News Daredevil: Born Again Why Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 Will Adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D” Showrunner Dario Scardapane says Born Again has been building towards the story for quite some time By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 6, 2026 Image: Disney Plus Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Disney Plus This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Despite some previous speculation to the contrary, Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 has been greenlit, is currently being filmed, and is expected to be released sometime in 2027. And after that pretty incredible second season finale, there’s little doubt that the show’s next season will adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D”: the famous 2006 Daredevil story from Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark which sees Matt Murdock in prison. Actually, there was little doubt that the show would eventually head in that direction after a series of leaked season three set photos essentially confirmed as much. In case you’re wondering, Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane wasn’t exactly a fan of those leaks. “Yeah. This is what hurts about leaks,” Scardapane said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly regarding the build to a “Devil in Cell-Block D” storyline. “[It’s] what we all really wanted to build, and it’s there in the whole season… We realized very, very quickly that it floats us right into one of my favorite runs of all time. Until the latest round of leaks, I’d always said to everybody, ‘Watch the last 5 minutes of episode 8, and you’ll know what we’re doing in season 3.’ And I stand by that.” In some ways, the decision to at least partially adapt “Devil in Cell-Block D” is kind of a no-brainer. It’s been identified as the logical follow-up to the Born Again storyline for quite some time, and it’s also really, really good. Beyond that, Scardapane feels it’s an especially pressing storyline for both the character and the times we live in. “The idea of Matt, the lawyer, going into the justice system on the other end of it to pay for his crimes as a vigilante, that’s extremely rich territory,” Scardapane says. “Also, because we try to be somewhat topical, the current stress and strife at Rikers Island is pretty real, and the idea of building a flawed world that neither vigilante nor a lawyer can have any effect on, yeah.” Interestingly, Scardapane notes that “sharp-eyed viewers” will see “which Fisk run” the show will do next as well. He doesn’t spell out what that means, though behind-the-scenes photos of Vincent D’Onofrio with a long beard suggest that Fisk will be a fugitive on the run in the next season. That could mean we’re getting a version of the “Return of the King” Fisk arc. We may even just see some of the events that followed the “Devil’s Reign” storyline (which Born Again‘s second season heavily drew from) come into play. Regardless, Scardapane told Variety that we should expect to see a very different version of the villain. “At the end, both of these men are in prisons of their own making. We have never seen this version of him. I don’t want to hype it too much. ‘Feral’ is the word that I can use.” Speaking of those behind-the-scenes photos, they also gave away Luke Cage’s surprise return and hinted at the upcoming return of Finn Jones’ Iron Fist. Scardapane even notes that “The establishment of the street-level characters in Netflix’s Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, Punisher, that’s the world that this is all heading towards, in my opinion.” We’re still left with some unanswered questions about Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 and the upcoming Punisher spin-off, One Last Kill, with regard to both the show’s timeline and the overall timeline of the MCU, though. Namely, it’s still not clear how all of this leads into Spider-Man: Brand New Day (which is set right after the events of Born Again Season 2 and the upcoming Punisher special). As far as that goes, Scardapane suggests even he doesn’t quite have all the answers. “I don’t know a ton about what goes on in Brand New Day, and I know very well where we left [The Punisher] at the end of Punisher season 2,” Scardapane tells Variety regarding the upcoming Punisher special. “I think this tells the story of what happened next after Punisher and before and during the events of [Born Again] season 2.[end-mark] The post Why <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Season 3 Will Adapt “The Devil in Cell-Block D” appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham A queer “Sleeping Beauty” retelling about escapism, grief, and dreaming of a better world. By Cindy Pham | Published on May 6, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham, a queer retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” publishing with Kokila on June 2nd. 100 years have passed since the last heir of Gyldan fell into eternal slumber and doomed the once-mighty kingdom into poverty and invasion. At least, that’s what the fairy tales claim.Corin is a jaded thief who doesn’t believe in fables, even when she searches Gyldan’s underground tunnels to find her younger sister, Elly, who ran away to find the sleeping princess in hopes of a better life. Corin’s conviction is challenged when she discovers the ruins of the ancient castle, maintained by beings from the kingdom’s golden age, who protect a hidden portal into princess Amelia’s subconscious. Following Elly’s voice, Corin jumps in the portal and seals the entry behind her.Inside the lush world of Amelia’s dreams, the sisters reunite for a new adventure as they meet Briar Rose, Amelia’s whimsical alter ego, and Malicine, a sharp-tongued demon with a gift for magic. But as they explore ice castles, sunflower mazes, and star-filled oceans, Corin suspects Briar Rose is hiding darker secrets behind her “perfect” paradise – and that there are some things their subconscious can’t bury forever. The last words Elly said before she disappeared were “I hate you.” To Corin, the sentiment was nothing new. Saying “I hate you” was a universal language between sisters, and their tongues spoke it fluently. Elly yelled it whenever Corin stomped over her chalk drawings and wiped them off the concrete. Corin hissed it whenever Elly hummed songs in the middle of her sleep and woke them up. They went to bed angry yet huddled for warmth every night. After the warplanes destroyed their homes and soldiers seized their family’s belongings, the only thing they had left was each other. But this time was different. This time, when Elly said “I hate you,” Corin knew she meant it. Her sister had vanished as swiftly as any other resident come sunrise. Anyone living within the dilapidated buildings or rubble-filled streets of Gyldan knew their home wasn’t forever. There would be a few years of normalcy and routine, if their factions allowed it, before the rumbling sound of bulldozers came to tear down the walls. A century-long turf war between rivaling countries meant constant itinerance: new military, new flags, but never any warnings for the families who lived in Gyldan. Houses were simply strategic locations to be secured, and people like Corin and Elly were just collateral damage, about as insignificant as roaches that were crushed to death if they didn’t move out of the way. As Corin wandered through the