Entertainment
‘Lanterns’ Officially Destroys the Typical Superhero Formula With a Shocking Betrayal
Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 5.
HBO’s Lanterns has been quite a trip for both longtime Green Lantern fans and newcomers alike. The offbeat take on Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) has stripped the superheroes of their traditional ring-slinging adventures in favor of a grounded detective story that deconstructs both DC icons before pitting them firmly against each other. Episode 5 goes a step further here as they close in on the Manhunter, bringing the 2016 mystery to a close and leaving us wondering what the next three episodes could tackle. Lanterns takes what would have normally been the third act of a two-and-a-half-hour superhero movie and uses it as a nexus point that launches the narrative into the present day — and we still have plenty of questions.
‘Lanterns’ Episode 5 Pits the Entirety of Rushville Against Our Heroes
This week’s episode begins in 2007, when a younger Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) finds her way to Rushville after escaping her past in Gotham — only, she hasn’t really escaped, as two armed men arrive and flank her in the local diner. “Nice trick you pulled with the plates,” one of them tells her, revealing that her father was a thief who stole from their employer. But Kerry isn’t a snitch, and instead tries to explain that she only wishes to live her own life apart from the organization. This doesn’t convince the goons, but before things can go from bad to worse, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) arrives, killing one and sparing the other. Upon learning their orders were to take Kerry’s pinkie back to her boss, Zoe tells Kerry to cut it off before sending the thug out of town. Zoe tells Kerry that she’s been in her shoes. “Someone once gave me a chance when I needed it the most, and now I’m offering the same chance to you,” she explains. Zoe suggests Kerry stick around on one condition. “One day, some people are going to come looking for me,” Zoe reveals, and admits she’ll need someone to protect her. When Kerry agrees to these terms, Zoe says she’ll grow her a new pinkie.
Back in 2016, John wakes up in the crashed vehicle and attempts to get out. Unfortunately, his leg is pinned. Hal approaches and apologizes. “I’m sure you understand my position because you’re working with the Guardians to replace me,” the Green Lantern tells him. Hal believes that William Macon’s (Garret Dillahunt) militia will gear up to protect Zoe while Antaan’s (Paul Ben-Victor) alien forces fight back. This distraction will give him just enough time to locate the Manhunter and return her to the Guardians on Oa. Meanwhile, Rushville begins to mobilize as they anticipate a threat. On the ranch, Zoe, Kerry, and Billy (Jason Ritter) argue about what to do next. Zoe tells her grandson, Noah (Cary Christopher), that the best thing Billy can do now is to protect him. “A lot of people are going to die today — people you know, some you love,” she tells him. “But no matter what happens, don’t forget everything I’ve told you.” It’s an ominous warning, one that makes us believe there may be something more to Noah than meets the eye, but that’s all we get from this interaction.
While all of this is going on, John tries to pull himself out of the car, but things get a bit hairy for the Lantern trainee when the vehicle catches fire. For a moment, it looks like he’ll be spared when a black SUV pulls up, and Zoe pops out. Instead of sparing John, she watches as the rental blows up with him still inside, engulfing him in flames. Elsewhere, Hal is watching over Rushville from the water tower. He activates “sentry protocol” and sends the “Halogram” out to investigate. Eventually, this leads him to Kerry, who shoots at him first before explaining. “Zoe can’t hear us, but she can see us,” she tells him. Hal protects himself with the ring as Kerry tries to explain what she’s doing. “You can never understand what she gave me,” she says — perhaps Zoe did more than just give her a new pinkie. The sheriff insists that Rushville can have peace, but Hal tells her that she’s harboring a war criminal. “I’m not going anywhere until she’s stopped,” he says, and it’s with that thought that the sheriff tells him that everything that happens next is on him.
John Stewart Makes a Deal with a Manhunter in ‘Lanterns’ Episode 5
At the hospital, Zoe watches over John. He can’t feel anything, since all of his nerve endings are dead thanks to the vehicle fire. He tells her he knows everything about her true identity, but admits he doesn’t fully trust the Guardians and what they’re telling him after what went down with the ring in last week’s episode. “They just expected me to take the ring,” he says, frustrated that he hasn’t been backed by anybody this whole time. Zoe tells John that the Manhunters were created to enforce justice — at least, until they were deemed too ruthless, which is a judgment call she hasn’t once proven inaccurate. Zoe can heal him, but her help has a price: once she kills Hal, John will take the ring and tell the Guardians Hal died defending Rushville from Antaan and his forces. This way, John gets the ring, and Zoe can continue to live in peace.
When Hal arrives at the diner, he finds dead bodies everywhere. Naturally, it’s a trap, but he’s anticipated Antaan’s attack and defends himself with a giant green bubble. But the Green Lantern doesn’t want to fight; he wants to strike a deal — well, that’s what he tells the alien terrorist, anyway. Hal lies, telling Antaan that William Macon is actually the Manhunter, information that he seems to take with a grain of salt (but take it he does). In an interesting turn, Antaan reveals to Hal that John was compromised by the Manhunter through coitus, which is apparently the synthetic’s main form of deception. Just then, Macon puts the hit out on Hal, and the townsfolk in Rushville get AMBER alert-style texts telling them to attack and kill the Green Lantern. Fortunately for Hal, this helps his case with Antaan, who leaves in pursuit of Macon.
Back at the hospital, Zoe and John spend way too much time talking about racial barriers (which is apparently why Zoe took the form she did) while John is literally suffering from near-fatal wounds, which feels a bit disingenuous considering his pain, but we’ll ignore that. As John’s body is restored, we get a flashback montage of his upbringing, training, and time in the Marines that recaps the entirety of “OutKast” in less time. Upon being restored, John has a revelation of his own. “You killed Abin Sur,” he tells her. “He brought you here to spare you.” Of course, Zoe doesn’t deny it. Instead, she justifies her actions, noting that she simply “couldn’t help it.” Even more concerning is that Zoe is drawn to John because he “really sees” her. After this interaction, Macon calls Zoe, and the two say their goodbyes as Antaan and his forces arrive at the ranch. “Thank you for everything,” she tells her husband. “Thank you for the gift of time,” he replies.
As Antaan’s forces invade the compound, Macon’s men fight back. The whole thing is a bloodbath as Antaan’s men suicide-bomb the Weenie and some of the other surrounding structures, slowly taking out the whole militia. Unfazed by the surrounding intensity, Macon sits in his office and drinks some whiskey when Antaan arrives. Macon pretends to be the Manhunter, and here we learn that Antaan and the android were previously involved in an intimate capacity, though they were unable to conceive any children. Antaan then attacks and kills Macon after realizing that the real Manhunter would never have welcomed death. In the wake of her husband’s demise, Zoe begins attacking the entire town, forcing Hal into space to disarm the laser weapons — a sequence we wish Lanterns would’ve shown.
Hal and John Face Off Over the Ring as ‘Lanterns’ Wraps Up the 2016 Story
After John escapes the hospital, he calls his father and demands that his parents patch him through to the Guardians before telling his mother that he plans to take the ring right from Hal’s finger. Of course, Hal is busy on the streets saving the locals from alien threats, but when the Halogram arrives and informs him of Zoe’s position, he completely diverts his attention. Before Hal can apprehend her, Zoe orders her men to blow up the nearby water tower — which houses not water, but the same dark energy he and John encountered on the Macon ranch before. Hal fights his way through, but not before sending an enraged Antaan into the shadows to his death. When the ring warns Hal that it’s time to recharge, he returns to the motel — but he isn’t anticipating a fight.
In the chaos, John grabs Hal, and they duke it out in the motel. John maintains that he deserves the ring, that he’s earned it after all these years preparing to wield it, while Hal issues a reminder that he was chosen. Eventually, John gains the upper hand, but before he can knock Hal out, the motel is attacked by another energy beam. John escapes in the aftermath, leaving Hal inside and trapped under debris. When Zoe arrives and asks where John is, Hal tells her that he “promoted himself,” but the Manhunter insists that she promoted him. Hal believes if John wanted him dead, he would’ve done it himself, making Zoe wonder why the ex-Marine would leave him to be discovered in the rubble. “Bait,” Hal replies — before John, with a sniper rifle from afar, shoots the Manhunter through the head.
Although the Manhunter has been killed and the alien threats neutralized, Rushville has been totally decimated. Walking back to Hal’s motel room, John pauses to give a watch to a young girl crying beside her wounded parents before retrieving his own belongings and confirming the Manhunter kill, carving Zoe’s crystallized heart out of her chest and putting it in his bag. Walking over to Hal, he takes the lantern and ring off his finger. “Was it worth it?” Hal asks, but John doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks off with his prize, wandering through the completely demolished town. When he’s met by Macon’s men, who quickly surround him, Kerry lets him go after inquiring about Hal’s whereabouts.
