Gladiatorial combat where naked warriors fight atop dinosaurs, alien octopus invasions, and tyrannical felines are just the tip of the iceberg in the fourth installment of Love, Death + Robots. Netflix’s genre-blending animated anthology series adeptly highlights science fiction’s versatility with stories that embrace horror, comedy, melodrama, and other label-defying tales. It’s a rare example of a project that becomes more confident and ambitious over time.  Love, Death + Robot’s executive producer, Tim Miller, and supervising director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, open up on the animated anthology series’ electric fourth season, which science fiction story would be their white whale of adaptations, how David Fincher’s ludicrous string puppet music video came together, and which of this volume’s segments were supposed to be directed by Zack Snyder. DEN OF GEEK: How do you figure out the stories that you’re going to tell and how do you approach the source material that you adapt? Is it a case of finding source material that you’re passionate about from the start or are there stories that are being suggested to you? JENNIFER YUH NELSON: Well, pretty much all the shorts done in all the seasons have been based on short stories that Tim’s read throughout his life. And the reason why they stuck with him is because they’re great stories. And so we have hundreds of these stories just piled up. That’s sort of the pile that we go through and say, “That’s a great one. Let’s try that one,” and we just curate a gigantic, different list and try to find stories that can live together in a nice sort of album of narratives, tones, and looks. TIM MILLER: There’s a lot of different stories, but once we get the vibe for the season, there’s a lot of like, “Let’s swap this one in for that one because it’s a little too much like this other one.” We try to curate the perfect mix. So we have a little something for everybody, although we always seem to end up with too many cats. But I can’t explain that. I don’t really notice it until after the fact. Have there been any short stories that you wanted to adapt, but weren’t able to, whether it’s been for rights issues or just not being able to figure out the best way to adapt it? TM: Oh, tons. Tons. Johnny Mnemonic, the original short story. There’s another one by William Gibson called Dogfight that I would love to do. It took me forever to get Drowned Giant, the J.G. Ballard one that I did in the previous season. Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell by Dan Simmons. There’s just a lot and sometimes we just can’t get to it. Sometimes the authors don’t want to let their works go for some reason. I don’t know, but I keep trying. Bound for Glory by Lucius Shepard is another one. It’s always so exciting when you watch a season and you do recognize some of the stories, or even if it’s just the author behind it. There is a real rush to that. I love it. TM: We do publish the stories, too! There’s two volumes. There will be a third soon. All the money goes to the authors. We want people to read the stories! Forget about making them into movies. What does the process of finding the right animation style for each story entail? Are the aesthetics and artistic choices your call or that of the animation studio? JYN: Often we choose the director in the animation studio according to their specialty and making sure that it fits for us. If we have two tentpole episodes that look a certain way then we want to make sure that those episodes are going to look vastly different from each other. So you’ll go to a studio that, say, if you have a realistic science fiction one, then you want to go to a studio that might be able to do stop motion for another story instead. Not every studio does all these different things well. You need to find their thing. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s important for us, especially for this series, to make sure that we’re really showcasing the whole breadth of animation. What you can do with it and to see the limits and beyond of what these new innovative styles can be. And sometimes these directors are very much pioneers in what they do and no one else is doing what they do. That’s why we end up working with them. TM: We push it in the initial direction and then the directors come in and do their pitch. They’ll build off of the initial concept. So when it comes to, let’s say, design the characters, we let them take their best shot at doing that and try to give them as much freedom or rope to hang themselves – if you prefer – as we can.  Building off of that, Tim, your “Golgotha” segment is really wonderful, but also has the series explore live action territory. How did live action fall on this segment and is that something that you could see more of in Love, Death + Robots’ future? MILLER: Part of it is me just saying, “Look, we can do anything we want, motherfuckers!” So it’s just planting a stake there, but I’d love to do a whole series of, like a live action version of Love, Death + Robots because I like that format. I love animation, but I also like visual effects and I think you could make a case for doing a story that required some really innovative and cutting-edge visual effects to tell the story. But that one just felt right. You know, a lot of times the story speaks to you in a–not in a mystical way, but just a way that feels right to tell that story. Live action felt like the most grounded, right way to tell “Golgotha.” Jennifer, one of the exciting things about a show that’s now in its fourth batch of episodes is that there’s an opportunity to tell sequels and return to past worlds, like with “Spider Rose.” How did you decide that this specific story was an old idea that you wanted to build upon, rather than another past entry? JYN: Well, “Spider Rose” was batting around for a while on the story wall. We wanted to make it for a while. And with Tim’s episode, “Swarm,” those were always like two sides of the same struggle in Bruce Sterling’s world of the Shapers and the Mechanists. And so Tim’s episode, “Swarm,” had the investor aliens, which are making a reprise in “Spider Rose.” The same aliens show up, but Tim’s story focuses on the side of the Shapers, which are humans sort of manipulating themselves and evolving through biotechnology, whereas the Mechanists on the other side are the ones that are more mechanical. They’re actually cybernetic enhancements. “Spider Rose” is that side of civilization. So it is not a direct sequel, but it’s happening in the same world. It’s such a rich world, but we only have like 14 or 15 minutes. You get this little slice of a view into this world that’s so rich. That was just a fun way of just getting back into something that’s already so well thought out.  TM: But I have to say, Jennifer – if she and I were both kids and you took us to Toys “R” Us, I’m the kid that runs in and goes to the toy he knows he wants exactly. Jennifer is the kid that peruses all the aisles and makes a considered choice about what she wants, looks at every toy she could get, and then chooses the one she really wants, after much consideration, because she can choose anything she wants to put in the show. And she really thinks about it. It’s usually after the lineup comes together that she’s like, “I want that one!” It’s quite different the way our brains work. Yeah. Well, like “Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” feels like a very good example of that. Of just being like, “Who doesn’t love gladiator dinosaurs at the end of the day?” It’s just so much fun. TM: That one was written for Zack Snyder! Zack wanted to do one, but then he didn’t have time. I had written it so, normally, it wouldn’t have been one I picked, but I was invested in it, because I’d written it and I enjoyed it. When I write something, I’m working it out in my head; how I would direct it, really.  JYN: Was it really one you wouldn’t have normally done? Nelson laughs TM: I don’t know. If you look at “Drowned Giant,” which was the one I had done before that, could anything be more different than that? Although that was a weird one for me to do too. I’m not sure. I don’t think I have a style for, better or worse. David Fincher’s “Can’t Stop” is such a fun experiment, but I also really just loved to see him ostensibly returning to his music video roots. Was this an idea that he previously wanted to do in the series? How did this decision on his part come about? TM: He had mentioned a while ago about wanting to do a Chili Peppers music video with puppets. But when I called and said, “Hey, would you do an episode?” And he said, “What do you want me to do?” I said a music video for two reasons. One, because he is essentially the master of masters in that field. And then secondly, because I knew he was limited with his time. Like, he couldn’t make a 20-minute music video. So it built a box around him that I knew he couldn’t get out of. But he immediately said, “Yeah, I want to do the Chili Peppers as puppets.” Directors get fixated on ideas and then they just kick around in the attic until they get a chance to do them. You’ve talked about the rich world that all of these stories create, but sometimes you only spend a very brief time in them. Has there been any consideration for full-length spinoffs – or even a movie – that take one of these ideas or worlds and turn them into their own series?  