Netflix couldn’t have picked a better year to keep Stranger Things alive. The original series is finished, but Hawkins isn’t going anywhere just yet. Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 will return for Season 2 later this year, and its timing is almost suspiciously good as Netflix has spent 2026 turning science fiction into one of its most reliable draws.

This is a useful position for a spinoff that had plenty working against it when it arrived. Tales From ’85 was animated, it recast the characters fans had spent years watching, and it jumped backward in the timeline to a period viewers already knew. The first season had to convince people that this was more than a side project, but Season 2 doesn’t have that problem anymore.

Netflix Has Made 2026 a Very Good Year for Sci-Fi

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If there is one thing Netflix’s 2026 slate has made clear, it’s that the streamer hasn’t lost interest in science fiction. War Machine, starring Alan Ritchson, became one of Netflix’s biggest movies ever after pulling in more than 140 million views. After its performance, Netflix has already announced War Machine 2 and given Ritchson a first-look movie deal.

The genre has also found traction in less familiar territory. The Last House emerged as a major global hit, reaching No. 1 on Netflix’s global movie chart and trending in dozens of countries. Meanwhile, Stranger Things Season 5 remained one of the platform’s biggest television draws, collecting 55.6 million views during the first half of 2026.

Not every sci-fi gamble has worked. The Boroughs, another series produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, was canceled after one season despite positive reception and solid viewership. Netflix reportedly decided that its audience wasn’t large enough to justify the show’s considerable cost, but even that cancellation says something about where the streamer has been placing its bets.

‘Tales From ’85’ No Longer Has to Prove Itself

Via. Netflix

Netflix introduced Tales From ’85 on April 23 as the first television spinoff from one of its biggest franchises. Rather than continuing after the original series, the show went back to the winter of 1985, between the second and third seasons. Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Max were back, but they sounded different because none of the original live-action actors returned to voice them.

For a franchise whose identity is so closely tied to its young cast, moving Stranger Things into an animated format could have been a tough sell. The Duffers and showrunner Eric Robles instead leaned into the idea, taking inspiration from the Saturday-morning cartoons of the 1980s and giving Hawkins a brighter, more exaggerated look. It worked well enough for Netflix to order another season just five days after the premiere.

The first season also gave Tales From ’85 its own identity. The Hawkins kids formed the Hawkins Investigators Club, met Nikki Baxter, fought a new collection of creatures, and uncovered another mystery connected to the Upside Down. It was finding out what Stranger Things looks like when it gets to play by the rules of an animated adventure.

Netflix’s Sci-Fi Boom Could Give the Spinoff a Second Wind

Via. Netflix

Tales From ’85 managed to spend two weeks on Netflix’s global Top 10 TV chart after its debut, which is respectable, especially for a spinoff that arrived with a very different format from its predecessor, but it didn’t come close to the cultural earthquake created by the live-action series. Season 2 has an opportunity to close some of that gap.

Netflix has spent the year reminding subscribers that science fiction isn’t something they need to wait for Stranger Things to watch. New movies have pulled huge numbers, original series have continued to experiment with the genre, and the franchise itself remains one of the most recognizable pieces of Netflix IP. Tales From ’85 doesn’t need to become the next Stranger Things; it doesn’t even need to replicate the original show’s numbers, but it should give people who already like science fiction a reason to press play, and it has a much easier pitch than most new shows: it’s Stranger Things, but animated, set in 1985, with the Hawkins kids facing another supernatural mess.

There’s also no shortage of curiosity surrounding the wider Stranger Things universe. The original series ended its five-season run in December 2025, but Netflix moved almost immediately into the next phase with Tales From ’85. The franchise has already demonstrated that it can survive outside the main story, and Season 2 gives Netflix another chance to keep that audience engaged. Considering how much sci-fi has delivered for the streamer this year, Tales From ’85 could hardly ask for a better time to come back.

