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X-Men: Siege Perilous Explained

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The recent Knights of X #1 marks a new chapter in the ongoing saga of Betsy Braddock, the mutant telepath once known as Psylocke of the X-Men and currently serving as Captain Britain. The final issues of Excalibur saw the conquest of Otherworld, Marvel’s version of the realm of faerie magic, at the hands of Merlyn and King Arthur. This cut Otherworld off from Krakoa, effectively isolating Betsy and the rest of the Captain Britain Corps there. Luckily, she’s got some help! Roma, Merlyn’s daughter and a friend to the X-Men from days past, gives Betsy the chance to assemble a team for a proper Arthurian quest to find the artifact known as the Siege Perilous.

There’s just one question newer readers may be wondering…

What the Heck Is the Siege Perilous?

Originally appearing as part of a Captain Britain (Brian Braddock back then, Betsy’s brother) story in Mighty World of Marvel #13, the Portal Perilous, as it was known in that appearance, was a large portal to alternate Earths, through which the body of Merlyn was consigned (like many characters, he died, then got better) by Roma.

The first time it was known as the Siege Perilous was in Uncanny X-Men #229, once again under Roma’s power. Here, it took the form of an overlarge brooch which could be expanded into a gateway large enough for individuals to walk through. Claremont’s decision to use the name “Siege Perilous” is an interesting metaphorical one, on par with his often-grandiose artistic statements at the time; in original Arthurian lore, the Siege Perilous refers to a seat at the Round Table, reserved for the Knight who succeeded in a quest to recover the Holy Grail. As a word, we understand “siege” as a type of military assault, but it comes from the French word for seat, and so it was used historically. So why name this artifact, which seems to represent the opposite of sitting, after an old seat at the Round Table? Well, that’s part of the metaphor, as explained by Roma to the X-Men a few pages after the above, “As Avalon was for King Arthur, so may the Siege be for you.”

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Avalon was the place where Arthur went to recover from his wounds, a hidden, idyllic island where he could rest (other versions of myth posited that he was interred there, which is, well, a different kind of rest). In offering here, Roma presents the Siege Perilous as a gateway to that kind of rest in similar fashion; by stepping through it, the X-Men would receive new identities, lives, even memories, forgetting who they were and being given the gift of receding into anonymity. Thus, rest.

However, that’s not all! The legend of the original seat at the Round Table included that sitting in it would be fatal to a Knight who had not completed the quest it was reserved for. Claremont extrapolated this as a magical sense of judgment and included it in his interpretation; the version presented to the X-Men would judge each person who passed through that portal and give to them the life they deserved.

Betsy Braddock and the Siege Perilous

The X-Men did eventually go through the Siege Perilous – spoilers for a thirty-year-old storyline – but here’s where its ties to Betsy Braddock in particular grow more complicated. In Uncanny X-Men #251, it is heavily implied that Betsy telepathically convinces the team to step through the portal, which leads to some interesting results; while some do indeed find idyllic lives, Havok becomes a loyal soldier to an anti-mutant government regime, and Betsy herself has her mind transplanted into an Asian woman’s body, becoming a mind-controlled assassin. The mind control didn’t last long, but she stayed in that body for the next thirty years, until 2018.

The Siege Perilous was seemingly destroyed immediately after this, and not seen for many years. It turned up in Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men, where it ended that series in the hands of evil rich child (really) Wilhelmina Kensington, a member of a new incarnation of the Hellfire Club. Later, as the Krakoa-era Marauders book saw Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw reclaim the Hellfire name for themselves, that group (again, of evil rich children) would become a new organization by the name of Homines Verendi – Latin for “people to be respected.” In a further twist, Wilhelmina herself left that group after some complicated history regarding family trauma caused her to reassess her priorities. Does she still have the Siege Perilous? Who knows! I suspect we’ll find out soon.

Knights of X

After all of that, you may be wondering, “what does this have to do with Knights of X?” Well, currently, the quest is for an artifact tied to both Merlyn and Roma, which functions as a portal between realms. It’s being sought by a band of mutants trapped in an alternate dimension where prior portals have been destroyed, isolating that dimension from Earth. Those mutants are led by a woman who last used it to force her friends to escape a metaphorical purgatory (that’s an article for another time), and now very likely faces a direct reckoning for that act.

Additionally, none of her team members from that time are a part of her current team. What happens when they find out? What happens when that bit of history gets brought up for them once again? Betsy’s got some interesting challenges ahead of her.

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Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Just Pulled off Two Major Clone Wars Callbacks

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This Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi article contains spoilers.