city center in search of Elly, she could hardly imagine these same streets bustling with trade and people a century ago. Her grandparents had risked their lives seeking refuge in the prosperous kingdom surrounded by forests, but those dreams were quickly dashed when the royal family aban-doned its people, leaving an ungoverned country to descend into chaos. Warring groups divided into territories, and with soldiers patrolling the borders, Corin knew Elly couldn’t have left their faction. She pasted posters with her sister’s likeness around soup kitchens, town squares, even shops that had closed their shut-ters, like the burning bakery she had looted for bread after the last round of warplanes came. Her stomach rumbled with hunger by the time she circled back to the marketplace, a deserted area with ramshackle storefronts and stragglers sorting through trash. She approached a few of them to ask if they had seen the girl on her poster, but their eyes glazed over the image, or they muttered a noncommittal response, or they cursed her out, which always resulted in her cursing them back. Mostly, though, she was ignored, like another body rotting on the street. Her appearance probably didn’t help. Hunger had whittled her limbs to bones and hollowed her cheeks. Swaths of crow-black hair stuck to fresh bruises across her face. Tattered pants and ripped sleeves revealed grime and mud, the stains blending with her dark skin and old scabs. At eighteen years old, she already looked dead. She nailed her last poster onto a wooden pole and took a step back, examining her work. She had recreated Elly’s face in charcoal with all the details she remembered. Every freckle on her dark skin, every birthmark on her long limbs. Her short, choppy hair, which always curled behind her ears. She had a small, rounded nose, wide cheekbones, and two large pools of eyes the color of summer soil after it rained. While Corin inherited their father’s broad shoulders and strong nose, Elly carried their mother’s features, soft and femi-nine like a black-eyed daisy. The longer Corin stared, the more she hated the drawing. The sketches were too crude and badly smudged. They looked like Elly but couldn’t capture her. They didn’t show what it felt like to hold her hand, to feel the stickiness of her palms from all the times she broke dandelion stems and marveled at their white milk. They didn’t show the light in her eyes whenever she heard a new story, the cuts on her fingers from plucking weeds in the cracks of side-walks, the dirt under her nails from digging into soil and shouting that there was another world underneath that they couldn’t see. Buy the Book The Secret World of Briar Rose Cindy Pham Buy Book The Secret World of Briar Rose Cindy Pham Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “She’s still asleep down there,” Elly would insist in rushed breaths, “the princess from long ago—” Corin shook her head, dispelling her sister’s foolish enthusiasm for fairy tales. Even at the age of twelve, Elly still latched onto bed-time stories she’d heard as a child when they had lived with other artisans. Corin thought leaving the commune last year would, at least, let Elly outgrow childish interests and forget their friends. In the end, it was only Corin who wanted to forget them. Before she dwelled longer, the sound of footsteps approaching made her reach for her belt. She turned to flash a dagger at the stranger’s throat, then pulled back as the elderly woman before her gasped. “I’m sorry,” the stranger stammered, her voice frail and light. “I wanted to see your poster.” Deep wrinkles etched the woman’s face like a crumpled plant. She wore a faded shawl that thinned above her wrists, showing a wedding ring that glinted from her finger. Corin handed her the crinkled paper and watched the woman squint at the drawing of Elly. Her lashes nearly brushed against the charcoal as her face pressed closer to the parchment. White clouds that surrounded her pupils shifted, her eyes straining to scan every detail. “The shading on the girl’s face is excellent,” the woman mur-mured. “You’re very talented.” Corin counted her breaths to restrain herself from cursing at the stranger. She felt foolish for hoping Elly would be recognized and angrier that the woman would waste her time by prattling compliments. She was not here to show off her technical skills in some pitiful act of panhandling. But why would anyone care? Even if people knew Elly had been missing for a full day, they would assume she was simply another street rat who faced the early mercy of death. But Elly wasn’t dead. Corin knew this, because there was no body. She had checked the usual places her sister loitered: the soup kitchens filled with lines of gaunt figures, the root cellars they hid in to shelter from rain, even the riverfront where their old friends had built their commune, a now-destroyed home that she swore she would never return to again. No, it wasn’t that Elly was dead. It was that she was nowhere to be found. As if she had disappeared into thin air. “You remind me of the artists that lived by the river,” the woman observed. “People only remember the insurrection, but before then, I used to see them paint and build. Tragic, really, what happened to them.” Corin steeled herself to shut out the sound of bullets, the smell of burnt flesh, the muffled scream that burned in her throat when-ever she imagined that day. It had been a year, and still the scene came to her in nightmares and woke her in sweat and tears. There was no point in picturing how even the autumn leaves died that night, crumpled like the bodies strewn over the debris. She had not been there, after all. She needed to focus on the opportunities in front of her, here and now. “Are you an artist?” she asked. “Yes. But it’s difficult now, as you can see.” The woman’s dis-figured hand gestured to her cloudy eyes. “My husband used to describe a scene to me and I would draw it. Before he died, we drew so much together.” Corin imagined the woman and her husband, hunched over an easel, splatters of paint dripping over the canvas edges. Their voices were soft murmurs, an echo of her own parents’. See this, Corin? Her mother’s hand steadying Corin’s fingers over a brush. A round smear of orange paint, bright like apricot, messy like juice. You just made the sun. “My parents were artists too,” she said. “My mother was a painter. She taught me everything.” “Oh, that’s wonderful. And your father?” “A sculptor. He liked making pots, the tiny ones you grow plants from. I’m better with a brush, though, so sometimes I’d paint them after he finished.” The woman cracked a smile. “You must keep painting, then. Sometimes art can be the only refuge in this world. These soldiers take our loved ones, but they cannot take this. That’s how we keep a memory alive, even if it’s gone.” Corin thought of patchwork quilts stained with paint, clay pots drying by the window, a tiny cottage made of lime-washed brick, and a roof so low she could kiss the thatch. Her father’s calloused palms, her mother’s belly pregnant with Elly, the low hum of a song they’d made up. She could paint the memory into permanence, proof that there was once a home where love overflowed. She took the elderly woman’s hand. This was someone left with no family, just like her, searching for a way to bond with another human being. Corin would give her that connection. She would let the woman know that, despite their despair, at