This post contains spoilers for the season finale of Marvel's 'What If…?'

All season there were hints that What If…? was going to be more than just an anthology show. The fact that it debuted week to week, instead of dropping all at once like Star Wars Visions. The Watcher’s repeated insistence that he must not interfere, an assertion begging to be tested. Stephen Strange noticed the Watcher’s presence. And then Ultron becomes aware of not just the Watcher, but of the entire multiverse, setting the stage for this week’s finale. It’s like a “greatest hits” of the series so far, with room for future adventures.

After last episode’s altercation, the Watcher knows he cannot handle Infinity Ultron by himself, instead enlisting the help of the heroes we’ve met over the entire season, including Captain Carter, T’Challa Starlord and Party Thor. The one exception is a Gamora who appears to have been working with Tony Stark, pulled into the group with little explanation, making me wonder if I had missed an episode. (Though the Watcher’s dismissal of Tony was pretty funny.)

Where other episodes have had to rush through their premises, showing us how those particular realities differed from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe, the finale has eight prior episodes to lean on for background so it got straight to the action. What we got was a tight, zippy episode that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser, with lots of fun banter between the characters. And it certainly helped that a few were played by their original live-action actors, most notably Benedict Cumberbatch and Hayley Atwell.

However, even this episode left some loose ends and a lot of doors open, with Arnim Zola and Killmonger locked in eternal battle, Black Widow finding a new team and Captain Carter discovering her lost-long love still alive. These all feel ripe for sequels that this show appears more than willing to deliver.

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It raises the question of what What If…? actually is. The show was originally presented as an anthology — which is still one of the tags it’s given on Disney+. Traditionally an anthology is a collection of stories or essays by different authors, but as early as The Twilight Zone television has defined an anthology as a program with new characters and scenarios every episode, regardless of whether the writers are the same. Even now, while every episode of Black Mirror is written by Charlie Brooker, you’ll still see it described as a science fiction anthology.

The episodes of What If…? are written by a variety of people including showrunner A.C. Bradley, but that’s par for the course with any television program, even the serialized ones. But its anthology nature was due to the fact that even if they were similar to characters we already knew and loved from the live-action productions, the characters were still different people. This is actually alluded to in the finale, when Gamora’s machine fails to destroy the Infinity Stones because it was only built to crush the gems in her universe, not in all realities.

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But ultimately, even if it’s different universes, it’s one multiverse and thus, one continuity. To watch this finale you would have needed to see every episode of the series this season, instead of cherry-picking only the episodes you were interested in. I know a few people who were only watching the concepts that intrigued them, but in the end they’ll have to watch every episode in order to make sense of certain plot points. While the show has been careful not to intrude into the main MCU and becoming “required” viewing in that expanding behemoth, it’s still building an essential canon of its own.

It’s still rather up in the air over what part What If…? is meant to play. Having many of the actors reprise their roles from the films was a way to tie it into the larger universe, while the change in medium from live-action to animation set it apart from not just the films, but series like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Being billed as an anthology gave it license to do a lot less long-term character building than those two programs as well. 

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However, in practice it feels a lot like Loki, which completely changed how we saw the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe — it even downplayed the Infinity Stones at several points! Taking major threats of the MCU and greeting them with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ says that even What If….? isn’t all that interested in retreading old stories and is ready to move on with the rest of the Marvel properties. It may be inessential canon, but it still wants to keep up with the main event. And that’s not how an anthology is supposed to work.

Telecoms have long been accused of trying to skew politics, but a new report suggests AT&T might have gone further than most. According to The Verge, Reutersreports that AT&T is a major backer for One America News Network (OAN), a right-wing media outlet YouTube temporarily banned last November for spreading misinformation. While multiple TV providers carry the channel, an OAN accountant testified in 2020 that 90 percent of OAN parent Herring Networks' revenue, tens of millions of dollars, came through deals with AT&T-owned platforms that included DirecTV.