Sandra Oh hasn’t appeared on Grey’s Anatomy in over a decade, so why is there speculation she could reprise the role of Cristina Yang in season 23?

ABC caused fans to question a potential return when the official account for the network shared a photo of Oh, 55, on Wednesday, August 12, writing, “Heavy on the Yang.” Social media users took to the comments section to share their theories on what the cryptic post meant.

Many suggested that resurfacing a photo with Oh meant she was filming scenes in the upcoming season. Others were quick to point out that with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Nick (Scott Speedman) engaged, it would make sense for some OG stars to return for an episode or two as the couple celebrates their nuptials — though Meredith stated she didn’t want a traditional wedding.

Oh originally starred on Grey’s Anatomy from its debut in 2005 until 2014. The actress received many nominations for her portrayal of Cristina and even won a Golden Globe for the role in 2005.

Since her exit, Oh has previously made it clear she has no plans to reprise the role.

“No,” she said about a possible return during The LA Times’ “Asian Enough” podcast in 2021. “I love it, though, and this is also why I really appreciate the show … that I still get asked this.”

Oh continued: “It’s very rare, I would say, to be able to see in such a way the impact of a character. In some ways, you do your work as a bubble and you let it go. I left that show, my God, seven years ago, almost. So in my mind, it’s gone. But for a lot of people, it’s still very much alive. And while I understand and I love it, I have moved on.”

More recently, Oh made a rare comment about her decision to exit Grey’s Anatomy amid salary renegotiations.

“At the end of season 8, [creator Shonda Rhimes] took me aside because we were all renegotiating and she goes, ‘What do you want to do?’” Oh said on a July episode of the “Dinner’s on Me” podcast. “I said, ‘Let me think about it.’”

Oh, who played Cristina Yang since season 1, took the time to consider her future.

Related: Grey’s Anatomy’s Biggest Exits Over the Years

Katherine Heigl, Patrick Dempsey, Justin Chambers and more stars have left Grey’s Anatomy — for various reasons. Created by Shonda Rhimes and starring Ellen Pompeo, Grey’s Anatomy debuted on ABC in 2005. Pompeo (Meredith Grey) left the show as a series regular following season 19 but continued to provide voiceover narration and make special guest […]

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“The creative being will dictate and you have to follow it,” she noted. “You’ve gotta ask, ‘What do you want to do? What should I do?”

The actress ultimately returned for one more season, adding, “I felt very much like I did my job. I feel like I created a whole character. I grew the character in 10 years time — where it’s a believable growth. People do grow in 10 years and I think she really did grow.”

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Oh concluded: “The privilege was to actually plan an exit and for all the writers to be able to support that. It’s extremely rare to have that. So that was a real, real gift.”

Grey’s Anatomy has weathered a multitude of cast departures over the years including lead Ellen Pompeo. After hinting at a departure, Pompeo, 56, confirmed in September 2022 that she would have a reduced role for season 19.

Pompeo starred in eight episodes that season before exiting the show as a series regular in 2023. Kim Raver and Kevin McKidd later departed the show, but it remains unclear whether there will be more characters who won’t return in season 23.

Anne Hathaway didn’t mince words as she expressed strong reactions to movies that kill dogs during the press tour for her new movie, “The End of Oak Street.”

The renowned actress said films in which dogs are killed “should automatically be rated R,” which stands for “restricted” and means that the movie contains adult material.

Over the years, Hathaway has spoken up on causes close to her heart, including when she promised to “fight” for LGBTQ+ equality despite the “divided” politics.

Anne Hathaway is advocating for animal safety even in fiction. During the press tour for her new film, The End of Oak Street, she told Complex Pop that movies that feature dogs being killed should be rated R, name-dropping “John Wick,” which stars Keanu Reeves.

“I feel like movies that kill dogs should automatically be rated R,” Hathaway said. “Doesn’t matter if anybody curses, doesn’t matter if there’s violence, if a dog dies, R-rated.”