least they had crossed paths with one another. “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t give up on my dreams.” The woman crinkled her eyes and nodded with conviction, as if her heart turned a little softer from their brief connection with each other. They bid goodbye, and Corin watched the woman leave before dropping her smile. Her hand dug in her pocket, where the edge of a wedding ring pressed against her palm. It was smaller than she would have liked to barter with, but she could still make some decent money from it. Maybe it took a mind deteriorating with old age to fall for a trick like this, believing in the dreams of a starving artist. But the truth was that dreams were never enough. Her mother died when she was ten, her paintings and clothes discarded by leering men who wanted to put their own marks over her body. Her father changed after that, stewing in liquor and regret until he finally gave in to his darkest desires and drowned himself a year later. No, if Corin painted a memory, it would be this: A raging river that took three bodies. A baby wailing as the water drowned them. A girl who only had the strength to carry her sister, not the weeping man who brought them there. It would be a portrait of survival, because in the end, that was what mattered. Not the fleeting love of a mother gone too soon, not the strength of a father who’d lost too much. Not even a makeshift home that once opened itself to an orphaned teenager, only to dis-integrate before she turned eighteen. She had no capacity to focus on something as meaningless as art. After the insurrection took her friends, there was no one else but Elly and her. Now, there was only her. Because even as she kept searching, Elly never returned. Excerpted from The Secret World of Briar Rose, copyright © 2026 by Cindy Pham. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Secret World of Briar Rose</i> by Cindy Pham appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Daredevil: Born Again Nothing to Fear and Nothing to Doubt: The Daredevil: Born Again Finale Pays it All Off Come on, Wilson, tell Matt he’s your hero! By Leah Schnelbach | Published on May 6, 2026 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios Season two of Daredevil: Born Again stuck the landing in its finale! For all that I’ve had many issues with this season (I’m sure you’ve noticed all the CAPSLOCK and all the !!!!s) “The Southern Cross”, written by Dario Scardapane & Jesse Wigutow, and directed by Iain B. MacDonald, brought all the storylines together and delivered both an excellent ending and an excellent set up for the third season, which is already filming. A Spoilery Recap We open in the courthouse where Kirsten says they can start even though Matt is late. Karen is very obviously bruised from her encounter with Heather Glenn. Meanwhile, Jess is patching Matt up, and he seems to have an epiphany about being in Fisk’s crosshairs. At Gracie Mansion, Buck informs Fisk that Daniel’s dead via a sad but stoic expression. This causes Fisk to wax philosophical. “I think I’m only just now understanding the responsibility of someone who’s elected by millions—chosen by millions of New Yorkers.” DUDE. You really needed to think this all through better in that after-credits sequence of Echo. Come on. Over in the courthouse, Heather Glenn is gleefully telling Hochberg that Karen has “antisocial personality disorder”—“what we used to refer to as a sociopath,” Hochberg adds. Just then the door opens, and Matt limps in, covered in bruises and full of apologies for his tardiness. The judge asks if he’s all right, and he replies, “I am outstanding.” To Kirsten and Karen he says “I’m OK, just… shot in the leg.” In a building across from the courthouse, men in masks run up stairs. Hochberg has Heather read from her book about vigilantism, and, look, I’m sorry, but what she reads is not insightful enough to be published. Like, oh, does the mask reveal a person’s true character? You mean the point Oscar Wilde made like 140 fucking years ago? Matt questions her, and also raises the idea that Karen was assaulted by somebody, she’s covered in bruises, whomever was alone in a room with her for a while? Hochberg screams “Objection!” every five seconds, and the judge sustains him each time. Across the street, a man in a blue mask men sets up a sniper rifle. Is that…? But back in the courtroom, Matt barely contains his glee as he pivots and calls a new witness. “The Defense calls Mayor Wilson Fisk!” Oh SHIT. The doors swing open, and we hear Omen-esque chanting on the soundtrack, and Fisk’s booming footfalls, and then he taking the oath and Matt is smiling to himself when they get to “So help you God” as he listens to Fisk’s steady, booming heartbeat. The AVTF file in and line the whole back of the room. Not ominous at all. No one’s asked him anything yet, but Wilson tells the court, “When I was a boy, I was taught to find the biggest boy and bring him down,” and just as I’m hoping he’s about to break into a spoken word rendition of “Black Parade” he pivots by saying that “no man stands as tall as this courthouse. This institution.” Across the street, another man walks into the room and takes everyone down by throwing daggers, including the masked sniper. “Poser,” Bullseye snickers as he steps behind the gun. Back in court, Fisk just goes off about the Safer Streets Initiative for a while, and they let him talk himself out. He’s finally gotten big enough that he doesn’t see the trap in front of him. Credit: Marvel Studios Then they brings in the testimony from the late Christofi Savva, and they go into the judges’ chambers to discuss it. Matt hears Wilson murmuring threats at him, and he murmurs back “I could say the same thing,” apparently forgetting that Fisk does not have super-hearing. The Judges hear him though, and he spins it into a commentary on Hochberg and the case, and when someone mentions a possible appeal, Hochberg snaps “There’s not going be an appeal!” Matt lights up like it’s Christmas morning—or wait, sorry, this is Matt we’re talking about, he lights up like it’s Ash Wednesday morning—and says “You’re saying that out loud??? In front of the judges???” He turns to the judges, who do look pretty annoyed. “You want to just hand Fisk the robes and gown???” They tell him he can play the footage of Saava. This, naturally, breaks everything open. Matt goes on the offensive, and grills Fisk about his criminal dealings as Fisk mutters and seems just about to out him. Except, of course, if Fisk admits that he knows he’s Daredevil, well, he himself was aiding and abetting a vigilante, no? So he’s kind of done this to himself. Matt asks about the Safer Streets Initiative, what if means if the public think Daredevil is a hero, and then: “I took a bullet for you. Am I a hero?” Fisk balks at replying, and Matt pivots again. He asks Fisk directly abut the Northern Star, about running weapons through the freeport, and asks whether he ordered the ship scuttled if the plan was exposed. Hochberg, who is so far out of his depth he’s in fucking Antarctica, sputters at Fisk not to answer.   