This chapter of Lanterns ends with John meeting with Lianna (Laura Linney). He tells the Guardian that Hal is still alive and brings her the Manhunter’s heart as proof of the kill. “Even we make mistakes,” she tells John. “All we can do is correct them.” John confesses that he’s spent a lot of his life wondering how he would feel after taking the ring, but when he put it on, he just felt empty. “Hal betrayed everything to keep this ring,” he explains. “And it broke him. Probably doesn’t even remember why he wanted the damn thing.” Instead of putting on the ring and finally reciting the oath, John gives it back to the Guardian and walks out.
New episodes of Lanterns air Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
- Release Date
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August 16, 2026
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel
- Writers
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Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson
- It’s a bold choice not to give John the ring here, but one that will no doubt pay off before the season is up.
- The Manhunter climax comes together well, but the fact that there’s still three more episodes signals that there’s still more to explore in Rushville.
- Halogram working alongside Hal is a fascinating contrast that we ought to get more of.
- Lanterns could’ve been a much stronger series if Hal and John weren’t always betraying one another.
- Hopefully this won’t be Hal’s last time as a Green Lantern.
Entertainment
LeShon Johnson Sentenced to Prison for Dogfighting Ring
Former NFL running back LeShon Johnson has been sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a deadly dogfighting ring.
Johnson, 55, received 60 months in prison, along with three years of supervised release and a $30,000 fine, on Thursday, September 10, after he was convicted of six dog fighting-related charges for his role in a dogfighting operation that resulted in the “death or serious bodily injury” of hundreds of pit bulls.
Johnson was previously found guilty in August 2025 of violating the federal Animal Welfare Act’s prohibitions against possessing, selling, transporting, and delivering animals to be used in fighting ventures.
“Testimony at trial showed that Johnson … had been running a major operation since at least 2007 that bred and sold fighting dogs for profit,” read a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Johnson, who previously ran “Krazyside Kennels,” referred to his new operation, based out of Broken Arrow and Haskell, Oklahoma, as “Mal Kant Kennels.” Evidence showed that the athlete “bred and trafficked hundreds of dogs for the purpose of dog fighting around the country.”
Authorities had seized 190 dogs from his property — the largest number ever seized from a single individual in a federal dog fighting case, according to the release.
Evidence also showed that Johnson had advertised many of his dogs as “champions” and “grand champions,” meaning they had won three or five fights, respectively. He is also said to have sold litters of puppies from favorable fighting bloodlines and “stud fees” for the right to breed with one of his male dogs. Proceeds totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a statement, Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said that Johnson would “face justice for building another particularly egregious and violent dog fighting scheme.”
“As Johnson was well aware, dogfighting is a felony in all 50 states,” the statement continued. “To anyone attempting to build violent and illicit business schemes: you can run, but you can’t hide from the Department of Justice.”
Johnson previously pleaded guilty in 2004 to Oklahoma dogfighting offenses in a separate case.
Johnson’s attorney, Billy Coyle IV, told ESPN that he had asked for probation for his client, arguing that Johnson had “zero criminal history points” — which doesn’t take into account past cases — and is a “medically compromised human being” suffering from severe dementia and Parkinson’s disease. In a pre-sentence memorandum, Coyle said Johnson has had a daily caretaker for the past two years.
“The main point was just to show the court that he’d been out on bond for pretrial release for over two years,” Coyle told ESPN. “He’s got no infractions whatsoever. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. I don’t think the necessity of sending him to prison or jail was necessary.”
A final decision to appeal the sentencing has not yet been made.
Johnson played in the NFL from 1994 to 1999 with the Green Bay Packers, the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Giants. He also played for the now-defunct Chicago Enforcers in the XFL’s only season in 2001.
Entertainment
Rachel Dolezal Says She’s Now a ‘Certified Sex Coach’
Nkechi Diallo, the controversial figure formerly known as Rachel Dolezal who notoriously claimed to be Black, is following a new career path.
“The cap & gown🎓and a new title! 💋,” Diallo, 48, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, September 12, alongside photos of herself wearing a graduation cap and gown and holding a personalized desk sign reading, “Nkechi Diallo, Certified Sex Coach.”
Diallo said she graduated from The Sexology Institute’s “300+ hour certification program” and has subsequently opened her own “online intimacy and relationship coaching practice,” called Bandwidth.
The Sexology Institute confirmed to Us on Sunday that Diallo has graduated from their program and is certified as a sex coach.
“This work is personal,” Diallo continued in her post. “As a single mom of three boys, I know what hypervigilance, burnout, and carrying the mental load do to connection — and I believe joy, closeness and aliveness in your body aren’t luxuries. They’re capacities we can design, develop and expand.”
Diallo added, “Bandwidth is for the people who’ve poured into everyone else: single parents, parents of neurodivergent kids, and folks whose work lives at the margins. Together we clear the static, make room for what matters, and expand your bandwidth for a life that’s authored — not absent or performed.”
The photos showed Diallo sporting a black cap and gown, a red stole and black fishnet tights. Diallo also included a professional headshot for her Bandwidth business.
“Certified. I did it! Woohoo, my office is open!” she wrote over the images.
Diallo is a former college instructor who made headlines in 2015 after claiming to be a Black woman for years despite having a white mother and father. Her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, told Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review at the time that Diallo began to “disguise herself” after adopting four Black children.
Diallo doubled down regarding her identity, telling the outlet, “There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”
Amid backlash over her claims, Diallo resigned as president of her chapter of the NAACP and lost her part-time teaching job at Eastern Washington University.
“Everything I do is connected to other people, so I don’t know how to assess the damage other than within my own mind,” she told Vanity Fair in July 2015. “It’s taken my entire life to negotiate how to identify, and I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of studying. I could have a long conversation, an academic conversation about that.”
Diallo told the outlet that she felt she “didn’t mislead anybody.”
“I didn’t deceive anybody. If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African-American, but I would say I’m black, and there’s a difference in those terms,” she added.
Diallo later drew attention again in February 2024 when she was fired from a teaching position in Arizona after administrators discovered her OnlyFans account.
Entertainment
Anime’s Biggest Mystery Hit Officially Gets a New Game
The Apothecary Diaries has never needed sword fights or supernatural powers to keep its audience guessing. The anime instead follows Maomao, an exceptionally clever apothecary whose knowledge of medicine and poisons repeatedly pulls her into dangerous mysteries within the imperial court. Her habit of noticing what everyone else misses has made the series one of anime’s biggest recent hits.
The story began as a light novel series written by Hyuganatsu before expanding into manga and anime adaptations. Its combination of palace intrigue, slow-burning romance, and elaborate investigations also makes it unusually well-suited to an interactive adaptation. Maomao is finally getting the opportunity to solve those cases with some help from players.
Koei Tecmo and Gust have officially announced The Apothecary Diaries: The False Imperial Brother, the franchise’s first console game adaptation. The mystery adventure will feature an original story conceptualized by Hyuganatsu and send Maomao across the rear palace, pleasure district, and capital city. It is scheduled to arrive in early 2027 for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
Maomao Has Five New Mysteries To Solve
The story begins shortly after Maomao starts working as a maidservant in the rear palace, where rumors spread about incidents collectively known as the “Five Mysteries.” These include a faceless eunuch, a storehouse that mysteriously wails every night, and garments suddenly turning deep red. Jinshi tasks Maomao with investigating the strange events using her medicinal knowledge, observation skills, and talent for finding evidence. Maomao later befriends a traveling actor named Guanyu while visiting the pleasure district, but his personal troubles gradually pull her into another unfolding drama. After the Shi clan’s rebellion is defeated, a similar collection of incidents known as the “Five Curses” begins affecting residents throughout the capital. The investigation eventually leads Maomao to a masked vigilante claiming to be the imperial younger brother, despite Jinshi insisting the impersonator is not him.
Players will investigate incidents, gather evidence, present theories, and solve each mystery as the two apparent conspiracies begin connecting. The structure sounds like a natural extension of the series, where the real satisfaction comes from watching Maomao assemble small, easily overlooked details into an answer everyone else failed to see. The False Imperial Brother does not have an exact release date yet, but it will bring Maomao’s latest investigation to consoles and PC in early 2027.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
-
2023 – 2025-00-00
- Network
-
Nippon TV, RAB, TVI, YBC, JRT
- Directors
-
Jun Owada, Akira Koremoto, Erkin Kawabata, Shintaro Itoga, Kentaro Fujita, Yukihiko Asaki, Tsuyoshi Nakano, Masahiro Matsunaga, Akira Shimizu, Yuushi Ibe, Yuu Kinome, Kyohei Yamamoto, Takanori Yano, Tadao Okubo, Misu Yamaneko
- Writers
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Yuko Kakihara, Misuzu Chiba, Hitomi Ogawa
- Franchise(s)
-
The Apothecary Diaries
-
-
Takeo Otsuka
Jinshi (voice)
Entertainment
CBS Fall 2026 Daytime TV Premiere Dates: Price Is Right, More
CBS is returning in full force this fall with a stacked schedule of daytime premieres from The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless and more.
