Fall may be just around the corner, but Sterling Point has us dreaming of an epic lakeside summer. Prime Video's new series from My Old Ass writer/director Megan Park is a coming-of-age drama centered on the titular small Canadian island. When N.Y.C. twins Annie (Ella Rubin) and Connor (Keen Ruffalo) inherit an idyllic cottage from their estranged grandfather, Annie sets out to visit Sterling Point, which was her late adoptive mother's favorite place in the world. But once she arrives, Annie finds that a secret sister (played by Amélie Hoeferle) is just the start of an avalanche of secrets surrounding their late mother.

Since its debut on August 5, Sterling Point has won the hearts of critics and fans, becoming the streamer's latest beloved word-of-mouth hit. The eight-part original series may have viewers wondering when they can book a seaplane to the small-town island. Below, read on for a guide to the filming locations of Sterling Point, from the stand-in for the titular island to the show's surprising connection to Heated Rivalry.

All About the Real 'Sterling Point' Locations

Where Was 'Sterling Point' Filmed?

According to star Ella Rubin, Sterling Point was filmed entirely in southeastern Ontario, Canada, "half in Toronto and half in Muskoka." The latter is a district two hours north of Toronto that comprises multiple villages and towns, as well as over 1,600 lakes. While Muskoka has plenty of rentals for visitors, most cottages are privately owned, especially ones that have been maintained for decades by the same families.

As seen on Sterling Point, Muskoka is part of "cottage country," one of Canada's most popular summer enclaves for wealthy families. (If that doesn't give you Hamptons vibes, Summer House's Canadian spinoff will be set in Muskoka.) The region regularly hosts celebrity couples from David and Victoria Beckham to Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber, so Oona’s Kaia Gerber name-drop in episode 1 actually wasn't that far off.

Another reason that "cottage country" may sound familiar? Heated Rivalry put the vacation locale on the map late last year, as the cottage (of "I'm coming to the..." fame) is a real-life Muskoka rental property.

As for specifics, the Prime Video series was filmed in several locations around the region's three major lakes: Lake Muskoka, Lake Joseph, and Lake Rosseau. Per Streets of Toronto, some of the local haunts featured include the family-run Mortimer's Marina and the Sparrow Lake Camp, a real-life summer camp that also offers nightly tent stays.

Is 'Sterling Point' a Real Place?

The town of Sterling Point may be fictional, but it's based on personal history. Creator Megan Park was inspired by her own childhood summers in Muskoka in the '90s while writing both Sterling Point and her 2024 coming-of-age film My Old Ass. Park explained to CBC that the series is a love letter to the rapidly-changing region.

"There is tension up there that's very real with people who have had these cottages in their families for [generations], and new people coming in...environmental challenges," she told the outlet. "Muskoka is stunning, and I'm so glad that the world gets to see it."

There's also a sweet connection hidden within the show's name. According to a blog from the rental company Jayne's Cottages, one of their properties, a "century-old traditional cottage," was the filming location for Elliot's childhood home in My Old Ass. The name of the cottage? Sterling Point.

Ever since December 2025, hockey-romance fans have been waiting with bated breath for Hudson Williams to return to their TV screens. While his Heated Rivalry co-star Connor Storrie quickly made his way to Saturday Night Live (and picked up an Emmy nomination!), Williams chose to team back up with Crave, the Canadian streamer behind the Game Changers adaptation, for another steamy drama.

Created by playwright Kat Sandler and based on her play of the same name, Williams' next project, Yaga, is a contemporary mystery-thriller and feminist retelling of the witch Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore. When the young heir to a fishery (Williams) goes missing, a private investigator gets wrapped up in an investigation involving "a labyrinth of enigmatic suspects, secret lives, and ancient magic," per the plot description.

"Yaga began as a play with a cast of three in a 200-seat theater, reimagining the myth of Baba Yaga through a modern lens with a genre mashup of mystery and myth," Sandler teased to Entertainment Weekly. "It has since evolved into television as a collision of folklore, fairy tale, noir thriller, police procedural, horror, and feminist fantasy, while continuing to ask the question: What makes a witch?"

Now that Crave has begun teasing new details ahead of a fall release, read on for everything to know about Yaga, including how to watch the highly-anticipated series in the U.S.

When does 'Yaga' come out?

Crave and AMC+ have confirmed that Yaga is set to arrive on streaming in October 2026. The streamers have yet to confirm an official release date, but it's expected that the eight-part series will release weekly (as the fellow Crave series Heated Rivalry did).

Where can you watch 'Yaga' in the U.S.?

For American fans, Crave has confirmed that Yaga will be available to stream in the U.S. via AMC+ this October. It's currently unknown whether or not the series will release concurrently on Crave in Canada and AMC+ in the U.S.

For viewers new to AMC+, the streaming service offers a seven-day free trial, after which a subscription starts at $8 a month with ads or $11 a month without ads. Viewers can also add AMC+ as a channel on Prime Video for the same rates after a seven-day trial. (People who subscribe to AMC+ also get access to the horror streamer Shudder and the indie-focused Sundance Now.)

Or, if you've been meaning to rewatch Heated Rivalry or check out Jacob Tierney's Letterkenny or Shoresy, Yaga will also be available to stream on Crave. If you don't have a VPN, you can use one like Nord VPN.

Who is in the cast of 'Yaga?'

In addition to Williams, the Crave crime-thriller has an exciting leading cast. Carrie-Anne Moss (of The Matrix, Memento, and Jessica Jones fame) stars alongside the actor as Katherine, a "charismatic university professor with a taste for younger men," per the description. Moss has already teased that her and Williams' characters get physical in the series.

"I got to make out with him, so that’s lovely," Moss said, pointing to Williams, during the show's upfront presentation in June 2026. "He was super respectful. He was so respectful to my personal space. This guy is, like, a serious gentleman."

Rounding out the lead cast are Noah Reid (Schitt's Creek, The Vampire Lestat) as Rapp, the out-of-town P.I. looking into the disappearance, and Clark Backo (Letterkenny, The Changeling) as Carson, an "apprehensive" local detective. According to EW, another notable cast member is Sheila McCarthy (The Miniature Wife) as Olena Yaha, "a cheeky and wise local woman, originally from Ukraine, who has a soft spot for younger men, vodka, and hallucinogenics."

Is there a 'Yaga' trailer?

Crave released the first teaser for Yaga at this year's Comic-Con, previewing the spooky, erotic series. The clip is full of interesting moments, from Williams and Moss' characters getting intimate to witchy scenes involving ritualistic icons and chickens to a shot of Williams' character smiling and holding a chicken while wearing only a midsummer headdress. Thankfully, some narration also gives viewers a primer on the titular myth.

"There's versions of her all over the world. Sometimes she's an ugly old witch who lives in a disappearing hut on chicken feet. Sometimes she's a wise woman, an enchantress, a healer. Sometimes she helps a hero on his quest," Moss' character, Katherine, says. "Sometimes she tests him. Sometimes she kills him. Sometimes she eats him. Sometimes she fucks him. But she always has a name."

When Netflix's Western-romance series Ransom Canyon premiered in April 2025, it cemented itself as the next must-watch for fans of the soapier side of Netflix originals. Based on author Jodi Thomas' book series, the show follows several locals in a West Texas ranching community as they deal with business rivalries, conman plots, and love triangles that make The Summer I Turned Pretty seem tame. And to cement its "Texas, Forever" bona fides, Minka Kelly leads an ensemble cast that has garnered the show the nickname "Handsome Canyon."

Ransom Canyon's second season, which just arrived on Netflix, turns up the heat with several new rivalries and suitors guaranteeing that the titular town is always on its toes. And of course, it ends with some cliffhangers to leave fans wondering what's next. Below, read on as we keep track of any and all updates on the fate of Ransom Canyon season 3.

Is 'Ransom Canyon' renewed for season 3?

Netflix has not revealed whether Ransom Canyon will get a season 3 renewal, but that's not a bad sign. After season 1's April 2025 release, it took two months for season 2 to be confirmed. Odds are the streaming giant will wait to see a few weeks of viewing numbers for season 2 before announcing its renewal decision.

Either way, showrunner April Blair has confirmed that the series' writers are already discussing what could happen in a possible season 3. Speaking to Decider, the showrunner confirmed that the writers' room has already picked back up as of season 2's release.

When will 'Ransom Canyon' season 3 come out?

Depending on how soon a season 3 renewal is announced, Ransom Canyon could cement itself as a yearly show. With season 1 airing in April 2025, followed by season 2 this July, season 3 could arrive on our screens sometime in late summer 2027.

Who in the 'Ransom Canyon' cast will return for season 3?

Minus some major shakeups, Ransom Canyon season 2 solidified the main cast for Netflix's romance hit. Though season 3 is still in the works, the main cast will all likely return, including Minka Kelly (Quinn O'Grady), Josh Duhamel (Staten Kirland), Lizzy Greene (Lauren Brigman), Philip Winchester (Dan Brigman), Garrett Wareing (Lucas Russell), Casey W. Johnson (Kit Russell), Marianly Tejada (Ellie Estevez), Jack Schumacher (Yancy Grey), and Justin Johnson Cortez (Kai Flores).

It's currently unclear whether supporting players like Heidi Grace Engerman (Sidney), Kenneth Miller (Freddie), and Steve Howey (Levi) will return for more episodes.

What will 'Ransom Canyon' season 3 be about?

Season 2 ends by resolving most of the show's big questions. Quinn and Staten finally get together, with the blessing of her previously disapproving mother Claire. Ellie gives birth to a healthy baby girl, but even though Yancey successfully kept his ranch away from Sidney, Ellie breaks up with him to protect their child. And after a season of Lauren being torn between two brothers, she makes amends with her ex Lucas and stops her new beau, Kit, from leaving Ransom. (Yes, that means she's now dating the guy her mom was having an affair with in season 1.) Staten even gets control back of the Double K, and Quinn's music festival saves Ransom. Happy times (mostly) all around.

Now that season 2's out, April Blair has teased a bit of what's in store for season 3. Speaking to Deadline, she said that, unlike the six-month gap between seasons 1 and 2, Ransom Canyon season 3 will start without a time jump, so viewers can "see all the fallout of where we left off in season 2."

It also seems that Staten and Quinn are fully out of their will-they-won't-they era for the foreseeable future. "I think, moving forward, there will be hurdles and challenges, but it’s not about breaking them up," Blair told the outlet. "I wanted, ‘Okay, now they’re together, but what are those challenges moving forward?’ A relationship, finding each other and falling in love, is actually the easy part. It’s making a life with someone and figuring out who they really are deep down, what are the skeletons in their closets, and ‘Can you love someone at their worst?'"

Ransom Canyon viewers will still have other love triangles to watch. In addition to Yancy and Kai's interest in Ellie, Blair also hinted that the Lauren-Lucas-Kit saga isn't over yet (despite the Ashley of it all).

"Lucas is struggling to figure out who he wants to be, and for me, I don’t know if it’s even within the life of the series, but I think Lauren and Lucas are endgame in the way that Staten and Quinn were and are," Blair told Deadline. "They need to have loves and other lives and figure out who they are, and before they can be together, and I would love the show to go on long enough to see that. But even if it doesn’t, that’s, in my mind, where they end up. They’re the Staten and Quinn, and they just have to have a lot of other journeys and figure out who they are."

She added that Lucas may be headed towards "his own bad boy era" in future episodes. "Moving forward, in our idea of season 3—we’re just in the room—it’s a potential Season 3 right now, but the idea is that Lucas is hurt, but he’s trying to put on [a brave face]."

In the writers' room for Lucky, showrunner Cassie Pappas kept coming back to Heat. The Apple TV miniseries bears little resemblance to Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama, but its writers were gripped by the age-old game of cat-and-mouse: two people locked in a chase because they know nothing else.

“We've seen this idea of a person on the run and a dogged law enforcement chasing him,” Pappas tells Marie Claire over Zoom ahead of Lucky’s two-episode premiere. “Our show now has three women doing that. We have a female criminal (Anya Taylor-Joy), a female mob boss (Annette Bening), and a female FBI agent (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). How does that genre change when women are at the helm?”

Based Marissa Stapley’s novel, the series was first popularized as a Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club selection before landing with Pappas (Silo, Griselda) and co-showrunner Jonathan Tropper (Warrior, See). Taylor-Joy, who was attached to the project from the start, plays a grifter often underestimated for her size, age, and gender. “Nobody thinks that she's the smartest person in the room—when actually, every single time, she is,” Pappas says.

While Tropper was in New York filming another Apple TV title, Your Friends and Neighbors, Pappas ran the set for Lucky, which unfolds as an electrifying desert chase across seven episodes. As action-packed as the series is, it never strays from its emotional core: the relationship between Taylor-Joy’s character and her con-artist father (Timothy Olyphant). With Olyphant’s John in federal prison and Lucky unsure whom she can trust, she grapples with an identity crisis while on the run.

“I won't give anything away, but a big action sequence ends in her realizing, ‘My cons have real consequences,’” Pappas says. “We were always trying to have an emotional depth piece connected. If we're going to crash a car, we want it to also make you feel something deep about the character.”

With the first two episodes of Lucky streaming now, Pappas tells Marie Claire about writing a conscientious con artist, working with a star-studded cast, and crafting a “muscular, propulsive” thriller with Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter of Hello Sunshine.

Marie Claire: Tell me about adapting this novel. There are some big changes from page to screen. What were the thought processes behind some of those choices—or sticking points?

Cassie Pappas: Reese and Lauren from Hello Sunshine got the rights to the book [and were] extremely involved every step of the way. They were always on set. They give very detailed notes on scripts. They are the most hands-on producers that I've ever worked with. This was more muscular and more action-packed than some of the shows they had done in the past, and they were super eager to go there—and they were responsible for attaching Anya. Every single word we wrote with her in mind.

But the thing that we gravitated towards the most in the book was this dysfunctional father-daughter relationship. Tropper, having written something like This Is Where I Leave You, I know he does dysfunctional families very well, and if I were to tell you any of my family stories, you'd be like, “Oh, you're primed and ready to write that.” But what made the stakes higher is that theme of, How am I like my parents? What baggage have I inherited? What am I genetically predisposed to?

Her dad's a con artist. He's a criminal, and he's raised her exactly like him, to be an extension of him. She was born into a life of crime that she didn't choose, but she's really fucking good at it because he raised her in his likeness. As she's trying to get out of this life and come of age, there's this self-awareness theme. She's physically running from those external forces, but internally, I liked the conflict of, What if the thing I'm running from is in my blood? What if I can't outrun it? Can I be the author of my own life?

MC: How involved were you in the casting process?

CP: We had Anya, and then we knew the next person we needed to cast was Priscilla. Annette Bening was always our number one, but I don't know that any of us really thought we were going to be lucky enough to get her. When we sent her the script, she leaned in and wanted to hear more. When it became real, it almost feels like any other actor is like, “Yeah, I'd love to be on board.” The Tim piece came because Jonathan Tropper had worked with him before, and I know that Lauren had a relationship with him—but my understanding was that he had heard about the part and was very, very interested in it as well.

MC: The first thing that gripped me from episode 1 was the action. It's brutal; it's very engaging. How did you go about mapping and executing that, and what role did Anya play in the process?

CP: I think the reason [Hello Sunshine] went to Tropper first is because he had a more action-heavy background. The word that kept being used a lot was “muscular.” In television, everybody wants something bingeable, they want something propulsive, so those are the words that kept being thrown around.

The pilot is a full sprint with a huge action set piece at the end, which then allowed us in episode 2 to go, “Let's take a downbeat, let's have her hide, let's have her lick her wounds, let's have her figure out her next move.” You can really do character in that episode. It was about managing both, and we never wanted to do action for action's sake. We wanted it to always have emotional depth or truth to it.

MC: In the first episodes, she's much more mysterious as a character. I would love to know more about writing Lucky in those early stages—what you choose to reveal, to obscure, and what you want the audience to think.

CP: One of the things that I really connected to was this idea of deep down underneath all the masks, she has no idea who she is—and I think that terrifies her. I think she spent her whole life reading the room. If she's talking to a mark, she's going to reflect back to the mark what they want to hear, what they think, and then she's going to con them. It's not until after she leaves the room that the person will realize, "Oh my gosh, I was just taken.” As long as she's living in that space of wearing a mask, she's been confident.

But as she comes of age and as she physically runs, I think there's something about the physical distance that gives her space to go, “Well, who the hell am I really? If I'm not doing this to people, I actually don't know who I am.”

MC: There's so much betrayal in this show. At some point, I thought I should stop being surprised by it.

CP: We did a lot of research in the early days of the writers' room about the art of the con. I'd never worked on a show that dealt with a con artist, so that was the piece of the show that I felt the most insecure about. I was like, “I can do the father-daughter thing, I'm all good on the character stuff, but I really want to dig deep on this world of con artists.” There was this book that we read called The Confidence Game, and that was really insightful. Con artists are apparently in a constant cycle of trust and betrayal. They gain your trust, they get what they want, then they betray you, and something in this book said that there might be a connection to that in your past as a child. You might be working out childhood trauma of experiences of trust and then betrayal, and not realizing it.

MC: As you said, Lucky was born and raised into this lifestyle and doesn't want to be part of it—but how do you feel that she fits into it? How do you view her moral framing within this?

CP: It lives in that space of nature versus nurture. Part of me is like, she's her father's daughter, so she's inherently born to be good at this stuff, but she might not want to use those skills. And then the choices that she makes throughout this seven-episode arc show her moral compass, her desire to be free, her desire to stop running. There's something beautiful about admitting that you don't know who you are, but that you are excited to figure that out, that you want to learn.

There are a lot of labels that women take on that really define who you are, or who you think you are. You're a mother, you're a daughter, you're a wife, you're a sister, you're a sibling—and if you remove each one of those labels and you untether yourself from them, well then who are you really? If you don't know the answer to that question, which I don't think Lucky does, then you get into that self-identity thing like, Who am I, and/or, Do I kind of maybe just want to be nobody? Do I just want to be free of all the masks and all the labels? I think she's fantasizing about “How can I get there, and what would that life look like?”

MC: Do you have a favorite scene or sequence?

CP: Episode 2 is one of my favorites when Lucky is hiding out in that ranch house in the desert, and the FBI agent is in the house. There's such simplicity to it. It's the opposite of an action sequence, and it is so tense, so edge-of-your-seat, and the acting from Aunjanue and Anya is so exquisite. What's interesting is once Aunjanue is in the house, there's not a lot of dialogue; it's just her crawling from one room to the other. It read well on the page, but then when we shot it, it got so much better.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Netflix's Little House on the Prairie revives Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic novels—and the hit 1970s drama—for a new generation. Created by Rebecca Sonnenshine, the new adaptation follows the Ingalls family as they set out to start a new life on the American frontier during the 1860s and 1870s. By the end of the delightful eight-episode season, released on July 19, Laura, her Pa Charles, her Ma Caroline, and her older sister Mary settle in Independence, Kansas, and make new friends—until a shocking revelation prompts the family to seek out a new home.

Thankfully for eager fans, the team behind Netflix's reimagining is already working on new episodes. Below, read on for what we know about Little House on the Prairie season 2 so far, including which book will inform the basis of the next installment.

Has 'Little House on the Prairie' been renewed for season 2?

Yes! Netflix confirmed Little House on the Prairie season 2 in early March, four months before the series' debut.

"We are delighted to renew this beautiful reimagining of Little House on the Prairie for a second season ahead of its Netflix debut." Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of US and Canada scripted series, said at the time. "The exceptional work by Rebecca Sonnenshine and the entire cast and crew on season 1 has established a rich foundation of storytelling for years to come. With its hopeful spirit and emotional authenticity, we’re confident that Little House will deliver even more of what fans truly love.

When will 'Little House on the Prairie' season 2 come out?

Though Netflix hasn't revealed when Little House on the Prairie season 2 will arrive, the show's journey to the next installment is already underway. According to Radio Times, season 2 began filming in early June in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is expected to continue through mid-October.

This filming schedule matches the production for season 1, which began in June 2025 and wrapped in October. That means there's a very good chance the series could return at the same time next year, in summer 2027.

Who in the cast will return for 'Little House on the Prairie' season 2?

Netflix has yet to confirm the season 2 cast, but Little House on the Prairie wouldn't be the same without the Ingalls family and their closest friend. That said, we're expecting Alice Halsey (Laura Ingalls), Luke Bracey (Charles Ingalls), Crosby Fitzgerald (Caroline Ingalls), Skywalker Hughes (Mary Ingalls), and Warren Christie (John Edwards) to return to lead season 2.

Unfortunately, since the Ingalls have left Independence, Kansas, behind, it's unlikely that the rest of season 1's cast will return. However, there's always the chance of cameos.

Who are the new cast members in 'Little House on the Prairie' season 2?

Get ready to meet some more beloved characters from Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Deadline has confirmed three new actresses set to join Netflix's reimagining. The Runarounds star Willa Dunn has signed on to play Nellie Oleson, Laura Ingalls's childhood bully and the fan-favorite villain from the original 1970s TV adaptation. (Fans of the earlier show may have spotted the original Nellie actress, Alison Arngrim, had a cameo in the Netflix series.)

Per the outlet, Netflix's take on Nellie may be a more layered look at the character. Her description reads, "On the surface, Nellie (Dunn) is a world-class spoiled princess and a playground bully. Smart and supremely confident, sharp-tongued but easily wounded. Lives and breathes to make Laura Ingalls (Halsey) miserable. But beneath her mean-girl persona is tenderness and a yearning for true friendship—even if she doesn’t know exactly how to get it."

Meanwhile, Charlotte Sullivan has signed on to play Margaret Oleson, Nellie's mother. "Beautiful, high-energy, charming, unfiltered, fun and funny, with a quick wit and gallows humor, Margaret adores her daughter fiercely and completely, but also fears losing her love," her description reads.

And rounding out the new cast, Rachelle Lefevre is set to play Eva Beadle, the beloved town schoolteacher who instantly wins over Laura and Mary. The character is described as "open-minded, passionate, forthright and brave...well-educated, well-read, adventurous, generous of spirit, a world-traveler."

Which Laura Ingalls Wilder book will 'Little House on the Prairie' season 2 adapt?

Spoilers for Netflix's Little House on the Prairie season 1 finale ahead. By the end of season 1, the Ingalls family (plus new baby Carrie and an honorary Ingalls, John Edwards) has set off for a new adventure. Though they spent the season settling in Independence, Kansas, the family's forced to leave when the government orders them to pay for the land they'd been promised for free. At Mr. Edwards' suggestion, the group heads to a little town called Walnut Grove.

Walnut Grove—a real-life Minnesota town that boasts the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum and the annual Wilder Pageant—is best known as the primary setting of the 1970s series. However, the Ingalls only spent one installment of the source book series in the town: the fourth entry, On the Banks of Plum Creek. We'll have to wait and see how long Netflix's adaptation will stay in Walnut Grove, but season 2's guaranteed to at least cover part of the novel.

The official description for On the Banks of Plum Creek reads: "The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they leave their little house on the prairie and travel in their covered wagon to Minnesota. They settle into a house made of sod on the banks of beautiful Plum Creek. Soon Pa builds them a sturdier house, with real glass windows and a hinged door. Laura and Mary go to school, help with the chores around the house, and fish in the creek. Pa’s fiddle lulls them all to sleep at the end of the day. But then disaster strikes—on top of a terrible blizzard, a grasshopper infestation devours their wheat crop. Now the family must work harder than ever to overcome these challenges."

What will 'Little House on the Prairie' season 2 be about?

Though most of the plot details for season 2 are under wraps, creator Rebecca Sonnenshine has spoken out about the influences she wants to balance throughout her reimagining of Little House on the Prairie. Speaking with The Wrap, the Vampire Diaries and The Boys alum explained that she’s interested in depicting the books’ version of the Ingalls, who were more nomadic than shown in the '70s TV series.

“A part of my pitch was that we were going to follow the ebbs and flows of the books, and they are fairly nomadic for quite some time,” she told the outlet. “I missed that from the original show, which was an amazing show and everyone loved it, and it was very special. But it didn’t have the opportunity just because of the realities of television, and it didn’t have the opportunity to do this. And we do now.”

While that means leaving behind season 1’s supporting characters, Sonnenshine added that she’s “always going to look for a way to bring those characters back” if the story allows. “I hope that it runs for a long time so that we get the opportunity to organically do it...We’re trying to be faithful to historical truth and still look for ways to keep our characters alive, however we can.”

As for the future of the series, the showrunner also added that she would “love to do all the books and then look beyond [at Wilder’s] fascinating life.” She added, “When I think about Laura Ingalls Wilder, it’s kind of amazing that someone lived through times that started in covered wagons and no electricity, and lasted all the way into airplanes and the atomic bomb.”

Nearly a century after Laura Ingalls Wilder published the first book in her Little House on the Prairie series, the novels are still massively adored and still reaching new audiences—thanks, most recently, to Netflix’s TV series adaptation, which debuted on July 9. There’s just something so timeless about the books, which were previously made into a still-beloved NBC show in the ’70s and ’80s, an early-aughts ABC miniseries and a 2008 stage musical, among several other adaptations.

For those who haven't perused a Little House novel since third grade but are diving headfirst into the new Netflix show, the series chronicles the semi-fictionalized lives of the Ingalls family in the Midwest U.S. throughout the late 1800s, starring a young Laura alongside her parents and siblings. Wilder published most of the series in the 1930s and ’40s, with a final book arriving posthumously in 1971.

If you’re planning to revisit the novels—or introduce them to a new generation—after bingeing the Netflix adaptation, look no further for a comprehensive guide to the entire Little House series. And a reminder as you dive in through 2026 eyes that while Wilder’s work has long been widely lauded and critically acclaimed, it’s very much a product of its time: You’ll want to be aware that it heavily perpetuates the American frontier myth and therefore includes problematic portrayals of Indigenous people (an aspect of the series that Netflix has sought to correct).

Book 1 — 'Little House in the Big Woods'

The first book in Ingalls Wilder’s best-selling series starts in 1871, with 4-year-old Laura living in a log cabin in Wisconsin with her parents and two sisters. It introduces readers to life on the homestead through about a year’s worth of chores and celebrations, detailing wintertime maple syrup harvesting, the birth of a calf, and everyday tasks around the house and farm, with many days capped off with Pa playing the fiddle for his daughters.

Book 2 — 'Farmer Boy'

Wilder detoured from her own history in Book 2 to focus on her husband’s upbringing instead. In Farmer Boy, a young Almanzo Wilder grows up in upstate New York in the 1860s, joining his siblings in the seemingly unending work of running a farm—only occasionally interrupted by exciting visits from a tin peddler or a traveling fair.

Book 3 — 'Little House on the Prairie'

We return to the Ingalls family in the series’ third book, just in time for their big move from Wisconsin to the prairies of Kansas in the mid-1870s. For several months, they get to work building a new house and starting a farm on territory belonging to the Osage Nation, grappling along the way with malaria and ongoing conflicts with Indigenous groups—only to eventually accept that they’ve illegally settled on the land and must move along.

Book 4 — 'On the Banks of Plum Creek'

The Ingalls family piles back into their covered wagon and heads north, ultimately stopping to make a new home in Minnesota. There, Laura and her sisters attend a real school for the first time and must remain resilient as they face challenges to their way of life, including fires, blizzards, crop-destroying grasshopper swarms, and, worst of all, a mean girl at school named Nellie.

Book 5 — 'By the Shores of Silver Lake'

Ready to leave behind the many troubles they encountered in Minnesota—and following a bout of scarlet fever that left Laura’s older sister Mary blind—the growing Ingalls crew heads west, into what was then the unsettled Dakota Territory. There, Pa takes a job on a railroad and claims a permanent homestead in the area. In the meantime, Laura and her sisters enjoy a respite from many of the most difficult parts of frontier life: swapping their covered wagon for train travel, cozying up in a comfortable home for the winter, and raking in earnings from catering to the many pioneers passing through their town.

Book 6 — 'The Long Winter'

Alas, those happy early days in South Dakota weren’t to last. As suggested by the title, The Long Winter details the particularly devastating winter of 1880 and 1881, when Laura was 13. A shocking seven months of continuous blizzards leave many in the Ingalls’ town snowed into their homes and stop supply trains from delivering needed food and fuel. However, a bright spot for Laura: Here, she first crosses paths with her future husband, as Almanzo and a friend risk their lives to deliver wheat to her town.

Book 7 — 'Little Town on the Prairie'

Things are on the upswing for Laura after making it through that horrible winter—despite the onslaught of classic teenage angst and the arrival of her old nemesis Nellie in town. She’s fielding invitations to socials, parties, and literary society meetings, plus a request from Almanzo to start walking her home from church every week(!). She also begins working toward earning her teaching certificate and makes a point of contributing everything she can to Mary’s tuition at a college for the blind in Iowa.

Book 8 — 'These Happy Golden Years'

Originally the final book in Wilder’s Little House series, this eighth novel encompasses Laura’s late teens, as she takes a job at a nearby school and truly comes into her own as a self-sufficient young adult. There’s also, of course, her continued courtship with Almanzo, which culminates at the end of the book with his proposal and their sweet, simple wedding.

Book 9 — 'The First Four Years'

More than a decade after Wilder’s 1957 death, her daughter Rose’s designated heir, Roger MacBride, discovered a first draft of The First Four Years among Rose’s belongings and published it as-is. It wraps up Laura’s coming-of-age story by documenting the first years of her marriage to Almanzo, as they begin making their own way as a young pioneer family, with all the trials and tribulations that entails, from illnesses to fires to tragic deaths.

Did Laura Ingalls Wilder write anything else?

Indeed, she did, though all of the nonfiction variety. Amid the many collections of newspaper columns, letters, poems, and other writings published since Wilder’s death, several stand out. The first, in 1962, was On the Way Home, detailing her, Almanzo, and Rose’s move from South Dakota to Missouri in 1894. It was followed in 1974 by West From Home, comprising a series of letters Wilder wrote to her husband during a 1915 visit to Rose in San Francisco.

Those books were combined into A Little House Traveler in 2006, along with The Road Back, a previously unpublished diary that Wilder kept while returning to South Dakota with Almanzo in the 1930s to visit her family and gather information for her Little House series.

Are there any other books in the 'Little House' universe?

So many. Several authors have taken on the task of expanding the Little House-iverse, including the aforementioned MacBride, heir and “political disciple” to Wilder’s daughter Rose. He published eight books in the 1990s about her life, known as “The Rose Years.”

There are also “The Martha Years,” a four-book series about Laura’s great-grandmother by Melissa Wiley; “The Charlotte Years,” another tetralogy from Wiley, this one describing the life of Laura’s grandmother; and “The Caroline Years,” seven novels about Laura’s mother, with the first four written by Maria D. Wilkes and the final three by Celia Wilkins.

Wilkes also published two dozen chapter books simplifying several of the longer novels’ stories about Caroline, Laura, and Rose. And even younger readers can get in on the Little House fun with the countless picture books, board books, and other pre-reader versions of the stories that have hit shelves over the years.

Elsewhere, in an attempt to fill in some blanks between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake, prolific children’s author Cynthia Rylant published Old Town in the Green Groves in 2002, based on some of Wilder’s notes and historical records. Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2012, Heather Williams and Elizabeth Cody Kimmel filled in a few more gaps, releasing a trio of books telling the stories of Nellie, Mary, and Almanzo.

Less canonical is the Days of Laura Ingalls Wilder series, which comprises eight books written by Thomas L. Tedrow in 1992. Though they feature Laura, Almanzo, and Rose in their Missouri home, the books aren’t explicitly based on Wilder’s actual life or writings, but instead imagine how she might have responded to many of the most pressing issues of the early 1900s.

Nearly a century after the source novel's debut, Netflix's Little House on the Prairie offers a new take on an essential piece of American pop culture. Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical book series, the new show follows a young family in 1860s and 1870s America, as they settle in the burgeoning frontier town of Independence, Kansas. Created by Rebecca Sonnenshine, the new series introduces a new generation to the pioneer family, while also expanding the story to include Black homesteaders and members of the Indigenous Osage tribe.

To bring the Ingalls family and co. into the 21st century, Netflix recruited a cast of rising actors. Read on to meet the actors bringing Little House on the Prairie back to life.

Alice Halsey as Laura Ingalls

Laura, who is eight at the start of the Netflix series, is a bright, fearless, observant child who enjoys playing in the outdoors much more than ladylike hobbies. Though her questioning nature can rub some adults the wrong way, she mostly makes friends everywhere she goes (including her loyal dog, Jack).

11-year-old actress Alice Halsey made her television debut as the intelligent daughter of Elizabeth Zott (played by Brie Larson) in Apple TV's adaptation of Lessons in Chemistry. Since then, the child actress has starred as Rachel Black in the soap opera Days of Our Lives and voiced twin sisters in the Disney Junior cartoon Kindergarten: The Musical.

Luke Bracey as Charles Ingalls

Pa Ingalls, Laura's handsome father, is many things: a farmer, a poet, an optimist, a romantic, and a devoted family man. He's also determined to lead his family to a better future, despite the danger.

Luke Bracey, 37, is an Australian actor and Home and Away alum who made his big-screen debut starring alongside Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester in 2011's Monte Carlo. He has since appeared in movies like 2015's Point Break, 2016's Hacksaw Ridge, 2020's Holidate, and 2022's Elvis, as well as the Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere. (Though he doesn't speak publicly about his romantic life, Bracey has been linked to both Gomez and Eiza Gonzalez.)

Luke Bracey's Instagram: @lukebracey

Crosby Fitzgerald as Caroline Ingalls

While Pa is an idealist, Caroline, or Ma, is the patient, practical backbone of the family. Her playful side comes out with Charles, but often she has to be the strict parent. A former teacher who quit to raise her children, she's also determined that her girls will receive an education.

Crosby Fitzgerald, 36, is a Georgia-born actress and comedian who got her start in TV with guest spots on comedy shows like Awkwafina is Nora from Queens and Abbott Elementary. Before her first lead role in Little House, she had recurring roles as Sylvia in Apple TV's Palm Royale and Madison in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.

Crosby Fitzgerald's Instagram: @crosberryfitz

Skywalker Hughes as Mary Ingalls

Laura's older sister Mary is her opposite in every way: studious, ladylike, obedient, and a responsible rule-follower who doesn't love the outdoors. Though they often butt heads, the sisters are each other's best friends and always have each other's backs.

14-year-old actress Skywalker Hughes grew up in Toronto and made her acting debut playing daughter Sheridan Pickett in the Paramount+ crime drama Joe Pickett. Since then, she has also appeared in the Nickelodeon show Blues Clues & You! and the 2026 sci-fi film In the Blink of an Eye.

Warren Christie as John Edwards

John Edwards, a mysterious settler and Civil War veteran hailing from Tennessee, befriends the Ingalls family when they settle near Independence. Per Tudum, he's in a dark place when he meets them; his friendship with family eventually inspires him to heal.

British-Canadian actor Warren Christie, 50, plays the fan-favorite character in the Netflix series. The prolific TV actor has appeared in shows including The L Word, October Road, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Chicago Fire, The Resident, and Batwoman. He has also recently starred in multiple Hallmark holiday movies. (Christie and his wife, actress Sonya Salomaa, have been married since 2007.)

Warren Christie's Instagram: @thewarrenchristie

Jocko Sims as Dr. George Tann

Dr. George Tann, a kindhearted doctor who lives in Independence, is based on the real-life man who treated the Ingalls family's malaria around 1870. Though the character appeared in only one chapter of Ingalls Wilder's books, the Netflix series fleshed out Dr. Tann by researching the physician's history.

Jocko Sims, 45, is a Houston native best known for his main and recurring roles in series such as Crash, Masters of Sex, The Last Ship, How to Die Alone, and Grosse Pointe Garden Society. He has also played doctors on medical dramas like The Resident and New Amsterdam.

Jocko Sims's Instagram: @jockosims

Barrett Doss as Emily Henderson

Emily Henderson runs her family's general store on her own and is great at dealing with people. A lot happens with Emily in season 1; in addition to befriending Caroline, she takes an orphan named Caleb (Kowen Cadorath) and begins a romance with Dr. Tann.

Barrett Doss, 37, was born in Minneapolis and began her career acting off-Broadway before making her TV debut in an episode of 30 Rock. She has divided her career between Broadway and television, with appearances on shows like Person of Interest, Girls, and Iron Fist. She also played Vic Hughes across several seasons of Station 19 and Grey's Anatomy.

Barrett Doss's Instagram: @dontgo_jasonwaterfalls

Meegwun Fairbrother as William Mitchell

William Mitchell is a successful, mixed-blood Osage farmer who has the largest homestead in the county. Per Tudum, he, his wife, White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk), and their daughter, Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts), are meant to mirror the Ingalls, with their undying love despite disagreements.