Fisk melts down and screams that “You don’t get to know what comes through our port!” Matt reminds Fisk and the room that as long as there’s another living witness to the scuttling they can corroborate Saava’s testimony, and hammers home the idea that Daredevil was on the boat. Fisk finally understands what’s about to happen and stares at Matt. He’s impressed, really really angry, and I think at least a little in love. “You are a fool.” “No, I’m not. I am Daredevil,” Matt says. The crowd goes bananas. Hochberg yells “Objection!!!” which makes no damn sense. What are you objecting to, sir? This isn’t about you, shut up. The judge agrees with me, tells Hochberg to can it, and allows Matt to point out that the court isn’t a real court, and is unfit to rule on the Safer Streets Initiative, since it was set up by a man who has now just admitted to committing a list of crimes longer than the goddamn Cheesecake Factory menu. The judge finally says, “Daredevil or not, Mr. Murdock is right.” Matt, almost in tears, says, “I move for a dismissal,” and the judge dismisses the case against Karen. Karen cries, Matt cries, they kiss, Fisk is vibrating with fury, it’s all pretty great. As they pour our of the room, the Governor tells Fisk he needs to resign, but he pushes back of course, and all of them move together toward the front door, even though that’s a terrible idea and half the people in this room should know to stay away from him cause he’s now a cornered bull. Jessica says “Watch yourself, kingpin,” for some reason, even though that doesn’t really sound like something she’s say. Except then in a mad rush of chaos, Matt hears Powell give an order, realizes he’s been set up and they have a sniper waiting for him, but also that now Bullseye is up there instead, and tries to stop Wilson from walking into a bullet. Bullseye shoots and hits Buck, some of the AVTF thugs hustle Fisk, Buck, and Heather Glenn back into the courtroom; Matt, Karen, Jess, the Governor, and Kirsten all hole up in a different office, and a bunch more thugs line up out front. The Good Guys turn a TV on, and see a reporter announce that Mayor Fisk has locked the building. Except—isn’t the Governor of the whole ass state in there??? Could she please hire some fucking security??? I mean, they do point out that calling the National Guard in will take too long, and create even more chaos, but why did the Governor walk into this shitshow without at least a bodyguard? Jess, meanwhile, keeps her eyes on the prize. “God bless jurisprudence,” she says, as she finds a hidden bottle of whiskey. But then a new broadcast starts on the TV, and it’s Fisk, telling people Buck was attacked, and, further, that masked people are swarming the building and trying to take the City down. “I will not abandon you. I will stand and fight. Will you?” They all stare at the TV in horror, as though this is somehow unexpected. “He’s asking for a war,” Karen says. Well, yeah. Isn’t that what this type leader always does, in one way or another? The system can only function if people are divided into an endless array of USes and THEMs that can be taken apart and reassembled in whatever shape works for the latest crisis that keeps them in power. I’m annoyed at the episode for acting like they’d be shocked at this point rather than exhausted. But before anyone can get duped by Fisk’s bullshit, BB breaks into a lot of newsfeeds with a Phisk blip, except this time she’s speaking in her own voice and reveals her face—she ends with “It’s our City not his. It’s time to take it back.” Crowds of people gather and march to the courthouse, many of them in homemade Daredevil masks. Jessica throws Matt his suit, and Matt tells the room that the Task Force is coming as Jess slugs her whiskey. “Ready?” Matt asks her. “Finally,” she snaps, and it’s the first time she’s sounded like herself all season. The crowd reaches the courthouse steps, Cherry, Brett Mahoney, Angela, and Soledad step to the front because they’re the characters we’ll recognize, and demand to be let in. Powell yells bullshit at them, they argue about the murder of Hector Ayala, and Powell orders Norton to shoot Cherry. When he refuses, Powell says he’ll just do it himself. Norton remembers he has a spine in his back and coldcocks Powell with the butt of his gun. “Let ’em in!” he yells, and luckily, the other AVTF thugs don’t just bash him in the head. Maybe they’re realizing they should back a different horse. The protesters pour into the building. In the courthouse, Buck is bleeding badly from his gunshot wound, and Heather asks Hochberg for his jacket to try to ward off shock. “It’s a Canali,” he says, flabbergasted. After handing the jacket over, Hochberg decides that this is the perfect moment to ask Heather out on a date, and… pets? Her head? She responds pretty much the way I would, by punching him in the throat so hard he doubles over and collapses. Credit: Marvel Studios “Don’t you ever touch me,” she says. Every time I’m done with this woman, she pulls me back in. Sheila finally remembers there’s a spine in her back and accepts a call from the State Attorney General, who offers Wilson an incredible deal if he would just resign and leave, but instead he roars at his AVTF thugs to let the protesters in. As the people he claims to love and protect crowd the door, Fisk swaggers out like a gunfighter. He punches, grabs people, throws them around like confetti, and absolutely for sure 100% murders a lot of them. We cut between him decimating people, and Matt and Jessica fighting their way through other hallways. Fisk is covered in blood by the time he makes it to the main mezzanine above the entrance, while Daredevil and the crowd pack into the lobby below. Angela finally fights briefly! And Karen takes a dude down by clocking him with his own gun. Wilson looms above them on the staircase balcony like an Outer Boroughs Eva Peron. “I have done everything for you!” he screams. “I have given you my heart and my soul! I just wanted a better New York!” Well sure, all of us want that, but you don’t see me setting up a port with no legal guidelines and running guns in and out of my City while I lock innocent people in cages! When I want a better New York I do the sensible thing and vote for Zohran Mamdani. More citizens stream up the stairs and finally surround Wilson and bring him down like the fire ants in that one super fucked up episode of MacGyver. Matt, obviously, is upset, and parkours up the wall to intercede. Jessica also superjumps up there, and I notice Karen clams up with a distinct air of, “Let them eat Fisk.” Credit: Marvel Studios “You’re better than this!” Matt yells at the Good People of New York, who are absolutely not better than this, and will kill and eat a Mayor when the occasion calls for it. “Stay down!” he yells at Fisk, realizing, perhaps, that the good people of New York will happily kill and eat a Mayor. Matt tells Fisk, “Its over for both of us. Take the deal!” Look I hate to rain on this attempt at reconciliation, Matty, but you do know that Fisk fully straight up murdered people just now, right? He broke a dude’s back, he crushed at least three heads, he’s covered in blood. The fucking hallways are littered with corpses??? Is the deal still on the table after that??? “You go to prison, locked away from her memory…” Matt says, trying to play the VANESSA card, and then, more rationally, says that the two of them will just keep fighting and “this whole thing starts all over again!” When Fisk bellows that none of that means anything to him, Matt comes in with his version of a punch to the windpipe. “What about grace?” “You are  not allowed to offer that to me!” Fisk roars, as I laugh nervously and wonders how I’d look in a white-on-white suit. “We have opportunity to give this city peace, even