There are certainly plenty that could sustain it. Does that idea interest you at all? TM: We pitched a “Three Robots” series. Netflix – I’m not gonna say they said no, I’m just gonna say that they haven’t said yes. And then there have been others. But you know, the beauty of the show is that we’d never get some of these ideas made if we were asking to do a feature. If I said, “Yeah, I want to do naked gladiatorial slaves riding dinosaurs in space, they’d go, ‘No.’” But if I say it as part of a short, nobody cares, right? Nobody even questions it as part of the show, which is the greatest thing about the show ever.  And even if you’re not wildly into an idea, you’re still going to do it if it’s only a five-minute buy-in. There’s such a good setup to what you guys are doing. JYN: Sometimes – and I don’t mean this in a bad way – but sometimes that’s all that’s required. You know what I mean? It’s great for five minutes, but you wouldn’t enjoy it If you made it 90. You’ve accomplished so much across the first four volumes of Love, Death + Robots, but what are your aspirations for future volumes? Is there anything that you haven’t done that you’d like to attempt? TM: We’ve got a lot of stories. I have the next season – seasons, actually – picked out. There’ll be wrangling of them if we are fortunate enough to do it, but there’s no lack of great material. And there’s no lack of different types of things. We occasionally go back to something like the tilt-shift of “Night of the Mini Dead” sort of thing or “Three Robots,” which I think is fun. There’s still a lot of room to do new and innovative things that we haven’t done before.  JYN: Absolutely. One thing that I think the show does really well and I hope really continues on  forever is that this is a way to show new ideas and new looks and new innovation by different directors and studios around the world. Rarely do you see such a showcase of animation like this. So I think that sort of beauty, shared with everyone, I hope that continues forever.  Off of that, I am such a huge animation fan. I love the different studios  that you have involved with the show. Animation has just made such huge leaps over the past few years. It’s so exciting to see the kind of stuff that’s getting nominated at the Academy Awards. Has there just been anything over the past few years that’s really excited you guys in particular?  JYN: Do we have time to watch anything, Tim?  TM: Not really, but I will say on our other show, Secret Level, one of the shorts we did was with Unreal Engine. I really think that a large part of the future of animation is going to be real-time and the tools that come with that. I think it opens up the filmmaking process to a lot of people. My studio, Blur, was started at the dawn of the PC desktop age, and it was great because it opened up the business of making animation to people that didn’t have millions of dollars. I started Blur with $24,000, but now things are even better and people can do more really highly polished stuff in their bedroom, in their underwear. I think that’s fantastic, and it’ll open up bigger stories for us to tell.  It’s too soon to say what AI is going to do to the whole industry. I’m terrified, fascinated, and excited, but I think we’re going to see a lot of changes. This means taking on bigger stories, which is what I want. It shouldn’t cost $100 million to tell a story and I hope we can do more with less. Not people, but time. All four volumes of Love, Death + Robots are now streaming on Netflix.

Science fiction has become one of television’s most reliable genres and audiences have no shortage of options when it comes to progressive sci-fi storytelling. Anthology series have also never been more popular as they’ve proven to be an easy, noncommittal way to draw in audiences with unrelated, standalone storytelling. Love, Death + Robots has quietly done dependable, delightful work for three seasons, but it’s not just a sci-fi anthology. It’s a challenging animation showcase that goes to brave, impossible places for an anthology series. Despite the seemingly selective nature of its title, it feels like nothing is off limits in Love, Death + Robots season 4. This season is more playful than ever as it asks the audience to consider technology and eternity through endlessly diverse lenses. This energy is palpable here, with another collection of impressive, intelligent, and unpredictable animated short films. Love, Death + Robots excels with its original stories, but this season also ambitiously expands upon some of its previously built universes. Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s “Spider Rose” is a masterful follow-up to Volume 3’s “Swarm,” which follows a grieving Mechanist who receives a new companion and another shot at vengeance against the assassins who killed her husband. This is a sequel story that doesn’t just repeat the hits or gratuitously give fans what they want. “Spider Rose” instead finds a fresh, justified angle to return to this world. It’s a surprising yarn about unexpected motherhood as a conflicted character reconsiders everything she thought she knew about herself. Stories like “Spider Rose” challenge the audience and prompt them to change and grow. There’s an emotional throughline to this, but the installment is also rich in chaotic aerial dog fights, ultra gory deaths, and creative, indulgent extremes The Love, Death + Robots episodes that lean into hard science fiction are often the season’s most gripping installments and the entries that will stick with the audience long after they’ve finished. That being said, there are plenty of installments from this fourth batch that are just unabashedly silly. These may be seen as frivolous stories to some audiences, but they’re a testament to Love, Death + Robots’ versatility and that the trio of topics in its title are universal ideas that everyone can enjoy. In addition to “Can’t Stop,” ABGO’s “The Other Large Thing” and “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners” from The Aaron Sims Company are some of the more overt examples of comedy this season. They’re a welcome balance for the more nihilistic and dour stories from this season that often hit with a ton of bricks. The successful tonal and genre balance that’s achieved across these 10 episodes takes the audience on a fascinating journey. There’s a little bit of everything here in this passionate sci-fi celebration, including a rare live-action segment. One of the season’s most entertaining episodes is the truly unhinged Red Hot Chili Pepper-starring “Can’t Stop.” Not only does this episode mark David Fincher’s directorial return to Love, Death + Robots, but through the conduit of his original love: music videos. “Can’t Stop” looks incredible and turns to an effective marionette aesthetic that’s unlike anything that’s previously been in the anthology series. “Can’t Stop” will ultimately find the audience asking not if Fincher could do this, but why he would want to. It’s such a gonzo experiment that simultaneously is the perfect showpiece for why a series like Love, Death + Robots is necessary. You’re not going to get a piece of storytelling like this on Black Mirror. There’s such a ridiculous, nonsensical energy that governs this short, but it’s also undeniably entertaining and such a fun time. The reason that a series like Love, Death + Robots works is that it makes space for “Can’t Stop” in addition to bleak, dramatic showpieces and action spectacles such as “Spider Rose” and “400 Boys.” Nothing is off limits in this series – this season even incorporates dinosaurs – and this freedom results in remarkable storytelling that’s worth the big swings that get taken, even when they don’t work. “Can’t Stop” is just five silly minutes that aren’t afraid to get weird and indulge in vibes. It also doesn’t hurt that David Fincher is behind this installment, but any chaotic mish-mash music video of this nature is still going to stand out in a series that’s more likely to reference J.G. Ballard and Harlan Ellison than MTV. Love, Death + Robots is a satisfying exploration of science fiction, but it’s also a series that prides itself in its groundbreaking visuals. Every season of Love, Death + Robots has been visually sumptuous, with these new episodes being no exception. Love, Death + Robots seems to be the proudest of its lush, photorealistic segments, like the work that Blur Studio does in “Spider Rose.” These segments don’t disappoint, but Love, Death + Robots has the most fun when it’s willing to indulge in more ambitious and stylized imagery “For He Can Creep” from Japan’s Polygon Pictures or Passion Animation Studios’ “400 Boys” are especially gorgeous.  