Here’s a roundup of the work we’re most proud of from this year.
The year 2025 was jam-packed with must-see genre entertainment. io9 covered an extensive range of pop culture across film and television, including major releases from Marvel Studios, DC Studios’ big Superman arrival, Netflix heavy hitters like Stranger Things, and awesome anime.
Beyond the screen, io9 kept you updated on the latest in theme parks and immersive experiences, as well as the latest in collectibles, toys, books, games, and comics.
To close out 2025, we’ve compiled our staff picks, highlighting our most treasured stories and sharp coverage that defined the world of genre entertainment this year.Film
By Cheryl Eddy
Most dog owners can recall at least one instance where their pup has reacted to a seemingly invisible presence. Are they picking up a sound pitched higher than our hearing? Sniffing out the memory of a dropped piece of food? Or perhaps… using their canine super-senses to detect something supernatural?
Good Boy, the feature debut of director and co-writer Ben Leonberg, takes that idea and runs with it, following Indy (played by Leonberg’s own dog) and his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), as they move into the former home of Todd’s late grandfather. It’s a gloomy, dark, isolated place, and—as Indy soon realizes—it appears to be teeming with unquiet spirits. [Read more]
By Germain Lussier
When Superman started kissing the football on a stick, it all clicked together. The day was June 24, 2024, and io9 was in Cleveland to watch the filming of James Gunn’s Superman. At the end of a giant battle over the streets of Metropolis, the Man of Steel knelt down to kiss and profess his love to an inanimate object that special effects would later transform into his dog, Krypto. That little dash of heartfelt weirdness, in the middle of a massive action scene, did a near-perfect job of showing what the film’s cast and crew had been trying to articulate all day: this is not just a unique, new Superman, it’s James Gunn’s Superman. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
Sinners is the type of movie where nearly every scene could be considered a standout moment on a technical, writing, or performance level. For me, there’s two moments—one utterly sincere and raunchy, the other delightfully meta—that speak to one of the film’s core themes.
In the first, burgeoning blues guitarist Sammie (Miles Caton) is getting intimate with singer Pealine (Jayme Lawson) and proceeds to get on his knees. He’s about to employ the advice his older cousin Stack (Michael B. Jordan) gave to him about pleasuring a woman earlier in the film, and just as Pearline’s about to politely decline, Sammie looks up at her and says: “You’re beautiful, and I want to taste it.” He’s clearly taken with her, and says this with the earnestness of someone who believes in what he’s saying. [Read more]
By Germain Lussier
“I have to ride a lightcycle.” That was my first thought last year when the invite arrived to visit the set of Disney’s new sequel, Tron: Ares. It seemed like a logical request. When you think of Tron, you think of lightcycles. They’re a huge part of both 2010’s Tron: Legacy and 1982’s Tron. And yet, I had to wonder, were there even lightcycles in this movie? What exactly WAS this movie? Coming out 15 years after the last one, with basically a whole new cast, it seemed any concept of what the film could or would be was entirely up in the air. I had questions. I wanted answers. And, perhaps, a ride on that lightcycle. [Read more]
By James Whitbrook
The latest entry in the Gundam franchise, GQuuuuuuX, is built around one of the most fascinating premises a mainline Gundam show has had in years. To get there, we’re asked to cast our minds back over 45 years to the original 1979 anime—and in doing so, we’re also asked to consider a pretty hilarious idea.
The vast majority of Gundam GQuuuuuuX—as covered in its prequel/compilation movie GQuuuuuuX Beginning, out in American theaters today for a limited run—is predicated around the fact that the show is in fact set in an alternate version of Gundam‘s “Universal Century” timeline. The primary timeline of the original Gundam and its direct successor series, among others in the franchise, GQuuuuuuX‘s version of events asks us to consider another outcome. What if the antagonistic forces of the original series, the secessionist space colony Zeon, actually managed to win the war against Earth? [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
Every year, it seems that Halloween creeps in earlier than before, and with it, its Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington.
