Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 5.After building up the last couple of episodes, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms finally reveals the Trial of Seven on screen in Episode 5. After Aerion (Finn Bennett) is attacked by Dunk (Peter Claffey) at the end of Episode 3, and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) reveals his true identity to his companion, tensions have been high. Refusing a one-on-one match against Dunk, Aerion instead calls for a Trial of Seven to settle their problems. While Aerion has his father, Maekar (Sam Spruell), his brother, Daeron (Henry Ashton), three kingsguard, and the recent turncoat Steffon Fossoway (Edward Ashley), it’s a bit more difficult for Dunk to find the other six knights he needs for his side of things.

By the end of Episode 4, he’s lost Steffon to Aerion but gains his cousin Raymun (Shaun Thomas) instead. Egg manages to get him the one-eyed Robyn Rhysling (William Houston), and both Humfrey Beesbury (Danny Collins) and Humfrey Hardyng (Ross Anderson), and of course, Dunk has his new friend Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) to help him out. However after all of that, Dunk is still missing one more person, and it is Bertie Carvel‘s Baelor Targaryen who steps in to face off against three members of his family. In a daring and chaotic fight, we ultimately see Dunk come out on top after overpowering Aerion, but in the final moments of the episode, Daeron’s prophetic dream comes true, and Baelor, after being struck by Maekar, falls dead after removing his helm. We discussed this final battle and death with Carvel, as well as Baelor’s true nature and how it differs from his other Targaryen family members. Carvel also gets into his love of the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire and reveals what attracted him the most to this story.

Bertie Carvel’s Love for ‘Game of Thrones’ Goes Much Deeper Than You Think

“We should be telling stories about how the ordinary people matter…”

Image via HBO

COLLIDER: What was has it been like stepping into such a massive universe like Game of Thrones, and how much knowledge did you have about the world coming into it?

BERTIE CARVEL: Quite a lot, I suppose. I loved the show. I went out and bought all the books after the first season, tore through them, and then tore through the rest of the show and loved it, and it felt very familiar to me. I spent a lot of time — more time than a modern human should — with a sword in my hand, pretending to be a hero or a villain in a complex moral universe, so take that how you will. It felt very familiar to me and very real, and I loved its contours.

And then I didn’t know these stories until I was sent the script. I tore through the scripts, really, really rare this in this day and age to get all the scripts to sort of land like a monolith on your desk, and so I loved reading them, and I felt something wake up that I used to feel as a boy reading stories about knighthood and chivalry that seems to have been asleep for some time. A story in a world I recognized that contained cruelty and cynicism and hard truths, here was a story in which there was a space for a hero, and I really felt like, yes, this is what I need. This is what I want to be a part of.

And that’s a good thing. The more I reflect on it, and the more I talk about it, the more I realize that there is something really important about those stories right now. We should be telling stories about how the ordinary people matter, and what you do and say matters, and standing up for what’s right matters, and I don’t know what the end of this story is yet — none of us does — but I’ve got a feeling that it counts. And I want to hear those stories right now.

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‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Timeline Explained: Where Dunk and Egg Fit in ‘Game of Thrones’ History

The ‘Game of Thrones’ series is not told chronologically.

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Carvel Discusses Baelor’s True Nature in ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

“That’s what I think makes the story have some kind of moral weight to it.”

Targaryens are often portrayed in the show as these semi-villainous characters, but Baelor is actually a very noble character, and very chivalrous. What was it like for you balancing those two aspects of his character? Did you talk to Ira [Parker] or George [R.R. Martin] about playing him and how you lean into this good nature that he has?

CARVEL: I don’t believe anyone has a good nature. Well, actually, that’s a bit flippant. I guess I believe profoundly that character is behavior, so what we do is what we are. And I suppose I’d like to be more essentialist than that; I’d like to believe that people have a good nature, that in general, people have a good nature. But I guess what I’m trying to say is you don’t know before, until after. Baelor does not know that he will do the right thing from one moment to the next, and what makes it exciting is to find out he is good because he chooses to do good things, and he is bad when he chooses to do bad things, and we have to make up our minds from one moment to the next, which is which. That’s what I think makes the story have some kind of moral weight to it.

So, it’s not a given that he will, in fact, in order to make the story exciting, I want you to believe that he might just as well rip your head off as wrap his arms around you in a warm embrace. And he has to contain the potential of the best of the Targaryens, to strike clean and hard and cut through the jugular. That was what made it exciting. But yes, you’re right. What he does in the story is certainly what I regard to be deeply noble, and I think, yeah, I’m really up for hearing those stories right now.

Carvel Reveals Whether We Were Ever Going to See Maekar and Baelor Fighting in ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

“…we’re not really with Baelor, in that sense, we’re with Dunk.”