The latter of these adopts a really impressionistic visual style that’s reminiscent of The Big O’s Art Deco quality. This complements the supernaturally heightened story that’s being told in a hyperbolized universe where gang warfare and a strict bushido-like code are the norm. Factions fight with psychic, electric powers in a world that feels ripped out of a Stephen King story. “400 Boys” is visually rich, but the art style also thematically resonates with the story’s deeper message. It goes to town with its exaggerated aesthetic and creates some truly gorgeous visuals and landscapes in this broken world. The post-apocalyptic wasteland that it crafts is like The Warriors meets Mad Max meets Escape From New York. Destruction plays out on such a massive scale that looks like gorgeous splash panels from a comic. There are setpieces in which warriors rollerblade under the legs of giant babies that they proceed to hack to bits that feel like they’re inspired by Attack on Titan’s epic battles. It’s the complete opposite style of no-holds-barred gladiatorial combat that gets treated like entertainment in “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur.” Love, Death + Robots triumphs with its fourth season, the likes of which prove that there’s still plenty of gas in this tank. If anything, Love, Death + Robots is willing to get even weirder and break some of its older rules for the sake of fresh storytelling. There are few misfires in this season of 10 episodes, although some certainly hit harder than others. It’s appreciated to get this many episodes and that Volume 4 is longer than the two previous seasons. However, it seems increasingly less likely to return to the cornucopia of content that was the 18-episode Volume 1. It’s also worth pointing out that, while the visuals this season remain immaculate, there are only two animation studios from outside of the United States. Love, Death + Robots’ aim has never specifically been to spotlight international animation. That being said, Love, Death + Robots is at its best when there’s a truly eclectic style to each of its installments.  Love, Death + Robots has another win with Volume 4 and hopefully there are more surreal science fiction stories to come. The season begins with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis singing “Can’t Stop” and by the end of these 10 episodes you’re left hoping that mantra is also true for Love, Death + Robots. All four volumes of Love, Death + Robots are now streaming on Netflix. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Farshid Moussavi has shared an inside look at their new Ismaili Center project in Houston. The first U.S. location for the Aga Khan Foundation and considerable local Ismaili Muslim community is 150,000 square feet and sits on an axis parallel to the city’s Waterway.  Its program contains, among other inclusions, a black box theater, exhibition halls, a library, and traditional Jamatkhana sanctuary. Nelson Byrd Woltz was included to complete the project’s 11-acre landscaped component. The Center opens later this fall. Moussavi, who won the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in March, will curate this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London after earning recognition at the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2025 Architecture Awards earlier this year. Photo: @farshidmoussavi via InstagramPhoto: @farshidmoussavi via InstagramPhoto: Elliott Hodges/@farshidmoussavi via Instagram

Under the second Trump administration, there is one group of people getting expedited access to refugee status and resettlement in the US. It’s not citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 6.1 million people have been internally displaced due to decades of fighting among armed groups and widespread gender-based violence. The US is not currently accepting more DRC citizens as refugees under President Donald Trump.It’s not Afghan citizens either, despite the continued human rights violations, especially against women and girls, perpetrated by the Taliban after the US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Instead, the Trump administration is now revoking temporary protections for many Afghans already in America, which could result in their deportation back to Afghanistan.And it’s not the Sudanese people, of whom nearly 8.6 million have been internally displaced amid a conflict between military and paramilitary forces.A subset of white South Africans, known as Afrikaners, are the only people Trump has newly admitted to the US as refugees. Trump has described them, without evidence, as victims of a “genocide that’s taking place” and anti-white discrimination, echoing rhetoric that has long circulated on the far right. And he’s sought to punish South Africa for that by cutting off US aid. (The US government will have to admit some refugees from other countries who were already in the resettlement pipeline before Trump took office, per a court order issued in late March after the president tried to suspend almost all refugee admissions. But that court-ordered acceptance is a sharp contrast from the administration’s enthusiastic outreach to Afrikaners.) Trump’s effort to label Afrikaners “refugees” is based on dubious pretenses. The South African government and even some white South Africans argue that, after the end of the apartheid system, which supported white minority rule in South Africa until the early 1990s, white people remain a privileged class. The typical Black household has 5 percent of the wealth of the typical white household. And police data does not show that Afrikaners, many of whom are farmers, suffer from disproportionate levels of violence that would amount to genocide. As a small minority of the population, white people still own a majority of the country’s land. That hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from criticizing the country’s land ownership laws as “racist” against white people following the signing of a land reform bill earlier this year.The law allows the government to seize property without compensation only in limited circumstances, including when the land is not in use or has been abandoned and if the owner is merely holding it as an investment in the hope that it will appreciate in value. Afrikaner farmers have argued that the law could be used to seize their land against their will, but the government has contested that claim, and there is no evidence that this is occurring.Instead, the evidence suggests Trump is selectively plucking a white minority for resettlement, even as nonwhite people facing war and famine around the world have been shut out from protection in the US.On Monday, the first group of these Afrikaners, 49 people in total, arrived in the US, where they will be offered a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship and receive assistance from a refugee office within the Department of Health and Human Services.To learn more about the impetus behind Trump’s decision, as well as about the situation in South Africa, I spoke with Jacob S. Dlamini, a Princeton University history professor whose research has focused on South African apartheid. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Do white Afrikaners have a legitimate claim to refugee status?I grew up under apartheid, literally under signs that said, “Whites only.” White boys chased Black folks for sport when I was growing up. This feels like a real kick in the gut. There is no substance to the claim that Afrikaners as a group have been persecuted. These are not refugees by any stretch of the imagination. They are people who simply do not want to live under majority-Black rule.Some of them will talk about crime. I come from a family of small business owners who have suffered because of crime. I’ve lost friends to crime. I’ve lost relatives to crime. Independent stats show that whites as a group are not disproportionately targeted. If anything, it’s poor people who bear the brunt of South Africa’s crime problem — and it is a serious problem.In his executive order granting refugee status to white Afrikaners, Trump referenced the South African government’s recent land reform bill, which he claims allows the seizure of “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” and is “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” Does that square with the reality in South Africa?The very first piece of legislation that Nelson Mandela signed into law when he became president in May of 1994 was a land reform bill whose job was to correct what is essentially South Africa’s original political sin, and that was the taking away of land from indigenous peoples and allocating it to white South Africans for exclusive ownership. For the past 30 years, the government has actually failed spectacularly on that front. That failure helps explain why today, in May 2025, whites still own more than 70 percent of farmland in South Africa. [Editor’s note: Only 7 percent of the country’s population is white.]In fact, as white farmers themselves have been pointing out ever since Trump announced his plans to do this, no single white farmer has had land taken away from him, and there is no suggestion that that’s going to change anytime soon.Do you think Trump’s policy is evidence of Elon Musk’s influence in this administration?Musk is not the only South African who’s got Trump’s ear. There’s a whole cohort of white men who grew up, for some of their lives, under apartheid in South Africa. That is significant.The mistake that the media in the US has been making has been to focus on Musk and to assume that it all radiates from him to Trump. In fact, there’s this whole cohort of white men who have yet to come to terms with democracy in South Africa, meaning that a poor Black person who has no prospects in life has as much say politically when it comes to elections as does a very rich white person. That’s what it comes down to.They’ve lost their power, which is not the same thing as privilege. For example, it’s still the case that when you look at corporate South Africa, 62.1 percent of corporate leaders are white, and most of those are men. Only 17.2 percent are so-called Black African. And that is 30 years since the advent of democracy.What do Trump’s policies mean for the South African government?They’re in for four years of hell with Trump. But it is also, I’m hoping, a wake-up call for the current [African National Congress] government to take South Africa’s poor much more seriously. The incompetence and the corruption of the past 30 years have, in some ways, pushed the ANC off the higher moral ground that it occupied when Mandela was president. Trump’s decision to treat the chief beneficiaries of apartheid as victims of a genocide taking place only in his head gives the ANC a chance to get back on that moral high ground by reminding the world just how criminal apartheid was.The single biggest mistake that the ANC made at the moment of transition in 1994 was to assume that all that you needed to do to correct the injustices of apartheid was to create a Black capitalist class. All that this did was create this massive patronage system that had government contracts at its center. This made the Black bourgeoisie dependent on government business and encouraged corruption. Looking back over the last 30 years, we can see that thinking that you could use government contracts to create a Black business class was just a terrible idea. Ironically, the ANC copied the idea from successive apartheid governments, which used government patronage to build an Afrikaner business class. There is not a single Afrikaner [billionaire in US dollars] in South Africa today who did not get their start on the back of apartheid government contracts.Corruption is endemic, and it’s a huge problem. Of course, the thing about corruption in South Africa that we forget is that it’s non-racial, it cuts across racial lines. Because you need these cross-cultural and racial networks to move money around, to launder money. It’s a national enterprise.Who has suffered because of the incompetence and the corruption? It’s all South Africans, especially the poor. White Afrikaners as a group have not suffered exclusively. How should we think about Trump’s decision to welcome white Afrikaners as refugees in the context of his gutting of US refugee admissions broadly?It is bitterly ironic that he has stopped the processing of refugee applications for everyone except this group of privileged white South Africans. Marco Rubio kicked out South Africa’s ambassador to the US for pointing out the basis of Trump’s animus toward South Africa, but there is no mistaking the white supremacist underpinnings of this. There is no mistaking the crude racism at the heart of this. You have here an administration that has and is punishing people who really need all the help they can get, who are coming here or are here for better opportunities for their kids and for themselves, but it will stop at nothing to take this very privileged group of white South Africans and turn them into refugees, when, in fact, they’re anything but refugees.I grew up under apartheid. My mother went to her grave without having voted in the country of her birth. I grew up fighting the system. I now find myself in 2025 having to relitigate whether apartheid was wrong. That is what this amounts to: taking people who benefited and continue to benefit from this awful system called apartheid and turning them into victims and refugees. What Trump is communicating is that apartheid was right. That is morally repugnant and just plain obscene.See More:

We may earn a commission from links on this page.A surprisingly endearing sitcom about an American football coach moving to the U.K. to coach the other kind of football, Ted Lasso was Apple TV+'s first breakout hit, but it's long over by this point. While few of their other shows have commanded even a fraction of the zeitgeist, over the past few years Apple's streaming service has built a small but solid library of other original series that are at least interesting or pretty good, and occasionally more. Apple's offerings still can’t quite compare to what you’ll find on Netflix or Hulu, at least in terms of volume, but there’s enough money in the tech company's bank account that they’ve shown a willingness to experiment, particularly when it comes to high-cost genres like science fiction, and that’s not a bad thing. Here are 40 of Apple’s best original shows so far. I'm highlighting the ones you may not have binged yet, so Ted Lasso isn’t on the list—but consider him mentioned here. Apple TV+ $9.99 Per Month at AppleTV+ Learn More Learn More $9.99 Per Month at AppleTV+ Dark Matter (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, and Alice Braga star in this high-concept sci-fi thriller from the novel by Blake Crouch (he's also the showrunner). Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a former physicist living a fairly decent life with his wife, Daniela (Connelly) in Chicago when he's drugged and kidnapped before waking up in a Chicago where he'd never married Daniela. It seems that a version of himself invented a device allowing for travel between infinite alternate universes—and that version of Jason wants the life that our Jason has, and who's now on a quest to make his way home. You can stream Dark Matter here. Foundation (2021 —, renewed for a third season) Foundation frequently misses the point of its source material (a series of influential Isaac Asimov novels), but that doesn’t make it any less of an impressively realized science-fiction epic on its own terms. Lou Llobel and Lee Pace lead the centuries-spanning series that sees a group of scholars and rebels working to bring down a galactic empire in order to save it (in the very, very long run). The first season was pretty great, the second season was even better, and ads for the third season look promising. You can stream Foundation here. Dope Thief (2025, miniseries) Ray and Manny (Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura) are a couple of childhood friends from Philly who've been supporting themselves by impersonating DEA agents and robbing low-level stash houses in the inner city. Manny's looking to move on while Ray's eccentric mother, Theresa (Kate Mulgrew, clearly having a great time) needs a lot of money fast. And so, as you've probably guessed, we're about to enter "one last big score" plot territory, which, in this case, involves robbing a meth lab that is, it turns out, part of a large-scale operation that the real DEA has in its sights. The setup is nothing new, but everyone here is at the top of their game. You can stream Dope Thief