OAN founder Robert Herring separately testified that AT&T executives inspired him to launch the network in 2013 after looking at a media landscape with relatively few conservative outlets. Court documents also indicated that AT&T offered to buy a 5 percent equity stake in OAN and Herring's lifestyle channel AWE, although the two ended up choosing a different agreement.

OAN even claimed that one AT&T executive, Aaron Slator, offered to put the channel on DirecTV in return for help lobbying for the satellite broadcaster's 2014 merger. The Herring family also supposedly met FCC officials to talk about the merger and speak well of AT&T in news stories. AT&T has denied making the offer linked to Slator, and an OAN lawsuit alleging a breach of that deal supposedly led to AT&T adding OAN to DirecTV's selection.

AT&T rejected claims of undue influence in responses to Reuters and The Verge. The carrier maintained that DirecTV "does not dictate" channel programming, and that DirecTV merger support was "never a condition of or part of" any content carriage agreement. In a Twitter statement, AT&T maintained it "never had a financial interest" in OAN and that the decision to carry the network was now in DirecTV's hands.

The concern, as you might imagine, is that AT&T may have contributed to the spread of misinformation without being held to account like online providers and other companies. On top of YouTube suspending OAN following a violation of COVID-19 misinformation rules, voting machine maker Dominion sued the network in August this year over unproven claims of election fraud. If the report is accurate, there could easily be pressure on AT&T to distance itself from OAN and focus more on its core services than politics.

Classic '90s sitcom Seinfeldjust landed on Netflix after a six-year run on Hulu. Given that the show was filmed years before HD was a thing, it was originally displayed in a 4:3 aspect ratio on TV (and the DVD sets that came years later). But on Netflix, the show has been cropped into a 16:9 widescreen format to fit on modern TVs. As noted by Rolling Stone, that means some visual gags have literally been erased. 

Twitter users @boriskarkov and @Thatoneguy64 succinctly pointed out the problem with a specific episode called "The Pothole." In the episode, George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld are trying to find George's lost keys, which were dropped in a pothole that was then paved over. In a crop where George wildly yells at the pothole, the Netflix crop removes the pothole entirely. The 16:9 aspect ratio probably also cuts out some other gags in the series — or at the very least, it might be a jarring experience for people used to how the show originally looked.

Of course, this isn't a new problem. Crops of Seinfeld have been on cable TV for years, and Hulu also showed the series in 16:9, as well. Given Netflix's popularity, Seinfeld is getting lots of extra attention right now, and thus a bunch of new viewers are probably checking it out who might not have seen it on Hulu. A similar controversy happened in late 2019 when the entire run of The Simpsons hit Disney+. After plenty of complaints about missed visual gags, Disney eventually released the seasons that aired in 4:3 in their original aspect ratio. Hopefully Netflix will do the same thing with Seinfeld — but in the meantime, as with many classic shows, the most authentic way to watch them is probably on DVD. 

This post contains spoilers for episode eight of Marvel's 'What If…?'

In physics there’s what’s known as the “observer effect,” wherein an object or system is changed merely by observing it. On Marvel’s What If…? each episode has been witnessed by an apparently omniscient narrator known as The Watcher, who seemingly believes himself to be above this simple rule. He’s seen the Avengers murdered, zombies overrun the galaxy and Steven Strange completely destroying his own universe, but the Watcher has always refrained from doing anything that would change the outcome — until now.

The twist in this episode is that in Age of Ultron, the titular villain managed to get control of the Vision body before it awakened as the hero we all know and love, taking it over and then, the world and even gaining the Infinity Stones. Somewhere in all this the Avengers are killed, with the exception of Natasha and Clint, finally giving us that Black Widow and Hawkeye adventure we should have had years ago. I haven’t been the biggest fan of either character, but here they’re a lot of fun despite the grim circumstances.

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The real star here, however, is Jeffrey Wright’s Watcher character. We still know little about him, or the faction he serves. The Watchers, as a group, have only appeared in live-action during a brief scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. What If…? has been our first proper introduction to the concept and, after eight episodes, we’re still mostly in the dark about them.

