“Let’s face it, the ending is all that matters.” Taken at face value, this line from the penultimate episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City, “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” might suggest a certain cynicism on the part of creator Eli Jorné for his own genre. And indeed, given the pacing of this episode, and the lack of narrative energy in the show thus far, one hopes that the finale next week might go some way to salvaging an otherwise frustratingly stodgy series.

For much of “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” nothing really happens. People walk around - limping, tiptoeing, lurching - and they also run. Two characters we’ve had no reason to care about are lost. Another character we don’t care about tells, unprompted, a personal story to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), because, one assumes, Jorné couldn’t be bothered to find a more organic way to make the character sympathetic. Regrettably, this unexpected overshare still fails to make us care about him.

The episode deals, at a thematic level, with the “stories we tell ourselves to sleep easier,” as Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) describes them. Those stories, he implies, are essentially falsehoods, and we are prompted to consider the ways in which each character lies to themselves. The Croat (Željko Ivanek)’s lie - to us and to himself - is that he is a villainous mastermind, when in fact he is a fawning, subservient lackey to the Dama (Lisa Emery). Maggie (Lauren Cohan)’s lie appears to be that Negan is a monster who deserves to have his life traded to the Croat for Hershel (Logan Kim)’s, as her real plan is revealed in the closing moments of the episode. Armstrong’s lie is that his work for the Babylon Federation is noble and just: “tranquility and order” are worth achieving at any cost. Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham) deceives himself with the belief that betraying his people to the Croat was for their own good. And the lie Negan tells himself? There doesn’t seem to be one, because Negan 2.0 is intended to be a self-aware and emotionally intelligent man who is unafraid to confront his weaknesses. Dead City should try to emulate those qualities if it gets a second season.

Foundation returns today to Apple TV Plus. The series is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's acclaimed stories and follows a group of exiles as they embark on a journey to rebuild civilization during the collapse of the Galactic Empire where the fate of humanity is at stake.

In the second season, set over a century later, tensions rise throughout the galaxy. As the Cleons, the ruling dynasty, begin to unravel, a vengeful queen secretly plots to bring down the Empire from within. Meanwhile, Hari, Gaal, and Salvor encounter a colony of mentalics with psionic abilities that could profoundly alter psychohistory. Additionally, the Foundation has entered its religious phase, bringing about the Second Crisis: a war against the Empire.

Nobody wins anything in this week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tries and fails to locate Hershel (Logan Kim), Amaia (Karina Ortiz) and Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham) lose a number of their people to walkers because they don’t use an obvious means of escape, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) saves Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) only to be arrested by him moments later, and the Croat (Željko Ivanek) - like the viewers - finds his old mentor a bewilderingly changed man. The episode positions everyone for how the season will ultimately play out, and there is a lot of movement, including a dramatic fight scene in an arena filling rapidly with walkers. There are explosions and haunting choral numbers, lots of jaw clenching and many charged stares. Children, and parenthood, are central to the episode’s themes.

“Kids,” Simon (Steven Ogg) barks at the Croat during the opening flashback, “is a line we do not cross. We all know that.” I sighed, while also wincing at his grammar. Kids are a line the Saviors crossed at Hillside when they beat a sixteen-year-old to death, a line Simon himself crossed, slaughtering the boys at Oceanside without repercussion, and a line Negan crossed when he tried to crush Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs)’ skull like an eggshell in the season 7 finale of The Walking Dead. The opening scene of “Everybody Wins a Prize” is vigorously, determinedly revisionist. To be fair, the franchise has worked hard at Negan’s redemption for years and thrown unfortunates such as his now-abandoned wife Annie (Medhina Senghore) into the mix, purely in the interests of softening his character. Annie’s brutal beating and gang rape were written to allow Negan a sorrowful sigh, a flicker of the lashes that might imply tears as he told Maggie the fate of his wife. If nothing else, The Walking Dead’s sheer doggedness in their quest for his redemption should be acknowledged.