here.Slow Horses (2022 – , renewed for fifth and sixth seasons) With nods to the great spy dramas of John le Carré, Slow Horses updates the setting without losing either the thrills or the style of a time-honored genre. The “Slow Horses” of the title is a group of has-been MI5 agents—they’ve all made messes of significant jobs, but are still seen as having some use, if only in dull administrative tasks. Naturally, the group (lead by Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden, with their spymaster played by Kristin Scott Thomas) finds themselves in deeper waters than anyone had expected of them. The show has a sly sense of humor, and balances a cynical tone with a conviction that redemption is more than possible (it's also probably my personal favorite Apple TV+ show). You can stream Slow Horses here.Sugar (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Sugar doesn't try to obscure or downplay its reliance on old-school Hollywood noir tropes: Its characters are driven to emulate the style of antiheroes of old, and clips from old movies even play alongside the action as a means of driving the point home. The central mystery sees detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) summoned to the mansion of a rich movie producer (James Cromwell), whose granddaughter has gone missing. The first few episodes are intriguing, and  the premise is unique in that Sugar is kind of an anti-anti-hero—he's an actual nice guy in a world where he's expected to play the tough guy. The sixth episode, though, drops an absolutely wild, love-it-or-hate it plot twist that drives the remaining episode and, presumably, the forthcoming second season. The series comes from writer Mark Protosevich (The Cell, I Am Legend) and smartly directed by City of God's Fernando Meirelles, so it has style to spare. You can stream Sugar here. Pachinko (2022 – , third season renewal pending) Pachinko is technically an American production, but its largely South Korean cast and crew place it in very much in the wheelhouse of the K-dramas that have found success in the U.S. in recent years. The multigenerational saga follows one woman (Youn Yuh-jung and Kim Min-ha) and her family from the Japanese occupation of Korea through the decades of the Korean diaspora. It’s as personal as it is epic, with better location cinematography than most movies—and it’s got an all-time great opening credits sequence. You can stream Pachinko here.Palm Royale (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Kristen Wiig stars here as Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, an endlessly inventive social climber in 1969 Palm Beach, Florida who sets out on a road to the top of the local hierarchy when she manages to nab herself a membership in the exclusive private club of the title. It's soapy and silly and occasionally over the top—which all just means that it's thoroughly entertaining and relatively stress-free. The cast here is among the best that streaming money can buy: Alongside Wiig, we get Laura Dern as a helpful hippie, Allison Janney as a demanding matriarch, Carol Burnett as mysterious (and initially comatose) local royalty, and Ricky Martin as the sexy bartender (with Bruce Dern, Julia Duffy, and Mindy Cohn among the recurring cast). You can stream Palm Royale here. Bad Sisters (2022 – , third season renewal pending) The comedy/murder mystery genre is having a moment, with Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, Apple’s own The Afterparty (to which I’ll return later in this list), and the Knives Out movies all doing brisk business. Bad Sisters is in that same category, but set apart in interesting (and significant) ways. The Dublin setting and the dark comedy stand out, and the show is as much about solving the core murder as it is about rooting for the killer, whomever they may be. Among the title sisters, one has a particularly odious husband. When he turns up dead, each of the sisters (one played by Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan, who co-created) is revealed to have had good reason for doing the job. You can stream Bad Sisters here. Severance (2022 – , renewed for a third season) Late-stage capitalism encourages “work-life balance” while simultaneously making it impossible, and then makes us feel guilty about it. In Severance, biotechnology giant Lumon Industries has a solution: They split your consciousness between your life at work and your life outside of it. For our lead characters (played by Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Britt Lower, and more) the work- and home-based consciousnesses grow apart to the point that they become entirely different people. The show blends the conventions of office-based dark comedies with movies like Brazil and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and dives into the dangers of modern American-style totalitarian capitalism while providing a reminder that technology often promises to improve our lives while only making them worse. You can stream Severance here.The Buccaneers (2023 – , renewed for a second season) The sassy, revisionist period drama (think Bridgerton) is having a heyday and, with the success of HBO's The Gilded Age (itself an Edith Wharton pastiche), it's only natural that things have come back around to the source—in this case, an unfinished Wharton novel telling the story of five American nouveau riche daughters being shuffled off to Europe to unite (in marriage) their family's ready cash with old European titles and lands. It's a fun, women-led show that splits the difference between The Gilded Age's relative faithfulness to history and Bridgerton's joyful anachronisms. You can stream The Buccaneers here. Hijack (2023 – , renewed for a second season) This solid action thriller stars Idris Elba as a business negotiator who finds himself among the passengers on a flight from London to Dubai that's been, well, hijacked. He's the only one onboard with a shot at saving himself and the other passengers, but will have to use his experience, brains, and brawn to do it. The show takes place in real time, more or less, adding to the suspense, and also making the second-season pickup slightly confusing. I'm not sure how a followup series will work, but if 24 could run for nine seasons, I'm sure that Elba's Sam Nelson can sustain at least a couple more. You can stream Hijack here. For All Mankind (2019 — , renewed for fifth season) I love a high concept—but execution is what counts, and For All Mankind makes good on its premise, thanks in large part to the involvement of writer/co-creator Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica). The show runs with a tantalizing "what if?": What if Soviet space pioneer Sergei Korolev hadn’t died prematurely in 1966 and instead helped bring his country’s space program to full flower, extending the space race indefinitely? If we’d been forced to continue and expand upon the space program, our past (and present) would look quite different, and this show dramatically imagines how that might go, jumping across decades to reveal our alternate past (and future). A spin-off involving a Soviet space program, Star City, is in the works. You can stream For All Mankind here. Dickinson (2019 – 2021, two seasons) Dickinson is so scrupulously weird that it gets points just for being unexpected. The most surprising thing about it, though, is that it's not merely idiosyncratic—it’s good. The show imagines the life of 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, with the conceit that she didn’t fit especially well in her own time, a fact the show reflects through the casual use of anachronisms and more modern sensibilities. Think Netflix’s Bridgerton or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette for similar vibes—but neither of those is about a person nearly as haunting or mysterious as Dickinson. Bonus: It’s also beautifully filmed and acted. You can stream Dickinson here.Visible: Out on Television (2020, miniseries) An effective update to The Celluloid Closet that takes us up to date for the Peak TV age, Visible brings that sweet Apple money to bear in gathering an impressive assortment of talking heads. Going back to the earliest days of television, when queer characters and themes were either ignored, heavily coded, or mocked, the docuseries traces the ups and downs of queer representation on TV right up until the present moment. It entertainingly documents how far we’ve come, and makes clear there’s still work to do. You can stream Visible here. Manhunt (2024, miniseries) Based on James L. Swanson’s book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, Manhunt reenacts (in detail) not just