She continued, “I think everybody’s so traumatized by ‘John Wick,’ because I’ve been seeing those [comments for our movie] like, ‘They better not kill the dog.’ I’m like, ‘Which movies are out there killing dogs that everybody’s scared that we’re just casually doing it in movies now?’”

Anne Hathaway Reassures Fans About Her Movie’s Dog

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In “The End of Oak Street,” Hathaway stars as Denise, an aspiring novelist and matriarch of the central family, as Ewan McGregor plays her husband, Greg, alongside Maisy Stella and Christian Convery as their children.

Set in the early ’80s, the story follows the Platt family, who live in a suburban neighborhood that is suddenly transported millions of years back into prehistoric times by a temporal anomaly, forcing them to survive against lethal dinosaurs.

They also have a trusted canine friend named Starbuck, which has left fans worried about his survival.

“Somebody was like, ‘Can you just let the audiences know that, like, it’s all gonna be OK?’” Hathaway said about Starbuck’s fate. “We break rules in this movie; that might not be one of them. Don’t worry.”

Hathaway’s Growing Family Includes Her Dogs

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Hathaway and her husband Adam Shulman, who share two children and are expecting a third, have brought dogs into their growing family, per Entertainment Weekly.

The Oscar winner has a chocolate Labrador named Esmeralda, whom she said was with her when she learned of her first Oscar nomination in 2008 for Rachel Getting Married.

“I was with my parents and my dog when I got the news, and we were all overjoyed — although I’m not sure my dog knew what was going on,” she jokingly told PEOPLE in 2009.

They also adopted a mixed spaniel-terrier in 2014 and renamed him Kenobi.

Hathaway might not be wrong, as reports suggest many fans check whether a dog dies before watching the movie.

Anne Hathaway Continues Her Fight For Equality

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The Interstellar actress often speaks up about causes close to her heart, such as women’s and children’s rights, animal safety, LGBTQ+ advocacy, gender equality, and abortion rights.

Chosen in 2016 to be a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, she shed light on the tension between celebrating progress and pressing on in the face of ongoing inequality during an address at the commemoration of the 2026 International Women’s Day at the UN General Assembly in New York earlier this year.

“It’s hard to bear the knowledge that the distance between the promise of equality and the experience of it is still so far apart, for so many,” she said.

However, she insisted that celebrating the occasion itself is an act of defiance and must go on.

“Yes, we absolutely do,” she added. “Our celebration today affirms our determination to outlast it.”

Hathaway Promises To Fight For LGBTQ+ Rights

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In the buildup to the release of “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” which she starred in alongside Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, Hathaway touched on the movie’s resonance with people worldwide, including the LGBTQ+ community.

In a conversation with Out, she revealed that she had the community in her heart the whole time she was filming the movie, in which she plays the legendary role of Andy Sachs, a role she first starred in 22 years ago.

She promised to continue the “fight” for LGBTQ+ equality even though the politics surrounding it have become “divisive.”

“I had [the queer community] in my heart the entire time we were filming! I knew who I was doing it for. It’s so obvious to me, the whole concept of equality. It doesn’t make any sense to me that the laws governing human freedom aren’t even applied consistently across the spectrum. I’ll fight until it’s that way, but in my head and in my heart, I know that’s true,” Hathaway told the news outlet.

She added, “This is a film for everyone. I love that there’s a film and there’s a space where we can be thinking about suburban dads and urban gays. We know that they will both love it and find something in it! I feel like, frankly, there’s a lot of money to be made by keeping us divided. It’s really wonderful to offer something for everyone.”

Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) has been one of TV’s most fascinating characters for two decades, so much so that fans refuse to let go of him. After the failed ending of the popular original series, Dexter, there was a spinoff sequel, Dexter: New Blood, which tried to fix things, followed by a better-than-expected prequel, Dexter: Original Sin. Finally, the franchise got it right with Dexter: Resurrection. After a great first season, the show is set to come back for a second. That wait is far off, though. If you’re craving more Dexter Morgan, check out the lost series you may have never even knew existed, an animated one that you can still find on YouTube today.

