Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams by Michelle Kulwicki Three teens discover a gateway to a mythical Labyrinth in the Appalachian Mountains. By Michelle Kulwicki | Published on April 1, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams by Michelle Kulwicki, a young adult portal fantasy publishing with Page Street YA on April 21st. Barren’s Peak, West Virginia, is not a place anyone would call magical, but Thea LaGuerre calls it home. A high school drop-out whose mother died in an accident, Thea is stuck working part-time jobs just to make ends meet. The most she has to look forward to are barn parties where she can make out with Callum, the one interesting boy who moved to town six months ago.Thea doesn’t know it yet, but Callum was sent to Barren’s Peak to watch her. He was raised within the magicians’ order, a shadowy organization meant to keep humanity safe from an underworld of monsters. Callum would sacrifice anyone, including himself, to help their cause, but he still can’t help falling into Thea’s orbit. She’s the first person he’s felt seen by since his childhood sweetheart, Oliver—who he hasn’t seen since Oliver’s banishment from the order.But Oliver hasn’t given up on Callum or on magic. Following a magical creature’s trail to Barren’s Peak, Oliver happens upon Callum and Thea at a barn party that turns into a monster-overrun massacre. To save Callum and the girl he’s protecting from a wave of deadly fairies, Oliver opens a portal for the three of them to flee into the Labyrinth.To get home again, Thea, Oliver, and Callum will have to work together to survive the Labyrinth’s trials and discover the threads that brought them there. CHAPTER 1 OLIVER BARREN’S PEAK, WEST VIRGINIA Oliver White crouched down in the thick weeds at the edge of the forest and took a deep breath of death. His satchel fell to the ground with a thump. The flower looked innocent enough with bright pink petals surrounding a velvety stamen, but as he reached forward, it shied away, curling in on itself and releasing another puff of rancid-meat scent. Oliver’s heart quickened in his chest, and he sank back on his haunches, silently reaching for the camera around his neck and pulling it to his face. Through the specialized lens—one he’d spent months tracking down across all of Nevada—the innocence was lost. Perched in the center of the plant was a small creature the size of his thumb tip. Its black carapace shone in the beating sunlight. Two wings extended from its back, both razor sharp, both shimmering with leftover pollen. And as its head swung to regard Oliver, its tiny mandible opened, revealing a mouth full of glittering fangs. A death weevil. Or, as Oliver had taken to not-so-affectionately calling them when they infested his rooms one spring at Sanctuary—a fucking asshole. It may be perfectly happy within the petals of the flower right now, but there was one thing death weevils liked more than high-summer pollen. Blood. Oliver frowned and let out a breath slowly, trying his hardest not to move. Even though the weevil had already set its sights on his face, he didn’t need to taunt it further. Not before getting a picture. Not before proving to himself that he wasn’t hallucinating. Again. His finger found the trigger by instinct more than actual expertise. He carefully depressed the old lever, trying his hardest to coax it into clicking without activating the grinding sound of a centuries-old camera. The shutter closed. The shutter opened. And the camera let out a low groan of anguish, before it unleashed a heavy belch of thick black smoke. Swearing, Oliver pressed it to his face harder, trying to keep his eyes on the flower through the clog of smoke. The weevil was gone. Buy the Book The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams Michelle Kulwicki Buy Book The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams Michelle Kulwicki Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget He swung the camera around, peering at the surrounding woods through the small peephole. A bright pain exploded in his forearm, and Oliver yelped, dropping the camera so hard the strap jerked, burning the back of his neck. He gritted his teeth as the gnawing agony in his arm grew worse, barely keeping himself from smacking his other hand against the spot. (Years of fending the asshole bugs off had taught him that a swat would only push it deeper and piss it off even more.) “Why?” he hissed to himself, rifling through his satchel that was still on the ground and coming up with a small vial. He brought it to his mouth, yanked the cork out with his teeth, and doused his arm in a homebrew of vinegar, 192-proof alcohol, and enough lavender oil to make his nostrils burn and his stomach roil. The burrowing pain immediately stopped, but the burn from the solution was almost as bad. Oliver scrubbed his arm raw, grinding his molars against a groan of pain. “I finally get a sign, and it’s one of you assholes.” He upended the last of the vial over his arm. “Serves you right,” he chastised the monster. The weevil fell to the ground, paralyzed by the lavender, but blood kept bubbling up from the wound, droplets falling to the grass. The bite was dime sized, and due to the weevil’s special kind of poison, it wouldn’t start clotting for days. He’d be stuck wrapping his arm in gauze near constantly and probably bleeding through his sweater a dozen times while he waited for it to finally close, which absolutely sucked because it was his favorite sweater. What were the odds that he found more cashmere wadded in the bottom of a thrift store dollar bin? Low. As the sting from the solution finally lessened and the ringing of his heartbeat in his ears faded, Oliver knelt down over his bag again and pulled out a couple of rags. He carefully wrapped the empty vial in one and tucked it safely back in a pocket of the satchel. The other he wrapped around his forearm, yanking tight around the wound that was still pumping enough blood that he could smell the metallic scent of it over the rancid burn of the lavender. He reached for the camera again, intent on finding the thing’s body through the lens and making sure it was well and truly dead, but froze as his naked gaze landed at his feet. The tiny corpse of the death weevil lay smoking, sharp wings crumbling to ash in front of his eyes, shiny black carapace breaking apart. Oliver’s stomach dropped out of his body entirely. “No way,” he whispered, sinking back down to his haunches and reaching for a long blade of grass. Dead, the weevil posed no danger to him, as long as he avoided the dripping venom of its burrowing fangs, but he still wasn’t going to touch it barehanded. He poked at the body with the stalk, rolling it over. The bottom thorax completely fell off as it crumbled to a pile of dust. Oliver blinked and swallowed heavily. The trees of the forest moaned as the wind picked up and branches creaked overhead. He’d spent a solid year searching for the camera around his neck, locating it only by trading far more information than he should have to a Redditor named ENTSFOREVER81—someone with both a desperate desire to real-life cosplay a magic user and way too much time on their hands. Still, despite their fanatical obsession with fake wizards, they’d provided solid information. To most, it looked like a plain old vintage camera—a plastic box with bright silver dials, requiring stupidly overpriced film for which hipsters were all too willing to shell out. Only a select few would realize that the lens was different. Wrong. Concave instead of convex, a swirl of color in the center that shimmered like a mirage if you looked too closely. It revealed monsters if you looked through the viewfinder. Monsters that shouldn’t exist on Earth. Monsters that Oliver had been tracking for over two years, ever since… He shook his head, scowling. Even the smallest thought of Sanctuary was enough to set him twitching, enough for fiery anger to burn through his veins even hotter than the weevil’s bite. But that didn’t matter. What did matter was that the weevil’s corpse lay at his feet, blowing away in the gusty wind… and that he could see it with no help from the camera at all. Monsters were secret things, rare on Earth, only found in the dark of night and the nightmares of small children. But if he was seeing one with his naked eyes? “Labyrinth,” Oliver whispered, a word that was stolen by the wind as quickly as the weevil’s corpse. What did matter was that the barrier was breaking. And magicians wouldn’t be far behind. Excerpted from The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams, copyright © 2026 by Michelle Kulwicki. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams</i> by Michelle Kulwicki appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Daredevil: Born Again Daredevil: Born Again Needs to Commit to the Bit in “Shoot the Moon” and “The Scales & the Sword” If you’re going to give us a room full of cages, GIVE US A ROOM FULL OF CAGES. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on April 1, 2026 Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ Daredevil Born Again is back with two episodes this week! “Shoot the Moon” was written by Dario Scardapane and directed by Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson, and “The Scales & the Sword” was written by Heather Bellson and directed by Solvan “Slick” Naim. And this week… is a mixed bag. Let’s get into it. A Spoilery Recap “Shoot the Moon” opens on Cherry being loaded into an ambulance as Daredevil watches from above, pensively fiddling with Bullseye’s “You’re Welcome” knife. We cut to a glowing stained glass-lit church. A man stands with his back to the altar, and a priest approaches asking if he needs something. First, the man asks for Sister Maggie, but we’re told she’s “on a sabbatical year in Rome”. Then he asks for absolution. And turns, revealing himself to be not Matty but Poindexter. The light in the church turns blue. Fisk is at a boxing practice with his coach, who I fear is not long for this world. Buck shows up, and the coach tells Fisk he can have a 30 second break. Yeah, no, dude. Buck tells the Mayor about Cherry going to the hospital, Fisk immediately understands that Bullseye was the one who took the AVTF thugs out, and suggests that other thugs should go to the hospital to deal with Cherry. The coach, who really cannot read a room, attempts to taunt Fisk into coming back to practice by saying “You giving up???” and Fisk replies by punching the man across the room into a wall of mirrors. Karen is on a call about Cherry while Matt muses on Bullseye not wanting him dead. Karen snaps that Bullseye was the one who killed Foggy, as though Matt might have forgotten that, and then they resolve to go to Astoria to help Ariana. But the AVTF thugs are already arresting Ariana, because Matt and Karen cannot get anywhere in time to help anyone, apparently. After Buck suggests that they can close in on Daredevil by revealing his secret identity, Fisk personally announces a hunt for Matt Murdock—but with the spin that Murdock is a hero who saved Fisk’s life before going missing, and has been targeted by Bullseye. So now there are posters of Matt everywhere, and Karen has to usher him back out of Astoria right after they get there so he’s not spotted. Once again, Fisk has thought a bunch of steps ahead of them. In rapid succession we get a BB Report of a woman asking what the “Resistance” is actually resisting because “I’ve lived here for 30 years, and New York has never been this great” (once again I see through the obvious bullshit—no one who’s lived in New York that long has a single nice thing to say about this City, unless a non-New Yorker insults it) and another masked Phisk resistance video. Fisk meets with Powell, who promises “Matt Murdock in this office, and Daredevil’s head on a spike”. Fisk respondes that either of those would be sufficient. Over at the hospital, the AVTF thugs puff their chests out and insult the patrol cops who are already guarding Cherry’s room, then open the door to find an assemblage of seasoned detectives, including Detective Kim, all just hanging out with Cherry. The thugs tell them to leave, the cops won’t, and then for some reason the thugs back down and leave, after threatening to call for backup. We follow them into an elevator and they talk about the kinds of banalities fascists talk about as a panel opens above them. When the elevator doors open they fall forward with holes in their skulls. The light turns blue, and here’s Bullseye flipping his knives around like a gunslinger. And then he leaves, the blue fades out, and we’re left with a realistically lit scene of elevator door repeatedly opening and closing on the corpses of a pair of fascists. Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ Meanwhile, Fisk gently threatening Daniel over the Phisk videos, which of course he’s seen. Then we cut to a scene of Buck and Vanessa going over guns together. Matt and Karen watch the harbor and gently argue about methods of resistance; Fisk and Vanessa discuss how big of an impact they’re required to make, as Important People in the World. It’s all very choppy. Then we cut to one of the most complicated scenes in the series so far. Anela del Toro and her Tia Soledad are walking and talking about Hector Ayala. They duck into a bodega, and of course there are three boys there doing stupid teen shit, in this case swiping a bottle of wine. Soledad tries to call them on it, they sass her, and for plot reasons the bodega owner decides to bust out a whole shotgun and take aim at a child. And then naturally the AVTF thugs show up, knock out the owner, pin the terrified boy to the floor, and when Soledad lightly touches a thug’s arm to try to reason with him, he tells her she’s “assaulting an officer” and grabs her. Then they’re all being loaded into vans while Angela is pinned to a wall by another thug, and the neighborhood films and yells at them but doesn’t do anything. Meanwhile Heather and Vanessa are talking about rich lady shit, and Vanessa can somehow sense that Bullseye is watching her. Kristen McDuffie hears someone in her office and immediately grabs her trusty baseball bat—but it’s Angela, sobbing that her Tia’s been taken. When Kristen realizes that it was AVTF thugs and not regular cops, her face crumples. She gives Angela Hector’s White Tiger suit and talisman, telling her “Soledad didn’t want it.” Daniel makes dinner for BB, claims he doesn’t know how to cook but he just followed the directions (to which I once again say bullshit) and he repeatedly tries to get her to admit she’s the one making the videos, while she repeatedly tries to get him to admit he’s afraid of Fisk. Matt, Karen, and Josie are sitting in Josie’s bar drinking and talking about Foggy when there’s a knock at the door, Josie grabs her trusty baseball bat, but it’s Detective Kim, who has come to tell them that Cherry’s safe, and who says “Resist, rebel!” pretty freaking loud as she leaves, which seems like the best possible way to get followed and reveal their secret lair. We cut to another Phisk video that features Fisk offering the audience red and blue pills. He tells them that all the people the AVTF thugs are arresting have gone