The network released its official daytime guide ahead of each show’s return. Drew Carey’s 20th season as the host of The Price Is Right kicks off September 21, with the addition of Wild Wheel Wednesday.
“During the Showcase Showdown, contestants will have the chance to win not only over $100,000, but also a special prize chosen by Drew, making every spin of the Big Wheel even more thrilling,” read a press release. “Themed episodes this season include Veteran’s Day, Halloween, Earth Day, Breast Cancer Awareness, Pet Adoption Week, Pride, Cinco De Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Week.”
Host Wayne Brady is back with Let’s Make a Deal with a brand new game of Cash Course.
“A ball-rolling obstacle course where Traders line up green and gold balls on a custom-designed course for a guaranteed chance to win big cash, with the opportunity to take home a grand prize of $10,000 — but look out for the spinning duck, stone toad and the octopus!” the press release continued. “This season also marks a major milestone for Let’s Make a Deal, with the show celebrating its 3,000th episode with Brady as host. The milestone will be commemorated with a special episode airing in January 2027.”
The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful and more fan favorites are returning as well. Keep scrolling for a full breakdown of when each show premieres:
Tuesday, September 8
The Bold and the Beautiful 1:30 p.m. on CBS
Monday, September 21
Let’s Make a Deal 10 a.m. on CBS
The Price Is Right 11 a.m. on CBS
Thursday, October 8
The Young and the Restless 12:30 p.m. on CBS
Tuesday, December 29
Beyond the Gates 2 p.m. on CBS
Entertainment
‘Lanterns’ Star Explains Why She Was “Completely Shattered” by the HBO Sci-Fi’s Biggest Twist
Editor’s note: The below interview contains major spoilers for Lanterns Episode 5.
HBO’s Lanterns is officially heading into its final stretch of episodes, but it seems as though there’ll be no getting out of the 2016 story without several explosive twists. In an hour that would normally play out at the very end of a superhero movie, Episode 5 brings Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) investigation in Rushville to a head as the identity of the Manhunter is revealed.
The reason things have been so peaceful can all be tied back to the day Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) came into town, using her power to both heal William Macon (Garret Dillahunt) and save Kerry Kane’s (Kelly Macdonald) life, as well as seemingly strike several other bargains to keep Rushville safe and quiet. It’s no wonder, then, that the locals are willing to fight to the death to protect her — and for a time, it even seems like John is on Zoe’s side if it means getting the Green Lantern ring for himself. Yet once the smoke clears, and John ultimately leaves the ring in the custody of the Guardians, very few characters have made it through unscathed.
Ahead of the Lanterns premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several members of the cast and creative team, including Dillahunt and Jagannathan. Below, the co-stars discuss the biggest twist surrounding Zoe’s true origins, Dillahunt’s most revealing scene of the series, why Zoe’s interest in John Stewart runs much deeper than the opportunity to manipulate a Lantern candidate, and more.
COLLIDER: Garret, I have to start with you. This is a Deadwood house, first and foremost. It was a thrill to get to see you back on a horse. I was curious about what it felt like to get to play a modern cowboy in Lanterns.
GARRET DILLAHUNT: Well, I love that. I’ve been fortunate to be on so many Westerns and Western-adjacent kinds of shows. In fact, the wrangler on this, his name is Todd Forsberg; I’ve worked with him two or three times before this. I recommended him for this job because we also got to shoot in L.A., which was unusual, and his ranch is in Piru, so this was the closest job he’d ever had. I also know he’s got beautiful animals, and they’d be so well-trained. I loved it. I felt very comfortable on it, and it’s just a great character in this weird little universe they’ve created, this weird little town.
Poorna Jagannathan Was Shocked by Who She Was Really Playing in ‘Lanterns’
“I can’t describe the feeling. I’ve never had [it] in my entire life.”
Speaking of great characters, Poorna, the twist surrounding who you’re really playing — my jaw was on the floor, and I have a feeling viewers’ jaws are going to be on the floor.
POORNA JAGANNATHAN: You think mine wasn’t?
I was going to ask you what your reaction was to not just reading it in the script, but what was the conversation like when you were told who you were really playing?
JAGANNATHAN: They didn’t tell me! I read it in the script. Yeah, they didn’t tell me.
DILLAHUNT: I can’t believe that. It’s amazing.
JAGANNATHAN: And when I died in the car, I was like, “Okay. It’s been a great ride. Loved being part of this universe. Thank you for having me.” And then when the last page happened, and it was revealed that I was a Manhunter, I was confronted by my own mind. I just assumed it’d be a man. I assumed it’d be a white guy. You know what I mean? When I read a script, I’m so good at figuring things out. I feel like I have such a good grip on that — I was completely shattered when I read that. I was like, “Holy shit.” Everything I knew so far was just gone. I texted and called Carly Lane Chris Mundy at, like, midnight, screaming.
DILLAHUNT: You were screaming while you texted?
JAGANNATHAN: Both. I texted, and then I called, and then I screamed, and then I left an audio message. But I can’t describe the feeling. I’ve never had [it] in my entire life.
The characters and their motivations — everyone has these layers that are gradually peeled back the more we get to know what’s going on in this small, unassuming town. Garret, Macon is a character who certainly puts on a very specific outward persona to the rest of the world, but as we later learn, it’s hiding some very complicated, complex motives. He’s also willing to go to some great lengths, I would say, to throw Hal and John off a particular scent, including a very memorable scene where you are stripping down in front of everyone.
DILLAHUNT: It is memorable.
JAGANNATHAN: What do you remember about it?
What stands out most in your mind from preparing to film that scene, filming the scene — and also, did you get to keep the sketch of yourself afterward?
DILLAHUNT: [Laughs] Yeah, I didn’t want that sketch. But it was a fun scene. It was certainly a challenge. I thought those days were over. But I knew that Zoe had healed Macon. He still has the scar from his port from when he was battling cancer, and then he became this sort of preternaturally fit old man, and so I felt an onus to try and get in as good a shape as I could, and so I worked really hard, and barely ate that day, and sipped water and ate rice cakes and all that stuff.
JAGANNATHAN: His workout routine to get fit started that morning. [Laughs] No, he trained for [it] a lot.
DILLAHUNT: It was great. It was weirdly… I don’t need to do them every day, but it was a very supportive set and well-lit, and they took good care of me, and I think the scene works. It’s funny, it’s weird, it’s uncomfortable.
JAGANNATHAN: But we were all at the scene. We were like, “Holy shit, this is happening.” We were so excited to be at the scene.
What’s really going on in the town slowly starts to be revealed through the characters, and everything that they really feel like they owe, Poorna, to your character. Once you found out who you were really playing, how did you want to approach the Manhunter? Because it feels like villain is not really the right term. There’s definitely an antagonistic presence that she brings to the show, but I think her motives are a lot more complicated than that. So, how did you try to wrap your head around how best to portray her?
JAGANNATHAN: I think superhero is also not the right term, then. Both the antagonist and protagonist are very complex and flip between both poles. And I agree, for me, she’s an extraordinarily sympathetic character who is a victim of so many things, including just her own programming.
But I love that scene on the top of [Episode] 5, the contract that she makes with Sheriff Kane, with Kelly [Macdonald]’s character, which is, “I did this for you because down the line, I might need something from you, someone who is willing to go the distance for me.” And there’s a real feeling she’s made that contract with every single person in that town, which is why they go so hard to protect her and fight for her.
So, it’s an unexpected foil. It’s an unexpected arrangement. That’s what I love about it. The way that Chris really explained it to me is that she’s the only surviving Manhunter out of everyone, and she takes different forms, and really is here as a human with human emotions and human feelings — but her need to survive she puts above everyone and everything else, which is what makes her slightly different.
‘Lanterns’ Poorna Jagannathan Explains the Deeper Layers Beneath Zoe and John’s Connection
“She is showing John Stewart who she really is in as many words as she can…”
Previously, I know you spoke with my colleague, Perri [Nemiroff], about doing a love scene for this show. The one that really stands out to me as having so much going on underneath it is the moment with Zoe and John in the hotel room. It feels like a goodbye of sorts. It also feels like she’s trying to tell him things without really telling him things. How did you and Aaron [Pierre] want to approach all the complex emotions at play?
JAGANNATHAN: I was not aware of that layer, that she was telling him who she was, until the day of shoot. With the writers, we were just figuring stuff out, and I didn’t know that. But it is. She is showing John Stewart who she really is in as many words as she can, and she’s saying, “This is who I am, and it’s not bad. So, leave town. Who you are expecting to find is not who you think. It’s me. So, just leave, or you will get killed.” Because she knows what Macon is capable of, she knows what she’s capable of, she knows the mandate of the town, and so she wants John Stewart to live. She wants that. She is in love with him, as well.
