Star Trek: Resurgence is gone. The narrative adventure game from former Telltale developers has been pulled from Steam and Xbox with less than 24 hours notice, the victim of an expired license that neither Paramount nor publisher Bruner House moved to renew.

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The announcement came on April 14 via a brief Steam community post. “Our license to distribute Star Trek: Resurgence has come to an end, so the game will no longer be offered for sale,” the statement read. “Existing customers can continue to access the game via their Steam library. Thanks to everyone who was able to enjoy the game!” The game vanished from Steam within hours. The Xbox Store followed. As of April 15, it remains available on the Epic Games Store, Nintendo eShop, and PlayStation Store, but those storefronts are expected to follow.

The timing made it worse. Star Trek: Resurgence had been part of an active Steam sale when the delisting notice went up. Players who bought the game at a discount one day found it gone the next. Fans noted that Bruner House and Dramatic Labs almost certainly knew the license end date well in advance. They said nothing.

The game itself earned its audience. On OpenCritic, it sits at a 71 average from critics. On Steam, it held a “Very Positive” rating from more than 3,000 user reviews. The studio behind it, Dramatic Labs, was founded by over 20 former Telltale employees after that company’s sudden 2018 collapse. They built a game that reviewers consistently praised for its authentic Trek feel, its character writing, and its narrative structure. It sold between 50,000 and 100,000 copies on Steam alone, after launching as an Epic exclusive.

Resurgence launched in May 2023. It lived on storefronts for less than three years before Paramount let the deal expire.

Reports from the GamingOnLinux community suggest Paramount and Skydance raised Star Trek licensing costs by 2,000% for renewal negotiations, a number that would explain why a small studio and boutique publisher had no path to a new deal. Paramount has not confirmed or denied those figures.

This lands at an already low moment for the franchise. Paramount canceled Star Trek: Starfleet Academy before its second season could air. Strange New Worlds is being wound down after Season 5. For the first time in years, no Trek television series is in active development. The Kurtzman era, which promised a streaming-era expansion of the franchise, produced shows that failed to build a durable audience and a licensing regime that is now pricing out the developers who tried to fill the gap.

The game does have physical media discs, but those are selling out rapidly and going for exorbitant prices on eBay already.

A franchise that should be generating additional products and audience goodwill at its 60th anniversary is instead contracting on every front.

What do you think of how Paramount has managed the Star Trek brand? Let us know in the comments.

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When genetic engineering nearly doomed the species, humanity made a desperate bargain: let the frontier do what nature intended. In a harsh universe, these cadets have to make impossible decisions. Read Space Fleet Academy today.

NEXT: Kane’s Games Just Dropped A 2-hour Review On ‘Resident Evil Requiem’

Lucasfilm has a standing rule against bringing Mara Jade into Star Wars canon, and no one has been able to break it. Not Claudia Gray, one of the most prolific Star Wars authors working today, nor Timothy Zahn, the man who created Mara Jade in the first place.

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Josh Daws, a former Lead Software Engineer at the Walt Disney Company, who was just laid off, shared that the company has toned down its DEI policies and initiatives since the election of President Donald Trump in 2024.

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After being laid off, Daws conducted an impromptu Ask Me Anything on X, where he was first asked about how hard the company pushed the LGBTQ+ agenda internally and if it slowed down in 2025.

Daws answered, “2018-2024 was pretty bad. It peaked in 2020 and almost completely disappeared when Trump won.”

Additionally, he later shared that the people pushing this agenda are a “very small and vocal minority of the company. Most folks just want to make cool stuff.”

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Tim Russ, best known as Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager, sat down with Trek Culture to discuss the cancellation of Starfleet Academy, and his analysis landed everywhere except on the actual problem. Rather than acknowledging that audiences rejected the show, Russ floated political theories about Paramount’s new ownership while calling the incoming CEO a “Trump MAGA freak.”

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Camilla Mendes, who plays Teela in Amazon MGM Studios upcoming Masters of the Universe, film affirmed that the film will explore “toxic masculinity.”

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Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Mendes discussed her character and her relationship with her father, the race-swapped Man-At-Arms played by Idris Elba, “It's hard to talk about Teela without talking about her relationship to her father, because I feel like so much of who she is has to do with how she was, I guess, let down as a kid. And I feel like that really built this outer wall around her that's sort of like shielding this inner sensitivity.”

“She's affected by toxic masculinity just as much as the men in the film,” she continued. “And I think she's sort of adopted masculinity to protect herself in this very masculine world. It's how she survives. She's in survival mode, and has been for a very long time.”

Mendes was not the only one to discuss masculinity in the film with Entertainment Weekly. The film’s director Travis Knight also compared the film’s depiction of He-Man to the original animated series, “He was talking about kindness. He was talking about friendship and compassion. He was somebody who cared. And he was essentially like a bronzed empathy coach in furry underpants.”

“It was unique. It was different. And certainly for a kid like me — I was a sensitive kid. I was an artist. I was kind of a weird guy, you might say, and I made friends slowly when I made them at all…. I was comfortable with my own company, and I had deep thoughts and deep feelings, but I had a hard time making those types of deep connections easily with others. And so that very notion that strength and sensitivity could commingle, it was seismic. It was like discovering you could own both a tank and a diary,” he explained.

Actor Nicholas Galitzine, who plays He-Man, also shared, “This was like playing two characters, in a lot of ways. We're not reinventing the wheel necessarily, but the arc was so powerful. And I think as someone who grew up in a very masculine sphere of rugby but always felt like a really sensitive, emotionally intuitive person, I really did see myself in this character.”

As for what that arc will be, he shared, “[His life on Earth] is a little soulless, it's a little mundane, it's devoid of color and life.”

“It's frustrating, because Adam feels like he sees the best in people, he wants the best for people, but it doesn't feel like any of that is reciprocated for him,” he continued. “What is it like to be a pariah from such a young age, and always be gaslit into thinking that there's something wrong with you, but also the feeling that you weren't really at home on your home planet either? So it's this feeling of not really belonging anywhere.”

Finally, he concluded that Adam forms a “cocoon to remove [himself] from the possibility of feeling and being disappointed and hoping. Eventually, after 15 years, he's really a shadow of a person. He's lost hope. And so we meet him in quite a depressive sort of place.”

This is not the first time, the individuals involved in this film have talked about masculinity being a theme of the film.

Knight previously told Empire, “Skeletor’s kind of the embodiment of toxic masculinity.”

Gallitine also informed ScreenRant, “Without spoiling too much, I think there is a modernity to him that is really interesting. It feels like who he is as a person is a handshake between what traditional masculinity and femininity are, and I think it is very exciting to be able to play that in such a huge studio movie.”

“Obviously, the action and the set pieces are incredible, but there's a really human story in there as well. I think if I'm going to do something with that level of spectacle, I have to have that as well,” he concluded.

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Step into the dying deserts of Barsoom like never before. In Guns of Mars by Chuck Dixon, a thousand years after John Carter’s legendary arrival, a hard-bitten survivor named Kal fights for his life across a savage, crumbling Mars, where honor clashes with betrayal, ancient weapons meet desperate grit, and every step could be your last.