‘Dexter Early Cuts’ Was a Series of Short Animated Films on YouTube

Dexter Early Cuts premiered in 2009 during the run of the original Showtime series. Long before Dexter: Original Sin, which starred Patrick Gibson as the serial killer in his early days, audiences wanted to know more about who he was before we first met him. Dexter Early Cuts fills in some of those blanks in a unique way. From 2009 to 2012, three seasons of Dexter Early Cuts were released as a clever way to promote the upcoming new episodes. By putting the content on YouTube, free for all to see, it increased interest in what you had to pay to see later on Showtime.

The first season of Dexter Early Cuts consisted of 12 easy-to-digest mini-episodes, with runtimes that clocked in at only a few minutes. The familiar music of the intro is there, complete with a quick shot of darkened images of bodies, a syringe, and a spot of blood. Released weekly, the first season takes a burgeoning Dexter Morgan on his journey of tracking down and taking out three serial killers. Season 2 of Dexter Early Cuts, subtitled Dark Echo, did things a bit differently, with only six episodes, and all coming out the same day in October 2010. Two years later, in late summer 2012, came a third and final season, subtitled All in the Family, this time going back to the better format of one mini episode per week.

‘Dexter Early Cuts’ Is a Richly Drawn Exploration of Dexter Morgan’s Origins

Dexter Early Cuts is not as good as the original show it promoted. It’s not as good as what’s come after either. But it’s not supposed to be. With such limited time to work with, there is only so much the series can do. Still, it’s much more than filler or a lazy commercial for Dexter. It’s a compelling series, with Michael C. Hall back as the narrator, and a journey that takes Dexter from multiple victims at the start of the journey to a season-long big bad, and in the last season, a father-and-son duo who will challenge our anti-hero in new ways.

Dexter Early Cuts isn’t perfect. We know Dexter is in no danger, and the short runtime makes it difficult to get invested in the evolution of his mind or who the antagonists are. They are simple fodder. The animation style is also an effect you’ll either love or be frustrated with. In our opinion, it works. Rather than being a simple, twisted cartoon of sorts, Dexter Early Cuts is more akin to a graphic novel. It mostly stays still, with zoom-ins and zoom-outs, the camera moving across the page from one frame to the next. The little movement there is, with mouths moving on still characters, feels disjointed and off-kilter, just like the rich, exaggerated colors that are often hurried, scratched, and frayed. It’s purposely imperfect and not lifelike, which serves to make it unsettling. The simplicity also forces the viewer to use their imagination rather than being shown everything.

It’s truly art, and a style taken seriously because of who is involved. Season 1 is illustrated by Kyle Baker, a former illustrator for Marvel Comics who has been around since the 1980s. The second is a joint production by Bill Sienkiewicz (a surrealist who influenced The New Mutants movie) and David Mack (a writer and artist for Daredevil Marvel Comics), before Mack handles the duties on his own in Season 3.

If you’re a fan of graphic novels and comics, Dexter Early Cuts is fascinating. The iconic character and the actor who voices him are the way in. The animation is the reason to stay. The style hides the flaws that would exist if the short episodes were the usual live-action sameness. The attention-getting animation is as much of a reason to watch as the stories told. 15 years ago, it was a stylistic way to keep Dexter alive in the imagination of viewers between seasons. It worked well enough two decades ago. Today, Dexter Early Cuts is an even better watch because we’ve since gone back to the origins of Dexter Morgan, and with renewed interest due to Dexter: Resurrection, the mini-episodes are more effective, whether it’s for a rewatch or the very first time you’ve seen it.

