TeaMates, Rakai is deep in his feelings this Valentine’s Day! The popular streamer recently asked Piper Rockelle to be his Valentine during a live session, and even sealed the moment with a kiss.

Related: Deshae Frost & Rakai Respond After Kai Cenat’s Ex Gabrielle “Gigi” Alayah Airs Them Out Over Post-Breakup Shade (VIDEOS)

Rakai Pops The Question To Piper Rockelle On Livestream

On Friday Feb. 13, Rakai dedicated his livestream to asking a special someone to be his Valentine. Holding balloons and flowers, Rakai appeared nervous but excited as he popped the question to Pipe Rockelle, the 18-year-old social media star and former YouTube sensation. In clips now circulating online, Piper initially responded with a hesitant, “I mean, sure… yeah,” before confidently adding, “Yes, I want to be your Valentine.” Rakai then promised to take her out on Valentine’s Day and asked to seal the deal with a kiss, which she hesitantly agreed to, sending fans into a frenzy.

Social Media Reacts

As expected, social media wasted no time sharing opinions about the Valentine’s surprise over in The Shade Room teens comment section.

Instagram user @therealjenncarter wrote, “Rakai couldn’t wait for this 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂”

Another Instagram user @slvttbby wrote, “this so middle school but they cute tg 😂”

Instagram user @n.aiiyaa wrote, “Awww I miss being this young 😂😂🥺

Another Instagram user @mariieejaee wrote, “I like him with her 😭😍”

While Instagram user @marabear3 wrote, “A girl who’s really into you doesn’t act like this 😭”

Instagram user @untoldtalents wrote, “They both trolling 😂”

Another Instagram user @riahoney wrote, “normal teenage behavior this is literally so cute lol!!!”

While Instagram user @_shuntrell23 wrote, “She don’t like him, she like the attention & money that comes with being with him 😂💯”

Rakai & Piper Rockelle Popped Out At The Super Bowl

Rakai and Piper have appeared together on several livestreams, often flirting and joking with one another. However, fans began suspecting something more was going on when they popped out together at the Super Bowl Sunday. On Feb. 8, Piper shared a photo of herself and Rakai at the game, showing him with his arm around her as she rested her head on his shoulder. She captioned the post, “My first Super Bowl 🥹.”

Rakai later posted a similar photo on his own Instagram, fueling even more speculation. Things didn’t stop though, the pair also shared clips from a hotel room where they filmed TikTok videos together. Fans quickly noticed what appeared to be a tattoo of Rakai’s name on Piper’s ankle, sparking debate if the two are officially locked in.

Related: Social Media Debates Whether Rakai Was Supporting Or Trolling Kai Cenat With Dr. Seuss Reading On Live (VIDEO)

The Duggar family is known for entering into marriage at younger ages, but Jinger Duggar is hoping her children will buck family tradition.

“My parents, they were married at 17 and 19, which is pretty young,” Jinger, 32, said on the Wednesday, February 11, episode of her eponymous podcast, referring to parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. “That would scare me a little bit with my own kids.”

Jinger and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, are parents of Felicity, 7, Evangeline, 5, and Finn, 11 months.

“I think all of us [siblings] would probably be like, ‘17, maybe not for a girl,’” Jinger said, acknowledging that Michelle, 59, was “ready to get married” before she turned 18. “It’s one of those things where you look at it [afterward].”

Jim Bob, 60, and Michelle have been married since 1984, going on to welcome 19 children together. They raised their children to follow a courtship-style of dating when entering into their own romantic relationships. Jinger, however, doesn’t necessarily plan to follow suit with her own kids.

“I think that the Bible’s clear about what purity is before marriage, but as far as the specifics, it’s not nailed down,” Jinger exclusively told Us Weekly in 2023. “[We were taught] you can’t go on a date with someone without a chaperone. You know, you can’t kiss before you’re married, you can’t hold hands, like, all the rules. I don’t see that in the word of God.”

According to Jinger, she wants her and Vuolo’s kids to be more open-minded as they grow up.

“I mean, sometimes things are trial and error,” the People Pleaser author told Us. “I want to equip them for life and give them the best possible lives that I can and point them to the word of God.”

