Category: TV

Jon Bernthal will reprise his role as ‘The Punisher’ in new Daredevil show, per report

Bernthal back! But, not Karen and Foggy?

Jon Bernthal is becoming a veteran of prestige TV. We’ve seen him in awesome shows from The Pacific, to The Bear, and as the crooked Sgt. Wayne Jenkins in HBO’s We Own This City. We’ve also seen him turn in awesome performances on the big screen, more recently in films like Ford vs. Ferrari, King Richard, and The Many Saints of Newark, the latter of which saw him play Tony Soprano’s father.

One of Bernthal’s big breakout roles was back in 2016, when he played the iconic Marvel Comics mercenary, The Punisher, in the second season of Netflix’s dark action-drama Daredevil series. Bernthal was so good that Netflix gave him two seasons of his own show, The Punisher, which earned the actor a pair of Saturn Award nominations.

But Marvel’s Netflix shows, and their casts, fell into a bit of a limbo in 2019 when Netflix canceled them ahead of the launch of Disney+. Last year though, Disney acquired the rights to those shows and their characters, leading fans to wonder which actors might make the crossover into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

We’ve seen Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in Hawkeye, and Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk. Both will also appear in the upcoming Echo series, and be tentpoles in the 18-episode Daredevil: Born Again.

And Bernthal is joining that cast too, reprising his role as Frank Castle, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.

This makes sense because Daredevil and The Punisher are two of Marvel’s more grounded, street-level stories, and their characters often crossed paths in the comics — either teaming up or facing off. Matt Murdock and Frank Castle rarely take trips to outer space or the multiverse; more often than not, their fights are in the dark shadows on city streets.

The same is true for Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, though we haven’t heard any official word on if actors Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter are joining the MCU.

Aside from Finn Jones’ portrayal as Danny Rand (aka Iron Fist), the majority of Marvel fans seemed to be pretty happy with how the Marvel Netflix shows were cast. Those shows also featured David Tennant as the Purple Man (aka Killgrave), Wilson Bethel as Bullseye, Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple (who might be the Night Nurse), Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Micro, Ben Barnes as Jigsaw, Rob Morgan as Turk Barrett, Theo Rossi as Shades, Simone Missick as Misty Knight, and Alfre Woodard as Black Mariah.

It doesn’t seem like all of these characters will be making the transition over though. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson will not return to the new Daredevil series as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson. Both characters are important in the Daredevil comics, but its unclear if Marvel will recast them or write around their absences. Iron Man director and Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau portrayed Foggy in the 2003 Daredevil film starring Ben Affleck. Maybe Favreau can come back.

Daredevil: Born Again is supposed to hit Disney+ in the spring of 2024.

To hold us over until then, here’s a scene from season two of Netflix’s Daredevil show. NSFW language ahead.

6 burning questions ahead of this week’s episode of Survivor 44

After a wild two-hour premiere, what can we expect before the next castaway gets voted out?

For The Win’s Blake Schuster and Bryan Kalbrosky are blogging about Survivor 44 all season long. Catch up with their thoughts on the premiere and this spring’s cast here.

Fans of Survivor had a week to digest a truly dramatic opening to the 44th season. We now know that Bruce will get a second chance to play after being medically evacuated after just 12 hours in Fiji and the shot in the dark may not be as useless as once thought. But now that our players are three days into the game, it’s time to start looking ahead at what’s coming next.

Here are the six burning questions we have ahead of episode 2, “Two Dorky Magnets”.

The Bachelor recap: Contenders, pretenders and power rankings after Ep. 7

Greetings from Hungary as Zach and the ladies continue their journey for love.

I hope you’re Hungary for some drama, because the Bachelor crew has moved to Budapest.

Kaity was the first to get a second one-on-one, and they went sight-seeing in Budapest before writing each other poetry on a random typewriter atop a hill. At the dinner portion of the date, Kaity told Zach about all the men that have left her in her life and received a rose.