If you crave classic Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure with a raw, unflinching edge straight from the master of action comics, this pulse-pounding tale is your next must-read. Grab your copy today and ride the red sands!

NEXT: ‘Supergirl’ Actress Milly Alcock On Why She Wants The Film To Be Seen By Young Women: “The Message Is To Be Good You Have To Be A Bit Bad”

Supergirl actress Milly Alcock recently shared why she wants young women to watch the film.

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Speaking to Entertainment Tonight at CinemaCon, Alcock said, “I just really want this film to be seen by as many young women, specifically, as possible because I think the message is like: To be good you have to be a bit bad.”

“Like it’s okay to be flawed,” she continued. “It’s okay to be messy as long as your heart is in the right place.”

“She’s a bad [expletive] with a heart of gold. She is. That is the tagline,” she concluded.

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Supergirl’s Milly Alcock reportedly insinuated that fans treat actresses in major franchises harshly simply because they are women. Perhaps other cast and crew will make similar remarks about the film’s potential audience. Even if they don’t, it’s the latest incident showing that Hollywood doesn’t want to change. And that’s just fine. It has created a massive opening for others to craft new tales—ones filled with shocking ideas and situations that Hollywood would never dare touch.

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Vanity Fair asked Alcock if acting in House of the Dragon readied her for fan backlash over the upcoming Supergirl movie. “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” she supposedly replied.

Hollywood telling people what it thinks of them is quite welcome at this point. It also serves as a reminder that it doesn’t own storytelling. People can create new superheroines and feature them in new stories that would be both massively fun and completely horrifying to the legacy entertainment industry. As an example, instead of a girlboss superheroine who’s the toughest and roughest one there is, let’s imagine a perky and bumbling superheroine who manages to foil villains through clumsiness and sheer ineptitude.

The Magnificent Magnifi-Girl, Episode 1

Daphne Woods is a freshman at Evans State College in Broadton, New York in the mid-1960s. On her first day of classes, she’s walking on campus and notices someone who has slipped and fallen. She rushes to help her. As she assists, wind kicks up strewn paper and she lunges to grab it. In doing so, she trips a passing student, who falls into another, starting a chain reaction of pratfalls and culminating in someone dumping food on the prized car of the upperclassman jock, infuriating him. Daphne brightly blushes.

A bit later and Daphne is again walking through the campus. As she passes some swell chums gathered around a table and listening to the hot new portable radio developed by industrialist James Rock, she overhears a news bulletin about a fire raging in nearby Harbor City. Daphne Woods may not be having a good day! she thinks. But, golly, Magnifi-Girl sure can help on this!

Magnifi-Girl flies to the fire, noticing that it has fully engulfed a three-story building. Despite the incident commander assuring her that it’s under control, she takes a hose, flies to the top of the building, and begins spraying water. She eventually extends it too far, ripping it out of a fire hydrant, causing water to gush everywhere on the street. “Without another hose, the fire’s going to engulf the rest of the block!” the incident commander advises her. “Then we’ll just have to take drastic measures!” she replies, zipping away. “No, wait! You didn’t let me finish!” he yells back. But she is not paying attention to him.

The peppy superheroine uses her super strength to punch away brick walls of the adjacent building’s ground floor until a loss of structural integrity causes it to collapse. She returns to the incident commander with an enormous smile on her face and boasts about her feat. The incident commander looks at her while other firemen surround him with another hose. “We had another hose on the way,” he replies. She apologizes and inquires as to how it started. He mentions that a supervillainess named Queen Janine has taken credit for it. The block of buildings belong to James Rock, whom Queen Janine has denounced as being arrogant and a menace to the city.

Embarrassed by the mistake but still upbeat, Magnifi-Girl zips back to college and changes into Daphne Woods. She realizes she’s about to be late for her first class and hurries to it, rushing to it and directly into her professor, knocking her onto the floor. Students laugh. The professor is furious.

Elsewhere, Queen Janine is in her secret headquarters, raging to her minions about how Magnifi-Girl stopped the fire. She then makes a public announcement about how she is launching a campaign against Harbor City, promising to inflict millions of dollars in damages unless it pays her a ransom and removes Rock’s influence from it. Her minions have launched an attack on a large warehouse at that very moment.

Magnifi-Girl rushes to the attack and disrupts it through her clumsy ways. She learns about another attack going on at another property owned by Rock.

Rock is using his private security to fend off Queen Janine’s minions. Magnifi-Girl arrives and he observes her clumsiness and buffoonery, with it at first irritating him. But he changes his mind, eventually sees it as an opportunity when he observes her incompetence ends up foiling the bad guys. He devises a plan on how to use her to draw out Queen Janine to face him in person.

Queen Janine takes the bait, but is surprised to find Magnifi-Girl with Rock, with the superheroine repeatedly disrupting her attacks through her maladroitness. To make matters worse, Magnifi-Girl rebuffs Queen Janine’s calls to switch sides and join her. Rock watches with amusement as Magnifi-Girl’s perky awkwardness leads her to victory. Queen Janine melts down into impotent fury at being defeated by sheer ineptitude. Rock congratulates Magnifi-Girl and offers her a deal.

Daphne returns to Evans State College, with excitement in her eyes. She goes to the registrar’s office where she drops out of school. As she departs, distracted by her own giddiness, she wanders into the midst of a protest against “American imperialism,” which she manages to completely shut down when she accidentally steps on a sign, causing its wooden handle to pop up and strike a student protester in the jaw. That sets off a chain of events that ends with the leader of the protest being knocked off a soapbox and falling head first into a trash can, causing everyone to laugh at him.

The comic book issue ends with Daphne at Rock’s headquarters, showing the deal he made with her. Daphne will now work as his personal secretary and he will use his resources to find problems for Magnifi-Girl to solve. Rock and Magnifi-Girl make a public announcement about their “partnership.” Queen Janine witnesses this news while in prison and loses her mind over it.

In future issues, Magnifi-Girl’s rogues gallery will include a significant number of people she and/or Daphne accidentally embarrass and/or offend with her clumsiness—including the jock, professor, and student activist she humiliated in issue number one. Hijinks will ensue, and the tales will be a complete change from the girlboss superheroine stories that Hollywood can’t help but tell.

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Thor vs. the Valkyries by Paul Hair delivers a fast, action-packed Norse mythology short read that hits like a thunderbolt.

When a band of treacherous Valkyries storms Thor’s palace, launches a coup against Asgard, and takes his beloved Lady Sif hostage as a slave, the God of Thunder has no allies left and no time to waste. With nothing but raw strength, defiance, and his legendary hammer, Thor charges headlong into battle in a tale of betrayal, brutal retribution, and a satisfying twist ending that’ll leave you grinning.

Short enough to finish in one sitting (under 15 minutes), this fun, no-nonsense story is perfect for fans of classic mythology who want a quick escape with plenty of muscle and zero modern preaching.

NEXT: 'Project Hail Mary' Novelist Andy Weir Explains How His Main Character Is Inspired By The Gospel

Andy Weir shared how the character of his novel and the film adaptation, Dr. Ryland Grace, is inspired by the Gospel.