Meegwun Fairbrother is an actor of Ojibwe and Scottish heritage who was among the first Indigenous students to graduate from York University's acting conservatory. The film, TV, and stage actor is best known for his roles in shows like SYFY's Helix, CBC's Mohawk Girls and Burden of Truth, and Paramount+'s Skymed. Most recently, he appeared in the final season of Outlander and played Avatar Kuruk in Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Meegwun Fairbrother's Instagram: @meegwun_fairbrother

Once again, a buzzy summer romance show has arrived on Prime Video and made a cohort of fans fall in love with it. Based on Carley Fortune's 2022 debut novel, Every Summer After, Every Year After follows Percy Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett), who reunite in the picturesque Barry's Bay a decade after a mysterious betrayal torpedoes their teenage friends-to-lovers romance. Alongside the pair's second-chance encounter, the show's eight episodes flesh out some of the original book's supporting characters, from Percy's best friends Chantal (Aurora Perrineau) and Delilah (Abigail Cowen) to Sam's older brother Charlie (Michael Bradway).

Although Percy and Sam's time in the spotlight has seemingly come to an end, fear not: Fortune has written another book set within the Every Year After universe, so there's ample source material to pull from.

If you've already torn through the first season and are itching to return to Barry's Bay, you're not alone. Keep reading to find out everything we know about a potential Every Year After season 2 so far, including which character is poised to become the show's new romantic lead.

Has 'Every Year After' been renewed for season 2?

Summer isn't over yet! In late June 2026, at Prime Video's Obsessed Fest, the streamer confirmed a season 2 renewal for Every Year After. Not only that, Prime Video confirmed that the upcoming episodes will adapt the next book in Fortune's Barry's Bay series: One Golden Summer. Considering that major cliffhanger (more on that below!), book fans had speculated as soon as they binged season 1 that the next novel was bound to be adapted.

Showrunner Amy B. Harris also shared a statement about the good news in a press release. She said, "The response to Every Year After has been truly extraordinary, underscoring the universal appeal of Carley Fortune’s storytelling and the deep connection audiences have formed with the world of Barry’s Bay."

Peter Friedlander, Head of Global Television, Amazon MGM Studios, added, “We’re incredibly grateful to Carley, Amy B. Harris, our exceptional cast and creative team, and the passionate fans who have embraced this series around the globe. We’re excited to return to Barry’s Bay and bring audiences another deeply emotional and unforgettable chapter.”

What's more? Harris has also alluded to the show running long past season 2. Of course only a second installment is on the table right now, but it's possible there's more to come down the line. "I see five seasons," she told Entertainment Weekly when season 1 hit streaming. "Obviously, there’s another book that’s connected to Barry’s Bay that I think will be a very exciting blueprint for us for a potential season 2."

Which Carley Fortune book will 'Every Year After' season 2 adapt?

Every Year After season 2 will adapt Carley Fortune's 2025 book, One Golden Summer. The romance novel, also set in Barry's Bay, follows Sam's brother, Charlie (Michael Bradway). Meaning, that's right: He does, in fact, survive season 1's shocking cliffhanger!

Over the course of One Golden Summer, Charlie falls in love with photographer Alice Everly, who returns to Barry's Bay years after taking a photo there that changed the course of her life. And yes, that photo just so happens to be the snapshot of Charlie, Percy, and Sam that Charlie sees at the end of the season 1 finale.

During a recent Teen Vogue interview, Bradway teased that the cast and crew crafted his character's season 1 storyline with One Golden Summer in mind. "There were definitely things that we did in the first season that we were intentional about," the actor told the outlet. "[We] made sure that Charlie acted a certain way [in relationships] because we knew that Alice was going to be coming next season."

What will 'Every Year After' season 2 be about?

While Charlie and Alice's romance will drive season 2's plot, Harris also plans to continue fleshing out the stories of the rest of the Every Year After characters.

"We intentionally built out the ensemble because I think we can tell lots of stories with our main characters," she told Deadline. "Obviously, Sam and Percy are our love story, the one we were following this season, but to me, the love triangle between Jordie, Chantal, and Delilah has much more to explore."

During an interview with Elle, Harris pointed out that this broader interest in the show's ensemble is part of what inspired the choice to rename the show rather than use the original book title, Every Summer After. "The book is obviously Every Summer After and takes place during the summer, and the first season does take place in the summer," she said. "But what I was intrigued by is that it isn't just every summer that [these characters] have been...dealing with the ramifications of their behavior. That doesn't just affect your summers...I've been thinking a lot about the next season [of the show], and wanting there to be a fall, a winter, a spring."

Which cast members will return for 'Every Year After' season 2?

You can expect all of season 1's major players to return, including Michael Bradway as Charlie, Sadie Soverall as Percy, Matt Cornett as Sam, Aurora Perrineau as Chantal, Abigail Cowen as Delilah, and Joseph Chiu as Jordie.

Although Elisha Cuthbert's character, Sue, died in season 1, she could still appear in flashbacks.

Meanwhile, season 2 will introduce a major new character: Alice Everly, the show's new female romantic lead and Charlie's eventual love interest. The word is still out on who will play her, so start your fan casts now.

When will 'Every Year After' season 2 come out?

It's unclear when season 2 will premiere. However, we can look at the season 1 timeline for an idea; the show was originally ordered in summer 2024, and by mid-summer 2025, the series was cast and began production. Season 2 was renewed in late June 2026—though the showrunner seemed to have an idea that it was a possibility and a plan for what to bring to the screen next. So, if the writers get back to work ASAP, it's possible filming could pick up in time to shoot before the summer weather is totally through. But a more likely timeline may be for filming to begin next spring. Depending on production timing, hopefully we'll be back in Barry's Bay sometime in 2027.

We'll keep this story updated as more information becomes available. In the meantime, you can get the show's source material, Every Summer After and One Golden Summer, on Bookshop.

Hulu's hit series The Testaments turned out to be so much more than a simple Handmaid's Tale sequel—it introduces viewers to a whole new side of Gilead. This time around, the dystopian tale unfolds as a coming-of-age story, told through the eyes of June Osborne's (Elisabeth Moss) eldest daughter, Agnes (Chase Infiniti). Raised in a totalitarian state with little knowledge of her origins, Agnes spends the first season realizing that the world around her isn't the virtuous place she thought it was. Alongside her new friend Daisy (Lucy Halliday)—who, unbeknownst to Agnes, is a Canadian spy—Gilead's next generation could be the one to bring it down across future seasons.

The first season, which aired in spring 2026 before its finale on May 27, definitely doesn't adapt the entire Margaret Atwood source novel of the same name, and it concludes implying there's more to come. So, below, we're breaking down everything we know about The Testaments season 2.

Is 'The Testaments' renewed for season 2?

Praise be! The Testaments has officially been renewed for season 2.

The announcement came on May 20, the same day that season 1's penultimate episode aired. The show's official Instagram shared a video featuring fan comments asking for a second season. The comments are cleverly edited into scenes from the show, such as Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) flipping through a file and June (Elisabeth Moss) reading a secret message hidden in a Gilead honey jar.

"A secret we couldn't keep any longer 💜," the caption reads. "THE TESTAMENTS will be back for Season 2 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+."

The news comes as The Testaments continues gaining viewers. According to Hulu, the show has been streamed globally for over 45 million hours.

Showrunner Bruce Miller recently even teased that the series could go on for multiple seasons during an interview with TechRadar, telling the outlet, "Every ending in Margaret's world is a very good beginning."

"I don't think in terms of [the] number of seasons," Miller continued. "But if you think of the awakening of a 14/15-year-old girl, her coming to and taking action, those things can go on for quite a while."

When will 'The Testaments' season 2 come out?

A premiere date for The Testaments season 2 hasn't been announced just yet. Showrunner Bruce Miller told Variety upon the release of the season 1 finale that the scripts are currently being written, and he's hopeful they can "move quickly" toward production—especially since the stars need to continue to resemble teenagers. He emphasized that he doesn't want to move too fast and "make a shitty show," but hopes to usher production along.

We can look to the season 1 production timeline for some clues about when our Gilead girls will be back on our screens. Season 1 filmed from April to August 2025 and premiered in April 2026. If season 2 follows a similar trajectory and starts filming late in the summer after the teleplays are complete, it could premiere as early as fall 2027.

Which cast members will return for 'The Testaments' season 2?

The Testaments tells Agnes's (Infiniti) and Daisy's (Halliday) coming-of-age stories, so we can rest assured knowing that they'll remain front and center in season 2. Ann Dowd will also return as the formidable Aunt Lydia, who's set to mentor Agnes in future episodes. Plus, it's a safe bet that Moss will make more guest appearances as June Osborne, who's still working with the Mayday rebellion to rescue her eldest daughter from Gilead. For instance, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she feels "very, very close to [June]" and hopes to continue to return to her. "I would never want to stop playing her," she said. "As long as there’s a Gilead, she’s never going to stop fighting."

We can also expect many of season 1's supporting characters to return, including Mattea Conforti as Becka, Rowan Blanchard as Shunammite, Mabel Li as Aunt Vidala, and Brad Alexander as Garth.

What will 'The Testaments' season 2 be about?

Although Hulu hasn't released an official synopsis for The Testaments season 2, the season 1 finale and the show's source material offer glimpses of what's in store.

By the end of season 1, Agnes's arranged marriage to Commander Weston (Reed Diamond) was canceled, and she was shocked upon learning that June is her birth mother. After initially trying to escape Gilead, Daisy ultimately decided to stay and fight for her new friends's freedom. Meanwhile, Agnes's best friend Becka reluctantly married the newly minted Commander Garth after her mother took the blame for Becka murdering her abusive father (Randal Edwards).

The Testaments has already taken liberties with the Margaret Atwood novel, such as making Agnes and Daisy the same age and not actually half-sisters. While season 1 roughly adapted the section of the book detailing Agnes's childhood, we can expect season 2 to draw from the events in Daisy and Agnes's teenage years. More flashes of Aunt Lydia's backstory and inner life are bound to pop up, too.

Showrunner Bruce Miller teased in an interview with Variety what direction season 2 will take, especially in terms of Agnes's development, now that she knows her true identity. "That’s what the show is about—it’s about the pot boiling over," he said. "When she realizes who her mother is, that turns up the temperature of that pot quite a bit—but it's still just burbling, it doesn’t explode. This is a woman who is raised in Gilead, those are her rules, she's not going to turn around one day and say, 'This is awful. We should change it.' You really want her to become who is on a hot fire, bubbling away, but you never know when she’s gonna start to pop."

He also noted that Agnes was seen as a "golden child" for quite some time, and will now have to face the ramifications at school and in her conservative community of her marriage falling through. "I think at the end, where you have Agnes coming in, she’s saying, ‘Boy, I’m a loser, this has never happened before.’ But the next thing you see is her walking down the hallway, absolutely full of strength," he explained. "So, it may never have never happened before, and I think Lydia is worried, but I think Agnes is going to make something out of this little bit of independence that she’s found."

Meanwhile, Infiniti herself told Collider that she's looking forward to seeing Agnes "taking charge and learning about her story."

"We literally leave her in this internal struggle of figuring out who she actually is versus what she's been told she is her entire life," she said. "That's something that I am very excited to explore."

This story contains light spoilers for Is God Is. Aleshea Harris wrote Is God Is for herself. Over a decade ago, the playwright wove together inspiration from Greek tragedies, spaghetti westerns, revenge thrillers, and her own Southern upbringing to craft the story she wanted to read about Black female rage. She didn't know whether it would ever be performed—but after a buzzy 2018 Off-Broadway premiere that won her an Obie Award and drew attention from Hollywood executives, she’s now the screenwriter, producer, and director of a feature-film adaptation.

“Is God Is was a turning point for me,” Harris tells Marie Claire over Zoom. “This was the first time I was like, No, I'm just going to do what I want to do, what I think is delicious.

She says it was “soul work” to write. The result is a timeless yet contemporary folktale following discarded twins, Anaia and Racine, as their mother tasks them to find and kill their father, who burned and left them for dead 18 years ago. Every step of bringing Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson in the film) and Racine’s (Kara Young) bloodthirsty odyssey to the screen was painstakingly intentional; from casting legends like Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown to play to (and against) their celebrity personas, to recruiting collaborators, like producers Janicza Bravo and Tessa Thompson, who nurtured and built upon the first-time filmmaker’s vision. Harris’s film doesn’t pause to explain the intricacies that it explores, or diminish itself to make its audience comfortable; it’s just brash, explosive, and unapologetic as it reads on the page.

Though its themes of vengeance, trauma, and lookism are universal, Is God Is is first and foremost a story about Black womanhood. The twins don box braids and waist beads, they utilize humor in the face of pain, and rap girlie bops make up the soundtrack. Beyond that, Anaia and Racine's voyage is an allegory for the many ways Black women stay resilient, even when their community fails them. That's what Harris says she hopes audiences recognize as the film's base truth: "The inherent value and power of Black women."

Below, Harris chats with Marie Claire about crafting the style of her film’s world, depicting Black violence onscreen, and exploring her own girlhood through Anaia.

MC: The dialogue in the play and film is very true to Southern Black vernacular, but it also feels haunting. What were some of your inspirations?

AH: It often takes me a long time to start a play because I have to find its mother tongue. I need to know how the people speak in this universe, and then I'm trying to be inventive. This is in many ways Black Southern speech, but even that's quite general. It's really me recalling from memory and the ways that I speak—but then there's also a poetic gesture inside of it. That's the inventive part, where I'm creating a word that I know people will understand what it means, but it's not in the dictionary.

The playwright Suzan-Lori Parks says, "Words are spells in our mouths," and I think of a story as a very immense and complicated spell. Each of those ingredients has to be just right. If someone's going to say, "gonna," that's different from "gon’." "What you gon’ do" is different from "what you gonna do." The rhythm is different and can shift the sensibility of it. That's exactly what Is God Is is to me. It's got one foot in the familiar and then one foot in something else that's imaginative.

MC: The sequence introducing Vivica A. Fox’s character God/Ruby is a great example of the movie skewing reality toward the mythic. How did you approach adapting that scene visually and keeping it rooted without fully leaning into magical realism?

AH: Keeping the balance with all these genres—when I'm playing with a bit of a Greek chorus, but also there’s nods to the culture with the braiding and the nails—it's a gut thing. I feel like nothing should be there that's just ornamental. It should be supportive of the story.

When we get into the mother's space, it gives her a size and a texture to have the suggestion of a halo, to have her hair look like a veil, and to have these women [with her]. On one hand, they're attendants, which we see in the real world, but they also move in unison. They're extensions of her body, so that's the magic of it. It's like riding that line for me: We've got one foot here, one foot there, and that's the creation of a new world.

MC: How did you land on Racine and Anaia’s look, which feels very contemporary, but also fits within the film’s gothic style?

AH: I have to shout out our incredible costume designer, Angelina Vitto. Her lookbook made me more excited to tell this story. I remember saying to Angelina that I felt like Racine and Anaia's silhouette is like the punk band Bad Brains. There's something that feels a little tomboy, but there's a feminine flair. And she brought back Aaliyah and Gwen Stefani back in the day. The dresses that they wear when they meet their mother, I was [initially] like, “I don't know.” But you see what it does as part of this greater tapestry. She nailed it.

MC: There are some changes from the play to the film, including the introduction of Divine (played by Erica Alexander). Why did you decide to add her?

AH: I had gotten the note that we needed a little more of an obstacle for the twins as they went on their journey. So I wondered who else organically exists in this world? Who else has their father left behind? It made sense that there could have been another woman and another son.

A lot of people comment on what I'm trying to say about the Black church with this scene. When I wrote that, I was thinking that she's got a kind of cult. I was also thinking about institutions, so not only the church, in the way that she protects this man. Despite the terrible thing that he had done, he can come into the fold and be welcomed into her arms; the lack of wanting to hold him accountable, the lack of empathy for these women and their mother. We see versions of that in the culture, unfortunately, and that's what I'm trying to call out, because I think accountability is good for the entire community. I am coming for a certain reaction to harm that I think is problematic, and Divine was a great way to do that.

MC: There’s an ongoing conversation about the depiction of Black pain and trauma in film. What considerations did you have about how much violence to actually show on-screen?

AH: I'm very conscious of pain that exists because we are Black and pathologized, but I hope that this movie is about so many other things. I was sitting with that, where I know that my people experienced certain things, but I want to tell this story. Inevitably, because of the nature of anti-Blackness, there's overlap between the awful things that happen in the world and some stereotypes somebody has about us. To me, it goes without saying that not all Black men are like this man. If you're making a revenge story, which I am, and you like writing about Black people, which I do, your revenge story is going to have Black people, and somebody is going to be the bad guy. Unfortunately, gender violence exists in our world, and there's something to be said about it, but I think the way that one says it is important.

I knew that I did not want to show [God/Ruby] being tortured. It's also true to ancient Greek tragedy that the violence happens inside the home, and then you see or hear about the results of the violence. So we shot it in such a way that we wouldn't be directly on the violence. We would help the audience to engage other senses through sound or obscure the act. We'd have the camera on the person who was casually standing there while the violent, horrible thing happened, which tells us a lot.

MC: The film's themes of who is perceived as "ugly" and Anaia being dehumanized based on her appearance are so potent and really resonated with me. What conversations might you have had about that aspect of the film?

AH: People have said that it meant something to them that I had a Black woman calling herself ugly onscreen. We know the ways that beauty standards work; they're harmful to all women, and especially non-white women. That's something that I had sort of forgotten about or wasn't conscious of [at the time], but I absolutely wrote this from the inside, so I wrote from feeling ugly.

Growing up, I knew that I was [considered] ugly. I remember being about 4-years-old and talking to my mother. I named someone, and I was like, "That person is ugly." And then I was naming every Black person I knew, and saying, "She's ugly, she's ugly, I'm ugly." Because I had already processed at 4-years-old that Black people were not [seen as] pretty. The Barbie doll that they showed in the commercial was the white one. Beauty and how one is perceived in the world is a huge part of this story, to state the obvious, but I think what had kind of slipped under was that I wrote that because I spent a lot of time walking around thinking a thing about myself that I had been taught about myself.

MC: In this new Black myth that you’ve created, how do you hope audiences will react to Anaia and Racine, who seem to represent two different manifestations of Black female rage?

AH: I’ve described them before as opposites, as different reactions to harm, and to trauma. I've also thought to myself that they're aspects of the psyche. One part of the self who's like, No, no, no, I'm going to go scorched earth, and the part that's like, Let me just take a step back. There's an inherent drama having these two people who have different reactions, and I think that’s an important part of the movie.

I hope that people can sit with those questions for themselves, if they're a Racine or an Anaia, and when, and under what circumstances. Even though Is God Is isn't a literal proposition, I do hope that it affirms both kinds of being and anything in between, for everyone, and of course for Black women. To continually suffer because of your identity is a horrible thing. I think the question of my life is, What do I do with that? How do I maintain a sense of joy and peace and stay good and keep making my art when I know it's going to happen? It's all in there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

If you've just finished bingeing Trust Me: The False Prophet, Netflix has a new fictionalized cult drama for you to dive into next. Inspired by showrunner Julie Gearey's brief encounter with a young conservative woman, Unchosen follows Rosie (Molly Windsor), a young mother who becomes entwined with a mysterious, but charismatic outsider named Sam (Fra Fee) when he saves her daughter Grace (Olivia Pickering) from drowning.

Rosie welcomes Sam into their tight-knit community and begins a romantic relationship with him, and his presence ignites her desire to leave her abusive marriage and the strict confines of their sect. Soon, even her devout husband Adam (Asa Butterfield) takes a strong liking to their newest neighbor. But as details about Sam's life, including that he's an escaped convict serving time for murder, slowly come to light, it threatens everything they've built and believe in—for better or worse.

So does Rosie escape at the end of Unchosen? Is Sam's bad behavior a thing of the past? Here's how Netflix's latest series Unchosen ends.

Does Rosie escape her violent marriage to Adam at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Yes, Rosie does escape her marriage at the end of Unchosen. But, in the end, it isn't her husband, Adam, that she's running from. It's Sam, the outsider whom she fought for, and who was hiding his violent secret from everyone.

Do Rosie and Sam stay together romantically at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Rosie learns the truth about Sam's past while she's in town, as she frantically searches for his name online. A young woman steps in to help her, and their Google search is troubling: Sam was imprisoned for killing a young girl in his native Ireland. Moreover, Rosie's daughter, Grace, tells her that when she witnessed Sam fighting with Mr. Phillips (Christopher Eccleston), Sam threatened Grace if she opened her mouth.

Back in their community, Sam corners Rosie in the kitchen and offers her his undying love. Knowing the truth, Rosie is repulsed and makes an excuse to leave, finding her husband Adam instead. She confesses about her sexual involvement with Sam and Sam's threat towards Grace, and Adam is kind for the first time, committing to help them escape.

They try to leave during a storm but are cornered by Sam in the rain. He feigns needing car help and discovers suitcases in the back, quickly understanding that they are fleeing. Adam tries to attack Sam, but he's overpowered, and Sam tracks down Rosie before she can run away. Feeling rage about being "abandoned" again—the same feeling that led him to murder the girl in his past—he holds Rosie's head under water. But suddenly, her voice is in his head, preaching about forgiveness, and he lets her go. She takes Grace into town, landing on the doorstep of Mrs. Phillips (Siobhan Finneran) and her son.

Does Adam reconcile with his brother Isaac in 'Unchosen?'

Adam casts Isaac (Aston McAuley) out in the early episodes of Unchosen when it's revealed that he had a cell phone and was in a relationship with an outsider—two no-no's for their separated community. But before there is a chance at reconciliation, Sam seizes an opportunity to run Isaac off the road and kill him in a fatal car crash. Isaac had tried to warn his family about getting close to Sam, but was unable to get through to them before meeting his end.

In the aftermath of the car crash, Sam frames the community's leader, Mr. Phillips, by pulling him into the front seat of the car and placing a flask in his hand, playing into his known drinking problem. Sam seems to grieve what he's done by seeking absolution in church, but he never confesses to what he did, allowing Mr. Phillips to take the blame publicly.

Is Sam and Adam's romantic moment revealed at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Suspecting Adam's repressed homosexuality, Sam stages a moment of intimacy between them, recording the whole thing without Adam's knowledge. He holds this over Adam's head, considering he was recently named an Elder in the community, and this revelation would threaten his standing.

Luckily, the video was never released, even after Adam helped Rosie and Grace escape. And when Adam has the chance to attack Sam, he takes it. “I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘Yes, finally,’” Butterfield told Tudum. “Adam has all of this pent-up guilt and shame and rage. He’s finally able to really stand up for himself and for his family. It’s taken him a long time to be able to do that.”

What is Sam's fate at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Before the credits roll, Unchosen jumps a year into the future, revealing that Sam never had to pay for killing Isaac. Instead, he's been welcomed into the Church, where he is seen preaching to a congregation—just like Adam and Mr. Phillips did before him.

Showrunner Julie Gearey told Tudum that releasing Rosie was “a moment of proper redemption” for Sam. (“Otherwise it’s like, what has it all been for?” she said.) But the eerie ending reads more as an indictment of both organized religion and culture at large, which often fails to punish men with status for their wrongdoings.

What's next for Rosie, Adam, and Sam after the end of 'Unchosen?'

Of course, we don't know anything beyond what was shown on screen, but Gearey and the Unchosen actors revealed to Tudum what they saw next for their characters.

Windsor believes Rosie's next step would be to figure out how to integrate into society and learn to trust people again, while Butterfield hopes Adam would find the courage to leave the cult. "I think he’s still got a journey ahead of him, an internal journey to really confront his own truth, to confront the loss of his family, to confront Sam,” he told the Netflix site. “It’s so deeply ingrained in him, this life and this world. Unlike Rosie, who needs the change and who’s seen the chance to change, I don’t think Adam’s really opened his eyes to that yet.”

Fee, on the other hand, doesn't really believe Sam has changed; he's just riding the wave as long as he can. “He entered the fellowship as a hero. He saved Grace,” Fee said. “They all think of him as this hero, and he’s going to allow that narrative to play out for as long as possible. I think he’s very much on a high, high pedestal at the end of the show...[Maybe] he’s replaced that love with the admiration and devotion of followers, but we all know that that’s not real.”

For the second season of Netflix's acclaimed drama Beef, creator Lee Sung-jin recruited rising and veteran stars from Korea to tell a cross-cultural tale. Among the standout K-drama actors, one star is better known in the music world: Matthew Kim, a.k.a. K-pop rapper BM.

Kim makes his acting debut as Woosh, a mysterious tennis coach who arrives at the central country club alongside its new chaebol owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung). Instead of being attached to the chairwoman's side like her assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), Woosh is busy hawking K-beauty products and procedures to the club's wealthy clientele. Still, the seemingly harmless himbo is hiding some major secrets (though he may or may not be aware of it).

"[Beef] was acting school for me. The most prestigious acting school," Kim told Marie Claire on the red carpet for the Beef season 2 L.A. premiere. "The information [I learned] through working alongside these actors is, wow. I feel so much different now than I did before Beef."

Read on to learn more about Matthew Kim, from his career as a K-pop producer and meme generator to how his personality differs from Woosh.

Matthew Kim is a Korean-American rapper known by his stage name, BM.

Matthew Kim, 33, was born in October 1992 in Southern California. After growing up in and around Los Angeles, Kim relocated to Seoul in 2011 to take part in the first season of the singing competition K-pop Star. Though he didn't win, he was subsequently recruited by DSP Media and spent five years there as a trainee.

In 2016, Kim debuted under the name BM (a.k.a. Big Matthew) as a rapper in the co-ed K-pop group KARD. The quartet—featuring BM, J.Seph, Somin, and Jiwoo—quickly stood out as one of the rare mixed-gender groups in an industry full of boy and girl groups. Kim later made his solo debut with the single "Broken Me" in 2021; he has also served as composer, songwriter, and producer for his solo work, as well as KARD songs like "Dumb Litty" and "Break Down." Most recently, he produced several songs on Somin's solo EP, Unveil.

In addition to K-pop, Matthew Kim is a podcaster and entertainer.

Kim is known throughout the K-pop world for his personality as much as his music. Since 2020, Kim has worked with Eric Nam's DIVE Studios as a longtime co-host of the English-language podcast "GET REAL," alongside BTOB member Peniel, former Ladies' Code member Ashley Choi, and singer-songwriter JUNNY. The chat podcast discusses "the ups and downs of work, love, and adulthood," often featuring English-speaking celebrities who moved to South Korea from countries like the U.S. and Canada to pursue careers in entertainment.

Kim is also well known as the creator of the Big Tiddie Gang meme, which originated from a viral March 2019 livestream where he said he prefers chest workouts. The following October, during a KARD tour stop in L.A., Kim met a fan of the group who said their music comforted her as she was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. Per Refinery29, this inspired Kim to sell Big Tiddie Gang (BTG) merch through his parents' clothing brand Staydium LA, with over $20,000 from the proceeds going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Speaking to the outlet in late 2020, Kim reflected on becoming known for his candor as a K-pop idol. "I’m just too blatantly honest. It’s the L.A. in me—I was born and raised around people who are very open with their opinions. I’ve got nothing to hide. If you ask me something, I’m going to tell you exactly how it is and how I feel about it," he said. "There are obviously rules and standards that are placed on idols and other public figures since they're looked at as role models, so they’re careful with what they say. I understand why things are the way they are. I’ve been told why, but...I just don’t listen. And I guess it worked out for me."

Matthew Kim says he's "a little less greedy" than Woosh in real life.

In his first-ever acting role, Kim plays a former tennis pro who now teaches tennis at Monte Vista Point, selling expensive K-beauty products to housewives on the side. Speaking to Marie Claire at the show's L.A. premiere, Kim compares Woosh's traits to his real-life personality. "[We're both] attention hungry, [but] Matthew is a little less greedy. Woosh is very hungry still."

In a TV Guide interview, Kim discussed the similarities between acting and his creative background as a K-pop idol. "While there's a lot of differences, I think there's an honesty and authenticity in your emotions when you convey something in both music and acting," he said. "Acting, you're just not doing it in a set time, in a set rhythm—you have your own rhythm. Having been able to for so long convey an emotion through music, definitely that energy was brought to acting and it was pretty helpful to have done that for such a long time."

It might seem like my graphic tee collection is complete, given it's overflowing with Sabrina Carpenter's concert merch, Twilight movie posters, and more. But obviously it's not, because my T-shirt drawer doesn't have The Drama graphic tee Zendaya debuted on April 18. Trust: I'll make room for this one.

Zendaya's dark comedy has been in theaters since April 3, but one final screening brought her back to L.A. in a better-late-than-never press tour look. Law Roach—the same image architect behind her The Drama red carpet gowns—sourced New York designer Emily Dawn Long's collaboration with production company A24 for a limited-edition baby tee. The beige short-sleeve boasted the phrase, "To Be Loved Is To Be Known" in blood red. The Drama's capitalized logo appeared on the back.

The expression wasn't a direct quote from The Drama, but it referenced the film's themes around unconditional love. "To me, this movie is really about what you are willing to accept for love and poses the question, ‘Is love unconditional?'" Zendaya told Vogue last month. "In my real life, what this movie has reminded me about love is: if you feel safe with someone, if you feel known by someone, and you feel seen by someone; then you feel like you can tell them everything."

Zendaya's one-of-one tee (and its 35 counterparts) sold out in minutes on April 7. Her plaid pencil skirt's Louis Vuitton Fall 2013 roots make it equally-rare. Mauve-colored flowers along the knee-length hem revived the lace-trimmed skirt trend of yester-summer, a favorite among fellow minimalists like Zoë Kravitz and Jennifer Lawrence.

To finish, the Emmy winner slipped on soft loafers from Jil Sander in burgundy to match her tee's lettering. Gigi Hadid wore an almost-identical Miu Miu pair two weeks ago, alongside a Zendaya-coded barn jacket and light-wash jeans. Spring 2026 color trend reports prove it's burgundy's time to shine, whether it's alongside chartreuse, navy blue, or mauve lace.

Zendaya will never turn down merch for her movies, even the most dramatic ones. During her Challengers press run in 2024, she pulled off the "I Told Ya" T-shirt worn by her character's love interest in the tennis-focused film. Then-Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson was inspired by John F. Kennedy Jr.'s shirt in 1997, which featured the same slogan. It was an homage to his father's presidential tagline, "I Told You So."

With The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Dune: Part Three still to come this year, Zendaya's graphic tee possibilities are endless. If anyone can turn a Spider-Man shirt into a Spring 2026 hero item, it's Z.

Three years after its Emmy-winning debut, Netflix's anthology Beef is back for a new star-studded exploration of love and hate. Among the cast of Oscar winners and superstars, Seoyeon Jang is having her breakout moment.

When she first appears in the series, Jang's character Eunice seems unassuming, the dedicated assistant to the central country club's new owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung). But Eunice quickly steps out of the shadow of her chaebol boss, thanks to her surprising connection with himbo trainer Austin (Charles Melton). By the end of the eight-episode season, the fate of Chairwoman Park—a woman who represents 2 percent of South Korea's GDP—is in Eunice's hands.

"This was one of my dream roles," Jang told Marie Claire on the red carpet for the Beef season 2 L.A. premiere. "I [have] primarily worked in Korea, so I knew I wanted to bring the Korean elements into this world as well, and I believed that I could offer it. When I first encountered this audition, I was praying so hard. I'm just so grateful that it all worked out."

Read on to learn more about Seoyeon Jang, including where to watch her shows and movies before Beef, as well as her K-drama and K-beauty recommendations.

Seoyeon Jang is a British-Korean actress who has appeared in several K-drama rom-coms.

Seoyeon Jang, 31, grew up between South Korea and England. She trained in both acting and classical dance at the secondary school ArtsEd in London, before relocating to Korea. In 2024, she earned a graduate degree from Korea University.

Speaking to Marie Claire at the Beef season 2 premiere in L.A., Jang explained that she related to her character's multicultural roots. "I related to Eunice because I had an upbringing in London, and my family is very Korean. So I think I had the best of both worlds by growing up."

Jang made her acting debut in 2019, with a role on the Korean web series One Fine Week. She went on to appear in supporting roles in romance K-dramas like Stock Struck, Love Is for Suckers, and Heartbeat, as well as the thrillers Doctor Lawyer, Snowdrop, and Good Partner. She also had a small role opposite her Beef co-star Song Kang-ho in the 2021 film Emergency Declaration.

Before 'Beef,' she played a secretary in another Korean-English thriller series.

Beef season 2 isn't Jang's first time starring in a joint production between the U.S. and South Korea. Last year, she played Moon, the polished secretary to spy boss Juno Lund (Piper Perabo) in Prime Video's Butterfly. (Unfortunately, the Daniel Dae Kim-led thriller was cancelled after one season.)

In an interview with The Chosun Daily released around Butterfly's finale, Jang shared her thoughts on acting in English-language scenes on a major show. "I’ve always wanted to act in English, but opportunities were rare. I’m relieved to receive positive feedback. This project has opened doors overseas and allowed me to introduce myself to many, making Butterfly a truly meaningful work."

Seoyeon Jang has strong opinions on K-dramas and K-beauty.

When asked for her K-drama recommendations on the Beef season 2 red carpet, Jang listed off some of the most acclaimed Korean series on Netflix. She listed the 2019 romance Crash Landing on You, the 2018 melodrama My Mister, and the 2014 workplace drama Misaeng: Incomplete Life among her favorites.

She also broke down part of her K-beauty routine. "I love serums. I'll use a serum with a skin-boosting device. I like to really push it in as far as I can and hope for the best. And then [I use] a nice hydrating serum," she explained, before adding that she could go on "for hours" about skincare.

This article contains references to suicide and self-harm. For support, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or visit the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

Much like a car accident on a busy freeway, season 2 of The Pitt was almost impossible to look away from. Across 14 episodes, the HBO Max drama had fans stress eating through confrontations with ICE agents, cyber attacks, psychiatric meltdowns, and head injuries. (So many head injuries.) As torturous as it might’ve been for viewers, the show treated Noah Wyle’s Dr. “Robby” Robinavitch even worse, turning the battered moral compass of season 1 into…well, a bit of a dick. He insulted colleagues, he undermined his replacement on her first day, he let federal agents terrorize his employees without much of a fight. Those slutty little glasses could only do so much for his likability. By the time the day shift workers were limping through those emergency room exit doors, all of us were anxious for the scrubbed-up president of the sad dad club to treat his severe burnout with that ominously threatened sabbatical already.

All of which is to say: We thought we knew where the finale was headed. And if The Pitt were any other show, we would’ve been right. Prestige TV has a very specific grammar for a man in Robby’s condition. The internal rot must always express itself externally. In TV speak, that usually means car crashes, a bender, maybe a disgruntled patient with a gun, or a well-placed bridge—all arriving in a show’s final installment to serve as the climax, the boiling point of all the tension and narrative foreshadowing that had been building all season long. There’d likely be a cliffhanger to keep us on the hook during the year-long hiatus. But something had to happen.

And then, it didn’t. In fact, much of nothing at all happened in the show’s season 2 finale.

Obviously, that’s not true for the patients. A pregnant woman facing an eclampsia crisis courtesy of a “wild birthing” trend; a dead guy in the waiting room; a man wheeled in with half his face shot off—they were all in on the action, but for audiences expecting to see Dr. Robby’s skull meet pavement in those waning minutes, the writers delivered something very different. The ending the show had been telegraphing since the first frame of the season premiere, was Robby on that motorcycle, helmet-less making a decision he couldn't walk back. Instead, we were treated to something more radical: Men talking about their feelings.

Robby’s buddy Duke (Jeff Kober), bless him, went straight for the jugular, wielding his own dicey heart condition as emotional leverage to ensure his friend’s return. Langdon (Patrick Ball), who'd spent the entire shift ricocheting between wounded and furious in Robby's general direction, finally landed somewhere useful: a blunt, slightly self-helpy speech about addiction, delivered by a man who'd only recently gotten honest about his own. And Abbott—Shawn Hatosy doing Emmy-earning work—delivered the most heartfelt plea, using his own mental health struggles as a hand to pull Robby out of the darkness, providing perspective from the vantage point of a man who’s looked down from the ledge many times before. The fact that none of these amateur interventionists were women might seem minor, but it isn’t.