But this week’s installment did shed some light, at least. We know that our Watcher has taken an oath to never interfere with the things he sees, though to whom we still don’t know, nor are we made aware of possible consequences of breaking that vow. And we now know he’s emotionally invested in the universes he observes, if only based on his reaction to Clint not finding the folder they need in the KGB archives (luckily, Natasha is there to save the day).

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However, that observer effect comes into play regardless of the Watcher’s intentions, as his omniscient narration is overheard by the powered-up Ultron, who seeks him out and attacks. In the process Ultron becomes aware of the multiverse, which explains his sudden appearance at the end of last week’s episode. Previews for the finale hint at some sort of multiversal team-up, one involving Captain Carter, Party Thor and the other altered characters we’ve met over the first eight episodes.

While it’s certainly a fun concept — there’s an entire comic series called Exiles about a multi-reality team such as this — it raises questions about what, exactly, season two will be about. It’s already been confirmed, but Marvel has shown it’s not really interested in running What If…? as an anthology series like the comic it’s based on. The instance on making it part of the larger canon has led to the show having its own internal continuity, though it’s unlikely it will be needed to understand the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Marvel Studios

At least we hope it remains a side-story of the MCU: the power levels in the battle between The Watcher and Infinity Ultron puts even the massive conflicts shown in the last two Avengers films to shame. (Especially after Thanos is offed rather unceremoniously.) It’s a weird escalation in scale given that the teased villain of Phase IV, Kang the Conqueror, hasn’t even made a proper appearance yet.

Marvel Comics has a deep, expansive mythology and it’s nice to see the MCU finally explore some of those outer reaches. But right now the current approach to continuity feels a little cramped, and in danger of getting in its own way. Hopefully, next week’s finale will see the Watcher fully break free of his oath, and maybe help What If…? shed its remaining ties to its live-action counterparts to do something truly new.

Netflix has nabbed the most Emmys ever for a single platform with 44 including 11 for The Crown, more than double its nearest rival, HBO/HBO Max. The 2021 edition of the awards was also a watershed year for Apple TV+, which took home 10 Emmys including seven for its comedy series Ted Lasso.

To be sure, a huge chunk of Netflix's Emmy harvest came from the 34 Creative Arts Emmys it won last week. However, it still took a further 10 primetime Emmys including acting awards for Olivia Colman, Gillian Anderson and Josh O'Connor in The Crown, along with Ewan McGregor in Halston. The Crown also won for writing and directing, while taking the prestigious best drama series prize. Netflix's The Queen's Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, won for best limited series.

Mario Anzuoni / reuters

Meanwhile, Apple TV+ had its best Emmys yet with 10 total, including seven in primetime. It dominated the comedy series category with seven wins for Ted Lasso, including three in the acting category for Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham (best supporting actors) along with Jason Sudeikis (best actor). Ted Lasso also took the award for best comedy series. 

Thanks in large part to that series, Apple TV+ fared much better than its rivals. Disney+ did beat it with 14 awards total, up from eight in 2020, but only one of those was a primetime Emmy (Hamilton for best pre-recorded variety special). Amazon and Hulu were completely shut out in 2021, after both won Emmys in 2020.  

HBO and HBO Max led all rivals with 130 nominations and took 19 Emmys, including 9 in primetime. The biggest winners last night were Jean Smart for Hacks (best actress in a comedy series) and Kate Winslet for Mare of Easstown (best actress in a limited series). After it was controversially shut out of the Golden Globes nominations, Michaela Cole took the prize for best writing in a limited series for I May Destroy You.

It was notable in 2018 when Netflix managed to tie a cable network, HBO (pre-HBO Max), for the most Emmy wins. This year, it beat all rivals by a long way, and streaming platforms overall took the top four spots. Whether that can continue when the pandemic starts to wane — and subscription growth declines — remains to be seen. 

This post contains light spoilers for season two, episode six of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

In last week’s episode, Lower Decks wrapped up the first half of its second season by addressing some leftover plot threads from season one, namely Rutherford’s memory loss and the fallout between Mariner and Boimler. With those issues out of the way the series is free to move forward. But first, this week’s “The Spy Humongous” takes some time to look at an average day onboard the USS Cerritos. It’s not quite the TNG classic “Data's Day,” but it’s close enough for fans of smaller, more intimate Trek stories.

