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

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

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

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

Image via HBO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image via HBO

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

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

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

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

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Release Date

January 18, 2026

Network

HBO

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Showrunner

Ira Parker

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Directors

Owen Harris

Writers

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George R. R. Martin, Ira Parker

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• 

  Peter Claffey

  Ser Duncan ‘Dunk’ the Tall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Related: Whoopi Goldberg Claims There Are ‘Space Aliens‘ Are ‘Already‘ on Earth

Whoopi Goldberg went a little extra on the Wednesday, March 27, episode of The View — as in, extraterrestrial. During a discussion with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire star Kumail Nanjiani, The View cohost Sunny Hostin asked the actor, 46, whether he believes in ghosts after filming the movie. While Nanjiani said, “I don’t believe in ghosts, […]

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

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

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

Guess Who
This Big-Time Showrunner Is!

Published
February 15, 2026
4:00 PM PST

By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Dark Winds Season 4 premiere.

Well, it’s official. Dark Winds has been renewed for a fifth season ahead of the fourth season premiere, which is great news for those of us thrilled with the AMC neo-Western. With Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) set for a plethora of new changes heading into Season 4, Collider had the pleasure of speaking with executive producer and showrunner John Wirth about the show’s future — namely, why now was the time to head to Los Angeles, what Franka Potente‘s new villain brings to the show, and what audiences can expect in the coming weeks.

COLLIDER: After the team has been split apart over the last two seasons now — Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito [are] all back and finally reunited in Season 4 — how has their dynamic changed in the last few years, and why is now the right time to move them from the Navajo Nation to Los Angeles, at least temporarily?

JOHN WIRTH: That’s a good question. I don’t know if this was foreknowledge or after-knowledge, but given the circumstances of the way we started this season with Leaphorn’s ruminations on retirement and then his thinking about succession… and who of those two [Chee and Manuelito] — because they do have the same rank in the police station, they do the same job. They have different backgrounds, law enforcement backgrounds, but I think Leaphorn thinks of them as being his lieutenants, “junior” lieutenants. So, his ruminations lead him to make a decision on who is going to succeed him, of those two, which is a great set-up for drama in a show like this. You’ve got multiple relationships there — Bern and Chee, Bern and Leaphorn, Leaphorn and Chee, Chee and Bern — so it’s just a really good, juicy way to get into the inner workings of their relationship.

Taking them out of their environment, especially taking them to a place like Los Angeles, these people are… They’re not hicks. They have lived in cities. Chee went to Berkley, he went to California, he lived in Los Angeles, as we find out this season. But they’re Navajo people. And one thing I know about Navajo people, having learned it by working with a lot of Navajo people over the last five years, is [that] they are connected to the land in a way that I am not. I wear shoes all the time, I’m inside all the time. It’s very unusual for me to spend a night outside or even six hours outside, unless I’m on location filming this TV show.

But the Navajo people are extremely connected, on an electrical way or something, to the world around them — the sky, the water, the air. It’s really amazing. I’m making too big a deal out of it, of course, but it’s amazing to be with them and talk with them about it. So, I think taking these three characters that are Navajo, that have that connection to their world, and yank them out of that world and put them in another world (which they are not comfortable in), add an element of danger, add an element of mistrust between the three of them because of what’s happening (both in the succession story and in the ghost-sickness story), just made for good drama. It’s just a really good situation for us to explore.

I had wanted to get off the reservation — first of all, in the novel, The Ghostway, they go to California, so it was kind of a no-brainer. That’s where the idea came from initially. I thought, “Let’s take this show to a place where the audience is maybe not expecting it to go and see what happens, and then return our people back to the place where the audience wants to see them, probably.” At the end of the season, I was like, “I’m so glad to be back.” It’s just easier in some ways. You can die of exposure, but at least you’d be with your landscape.

John Wirth Teases ‘Dark Winds’ Season 4’s Biggest Threat

Image via AMC

The big threat this season is Franka Potente’s Irene Vaggan. What can you tell audiences about her? When we spoke on set, you compared her to Nicholas Logan’s Colton Wolf, but what sets her apart as a Dark Winds antagonist?