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In a discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his StarTalk YouTube channel, Weir brought up the subject. He said, “Did you notice that the name of the ship is The Hail Mary and it’s full of grace. The main character’s name is Dr. Ryland Grace. The Hail Mary is full of grace. I could not resist it.”

In Luke 1:28, the angel Gabriel addresses the Virgin Mary, “And coming to her, he said, ‘Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.’”

However, in the Douay-Rheims translation it states, “And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

Additionally, it is the opening line of The Hail Mary prayer, which is obviously derived from the Gospel of Luke, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

This revelation by Weir appears to add even more credence to how the movie is indeed a Christian film. LOOR TV co-founder Marcus Pittman previously shared his analysis noting how Dr. Ryland Grace was a Christ-like figure noting that he meets the alien creature named Rocky and the two to become best friends and this is similar to Christ choosing St. Peter to build his Church, “In deep space, Grace meets an alien creature, Rocky, who is also trying to figure out how to save the world, and the two become best friends. In Scripture, Jesus says to Peter, ‘On this rock, I will build my church.’ The film reaches its climax when Grace, the Christ figure, willingly sacrifices himself to save Rocky, the proverbial church, and all of creation.”

Additionally, Pittman noted, “I am just beginning to scratch the surface of all the biblical parallels. But here’s just one more. At the end of the film, after creation is saved, the question remains: Will Grace return to Earth? We don’t get a definitive answer, but it is implied that someday soon, he will return.”

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Tired of woke sci-fi that preaches at you? Templar Drin wields deadly nanotech for a galactic empire—until he crash-lands on a brutal desert world ruled by a tyrannical alien overlord. Now, armed with faith and firepower, one rogue warrior must fight for justice, free the oppressed, and save souls in a war that spans stars and eternity.

If you crave old-school military sci-fi like Star Wars and Warhammer 40K with unapologetic Christian heart, Justified is your next addiction. Grab it now before the empire strikes back!”

NEXT: Mark Hamill Responds To Activists Wanting Luke Skywalker To Be Gay

Actor Mark Hamill, who portrays Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise, recently addressed activists who want Luke Skywalker to be gay.

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Hamill told Polygon, “So if you want him to be gay, he is. If you don't want him to be, he's not. It's whatever you want.”

Activists have been attempting to make Luke Skywalker a homosexual for years now. One of their most recent big pushes came back in 2023 when the Star Wars fan encyclopedia Wookieepedia labeled the character as LGBTQ+ based on a short story written by activist writer Sam Maggs.

That short story was titled “Luke on the Bright Side” and was published in Stories of Jedi and Sith, an anthology marketed towards children ages 9-12.

The story follows Luke while he’s on Hoth as he attempts to aid the Rebel Alliance by using the Force to dig given their radar equipment is not functioning. Luke and a Sergeant Reyé Hollis fall victim to an ice worm attack and end up buried beneath the base. Luke has to use the Force to find the weak points in the ice so the two can dig themselves out.

In order to do so, Luke uses the Force to create heat that allows him and Hollis to tunnel through the ice. Maggs writes, “I look down at our faintly glowing hands and then back up at Reyé I wouldn’t say he looks happy; I don’t think the guy has looked happy a day in his life. There’s still some doubt in his eyes. But I will say—if I’m going easy on myself—that he looks impressed. I flash the same big grin I gave him the first time I saw him. ‘See? Jedi aren’t all bad.'”

After the two dig themselves out, Maggs concludes the story, “And when we start to dig, it isn’t long before the light breaks through, just like I saw in my mind’s eye. The Force has never steered me wrong. I know it never will.”

The story did not depict Luke Skywalker engaging in any romantic relationship with Hollis despite Wookieepedia activists attempting to use it to label Luke as LGBTQ+.

Additionally, in the Expanded Universe Luke Skywalker ends up married to Mara Jade and the two have a son, Ben Skywalker, together.

Furthermore, as Archbishop Lazar Puahlo noted in his review of Return of the Jedi back in 1984, “The hero of the series is Luke Skywalker, a pure, highly moral young man who is a true hero, rather than the modern anti-hero image so often lauded in contemporary films. He remains a virgin throughout the film and his growth in spiritual leadership and strength is directly linked with this.”

He later added in his review, “It is one of the only movies I know of from the last two or three decades where we witness an actual triumph of virginity and morality over the dark forces of the passions.”

Clearly, trying to make Luke Skywalker undermines the entirety of the character. He is no longer the pure, highly moral young man, but instead highly immoral and enslaved to the dark forces of his passions.

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Tired of woke sci-fi that preaches at you? Templar Drin wields deadly nanotech for a galactic empire—until he crash-lands on a brutal desert world ruled by a tyrannical alien overlord. Now, armed with faith and firepower, one rogue warrior must fight for justice, free the oppressed, and save souls in a war that spans stars and eternity.

If you crave old-school military sci-fi like Star Wars and Warhammer 40K with unapologetic Christian heart, Justified is your next addiction. Grab it now before the empire strikes back!”

NEXT: Brian Jacques’ ‘Redwall’ Series No Longer In Development At Netflix

Samuel Cockings has been quietly building one of the most impressive bodies of work in the Star Trek fan film community. Over 38 short films have been released since 2021. A full YouTube channel packed with shorts, longer-form productions, and other franchise films such as Stargate, Doctor Who, and Star Wars.

And now, a Kickstarter campaign with the biggest one yet is here to fund what comes next.

Fandom Pulse received an advance screener of Legacy Returns, Trek Shorts’ latest production and their most ambitious film since 2019's viral success “Temporal Anomaly,” which has over 850k views in its 2 parts.

We’re keeping the details close to the chest for now; there are no reveals in this one that deserve to land fresh, but we can say this: the scope of what Cockings and his team pulled off will surprise you. The production bridges eras of Trek history in a way that feels earned rather than fan-servicey, and it features characters and ship designs that will hit hard for anyone who grew up with the original cast and The Next Generation. The temporal mechanics at the heart of the story are handled with the same care that made Star Trek: Prodigy: Reckoning, another Trek Shorts production and one of the best time travel stories the fan film community has produced, such a standout on the channel, with its next 5 episodes set to release later this year.

Here’s how it all comes together for a Trek fan production.

The Labor of Love Has a Price Tag

Cockings was direct when we asked about the economics of running a fan film operation at this level. He cleaned it up from a longer conversation, but the core of what he said is this:

“We all put in so much time and energy, but there are always hard costs…we can’t negotiate with hotel chains or places to eat, so…there are always costs to every shoot, and the more actors, the more days, the costs escalate… It's worth it, but…it adds up fast! Fans also ask for more, and we want to make more, so...bigger films, more shoot days...more costs BUT...we love it, and I think the body of work released shows we can do a LOT with a very small relative budget.”

That’s the honest version of what fan filmmaking looks like at the level Trek Shorts operates. The hundreds of hours Cockings puts in personally are uncompensated. It means Trek Shorts operates within the fan film guidelines: no profit, web-based distribution, funded by community support. The Kickstarter isn’t paying for Cockings’ time. It’s paying for everything he can’t absorb himself.