if we have none!” Matt gasps. “That’s grace.” Wilson makes Angry Fisk Noises. “Please.” Matt says. Fisk makes more Angry Fisk noises, then finally, finally: “I… accept. You’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand.” “I understand,” Matt replies. Credit: Marvel Studios We cut to black for a moment, but then after a brief montage of empty streets, empty AVTF headquarters, and a still-shuttered Josie’s, we rejoin Karen and Matt at their favorite Indian restaurant again. “It’s hard to believe its really over.” They talk about how weird it feels not to be hiding and/or on the run, and wonder why a normal life is so difficult. “Cause we’re really messed up!” Karen says, and they laugh together as the cops pull up outside. “I thought we’d have more time,” Karen says Did you? Why? Actually, how the heck did you two lovebirds even get all the way to this Indian restaurant with all the vigilantes and corpses of people Fisk murdered with his bare hands cluttering up the hallways? How much time has passed??? He and Karen exchange “I love yous” and then Karen ruins the moment by saying “But you know, the Punisher has some points about killing peop—” no, no I’m kidding, it’s actually sweet, and Charlie Cox and Deborah Ann Woll act the hell out of it. He kneels, hands behind his head, smiles at the cop reading his rights, and waves the advisement of, not the rights. Oh and now they’re… oh for fucks sake they’re playing “Pyramid Song”. Did someone google “Leah’s Kryptonite” and then wade through paragraphs of AI bullshit to get to the answer that yes, in fact, this song is Leah’s Kryptonite? Credit: Marvel Studios Jess and Danielle are together in a large room, obviously not their house upstate. And there’s Luke suddenly, standing in the doorway. Danielle runs up and hugs her dad, Jess takes a sec before she goes over and grabs him in a hug that would probably crush most peoples’ ribs into a fine powder. BB gets a job at the Bulletin, and there’s Ellison, yayyyy! Continuing his tradition of hiring very underqualified people and giving them giant offices! …yayyyy? But I guess BB’s earned it. She has a picture of her and Daniel on her desk.  Jess asks Luke a complicated question. “Are you OK?” “Work was… different over there.” “And you’re done?” Luke tells her they’ve found someone else, and we cut to Mr. Charles, using a different name of course, who’s super excited by how many miles he’s accumulated with this airline. He’s seated next to a bemused Bullseye. Oh no. Jess walks over and closes the front door of, you guessed it, Alias Investigations. So I guess the suburban idyll is over. Then we cut between Matt in prison, walking past Powell; Heather putting on the Muse mask and seeing herself smiling, without a mask, in her mirror, Fisk standing alone on a beach in his white suit, and then Matt again sitting with his hands laced together, as a guard closes his cell door. I’ll remind you that “Pyramid Song” has been playing through ALL OF THIS. UGH. And then we cut to black until Season Three. Grace Credit: Marvel Studios OK after really disliking a huge amount of this season, this episode did a lot of what I’ve wanted them to do the whole time. Matt in the courtroom is a whole other Matt—the dialogue is sharper, his banter with Fisk is snappy and sharp, his inherent bitchiness rises to the top, the emotions work, the way he asks relentless questions until Fisk is backed into a corner. Fisk going full Darth Vader in the hallway, finally becoming the bull he’s wanted to be, plowing through innocent protesters who can’t possibly defend themselves until his suit is dripping with other peoples’ blood—chef’s kiss. Heather Glenn finally snapping the tether, Karen getting to be hardbitten and levelheaded, Jessica chugging whiskey—it all felt like things had snapped into place. I just wish all the various threads had played off each other better in the lead up to this finale. And really, the courtroom scene was amazing, and getting to hear Matt pull an Iron Man and announce that he’s Daredevil was amazing—as was the fact that, unlike Tony Stark, Matt isn’t a billionaire above the law. He’s carted off to jail while all the other, wayyyyy worse people walk free. And again, “Pyramid Song” goes a long way with me, but the scene of Bullseye flying off into the sunset, Luke coming home from a government job, Fisk free on a beach, all while Matt sits silent and alone in a prison cell, paying for the crime of being a hero??? The soundtrack wouldn’t matter, that kind of angst is exactly what I want from my Daredevil show. After flirting with the idea of mob rule and autocracy, the show comes down on the idea that the rule of law will prevail, that morally grey people will eventually find the courage to stand up to bullies, that a judge will stop allowing objections from a lawyer who works for the Mayor. Rather than letting New Yorkers physically tear their Mayor apart for his crimes, the show has them listen to Matt, stand down, and allow the man to take the plea deal and leave. Rather than staying on the run, Matt allows the cops to take him in for his years of vigilantism—you know, his years of assaults on people without due process, the very thing he raged about in the courtroom. He goes to jail to prove that the system works, that law applies to everyone. And I love that the show has done that, even as it undercuts it by showing us literally every other character—except Powell—remaining free.   But you know some part of Matt is happy he’s in jail, the guilt-loving freak. (Complimentary) Retribution Credit: Marvel Studios OK BUT WHY WAS LUKE WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT????? And yes, yes, I know Hero for Hire, and in the comics he does all kinds of stuff. But this is the sequel to the Netflix-era show, just like this version of Jessica, and I can’t really believe that he’s do that kind of work, and I can’t believe that Jess’ powers just blip in and out sometimes now. Come up with better stuff to do with them next season, show, or so help me… Fiorello’s Desk WHY THE HELL DOESN’T THE GOVERNOR HAVE A SECURITY DETAIL???????? I did like the way the episode gave time over to breaking down all of Fisk’s crimes, working through them methodically until the judge had to listen, before Daredevil finally did his big reveal. Quotes! Credit: Marvel Studios “Dutiful boyfriend, responsible boss, the loyal son.”—Heather Glenn outlines the “masks” a vigilante might wear, as their mask is their true face. “She didn’t need a mask. She hid behind Daredevil’s.”“The same way you’re hiding behind the Fisk administration?”—Heather and Matt spar over Karen’s “vigilantism” versus Heather’s “law-abiding citizen” status. “There are things I can say in here that will ruin your life.”“I could say the same about you.”—Matt and Wilson flirt in an undertone. “You’ve won nothing, Mr. Murdock”—Wilson protests too much. “Boo!” (punch)—Wilson confronts a disappointed voter. “Waive the advisement not the rights. I used to be a lawyer.”