Take the Haunted Mansion Holiday at Disneyland; it’s a haunted house with ghosts that, as soon as Halloweentime arrives at the Disneyland resort at the end of summer, becomes inhabited by Jack and the people of Halloweentown. However, they’re not there for Halloween; they’re there to make Christmas. There’s the rub, because the once cult and now very mainstream holiday staple from the mind of Tim Burton and director Henry Selick is about one holiday taking over another. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
He’s best known for his acclaimed genre TV shows, but Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) is making his feature film directorial debut with Dust Bunny, a coming-of-age storybook fantasy with his signature twist.
The film reunites the Hannibal series creator with star Mads Mikkelsen. He plays a hitman hired by a young girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who wants his help to hunt the mysterious and monstrous Dust Bunny tormenting her apartment.
In a recent conversation with io9, Fuller talked about how the feature got the big screen treatment after previously being pitched as an episode of the Steven Spielberg-produced Amazing Stories series for Apple TV, and what it was like working on it with genre great Sigourney Weaver. The cult-fave creative mind also opened up about how he feels in regards to some of the projects he’s been attached to that have fallen through—as well as his excitement for a project yet to be announced. And yes, we even got a few details about his potential Silence of the Lambs limited series. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
It always sucks when something that’s pretty good and was clearly well made just doesn’t hit the way it seems like it should’ve. This is particularly true when it comes to movies; think of a film you saw that was surprisingly enjoyable and how it didn’t really get a fair shake for whatever reason.
Plenty of examples come to mind for me, but one of the first is Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. Originally released on February 7, 2020, under its initial (and funnier) title, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), the film’s a bit of a tangled knot. You may remember it first seemed like a solo vehicle for Margot Robbie’s Harley post-Suicide Squad 2016, then somewhere along the line, it also may have become something for the popular, usually women-starring B-list superhero team, and then ended up being… kind of both? [Read more]Television
By Isaiah Colbert
Castlevania: Nocturne returns with its second season on Netflix, sparking online discussions about video game references, animation enthusiasts sharing their favorite action clips, and Alucard babygirl posts in its wake. However, a new season also brings the resurgence of pearl-clutching and Gamergate-adjacent rhetoric concerning Black representation, which should be celebrated in the Powerhouse Animation series instead.
To address and preempt criticisms from those who deride the inclusion of Black characters in the video game series as “woke,” we talked to Black Castlevania: Nocturne writers Testament and Zodwa Nyoni, and executive producer Clive Bradley, about how they enriched Konami’s fantastical source material setting with real-world events and the Black experience. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
Season two of Fionna and Cake has arrived on HBO Max, taking Adventure Time fans into a new world—and it’s one that’s finally established as its own universe, thanks to Prismo breaking the rules and making the Ice King’s fan fiction real.
The first season’s ending metatextually had Fionna and friends fight to make their world canon, and there’s now more to explore in its earned existence and how it might cross over into Adventure Time‘s Land of Ooo.
But don’t get the premise twisted, Fionna and Cake isn’t just fan service to sneak back into Adventure Time territory completely. In a conversation io9 had with producer Adam Muto, we discussed how the creative teams aim to make their beloved character variants stand on their own and, yes, sometimes stand with the legacy faces to take on new interdimensional threats. [Read more]
By Germain Lussier
When I first watched Cobra Kai, I stopped it five minutes in. This is a true story. I started the first episode and was so absolutely blown away by what I was seeing, I almost didn’t believe it was real. Since I was about five years old, I’d been a massive fan of The Karate Kid franchise, and here I was in my 30s watching the same actors from those movies tell this dynamic, awesome, follow-up story. There was no way this show was this good. It was impossible. [Read more]
By James Whitbrook
Tony Gilroy is a man with a vision. That vision guided him from the extensive reshoots of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story all the way to a Disney+ series about one of that film’s heroes, Cassian Andor—and finding in it a critical acclaim unlike anything the galaxy far, far away had seen in a generation.