She continued, “And then, at the end of the day, I think that they will grow and mature. I don’t think that courtship is a word that we’re gonna use with them at all because I don’t think that that’s the only way to find a spouse — or the best way — at all.”

Jinger, who was 22 years old when she married Vuolo, also saw some of her siblings follow in Jim Bob and Michelle’s footsteps when it came to getting married young. Jinger’s brother-in-law Ben Seewald, for his part, was 19 years old at his 2014 wedding to Jessa Duggar.

“One reason that comes to mind is [what] my parents have shared is them getting married young and then having kids young and raising them, and then now we’re getting married,” Seewald, 30, said on Wednesday’s podcast episode. “The grandkids are coming, and they’re still pretty young and they still have enough energy to get out and do fun stuff with the grandkids. I think you get more of a potential with that next generation … to just be more involved in their lives.”

Related: Jinger Reveals What Was ‘Not Necessarily Healthy’ About Growing Up Duggar

Jinger Duggar has been honest about the challenges of growing up in the TLC spotlight — and of breaking free from the conservative teachings of her childhood. Jinger is one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children who were raised as followers of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a fundamentalist organization founded by […]

As for Seewald, he was also interested in the idea to “start life” with Jessa, 33, as soon as possible. (Jessa was 21 when they said “I do.”)

“I really wanted to start a family and just begin that aspect of my life,” he stated.

Jessa and Seewald are now parents of six, welcoming their youngest baby in 2025.

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Not every franchise can orchestrate a textbook reboot, only to be left in the lurch. In the last five years, while several major franchises have struggled to stay afloat and contemplated major pivots, one of the longest-running sci-fi series of all time pulled off quite a surprising comeback. The franchise had gone through several iterations over the years, without quite having found a sweet spot. But things turned around in 2022, when a movie destined for theaters landed on Hulu and swept audiences off their feet by sheer quality alone. Two follow-ups were released, with the most recent one delivering excellent reviews and solid box office results only last year. The movie has now hit a major milestone on transactional streaming platforms, although this achievement comes at a time when the franchise is at a crossroads.

It was recently announced that director Dan Trachtenberg has signed a first-look deal with the newly restructured Paramount, which presents an entirely new set of opportunities for him. However, he has also said that this doesn’t mean the end of his relationship with the Predator franchise, which he helped reboot with Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers, and Predator: Badlands. Released last year, Predator: Badlands grossed around $185 million worldwide against a reported budget of more than $100 million. Like Trachtenberg’s two previous Predator movies, it earned positive reviews. Predator: Badlands holds an 86% critics’ score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Director Dan Trachtenberg continues to take the Predator franchise in exciting new directions with Badlands, a rollicking adventure that transforms one of cinema’s most iconic brutes into a hero worth rooting for.”

How Long Has ‘Predator: Badlands’ Been Ruling the Home Video Charts?

However, it’s the film’s “Verified Hot” 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes that seems to have pushed it past a major milestone on the PVOD market. According to FlixPatrol, Predator: Badlands has spent over a month on the domestic Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu charts, which recently found a new champion in The Housemaid. Starring Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and Elle Fanning, who has since been nominated at the Oscars for her supporting performance in Sentimental Value, the movie subverted expectations by presenting the story through the alien character’s perspective. Trachtenberg previously worked with Paramount on 10 Cloverfield Lane, and has said that he wants to make original movies at the studio.

You can watch Predator: Badlands at home. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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Release Date

November 5, 2025

Runtime

107 minutes

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Director

Dan Trachtenberg

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Writers

Dan Trachtenberg, Patrick Aison, John Thomas, Jim Thomas

Producers

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Brent O’Connor, John Davis, Marc Toberoff, Dan Trachtenberg, Ben Rosenblatt

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• 
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  Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

  Dek / Father

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By Robert Scucci
| Published 17 seconds ago

Whenever I think about movies associated with Martin Scorsese, I immediately think about mobsters and crimelords and nothing else, because that’s what he’s best known for. The first films that come to mind are Goodfellas, The Departed, and Bringing Out the Dead, all excellent movies worth their weight in critical acclaim. At 37 years old, though, I’m just now learning about a subgenre popularized in the 80s known as the Yuppie Nightmare Cycle, which mixes film noir motifs with elements of screwball comedy, as can be seen in 1985’s After Hours.

