Blog

This article contains details from Marvel comics that may be spoilers for Thunderbolts*. There have already been a lot of questions surrounding Marvel’s latest team movie Thunderbolts*. Are these guys the new Avengers? What’s with the asterisks? Who is Bob? The latest trailer for Thunderbolts* resolves one of the big questions, even if the answer […]

The post Thunderbolts Trailer Confirms a New Marvel Villain Hiding in Plain Sight appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

Four full minutes. That’s how much time Star Trek: The Motion Picture devotes to a sequence in which Scotty and Kirk take a shuttle to the new USS Enterprise. The Motion Picture gets a lot of guff for its slow pace and its indulgences, and rightfully so. But we forgive the flyby sequence because it’s […]

The post Star Trek: Ranking Every Version of the Enterprise appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

“Everything you were, everything you’ve done, comes down to this,” intones the mysterious voiceover in the latest Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer. To underscore the finality of this eighth and last entry of the franchise, the promo features shots from previous films, namely Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt plummeting to the floor during the […]

The post Mission: Impossible Final Reckoning Trailer Has a Mysterious Callback to the First Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

Get ready, bub. Captain America: Brave New World might not really be about Sam Wilson dealing with a secret plot to turn the President into a Hulk. At the center of a battle with Captain America and the U.S. government on one side and the mercenary group the Serpent Society (led by Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder) […]

The post Captain America 4 Keeps Hinting at a Major Wolverine Connection appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s been three long years since the season 2 finale of Euphoria. Between the WGA and SAG-AFTRA work stoppages of 2023 and creative disagreements on the direction of the series, there have been doubts that we would even get a third season. There’s also the fact that several of the show’s stars like Zendaya, Jacob […]

The post Euphoria Season 3 First Look Brings Good News for Fans of the Show appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of […]

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”

Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.

Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”

“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”

The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.

Shogun

Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.

“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”

St. Denis Medical

Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.

“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.

Stranger Things

The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.

Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.

The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.” 

Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances

As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.

“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”

Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.

“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”

Cobra Kai

After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.

“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”

The Recruit

2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.

“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.’”

Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”

SCAD Presents: Lodged

One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.

“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.

“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.

“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”

The post Stranger Things, Shogun, Cobra Kai, Agatha, and More: What We Learned at SCAD TVfest 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

In the ‘90s, there was a stark line between console and PC gaming. Many games that first released on PC never received console ports (and vice versa), and most PC titles were built exclusively for a mouse and keyboard. These early PC games were also notoriously finnicky to install, and there was much less information […]

The post The Best PC Games of the ’90s, Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.

ITV crime drama Unforgotten returns with a new historical murder for Sunny and new(ish) boss Jess to solve, and a brand new guest cast including MyAnna Buring, Emmett J Scanlan, Victoria Hamilton and Damien Molony.

They join the returning cast of lead Sanjeev Bhaskar as DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan, Sinéad Keenan as DCI Jessica James, both of whose emotional lives took a beating in the previous series. While grieving for his former colleague Cassie, who died suddenly in a car accident at the end of series four, Sunny’s relationship with his fiancée Sal (Michelle Bonnard) also ended. Sal lost a pregnancy and Sunny told her that he didn’t want to have any more children, so she moved out of their home. With his daughters away at university, Sunny now lives alone.

In terrible timing, Jessie started her new job in series five while discovering that her husband had been having an affair with her sister. Her no-nonsense approach made her clash with Sunny and his still-grieving team, but by the end of the series, they’d reached a kind of friendship and realised that they didn’t stand as far apart in terms of professional values as they’d first thought.

Sunny and Jess will be joined by Unforgotten regulars Jordan Long as DS Murray Boulting, Carolina Main as DC Fran Lingley, Hiten Patel as DC Patel, Pippa Nixon as DC Karen Willets, and Georgia Mackenzie as Dr. Leanne Balcombe, along with Andrew Lancel as Jess’ husband Steve, and Kate Robbins as her mother Kate. Find out all about the new guest cast below:

MyAnna Buring as Melinda Ricci

Melinda is a correspondent for Britannia News, Unforgotten‘s right-wing GB News-style organisation, but does she really believe in the hatred she’s spouting on TV? Her personal life has suffered a recent tragedy when fiancé Patrick (Emmett Scanlan) was paralysed in an accident. Melinda is played by MyAnna Buring, a familiar face to many from recent roles on fantasy videogame adaptation The Witcher, BBC crime drama The Responder, and the part of Long Susan in BBC/Prime Video period crime drama Ripper Street, as well as in feature films Kill List, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, and more.