On prestige TV, the emotional rescue of a suffering man is traditionally women's work, because it traditionally is women's work—full stop. Television didn't invent the dynamic so much as faithfully reproduce it. There’s always been “the worried wife;” the perceptive female colleague; the girlfriend who calls attention with little credit. She is, depending on the show's politics, either a saint or a nag, canonized as a long-suffering angel or vilified as an obstacle to the protagonist's self-destruction. Either way, the emotional labor is theirs, unpaid and largely thankless, and the show's sympathy almost never follows them into the next scene.

What The Pitt did was hand that job to the men and the storytelling was better for it.

The finale ends not on a highway somewhere outside Pittsburgh, but on Robby still in the building, rocking an abandoned baby to sleep with something that sounds like hope; a bedtime story imagining a full life for baby Jane Doe, and maybe for himself too.

And I am not, in any way, condoning self-harm nor suggesting that finding the will to live makes things boring (in real life or otherwise). But I am saying that TV has spent decades teaching us to expect spectacle. By not giving us one, The Pitt prioritized character development over audience expectations, and let its broken hero simply clock out and try again another day.

Strip away the head injuries and the hot takes and that’s what The Pitt is really about: the labor of care. Who gives it, who receives it, and who gets voluntold into providing it based purely on their gender and their proximity to a man who's struggling. The ER runs on that labor and the show has always been smart enough to know it. Which makes it meaningful that when Robby finally needed saving, no woman was dispatched to do it. In 2026, when male loneliness is either a crisis or a grift depending on who's talking about it, that's its own kind of argument.

The show played us, and it played us on purpose. Fourteen episodes of setup, of ominous goodbyes and motorcycle safety lectures and watching Wyle hang on by his overworked stethoscope…and the payoff was a bedtime story. The Pitt has some nerve. It also, begrudgingly, has a point.

It’s a February afternoon in L.A., and Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara are back in the same room. Five months after wrapping their Apple TV thriller Imperfect Women, the three sit around a table, between breaks in a photo shoot, slipping easily into conversation as good friends do—swapping notes on the latest prestige dramas.

For actors who’ve each anchored some of TV's most critically acclaimed shows, this project marks a first: sharing the screen as a trio. In Imperfect Women, they play longtime friends who realize how little they know about each other after one of them goes missing. Through illuminating flashbacks and switching POVs, viewers learn the secrets about their friendships at the same time as the titular women.

The newest addition to the rich-women-behaving-badly genre is a standout both in front of and behind the camera—Moss and Washington also served as co-executive producers on a set where the showrunner, directors, and top stars were all women.

Ahead of the series’ premiere (and its April 29 finale) Moss, Washington, and Mara sat down with Marie Claire to discuss adapting Araminta Hall’s novel for the screen, bringing the production to post-wildfires Los Angeles, and the importance of telling complex, female-led stories.

Marie Claire: I’d love to discuss how each of you came onto the project. What has it been like to work together—both onscreen and, for Kerry and Elisabeth, as producers?

Elisabeth Moss: I read the book at the end of 2019. It's highly likely I got it at the airport—I was flying to Hawaii to do Taika Watiti's film, and I thought, This looks like a good beach read—and I fell in love with it. I had just met my producing partner, Lindsay McManus, and we hadn't even started the company. This was the first thing we ever got together, so it's special to us because of that.

Kerry Washington: I'm a huge Lizzie Moss fan. Even just getting any correspondence from her was incredible. I feel like these opportunities to work with other women and really lift each other up and carry the weight together are so wonderful.

EM: It's really rare you get to go to another actress and say, "Do you want to partner up on something and both have great roles and have it be sort of an equal partnership as well?" I've never been able to do that before.

Kate Mara: The thing that I was most flattered by when you guys presented this to me before I read it was: "We need someone who presents as [perfect], but also has probably done some really messed up stuff." And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm so flattered." The thought that I could play that was much more exciting.

EM: There was literally one person that we thought of for Nancy, and luckily she said yes.

MC: Each of your wardrobes is very distinctive for your characters. Did each of you have a favorite look or element that really helped you embody your character?

KW: We need to lift up Tiffany Hasbourne, our costume designer. She was so committed to telling the story of who these women were through clothes and the subtle differences which also helped convey that we all were friends.

KM: Nancy's daily wardrobe is so fancy. Our rule for Nancy was she never wears pants unless she's just given birth. I’d show up [to set] in sweatpants and then put on these incredible dresses, and it does totally change your whole vibe.

KW: Eleanor came from money but didn't want to present that way in the world. She was very eclectic and kind of artsy in her choices, but underneath that it was like, 'Oh, that just happens to be McQueen, or it just happens to be Prada.' It was always mixed in with high-low and vintage finds.

EM: I presented Tiffany with a challenge with Mary. Part of me wishes I had said yes to some of her initial ideas because they were really beautiful; There was a lot of Zimmerman and things like that that I would have loved to have gotten to wear. But it didn't feel realistic for Mary, who is a stay-at-home mom and has two young kids. There were times when I had to dress up a little bit more to just look like I was going to the same party as these ladies, but the highest end we got was Dôen.

MC: Los Angeles is shot so beautifully in this series. How did the change from the novel’s U.K. setting to L.A. come about?

EM: I will point a very grateful finger at Kerry, who came up with the idea. It just worked creatively so well. I feel like I've seen the East Coast version of this show, and I thought, this is going to be different. And obviously to bring work to L.A. was really important to all of us. [Filming] ended up being after the [2025] wildfires.

KW: It was a gift to be able to give the crews here an opportunity to do what they do so brilliantly and not have to leave their families to do it. Also, I don't think people think of L.A. as being a place where there is old money and that's what I love about Nancy’s family story. Those families exist in Pasadena.

EM: It's a place too where you can reinvent yourself, right? You can be who you want to be, even if that person isn’t who you really are.

KW: It's part of our characters. We're all keeping so many secrets, like how much money we have or don't have, where we're from or not from. We're all sort of selling a misconception of those stories.

MC: Were there any elements of the original novel you really fought to make it to the screen?

EM: The distinct changes in point of view were really important to me. When I read the book, I really thought that I had it all figured out, and I was totally wrong about who Nancy was. That to me was something that was really important to keep.

KW: In the world that we're living in right now, to understand that you can be two people in the same room, in the same moment, and be telling two different stories, it is a muscle we all need to be building. We all need to be understanding that perspective really dictates so much and that you might learn something from seeing a moment from somebody else's point of view.

MC: There’s an interrogation scene teased in the trailer, where Detective Ganz says she wouldn’t call the women’s dynamic a friendship. Do you ultimately think Eleanor, Mary, and Nancy were friends?

EM: Look, we made a TV show. As far as I know, none of my friends have done some of the things that these women do in the show, but we needed to add a little drama. I do think they're friends.

KW: I do too. I think friendship—like women, like humans—is imperfect. I feel like the closest friends I have are the ones where we have fucked up and we made it through to the other side. Then you really know somebody.

EM: Also, it's so relatable. The idea that you tell one friend something that you're not going to tell your other friend. Everyone has a friend they go to that is maybe slightly less judgmental.

KM: Even with family as well. I'm going to tell this brother and not that brother.

EM: Absolutely. And when I read the book, I was like, yes, female friendships sometimes are not great. Sometimes someone messes up.

MC: The scenes that impacted me most, in terms of their bond, were when you could see the village they built together among their families. What was it like bringing that dynamic to the screen?

KW: I just got emotional, because it made me think of what it was like to make the show. We were saying yesterday that it's almost like the show had three number ones. We held it up together. There were weeks that were really hard for me and these girls were like glorified background actors. And then it became all about Kate and [Elisabeth and I] were like, 'We're just going to hang out and do our nails.' But we were there for each other and that allowed us to tell this story together as a community, as a circle. The way these women are sort of helping to raise all of their kids, that's how we were building the show, creating that support network for each other.

EM: This accommodation behind the scenes that no one would ever see; that quiet placing the other person in front of you. I wasn’t surprised at all, but it was very cool to see.

MC: Tell me about that experience working on a female-led set where all of the leads were working moms.

KM: There were babies and toddlers showing up all the time.

KW: My [eight-year-old] son was on set one day, and decided to be our still photographer. He was taking pictures of the crew and interviewing them, like, “What's your job?” It was really, really sweet.

EM: I'm kind of newer to the game and so I would just like constantly be trying to think of questions to ask them as working moms. 'How do you prioritize this? How do you make time for this?' There wasn't enough time to talk to them about everything I wanted to talk to them about.

MC: In each of your opinions, why do you think stories about the inner workings of “unlikeable” women and complicated female friendships are so fascinating to audiences?

EM: I think we like to watch ourselves on screen. We like to find things that we relate to, and it can be more fun when it's a heightened version. This show has moments that are so honest, vulnerable, and hard to watch. And then it also has watercooler, I can't believe she did that moments. I love watching that mix of highbrow and fun.

KM: People enjoy watching a mess. I don't think every show and every movie needs to necessarily have a message. Sometimes that's really important, but it can also just be a really fun watch. You can get lost in the story.

KW: I do think for a long time in film and television, women have been relegated to being the best friend, the girlfriend, the wife. I think we're in an era of knowing that we are at the center of our own stories and our own lives. It's shown in a beautiful way through this show where there are three interesting, complicated women, and you don't get to say one of them is the lead. That idea of making room for everybody to have the value where they are worth their own story. I choose as a mom and as a wife to sometimes be a supporting character, but in my day-to-day life, I also know that I'm the lead of my life, and we all deserve to know this.

EM: I'd love to get to a point where that's not even what we're talking about as related to women. Without calling out anyone specific, there's a lot of directors and actors that no one has ever asked them what it's like to play a messy person. Instead it's, "Oh my God, you were brilliant." Maybe we get to the place where it's not even a part of the conversation.

Photographer Tracy Nguyễn | Creative Direction Alexa Wiley | Art Direction Montse Tanús | Entertainment Director Neha Prakash | Producer Luciana De La Fe

Elisabeth Moss: Stylist Chloe Hartstein | Hair Stylist Sunnie Brook | Makeup Artist Sabriana Bedrani

Kerry Washington: Stylist Rob Zangardi & Mariel Haenn | Hair Stylist Davontae Washington | Makeup Artist Adam Burrel

Kate Mara: Stylist Johnny Wujek | Hair Stylist Mara Roszak | Makeup Artist Alisha Bailey

Lucy Halliday was a devout Margaret Atwood fan well before she landed the lead role in The Testaments, Hulu’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale series. The 22-year-old grew up reading titles like The Penelopiad (which she devoured amid an obsession with mythology); and remembers fondly the day her friend brought a copy of The Testaments to school in 2019.

“The moment this job came up, I was so enthralled by it,” Halliday tells Marie Claire over Zoom in early April. “I wanted to audition so badly—and I really wanted them to hire me.”

Inevitably, the newcomer landed a leading role with a self-tape audition. She stars as Daisy, a teenage girl from Toronto who goes undercover in the dystopian, theocratic Gilead as a convert of the Pearl Girl missionaries. Upon her arrival, she’s assigned one of the commander’s daughters as a mentor, Agnes (One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti), and the series explores the depths of their relationship and the empowerment they discover through sisterhood.

It’s clear that Halliday shares Daisy’s rebellious spirit. The up-and-comer, who hails from Paisley, Scotland, begged her parents to let her do theater, and ultimately deferred studying medicine when she booked her first-ever on-screen role in the 2022 BAFTA-nominated indie film Blue Jeans. “How I got my first job was quite gutsy, a bit like Daisy,” she says. “There was an open call for a film that I saw online, and I didn't really match any of the description that they'd said, but I sent an email anyway, being like, ‘I'm perfect for this!’”

She brings that tenacity to her performance. For eagle-eyed fans who spotted resemblances between the actresses and thought Daisy was June's daughter, showrunner Bruce Miller has debunked the theories, but Halliday still delivers as feistiness feels resonant of how Elisabeth Moss portrayed The Handmaid’s Tale’s heroine, June. It’s unavoidable in the work they did together in The Testaments—as is Halliday’s ability to hold her own opposite the Emmy-winner. “Getting to share the screen with her was a real privilege, and getting to spar with her was the joy,” Halliday says of Moss, who also executive-produced the series. “She was a real source of support for all of us because she's an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to this world.”

With Halliday and Infiniti now ushering in a new generation into that universe, and the first three episodes of The Testaments out on Hulu, below, Halliday tells Marie Claire about what she knew going into the project, how she bonded with her castmates, and the message she hopes the show sends.

Maire Claire: What was it like playing a character who has such a huge secret and is trying her best to perform herself?

LH: The duality of Daisy really appealed to me from the very beginning because, especially in the world of Gilead, everyone's having to be very pious and composed all of the time, but then to have a character that has an alter ego and you get to explore a whole other realm of her was so exciting. I was continually trying to find moments where I could bring the Toronto side to the Gilead side—not lose the Daisy that existed before she came here. That was very important to me because, when you go somewhere new or you change over time, you don't lose your roots, you don't lose where you've come from. We've all entered a room or a place where we felt we've had to change who we are slightly or conform a little bit or hide who we are a little bit, so I think that being a universal experience definitely was something I drew on and was keen to explore more.

MC: Daisy has such a rich innerworld and backstory—considering she’s an outsider in Gilead and had a normal teenhood before becoming an incognito Pearl Girl. How did you get into her head?

LH: I do have a Daisy playlist. Playlists are something that I think I've done for every job I've done. They really allow me to get inside of a head of a character. But what's great about Daisy and this show was not only does she have two sides, so already there's going to be two very different styles of music or energies that are going to be added to the playlist, but so much occurs throughout the season that she really does experience so many different emotions. So, the variety of music really was quite incredible. It was interesting going back and looking through at the very end and being like, "Oh, my gosh, she's really gone on a journey here."

I'll quite often, on the way in to work in the morning, have it [be what] I'm listening to, just to get into the mindset. Especially in the show, when you are jumping about, not just storylines, but locations, whether she's in Toronto or Gilead, to put on the music and transport back to that specific place was so helpful.

MC: What was on your playlist for when Daisy was in Toronto versus when she became a Pearl Girl?

LH: I remember there being Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch” at one point. I've got “The Times They Are A-Changin' by Bob Dylan; I think that's when she comes in. I've got “Rebel Rebel,” David Bowie, “The Wind” by Cat Stevens, “212,” Azealia Banks. I've actually got The Cranberries, which is funny because this was before The Cranberries was ever added to the soundtrack, so I was on the same wavelength. It was a real mix of songs; they didn't really need to have rhyme or reason. It was just if I listened to it and felt, This is Daisy, it would go in the playlist.

MC: Going into the project, did you know you were going to have screen time with Elisabeth Moss?

Lucy Halliday: I didn't know until I'd already had the job Bruce [Miller, showrunner] texted me to tell me before he then sent the updated script, and I was ecstatic because Elisabeth Moss is the embodiment of The Handmaid’s Tale. And aside from that, she's just a phenomenal actor. I really treasured the moments I got to share with Elisabeth.

MC: Working with her as an executive producer, what questions did you end up having for her that you didn’t expect to have?

LH: I do remember the best piece of advice she gave us was, not like a singular statement, but it was rather [that] she reassured us and gave us a space to step into these characters and to step into this world. I know both of us, Chase [Infiniti] and myself, we were nervous coming into this because we were aware of the weight of responsibility of how well The Handmaid’s Tale had done and we didn't want to mess up. She basically was like, "It's okay. You've got this,” and let us step into these characters and pass the mantle.

MC: When did you find out that you and Chase would be on-screen partners?

LH: I found out immediately after I got the job that Chase had the job—and it was an immediate friendship, an immediate kinship. That was so lovely to have from the outset; to have a support in someone and paralleled experience with someone was so crucial to the overall experience I ended up having.

MC: What surprised you the most about working with Chase?

LH: Something I've learned from Chase throughout this process was the power of advocating for yourself and speaking up for yourself on set. That's something she was continually encouraging me to do. It was something I noticed had already transformed in me by the end of filming because I was aware that I was utilizing that facet a lot more. I've been on sets since then and it's the same. I hold myself differently or I speak up differently now, and it's not something that I have as much qualms about approaching—and that's because of Chase.

MC: That’s so great to hear. Can you recall a moment on set of The Testaments where you felt compelled to advocate for yourself?

LH: I don't think I can recall a singular moment. It's more just about continually keeping the belief that you're not an inconvenience for advocating for what you need. Like, if you need five more minutes to reset between a take—because ultimately that's going to allow you to do the job better. That's key to a lot of it: You're not just advocating for something for yourself, it's actually going to benefit you professionally and the performance, which ultimately is the end goal for everyone.

MC: Stories about female teenage rebellion have been beloved and inspiring audiences for decades, and The Testaments is the latest series to join that pantheon. What do you think it is about those stories that resonate?

LH: I think what's going to resonate with audiences is actually just the universal experience of adolescence and how transcendent it is of location or culture or upbringing. We've all shared these same moments and these same milestones and felt these emotions at one point or another.

I think also just the idea of sisterhood and community and the power that we find in having each other and the power that can come when we come together, I think is going to resonate with audiences. We see it in the show and I hope it inspires individuals in real life to band together, to form communities, to use their voices and try to enact change because that's such a powerful thing, too.

MC: I love that you mentioned the universality of the coming-of-age experience in the show. What coming-of-age movies, shows, or books have stuck with you?

LH: Girlhood by Céline Sciamma. I really love that film. Lady Bird. I obviously watched Normal People when it came out, when I was in school. I think that just further reiterates how important art is in the coming of age [experience] because we remember the stories or books or TV shows or whatever that we watched and we felt resonated, we felt seen and we felt represented. It would be lovely to think if this show can have the same impact on someone coming of age right now.

MC: The crux of the show is really the iconic line, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” How might you be taking that, and Daisy, with you after working on the show?

LH: I think it is essentially how important it is to remain hopeful, and how important it is to be there for each other, and to band together because we are powerful as a team, and that it is possible to make a change, whether it be on a small, minute level or a grand scale. We need to keep hope because without hope we have nothing.

MC: As you said, sisterhood is a big theme of the show. While you shot a lot of intense material, what were some of your favorite memories working with the other women, either off or on set?

LH: It was like being back in school. There was so much chatter and laughter, which was so great. I remember going to Medieval Times—We really liked Medieval Times. I don't know who suggested it. We also saw Superman like four times in the cinema. We had dinner together just about every weekend. It was moments like that that really further reiterated how much of a community we'd found in each other, and that was really beautiful.

I think having those girls really informed the experience that I had in this job, and allowed the levity, because we did have some heavy scenes, and they are difficult to film. You are pouring yourself into them and giving them your all, but having people who you can take a step back from those scenes with, and be supported and be held, was so important. It allowed that transition between reality and fiction to really take place, because you didn't need to take those feelings home with you at the end of the day. You had the girls to decompress with and add some laughter.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This story contains main spoilers for The Testaments. As if the real world doesn’t feel dystopian enough right now, Hulu is bringing us back into the world of Gilead. The Testaments, based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, has officially arrived on our screens. The series is billed as an “evolution” of its predecessor, continuing the story and world we’ve come to know over six seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale. This time around, a new generation of young women is coming of age inside Gilead’s oppressive regime, under the unsparing glare of Commanders, Wives, Eyes, and Aunts (including Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia, reprising her role from the original series).

Read on to learn more about the new young cast of The Testaments—and how their characters fit into the show’s bigger world.

Chase Infiniti as Agnes

Agnes, formerly known as Hannah, is technically a character Handmaid’s Tale viewers have met before: She’s the eldest daughter of June, aka Offred (Elisabeth Moss), who was taken from her as the Gilead regime came to power. When the original series ended, Agnes was still in Gilead, having been raised by others inside their oppressive, fundamentalist government. The Testaments (re)introduces Agnes as a dutiful and pious young woman attending Aunt Lydia’s preparatory school for future wives.

Infiniti, 25, made her feature-film debut in 2025’s Best Picture-winning One Battle After Another, starring as Willa, the resilient daughter of Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor’s vigilante characters. Rapper Tyler, the Creator cast her in his music video for “Darling, I,” after seeing her in the trailer for that film. Infiniti also appeared in the 2024 Apple TV limited series Presumed Innocent, alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga.

Instagram: @chaseinfiniti

Lucy Halliday as Daisy

Daisy is a newcomer to Gilead. When she arrives, she appears to be a new convert of the Pearl Girl missionaries, after growing up in Canada. Agnes is assigned as her mentor, but unbeknownst to Agnes and their classmates, Daisy is actually working undercover for the Mayday rebel group. Over the course of the series, Agnes and Daisy's bond "becomes the catalyst that will upend their past, their present, and their future," according to the show's official description.

Halliday, 22, is a Scottish actress who earned acclaim (and a Scottish BAFTA award) for her role in the ‘80s-set lesbian drama Blue Jean. She also appeared in the 2025 musician biopic California Schemin’, directed by James McAvoy.

Instagram: @lucyhallidayy

Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia

Does Aunt Lydia really need an introduction? If you watched The Handmaid’s Tale, her reputation precedes her: As a high-ranking Aunt in Gilead, she’s responsible for the instruction (read: indoctrination) of women inside the country’s brutally patriarchal system. In The Testaments, she runs the preparatory school attended by Agnes and Daisy, which is described as “a place where obedience is instilled brutally and always with divine justification.” However, the sequel series implies she has changed over time—and will call into question just how much she believed in Gilead's mission.

Dowd, 70, is known, of course, for portraying Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale, a role that won her an Emmy Award. She’s a veteran actress whose film and TV credits include The Americans, The Leftovers, Hereditary, Garden State, and The Manchurian Candidate.

Instagram: @realanndowd

Rowan Blanchard as Shunammite

Shunammite is a classmate of Agnes. A pampered teen from a prominent Gilead family, her status affords her a certain level of respect and power amongst her peers.

Blanchard, 24, came to fame as a child actress—she appeared in Spy Kids: All the Time in the World and then played Riley Matthews on the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World from 2014 to 2017. More recently, she’s appeared in The Goldbergs, A Wrinkle in Time, Snowpiercer, and Poker Face.

Instagram: @rowanblanchard

Mattea Conforti as Becka

Becka is another student at Aunt Lydia’s school, but one who’s more working-class, comparatively speaking, than her peers. (Her father is a dentist.) She’s also questioning if she wants the wives-and-mothers future she and her peers are being groomed for.

Conforti, 19, has appeared on Broadway as the titular character in Matilda the Musical and as young Anna in Frozen—and she also provided the voice of young Elsa on screen in Frozen 2. Other acting credits include Power, NOS4A2, and The Many Saints of Newark.

Instagram: @matteaconforti

Mabel Li as Aunt Vidala

Aunt Vidala is a stern disciplinarian and the heir apparent to the women’s sphere of Gilead. That authority is tested as unrest begins among her students.

Li has appeared on TV series like Safe Home and Careless. She has also performed theater in her native Australia, including The Seagull at the Sydney Theatre Co.

Instagram: @mabel_liii

Amy Seimetz as Paula

Paula is a Gilead woman whose recent marriage to a powerful Commander has raised her social status. However, that new position is complicated by her relationship with her new stepdaughter, Agnes.

Seimetz, 44, is an actor and filmmaker who can be seen in films and shows like The Killing, Sweet Tooth, Pet Sematary, Alien: Covenant, and No Sudden Move. She also co-created the TV adaptation of The Girlfriend Experience, directed two episodes of the 2024 Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV reboot, and wrote and directed both the 2012 film Sun Don’t Shine and 2020’s She Dies Tomorrow. (You may also know her as the initial director of HBO's The Idol.)

Brad Alexander as Garth

Garth is a young Commander who becomes involved in the personal lives of the girls he’s sworn to protect.

Alexander is a British model and actor who portrayed Edward on season 4 of Netflix’s You. He was also seen in the TV series Surface and Lynley.

Instagram: @bradalexanderactor

Zarrin Darnell-Martin as Aunt Gabbana

Gabbana is another Aunt and a firm proponent of Gilead values. A strict and uncompromising educator, she’s also Aunt Vidala's right-hand.

Darnell-Martin, 42, is a Canadian actress who has appeared on TV’s Ginny and Georgia, The Good Doctor, and Fellow Travelers.

Instagram: @zarrindm

Eva Foote as Aunt Estee

If there’s such a thing as a “cool Aunt” in this world, it’s Aunt Estee. She’s the youngest Aunt at the school, and her energy and kindness endear her to her students.

Foote has appeared in Murdoch Mysteries, the short film Sally (which she also wrote), and Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.

Instagram: @evateresefoote

Isolde Ardies as Hulda

Another classmate and fellow “plum” at Aunt Lydia’s school, Hulda is sweet and friendly but somewhat naive, and her frank observations and optimism have earned her loyal friends.

Ardies has featured in the TV series Ruby and the Veil and Netflix's Wayward, which also starred Toni Collette.

Instagram: @isoldeardies

Shechinah Mpumlwana as Jehosheba

Jehosheba (seen above, far left) is a competitive classmate from a respected Gilead family who is relentless in her pursuit of a high-status marriage.

Mpumlwana can be seen in 13: The Musical, Creeped Out, The Fire Inside, and has voiced characters on kids’s shows like PJ Masks and Blues Clues & You.

Instagram: @shechinahhhh

Birva Pandya as Miriam

A girl on the cusp of womanhood, Miriam (above, third from left) struggles under the pressure of the marriage season.

Pandya has appeared on TV series like The Umbrella Academy, Northern Rescue, Transplant, and The Institute.

Instagram: @birvaapandya

Kira Guloien as Rosa

Rosa is a caring, dedicated Martha (the domestic servants in the Gilead social structure) who acts as a maternal figure to Agnes. She’s a much-needed source of love in an otherwise cold household.

Guloien is a Canadian actress who has featured in Women Talking, The Good Doctor, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and The Boys spin-off series, Gen V.

Instagram: @kiraguloien

Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne

Ahead of The Testaments's premiere, Moss played coy about whether her The Handmaid's Tale character would return. Perhaps it's no surprise that yes, she does: The woman once known as Offred is now a revolutionary working with the Mayday resistance group out of Canada. She's the one who sends Daisy across the border to pose undercover in Gilead.

Moss, 43, has won two Emmy Awards (for Handmaid's Tale and Top of the Lake). She also played iconic copywriter Peggy Olson on Mad Men and first daughter Zoey Bartlett on The West Wing. More recently, she's appeared in the series Shining Girls, The Veil, and Imperfect Women.

This story contains spoilers ahead for The Testaments. It's time to head back to Gilead — but rest assured, you've never seen it quite like this.

Over the course of six seasons, Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale adaptation told the story of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), a woman forced to serve as a concubine-esque "handmaid" after the United States falls to the theocratic dystopian state of Gilead. Although June eventually escapes and becomes a key member of the resistance, the battle isn't over by the time that its sequel series, The Testaments, begins.

In contrast to the grounded adult world of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments tells a coming-of-age story. Set against the backdrop of pastel uniforms and The Cranberries needle drops, the show follows two teenage girls (played by One Battle After Another's Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday) whose connection has massive implications in the battle to bring down Gilead once and for all. The Handmaid's Tale's Ann Dowd will also play a major role in the series, reprising her role as the imposing Aunt Lydia.

If you're curious about The Testaments but didn't finish The Handmaid's Tale or need a refresher, you're in luck! Below, we've rounded up everything you need to know before jumping into the new show.

How did 'The Handmaid's Tale' end?

In the penultimate episode of The Handmaid's Tale, June, Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski), and Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) conspire to sneak a bomb onto a plane full of high-ranking Commanders. It successfully explodes and kills the men on board, sparking a revolution that led to the Mayday rebels reclaiming control of Boston.

June reunites with many of her friends and family, including her mother, Holly (Cherry Jones), and younger daughter, Nichole. (Nichole is the biological daughter of June and Commander Nicholas Blame, with whom she had an affair when she was forced into being the Waterfords's handmaid.) However, by the end of the show, she is still searching for her and her ex-husband Luke's (O-T Fagbenle) daughter, Hannah, who Gilead kidnapped.

What is 'The Testaments' about?

Based on The Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood's 2019 sequel novel of the same name, The Testaments follows two teenage girls growing up in Gilead: Commander's daughter Agnes (Infiniti) and newcomer Daisy (Halliday). Unbeknownst to Agnes, Daisy is actually a spy sent from Toronto, Canada, to gather information for Mayday.

Together, they attend Aunt Lydia's elite preparatory academy for girls. As the show's official synopsis teases, Agnes and Daisy's "bond becomes the catalyst that will transform their lives."

Who is Agnes in 'The Testaments?' Is Agnes June's Daughter?

Agnes is June's older daughter, Hannah. Renamed and raised within Gilead, she's now a teenager being groomed for her impending arranged marriage. Over the course of The Testaments, Agnes's friendship with the rebellious Daisy and the grim realities of her future force her to question her surroundings.

During a March 31 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments showrunner Bruce Miller said that he cast Infiniti in the role, in part, because her performance reminded him of Moss. "She was unpredictable. I didn't know what she was going to do—not in a scary way, but I just didn't have any idea what she was going to say, if she was going to go left or right," Miller explained. "It was the same thing with Elisabeth Moss; she's not volatile, but she is unpredictable."

Who is Daisy in 'The Testaments?' Is Daisy June's Daughter Nichole?

Daisy is a typical teenager from Toronto, Canada, who discovers that her parents were actually allies of Mayday, and is thrust into going undercover with the rebel group. In Gilead, she pretends to be a convert of the missionaries known as the Pearl Girls and relays information through various networks.

In The Testaments novel, Daisy is revealed to be June's younger daughter, Nichole. However, because The Handmaid's Tale show takes place over a different time frame, that isn't the case in the show.

Whereas the book takes place 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, Miller recently told Variety that the show is set "around three or four years after" its predecessor. Nichole is still a toddler at the end of The Handmaid's Tale series. Because of that, Miller explained, it didn't make sense to cast her as a teenager in The Testaments. "People just aren't the right ages," he said. "Nichole is not going to high school, and so we had to make changes for that."

He explained how the series justified the "practical" shifts to Daisy's character in an interview with Gold Derby. "I was very reluctant to make any changes," he said. "[Daisy] does seem a lot like the Nichole in the book, and even the way June treats her is a lot like the Nichole in the book. [But], if I was June, whether I would send in my daughter, and I think her sending in Daisy is a little easier for me to understand [now]. In that way, it took away something that always seemed like an unbelievable sacrifice."

Is Aunt Lydia in 'The Testaments?'

Yes, Aunt Lydia will play a key role in The Testaments. The novel explains that Aunt Lydia was actually part of Mayday, having been forced to leave her career as a lawyer when the United States fell. Although The Handmaid's Tale originally portrays Aunt Lydia as a true believer in Gilead, she became disillusioned with it in later seasons. In the penultimate episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Aunt Lydia knowingly steps aside to let June and her allies plot against Gilead, setting the stage for her to fight the system from the inside in The Testaments.

"Lydia had time between The Handmaid's Tale and the beginning of The Testaments to really change and accept that she had to change who she is," Dowd told The Hollywood Reporter at The Testaments's premiere. "So we see a different side of Lydia—a softer and gentler person dealing with younger girls, still the girls that she loves who have always defined her life."

Is June in 'The Testaments?'

In an exciting surprise, Elisabeth Moss reprises her role as June in The Testaments, despite being tight-lipped about whether she would appear on the show, in addition to her role as an executive producer.

When we last saw June in The Handmaid's Tale, she was actively working with Mayday, in hopes of reuniting with Hannah. At the end of The Testaments's first episode, she's still taking refuge in Canada. A brief shot reveals her hanging out at the store owned by Daisy's parents, and Daisy briefly passes her by.

By the third episode, June is heavily featured, as she convinces Daisy to go undercover in Gilead. Her presence is felt even off-screen throughout the season.

Miller told Deadline why it made sense for June to return to The Testaments. "I think in some ways, June is such an anchor for the character of Agnes that I don’t think you could have the story without June, even if there was no Handmaid’s Tale," he told the outlet. "Elisabeth Moss has been our creative partner since the very, very beginning, and in every way. So I think that having her as an executive producer, you feel the presence of June all the time. Fortunately, we were able to move our schedules around and do everything that we could to get her into the show a little."

He added, "Bringing back people from Handmaid’s Tale into this world to continue their story is just such a rich pleasure...I think it’s a pleasure, but it also rounds out the world in a way that you understand how you feel about Gilead because you have June there going, ‘Oh yeah, I used to feel that way too.'"

For the past two years, Hulu's Paradise has become the must-watch show of the winter. Created by This Is Us boss Dan Fogelman, Paradise started as a political murder-mystery and quickly expanded into a dystopian thriller, following power struggles between climate-apocalypse survivors living in a massive underground bunker. Season 2 expanded the world even more, introducing survivors outside the bunker as Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) ventured into the world to find his wife.

After several weeks of heart-wrenching (at times meandering) episodes, season 2's dual timelines finally merged in the explosive March 30 finale, which saw the death of a major character and a major cliffhanger. Luckily, there have already been updates about where the Emmy-nominated series will go from here. Below, read on for a breakdown of everything we know about Paradise season 3 so far.

Has 'Paradise' been renewed for season 3?

Yes! On March 17, 2026, Hulu announced that Paradise will return for season 3, dropping the news two weeks before the season 3 finale. Along with the announcement, the streamer revealed that season 2 had amassed 30 million hours of viewership so far, along with an additional 25 million hours for season 1.

When will 'Paradise' season 3 be released?

Though Hulu has yet to announce an official release date for Paradise season 3, it looks like the series is set to continue its annual cadence for new episodes. On March 21, nine days before the season 2 finale even dropped, creator Dan Fogelman shared on Instagram that the show's writers's room had already completed the scripts for season 3.

"We finished writing s3 of Paradise," Fogelman wrote, alongside an airplane selfie with the writers. "This very fun, very talented room has completed the assignment. Vegas here we come."

Some more good news: Speaking to The Los Angeles Times after the season 2 finale, Fogelman revealed that Paradise would start filming season 3 in mid-April 2026, and hoped the new episodes would arrive "even quicker" than season 2. If he gets his wish, we can expect Paradise season 3 to arrive in January 2027.

What happened in the 'Paradise' season 2 finale? (Who is Alex? Who is User X? Is [spoiler] really dead?)

How did 'Paradise' season 2 end, including who is Alex and is Sinatra really dead?

Major spoilers ahead for the Paradise season 2 finale. If your head's still spinning from the season 2 finale, "Exodus," let's quickly go over everything that will play a major factor in season 3. "Exodus" reveals that the mysterious "Alex" is an AI-powered quantum computer that manipulates time. Before the bunker, Sinatra killed Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler) because he thought that AI time distortion was too dangerous. (Can't say I disagree with him.) Of course, Sinatra continues with the ALEX project in hopes of saving humanity, and, by Paradise's present-day timeline, the computer (which apparently still hasn't been activated) is predicting thunderstorms and earthquakes (and deaths) and causing "anomalies," such as Link (Thomas Doherty) somehow being Sinatra's long-deceased son Dylan.

Meanwhile, "Exodus" is the evacuation order for the bunker, which comes as the nuclear reactors powering the habitat start to melt down. After what seems like everyone makes it out, Sinatra sacrifices herself to close the bunker doors and make sure that the radiation blast doesn't get outside. She does this because she realizes that another ALEX prediction was true: User X, a.k.a. Xavier, is meant to get to the separate ALEX bunker to activate it and save the world, presumably with the help of his nosebleed-twin Link. (ALEX's bunker is 100 miles away under the Denver Airport, so it didn't explode.)

Who in the 'Paradise' cast will return for season 3?

Despite the main bunker literally exploding, Paradise season 2 had a surprisingly low death count. Most of the main cast will likely return, including Sterling K. Brown (Xavier Collins), Enuka Okuma (Teri Collins), Sarah Shahi (Dr. Gabriela Torabi), Nicole Brydon Bloom (Jane), Krys Marshall (Nicole Robinson), Aliyah Mastin (Presley Collins), Percy Daggs IV (James Collins), and Charlie Evans (Jeremy Bradford). Season 2 addition Thomas Doherty (Link/Dylan) will also presumably have a massive role.

As for the dearly departed (R.I.P. Sinatra, Annie, Anders, Henry Miller, and Geiger), characters on Dan Fogelman shows never really stay dead. Likely, Julianne Nicholson, Shailene Woodley, Erik Svedberg-Zelman, Patrick Fischler, and Michael McGrady will return in at least one flashback. The same can also be said for James Marsden (President Cal Bradford) and Jon Beavers (Billy Pace).

Who are the new cast members in 'Paradise' season 3?

We haven't met everyone in and outside of the bunker quite yet. In late April 2026, as production presumably began on season 3, a big name was added to the cast. Deadline reported that Emmy-winner Julianna Margulies has been cast in a recurring role. The word is still out on who longtime TV star (known for her roles in The Good Wife, The Morning Show, and ER, among other hits) will be playing.