The group date visited a mentalist, meaning they all were either very weirded out by him reading their minds or broke down crying (or both). Crying and emotional outpourings continued into the evening, with Gabi getting the group date rose.

The second one-on-one had Zach take Brooklyn to the outdoor heated baths, making it back-to-back weeks with the Bachelor taking a woman into a spa-related bathing area. Despite them seemingly having a good time, Zach sent her home.

Next week, Zach is hitting up hometowns with the four remaining women.

Let’s get into the contenders, pretenders, those that have work to do and our Top Five.

Survivor 44 VIBE CHECK: Medic calls and tribal council chaos in a wild season preimere

Survivor returned in epic fashion for season 44

Warning: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE 1 OF SURVIVOR 44.

Ready?

Ok.

Welcome to Survivor Vibe Check! Each Thursday this season, Blake Schuster and Bryan Kalbrosky will chat about last night’s episode to see who is thriving and who is straight up not having a good time on the islands of Fiji. Season 44 got off to an absolutely chaotic on Wednesday. We saw multiple calls for medics, new advantages introduced and the first tribal council ended with only one vote counted. Let’s dig into it.

Blake: Bryan! What a return to the islands of Fiji. A wild, two-hour premiere for Survivor 44 with tons of new twists and some noteworthy characters. Sum up the premiere for me in one sentence.

Bryan: That felt like a fever dream and somehow required three times as many medics as there were votes counted in tribal council?!?

Blake: Oh, Maddy. Getting voted out first has to suck. Getting voted out first with ONE VOTE is about as brutal as it gets. The title of the episode was, officially, “I can’t wait to see Jeff” but it probably should’ve been “Don’t get cocky, kids”. I’m just absolutely stunned by the amount of mistakes made in just three days. It’s not something we’re used to seeing. 

Bryan: It was honestly like playing Blackjack with someone who has no idea how to play and they’re just asking the dealer for more cards and it totally ruins the table. Multiple people weirdly took away their ability to vote when they didn’t have to, and that somehow cost the game of one of the only people who handled tribal council normally.

Blake: If I can take your analogy a step further: It’s like asking for more and more cards and somehow getting to 21 because for the first time ever the shot in the dark was played successfully! I can’t fathom why you would want to take a 1-in-6 chance but congrats to Jamie for actually pulling it off.

Bryan: Just to perfect this Blackjack analogy, though: Jamie had a 20. She was already safe! She hit and happened to get an ace for a 21. But why?! She wasn’t going home. No one was talking about her. I can sort of see why Matthew might have done it — perhaps he felt the tribe viewed him as a risk in challenges due to his totally self-created injury. I was shook when Jamie did it, though.

Blake: I think once Jamie announced it, Matthew had to do it as well because of his injury. If Jamie plays it in secret, I’m not sure Matthew even considers doing the same. And at that point Brandon has to play his idol to make sure he’s not going home.

I want to back up for one second because I thought there was some really smart gameplay going back to the first immunity challenge.

With Claire and Matthew sitting out, Claire makes arguably the best move so far by subtly asking Matthew if Lauren proved that she lost her vote after being sent on the island hike. That immediately helped Claire build trust across party lines and gave Matthew ammo against a threat in his own tribe. Huge points there. Matthew then gives Lauren an opportunity to come clean during tribal council about whether or not she actually lost her vote. And Lauren, smartly, doesn’t own up to it and instead plays her “bank a vote” advantage. So now Lauren can play off the tribal as not having a vote and no one is wiser to it.

Claire and Lauren were the two winners of the first three days, in my opinion.

Bryan: That’s such an ideal way for one of the two newest advantages to, at least optically, work totally in Lauren’s favor. Very strong rebuttal after a savvy move by Claire.

Blake: I want to touch on Bruce real quick, too. It’s such an absolute shame that he gets hurt 30 seconds into the first reward challenge and is evacuated 12 hours into the game. I hope he gets a second chance to play at some point. But man, I really could’ve done without the intense, ultra HD, slo-mo shot of his head cracking open.