WIRTH: She’s a sociopath. And a psychopath. I mean, she’s demented. I used to have fun with Franka; when I would see her, I would say, “Dr. Demento!” Because she plays that demented thing so successfully. She would tell you — and if you’ve spoken to her, I’m sure she has — that she likes playing the bad guys because they’re interesting. They’re weird and broken and dysfunctional. She loves playing those characters, and she really got her teeth into this character.

In the book, Vaggan was a man, and he was just too close to Colton Wolf. And I thought Nick [Logan] was spectacular as that character, and I just didn’t want to bring in another big, hulking white dude to be the bad guy. We decided to make Vaggan a woman, and then there were lots of discussions of what kind of woman she would be, what kind of woman in 1972 would have that job. Was that even remotely realistic, even in the film and television business? And it was a little bit out on the edge, but giving her this background of having been raised in Germany during World War II, and her father was a Nazi, and her grandfather was a Nazi who is now living with her. And I just loved Udo’s — R.I.P. [Udo Kier, who passed back in November] — performance as that character, and how she resolved her issues with him.

Related

‘Dark Winds’ Season 4 Is the Most Intense Yet, Plus Everything We Learned on the Neo-Western Thriller’s Set

A new location, a new villain, and old favorites make ‘Dark Winds’ Season 4 the most ambitious one yet.

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Once we had that backstory in place — and we wrote a pretty specific, lengthy backstory for her — it really made sense that she would land in the Southwest. And, in the course of her work for this very urban gang leader — Dominic McNair, played by Titus Welliver, which was also incredibly thrilling to have him on the show — she goes to the reservation, and this is the place of her dreams. She had been fixated with Native Americans and the whole life of the Southwest and warriors. She had read all these books written by Karl May — who is a real novelist, still quite successful in Germany — [who] had written all of these books, fantasy books, about the Southwest and Native Americans in the Southwest that Europeans were reading at the time. It got her through the tough days of the war, and then her family emigrated to South America, and then they ended up in California, and suddenly, she finds herself on the reservation working and lays eyes on Joe Leaphorn — and there is the man of her dreams. The fantasy come to life. There he is in the flesh. From that moment on in the story, her obsession starts to build, and it plays out in a really kooky way, I thought.

‘Dark Winds’ Showrunner Reveals the Process Behind Choosing Which Book To Adapt Each Season

I actually have my copy of The Ghostway right here, and I was curious: What goes into choosing which Hillerman novel you adapt each year? How do you decide which parts you lean into and which you take out?

WIRTH: Well, that’s a really good question. The novels are challenging to adapt. You know, there’s a whole story of Hillerman writing the Joe Leaphorn book, the original novel [The Blessing Way], which he sold to Universal, and then he wrote the screenplay for a movie, and the movie did not get made. Then he went back to Albuquerque, or wherever he lived, I’m not quite sure, and wrote another Joe Leaphorn book and found out that he had lost the rights to the character because the movie studio owned it. So then he created Jim Chee. And then at some point, with the success of his novels, he got the rights to Joe Leaphorn back. So then, some of these books in the early books are Jim Chee novels, and then Leaphorn comes back in, and they become the Leaphorn & Chee novels.

In The Ghostway, Leaphorn is not really in that story. I had wanted to do the LA part of it, that’s what attracted me to it, and so we just decided to do that story. It felt right in terms of my sort of circadian rhythm of what the show should be. In Season 2, Leaphorn wasn’t in that novel [People of Darkness] either. The world of the novels and the world of the TV show are connected, but they’re not mirror images of each other. We do a lot of invention to make the novels fit into our stories. In Season 3, we used two novels [Dance Hall of the Dead and The Sinister Pig] and kind of mashed them up because there were elements of The Sinister Pig that I liked a lot, and we had Bernadette leaving. It’s just kind of a feel thing.

For Season 5, I had thought that we would do one novel, and then I got into some discussions about it with Zahn McClarnon, and he wasn’t quite sold on the novel that I wanted to do. So, he recommended a couple of others. And so, I started to take a second look at the novels that he recommended, and then we ended up negotiating our way to the novel that we ended up using. He’s influential in that as well, because he has to be the guy on screen, so he wants to be sure that we’re making the right decision. And we’re never sure because it’s all a crapshoot. You just hope to get in an interview like this with a guy like you who says, “I loved the season!” You’re like, “Oh, thank God.”