Obi-Wan Kenobi not only brings back two of the most important characters from the Original Trilogy, it’s also an embarrassment of riches for Prequel Trilogy fans who have longed to see the franchise pay tribute to the Star Wars galaxy of the early 2000s. At last, we have Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen sharing the screen once again, this time trading lightsaber blows on opposite sides of the battlefield. In episode 3, the Jedi Master and Sith Lord finally come face to face after 10 years, and the reunion is anything but heartwarming. Unless you count Vader literally lighting his old master on fire…

But McGregor and Christensen aren’t the only two major Prequel blasts from the pasts featured in the series. Last week, for example, the show featured a Temuera Morrison cameo, putting the Jango and Boba Fett actor in clone trooper armor for the very first time — despite being the face of all clones since 2002’s Attack of the Clones (the “magic” of CGI, am I right?).

“Part III” brings in two more major Prequel era callbacks that likely made Star Wars fans who grew up in the 2000s jump off their couches in excitement. Here’s what these references might mean for the show and the Star Wars canon timeline going forward:

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Quinlan Vos

Obi-Wan is shocked to learn that one of the Jedi fugitives who’ve passed through the safe house on Mapuzo is Quinlan Vos, the Kiffar Jedi Master who first appeared as an extra in The Phantom Menace in 1999 (you can spot him sitting at a table watching as Anakin walks down a Mos Espa street), but is best known for his appearances in The Clone Wars and Dark Horse’s Clone Wars comics from the now non-canon Legends continuity. In fact, it’s in the pages of Star Wars: Republic by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema where he gained most of his popularity as one of the comic’s central stars opposite mainstays like Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Unlike Obi-Wan’s more virtuous Jedi Knight, Quinlan was known for being more morally gray, which made him the perfect candidate for a secret mission to assassinate Count Dooku during the height of the Clone Wars. But regardless of whether you’re reading his canon or Legends adventures, Quinlan time trying to infiltrate Dooku’s inner circle within the Separatists led to the Jedi falling to the dark side and instead serving Darth Tyranus against the Republic. Fortunately, both versions of Quinlan’s story see him return to the light. In the canon novel Dark Disciple by Christie Golden, Quinlan is driven back to the light after former Sith apprentice and badass bounty hunter (and Vos’ lover) Asajj Ventress sacrifices herself to save him from a killing blow from Dooku.

As the behind-the-scenes story goes, George Lucas was so captivated by Quinlan’s unique design and story that he planned to include the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith, including in his own Order 66 scene. The production went as far as creating animatics for the scene, but it was ultimately cut. But Quinlan is still referenced in a line from Obi-Wan: “Master Vos moved his troops to Boz Pity.”

Later bits of lore place Quinlan on Kashyyyk after his victory on Boz Pity, fighting alongside Master Yoda right up until Order 66 and the start of the Jedi Purge. His whereabouts during the reign of the Empire largely remained a mystery until Obi-Wan Kenobi revealed Quinlan has been working for the Star Wars universe’s version of the Underground Railroad, helping Force-sensitive children escape the Inquisitors.

But does name dropping Quinlan in episode 3 mean he’s bound to make an appearance on the show before the end? It’s hard to say, although fans have been theorizing Obi-Wan Kenobi will feature at least one other Jedi Knight due to just how many classic Jedi the series has referenced in just three episodes, including Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn, as well as Legends heroes like Corran Horn and Valin Halcyon. If we had to guess, the cameo will come in the form of Liam Neeson playing Qui-Gon’s Force ghost, but now that we know which other Jedi are still out there, anything could technically happen.

Jabiim

There’s a very good chance we will visit Jabiim next week. Fans of classic Clone Wars tie-in comics should know this planet well. After all, in the Legends timeline, it was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the galactic conflict. The forces of the Republic and the Separatists converged on the rain-soaked planet during a local civil war in order to secure Jabiimi resources — whichever side won would get control of the planet’s vital mining operation.

Obi-Wan, his padawan Anakin, and Asajj Ventress all converged on the planet during the battle in the early days of the Clone Wars. While a fast-paced offensive quickly allowed the Republic to gain territory, a counter-offensive led by Ventress and local general Alto Stratus that saw the clone army suffer massive casualties, and even Obi-Wan was thought to have been killed, leaving Anakin to fend for himself.

With Obi-Wan gone (he’d actually been captured by Ventress and imprisoned on another planet), it was Anakin who led the Republic’s last stand on Jabiim with the remaining clone troopers and a group of padawan, holding out long enough for the surviving forces to evacuate. It was a victory for the Separatists and a major setback for the Republic.