—Matt, to the cop arresting him, and Karen, who’s watching him get arrested. Closing Arguments Credit: Marvel Studios As I think everyone can tell from most of the reviews these past seven weeks, I was not a fan of this season. While all the ideas were solid, I thought the structural choices the writers made undercut the tension and depth we could have had. Daniel and BB’s friendship needed to grow more slowly, and have a lot more push/pull in it as she tried to hide her dual lives—basically we needed time just with her, rather than only ever seeing her with Daniel or under a mask in Phisk Blips. After the reveal, we needed to see her practice the voice and the sound editing, filming, uploading, anything to give a sense, from her POV, of her own fear. Because instead we get a scene where she seems incredulous that Buck Cashman is a threat, and that doesn’t make sense. We also needed to see her and Daniel hanging out casually rather than every conversation being fraught. I thought the decision to retrofit Buck into the Netflix Era was silly. Heather Glenn was infuriating, but she was supposed to be; her conversations about vigilantism needed more nuance all along to set up her villain turn. Why bring Mr. Charles in if you’re not going to give him anything to do? Credit: Marvel Studios Killing Vanessa off was probably necessary for the other love story, which I’ll get into below, but I think it needed to happen earlier to leave Wilson bereft for more of the season. Really ride the wave of sympathy for his grief, and then curdle it into the point where the citizen of his City literally try to murder him with their hands. A lot of Matt and Karen’s dialogue about morality was just wayyyyy too on-the-nose, and almost all of Jessica’s lines were expository. What we needed, again, was time to breathe. Time for these characters to make fun of each other, to have perfectly normal conversations that suddenly turned into arguments. Because here in this last episode, Matt and Karen seemed like themselves again, and Jess was finally getting there. But like case in point: Why not stay with Matt and Jess in the church last week? Or open back there this week? Surely Jess would have some level of commentary on walking in and finding her extremely square friend bleeding from a gunshot wound and appealing to St. Jude? Surely she would have had something to say about being the hilarious answer to a prayer? Surely the two of them could have been sniping at each other about that while she was patching him up? Something to bring back the sparkiness the two of them have. But the big thing was just that I wanted New York to feel a lot more lived in. More small interactions, more buildup of a resistance movement, more people on the sidewalks, more noise—more of a sense that growing faction of the City is trying to prepare for what happens here in the finale, that there are pro-vigilante people, and people who think all of them, from Hector Ayala all the way up to Steve Rogers, are literal criminals. We have real protest marches in our streets all the time. They fill the streets for blocks upon blocks, they shut down traffic, they make un-ignorable noise. I needed to feel like the City was going to explode, not just be told it was. And maybe it seems like harping, but this season really was a sort of love triangle, not between Matt, Karen, and them memory of Frank Castle, or Matt, Karen, and Heather, but between Matt, Wilson, and the beautiful City of New York. Daredevil and Kingpin are in a battle over what New York is, what its future should look like, and, most interestingly, who it loves more. Not who loves IT more, but who IT loves more. And that is a fucking fascinating thing to make a TV show about! Especially to build on their Netflix-era battle for the City’s soul, when they were both self-appointed protectors. Here Wilson is, as he says, chosen by millions of New Yorkers—as a write-in candidate. That’s bonkers! So the idea that he really was given this role by his City, who then turn on him in favor of Daredevil again in the end, was a really cool and unique plotline. But to really make that come alive we needed more of the City itself. This season has been A LOT, and I have talked A LOT about it. What did y’all think? Am I wrong about everything? Are we excited for Season Three? Could we maybe get Ghost Daniel, please?[end-mark] The post Nothing to Fear and Nothing to Doubt: The <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em> Finale Pays it All Off appeared first on Reactor.

News The Devils Ken Russell’s Long-Banned The Devils Director’s Cut Releasing in Theaters This October You’ll finally be able to see the proper version of this “blasphemous” masterpiece By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 6, 2026 Photo: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Warner Bros. Well, this is a surprise. After it was announced that a 4K restoration of director Ken Russell’s The Devils will be screened as part of the 2026 Cannes Classics lineup, Warner Bros. has revealed that they will also be releasing that restoration of the previously censored film in theaters the week of October 16. We don’t know when or how you’ll be able to buy tickets for the screening quite yet, but Warner Bros. has described the event as a “one-week” engagement that will likely only play on select screens. At the very least, it’s hard to imagine this one opening wide. Along with the aforementioned screening of this restored cut of the film at Cannes, rumors suggest that this version of the movie will also receive a physical media release sometime later this year. Details aside, this is really quite a big deal for horror fans and those who follow all forms of lost media. Ken Russell’s The Devils has been listed among the most shocking and controversial movies ever made ever since it received a somewhat surprising theatrical release in 1971. Based on Aldous Huxley’s 1952 non-fiction story The Devils of Loudun, it follows a French priest in the early 1600s who becomes the focus of both a social revolution and sexual awakening among the local nuns. Yeah, pretty risque material, especially when you consider that it was released in the early 1970s and by a major studio. However, Warner Bros. did not release Ken Russell’s complete version of The Devils in theaters at that time. They removed a few key sequences from the British release of the movie to receive an X rating and made additional cuts to ensure that the film received an R rating in the United States. The “holy grail” director’s cut of the film with the original scenes properly restored didn’t screen in theaters until 2002 when film critic Mark Kermode managed to reassemble a version of the movie as part of a documentary about The Devils called Hell on Earth. Since then, Kermode has stated that Warner Bros. has blocked most attempts to release that version of the movie in any format and have reportedly even shut down Criterion’s attempts to distribute the movie. Mind you, it’s been fairly difficult to watch any version of The Devils via any official formats over the years. Even censored versions of the movie can only be found on unofficial (or semi-unofficial) physical media releases and the occasional streaming service appearance. Various versions of The Devils have been banned and censored worldwide since its release, and the director’s cut of the movie has often been treated like a sacrilegious object by the studio. So what’s the big deal? Well… how should I put this? The most famous cut scenes from the movie involve sexual acts performed by the nuns. One involves a statue of Christ and the other involves a femur bone. I’ll let your imagination take it from there (and I am among the many who haven’t actually seen those scenes for myself). Yeah, it’s pretty wild stuff, and that is on top of a movie that is best known for its generally controversial nature anyway. Shocks