Emmett Scanlan as Patrick

Patrick is Melinda’s fiancé and when we meet him, is in rehab following a serious accident that left his lower body paralysed. He’s played by Emmett J. Scanlan, seen recently in Irish crime drama Kin, as Billy Grade in the final series of BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders, in ITV crime drama The Tower, and previously, Sky thriller Gangs of London, horror-fantasy In the Flesh and cat-and-mouse detective drama The Fall.

Maximilian Fairley as Martin “Marty” Baines

Marty is a young man with autism who lives in Deal on the Kent coast, where he tries to care for his disabled mother Dot (Michele Dotrice). Isolated and pushed out in the town, he spends his free time seeking companionship and belonging in right-wing online communities. Marty is played by recent graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Maximilian Fairley. He is hard of hearing and neurodiverse with high-functioning autism, and this is his first television credit.

Michele Dotrice as Dot Baines

Marty’s mother Dot lives in disarray in a crowded home on the Kent coast. Unable to care for herself, she relies on her son for meals and the pair are clearly not coping well. She’s played by British acting veteran Michele Dotrice, who has a long and distinguished film and television career, and is beloved for the role of Betty Spencer in classic sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, as well as productions of Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Les Miserables and many more.

Elham Ehsas as Asif Syed

Asif is an Afghan who came to the UK to escape a threat to his life in Afghanistan and who is currently living in Barnstaple, Devon and training for his British citizenship test. He’s played by Homeland, Young Wallander, Shantaram and The Agency actor Elham Ehsas.

Ahmad Sakhi as Hassan

Hassan is an Afghan man who undertakes a dangerous, illegal journey to the UK to escape persecution and threat of death. He’s played by Ahmad Sakhi, who’s recently had roles in Coronation Street, Malpractice, and The Outpost, and will soon appear in Anne Rice’s The Talamasca.

Victoria Hamilton as Juliet Cooper

Juliet Cooper is a history lecturer and faculty head at a London university, where a complaint is made against her by a student. She’s a bereaved wife and the mother of troubled teenage daughter Taylor (Pixie Davies). Juliet is played by Victoria Hamilton, a familiar face on screen known for recent roles in Paramount+ crime drama The Crow Girl, Sky political thriller COBRA, Netflix behemoth The Crown, in which she played the Queen Mother, as well as previously in Lark Rise to Candleford and many, many more.

Pixie Davies as Taylor Cooper

Taylor Cooper is a teenager experiencing trouble at school following a family bereavement. She’s the daughter of university lecturer Juliet (Victoria Hamilton) and is played by 18-year-old Pixie Davies, who’s been acting since the age of six and has starred on television in Humans, Utopia, The Secret of Crickley Hall, and on film in Mary Poppins Returns, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children among others.

Also Appearing: Damien Molony

The Brassic, The Split and GameFace actor, who came to prominence as centuries-old vampire Hal in Being Human will also appear in Unforgotten series six in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

Unforgotten series six airs from Sunday February 9 on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.

The post Unforgotten Series 6 Cast: Meet the New Characters Joining Sunny and Jess appeared first on Den of Geek.

ITV crime drama Unforgotten returns with a new historical murder for Sunny and new(ish) boss Jess to solve, and a brand new guest cast including MyAnna Buring, Emmett J Scanlan, Victoria Hamilton and Damien Molony. They join the returning cast of lead Sanjeev Bhaskar as DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan, Sinéad Keenan as DCI Jessica James, […]

The post Unforgotten Series 6 Cast: Meet the New Characters Joining Sunny and Jess appeared first on Den of Geek.