Written by Joseph Minion and directed by Scorsese, After Hours is my official introduction to the subgenre in my own headcanon, though I’m sure I’ve seen movies that fall into this wheelhouse before becoming familiar with the term. What can I say? I’m only human, I go on too many cinematic side quests, and as a result I have blind spots. You don’t know what you don’t know, but now that I do know, I need more of what films like After Hours have to offer because it contains just about everything I’m looking for in a movie.

A Fugue State Of Terrible Decisions

After Hours earns its keep by continually escalating its premise to increasingly absurd extremes. We’re introduced to Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a white-collar word processor working in New York City. He’s conventionally handsome, professionally respected, has a nice apartment, and dresses well. Despite all of this, he lives alone and leads a seemingly hollow life.

While grabbing a bite at a café one night, Paul bonds over the book he’s reading, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, with Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette). She briefly talks about herself and her roommate, Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), a sculptor whose claim to fame is making papier-mâché paperweights shaped like bagels. Feigning interest in these sculptures so he can go back to her place, presumably to hook up, Paul gets Marcy’s phone number and the address she shares with Kiki.

From this point forward in After Hours, Paul’s life takes a turn for the worse in increasingly ridiculous fashion. He loses the only $20 he has on him when his speed-demon taxi driver causes it to blow out the window. Kiki comes onto him after asking for help with a giant sculpture of a screaming man. Marcy grows more unstable the longer he’s around her. Paul leaves the apartment fully intending to go home, but his standard 9 to 5 existence hasn’t prepared him for the fact that subway fare jumps at midnight, and the pocket change he has on hand isn’t enough to cover it.

Far from home, broke, and stuck in the rain, Paul relies on the kindness of strangers to get back to his apartment. This proves to be a misguided approach because every step forward shoves him two steps back, and the people he runs into only make matters worse. Marcy commits suicide in his absence, and the owner of the bar where he seeks shelter, Tom (John Heard), who is her boyfriend, receives the phone call informing him of her death.

Paul, who previously exchanged his own apartment keys for Tom’s as a sign of good faith so he could grab money from the register to afford subway fare, is mistakenly identified as the burglar who’s been terrorizing the neighborhood. A mob forms with every intention of either turning him over to the authorities or killing him. It goes on like this for 90 relentless minutes, so I’ll spare you the granular details.

Can’t Live With ‘Em … 

Throughout Paul’s journey in After Hours, he runs into woman after woman who make aggressive advances toward him, often emasculating him in the process, then spiraling when they realize he’s not interested and just wants to get home. From perfect stranger Marcy, to sculptor Kiki, to bartender Julie (Teri Garr), to Mr. Softee driver Gail (Catherine O’Hara), to June (Verna Bloom), who is also a sculptor, Paul keeps sprinting toward bad luck in the form of unwanted female companionship as if it were his true calling. The humor comes from the irony of it all, as Paul’s only reason for venturing out in the first place was to meet a woman with the hopes of taking her out on a date.

After Hours is equal parts neo-noir and slapstick comedy, and it’s impossible to watch without feeling absolutely exhausted on Paul’s behalf. Griffin Dunne’s facial expressions, spanning deadpan dread, astonishment, and pure bewilderment, make this an entertaining outing from start to finish because of how fully he commits to the premise. If you’re in the mood for the worst night out imaginable and want to experience it by laughing at someone else’s expense, you can stream After Hours on Netflix as of this writing.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 20 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy is the latest Star Trek show, and one of its big hallmarks is diversity. This includes showcasing characters from very different backgrounds (a human thief, a childlike hologram, an empathic princess, a pacifist Klingon, etc), complete with a wide range of sexualities (gay, straight, and bi? Oh my!). There is even diversity in age: the show focuses on both young characters and their older instructors, and Chancellor Ake alone has a few centuries on her young students.

However, calling itself diverse is a lie. Starfleet Academy is secretly the least diverse Star Trek series ever made. That’s because it has one flaw that effectively cancels out all of the diversity of its character backgrounds and sexualities. Namely, that every single alien character is written like a boring old human being.