What will 'Paradise' season 3 be about?

Prepare for Paradise to go full Lost (whether you like it or not) in season 3. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Fogelman teased that season 2 sets viewers up for a lot of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff in season 3, as the show will "definitely play with time" as it leans fully into sci-fi. With that, it's safe to say that Xavier's new mission to activate ALEX will give viewers answers to the many questions that the season 2 finale left us with.

However, it may take a while for Xavier to make the dangerous 100-mile trip. "That’s a big part of what we explore in season 3," Fogelman told the outlet. "He just got his nuclear family back, plus two white kids. He got back everything he’s wanted, and then a lunatic billionaire is telling you that 100 miles away under the Denver Airport, there’s this thing that sounds crazy. It’s not necessarily a scenario where you run off and do it tomorrow. Part of the journey of the third season is: What is he doing with that information? And does he resist it?"

Some other teasers from the interview re other characters: The bunker dwellers (even Xavier) will have to adapt to roughing it in actual dystopia for the first time. We're "meant to believe" that Link is somehow Sinatra's son, though it's "a tricky question because of where we’re going on a science fiction level." Also, Annie and Link's baby will play a big part in season 3. "Or, I should say, the child plays a huge part in season 3," corrects Fogelman, before hinting at that timey-wimey stuff.

Another big question for Paradise season 3 is whether or not Jane is alive. Though she was still passed out on Torabi's shower floor at the start of episode 8, after the shrink stabbed her in episode 7, "Exodus" includes a flash of Torabi's empty shower right before the bunker blows up. The rule of TV is that a character isn't dead until you see the body, but even Paradise's team seems to be mixed on the assassin's fate.

Following episode 7's release, Nicole Brydon Bloom did an interview with PEOPLE, treating the stabbing as Jane's death. And in his postmortem THR interview, Hoberg said of the scene, "She seems pretty dead to me. We intend her to be dead." But in his Los Angeles Times interview, Fogelman teased, "It sure seems like [she's dead]. But there is that shot at the end that is meant to make you wonder." Guess we'll have to wait until the season 3 cast announcement to see whether there's a payoff to Jane's intense backstory.

Will season 3 be the final season of 'Paradise'?

Since Paradise's debut, Fogelman has been clear that he had a three-season plan for Paradise already mapped out. "It’s going to be a three-season show, I know where it goes. I know what the shape of each season is," he told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2025. "Each season of the show is a slightly different show, within the same show with the same characters."

As of February 24, the three-season plan seems to still be on track. John Hoberg, executive producer and writer on the series, spoke with THR and shared the writers's process on season 3. When asked about a possible fourth season of Paradise, Hoberg said, "We know what the end [of season 3] is, and it’s an end that would make it very difficult to make a season four come afterward."

Though I'm still skeptical at the thought of a streamer letting one of its most successful shows end without milking it for all it's worth, Fogelman is sticking with the three-season plan so far. When asked about the pressure to continue the show further, the creator told LAT, "There is always pressure. But I try to resist the pressure because I think it’s the right way to tell the story. Sterling [K. Brown] feels similarly. I was very clear from the beginning that I had a three-season plan. I don’t imagine a world where I would shift that plan. And, frankly, what we do in Season 3 doesn’t leave room for it."

For the past few weeks, the ‘90s have been back in a big way as the world has become engrossed in Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.

The biographical drama delved into the couple’s political-dynasty scion (played by Paul Anthony Kelly) meets Calvin Klein cool-girl (Sarah Pidgeon) courtship, their subsequent marriage, and the intense media scrutiny the pair faced before their tragic deaths in a 1999 plane crash. After the series finale aired on March 26, many have been wondering if there will be a new season to come, chronicling another fairy-tale (or is it?) romance.

Love Story is part of executive producer Ryan Murphy’s American TV universe, in which each season focuses on a different standalone story—the other iterations include American Horror Story, American Crime Story, American Sports Story, and American Horror Stories. Murphy’s Feud, while not part of that wider franchise, also takes a similar track, using an anthology format to dive deep into real-life figures and events we think we know well, often prompting viewers to think about them in new ways.

What could this mean for another Love Story? Here’s everything we know so far, including which iconic couple a future installment could focus on. (Hint: Think Hollywood.)

Has ;Love Story' been renewed for season 2?

As of March 27, 2026, Love Story has not yet been renewed for a second season. But given that Variety reported that the show is FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Hulu and Disney+, with the first five episodes being streamed more than 25 million hours since the February 12 series premiere, it wouldn’t be surprising if the show comes back for more.

What would 'Love Story' season 2 be about?

Even if a renewal announcement hasn’t come down (yet…), series creator Connor Hines has already given some thought to which high-profile pairing he’d like to follow next. When asked by Vanity Fair who he’d be interested in taking on for his next project, Hines responded, “Maybe Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They have the right intensity.”

Burton and Taylor, of course, had a famously passionate (and famously tumultuous) Hollywood love story. The couple met on the set of 1963’s Cleopatra, when Taylor was married to her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher (the ex-husband of Debbie Reynolds and father of Carrie Fisher), and Burton was married to Sybil Williams. They both left their spouses for each other and married in 1964, making 11 movies together while also drawing headlines for their lavish lifestyle and public arguments. They got divorced in 1974, only to remarry a year later, but that second union was much briefer; they divorced again in 1976.

"Even though there were rough times, I wouldn't give up one minute of my time with Richard Burton," Taylor wrote in her autobiography, per PEOPLE.

What other couples could be covered in 'Love Story' season 2?

Famous couples who’ve captured the public’s attention? We could spend all day coming up with ideas! It sounds like Hines is already toying with Burton and Taylor—and certainly, there’s plenty of drama to mine there—but fans of the series have also been speculating about potential Love Story subjects.

Names that have come up (again, all in speculation) have included a mix of rock stars, paparazzi fixtures, and Old Hollywood staples: Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, David Bowie and Iman, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, Sonny Bono and Cher, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Victoria and David Beckham, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck…the list goes on.

Which cast members would return for 'Love Story' season 2?

As an anthology, Love Story would start a new story with a new couple, if the series is indeed renewed. But, that said, Ryan Murphy loves to work with the same actors over and over again, so it wouldn’t be impossible to imagine that some of his regular players—like Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Lily Rabe, Emma Roberts, and Naomi Watts (who played Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Love Story and Babe Paley in Feud: Capote and the Swans)—could appear in a new season in one way or another.

When would 'Love Story' season 2 come out?

Again, with no renewal news on the books, it’s hard to say when another season could arrive. But this season arrived just before Valentine’s Day, and it wouldn’t be out of line to think they’ll stick to that timing if (when?) the show comes back around again.

Earlier this month, Zendaya debuted her Vivienne Westwood dress from the 2015 Oscars as The Drama press tour's "something old." When the wedding dramedy’s Paris premiere called for "something new," Zendaya and stylist Law Roach sourced the designer that's been dressing her in bridal white for years—Louis Vuitton—and red carpet trends approved by the industry’s best-dressed leading ladies.

Once it came time to step-and-repeat, Zendaya traded her daytime button-down shirt outfit for the envy of any minimalist bride. Creative director Nicolas Ghesquière crafted the long-sleeve, column gown just for her, starting with a high, shoulder-padded neckline. (The Louis Vuitton leader designed another white, wedding-worthy gown for her last Paris premiere, 2024's Challengers.) Subtle, vertically-seamed darts atop her cinched waist added the stark white shade's only texture. Once Zendaya turned around, her bridal-adjacent dress took a bold turn.

Plot twist: Zendaya's entire back was on full display, thanks to a square-shaped cut-out beneath her high neckline. An oversize, black satin bow acted in lieu of a veil, which she hasn't tested beyond the mid-wedding set of The Drama (that we know of). Each end of the bow-tied ribbon—a persistent 2026 wedding dress trend—cascaded behind her like an elongated train. To finish, a slit up the column skirt's back revealed matching Louis Vuitton pumps. That's right, her beloved Christian Louboutin So Kate stilettos earned an evening off.

And just like that, Zendaya's east-west, Jessica McCormack engagement ring went back into hiding. (It was her plus-one at the L.A. premiere, though.) Instead, David Morris's Le Jardin Wild Flower Necklace was her jewelry suite's centerpiece. How couldn't it be, with five cascading rows of 22.5-carat diamonds? The multi-tier design's estimated $210,000 price tag beat her engagement ring by about $90,000. To match her brilliant-cut, diamond stud earrings, Zendaya added one final, six-figure David Morris necklace to the mix.

The undertones of Zendaya's two-tone number are purely bridal, but it also endorsed a burgeoning red carpet trend: black-and-white gowns. Similar grayscale combinations were the star of 2026's award season circuit. It started gaining traction at the Golden Globes, when Selena Gomez and Charli xcx stacked the shades on top of each other in Chanel and Saint Laurent, respectively.

Blackpink's Lisa and Olivia Dean picked up where the Golden Globes left off at the 2026 Grammys in black-and-white Saint Laurent and Chanel. Once the Actor Awards rolled around, Jessie Buckley, Quinta Brunson, Demi Moore, Dove Cameron, and Michelle Monaghan declared the color combination a bona fide fixture of 2026 fashion.

Black-and-white dresses even got a close-up at the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, Hollywood's second buzziest red carpet of the year. Julia Fox, for one, arrived in a white Viktor & Rolf couture gown, featuring sculptural sleeves that stretched far beyond the bodice's black floral appliqués. Then, Tracee Ellis Ross showed out in a Marine Serre Spring 2026 dress. What began as a skintight, black turtleneck transformed into an ultra-ruffled, stark white skirt.

With how consistent black-and-white dresses were this award season, there's no way the trend would've disappeared with the final acceptance speech. Here's hoping Zendaya will keep its legacy alive at future The Drama premieres. Black against white fabric is all but made for a thriller about a bride with a dark secret, right?

In the past decade, artists have repeatedly tried to crack the mystery of Princess Diana. In 2020, The Crown introduced the princess in its fourth season, first played by Emma Corrin, with Elizabeth Debicki taking over in seasons 5 and 6. In 2021, Kristen Stewart played the royal enduring a Christmas from hell in Pablo Larraín's expressionistic movie Spencer. There was even a misbegotten Diana musical, panned by critics but embraced as a camp classic by some Broadway fans.

And, while she doesn't appear on screen, Diana still haunts FX's series Love Story, which follows the romance of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon) and John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly). In the eighth episode, "Exit Strategy," Carolyn—bristling against the excessive, invasive media attention surrounding her own life—gets news of the car crash that resulted in Diana's death.

After that fateful call, the newly married Carolyn becomes obsessed. She’s glued to the television, the camera giving us a close up of her wide, tear-filled eyes as Radiohead plays. While we don't know exactly how the real Carolyn learned of Diana's passing, she was reportedly affected by the event. In a 2017 PEOPLE magazine story, Kennedy's former assistant said that Bessette was "rattled" by Diana's death, which came as a result of her vehicle being hounded by paparazzi. At the time, Bessette too was feeling threatened by photographers trying to capture her every move; here was an example of another prominent woman whose life ended as a result of the same phenomenon.

But by evoking Diana, the episode also highlights Love Story's own limits. After all, if we've never been able to really understand Diana, how are we supposed to understand Carolyn?

As Love Story makes clear, it's easy to draw parallels between Diana and Carolyn. They are both beautiful blonde women who married into prominent families that demanded a certain amount of public decorum. Diana wed literal royalty. Carolyn wed the U.S. equivalent. (JFK Jr. was arguably a more desirable prince than Charles—the latter never ended up as the "sexiest man alive.") Also, both Diana and Carolyn drew media attention not just because of their association with their respective country's elites, but because they had enviable personal style and the ability to look casually glamorous.

They also share untimely deaths—Diana in that car crash and Carolyn, ultimately, in that plane, piloted by her husband on the way to a family wedding. The violent, horrific nature of their endings only adds to their mystique.

Part of their combined appeal is that they were both essentially unknowable to the people who followed their lives through issues of PEOPLE and copies of The Daily Mail. And that means every subsequent interpretation of them is weighted down by a hefty level of speculation.

All of these works of art—whether that's The Crown or Spencer or Love Story—are required to invent these women's interiority using the writers' imaginations and bits of details we've gleaned from reporting over the years, stories their friends and acquaintances have told to biographers, gossip whispered to the press. At least in the case of Diana there were notable televised interviews, which have allowed actors to mimic her distinctive speech patterns; Carolyn rarely made public comments.

As such, the performances that result from Diana’s media are occasionally impressive and a little bit elusive. In Spencer, Stewart gave her an almost feral quality; In The Crown, Corrin plays her like a wounded bird. The two actors nail the accent and the slightly bowed head, while each imbuing their Diana with the qualities the work around them wants to highlight. They are both entrancing, but leave the viewer aware that no one really knows who she truly was.

That sensation has remained in Love Story. In the early episodes, Pidgeon offered up a portrait of Carolyn as the ultimate '90s cool girl, fingers constantly running through her perfectly mussed hair or dangling a lit cigarette. As the show has gone on, Pidgeon's portrayal has started to feel burdened by the weight of Carolyn's trauma. Recent episodes have presented her less like the whole person we got to know at the beginning of the series, and more like the representation of the tragic figure we can only try to glean from images.

"Exit Strategy" brings this into relief because of the Diana comparisons. For years, we've tried to guess how Diana was feeling in her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles and her final moments; now it's clear we're just doing the same when it comes to Carolyn.

These projects do a good job of keeping these women's memories alive, but only up to a point. Their lasting impact is the perpetuation of Diana and Carolyn's aesthetic above all. That's evident in the brand Rowing Blazers recreating two of Diana's most iconic sweaters in 2020. Love Story, meanwhile, has resulted in young West Village denizens now seeking to recreate Carolyn's iconic look and waiting in lines outside of the Indian restaurant where the show depicts her and John's first date.

But all this just serves to remind us what we're invested in is the idea of these women rather than the actual women. Love Story even posits that Carolyn herself was guilty of this, staring at the television trying to graft her own life onto Diana's even though she was a mere acquaintance. Now, anyone watching Love Story is forced to do the same for Carolyn.

Based on the title alone, it's clear that Apple TV's new murder-mystery series Imperfect Women is an examination of the impossible expectations placed on women. But the drama, adapted from Araminta Hall's novel of the same name, is also about perspective.

Valuing different points of view and experiences was a throughline for Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara, along with showrunner Annie Weisman, during a conversation with Editor-in-Chief Nikki Ogunnaike at a Marie Claire screening and panel ahead of the show’s March 18 premiere.

At the event, held in N.Y.C.'s Crosby Hotel, the cast explained that the show’s shifting, multi-perspective structure drew them to the material and also sparked important conversations behind the scenes.

Ogunnaike pointed out that each character in the show—which unpacks the secrets and entanglements within a friend group, leading to one of their murders—has "their own version of the truth" and understanding of the world.

Star and executive producer Kerry Washington noted: "I think this is one of the beautiful exercises of the show. I think we are living in a time when it's really important to pause and understand that taking into account someone else's point of view may enhance your understanding of what truth is."

Washington also revealed that her character, Eleanor, was not originally written for the show as a Black woman. So when she took on the role, it was essential for her that it feel like Eleanor's "identity as a Black woman informed how she participated in the story."

"In my career, a lot of times if I had been cast in a role that wasn't written for a Black woman. It's like, 'Well, just play it as if you're not Black. Just the fact that you're Black is enough.' And so to be able to bring that cultural context and what it means to not just be Black, but to be from an old money, generational wealth Black family, those details were really important," she said.

Showrunner Weisman pointed out that Washington also ensured half of the writers on the show were Black, to which Washington added, "One Black writer in the room, all you get to be is Black. But when there are three Black writers in the room, you get to be human and bring your Black experience."

For Moss, who also served as an executive producer on the title, her character Mary's experiences as a mother were what grounded her decisions.

"Her heroism lies in making this perfect snack for her child," Moss said. "And to me, that's heroism that I want to celebrate: the heroism of parents and caretakers everywhere who know how to make the right snack."

Mara added that viewers may walk away with different interpretations of the series, but above all, hopes they enjoy the twists. "I kind of like not having any expectations of what someone is going to feel or take away," she said. "I like just going, hopefully it's a fun ride."

Ogunnaike spoke to all those nuances by bringing it back to the show's title. "Imperfect Women is such a beautiful, quiet rebellion against the way that women are often expected to present themselves," the Marie Claire editor said.

The cast—and nearly 100 guests in the audience who cheered enthusiastically throughout the conversation—couldn't have agreed more.

The first two episodes of Imperfect Women are streaming now on Apple TV.

It's hard not to reminisce on a star's first Oscars best-dressed appearance during Academy Awards season. I never expect to actually see that gown return on a 2026 red carpet—especially not Zendaya's. But on March 17, Zendaya re-wore the 11-year-old, Vivienne Westwood dress from her Oscars red carpet debut at The Drama's initial premiere in L.A.

After weeks of teasing her press tour's bridal style—and a surprise 2026 Oscars appearance— Zendaya shifted into high method gear in the déjà vu-inducing Vivienne Westwood dress. Every stark white element, from the cinched corset and off-the-shoulder sleeves to the delicate silk satin drapery looked fresh from a wedding aisle. As you might remember from the 2015 Oscars, the chiffon sleeves gathered in the back, before creating a veil-esque train.

Zendaya's Chopard diamonds were a bit more mature this time around, but just as wedding-worthy. Her Jessica McCormack, east-west engagement ring and brand-new wedding band were joined by elongated drop earrings with 26.82-carats of diamonds. To finish, she frosted her fingers with contrasting rings, including a 3-carat, oval-cut engagement sparkler.

Why revive the gown now, and why not at Sunday's 2026 Oscars? When Zendaya was "brainstorming with [stylist Law Roach] about how I would theme dress for this film," she remembered an iconic wedding tradition, she told Variety after her step-and-repeat. "I remembered the saying: 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.’ So, this is my something old. I thought I'd bring it back and give it a new life," she added. "It meant so much to me, this dress."

Her "something new" was a sleek bixie hairstyle, which celebrity hairstylist Ursula Stephen curled atop her ears with a 1920s charm.

Back in 2015, the classic wedding-turned-award show gown was the blank canvas to highlight her history-making locs. Discriminatory backlash attacked her hair choice within minutes of her red carpet walk. "It was such an important moment for myself, for my community, for my loved ones...it felt right," Zendaya shared last night. Plus, it "happens to be a white dress, so that worked."

The Drama's wedding plot perfectly aligned with the newlywed's own (secret) nuptials. We might never see her wedding dress, but she's wearing no shortage of white on this press tour. She plays a soon-to-be bride in The Drama, after all.

It all started on March 12 at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood event, when stylist Law Roach dressed her in a vintage little white dress previously worn by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in 2007's Sex and the City. Its oversize floral appliqué and subtle metallic gold feathers would've fit in at her and Tom Holland's wedding shower, if the private couple even had one.

Z's second bridal The Drama dress debuted on the Louis Vuitton Fall 2026 runway mere days prior. She pulled off the closing look's pleated midi dress, featuring paper-like pleats from Elizabethan collar to hem. (Perhaps creative director Nicolas Ghesquière sent it home with her after the Paris Fashion Week fashion show.) She slipped on her signature Christian Louboutin So Kate pumps in the same stark white shade.

With each step-and-repeat, Zendaya is pushing the boundaries on bridal fashion further and further. On March 16, the Challengers star stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! in a gray-and-white, Bermuda shorts set from Moschino Fall 2026. Its shoulder-padded blazer and trouser-like shorts took cues from co-star Robert Pattinson's costume rack instead. The elongated ruffles atop her undone white button-down, however, felt appropriate for a modern bride. Her white So Kates are quickly becoming this press tour's leading lady.

A24 has already outdone itself on The Drama's press rollout. Just by casting Zendaya, the studio cemented the film as one to watch—if not for the storyline's plot twists, for her on- and off-screen style. Better yet, the April 3 release date is still weeks away, meaning Zendaya has plenty of time to deliver any fashion girl's dream (faux) wedding wardrobe. By then, she'll have a whole wedding party's worth of bridal trends ripe for the copying.

Considering its number of record-breaking moments and long-awaited wins, the 2026 Oscars will go down in film history.

Last night, the 98th annual Academy Awards arrived to cap off a long and exciting awards season. (You can thank the Winter Olympics for the slight extension.) The nominees marked a year of wins for representation, with diverse films like Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters as frontrunners; triumphal returns for auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson and Chloé Zhao; and huge strides for international films, as Hollywood's most-coveted awards became truly global.

As the best movies of 2025 were honored, we at Marie Claire kept track of the ceremony's highlights, from host Conan O'Brien's best segments to the moving speeches that brought tears of joy to the upsets we could not have predicted. Read on for the most memorable moments of the 2026 Oscars.

Conan O'Brien ran through this year's nominees as Aunt Gladys—and got really political—to open the awards show

Conan O’Brien returned to host for the second year in a row and delivered a stellar opening monologue, both for its biting sense of humor and thoughtful political bent. The comedian opened the ceremony with a fun journey through many of this year’s nominated films, courtesy of a nod to the final scene of Weapons. In Aunt Gladys drag, O’Brien was chased by an angry mob of children—just like Amy Madigan’s character in the horror blockbuster—traveling through memorable scenes of F1, Marty Supreme, Hamnet, One Battle After Another, KPop Demon Hunters, Sentimental Value, and Sinners, until eventually bursting through the crowd of the Dolby Theatre in L.A. and onto the stage.

Throughout his monologue, the host pulled heartthrobs and Best Actor nominees Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B. Jordan, and Timothée Chalamet into jokes. But for the most part, he used his platform to discuss the dire state of the world—and encouraged talent to speak up throughout the night. “I should warn you that tonight could get political, and if that makes you uncomfortable, there’s an alternate Oscars hosted by Kid Rock down the street,” he joked, referring to the right’s reaction to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. And he didn’t stop there; O’Brien made digs at the country’s lack of affordable health care, the poor handling of the Epstein files, and more. However, he mostly encouraged optimism and referenced how many of the nominated films have universal messages. “We pay tribute to the ideals of global artistry, patience, collaboration, and the rarest of qualities today, optimism,” he concluded. “Let us celebrate not because all is well but because we work and hope for better.”

Of course, he couldn’t go out without one more bonkers joke: O’Brien awarded himself an Oscar, while being crowned the equivalent of the Oscars Prom King with a robe, crown, and trophy handed to him from an eagle, all the while Josh Groban serenaded him. It’s Cinema’s Biggest Night, baby!

Scream Queen Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress

Horror seldom gets recognition by the Academy, so it was somewhat of a surprise when Weapons star Amy Madigan received a Best Supporting Actress nomination—and an even more pleasant surprise when she took home the trophy during the awards ceremony. The actress, who plays the cult-loved wig-wearing, witchcraft-wielding Aunt Gladys, was “flummoxed” by the win and cackling with laughter as she joked about thinking about what she might say on stage while taking a shower and shaving her legs the night before.

With the win, Madigan also made history as the actress with the longest break between nominations, as she returned to the Academy’s stage for the first time in 40 years. Having last been nominated in 1986 for Twice in a Lifetime, as she stepped on stage, she shared her feelings about the record-breaking moment: “This is great! Everybody's asking me in the press and all this, ‘Well, it's been 40 years, and, you know, what's different about this time?’ What’s different is that I’ve got this little gold guy.”

While it was exciting to see Madigan return to the stage and receive recognition from her peers—as well as shout out her fellow nominees (Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Teyana Taylor)—her win also marked the first time in quite some time that the Academy honored a performance in a genre film. (Demi Moore was nominated last year for The Substance, and Natalie Portman won in 2011 for Black Swan, although others, like Lupita Nyong’o for Us and Toni Collette for Hereditary, have been snubbed in the years since. Let’s go, scream queens!)

'Sinners' brought its most iconic scene to the stage

To celebrate the most-nominated film in Oscars history, the ceremony brought Sinners’s mystifying juke-joint scene to life. In a performance of the film’s Best Original Song-nominated “I Lied to You,” the track’s producer Raphael Saadiq gave a quick intro before Sammie himself, Miles Caton, serenaded his co-stars Jayme Lawson and Li Jun Li, as well as the dancers swaying in the juke. Lawson and Li weren’t the only co-stars who appeared; fictional vampires Jack O’Connell, Peter Dreimanis, and Lola Kirke were briefly shown trying to join the fun, but they were turned away.

As the performance summoned musical storytellers from the past and present, an array of stars joined the performance. Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush represented blues legends. Alice Smith joined Caton on backup vocals, along with rising country star Shaboozey. Eric Gales, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Brittany Howard shredded on rock guitar as a DJ brought in the beat. Meanwhile, African, hip hop, and traditional Chinese dancers filled the stage, and the grand finale was trailblazing ballerina Misty Copeland. As the crowd broke into a standing ovation, it was clear that Sinners’s astonishing display of the legacy of the blues had translated from screen to stage.

The first-ever nominees for Achievement in Casting got their time to shine

This year’s Oscars introduced an all-new category: Achievement in Casting, honoring the casting directors who help assemble the A-listers and fresh faces that make up a film’s ensemble. While the Academy airs every award during the live show, it has a bad rap for not always giving below-the-line nominees their moment. But Achievement in Casting got an extra-special nod (that was more than well-deserved, considering the department was previously overlooked in the award show’s 98-year history). Each casting director who received a nod—Nina Gold (Hamnet), Jennifer Venditti (Marty Supreme), Cassandra Kulukundis (One Battle After Another), Gabriel Domingues (The Secret Agent), and Francine Maisler (Sinners)—got a shout-out from one of the stars of the film they worked on, including Paul Mescal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chase Infiniti, Wagner Moura, and Delroy Lindo. It felt personal and sincere, and like a peek behind the curtain at their essential yet often thankless cast. The moment ended with Kulukundis ultimately taking home the award and making history as the first-ever winner in the category.

The Best Animated Feature win for 'KPop Demon Hunters' was one for the dreamers

It wasn’t a big surprise when KPop Demon Hunters won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature; the global sensation spent awards season sweeping every awards body and guild. When co-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, and producer Michelle Wong took the stage, they made sure to highlight how much the film has meant to the Korean diaspora.

“For those of you who look like me, I'm so sorry that it took us so long to see us in a movie like this,” Kang, who’s Korean-Canadian, said. “But it is here—and that means that the next generations don't have to go longing. This is for Korea and for Koreans everywhere.”

Appelhans also honored the film’s global impact with a message to other young artists with a story that’s never been told before. “Music and stories have this power to connect us as humans across cultures and borders,” he said. “So I just wanna take a moment to say to all the young filmmakers, artists, musicians in all corners of the globe: Tell your story, sing in your voice, I promise you the world is waiting.”

Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford’s In-Memoriam tributes made us ugly-cry

We lost many Hollywood legends in 2025, and the Academy honored them with one of the best In Memoriam sequences in recent memory. While the tribute included the typical montage of artists and creatives, including actors like Isiah Whitlock Jr., Graham Greene, Val Kilmer, and Robert Duvall, several stars also came to the stage to honor some of the film industry’s most famous icons.

The extended segment began with Billy Crystal, who shared fond memories of the late director Rob Reiner and a nod to “the millions who have enjoyed his films.” He was then joined by some of the actors who have appeared in Rob Reiner movies through the years, from Crystal’s When Harry Met Sally co-star Meg Ryan, to Misery’s Kathy Bates, to A Few Good Men’s Demi Moore, to The American President’s Annette Bening.

Rachel McAdams also highlighted the incredible actresses we lost last year, like Claudia Cardinale, Diane Ladd, Catherine O’Hara, and Diane Keaton. McAdams became emotional as she honored Keaton, her co-star from The Family Stone and Morning Glory. “She wore so many hats...literally and figuratively. But no hat more important to her than being mother to her two children,” McAdams said. “To our friend, Diane Keaton, celebrating a life in silver and gold, a legend with no end."

Finally, Barbra Streisand graced the stage to honor her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford, fondly recalling how he used to call her “Babs.” She concluded by singing a snippet of her Oscar-winning ballad from the film, ensuring that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

The 'Bridesmaids' cast reunited and had us in stitches

There’s only one comedy ensemble that became instantly iconic and can still say they are more beautiful than Cinderella, smell like pine needles, and have a face like sunshine. Obviously, it’s the women of Bridesmaids—and we were overjoyed that Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, and Ellie Kemper reunited on stage in honor of the blockbuster’s 15th anniversary. The legends presented the awards for Best Score and Best Sound, and made us audibly crack up in the process.

In a hysterical bit, they read “notes” sent up from the audience that just so happened to dish out backhanded compliments. Stellan Skarsgård, for example, thought they were “aging well,” and “the kid from Hamnet” was bored, wanted to go home, and was disappointed there was no pizza. They each got to highlight their individual comedic strides, like when Rudolph dropped the quick-witted, “earlier today when I was counting my money,” and Kemper explained she learned what sound was from “a woman [she] met on a rollercoaster.” It also looked like they got a kick out of each other’s deliveries and broke a little. All in all, it was a delight to see them all together again—and we’re still holding out for Bridesmaids 2.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw made history as the first woman to win Best Cinematography

After 98 years, the Oscar honored its first woman for Best Cinematography. Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw took home the historic honor for the male-dominated craft, to the explosive applause of her film’s cast and crew. Arkapaw began her speech by thanking the people who supported her throughout her career, including Sinners director Ryan Coogler (who she called ”a very, very honorable person”), cinematography pioneer Ellen Kuras, and Black Panther cinematographer and Oscar nominee Rachel Morrison. She then asked every woman in the room to stand, saying, “I feel like I don't get here without you guys…and I want to thank you for that.”

Arkapaw went on to thank the Sinners cast and crew, naming each actor in the ensemble. “These people are so beautiful, and I’m honored to be there photographing them,” she said. Finally, she highlighted her family in the room, including her young son Aiden, whom Coogler had collected from the back of the theater and ran up to join the cast. She concluded, “Thank you so much. This is an honor. Thank you.”

EJAE, Rei Ami, and Audrey Nuna of HUNTR/X get their “Golden” moment

After spending the past several months on the Billboard charts, the titular KPop Demon Hunters brought their record-breaking hit “Golden” to the stage. The performance began with a short history lesson on the Korean folk tale that inspired the film; as traditional Korean instrumentalists performed the “Hunter’s Mantra,” demon hunters of the past fought an ancient version of the film’s demon boy band. When EJAE, Rei Ami, and Audrey Nuna began singing, the Dolby Theater turned into the Golden Honmoon, thanks to a sea of flag dancers onstage and the lightsticks swaying among the audience.

Soon after, “Golden” was announced as this year’s Best Original Song, becoming the first K-pop song to win the Oscar. Though the songwriting and producing team’s acceptance speech was cut short, EJAE gave an emotional speech thanking her family, her fiancé, and the film’s cast and crew. “Growing up, people made fun of me for liking K-pop, but now everyone's singing our song and all the Korean lyrics,” she said. “I'm so proud. And I realized, like this song, this award is not about success, it's about resilience.”

Michael B. Jordan became part of Black Oscars history with his Best Actor win

In a year when none of the actor races had a clear frontrunner, Michael B. Jordan’s win for Best Lead Actor was the biggest surprise of the night. The Sinners actor, who gave a transformative performance as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack, is only the sixth Black actor to win the category. He honored those who came before him, past winners Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, and Will Smith, as well as Halle Berry, the only Black woman to win Best Lead Actress.

After taking the stage to rapturous applause, Jordan shouted out his family in the room before thanking Warner Brothers for “betting on the culture, original ideas, and original artistry.” He went on to thank Ryan Coogler, who has directed him in four films so far. “You’re an amazing, amazing person. I’m so honored to call you a collaborator and a friend. You gave me the opportunity and space for me to be seen,” he said. As the camera showed Coogler sending Jordan love through sign language, Jordan said back, “I love you, too, bro. I love you to death.”

Jordan went on to thank his Sinners co-stars, highlighting his love interests Wunmi Mosaku and Hailee Steinfeld. As he became emotional, he called the Black actors who paved the way for him “giants” and “greats.” And, to conclude, he thanked the fans who made Sinners a cultural phenomenon and all of his supporters. “I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me. I’m going to keep being the best version of myself I could be.”

Jessie Buckley dedicated her Best Lead Actress win to "the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart"

Oscars night took place on Mother’s Day in the U.K., so it was a lovely bit of kismet when Jessie Buckley was announced as Best Lead Actress. Though it was a competitive field, the Irish actress’s portrayal of an Elizabethan mother’s mourning received the title. Still, Buckley began her speech by thanking her “incredible” fellow nominees, saying, “I am inspired by your art and your heart, and I want to work with every single one of you.”

The Irish performer went on to seek out her family in attendance, thanking her parents “for teaching us to dream and to never be defined by expectation, but to carve from your own passion.” In her usual candid style, she told her husband, Fred, “You’re my best friend and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you.” As for her 8-month-old daughter, Buckley admitted that the infant “has absolutely no idea what's going on and is probably dreaming of milk,” before sharing her love. “This is kind of a big deal, and I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can't wait to discover life beside you,” she added.

Finally, Buckley thanked Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell and director Chloé Zhao, before expressing her gratitude for the film. “To get to know this incandescent woman and journey to understand the capacity of a mother's love is the greatest collision of my life,” she said. “I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart. We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds. Thank you for recognizing me in this role,” she concluded, before honoring her Irish roots by repeating her thanks in Gaelic. (She's now the first Irish woman to win in the category.)

'One Battle After Another' won best prize—and took a moment to honor the women at the film's center

At the end of the night, One Battle After Another took home the coveted prize for Best Picture. Earlier during the evening, the writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson also scored Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, as the film adapts Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, and Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor. As the team accepted the award for Best Picture, they were overjoyed—so much so that star and Best Supporting Actress nominee Teyana Taylor couldn’t stop giving Anderson passionate, playful hugs as he helped lead her up the steps to the stage. Chase Infiniti, meanwhile, kept adorably jumping up and down with unadulterated joy.

After producer Sara Murphy spoke about what an honor it was to work on the political action-drama, Anderson gave another speech, noting how it was an incredible year in film. He pointed to the memorable films all nominated for Best Picture in 1975 (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, and Nashville), which have stood the test of time, likening them to this year's crop and how they all deserved to come out on top.

The filmmaker also joked that he “blew it” while accepting Best Director because he forgot to thank his cast. The auteur (who had been nominated for 11 other Oscars before winning any tonight) primarily directed his attention at the women at the film’s center whose performances kept it grounded, human, and compelling. He “especially” thanked Infiniti, calling the lead actress who portrayed Willa his “American Girl,” in reference to the heartwarming Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers needle drop in the film’s final moments. “You are the heart of this movie.”

Fans of Colleen Hoover novels know that it's best to grab a box of tissues before watching the big-screen adaptation of her 2022 book Reminders of Him. The tearjerker centers on Kenna (played by Maika Monroe), a woman newly released from prison after a car crash that killed her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow). Unable to reunite with the daughter she had behind bars, the only person willing to give Kenna a chance is Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a local bar owner who was Scotty's best friend.

Given that devastating plot of the romantic drama, you wouldn't expect to describe the actors leading Reminders of Him as "goofy." But when Marie Claire sat down with Monroe and Withers for a game of How Well Do You Know Your Co-Star?, the two stars had a much more carefree chemistry than the emotional romance they portrayed onscreen.

In honor of the film's March 13 release, Monroe and Withers tested their friendship by guessing each other's favorite foods, guilty pleasures, most-used vocal stims, and most-iconic declarations of love. Though we provided multiple-choice options, the self-proclaimed besties didn't need them, as they had already gotten extremely close on set. After chatting with them, we wish we could hang out with the pair every day (especially if it means we'd get to hear more of Withers's impressions).

Watch the full challenge above, then head to your local theater to catch Reminders of Him.

Virgin River was already Netflix’s longest-running drama—but they’re upping the ante even more with a forthcoming season 8. Well before season 7 premiered, the streamer greenlit another installment of the feel-good series about life in the tiny, fictional, eponymous California town. Based on the romance book series by Robyn Carr, showrunner Patrick Sean Smith has “no plans to wrap up the series anytime soon,” telling Deadline that “as long as people keep coming back for it, we’re proud and happy to keep telling these stories.”

With that in mind and season 7 available on Netflix, here’s what we know about season 8, including when we can expect the new episodes after that cliffhanger season 7 finale.

Is 'Virgin River' renewed for season 8?