What the Campaign Is

The Trek Shorts 2026 Kickstarter has a MIN goal of £12,500 (roughly $16,755) and a MAX stretch goal of £25,000 (roughly $33,700) with a deadline of May 20, 2026. At the time of writing, they’re past the halfway mark with 56 backers and 37 days remaining. This is an all-or-nothing campaign: if it doesn’t hit the goal, no money changes hands, no new projects get filmed, and the current in-production projects may still come out, but it won’t be anywhere near as fast and not pushed to the same level of quality. Trek Shorts tells us, “These effects take a lot of time to create!”

The reward tiers are structured to give something at every level of support:

• £5 (~$7) — Ensign: Your name in the credits and early access to every release in 2026

• £10 (~$14) — Lieutenant Jr.: Credits, early access, plus digital HQ poster and original soundtrack download

• £15 (~$21) — Video Message (In Character): A fully finished, in-uniform, green-screened video message from a cast member — essentially a Cameo, but fan Trek

• £20 (~$27) — Lieutenant: Credits, early access, three digital posters, two soundtracks

• £40 (~$54) — Name a Character: Your chosen name goes into the planned Dominion War fleet film

• £50 (~$68) — Name a Starship or Captain: Your ship flies in the Dominion War short, complete with HD render

• £150 (~$202) — Two Star Admiral: Physical signed posters, HQ video downloads, signed script pages, character cards, and a personal in-character video message

• £600 (~$805) — Associate Producer: Full producer credit on every 2026 film, signed cast print, and two in-character video messages from different cast members

• £1,000 (~$1,341) — Section 31 Agent: A secret perk, all Admiral-level rewards, and a Section 31 consultant credit on every film. Only two of three slots remain.

The higher tiers escalate the physical rewards and, at the top tier, include direct video calls with Cockings and creative input on future productions. He wants to make more, and this is the time to help him.

There’s also a planned Dominion War short in the DS9 era, a full-on fleet battle film with named ships, characters, and captains, that several of these tiers feed directly into. That alone is enough to get anyone who cares about the Dominion War arc excited, as there’s so much untapped potential for that era of storytelling.

The mainstream Trek landscape right now is streaming-first and algorithm-dependent. Fan productions like Trek Shorts operate without any of that infrastructure. They’re completely for the fans by the fans, and this is something that’s been big in the Trek community of fan film makers for a long time, something Trek Shorts exemplifies at its finest.

The Kickstarter closes May 20. If the fan film community shows up for this one, there’s a Dominion War fleet battle, continued adventures for Horizon crew, Prodigy: Reckonings long-form story, and whatever comes after Legacy Returns waiting on the other side...

Back the campaign. Watch the back catalog on YouTube. And keep an eye out for Legacy Returns releasing very soon.

What tier are you backing at? Drop a comment below.

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The debate around Alex Kurtzman’s tenure running Star Trek has never lacked for opinions. Fans have argued about the creative direction for years, the serialized storytelling, the visual overhaul, the politics baked into every script. But opinions don’t renew contracts. Numbers do.

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The Tachyon Pulse Podcast sat down with data sourced from Nielsen ratings, platform subscriber counts, and an industry consultant working with one of the major demographic consultancy firms. What those numbers reveal about Kurtzman’s Star Trek is more layered than either his defenders or critics typically admit, and in at least one area, damning.

Discovery: A Strong Start That Nobody Remembers

Discovery launched with momentum. The series premiere pulled nearly 10 million views in its first week and set an all-time single-day subscriber record for CBS All Access. For seasons one and two, the show also had Netflix as its international home, a vastly larger platform that propped up global numbers considerably.

By season five, the Nielsen picture was sobering. Discovery averaged 285 million minutes in its first seven days across its ten episodes. Not catastrophic, but noticeably behind where Strange New Worlds would land.

Strange New Worlds: The One That Worked

Strange New Worlds is the undeniable high-water mark of the Kurtzman era. Season two averaged 390 million minutes per week. Season three climbed to 470 million. That climb is notable because, by most fan assessments, season three was the weaker of the two. The audience discovered the show through the stronger season and carried that momentum forward.

Those numbers hold up even against Star Wars when you account for platform size. Paramount Plus has roughly 80 million subscribers. Disney Plus has 140 million, about 60% more. Applying that correction to Strange New Worlds season three puts the adjusted figure at 750 million minutes. That beats Andor’s 720 million and crushes The Acolyte’s 350 million, while costing nearly half as much per episode to produce.

That is the argument for Kurtzman in its strongest form. It is a real one.

The Cost Problem Nobody Is Talking About

Strange New Worlds costs between $10 and $11 million per episode. Starfleet Academy came in at $12 million, the most expensive Star Trek series under Kurtzman. Discovery, adjusted for inflation, runs about $11 million per episode.

Compare that to the shows that built Star Trek’s long-term financial foundation. The Next Generation cost $3.5 million per episode. Voyager ran about $5.8 million, both figures inflation-adjusted. The jump from $5.8 million to $11 million per episode is largely attributable to CGI spending, and that is where Tachyon Pulse lands its pointed critique: Kurtzman-era Trek leans on visual effects in a way that Star Trek fans have never demanded.

The Expanse, packed with CGI and inflated for modern production costs, still came in around $8 million per episode. Kurtzman overspent by approximately $3 million per episode on Strange New Worlds, Discovery, and Academy alike. Over a five-season run, that is a staggering amount of avoidable spend. For Academy alone, a two-season show, the excess likely exceeded $60 million.

Academy: Where It All Fell Apart

Star Trek: Academy’s first episode posted 343 million minutes, stronger than Discovery and not far off Strange New Worlds. On paper, a reasonable start. What followed was not reasonable.

Between episodes two and three, total viewership, domestic and international combined, was cut in half. The finale registered roughly 2.4 million minutes in the United States. Some outlets framed this as equivalent to 400,000 individual views, or even as low as 40,000 when accounting for the total minute-to-runtime ratio. Tachyon Pulse pushes back on those figures as US-only snapshots. Internationally, Academy averaged around 150 million minutes per episode across the season.

Even with that correction, the consultancy source was unambiguous: Academy came in 20% below the bottom end of their projected range. Paramount, according to the same source, looked at this show the way they looked at Section 31, as a decision that was flawed before production began, not just in execution.

The metric that seals it is minutes per million dollars spent. Strange New Worlds generates roughly 14 million minutes for every $1 million in production cost. Academy managed 12 million minutes per $1 million. For a show that cost more to make, that gap matters.

Section 31: The Number That Ends The Conversation

Section 31 generated 1.2 million minutes for every $1 million spent.

Not 14 million. Not 12 million. 1.2 million.

The show performed catastrophically in its opening week and then saw rewatchability fall off entirely. Nobody went back to it. The new Paramount leadership looked at Section 31 and reached a conclusion that carries serious weight: greenlighting a straight-to-streaming movie in this format was a bad business call from day one, not a marketing problem or a release timing issue. A fundamentally avoidable loss.

That assessment reportedly landed hard. Section 31, more than any other single title, is cited as the moment Paramount’s incoming leadership made up their minds about Kurtzman’s contract.

The Rewatchability Gap

This is the number that doesn’t make headlines but drives the entire long-term economics of franchise television.