Of course, all of this backstory was wiped away after Disney bought Star Wars in 2012. In other words, we don’t actually know whether any Clone Wars battles happened here in the new canon. Surely, Obi-Wan would have said something along the lines of “Oh no, not there!” when Tala (Indira Varma) mentioned that was where he and Leia would be headed next.

If you want to check out the Battle of Jabiim for yourself whole we wait for some answers on Obi-Wan Kenobi, track down issues 55 through 58 of Star Wars: Republic by W. Haden Blackman and Brian Ching.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+.

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The Sound of Magic Ending Explained

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This article contains spoilers for The Sound of Magic.

Adapted from a webtoon called Annarasumanara, Netflix’s latest Korean-language release, The Sound of Magic, is a quick watch at only six episodes—much shorter than most K-drama fare. For that runtime, the drama bites off a bit more than it can chew in terms of storyline, which makes the final episode action-packed with plot points, including reveals concerning magician Ri-eul’s past and the identity of Seo Ha-yoon’s murderer. The ending also must wrap up Ah-yi and Il-deung’s respective stories, which it does with a series-ending time jump in which we see Ah-yi’s life several years after the main events of the story. Here’s everything that happens in “The Last Performance,” The Sound of Magic’s final episode, and what it means for the themes of this magical coming-of-age tale.

Is Magic Real in The Sound of Magic?

One of the biggest “mysteries” throughout The Sound of Magic is the question of whether or not Ri-eul is a “real” magician; in other words, is he a skilled illusionist or is there something otherworldly at play in what he can do? The series leaves it relatively open-ended, letting the viewer decide for themself, which fits in well with the theme of holding onto traditional aspects of childhood, like a healthy sense of wonder and belief, even after growing into an adult.

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That being said, the series ultimately hints that Ri-eul’s magic is real on two occasions. First, when a spring snow starts falling inside of the abandoned theme park’s main performance hall during Ri-eul’s failed second arrest. And, after, when the police detective mentions that something activated one of the theme park’s otherwise defunct security cameras the night of Seo Ha-yoon’s murder, capturing images of her killer in the act. The series skates right past the horrifying nature of this crime to imply that it was the same night that Ri-eul took Ah-yi for a ride on the ferris wheel into a sky lit up with fireworks. Other than these moments, which include insight from outside of one of our protagonists’ perspectives, all of the magic we see could be a manifestation of Ah-yi or Il-deung’s blossoming willingness to believe in that magic.

Is The Sound of Magic a Musical?

Of course, though not as musical as the first episode suggests to viewers. There are increasingly fewer musical numbers as the series progresses, with the most musical numbers coming in the first few episodes. Annarasumanara, the webtoon on which The Sound of Music is based, is not a musical (as it is a web comic); this element was added in the adaptation by Itaewon Class director Kim Seong-yoon. The series uses the musical numbers as a way to access the interiority of these reserved characters, as well as to depict what a sense of childlike wonder can look and feel like to an audience perhaps unused to seeing characters burst into song, the setting coming alive around them. In conclusion: normalize TV series having random musical numbers if and when it allows viewers to access story, character, and theme in a productive and interesting way.

Who Killed Seo Ha-yoon in The Sound of Magic?

One of The Sound of Magic’s least successful story elements is a shoehorned-in teen murder plot. Meant to raise the stakes in relation to Ri-eul’s treatment by the community, allowing Ah-yi and Il-deung to come to his aid in different ways, it is an unnecessarily gruesome addition to the world. Arguably, Ri-eul’s ostracism is unfortunately already articulated and exacerbated in other ways, including in the stigma around mental illness.

That being said, we find out in the final episode that it was Ah-yi’s former boss, Kim Doo-sik, who killed Ha-yoon. Like Ah-yi, Ha-yoon took a part-time job at Doo-sik’s store. And, as he would later do to Ah-yi, he sexually assaulted Ha-yoon. Ha-yoon recorded the entire thing, and blackmailed Doo-sik for money. When Ha-yoon met with Doo-sik in the seemingly abandoned theme park, he killed her.

What is The Magician’s (Ji Chang-wook) Backstory?

In “The Last Performance,” Ah-yi and Il-deung meet up with Min Ji-soo, a woman who knew and liked Ri-eul (whose legal name is Ryu Min-hyuk) while they were in school together. From her, we learn that Ri-eul is 30 years old (though probably 28, in “international age,” as Korean’s use a different age-counting system) and that he comes from a similar background to Il-deung. Like Il-deung, Ri-eul was born into a well-respected family; his parents were (and presumably still are) well-respected professors who were on TV a lot, according to Ri-eul’s friend. His siblings did traditionally well too, and Ri-eul was also always top of his class in middle school and into high school.