The Oldest Trope In Star Trek

Since the days of The Original Series, Star Trek has had an unofficial rule: each show must include an outsider alien character who helps the audience learn more about their own humanity. Spock’s emotionless Vulcan ways contrasted with McCoy’s fiery passion, for example, and Spock ultimately sacrificed his life after learning the value of Kirk’s relentless drive (there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario). After Spock died foiling the ultimate no-win scenario, Kirk declared, “Of all the souls I’ve encountered, his was the most human.”

This wasn’t literally true, of course: not only did Spock remain fully green-blooded, but his decision to save the ship was rooted in his flawless Vulcan logic (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one). But his death helped Kirk to find joy in life and rededicate himself to new beginnings. In this way, Spock began the oldest trope in Star Trek: the outsider alien helping others learn more about their own humanity.

Trek Trope: The Next Generation 

Later Star Trek shows embraced this trope to great effect: on The Next Generation, the android Data dreamed of becoming more human, and his quest helped everyone learn more about the power and promise of their own human journey. On Deep Space Nine, Odo was a Changeling who could never master looking like a solid, but his efforts to understand everyone else helped everyone gain new perspectives on what they took for granted. Neelix helped Voyager’s human crew discover joy in the small things, while T’Pol helped the humans of the Enterprise crew learn from their species’ mistakes as they began exploring strange, new worlds for the first time.

NuTrek has dabbled in this trope: on Discovery, Saru teaches the crew how to adapt to any situation, and Michael Burnham’s Vulcan upbringing helped her discover (for better or for worse) the importance of her emotions. Picard also dabbled in different alien outsiders, ranging from the android Soji to her positronic papa, Data. The return of Data hailed the return of TNG’s beloved alien outsider, and Strange New Worlds brought things full circle by putting Spock front and center.

Starfleet Academy Is Too Human For Its Own Good

Starfleet Academy is often praised for its diversity, and the cast of characters is truly unlike anything we have previously seen in other Star Trek series. Fully eight of the show’s 12 main characters are aliens, and over half of them are women. The show also puts men and women of color front and center: holographic SAM is the show’s biggest link between both Voyager and Deep Space Nine, and Jay-Den Kraag is showing us a strange new world of Klingon culture. Caleb, meanwhile, is the show’s de facto main character, and he often bridges the gap between the more dramatic and comedic elements of the show.

However, once you get past the diverse character archetypes and occasional forehead loaf, a surprising truth emerges: pretty much all the alien characters are written to be human. Darem is meant to be an exotic alien (he’s Khionian, b*tch!), but he is simply written as a cocky human, which is why he and would-be Alpha Caleb are constantly butting heads. SAM is an emissary from a holographic race who knows nothing about humanity, but she is constantly and inexplicably written as a teenage human.

The same goes for Genesis, an alien who is so human that she likes to chew bubblegum and wax philosophic about Daddy issues. Chancellor Ake is a Lanthanite who is nearly half a millennium old, but she is virtually indistinguishable from a quirky wine mom. On paper, the Klingon Jay-Den would be the most alien of them all because he hails from a warrior race, but in making him a softspoken, quippy pacifist making moony eyes at his crush, Starfleet Academy has made him the most human Klingon we’ve ever seen (yes, even more than Alexander).

They’re Only Human 

Making all these aliens effectively human is by design, of course: Starfleet Academy is designed to appeal to young audiences, so this is a way of ensuring that these young characters are relatable despite their alien heritage. No matter what exotic planet they hail from, all of these 32nd-century cadets utilize slang and references very familiar to 21st-century youngsters. In this way, Paramount hopes to retain the old guard of Star Trek fans while appealing to Zoomers and even Generation Alpha.

Time will tell if Starfleet Academy manages to secure the (ahem) “next generation” of Star Trek fans, but they are already alienating older fans through (ironically enough) the lack of truly alien characters. There is no alien outsider to help characters and viewers appreciate their own humanity; instead, every alien is written as a human with a chip on their shoulder and a mouth like a sailor. Sure, this makes the latest Star Trek series feel like other popular drama series, but it also dilutes the new show by removing one of the franchise’s most distinctive sci-fi elements.

When Is A Star Trek Show Not Actually A Star Trek Show?