DILLAHUNT: Well. She likes him.
JAGANNATHAN: [Laughs] Yeah. So, it’s a very moving scene. I don’t know if you picked it up, but it’s also where John Stewart picks up what she’s put down. It’s like all these things swirling in his mind actually solidify at that moment, and she also knows who she is.
I think even the ending where there’s a gun pointed at her head, and she looks up, and she sees John Stewart, it’s just… she’s never been outmaneuvered. She’s had to survive for so many lifetimes, but she’s never been outmaneuvered. So it’s that wonderful game-recognizes-game moment.
New episodes of Lanterns premiere Sundays on HBO.
Entertainment
Britney Got a Documentary. Everyone Else Gets a Lawyer
The conservatorship cases that ran entertainment news for five years happen constantly in ordinary probate courtrooms, usually with no cameras and no legal team. A Las Vegas fellowship is one of the few programs that puts new attorneys in those rooms on purpose.
For most of the last decade, the biggest running legal story in entertainment was not a criminal trial. It was probate.
Britney Spears spent 13 years under a conservatorship before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny ended it on November 12, 2021, finding that it was no longer required. Amanda Bynes was released from hers by a Ventura County judge four months later, in March 2022, after nearly nine years. In September 2023, a Shelby County, Tennessee probate judge terminated the conservatorship that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy had held over former NFL tackle Michael Oher since 2004, with reporting at the time noting the judge remarked from the bench that she had never seen such an arrangement created over an adult with no disability. She declined to dismiss the underlying case, and the parties’ claims over money and name and likeness rights continued past that ruling. Wendy Williams has been under a court-appointed guardianship in New York since 2022, when a temporary guardian was appointed early that year, and it remains in place. The file is sealed, so most of what the public knows comes from attorney statements rather than court documents.
Those four names generated years of coverage, documentaries, podcasts, and a hashtag that became a movement. What they did not generate is much attention for the version of the same proceeding that happens without a publicist.
The number nobody can actually count
There are an estimated 1.3 million adult guardianship cases in the United States, covering roughly $50 billion in assets. That figure originates with the National Center for State Courts and was cited in “Ensuring Trust,” a November 2018 report by the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.
The number should be read with real skepticism, and the Senate report’s own caveats support the doubt. It notes the estimate was based on information from selected states with the most reliable data, and that few states can report accurate or detailed guardianship figures at all. The advocacy group Justice in Aging has made the same point more bluntly, observing that national guardianship estimates rest on the handful of states that track cases reasonably well. The figure is also approaching a decade old, and no newer national count has replaced it.
What that uncertainty means in practice is that the single most restrictive thing a civil court can do to an adult, which is to hand control of their money, their medical decisions, or their living situation to somebody else, happens at a scale the country cannot measure.
What #FreeBritney actually changed, and what it did not
The fan movement produced one clear legislative result. California AB 1194, authored by Assemblymember Evan Low, was signed and chaptered on September 30, 2021, roughly six weeks before Spears’ conservatorship ended. It tightened oversight of professional fiduciaries, gave conservatees the right to choose their own attorney, and restricted compensating a conservator for unsuccessfully fighting their own removal. The bill was openly credited to the Spears case and the documentaries about it.
The federal bill everybody remembers went nowhere. The FREE Act, H.R. 4545, was introduced in July 2021 by Representatives Nancy Mace and Charlie Crist, referred to a House Judiciary subcommittee in November 2022, and expired without a hearing when that Congress ended in January 2023. It never became law, and a striking amount of coverage still implies otherwise.
More broadly, the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging counted roughly 37 guardianship bills enacted across 16 states in 2021, and credited the Spears publicity with significantly raising public awareness. The ABA also called the timing coincidental, situating 2021 as the culmination of about thirty years of existing advocacy that the hashtag amplified rather than started. Some of the reforms frequently lumped into the Britney story, including changes in Nevada and New Mexico, actually predate the hashtag and grew out of local guardianship fraud scandals.
So the celebrity cases moved the law a little and moved public attention a lot. The caseload underneath them did not shrink.
The clients who get no coverage at all
Low-income Americans received no legal help, or not enough of it, for 92 percent of the substantial civil problems they faced in a year. Evictions, custody fights, debt collection, denied benefits, guardianship disputes. That figure comes from the Legal Services Corporation’s 2022 Justice Gap study, built on an intake census of LSC-funded aid offices and a nationally representative survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. NORC polled more than 5,000 adults, and the 92 percent finding is drawn from the 2,003 respondents living at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty line. Four years later, it is still the most recent national measurement.
A large share of the lawyers hired to close that gap passed the bar within the last twelve months. What they learn in that first year, and how closely anyone watches them do it, varies enormously from one program to the next.
No, it is nothing like the shows
Television has trained an entire generation of applicants to expect the wrong job.
The legal drama in its most popular form is about the closing argument. “Suits” ran nine seasons on the premise that a brilliant fraud could out-argue anyone in a conference room. Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer” runs on courtroom reversals. Even the reboots lean on it, with the 2024 “Matlock” built around Kathy Bates outmaneuvering a firm from inside it.
The show that gets closest to the actual work is “Better Call Saul,” and it gets there by being about paperwork. Jimmy McGill’s elder law practice, the boxes of documents, the nursing home residents, the class action assembled one resident at a time out of billing records, is a reasonably honest picture of what a guardianship or elder abuse matter involves. It is largely not oratory. It is records.
A first-year legal aid attorney spends the bulk of that year interviewing clients and reviewing files under supervision. Many draft filings as their licensure allows. No fellowship guarantees courtroom appearances or independent case management, whatever a recruiting page implies.
The first real skill is the interview, and it is harder than it looks
Fellows learn to explain confidentiality and the scope of representation in language a frightened person can follow. They practice pulling the urgent legal question out of a much larger pile of practical problems. When a client is distressed and the paperwork is incomplete, the fellow builds a timeline out of whatever facts and documents exist.
This gets filed under soft skills, which badly undersells it. Listening determines which legal issues surface and what evidence gets collected. A fellow who can ask a hard question without leading or blaming the client ends up with an accurate record and a clear sense of what is missing. A fellow who cannot ends up with neither, and the case suffers for it.
Fellows also learn where the lawyer’s job stops. Clients frequently need housing placement, medical care, or a safety plan that no filing will produce. Knowing the line between representation and referral is part of the training.
Case preparation is where legal knowledge turns into judgment
File review comes first, then deadline management and research. Drafting and evidence organization follow as the matter develops. Fellows prepare for negotiations and, under supervision, communicate with opposing parties.
The skill that separates a second-year lawyer from a first-year one is sorting facts by legal weight. Take a habitability dispute. A fellow might line the lease up against every notice the landlord sent, then pull payment records and photographs of the unit before recommending a next step to the supervising attorney. Some of what the client volunteers will be legally decisive. Much of it will matter enormously to the client and not at all to the claim. Learning to tell those apart quickly, without dismissing the client, takes months of repetition.
Filing standards vary by state, so the mechanics a fellow learns in Nevada will not transfer cleanly to Ohio. The habits of mind do.
A Las Vegas program routes new lawyers straight into guardianship court
The Community Justice Fellowship at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, sponsored by the Las Vegas firm Paul Padda Law, is worth examining because it publishes terms most programs keep vague, and because one of its four rotations is the exact practice area the celebrity cases made famous.
The fellow spends a year rotating through the Children’s Attorneys Project, which represents abused and neglected children in foster care; the Family Justice Project, covering protective orders, divorce, and custody for domestic violence survivors; the Consumer Rights Project, which covers debt collection, bankruptcy, foreclosure, predatory lending, fraud, and tenant matters; and the Guardianship Advocacy Project, which represents seniors, adults with disabilities, and minors in guardianship proceedings. According to the posting, the fellow conducts client interviews and moves matters from intake through resolution.
Nevada is a pointed place to do that work. Beginning in 2015, local reporting exposed how Clark County’s private guardianship system was operating, with one guardian, April Parks, at the center of it. Parks pleaded guilty in 2018 and was sentenced in 2019 to 16 to 40 years for exploitation, theft and racketeering involving roughly 150 wards. The Nevada Legislature rewrote the state’s guardianship law in 2017, creating a compliance office and making appointment of counsel for a proposed protected person automatic rather than something the person had to know to request. All of that landed years before anyone was chanting about Britney Spears.