In a Ji-soo-narrated flashback, high school-aged Ri-eul is depicted as strange and kind, as well as very focused on maintaining good grades for the sake of his parents’ happiness. (It puts his mentorship of Il-deung into more specific context.) Later in their high school career, Ri-eul becomes despondent and depressed. He faints in the hallway while studying flashcards and, when he wakes up in the hospital, he doesn’t stop studying, even when Ji-soo begs him to. “Maybe for Min-hyuk, that impressive wrapping paper [of being a brilliant boy from a family of prestigious professors] felt like an invisible prison,” muses Ji-soo. In the final flashback in Ji-soo’s story, we see Ri-eul fall off the top of the school building while reaching for a butterfly only he can see in what is coded as a suicide attempt. (Suicide has been the leading cause of youth death in Korea since 2007.)

Ri-eul survives, and continues to live with mental illness. We know from the police detective that Ri-eul left a mental health facility. At some point, Ri-eul began learning and sharing magic. Following the theme park’s closure, Ri-eul found a home there. We don’t know what happens to Ri-eul after Ah-yi helps him escape from the police. “You’re a real magician,” she tells him before he goes. “Because you made me really believe in magic.”

Does Ah-yi’s Mother Come Back?

As of the time jump, which takes place three years after the main events of the series, Ah-yi’s mother is still not a part of Ah-yi��s life.

What Happens to Ah-yi at the End of The Sound of Magic?

We get to see Ah-yi several years in the future following the main events of the series, and she’s doing so much better. When we met her, it was her dream to skip the next few years of presumed struggle so that she could be an adult with more control over her own life—and, with the time jump, she gets that dream. Now, she is a college student and also has part-time work. Her father has found a job and is able to visit Ah-yi and her sister every weekend. They are doing OK, and have a sense of stability that was missing from Ah-yi’s life when we first met her.

That being said, she hasn’t completely lost that childlike sense of wonder that she found in her friendship with Ri-eul. Her part-time job is working as a magician at a restaurant. In this way, she gets to be the person who brings “real” magic into kids’ lives. She is passing on the gift that Ri-eul gave her, in some way. And she seems happy.

What Happens to Il-deung?

Sadly, we don’t get to catch up with Il-deung after the time jump, but given where we left him—rich, and starting to be able to advocate for himself in his relationship with his parents, peers, and the other adults in his life, I think he’s doing fine. I like to imagine that he and Ah-yi meet up every once in a while to practice their magic together. (In the webtoon, the two go out on a date following the time jump.)

What Happens to Ri-eul the Magician?

We also don’t see Ri-eul after the time jump. Though, before he escapes from the police, he does get his wish: someone who believes in the power of his magic.

The Sound of Magic’s End Credits Musical Scene

Don’t cancel out of the screening window before the credits roll. The end credits feature a delightful scene of the cast performing on stage for what I presume is the other cast and crew. It’s sweet, energetic, and a reminder that most famous actors are theater kids at heart.

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How The Amazing Spider-Man Finally Settled the Organic Web-Shooters Debate

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Organic webs or mechanical? As nonsensical as that question sounds in 2022, believe me that a little over two decades ago it was spoken about with the hushed severity of religion during the Reformation. Do you think Spider-Man should have organic web-shooters or mechanical? If you answered incorrectly in certain parts of the early wild west days of the internet, you could find yourself cast out from digital communities like a leper. In retrospect, it was perhaps a prelude to how fan communities would organize around social media.

This tumultuous upheaval among Marvel fandom was fallout from the very first big budget Spider-Man movie starring Tobey Maguire in 2002. In that movie, director Sam Raimi—along with undoubtedly a slew of producers and studio executives at Columbia Pictures/Sony—made the choice to give Maguire’s Peter Parker organic web fluid. The concept was a leftover from the unmade Spider-Man movie that was being prepared by director James Cameron in the period between Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and True Lies (1994). Cameron lit on the idea of using webbing as an unsubtle metaphor for puberty in which his hero would awaken with sticky sheets.

While Raimi didn’t take the metaphor quite that far—although you should note Maguire’s Peter only first notices his organic webbing after having a conversation with the girl of his dreams, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst)—the director did say at the time it would add to the character’s sense of alienation. Plus, if Peter got all the other powers of a radioactive/genetically modified spider, why not webbing? So Spider-Man made a change that some fans embraced and others did not over the course of the next five years.