He’s also a very frank man who knows when that vision can potentially turn on a dime—as it did one day while filming the series in Scotland, when the writer, director, and showrunner realized that his grand plan for Andor wasn’t going to work. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
During io9’s interview with showrunner Tony Gilroy and star Genevieve O’Reilly, who plays Mon Mothma, the duo broke down the last moments of the third episode of this week’s drop. Gilroy also discussed how framing these pivotal years as three-episode mini-movies came about. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
What it takes to sustain a rebellion is brought into question in this week’s episode arc of Andor, which covers what happens two years before the main events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the original Star Wars saga. Thematically it’s time for the rebels to figure out if they want to just fight or actually win, as tensions come to a head on Ghorman in what’s probably the most gut-wrenching watch of the series, and perhaps even Star Wars as a whole. [Read more]
By James Whitbrook
“Who are you?” is the question that haunts Syril Karn for his entire life. From the moment we met him, prim and proper security uniform modified to be just so, a sense of purpose in a vast and uncaring universe has been at the core of understanding what makes Syril tick. The journey that took him across the galaxy reached a climactic moment in Andor‘s penultimate arc this week, and raised that haunting question once more. But the answer is more complicated than mere villain in Andor‘s narrative, doubting or otherwise. Because even as the hero of his own story, the man we know Syril to be, until the very end, is shaped less by himself and more by the systems and structures that made a tool of him. [Read more]
By James Whitbrook
There’s a scene in the ninth episode of Andor‘s second season where Vel Sartha, inspecting a table full of requisitioned weaponry at the Rebellion’s Yavin base, picks up a blaster and asks whose it is. Except, that’s not what she asks, raising the pistol into the air in front of a crowd of new recruits. What she actually says is “Who belongs to this?”
I was thinking a lot about that line an episode later, when, as she infiltrates a hospital in a desperate attempt to end the life of the man who saved hers as a child, Kleya Marki, one of Andor‘s standout characters, slips a tiny blaster with one hell of a kick out of her purloined nurse’s scrubs and calmly executes an ISB tactical officer. And then does it again. And again. It’s the climactic, tense moment of an episode that builds up to this singular moment of emotional and dramatic release as she tearfully turns off Luthen’s life support. In many ways, Kleya’s whole life, one torn apart by the Empire, and rebuilt out of her hatred of it, is leading to this moment, and this moment of infiltration and execution is just the final flourish. [Read more]
By Isaiah Colbert
Anime and, by proxy, manga are typically viewed through a lens where violence begets violence, and the only hero is one with attention-grabbing hairdos, the ability to power up, and the capacity to punch things even more brilliantly. Very rarely is the traditional hero’s journey, whether in shonen or its older brother genre, seinen, predicated on having its hero question the nature of violence as a catch-all solution, rather than a spoke that keeps the cycle spinning. Then again, not every manga series challenges that notion so brilliantly as Vinland Saga. [Read more]
By Isaiah Colbert
Over the years, critics and everyday people have come to identify media as “Lynchian,” in reverence for how video games, movies, and TV shows evoke the dream-like quality of the late auteur David Lynch. Although most media described as Lynchian takes its inspiration from seminal works like Twin Peaks through referential nods, no show completely embodies the ephemeral vibe of Lynch’s opaque-yet-piercing style of storytelling quite like the similarly influential shojo anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena. [Read more]
By James Whitbrook
In just under a week, the next Star Trek project arrives in the form of Section 31, a streaming movie starring Michelle Yeoh diving into the titular black ops organization—one that, at least in all the footage we’ve seen so far, puts an emphasis on the glitz and glam of secret agent work. There’s action, there’s dazzling costumes, there’s even, perhaps most surprisingly in the context of it all, direct Federation oversight, like a co-worker with a stick up their ass who’s here to stop you from having fun. [Read more]
By Cheryl Eddy
Losing a loved one brings pain no matter the circumstances. Not knowing what happened to them only adds more agony. That grief and confusion is what propels The Leftovers, but on a global scale—leading to three fascinating, thought-provoking, audacious, cigarette-filled, and often miraculous seasons of TV.