Two published terms stand out. The current posting states that fellows are awarded a full-time position with the Legal Aid Center at the conclusion of the fellowship, which distinguishes it from fixed-term programs that leave participants job hunting in month ten. That language is specific to this cycle and worth confirming annually, because an earlier listing for the same program, posted through the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, promised nothing of the kind and said only that preference went to applicants who wanted full-time employment there. The salary is listed at $75,000 for new law graduates and $80,000 for outgoing judicial clerks.
For context, NALP’s 2023 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey put the median entry-level salary at civil legal services organizations at $64,200, more than $5,000 below the medians for public defenders ($69,600) and other public interest employers ($69,500). Legal aid pays the least of the public service employers NALP tracks, and the gap widens with experience.
The fellowship now underway runs from August 2026 through July 2027. Applications were open from December 1, 2025, to January 31, 2026. Candidates should confirm the next cycle and its terms directly with the organization.
Four very different jobs share one word
“Fellowship” is the term usually attached to these arrangements, and by itself it tells a candidate almost nothing. Yale Law School’s public interest fellowship guidance treats the category as an umbrella, and its own list runs to six types. Four groups cover most of what is actually on the market.
Organization-based fellowships. The employer defines the work. A legal aid office has a caseload and hires a fellow to carry part of it. The Nevada program is this model.
Project-based fellowships. The candidate designs the position, recruits a host organization, and applies for funding. The Skadden Fellowship Foundation is the archetype. Applicants build their own two-year job at a nonpartisan host. For the class of 2027 the foundation provides $68,000 per year in base salary support plus $5,202 toward the employer share of FICA, and hosts must pay at least $68,000 unless a collective bargaining agreement mandates otherwise. Hosts paying more receive a supplement of $2,000 or $5,000 annually. The foundation has funded 1,018 fellows since 1988 and says roughly 90 percent stayed in public interest work.
Law school or foundation placements. A school or funder pays a graduate to work at an outside organization for a set term.
Government honors programs. Structurally similar, often called something else entirely.
The distinction changes who owns the work. In a project fellowship, the fellow owns the idea and has to make it produce. In an organization-based placement, the office owns the docket and the fellow learns by absorbing part of it. Both are legitimate training. They are different jobs, and candidates routinely apply to both without noticing.
A postgraduate fellowship is also a different animal from a summer internship. Fellows stay longer and carry real responsibility. Some programs require bar admission; others operate under a jurisdiction’s supervised practice rules, which let a graduate perform limited legal work under a licensed attorney’s oversight.
Rotations and supervision are program-specific, not standard
Neither is guaranteed anywhere, and both should be confirmed in writing before anyone accepts.
Rotations expose a fellow to different client populations and procedures. A housing docket moves fast and rewards speed. A guardianship matter demands sustained attention to a person’s autonomy and financial records over months. The benefit is comparative. After a year, a fellow can say with some confidence whether urgent litigation or long-arc representation suits them.
Rotations are not automatically better. A focused fellowship builds depth in one field, and depth has its own market value.
Supervision should get less hands-on as the year goes on. Early months may involve observation, joint client meetings, and close review of every draft, with responsibility expanding as the fellow demonstrates competence. Candidates should ask whether case reviews are scheduled or improvised, whether feedback addresses interview technique and writing specifically, what the protocol is for urgent client situations, how often ethics comes up, and whether the fellow will see more than one attorney’s approach.
Supervision will not prevent burnout by itself. It can surface a workload problem early. Caseload size and organizational resources decide whether the job is survivable.
The employment question deserves a direct answer
Employment outcomes need blunt questions. Some host organizations retain fellows. Some help them build networks and send them elsewhere. Some have no permanent opening and never did. Ask what happened to the last three fellows. Ask whether a permanent position is budgeted. Ask whether continued employment is guaranteed in writing or merely described as possible, and get the answer for the cycle being applied to rather than a previous one.
Money belongs in the same conversation. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce reported in June 2024 that law graduates leave school with a median debt burden of $118,500, and that four years out the median borrower still owes close to $120,000. Against that, an entry-level legal aid salary and the availability of loan repayment assistance stop being secondary details.
How competitive is it, actually
Public interest law is not one hiring market, and the answer depends entirely on which corner of it someone is looking at.
Nationally funded project fellowships draw large volumes of polished proposals from applicants who have been preparing them since their second year of law school. Local legal aid offices in lower-salary markets or high-burnout practice areas often struggle to fill positions. The same applicant can face brutal odds at one and a warm reception at the other.
What consistently helps: a sustained record of clinic work or public interest internships, demonstrated research and writing ability, evidence the candidate understands the client population, a credible explanation of interest in that organization’s actual docket, and relevant language skills where the community needs them. References from public interest supervisors carry real weight. General enthusiasm without any of that is where applications stall. A highly ranked law school is not a universal requirement.
Five things to get in writing before signing
- Employment status and pay, including whether the position is an employee role or a stipend arrangement.
- Bar admission expectations, and what the fellow may do before admission under the jurisdiction’s supervised practice rules.
- The training and supervision plan, including how often formal case reviews happen.
- Whether rotations exist and how they are structured.
- Whether continued employment is guaranteed, considered, or off the table, and what happened to recent fellows.
PSJD, the public interest career database run by NALP, and law school public interest career offices both post program descriptions that can be compared on these points.
The part the documentaries leave out
Britney Spears had a team. She had Mathew Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor from a major firm, and she had a movement with millions of followers online and a crowd outside the courthouse on hearing days. Michael Oher had a probate petition that made national news within hours. Those are not the conditions under which most guardianship cases are litigated.
The ordinary version involves a person who did not know they could ask for their own attorney, a family member with control of the checkbook, and a court file nobody outside the room will ever read. Whether that person gets a hearing worth having often comes down to whether a legal aid office had somebody available, and whether that somebody had been taught how to read a stack of financial records and notice what was missing.
That is the job. It looks almost nothing like the shows, and the offer letter will not tell you much about it. The terms underneath it will tell you everything.
Entertainment
2026 Emmy Winner Predictions: ‘Widow’s Bay’ and ‘Pluribus’ Loom Large
The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will take place on Monday, September 14, 2026. It will air live at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT on NBC and stream on Peacock. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay will be hosting the ceremony this year.
During the Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies held over the weekend of September 5-6, “Widow’s Bay” took home eight awards, making it the biggest winner across the early ceremonies. Betty Gilpin won for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. The show also won awards for casting, cinematography, music supervision, dramatic score, sound editing, sound mixing, and production design. “Pluribus” also picked up four awards: Original Main Title Theme Music, Picture Editing for a Drama Series, Production Design, and Sound Mixing.
Both shows are competing for the top honors this year, including Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Matthew Rhys and Supporting Actress for Kate O’Flynn and Dale Dickey. “Pluribus,” meanwhile, has been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, as well as Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Rhea Seehorn.
Outstanding Drama Series

- The Diplomat
- The Gilded Age
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
- Paradise
- The Pitt
- Pluribus
- Slow Horses
- Your Friends & Neighbors
It’s going to be a close call between “The Pitt” and “Pluribus,” but the Emmys have been friendly to newcomers over the past several years. One could argue that the second season of “The Pitt” wasn’t as strong as the first, but “Pluribus” is fresh, original, and might just be able to steal the win here.
Outstanding Comedy Series
- Abbott Elementary
- The Bear
- Hacks
- Margo’s Got Money Troubles
- Nobody Wants This
- Only Murders in the Building
- Shrinking
- Widow’s Bay
Let’s face it. “The Bear” hasn’t been great since season two. It’s been good, but not great. “Hacks” could pull off a win here, but “Widow’s Bay” has already pulled off a strong performance last week and is likely to do it again. The show manages to pull off a blend of horror and comedy that’s unlike anything else on TV right now.
A win here would be even more impressive, considering not all episodes were nominated or eligible. The final three episodes of the show’s first season were released after the May 31 Emmy eligibility deadline. Win or lose, it’s doubtful that they’ll make that mistake again for season two.
Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

- All Her Fault
- The Beast in Me
- Beef
- DTF St. Louis
- Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette
Although “DTF St. Louis” could score a win here, it’s probably going to go to “Beef.” The Netflix anthology was an Emmy darling for the show’s first season, and an all-new cast featuring “Star Wars” alum Oscar Isaac is hoping to pull off a repeat performance at the award show.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

- Carrie Coon, The Gilded Age
- Chase Infiniti, The Testaments
- Keri Russell, The Diplomat
- Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus
- Zendaya, Euphoria
Although Zendaya could score a win for her final season of “Euphoria,” the win is probably going to go to Rhea Seehorn, who was a one-woman show throughout the first season of “Pluribus.” The show’s premise could have collapsed under the weight of a lesser actress, but the fact that she singlehandedly carries the show should earn her the Emmy win without question.