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Alas, however, things were never really settled in the world of online fandom, and the debate would rise again when Sony announced it planned to reboot the Web-Head’s franchise a mere 10 years after that first Maguire movie with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

Largely unloved today for its repetitive storytelling mechanics that hit most of the exact same beats from the first Raimi movie, as well as its truly awful sequel, Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man, which starred Andrew Garfield as Peter, is more often ignored than celebrated by fandom. It’s part of that two-film aberration between the giddy highs of the early/mid-2000s’ pop culture behemoth embodied by Maguire and the modern MCU iteration of the character played by Tom Holland.

However, The Amazing Spider-Man got a precious few things right back in its day, including how it settled for good and all the “organics or mechanical web-shooters” debate. And the man to thank for that is, believe it or not, comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis.

One of the premier Marvel writers in this century, Bendis was the co-creator of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series in 2000, which has influenced to varying degrees every screen iteration of Spider-Man that came afterward. He also famously co-created Miles Morales in Ultimate Fallout #4 in 2011. It was during this prolific wallcrawling period that Sony brought Bendis into the office for a pre-production meeting on The Amazing Spider-Man. He was there to settle a little debate the suits were having.

As Bendis told Yahoo in 2015, “They sat me down in Amy Pascal’s office with this big roomful of producers and writers and directors, and she looked at me and said, ‘Organic web-shooters or mechanical web-shooters?’ I said, ‘mechanical,’ and half the table said, ‘Goddamn it!’ They were mad because I was clearly the deciding vote, even though I didn’t know that. So when I see the mechanical web-shooters, I feel a little happiness. I feel like I did something good in the world.”

For a certain breed of fandom, we imagine that feels a bigger contribution to the cinematic Spidey mythos than the invention of Miles. Which is a bit of a shame because, first of all, Miles is the best thing to happen to Spider-Man comics in the last 15 years (movies too), and secondly because it seems arbitrary that Peter can climb walls but not do the one thing spiders are most known for.

Nevertheless, the subject was so settled that after The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Studios felt comfortable goofing on the topic in their patented wink, wink and nudge, nudge, fan service-y way. Thus in last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured Maguire, Garfield, and Holland, the two younger Spider-Men are absolutely mortified to learn that their elder has organic web-shooters.

“Like does it just come out of your wrists,” asks Holland’s Spidey, “or does it come out of… anywhere else?” You know there was an alternate take where he asks if it comes out of his butt. But maybe they can save that gag for the next crossover?

In the meantime, we can all rest easy, Brian Michael Bendis and The Amazing Spider-Man convinced audiences (and studio executives) that it’s mechanicals for life.

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Geek Moments of the Last 15 Years That Shook Pop Culture

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Can you believe Den of Geek has been around since 2007? That’s practically the olden days. And a lot has happened in pop culture since we launched. Superheroes certainly weren’t as pervasive as they currently are, the Oscars has made some serious shifts, major trends in gaming appeared (and sometimes disappeared), Disney has taken over the universe, Game of Thrones was a thing and we had our first female Doctor. And that’s not all…

We’ve taken stock of the major geek events of the last 15 years to take stock of how far we have come.

The Birth of the MCU (2008)

When Iron Man was released on May 2, 2008, few would have imagined that a movie about a (at the time) second-tier Marvel Comics character would become ground zero for the most successful multimedia franchise of all time. Over a decade later, what has come to be known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe now spans 28 feature films (so far), multiple TV shows, and a level of pop culture saturation and box-office dominance beyond most studio executives’ wildest dreams. But the formula for that success was clearly laid out in Iron Man: a likable, charismatic lead; blockbuster action; a self-aware, lightly comedic tone to break the tension; and the constant awareness that there’s an even bigger world to be explored if the audience wants to come along.

Iron Man spawned two direct sequels, and star Robert Downey Jr. went on to play Tony Stark in a total of 10 films, with each entry not only upping the stakes on screen, but also at the box office, with other studios now measuring their own blockbuster success against that of Marvel Studios. The story of the MCU that began with Iron Man has now become so sprawling that it can only be understood in “phases,” with each set of movies all building up to payoffs in ever-larger scale. It’s a completely new way of looking at serialized storytelling on the big screen, and a “shared universe” code that Disney and Marvel’s competitors have yet to crack. Iron Man may be gone, but his legacy is still going strong.

The Dark Knight DOESN’T get a best picture nomination (2009)

Rarely is a thing that did not happen worth recording in the annals of history, geeky or otherwise. And yet, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences omitted Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight from its short list of Best Picture nominees in 2009, the awards season world changed forever. Viewed in retrospect by the industry as the culmination of a decade-long shift away from populist entertainment (read: big earners at the box office), The Dark Knight snub was all the more remarkable since the brooding superhero epic had managed to be recognized by most of the industry guilds, whose members also spill over into the Academy.