to live on a farm upstate with all your childhood dogs, and that “the more you resist, the more you rebel, it hurts my feelings.” And then the person gets up and turns the camera off, pulls the mask off, and it’s BB under there. Huh. Why show us this already? Why kill the mystery??? Vanessa has a way-too-literal dream about Bullseye hunting her, and when she wakes up, her conversation with Fisk about whether they could have another kind of life is intercut with AVTF thugs raiding Josie’s bar. (So did they follow Kim?) Daredevil is able to  suit up and fight them off, but Karen disappears in the melee, and he thinks they took her. But no! She was able to fight an AVTF thug, subdue him, and tie him to a chair. They unmask him and interrogate him, and Matt quickly confirms her theory that the man, who is much younger and more scared-looking than most of them, has come to them as a mole to try to help the Resistance. He gives them a key card for the vigilante prison, and Matt explains that he’ll have to punch him and put the hood back on so he’ll be found by other thugs. The kid says “You’ve got to stop Fisk! You’re the only one who—” and Matt knocks him out. Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ “The Scales and the Sword” opens on Heather Glenn, who has Muse’s mask for some reason. I’m sure it’s fine. She and Kristen have a tense conversation about Matt, his lies, and vigilante-ism as a concept, and man is she ever hanging by a fraying thread. Kristen finally gets to meet with her client, Duquesne. BUT. In order to do that she has to wear a giant mask, and be escorted (or, really, manhandled through dripping corridors and up and down stairs, in heels) by Powell. She’s finally led to the holding cell where Duquesne previously met Heather Glenn. He looks good, clean, well-dressed, and pleased to meet her. She confirms that he’s the first “vigilante” to be tried—not by a jury of his peers, of course, but in a tribunal. “Which means I have no idea how this is gonna go,” Kristen tells him. Which, yes you do, Kristen. Come on. He tells her that this all started as a standards shakedown, that Fisk wanted him to invest in the Red Hook project and he refused, and they agree that this trial is a convoluted path to “forfeiture of criminal assets”—i.e., Fisk gets to seize all of Duquesne’s money as soon as he’s convicted. “When do they loot St. Patrick’s now?” he asks. “I think that’s scheduled for Tuesday,” Kristen replies. The show slowly dials up the Zone of Interest-esque screaming from outside, and we fade through the wall into the room full of caged, terrified prisoners. Karen’s made an Unhinged Red Thread Conspiracy Wall, which naturally makes Matt compare her to Frank Castle. “Know your enemy, cause they’re all ya got” she says, quoting him. Then, slowly, she asks if Matt thinks Frank is dead, and Matt replies that if Fisk had gotten the Punisher he’d “hang his corpse from the Brooklyn Bridge”. And then of course we get into yet another debate about Frank’s “methods” (you know, straight up murder) and how Matt and Karen can’t do that, even though Karen clearly wants to start killing people, but That Won’t Bring Foggy Back, and What Would Foggy Want, etc. Buck visits Daniel in his tiny crappy office, and they talk about strategies for that night’s dinner with the Governor and her people. Daniel thinks he can get gossip about her. Buck reminds him that the only thing that matters is finding the person who’s creating the Phisk Blip videos. Daniel also tries to get Buck to admit what sort of super secret government security work he’s done, which is not a thing one of those people would actually admit to. Buck wavers between being slightly threatening and kind of… fatherly? It’s weird. There’s another Phisk Blip, with Phisk calling Duquesne a “bargain basement Zorro” and ending, as usual, by saying that he loves New York. The Vigilante Trial comes, and is exactly what you’d expect. There are three judges. One is clearly very unhappy to be involved, popping painkillers and rubbing her temples. The other two are older white men who comment on her discomfort. Heather sits and watches, her eyes getting that anti-vigilante glaze they get. BB sits and watches with the press, and is openly upset in a way that she shouldn’t be if she’s playing double agent. Kristen tries to build a real defense of Duquesne, she’s threatened with Contempt of Court; D.A. Hochberg smirks his way through; Duquesne, an extremely rich and cultured man who’s been held in a chicken wire cage for who knows how long, mutters ironic commentary and doesn’t seem bothered by what’s happening to him. The only thing is: the trial seems to be being broadcast. We see people watching on their phones and laptops; Fisk watches on a TV in his office, Karen and Matt watch in their lair. Karen seems to have some hope, somehow, and Matt says “hearts and minds win the war”. When Duquesne is inevitably found guilty, Fisk laughs gleefully, then reins himself in. And… that’s it. It’s one small scene. We don’t really get enough of a sense of how the citizens of New York are responding, we don’t get an idea of this being broadcast nationwide. None of the Avengers or Spider-man show up to this trial that effectively makes them illegal in the City most of them call home. Later at the dinner, Vanessa—who is weirdly obsessed with Heather Glenn’s love life—seats her next to Buck. Heather doesn’t seem terribly into it, but the two try to banter, as Buck gazes around the room and maps the Fisks, the governor, Daniel, and Sheila onto the members of a royal court. When Heather asks who Buck is, he replies, “I’m the knight”—and amends that to Man-at-Arms when she challenges him. Meanwhile across the room, the Governor sees that Fisk is about to make a toast and leaps to her feet to do it instead. Yeah, that’ll bring him back in line. Kristen’s trying to drink her sorrows away (in a bar down the street from me, I think) when someone buys her a drink. She turns to toast the man just in time for Karen to knock into her, spill the drink, and look down to find a napkin that says YOUR OFFICE NOW in fairly frantic handwriting. Obviously she bolts right over. But now I have to ask—does this lifelong New Yorker ever lock her office door? Like what’s going on here? Daredevil lurks in the shadows, looking and sounding exactly like her former partner Matt Murdock. She insists she doesn’t want to get tangled up with him and the resistance, but, as he points out, she already is. (Come on. Trying to do a real defense of Duquesne has made you Fisk’s enemy, Kristen. You’re fucked. Don’t be naive.) He asks her to walk him through her experience in the prison. She says she can’t tell him much because they made her wear a mask, but he insists that won’t be a problem. (YOU KNOW WHO ELSE THAT WOULDN’T BE A PROBLEM FOR, KRISTEN? YOUR FORMER PARTNER, THE BLIND LAWYER MATT MURDOCK.) And here’s where my real beef with the episode comes in, because as she recounts the details she remembers (we see flashbacks to her earlier scenes—a breeze here, some roosting pigeons there) it intercuts to show us Daredevil working his way inside. So, the show telegraphed that it was going to give us a big break-in scene, a la the prison escape from Season 3 of the Netflix series, and then it just… tweets it out. Suddenly Daredevil is just breaking in with almost no resistance given what this place is. Once inside, he hears the ticking watch he left in the munitions box—but then he also hears the screams of the captives, in the opposite direction. Again, with wayyyyy too little resistance he ends up in the Cage Room. He breaks open the