Bryan: Really? You don’t watch Survivor for the moments that most closely resemble an MMA fight? Yeah, that was hard to watch. I was glad he got a chance to stay instead of immediately getting evacuated, but it was so brutal to see the production team give us that. I know if I got hurt on the game, I’d like as few people to see it as possible and if any did see it, I hope they wouldn’t see anything too invasive. But that is one of the myriad of reasons why I’m blogging on it and am not actually on that island, I guess. What did you make of the other medics? Three in one episode is a LOT.

Blake: Bruce’s injury came from trying too hard in a challenge. I can understand that. Matthew just going rock climbing for the hell of it? Dude, what are you doing? It looked like a bad idea even before he fell and busted his arm and foot. He wasn’t even looking for an idol or anything. I just don’t understand. You’ve got to be smarter than that even if your adrenaline is telling you to go for it.

As for Brandon, he had a tough two days with the sweat challenge at camp followed by having to move huge puzzle pieces. I wonder how hot it was out there for him to cramp up as much as he did.

Bryan: Plus, with Brandon, you have to be extra careful after what happened to Bruce. The conditions must feel so awful, though, if this dude played through multiple seasons of NFL and college football. Like, that’s not easy stuff either!

Who are your early favorites to win a million dollars? And who are you most excited to watch on TV every Wednesday?

Blake: It’s so early and I feel like I’m just getting over Jesse not winning Survivor 43, so I hesitate to make a pick right now. That said, I think Claire has her head in the right place and I’m very excited to see her strategy play out.

Bryan: I hope that one day, we all have a Mandela effect moment where we all collectively decide Jesse actually won S43. I think smart money is on Claire, too. I had a good feeling about Frannie, too. But it’s such an impossible game to predict. I probably would have picked Gabler as the last guy capable of winning the season after the premiere of S43, and we saw how that turned out.

Blake: Jesse won our hearts. That’s what matters most.

Bryan: A million dollars would be nice, though.

A Baby Yoda hug became the newest Grogu meme from The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere

The Season 3 premiere of The Mandalorian featured one of our absolute favorites.

If you haven’t watched the Season 3 premiere of The Mandalorian, stop right now and go do watch it. We’ll wait. Go on.

Ok, you good? I hope so, because there will be spoilers for The Mandalorian going forward.

If you didn’t watch The Book of Boba Fett — or just forgot what happened — our favorite little green munchkin Grogu (although he’s always going to be Baby Yoda to us) gave up Jedi training and reunited with his (and the internet’s) favorite Mandalorian dad, Din Djarin (played by Pedro Pascal).

The first episode of Season 3 was excellent, but the best part of it was undoubtedly reuniting with a close friend we hadn’t seen since Rise of Skywalker.

IS THAT BABU FRIK???

Ok, so it’s likely not Babu Frik — instead just another member of the Anzellan species — but man it was amazing to see anything that reminds us of our little droid mechanic back on the screen. Since Mando is using the Anzellans (yes, plural! There were many!) to try and repair the IG-11 unit that we got to know and love during Season 1, it stands to reason that we will see them at least one more time.

The internet LOVED the re-appearance of our favorite little critters.

Survivor 44: Meet the castaways who will compete for $1 million in Fiji

18 contestants, 26 days, 1 Survivor

For the 44th time, a group of 18 castaways will be deserted and left to fend for themselves for weeks all with the hopes of winning a $1 million prize. For just the fourth time, they’ll do so over just 26 days without any food rations and minimal supplies.

The COVID-era of Survivor has led to massive changes in gameplay and strategy. Now an all new cast will put their skills to the test as they attempt to outwit, outlast and outplay their fellow competitors.

Survivor 44 begins Wednesday, March 1 on CBS (streaming on Paramount+) with Jeff Probst hosting as usual.

Here are the 18 castaways set to battle it out on the islands of Fiji.

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Keep up with Survivor 44 on For The Win here:

The Mandalorian is back, and this time there are space pirates

Plus Grogu, giant alligators and more!

Do we have too much Star Wars?