There’s no strict division between A-plot and B-plot this time, with both upper and lower decks crew starring in four loosely connected stories. The bridge crew is attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with the Pakleds, while the ensigns have been assigned to “artifact reclamation duty,” which is a fancy way of saying “clearing out weird space junk.” Boimler is thrilled, but he gets pulled away by a group of career-driven “redshirts” who think his time on the USS Titan makes him prime command material. And Ransom ends up babysitting a Pakled defector/tourist/spy. It’s a grab bag of jokes and Star Trek lore, sure to please any long-time Trekkie.

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However, it’s still remarkably newcomer friendly, in that it doesn’t require too much background to understand the basic plot, while also illustrating the show’s core concept as a show about the nuts and bolts of Starfleet. If this were a live-action show it would be what’s called a “bottle episode,” one shot on a limited budget using pre-built sets and the regular cast. Even on the one exotic locale we’re shown — Pakled Planet — we never actually go inside any buildings. It’s an interesting contrast to last week’s expansive tour of Starbase 25.

In live action programming, bottle episodes exist because a show blew through its guest star or special effects budget on a big important story, and “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” would fit that bill. But as I pointed out last week, Lower Decks is not limited by what a set designer can build or how much makeup an actor will wear or how long would it take to render a sentient gaseous anomaly on a green screen. The animators can draw whatever needs to be drawn. So there’s no reason to follow the trope of a bottle episode except that… they want to.

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Lower Decks has made no secret that it’s essentially a giant love letter to Star Trek. What was initially predicted to be “Family Guy in space,” ended up treating the franchise with a lot of respect, and was packed full of jokes for the fandom to discuss and catalog in places like Reddit and Trek wiki Memory Alpha. But this week’s adventure illustrates that attention to Star Trek tropes and backstory can go beyond showcasing little-seen alien species or getting justice for murdered characters.

It’s also about the love of how Star Trek tells its stories, with a strong emphasis on the personal aspect. Here we get to see Freeman, Mariner and the others simply do their jobs. We know they’re not going to die, especially not mid-season, so it’s really about seeing how they handle adversity and ultimately, what made them Starfleet material in the first place.

Amazon has shared the first trailer for its long-awaited adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. If you’re a newcomer to the fantasy series, the clip sketches out the basics of the world the author created before his death in 2007. 

In the Wheel of Time, only women known as Aes Sedai can channel magic. A powerful sorceress named Moiraine (played by Gone Girl and Hostiles actor Rosamund Pike) comes across a small town called Two Rivers where she finds five young men and women. One of them she believes is the Dragon Reborn, an entity that could be either the savior or destroyer of humanity.

Amazon first announced it was working on a live-action adaptation of Robert Jordan’s 14-volume fantasy back in 2018, but like with the company’s other big-budget fantasy adaptation, filming was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first three episodes of the Wheel of Time will debut on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, November 19th, with new episodes to follow every week thereafter until December 24th when the season finale starts streaming.

The following contains spoilers for episodes three and four of 'What If...?'

There’s a Twilight Zone episode I’m particularly fond of called “A World of His Own,” where a writer discovers that everything he speaks into his dictaphone comes true, and he can undo it by simply burning the tape. By the end, even narrator Rod Serling is shown to be a creation of this character’s imagination, making this one of the few TZ episodes where the fourth wall is firmly broken. It took an entire season for that classic program to feel comfortable enough to play around with its format and premise like that. However, we’re only on the fourth installment of What If…? and it’s employing similar tactics, though with a less comedic tone.

The first two episodes of What If…? revolved around a simple switch, trading one character for another and seeing how things play out as a result. Last week’s hinged on a minor change — Hope Pym joining SHIELD — that spiraled out with huge consequences. This week shows us a simple substitution again, putting Dr. Christine Palmer in the car with Stephen Strange and killing her off in the accident that in another timeline, destroyed the gifted surgeon’s hands instead.

