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We may be living in a golden age of TV, but panning through all the dross to find that gold can be time-consuming and tedious. For every much-discussed hit like Severance, House of the Dragon, and The Bear, there are dozens of new original shows that barely tip the cultural needle. And with so many new streaming services competing with HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Disney Plus, it’s impossible to keep up with everything new to view. But The Verge’s TV section is ready to help. Our news, reviews, and interviews help you find the next Stranger Things or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in time to keep up with the cultural conversation. And our essays and analysis invite you to consider the deeper context of what you’re watching.

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Production on The Last of Us’ second season starts in February.

Showrunner Craig Mazin said in a Variety panel that production begins on February 12th. The date’s not a total surprise, as HBO and Max content chief Casey Bloys recently said that production would start in early 2024, but now we know exactly when it starts.

Now we just need to know who is going to play Abby. Hopefully we’ll find out soon, given that the role has apparently already been cast.


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The first season of the Halo show is available to watch for free on YouTube.

You can watch all nine episodes from this playlist, as shared by Wario64. If you want to read more about the show before jumping in, check out Ash Parrish’s review of the season.

The Paramount Plus show has been renewed for a second season, but we still don’t know when it’s set to come out.


The best entertainment of 2023

A curated guide to the most interesting games, movies, and TV shows of the year.

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Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal are taking The Boys to Mexico.

Amazon’s adaptation of The Boys only just got to college with its Gen V spin-off, but the streamer has already greenlit yet another expansion of the franchise — this time set in Mexico — courtesy of Blue Beetle’s Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Diego Luna, and Gael García Bernal.


Get a first look at the big iron on his hip.

Vanity Fair has released some first-look photos for the Amazon-produced live action Fallout series due out in April of next year, and with The Game Awards next week, we just might get a trailer soon.

Fallout stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) as Lucy, a vault dweller venturing out into the nuclear devastated world of ghouls, robots, and Roman empire cosplayers. It also stars Walton Goggins (Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers) as The Ghoul, a hundred-year-old irradiated walking corpse who, according to Fallout’s prosthetics designer Vincent Van Dyke, needed to be both gruesome and hot.

Judging from the pictures...mission accomplished.


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Image: Vanity Fair
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The MCU’s Agatha Harkness seems to be back on her bullshit.

How Agatha Harkness: Darkhold Diaries will address the events of WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is anyone’s guess.

But in a new WandaVision behind-the-scenes feature reel which also includes some new Darkhold Diaries production footage), Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness appears to be back to her old seld, and messing with the kind of magic that tends to get people roped into big crossover events.


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Science Saru’s Dandadan adaptation might just make a believer out of you.

Yukinobu Tatsu’s sci-fi / action / romance manga Dandadan tells the story of two teens who are dead certain that ghosts and/or aliens are probably real.

The manga has only been publishing for a couple of years, but Science Saru’s upcoming adaptation looks like it’s going to be pretty damn slick when it drops in 2024.


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Doctor Who arrives oddly late to the companion podcast space.

The first of three new Doctor Who episodes is about to premiere at 6:30PM GMT (1:30PM ET, and if you’re not in the UK or Ireland, you’ll find the new episodes on Disney Plus now). And after fans watch “The Star Beast,” for the first time, there will be an official post-show podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts) to extend the experience.

The only odd thing about this is that Doctor Who didn’t have one before, and if you’re still wondering why every new show has a podcast, Hot Pod has tried to answer that very question.


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You can finally read the details of SAG-AFTRA’s new contract for yourself.

When SAG-AFTRA finally reached a tentative agreement to bring the actors strike to an end earlier this month, the union’s insistence that its members might not be able to look over the deal before voting on it raised more than a few eyebrows.

It seemed odd that union leadership might try to get people on board with the contract without giving them a chance to read the whole thing. But now the union’s released the full document — on the Friday evening after Thanksgiving of all days.


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Meep meep.

While Star Wars continues to feature new aliens engineered in a lab for maximum cuteness, Doctor Who is moving in the opposite direction. Just look at this thing. I very much relate to Donna at the end of the clip below. The Meep, as it’s known, will make an appearance in “The Star Beast,” one of a trio of Doctor Who specials coming over the winter.


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*pounds table* Show me the creatures.

This is the second teaser for Netflix’s Gyeongseong Creature, following a release date announcement at Geeked Week earlier in the month. And while the show looks great, I am just itching to see what these creatures actually look like. I guess we’ll find out pretty soon: part one of the series starts streaming on December 22nd.


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Squid Game contestants want payback over alleged injuries.

Netflix denied complaints of injuries resulting from Squid Game: The Challenge's January filming conditions that reportedly resulted in some injuries.

As Deadline reported today — a day after the game show’s release — two of the contestants have hired British personal injury firm Express Solicitors to seek compensation for their claims of hypothermia and nerve damage resulting from the filming. A spokesperson for the show told Deadline “no lawsuit has been filed” yet.


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Netflix wants its money back after a $55 million production fell apart.

That’s according to The New York Times, which claims filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch pocketed the millions of dollars Netflix transferred him for the production of a sci-fi series that we’ll probably never see:

Netflix wired Mr. Rinsch’s production company $11 million, bringing its total outlay to more than $55 million... Mr. Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab and, using options, placed risky bets on the stock market.

Rinsch and Netflix are “now locked in a confidential arbitration proceeding,” the NYT reports. He reportedly claims Netflix owes him “at least $14 million in damages.”