The general answer for some would be probably, with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens rocket launching the galaxy back for five movies (so far), plenty of television shows (so far) and little doodads like that Baby Yoda/Studio Ghibli collab.

The over-saturation that has plagued the Marvel Cinematic Universe of late seems to be creeping itself into the Skywalker saga, with last year’s The Book of Boba Fett basically an honorary season of The Mandalorian that some folks seemed to accidentally skip over.

If you’re lost, all hell broke loose for Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin (er, the Mandalorian) when he took his helmet off to say goodbye to Baby Yoda (…Grogu) at the end of The Mandalorian‘s second season.

In The Book of Boba Fett, Djarin gets busted by his fellow Mandos for breaking their one rule about the helmet. So he’s now exiled. Baby Yoda decides it doesn’t want to be a Jedi in that side series, too, so the little guy has hopped back into Djarin’s cruiser for more episodic adventures.

The challenge for The Mandalorian going forward might also be its appeal.

Disney/Lucasfilm

We’re going to get a loosely threaded grand narrative, as Djarin has to go find a magic bath on his ransacked home planet to get back in good graces with his people. However, there’s now also space pirates chasing after him for something that happens in season three’s first episode. Taika Waititi’s IG-11 robot might not be dead. Little Babu Friks and Salacious B. Crumbs show up. Star Wars Carl Weathers is still doing Star Wars Carl Weathers things. Apparently Star Wars has Lake Placid-sized crocodile turtles now, too.

The unnecessary business of plot threads’ past and the delightful dorkiness of serialized Star Wars storytelling will come to blows with this latest Mandalorian season, and which side of this approach wins out will be critical to whatever future these live-action television shows have.

Disney will undoubtedly want the Lucasfilm fanfare back in theaters sooner than later, and with so many television shows in development, it begs the question: will people ever tire of watching this at home?

The easiest remedy is letting The Mandalorian be itself and keep grander narratives on the back burner, which thankfully happens in spurts during the third season’s first go-around.

Disney/Lucasfilm

If you’ve watched this latest episode, then you know that Mando and Baby Yoda have the general goal this season to get to the remnants of Mandalore and save Mando’s helmet-removing butt by washing him in their holy pools. This, apparently, is the way for redemption. It’s all a little extra, but then again, if the helmet removal is that big of a deal, then so be it.

The new wrinkle looks to be space pirates, led by the plant-based pirate king Gorian Shard. Shard looks like if someone crossed Boss Nass from The Phantom Menace with Old Gregg from The Mighty Boosh. Shard is irate with Mando now that he’s killed a bunch of his space pirates in both a confrontation on Nevarro City (where Weathers’ Greef Karga now runs the show) and in a space battle by Shard’s big pirate ship.

So keep a tab on the most evil pirate fern in the galaxy for later in the season.

Also, we get to meet the disembodied remains of IG-11, who died in The Mandalorian‘s first season. The robot’s resurrection is now a side quest for Djarin and Grogu as they try to find all the little Babu Friks in Nevarro City some sort of memory processor thingamajig so that the little aliens can fix him to help Mando with the main mission on Mandalore (say that five times fast). Note: apparently, these little Babu Friks (Anzellans) aren’t the Babu Frik from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. As you were.

Disney/Lucasfilm

As the episode closes, we also get a side detour to where Bo-Katan is hanging out at her big Mandalorian castle. If you’ll recall from the show’s second season, Bo-Katan was the leader of a rogue group of Mandalorians that Djarin knew from back in the day. They allow themselves to take the helmet off, which seems very logical and Djarin should’ve just teamed up with them so he could take his helmet off, too, but whatever.

In season three’s first 30 minutes, we cover a lot of ground. Those absolutely befuddled as to what’s going on will have to take a few hops back on the Star Wars game board to The Book of Boba Fett to update yourself on what’s going on. For those “in the know,” you know what you came for.