That leads to some downright philosophical questions, like “When is a Star Trek show not actually a Star Trek show?” Paramount is gambling that stripping the franchise of everything familiar in the name of mass appeal is the only way forward, but it’s an approach that has been driving away legacy fans in droves. Now, the studio is about learn the answer to “when is a Star Trek fan no longer a Star Trek fan?”

Simple: when they unsubscribe from Paramount+, the worst streaming platform the galaxy has ever known.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 29 seconds ago

The most recent episode of Starfleet Academy (“Come, Let’s Away”) was a glorious return to form for the franchise, giving us a cool plot that revolved around our cadets managing to restart an old Starfleet vessel, the USS Myazaki. The vessel is now derelict because it was using an experimental new form of propulsion known as a singularity drive, which caused a series of cascading malfunctions. However, the episode didn’t really address how this technology was different from the traditional warp drive, and this reignited a classic question within the fandom: why were the Romulans affected by the events of the Burn?

This all goes back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where episodes like “Face of the Enemy” revealed that the Romulans power their starships with a quantum singularity drive. Basically, instead of a traditional warp drive, they use an artificially-made black hole to travel the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds. As cool as that is, TNG never really elaborated on how this was supposed to work, and fans generally forgot about this until the third season of Star Trek: Discovery.

When Good Tech Goes Bad

After the Discovery traveled to the 32nd century, they found that the Federation was a decimated version of its former self. The main reason for this was the Burn, an event in which dilithium throughout the galaxy went suddenly inert. Active dilithium keeps matter and antimatter from colliding in starships (among other things), so once it went inert, countless starships exploded due to instantaneous warp core breaches.

Even before the Burn, dilithium was becoming scarce, so the Federation began experimenting with other forms of propulsion. One such alternative was the Pathway drive, which eventually became a standard alternative to both warp drive and Discovery’s spore drive. The Starfleet Academy episode “Come, Let’s Away” introduced the fact that the Federation was working on its own singularity drive, which reignited a question Discovery fans have been asking for years: why were the Romulans affected by the Burn in the first place?

What Did The Romulans Know?

Discovery gave a kind of happy ending to the Romulans, showing that they finally reunified with the Vulcans (Spock’s mission is finally accomplished!) after many millennia. But the show also made it clear that the Romulans were just as affected by the Burn as the Federation and (as we found out later) the Klingon Empire. This understandably confused fans because The Next Generation established that Romulans use singularity drives rather than warp drives, which implies that they don’t use dilithium and should therefore have been safe from the Burn.

Fans continue to debate whether the Romulans rely on dilithium or not for many reasons, including the fact that TNG didn’t tell us all that much about the singularity drive. It’s entirely possible they use dilithium but in different ways; for example, it may be used to contain the singularity. Plus, we know from Star Trek: Nemesis that Romulans mine dilithium, and while they could simply be using it for other purposes (like the Klingons using it to power planets), this fact implies it is still somehow important to Romulan interstellar travel.

Bringing Old Controversies Back Online

Now, though, the Starfleet Academy episode “Come, Let’s Away” has reignited this mystery. Previously, fans were willing to accept (more or less) that the Burn affected the Romulans because they must have somehow used dilithium in ways the Federation didn’t know about. Therefore, the singularity drive would be just as vulnerable to the Burn as a traditional warp drive.

However, the Federation working on their own singularity drive as a warp drive alternative implies that this technology would work in a post-Burn galaxy. That leads us to something of a lore paradox: if singularity drives are immune to the Burn, why were the Romulans affected in the first place? But if singularity drives are not immune to the Burn (and, therefore, still rely on dilithium), why is the Federation bothering to research this technology in the first place?

So far, it doesn’t look like we’ll get answers anytime soon, and that’s fine: in “Come, Let’s Away,” the singularity drive is more of a MacGuffin to keep the plot moving than some major new addition to Star Trek lore. Plus, it’s part of arguably the best episode of Starfleet Academy, one that balances romance, action, and tension to great effect. Given the choice between whistling past old lore or destroying old lore (like sending almost every Klingon to hell in an offscreen catastrophe), it’s fair to say that most fans will happily learn to whistle!