ITV crime drama Unforgotten returns with a new historical murder for Sunny and new(ish) boss Jess to solve, and a brand new guest cast including MyAnna Buring, Emmett J Scanlan, Victoria Hamilton and Damien Molony.

They join the returning cast of lead Sanjeev Bhaskar as DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan, Sinéad Keenan as DCI Jessica James, both of whose emotional lives took a beating in the previous series. While grieving for his former colleague Cassie, who died suddenly in a car accident at the end of series four, Sunny’s relationship with his fiancée Sal (Michelle Bonnard) also ended. Sal lost a pregnancy and Sunny told her that he didn’t want to have any more children, so she moved out of their home. With his daughters away at university, Sunny now lives alone.

In terrible timing, Jessie started her new job in series five while discovering that her husband had been having an affair with her sister. Her no-nonsense approach made her clash with Sunny and his still-grieving team, but by the end of the series, they’d reached a kind of friendship and realised that they didn’t stand as far apart in terms of professional values as they’d first thought.

Sunny and Jess will be joined by Unforgotten regulars Jordan Long as DS Murray Boulting, Carolina Main as DC Fran Lingley, Hiten Patel as DC Patel, Pippa Nixon as DC Karen Willets, and Georgia Mackenzie as Dr. Leanne Balcombe, along with Andrew Lancel as Jess’ husband Steve, and Kate Robbins as her mother Kate. Find out all about the new guest cast below:

MyAnna Buring as Melinda Ricci

Melinda is a correspondent for Britannia News, Unforgotten‘s right-wing GB News-style organisation, but does she really believe in the hatred she’s spouting on TV? Her personal life has suffered a recent tragedy when fiancé Patrick (Emmett Scanlan) was paralysed in an accident. Melinda is played by MyAnna Buring, a familiar face to many from recent roles on fantasy videogame adaptation The Witcher, BBC crime drama The Responder, and the part of Long Susan in BBC/Prime Video period crime drama Ripper Street, as well as in feature films Kill List, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, and more.

Emmett Scanlan as Patrick

Patrick is Melinda’s fiancé and when we meet him, is in rehab following a serious accident that left his lower body paralysed. He’s played by Emmett J. Scanlan, seen recently in Irish crime drama Kin, as Billy Grade in the final series of BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders, in ITV crime drama The Tower, and previously, Sky thriller Gangs of London, horror-fantasy In the Flesh and cat-and-mouse detective drama The Fall.

Maximilian Fairley as Martin “Marty” Baines

Marty is a young man with autism who lives in Deal on the Kent coast, where he tries to care for his disabled mother Dot (Michele Dotrice). Isolated and pushed out in the town, he spends his free time seeking companionship and belonging in right-wing online communities. Marty is played by recent graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Maximilian Fairley. He is hard of hearing and neurodiverse with high-functioning autism, and this is his first television credit.

Michele Dotrice as Dot Baines

Marty’s mother Dot lives in disarray in a crowded home on the Kent coast. Unable to care for herself, she relies on her son for meals and the pair are clearly not coping well. She’s played by British acting veteran Michele Dotrice, who has a long and distinguished film and television career, and is beloved for the role of Betty Spencer in classic sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, as well as productions of Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Les Miserables and many more.

Elham Ehsas as Asif Syed

Asif is an Afghan who came to the UK to escape a threat to his life in Afghanistan and who is currently living in Barnstaple, Devon and training for his British citizenship test. He’s played by Homeland, Young Wallander, Shantaram and The Agency actor Elham Ehsas.

Ahmad Sakhi as Hassan

Hassan is an Afghan man who undertakes a dangerous, illegal journey to the UK to escape persecution and threat of death. He’s played by Ahmad Sakhi, who’s recently had roles in Coronation Street, Malpractice, and The Outpost, and will soon appear in Anne Rice’s The Talamasca.