Recently Acorn TV premiered the new romantic crime procedural Cannes Confidential. The six-part international detective series stars French actress Lucie Lucas as Detective Camille Delmasse, who struggles to accept the arrest and sentencing of her ex-Chief of Police father for corruption charges. The series also stars Jamie Bamber as international conman Harry King who teams up with Camille to solve crimes (regardless of whether she wants the help) and may have information that could exonerate her father. Their chemistry becomes complicated by Camille’s colleague Lea Robert (Tamara Marthe), who has a secret crush on Camille.

Bamber recently spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the series, which is now available to stream on Acorn TV.

In the Dead City premiere, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tells Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) that, for her, there is no moving on from Glenn (Steven Yeun)’s death - the horror, one gathers, as well as the loss. The psychological realism of this is, on the one hand, self-evident. Grief and bereavement are not transient states, but permanent ones. There is no “getting over it” for anyone who has lost someone close to them. Neither, however, is grief static: it evolves, becomes familiar and more manageable. The Walking Dead gave one of Dead City’s main characters a remarkable redemption arc, a development from one of the flagship show’s worst villains to a repentant family man. But it trapped Dead City’s other protagonist in a state of unchanging rage and trauma - as difficult to watch as it is, in some moments, to believe - of which her reaction to Hershel (Logan Kim)’s kidnapping is just the most recent iteration. 

For that reason, among others, Dead City is indubitably, by its halfway point, The Negan Show. Maggie, struggling to cope with misery and fear over her missing son, is so tightly wound as to be robotic at times, even during her most vulnerable moments. By contrast, Negan continues to be sentimental and self-aware - finding a gift for the kidnapped teenager, offering a listening ear to Maggie, and sharing a scene with Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) that will make your teeth ache with its sweetness. 

MGM+ Renews Sci-Fi Horror Series FROM for Season Three

Created by John Griffin and executive produced by Griffin and Lost alums Jeff Pinkner and Jack Bender, the series will return in 2024

BEVERLY HILLS, California—June 29, 2023—MGM+, a premium linear channel and streaming service, announced today that the contemporary sci-fi horror series FROM has been renewed for a 10-episode third season. Created and executive produced by John Griffin (Crater) and executive produced by showrunner Jeff Pinkner (Lost, Alias, Fringe), and director Jack Bender (Lost, Game of Thrones), the series unravels the mystery of a nightmarish town that traps all those who enter. In the wake of Season Two’s epic cliffhanger, escape will become a tantalizing and very real possibility as the true nature of the town comes into focus, and the townspeople go on offense against the myriad horrors surrounding them. The series is set to return in 2024. 

FROM is the second-most viewed series in the history of the premium network, behind the Emmy winning Godfather of Harlem, starring Forest Whitaker and co-created by Chris Brancato and Paul Eckstein (Narcos).

AUDIBLE ANNOUNCES SCI-FI COMEDY AUDIBLE ORIGINAL “THIRD EYE” FROM GENRE LEGEND FELICIA DAY

Premiering October 5, 2023, Series Starring Neil Gaiman, Sean Astin, LilyPichu, London Hughes, Wil Wheaton and More

NEWARK, NJ – June 28, 2023 – Audible, Inc., the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, today announced a new scripted science-fiction comedy Third Eye, written and created by actor, producer, writer and streamer, Felicia Day (The Guild, Geek & Sundry) and featuring author Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) as The Narrator. Set to premiere on October 5, the Audible Original produced alongside Clamor, stars Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings),LilyPichu (Offline TV), Wil Wheaton (Ready Player One), London Hughes (The Netflix Afterparty), Danny Pudi (Mythic Quest, Community), Alan Tudyk (Resident Alien), Hudson Yang (Fresh off the Boat), and Christopher Judge (God of War). Post-production for the Audible Original will be handled by Mumble Media, a worker-owned podcast production cooperative. 

