Last summer's Hollywood strikes delayed a number of releases, among them the fourth season of Prime Video's The Boys . We're longtime fans of this incredibly violent, darkly funny anti-homage to superheroes, and thus are thrilled to see there's finally an official trailer for S4. It's filled with the bloody mayhem we've come to expect from the show, as well as a tantalizing glimpse of the chief villain, Homelander (Antony Starr), performing in what appears to be an ice skating extravaganza.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below, especially S3.)

As I've written previously , the show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Boys is set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real but are corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, which created the supes with a substance called Compound V. The Seven is headed up by Homelander, a violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All-American hero. Homelander's counterpart as the head of the titular "Boys" is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-appointed vigilante intent on checking the bad behavior of the Seven—especially Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher's wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), unknowingly fathering a son, Ryan, in the process..

It's Star Wars Day, and to mark the occasion, Disney+ has dropped a new trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte . As previously reported , a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Galactic Republic and its Jedi masters symbolized the epitome of enlightenment and peace. Then came the inevitable downfall and outbreak of war as the Sith, who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, came to power. Star Wars: The Acolyte will explore those final days of the Republic as the seeds of its destruction were sown.

The eight-episode series was created by Leslye Headland. It's set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace . Apparently Headland rather cheekily pitched The Acolyte as " Frozen meets Kill Bill ." She drew on wuxia martial arts films for inspiration, much like George Lucas was originally inspired by Westerns and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Per the official premise:

The first trailer dropped in March, in which we saw young padawans in training; Indara battling a mysterious masked figure; learned that somebody is out there killing Jedi; and were told that there is a growing sense of darkness. This latest trailer reinforces those themes. The assassin, Mae (Stenberg), once trained with Master Sol (Lee), and he thinks he should be the one to bring her in—although Master Vernestra correctly suspects Mae's killings are a small part a larger plan, i.e, the eventual return of the Sith.

Enlarge / Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) are the Dead Boy Detectives, ghosts who solve paranormal mysteries. (credit: Netflix )

For those eagerly anticipating the second season of Netflix's stellar adaption of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, Dead Boy Detectives —the streaming plaform's new supernatural horror detective series—is a welcome return to that weird magical world. Co-showrunner Steve Yockey ( Supernatural ), who created the series, aptly describes it as "the Hardy Boys on acid." You've got vengeful witches, demons, psychic mediums, cursed masks, foul-mouthed parasitic sprites, talking cats—and, of course, the titular ghostly detectives, intent on spending their afterlife cracking all manner of mysterious paranormal cases.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Sandman fans first encountered the Dead Boys in the " Seasons of Mist " storyline, in which the ghost Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland meet for the first time in 1990. Edwin had been murdered at his boarding school in 1916 and spent decades in Hell. When Lucifer abandoned his domain, Hell was emptied, and Edwin was among the souls who returned to that boarding school. Charles was a living student whom Edwin tried to protect. Charles ultimately died and chose to join Edwin in his afterlife adventures. The characters reappeared in the Children's Crusade crossover series, in which they decided to become detectives.

Enlarge / A Day octopus ( Octopus cyanea ) named Scarlet parachutes her web over a coral head while Dr. Alex Schnell observes. (credit: National Geographic/Disney/Craig Parry)

With Earth Day fast approaching once again, it's time for another new documentary from National Geographic and Disney+: Secrets of the Octopus . It's the third in what has become a series, starting with the remarkable 2021 documentary Secrets of the Whales (narrated by Sigourney Weaver) and 2023's Secrets of the Elephants (Natalie Portman as narrator). James Cameron served as producer on all three.

Secrets of the Octopus is narrated by Paul Rudd. Per the official synopsis:

Octopuses are like aliens on Earth: three hearts, blue blood and the ability to squeeze through a space the size of their eyeballs. But there is so much more to these weird and wonderful animals. Intelligent enough to use tools or transform their bodies to mimic other animals and even communicate with different species, the secrets of the octopus are more extraordinary than we ever imagined.

Each of the three episodes focuses on a specific unique feature of these fascinating creatures: "Shapeshifters," "Masterminds," and "Social Networks." The animals were filmed in their natural habitats over 200 days and all that stunning footage is accompanied by thoughtful commentary by featured scientists.  One of those scientists is Dr. Alex Schnell ,  a native Australian and self described storytelling who has worked at Macquarie University, the University of Cambridge, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, among other institutions. Her research focuses on the intelligence of marine animals, particularly cuttlefish and octopuses.

