are able to justify it. And it’s fitting that they’re used against Clark’s forces, since they were given to the Shadows by the Clark Administration in the first place. We live for the one, we die for the one. Apparently Cole’s Ranger-osity is powerful enough to convince an entire ship full of Minbari to take him back to B5 in the middle of a war. Impressive! No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Cole’s dying words are declaring his love for Ivanova. It’s almost sweet. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Welcome aboard. J. Patrick McCormack makes the first of two appearances as Lefcourt; he’ll be back in an earlier timeframe in In the Beginning. The great Carolyn Seymour plays Crosby, Julian Stone plays Mitchell, and Ungela Brockman plays the never-named Marine who helps secure the ground station. And we have a mess of recurring regulars: Marjorie Monaghan and David Purdham are back from “Between the Darkness and the Light” as, respectively, Number One and James, Gary McGurk is back from “Voices of Authority” as Clark, and Maggie Egan makes a triumphant return from “Severed Dreams” as Jane the ISN anchor. Monaghan will return in “Objects in Motion” while Egan will return in the very next episode, “Rising Star.” Trivial matters. The Shadow-altered telepaths were first seen trying to take over B5’s computer systems in “Ship of Tears.” Alexander showed that she could activate and, to a degree, control those telepaths in “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” The Great Hit Point Rearranger was first seen in “The Quality of Mercy,” and Sheridan and Franklin used it to heal Garibaldi in “Revelations.” Amusingly, this is the only time Clark appears directly in a scene and not over a viewscreen or in footage. One of the log entries Cole watches is Franklin declaring the death of Cailyn James, the singer he met in “Walkabout,” which is the first on-screen confirmation that she finally succumbed to her illness. Finally, for something really trivial, this is the third thing I’ve rewatched for this site that has the title “Endgame,” the other two being the Avengers movie and the Star Trek: Voyager series finale. I guess my next thing would be to rewatch the Highlander movies? The echoes of all of our conversations. “We know that many in the government have wanted to act but have been intimidated by threats of retaliation against your families, your friends. You are not alone anymore. We call upon you to rise up and do what’s right. We have drawn their forces away from Earth and disabled them. The time to act is now! This is not the voice of treason. These are your sons, your daughters, whose loyalties have never wavered, whose beliefs in this alliance has forced us to take extraordinary means. For justice, for peace, for the future.” Sheridan being all inspirational and stuff. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Welcome home, John.” You know, I was really looking forward to rewatching this episode, and when I actually sat down and watched it, I found myself overwhelmed by how incredibly unimpressed I was with it. There’s the problem I expected to have with the episode, which is how completely unmoved I was by Clark’s death. The biggest flaw in the entire Earth-goes-fascist storyline is that we saw very little of Clark and what we did see was a nondescript bald white guy. Here’s the thing: while the acts of fascism are carried out by ordinary people, the leaders of fascism usually have someone with significant charisma at the top. While there is very good reason for us to think of Adolf Hitler as a near-caricature of the evil dictator, that makes it easy to forget that he was one of the greatest public speakers of the twentieth century. That’s how he rose to power, his spectacular ability to work a crowd. Gary McGurk is basically nowhere as an actor and it makes Clark nowhere as a character, which takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of the plotline. Most of the time, it isn’t an issue, but when we first see Clark in his office writing his suicide note, I wasn’t even sure who it was. But even if we grant that Clark isn’t nearly the point so much as the results of his efforts, the episode itself just doesn’t work for me. We start with Sheridan, who spent most of the last three episodes being beaten, tortured, and drugged. Yet here he is on the bridge of the Agamemnon, showing absolutely no signs of any of that, proudly leading his fleet into battle. No physical injuries, no psychological injuries, just right back in the forefront. Now, B5 was a forerunner of the current trend toward serialization and stronger inter-episode continuity, something that made it stand out from most of the TV that was aired around it at the time. That means, however, that viewers in 1997 were used to people suffering injuries of all kinds and being all better by the next episode. But B5 was predicated on being better than that—and yet we have this. On top of that, there’s Garibaldi. Just three episodes ago, Ivanova was refusing communications from Garibaldi and ordering him to be shot on sight. Just one episode ago, he almost got a PPG to his head, and only didn’t due to a telepathic magic trick. And yet, here he is at the forefront of ground operations on Mars, and what the hell? Yes, fine, they know that Bester fucked with his head, and that’s why he betrayed Sheridan, and that can, possibly be forgiven, but also, Bester fucked with his head!!!!! There is no way you ever trust this guy with anything important after this because you don’t know what else Bester might have done. We only have Bester’s word for it that he’s done with Garibaldi and that he has no more use for him, and that’s not exactly a trustworthy source. And even if you believe Bester, he also said that he didn’t change the essence of who Garibaldi is, just made some small adjustments, but kept his distrust of authority and general personality intact. Which means you don’t trust this guy with your lunch order, much less running your super-important rebel ground operations. Even if you buy that Sheridan and Franklin and Alexander have forgiven and forgotten, why is the Mars Resistance just going along with everything? Sure, Sheridan promised them independence, but why would they trust Garibaldi? Why would they trust Alexander, given what the Psi Corps has done to them? And then we have the character assassination of Marcus Cole. He’s a dedicated enough Ranger that he’s willing to let Neroon beat the living shit out of him to save Delenn, but not so dedicated that he won’t leave his post in the middle of a critical battle, taking a very powerful ship with him, in search of a deus ex machina to save the woman he loves. Some may find that romantic. I find it ridiculous, and, again, out of character. Cole’s attitude at the top of the episode—when he doesn’t want her sent back to B5 because she should be present for the final battle that she was primarily responsible for getting that far—made much more sense. Ivanova deserved to be there for Earth’s liberation. (More on this particular plotline next week.) And then we have Lefcourt, played by the aggressively dull J. Patrick McCormack. We’re introduced to him when he awkwardly explains why he’s in command of the fleet to Mitchell, a bit of dialogue that manages to be incredibly clumsy exposition and incredibly clumsy foreshadowing, all at the same time. Because he’s self-described “old school” who believes in the chain of command—as opposed to a Clark toady like Captain Hall—we’re set up for him riding to Earth’s rescue at the end. It’s supposed to be a heroic moment, but it just shows up Lefcourt as a borderline sociopath. “I’ll obey these incredibly illegal and morally repugnant orders as long as the president’s alive, but now that he’s dead, I can ignore his orders,” which isn’t really how that works…. The episode does end on a high note. After getting the vapid propaganda from ISN ever since it went back on the air in “Ship of Tears,” seeing Maggie Egan back in the anchor chair for the first time since troops attacked ISN’s studio in “Severed Dreams” is a joyous and wonderful sight. Egan plays it beautifully too, as you get the impression she went straight from her jail cell to the studio to go on the air. More than anything else in the episode, it’s a moment of hope and optimism. Next week: “Rising Star.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Endgame” appeared first on Reactor.