Back in July 2025—just days after season 7 wrapped production—Netflix announced that Virgin River fans had even more to look forward to with an early season 8 renewal. “On behalf of myself and the whole Virgin River family, we’re eternally grateful to Netflix and to the fans for allowing us to continue on this journey with these beloved characters,” Smith told Tudum at the time. According to the streamer, Virgin River is Netflix’s longest-running current original scripted series, and season 8 will add 10 more episodes to its story.

When will 'Virgin River' season 8 come out?

Since premiering in 2019, the small town drama series has maintained a consistent schedule, releasing new episodes almost every year—the only time this went off course was between seasons 6 and 7 (6 debuted in December 2024, and audiences had to wait until March 2026 to get season 7, despite getting an early renewal). With that in mind, the absolute latest we expect season 8 to hit our screens is late 2027, though it’s very likely that we’ll get new episodes earlier than that. According to Deadline, filming resumes in April and is set to wrap up in August, so hopefully we’ll be back in our favorite cozy town by next spring.

Who in the 'Virgin River' cast will return for season 8?

While returning and new cast members haven’t officially been announced, it’s safe to assume that Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson will return as the central couple of the series, Mel and Jack. Other series regulars, like Colin Lawrence (Preacher), Annette O’Toole (Hope), Tim Matheson (Doc), Sarah Dugdale (Lizzie), Zibby Allen (Brie), Kai Bradbury (Denny), Kandyse McClure (Kaia), and Ben Hollingsworth (Brady), will also return. (Yes, it’s been announced that we’ll see more of Brady, despite his accident. More on that below!)

Season 7 also introduced a few new faces, and we know a handful will stick around: Cody Kearsley (Clay) and Austin Nichols (Eli). Clay will continue searching for his missing sister, and Smith confirmed to Deadline that Eli will make another appearance.

A few characters have been confirmed not to return. In a surprising shake-up, Smith also told Deadline that Marco Grazzini, who plays Mike, and Lauren Hammersley, who plays Charmaine, won’t reprise their roles in season 8. While the showrunner explained they could return in future seasons, he said their stories were complete for now and that he wants to make room for new characters.

“For me, I’m just trying to look to the longevity of the show and making sure that the characters that we’re keeping have enough story engine in them to keep going,” Smith told the outlet. “So I can’t say there are any specific cast shakeups planned, but I think we will have to start to—as characters run their course—make some decisions and bring in some new blood.”

Similarly, Rachel Drance, who played the pregnant woman whose baby Jack and Mel adopted, is also “out for now,” according to Smith. And season 7 newcomer Sara Canning, who played Marco’s love interest Victoria, won’t be back.

What will 'Virgin River' season 8 be about?

Season 7 marked a few milestones for the residents of Virgin River: Mel and Jack adopt a baby from one of her patients; Jack and Preacher end their professional partnership so that Preacher can open his own restaurant; Doc partners with a hospital to elevate the medical care available to the small town; Brie and Mike break up, allowing Brie and Brady to reunite; and Lizzie and Denny welcome a daughter named Koko.

The most recent season also saw the departure of Calvin (David Cubitt/Josh Blacker), who was killed by Charmaine’s (Lauren Hammersley) obsessive former boss, and expanded beyond the confines of Virgin River via Mel and Jack’s honeymoon to Mexico and their urgent trip to the hospital she used to work at in L.A. With their baby’s birth complications and admission into the NICU, we’ll likely see more of their big city journey in season 8.

The introduction of Hope’s ex-husband, Roland (John Ralston), took a toll on Doc and Hope’s relationship in season 7, which ended with an explosive fight. “There’s definitely a huge rift between Doc and Hope, and I think a big question in season 8 is, ‘Will they find their way back to each other?’” Smith told Tudum.

The final moments deliver another blow that Smith confirmed would be a major storyline in season 8. While Mel and Jack’s baby is entered into the NICU, Brady gets into a potentially fatal motorcycle accident. Unfortunately, fans will have to wait for the new season to find out the ramifications of the crash—although it doesn’t seem like it died, given the confirmation he’s a returning cast member. Here’s to hoping he has minor injuries, if any!

Will season 8 be the final season of 'Virgin River?'

As reported by Deadline, Smith has “no plans” for season 8 to be the final installment in the romantic series. Of course, any renewal decisions will come down to Netflix, although Virgin River is one of its most popular offerings: The show was among its top five most-watched series between 2020 and 2025. While the show has diverged from the source material, there are certainly many stories to tell, with currently 21 books in the Robyn Carr series. We’ll certainly be happy to return to our favorite cozy California outpost as long as Netflix continues making the show!

After a long season of surprises, snubs, and red-carpet glamour, the 98th annual Academy Awards are just a few days away. This year's ceremony will cap off one of the most unpredictable awards seasons in recent years; most of the best drama movies of 2025 have picked up honors over the past three months, and there's no clear frontrunner in most of the acting races and Best Picture.

This year's nominees include a mix of record-breaking blockbusters (Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters, Marty Supreme), beloved auteur-led films (One Battle After Another, Hamnet), and strong international contenders (Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident). Plus, first-time nominees like Jacob Elordi, Michael B. Jordan, Renate Reinsve, Rose Byrne, Teyana Taylor, Wagner Moura, and Wunmi Mosaku hope to stamp their place in Hollywood history.

Read on to learn everything to know about the 2026 Oscars, including how to watch the ceremony and the nominated films.

When are the 2026 Oscars?

The 2026 Oscars will air live on ABC on Sunday, March 15 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. (Note: This is an hour earlier than the usual 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT start time for awards shows like the Golden Globes or the Grammys.)

As always, the ceremony will be held at L.A.'s Dolby Theatre.

How can I watch the 2026 Oscars?

Viewers with cable can tune into their local ABC channel or use their cable login to watch on a computer, phone, or tablet via ABC's app or website.

The Oscars will stream live on Hulu for all subscribers, regardless of subscription tier. (Ideally the streamer has created fixes for last year's glitches.) The full ceremony will also be available to watch on demand the following day.

If you don't have cable or a Hulu subscription, there are other ways to stream the Oscars online. Live streaming TV services like DIRECTV STREAM, Fubo, Sling TV, and YouTube TV provide access to ABC (and offer free trials).

How can I watch the 2026 Oscars red carpet?

ABC's official pre-show, On the Red Carpet at the Oscars, starts at 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT on March 15. E! Live from the Red Carpet is also expected to start soon after at 4:00 p.m. ET/1:00 p.m. PT.

Who is hosting the 2026 Oscars?

Emmy winner Conan O'Brien will host the Oscars ceremony for the second year in a row. The comedy legend signed up to return to the awards show just two weeks after his well-received hosting debut in 2025.

Who is presenting at the 2026 Oscars?

The Academy of Motion Pictures announced that the ceremony's presenters will include: Anne Hathaway, Bill Pullman, as well as his son Lewis Pullman, Channing Tatum, Chase Infiniti, Chris Evans, Delroy Lindo, Demi Moore, Ewan McGregor, Gwyneth Paltrow, Javier Bardem, Jimmy Kimmel, Kumail Nanjiani, Maya Rudolph, Nicole Kidman, Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Rose Byrne, Sigourney Weaver, Wagner Moura, and Will Arnett. Last year's acting winners, Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin, Mikey Madison, and Zoe Saldaña, will also return as presenters.

Meanwhile, Matt Berry will serve as the ceremony's announcer.

Who is performing at the 2026 Oscars?

After last year's controversial decision to skip the Best Original Song performances, the Oscars are bringing them back...but just the two biggest hits.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that this year's ceremony will include live performances of “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters and “I Lied to You” from Sinners. Oscar producers explained their decision, citing how the two songs "have played a defining role in their global cultural impact and audience connection this year."

They should be pretty big numbers. It's been confirmed that the singing voices behind HUNTR/X—EJAE, Rei Ami, and Audrey Nuna—will take the stage to sing "Golden." Meanwhile, "I Lied to You" will be performed by Sinners star Miles Caton and R&B icon Raphael Saadiq. They'll also be joined on the stage by an exciting roster of musicians and performers, including Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy (who had a cameo in Sinners), Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey, and Alice Smith.

Elsewhere during the awards show, Josh Groban and the Los Angeles Master Chorale will also perform.

According to THR, the other three tracks up for Best Original Song—"Train Dreams" by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner (Train Dreams), "Sweet Dreams of Joy" by Nicholas Pike (Viva Verdi!) and "Dear Me" by perennial nominee Diane Warren (Diane Warren: Relentless)—will be "introduced via custom-produced segments featuring film and behind-the-scenes footage."

Who is nominated at the 2026 Oscars?

As for this year's race, Sinners leads this year's Academy Award nominees with 16 nods. The vampire musical-thriller claimed a new record for the most nominations for an individual movie in one year, surpassing All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land's 14 nods.

Following closely after Sinners is One Battle After Another, with 13 nominations; Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value with 9 nods each; and Hamnet with 8 nods. These five films are all nominated for Best Picture, along with Bugonia, F1, The Secret Agent, and Train Dreams.

Other notable nominations include Chloé Zhao's Best Director nod for Hamnet; Best Animated Picture and Best Original Song nods for KPop Demon Hunters; first-time acting nods for Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value), Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You), and Delroy Lindo (Sinners); second career nominations after decades-long gaps for Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue) and Amy Madigan (Weapons); and the four nods for non-English acting performances—The Secret Agent's Wagner Moura and Sentimental Value's Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Stellan Skarsgård. There's also a brand-new category this year: Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, and Sinners nabbed the first-ever nominations for Achievement in Casting.

How can I watch the movies nominated for the 2026 Oscars?

If you still need to catch some of these films before finishing your voting ballot this week, you can watch most of the Oscar-nominated movies from the comfort of your couch.

Most of the Best Picture nominees are already available to stream. Bugonia is on Peacock; F1 is on Apple TV; Frankenstein is on Netflix; Hamnet is on Peacock; One Battle After Another is on HBO Max; The Secret Agent is on Hulu; Sinners is on HBO Max; and Train Dreams is on Netflix. As for other top films, Blue Moon is on Netflix; KPop Demon Hunters is on Netflix; If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is on HBO Max; It Was Just An Accident is on Hulu; Song Sung Blue is on Peacock; and Weapons is on HBO Max.

Meanwhile, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, andThe Voice of Hind Rajab are all available to rent or own on demand. All of these are also playing in theaters nationwide, as well as Best Visual Effects frontrunner Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For those of us who have too many streaming subscriptions and are willing to wait until after the ceremony: Sentimental Value will be on Hulu starting March 26, and Marty Supreme is expected to arrive on HBO Max sometime in April or May.

One of Netflix’s longest-running dramas is Virgin River, an adaptation of the Robyn Carr eponymous romance book series. Virgin River charts nurse and midwife Mel’s (Alexandra Breckenridge) arrival in town as she runs from a traumatic past, and tracks her journey as she gets acquainted with life in a small town. Over the course of the six-season run, she meets and falls in love with Jack (Martin Henderson), a barkeep and former Marine, and by the end of season 6, they’re happily married.

Thankfully, showrunner Patrick Sean Smith plans to keep it that way, though he teased a few other shake-ups for the characters. “I can’t imagine creating a scenario where you think Mel and Jack are going to break up,” Smith told Netflix. “It forces you to dig a little bit deeper into, well, what other issues can they have in their relationship?” Some of those obstacles might come in the form of new characters, at least one of whom is promised to be a fixture from Mel’s past who reappears in Virgin River.

Ahead, with season 7 out March 12, we’re refamiliarizing ourselves with the Virgin River cast and getting acquainted with the new faces we’ll be seeing around town in the feel-good series.

Your Guide to the Main 'Virgin River' Cast

Alexandra Breckenridge as Mel Monroe

Virgin River primarily follows Mel, a midwife and nurse practitioner who moves to the small town looking for a fresh start at the start of the series. By the end of season 6, she married her longtime boyfriend, Jack. According to showrunner Patrick Sean Smith, season 7 will “explore the honeymoon phase for them as they’re building their lives on the farm, which can come with its own obstacles.”

Alexandra Breckenridge, 43, began her career with the iconic teen comedies She’s the Man and Big Fat Liar. Before Virgin River, she starred in American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and This Is Us.

Instagram: @alexandrabreck

Martin Henderson as Jack Sheridan

Mel’s other half, Jack, is a local bar owner and Marine vet with lingering PTSD. While season 7 will bring challenges to their relationship, Smith reassures fans that any obstacles will be “resting on emotional stakes as opposed to will they, won’t they.”

Martin Henderson, 51, is probably best known for playing Dr. Nathan Riggs on Grey’s Anatomy. He also starred in Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes’s short-lived drama Off the Map. He’s appeared in horror films like The Ring and X, and the cross-cultural romance drama Bride and Prejudice.

Instagram: @martinhendersonofficial

Tim Matheson as Doc Mullins

Doc is a local doctor in town and the husband of Virgin River’s mayor, Hope.

Tim Matheson, 78, is best known for starring in the comedies National Lampoon's Animal House and Van Wilder, and the TV dramas The West Wing and Hart of Dixie. He also voiced the 1960s animated series Jonny Quest. Matheson is also a TV director, helming episodes of shows including The Twilight Zone, Criminal Minds, Suits, Virgin River, and more.

Instagram: @tim_matheson_official

Annette O'Toole as Hope McCrea

Hope is the town’s mayor, and the wife of Doc. Smith expressed excitement about telling the story of their rekindled romance to Tudum because “it feels like nothing else anybody is doing on television.”

Annette O’Toole, 73, starred in Nash Bridges, Smallville, and the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s It. She also had recurring roles in shows like The Punisher and Halt and Catch Fire.

Instagram: @annetteotoole4152

Colin Lawrence as John "Preacher" Middleton

“Preacher” is a fellow Marine and close friend of Jack’s, and is the chef at Jack’s bar.

Colin Lawrence, 55, has appeared in hit shows like Battlestar Galactica, iZombie, The Killing, and Riverdale. In film, he appeared in the comic book adaptations Watchmen and Fantastic Four, as well as Fifty Shades Darker and Rememory.

Instagram: @colinlawrence97

Benjamin Hollingsworth as Dan Brady

Brady is another of Jack’s Marine veteran friends who is having a difficult time adjusting back into his civilian life. He has a romantic history with Jack’s sister Brie.

Aside from Virgin River, Benjamin Hollingsworth, 41, is best known for starring on the television dramas Code Black and Suits. Hollingsworth has also appeared in a handful of Christmas Hallmark movies, like Love Under the Olive Tree and The Christmas Ring.

Instagram: @hollingsworthb

Sarah Dugdale as Lizzie

An Angeleno, Lizzie is the niece of Hope’s friend Connie. She has had a troublemaking streak, and in season 7, she and Denny will navigate the highs and lows of expecting their first child.

Sarah Dugdale, 30, has appeared in episodes of Supernatural, Arrow, and Allegiance. She has also starred in several TV movies, including Death of a Cheerleader and the ripped-from-the-headlines movie The College Admissions Scandal.

Instagram: @sarahdugdale

Zibby Allen as Brie Sheridan

Brie is Jack’s younger sister, who arrived in Virgin River to escape a traumatic past. Now, she’s embroiled in a love triangle between Brady and Mike, the latter of whom proposed to her at the end of season 6.

Zibby Allen, 45, has appeared in the CW series Nancy Drew, Scaredy Cats, The Good Doctor, The Twilight Zone, and For the People. She also starred in 30 Second Somebodies, a dramatization of the actors’s real lives as they go up for commercial jobs.

Instagram: @zibbyloo

Kai Bradbury as Denny Cutler

Denny is Doc’s grandson and Lizzie’s partner, with whom he is expecting a child. In season 6, they grappled with Denny’s Huntington’s Disease and whether it might be passed on to their future daughter.

Kai Bradbury, 32, starred in the Canadian series Warigami and Motherland: Fort Salem. You may also recognize him from episodes of The Boys, The Terror, Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Imperfects, and Fire Country.

Instagram: @kaibury

Marco Grazzini as Mike Valenzuela

Mike is the local police detective, another of Jack’s Marine vet friends, and Brie’s boyfriend. At the end of season 6, he proposes to Brie even though he knows she’s been sleeping with Brady.

Marco Grazzini, 45, had a memorable six-episode arc on the cult comedy hit Kim’s Convenience, and has also appeared in episodes of Heroes Reborn, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Murders. Like some of his costars, Grazzini has also starred in many Christmas-themed TV movies, including Designing Christmas, Lonestar Christmas, and Christmas Under the Lights.

Kandyse McClure as Kaia

Kaia is the fire chief of Virgin River. She’s been dating Preacher since season 5, when they came together during the town’s devastating wildfires.

Kandyse McClure, 45, starred as Anastasia Dualla in Battlestar Galactica and later appeared in the Netflix series Hemlock Grove. Her other credits include Higher Ground, Persons Unknown, Ghost Wars, and the 2018 Charmed reboot.

Instagram: @kandysemcclure

The New Cast Members in 'Virgin River' Season 7

Sara Canning as Victoria

One of the few new faces in season 7, Victoria is “a former cop now working for the state medical board investigating Doc's practice,” per Netflix.

Sara Canning, 38, notably starred on The Vampire Diaries, the TV adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the 2017 film War for the Planet of the Apes. She’s also appeared in a number of projects in her native Canada, including the rom-com The Right Kind of Wrong and the slasher Dark Match.

Instagram: @saracanning

Cody Kearsley as Clay

Clay is another new character in season 7. He’s described as “a tough, athletic kind of guy who gets noticed when he enters a room.” Clay worked on the rodeo circuit and is searching for his sister, whom he hasn’t seen in years, after they grew up in foster care.

You might recognize Cody Kearsley, 34, as Moose Mason from Riverdale or as Turbo Pokaski from Daybreak. Before those series, he appeared in the 2017 Power Rangers movie and the Bruce Willis film Breach.

Instagram: @codykearsley

Austin Nichols as Dr. Eli Kelly

At the start of season 7, little is known about Nichols’s mysterious doctor character—except that he’s a figure from Mel's past that will surely wreak some havoc in her blissful relationship.

Austin Nichols, 45, is best known for playing Julian Baker on the iconic 2000s teen drama One Tree Hill. He also appeared in the series The Walking Dead, Ray Donovan, Minx, and Bates Motel, as well as films like Wimbledon and The Day After Tomorrow. Most recently, he appeared in the 2025 slasher film sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Instagram: @austinnichols

The Netflix dark comedy Vladimir explores the distinction between reality and fantasy. While those lines blur and it’s hard to understand what is really unfolding, by the finale, the eight-episode series reveals its truth as a “do it for the plot” send-up of writers. Centered on an unnamed protagonist played by Rachel Weisz, who regularly breaks the fourth wall a la Fleabag, the erotic dramedy follows Weisz’s tenured English professor who becomes obsessed with a younger colleague. Her direct-to-camera confessions reveal her fantasies about Vlad (Leo Woodall), while her real life begins to unravel when her husband John’s (John Slattery) inappropriate relationships with younger students are exposed and escalated.

In its first episode, the Netflix original, adapted from Julie May Jones’s novel of the same name, teases Vlad’s inevitable kidnapping—but it’s not until the end that it’s revealed how he wound up being held hostage in a cabin. And while much of the relationship between Vlad and The Protagonist is via imagined hook-ups and flirtatious texting, it doesn’t fully take the plunge until the final episode. But how exactly do they get there? And what does it mean, given the show’s sleight-of-hand final twist? Read on to find out exactly what goes down in the twisted love triangle of Vladimir.

Do Vladimir and The Protagonist act on their flirtation in 'Vladimir?'

Yes. As teased in the opening moments of the series, the finale brings us back to The Protagonist’s cabin, where Vlad is drugged and tied up in a chair. He’s led to the cabin after having lunch with The Protagonist to discuss their books, thinking they’re going to spend time writing together. However, while they’re drinking, things take a turn, and she acts on her desires questionably by adding crushed medication to his beverage and tying him up so that he won’t fall over.

When he comes to, he suspects his older colleague of lacing his drink, but takes her at her word when she denies it, saying that he was drunk and wanted to try BDSM before he passed out.

She also informs him that her husband, John, is having an affair with his wife, Cynthia (Jessica Henwick), which angers him.

Were Cynthia and John having an affair in 'Vladimir?'

Vladimir and the unnamed lead’s dalliance is interrupted by John, who arrives at the cabin and informs everyone that he and Cynthia weren’t having an affair; they were just 2 a.m. writing buddies. Even though she saw them together late at night, John explains that they were writing together with the aid of drugs like adderall. This revelation sends Vlad into a rage, as Cynthia is an addict whom John was enabling.

After Vlad comes to terms with the fact that he cheated (and not that he was taking revenge on Cynthia, as he initially seemed to frame it in his mind), he approaches The Protagonist with an offer: Meet him here at the cabin once a week. But having gotten what she needed out of this relationship—that is, fodder for her new novel—The Protagonist chooses herself and “burns” both of her sexual partners in the pages of her new book.

What happens with John's hearing and trial in 'Vladimir?'

Looming over the series is John’s legal hearing, as many of his former students have brought forward their complaints of his misconduct. The Protagonist argues in class that the relationships were consensual, and the judge agrees: The complaints against John are dismissed. He loses his ability to teach again, but keeps his pension.

John and The Protagonists’s daughter Sid (Ellen Robertson) serves as John’s lawyer in court, and after the trial, John confesses that he regrets involving Sid. The series doesn’t interrogate this further, simply expressing that John thinks he “fucked it up for a while.”

Do John and The Protagonist stay together in 'Vladimir?'

After the affair and John’s trial are settled, he asks his wife if they should reconsider their agreement. “We’re not getting any younger,” he reasons, though The Protagonist likes the idea of having agency in her life for the first time. She doesn’t fully commit one way or another.

What happens after the fire in 'Vladimir?'

Weisz’s character cures her writer's block after the affair—and becomes satisfied with feeling like the men in her life see her as a character in theirs. As she’s working on the end of her novel, she falls asleep on the couch and wakes up to a faulty space heater that’s started a fire in the cabin. It’s unclear whether it’s one of her fantasies or really unfolding—but she saves her manuscript, instead of John or Vlad. The Protagonist attests in a voiceover that she called 911, and everyone made it out alive (though the truth remains to be seen).

Does The Protagonist finish her book in 'Vladimir?'

In the end, it was all a writing exercise. The tongue-in-cheek show ends with The Protagonist realizing that the fantasy of Vlad was more enticing than actually having the affair, and all of it was really just fodder for her next book. In an epilogue of sorts, Weisz’s unnamed character tells the camera that her book about an obsession with a younger coworker was a success, while Vlad’s—which also took inspiration from their tryst as he wrote about an affair with an older professor—didn’t live up to the hype of his first. She reasons that hers “speaks to a certain need” before insinuating that she chose herself over the two men in her life. And with that, Vladimir reveals itself as a commentary on writers, who will find inspiration anywhere, even if it renders them delusional along the way.

Ryan Murphy shows that depict real-life historical figures have become infamous for their loose relationship with the truth. According to Daryl Hannah, FX's Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is allegedly no different.

On March 6, four weeks into Love Story's run on FX and Hulu, the Splash star penned an op-ed for The New York Times addressing her portrayal on the hit drama. Early episodes dramatize the end of her long-term relationship with JFK Jr. (played by Paul Anthony Kelly), as the scion simultaneously met and fell for then-Calvin Klein employee Carolyn Bassette (Sarah Pidgeon).

"The character 'Daryl Hannah' portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John," the actress wrote in what marks her first time speaking on her romance with Kennedy Jr.

Described by Vulture as a "portrayal border[ing] on caricature," Love Story depicts Hannah (played by Dree Hemingway) as a ditzy on- and off-again girlfriend who hosts drug-fueled parties in Kennedy Jr.'s apartment. Their relationship ends largely because his mother, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, disapproves, and their breakup is made all the worse when Hannah crashes the late First Lady's memorial service, embarrassing the family.

In her op-ed, Hannah rebuts each of these scenes. "I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s."

"It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct—and they are false," she added. The actress/filmmaker also described the show's choice to depict her as "irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate," and to pit her against Bassette-Kennedy. She asks, "Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?"

In addition to debunking her character's salacious scenes, Hannah's op-ed also revealed how the series has affected her. "When so many people watch a dramatization that uses a real name, real-life consequences follow," she wrote. "In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual. When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation."

Neither Murphy, FX, nor the Love Story team has responded to Hannah's claims as of the time of writing.

Hannah isn't the only public figure to decry Love Story as controversial. During his appearance on CBS News Sunday Mornings on March 1, JFK Jr.'s nephew (and congressional hopeful) Jack Schlossberg accused executive producer Murphy of profiting from the notoriously private family.

"If you want to know someone who’s never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy," Schlossberg said. "The guy knows nothing about what he’s talking about, and he’s making a ton of money on a grotesque display of someone else’s life."

After four seasons, can the average Industry fan say they understand shorts and investments? Maybe. But can they say without a doubt that they know good TV? Well, yes!

In season 4, which aired in early 2026, the HBO hit introduced more frenemy and professional drama between Yas (Marisa Abela) and Harper (Myha'la)—that not even one night out doing all the things Lorde sings about could make up for!—a leveled-up corporate girl wardrobe, and surprising twists. As the show expanded well beyond the confines of Pierpoint & Co., where it originally introduced its characters as junior employees, it continued to explore power, but especially in terms of what comes when those who have it are ruthless with it, as well as perception versus reality.

The show created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay wrapped up its latest eight-episode installment on March 1, 2026, with a jaw-dropping finale that's left fans eager for more. Thankfully, HBO's seen the profitability of its financial drama, and we already know its fate going forward. Read on for everything we know about Industry season 5.

Is 'Industry' renewed for season 5?

HBO has seen ROI in Industry—and it's continuing to do so for one more season. The network has officially renewed Industry for season 5, after the hit drama averaged 1.7 million viewers per episode with season 4, up 30 percent from the previous installment. The Hollywood Reporter reported the news in late February 2026, one week before the season 4 finale. The outlet also confirmed that season 5 will be the show's last—the showrunning duo, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, decided.

The showrunners shared a joint statement on Instagram about the decision. "We’re privileged to have joined the small, esteemed club of dramas that have run for five seasons on HBO. This March marks a decade since we first began to conceive of the world of Industry and it exists because of the unwavering faith and vision of our partners and former partners at HBO," they wrote. "For some time now we have been thinking about how best to end the show on an unparalleled high. Unlike some of our characters, we know when to leave a party."

The duo continued, "We’d like to thank our evangelical fan base, especially those who have watched from day one. Finally: we owe everything to our crew and the best cast on TV for making our writing live. The characters will live on because of their world class performances. Seeing the HBO ident in front of our work will never stop being a thrill. It remains the best place to make television, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration well into the future."

HBO's executive vice president of programming, Francesca Orsi, also shared a statement, per THR. "For four seasons, Industry has thrilled us while examining power, money, politics, and class. Under Mickey and Konrad’s ambitious and singular vision, it has solidified itself as an important contemporary, genre-bending drama in HBO’s lineup that keeps viewers on the edge of their seat week after week...It is gratifying that viewers and critics have recognized season four as bigger and more thrilling than ever, buoyed by career defining performances from our magnificent cast. Alongside the amazing team under executive producer Jane Tranter at Bad Wolf and executive producer Kathleen McCaffrey at Little Gems, we are so proud we can announce the fifth season of this terrific show, which Mickey and Konrad have decided will take us to the end of Industry’s story."

While it'll be a bummer to no longer check in with our favorite morally dubious characters, at least the show will get to see a fitting, planned end.

When will 'Industry' season 5 come out?

Industry season 5 begins filming in August 2026, as reported by Deadline in a July casting announcement (more on that below). It's unclear how long production will last or when new episodes will drop, but we can look at past seasons to get a sense of how long it might take. Season 3, for example, premiered in August 2024, and then season 4 aired in early 2026. Hopefully that means we'll see new episodes by summer 2027.

Who in the 'Industry' cast will return for season 5?

Industry has come a long way since it followed the junior employees on the floor of Pierpoint & Co. Just about every season has been pretty ruthless about introducing fan-favorite characters, putting them through the wringer, and then writing their conclusion. (That's not to mention some of the stars the show has spawned, like David Jonsson and Harry Lawtey, who have exited on their own accord.) But still, the show has always been centered around one of TV's most complicated frenemies: Harper (Myha'la) and Yasmin (Marisa Abela). We can assume that at the very least, they'll lead the cast in season 5.

The rest of the ensemble is a bit up in the air, considering the show could go in any number of directions for its final season. While nothing is confirmed, it seems likely that Harper's teammates, Sweetpea (Miriam Petche) and Kwabena (Toheeb Jimoh), will return. Depending on where the show goes with Yasmin's shocking madame arc, season 4 newcomer Kiernan Shipka, who plays Yas's ally Haley, could be back.

There are several names we can be certain won't return. With Yas being very clear about wanting a divorce from Henry (and, frankly, how much he's endured!), there's likely little more we could see from him and actor Kit Harrington. The Game of Thrones alum told Variety that he's pretty certain that Yas and Henry's relationship is over, and would be happy to come back to the show if asked, but thought it was unlikely.

Relatedly, now that the story revolving around Tender is through, we can assume Max Minghella won't reprise his role as Whitney Halberstram.

Whitney's grand extortion scheme against powerful figures also affected Ken Leung's character Eric, leading to the end of his story on Industry. While he worked to remedy his relationships, including his mentorship with Harper, in season 4, a compromising video featuring him and an underage sex worker prompted him to leave everything behind. The showrunners confirmed it was the end of the road for him in a Variety interview. Down said, "The sendoff that we gave Ken—Eric, should I say—is kind of the most explicit sendoff we’ve ever done with a character. He’s literally walking down the road to nowhere. It was almost us paying respect to the character within what he’d done, which was heinous."

With that in mind, there's certainly room for more characters to come into the fold for the fifth and final installment. As the series nears production, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for casting news.

Are there any new cast members in 'Industry' season 5?

Yet again, we can give it up for the Industry casting department! Cult-loved actress and Girls alum Zosia Mamet will join season 5, as Deadline reported in July 2026. Shoshanna Shapiro herself joining the finance thriller is enough to get excited, but what's more? Her character sounds incredible. The outlet reported that she'll play a woman named Carmen Dame, "a fitness influencer turned wellness tech founder and CEO." We can't wait to see what chaos she'll cook up.

What will 'Industry' season 5 be about?

The Industry team has been explicit about writing the show as it goes on, which has never been more apparent than in the ambitious season 4. Outside the confines of Pierpoint, Harper ran a successful shorts-only investment fund, while Yas became the (unhappy) wife of a British aristocrat, struggling to relaunch his political career. Inevitably, the two crossed paths again when Yas's husband was tapped to run the fintech company Tender, which Harper was investigating, and blew its fraudulent activity wide open.

By the end of the season, Harper is on top, finally reaching the life of luxury she's long been chasing—and Yas is perhaps in the most compromising position than ever. In the midst of a divorce but desperate to hold onto her power, she teams up with former Tender assistant/escort Haley to run "salons" for neo-Nazi types where they're trafficking young women and girls. It's to Harper's complete horror when she attends one of the disturbing events, though Yas doubles down on what she's doing. (While the reveal may have been a surprise to some viewers, the parallels between the character and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell have long been present.)

We can expect season 5 to continue some of that storyline—but with the writers seemingly unafraid of holding back, we can only imagine they'll introduce an even wilder final face-off/reunion/make-up/break-up for complicated besties Harper and Yas. They alluded to as much while speaking with GQ. Kay said, "I feel like the show can’t get any smaller, because a smaller thing would be a backward thing. So it feels like, if anything, it just needs to grow until it tumbles under its own weight."

He continued, "For season 5, I just think it’s going to be more emotionality, more character, making sure we don’t betray our roots, and I think the valence of the show, where it’s operating in all the different worlds, the politics, the media, the intersectional stuff—I feel like the show can’t get any smaller because a smaller thing would be a backward thing. So it feels like, if anything, it just needs to grow until it tumbles under its own weight."

While there's a lot to speculate at this time, fans can rest easy that the showrunners do at least have a conclusion in mind. Down told Collider, "We know what the ending is, though. You’ve got to. You can’t write four seasons and not think about the ending."

This story contains heavy spoilers for Paradise season 2, episode 4, “A Holy Charge.” When Hulu's Paradise returned for its highly anticipated season 2 on February 23, instead of checking in with the lead character, Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), it opens with a departure episode about a woman named Annie Clay. Primarily set after the super volcano eruption that upends society in the series, the premiere titled “Graceland” follows the med school dropout turned Graceland tour guide (played by Shailene Woodley) as she finds the will to survive. It’s arguably the show’s best installment yet.

Thanks to Woodley's exquisite performance and the telling glimpses of her life before the apocalypse—her mother’s death, the panic attack that brings her career to an end, and the comfort she finds in teaching strangers about her mother’s favorite singer—we quickly come to care for her. It's all the more heartbreaking—and frustrating—then, when it's clear three episodes later that the character was introduced only to die.

When Annie and Xavier’s paths inevitably cross by the end of “Graceland,” it seems to signal a new future for her and an important allyship for both of them. Strong-willed and pragmatic, Annie could’ve seen Paradise’s mysteries with new eyes, and without the complacency of the average bunker dweller. However, no matter how well-written she appears to be, she was never meant to be the hero. Instead, she’s just the latest victim of a misogynistic plot device that has plagued female characters for decades.

The beginning of Annie’s plummet from compelling character to emotional-manipulation device comes via a plot twist near the end of “Graceland”: She’s heavily pregnant. A year before Xavier’s plane crashed, Annie met Link (Thomas Doherty), a charming biker who gate-crashed the museum two years after the eruption, in search of vintage car parts. Though she was initially guarded, Annie bonds with Link during his time at the mansion, and they sleep together before he leaves. Link, who’s determined to get to the mysterious Colorado bunker, asks Annie to join him, but she's too afraid to leave her familiar shelter. So by the time Xavier falls from the sky, Annie is very late in her pregnancy.

It makes little sense beyond melodrama. Shrewd Annie and mature-beyond-his-years Link are both extremely smart, careful people, and they didn’t once think of contraception? The odds of getting pregnant from one instance of unprotected sex range from 3 to 42 percent within a woman’s fertile window, but you wouldn’t know that if your sole source of sex ed is this exhausting postapocalyptic trope. (See A Quiet Place, The Walking Dead, Children of Men, etc.)

Though some viewers may have hoped that Annie and her baby would survive—after all, the concept of the entire show requires some suspension of disbelief—what we get is much more lurid. After Annie stitches Xavier back up in the March 2nd episode, “A Holy Charge,” the pair have two weeks together while he heals before setting out to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), in Atlanta, and eventually reach Colorado. But, to appear travel-ready, Annie had been hiding the severity of her condition, so it’s not long before she experiences preeclampsia and is pushed into early labor. In the 25 minutes of screen time before that labor begins, her interiority takes a back seat. The show doesn’t explore whether she regrets locking herself in Graceland, if her feelings for Link have evolved since their separation, or what she thinks about motherhood outside of their dystopian circumstances. Save for flashes that hint at her condition and urgency to leave, we only see her with Xavier, who centers himself in the moment, dadsplaining the joys and fears (and swaddling tips) of parenthood. Every conversation between them rehashes the same existential dilemma: Nihilist Annie can’t see the future as anything but bleak, but, to optimist Xavier, the baby inside her is a symbol of hope.

Before Annie ultimately dies in childbirth, she tasks a crying Xavier with “A Holy Charge”—delivering the baby to Link—in a prime example of fridging. The bane of every feminist fangirl, the trope coined by comics writer Gail Simone in 1999 is when a secondary character (usually female) dies or goes through grievous harm so a more significant character (typically male) can experience growth or change because of it. Not every instance of a male character’s sorrow over a female character’s death is fridging, but Annie’s death caps off the end of an episode that treats her like the trope’s most notorious examples. Her own character arc and potential are pushed aside so she can serve as a plot device and conduit for two men. Link—the specter in Xavier’s dreams whose past is tangled in the existence of the bunker itself—becomes the lynchpin holding the series together, giving it momentum. Annie’s discarded, and her only legacy is a letter to her child that echoes Xavier’s message.

Television has made major strides in its depiction of nuanced female characters, but even the best shows can’t avoid all pitfalls. Over the past few years, speculative-fiction shows like House of the Dragon, The Handmaid’s Tale, Yellowjackets, The Last of Us, and even Bridgerton season 4 have explored pregnancy trauma and traumatic childbirth in scenes more graphic than Annie’s. While some of these have been controversial, they’ve also treated the death of the mother with gravitas, not glossing over the cruelty and sorrow. Instead, “A Holy Charge” joins Squid Game season 3 as a recent show in which a mother's death is sidelined for the male hero to find a new purpose as her baby’s caretaker. Considering how reproductive harm is a longstanding sci-fi trope, it’s troubling to think that a portion of mainstream Hollywood could be regressing in their approach to these stories. It’s also telling that this episode’s flashback juxtaposes Annie’s childbirth with a bunch of men (and Julianne Nicholson’s Sinatra) more concerned about the bunker’s first newborn than the mother who carried him to term.