the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle), but the hours, months, and years that followed, examining the political and cultural fallout at the dawn of Reconstruction. The surprising star here is Tobias Menzies' Edwin Stanton, the war secretary who fought to preserve Lincoln's legacy, with mixed results. The show also offers strong parallels, intentional or not, between Booth—violently racist, bombastic, and vainglorious while also somehow a perpetual victim—and modern-day political figures with whom you might be familiar. You can stream Manhunt here. The Last Thing He Told Me (2023 – , renewed for a second season) Critics and audiences are divided over The Last Thing He Told Me, the crime drama earning only mixed reviews while also ranking as the streamer's most watched limited series ever. Based on the bestseller by Laura Dave, the popularity of the book might have something to do with that, as might Jennifer Garner's sensitive performance. While it scored those impressive numbers as a limited series, the series has subsequently been renewed for a new season, to be based on a forthcoming sequel novel, currently scheduled for release in 2025. Co-starring Angourie Rice, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and David Morse, the series finds Garner's character trying to forge a bond with her stepdaughter in order to help solve the mystery of her missing husband. You can stream The Last Thing He Told Me here.Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023 – , renewed for a second season) Monarch does a surprisingly effective job of telling its own story within the universe of all those American Godzilla movies of the past decade or so, bringing those big stories back down to Earth while building out an entire monster-verse mythology in the process. Anna Sawai stars as a young teacher searching for her father, missing since Godzilla's attack on San Francisco (depicted in the 2014 film), and finds herself drawn into the past and present of a secret government agency. Wyatt and Kurt Russell play the past and present incarnations of the Army colonel who helped set the whole thing in motion. You can stream Monarch here.See (2019 — 2022, three seasons) The pitch meeting for this must’ve been a hoot. “We’ll do ‘The Country of the Blind’—but, you know, in the future!” Just as in that H.G. Wells story, we learn here that being one of the only sighted people among the blind doesn’t necessarily grant you any special privileges. A few centuries from now, humans have lost their senses of sight, and the few born sighted are hunted and despised. As high concepts go, it’s a little goofy (and the reviews have been a little rough), but the beautifully produced and entertaining show blends Game of Thrones vibes with dystopian sci-fi, and boasts Jason Momoa and the always brilliant Alfre Woodard. You can stream See here.Central Park (2020 — 2022, three seasons) Central Park, from creators Loren Bouchard, Josh Gad, and Nora Smith, retains much of the look and feel of Bouchard’s beloved (and long-running) Bob’s Burgers, which is probably enough of a recommendation to get many adult-leaning cartoon fans onboard. It differs, though, in its ambition: Unlike Bob’s, this show invests more heavily in serialization to tell the story of a park manager fighting to save the titular Central Park from greedy developers. It’s also a true musical, incorporating big numbers into each and every episode. (The more sporadic musical numbers in Bob’s Burgers are always the best part, so upping that quotient here is all to the good.) You can stream Central Park here.Silo (2023 —, renewed for third and fourth seasons) The casts of many of these shows are pretty extraordinary, but this one is at least a small step above: Rebecca Ferguson, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Common, and Tim Robbins are all included in the main cast. The science fiction series, based on High Howey’s self-published sensation Wool, is set in a post-apocalyptic future; the show’s characters live in the 144-story silo of the title, a sealed environment sustaining (and imprisoning?) the last dregs of humanity. Societal politics blend with elements of mystery (nothing in the silo is quite what it seems) in an impressively conceived dystopia; the series is set to conclude, but not before two further seasons are produced. You can stream Silo here. Schmigadoon! (2021 — 2023) There’s a big theater-kid vibe to Schmigadoon, no question, with references and in-jokes not everyone is going to get. I’m not sure it matters. When Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) set out on a camping trip to strengthen their relationship, they instead stumble into the title town, where everyone sings their feelings, just like characters in a... you get it. The only way out? True love—which Melissa and Josh thought they already shared, but maybe not so much. It’s both a tribute to classic musicals and a satire of the common tropes and the more problematic aspects of those old productions. The second season switches location and eras to “Schmicago,” taking on the darker-tinged musicals of the 1970s. You can stream Schmigadoon here. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (2024, one season) The Great British Bake Off's Noel Fielding stars in this wildly ahistorical British import involving the real-life highwayman of the title, who lived in the mid-1700s. Truth and legend are impossible to sort out when it comes to Turpin, so the show defers to the legend, adding a bunch of inspired silliness to the mix. It's not quite Our Flag Means Death, but it takes a similarly loose and fun approach to history. The well-received show shut down for good during production of a second season, under slightly mysterious circumstances, but the existing season is still worth a run. You can stream Dick Turpin here.Masters of the Air (2024, miniseries) A spiritual successor and companion to earlier WWII minis Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), Masters of the Air focuses on the “Bloody Hundredth,” the 100th Bomb Group—pilots tasked with bombing targets inside German-occupied Europe. Austin Butler (Elvis), Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), and Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) are part of the impressive ensemble. You can stream Masters of the Air here.Constellation (2024 – ) Severance, Foundation, For All Mankind, and Silo have established Apple TV+ as a home for high-concept, big-ish budget science fiction. Which is cool, given that even the SyFy channel is't filling that niche anymore. This one finds astronaut Noomi Rapace returning to Earth after an accident, and discovering that the reality she's returned to isn't quite the same as the one she left behind. You can stream Constellation here.Criminal Record ( 2024 – , renewed for a second season) The apparently IRL-delightful Peter Capaldi is one of our most effortlessly menacing actors, imbuing even The Doctor with an unpredictable inscrutability, so it's no surprise that he excels at playing a hardened police detective with a checkered past. He's joined here by Cush Jumbo's June Lenker, a by-the-book and far more idealistic detective who's as suspicious of Capaldi's DCI Hegarty as she is of the facts involving the cold case the pair are investigating. Think of them like a twisted version of Mulder and Scully (minus the aliens, of course). You can stream Criminal Record here.The Morning Show (2019 — , renewed for a fourth season) Less high-concept than some of Apple’s other originals, The Morning Show still serves as a solid drama led by an out-of-character performance from Jennifer Aniston. She plays Alex Levy, co-host of a major network morning show. “Co-host,” that is, until Mitch (Steve Carrell), with whom she’s worked for 15 years, is fired due to sexual misconduct shortly before the show goes on the air one morning (a la Matt Lauer), leaving Alex to explain the situation. The resulting shake-ups and power grabs (including by an up-and-comer played by Reese Witherspoon; the star power in this thing!) were inspired by Brian Stelter’s real-life book Top of the Morning, about the (perhaps) surprisingly dramatic and cutthroat world of morning television, so with the TV-ready drama comes an air of verisimilitude. You can stream The Morning Show here. The Me That You Can’t See (2021, miniseries) An Oprah Winfrey/Prince Harry co-production might inspire understandable cynicism, but the effort here is worthwhile: Approaching both stars and non-celebrities, the miniseries explores issues related to mental health, particularly the stigma and difficulties in finding care. The celebs are all impressively frank, and the less-famous individuals come