Victoria Hamilton as Juliet Cooper

Juliet Cooper is a history lecturer and faculty head at a London university, where a complaint is made against her by a student. She’s a bereaved wife and the mother of troubled teenage daughter Taylor (Pixie Davies). Juliet is played by Victoria Hamilton, a familiar face on screen known for recent roles in Paramount+ crime drama The Crow Girl, Sky political thriller COBRA, Netflix behemoth The Crown, in which she played the Queen Mother, as well as previously in Lark Rise to Candleford and many, many more.

Pixie Davies as Taylor Cooper

Taylor Cooper is a teenager experiencing trouble at school following a family bereavement. She’s the daughter of university lecturer Juliet (Victoria Hamilton) and is played by 18-year-old Pixie Davies, who’s been acting since the age of six and has starred on television in Humans, Utopia, The Secret of Crickley Hall, and on film in Mary Poppins Returns, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children among others.

Also Appearing: Damien Molony

The Brassic, The Split and GameFace actor, who came to prominence as centuries-old vampire Hal in Being Human will also appear in Unforgotten series six in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

Unforgotten series six airs from Sunday February 9 on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.

The post Unforgotten Series 6 Cast: Meet the New Characters Joining Sunny and Jess appeared first on Den of Geek.

Warning: spoilers for Unforgotten series six episode one. Every series, ITV crime drama Unforgotten welcomes a new guest cast around whom that year’s investigation revolves. By the time the credits roll on the finale, series regulars DI Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and DCI James (Sinéad Keenan, who took over from Nicola Walker’s DCI Stuart in series […]

The post Unforgotten: Who’s the Ex-Police Detective Prisoner at the End of Episode One? appeared first on Den of Geek.

ITV crime drama Unforgotten returns with a new historical murder for Sunny and new(ish) boss Jess to solve, and a brand new guest cast including MyAnna Buring, Emmett J Scanlan, Victoria Hamilton and Damien Molony.

They join the returning cast of lead Sanjeev Bhaskar as DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan, Sinéad Keenan as DCI Jessica James, both of whose emotional lives took a beating in the previous series. While grieving for his former colleague Cassie, who died suddenly in a car accident at the end of series four, Sunny’s relationship with his fiancée Sal (Michelle Bonnard) also ended. Sal lost a pregnancy and Sunny told her that he didn’t want to have any more children, so she moved out of their home. With his daughters away at university, Sunny now lives alone.

In terrible timing, Jessie started her new job in series five while discovering that her husband had been having an affair with her sister. Her no-nonsense approach made her clash with Sunny and his still-grieving team, but by the end of the series, they’d reached a kind of friendship and realised that they didn’t stand as far apart in terms of professional values as they’d first thought.

Sunny and Jess will be joined by Unforgotten regulars Jordan Long as DS Murray Boulting, Carolina Main as DC Fran Lingley, Hiten Patel as DC Patel, Pippa Nixon as DC Karen Willets, and Georgia Mackenzie as Dr. Leanne Balcombe, along with Andrew Lancel as Jess’ husband Steve, and Kate Robbins as her mother Kate. Find out all about the new guest cast below:

MyAnna Buring as Melinda Ricci

Melinda is a correspondent for Britannia News, Unforgotten‘s right-wing GB News-style organisation, but does she really believe in the hatred she’s spouting on TV? Her personal life has suffered a recent tragedy when fiancé Patrick (Emmett Scanlan) was paralysed in an accident. Melinda is played by MyAnna Buring, a familiar face to many from recent roles on fantasy videogame adaptation The Witcher, BBC crime drama The Responder, and the part of Long Susan in BBC/Prime Video period crime drama Ripper Street, as well as in feature films Kill List, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, and more.

Emmett Scanlan as Patrick

Patrick is Melinda’s fiancé and when we meet him, is in rehab following a serious accident that left his lower body paralysed. He’s played by Emmett J. Scanlan, seen recently in Irish crime drama Kin, as Billy Grade in the final series of BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders, in ITV crime drama The Tower, and previously, Sky thriller Gangs of London, horror-fantasy In the Flesh and cat-and-mouse detective drama The Fall.