Enlarge / A young prodigal tomboy returns home from war and finds herself framed for murder in Renegade Nell . (credit: Disney+)

Award-winning British TV writer Sally Wainwright is best known for the dramatic series Happy Valley (2014–2023) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022), the latter produced jointly by BBC and HBO. Wainwright partnered with Disney+ for her latest series, the resolutely PG-13 Renegade Nell , which is a different beast altogether: a good old-fashioned, swashbuckling comic adventure with a supernatural twist, featuring a sassy cross-dressing heroine forced to turn to highway robbery to survive.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Set in 1705 during the reign of Queen Anne (Jodi May, Gentleman Jack ), the series stars Louisa Harland ( Derry Girls ) as Nell Jackson. Nell is a headstrong young woman with tomboy flair and a taste for adventure who returns home to her village of Tottenham after running off five years before to marry one Captain Jackson against her father's wishes. She's now widowed and possessed of occasional supernatural skills whenever someone threatens her, courtesy of a fairy sprite named Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed, aka Nathan from Ted Lasso ), who has been tasked to protect Nell. Nell's family thought she'd been killed on the battlefield alongside her husband, so her homecoming is a bit of a shock.

It's been a long wait for the second season of HBO's House of the Dragon , in which House Targaryen descends into civil war over the heir to the Iron Throne. It's set to premiere in June, and HBO is ramping up its marketing with a rather clever twist: not one official trailer, but two, each presenting the perspective of one side in the bloody conflict. And we get to choose which trailer we'd like to view—although if you're like us, you'll elect to watch both.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I've written previously, HBO's House of the Dragon debuted in 2022 with a solid, promising pilot episode, and the remainder of the season lived up to that initial promise. The series is set about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood , a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Galactic Republic and its Jedi masters symbolized the epitome of enlightenment and peace. Then came the inevitable downfall and outbreak of war as the Sith, who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, came to power. Star Wars: The Acolyte is a forthcoming new series on Disney+ that will explore those final days of the Republic as the seeds of its destruction were sown—and the streaming platform just dropped the first trailer.

The eight-episode series was created by Leslye Headland, who co-created Russian Doll with Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler. It's set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace . Apparently Headland rather cheekily pitched The Acolyte as " Frozen meets Kill Bill ," which is an intriguing combination. She drew on wuxia martial arts films for inspiration, much like George Lucas was originally inspired by Westerns and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa.

(Some spoilers for the prequel trilogy below.)

Amazon Prime Video has dropped the full official trailer for Fallout , the streaming platform's forthcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi series. It's based on the bestselling role-playing gaming franchise set in a satirical, 1950s-style future post-nuclear apocalypse. There's plenty for gaming fans to be pleased about, judging by the trailer, but casting national treasure Walton Goggins ( Justified ) as a gunslinging Ghoul was quite simply a stroke of genius.

The first Fallout RPG was released in 1997, followed by several sequels and spinoffs. According to the game's lore, modern civilization is destroyed in 2077 by a global nuclear war between the US and China. Survivors live in various underground vaults (fallout shelters). Each iteration of the game takes place somewhere across a post-apocalyptic US metro area and features a Vault Dweller—someone born and raised underground—as the protagonist. The first game takes place in 2161 and features a Vault Dweller from Vault 13, deep in the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller must complete various missions to save the residents of Vault 13, which takes said protagonist to in-world places like Junktown; a merchant city called the Hub; and Necropolis, filled with Ghouls, i.e., humans badly mutated by exposure to nuclear radiation.

The series was announced in July 2020, with Westworld writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it was revealed that Nolan would direct the first three episodes but that two other writers—Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner—would be the showrunners. Todd Howard, who directed several games in the franchise, is also an executive producer and has said the series is not an adaption of any particular game, but it is set within the same continuity. Per the official premise:

The countdown continues for the hotly anticipated debut of 3 Body Problem , Netflix's eight-episode sci-fi series adapted from the award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first book in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Those attending the SXSW Film & Television Festival in Austin will get to see the series' world premiere tonight. The rest of us have to wait until later this month, but in the meantime, the streaming platform has released a final trailer.

(Some spoilers for the novel below.)

The 3-Body Problem 's narrative is told in a nonlinear fashion, jumping between a young astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie, who witnesses her father being beaten to death by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and Ye's return to Tsinghua University as an established professor many years later. During the earlier timeline, Ye figures out a means of sending an interstellar message to possible extraterrestrial civilizations and receives a response from a planet called Trisolaris. (As its name implies, the planet has three suns, which wreak havoc on Trisolaris via unpredictable "chaotic periods"—hence the novel's title, which refers to a classic problem in celestial mechanics.) Despite being warned that the aliens intend to invade and conquer Earth, Ye responds to the message and invites them to do so, disillusioned by the state of the world.