cages and the traumatized screaming people immediately start opening their fellow prisoners cages. Some guards come—nowhere near enough, and luckily it takes several minutes for THE ONES WHO ACTUALLY HAVE GUNS to arrive—and he and a newly-freed Swordsman fight them off. We see the bodega owner among the prisoners, but the whole scene is blurry and too rushed to get a sense of who anyone is—but Frank Castle isn’t among them. They get out, which seems to be a matter of running through a few corridors. We cut to Karen in the car. She and Matt weren’t expecting a room full of caged people, some of them are gonna have to sit in laps if they’re all going to fit for the ride home. Of course, as soon as Karen hears anything suspicious, she hops right out of her easiest method of escape and walks away from it cursing. She sees someone, whips her gun out, and it’s poor traumatizes Angela del Toro, wearing her Tio’s talisman and carrying a bag full of guns and walkie-talkies she swiped… somehow. Karen’s able to use the walkie-talkie to contact Matt, and then Angela hotwires an AVTF wagon so they’ll be able to get everyone out of there. (I think? This part happens offscreen.) Once again they’re able to herd everyone into the van even as reinforcements arrive, because there are nowhere near enough reinforcements, and they barely shoot at them. Are they letting them escape??? Karen whips her gun out again and shoots at least one of them, which cause Matt to jerk to a stop for second, which he shouldn’t do, and Angela finds her Tia and they hug instead of getting in the fucking van, GET IN THE VAN. Karen tells Swordsman to drive the truck without finding out if anyone else can, presumably because he’s the character we know. They all escape, and Powell calls Fisk to give him the news. Fisk doesn’t seem that upset, and says Powell “knows what to do” about the crew on The Northern Star, and the episode ends on Karen and Matt reacting to the ship exploding as they speed away from the East River. So clearly Fisk is going to blame the ship explosion on the newly escaped prisoners, and double down on them being terrorists just as they’re being returned to their families. Grace Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ Not as much here this week, I fear! I thought Bullseye’s attack on the AVTF at the hospital, paired with him showing up at a church, was super fun. I love how the blue lights glow around him because that’s clearly what’s happening in his own mind, where he’s a superhero, only to fade out as he leaves the room. That elevator attack was maybe the only moment in these two episodes where I felt like the show was becoming the best version of itself. the doors opening and closing on the AVTF thug corpses was objectively hilarious, but once again I wish we’d stayed in the moment longer, and dealt with the aftermath more. Karen and Matt’s interrogation of the AVTF kid was pretty good! Their attempt at forming a real resistance felt lived in, AND it allowed their old sparkiness to come through. The AVTF attack on the bodega was good… kind of. I’ll get into it more below. And I thought the futility of Duquesne’s trial was good, though way too rushed. That trial should have been an entire episode, and the infiltration of the prison site needed to be its own episode. Retribution Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ OK. Every time I start to feel confident about this show it undoes me. The tension between Karen’s desire for violence and Matt’s insistence on non-lethal force is trotted out yet again. Like, we KNOW Karen’s killed people, we KNOW she has a thing for Frank. We really don’t need yet another conversation about this while Matt takes his shirt off so his cross can glint in the light. They clearly telegraph that Matt would have to fight his way out of the vigilante holding pen by showing us Kristen walking down with the mask on. Cool, but then they cram that whole sequence into less than ten minutes, with Matt’s descent into the prison intercut with his conversation with Kristen? He gets in like it’s nothing, frees a bunch of people, then he and Swordsman are able to fight the guards off with no problem. The scene, which really should have been an entire centerpiece episode, is given no room to breathe, no room to tell its story through the fighting, or to show Matt and Duquesne figuring out how to work together on the fly. Obviously, I am a BIG FAN of seeing AVTF thugs gets hit in the face with things, but it needs to add to the story! Also, where is Ariana during the bulk of the prison break? The show makes a whole scene of her getting arrested, but she’s seemingly not in the room with the cages, and only suddenly appears as they’re hopping into the AVTF van. Angela del Toro has had no training, and is clearly in over her head. I think my second biggest issue, three episodes in, is that our Daredevil show doesn’t have enough Daredevil in it. The writers are so busy checking in with the Fisks, with Daniel and BB, with Bullseye, with Heather Glenn, with randos commenting on how New York is better than ever, that Daredevil feels like just one of the ensemble rather than the star of the show. I’ll get to my biggest issue in the Closing Arguments section below. Fiorello’s Desk Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ Everyone seems to just accept that these Vigilante Trials are political hit jobs by Fisk. The Governor makes a bunch of noises but does nothing. No one above them steps in. None of the billions of superheroes we’ve been introduced to over the course of the MCU shows up outside the courthouse. Daniel makes dinner for BB to try to get her to come clean about being the person behind the Phisk blips, and then Buck shows up in Daniel’s tiny dingy office to try to convince him to ferret the person out. Guys! There are only so many people it can be! Come on! I love Lili Taylor, but the Governor is given very little to do other than make a toast. This show needs more Mr. Charles, and it needs it fast. Quotes! “Do you feel the need to protect anyone in this office?” “Yes! You!” “Good answer.” —Fisk and Daniel have one of their touching heart-to-hearts “How many worlds do you need to conquer?” “How many are there?” —Fisk and Vanessa have one of their touching heart-to-hearts Closing Arguments Credit: Marvel Television / Disney+ I’ll start by saying that I appreciate what the show is trying to do. It’s set up a plot that is kind of doing an even darker version of what the third Netflix season did: Fisk is incredibly powerful, utterly corrupt, and backed by a lot of people who either don’t know or don’t care how amoral he is. It’s up to Matt and a tiny scrappy group of people to fight back against impossible odds. And that’s great, BUT. If you’re going to do a show about a resistance movement in 2026 you have to show me the wounds. We stay in that bodega attack scene for way too long, mostly in a close-up on Angela’s screaming face. Not on the kids and bystanders who are getting beaten into the concrete. Not on Soledad’s hair getting ripped out of her scalp. Now on the Bodega Guy’s blood pouring out of his ear where he got hit. Not even on the AVTF thug mocking Angela as he ruins her life, daring her to try anything so he can take her too, putting a gun in her face. The things that would actually happen. Instead the show stays in the much more aesthetic trauma porn of Angela crying. Go home with her, TV show. Follow the teenage girl home to her empty, dark apartment. Sit with her terror and despair for a while. If you’re going to do this, fucking do it. The show gives us a room full of literal chickenwire