Maximilian Fairley as Martin “Marty” Baines

Marty is a young man with autism who lives in Deal on the Kent coast, where he tries to care for his disabled mother Dot (Michele Dotrice). Isolated and pushed out in the town, he spends his free time seeking companionship and belonging in right-wing online communities. Marty is played by recent graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Maximilian Fairley. He is hard of hearing and neurodiverse with high-functioning autism, and this is his first television credit.

Michele Dotrice as Dot Baines

Marty’s mother Dot lives in disarray in a crowded home on the Kent coast. Unable to care for herself, she relies on her son for meals and the pair are clearly not coping well. She’s played by British acting veteran Michele Dotrice, who has a long and distinguished film and television career, and is beloved for the role of Betty Spencer in classic sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, as well as productions of Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Les Miserables and many more.

Elham Ehsas as Asif Syed

Asif is an Afghan who came to the UK to escape a threat to his life in Afghanistan and who is currently living in Barnstaple, Devon and training for his British citizenship test. He’s played by Homeland, Young Wallander, Shantaram and The Agency actor Elham Ehsas.

Ahmad Sakhi as Hassan

Hassan is an Afghan man who undertakes a dangerous, illegal journey to the UK to escape persecution and threat of death. He’s played by Ahmad Sakhi, who’s recently had roles in Coronation Street, Malpractice, and The Outpost, and will soon appear in Anne Rice’s The Talamasca.

Victoria Hamilton as Juliet Cooper

Juliet Cooper is a history lecturer and faculty head at a London university, where a complaint is made against her by a student. She’s a bereaved wife and the mother of troubled teenage daughter Taylor (Pixie Davies). Juliet is played by Victoria Hamilton, a familiar face on screen known for recent roles in Paramount+ crime drama The Crow Girl, Sky political thriller COBRA, Netflix behemoth The Crown, in which she played the Queen Mother, as well as previously in Lark Rise to Candleford and many, many more.

Pixie Davies as Taylor Cooper

Taylor Cooper is a teenager experiencing trouble at school following a family bereavement. She’s the daughter of university lecturer Juliet (Victoria Hamilton) and is played by 18-year-old Pixie Davies, who’s been acting since the age of six and has starred on television in Humans, Utopia, The Secret of Crickley Hall, and on film in Mary Poppins Returns, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children among others.

Also Appearing: Damien Molony

The Brassic, The Split and GameFace actor, who came to prominence as centuries-old vampire Hal in Being Human will also appear in Unforgotten series six in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

Unforgotten series six airs from Sunday February 9 on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.

The post Unforgotten Series 6 Cast: Meet the New Characters Joining Sunny and Jess appeared first on Den of Geek.

While we’re all wringing our hands about the identity of the next James Bond, a new video has resurfaced online showing a potential 007 of the past. The clip from 2006 shows Henry Cavill running through lines from GoldenEye as part of a screen test for Casino Royale. Cavill’s lines recreate the first meeting between […]

The post Henry Cavill’s James Bond Audition Tape Is Proof That He Could Still Be a Great 007 appeared first on Den of Geek.

In the ‘90s, there was a stark line between console and PC gaming. Many games that first released on PC never received console ports (and vice versa), and most PC titles were built exclusively for a mouse and keyboard. These early PC games were also notoriously finnicky to install, and there was much less information about troubleshooting online than there is today. This was still years before YouTube and Reddit would go online.

But if you could get past those issues, the reward was cutting edge gaming. The ’90s PC gaming scene was a golden age when developers took big risks, entire genres were invented, and new titles constantly pushed graphics cards to their limits, far beyond what consoles of the time could do. These are the 15 best PC games of the ‘90s.

15. EverQuest

MMORPGs are a dime a dozen nowadays, but in 1999, the idea of an online-only 3D game where you could join guilds and adventure with other players (or fight them in PvP) was mind blowing stuff. One of the genre’s major pioneers, EverQuest, wasn’t super accessible either, given the game’s then-beefy system requirements, and how rare it was to find a reliable internet connection to even play it. These were the days when most people were still relying on AOL and dial up, after all.

But for those who could get online, EverQuest provided an addictive glimpse of the type of experiences that would dominate gaming in the coming decades. Though EverQuest’s popularity has dwindled to a fraction of what it used to be, it’s surprisingly still online, and even receives new expansions on an annual basis.

14. Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament wasn’t the first online FPS, but it was the first to understand just how important the competitive online component would be in these titles moving forward. Sure, there’s a barebones campaign here, but most players barely touched it. The star of Unreal Tournament was always the wealth of multiplayer options that let you tweak each match to get the exact experience you were looking for.

Add in some of the greatest deathmatch maps ever made (that continue to influence the genre to this day), and you have the recipe for one of the best and most influential first-person shooters of all time.

13. The Secret of Monkey Island

Adventure games had been a staple of PC gaming during the ‘80s, but some of the very best titles in the genre came in the following decade. This golden age kicked off in 1990 with The Secret of Monkey Island. First off, pirates are just awesome, and tend to work great in video games, and wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood is one of the funniest and most likable characters in all of gaming.

The Secret of Monkey Island is full of weird and wonderful scenarios, clever puzzles, and also featured some great graphics at the time. Plus, it was much more accessible than other adventure games, which tended to be crushingly difficult if you made the slightest mistake. There’s a reason why this game continues to be a huge influence on adventure games.

12. Civilization II

Is Civilization II the best in the series? Far from it, but that’s not because it wasn’t a great game during its time, it’s because the sequels built on everything it did so well. To be clear, everything here is fantastic. Civilization II is still the deepest strategy game of the ‘90s thanks to AI that vastly improved on the original game’s, and its multitude of options for both combat and diplomacy.

Even though the sequels are better, Civilization II still has its rabid fans. In 2012, one Redditor famously posted about his decade-long game where three civilizations were perpetually locked in nuclear war and climate calamity. Few games from the ‘90s have that kind of longevity. 

11. Worms Armageddon

Worms Armageddon is one of those games that just “feels” right. The game has this fantastic tone that’s both full of dread and also in love with its own absurdity. Armageddon really does seem like it could launch at any moment, but it’s just as likely to come from a Holy Hand Grenade as an air strike.

Whether the weapons are conventional or ridiculous, the physics are finely tuned. Success or failure never feels unfair, regardless of whether you’re playing multiplayer or the surprisingly deep single-player campaign. There’s a good reason why, even after multiple sequels, this is still widely considered the pinnacle of the Worms franchise.

10. Star Wars: Dark Forces

With the massive popularity of Doom in the ‘90s, all Dark Forces really needed to be a success was be a halfway decent Star Wars-skinned Doom clone, and everyone would have loved it. At first glance, that’s exactly what this classic shooter looks like, but when you actually dive into it, it’s clear that the developers were much more interested in pushing the genre forward than cranking out a cheap licensed cash-in.

Dark Forces pioneered several concepts in the FPS genre that we now take for granted, like jumping, being able to look up and down, the inclusion of puzzles and more complicated mission objectives, and levels with multiple floors. While it absolutely nails the look and sound of the Star Wars movie, those innovations made it a fan favorite even among those barely know a lightsaber from a light switch.

9. SimCity 2000

Have you ever thought you could run your town better than the people in charge? Of course you have! SimCity 2000 gave players everything they could ever want to build the city of their dreams, including schools, libraries, roads, and multiple types of power plants. Tax your citizens until they flee, or cut your budget to the bare minimum. Then there was the ability to just destroy all of your hard work with natural disasters and try to rebuild from the ground up. The options were almost limitless.

SimCity 2000 was a massive success, and since EA obtained the rights to the series, they’ve tried to reboot the series every few years. But while those games all look better, none have matched the pure gameplay bliss of this gem.

8. Diablo

Yes, Diablo II is far superior to the original, but it also came out in 2000, disqualifying it form this list. What’s remarkable about the first Diablo game is that, even though it’s a really simple action RPG, with three basic classes and far less loot than the many games it would inspire, it’s still incredibly fun and addictive.

A lot of it is the setting. The dark, foreboding atmosphere of Diablo has always helped set it apart, and made it a fan favorite from this very first release. Who knew that going to Hell could be so much fun?