But come nomination time, The Dark Knight’s presumed spot was taken by The Reader, a relatively poorly reviewed Holocaust drama produced by Harvey Weinstein. The fallout from the snubbing was immense. In the following year, the Academy returned to nominating 10 pictures for the top award for the first time since 1944. The Dark Knight’s cold reception arguably paved the way for movies such as District 9, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Out, Black Panther, and Joker finding room on the Oscar stage.

Minecraft arrives (2009)

Minecraft started as a technical exercise/passion project that likely would have been lost to history if it wasn’t for its determined developer and a dedicated group of fans. In 2014, it became the best-selling PC game of all time. In 2019, it became the best-selling game ever. Sales aside, Minecraft changed how games are promoted, talked about, and played. Many people heard about it via YouTube, and many learned how to play it from one of the legion of digital influencers who can trace their careers back to Minecraft. Simply put, it’s the most socially impactful game of the last 15 years, and its current popularity suggests it isn’t going anywhere.

Prestige TV gives way to franchise TV (2010)

October 31, 2010 is a date that holds special importance: it’s when AMC first premiered The Walking Dead. At first glance, the Frank Darabont-run series seemed like an attempt to bring the sensibility of “prestige TV” such as Mad Men and The Sopranos to the zombie drama format. Eleven seasons and several spin-offs later, however, it’s clear that what AMC wanted with the Robert Kirkman comic adaptation was its own Marvel-esque franchise. Though prestige-quality TV shows still live on, the prestige era has slowly given way to the franchise era. Whether it’s the Arrowverse, Star Trek, or even Marvel itself on Disney+, franchises are the way forward for TV.

Game of Thrones rocks the world (2011)

“Winter is coming.” Just over a decade ago, these innocuous words became charged with dark foreboding—and unadulterated excitement. That’s because Game of Thrones came to HBO and changed television forever. The first long-form series with spectacle that could compete with cinemas, and arguably the last of the “watercooler shows” where everyone seemed to treat it as appointment viewing, Thrones defined the TV landscape for nearly a decade. Despite the toxicity of the “discourse” after its final season, for most of its run, this was an elegantly crafted ensemble that drew on George R.R. Martin’s even richer novels. The performances, the twists, the deaths, the one-liners, and even those damn dragons remain with us still, long after our watch has ended.

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Dark Souls ushers in a new era of game design (2011)

At the time of release, Dark Souls was best known as that “really hard game” that many assumed would only appeal to a relatively small audience. But over the next decade, it popularized a new genre and changed how games are discussed and designed. Dark Souls’ minimalist storytelling, bold difficulty, and methodical combat inspired gamers to change their expectations and made developers alter their tactics. Those who were impacted by Souls’ innovations sought out anything that reminded them of it; those who despise the game continue to debate its impact on the industry. Love it or hate it, anyone who hopes to understand this era of game design must first understand what made developer FromSoftware’s no-compromises triumph such an unlikely innovator.

Streaming services dominate the TV landscape (2012)

According to FX’s research staff, the year 2012 saw 288 original scripted programs air on television. By 2018, that number grew to 487. That, my friends, is television in the streaming era. No other technological innovation over the past 15 years has affected mass media more than streaming. Starting in 2013 with Netflix’s release of its first original series House of Cards (or 2012 with Lilyhammer if we want to get super technical), the ability to reliably stream original, high-quality TV shows as part of a subscription package completely revolutionized pop culture.

Netflix led the charge in streaming originals, first with House of Cards, then with other bingeable titles like Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, The Witcher, and more. The streaming giant’s all-at-once release preference upended the traditional weekly viewing model. And its success in doing so also served as a clarion call for other major media conglomerates to get in on the action. From Amazon to Disney to Warner Bros. to Apple to even something called a “Quibi,” every major Hollywood player needed their own streaming service.

This glut of streaming services has led to a truly overwhelming entertainment landscape but it’s also opened up opportunities for titles previously thought unadaptable. Beloved genre classics The Wheel of Time and Foundation each received their own streaming series in 2021. None other than The Lord of The Rings is next on the docket, set to spend half a billion of Amazon’s dollars to premiere in September.

The rise of “elevated horror” (2010s)

Let us be clear: intelligent horror has been around forever. But the last 15 years have seen, at best, an acknowledgment for a kind of credible horror that people who would otherwise balk at the genre can acclaim. “Elevated horror” has become a catch-all term for the kind of chiller that eschews gore for big themes—see The Witch, The Babadook, Raw, Hereditary, and Saint Maud. The term is divisive—at worst it’s a way for people to look down their noses at mainstream horror—but it has opened dialogue about why the genre is so frequently overlooked at awards season. It has started to break through, too: Jordan Peele won an Oscar for his screenplay for Get Out, and last year, Julia Ducournau’s Raw follow-up, Titane, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. It’s a great time to be a horror hound.