cages. Each cage holds a screaming, traumatized person. Where are the buckets of piss and shit? Where are the blankets so encrusted with filth after months that they don’t fold anymore? Where are the stained clothes, the open wounds, the bruises, the sores? Daredevil, a man with extremely heightened senses, walks into that room and doesn’t react to the smell? He frees everyone and they’re all able to not just walk, but RUN after sleeping on concrete floors in cages for months? Duquesne looks perfectly crisp and chipper in his meetings with Heather and Kristen? He shows up to court looking like he’s fresh from a nice hotel room? For that matter, how are Matt and Karen holding up so well, given that they’re living in a hidden room behind a Hell’s Kitchen dive bar? How are they buying food? Where are they showering? You’re also telling me that Frank Castle broke out of his cage, somehow navigated through that whole building successfully, didn’t free anyone else, and also all the remaining people were just… left there. There was no punishment, no reprisals, no tightening of security. If you’re going to do this, fucking do it. I kept thinking about Steve McQueen’s brilliant film Hunger, about the 1981 dirty protest, and eventual hunger strike, in the Maze Prison. That movie showed a couple different kinds of resistance, some violent, some non-violent, but it was very careful to show the cost to everyone. Not just the prisoners, but also the guards, the guards’ families, the prisoners’ families. And it did that by showing the physical cost, showing the filth and the shit and the gauntlet and the bruises that never heal and the seeping wounds—not in a gratuitous way, but because that was the reality of the situation. Knowing that gives you a better understanding of what resistance actually fucking costs people. OK, I’ll stop, I’ll stop. This week’s two episodes left me with a lot of unsettled thoughts, and I’m eager to hear what everyone else thinks.[end-mark] The post <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em> Needs to Commit to the Bit in “Shoot the Moon” and “The Scales & the Sword” appeared first on Reactor.

News Widow’s Bay Apple TV Horror Comedy Widow’s Bay Started as a Parks and Recreation Script One of Apple TV’s most promising upcoming shows began as a spec script for one of TV’s greatest comedies By Matthew Byrd | Published on April 1, 2026 Image: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV In an interview with TV Insider, Widow’s Bay showrunner Katie Dippold finally shed a little light on the largely-mysterious Apple TV horror comedy that is set to premiere on April 29. While we know the show is set in a small New England town that is desperate to attract tourists even as locals continue to claim that the town is cursed, Apple has intentionally withheld some of the more substantial details about the series so far. According to Dippold, however, that core idea can be traced back to a Parks and Recreation spec script she wrote ages ago. “This is my version of the novel that a writer’s always trying to do,” Dippold says. “If someone read the Parks spec from back then, and they read this one, I think the heart of it is the same. Back then, it was more joke-focused. The older version could have felt more like a parody. And as a horror fan, I want the horror and the stakes and the tensions all taken very seriously.” While that spec script helped Dippold secure a position on the Parks and Recreation writing staff, she never really got the chance to explore some of its specific ideas on that show. Since then, the Widow’s Bay concept has undergone a number of revisions and refinements, some of which were inspired by Dippold’s trip to a Massachusetts diner. “It wasn’t perfect. It’s just very cozy and lived in,” Dippold recalls. “Big coffee mugs and old locals sitting at the counter in flannels, talking about their days. I didn’t want to leave. I just loved that feeling. We’re trying to capture that feeling: cozy, lived in, but there’s something lurking beneath the surface.” If that statement also reminds you of Twin Peaks, that’s not a coincidence. That revolutionary David Lynch series has often been cited as one of the show’s biggest stylistic influences, along with the works of Stephen King. As Widow’s Bay star Matthew Rhys explains, the show also draws heavily from Jaws to tell its story of a mayor desperate to keep the tourist dollars coming. “The big reference we have in the series is Jaws, which was an enormous draw and attraction for me as it is truly one of my favorite films,” Rhys says. “There are a number of horror movies that are nodded towards, referenced, and given a great ode. I’m wary to name them because I don’t want people anticipating them. I would like the viewer to experience, as I did upon reading it, the giggly glee of realizing that you are noticing these wonderful references from our past.” But from its small-town feel, comedic nature, and emphasis on the lives of those who work in a municipality, it’s indeed difficult to look at Widow’s Bay and not see its Parks and Recreation roots. And while we still know remarkably little about the upcoming show, every part of its cast, premise, and pedigree suggests it could be something special. For now, you can enjoy one of the series’ strange teasers for a taste of what is to come.[end-mark] The post Apple TV Horror Comedy <i>Widow’s Bay</i> Started as a <i>Parks and Recreation</i> Script appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird If NOT CAT Then NOT VAMPIRE: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Part 4) By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on April 1, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Chapters 7-8 of Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. The book was first published in 2025. Spoilers ahead! The Absolution of Three-Persons—April 11, 1912: It’s been four days since Good Stab stabbed Arthur Beaucarne “to the quick” with his tale. The pastor has spent this time dissecting the Blackfeet’s story, studying each piece, then trying to “puzzle them all together again into a narrative [he] can begin to accept.” Arthur’s “provisional conjecture” discounts “the more fantastic elements.” Perhaps Good Stab suffered some “catastrophic loss” related to the Marias River massacre which forced him to winter alone in the wilderness. This isolation and privation could have brought on delusions that, to Good Stab, rendered “the impossible… unassailable fact.” Arthur catalogs the delusions. Good Stab was infected with a curse by a “Cat Man.” He’d henceforth subsist by drinking blood, enabled by senses beyond both human and animal ken. He’d be resilient to disease, accidental injuries, and intentional attacks, healing quickly from lesser wounds, dying only temporarily from mortal ones. Monstrous gluttony forced him to drain each victim to the last drop of living blood; if he persisted past the victim’s last heartbeat, the remaining blood would sicken him. The way that Good Stab gradually takes on “four-foot” characteristics if he eats animals reminds Arthur of “some ancient lay… complete with justice and chivalry,” of which he’s forgotten the details. On the liability side, Good Stab claims to be hypersensitive to sunlight, and can ingest no solid foods or liquids apart from blood. Another liability, Arthur considers not necessarily supernatural or evil. Good Stab deplores succumbing to deep torpor after feeding. Some mortals, including Arthur, find “extreme satiation” a welcome numbing of thought, allowing for “communion with Creation that speaks ineluctably of wholeness.” Not that Arthur doesn’t