At the start of the first episode, it happens: two percent of the world’s population vanishes into thin air. The amount of missing isn’t huge, but it’s significant. The people who lost someone dear are personally wounded, but nobody escapes being touched in some way by the event, which leaves humanity with an infuriating array of mystical questions. Why did those who left get “chosen”—and why were those who didn’t go get left behind? Was God or some other cosmic being involved? Where did they go? Will they ever come back? And will it happen again? [Read more]
By Cheryl Eddy
Foundation season three has come to an end, but it still feels like there’s so much story left to tell. Thank goodness Apple TV+ confirmed just yesterday that season four is on the way! But before we ponder what’s next, we must discuss the season finale.
“The Darkness” was… well, a lot sure did happen, didn’t it? [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
The conclusion to Netflix and the Duffer Brothers’ pop culture phenomenon Stranger Things begins with an epic first volume that’s now streaming for your binging pleasure.
Action and horror propel the return to Hawkins in volume one as our heroes race to find Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), hoping to vanquish him once and for all. In the time since the Upside Down ripped open in season four, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has been training with Hopper (David Harbour) to strengthen her powers. Seeing Eleven’s growth into a strong as hell young woman from her early days throwing bullies off her friends is such a joy. Clearly, that’s thanks to Eggo waffles. [Read more]
By Isaiah Colbert
Anime of the late ’80s has an undeniable impact that extends beyond the medium into movies, TV shows, and video games. Many of the homages are to 1988’s Akira, which existed before Western culture had a grasp of what anime really was or could be. The “Akira slide”—an iconic shot of Kaneda sliding sideways on his bike in the 1988 movie adaptation of Akira—has become an icon of anime culture, referenced over and over in numerous cartoons and films, western and Japanese, ever since, including Jordan Peele’s Nope, Tron: Ares, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, amid an ocean of other Akira nods.
While Akira references are rife in new media like Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic, letting fans know that the creators are aware of its rule of cool, it’s hard not to feel a bit like the buck stopped at aping aesthetics for easy internet referential brownie points over carrying over its core narrative themes. Although most pop culture nods (Scavengers Reign aside) borrow Akira‘s surface style without echoing its thematic depth, every homage to fellow 1988 anime film Gunbuster‘s iconic arm-cross pose endures as a timeless gesture of steeled resolve wrapped in a badass stance. [Read more]Games, Immersive Entertainment, and Theme Parks
By Sabina Graves
Take a look inside the Five Nights at Freddy’s house at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. It looks like a real Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location right out of the mind of game creator Scott Cawthon and Emma Tammi’s cinematic adaptation.
io9 was invited to a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of the Hollywood attraction based on the video game and Blumhouse film franchise, opening at HHN ahead of December’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Creative director John Murdy took us through to highlight the incredible work done between Horror Nights, Cawthon, and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. [Read more]
By Germain Lussier
2001: A Space Odyssey. Star Wars. Star Trek. Tron. Blade Runner. Akira. The Fifth Element. Interstellar. Superman. Flash Gordon. The Matrix. That sounds like a list of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, but actually, it’s a list of the films mentioned during a discussion about the inspirations behind the Backstreet Boys’ popular new residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This past July, one of the biggest boy bands of all time celebrated 20 years of their iconic album, Millennium, at the technologically advanced venue, with two months of sold-out shows that generated a ton of buzz and interest. As a result, two more months of shows were recently added, and io9 spoke to Baz Halpin, CEO and founder of Silent House, about it. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
Have you watched KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix or played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
Chances are the answer is “yes,” and if not, you’ve certainly heard of them: both were released earlier this year to fairly glowing reviews (if not outright critical acclaim) and performed very well commercially. The latter, a turn-based RPG from newcomer Sandfall Interactive, will likely pick up some awards at year’s end, while Netflix is planning to go all in on KPop. Along with talks of sequels and an ever-growing wave of merchandise, the streamer submitted the mid-movie song “Golden” for Academy Award consideration. Both may also wind up jumping to live-action; Expedition had a movie announced months before the game’s release, while Netflix is reportedly mulling over a remake with human actors. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
When you visit Epic Universe’s Dark Universe, you get hints of a story that’s so mysterious you’ll want to keep coming back to learn more. In Darkmoor Village, where monsters and humans co-exist—barely—the relationship between the villagers, the mad scientist in her castle with her monsters, and the vampires below is a very fragile menagerie of the macabre.