To say that transformation occurred on Once Upon A Time is a major understatement. On screen, the ABC series was known for reinventing itself and putting its iconic characters through numerous wild scenarios and twisted storylines. Off screen, the actors who brought those characters to life were also changing and growing. In an interview with Perri Nemiroff for Collider Ladies Night, Jennifer Morrison talked about what first drew her to Once Upon a Time and how being on the long-running show was its own Disney-adjacent hero’s journey.

Once Upon A Time took us to Storybrooke, Maine, where fairy-tale characters like Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla), Belle (Emilie de Ravin), Little Red Riding Hood (Meghan Ory), Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle), and more lived normal lives, with no happy endings, thanks to a petty curse. It’s up to Emma Swan (Morrison) to be their savior. First, of course, she has to learn how to believe in magic.

“I was really moved by the pilot,” Morrison told Nemiroff. “I was really, really blown away by the pilot. I thought it was such a slam-dunk idea. It was just one of those concepts. The familiarity of all these fairy-tale characters mixed with this concept of them all knowing each other, and somehow having their lives overlap, felt so universally exciting.” She went on to praise showrunners Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who also wrote the pilot, saying they “had done such an incredible job of also infusing it with a tremendous amount of psychology and metaphor. You could feel the richness of what they were approaching it with, so I was very excited about that.”

Morrison Spent Her “Whole Life” Preparing for the ‘Once Upon a Time’ Pilot

Morrison also admired the Once Upon a Time pilot’s director, Mark Mylod, and came from a Disney-loving family. “I may not have realized this in the moment,” she continues, “but I grew up in a family that really loves Disney.” Morrison explained that her parents would find ways to bring magic into her life growing up, budgeting road trips from Chicago to Orlando on schoolteacher salaries. “So, I think that there was also a lot of that Disney mythology that lived in my bones in a way that I got very excited at the idea of being the new person in that mythology,” she told Nemiroff. “‘What does it mean to be the invention that’s dropped into that world?’ I think without realizing it, I’d spent my whole life doing research to be that person, so there was something very familiar about it that kind of called to me, as well.”

Her character Emma Swan might not be a Disney fairy-tale fan, but she was living the ultimate fan experience as an audience surrogate in a fantasy world. In that pilot, we meet Emma in Boston, where she works as a bounty hunter/bail bonds person with no friends, no family, and no faith in humanity. She receives a call to adventure right from a young boy named Henry (Jared Gilmore) claiming to be her son. Henry takes her to his hometown in Maine, which he’s convinced is not only populated by the archetypal fairytale characters that the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney made popular, but under a spell that’s made them forget who they are.

A New Disney Classic Reminded Morrison of Her Time on ‘Once Upon a Time’

Once Upon A Time ran for seven seasons on ABC, and in today’s television landscape, very few actors get to spend that long on one job. You’re evolving as the character you play, but also as yourself. The actors who played Emma’s parents, Goodwin and Dallas, got married in real life and had two real children in that time. Reflecting on that experience, Morrison finds an apt metaphor that happens to unfold in a newer Disney movie. “There’s so much in literature about going to the Enchanted Forest and it changing you. I mean, I’ve also now watched Frozen 2 18,000 times with my child, and there’s the whole sequence where Olaf is talking about how enchanted forests are meant to change you, and that’s all based on psychology and all this stuff. So, I think Once Upon a Time sort of was my Enchanted Forest.”

The scene she’s referring to happens right as Anna (Kristen Bell), Elsa (Idina Menzel), Olaf (Josh Gad), Sven, and Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) go into the woods again. The snowman asks the group, “Did you know that an enchanted forest is a place of transformation? I have no idea what it means, but I can’t wait to see what it’s gonna do to each of us.” Towards the end of the film, he admits that he still doesn’t know what transformation means, but feels changed. Sadly, Once Upon a Time never got to tell the story of Frozen 2, but it did cover the original Frozen in the show’s fourth season.