Disney buys Marvel, then Lucasfilm, then Fox (2012)

In 2012, George Lucas sold his movie studio to Disney for $4 billion. Star Wars now belonged to the company that had just months before changed how we thought about superhero movies and cinematic universes with Marvel’s The Avengers. We knew Star Wars would never be the same again, and the franchise’s expansion didn’t stop at a sequel trilogy of movies—the new era of Star Wars embraced standalone films and live-action TV series for the first time. Disney has grown quite a bit since 2012, too. The success of Marvel and Star Wars has led to other landmark deals, like Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its partnership with Sony to bring Spider-Man to the MCU. These big moves will continue to change Hollywood for years to come.

The Pokémon Go phenomenon (2016)

The Pokémon Go phenomenon of 2016 occasionally feels like a fever dream. Was there really a time when we were all outside hunting AR renditions of Pokémon with friends and strangers? Was there any value to that “Summer of Pokémon Go” beyond whatever memories remain of what now seems like a much simpler time? While there are times when it might feel like Pokémon Go was just a fad, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only is the mobile app still doing well, it ushered in an era of mobile AR games that all hoped to recapture that magic. Many have failed, but the success of Pokémon Go has been enough to inspire developers to seriously pursue AR and VR concepts that were once considered a sci-fi dream. If nothing else, those memories of Pokémon Go will always serve as a reminder of the power of gaming.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds makes battle royale games a phenomenon (2017)

It might be hard to remember now but there was a time when Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite weren’t the biggest battle royale games in the world. The roots of the genre stretch further back to survival titles such as DayZ and H1Z1, but it’s really 2017’s PUBG that perfected the winning formula of throwing players onto a massive map and forcing them to eliminate each other until there’s one last survivor standing. PUBG’s winning combination of strategy and adrenaline quickly became popular among online gamers. Four months after its release, PUBG had already logged over 10 million matches played. It may not be the most popular battle royale game anymore, but it’s possible many of gaming’s other big innovations in the 2010s wouldn’t exist without it (or Fortnite, its early big competitor). It’s adoption of cross-platform play, including on mobile devices, was a major turning point for online gaming.

The First female Doctor (2017)

Fifteen years. Three Doctors. (Three and a half if we count John Hurt. Three and two halves if we count Jo Martin. Potentially several more if… let’s stop counting for sanity’s sake.) In January 2009, during a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential, David Tennant’s successor was revealed to be relative unknown Matt Smith. He was too young! His face was too confusing! Doctor Who was ruined! Four years later, in August 2013, during a knuckle-bitingly awkward anniversary show featuring One Direction broadcasting live from a pocket universe, the next Doctor was revealed to be Peter Capaldi. He was too old! His face scared children! Doctor Who was definitely ruined! Four years after that, just after the July 2017 Wimbledon Men’s Finals on BBC One, Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the Thirteenth Doctor. She was too girl! Her face was all smooth! Doctor Who was one hundred percent, super-duper, no take backs, double triple ruined. That’s not forgetting the three different showrunners in those 15 years, each of whom ruined Doctor Who in their own special way (too populist/not populist enough/Chris Chibnall). Next up? The return of Russell T. Davies, the 60th anniversary, and Ncuti Gatwa as the brand new Doctor. Bring it on.

Korean culture booms (2020)

For some, the global dominance of Netflix’s Squid Game in 2021 was a huge surprise. For fans of K-culture, it was just the latest height of hallyu (a term literally meaning “Korean wave” in Chinese), part of a successful Korean economic strategy to become a global exporter of popular culture that began in the late 1990s following the Asian financial crisis and continues to this day. In 2012, PSY conquered the music world with the gloriously catchy dance track “Gangnam Style,” becoming the first Korean artist to break through into the American market; the music video would go on to become the first to hit one billion views on YouTube. In 2017, BTS won Top Social Artist at the Billboard Music Awards, becoming the first K-pop group to top the U.S. charts a year later. In 2020, Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar. And, in 2021, Squid Game was the most-Googled show of the year. As we head into the next 15 years of Den of Geek, look for K-culture to become an increasingly large part of the global pop culture conversation.