aside, The Devils really is a pretty special movie in any form. I previously referred to it as one of the definitive erotic horror films, which honestly undersells its value as commentary on society, religion, sex, and the humanity that runs through it all. So while you probably won’t want to take the whole family to this one, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for further details as The Devils nears its theatrical re-release later this year. [end-mark] The post Ken Russell’s Long-Banned <i>The Devils</i> Director’s Cut Releasing in Theaters This October appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird Extradimensional Digestive Enzymes With Morel Sauce: Yri Hansen’s “Nights and Weekends in the Shoggoth Loop” By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on May 6, 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 Yri Hansen’s “Nights and Weekends in the Shoggoth Loop,” first published in the March 2026 Strange Horizons fungal-themed special issue. (Note: Ruthanna has an article in the same issue, on the weird-fiction-to-solarpunk pipeline. It also contains such goodies as a new Sonya Taaffe poem.) Spoilers ahead, but go read! Narrator works in the Shoggoth Loop of an unnamed city at a fine-dining restaurant called Nuth-Shoggoth. Or perhaps Nuth-Shoggoth is the name of the shoggoth entire which “hosts” the restaurant inside its bulk, where its head would be, if it had a head. Where does it keep its brain, then? Here’s the thing, you can’t think about shoggoths as if they evolved in Earth’s plane of existence. Chop its protean mass to bits, and it will just grow back. Its whole body can be a brain. It can synthesize “a million different novel biomaterials.” The Masters who left them behind after they invaded our plane also left behind Runestones that can biomagically control and shape shoggoths; once humans figured out how to use the Runestones, shoggoths became “super hot real estate” in a war-devastated world. The opening finds Narrator working a “shoveling” shift, a back-of-house gig that involves stuffing the shoggoth’s maw with such feed as whole hog’s heads. Sid, the restaurant’s host, taps them to fill in for Lazaro, who’s in hospital after being mugged. Narrator’s going to sub as a runner. Runners get less in tips than server assistants, but shovelers get no tips, and anything’s better than scraping duty. A fiftyish guy chats them up at the bus stop. After trying without success to figure out Narrator’s “gender deal,” he points out a spot in the rubble-strewn street where his favorite bar once stood. It had a killer house band, but then the aliens invaded. He and his buddies tried to band together against the Masters, but the authorities ran them off. Not that the authorities did any better. The bus is late, as usual. Delays at the decontamination checkpoint delay Narrator further; they don’t get to bed until after three a.m. The next day, Narrator fills in for Lazaro as a server assistant. Manager Shane puts two runners on scraping duty, so again Narrator escapes that pit assignment. The base ingredient of all Nuth-Shoggoth’s dishes is the shoggoth exudate called Ambrosia. Fresh from the glands, it’s light and fluffy, but it cools into a super-glue like substance removable only by being hand-shoved through the shoggoth’s pre-digestive pores and scraped against their wiry internal cilia. The reeking pre-digestive enzymes are caustic. Even if you wear gloves, they’ll eventually erase your fingerprints. But caustic, too, are the Molnads, big-money patrons who own not only the restaurant but the whole city-block of shoggoth. Narrator gets stuck with them and their loud demands for every expensive dish, including those not on the menu, which they then barely touch. Worse, a shoveler gets injured, and Narrator must run between the dining room and the shoggoth-maw. It must be fed constantly, or the Ambrosia will run out—it takes sixty grams of raw meat to produce one gram of delicious mush. But at shift’s end, they get a big tip from the Molnads and even praise from Sid, who tells them that tomorrow they’ll start host training. Heading home, Narrator thinks about their first day at Nuth-Shoggoth, which was also the first day they tried Ambrosia. Its irresistible aroma is different for each person; scientists believe it contains a narcotic that stimulates appetite and the memory of the best foods the smeller’s ever eaten. Its taste sets off a brain-chorus of Remember! Food tastes good! Life is pleasure! You deserve this! Narrator cried at their first bite, overwhelmed with “transcendent, revelatory deliciousness.” Too bad the Ambrosia eater builds up tolerance, until it tastes like nothing, or maybe a little like chicken. Wherever the shoggoths originated, their Ambrosia doesn’t need to retain its gustatory impact. As a prey-lure, it only needs to work once. That’s why the glands occur near the shoggoth’s maw. It was an Eastie kid who brought the secret of Ambrosia to humanity. People from East City had become hardened to catastrophes that always fell on them hardest. The coming of the Masters was just one catastrophe more. Shortages, crop failures, environment devastation, famine drove Easties across Shoggoth District barriers. A ragged gang of youths caught the scent of paradise and traced it to its source. Only one escaped ingestion. In the tiny bedroom of their shared apartment, Narrator muses about how they came to the city to become a professional musician. But the restaurant toil that keeps them alive also sucks up all the energy they hoped to devote to music. Lazaro returns to Nuth-Shoggoth battle-scarred but upbeat. Still weak, he starts the night as a server’s assistant and ends up scraping. Narrator suggests that Lazaro could be a good host. Sid’s unconvinced. He says the host station’s too close to the bar, but they know it’s Lazaro’s unaesthetic scars. The conversation turns to the rich patrons, the Molnads in particular. Narrator shouldn’t think they bought Nuth-Shoggoth just for the restaurant income. They should remember that shoggoths aren’t just “mush dispensers.” Remember the killing machines they were during the invasion. Sid’s planning to quit the restaurant. Narrator thinks about how the Molnads court business types, how there’ve been mysterious firings and hirings in management, how the restaurant cash flow doesn’t always make sense. Ultimately, the restaurant’s only “one little compartment in a massive living organism, like an ingrown hair on an elephant.” Lazaro joins Narrator and Sid. He jokes Sid into relaxing a bit. He rests a hand on Narrator’s shoulder, and their “heart stutters, because his hand is big and he’s touching me.” Underfoot, the Shoggoth “clicks and groans,” barely audible over “the sound of clinking forks and tipsy laughter.” The Degenerate Dutch: Weirdly, well-off customers don’t have to go through decontamination leaving the Loop—only the poor people who work there. And even among the servers, there are differences: someone who “looks like an Eastie” is never going to get a front-of-house promotion. Libronomicon: That “New York Times piece on Ambrosia Cuisine” must’ve been one hell of a restaurant review. Maybe literally. Weirdbuilding: Have ye ever heard tell… of a shoggoth? Have ye been down to the Innsmouth Crab Shack? Absolutely delicious it is, just don’t ask where the crab meat comes from. Ruthanna’s Commentary I’m fortunate, among my peers, that I’ve only spent a single