“I went in with a lot of excitement and a lot of passion, and I feel like what I didn’t expect coming out of it was some of the challenges and the things that were harder for me,” Morrison explained, “in terms of being away from my family, being away from my home for so long, the sheer hours worked, and expectations and demands of a show like that, at that age, at that point in my life. Because I wasn’t yet married, and I didn’t have my partner yet, and so to do all of that and sort of still be alone, it really challenged me. It really, really challenged me. I think it forced me to wake up to needing to know myself better.” She went on to say that spending 17 years collectively on network television never left her much time to be herself. ” I’m not method. I don’t take the character home or anything like that,” she told Nemiroff, “but if, for 14 to 16 hours a day, you’re sort of more in the skin of someone else than in your own skin, you don’t have a lot of time to know yourself.”

“So, I think the awakening for me in my, like, ‘Enchanted Forest time’ was that I have to know myself as well as I know these characters, if not better. So it forced me to start prioritizing, taking care of myself differently, and knowing myself differently. And it was in that awakening that I realized that I had, at one point, had two burgeoning careers, which was that I was directing theater alongside being an actor, and I was really craving telling the whole story, and I was really missing that part of myself that could create without giving up myself. So, in that realization, I started directing a lot sooner than I think I would have because I was like, ‘I have to do this now.’ And so that’s how the whole show itself sort of became my Enchanted Forest.”

While Morrison did not direct any episodes of Once Upon a Time, she has gone on to direct episodes of Euphoria, Tracker, Yellowjackets, and The Five-Star Weekend, all after her first short film Warning Labels, and feature Sun Dogs both in 2017. You can stream Once Upon a Time on Hulu and Disney+, and watch Morrison’s full episode of Collider Ladies Night below.

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Once Upon A Time

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Release Date

2011 – 2018-00-00

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Showrunner

Adam Horowitz

Directors

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Ralph Hemecker, Ron Underwood, Dean White, Romeo Tirone, Billy Gierhart, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Alrick Riley, David Solomon, Eagle Egilsson, Milan Cheylov, David Barrett, Geofrey Hildrew, Guy Ferland, Mario Van Peebles, Paul A. Edwards, Jon Amiel, Mick Garris, Sharat Raju, Morgan Beggs, Adam Horowitz, Alex Zakrzewski, Andy Goddard, Anthony Hemingway, Antonio Negret

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  Andrew Kavadas

  Baron Danglars

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  Mr. Gold / Rumplestiltskin / Weaver

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Season 7 of the Netflix phenomenon Black Mirror arrived in 2025 with another batch of episodes to fill its audiences’ brains with existential dread, and creator Charlie Brooker has since confirmed that the series will return again. The series was made famous for using technology as a vessel to showcase the lowest points of humanity. While some of the technology is far beyond what is possible for the masses in our reality, the writing of Black Mirror delivers a grounded approach that is relatable to audiences because the actions of its characters feel possible. It’s what makes the series so devastating and what keeps the audience coming back for more every time a new season drops. Black Mirror fans who have already devoured Season 7 should check out Prime Video’s sci-fi series, Upload.

What Is ‘Upload’ About?

Upload takes place in 2033 and presents a world where death is not the end, and your consciousness can be uploaded to digital heaven, where loved ones can still communicate with you and even visit you through a virtual reality setup, transferring you seamlessly from the real world to the digital world. The “dead” can also still view the goings-on of the outside world through giant screens in this digital utopia. The series follows programmer Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), who dies at the young age of twenty-seven from a self-driving car accident and is then uploaded to the luxurious Lakeview, where he is at the whim of his obsessive and materialistic, still-alive girlfriend, Ingrid Kannerman (Allegra Edwards), who is personally funding Nathan’s new digital home. As Nathan navigates his new existence, he grows close with his living customer service representative, a.k.a. his “angel,” Nora Antony (Andy Allo).