Third Eye tells the story of Laurel (Felicia Day), a “Chosen One” wizard still grappling with the fallout of failing a decade earlier in her fight with the ultimate evil Tybus (Christopher Judge). Day will write and star in the project, as our heroine is forced to overcome her tattered reputation and self-loathing in order to save her friends, eventually uncovering shocking secrets on the way toward re-confronting old enemies. The series takes listeners on a comedic ride, with one-of-a-kind characters including Kate Chen (LilyPichu), a quirky, teenage human girl on a quest for knowledge about the supernatural world; Frank Fletcher (Sean Astin), a cranky, stubborn vampire; Robigus (Wil Wheaton), the local San Francisco enforcer for Tybus the Terrible and a constant thorn in the side for Laurel; and Sybil (London Hughes), an exiled Faerie princess in her 20s who exemplifies “hot mess.” With a storyline written as a love letter to the fantasy genre, listeners can expect an abundance of iconic geek and gaming culture Easter eggs cleverly woven throughout the series. 

Arguably the strongest characters in The Walking Dead universe are women: among them, Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), Michonne Grimes (Danai Gurira), Rosita Espinosa (Christian Serratos), and Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan). The franchise makes its women suffer, but it allows them to transform that suffering into courage and grit and cunning. By the end of the flagship series, countless battles under her belt, Maggie is heading up the community at Hilltop, which thrived under her governance years before. She is a seasoned fighter and leader - smart, accomplished, and brave.

And yet, in “Who’s There?,” the second episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City, she displays virtually none of these skills. Instead, the dynamic in her uneasy partnership with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) becomes that of the veteran warrior (him) and the young hothead (her), with Negan lecturing her on how and why to negotiate and cautioning her against unnecessary violence. Maggie is on a knife-edge in this episode - as in all of them - while Negan is wearily tolerant of her aggression and rash decision-making.

There is weariness, too, in one of the episode’s pivotal moments, when Negan enacts a performance reminiscent of his days leading the Saviors. Ambushed by a team of the Croat (Željko Ivanek)’s people, Negan captures one, drives his head through multiple panes of glass, and then slits his throat and guts him over the edge of balcony, allowing the man’s blood and gore to splatter onto his companions below (mysteriously, they do not move out of the way). His sarcastic patter to the attackers is tired, a half-hearted summoning of his former persona that borders dangerously on self-satire, and when he turns to a clearly triggered Maggie afterwards, he looks worn, chagrined, and perhaps regretful.

Tomorrow, the second season finale of From arrives on MGM Plus. At the end of the most recent episode, Julie (Hannah Cheramy), Randall (A.J. Simmons), and Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) were attacked by cicadas that no one else could see, perhaps being what the nursery rhyme that appeared in a few characters’ nightmares foretold: “here they come; they come for three.” In the season finale, the town struggles to figure out the nursery rhyme and how to stop the “melody” to potentially save them.

Scott McCord plays the character of Victor on the series, a peculiar resident who has been in the town since he was a boy. Recently quite a lot was revealed about his childhood, and it seems that his past may play an important role in what’s to come.

Earlier in the week, McCord spoke with SciFi Vision about Victor, including crafting the character’s regression, playing someone who experienced such trauma, where Victor’s drawings actually come from, some of the challenges of not knowing what’s coming, what might be coming in the season finale, and more.

Tomorrow, the season finale of FROM comes to MGM Plus. In the previous episode, three members of the town, Julie (Hannah Cheramy), Randall (A.J. Simmons), and Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) were attacked by cicadas that no one else could see, and their fates were left up in the air. In the season finale, the town must come together to figure out how to “stop the melody” and what that even means, if they hope to save everyone. 

Elizabeth Saunders stars as Donna, the no-nonsense leader of Colony House, who is always trying to protect people, whether they truly deserve it or not. 

Earlier in the week, Saunders talked with SciFi Vision about her work on the show, including why she feels the character is so selfless, the possibility of Donna being a mole and other theories, the potential for season three, and more.