Star Trek has always made its real money in syndication, in the decades-long tail of viewers who discover TNG or Deep Space Nine or Voyager and run through them multiple times. That is why Amazon MGM keeps Stargate alive. That is why these shows still air on cable in multiple countries. The initial viewership pays back the production cost. The rewatches generate the profit.

Star Wars scores a 48% rewatchability rating on the consultancy algorithm Tachyon Pulse cites. Classic Trek from the TNG era lands around 35 to 40%.

New Trek under Kurtzman scores 8%.

People are not going back to Discovery. They are not running through Picard again. Section 31’s rewatchability dropped after the first week and never recovered. The 8% figure explains why Paramount looks at Strange New Worlds’ decent initial numbers and still has no confidence. A show people watch once and abandon generates no long-term value. The production cost is not recouped over time. It is a sunk expense. At $10 to $12 million per episode, those expenses do not sink quietly.

The Verdict The Numbers Actually Support

Kurtzman’s Star Trek was not a total collapse. Strange New Worlds delivered real numbers, performed comparably to mid-tier Star Wars on an adjusted basis, and did so at a fraction of Andor’s per-episode cost. Discovery had a strong launch and built an international audience.

The financial decisions are a different matter. Overspending on CGI relative to genre peers, greenlighting Section 31, building Academy on a concept the market rejected before a single episode aired, these represent a pattern of miscalculation that compounds otherwise manageable viewing numbers. Layer in the 8% rewatchability score and Paramount’s long-term value proposition on Kurtzman Trek disappears entirely.

The numbers make one thing clear: whatever comes next, Paramount is doing it without Alex Kurtzman.

Thanks again to The Tachyon Pulse Podcast for delving into these numbers. Subscribe to him on YouTube.

What do you think? Do the numbers tell the full story, or is there a creative argument for Kurtzman that the data cannot capture? Get in the comments.

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Scarlett Johansson and Milly Alcock are the latest actresses running what has become a recognizable Hollywood press cycle: the pre-release gender grievance tour. Both women made comments in the same week that generated headlines, social media debate, and the same question the industry never seems to ask: does this strategy ever actually work?

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Johansson, promoting her latest project, told CBS Sunday Morning that the early 2000s were brutal for young actresses. “It was tough. There was a lot placed on how women looked,” she said. “What was offered at that time for women my age, as far as acting roles or opportunities, was much slimmer than it is now.” She continued: “You would get really pigeon-holed and offered the same roles. It would be like the other woman, or the side piece, the bombshell. That was the archetype that was prevalent when I was that age.”

Meanwhile, Supergirl star Milly Alcock told Vanity Fair that her time on House of the Dragon prepared her for inevitable scrutiny. “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” Alcock said. “We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

The pattern traces back most visibly to Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel press tour in 2019, where comments about diversifying critical voices reviewing her film generated enormous controversy before the movie opened. Then came Rachel Zegler, whose comments before Snow White’s release about the classic film’s romance dynamics created weeks of negative press. When the film collapsed at the box office, the pre-release narrative became central to the autopsy.

All of these cases share a telling detail: the films’ problems were rooted in writing and execution. Snow White’s troubled production, multiple reshoots, and delayed release told the real story. The gender commentary became a convenient misdirection from genuine creative failures. Audiences didn’t reject those films because of the actresses, but instead they rejected films that simply didn’t work.

Johansson collected $20 million per film during the supposed era she now describes as impossibly difficult for women. She became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars, headlined one of the most successful film franchises in history, and successfully sued Disney over streaming rights. The grievance narrative sits awkwardly against that career trajectory.

Alcock’s position is similarly complicated. Supergirl hasn’t opened yet. Framing her experience through body commentary and fan ownership before audiences have seen a single frame of her performance hands critics a ready-made narrative should the film struggle.

Hollywood keeps reaching for this playbook despite consistent evidence it damages the very films it claims to support. Audiences embrace female-led genre films when the writing delivers — Alien: Romulus, the original Hunger Games, Mad Max: Fury Road generated no pre-release controversy because the creative teams focused on making good films rather than managing press narratives.

The grievance tour substitutes for creative confidence. When a production team believes deeply in their work, they talk about the work. When they don’t, the conversation shifts elsewhere.

Attaching personal grievances to a film’s marketing cycle doesn’t build audiences. It builds controversy that the film then has to overcome at the box office.

What do you think? Does pre-release commentary about gender dynamics in Hollywood help or hurt a film’s reception?

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NEXT: Brian Jacques’ ‘Redwall’ Series No Longer In Development At Netflix

Marcus Pittman has been making waves on X, talking about films and specifically the problems surrounding Christians in culture, from being blacklisted to the corporate industrial complex around Christian media that he believes is holding many Christian artists back. He’s started a site Loor.tv to build independent filmmaking in a new way. He sat down to speak with us about his projects and about his viral discussion on Angel Studios’ new Animal Farm film that’s stirring a lot of controversy.

You can also find him on X here.

You run a streaming site called Loor.tv. What’s the concept behind it, and how is it going?

LOOR TV is a way for filmmakers to receive money from the monthly subscribers to produce and stream their movies, animations, and TV shows. The goal is to serve as an incubator for the next generation of talent, who would never get their stories made in Hollywood. The monthly subscribers get to allocate a portion of their monthly subscription every month towards entertainment they want to see get made. Our platform is also well-positioned for AI filmmakers, and we are looking forward to using our platform to launch mainstream AI filmmakers who can use our platform to raise money for AI Credits and Platform costs.

LOOR is still in the early stages, but we’ve already funded several IPs, including Bearly Biblical, Fleur De Lis, and a feature documentary called Gothix. The next phase for us is raising capital to scale and grow the brand. We brought on Shon Tomlin as our CEO, who built Fuel TV for Fox Cable Network and has worked with many incredible youth-oriented brands such as X-Games and Red Bull to help us prepare for and begin the process of scaling the company.

Christian culture used to be the standard for excellence in almost everything, from architecture to paintings to music. When did that shift and what do you think was the cause of it?

Not just the cathedrals, the reformation era paintings, and music. We pioneered technology from the telegraph, Morse code, and the transatlantic cable that is still the basis of worldwide communications today. That was right up to the time of the rise of end times eschatology, really taking dominance in the Church in the late 1800’s. When you believe that Jesus will be rapturing Christians any day, you tend to invest less in the future. Think about Arthur Guinness, the Christian who invented Guinness Beer. He signed a 9,000-year lease for St. James Gate that is still active to this day. I don’t know many Christians who plan ahead 9,000 years anymore, and I think that desire to just escape the earth has consequences on innovation.

Many Christian artists are afraid to be open about their work at this point and try to caveat “I’m a Christian… but this ISN’T preaching” as if somehow proclaiming Christ is a negative. How do we break that mindset?

First, I don’t think that Christian entertainment needs to be a preaching medium. That job is reserved for the Pastor and Evangelist. Not the artist. This is not to say that preaching with your art should never be done, but the mainstream Christian entertainment industry has ruined the reputation of Christian entertainment, full stop. Whenever this point is brought up to those deeply ingrained within the faith-based film industry, they never take the blame and admit their errors. Instead, they blame the lack of talent and the artists, even though they are the ones making the hiring decisions. I don’t know if they properly understand the differences between general revelation (art that doesn’t save) and special revelation (Exposition and Proclamation of the Gospel), or if they just don’t care.

