Emily and Melanie spill all about the Yellowjackets Cannibal Council! The WHO, THE WHY, and some insights from Costume Designer Marie Schley. Plus, Nerdist News Editor, Ro Rusak, joins to discuss Yellowjackets characters as Fairy Tale Archetypes. Read her super insightful Nerdist article here. What a great spill about the hierarchy of the Cannibal Council, the animals and symbolism, and speculating on who's who! Buzz buzz buzz.

To celebrate Hannibal‘s continuing agency in this world, we spoke to Caroline Dhavernas, who played Doctor Alana Bloom. In the early seasons of Hannibal, Alana served as a kind of heart for the show. She brought a sense of human goodness into a world of great but terrible creatures. In the end, though, not even Alana could resist the siren song of Hannibal Lecter forever. And now, Dhavernas looks back on the complex fun of the role, Alana’s transformations, and what she took away from her time on Hannibal.

In Middle-earth, group affiliation is key to understanding many characters. We immediately know a Harfoot from a dwarf from an elf. And these labels reflexively offer information about what we might expect from someone new. But, on The Rings of Power, Joseph Mawle’s character Adar defies these expectations, introducing a novel tension into the world.

Eddie Munson is a hero. He did not, however, become a hero in the last minutes of his life. He did not, as Stranger Things 4 implies, suddenly turn away from cowardice to find bravery when he chose to lure away the Demobats. Eddie’s death on Stranger Things does not enshrine him with anything. His heroism is much deeper and more nuanced than fighting the monsters of the Upside Down. Eddie has, in fact, been fighting monsters much more terrifying his entire life.

Wherein Beth and Matt further engage Ro, particularly to contrast Hannibal‘s relationship arcs with those of Supernatural, Avengers: Endgame, and Sherlock.

Wherein Beth and Matt welcome culture critic and friend to all Fannibals, Rotem Rusak! In part 1 of our discussion, we cover Digestivo at length, learn why it’s Ro’s favorite, and give Chiyoh a chance.

On Yellowjackets, the question of the supernatural is central. Is it magic or madness? The show asks repeatedly. And, the answer is hard to parse. The introduction’s profane feeling combined with the mundane present timeline make for excellent red herrings. Viewers become anchored to beliefs the on-screen universe follows the rules of our own. And that feeling is hard to part with. But like Yellowjackets’ characters, part with it we must. While initially, the show feels like a realistic, albeit psychological, fiction, it is actually a fairy tale.

In today’s pop culture world, there is an incredible push to tell more queer stories. But despite these efforts, finding narratives that speak to diverse groups remains a work in progress. We still see things like “first-ever gay character” (for the five-hundredth time) and characters that allow platforms to talk the talk but not exactly walk the walk. And if the walk does happen, the vision of a queer person filters through a normative lens. Instead of a story that speaks to the represented group, a find and replace occurs. The same story that’s always told simply gets told again, but now under the guise of representation. But the question remains, to whom are those stories appealing? In truth, no one. The normative populations that might reject queer stories reject the stories anyway. The queer populations who look for representation feel glad for the attempt but often find the stories lacking in the end. Sometimes, though, representative stories get told without true awareness of that representation. This is the case with the generally popular witch figure. Though there are surprisingly few queer witches in pop culture, the narrative of the witch is, almost definitionally, a queer one.

“Is Bucky Barnes a victim or a villain?” While the answer seems obvious to some, the MCU’s perspective is murkier. Fans hoped that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would allow Bucky to work through his victimhood; a meaningful project both in-universe and out. But this does not transpire onscreen. Instead, the show turns the trauma that Bucky suffered into trauma he caused. The story retrofits a previously nonexistent agency into Bucky’s past as the Winter Soldier. Rather than telling a story of survival and recovery, TFATWS retcons Bucky’s history in order to more comfortably deal with it.

Cinemalogue Managing Editor Meghan White is joined by freelance entertainment journalists Rotem Rusak and Amanda Steele, discussing the Disney+ series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

At the end of the day, it takes two to tango, and though it’s true that properties can do whatever they want, it doesn’t mean they should. There’s a reason why shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Hannibal are so universally loved by their fans, and that is because they tell the stories they promise to tell and unfold satisfying arcs and resolutions—and not out of the desire for shock value, nor for spite, nor fear, do they stray from them.