Image via HBO

I love that scene when Baelor rides in for the Trial of Seven. I think that was a fantastic moment when he came out. Was there ever a version of that final sequence where we see him actually face off with Maekar? Because I was very sad that we didn’t get that. Was there ever a version of that, or were we always meant to see him come in at the end and assume that everything was okay before he dies?

CARVEL: This is probably a question for Ira [Parker] more than for me. I mean, the two things that strikes me to say, one, is that I think one of the things that’s kind of thrilling about this series is that we’ve gotten used to this universe where no one character is the protagonist, and where in A Song of Ice and Fire, George changes the angle of attack all the time and destabilizes you in that way, and you see that everything has multiple viewpoints, there’s a sort of moral relativism there, which is really exciting. In this story, we very much stay with Dunk, and so I guess you see that sequence through Dunk’s eyes.

There was a moment where it was like a fleeting moment that we shot, which was the moment where Maekar strikes Baelor, and the moment just leading up to that with the brothers. But, I guess you’d have to ask Ira, but I think they probably chose not to show that because it sort of spoils what’s about to come next. But we’re not really with Baelor, in that sense, we’re with Dunk. And I hope that answers the question, but the short answer is no.

New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms airs every Sunday on HBO in the U.S.

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Release Date

January 18, 2026

Network

HBO

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Showrunner

Ira Parker

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Directors

Owen Harris

Writers

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George R. R. Martin, Ira Parker

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  Peter Claffey

  Ser Duncan ‘Dunk’ the Tall

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Former President Barack Obama is confirming that aliens are, in fact, real.

“They’re real,” Obama, 64, told political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen on Friday, February 13, adding that while he knows extraterrestrial life is real he has not personally seen evidence proving their existence.

“But I haven’t seen them,” he continued. “They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility — unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”

Obama, who served as the United States’ 44th president from 2009 to 2017, admitted that the “first question he wanted answered” when he ascended to the highest office in the land was: “Where are the aliens?”

Despite Obama’s shocking otherworldly confession, Cohen did not offer any follow-up questions regarding proof aliens are real during the pair’s conversation.

In September 2025, Congress held a hearing in which House members questioned five witnesses — including former military members — about their alleged encounters with “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” or UAPs.

“I’m here to provide a first-hand account of what I saw,” Alexandro Wiggins, a member of the U.S. Navy, testified at the time, alleging he saw a UAP on February 15, 2023, while aboard the USS Jackson off the southern California coast.

According to Wiggins, what he witnessed flying overhead was “not consistent with conventional aircraft or drones.”

“[I saw a] self-luminous tic-tac-shaped object emerge from the ocean before linking up with three other similar objects,” Wiggins testified at the time, adding that he couldn’t decipher how the unidentified objects were capable of maneuvering so quickly and disappearing from radar so effortlessly.

Wiggins later urged the committee during his testimony to do more to protect whistleblowers who report instances of UAP sightings.

“I have been in the Navy for almost 24 years, but what about the sailors who have been there for two years that experience things like this?” he asked the panel at the time, adding that those individuals may not know what to do or may be too afraid to report sightings so early in their career.

Jeffrey Nuccetelli, a U.S. Air Force veteran, told Congress that citizens have the “right to know the truth,” adding that the reality of alien life “remains hidden” due to “stigma and confusion.”

During a 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Obama made a similar remark about wanting to know about the aliens as soon as he became president of the United States.

“The truth is, that when I came into office, I asked, ‘Is there a lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?’”

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He later admitted during an appearance on The Ezra Klein Show podcast that same year that he believes if aliens are proven without a shadow of a doubt to be real, the impact would substantially change Earth as we know it.

“There would be immediate arguments about, like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend ourselves,” he explained at the time. “New religions would pop up. And who knows what kind of arguments we would get into. We’re good at manufacturing arguments for each other.”

He continued, “It wouldn’t change my politics at all. Because my entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space.”

Guess Who
This Big-Time Showrunner Is!

Published
February 15, 2026
4:00 PM PST

By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

Sometimes you want to watch sci-fi anthology series like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Black Mirror for their existential subject matter without fully diving off a dread-induced deep end. That’s where 2017’s Dimension 404 comes in handy. It tackles the same kind of metaphysical topics while functioning as a straight-up comedy series. Narrated by Mark Hamill and featuring talent like Joel McHale and Patton Oswalt, Dimension 404 plays out like The Twilight Zone for the digital age.

Clocking in at only six episodes across a single season, Dimension 404 is a breezy weekend binge if I’ve ever seen one. It’s a satisfying watch if you’re into the above series but want to lean more toward levity. It’s still cynical and brushes up against the same moral and philosophical conundrums you’d expect from a forward-thinking sci-fi anthology, but it carries significantly less existential baggage.