from a wide array of backgrounds and face a diverse set of issues. Naturally, the presentation is highly polished, but the mere fact that the streamer is putting its money into expanding conversations about mental illness make it worth checking out. You can stream The Me That You Can't See here.Truth Be Told (2019 — 2023, three seasons) Honestly, they had me at Octavia Spencer. It’s not just her, though: The cast here is uniformly first-rate (Lizzy Caplan, Aaron Paul, Mekhi Phifer, and Kate Hudson also star). The premise is also solid, and timely: Spencer plays a true-crime podcaster who condemned a now-convicted killer with her reporting, but who now learns that she might have gotten some crucial details wrong. The execution stumbles a bit in the first season, but picks up in the second and into its concluding third. You can stream Truth Be Told here.The Afterparty (2022 — 2023, two seasons) At a high school reunion afterparty, a murder occurs that, naturally, sets the series in motion—a scenario rife with possibilities, given the dramas that swirl around any real-life reunion. The spin here on the comedy murder mystery is its Rashomon-like structure: Each episode explores the night from the POV of one of the participants, shifting genre styles to suit the character in question. Tiffany Haddish and Sam Richardson are great as the leads. You can stream The Afterparty here.Little America (2020 — 2022, two seasons) With a sense of humor, the anthology Little America dramatizes a series of Epic Magazine pieces telling the stories of immigrants in America. Each 30-minute episode plays like a movie in miniature, and each is packed with emotion—sometimes heartbreak, often joy. Seriously, they cram a lot of heart into these little episodes. Each one ends with a tag about the real people on which it is based, which serves to ground the emotion in reality. You can stream Little America here.Home Before Dark (2020 — 2021, two seasons) I love, love, love that this one’s based on a true story. Home Before Dark dramatizes the story of Hilde Lysiak, award-winning crime reporter and the youngest member of the Society of Professional Journalists, who began her career at age nine (she’s now a whopping 14). Here she’s fictionalized as Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince), who moves with her mother to a Twin Peaks-esque coastal town where she slowly, doggedly, uncovers the truth behind a long-forgotten cold case. You can stream Home Before Dark here.Servant (2019 — 2023, four seasons) Creepy nanny meets creepy doll in this utterly strange psychological thriller, co-executive-produced by the occasionally brilliant but notoriously inconsistent M. Night Shyamalan (the show was created by Tony Basgallop). The horror here isn’t really overt, but the show plays some interesting and disturbing games centered on the relationship of the lead couple, played by Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell. Following the death of their 13-week-old son, the pair acquires a lifelike doll as a therapeutic tool. Naturally, something’s not quite right with the doll (or Dorothy’s attachment to it), and something’s definitely not right about the young live-in nanny who they hire (rich people, amirite?) to take care of fake baby Jericho. You can stream Servant here.Ghostwriter (2019 — 2022, three seasons) This new, updated Ghostwriter goes in a different direction than the ‘90s-era original, focusing a little bit less on the mystery elements of the stories and more on reading fundamentals. Operating out of a bookstore belonging to the grandfather of two of the main characters, four kids are brought together by a ghost who brings characters from classic and modern literature to life, with CGI that’s sometimes great —and sometimes less so. Where the show really shines is in its depiction of kids who are believably smart and savvy, unlike an awful lot of shows that can’t seem to tell the difference between a 12-year-old and a fivr-year-old. It’s definitely for kids, but that’s to its credit. You can stream Ghostwriter here.Defending Jacob (2020, miniseries) Based on the book by William Landay, this one’s premise is clever, and harrowing: In an upper-class Massachusetts suburb, Andy (Chris Evans) and Laurie (Michelle Dockery) learn that a classmate of their 14-year-old son has been murdered in a local park. What happens next is even more shocking: their son is arrested for the murder. The show sometimes leans unnecessarily into melodrama, but the performances are solid and the central mystery is so compelling, it’s hard not to get drawn in. You can stream Defending Jacob here.Black Bird (2022, miniseries) Novelist Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River) developed the based-on-a-true-story miniseries, and his touch is evident if you’re familiar with his books, or with the movies they’ve inspired. Taron Egerton plays Jimmy Keene, a former football star given a 10-year prison sentence for drug dealing. Before long, he’s given another shot: His sentence will be erased if he transfers to a much higher security prison for the criminally insane and gathers evidence against a suspected serial killer incarcerated there. That’s a killer premise, and Egerton is great here. You can stream Black Bird here.Trying (2020 — , renewed for fifth season) After having difficulty conceiving a child, Nikki and Jason begin the adoption process, and find themselves in a bind. Were they able to conceive, there’d be no other qualifications necessary to have a baby. Adoption, on the other hand, is long process full of screenings, classes, paperwork, home visits, and money. This is one of those rare comedies that’s both genuinely funny and gentle—the show even revisits all of its characters at the end of each episode so that we know how everyone has made out. You can stream Trying here. Mythic Quest (2020 — 2025, four seasons) It might sound a little (or a lot) niche, but we’ve seen enough headlines about the working conditions at many video game production houses to understand why a workplace comedy set against such a backdrop would make for effectively dark and juicy comedy. Charlotte Nicdao and Rob McElhenney are the leads here, as a brilliant and driven workaholic and an unsociable egomaniac respectively, and the chemistry between their two characters give the show more than enough spark. There's also a four episode spin-off: Side Quest. You can stream Mythic Quest here. Acapulco (2021 – , renewed for a fourth season) Inspired by the 2017 film How to Be a Latin Lover, the ambitious English/Spanish-language comedy spans generations in telling the story of Maximo Gallardo Ramos (Eugenio Derbez), a Malibu mogul who began life as a pool boy at a fancy resort hotel. The sweet, sun-drenched show has a gorgeously retro visual style. You can stream Acapulco here. Disclaimer (2024, miniseries) Created, written, and directed by four-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón, Disclaimer has as impressive a pedigree as you could hope for on streaming TV: It stars Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline (both, incidentally, Oscar winners), alongside Sacha Baron Cohen and Leila George. Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, an award-winning journalist who receives a mysterious manuscript—it's a novel in which she, herself, appears to be the main character, and which reveals secrets of her past that she thought were long buried. Cuarón moves deliberately through a story that takes its time, even as each episode shifts through points of view and timelines to offer up consistent and impressive surprises. You can stream Disclaimer here. The Studio (2025 – , renewed for a second season) Industry exec Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) loves movies, and when he signs on for a high-profile role at the fictional Continental Studios, he's feeling like his time has come, like he can make a real difference in fixing an increasingly IP-driven movie industry. That is, until about a minute into his new job when the CEO (Bryan Cranston) lets him know that his first job will be marketing Kool-Aid Man, a thin attempt to rip off the success of Barbie. Hollywood satires of yore have focused on the industry as one that eats people up and spits them out, but the spin here is that Remick yearns for those days. This very funny, often intentionally cringe, comedy finds Hollywood in a state of decline and focuses on a man who'd love nothing more than to rebuild the movie industry of old. Catherine O'Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), and Kathryn Hahn also star, and the show boasts a seemingly endless list of celebrity cameos. You can stream The Studio here.