You mentioned in a tweet something pretty provocative that Christian film is intentionally made to be bad. What do you mean by that exactly?

First, and this is important to understand, the Christian film industry is dependent on mainstream Hollywood’s acceptance. Almost all Christian movies are partnerships with major studios. Sony Pictures, DreamWorks, Lionsgate, etc. So every movie has to be made knowing that a major film studio has to be willing to put its name on it. This was evidenced by Kendrick Brothers and Kirk Cameron’s film Lifemark, which was rejected by major studios for distribution because they didn’t want to attach their name to a Pro-Life film.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-09/kirk-cameron-s-anti-abortion-film-lifemark-rides-wave-of-christian-movies

Second, the entire Christian Entertainment space was created for the female Christian bookstore shopper in mind in the 1990’s. They even gave her a name. Bookstore Becky/Betty.

This meant that all music, movies, books, and every other form of entertainment at your local Christian bookstore was not made for college-aged men, but for women. This greatly feminized the entire Christian entertainment industry.

This was all on purpose. This was all business strategy. It wasn’t a lack of talent or an inability to find great artists who want to make Christian movies. I’ve spoken to hundreds, and they all have stories as to how Faith-Based executives routinely rejected their work because it was too masculine and wouldn’t fit the female demographic. This is a top-down problem.

https://www.barna.com/research/religious-books-attract-a-diverse-audience-dominated-by-women-and-boomers/

Who are the gatekeepers keeping Christian art and film this way?

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A new report alleges that Brian Jacques’ Redwall series is no longer in development at Netflix and the company has lost the rights as well.

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Back in February 2021, it was originally announced that Netflix had cut a deal with Penguin Random House Children to have the streamer develop the enormously popular series into animated movies and TV shows.

Variety reported at the time that Netflix had recruited Patrick McHale to write the first film that was going to be based on the original Redwall novel that followed Matthias as he defended Redwall Abbey from Cluny the Scourge.

A script for that film had been completed, but it was reported that McHale left the project. He told the Redwall Wiki, “I finished a script and we did some beautiful development art and some storyboards."

Additionally, the company was expected to create a TV series about the character Martin the Warrior, who co-founded Redwall Abbey.

Now, Broadcast reports that the Netflix is “no longer developing screen adaptions of Brian Jacques’ seminal children’s works.”

Furthermore, What’s On Netflix also reports that the Netflix no longer has the rights to the books, “The rights have now officially reverted back to Penguin Random House and The Redwall Abbey Company.”

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Tired of woke sci-fi that preaches at you? Templar Drin wields deadly nanotech for a galactic empire—until he crash-lands on a brutal desert world ruled by a tyrannical alien overlord. Now, armed with faith and firepower, one rogue warrior must fight for justice, free the oppressed, and save souls in a war that spans stars and eternity.

If you crave old-school military sci-fi like Star Wars and Warhammer 40K with unapologetic Christian heart, Justified is your next addiction. Grab it now before the empire strikes back!”

READ: ElfQuest Movie Is Dead: Wendy and Richard Pini Walk Away from Hollywood After Decades of Failed Deals

Last year, buzz started among Star Trek fans that Star Trek: United would be the next show coming from the Trek franchise, helmed by long-time Star Trek veteran writer Michael Sussman and reprising Scott Bakula’s role as Jonathan Archer, now President of the Federation. Now, a Paramount insider tells Fandom Pulse the show is moving forward, but can’t be announced yet.

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After nearly fifty years of Hollywood promises and broken options, Richard and Wendy Pini have officially closed the door on any theatrical or streaming adaptation of ElfQuest, their groundbreaking fantasy comic series. The announcement, delivered through their “Matter of oPINIon” newsletter, marks the end of a decades-long pursuit that saw the property passed through CBS, Warner Bros., and most recently Fox Animation, each time leaving the Pinis with wasted years and compromised creative demands they couldn’t accept.

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ElfQuest is one of independent comics’ most enduring and beloved achievements. Created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978, the series follows Cutter, chief of the Wolfriders, a tribe of elves who bond with and ride wolves through a primitive world that has forgotten their alien origins. At its heart, ElfQuest is a survival story, a love story, and an exploration of identity across generations. Cutter’s relationship with his lifemate Leetah, an interracial pairing that was quietly revolutionary for its era, and his blood-brotherhood with Skywise, his best friend and navigator, form the emotional core of everything the story builds outward from. The series spans thousands of years of in-universe history across more than 20 volumes, covering wars, exiles, time travel, and the slow rediscovery of the elves’ cosmic heritage.

Wendy Pini’s art defined the series - sinuous, expressive, emotionally immediate in ways that made readers feel the story rather than simply follow it. The result was a fiercely devoted fanbase that has sustained the property across five decades without a single major studio release.

Now it’s clear why that film never happened.

“Since 1981, we’ve been approached by at least half a dozen studios or producers; I’ve lost count,” Richard Pini wrote. “Every one of these Hollywood reps opened their pitch with ‘We love ElfQuest, been reading it forever, and we want to faithfully adapt it into a movie/cartoon show/series.’”

The first serious attempt came from CBS in 1985. A Saturday morning cartoon was in development until the network’s demands revealed how little they understood the source material. Richard Pini described having “to force Wendy’s gorgeous pre-production art through Photoshop to make Leetah and the twins as light-skinned as Cutter. Because that (among other things) was what CBS wanted.” The notion of an interracial couple was, in the words of the newsletter, “unacceptable to those in power.” CBS chewed through three years before making an offer the Pinis could only refuse.

Warner Bros. arrived in 2008 riding the success of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises. The studio envisioned a live-action CGI film along the lines of the Tolkien adaptations. Then they showed the Pinis their concept art. The characters had been transformed into something unrecognizable - bulky, armor-clad figures that bore no relationship to Wendy’s designs. “Turns out Warner didn’t really want ElfQuest,” Richard Pini wrote. “They wanted Chief of the Rings. Or maybe Lord of the Lodestone. But not the story Wendy had lovingly nurtured since the beginning.” Four more years consumed.

The most recent attempt came through a partnership with an outfit holding a deal with Fox Animation for a streaming series. This one felt different. “The apparent level of sincerity and respect was higher than for any previous endeavor,” Richard Pini wrote. Contract negotiations dragged. One prospective showrunner was replaced with another. Communication deteriorated. Then came the creative demands.

“They wanted to get rid of Skywise and instead make Cutter the keeper of the lodestone,” the newsletter revealed.

On January 23rd of this year, the Fox option expired. The Pinis made their decision.

“Wendy and I looked at each other and, quite calmly, resolved that after pushing this particular boulder up a hill and having it tumble back down over us for almost 50 years... we’re finished,” Richard Pini wrote. “Hollywood has tried over and over, and let us down over and over. We will take no more options, no more meetings.”

Wendy Pini addressed the Skywise decision directly on Facebook, cutting to the core of why that particular demand was a dealbreaker: “More to the point - and this is what Hollywood never gets - Elfquest is the love story of Cutter and Skywise. Everything else in the plot serves that. Eliminate Skywise... no story at all. Just like eliminate Richard... no Elfquest at all.”