When io9 visited Darkmoor during Epic Universe’s opening week, we couldn’t help but wonder if the dense canon introduced would offer some insight into Universal’s abandoned Dark Universe film franchise. It turns out that some elements in the attractions, details in the land offerings, and immersive interactions echo what was once supposed to herald an Avengers-like assembly of the Universal Monsters on the big screen. [Read more]
By Isaiah Colbert
When Hideo Kojima—the man fashioned into a video game auteur out of his work on Metal Gear Solid—launched his debut title under the newly formed Kojima Productions in 2019, Death Stranding arrived shrouded in mystery and hype. Every Death Stranding trailer was full of cryptic imagery and spectral apparitions, and its stacked cast featuring Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, and Mads Mikkelsen set expectations sky-high. It was also the first title to come from the creator following a messy and public exodus from Konami. Would Kojima once again rewrite the rules of game design?
Upon release, Death Stranding didn’t disappoint so much as it defied prediction. At its core, it was an immersive, slow-burning post-apocalyptic courier simulator. Players took control of Sam Porter Bridges, a pulp comics-esque naming convention of a protagonist suffering from aphenphosmphobia, an extreme fear of being touched, tasked with completing a herculean cross country trek across haunted landscapes by plagued eldritch horrors with the help of a baby in a container on his chest—avoiding environmental hazards and balancing parcels on every available piece of real estate on his body to “reconnect America.” Reductively, Death Stranding is regarded in gaming circles as a “triple-A” indie game, with a weird (but not overly confusingly dense) world-building serving as the connective tissue propelling every careful footstep on Sam’s odyssey. What Death Stranding lacks in conventional thrills, it made up for with sheer conceptual weight. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
As of this week, Walt Disney returns to his original Magic Kingdom, with a little help from the magic-makers at Imagineering.
Through the audio-animatronics technology Walt Disney introduced when he opened Disneyland 70 years ago, the evolution of the show robots has gone from static positioning with some movements, as first seen on the singing birds in the Enchanted Tiki Room, to a roaming animatronic of Uncle Walt. Stationed in the Main Street Opera House, the (m)animatronic is the crown jewel of the Walt Disney – A Magical Life show, where he, along with the help of Disney CEO Bob Iger as the program’s narrator, gets to sit and stand front and center to share his story in his words. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
There was a moment early on in Ghost of Yotei where I knew it’d won me over. As Atsu, I wasn’t hunting down the Yotei Six who killed my family and left me for dead back in my youth; I was taking on a simple bounty who’d managed to get the better of me. I was all set to watch him plunge his katana in my back and restart the swordfight. Instead, a wolf jumped in out of nowhere, biting him and granting me full health so I could get back up and resume the fight and get my bounty. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
Seasonal and promotional ride overlays are now ways to draw in more people to revisit beloved attractions at Disney’s parks or give passholders a reason to come back over and over. Over time some have had more longevity than others, as the most popular overlay continues to be Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion Holiday, which has Jack Skellington and friends take over the West Coast haunt with his spooky Christmas shenanigans. Meanwhile, the haunted version of Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy seems to have exorcised its spirit—it just might have been a tad too scary, while Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain stays beating out the rest. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
The Mass Effect series has always held a special, and often divisive spot in fans’ hearts. BioWare’s sci-fi RPG saga blew up with its first game back in 2007, and its sequel took the franchise to bigger, more mainstream heights. In the years since that game’s release, it’s cast a long shadow—not just over its own franchise and creator, but the larger RPG space, particularly those from western developers. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
With Back to the Future: Destination Hill Valley, Universal delivers on the promise of bringing you into the movies in a new, impactful way. The immersive experience is a triumph and you won’t want to leave.