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

- Sterling K. Brown, Paradise
- Gary Oldman, Slow Horses
- Mark Ruffalo, Task
- Rufus Sewell, The Diplomat
- Noah Wyle, The Pitt
Is this one really a question? Although Sterling K. Brown could pick up a win for “Paradise,” Noah Wyle is going to pick up a second Emmy for his role as Dr. Robby in “The Pitt.”
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

- Taylor Dearden, The Pitt
- Fiona Dourif, The Pitt
- Allison Janney, The Diplomat
- Katherine LaNasa, The Pitt
- Sepideh Moafi, The Pitt
- Julianne Nicholson, Paradise
- Karolina Wydra, Pluribus
It’s likely that Katherine LaNasa is going to pick up a second Emmy for her role in “The Pitt.” It’s possible that Allison Janney could steal it away with her role in “The Diplomat,” but with three other ladies from “The Pitt” to contend with, it’s a crowded race.
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
- Patrick Ball, The Pitt
- Billy Crudup, The Morning Show
- Shawn Hatosy, The Pitt
- Gerran Howell, The Pitt
- Jack Lowden, Slow Horses
- Tom Pelphrey, Task
- Carlos-Manuel Vesga, Pluribus
Can we say that one of the guys from “The Pitt” is going to get it? Patrick Ball might get it just due to that ICE-focused episode of “The Pitt,” but the win could just as easily go to Shawn Hatosy or Gerran Howell. And, although “Pluribus” is likely to pick up the win for Best Series, Carlos-Manuel Vesga just wasn’t in the show’s first season enough to make him a serious contender.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

- Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
- Ayo Edebiri, The Bear
- Elle Fanning, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
- Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback
- Jean Smart, Hacks
The win is going to Jean Smart, without question. It’s possible that Elle Fanning might be able to steal it away for her role in the breakout hit “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” but it’s tough to say. This one’s a coin flip.
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

- Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Wonder Man
- Steve Carell, Rooster
- Matthew Rhys, Widow’s Bay
- Jason Segel, Shrinking
- Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building
Everyone loves Martin Short, but Matthew Rhys is almost a shoo-in to win for his role in “Widow’s Bay.” His role as Mayor Tom Loftis might have struggled in early episodes, but his acting is undeniable in “Seasickness,” the show’s seventh episode, and only gets stronger from there.
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

- Dale Dickey, Widow’s Bay
- Hannah Einbinder, Hacks
- Janelle James, Abbott Elementary
- Kate O’Flynn, Widow’s Bay
- Michelle Pfeiffer, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
- Megan Stalter, Hacks
- Jessica Williams, Shrinking
Although Hannah Einbinder might pick up another Emmy win for her role in “Hacks,” the win could just as easily go to newcomer Kate O’Flynn, who won fans over in “Widow’s Bay.” The show’s fourth episode, “Beach Reads,” and eighth episode, “Your Baggage,” are a testament to her stellar acting.
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

- Colman Domingo, The Four Seasons
- Paul W. Downs, Hacks
- Harrison Ford, Shrinking
- Nick Offerman, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
- Stephen Root, Widow’s Bay
- Michael Urie, Shrinking
- Tyler James Williams, Abbott Elementary
No one from “The Bear” was nominated this time around, so it’s likely that it’s going to go to one of the guys from “Shrinking.” The actor has scored two Emmy nominations for his role as Dr. Paul Rhoades, but hasn’t won yet. 2026 is his year!
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

- Riz Ahmed, Bait
- Jason Bateman, Black Rabbit
- Charlie Hunnam, Monster: The Ed Gein Story
- Oscar Isaac, Beef
- Matthew Rhys, The Beast in Me
Could Matthew Rhys win for both “Widow’s Bay” and “The Beast in Me”? It’s doubtful. There are two “Star Wars” alums in this category: Oscar Isaac appeared in all three movies in the sequel trilogy, while Riz Ahmed just appeared in “Rogue One.” While it’s likely that the win is going to go to Oscar Isaac, it’s possible that Charlie Hunnam could steal the Emmy for his role in the third installment of “Monster.” Either way, it’s a win for Netflix!
The 2026 Emmy Winner Predictions: ‘Widow’s Bay’ and ‘Pluribus’ Loom Large first appeared on The Blast
Entertainment
Dead City’ Needed To Shake Up Its Formula
Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3.
Negan was first introduced into The Walking Dead TV universe in the Season 6 finale, “Last Day on Earth.” His arrival marked a pivotal moment in the series, introducing a ruthless man whose brutal leadership style reshaped the survivors’ world and changed the life of Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) forever. In the time since then, Negan has become a more complex character in Dead City, grappling with his past actions and seeking redemption for his past actions, which includes brutally murdering Maggie’s husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun). They’ve both had to make morally questionable decisions to protect their loved ones, and while Maggie will never be able to forgive what Negan did, they make each other better people.
In this exclusive Collider Signature in-depth conversation, Morgan digs into the journey he’s taken with Negan and how it’s all led to who the character is now, more than 10 years after his first appearance. During the interview, he discusses why now was the right time to shake things up with the franchise and with Negan and Maggie’s dynamic, how different it was for Negan to find a friend in Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) before it all went horribly awry, shooting Maggie and Negan’s version Before Sunrise with Episode 6, how they’re each other’s chosen family at this point, and what their new partnership could look like in a possible Season 4. He also shares why he loved the experience of making Sterling Point, which will be returning to Prime Video for Season 2, and that family is always the priority for him when it comes to finding that next acting project.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan Says It Was Time To Change Things Up With ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 3
“It was important to find a way to shift things and be able to move this show forward.”
COLLIDER: You definitely changed things up a lot with Dead City this season.
JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: Thank fucking God! That was the whole idea for this year. I felt like we needed a change, and I think we found a way to do that. Really, it was bringing in (showrunner) Seth [Hoffman] and having a fresh set of eyes and finding a way for this relationship, which has been fraught with issues for over 10 years, or 17 years in show years, to be able to move forward in that space of me having killed Glenn and these horrible things that have happened. That was a tricky maneuver, and we found a way to do it. For me, it was a joy. I really had a fun year shooting this season, between scenes with Lauren [Cohan] that we’d never done before and the Jimmi Simpson of it all, I just had so much fun. Every day, I had a blast and couldn’t have had more fun.
But it’s hard. When you’ve been a show that has been as successful as this franchise has been and has multiple spinoffs, and you have two characters that inherently hate each other, and one especially hates the other, you can only play that for so long before you lose people. You might even lose an actor or two. And so, it was important to find a way to shift things and be able to move this show forward, and yet be in the same space that we’ve always been with this past that they have and not ignoring that. It’s a tightrope walk in, and I think we were able to pull it off.
It feels like Negan is in a different mental place this season. He seems to be reflecting in ways that are affecting him more than usual. Is that something that was intentional? Was that something you wanted to explore this season?
MORGAN: Seth and I had a lot of conversations about where Negan would be. After the death of Ginny, Negan is a mess. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back in Negan’s case. When we find him at the beginning of this year, he’s probably more down than he’s ever been. He certainly doesn’t feel good about himself or in this world that he’s living in. The perfect spot for him, which he happens to find, is Dillard’s bar. He not only finds a person that he can tolerate, but that he kind of likes, and he can disappear for a while. And if anybody needs to disappear right now and be reflective and decide what is next, I think it’s Negan. And so, we do find him a bit of a mess at the start of this season, and it takes him a while to crawl out of it. It takes Maggie to get him to snap out of it.
We’ve seen her come to him before, with some stuff she needs help with, and Negan will do it, but that has never worked out well for him. He’s been stabbed twice by her. In trying to make amends for some stuff, he has the guilt that still haunts him. These two people have been together longer than any of the people on the show, except for Carol with Daryl. I don’t think either of them trust each other, but they can predict what the other person is going to do. They’re each other’s dysfunctional family in a way, as well as Hershel, and they are very dysfunctional.
This year, there was a concerted effort to move this relationship dial, one way or another. At the beginning, it could have gone either way. Either Negan was going to disappear or die, or what happens would happen. Negan sees the bigger picture way before Maggie does. The people that we met along the way this year weren’t the ones that should be leading. Negan didn’t trust them from the jump, and he thought that Maggie should be leading this community. Negan has an incredible amount of faith in Maggie. I think Maggie will never fully trust Negan, but she has to lean on him. He’s the one person where she knows what he’s going to do. She knows that he’s going to be by her side. For the right reasons or wrong reasons, she knows that she can play on the guilt of that forever, but she does more than that this year. She opens up to Negan, which I find fascinating.
What’s made the season what it was this year is that we see a different side of Maggie. Maggie has been playing the mad or sad widow for 10 years, and we see a different side this season. There was a line that I improvised in a scene this year, and she smiled. I remember seeing her do it and I remember thinking, “That’s a fucking choice.” I said, “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smile.” I think that was in Episode 1 or 2. That changed the trajectory again, without us even knowing it. Seth leaned into that as well, and it gave us more places to go. It was a completely different season and yet we’re still built on that foundation that we can’t stray far from.