Nora works for the company to secure a spot in Lakeview for her ailing father. He is reluctant to join this digital purgatory and would rather take his chances in the unknown reality of death, in hopes he will be able to rejoin his late wife on another plane. What Nora didn’t expect to come with the job was a budding romance between her and Nathan, which is the beating heart of the series. Before Nathan died, he was looking to end it with Ingrid, but the financial stranglehold Ingrid had on Nathan put him in a very precarious position. He is almost forced to try to make this relationship work while simultaneously falling for Nora. Nora brings out a new side of Nathan, one that is the polar opposite of the superficial life he became accustomed to with Ingrid. There’s also another wrinkle in both of these relationships — both Ingrid and Nora are alive while Nathan is very much dead. The technology presented is far more advanced than what the audience sees in everyday life, but there is still no method to transfer a dead person’s consciousness back into another body to bring them back to life in the real world.

There’s also an issue with Nathan’s memories, as some major gaps in his life are missing. Before the accident that took his life, Nathan and his business partner were working on a free version of the digital afterlife program to give everyone a fair shot at continued existence, if that’s what they wanted. This mystery lends to the overarching fact that Nathan’s car accident might not exactly have been an accident. Not only does Nora become the primary love interest of Upload, but she also becomes determined to find out what actually happened to Nathan to grant him a trip to Lakeview. The way Ingrid seemingly forces Nathan to be uploaded is a clear dead ringer for what might be going on in this supposed conspiracy against Nathan and his intentions to help others.

This afterlife is available for everyone, but the wealthier you are, the better afterlife you are afforded. The wealthy get to enjoy a luxurious paradise, while everyone else is subjected to “2 Gigs,” where they have limited bandwidth and freeze when they run out of data, similar to the subscription tiers in Black Mirror‘s “Common People” episode from Season 7. The benefits of these technological advances seem too good to be true, and that’s by design. It’s a mirror to the real-life fact of megacorporations looking to monetize every aspect of human life. The real kicker is that both shows seem to be intentionally mocking both of the streaming services that float the bill for them to get made, sticking it to the man while still folding into the throes of capitalistic society.

‘Upload’ Is if ‘Black Mirror’ Ditched the Anthology Format and Followed One Storyline

Both Upload and Black Mirror are metaphors for real-life class disparity, with Upload delivering a more humorous approach. Even though it is more of a comedy, Upload delivers thought-provoking concepts about the morality of continuing your consciousness after death, almost predicting what the future could hold with inventions like Meta and the future advancement of virtual reality. The real setback to Upload is that it accomplishes a great deal with a very short runtime. It incorporates sci-fi elements, is a comedy, features a romantic throughline, and maintains a satirical outlook on modern-day society through a futuristic lens. Juggling all these plates at once can cause one, or a few of them, to fall at points in the series, but the Greg Daniels creation is still well worth the watch.

If fans of Black Mirror ever wondered what would happen if they ditched the anthology format and went with one storyline, Upload would be a great guess about how it would come out. So many amazing Black Mirror episodes start with so much hope and happiness, only to rip the carpet from beneath the viewer and give them a heaping dose of depressing reality. Upload does have more comedic elements, as stated before, but its pure concept is inherently bleak, and there are moments within the series that exemplify that feeling substantially. All four parts of Upload have now aired, with the fourth and final part bringing the series to a conclusion in 2025. That means the entire story is now available to watch from beginning to end, making it an ideal time to dive into this digital world.

Upload is available to stream on Prime Video.

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Release Date

2020 – 2025-00-00

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Prime Video

Directors

Jeffrey Blitz, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Daina Reid, David Rogers, Sarah Boyd, Jonathan van Tulleken, Tom Marshall

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Writers

Megan Neuringer, Maxwell Theodore Vivian, Farhan Arshad, Alison Brown, Shepard Boucher, Yael Green, mike lawrence, Lauren Houseman, Aasia LaShay Bullock, Alex J. Sherman, Alyssa Lane

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