You get on the studio tour and it becomes a time traveling tram that drops you into the moment that Marty McFly arrives and through the events of Back to the Future on the courthouse square where the Robert Zemeckis film was shot. Through roaming actors portraying George, Lorraine, Biff, and Doc, we get to see iconic moments recreated and be a part of them. I got to chat with my childhood crush George McFly and turned into a total shy mess as he asked if I was going to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. The storytelling propels forward as you are able to encourage him to ask Lorraine to go with him and help with his writing before we see the hilarious hijinks of Lorraine hitting on Marty, her future son who she wants to go to the dance with. Biff shows up and causes mayhem while fans spectate and quote along. [Read more]
By Justin Carter
For as many long-running franchises were born during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era—your Assassin’s Creeds and Borderlands, to name a few—some old series tried making a return. Among those was Deus Ex, a series of cyberpunk role-playing games which just turned 20 years old and had an unfortunately short-lived return with a duology that under better circumstances, would’ve been a trilogy. [Read more]Books, Art, and Toys
By Germain Lussier
Indiana Jones is always on the hunt for rare antiquities. He’s found the Golden Idol, Ark of the Covenant, Holy Grail, and so much more. All of which makes prop replicas of those things rather obvious. But, for the Indiana Jones fan who wants to be like their favorite adventuring archaeologist and get something more rare and specific, how about a clothes hanger? [Read more]
By Cheryl Eddy
That little getaway in the woods sure would have been much less eventful if Ash Williams and his pals hadn’t decided to read passages out of that creepy old book someone left behind. But we’re so glad they did—thereby awakening the forces of darkness, sparking the events of The Evil Dead and its sequels, launching Bruce Campbell into the goofy action hero pantheon, and giving horror fans endless delights over the past 40-plus years. And now, you can own the actual prop that started it all! [Read more]
By Germain Lussier
Play-Doh is not generally considered a pathway to a career in art, but it was exactly that for Brad Hill. Years ago, the aspiring artist was gifted the popular children’s toy and, as a thank you, molded some of it into a head. “I was like, ‘Oh wait. That’s kind of fun,’” Hill said. “Every day, I’d just wake up and sculpt a head out of Play-Doh. And I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t sustainable.’” He was wrong. Fifteen years later, Hill’s work has gone all over the internet, and this week he’s having a retrospective art show featuring not just brand new work, but pieces from throughout his still blossoming career. [Read more]
By Isaiah Colbert
When people read manga, they often focus on the Instagram caption-worthy one-liners and larger-than-life illustrations that fill their pages. What usually goes unnoticed in picking up a manga is the work that goes into its lettering and graphic design, done by the folks who pour their craftsmanship into typesetting popular Japanese manga for Western audiences.
We spoke with professional letterers Brandon Bovia (The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All, Dragon Ball Super, Kaiju No. 8), Evan Hayden (Battle Angel Alita, Land of Lustrous, Akira), Sara Linsley (Kamudo), Aidan Clarke (Otaku Elf, Neo Faust, Les Miserable), Barri Shrager (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?), Kyla Aiko (Dandadan, Gokurakugai, RuriDragon), and Finn K. (Shinobi Undercover, Dear Anemone) about the challenges of typesetting the best manga in the world. [Read more]
By Sabina Graves
He’s a meme one, Mr. Grinch, or at least that’s the current pop culture identity of the iconic Dr. Seuss creation.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the beloved illustrated Seuss book that many of us first experienced as a story read to us as children, initially became a cultural phenomenon thanks to its timeless themes about how Christmas can be found not only in gifts but also in the hearts of all—even the grumpiest of green meanies. [Read more]