Beyond the simplistic writing and lost potential, the most frustrating thing about Paradise’s discarding of Annie is that we know the show can do better. The fourth episode of Paradise’s first season, “Agent Billy Pace,” also ends with a central character’s tragic death. Over the course of an hour, we learn the titular assassin’s (Jim Beavers) tragic backstory and empathize with him as quickly as with Annie. But we also get to see Billy grow: his redemption arc, his feelings for Jane, and how his friendship with Xavier and love for Xavier’s kids inspire him to be better. Billy gets to be a whole person, not a character in a fable. Annie and all the other female characters coming to TV deserve the same courtesy.

Dearest reader, it gives me great honor to inform you that Netflix's Bridgerton has made it halfway through its potential tenure. In January 2026, the beloved book-to-series adaptation aired its fourth season, centered on Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek's (Yerin Ha) fairytale romance. With the couple's happy ending on February 23, Bridgerton has now adapted half of its source novels by Julia Quinn, while also extending a fan-favorite subplot past the book timeline.

Of course, we Bridgerton fans are ravenous; just because we've recently been fed doesn't mean we're not eager for the next course. Thankfully, the Netflix original's future is already confirmed, and fans can expect regular dispatches on the upcoming installment, from highly anticipated castings to updates from the set to plenty of first-look images and teasers. Below, we're tracking every update and clue on Bridgerton season 5 so far.

(In the meantime, we've rounded up several shows like Bridgerton, as well as books like Bridgerton, to entertain you as you wait.)

Has 'Bridgerton' been renewed for a fifth season?

Yes! The Netflix romance series was renewed for seasons 5 and 6 simultaneously. The streaming giant announced the good news via a Whistledown column in the lead-up to season 4.

As for the future of the series, executive producer Shonda Rhimes confirmed in January 2025 that she plans for Bridgerton to last eight seasons, one for each sibling. Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, she also teased that there's "a possibility for spinoffs" in the future, following Queen Charlotte.

When will 'Bridgerton' season 5 come out?

It's official: The two-year wait between Bridgerton seasons is a thing of the past! In May 2026, Netflix announced that season 5 will premiere on the streamer in 2027, marking the shortest hiatus of the period romance show's history.

Ahead of season 4, showrunner Jess Brownell shared that the series had been trying to "speed up" production, including building a permanent Georgian back lot at Shepperton Studios outside of London. The Bridgerton backlot officially opened for the filming of season 4, which began in September 2024.

Fast-forward to March 24, 2026, and Netflix announced that Bridgerton season 5 has begun filming, less than a month after season 4's conclusion. (For reference, there were four months between season 3's release and the start of production on season 4.) Ahead of the announcement, Brownell told TechRadar that season 5 would be underway soon.

"We're really keen to try to pace up our release schedule," she explained in late February. "So with season 5, we're pretty much done already with the scripts. We have finished the writers' room, and I'm just doing a final pass on the finale. We start shooting pretty soon. Those conversations happened as soon as we finished shooting season 4."

Which Julia Quinn book will 'Bridgerton' season 5 adapt?

Dearest readers, it's time to prepare for a wicked love story. Netflix has confirmed that Bridgerton season 5 will center on Francesca Sterling (née Bridgerton) and Michaela Sterling. The news dropped with special portraits of stars Hannah Dodd and Masali Baduza, along with a summary of season 5's plot.

Per Tudum, "Bridgerton’s first same-gender central romance...begins two years after John’s death, when Francesca decides to reenter the marriage mart for practical reasons. But when John’s cousin Michaela returns to London to tend to the Kilmartin estate, Francesca’s complicated feelings will have her questioning whether to stick to her pragmatic intentions or pursue her inner passions."

Before the big reveal, Brownell revealed that sisters Eloise and Francesca would be the leads of the confirmed seasons 5 and 6. Though the season 4 finale's surprise post-credits scene was a nod to the intrigue, we now know that Francesca will take the reins in season 5, with Eloise and Sir Phillip's love story serving as the foundation for season 6.

Season 4 already adapted the start of Francesca's book, When He Was Wicked. The novel begins with the death of her husband, John Sterling, and the subsequent ghosting of his cousin, Michael Sterling. (Of course, in the series, Michael is Michaela, played by Masali Baduza.)

In the book, Francesca and Michael's story continues when they reunite four years later, as Michael returns to London following his travels in India. When Francesca decides to join the marriage mart—seeking a union of convenience rather than true love—she soon comes to see a new side of her former cousin-in-law, leading to one of the most popular love stories among book fans (as well as some of the raciest scenes in the novel series).

Which cast members are returning for 'Bridgerton' season 5?

Though Netflix has not confirmed the full season 5 cast, most of the main players will likely return. This includes Ruth Gemmell (Violet Bridgerton), Claudia Jessie (Eloise Bridgerton), Hannah Dodd (Francesca Bridgerton), Will Tilston (Gregory Bridgerton), Florence Hunt (Hyacinth Bridgerton), Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte), Hugh Sachs (Brimsley), Daniel Francis (Lord Marcus Anderson), Martins Imhangbe (Will Mondrich), Emma Naomi (Alice Mondrich), Polly Walker (Portia Featherington), Lorraine Ashbourne (Mrs. Varley), and Julie Andrews (voice of Lady Whistledown).

Now that we know that season 5 will adapt Francesca's novel, Masali Baduza (Michaela Stirling) has been elevated to the installment's co-lead. It's also very likely that Victor Alli (John Stirling) will return in flashbacks, as Francesca and Michaela work through their grief at John's passing.

Speaking to Tudum, Baduza spoke on her character's arc in the upcoming season. "Michaela…really struggles to show vulnerability to people that she doesn’t know, especially because she’s had to hide so many parts of herself," she told the outlet. "She’s used to having all these walls up. I’m excited to tear down those walls and have her let Francesca in. I'm excited for people to see her wanted so deeply and so badly…I’m excited for people to see Michaela yearn for Francesca."

Another cast member who has left fans wondering about her return is Adjoa Andoh, who plays the wonderful Lady Danbury. It takes a while, but in season 4, Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) allows Danbury to leave the Ton and travel to her homeland for the first time since her childhood. Thankfully, Brownell confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that Andoh will return for season 5.

"You'll see Lady Danbury next season," she said, before teasing Danbury and Charlotte's dynamic in future installments. "I think, for us, it was more about exploring the themes this season of relationships that have a power imbalance and trying to find a way to shake up that power imbalance between Lady Danbury and the Queen. I think after what they've been through this season, it's safe to say that the Queen is finally going to be treating Danbury more as a peer."

And then there's the question of the married Bridgertons, specifically season 2 leads Antony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate (Simone Ashley), season 3's Colin (Luke Newton) and Penelope (Nicola Coughlan), and season 4's Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Sophie (Yerin Ha). The couple most likely to return for season 5 is Benophie, since the series likes to give viewers a peek at the previous leads' newlywed arc. But good news: Brownell revealed in an interview with Cinemablend that Benedict will be an important support for both Eloise and Francesca in their upcoming arcs, so you can expect to see more of him.

Although that doesn't mean Penelope will be on screen just as much. During a podcast appearance in late April 2026, Coughlan hinted that she'll have a smaller role in the new episodes. "Season 5 had started filming already, so I won't be in it very much," she said, as reported by E!. "I'm always happy to come back. I think it's a genuinely lovely job to come back to...I have it so good now 'cause I come in for a few days and I'm like, 'Yay! How is everyone? I'll see you in two months. Bye! They're working super super hard, and I'm just like coming back. It's lovely."

There's also been no official word on whether Simone Ashley or Jonathan Bailey will return for season 5. Considering that Ashley and Bailey are now among Hollywood's biggest young stars, it's looking likely that they'll go the way of season 1's Phoebe Dyvenor and Regé-Jean Page.

Who are the new cast members joining 'Bridgerton' season 5?

Netflix has announced three new actors joining the Ton in Francesca and Michaela's season. After the Flood alum Jacqueline Boatswain will play Helen Stirling, Michaela's mother who "seeks to guide—and occasionally push—her daughter through London's social season," per the streamer. Gemma Knight Jones (MobLand, Andor) will also join as Lady Elizabeth Ashworth, Michaela's old friend, who relays the intricacies of London's social season.

Meanwhile, Lord Marcus Anderson's family will grow, with Tega Alexander (MobLand, Red Eye) playing Marcus's son Christopher. The younger Anderson is described as "a Regency-era Casanova who could give the Bridgerton bachelors a run for their money. Yet behind his cheeky facade lies a current of self-doubt that threatens to unravel him."

Will the new Whistledown be revealed in 'Bridgerton' season 5?

Season 4 ended with a major cliffhanger: After Penelope retires from Whistledown (and begins work on a novel!), Colin reveals that an entirely different, unknown writer has published a new issue. This means that Bridgerton season 5 will start a show-original Whistledown mystery, and it seems like the writers are planning to milk the secret identity for a while.

"Shonda and I have an idea about who Whistledown is, and that's what we're writing toward," Brownell told Entertainment Weekly. "We'll definitely be planting some clues over the next few seasons for people to hopefully have their own guesses."

She added, "I'll say it won't be revealed in season 5. I can say that we've already finished writing season 5, so beyond that, I can't say for sure, but we will play with the mystery for a little while."

What else has the showrunner said about 'Bridgerton' season 5?

While fans can certainly look to When He Was Wicked for the general plot of season 5, clearly some changes will be made as it's adapted into an LGBTQ+ story. While the new episodes were in production, showrunner Jess Brownell spoke about some of those changes in a June 2026 interview with Shondaland.

Brownell explained that, while crafting the season, the writers spent a lot of time unpacking stereotypes in queer media and how they hoped to avoid that. "It was really important for us to find ways to do something new and not fall into anything that could be harmful," she said. The showrunner explained that they wanted to avoid the "dead lesbian syndrome," in which the relationship is met with tragedy because one person must die. "We knew on this show that we wanted to give Fran and Michaela a happy ending, and they certainly do get one."

Brownell added, "The other huge thing is just about the male gaze. It’s something that we talk about every season, but especially with two female characters, making sure that we’re rooting their emotional and their physical intimacy in the connection between them, in the yearning between them, and in their character growth."

However, don't necessarily expect smooth sailing toward happily-ever-after. The showrunner explained that, while "this is a story about queer joy and not one about queer trauma, it doesn’t mean that our characters won’t face obstacles."

"To take away any obstacles or difficulties would be to strip our characters of agency, and you don’t want to take stakes away from a story," she continued. "I want to feel like they earned their happy ending as every other past lead has."

We certainly trust that they'll do Francesca and Michaela justice! In the meantime, continue to check back, as we'll update this story when more information becomes available.

Emerald Fennell has repeatedly described “Wuthering Heights” not as a direct adaptation of Emily Brontë's gothic classic, but as her 14-year-old self’s interpretation of it. Rather than bringing both halves of the novel, in all its density, to the screen, she focused on what kept her glued to the page (and turned on) as a teenager: the complicated romance and retribution between Catherine and Heathcliff.

At every turn, the blockbuster romance, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, unfolds like a teen’s bodice-ripper fantasia: There’s an anachronistic avant-pop soundtrack from Charli xcx, fairy-tale-like costumes, restrained kisses in the rain. And lots and lots of ribbons.

The feminine accessories aren’t just pretty to look at; they are a deliberate tie-in to Fennell’s interpretation of the source material. In the film, ribbons, bows, and braids, inherently synonymous with girlhood, come to symbolize how the things that frighten and awaken our sexuality in our youth shouldn’t be suppressed.

It’s Alison Olivier’s character, Isabella, in particular, whose journey embodies the symbolism behind the ribbons. At her residence, Thushcross Grange, the wealthy, sheltered young woman spends her days in a room dedicated to sashes and bows, making creations like dolls crafted from human hair. While her proclivities may make her appear naive, her girlishness ultimately comes to represent her own self-discovery and how she revels in control.

Siân Miller (who previously collaborated with Fennell on Saltburn) came on board, she was thrilled to find a character obsessed with ribbonry. “She’s an expert in her confinement,” Miller tells Marie Claire of Isabella. “But what's incredible is that sort of childlike innocence for her age. She’s very little-princess-like.”

That youthfulness informed Miller’s artistic direction. “It really turned into, Okay, what we want to do is try to show something where Cathy is Isabella's doll,” she explains. (In terms of inspiration, Miller says Fennell came prepared with extensive mood boards; while Miller looked to Pinterest references of Old Hollywood and historical paintings of Lovelock hairstyles.)

Miller describes Isabella as being about “administering a sense of control.” So it’s by design that Isabella becomes the character who brings the kink. When she and Heathcliffe elope, and she consents to his requests of dominance and submission, Miller notes that “you see her blossoming as a woman.”

“You see this part of her that's emerging—that's just been woken up. As alarming as it might be to some people in the audience, it is coming from her,” Miller continues. “It’s very interesting to see that transformation from somebody who appeared so quintessentially dressed up like a child-like, young woman.”

In the second part of Isabella’s arc, her hair is now worn loose, but bows and rosettes still line her gowns. Oliver plays the character like she’s constantly frothing at the mouth, eager for something more, but she’s still the woman with the ribbon room in these fetishistic scenes; she’s just now allowed herself to come undone.

“Wuthering Heights” is simply the latest chapter in the recent proliferation of bows and conversations about the reclaiming of girlhood in pop culture and fashion. The discourse perhaps last reached a fever pitch when Robbie’s last major blockbuster produced under her LuckyChap banner, Barbie, hit theaters in summer 2023. But Fennell’s ribbons are less about reclamation than motifs to unravel—and ones that fit into the cultural/stylistic moment that’s proven here to stay in its own way. They speak to how closely innocence and danger can coexist, especially for young women coming into their own, like they’re bound together in a tight knot. It’s perhaps what Fennell felt at 14, and how she’s looking back on that moment with new eyes in the form of her latest film—all tied up in a bow.

Netflix’s The Night Agent is a thrilling espionage drama series whose third season took the titular spy, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), around the world as he pursued answers to an international terrorism conspiracy linked to the United States government. But by the end of the season, Peter is ready to step away from the job—at least for a little while. While that could be a natural end to Peter’s story, we’ll likely see more of his adventures at the Night Action agency.

Ahead, we’ll break down what exactly we know about The Night Agent season 4, when we can expect it to hit our screens, and who might be joining Peter on his next mission.

Is 'The Night Agent' Renewed for season 4?

We've just received an important asset: Netflix has officially renewed The Night Agent for season 4! The streamer announced that the show was "answering the call" for another installment via a press release in early March 2026, just over two weeks after season 3 dropped.

Showrunner Shawn Ryan shared a statement to celebrate: "It's been a wild ride filming The Night Agent in five countries across three continents to this point, and we're so thrilled that the adventures of Peter Sutherland will continue into season 4. Our writers, our cast, and our crew stand ready to answer the call to bring our incredible fans even more twists, turns, and thrills."

Beyond that, Netflix tapped Gabriel Basso and people on the streets of N.Y.C. to tease the renewal. In a fun initiative, the streamer set up a mysterious phone in the middle of Times Square, leading tourists to solve a series of clues and find a code. The answer to it? "The Night Agent will return for season 4," plastered on a huge billboard.

It makes sense that not only is The New Agent returning, but that it received such a quick renewal. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show is Netflix's 10th-most-watched English-language show of all time.

Also, even before season 4 was greenlit, Deadline reported that Netflix had already asked the showrunner to assemble a writers’s room. "We’ve been working for a while on the storyline. We have some scripts, we are breaking stories," Ryan told the outlet during early 2026 press for the show’s third season. As we now know, Netflix is definitely moving ahead with what they've been working on.

When will 'The Night Agent' season 4 come out?

The Night Agent season 4 kicked off production in L.A. in early May, according to a Netflix press release. It's unclear how long filming will last, but the show has been one of Netflix's consistent yearly releases. With the third season arriving in February 2026, we’d expect that a fourth would arrive in late Q1 2027.

Is season 4 the last season of 'The Night Agent?'

As it turns out, Peter Sutherland is answering one last call. When production began on season 4, Netflix confirmed in a press release that it would be the show's final instalment.

Series creator Shawn Ryan shared a statement about the decision. He said, "Ever since the initial success of The Night Agent, I’ve been obsessed with eventually delivering a proper and thrilling conclusion to the show and to Peter Sutherland’s journey...I’m so grateful to Netflix and Sony Pictures Television for partnering with me on The Night Agent and for giving us the space to deliver a definitive final season to our worldwide legion of fans. We are hard at work to complete our story and to make our final season one our fans will never forget."

The show has been a consistent hit for Netflix—with its debut season breaking into the streamer's Most Popular list and every subsequent season cracking the Global Top 10—so it makes sense that the decision to wrap it up was amicable, rather than a cancellation. We can only assume that means it'll be an epic conclusion!

Who in the 'The Night Agent' cast will return for season 4?

Based on the eponymous mystery-thriller novel by Matthew Quirk, Ryan structured each season of The Night Agent around a “revolving cast,” as our titular agent Peter Sutherland (played by Gabriel Basso) is thrown into new adventures. So while Basso will surely return for a new season, we can expect that he’ll be one of the few familiar faces on the show.

Still, it’s possible that recurring characters like Fola Evans-Akingbola’s Chelsea Arrington could return in season 4, given her sustained presence throughout the series’s run. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Amanda Warren’s Catherine Weaver, since Peter’s mentor dies in season 3. Similarly, Louis Herthum won’t appear in future seasons, as his character, Jacob Monroe, was murdered in the most recent season.

The Night Agent’s worldbuilding means it can tap former stars to reprise their roles in later seasons—but that also means that beloved characters may take a season or two off. The latter is the case for Luciane Buchanan’s Rose Larkin, who did not appear in season 3 but could potentially rejoin in season 4. “The writers decided that they wanted to follow Peter and his journey based on what happened at the end of season 2…so we don’t get to see what happens to Rose,” she told Deadline while season 3 was in production, and it was confirmed that she wouldn’t be back. However, she did tease that “it’s not a goodbye forever.” Ryan also confirmed that Rose could appear again, telling Deadline, “I don’t believe that we’re done telling the story of Peter and Rose. I hope circumstances ultimately allow for the return of Rose to our Night Agent universe.”

What will 'The Night Agent' season 4 be about?

Season 3 brings Peter into the dangerous waters of an international terrorism financing conspiracy that implicates the President and the First Lady (played by Jennifer Morrison). Staying steadfast to his morals, Peter works with a reporter (Genesis Rodriguez) and an insider to expose the truth—even putting his life on the line opposite his new partner Adam (David Lyons), who was blindly loyal to the President (Ward Horton).

At the end of the season, Peter is ready to take a break from his high-octane job. “Someone once told me that the best agents know how to find balance in their lives. I’m thinking I should find some,” he says in the series, implying that he’ll step away for an unspecified time. Season 4 could pick up at the end of his sabbatical, right before he’s pulled into another assignment—because of course he won’t stay away too long. Basso said as much, telling Tudum about his character’s motivations: “I think he recognizes that he’s part of a bigger plan and that he’s in service of good. And if he’s not there helping, then who is?”

The Night Agent’s FBI Deputy Director, Aiden Mosley (Albert Jones), endorses Peter’s plan for some time away from the job, but also teases new adventures when he’s ready to return. “I’ve been thinking about the request you made earlier for a partner. I think I have a candidate in mind,” he tells Peter—a line that Ryan confirmed to Tudum was “meant to be a launching pad for season 4.”

We'll have to see where exactly that call takes him, but we know one thing's for certain: He's headed to L.A. When Netflix announced more episodes were on the way, it revealed they'll be filmed in L.A. It's unclear what might bring Peter there, but we can assume it'll be another thrilling story...and perhaps be what reunites him with Rose.

Who are the new cast members in 'The Night Agent' season 4?

With The Night Agent headed to L.A., inevitably, Peter's bound to meet some fresh faces. Deadline announced the first set of them in late April. According to the outlet, a handful of exciting stars are joining the season 4 cast, including former Bosch star Titus Welliver, Trevante Rhodes of Moonlight fame, Sinners actress Li Jun Li, and Elizabeth Lail, who broke out in the first season of You.

While details about their characters are scarce, we do know their names and brief descriptions—and one of them should be exciting for eagle-eyed fans. You can expect Peter to face off with Welliver's character Duval, a special DOJ prosecutor. Alternatively, he'll work closely with Rhodes's character Dom, who is said to be his new partner, while Li will portray his wife, Min. Lail, meanwhile, will play Zoe, Peter’s ex-fiancée. The series has made references to Zoe in the past, though she's yet to be introduced on screen.

As the show entered production, even more exciting newcomers joined the ensemble. According to Deadline, former child star Abigail Breslin (Scream Queens) and David Denman (The Office, Mare of Easttown) are among the new series regulars, while The West Wing alum Annabeth Gish has landed a major recurring role. Some of the new stars are likely playing Peter's adversaries: Gish's character, Holland, is described as "an FBI agent who joins the DOJ investigation into Peter Sutherland," and Breslin's Cahlin is "a young FBI agent working on Duval’s investigation into Night Action." Meanwhile, Denhman's playing a man named Ford who is "a veteran CIA agent and former head of a Joint Terrorism Task Force."

Based on those announcements, there's a lot to unpack with what's up next for Peter. Beyond the FBI being on his tail, we're curious to know if he and his former flame, Zoe, reconnect—inevitably thrusting her into danger? Or, might Rose resurface and introduce a love triangle of sorts? The word is still out, but we'll keep tracking any new evidence about the forthcoming season as it surfaces.

Netflix’s hit The Night Agent is back for more bombshell twists and high-octane action. In season 3, Gabriel Basso reprises his role as Peter Sutherland, an FBI agent based on Matthew Quirk’s 2019 mystery-thriller novel of the same name. This time, Peter is on the hunt for a rogue Treasury agent who has fled to Istanbul with sensitive intelligence in tow. As Peter’s investigation ramps up, he “uncovers a dark money network, evades paid assassins, and crosses paths with a relentless journalist whose pursuit of the truth puts them both squarely in the crosshairs,” according to Tudum.

With an entirely new mission in his hands, Peter will be interfacing with a fresh ensemble of characters. Ahead, see who is joining Basso on Peter’s globetrotting mission in The Night Agent season 3 cast.

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland

Sutherland is the titular Night Agent: an FBI agent who works in the secret Night Action investigative program at the White House, to be exact. Per Tudum, in season 3, Peter is “struggling with guilt over his actions in season 2 [and] desperate to bring the mysterious broker to justice.”

Gabriel Basso, 31, most recently appeared in the 2025 Kathryn Bigelow film A House of Dynamite and previously played now-Vice President J.D. Vance in the 2020 film adaptation of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He also had a supporting role on the early 2010s Showtime series The Big C, starring opposite Laura Linney, and appeared in films like Juror #2, Super 8, and The Kings of Summer.

Fola Evans-Akingbola as Chelsea Arrington

Now Head of Security for the First Family, Agent Arrington’s life is upended when there’s a violent incident at the White House that reframes the picture-perfect First Family.

Fola Evans-Akingbola, 31, is a Nigerian-English actress best known for playing Maddie Bishop in Freeform’s Siren. She has also appeared in the TV shows Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, and Ten Percent. Evans-Akingbola also lent her voice to the video game Assassin's Creed: Origins.

Louis Herthum as Jacob Monroe

Monroe is an international businessman and the “broker” who became Peter’s foe in season 2. Tudum promises that season 3 will show a more “human side of Monroe, as old wounds are reopened and we learn more about what it took to turn a man into a monster.”

Louis Herthum, 69, was a recurring star on HBO’s Westworld and has appeared in shows like True Blood, Longmire, What/If, and Home Before Dark. In the 1980s and 90s, he also held various roles on the long-running murder-mystery classic Murder, She Wrote.

Ward Horton as President Richard Hagan

According to Tudum, President Richard Hagan is “riding a wave of bipartisan popularity in his first term,” which could be upended by the decision between “being seen as a great president or a good man.”

Ward Horton, 50, is best known for appearing in the horror film Annabelle, a spin-off of The Conjuring. On TV, he appeared on the soap opera One Life to Live, the drama Pure Genius, and the HBO hit drama The Gilded Age.

Albert Jones as Aiden Mosley

Aiden Mosley is the FBI Deputy Director, and one of the few people who knows about Peter’s season 2 relationship with the broker. While he wants to support Peter, his governmental duties may force his hand.

Albert Jones, 44, previously appeared in TV shows like Mindhunter, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Changeling. In film, you might recognize Jones from The Bourne Ultimatum, Salt, and American Gangster.

David Lyons as Adam

Adam is Peter’s mysterious—and charming—new partner. Peter approaches Adam with an air of caution but is also intrigued by the newbie’s “experience, humor, and competence,” according to Tudum.

David Lyons, 49, most recently played FBI agent Brian Abbott opposite Claire Danes in the limited series The Beast in Me. Before that, he appeared on ER, Revolution, and Sea Patrol in his native Australia. In film, he starred alongside Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love and in the Nicholas Sparks romance drama Safe Haven.

Jennifer Morrison as Jenny Hagan

Move over, Mellie Grant; Jenny Hagan is the newest TV First Lady secretly pulling the strings in her husband’s administration. In season 3, First Lady Hagan will have her wits tested when a violent event occurs at the White House, forcing her to turn to unexpected sources.

Jennifer Morrison, 46, is a TV legend, with main or recurring roles on shows like House, Once Upon A Time, How I Met Your Mother, This is Us, and more. As a director, she’s helmed episodes of Yellowjackets, Euphoria, and Dr. Death. In 2017, she directed her first feature, Sun Dogs, which won the Best Narrative Feature award at the Savannah Film Festival

Stephen Moyer as The Father

A contract killer, “The Father” is a ruthless and determined assassin. But as his moniker suggests, he’s also the father to a young boy. When the lines between his worlds are blurred, he’s forced to make a tough choice.

Fans first fell in love with Stephen Moyer, 56, when he played vampire Bill Compton on True Blood. He later starred in the X-Men TV series The Gifted, The Bastard Executioner, and Shots Fired. In his native England, he appeared in Safe House and Art Detectives. He also played Georg Von Trapp in the live televised production of The Sound of Music.

Genesis Rodriguez as Isabel De Leon

Isabel De Leon is a journalist committed to exposing the truth—no matter the cost. When she begins pursuing a major scoop, she finds it’s much more personal than she expected, which threatens her entire foundation.

Genesis Rodriguez, 38, is best known for her leading roles in Spanish-language dramas like Prisionera, Dame Chocolate, and Doña Bárbara. She later appeared on Entourage, and in the films Man on a Ledge, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and The Last Stand.

Suraj Sharma as Jay Batra

Financial analyst Jay Batra uncovers a huge international conspiracy linked to terrorism, and must decide whether to keep his head down or listen to his moral compass.

Suraj Sharma, 32, broke onto the scene with his acclaimed starring role in Ang Lee’s 2012 film Life of Pi. Since then, he’s appeared in Homeland, God Friended Me, and How I Met Your Father. Starring in both American and Indian projects, Sharma has also appeared in films like Million Dollar Arm, Wedding Season, Gulmohar, and Happy Death Day 2U.

Callum Vinson as The Son

As expected, The Son is the real son of Moyer’s “The Father” character. As he matures, he finds himself questioning the parameters of the world that his father has built for him.

Callum Vinson, 11, is no stranger to complex roles: He got his start on the Chucky series. Last year, he appeared in the limited series Long Bright River opposite Amanda Seyfried, and has voiced Piglet on various Winnie the Pooh series. In addition to The Night Agent, Vinson is slated to star in Peacock’s forthcoming Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake, as a young Jason Voorhees.

Amanda Warren as Catherine Weaver

One of the few returning characters that Peter can trust, Catherine Weaver is hellbent on bringing down the broker—despite the risks.

Amanda Warren, 43, is best known for her roles on celebrated series like The Leftovers, Dickinson, and The Americans. Her film credits include Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Adjustment Bureau.

It finally happened: One of the most toxic stories ever told is now over, thanks to the Tell Me Lies season 3 finale. The hit Hulu show concluded with its third installment, officially bringing an end to Lucy (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen's (Jackson White) messy college relationship. Or did it?

Going into the season 3 finale, fans of Tell Me Lies had many lingering questions. Why did Bree (Cat Missal) say she was the “worst person” Lucy knows? What did Stephen do to ruin Lucy's life sophomore year in 2009? And why in the world did Evan (Branden Cook) even invite Stephen to his wedding years later in 2015? Now that the finale finally aired on February 17, 2026, we've got our answers. (Well, mostly: Evan's continued friendship with Stephen remains an inexplicable error in judgment.)

The entire season of Hulu's college drama has been building up to the fact that Lucy was exposed for falsely accusing Chris (Jacob Rodriguez) of sexual assault. So, when Stephen coerced Lucy into confessing on camera in exchange for him not telling Bree about Lucy and Evan's drunken hookup, we thought we'd found our answer. But, in one of the most shocking twists in Tell Me Lies history, Stephen returned the tape to Lucy after she desperately begged him to release it.

So, who really released the tape? And what were the consequences? All was finally revealed in Tell Me Lies's season 3 finale, “Are You Happy Now That I'm on My Knees?” Read on for a breakdown of the ending of Tell Me Lies.

How does the 'Tell Me Lies' season 3 finale end?

The Tell Me Lies season 3 finale picks up right where the season's penultimate episode left off. Lucy, now in possession of the memory card with the taped confession Stephen coerced her into making, feels a renewed sense of power—and she wants to use it to make Stephen pay. So, instead of destroying the memory card right away, she decides to attend a Yale Law School event in the hopes of convincing a Yale representative to rescind Stephen's acceptance. She causes a scene, but inevitably fails in her mission to force her ex to face consequences, leaving her on his bad side. It's no surprise, then, that her taped confession was soon leaked online. A traumatized Lucy is then unceremoniously expelled and forced to leave Baird College immediately as her friends watch.

Fast forward to 2015, Bree and Evan's wedding reception is winding down, with only the Baird College crew left standing. After failing to ruin Bree and Evan's wedding by revealing that Evan and Lucy slept together in college, Stephen comes up with plan B. He decides he's going to break up with his fiancée and reveal to the entire wedding party that he and Lucy slept together earlier that day, that Bree and Wrigley (Spencer House) have been hooking up for months, and that he hates Evan and all of his friends.

Why does Stephen leave Lucy at the gas station in the 'Tell Me Lies' finale?

It's a very close call, but Lucy and Stephen end season 3 going in opposite directions—literally. After Stephen ruins the wedding, he sweet-talks Lucy into leaving with him. Despite knowing that Stephen will only ever be in a relationship to win or gain the upper hand, Lucy wants to believe him when he tells her that she's all he has left.

The two drive off into the sunrise. All is well until they stop for gas in the middle of nowhere. Lucy offers to get some coffee in the convenience store, but by the time she comes back out, Stephen is gone. But don't worry too much: In a rare act of uncharacteristic kindness, he at least had the courtesy to leave her purse.

The episode ends with Lucy realizing that Stephen is long gone, but instead of falling apart, she turns and laughs.

Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer opened up about the moment to Marie Claire. She described her laugh as realizing she has hindsight to question her decisions and feeling like she can finally move on. "I think there's a part of her that feels some kind of relief knowing 'the secrets are out, my guilt is out, and I'm going to move on from this, and I can actually grow up,' because she's only what, 26? She's so young," Oppenheimer said.

The series creator added, "I think if [Lucy] had walked away, [Stephen] would have pursued. I think that because he does get the final move, and he gets to have that final laugh, she actually will be safe from him now. I just think that's how he works."

Who released Lucy's confession tape in 'Tell Me Lies?'

Before leaving Evan and Bree's wedding, Stephen drops one more bomb: He didn't release the tape that got Lucy expelled from Baird. It was Bree. In a flashback to 2009, Bree is summoned to a meeting with her mother, Oliver (Tom Ellis), Marianne (Gabriella Pession), and Amanda (Iris Apatow), the underage freshman Bree believes is Oliver's new student girlfriend. Marianne and Oliver accuse Bree of harassment and convince her mother that Bree is so infatuated with Oliver that she made up a romantic relationship in her head. Amanda sticks by Oliver and Marianne, and, unable to convince her mother to believe her, Bree is left without an ally.

What does this have to do with releasing Lucy's tape, you may ask? It sets the stage for Bree to do something uncharacteristically impulsive.

After her traumatic parent-teacher conference, Bree escapes to Evan's apartment. Once there, she discovers—via Facebook—that Evan slept with Lucy their freshman year. The betrayal by her mother, coupled with this fresh wound, sends Bree into revenge mode, and she releases the tape.

Do Bree and Wrigley get together at the end of 'Tell Me Lies?'

Bree and Wrigley never gave their relationship a real try in college, but there's still hope for them. The two share a sweet smile in the final moments at Bree and Evan's wedding, suggesting that this relationship is far from over.

Do any men face consequences in the end of 'Tell Me Lies?'

Unfortunately, the answer is “no”—except for Evan, who ends his wedding by face-planting into his wedding cake and is definitely headed towards an annulment. (It's the least he deserves after teaming up with Oliver to manipulate Bree into being with him.)

Otherwise, the men face very little consequence for their bad behavior. However, Stephen's admission to Yale Law is rescinded after Wrigley calls and tells them that he sent nude photos of Diana (Alicia Crowder) to her father. Still, in the future, Stephen is clearly successful, and, despite ending the season alone, he's also gotten away with pretty much all of his bad behavior—including killing Macy (Lily McInerny) in season 1.

Meanwhile, we can only assume Oliver is still up to his old tricks, dating students with his wife's help. Or, at the very least, it's clear that Bree never successfully outed him as a predator.

Will there be a 'Tell Me Lies' season 4?

Like Stephen and Lucy's relationship, it's time for Tell Me Lies to end. The series was not renewed for a season 4, as the creator/showrunner, Meaghan Oppenheimer, felt the show told its full story with three installments.

Oppenheimer confirmed the news with a statement on Instagram on February 16, 2026, just hours before the finale arrived on streaming. “After three amazing seasons of Tell Me Lies, tonight's episode will be the series finale,” she wrote. “This was always the ending my writing team and I had in mind, and we are insanely proud of it.”

The showrunner continued, saying that the fan response to season 3 caused the creative team to “explore whether there was another organic way to continue the story," but ultimately decided against it. "We felt it had reached its natural conclusion," Oppenheimer explained.

She spoke more about her decision to end the series in her Marie Claire interview. "From day one...I knew that the last breakup or downfall between Lucy and Stephen in their college years would culminate along with the wedding. I knew that those two arcs would climax at the same time," she said. "At the end of the day, it just felt like the most organic ending. Anything we did past this, we would have to really change the structure of the show, because the wedding has always been the framing device."

Still, she acknowledges how warmly the final season has been received and is excited about whatever may be next. She ended her Instagram announcement by writing, "Thank you for loving our show. We are excited to bring you more stories in the near future."

Ahead of Tell Me Lies season 3, creator and showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer became obsessed with the fable of the scorpion and the frog.

As the story goes: a scorpion needs a frog’s help to cross a river. The frog hesitates, saying the scorpion will deploy its deadly sting, but the scorpion promises not to. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, who asks why it would do that, dooming them both to death. The scorpion apologizes, but ultimately, it just couldn’t fight its true nature.

“There's always the question with Stephen (Jackson White) of is he going to change or hurt Lucy (Grace Van Patten), and she gives him that final chance,” Oppenheimer tells Marie Claire. “And the answer is: of course. He was going to hurt Lucy because this is who he is, and he can't help it, and he has to win.”

The choice in question refers to the final moments of the season 3 finale, which Oppenheimer and Hulu revealed Monday night will be the series’s conclusion. Oppenheimer said she wanted to keep the story contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end—despite season 3’s record viewership and passionate fan engagement. As tempting as it was to pursue a fourth season, Oppenheimer said it would require reframing the entire show, which has always anchored itself to a wedding storyline that wrapped up in season 3.

“There was always a very specific core question for me: what happens to this group of friends when there is this absolutely toxic dynamic at the center of it, and then what happens when they reunite years later?” Oppenheimer explains days before the finale airs. With those questions answered, she and the writers felt confident in where and how to end Tell Me Lies.