She’s right. Skywise isn’t a supporting character who can be written out for narrative convenience. He is the philosophical counterweight to Cutter’s fierce rootedness - the wanderer to Cutter’s chief, the stargazer to his warrior. Their bond is what makes Cutter’s journey meaningful. A version of ElfQuest without that relationship is a different story using borrowed names.

Hollywood’s consistent failure to grasp this reveals the fundamental problem with how the industry handles beloved properties. Studios see recognizable titles as raw material for their own visions rather than as complete works deserving faithful treatment.

Richard Pini frames the outcome with characteristic grace, arguing that “the perfect ElfQuest movie already exists” in the imaginations of readers who have been casting, scoring, and directing it in their minds since they first read it. “You have been the producer, the director, the sound editor,” he wrote.

That framing is generous and touching. But it’s also honest about what’s been lost. There will be no ElfQuest film, and no version that introduces Cutter, Leetah, Skywise, Rayek, and Winnowill to audiences who’ve never picked up the comics.

The Pinis made the right call, refusing every compromised deal. A bad adaptation would have done more damage to ElfQuest’s legacy than no adaptation at all. Between the Star Wars sequels, the Hobbit trilogy bloat, the endless MCU dilution, the entertainment landscape is littered with beloved properties diminished by productions that prioritized commercial calculation over creative fidelity.

What do you think about this announcement? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Epic Fantasy hasn’t been this hard-hitting since Tolkien. In a world where humanity is akin to a Roman legion, a great darkness arises. Read A Throne Of Bones today.

NEXT: Andy Weir Is Starting To Get Attacked By The Left, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse

Actress Olivia Munn, who played Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse and was the host of G4’s Attack of the Show!, shared one of her rules for taking on a film or TV role.

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In an appearance on The Drew Barrymore show, Munn shared, “I've looked at so many different scripts and a lot of times the women are portrayed in like kind of a naggy way sometimes.”

“I had this thing that I'd decided at one point early in my career: I only wanted to do projects where she would exist even if he didn't exist. That it wasn't just his story,” she continued. “I was like I'd rather just play like a cashier in one moment in one scene where she's really interesting and you can tell she goes home and has a whole other life than to be the lead with just his story."

Munn added, “And I also went in-. I think that idea of like hating men and portraying that energy as well, it just creates the divide. I just think it’s important to like lead with positivity.”

She then recalled how an unnamed male costar refused to allow his character be saved by Munn’s character.

“There have been a few times where I’ve been filming something and my character were either like CIA or a cop or something and there’s been scenes where my character has been the one to save the other character,” she said. “And I remember I was in this bunker once and if you read the script it was that he was guarding his side and I was guarding my side. Then we switched sides and then there’s a gut that was coming for him and was going to shoot him in the back. So I shoot him.”

“And then we’re about to shoot and somehow I guess he didn’t read the script and in that moment he realized, ‘Wait, wait wait. Hold on. She can’t save me. No, no, she can’t save me,’” she continued. “And then everything stops down and there was no insecurity about being obnoxious and everyone hearing this. ‘She can’t save me. We’re not doing this.’ And then he was combative with the director.”

“And, finally, after like 45 minutes of just stopping down, I said, ‘How about instead of my character saving you, it just is that we switch because it’s time for us to switch and so this is my guy to get.’ He was like, ‘Okay,’” Munn recalled.

Next, she shared, “Now, here’s the interesting thing. Nothing changed. It’s just what he thought. I was doing the exact same thing.”

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Tired of woke sci-fi that preaches at you? Templar Drin wields deadly nanotech for a galactic empire—until he crash-lands on a brutal desert world ruled by a tyrannical alien overlord. Now, armed with faith and firepower, one rogue warrior must fight for justice, free the oppressed, and save souls in a war that spans stars and eternity.

If you crave old-school military sci-fi like Star Wars and Warhammer 40K with unapologetic Christian heart, Justified is your next addiction. Grab it now before the empire strikes back!”

NEXT: ‘The Golden Compass’ Author Philip Pullman Explains Why He “Hates” C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Magician’s Nephew’

The Boys debuted on Amazon Prime in 2019 as one of the most genuinely subversive pieces of superhero television ever produced. Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book series ripped apart the superhero industrial complex with vicious precision, presenting a world where corporations weaponize caped figures for profit, public manipulation, and political power. Seasons 1 and 2 were sharp, brutal, and genuinely transgressive. Season 5’s premiere suggests the show has become the very thing it spent four years satirizing with heavy-handed propaganda dressed up in bloody spectacle.

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The premise remains compelling on paper. One year after Season 4’s finale, Homelander has consolidated near-total control over American society. Citizens are now categorized as Supe, human, Hometeamer, or Starlighter. Freedom Camps, a very not-so-subtle allegory for concentration camps, hold Homelander’s enemies while Annie January, better known as Starlight, leads a resistance against him. Sister Sage, positioned as the world’s smartest woman and Vought’s new CEO, operates as the strategic brain behind Homelander’s operation while apparently running a long game whose endgame remains unclear.

The execution, according to pop culture analyst Byl Holte, who sat through the premiere so others could make an informed decision, is something else entirely.

“It starts with three male team members in prison because ‘incarcerated hero’ is the latest female empowerment trope,” Holte noted. “Two minutes in and I’m already squinting at the under-lit screen.” The lighting complaint is legitimate and well-documented among streaming television audiences - the industry’s obsession with cinematic darkness has made numerous shows physically difficult to watch.

The political commentary has also become a blunt instrument. “Then comes a barrage of modern politics so heavy-handed I can barely follow the story.” Holte clocked Homelander name-dropping that the Obamas call Sister Sage for advice, alongside Peter Thiel. A shareholder meeting crowd chants “USA! USA!” in what the show frames as a MAGA rally. Homelander wants to make memes illegal.

The Boys Season 5, based on this account, the targets are almost exclusively from one side of the aisle. “Kripke has turned this s****show into CNN with superheroes,” Holte wrote bluntly.

The gender dynamics drew particular criticism. “All the men are weak or die horrifically for comedy. All the women are nasty entitled c**ts.” A character named Worm, a new incel figure, eats dirt and expels it for gross-out laughs. The Deep and Black Noir 2 host a Manosphere podcast. Homelander, described as “the most powerful male on Earth,” operates entirely under Sister Sage’s direction. The formerly mute character gets cut in half by a laser and survives anyway because, as the reviewer observed, the show’s female characters have become functionally invincible.

The White Christian female VP, married to a black superhero, wants to abolish DEI because “those three letters are in DEVIL.” Sister Sage responds by dismissing her faith as belief in a “magic sky ghost or his baby sky ghost.” This is writing that thinks it’s clever.

“Starlight now has duck lips from too much plastic surgery. Starlight vapes,” Holte noted, capturing the show’s apparent determination to make even its heroic characters difficult to root for.

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes are calling it “the most savage and politically charged season yet” and “must-see TV.” Audiences who remember what the show was in its first two seasons may reach different conclusions.

The Boys was never comfortable viewing. The show has always operated in transgressive territory. The difference between early Boys and what this premiere apparently delivers is the difference between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.

Kripke built something fun with the early seasons. Season 5’s premiere suggests he’s more interested in scoring political points than finishing the story he started.