We’ve Seen These All Before, But Not The Funny Versions

While I fully understand that shows like Black Mirror aren’t all doom and gloom and can be quite funny at times, they tend to occupy that lane more often than not. Dimension 404 leans into camp, comedy, and parody as its baseline approach to storytelling. 

The first episode, “Matchmaker,” which premiered just months before Black Mirror’s Season 4 episode “Hang the DJ,” treads similar territory with its absurdist take on dating apps.

Where the Black Mirror episode hinges on the futility of modern dating, “Matchmaker” goes full absurdist, involving cloning, dating do-overs, and a campus full of men named Adam (Robert Buckley), all of whom chow down on pink slop while watching each successive version of themselves try to win the dating game. It’s the same subject matter but has a better sense of humor about everything.

The rest of Dimension 404 follows a similar pattern, with each episode feeling vaguely familiar but twisted toward comedy instead of dread.

Patton Oswalt portrays a movie snob who brings his own 3D glasses to a high-tech theater in “Cinethrax,” only to discover that a Lovecraftian monster is crawling out of the screen and face-sucking every patron wearing the glasses the theater provided. In “Chronos,” a young woman named Susan (Ashley Rickards) finds herself stuck in a time loop centered on her favorite 90s cartoon that nobody else remembers, and she has to break the cycle in time to submit her physics final.

“Polybius” centers on an arcade game that pulls its players into its realm, complete with ancient, biblical implications. “Bob” gives us the classic “what if AI has feelings” routine, except the titular machine is made entirely out of genetically modified human meat and is as disgusting to look at as you’d expect. And finally, “Impulse” follows an aspiring professional FPS gamer who learns the dark side of fame after slugging down one too many energy drinks.

Doesn’t Reinvent The Wheel, But Still A Fun Vehicle 

Dimension 404 doesn’t reinvent the thought-provoking sci-fi anthology wheel, but it doesn’t really need to. There are plenty of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, and everybody involved is clearly having fun with whatever ridiculous scenario they’re trapped in. It’s the diet Black Mirror, or the version of The Twilight Zone that mom says we have at home. I don’t mean that as a knock, but the series clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

If you’re a sci-fi fan who’s seen it all before, you know exactly what you’re getting into when firing up Dimension 404, which is currently streaming for free on Tubi. That familiarity doesn’t make it any less entertaining, though. For everything it may lack in originality, it’s still an engaging watch from start to finish thanks to the talent involved, and it swerves away from baseline expectations just enough to earn your attention.

A smoky eye always looks effortless on the red carpet — but recreating that same soft, smudged definition at home usually comes down to one thing: the right products. For Martha Stewart‘s red carpet smoky eye, celebrity makeup artist Daisy Toye created the look using Laura Geller’s bestselling INKcredible Gel Eyeliners.

“For the eyes, I used Just Swipe Cream Eyeshadow in Terracotta, along with INKcredible Waterproof Gel Eyeliner Pencil in Deep Purple and Brown Sugar to define and add depth,” Toye said in an Instagram post.

The eyeliners offer rich pigment with a soft, blendable finish that makes smoky eyes feel approachable rather than overdone. The gel-based formula glides on smoothly — no dragging, no skipping — giving you enough time to smudge and shape before it sets into place.

Get the Laura Geller INKcredible Gel Eyeliner for $32 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.

Using two tones, as Toye did for Stewart’s look, adds instant depth: The deeper purple shade enhances the lash line with a barely-there intensity while the warm brown softens the edges, creating a smoky effect that looks diffused and dimensional rather than stark.

Once set, the gel eyeliner wears comfortably throughout the day without transferring or fading, making it especially reliable for long events (or everyday wear when you want definition that lasts). The formula also plays well with real-world lids, smoothing over texture and fine lines instead of settling into them.

One Amazon shopper said the eyeliner “goes on very smoothly without tugging [the] skin,” and noted that it also “works great for tightlining.” Another reviewer said, “[It’s] the only eyeliner [they’ve] found that makes it all day on my waterline.”

If you’re looking to nail a smoky eye that feels soft, wearable, and red-carpet polished, Laura Geller’s INKcredible Gel Eyeliner makes it surprisingly easy. Shop the bestselling pencil now and recreate the look with minimal effort.

Get the Laura Geller INKcredible Gel Eyeliner for $32 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.

Looking for something else? Explore more gel eyeliners here and don’t forget to check out all of Amazon’s Daily Deals for more great finds!

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Martha Stewart knows how to keep her beauty routine simple (and affordable). Forget pricey lash extensions or heavy falsies — the lifestyle entrepreneur’s go-to mascara is $10 and creates lashes so full and fluttery, you’d think they were fake. If you’re after that show-stopping lash look without the hassle or the high price tag, Maybelline’s […]