Ahead, Oppenheimer discusses the decision to say goodbye, the psychology of her flawed characters, and the pivotal choices that have polarized fans throughout the season—including those jaw-dropping closing moments between the show’s proverbial scorpion and frog.

Marie Claire: We see Lucy really unraveling this season. I think the show does such a good job of putting the audience in her position so you really feel as she's wondering if she can trust her own mind. What was the kind of evolution of that in the writers room?

Meaghan Oppenheimer: It was important to show that that sort of emotional abuse; it really does detach you from yourself. I think people get very angry at her decisions but we wanted to make it clear that when you're in a relationship like that, you're not making decisions out of a stable place, you're coming from a fragmented place. I think Lucy already had the ability to sort of dissociate, which you see at other times earlier in the show—in season 2 when she does eye makeup on one eye, there have always been those little moments, those little hints—so it just felt like the most organic place that it could go. A lot of people have talked about: is this a romantic story? Is this a love story? Is this a story of abuse? I really wanted to leave no question this year that this is a story of emotional abuse. I don't see them as Bonnie and Clyde. I don't see them as equal villains. I see her as a victim of Stephen’s.

MC: That really speaks to how even when your heart is going through something, your mind and body are affected by it.

MO: Completely. Emotional and mental stress take such a physical toll. With Lucy, by episode 8, we're really seeing that detachment between her body and her mind. I talked to Grace about that scene where she's getting expelled, and I said I almost want it to feel like your brain and your body have not caught up with each other. So you're crying because something in you is literally weeping out of grief, but you have a smile on your face because you haven't reconciled those two realities with each other. And she did it so beautifully.

MC: Grace has said that this season for Lucy is about punishment. Another word that you've used in the past, for season 2, was “humiliation.” Tell me more about that.

MO: For me, humiliation has always been a big theme of the show. On a personal level, humiliation is one of those feelings for me that is one of the worst things you can feel. I was really taken by it in the book at how Carola [Lovering] was so brave, and how humiliating she allowed Lucy to be at times, which I don't think we see often. But the punishment—I talk a lot about what is the natural arc of things—it felt like people had escaped consequences a lot up until season 3, and the reality is that consequences do happen. There is sometimes a feeling in early adulthood that consequences are temporary and that you can always fix things, and I think one of the realities of growing up is realizing that some consequences are actually really permanent, and things do take a permanent toll on you. So thinking about punishment in that way, not even a just punishment, but almost the universe punishing these people, and also Lucy punishing herself.

MC: That's interesting, because now this is the series finale, there are quite a few things in the show where there aren't consequences—and that is a harsh reality as well.

MO: There are. Because there aren't always consequences for everything, and things are not fair. I thought that was very important, specifically with Stephen. He has consequences for some things, such as Yale—he loses out on that huge dream of his—but he gets away with a lot. He gets away with Macy (Lily McInerny). I always felt that he would get away with that crime, from day one. I thought that that would be realistic, and I think it's unfair to actual victims of this kind of abuse to pretend like justice always happens, because it doesn't.

But Evan (Branden Cook) gets some consequences; the wedding blows up in his face. I don't think he ends up getting the girl at the very end. I think that Bree (Cat Missal) and Lucy lose their friendship, so that's a consequence, but I also think there's some happy endings. That little smile at the end with Bree and Wrigley (Spencer House), there's hope for them in the future, and I think once this friend group sort of disintegrates—which it needs to in some ways—I think that they kind of find their happy ending eventually. But I wanted the justice to be imperfect and realistic like it is in real life. I know that not everyone will love that. I know that that will be polarizing, but it felt important to me to be honest with what I see in the world.

MC: I think we want that from TV, but we rarely get it in real life.

MO: There's been so much talk about in the last few years after #MeToo—"Oh, did we over do it? Did we cancel all these men?" I can tell you, there are men out there that are thriving, that have horrible secrets, and women as well. We see it now with everything that's happening in the world. Bad people are thriving, unfortunately.

MC: There are a couple times this season where Lucy kind of tries to beat Stephen at his own game. Do you feel that Stephen is infecting the people around him?

MO: Yeah. I think that is what happens in friend groups and friendships in general, relationships that are romantic or platonic. You end up learning from the people that you surround yourself with, and that's why it's so important to choose your friends and your relationships really carefully, because it's inevitable that we, to some degree, become the people that we spend the most time with. I think that Evan specifically learns a lot by just watching Stephen, and watching Stephen get away with things, and I certainly have seen that in friend groups before.

MC: That has led to a lot of criticism of the other characters besides Stephen—and healthy conversation as well, because they're all, to quote Wrigley, making terrible decisions. So how do you write or root for these morally gray characters and want the audience to view them?

MO: It's funny, I never have trouble rooting for flawed characters because I've literally never met a perfect person in my life. Most of my favorite people are very flawed, and especially at this age. Stephen is making some really unforgivable decisions. Evan, the one thing that he does that's kind of unforgivable is the thing with Bree's mom. But other than that, I think that the decisions these people are making, while they're flawed, are not inherently evil. They're the result of being immature, being in a bad environment, not having certain tools. So it's very easy for me to root for them, because they're not murderers. Most of them are not trying to inflict harm. For me, it's not hard, but it is funny when people talk about these characters being so terrible and they're so mad. I'm just like, "Wow, am I just surrounded by really terrible people? Because I don't think they're that bad." I am not surrounded by terrible people, I have great people in my life. I'm joking.

MC: But I was kind of thinking that we offer a lot of grace to television characters in that way, and not always in real life. I’m not sure viewers are making those connections.

MO: Without a doubt. There are so many characters on TV where I'm like, “Oh, they're a flawed anti-hero. They're amazing,” but if I actually met that person in real life, I would want nothing to do with them.

MC: It’s very tempting to compare apples to oranges when watching Tell Me Lies. I was just speaking with a friend about Pippa (Sonia Mena), and how she's very agitated that no one does anything about Stephen, yet she's not doing anything about Chris (Jacob Rodriguez)—and it's not the same. I don't want to compare those things. I don't want to watch the finale and compare everyone's struggles, but the temptation is there, and I wanted to bring that up.

MO: That's actually a really interesting point. When Pippa says that, the way that I interpreted or intended that to be is she's upset with Stephen's friends, not mad at Stephen's victims for not doing anything. She's mad at his friends that witness him hurting his victims. I do think that is a problem, especially with boys of that age, they tend to forgive a lot of bad behavior with their male friends in terms of how they treat girls. If you are a victim of any kind of sexual violence, I don't think it's that person's responsibility to come forward. You are allowed to have your trauma be as private as you want it to be, and that's why I don't blame Pippa for not coming forward and saying, "Hey, this happened to me. It didn't happen to Lucy." I had some comments of people being upset about that, but Pippa does not owe anyone that information. But it's easy to compare all of it for sure.

MC: I don’t think Pippa’s in a position to even see the parallel.

MO: I think that Pippa has a hard time forgiving Lucy in general, to be honest. Pippa is a bit hard on Lucy.

MC: It's hard to watch your friends go through that.

MO: Especially when there's someone as insufferable as Stephen around you end up just resenting the people that keep those guys around, even though they are so, so manipulated.

MC: Wrigley, to that end, is very much the saving grace this season, and I am not surprised at all by it, because Spencer is such a strong actor so that was very satisfying. How did that arc take shape?

MO: Him becoming such a hero was something that surprised me. A lot of it was honestly watching Spencer, getting to know Spencer. He brought so much that was not on the page with Wrigley initially. He has so much depth. He's such an empathetic person. He's a real caring, good guy, and you could see that in his eyes, in every scene, so it just became easy to write to it. I joke with him a lot about this; He gave an interview after season 2 that was like "I get a little bit bummed out because I see Wrigley in 2015 and I know he never gets out of this downward spiral, and I just have had to accept that, but I wish he had a win." And I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna take that challenge." I joke with him that there are a lot of people I would have just ignored that comment from, but he's such a great guy. I'm joking—but it was really nice to find a way to give him a hero arc.

MC: That final scene with Lucy had my jaw on the floor. I have so many interpretations, and I love that you've left it in a way that we can just pore over it. But what is your interpretation of that and of where things are left with her and Stephen?

MO: I think that's the end with her and Stephen, and I think she realizes it in that moment. He just needed her to choose him. It's what she says. He just needed her to choose him over everyone else, and then that's all he needed, and he can move on to the next person. Because he has that final win, and once he has the final win, the game is over. But I think that Lucy in that moment, you can only laugh. She can only laugh because she sees it all. Hindsight is perfect, and she realizes in that moment, "Oh, my God, look what I have done," but there's a freedom in that, and there's a release in that. Also, this friend group had to implode—I think certain people will say friends, but the group as a group, was just never something they could grow within. Even though it's catastrophic and it's horrible and these friendships explode, I think there's a part of her that feels some kind of relief knowing "the secrets are out, my guilt is out, and I'm going to move on from this, and I can actually grow up," because she's only what, 26? She's so young.

MC: You kind of answered my next question, which was why is it him leaving and not her refusing to go? So he can have the last move?

MO: I actually don't think she would have ever gotten freedom if she turned him down. I don't think she's making this move intentionally. I think that she actually does give him the chance and he betrays it, but the silver lining of that is that I think if she had walked away, he would have pursued. I think that because he does get the final move, and he gets to have that final laugh, she actually will be safe from him now. I just think that's how he works—and I think Diana learned that a long time ago.

MC: We’ve now confirmed that this is the last season. Did you always envision it as three after you started expanding on the book?

MO: I felt like three was a really good number. I think that it's a smaller story. I always felt like this needed to be a story that had a very solid beginning, middle, and end. I didn't want it to just be something that became a theme, if that makes sense. From day one, from when I wrote my initial pitch pages, I knew that the last breakup or downfall between Lucy and Stephen in their college years, would culminate along with the wedding. I knew that those two arcs would climax at the same time.

There were definitely questions. We had amazing numbers this year, and it's hard to walk away from something when the fan base is so loyal and so active. It's so much fun to make the show, but at the end of the day, it just felt like the most organic ending. Anything we did past this, we would have to really change the structure of the show, because the wedding has always been the framing device. I care so much about just keeping the quality good. It's hard to walk away from something when it's good, but I think the worst case scenario would be dragging something out too long, or not knowing when you're ending. There's so many shows when they don't even know that they're doing their finale, and so they leave stuff unfinished, and then they get canceled. I really never wanted that to happen. I wanted to wrap things up. But there was a lot of discussion.

MC: There's a lot of what I now understand are things that are deliberately open ended. There's so much that happens between 2009 and 2015 that fans can ponder. What do you have to say to them?

MO: There's certain things that I never anticipated being really answered. I never thought we would see how Lucy and Max (Edmund Donovan) get back together. I'm surprised that there are people that ask how Lydia (Natalee Linez) and Stephen got together? We answer that in season 2, when you see them have that conversation about how much Lucy sucks, and he's like, "Oh, maybe we'll see each other." It's clear, to me at least, that they get together to some degree out of spite towards Lucy, and that what Lydia considers Lucy's betrayal is what opens the door for that. My favorite kind of storytelling is stuff that does not overexplain everything, and leaves some stuff to the imagination. I think that that's the most elegant way of telling a story.

There's certain things that are actually boring to watch if you give all the answers. So I never intended to see all of those years in between college and adulthood. It was always about we're going to lead up to their final breakup in college, and then we're going to see this reunion in adulthood. Obviously, I hope the fans love the ending, but you can't please everyone. It just speaks to how dedicated our fans are, if they have a very strong reaction. But I feel good about the story. And all my writers really loved the story, the way that we ended it.

MC: You don't have to tell me if you did come up with stuff, but did you explore those gaps on your own or with the writers just to have the answers for yourselves?

MO: Yeah, for sure. Just so that we would understand sort of where the characters were coming from, we talked about where they'd been. We talked about what Lucy did after getting expelled. I think she probably ended up going back to school after maybe taking a year, but not probably a very good school. She gave up on writing, and she went into sales, which we talked about, and I think she was with Max because it was safe. But now that this explosion has happened, she will actually find real happiness, because it's all out of her system now. It was sort of a fake recovery before.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

This story contains spoilers about Industry season 4, episode 6, "Dear Henry." Midway through season 4 of Industry, Kiernan Shipka sent the internet ablaze when her character, Haley, pulls a psycho-sexual Uno reverse on Marisa Abela’s Yasmin in the confines of an elevator. With one impeccable, snarky “Thank you, Mommy,” she launched countless GIFs and inspired even more viewers to tune into the HBO hit. But beyond that, the star also made it even clearer that there’s a lot more to the executive assistant than meets the eye.

In episode 6, “Dear Henry,” when shit hits the fan at Tender, Haley finally casts aside all professional pleasantries, unveiling who she really is. As it turns out, Tender head Whitney (Max Minghella) hired Haley from an escort service; her job description includes managing his schedule, sending emails, and committing extortion by getting herself and other escorts alone with powerful men.

As Shipka sees it, the role and its layers couldn’t have yielded a higher return on investment. “It’s fun to have a secret and slowly uncover it,” she tells Marie Claire over Zoom in January. “[At] the premiere, they only showed the first episode, and I remember being at the after-party and someone coming up to me being like, ‘I'm so scared for her. I'm so worried for her,’ which was funny to hear. I was like, ‘I think she'll be fine.’”

In the February 15th episode, not only does Haley confront Whitney, she also opens up to Yasmin in hopes of forming an alliance, so she, too, can remain within arm's reach of wealth and access and not go down with her boss and Tender. When Yasmin asks if the tryst between her, Haley, and her husband—Tender’s newly-appointed CEO, Henry (Kit Harrington)—was recorded as a part of Whitney’s schemes, Haley doesn’t give a straight answer. She may be at the bottom of the corporate ladder, but she’s savvy enough to wield what little power she has while trying to climb it.

The fact that Haley kept Industry fans guessing throughout season 4 is all to Shipka’s credit. The 26-year-old Mad Men alum masters the dichotomy of Haley’s good-girl-in-a-cardigan act as much as her true, devious party-girl form.

“We're such different people, and we move about the world in such a different way, but I feel like the thing that I could really deeply relate to was this idea of playing other people,” she says.

With Haley liberated from Whitney’s management following Sunday night’s episode, Shipka tells Marie Claire about what she makes of her character’s big reveal, what it’s like partying with the cast and crew of Industry, and what she really thinks of the show’s comparisons to Mad Men.

Marie Claire: There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Haley, and then the truth comes out in episode six. When you signed on, how much did you know about the character?

Kiernan Shipka: I knew what she did for [Whitney]. That was a pretty early conversation, just because I wanted to know everything that I could about her, especially playing someone who's so mysterious and revealed over time. I wanted to make sure that it all made sense.

I feel like, for the majority of the season, Haley is holding her cards close to her chest. She's breadcrumbing little bits here and there about who she really is, but she's playing a character [herself]. So to get to finally lay it all out and be a more authentic version of who she really is was so fun and so freeing because she played such a good game throughout the show. It was fun to let it rip and let more of the truth out. There was something very cathartic about that.

MC: What did you make of Haley in the moment when she confronts Whitney?

KS: I think that, for a long time, Haley felt she had to justify these things that she was doing and was feeling trapped in the Tender/Whitney situation until Yasmin proved to be a life raft out. I think there was a lot that she felt like she had to endure and do in service of getting what she wanted or getting something that Whitney promised her that never actually came to be. It was a big release for her because I think, before that, she felt like she couldn't leave, and she was scared to leave. Now, I think we see a version of her that's ready to go and is able to, for the first time, feel and say all these things she's actually been bottling up for a really long time.

MC: And then when Yas asks her if the encounter with Henry was filmed, you do this amazing little lip quiver. I need to know whether that was scripted or how you arrived there.

KS: When in doubt, Haley still wants to have options. I think she’s always—even in her most vulnerable moments—looking at the situation from a strategic point of view and always wants to have a few cards only for her. That was one of those moments that we wanted to play intentionally unsettling and vague because, at the end of the day, the potential existence of that tape has a lot of potential to come back around or be a lot of things. The power of her saying so much with saying so little was the goal there.

MC: There’s so much to unpack in Haley and Yas’s conversation, but it’s interesting how she says she wants to get closer to her because she’s learned that “access is what makes you rich.” Do you feel like there's truth in that? Or, how might you have related to that line of thinking?

KS: I definitely understand that line of thinking. I think that what Haley has been chasing—maybe she's thought for a while—is money, but what it really is is belonging. I think that her driving force is feeling untouchable and like she belongs. She doesn't want just a nice apartment to go home to, but not be invited to the party. She wants to be in the center of it all, and I definitely think that line was very astute. I think she sees the fleeting nature of money and then spending that money, versus the longstanding nature of having access or status, even though that can shift and rise and fall as well. She is realizing the staying power is not all just based in getting a check.

MC: In that moment, Haley also insists that she and Yas understand each other. Why do you think that is?

KS: I think it's their relationships with men. In the earlier episodes, there was this sort of unspoken spiritual bond because they've both endured some gnarly stuff and are still standing and protecting themselves in all the specific ways that they do. I think they're both incredibly charismatic and use that as a weapon.

What I think is very interesting about their relationship is that it's not really built on trust, but it is built on understanding. They both realize they would benefit from each other's existences in their lives, even if they're on shaky ground. They both would rather have each other and have more access and more of a chance to do whatever it is that they're about to do. They're both incredibly complicated people, and they're both incredibly flawed people, and they see a lot of the same want to belong in each other.

MC: Yas and Haley are the latest example in a trend of recent movies and shows about imperfect mentorship or an imbalanced power dynamic between a woman in a position of power and another woman who’s her junior. What interests you about these dynamics?

KS: There's something endlessly fascinating about who has the ball in a power dynamic. Especially in a power dynamic between two women, but really in any power dynamic, this idea that one person has the power at all times is this binary way of looking at it. This idea of there being nuance within that and complexities within that, especially in the current day and age, is so ripe for discussion and discourse.

It’s because there’s not a finish line—that's the endlessly fascinating thing about these shows and films, or with Haley and Yas. It's not done. It's not a fixed thing. There are ways for it to shift or seesaw, and I think there's something incredibly modern about that and incredibly exciting to watch. And all of that aside, it also just keeps you on the edge of your seat.

MC: You’ve been in the entertainment industry for a while. Did you relate to Haley’s ability to alter people’s perceptions of her, or maybe overcome being underestimated?

KS: I definitely think Haley knows how people see her or how she appears, and then plays with that and surprises people. I definitely relate to that. There's almost a meta quality to me playing this character, because there is a surprising nature to me in this part, inherently because of my history, having been a child in the public eye. As different as we are, I think that there were parts of her that I could really find myself in, too.

MC: How did you get into Haley’s headspace? Did you make a party-girl playlist or anything like that?

KS: All sorts of stuff. I journaled her. I really did her whole backstory. That's what I do for every character that I play. I want to know how they grew up, where they grew up, why they want what they want, how they were raised with their family—so that by the time that I'm in their shoes, I'm not confused. I don't want there to be questions.

I'm a big music listener, and I feel like I was listening to whatever I already was, plus extra fun stuff. The club scene that we did, [showrunner] Mickey [Down] actually had a DJ friend named DJ Tennis, and he literally DJ-ed. So, there was actual music going on during that, and a lot of the music was also written into the script itself. That was fun. There's a lot of footage out there of me trying to crawl into the DJ booth and getting rejected that didn't end up making the cut. It’s like me begging DJ Tennis let me into his booth and him just being like, Ugh, this girl.

MC: What is it like being a part of a show where the characters do not hold back and often show the worst parts of themselves?

KS: It's fun. It's great. We meet Haley at her most raw and unapologetic and reckless, for better or for worse. And that version of Haley circles back when she has the confrontation with Whitney. I see her in all these different parts, and it was fun to return to something that felt a little bit more recklessly abandoned, if you will.

I don't ever really approach anything from a place of judgment. I don't think you really can when you're performing. When you're playing someone else, you have to throw that out the window, and once it comes out, you can say, “Oh, I wouldn't do that.” But while doing it—to be able to escape into someone else and throw away judgment and really play with this new person—it's so exciting.

MC: Haley is at the scene of the crime in many of this season’s wilder moments. Which was your favorite to film?

KS: I really enjoyed screaming out Charlie [Heaton] at the beginning of the season. I didn't realize how funny that scene is until watching it back with an audience. There are certain scenes where, after I do them, I can drop my shoulders, and I know the character, where they're going, or like an important piece was done. After we did that scene, I felt like, Okay, we're in the car. It's moving. Let's do this. I felt really energized.

MC: There are a lot of comparisons between Industry and Mad Men. As a former Mad Men star, what do you think of them?

KS: They're really accurate. I binged [Industry] before I went to Wales to start filming the season, and I had not heard those comparisons before, but immediately I went, Oh my gosh, there's some stuff about it that's very Mad Men. I mentioned it to [showrunner] Konrad [Kay]—just casually wanted to drop it. He goes, “Oh, yeah. I've seen Mad Men four times through.” I think there's something in their subconscious that creates with Mad Men in mind, in the best way.

They're so wildly different in tone and in theme, and the characters are so different that the comparison feels really genuine and nice. Not like it's a replica by any means, but there are some dynamics in that show and some moments that really feel like subtle homages.

MC: You said a little over a year ago that you were trying to have more fun and untether yourself from control and perfectionism. Was challenging yourself with a role like Haley part of that journey?

KS: Oh, for sure. This whole experience was the epitome of fun and untethering. [Laughs] I didn't even think about that, but I really did say that, and I think I kept my promise to myself because this was exactly that. There's always a relinquishing of control when you're in a new place, on a new set. And there are so many different ways that things could go, and you can only do so much to service the character and the story, and then the rest is out of your control. And then also, this cast and crew are incredibly fun and like to have fun. I definitely said yes to all the fun nights, too, so there was that.

MC: Considering you had so much fun working with the cast and crew, do you have any favorite memories from going out with everybody?

KS: After that very intense Yas/Haley scene in episode six, where I reveal all, I got my things and drove straight to Glastonbury to meet Mickey and Konrad. Marisa [Abela] had two more scenes to do, but made it by the evening, and we had such a fun time. I'd never seen Charli xcx live. That was my number one. I felt like I really was in the center of the entire music festival, even though I wasn't, but I was in the crowd. Glastonbury was a magical, life-changing experience, and I'm glad I didn't have to work on Monday. Some of them did, though.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

There's nothing like an excellent drama movie—one that transports you into a captivating narrative and challenges your point of view. While the best dramas of 2025 are currently the subject of awards season celebrations, it's time to start looking forward to the films heading to theaters in 2026.

This year, several of Hollywood's biggest directors are set to release new films, from Christopher Nolan's take on The Odyssey to Steven Spielberg's latest alien invasion to David Lowery's highly anticipated Mother Mary. Below, we're tracking the genre-bending romances, blockbuster epics, and indie darlings that are sure to be among the best drama movies of 2026. (If you still need to catch up on last year's award winners, check out our list of the best drama movies of 2025.)

The Best Drama Movies Coming in Winter 2026

'Wuthering Heights'

Release date: February 13

Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, and Owen Cooper

Why it’s worth seeing: Emerald Fennell's take on the classic Emily Brontë novel may be divisive with book purists, but based on early reviews, the "messy" and "yearning romance" will be perfect Valentine's Day viewing.

WATCH THE TRAILER

The Best Drama Movies Coming in Spring 2026

'The Drama'

Release date: April 3

Starring: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates, and Zoë Winters

Why it’s worth seeing: What happens when you learn a horrifying secret about your spouse just days before the wedding? If you're in an A24 dramedy, things get harrowing.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Mother Mary'

Release date: April 17

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Atheena Frizzell, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Alba Baptista, Sian Clifford, and FKA twigs

Why it’s worth seeing: David Lowery's new film finally hits theaters this year. It stars Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel as an iconic pop star and her estranged costume designer, who reunite ahead of the singer's comeback.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Michael'

Release date: April 24

Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Juliano Krue Valdi, Miles Teller, and Colman Domingo

Why it’s worth seeing: Michael Jackson is the latest pop icon to get his own biopic, with the King of Pop's real-life nephew bringing the film to life.

WATCH THE TRAILER

The Best Drama Movies Coming in Summer 2026

'Disclosure Day'

Release date: June 12

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo

Why it’s worth seeing: The plot for Steven Spielberg's latest sci-fi epic is mostly under wraps, except for this ominous tease: "If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to…Disclosure Day."

WATCH THE TEASER

'The Odyssey'

Release date: July 17

Starring: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, Anne Hathaway, Jon Bernthal, and Lupita Nyong'o

Why it’s worth seeing: For his follow-up to Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan has gathered a new star-studded cast for his adaptation of Homer's epic poem.

WATCH THE TRAILER

The Best Drama Movies Coming in Fall 2026

'The Social Reckoning'

Release date: October 9

Starring: Jeremy Strong, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, and Bill Burr

Why it’s worth seeing: In this "companion piece" to The Social Network, Kendall Roy himself takes on the role of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Per Variety, the film "tells the true story of how Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a young Facebook engineer, enlists the help of Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), a Wall Street Journal reporter, to go on a dangerous journey that ends up blowing the whistle on the social network’s most guarded secrets."

'Narnia'

Release date: November (exact date TBA)

Starring: Emma Mackey, Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan, David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell, and Denise Gough

Why it’s worth seeing: Greta Gerwig's upcoming take on C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series is the most secretive film of 2026, but two things are guaranteed: It will be released in theaters (in IMAX no less!) and, based on the Barbie director's track record, it'll be unmissable.

The Best Drama Movies Coming Soon in 2026

'Clarissa'

Release date: TBA

Starring: Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Ayo Edebiri, Toheeb Jimoh, and Nikki Amuka-Bird

Why it’s worth seeing: Acclaimed filmmakers Arie and Chuko Esiri are behind this modern reimaging of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, which will follow the titular socialite (Sophie Okonedo) as she "prepares to host a party at her home in Lagos, Nigeria, where she will unexpectedly encounter once-intimate friends from her youth," per Deadline.

'Here Comes the Flood'

Release date: TBA

Starring: Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Danai Gurira, Sean Harris, Moisés Arias, and Justin Kirk

Why it’s worth seeing: TBH, all we needed to hear was "Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson starring" to add this Netflix thriller-drama to our watchlists. For anyone who needs the synopsis: "Here Comes the Flood is an unconventional heist movie about a bank guard, a teller, and a master thief in a deadly game of cons and double crosses."

'The Invite'

Release date: TBA

Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton

Why it’s worth seeing: The buzziest movie of Sundance is already headed to a wide release, thanks to A24. Wilde directs and stars in the ensemble dramedy, following a "dinner party between a couple who are going through a rough patch and their upstairs neighbors, who turn out to be swingers," per Variety.

'Josephine'

Release date: TBA

Starring: Gemma Chan, Channing Tatum, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Michael Angelo Covino, and Mason Reeves

Why it’s worth seeing: This Sundance darling is already getting Oscar buzz. "After 8-year-old Josephine (Reeves) accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, she acts out in search of a way to regain control of her safety while adults are helpless to console her," reads the Sundance logline.

The Lincoln Lawyer cruised back onto screens with its fourth season in winter 2026, and Netflix’s hit legal drama doesn’t seem to have any plans to take its foot off the gas.

Based on Michael Connelly’s hit series of mystery-thriller books, The Lincoln Lawyer continues the story of defense attorney Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his associates as they take on cases across L.A. Season 4, which debuted on February 5, 2026, finds Haller on the other side of the courtroom, after a body is discovered in the trunk of his car and he’s put on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. As if those stakes aren’t high enough, the season also included the death of one of Mickey’s closest confidants and the arrival of a new character with major implications for his story going forward.

So, what does that mean for a future season 5? Buckle up and read on to find out everything we know so far.

Has 'The Lincoln Lawyer' been renewed for season 5?

Yes! On January 28, 2026, just one week before season 4 of The Lincoln Lawyer premiered, Netflix announced that its original series would return for a fifth season. In fact, the creative team is already working on the next chapter in Mickey’s story.

“We’re so excited to share the upcoming fourth season with the audience on Feb. 5, and even more excited to share the news that we’re already hard at work on the next one,” co-showrunners Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez said in a statement. “Season 4 is the most challenging and intensely personal journey we’ve taken Mickey Haller on yet, and we’re thrilled and grateful to be able to continue the ride in season 5.”

While Mickey was ultimately cleared in the death of former client Sam Scales (Christopher Thornton), the experience of being wrongfully accused of murder, going to jail, and having to fight for his life and good name fundamentally changes him, Humphrey told Tudum, adding, “What that change means to Mickey or how that change manifests itself in his life is something we’re excited to explore going forward.”

Is season 5 the final season of 'The Lincoln Lawyer?'

Consider the case almost closed on The Lincoln Lawyer. During Netflix's upfront presentations to advertisers and while production was underway, the streamer confirmed that season 5 would be the final season of its hit series.

Series creator/co-showrunner Ted Humphrey and co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez share a joint statement via a press release about the decision, emphasizing that the series will end with a proper conclusion. They said, "All good things must come to an end, but thankfully, sometimes how they come to an end is up to us. From the very beginning, the mission was always not only to tell the story of Mickey Haller and his compatriots, but also to give that story a proper conclusion. And while it is of course bittersweet, it’s also an amazing opportunity to bring this adventure to a close and perhaps chart a new course for some of our characters into the future."

"We are immensely grateful to Netflix and A+E Studios for the opportunity to land this plane the right way," the continued. "But most of all, we are grateful to the fans all around the world for watching and supporting the show. We promise you, we are right now building a final season that will provide the satisfying finale Mickey Haller deserves. We can’t wait to share it with you!”

When will 'The Lincoln Lawyer' season 5 be released?

A release date may not be confirmed for a while, but like any good lawyer, we can follow the facts already entered into evidence. According to Deadline, production began in mid-March 2026, and we can assume it'll shoot into the summer. New episodes of The Lincoln Lawyer have arrived on what’s more or less been a yearly basis: season 1 in May 2022, season 2 in July and August 2023, season 3 in October 2024, and season 4 in February 2026. If that trend holds for season 5, we can expect to see Mickey & co. again sometime in 2027. Like season 4, we suspect a winter/spring release seems feasible. Consider us ready whenever the court is back in session.

Which 'Lincoln Lawyer' book will season 5 be based on?

According to Tudum, season 5 will consist of 10 episodes and be inspired by the seventh book in Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series, Resurrection Walk, which was published in 2023.

What will 'The Lincoln Lawyer' season 5 be about?

When The Lincoln Lawyer season 5 went into production, Netflix unveiled an official synopsis: "In season 5 of The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller’s world is upended when the half-sister he never knew existed, Emi (Cobie Smulders), comes to him with a plea to help free a wrongfully convicted woman. In a season defined by blood ties and buried secrets, Mickey takes on a grueling habeas petition to overturn a 6-year-old murder conviction, but the deeper he digs, the more nefarious the forces arrayed against him become."

The synopsis continues, "Meanwhile, the stakes rise for his trusted team as Lorna (Becki Newton), Izzy (Jazz Rayburn), and Cisco (Angus Sampson) step up to tackle high-profile challenges of their own. Having just saved himself from a wrongful conviction in season 4, Mickey is now determined to set right an enormous miscarriage of justice. But as he unravels a dangerous web of corruption and lies, he must grapple with the fractured legacy of his family—both his chosen family and the family he never knew he had."

As if there wasn't already a lot to unpack and theorize over with that thrilling logline, we can also look at the synopsis of the source material, Resurrection Walk, for more clues about the forthcoming case. In the novel, Mickey takes on a new client: a woman who was convicted of killing her ex-husband, a sheriff’s deputy, but still maintains her innocence. After reviewing the facts of the case, Mickey sees things that don’t add up and point to the sheriff’s department looking for a quick resolution to a crime involving one of their own. The synopsis teases, Mickey “has an uphill battle in court, a David fighting Goliaths to vindicate his client.” His path is, ominously, “fraught with danger” from those who don’t want to see the case reopened and the truth uncovered.

How much of this will wind up in the season 5 scripts? That remains to be seen, but it sounds like The Lincoln Lawyer is poised for another exciting ride.

Who in 'The Lincoln Lawyer' cast will return for Season 5?

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo will be behind the wheel again as Mickey Haller. We'll also see more of other main cast members like Becki Newton (Lorna), Angus Sampson (Cisco), and Jazz Raycole (Izzy), as well as Mickey’s ex-wife, Maggie (Neve Campbell), who returned in a major way in season 4.

One person we might not see again? Mickey’s mentor and father figure, David “Legal” Siegel (Elliott Gould), who died after suffering a heart attack. There’s a chance he could appear in flashbacks, of course—and he appears to Mickey in a dream in episode 7—but Garcia-Rulfo told TV Insider it will be “very devastating” for Mickey without him around.

Then there’s the new face introduced this season, who will have major implications for the next one: In the finale, a woman (Cobie Smulders) saves Mickey from the Armenian mob and then drops the humongous bombshell that she’s his sister. In March 2026, Deadline reported that the How I Met Your Mother alum will return in season 5 as a series regular. Her character's name is Emi Finch, and, as confirmed by the synopsis, she is, in fact, Mickey's half-sister, whom he didn't know he had.

One interesting thing to note: Fans of Connelly's books know that Mickey has a half-brother, Harry Bosch, who appears in several novels—including the season 5 inspiration, Resurrection Walk. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the character has his own mystery series on Prime Video. The show, which ran from 2014 to 2021, starred Titus Welliver and launched two spinoffs: Bosch: Legacy, from 2022 to 2025, and Ballard, which is still on the air. Because Bosch is another streamer’s property, it’s unlikely that there will be a crossover event on the Netflix original, or that it’ll even be able to introduce its own version of the character. But now that the Netflix series has introduced Smulders’s character, that opens the door for a version of the Mickey-Harry relationship—or potentially more sibling relationships—to enter the story.

“Is this how we’re bringing in Bosch? Well, I wouldn’t put it that way because, of course, we don’t have the rights to Bosch. Bosch is on another network,” Humphrey told TV Insider. “But there’s obvious parallels, I suppose you could say, in some ways, it’s how we’re expanding the world of the show, the world of Mickey’s family, and introducing what we think is going to be a really compelling new character who can stand on her own two feet.”

Humphrey also told Tudum that the final scene sets up a whole host of possibilities going forward: “First of all, the obvious question: Is she telling the truth? Is she his sister? And if so, what does that mean? Mickey has these very set ideas about who he is and about his past. What if there’s more to the story than he thought?”

Of course, it's clear now that they are related, but there will certainly be larger implications, especially given the new cast announcements...

Who are the new cast members in 'The Lincoln Lawyer' season 5?

Several new faces join The Lincoln Lawyer season 5. Deadline confirmed that Diane Guerrero (Orange Is the New Black, Doom Patrol) joins as Natalia, Teresa Maria (Narcos Mexico) will play Tina Perez, Richard Cabral (Mayans M.C.) portrays Benny Perez, Steve Howey (Shameless) joins as Brian Cunningham, Patty Guggenheim (Twisted Metal) will play Allison Finch, while Corbin Bernsen (Psych) plays Richard Finch, Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley) is playing a character named Frank Silver, and Iker Garcia's (The Pitt) role is Rafa Wagner.

Even more fresh faces were announced in mid-May while the show was deep in filming. According to a press release, Amy Aquino (a Bosch alum) will play Judge Olivia Alcott, actress/comedian/choreographer Angela Trimbur will play a woman named Felicia, Mexican actress Elpidia Carillo (Blue Beetle, Predator) will play Muriel Perez, Nate Corddry (The Testaments) portrays Jimmy Finch, Tricia Helfer (Lucifer) joins as Brooke Miller, and Australian actor Keir O’Donnell (Wedding Crashers) will play DDA Lucas Peralta.

Details on their characters are limited, although you can certainly theorize based on the plot description. It's also worth noting that Smulder's half-sister character has the last name Finch—and so do a handful of the new characters. Mickey is supposed to meet more of his estranged family!

We'll have to wait and see how everything plays out, but in the meantime, you can read Resurrection Walk for a tease of what's to come—and continue following along, as we'll keep this story updated as more information becomes available.

This story contains spoilers for The Moment. Minutes into The Moment, Charli xcx asks a question that defines the entire mockumentary. Speaking to her manager, Tim (played by Jamie Demetriou), she posits if the Atlantic Records-backed director Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård) “makes adverts for women." Tim responds confused, assuming the pop star is referring to Johannes’s commercial work he’s unaware of. But Charli is, in fact, talking about the glossy, controlled tour movies and pop docs he’s known for; she just sees them as no more than A-listers carefully curating their image. “No, like the woman is the advert.”