Her death ends up being the catalyst for Strange studying the mystic arts, and the events shown here pretty much follow the same lines as they did in the film. It’s kind of unlikely, given that a motive to fix one’s injured hands is small peanuts compared to an attempt to undo death. But we still see Stephen training in Kamar-Taj, learning about the Eye of Agamotto and eventually fighting Dormammu. As far as the timeline is concerned, everything is pretty much the same.

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Except Stephen, who can’t get Christine’s death out of his head. He ends up going back to the moment of the crash and trying to save his girlfriend’s life, only to fail again and again. Since her death was the catalyst for him to learn magic, he can’t use his powers to save her. She is a fixed point, an unchangeable event (something Doctor Who fans will be well acquainted with).

For the viewer, this raises a big question: If Christine’s death is really such a concrete event in the time stream, how did we end up with “our” Stephen Strange back over in the regular MCU timeline? Here, the episode inspired an intriguing possibility: that perhaps this Doctor Strange will succeed in changing the timeline so that Christine isn’t in the car and he destroys his hands, in fact making this episode a prequel to the 2016 film. That would have been a rather mind bending twist that certainly would have made this series more important, though still not essential, to the MCU.

Alas, it was not to be, with Strange descending further and further into his obsession to the point where even our narrator is concerned. And for the first time, a character becomes aware that they are being observed and actually calls the Watcher out. Like in the Twilight Zone episode, the sequence is intended as a demonstration of power, showing that Strange has reached the level of awareness to notice the fourth wall. But still his powers are limited; he’s not cognizant of the audience (though Uatu the Watcher is, having addressed us directly earlier in the episode) and his pleas for assistance ultimately go unheeded.

Marvel Studios

Compared with the first three episodes, this one ends on a dark note. That’s actually truer to the original comic series the show is based on where, freed from the constraints of long-term continuity, the writers could take the story in whatever direction they wanted. If they wanted to kill everyone they could and would, since the main timeline was to go unaffected and future issues of What If…? would just hit the reset button.

Whether the animated version will go the same way remains to be seen, but with the fourth episode an underlying sense of continuity has started to develop: The tentacled creature from "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?" makes a reappearance, and Uatu acknowledges to the audience the stories he’s already told, which at the bare minimum hints that these episodes are meant to be viewed in a specific order. What If…? may be a diversion, but there seems to be a destination on the horizon.

Jon Stewart will soon return to a screen near you to once again dissect some of the big issues of the day. His Apple TV+ series, The Problem With Jon Stewart, will premiere on September 30. Rather than airing on a nightly basis, like The Daily Show, or even weekly, new episodes will arrive every other week.

In the show, Stewart will tackle one topic per episode (similar to the much-missed Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj). He'll speak with people affected by the issue and those who were involved in it impacting others. Stewart and his guests will "discuss a more productive path towards action," Apple says.

The conversation will continue on the companion podcast, which features staff members from the series and activists working on the issue at hand. It's not clear how many episodes the first season will include, but the show is slated to run for multiple seasons.

This article contains mild spoilers for season two, episode three of 'Star Trek: Lower Decks.'

This week’s episode of Lower Decks, “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” manages to squeeze two references into its title: a season one The Next Generation installment called “We’ll Always Have Paris,” and the name of a main cast member of Star Trek: Voyager, Lieutenant Tom Eugene Paris. But aside from that clever bit of wordplay, the title also carries a deeper meaning: That as much as we’d like to forget about the more embarrassing moments of the Star Trek franchise, they still happened and they weren’t all bad. Even, and especially, Voyager.