regret it when he stumbles drunkenly around the church blubbering apologies to the crucified Jesus, or when he stuffs himself with parishioner-donated food until he’s ill. The first Sunday, Arthur observed that dogs dislike Good Stab. This last Sunday, he observed something more troubling. Instead of swallowing the Host, Good Stab must have hidden it in his sleeve, because later he dropped it in the street. Whether he did this in disrespect for the white man’s religion or because the Host was solid food doesn’t matter—the sacrilege is Arthur’s fault. He should never have let someone not of the Faith participate in communion. On Tuesday, the first murdered man is buried. Arthur struggles through the aftermath of a food binge to officiate at the funeral. Twenty townspeople attend, drawn by curiosity rather than grief. Good Stab is not there, but another stranger is: a neatly dressed and shaven man holding a bowler hat. He departs with Sheriff Doyle after a nod to Arthur. As penance for his latest gluttony, Arthur remains while the gravediggers finish their work. From the top of the town “boot hill,” he looks out across the prairie. He imagines how Good Stab must have crossed it the night he walked into Miles City, and he wishes he could have seen his approach—and “scurried away.” April 13, 1912: Arthur learns from the boarding house porch-sitters that there’s a Blackfeet man living on the outskirts of town. He buys a thick rasher of bacon, that universally-desirable food, and visits a dingy tent before which the aged Amos Short Ribs huddles over a dung fire. The bacon accepted and cooking, Arthur tries to learn whether Amos has ever seen a domestic cat—one small doubt he has about Good Stab’s story is that back in 1870, a Blackfeet shouldn’t have known what a such a feline was, much less name his monster Cat Man. Getting nowhere with mere descriptions, the embarrassed but desperate Arthur borrows the brothel’s orange mouser. Amos’ reverent fascination with the animal proves it is new to him. As Arthur’s about to depart, Amos asks after “the Fullblood” he’s seen exiting the church. Amos had thought the man dead, killed for what he did to the buffalo hunters. Asked just what the Fullblood did, Amos points with lips and chin to the prairie. Thinking of the flayed corpses found near town, Arthur asks if the Fullblood is the one painting— But Amos suddenly disappears into his tent. The stranger from the funeral walks up. He introduces himself as Dove. Just Dove. He’s come by coach from San Francisco, and he produces credentials naming him a Pinkerton of the famous detective agency. Arthur may be able to help him with his current case. A San Francisco family has set him on the trail of… he can’t say what. But various clues have led him to believe “they” are now in or around Miles City. Dove then looks Arthur in the eye, watching for his reaction, and adds: “Parts of them anyway, Father. I can’t say for certain where their skin is.” The Degenerate Dutch: Beaucarne is continually surprised by Native Americans being “rhetorically capable,” or indeed speaking English. Madness Takes Its Toll: Obviously Good Stab became delusional while lost in the wilderness, confusing his hallucinations with what he actually did for survival. Something something narratives, something something cats. Seven Deadly Sins and Counting: The main metric that Beaucarne tracks is his own sins, with a preference for those falling into easy categories over the ones he’d prefer not to think about. This week there’s gluttony (drunkenness and binge-eating), despair (subsequent to the drinking), and vanity (looking at his teeth in a mirror). Ruthanna’s Commentary Motivated reasoning, it preys upon the mind—The more you think things through with it, the less of truth you’ll find!You lay out all your logic with conclusions picked already,And if you logic vampires you’ll surely end up deady.It works like this: he’s heard of cats, and therefore it’s a lie.These savage people have no pets, and thus you question whyGood Stab would make confession with a Cat Man at the heart;If no cats then no bloodsuckers, quod erat, you’re so smart!Methinks you doth protest so much, like gnomes with underpants:You have step one, you have step three; you have no evidenceTo fill that middle question-mark and get what you desire.Good Stab knows what you won’t admit—it’s your own pants on fire. Sorry, this is what happens when our whole weekly reading involves Arthur Beaucarne trying to disprove scary stories. We still don’t know why Good Stab’s story is so scary to him, except that it clearly has something to do with skinned buffalo, and skinned buffalo hunters, and old sins that Beaucarne doesn’t want to think about. So instead he’s borrowing cats from the local cathouse. And misquoting Shakespeare so as to emphasize the unbridgeable barrier between civilized White Man and savage. To contrast with Beaucarne’s amateur investigation, a Pinkerton shows up. During the U.S. Civil War, the Pinkerton Agency did espionage work for the Union; by this time they’re both the largest private law enforcement agency in the world and primarily known for strikebreaking. They also did a certain amount of tracking western outlaws, so it makes sense that they would be on the trail of a serial killer in Miles City. Ruthless, competent, and eager to support the status quo, they may be a problem for Good Stab. And if they know more about the situation than the reader, they may be a problem for Beaucarne as well. Meanwhile, Chance Aubrey is hanging around the telegraph office, obsessing over the Titanic. That’s not symbolic at all. Beaucarne considers it “hubris for the creations of men,” though he manages to avoid preaching over sausages. Hubris is, of course, a very civilized sin. Beaucarne values hard work to get the most (by European definitions) from what G-d has given you. Avoid exploiting land until you’ve extracted all possible resources, and you don’t deserve to keep it at all. Railroads and telegraphs prove Manifest Destiny. So where’s the line? Is it just how much you invoke G-d in your excitement? It’s Kipling-ish, this confidence in one’s own cultural superiority bolstered by a purely religious humility that requires no mortal-world questioning of assumptions: If, drunk with sight of power, we loose   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,Such boastings as the Gentiles use,   Or lesser breeds without the Law—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget—lest we forget! Respect the divine, kneel in church, and doubt any word from the “lesser breeds”—what else do you need to stay ahead in life? Beaucarne, I hope, is soon to find out. Anne’s Commentary If weird narrative has a core feature, a hard-beating heart, it’s the protagonistic impulse to explain away the inexplicable until compelled to acknowledge its existence. After struggles protracted or sharp, characters have to reconfigure their worldview to include the new aspect of reality, whether they thereafter accept it, flee it, or fight to drive it out of their immediate breathing space, their minute acre of the universe. In Old West parlance, they could tell the Weird this town ain’t big enough for the two of us, so git or draw. Problem with the latter alternative is that the Weird’s generally packing the bigger gun and quicker trigger appendage. In this week’s chapter, Graham Jones does a superb job of harrying Arthur Beaucarne through the incredulous phase. Arthur takes a firmly rational approach to Good Stab’s confession. His “provisional conjecture” is that the fantastic elements of his story are just that, fantastical. He’s