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 — May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition. He is known for establishing the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Postal Service. This undated photograph of Spooner was taken by Amory Nelson Hardy. Photograph credit: Amory Nelson Hardy; restored by Adam Cuerden Recently featured: Cape Barren goose Xbox 360 Ottmar Mergenthaler Archive More featured pictures

Krysten Ritter will reprise her role as Jessica Jones in season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again, Disney announced Tuesday at its upfronts presentations, according to Variety report from the event. The return of Ritter’s version of Jones will come nearly a decade after her most recent on-screen appearance as the character in Netflix’s The Defenders. Ritter starred as Jessica Jones, a former superhero with PTSD who starts her own detective agency, Alias Investigations, for three seasons when Netflix was making street-level Marvel superhero shows. Ritter’s Jones also appeared in The Defenders, a mini-series that brought together Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny “Iron Fist” Rand to battle criminal organization the Hand. “It’s so great to be back, returning to Jessica after three seasons and ‘The Defenders’ and now joining the MCU,” Ritter said, according to Variety’s account of Disney’s presentation. “I’m so excited to bring back this iconic character, and without giving too much away, there is much more in store for Jessica Jones. This is going to be an incredible season!” Daredevil: Born Again season 2 will see Matt Murdock/Daredevil rallying an army of vigilantes and police officers to take down mayor Wilson Fisk and his anti-vigilante task force. Having the super-powered Jones on his side would obviously be a boon for Murdock; he’ll likely have Frank Castle/Punisher at his disposal, but whether any other Defenders are available to pitch in is unclear. Luke Cage actor Mike Colter has said he “would love to explore” a return to the MCU, as has Iron Fist actor Finn Jones. “I’m very aware of the critiques of the character and my role in it. My response to that is, ‘Give me a f*cking chance, man,’” Jones reportedly said earlier this year. “I’m here and I’m ready, and I wanna prove people wrong.” Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again is expected to debut on Disney Plus in early 2026. Confirmed to return in the second season are Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Wilson Bethel as Bullseye, Clark Johnson as Cherry, Genneya Walton as BB Urich, and Michael Gandolfini as Daniel Blake. Elden Henson will also return as Foggy Nelson… somehow.

‘Out of Africa’ champagne picnic experience during a Masai Mara luxury safari, Kenya. All images © Zed Nelson, courtesy of Guest Editions, shared with permission In His New Book, Photographer Zed Nelson Lifts the Veil on ‘The Anthropocene Illusion’ May 13, 2025 Kate Mothes In the 1985 film Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, a picturesque scene highlights the pair on a romantic picnic high above the sweeping Masai Mara National Reserve. Today, tourists are invited to recreate the iconic moment in a colonial-inspired, hillside champagne picnic experience for which “local Masaai tribesman are employed to provide picturesque authenticity to the experience,” photographer Zed Nelson says. In his new book, The Anthropocene Illusion, Nelson takes us on a global journey that lifts the veil, so to speak, on what we think of as “wilderness” and our progressively uneasy relationship with the environment. “While we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature—a reassuring spectacle, an illusion,” he says. The Anthropocene defines the ever-evolving, rapid changes to the environment due to humans’ unyielding impact. Many scientists place the epoch’s origin during the Industrial Revolution, but some consider 1945—the year humans tested the atomic bomb—to be the true beginning. Yet others suggest that the Anthropocene was initiated even earlier, during the advent of agriculture. At that point, we entered into an increasingly uneasy relationship with the natural world, relying on ever-more extractive processes, heavy manufacturing, plastics, and advancing technology—all of which depend on the earth’s resources. Our societies’ colonialist tendencies also apply to nature just as much as other human-occupied territories. We’re depleting entire aquifurs, forever altering the composition of the land, and irretrievably damaging delicate ecosystems. All the while, Nelson shows, we subscribe to a nostalgic view of untamed wilderness while at the same time expecting it to mold to our lifestyles. In Kenyan national parks like Masai Mara, wildlife is provided sanctuary, “but the animals living within them are allowed to survive essentially for human entertainment and reassurance,” Nelson says. “These animals become, in effect, performers for paying tourists eager to see a nostalgic picture book image of the natural world.” Snow cannon producing artificial snow at Val Gardena ski resort, Dolomites, Italy Nelson’s illuminating series taps into the absurdities of the illusion that nature is still thriving as it once was. Artificial snow shot from a cannon in the Italian Dolomites, for example, nods to warmer winters. A result of the climate crisis, leading to little snow, the powder is manufactured so holidaymakers can ski. From vine-draped brutalist buildings to overcrowded national park lookouts to half-tame lions walked out like entertainers during a safari, he shares moments that feel skewed and incongruous, indicating looming and ultimately inescapable problems behind the veneer. The Anthropocene Illusion series took first place in the professional category of the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards, and the book, which comes out this month, is available for pre-order in the Guest Editions shop. Ten percent of profits will be donated to Friends of the Earth, an environmental justice nonprofit. See more on Nelson’s Instagram. ‘Walk with Lions’ tourist experience, South Africa Next article