Morgan Believes That Negan Played a Role in Transforming Dillard Into ’The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Season 3 Villain
“Negan comes in and becore you know it, Dillard’s got Lucille in his hand and he’s playing piñata with some heads.”
Negan feels like somebody who is typically a pretty good judge of people’s character and is someone who can pretty easily predict where people are going to end up. What do you think he missed in Dillard?
MORGAN: I don’t know if he missed anything. It’s funny, maybe he did it, but he also pushed Dillard. Dillard was fine. Dillard was cool. He was living his own little life. He had his little ecosystem of happiness and food and all his shit above and below the bar there. And then, Negan comes in and before you know it, Dillard’s got Lucille in his hand and he’s playing piñata with some heads. In a lot of ways, Negan pushed Dillard. The only thing with Dillard is that, from the jump, we find out there’s something a little off with him, obviously. He has relationships with walkers and can communicate with them, or thinks he can, all of which I think amused Negan in a certain sense and frustrated him in another. More than anything, I think Negan just finally finds somebody that he’s comfortable around and can have this banter with and is the closest thing to a friend we’ve ever seen Negan have. The dark turn that Dillard takes, in the middle of the season, I was like, “We can’t lose Jimmi. If we do another year or two, I want him to be a part of the show. He’s so fucking great.”
But I knew the last image of this season was him being a walker with his people and communicating with these walkers. I could never get that out of my head because I thought it was such a perfect ending for this perfect/imperfect character. I was like, “Hey, what if we shot two endings? What if we shot an ending where you turn into the big bad at the end of the year, and you die and you’re with your people? But then, what if you don’t die and you stay with us for as long as possible?” He’s such a phenomenal actor and an even better human being. The fact of the matter is that he’s just a busy guy. He’s got other shows to do. This slot ended up working perfectly for him last year. He has six months off to do this season, but beyond that, we couldn’t count on anything, so that’s the way we went. I watched a couple of different cuts of the finale, and I just love that ending. I love Dillard in his happy place, or what I like to think is probably his happy place, and that’s where he wanted to be.
Things really start to spiral in Episode 5, when Negan makes the decision to kill Fabian. There’s something so interesting about the conversation that they have because Negan is testing him out before realizing that he has to kill him if he’s going to protect Maggie. What was that conversation like to shoot? Did you talk about how that would evolve? Were there different versions of that conversation?
MORGAN: My buddy Sylvain White directed that episode, who directed a film I did called The Losers, and he also directed the last episode of The Boys that I did – not the series finale episode, but the episode before the series finale. It was then that I said, “Hey, would you come and direct Dead City?,” and he did two episodes. That was a big scene. The dialogue was a little fucked up. The kid who played Fabian (Michael Emery) was a really sweet kid. I had a couple scenes with him, and I remember he was just nervous. He had a nervous energy, which worked for the character really well. Not only do I have this guy who I think is going to kill Maggie that I’m going to have to deal with right now, but Negan is fucking with him until he says, “I’m going to have to kill the bitch,” meaning Maggie. Immediately, he was dead.
For Negan, that’s all that he needed to hear. The topper of it is that Renata comes in. Negan has never trusted this woman and doesn’t believe that she should be the leader of this community or anyone else. Like you said, Negan has a pretty good feel for people. He has always read people, or thinks he has read them. More often than not, he’s been right and not wrong about people. He’s also putting on a show for her. It’s Negan the showman coming out. If Renata hadn’t walked in, there’s no doubt that Fabian would still be dead, but it probably wouldn’t have been quite as dramatic and large as it was.
Negan still has that flare. The piñata thing was a moment where we got to see that Season 1 Negan – my first season as Negan – is still part of who this man is. I think that’s very important, and I will always fight for that. I don’t ever want to become castrated and lose that aspect of who he is, no matter how much he evolves and how many different layers we show and how much he wants to protect Maggie and Hershel. Whether it’s out of guilt or some obligation or just this dysfunctional family aspect, he’s still got to be Negan. I think that’s incredibly important. That was a big part of that scene. I thought that was a time for Negan to go above and beyond where he normally would in this season and take it to a level, and he does. A lot of that is a show for Renata because he’s like, “Fuck you! You’re not going to tell me what to do and how to do it. And fuck this guy because he threatened my family.” In Negan’s head, Maggie is his family.
A Negan and Maggie Meet-Cute Was Certainly Unexpected in ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 3
“By the way, I never heard the team meet-cute until we shot that episode … I kept calling it out Hallmark Christmas movie.”
When you first learned about and read Episode 6, with how everything would play out for Maggie and Negan in a very different version of this world, could you ever have imagined you’d be filming an episode of The Walking Dead where Maggie and Negan would have their own meet-cute?
MORGAN: No, I didn’t. By the way, I never heard the term meet-cute until we shot that episode. That’s the first time I’d ever heard that term. I kept calling it our Hallmark Christmas movie. But no, not in a million years. I remember when Seth pitched it, it was such a head scratcher. I was like, “What?!” I get that we’ve been on the air for a while and we wanted to do some new shit this year, but I was like, “This is a fucking reach.” But then, the more we talked about it and how it would tie into what was happening within our story and ultimately how it ends, there’s Maggie and Negan, and they’re exactly who they’re supposed to be.
They don’t learn anything in that episode. Negan is going to kill a guy, and Maggie’s going back to the farm. Nothing changed. All of these ideas that they talk about in the course of the episode, none of it comes to fruition. They’re still Maggie and Negan. She’s got to go back to the farm and struggle, and Negan is going to go kill her guy and spend the rest of his life in prison. Nothing is learned. And yet, I think so much was learned in that episode. Getting to shoot in this world with no apocalypse and just two strangers meeting, it was our Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. It’s our version of what would happen if these people met in New York City and had 20 hours together, and what kind of conversations they would have.
It was just really refreshing. I don’t know how else to put it. While we were shooting it, I was like, “This is the craziest fucking thing.” There’s a lot of speculation about whether Maggie and Negan would ever hook up and people have freaked out about that, but that’s not going to ever happen. I love that that’s where people’s minds go. But what we found out in that episode is that it doesn’t matter the circumstances, it doesn’t matter if there are zombies or not, because you’ve got two people that are going to be who they are.
I like that we had those conversations, and that they listen to each other and became each other’s confidants in a way that we’ve never seen on this show before. I thought that was super fascinating and so fun to play. It was like being on a different show and yet not. I was like, “I feel like I know this character, this Negan Smith guy, but I look in the mirror, and I feel like I don’t recognize him at all.” It was about finding that weird balance. I watched the episode and very much enjoyed it. We were like, “We could do this show for another 10 years, and every year do an alternate universe episode, and it would make sense and work, and every ending could be different.” That part of it was fun.
I loved the conversation between Maggie and Negan in Episode 7, when she was making the drink for him at the bar. There were a lot of interesting moments with them working through their feelings this season, and that was one of the most interesting.
MORGAN: Yeah. The scene where she was making the drink was a 17-page scene. It was cut with other shit going on in the show, so it would be two pages of us talking, and then two pages of somebody doing something else before it would cut back to the bar, but we shot it all as one scene. It was like doing a play. We were done in half a day because we both knew it so well. The hardest part was continuity with the drink pouring. That was interesting because you didn’t know if she was going to poison him. A lot of stuff was going on, but a lot was said in the course of that scene. More than anything, I can’t tell you how much fun we both had this season, just getting to take these characters to different places with each other.
Negan and Maggie Are Each Other’s Chosen Family Now, for Better or Worse
“She knows that he’s not going to say no to her, out of obligation, guilt, and a lot of reasons.”
There’s a moment in the finale that feels like it’s been a long time coming, when Maggie says to Negan, “You’ve got me. We’re forever connected. We’re outright chained to one another.” She can’t forgive him, but they’ve moved past what has happened. What did that moment feel like to you?
MORGAN: At this point, that’s probably true. Negan is either going to go off and be on his own or be with Maggie, and not in that way, but by her side, backing her play. I don’t see another out for Negan, at this point. It’s either disappearing on his own, or he’s going to help Maggie achieve whatever she thinks she can achieve. After that conversation, we know what he’s going to do. He’s going to stick by her. He does believe with all his heart that she is the leader that this world needs. He says that at the beginning of the season, and he doesn’t change his mind throughout it. He is behind that 100%.