generous enough to provisionally entertain the possibility that, rather than perpetrating deliberate fraud, Good Stab suffers from a posttraumatic delusion. Arthur can expose this by picking apart the confession and “[puzzling the pieces] back together again into a narrative [he] can begin to accept.” Arthur has little trouble constructing a situation dire enough to have overset Good Stab’s reason. Whether or not he was alive as far back as the Marias Massacre (unlikely), Major Baker’s actions against the Blackfeet could have personally injured Good Stab. When forced for whatever reason to spend a winter alone near the Massacre site, he might have confounded his trial with that of his forebears, weaving a tortuous story to explain how he, who looks too young for it, was actually an adult in 1870. One of the boarding house porchsitters might diagnose Good Stab as crazy like a loon. Arthur also allows he could be crazy like a fox, a boldly deceptive trickster out to con an old white man, or at least to torment him with a tale too closely paralleling the pastor’s guilty history. At the same time, Arthur recognizes he may be “arranging angels on the head of a pin” by concocting possible inconsistencies in Good Stab’s confession, as niggling as whether a Blackfoot would have known about domestic cats in 1870. That doesn’t stop him from hunting up a kitty to amaze old Amos Short Ribs. Arthur remembers a story similar to Good Stab’s about becoming what he eats, “some ancient lay or another I read, complete with justice and chivalry, but can no longer conjure the precise details of.” Naturally, I had to hunt for narratives about the consequences of overconsumption. It’s not surprisingly a common theme in world myth and folklore. As far as “ancient lays” go, there’s the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, which goes back at least to the 1400s in Iceland. In it, a prince is enchanted to walk by day as a bear. When the bear-prince is killed, his pregnant lover is forced to eat his flesh. She subsequently delivers one son with elk features, another with dog features, and a third who can shape-shift into a spirit-bear during battle. I think it’s more likely Arthur knew two other stories. The first concerns a character ironically similar to Arthur in his gluttony. Erysichthon of ancient Greek legend was a king so rapacious in his greed that he cut down a grove sacred to Demeter to build a magnificent banquet hall. The highly annoyed goddess cursed him with an insatiable hunger, to feed which he depleted his entire fortune and even sold his daughter, Mestra, into slavery. When his larder was at last empty, madness drove him to devour his own flesh until nothing remained of him. Arthur might have read a detailed account of this compulsive overeater in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VIII, Fable VII. Luckily, Arthur doesn’t have Erysichthon’s means and so can only stuff himself when parishioners bring edible offerings. He can food-obsess full-time, though, as when he brings old Amos bacon or wonders how Good Stab can be so intent on proving his monstrous nature that he doesn’t scarf down Arthur’s stew. The second story, widespread in Native American folklore from its Algonquian origins, pertains more to Good Stab’s condition. It’s the legend of the Wendigo, a ravenous spirit associated with harsh Northern winters during which people might be driven to cannibalism, the utmost expression of insatiable greed and antisocial selfishness. Such moral failure could doom cannibals to become the monstrous incarnations of what they ate: emaciated corpses often grown to gigantic proportions, emitting a foul stench, their hearts turned to ice. Good Stab is no Wendigo in that his transformation was not due to personal greed or gluttony, certainly not to cannibalism. He does, however, accuse himself of moral failure in his killing of the beaver patriarch, all so he could have enough pelts to buy a new rifle. And now a stranger has ridden the stage coach into town to complicate Arthur’s life, and thicken the “hump” murders subplot. Welcome to Miles City, Pinkerton man Dove, and watch your well-clad back. Weird business is afoot here. Next week, we celebrate National Poetry Month by exploring Stoker Award nominees, starting with a set of Maxwell Gold’s cosmic horror poems on The Horror Zine.[end-mark] The post If NOT CAT Then NOT VAMPIRE: Stephen Graham Jones’ <i>The Buffalo Hunter Hunter</i> (Part 4) appeared first on Reactor.

Column 80s Fantasy Film Club The Last Unicorn: A Fantasy Classic Whose Beauty Never Fades Beyond simple nostalgia, this movie was a foundational part of so many childhoods… By Tyler Dean | Published on April 1, 2026 Credit: Rankin/Bass Productions Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: Rankin/Bass Productions In this column, we’re looking back at the 1980s as their own particular age of fantasy movies—a legacy that largely disappeared in the ’90s only to resurface in the 2000s, though in many ways, the fantasy films of the Eighties are far weirder and less polished than what we got in the aughts. In each of these articles, we’ll explore a canonical fantasy movie released between 1980 and 1989 and discuss whatever enduring legacy the film has maintained in the decades since. For a more in-depth introduction to this series of articles, you can find the first installment here, focusing on 1981’s Dragonslayer. Last time we looked at Rankin/Bass’ chimeric cult classic of magic and science, The Flight of Dragons; this time we are looking at another (far more sublime) clash between the ancient and modern, The Last Unicorn. Like most millennials, I saw The Last Unicorn on a rented VHS sometime in my early childhood. I wouldn’t read Peter Beagle’s original novel until college when it was recommended to me by my then-girlfriend, who adored it. By the time I was reading Beagle’s exquisite prose on a train headed from Parma to Ravenna, the cartoon was settled lore, a thing so deep in my DNA that I could not look at it quite right. It felt like a deep and foundational seam of my personality. And, judging by the responses to this film over the last forty years, it got into the bones of a whole generation. So, let’s discuss… Based on Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel, the 1982 film follows the same plot, more or less. The titular Unicorn, upon learning that she is the last of her kind, sets out to find her missing kin. Along the way, she finds allies in Schmendrick the Magician and the medieval equivalent of an aging gun moll, Molly Grue; eventually they arrive in the lands of King Haggard, who has trapped the other unicorns in the sea, where they are guarded by the menacing Red Bull. To protect her from the Red Bull, Schmendrick turns the Unicorn into a human woman. Disguised as the Lady Amalthea, the last Unicorn begins to forget that she was ever an immortal being and falls in love with Haggard’s ward, Prince Lír. Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea search for the location of the Red Bull and discover that it has driven all the other unicorns into the sea so that the melancholy Haggard can look upon them every day—they are the only thing that has ever made him happy, so he has hunted and hoarded them. Amalthea becomes a unicorn again and finally defeats the Bull in a desperate battle. The Unicorns are freed, Haggard and his castle tumble into the waves, and Lír bids a heartfelt farewell to the woman he loved. Molly Grue and Schmendrick ride off together into the sunset and the Unicorn returns to her woods, no longer the last of her kind, and having experienced love and regret during her time in a mortal body. The film was released in a small number of theatres, made a modest but disappointing profit and then went on to do what most Rankin/Bass productions did: finding a devoted audience on VHS and laserdisc.  