Black Panther DOES get a Best Picture nomination (2019)

Black Panther continued breaking down barriers a year after its release, when it cracked the Academy’s Best Picture ceiling for superhero movies in 2019. While others had chipped away at industry cynicism, such as Heath Ledger winning a posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight and James Mangold and Scott Frank’s nomination for their Logan script, Black Panther was the first superhero film to get a nod for the top prize. Then again, nothing was ever conventional about Black Panther, a movie that even Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter tried to block because his team didn’t think all-Black casts could carry a successful blockbuster. More than $1 billion at the box office and three Oscar wins later, all we can say is “Wakanda Forever.”

The rise and rise of comic books (ongoing)

There are two comics stories over the last 15 years that have made the medium what it is today. The first is the superhero story—cape comics, scrambling for relevance

in the face of a multimedia juggernaut that first co-opted then eclipsed their cultural relevance. The audience for an Avengers comic is a rounding error next to the audience of a movie, forcing comics into increasingly shorter reboot/relaunch cycles to try to maintain relevance in their media conglomerates. While this was going on, though, the comics medium has actually become healthier than ever. There has been an explosion in webcomics in recent years, thanks in large part to the growth of social media. Webcomics invaded cape comics, and after 15 years of chasing the movies, comics finally might have figured out their identity.

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Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Teases Classic Legends Jedi Are Still Canon

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This Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi article contains spoilers.

Like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett before it, Obi-Wan Kenobi is full of both Prequel and Original Trilogy easter eggs. But surprisingly, “Part III” also has several callbacks to the old Legends continuity that was erased from canon after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. Most intriguingly, the episode confirms that a few Jedi Knights from the old timeline have been brought back to canon, adding them back into the history of the galaxy far, far away in a very interesting way that could hint at their future involvement in this Disney+ series or future Star Wars stories.

It’s possible you missed these references during the action-packed episode that finally sees Obi-Wan come face to face with the monstrosity Anakin Skywalker has become 10 years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. Before the fight where Darth Vader absolutely demolishes his old master, we get scenes of Obi-Wan and Leia hiding out in safe house on the mining planet Mapuzo with Tala Durith (Indira Varma), the Imperial officer who is secretly a rebel double agent helping smuggle the Force-sensitive around the galaxy and away from Inquisitors. It’s during the sequence, as Obi-Wan studies the walls of the safe house, that the Jedi Master discovers that there are still several other Jedi working against the Empire from the underground.

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Obi-Wan mentions one particular Jedi by name: it’s Quinlan Vos, a fellow Clone Wars general who now works to hide Force-sensitive children from the Empire before they can be executed or recruited as one of Vader’s Jedi hunters. We watch as Obi-Wan reads a hopeful message scribbled by Quinlan on the wall. To anyone who can’t read Aurebesh (the alphabet of the Star Wars universe) that would likely be the extent of this moment of fan service, but there are actually a few other names written down that might turn the heads of fans of the Legends continuity…

Valin Halycon, Roganda Ismaren, and Djinn Altis. Those are names we’ve not heard in a long time. But Star Wars fans who grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s will likely recognize the former as the father of fan-favorite New Jedi Order character Corran Horn and the latter two as relatively deep cuts from the 1995 Expanded Universe novel Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly. In the Legends timeline, all three characters were Jedi who survived Order 66 and the Jedi Purge, and in Obi-Wan Kenobi, that also seems to be the case.

That said, it’s impossible to say just how much of their Expanded Universe backstory has actually been preserved for the new canon. Are these even meant to be the same characters we first met in Legends or just names graffitied on a wall for the sole purpose of fan service?

If Star Wars is planning to bring back any of these characters in a more substantial way in the future, there’s certainly precedent. The Rebels animated series brought notorious EU villain Grand Admiral Thrawn back to canon in 2016. Yes, he returned in a different time period than in his original debut in post-Return of the Jedi novel Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, but most of the other characteristics that made this character memorable in 1991 were all still there in the new canon. The Mandalorian and the upcoming Ahsoka show have also teased that they’ll eventually do some kind of remixed version of Heir to the Empire Thrawn, but with story elements from Rebels, such as his connection to lost Jedi Ezra Bridger.

So it’s certainly possible re-introducing a name like “Valin Halcyon” to Disney canon could be a way to incorporate the more popular Corran Horn into the post-Return of the Jedi era currently being explored on Disney+. In fact, we even watched a mother trying to smuggle a little Force-sensitive boy named Corran off Daiyu in the second episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is that just another coincidence? Legends Corran would be about nine in the year in which Obi-Wan Kenobi is set, so it does kind of line up correctly…

For now, this is all pure speculation, and you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up, anyway. Valin, Roganda, and Djinn could just be meant as fun little Legends references that we are thinking way too hard about. But if they aren’t, please bring back Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors too, Disney!

Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+.

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