I don’t think he ever saw himself as being her lawman, her enforcer, her sheriff, or whatever she asks him to be. I don’t think that was ever in the cards for him, but I also don’t think that he’s in a position where he is going to say no to her. And she knows that he’s not going to say no to her, out of obligation, guilt, and a lot of reasons. That opens the door to some stuff that we’ve never done before, so we’ll see. I love the words that she spoke. I think that encapsulated the season without saying the words, but for her to say them was important, for a lot of different reasons. It was as important for her to hear those words come out of her mouth as it was for Negan to hear them. When she says those words, he’s not going to leave. Here they are. They’re each other’s chosen family at this point.
What do you think that new partnership will be like? Do you think they’ll discuss things together? Do you think she’ll give him orders? How do you see that new dynamic working out?
MORGAN: That’s interesting. I think a little bit of all of the above. I don’t think he’s going to take orders real well. I can already hear him fighting back against her telling him what to do, but I think he trusts her to do the right thing. If she is making the right choices for this new world, whatever they may be, I think he will keep his mouth relatively shut. He’ll always have something to say, but I think they’re at a place in their relationship where they are very honest with each other. They don’t have to like each other, but they’re very honest with each other at this point. I find that to be very interesting. I don’t think they’re going to hold back anything going forward. I don’t know that it will ever work out the way that Maggie foresees it because Negan has his issues and, at any given moment, he can disappear.
But at the same time, it depends on what kind of promises he makes to her. He has always been a man of his word. That has always meant something to him, more than it means for a lot of people. If he says, “Look, I’m going to help you do this, and then I’m going to ride off into the sunset,” or “I’m here with you for the long haul,” then I think he’ll eat it, to a certain extent, and she can boss him around. But I think she’s going to have to be careful who she bosses him around in front of. He’s not going to let her make a fool out of him, ever. He would fight back in that sense because he’s too lippy not too. It’s an interesting dynamic that he sees her as this leader and has been pushing her there all year because that puts her in a position over him. Let’s see how that works out.
Morgan Loved Getting To Sink His Teeth Into His ‘Sterling Point’ Character and Just Be a Regular Dad
“It was a really special show to be a part of.”
You have this season of Dead City out around the same time as Sterling Point, and those two shows couldn’t be more different. One of my favorite things about Sterling Point is the relationship between Joe and Ellis. How did it feel to be able to explore a relationship with a young actor that you didn’t have to kill because of a walker or save from a walker?
MORGAN: I loved it. I got to be a dad, flaws and all, and I am a dad. I have a 16-year-old son who actually is in Sterling Point. I got to do a scene with my own son. It was such a joy going to work and just being a dad and not covered in blood or hitting something. I do hit someone in the face. I’ve known Megan Park, the creator who also directed the show and wrote it, for a long time, and we’ve wanted to work together forever. She sent me the script, and Joe comes in and he’s tattooed and in parentheses it says “Jeffrey Dean Morgan,” and I was like, “Well, I have to do it now.” I couldn’t get past page four before I was like, “Well, I’m in.” I had so much fun doing it.
I’ve been Negan for a while. I got to be Joe Kessler on The Boys, and I’ve done other stuff in the last 10 years, but I feel like I got to sink my teeth into Joe. Being a dad of a teenage kid, I’m familiar with. I was calling him “dude,” just like I call my son “dude.” It just fell into a natural, easy rhythm. And I loved the writing and how they shot the show. Every kid in that is so talented. Any scene I had with any of the kids, I had my mind blown by how good they were. It was a really special show to be a part of. I spent last summer, a year ago right now, in Muskoka with my whole entire family with me. I had a little house on the lake, and I had a little dock and a boat. I would take my kids tubing all day, and then I’d go work at night. I had the time of my life. It was a joy. The only problem is that both shows came out in the same week. Two years of work are over like that. But I got an opportunity to do something different. You can see a little bit of range, finally. So, there you go.
Do you know what you’re going to be doing next?
MORGAN: I don’t know what’s next. I would like to close the chapter on The Walking Dead in the right way. Lauren [Conrad] and I would like to close this chapter in the right way. There will be another [season] of Sterling Point. I get so many scripts, but a lot of them aren’t good. I got offered a show, and I can’t tell you what it was because I didn’t end up doing it – someone else did, but I really wanted to do it – but it went from 10 episodes to 23, and I can’t be away from my family for a year. I just can’t. And that show could have gone for 10 years, easy. So, there’s stuff. We’ll find something. For me, it’s always juggling being a dad. That’s what’s important to me. Being a dad is number one, and then you hopefully can work in some good jobs in between.
The Walking Dead: Dead City airs on AMC. Sterling Point is available to stream on Prime Video.
- Release Date
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June 15, 2023
- Network
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AMC
- Showrunner
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Eli Jorne, Seth Hoffman
- Directors
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Kevin Dowling, Loren Yaconelli
- Writers
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Brenna Kouf
Entertainment
Netflix’s New WWII Thriller Officially Sets 2026 Release Date
Netflix has an impressive roster of films being submitted for an Academy Award this year. The streamer, known for releasing movies on its platform, is giving some films a theatrical release to make them eligible for an Oscar. Netflix has gone around the world in its search for heavyweights that can compete with traditional studios or other streaming services. Additionally, the streaming service will now begin reporting box office performances for movies released in theaters. One of them is a war thriller that has secured a limited release beginning next month.
Set in the 1940s, the film follows four characters who enlist in Japan’s war with America. In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, four famous American college football stars abandon their shining status in the sport and enlist in the Marines. “As they prepare for the brutal invasion of Okinawa, they’ll play in a legendary game featuring some of the greatest players in history — a game that, for many, will be the last they ever play,” the film’s description says.
That film is The Mosquito Bowl, Peter Berg‘s war epic coming to theaters on October 30 before streaming on Netflix on November 25. Berg co-wrote the film’s script with Mark L. Smith and enlisted some talented young actors in the lead roles. IT icon Bill Skarsgård continues to impress in all his roles, and in this one he plays one of the stars-turned-soldiers, Bob Bauman. He-Man star Nicholas Galitzine is also building his career in high-budget epics, and he plays John McLaughry. The quartet is completed by Tom Francis (You) as Dave Schreiner and Ray Nicholson (The Beauty) as Tony Butkovich.
‘The Mosquito Bowl’ Is a Stunning Portrait of War
Netflix has already released the film’s trailer, and it has serious All Quiet on the Western Front vibes. Unlike the German boys, these people have a bit of experience in confrontation. In many ways, a football game is like war. Someone always loses, and there is a price to pay. But nothing can prepare anyone for the realities of war. Bob, John, Dave, and Tony experience the devastating realities of combat, where there are no rules, injuries are fatal, and it ends when it ends. The trailer teases a unique take on war through sport with stunning visuals and emotional resonance.
The Mosquito Bowl hits theaters on October 30, then streams on Netflix on November 25. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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October 30, 2026
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Brent Comer
George Murphy
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Claudia Ware
Frances Langford
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Entertainment
This $50 Amazon Maxi Dress Is a Wedding Guest Dream
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Few dress codes can send you spiraling through your closet quite like “wedding guest attire.” Fortunately, the Merokeety Satin Strapless Maxi Dress makes the decision so much easier, and Amazon shoppers tend to agree. It delivers all of the elegance of a special occasion dress, but unlike most formal outfits, it’s washable, so you won’t have to add a trip to the dry cleaner to your post-wedding to-do list.
The sleek, satin-like style is dressy enough for weddings and other formal events without requiring much effort on your part. Add heels, earrings and a clutch, and your entire wedding guest outfit is practically finished, leaving you with one less thing to worry about before the big day.
Get the Merokeety Satin Strapless Maxi Dress for $50 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
The strapless neckline gives the dress an elegant, minimalist look, while the floor-skimming silhouette brings the drama you want for a formal event. A softly draped design keeps it looking sophisticated rather than overly fussy, so accessories can completely change the vibe, depending on the dress code. It comes in so many colors that it might be hard to choose just one, but at the impressive price point, splurging on multiple colors won’t break the bank.
There’s no reason to retire it after one wear. Style it with metallic heels and statement jewelry for a formal wedding, pare things back with simple sandals for a destination celebration or pull it out again for an anniversary dinner or holiday party. The washable design makes repeat wear especially practical.
Shoppers confirm that it’s a compliment magnet. “I bought a white one for my bridal shower and a pink one for a wedding,” wrote one five-star reviewer. “I got so many compliments on them!”
Another Amazon shopper put it to the test at a summer wedding in Florida. “I love this dress!” they raved, adding that the “light fabric” was particularly appreciated in the middle of summer.
If another wedding invitation just landed in your mailbox, there’s no need to panic about what you’re going to wear. This satin-looking maxi dress delivers an elegant, ready-for-the-dress-code outfit in one easy piece, and being able to wash it afterward is just the icing on the wedding cake.
Get the Merokeety Satin Strapless Maxi Dress for $50 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
Looking for something else? Explore more satin maxi dresses here and don’t forget to check out all of Amazon’s Daily Deals for more great finds!
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