Are you watching this show still?

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NEXT: Mark Hamill Backs Dave Filoni as Star Wars Boss, But Fans Aren’t Convinced

Mark Hamill has thrown his public support behind Dave Filoni as the new creative force steering Lucasfilm following Kathleen Kennedy’s departure, calling the longtime Star Wars animator and producer the ideal person to lead the franchise forward. Fans aren’t exactly celebrating.

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Hamill was direct in his endorsement. “I can’t think of better hands” for Star Wars to be in than Dave Filoni, the actor said, adding that Filoni’s direct relationship with George Lucas gives him a unique advantage over anyone else who might have taken the role. “George was a mentor to Dave, so he knows George’s sensibility.”

That connection to Lucas is the foundation of Filoni’s entire case for the job. He’s one of the few people in modern Star Wars who actually sat with the creator, learned from him, and absorbed his approach to storytelling. On paper, that’s exactly what the franchise needs after years of creative drift under Kennedy’s tenure.

But paper and reality are two different things.

Filoni didn’t watch the Disney era of Star Wars from the sidelines. He was in the middle of it. He had creative involvement in The Acolyte, a series that drew significant fan backlash for its handling of established lore, particularly around the Force and the Chosen One prophecy. Leslye Headland, the show’s creator, repeatedly invoked Filoni’s approval when defending her most controversial decisions.

He produced Ahsoka, which struggled to connect beyond the existing fanbase despite featuring one of Star Wars’ most beloved characters. He played a central role in shaping Mandalorian Season 3, which shifted focus away from Din Djarin toward Bo-Katan Kryze in ways that divided the show’s audience considerably.

Hamill’s endorsement also reopens his long-documented frustrations with The Last Jedi. His disagreement with Rian Johnson’s vision for Luke Skywalker remains one of the most candid public disputes between an actor and a director in blockbuster history.

“I saw entire planets wiped out! If anything, Luke doubles down and hardens his resolve in the face of adversity,” Hamill reportedly told Johnson during production. His objection was philosophical - two completely different understandings of who Luke Skywalker fundamentally is as a character.

Despite those objections, Hamill committed to the performance. “Despite the fact that I disagree with your choices for Luke, I’m going to do everything within my power to make your screenplay work,” he told Johnson. He later clarified that his criticism was never personal, calling Johnson “one of the most gifted directors I’ve ever worked with.”

Now Hamill says he’s ready to step aside entirely. “I had my time… I think they should focus on the future and all the new characters.” It’s a graceful exit statement, but it lands awkwardly given that the last moment of genuine, widespread fan excitement for the franchise came from Luke’s return in the Mandalorian Season 2 finale - a scene that reminded audiences exactly what they’d been missing.

That reaction hasn’t faded. And it quietly complicates everything Hamill is saying about moving forward.

Pop culture pundit Matt Jarbo echoed fans fears about what we might see, responding to this on X, " have a feeling that Dave filoni is going to be heavily listening to what fans want. I just hope that it's not people who enjoy the sequel Trilogy LOL.”

The core tension in his Filoni endorsement is this: fans who want a course correction are being asked to trust the man who was present for much of what they want corrected. Filoni’s George Lucas connection is real and meaningful. But so is his fingerprint on the projects that divided audiences throughout the Disney era.

Kennedy’s departure marks a big shift in Lucasfilm’s leadership structure. Whether it marks a shift in creative direction depends entirely on decisions Filoni hasn’t made yet.

On top of this, Filoni isn’t entirely in charge. Feminist activist Lynwen Brennan has also been named as a co-replacement for Kennedy. “Filoni has never really been a traditional executive, so they’re giving him a partner in Lynwen Brennan, currently president and general manager of Lucasfilm Business, but he’ll be the decider on the creative direction of the franchise in film, television, and any other platforms in the galaxy,” Matthew Belloni from Puck said of the promotion.

For now, Luke Skywalker himself says he’s in good hands. Whether the fans who grew up watching Luke Skywalker agree is a considerably more complicated question.

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When genetic engineering nearly doomed the species, humanity made a desperate bargain: let the frontier do what nature intended. In a harsh universe, these cadets have to make impossible decisions. Read Space Fleet Academy today.

NEXT: Marvel TV Boss Claims ‘She-Hulk’ Is One Of Marvel’s “Best Performing Shows”

Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation recently claimed that the company’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law series is one of the studios’ best performing Disney+ shows.

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During an appearance on the The Escape Pod channel, the topic of She-Hulk was brought up and Winderbaum initially stated, “I’d love to make more She-Hulk. I’d love to make more She-Hulk.”

Then when one of the hosts said, “That’s not gonna happen,” Winderbaum replied, “I know.”

However, he then went on to claim that the show was one of the studio’s best performing shows. He said, “I’ll tell you this about She-Hulk. That’s one of our best performing shows. … It just hit the general audience. There was like a mismatch between fan response and audience response. Like a little bit.”

After one of the hosts shared some of the most horrible pitches for a show ever imagined like an Office style comedy on Xandar with Glenn Close’s character losing the Power Stone, Winderbaum shared, “I would love to have the opportunity to make more She-Hulk, honestly. Hopefully, one day. Maybe.”

While Winderbaum claims the show was one of its “best performing shows” the public data doesn’t support that claim.

The week of the show’s premiere it did not chart on Nielsen’s Top 10 originals and was thus below 395 million minutes watched. In its second week, it charted in the 9th spot with 390 million minutes watched.

It continued to see its minutes viewed increase with the week of its third episode, where it hit 472 million minutes viewed. In the week of episode four it hit 493 million minutes watched.

However, it then saw significant decline moving forward. The week of its fifth episode it fell to 403 million minutes watched and was just 10th on the chart.

It fell off the charts with the release of episode six, meaning it had less than 416 million minutes watched.

It would reenter the charts with the release of its 7th episode at 396 million minutes viewed. It then hit 454 million minutes viewed with episode 8 and during the week of its finale it hit 526 million minutes.

To be clear, the show was the first Marvel Studios’ Disney+ show to miss the top 10 originals chart the week of its premiere week and its weekly numbers were worse than shows like Loki, WandaVision, Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Moon Knight.

Furthermore, if the viewership was so good, why did Winderbaum indicate the show won’t get any more episodes? Repeatedly throughout the interview he talked about audience viewership dictating whether or not they would greenlight new seasons of Wonder Man and Daredevil: Born Again.

Additionally, given that he’s the Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation, one would think he would have significant sway on whether or not a second season would get greenlit.

Finally, actress Tatiana Maslany, who played She-Hulk, indicated that the show was way too expensive for the return it had. During an appearance on the Twitch show Codenames LIVE!, she said, “I think we blew our budget, and Disney was like, ‘No thanks.’”

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Dive into The Immortal Edge by Jon Del Arroz where Imperial Special Agent Ayla Rin uncovers a deadly conspiracy tied to a revolutionary immortality spore held by ruthless space pirates, forcing her into a high-stakes race across the stars to stop sinister forces from erasing humanity forever.

NEXT: HBO's Harry Potter TV Series Production Designer Claims The Magic In The Show Is "Rooted In Naturalism"