CBS

Viewer reactions to Voyager have been rather polarized over the course of the 26 years since it premiered. Back in the ‘90s, many fans were excited to have a “real” Star Trek show again, one that took place on a ship that was constantly exploring, unlike the comparatively stationary political drama of Deep Space Nine. But clunky writing soured many people’s opinion on Voyager, and toward the end of its run the show was known more for Seven of Nine’s skintight outfits and its slate of guest stars of the week, including Jason Alexander and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

After the show went off the air, the franchise stopped moving forward in its timeline, choosing to explore Starfleet’s founding in Enterprise and rebooting the entire universe completely with the 2009 Star Trek movie. While fans were thrown a bone with a brief cameo by Admiral Kathryn Janeway in the last TNG-era film, Nemesis, Voyager would essentially disappear from the Star Trek canon until the appearance of Seven of Nine in episode four of Picard.

Trae Patton

For fans of The Next Generation, Picard had its upsides: We got to see Troi and Riker as a family, and Data got a better sendoff into the afterlife. But for fans of Voyager, it was anything but positive, with the death of a supporting character and a rather grim existence for fan-favorite Seven of Nine.

Star Trek: Lower Decks rolls back the clock a little bit, as it takes place a year after the events of Nemesis, making it our first real view of the Star Trek universe’s immediate future after TNG, DS9 and Voyager. The Dominion War is over, Romulus is under a new regime and the crew of the USS Voyager are basically celebrities after seven years spent in the Delta Quadrant; Picard takes place nearly twenty years later, when the luster would have been gone.

Matt Kennedy

Here everything is just shiny and new and worthy of commemorative plates — a bit of a weird thing to exist in a post-scarcity culture, but this is a comedy series, after all. And in this week’s B-plot, Brad Boimler is looking to get one of his plates signed by a special guest to the USS Cerritos: Tom Paris. Or, as Brad refers to the former Voyager crew member, “Creator of Fairhaven, Captain Proton himself” as well as the first human to break the transwarp barrier. Straight off, that’s a reference to three of the goofiest, oddball and some say worst episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. And just in case you forgot what was so bad about the last one, Mariner asks “is he still a salamander?,” because that is a thing that happened in the episode “Threshold.”

Undeterred (and perhaps even encouraged) by the weirdness, Boimler is all hyped to meet his hero. Even after the ship’s system doesn’t recognize him and won’t let him through any doors, he takes to the Jefferies tubes to make his way to the bridge to meet Lt. Paris.

In a way, it feels like a metaphor for how the fandom feels about Star Trek: Voyager now. While everyone admits it had a lot of dumb moments, those actually made it more endearing. The famous line “there’s coffee in that nebula” would inspire astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti to bring a replica uniform with her and wear it on a mission back in 2015:

And who can forget the infamous “Tuvix” episode, where crew members Tuvok and Neelix were merged into one being thanks to a transporter accident? Though the resulting individual was healthy and happy, the decision was made to force him to split back into his component persons, inspiring the recent internet rallying cry “Janeway murdered Tuvix.” Even Janeway actor Kate Mulgrew entered the debate, responding to a tweet from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When you’ve got politicians involved it’s not really a fandom in-joke anymore.

Maybe it’s time to give Voyager a bit more credit. It’s not as good as TNG or DS9, but it still has its fair share of fans. I remember a time when it seemed like it was constantly running on Spike TV (now the Paramount Network), as opposed to Deep Space Nine, which is seldom rerun due to its serialized nature. Last year I sat down and rewatched the entire Star Trek franchise, including Voyager, and saw quite a few episodes I had missed the first time. I found myself enjoying some of it, cringing just as often, and eventually remembering why I had stopped watching the show for a while back when it aired. In general, I feel like the show’s biggest problem was missed potential, like the way the conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crew members was quickly smoothed over, how it underutilized many of its cast, and why on earth did Harry Kim never get promoted.

CBS

However, it’s not the job of Lower Decks to explain or redeem Voyager. Boimler and Tom Paris are only the B-plot here, with the main drive of the episode being Tendi and Mariner’s mission to pick up a package for Doctor T’Ana as well as Rutherford’s quest to find out how a certain dead officer is alive again. The episode just asks us to consider what it would be like to be a Starfleet officer and hear about all of Voyager’s adventures in the Delta Quadrant. Weird and goofy? Yes. But honestly, they’re also pretty cool.