7. Thief: The Dark Project

Thief is one of those games that made a lot of people completely rethink what could be accomplished in the medium. Sure, screenshots made this look like another first-person shooter (hardly an anomaly in the late ‘90s), but the actual stealth gameplay was far ahead of anything else on the market at the time. You didn’t want to confront enemies head on. Instead, the key to progressing was stealth, hiding in the shadows, and using distractions to your advantage.

These ideas went on to the influence other fan-favorite series, such as Hitman and Splinter Cell, and then appeared in all sorts of other genres as well to varying degrees of success. As hugely influential as Thief was, developer Looking Glass Studios went out of business in 2000, and later sequels from other developers didn’t have anywhere near the same impact or success as the first game.

6. Planescape: Torment

You might think that the original Baldur’s Gate would be on this list. Sure, that was a great CRPG from the ‘90s, but the lesser known Planescape: Torment actually runs circles around it when it comes to setting and gameplay, even if the two titles share a lot of similarities and even run on the same basic engine.

Planescape: Torment is just a much more unique game, exploring some of the darker, more bizarre worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. The reduced emphasis on combat was a welcome new approach for the genre, especially considering just how well-written every last line of dialogue is, and how many different directions the story can go in.

5. Quake II

With monumental releases like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom under its belt, id Software was at the height of its powers in the ‘90s. The legendary developers simply could not do any wrong. All the work they put into the first-person shooter genre ultimately culminated in Quake II. At the time of release, the 3D graphics were among the most advanced ever seen.

More importantly, the gameplay backed it up. The game was fast, smooth, and challenging, with a lengthy single-player campaign. Once you got through that, it was time to take things online with one of the best multiplayer shooters of the decade. Even now, Quake II holds up surprisingly well if you can find a few other gamers willing to play it online.

4. System Shock 2

System Shock 2 was one of the first FPS titles that realized the view could be used for more than just shooting. This is an early sci-fi horror masterpiece that will disturb you just as often as it will give you something to fire a weapon at. On top of that, it still has tons of RPG customization, another rarity in the genre at the time.

Though originally released in 1999, System Shock 2 almost feels like it could be a game from the 2020s with a few tweaks. This was a wildly ambitious game that years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, as is often the case, that meant the public at large didn’t quite know what to make of it, and early sales were low, even if critics loved it. At least it’s received a lot more attention over the last couple of decades, and a remake is currently in the works.

3. Fallout 2

The original Fallout was a fantastic introduction to the Wasteland and its many weird inhabitants. The second game is even better, even if it doesn’t change a whole lot from the first. Though it lacks the 3D graphics of newer Fallout games, it still features many of the gameplay ideas that are present in modern entries.

The name of the game isn’t so much combat as it is finding unique ways to complete each quest. Usually that means using your head, or talking your way out of trouble. This is some of the best apocalyptic old-school role-playing around.

2. StarCraft

Real-time strategy games were a PC staple for much of the ‘90s, but StarCraft is still widely considered the very best of these titles. The brilliance of StarCraft is in its balance. Sure, there are similarities between the game’s three playable races, but each of them have their own unique units, strengths, and weaknesses that ensure no one side has an advantage over the others.

StarCraft is so perfectly designed that it became one of the first to garner a sizable professional community, particularly in South Korea where top players were full-on celebrities in the 2000s. Even now, it’s highly debatable whether another RTS (including StarCraft II) is as well designed as this classic.

1. Half-Life

As innovative and eclectic as PC games were in the ‘90s, there was still only ever going to be one title at the top this list. Half-Life wasn’t just a tremendous first-person shooter, it was a landmark title that moved the entire industry forward and established Valve as a powerhouse developer that basically runs the PC game market to this day with Steam.

The genius of Half-Life is how the shooting takes a backseat to the storytelling. Scripted scenes are overused now, but no other game had leveraged them as well before, or told a story that was so compelling. You really couldn’t wait to see what would happen to Gordon Freeman next. Hell, we still want to know what happens to him next, though Half-Life 3 seems as elusive as ever after all these years.

The post 15 Best PC Games of the ’90s appeared first on Den of Geek.