The Writers’ Strike is over, and now that creatives and executives are finally mending fences, the floodgates have been opened for upcoming quality television, including some of Netflix‘s biggest-ever shows.
As the continuations of two sci-fi staples draw nearer than ever, a grand-scale virtual event gives fans of animation everything they could hope for and more.
Stranger Things writers hit the ground running on Season 5 after strike lift
The hiatuses between seasons of Stranger Things have been infamously prolonged, but it’s not the show’s fault that Hollywood has been on a bad luck streak for the past three years. Nevertheless, with the Writers’ Strike finally settled, thanks to executives finally seeing sense, the Hawkins team, feeling just as eager as any of us, wasted no time in getting the show back on the road.
“We’re back” — the statement, just as short as it was sweet, shared to the Twitter/X account for the Stranger Things writers, must have felt like music to the ears of desperate fans, who have been grasping at straws for news of Season 5 for months. If the strikes hadn’t brought the industry to a necessary stand-still, the fifth and final season of the Netflix phenom would have started production by now. However, since the Actors’ Strike is still ongoing, there’s not much the Stranger Things creatives can do besides getting the house in order, so filming can resume as soon as the actors’ union gets its own deal.
There’s light at the end of the dark Upside Down tunnel, but the earliest we’ll see El, Mike, Will, and the gang will most likely still be 2025.
New true crime docu revisiting the unsolved murder of a BBC anchor fights for a podium spot in over 60 countries
Netflix definitely has a knack for picking the most intriguing criminal mysteries to pore over, and it doesn’t hurt that they always do well on charts, either. The latest is a three-part documentary on the murder of Jill Dando, a beloved BBC news presenter in the ’90s who was shockingly killed near her house on April 26, 1999. A man named Barry George went to prison for Dando’s murder in 2001, but was acquitted in a subsequent trial seven years later.
If the numbers on FlixPatrol are anything to go by, it looks like Netflix audiences have been successfully hooked to the compelling docu-series, which is now sitting comfortably in fourth place on the website’s global charts. It’s understandably the most-watched show in the United Kingdom, but it’s conquered the podium in another 22 countries, making the top 10 in a total of 64. Jill Dando’s killer has never been found, but restarting the conversation around her untimely death could hopefully change that scenario.
The Japanese sci-fi thriller everyone was telling you to watch when Squid Game took over the world is coming back for a third season
Before there was Squid Game, there was another Netflix dystopian show where characters had to play dangerous games to save their own lives, and a lot of people seem to prefer it over the South Korean global sensation. Thankfully, the two can co-exist as Netflix has finally confirmed that Alice in Borderland is coming back for a third season, after dropping not-so-subtle hints of the renewal over the past week.
Attentive fans will know that the announcement tweet also contains information about a possible storyline of relevance in the upcoming episodes. Although the first two seasons of Alice in Borderland covered most of Haro Aso’s manga series of the same name, leaving practically no story left to adapt, there was one element that was purposefully left out and reserved for what could be an explosive third and likely final outing. The character of Joker, one of the main orchestrators of the games Arisu, Karube, and Segawa are swept up in, has never physically appeared in the Netflix show, but it looks like that will change very soon.
Netflix’s first-ever virtual showcase provided a bonafide feast for animation fans
Netflix is very serious about its global events. After making TUDUM an unmissable convention for the latest news regarding some of the biggest shows and films on the streamer and, by association, the world, Netflix took things virtual for its very first global showcase. Drop 01 was broadcast live on Twitch, YouTube, and Tudum.com on Wednesday, Sept. 27, bringing fans of genre animation together for a roll of never-before-seen episodes and trailers.
Not only did those who tuned in get to watch the world premiere of the first three episodes of Castlevania: Nocturne, but they also learned firsthand that a new Devil May Cry anime will be arriving on the platform soon, as well as catch exclusive first glimpses at shows like Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, Sonic Prime, the Scott Pilgrim: Takes Off anime, Blue Eye Samurai, and more. Animation has been a source of repeated success for Netflix recently — a wave the streamer seems eager to ride with events like Drop 01 and Geeked Week.