The Moment may very well be Charli xcx’s own form of brand management—but it’s also an anti-capitalist critique of the music industry and its proclivity to turn female artists into sellable brands. While the A24 film—set after the release of the British artist’s 2024 album brat, as she prepares for a tour—has seen rightful comparisons to This Is Spinal Tap and Spice World, it’s also like the less referenced early ‘00s spon-con, subliminal messaging send-up Josie and the Pussycats. Much like Josie, Charli's film is a pop machine reckoning, and it most shines in all its neon, strobing glory when she satirizes how quickly a musician’s art can be stripped of its meaning to become a parody of itself.

Throughout The Moment (in theaters January 30), almost everyone around the fictionalized version of the avant-pop musician tests how far they can push her into being an “advert,” rather than an artist. So while Charli xcx could’ve made a traditional tour movie like many before her (and as her label originally approached her to), she, co-writer/director Aidan Zamiri, and co-writer Bertie Brandes seemingly took the opportunity to depict how detrimental it can be to musicians, fans, and culture at large when female artists and their art become a product to milk for all that they’re “worth.” As The Moment illustrates, even if a woman has crafted a cultural moment deemed bankable by industry insiders and marketing execs, she’s nothing to them if not continuously exploited.

In a time when “the pop girlies” run music, the film feels like a timely, cautionary statement.

The Moment essentially imagines what could have come of the pop cultural phenomenon sparked by brat, were it to have fallen out of Charli xcx’s creative control. Early on in the movie, the singer is made to participate in an overtly outrageous (if on-the-nose) capitalist scheme: launching a lime-green credit card in collaboration with her label and a bank. Signing up comes with a tie-in to secure tickets to the brat tour, ensuring the label’s excitement, and it also helps the bank reach its absurd goal of targeting younger, queerer clients. But only Charli is to blame when the rollout doesn’t go as planned.

In another plot line, the hitmaker is told her concert film must appeal to a wider audience (read: garner as many viewers on Prime Video as possible), rather than speak to her own fan base. That means that any decision she and her creative director, Celeste (Hailey Gates)—the genius behind brat’s original success—try to make is ignored and side-stepped by a man who seems to think he knows better.

In these scenes, it’s hard not to empathize with the real Charli xcx when she, too, became a mockable trend for brands to cash in on. As much as the star in the film wrestles with whether she should fear the end of “the moment” she’s been having or go to dangerous lengths so it never dies, one thing she seems certain of is what a loss of self feels like when her art is no longer hers. It’s an especially pertinent message coming from the “Von Dutch” singer, who, for years, was considered a hyperpop pioneer solely because of her talent. Now, with a platform, she seems to be saying, if the music industry is going to revel in the women leading the charge, that shouldn’t come at the expense of their artistry and personhood.

By the end of The Moment, Charli loses herself, too, saying she’s doing so in a concerted effort to “kill” brat. It’s not unlike the movie’s purpose in reality, ushering in the next phase of the musician-turned-actress’s career while also reclaiming ownership over a project that became bigger than itself. In many ways, it feels just as much like the artist making a promise to herself. But at the very least, she’s laughing at the possibility that she could buy into whatever “advert of a woman” that the industry might try to make of her. After all, that’s pretty fucking brat.

Move over, Heated Rivalry—Netflix has a new ice sports show to get obsessed with. Based on a book by Jennifer Iacopelli, Finding Her Edge is set in the world of Olympic-level ice skating, centering on the Russo family, who own a financially struggling skating rink. But instead of worrying about money, patriarch Will Russo is mostly concerned with his family’s legacy on the world stage—a fate he’s put in his daughter Elise’s hands. Adriana Russo, the middle daughter, is content to fade into the background when Elise’s injury thrusts her back into the spotlight. That’s not to mention that the Netflix original promises a love triangle and plenty of sporting drama when it hits the streaming service on January 22, 2026. (Could this show be coming for not just Heated Rivalry’s crown—but The Summer I Turned Pretty, too?)

Just like its HBO Max/Crave sister show, the cast is made up mostly of up-and-coming Canadian stars. Get to know the stars of Finding Her Edge below.

Madelyn Keys as Adriana Russo

Adriana Russo is the daughter of Olympic skaters, though her own skating career ended earlier than planned. But when an opportunity to skate for the family name arises, Adriana seizes it—even if it puts a rift between her and her sister.

Madelyn Keys, 24, is a Canadian actor who began acting at the age of 10. She got her start on the kids series Beats in Bites before starring in the TV movie A Mother’s Lie and the mystery series Three Pines.

Cale Ambrozic as Brayden Elliot

Brayden Elliot steps in as Adriana’s new partner, complicating things between her and her sister Elise, who is romantically involved with him.

Cale Ambrozic, 23, is best known for his roles on the shows We Were Liars and Hotel Cocaine.

Olly Atkins as Freddie O'Connell

The third tip of the Finding Her Edge love triangle is Freddie O’Connell, Adriana’s former partner, for whom she still has feelings.

Olly Atkins appeared on two episodes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and will appear in the forthcoming film The Casket Girls alongside Gabrielle Union and Mike Colter, which is currently in post-production.

Alexandra Beaton as Elise Russo

Elise Russo was set to take over the mantle of the Russo ice skating dynasty until an injury sidelines her, causing a rift between her and Adriana.

Alexandra Beaton, 31, made her acting debut in the film 300. Since then, she has appeared in the Canadian teen series The Next Step, the seventh Bring It On film, Bring It On: Cheer or Die, and in the comedy Overcompensating.

Alice Malakhov as Maria Russo

Maria Russo is the youngest of the Russo sisters. She’s an ice skater, but carries less weight on her shoulders in terms of the family legacy.

Alice Malakhov, 17, made her onscreen debut in the acclaimed series Anne Without the E before appearing in shows like Zik, Adults, and IT: Welcome to Derry.

Millie Davis as Riley Monroe

Riley Monroe is Freddie’s new skating partner—and romantic partner, which makes any chance of Freddie and Adriana rekindling their romance difficult.

Millie Davis, 19, began acting at age 7 when she appeared on the children’s program Odd Squad. She then appeared in the series Dino Dana, the film Wonder alongside Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay, and the acclaimed series Orphan Black.

Harmon Walsh as Will Russo

Will Russo is the Russo family patriarch. After his wife’s death, he’s hyper-focused on training one of his daughters to continue their ice skating legacy, neglecting some of their emotional needs in the process.

Harmon Walsh is a Canadian actor best known for his arcs on As the World Turns and Murdoch Mysteries. He has also appeared on shows like Gossip Girl, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Rising Suns.

The Game of Thrones universe is expanding with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a new adaptation from George R.R. Martin’s canon. The HBO series is another prequel set in the fictional Westeros, based on Martin’s novella series Tales of Dunk and Egg that follow Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall (Peter Claffey), future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and his squire “Egg” (Dexter Sol Ansell), who would later become King Aegon V Targaryen.

Egg’s explosive brother, Prince Aerion Targaryen, aptly nicknamed Aerion the Monstrous and played by Finn Bennett, becomes an obstacle in Dunk’s path as the two duke it out as the embodiments of good and evil. But despite stepping into the franchise as this show’s villain, Bennett didn’t watch the original series until the pandemic. “Lockdown was obviously really miserable, but at least I had Game of Thrones,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2025. “One of the great things about the show—and where a lot of fantasy shows faltered—is that it’s so political in looking at a kind of War of the Roses setup between these great and noble houses.”

While the actor initially thought he had “flubbed” his A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms audition, he stepped into the role right after shooting the 2025 A24 war film Warfare. Ahead, get to know Finn Bennett, the actor who is giving us Joffrey-levels of evil in the latest Game of Thrones offshoot.

Finn Bennett started acting with his sister when they were young.

Born in Hackney, London, in 1999, Bennett wasn’t raised around the arts. His father, Ronan Bennett, is a novelist and screenwriter of Irish descent, and his late mother, Georgina Henry, was a journalist, making him the first person in his family to pursue this exact line of work. Still, he didn’t always know he wanted to be an actor; as a child, he contemplated joining the circus or becoming a marine biologist.

Despite their creative pursuits, Bennett’s parents didn’t push an artistic career on him, but rather exposed their children to acting as a form of therapy. “When my sister and I were younger, she was going through a difficult time…On a friend's recommendation, my parents sent us both to a stage school on Saturday, which was an hour of music, an hour of dancing, and an hour of drama, and the hour of drama became my favourite hour of the week,” he told 5 Eleven Mag in 2024. At 10, he realized he had found his calling and was soon performing at their local Her Majesty’s Theatre, and made his television debut in 2010 on Foyle’s War.

Though he started in stage productions, Bennett has admitted that he prefers screen acting. “I like rules about the screen, and I enjoy working in a tight environment. That's not to say I wouldn't ever want to do theatre again…But I like something about the rules of film. I love a set. I love how many people it takes to make a movie or a TV show, and you become this big troupe, and that's exciting,” he said.

Finn Bennett’s role in 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' was his introduction to horseback riding.

To truly become a Westerosi knight, Bennett had to learn horseback riding and sword fighting. He told WWD that he was surprised by the weight of the swords and that riding a horse was his favorite activity, which he plans to continue doing in his personal life.

Physical activities weren’t the only things Bennett did to prepare for this role. He also leaned on music, telling GQ Australia that Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine were the soundtrack for getting into Aerion Targaryen’s head on set. He dubbed Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” as “Aerion’s theme song”—an apt title for the prince’s demeanor.

Finn Bennett received the prestigious 2025 Cannes Trophée Chopard award.

Bennett joined the ranks of Gael García Bernal, James McAvoy, and John Boyega when he was identified as an emerging young actor at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. “I didn’t really believe it at first,” he told WWD about being chosen as 2025’s Trophée Chopard recipient. “I looked up the previous recipients, and there are some really amazing people on there—not just well-known, but brilliant actors who do the kind of projects I want to do.”

Angelina Jolie was the award presenter, and Bennett used his speech to thank his agent of over a decade. “Your agent is reading all those scripts, selecting you for projects, fighting for you,” he noted in the speech. “Now that we’ve moved into more American projects, she’s on the phone at midnight—I’m not. I just get to reap the rewards.”

Leading up to the award, Bennett starred in two high-profile television shows: HBO’s True Detective: Night Country and Netflix’s Black Doves. Starring opposite Jodie Foster in True Detective: Night Country as Officer Peter Prior was a career highlight for Bennett. “That role could have just been a plot device,” he said. “But [showrunner] Issa López gave him this massive journey. He really affected me.”

He also starred in the A24 film Warfare alongside D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton—a group of actors he told The Hollywood Reporter he’s still in touch with every day.

Next, he’ll appear in another buzzy A24 film: The Backrooms, a horror movie from 20-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons that’s set for release later this year.

Few teen dramas have more adequately portrayed the terror of toxic men quite like Tell Me Lies. The Hulu hit tells the twisted, terrifying story of Baird College student Lucy (Grace Van Patten) and her on-again-off-again relationship with Stephen (Jackson White). But Stephen isn't the only predator on this fictional college campus; in fact, he's far from it. Season 2 presented a brand new threat: the married Professor Oliver (Tom Ellis), who set his sights on Lucy's best friend Bree (Catherine Missal) during the first semester of her sophomore year.

In the season 3 premiere, which hit streaming on January 13, 2026, Oliver is not only back in Bree's orbit, but he's back to his old tricks. At least, that's what Bree thinks after she spots an impressionable freshman coming out of Professor Oliver's office upon her return from winter break. So when she sees that same freshman at a bar in episode 2, Bree can't help but introduce herself. Amanda, played by series newcomer Iris Apatow, quickly gains her trust. So much so that later, Amanda confesses to Bree that she and her boyfriend from home broke up because she cheated with a “way older” married man. She even admits to Bree that she met this mysterious new fling at a Christmas party hosted by his wife—just like the one Bree attended in season 2.

It sure sounds like Amanda has gotten caught in Oliver's web, but maybe there's more to the situation than meets the eye. While we wait to find out, here's everything you need to know about the newest Tell Me Lies cast member, Iris Apatow.

Iris Apatow is an actress and the daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.

If the name Iris Apatow sounds familiar to you, there's a good reason. The 23-year-old was practically raised on camera. The youngest daughter of prolific comedy filmmaker Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Trainwreck) and actress Leslie Mann (Blockers, How to Be Single) appeared in her first major role at just 5-years-old. She was directed by her father and starred opposite her mother in the 2007 blockbuster Knocked Up, playing her mom's on-screen daughter, alongside her real-life big sister, Maude Apatow. And she's been stealing scenes ever since—mostly appearing in her father's projects like This Is 40 (2012), Love (2016-2018), and The Bubble (2022). Recently, however, she's been branching out on her own, including her new role in Tell Me Lies.

Despite her pivot away from her father's filmography, Iris isn't shy about acknowledging her nepo baby status. “When people comment, like ‘nepo baby,’ it gets you at first,” Apatow told Bustle in 2024. “People stumble because it does feel like an ego kick, but it should be more excitement, that you can prove yourself and make things that are great and make people happy.”

“At the end of the day, I'm proud of both things. I'm proud of the work that will come out of being on my own, but obviously [family connections] helped me,” she continued. “So I always want to be very transparent that I am aware of that, and understand it now.”

Speaking with her sister, Maude, for Interview Magazine, Iris admitted that working with their famous parents as an adult on The Bubble helped put her career into perspective. “Working with them as an 18-year-old, I felt the weight and the expectations to really do my part and work hard, because I was in such a privileged situation,” she explained. “I wasn't 6 anymore, I couldn't laugh around and not memorize my lines. That's what made it amazing.”

Iris Apatow is dating Sam Nivola.

Apatow's boyfriend, Sam Nivola—son of actors Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer—recently enjoyed his own television breakout playing Lochlan in season 3 of The White Lotus. The two keep their relationship mostly private, but have been known to attend events together. They even walked the White Lotus season 3 premiere red carpet side by side.

She's also BFFs with Olivia Rodrigo.

Apatow doesn't just have a famous family—she has famous friends, too. One of her longtime BFFs is none other than Olivia Rodrigo. In fact, the two can frequently be spotted on each other's Instagram pages, like recent photos that show them ringing in the New Year together or celebrating Halloween in coordinated Elphaba and Glinda costumes. Apatow has also played a role in Rodrigo's career, appearing in Rodrigo's iconic “bad idea right?” music video.

The two are so close that they even lived together at some point, although it's unclear whether or not they still do today. (Apatow told Flaunt Magazine last year that she had moved from L.A. to N.Y.C.) The actor dished on her roommate situation during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2022, telling Barrymore that she and her pop star BFF have “Sex & the City movie nights” together.

Apatow will appear in 'The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.'

In addition to Tell Me Lies season 3, Apatow has a couple of exciting projects on the horizon. Soon, she'll star in the horror film Ballerina Overdrive, appearing alongside Lana Condor, Avantika, Maddie Ziegler, Millicent Simmonds, and Uma Thurman. The film—which doesn't have a release date but is expected to stream on Prime Video—follows a ballet troupe as they fight for survival when they check into a mysterious inn after their bus breaks down on the way to a dance competition.

In November, she'll appear in what might be her biggest project yet: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Based on Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games prequel novel about the 50th games, Apatow will bring to life Proserpina Trinket, sister of the iconic Effie Trinket (to be played by Elle Fanning in the new movie).

And that's just her work in Hollywood. Apatow is also making a name for herself as a model. She previously modeled for Rodarte, has worked with Chanel, and, in the summer of 2025, she made a splash as the face of the Stanley X LoveShackFancy collaboration collection.

As for what comes next, Apatow is working on it. She recently told Elle that her dream “is to be in a Sofia Coppola movie,” but for now, she seems happy to explore what's out there. “I'm still in a discovery phase,” she told Flaunt Magazine in a 2025 interview. “I just want to try everything.”

After the events of season 1 of HBO Max’s The Pitt, no one would blame Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) for needing a little time away from the ER. And when the show returns for its second season on January 10, 2026—jumping 10 months forward to July 4th—he’s preparing to do just that with a planned three-month motorcycle sabbatical. Season 2 of the Emmy-winning medical drama, in which each episode operates as a real-time hour of the emergency room staff’s shift, follows Dr. Robby on his last shift as he prepares to hand off his duties to a new attending physician.

That’s where Sepideh Moafi’s newcomer Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi comes in. A confident physician who previously worked at the VA Hospital with Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) and Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), Dr. Al-Hashimi arrives earlier than expected to shadow Dr. Robby, armed with a long list of ideas she’d like to implement at the hospital. Moafi herself has described this quality in her character as “Promethian flair for innovation,” and it’s quickly clear that her approach is more clinical and tech-forward than Dr. Robby’s. So, inevitably, their opposing outlooks on the state of medicine make them (politely) butt heads immediately.

But don’t worry, their friction won’t turn into a steamy romance. “I can assure there will be no broom closets involved," Moafi told USA Today. “The way I pictured it when I read the scripts was that we're two animals in the wild sort of circling and sniffing each other out.”

Dr. Robby is insistent in the season 2 trailer that Dr. Al-Hashimi is “just covering while I go on my little sabbatical,” but with Moafi announced as a series regular, she’ll be sticking around long enough for us to get to know her. Read on to find out more about the actress who is set to face off with The Pitt’s beloved Dr. Robby.

Sepideh Moafi was born in a refugee camp in Germany.

Moafi, 40, is of Iranian descent, and her parents fled their native country during the Islamic Revolution in the 1970s and sought political asylum in Turkey and Germany before her birth. The family was granted visas to the United States, where she was predominantly raised, eventually gaining citizenship.

Her family’s experience as refugees has shaped her identity: In 2019, Moafi penned a first-person essay in PEOPLE highlighting her experience and her focus on helping other immigrants in similar situations. “Being a refugee has shaped my life and I feel fiercely moved to not only help destigmatize but also humanize our struggling brothers and sisters around the globe,” she wrote.

Moafi has historically been involved with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), hosting fundraisers on its behalf. Her Instagram bio lists her as an ambassador to the organization. In 2021, she also hosted a salon titled “Belonging: From Refugee to Hollywood with Sepideh Moafi” for the nonprofit Girls Write Now. According to USA Today, Moafi’s humanitarian work influenced Dr. Al-Hashimi’s back story as a member of Doctors Without Borders.

Moafi is a trained singer.

Because of Moafi’s unique family history, she wasn’t “exposed to acting or singing until [she] was a teenager,” according to a 2018 interview. She began singing at the age of 15 and developed a passion for opera after singing Vivaldi’s “Gloria,” and, within a year, she received a full scholarship to San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

While her opera background was tapped into on the 2014 series Black Box, she probably won’t be showing off her pipes in her latest role. “I might be concerned if they start writing an opera moment in The Pitt,” she told USA Today. But the skill is an intrinsic part of her identity: During a The Pitt season 2 press junket with co-star and Dr. Jack Abbot actor Shawn Hatosy, Moafi joked that she’d prefer being caught singing half-naked than catching a friend in a lie because, “[she’s] a singer and [she] loves being naked.”

'The Pitt' isn’t the first time she's played a doctor on TV.

Moafi’s first TV role was on the series Blue Bloods in 2013, but soon she donned a pair of scrubs to play Dr. Farrah Mahmoud on the ABC drama Black Box. She later played a doctor again in one episode of Limitless before stepping into two of her best-known roles: Loretta on HBO’s The Deuce and Gigi on Showtime’s The L Word sequel series, The L Word: Generation Q.

Even though she’s familiar with a doctor’s office set, the level of realism on The Pitt is something she had to get used to. “It's really hard with blood, I'm not a fan,” she told USA Today ahead of the season 2 premiere. “It's the level of detail. I was grappling with being Sepideh Moafi watching this outrageous prosthetic where somebody's entire torso is split in half while still playing a doctor who's seen much worse.”

10 years, 42 episodes, one stage play, and a whole lot of demogorgons have brought us here: the very last episode of Stranger Things. Netflix dropped season 5, episode 8 of the sci-fi series on New Year’s Eve, and, as the world prepared to count down the final hours of 2025, fans gathered around their screens at home—or, for some, in movie theaters—to find out what would happen when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Will (Noah Schnapp), and the rest of the Hawkins gang as they faced off against Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) one last time.

Clocking in at over two hours long, the final episode of the hit series covers a lot of ground, including the climactic battle for Hawkins, Indiana (and the fate of humanity, no big deal) and its aftermath, closing with a lengthy epilogue that tries to offer a fitting farewell for each of these characters.

So, if you’re ready to enter the Upside Down one last time, make yourself an Eggo and read on as we break down what happens in the Stranger Things finale, “The Rightside Up.”

How does the gang save Hawkins in the 'Stranger Things' finale?

Obviously, yes, our heroes were going to pull through and save the world. In season 5’s volume 2 episode batch, a plan is hatched to stop Vecna from merging our world with the Abyss, the dystopian alternate dimension that’s home to the Mind Flayer, Vecna, and other creatures we’ve met, like the demogorgons. They intend to do so by blowing up the Upside Down, which is actually a wormhole connecting the Abyss to Hawkins. The keys to making that happen, naturally, are Eleven and her “sister”/fellow test subject, Kali (Linnea Berthelsen).

In the Upside Down, Hopper (David Harbour), Eleven, Kali, and Murray (Brett Gelman) head to Hawkins Lab so Eleven can take one last dunk in the sensory deprivation tank. Once in the Void, she, Kali, and Max (Sadie Sink) jump into Vecna/Henry Creel’s mind to find his memory of the Creel house, which is where he’s holding the 12 Hawkins kids he kidnapped to use as “vessels.”

As this is all happening, the rest of the gang has climbed the radio tower, where the Abyss crashes into the needle. For a moment, things look bleak—Steve (Joe Keery) is almost thrown off the edge, but is saved by Jonathan (Charlie Heaton)—but at the last instant, Eleven attacks Henry inside his mind and gets the children out of his grasp, stopping the collision before it truly takes out all our friends. They all then jump from the Upside Down into the Abyss to take out Vecna and the Mind Flayer once and for all.

After that triumph, it’s time for Murray’s explosives—set to detonate at the end of a listen to Prince’s Purple Rain—to eliminate the Upside Down for good.

How does Vecna die in the 'Stranger Things' finale?

This was the big battle everyone was waiting for. When the Hawkins crew enters the Abyss, they discover the tree-like structure known as Vecna’s lair is the Mind Flayer, in all its creepy, monstrous glory. While Eleven—who jumped from the Upside Down to the Abyss to join the fight—battles with Vecna inside the monster’s body, everyone else works to take it down from the outside. Nancy (Natalia Dyer) volunteers herself as bait, going full Ripley-in-Aliens with a machine gun to lure it into a cavern so everyone else can attack with everything they’ve got. (One of the highlights of the episode was Dustin stabbing at its underside, yelling, “This is for Eddie, you son of a bitch!”)

Both Vecna and the Mind Flayer feel the attacks—though, oddly, they don’t seem to impact Will, even though he’s tapped into the hive mind and using his powers to help in the fight. As Eleven and Vecna duke it out, Will taps into his mind and turns the tide: With his powers holding back Vecna’s attacks, Will and Eleven are able to rip Vecna’s arms off and impale him on a tree. But it’s Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) who delivers the final blow, channeling all the rage over what this monster did to her family into hacking his head off with a hatchet. (Go Joyce!)

How are Vecna and the Mind Flayer connected in 'Stranger Things?' And what really happened in that cave?

Despite all the fanfare about the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow being canon, this is the one place where those storylines really connect. The Netflix series teased bits of Henry Creel's backstory and how he became Vecna, but now we get the full story of what happened in that cave in Nevada and why that memory was so traumatic for him. When Henry opens the briefcase that the scientist was holding, what’s inside is particles from the Mind Flayer, which enter the young boy through the bullet hole in his hand. The Mind Flayer then bids Henry to find it, corrupting him and turning him to the dark side.

So, as Vecna explains to Will when he’s inside his mind, he doesn’t control the Mind Flayer and the Mind Flayer doesn’t control him: They’re one entity, hellbent on destroying humanity. Still, Will tries to appeal to the boy Henry once was—he was manipulated by the Mind Flayer, the same way he manipulated Will and the other children. He doesn’t buy it, though: He’s already too far gone.

What happens to Holly and the other kidnapped kids in the 'Stranger Things' finale?

As it turns out, Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) really lived up to her “Holly the Heroic” moniker! Let’s backtrack a bit: When they’re still trapped in the Creel home, Kali uses her powers to turn them invisible so they can see for themselves that Henry is the true monster. They then escape towards the cave, first helped by Eleven, Kali, and Max, but then when they get kicked out of Henry’s mind, Holly has to take over. She leads them through the cave, into the mine shaft and away to safety. When the Mind Flayer is defeated, Team Hawkins cuts them all down from where they were being held in Vecna’s lair and everyone goes home unharmed.

What happens to Eleven in the 'Stranger Things' finale?

Well, this is the question, so let’s get into it. Going into the big battle, Kali tells Eleven that they both should sacrifice themselves when the Upside Down is destroyed, so the military can’t keep experimenting with their blood to try and create new children with abilities. Kali is shot before the plan gets to that critical moment, but the point is that she had made her choice to die so nobody else would suffer like they did. But what about Eleven? Hopper begs her not to do it, saying she should fight for the better days waiting for them on the other side of this mess.

But once the C-4 is set to obliterate the Upside Down, Team Hawkins is ambushed the moment they cross back into the real world. Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) and her goons are all looking for Eleven, who’s nowhere to be found—until Mike (Finn Wolfhard) spots her on the other side of the gate, which is about to be blown to bits. She pulls Mike into the void, where they share a tearful goodbye, and everyone else watches on in horror as the Upside Down is obliterated and she disappears with it.

If that sounds tragic, that’s because it is. But is that really how her story ends? At the end of the episode, as the crew plays the last of their Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Mike uses the game to offer up a different story: one where Kali casts one final illusion before her death, letting everyone see a fake Eleven perish while the real one escapes. In this version, she moves somewhere far away from Hawkins, to a small village where she’s finally safe.

So, which story do you believe? The episode leaves things open for viewers to decide for themselves.

And what happens to everyone else in the 'Stranger Things' finale?

The back half of the episode flashes forward 18 months to explain what happens to the rest of the Hawkins kids. Whether that’s satisfying or feels like too much exposition at the end of what’s already a very long episode is, like Eleven’s fate, up to you to decide. But here’s what we learn:

Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are together and happy, finally getting their long-awaited movie date; Mike continues his passion for storytelling, becoming a writer; Will moves away to a bigger city where he feels accepted, feeling comfortable enough to chat with a guy in a bar; and Dustin goes off to college, but caps off their Hawkins High education as the class valedictorian, giving an epic graduation speech that ends with him ripping open his robe to show a “Hellfire Lives” T-shirt. Dustin also still finds time for adventures with Steve, who stayed in Hawkins to become a teacher and little league coach.

Meanwhile, Nancy drops out of Emerson College to take a job at a newspaper, Jonathan goes to NYU to study filmmaking, and Robin is enrolled at Smith College. They agree to meet up once a month at Robin’s weird uncle’s house in Philadelphia, which is apparently the most central meeting point for everyone.

As for Hopper and Joyce, now that they’re empty nesters, they decide to move to Montauk, New York, where Hopper was offered a job as chief of police. (As eagle-eyed fans have pointed out, this seems to be an Easter egg reference to the first iteration of the show, once under the working title Montauk, and taking inspiration from the government program known as the Montauk Project, which researched parapsychology like the Hawkins lab.) Before they leave town, though, Hopper pops the question during a dinner date at Enzo’s.

How does the 'Stranger Things' finale end?

The final moments of the episode are poignant and fitting for the epic story we’ve just sat through. After Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Max tearfully finish their D&D campaign—the one where Mike offers up that hopeful ending for Eleven—the group puts their books on the Wheelers’ basement shelf one by one, saying goodbye just like we are. As they go upstairs, though, Holly, Derek (Jake Connelly), and their friends rush down to start their own D&D campaign, with this younger generation now taking their place and embarking on an epic adventure of their own.

There’s nothing quite like getting swept up in the tale of two people falling in love. Whether it’s a charming, laugh-a-minute rom-com or a lush melodrama, the romance genre has something for every kind of film lover.

2026 has shaped up to be a strong year for romance enthusiasts, who are truly spoiled for choice when it comes to movies that have landed in theaters and what's coming down the pipeline. There’s a buzzy new take on Emily Brontë’s classic gothic novel Wuthering Heights, the very first adaptation of an Emily Henry novel, and an intriguing Robert Pattinson and Zendaya-led A24 joint. There’s even a BDSM “dom-com.” Below, we’ve rounded up the best romance films of 2026 so far, and what’s coming soon. (And if you’re looking for something to watch right now, check out our list of the best romance movies of 2025.)

The Best Romance Movies of 2026 So Far

'People We Meet on Vacation'

Release date: January 9

Starring: Emily Bader, Tom Blyth, Jameela Jamil, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Lukas Gage

Why it’s worth seeing: Over the past five years, Emily Henry has become a household name in the romance genre thanks to her witty, emotionally cogent storytelling. Now, one of her beloved novels, 2021’s People We Meet on Vacation, is finally headed to a Netflix account near you. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes star Tom Blyth and My Lady Jane’s Emily Bader play unlikely besties Alex and Poppy, whose friendship slowly grows into something more over their many travels together.

WATCH IT

'Pillion'

Release date: February 6

Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Harry Melling, Jake Shears, and Anthony Welsh

Why it’s worth seeing: Pillion has made a name for itself as a one-of-a-kind BDSM romance film. In filmmaker Harry Lighton’s directorial debut, dom daddy biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) recruits a timid British bloke named Colin (Harry Melling) as his submissive. What starts as a very specific arrangement soon takes a turn for the romantic as both men begin to come into their own.

WATCH IT

'Wuthering Heights'

Release date: February 14

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie, Hong Chau, Ewan Mitchell, Alison Oliver, and Shazad Latif

Why it’s worth seeing: Between Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, Emerald Fennell has proven that her films are water-cooler conversation starters. This year, she took on Emily Brontë’s iconic gothic novel Wuthering Heights, with Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. Fennell faced controversy, with some fans accusing the director of whitewashing Heathcliff and oversexualizing the source material. Still, it's a feast for the eyes—and who can resist a score by Charli xcx?

WATCH IT

'Reminders of Him'

Release date: March 13

Starring: Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford, Rudy Pankow, and Lainey Wilson

Why it’s worth seeing: Over the past few years, several of the #BookTok phenomenon Colleen Hoover’s novels have received the big-screen treatment, such as It Ends With Us and Regretting You. That cinematic universe grew in 2026 with Reminders of Him. This tale of second chances opens as Kenna (Maika Monroe) is released from prison. Desperate to reconnect with her estranged young daughter despite objections, Kenna’s path toward redemption coincides with an unexpected romance with a local bar owner, Ledger (Tyriq Withers).

WATCH IT

'The Drama'

Release date: April 3

Starring: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Gates, and Sydney Lemmon

Why it’s worth seeing: Two of the internet’s celebrity crushes together in one movie? Say less. In The Drama, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple about to walk down the aisle when a stunning revelation makes them question their future together. Considering the film is helmed by Norwegian auteur Kristoffer Borgli and produced by Eddington filmmaker Ari Aster, expect the A24 to be filled with existential dread, in the best possible way.

WATCH IT

'You, Me & Tuscany'

Release date: April 10

Starring: Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Lorenzo de Moor, and Nia Vardalos

Why it’s worth seeing: Nearly three years after stealing audiences’ hearts as Princess Ariel, Halle Bailey is leading another romance film: You, Me & Tuscany. Set in the gloriously sunny Italian region of the same name, Bailey stars as a young woman who impulsively flies to stay at a stranger’s villa without permission. When the owner’s (Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page) mother catches her, she saves face by pretending they’re engaged. A white lie and beautiful vistas? That’s the stuff rom-coms are made of.

WATCH IT

'Office Romance'

Release date: June 5

Starring: Brett Goldstein, Jennifer Lopez, Betty Gilpin, Amy Sedaris, Edward James Olmos, and Jackie Sandler

Why it's worth seeing: J-Lo is back in her rom-com bag. The multi-hyphenate plays a workaholic office employee who becomes entangled in a not-safe-for-work romance. Ol Parker’s Netflix film co-stars Brett Goldstein as her love interest—and the Ted Lasso alum certainly hasn't kept his IRL crush on Jenny From the Block a secret. So, yes, you can assume their chemistry is palpable.

WATCH IT

'Voicemails for Isabelle'

Release date: June 19

Starring: Zoey Deutch, Nick Robinson, Ciara Bravo, Iris Everly, Alice Comer, Harry Shum Jr., Lukas Gage, and Nick Offerman

Why it's worth seeing: This film from Leah McKendrick will make you cry—and reignite your Tumblr era crush on Nick Robinson. The heartthrob stars as a man on the receiving end of voicemails left by a young woman (Zoey Deutch), who continues to call her late sister's phone number amid her grief. Well-written, sincere, and an equally powerful story of sisterhood and loss, it feels like the rom-coms you grew up on and miss.

WATCH IT

'The Invite'

Release date: June 26

Starring: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton

Why it's worth seeing: After making a splash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Olivia Wilde’s latest film arrived in theaters this summer to spark juicy conversation between your couple friends. Wilde and Seth Rogen star in The Invite as Joe and Angela, a struggling couple who reluctantly agree to host a dinner party for their neighbors (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton). Soon enough, it swings into a completely different direction, if you catch my drift.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Heartstopper: Forever'

Release date: July 17

Starring: Joe Locke, Kit Connor, Yasmin Finney, William Gao, Corinna Brown, Kizzy Edgell, Tobie Donovan, Jenny Walser, and Rhea Norwood

Why it’s worth seeing: The sweet queer teens at the heart of Heartstopper returned for one last adventure. In place of a fourth season, Heartstopper: Forever brings Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie’s (Joe Locke) stories to a close. Based on the sixth and final installment of Alice Oseman’s web comic of the same name, expect to see Nick and Charlie dealing with long-distance after Nick goes to university. Will they truly last forever? We’ll have to tune in to find out, but expect plenty of tear-inducing moments and cartoon leaves in the process.

WATCH IT

Romance Movies Coming Soon in 2026

'One Night Only'

Release date: August 7

Cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Molly Ringwald, and King Princess

Why it’s worth seeing: Okay, so, this movie has come to be known as the summer blockbuster that's like The Purge except premarital sex for single people. And while that may sound silly or at least logically questionable, it seems to be the latest unconventional rom-com with bite that's bound to charm us. It'll follow rising stars Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner running through the streets of N.Y.C. and likely flirting with each other (and maybe even doing the deed!) over the course of one night. What else could you want?

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Finding Emily'

Release date: August 28

Starring: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Minnie Driver, Ella Maisy Purvis, and Yali Topol Margalith

Why it’s worth seeing: This wholesome British comedy feels like a callback to quirky rom-coms of yesteryear. When an indie musician (Spike Fearn) fails to give his number to his dream girl (Yali Topol Margalith) in a bit of a mix-up, he asks a psychology student (Angourie Rice) to help find her. Hailing from the team behind Love Actually, this one looks like it's full of laughs and heart—and we'd bet the soundtrack is one to remember.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Practical Magic 2'

Release date: September 18

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Joey King, Xolo Maridueña, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, and Solly McLeod

Why it’s worth seeing: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are getting into more cozy, magical shenanigans as the Owens sisters at the heart of Practical Magic. Although details about the long-awaited sequel are scarce, seeing these two iconic actresses cast spells on moviegoers in sleepy New England sounds like the perfect way to kick off spooky season. Fingers crossed for more midnight margaritas.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'The Love Hypothesis'

Release date: September 23 on Prime Video

Starring: Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, and Arty Froushan

Why it’s worth seeing: If you're at all tapped into #BookTok, you know that an Ali Hazelwood novel is worth swooning over (and brings the spice!). This marks the first adaptation of one of her STEM-romance books, and it's a fake-dating story that'll have you giddy, kicking your feet. Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman play two scientists who pretend to date to test their theories...and, inevitably, their relationship.

'Sense and Sensibility'

Release date: October 16

Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Caitríona Balfe, Frank Dillane, Herbert Nordrum, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, George MacKay, and Fiona Shaw

Why it’s worth seeing: There's a reason Jane Austen's works have been adapted to the screen so many times—both faithfully and remixed, contemporary versions. Her romances and stories of class are timeless—and few can compare to the power of her pen. This year sees a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, her first-ever novel about the Dashwood sisters who must relocate to a small property on the grounds of a distant relative's estate amid financial ruin. Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet previously starred in a beloved 1995 rendition, so we're looking forward to Daisy Edgar-Jones and rising star Esmé Creed-Miles taking the reins.

WATCH THE TRAILER