While the dialogue remains a bit stilted and the grander stakes a bit low on tread, watching Baby Yoda hug a Babu Frik and seeing Djarin zip around in his space cruiser and blast space pirates into asteroids to Ludwig Göransson’s techno-thumping score remain the kind of joys that make this show worth coming back to.

At least one episode in, The Mandalorian is doing everything it used to do. It’s become the safest bet for Lucasfilm in the Disney era, but one wonders if safety will keep this show from ever really taking some risks. If The Mandalorian is tasty Star Wars comfort food, then that’s what it should be. It just begs the question of when folks will get full on frog eggs and want more franchise divergence like Star Wars: The Last Jedi or Andor.

For now, fun adventures with Djarin and Baby Yoda will certainly scratch the itch. The more spirited and disconnected these episodes are, the better.

The Mandalorian: What happened in The Book of Boba Fett with Mando and Baby Yoda?

Let’s help you if you didn’t see The Book of Boba Fett.

Grogu and bounty hunter Din Djarin (portrayed by the great Pedro Pascal) are back on March 1 when Season 3 of The Mandalorian debuts on Disney+.

If you didn’t watch The Book of Boba Fett (yes, he’s alive), then it’s been a while since you’ve seen Mando and his cute little green buddy. The final episode of Season 2 of the Disney+ Star Wars show was released on Dec. 18, 2020. And that episode – directed by Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed – was a banger (even if it was a bit predictable) featuring one of our favorite original lightsaber-wielding heroes.

But a lot has happened since then. The latter part of The Book of Boba Fett essentially turned into Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian. While Boba was busy hanging out with Tusken Raiders and taking over Tatooine, Din and Grogu went through some significant things too.

To catch you up, here’s everything that has happened to Din, Grogu and their friends since the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian.

If you haven’t watched The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett, spoilers are ahead.

What time do new episodes of the Mandalorian drop on Disney+?

How late (or early) do you have to be awake for new episodes of The Mandalorian?

The highly-anticipated new season of The Mandalorian returns on Disney+ on Wednesday, March 1. Pedro Pascal returns as the titular masked bounty hunter as he sets off to wash in “the living waters beneath the mines of Mandalore” to regain his status as a Mandalorian after removing his helmet (several times) in his efforts to save his little green buddy, Grogu.

If you’re trying to remember what has happened since we last saw our Beskar-encrusted fighter and his adorable sidekick, check out our refresher.

New episodes will drop weekly on the streaming-only platform at midnight PT each Wednesday or 3 a.m. ET.

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Bachelor Ep. 6 recap: Contenders, pretenders and power rankings

Witches! Wife-carrying competitions! Naked saunas!

Good news! Zach is back! After an episode last week that saw our lead go down for the count with a positive COVID test, leading to a missed group date and solo date. The group relocated to Estonia since we last saw them, prompting one of the women to say it “reminded her of Frozen” because “it was cold and there are castles.” OK then!

In order to make up for last week, Zach re-invites Charity on the first one-on-one date. Things got spicy before they even got out the door, however, as Kat pulls him into the hallway for a chat before he departs with NOT her on a date. Unsurprisingly, the other women didn’t love that move, even when Kat explained it was because she [checks notes] missed him a bunch.

That led to a lot of tension with Brooklyn, who continues to call out people for their nonsense (therefore making her my favorite).

Charity and Zach had a lovely time going around Estonia by horse-drawn carriage, trying alcohol from men they just met and participating in a wife-carrying competition that felt like it was made for Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Zach took the ladies of the group date to an Estonian witch in the woods, and that’s all I have to say about that.

The second one-on-one with Ariel involved a sauna, a hot tub and a naked old couple. Despite that description, it went really well, and it’s clear Ariel and Zach have immense chemistry.

Things stayed spicy at the cocktail party as Charity tried to tell Kat she didn’t appreciate the latter smooching her boyfriend right before their date. Brooklyn interrupted that conversation (honestly, pretty unnecessarily), and it’s clear that drama is sticking around for another week.

Let’s get into the contenders, pretenders, those that have work to do and our Top Five.