season in food service. I was a high school student slinging sides at the seafood shack down the street, one of those clapboard places that only opens in the summer for tourists. It was enough to turn me off cole slaw for decades. The mere sight of dressed cabbage brought back the vivid tactile memory of reaching into a barrel of the stuff, thin plastic glove no protection from feeling the whole slimy handful. Scoop too slow, or place the lemon wrong on the plate, and you’d get snapped at by a manager who wasn’t getting paid enough to deal with this nonsense. The next summer, I got a piecework gig with a friend’s aunt who made cardboard jewelry for TJ Maxx. The smell of a hot glue gun invokes unwelcome memories as well, but I never looked back. Cape Cod’s shellfish scene, at least, carries limits on the size of the tentacles and the grossness into which you can insert your hands. Living and working in the seafood sounds like a whole ‘nother circle of hell. Which is the point, really—how could mythosian horrors take the exploitative, physically and mentally destructive world of food service to its logical extreme? The horror is still human inequality, for one thing. The rich winners, the owners and privileged guests, still come out on top after the Masters abandon their shoggoths, now with extradimensional resources on top of their hoards of money and property. They still treat the people who do the work like shit. Dishwashing’s gotten even worse. Tips still don’t fill the gaps. I haven’t worked in Chicago’s Loop—I had an assistant professor position on the South Side—but liked the area when I was there. I was living outside the city, in a Wheaton College Bible Belt neighborhood, and getting downtown was a treat. My favorite expedition was always the Field Museum—have they added a shoggoth section to the Evolving Planet exhibit, I wonder? Does the stadium next door, already designed to look like a UFO has just landed over the bleachers, now sport a real starship? Has my favorite restaurant, Russian Tea Time, pivoted to ambrosia? That would be sad. I am not an extreme eater—I’ll enjoy my butter-soaked pelmeni as many times as I can have it, rather than try a single unrepeatable taste of perfect Proust Effect shoggoth bait. I’m also pretty sure that the RTT servers aren’t sticking their hands in digestive enzyme behind the scenes, which is always nice. Then again, what is The Bean, really? Could it be an advance scout, a threat of non-Euclidean things to come? Under the surface—which is always where you (don’t) want to look with shoggoths—this is a story about what gets taken from the people being exploited. Not just labor. Not just fingerprints, identity scraped away by the work that the better-off get to avoid. Pleasure, and the memory of it. You can spend all day dishing it out for others, and no longer be able to taste it yourself—and that, like the fingerprints, is something they do to you either on purpose or because avoiding it doesn’t matter. Narrator loses their music. The owners might as well be entities from beyond the stars, with goals that have nothing to do with what they destroy on their way. And under the surface, all the types of exploitation are connected. Food service and real estate and weapons production, and the “Masters” who leave behind unwanted slaves. Or maybe who did so for a reason—not abandoned in retreat but inserted to pave the way for a second wave. Or, perhaps, to push a few already-privileged humans to “ascend” themselves. To be ready to join the Masters, one way or another, as part of the Great Old Labor Exploitation from beyond the realms we know—but which we might all too easily recognize from our own experience. Anne’s Commentary I ate Yri Hansen’s story up as if it were a big plate of Chicken-Fried Ambrosia and Ambrosia Cream Gravy with Mashed Ambrosia and Ambrosial Biscuits on the side. No wonder Nuth-Shoggoth has snagged a Ten Star Michelin rating year after year! “Nights and Weekends” reads, to me, like the first chapter of a novel, but it also works brilliantly as a “slice-of-life” short story, one extravagantly larded with disgusting, disturbing, and sumptuous details. And it features shoggoths! Say no more, I’m in knee-deep and wading deeper. Lovecraft became the Father of Shoggoths in 1936 with the serial publication in Astounding Stories of At the Mountains of Madness. Here’s his canon description of the creatures, in the words of William Dyer, a leader of Miskatonic University’s Antarctic expedition: “Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things?” Viscous Agglutination of Bubbling Cells sounds like a great soup du jour for Nuth-Shoggoth. I’ll take a bowl, please, with extra bubbles! Prof. Dyer can be excused for the overwrought close of the above excerpt. What he saw in the ruined city of the Old Ones would give anyone a touch of PTSD. Hansen’s depiction of shoggoths sticks close to Lovecraft’s, except for the fifteen-foot diameter limitation on their size. Hers are “agglutinations” that can achieve footprints big enough to cover two city blocks at top heights of four stories. On Earth, at least, they have become not just the builders but the buildings themselves. They have laid waste to much of the human city, so is their burgeoning growth an urban renewal plan or just incidental biological sprawl taken advantage of by humans once they acquire Runestones? Or the humans could be intentionally supersizing shoggoths by grossly overfeeding them. Force feeding them, even, like so many geese stuffed for the production of paté de foie gras. Paté d’Ambrosia gras, bound to be a hit with the Molnads. I started sympathizing with Hansen’s shoggoths when I read that the Masters of the invasion abandoned them upon leaving Earth, like superfluous puppies dropped out of the car on a backcountry road. Why leave their killing machines and construction workers behind? Is it so easy to whip up a new batch of slaves from a jar of protoshoggoth ooze? Or is it a precaution against transporting shoggoths on the verge of becoming intelligent enough to rebel? On the other hand, leaving the shoggoths on Earth could be the Masters’ reward to them for services well-rendered. Intelligent shoggoths wouldn’t want to gobble up all the prey items in their new “preserve.” They’d want to husband their resources so they’d last. With their potential to synthesize millions of “novel biomaterials,” they’d be able to mind-control the humans into believing they were the herdsmen, the shoggoths the cattle, while the opposite was true. It could be an arms race, too, between shoggoth intelligence and the humans’ mastery of Runestones. If, indeed, the humans have any real ability to wield Runestones—the shoggoths could merely be feigning submission. The fictional possibilities inherent in Hansen’s take on shoggoth-human relations are as tantalizing as Ambrosia itself. Side dishes that could grow into entrees are the human intrigues Sid hints at and the implied chemistry between Narrator and Lazaro. Hansen’s slice of post-invasion might have come from an Ambrosia cheesecake. It could smell and taste different for each human diner who tries it. Or, that is, for each human reader. Join us next week, along with Arthur’s weak heart, for Chapters 13-14 of Stephen Graham Jones’s Buffalo Hunter Hunter.[end-mark] The post Extradimensional Digestive Enzymes With Morel Sauce: Yri Hansen’s “Nights and Weekends in the Shoggoth Loop” appeared first on Reactor.