So…is The Last Unicorn any good? Does its hallowed reputation live up to the hype conjured by our collective childhood nostalgia? Yes, for the most part! It’s far from a perfect film but it has more than enough charm, pathos, humor, and style to make up for its minor shortcomings.  Let’s talk about the bad first. The film does drag in the second half. For every incredible ten-minute vignette, there are long stretches where very little happens. There are several songs performed by the British-American rock band America that are fantastic—the soundtrack was composed and arranged by songwriting legend Jimmy Webb, and the eponymous title track is an absolute folk rock classic. There are another two songs, however—one sung by Katie Irving (performing for Mia Farrow), and a duet sung by Irving and Jeff Bridges—that are pretty terrible. Irving in particular sounds off-key, which is surprising given that she was ostensibly hired because Farrow herself could not sing. But honestly, that’s about the sum total of the movie’s shortcomings, and its high points far outweigh its weaknesses.  A lot of credit is due to Beagle’s writing. He adapted the screenplay from his novel and is surprisingly not precious about his own work. The original novel feels deeply postmodern, constantly self-analyzing and deconstructing its own fantasy tropes. His film adaptation is played straight, to its vast credit—trusting in the power of its own mythos and preserving enough of Beagle’s purposely anachronistic humor to entertain without ever veering into self-parody. So many of Rankin and Bass’ screenplays were written by the far less talented Romeo Muller (who scripted both The Flight of Dragons and The Return of the King), and the difference in quality is painfully apparent when compared with Beagle’s work. The cast is also phenomenal. Surprisingly stacked for a small release, it features Mia Farrow as the Unicorn, Alan Arkin as Schmendrick, Christopher Lee as Haggard, Jeff Bridgesas Lír, and Angela Lansbury as Mommy Fortuna. The real power player, however, is Tammy Grimes, who imbues Molly Grue with an energy both jaggedly tragic and pragmatically resigned. She is the emotional heart of the film and manages to be a standout even among an incredibly talented cast. Incidentally, Asa West’s incredible essay on the character (right here on Reactor!) says more about Molly Grue than I have space to in this essay and is well worth your time. Through a combination of Beagle’s writing and stellar performances from Grimes, Farrow, and Lee, the film never flinches away from being about eschatological grief and the impossibility of reclaiming a lost golden age. There is an elegiac sadness in Molly Grue and Haggard both that makes the characters feel uncomfortably close to one another, despite the fact that they choose entirely different strategies for coping with their grief. The film’s sorrowful bona fides are deeply felt, even if children drawn to the story might not fully comprehend those aspects until they’re a bit older. It’s also a beautiful film. While the animation itself is occasionally a bit clunky, the designs are gorgeous. Lester Abrams, who also was the lead character designer on Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit (1977) and Return of the King (1983), gives his characters a charming, quirky strangeness reminiscent of Brian Froud and clearly inspired, at least in part, by Norwegian NyForm troll figurines. The landscapes have a stylish Mary Blair quality that feels both modern and classically fantastical. Some of its most breathtaking artistry comes at the very beginning, during the opening sequence in which animated versions of the Unicorn Tapestries appear over America’s haunting, hopeful theme song, setting a very high bar for the rest of the movie. Perhaps the movie’s best quality (for me personally at least): it’s genuinely scary. Though it only lasts about ten minutes, relatively early in the film, the sequence in which the Unicorn is a prisoner of Mommy Fortuna’s traveling carnival, put on display before disbelieving peasants, is a masterclass in acting. From the design of Celaeno the Harpy, equal parts monstrous and obscene, to Mommy Fortuna gleeful embracing her own death (having fulfilled her life’s purpose by trapping the immortal beast), the entire sequence is frightening effective in inspiring both abject fear of an immortal monster and good old fashioned existential dread. So, given how marvelous The Last Unicorn is, what are its lasting impacts? It obviously influenced a generation of fantasy fans and, like all the best entries in this column, helped to pave the way for the explosion of high fantasy content that we’d see in the 2000s. On some more specific notes, it seems absurd to assume that it did not contribute, in part, to the creation of the previously covered Legend (1985) and its unicorn-centric fairytale plot. Even the design of Tim Curry’s iconic look—huge and devilish in red makeup and prosthetics, sporting gigantic horns—feels like it may have taken some unconscious inspiration from the Red Bull.  Speaking of the Red Bull, while the Thai trucker elixir that became the internationally popular energy drink was called Krating Daeng (which translates, roughly to “Red Bull”), I personally refuse to believe that the choice to go with that direct translation didn’t have at least something to do with the fiery antagonist of this film (even if Haggard’s creature didn’t have wings). On a less specious note, the look of Haggard’s lonely, crumbling castle by the sea—hewn out of dark stone which sometimes takes on the appearance of tormented faces trapped in the rock—feels like it must have partly inspired George R.R. Martin’s descriptions of Dragonstone, a similarly lonely seaside castle covered in monstrous stone visages (the HBO shows radically changed the look of Dragonstone into something, in my opinion, far less interesting).  As we’ve discussed before, Topcraft, the studio that had animated The Hobbit, The Return of the King, The Flight of Dragons and other Rankin/Bass productions, would eventually be reborn as Studio Ghibli after a bankruptcy in 1985. You can absolutely see some of that iconic studio’s stylistic roots as they’re taking shape in The Last Unicorn. And some of those design sensibilities also feel like they were reflected back by popular culture over the next few years. The Unicorn’s smooth, doelike visage feels like a precursor to the distinctly unhorselike beasts of late ’80s megahit My Little Pony (based on an American toyline, but animated by Japanese and Korean studios). And there is something in her long-limbed grace (and beast-to-human transformation) that feels like it is paving the way for young audiences to adore Magical Girl anime series like Sailor Moon which hit American airwaves in the decade following.  But what do you think? Is The Last Unicorn as important a staple of your childhood as it was in mine? Do you have a lifelong fear of fortune tellers or a penchant for sexy trees as a result? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to join us next time as we pivot from a towering work of children’s animation to an iconic live-action film that contains at least one element that is decidedly not for children: 1986’s Labyrinth![end-mark] The post <i>The Last Unicorn</i>: A Fantasy Classic Whose Beauty Never Fades appeared first on Reactor.