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Guess the Muppets were too much mayhem for Disney Plus.

The Muppets Mayhem lasted just one season before Disney canceled it. Variety reported today that the show won’t get a second season on the platform.

The show followed Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem Band as they tried to record an album. Bummer for fans of the Muppet Show’s house band.


Black Mirror, which is basically a docuseries at this point, has been renewed for a seventh season.

As our world’s become increasingly filled with artificial intelligence, robotic dogs armed with guns, and social media platforms run by fashy lunatics, it’s gotten harder to enjoy Black Mirror as mere speculative fiction. But even though the show doesn’t always feel as science-fictional as it used to, that’s not stopping Netflix from bringing it back for a seventh season.


A monster weekend for entertainment releases.

And I mean that literally: the Godzilla spinoff series Monarch: of Monsters is now streaming on Apple TV Plus. But it’s not the only big release of the week, with Nintendo’s remake of Super Mario RPG out on the Switch, and the subversive Scott Pilgrim Takes Off streaming on Netflix.

Elsewhere, the excellent action game Downwell is now on Apple Arcade, and Nintendo surprise-dropped some titles at this week’s indie event: organization RPG Backpack Hero and turn-based folktale Howl.


A still image from the TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Image: Apple
Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land is coming to Hulu.

Last year, Bandai Namco announced it would turn a short story by Toriyama into an entire Sand Land franchise. The Sand Land movie has already been released in Japan, we saw a trailer for the game during Summer Game Fest, and next spring Sand Land: The Series will “build upon the movie’s original universe” with a new anime on Hulu.

Hulu’s Animayhem booth will highlight this show along with Undead Unluck, Tokyo Revengers, and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War at the Anime NYC convention this weekend.


Promotional artwork for the Sand Land TV show, with characters riding a dune buggy-like vehicle through the desert.
Sand Land: The Series
Image: Hulu
Harley Quinn season 5 is absolutely on its way.

As troubled as Warner Bros. Discovery’s universe of live-action projects based on DC’s comics are, none of that drama seems to be impacting Max’s Harley Quinn which has been renewed for a fifth season.

“We must have handed out at least three thousand NDAs by now,” executive producers Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker, and Dean Lorey said In a statement about keeping the renwal secret. “It was a big waste of paper.”


A red haired, green-skinned woman wearing a green biker jacket embracing a page blonde woman wearing pigtails whose tips are either pink or blue.
Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn sharing an embrace.
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It’s curtains for Netflix’s Shadow and Bone series.

Netflix’s adaptation of author Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone series seemed like it could have been the streamer’s next big hit when it was first dropped back in 2021. But after just two seasons, Netflix has done what Netflix does, and announced that the show has been cancelled.


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Plus, in this week’s Installer: a new Steam Deck, the Humane AI Pin, music podcasts, Elon Musk, and way too many writing apps.

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A new creature feature.

Gyeongseong Creature is the latest in a growing list of Korean series on Netflix, and it looks like a fascinating bit of monster mayhem up against the backdrop of real-world history. The first teaser doesn’t show much of the actual creatures, but we’ll find out more when the show starts streaming on December 22nd.


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Good vs. evil, but with cats.

We already knew that Netflix was working on an animated series based on the card game Exploding Kittens, and now we have our very first glimpse at the series, which features god in the body of a cat and a very confounding garage door. The show is expected to start streaming in 2024.


Loki’s season 2 finale dug deep to find meaning in all of Marvel’s madness

Loki’s second season goes out with a big, existential bang that gives the god of mischief a glorious but confusing new purpose at the center of Marvel’s multiverse.

A marvelous weekend for entertainment.

Leading the way this week is The Marvels, which, it turns out, is actually quite fun. Dream Scenario is also in theaters (it was one of our favorites from TIFF this year) this weekend, while David Fincher’s The Killer is now streaming on Netflix.

Elsewhere, Loki just wrapped up its second season on Disney Plus, The Invincible brings a hard sci-fi adventure to next-gen consoles and PC, Apple Arcade hit Air Twister is finally on PC and console, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s huge wave of new tracks is now complete.


A woman in a form-fitting superhero costume standing in a bedroom whose walls are plastered with drawings of her.

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The Marvels.
Image: Marvel Studios
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Masters of the Universe: Revolution’s teaser is a reminder to not skip leg day.

Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revolution series from Kevin Smith will see Eternia fall after Skeletor (Mark Hamill) wins in an epic battle with He-Man (Chris Wood) that damages the very fabric of reality.

But while the sword-bearing hero might be on the ropes, the show’s new teaser trailer definitely makes it seem like he might end up crushing his nemesis with those massive tree trunks Powerhouse worked to hard to animate.


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Watch out for the snake.

Netflix hasn’t really let up its push into anime, and the latest example is its adaptation of the Onmyōji fantasy novels. The series starts streaming on November 28th, but you can check out a new clip from the first episode right now — which features a cute frog and a not-so-cute snake.


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Get obliterated.

The creators of Cobra Kai are back with what’s described as “a high octane action-comedy that tells the story of an elite special forces team who thwarts a deadly threat to Las Vegas.” You can get a sense of that in the clip below, before the whole series starts streaming on November 30th.


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Oh brother.

The first teaser for The Brothers Sun is short, but it packs in a lot, from a fight in a dinosaur suit to Michelle Yeoh drilling into a dead body. Not sure what else you need. The dark action comedy hits Netflix on January 4th.