Aquaman is making a splash in cinemas this week, finally giving star Jason Momoa the chance to bask in the glory of his own solo adventure – five years after he was originally cast in the role.

After a fleeting glimpse in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and a more fleshed-out turn in last year’s Justice League, Momoa’s sea-bound superhero is getting his cinematic due. And according to director James Wan, it’s about flippin’ time.

In fact, one of the most notable elements of Wan’s blockbuster is just how little it has to do with DC’s Extended Universe, eschewing franchise-building Easter eggs to plough its own furrow. “It’s a very self-contained film,” the director told Den of Geek when we met him just before the film’s London premiere. “That’s the thing. It’s not necessarily part of a ‘cinematic universe’.”

“We’ve seen him in other films, but I really wanted to tell a standalone story. People ask me why. And I’m like: ‘Listen, you guys have so many movies to do with Superman and Batman and all that already. Let’s give this guy his time in the limelight. This is his opportunity. He’s never had the chance before. Let’s just let it be his film, and get that right. And maybe then we can have fun mixing him up with the other characters.”

Wan described making a successful standalone story for as a “big goal” of his when he first came on board the project. “It’s ultimately about the journey that he goes on,” he said. “I didn’t want to jam the other characters in just for the sake of jamming characters in there.”

Quite how Warner Bros and DC decide to move forward with Aquaman will largely depend on how Wan’s movie – the first high-profile solo outing for the character on the big screen – fares at the box office, but the fact that there was no pressure on the director to tie his story into the wider DCEU suggests that, for now at least, the studio is focused on giving its heroes a chance to stand on their own feet.

For more from James Wan, check back tomorrow for our full interview, and in the meantime, you can read our Aquaman review.

Aquaman is out in cinemas now

Warning: contains major spoilers for Luther series one-four.

It’s been a darned long wait — more than three years — but the BBC’s cult series Luther finally returns to our screens on New Year’s Day. Understandably, our memories of Luther’s trials and tribulations may have faded somewhat in the meantime, so here’s a recap of events so far, with a particular emphasis on series four.

What’s happened so far?

Idris Elba plays our eponymous hero, Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. A mercurial copper, Luther is obsessive, temperamental and an unusually talented and dedicated officer known for bending the rules almost to breaking point. He infuriates his superiors (such as series one irritant, superintendent Martin Schenk) with his questionable methods, but in true ‘rebellious cop’ tropes, he gets the job done. Luther investigates the worst of the worst crimes—Satanists with a penchant for kidnapping, paedophile child abductors— all that cheery stuff you want reminding of this holiday season. 

Following a particularly traumatic case that sees Luther spend a spell in a psych unit, he picks his trademark grey overcoat off its hanger and is thrust back into the deep end with new protégé Detective Sergeant Justin Ripley (Warren Brown) to investigate the murder of a middle-class couple with no obvious motive. Prime suspect for the crime is the couple’s daughter, Alice Morgan (a character played with unsettling relish by Ruth Wilson). Alice is deranged and yet oddly alluring. Through an initial game of wits, John and Alice build up an odd relationship through cat-and-mouse exchanges, two brilliant minds compelled by one another. This infatuation grows from an initial obsession with solving the murder of Alice’s parents before evolving into a very unusual romance.

At this point, Luther’s personal life is a mess. He lives alone in shabby accommodation, drives a battered old car and is desperate to make amends with his ex-wife, Zoe (Indira Varma). His efforts to reconcile lead to a one night stand together before she tells him that she has moved on with a new partner, Mark (played by Doctor number eight, Paul McGann).

Zoe ends up being dragged back into Luther’s world when Luther’s colleague and loyal friend, DCI Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh), knowingly allows a diamond robbery to go ahead. When the deal goes south and leads to kidnap and murder, the situation quickly gets out of his control. In an attempt to get Luther to see him in person, he visits Zoe’s house. In the panic, Reed ends up shooting Zoe by mistake and framing Luther for her murder. During a bloody showdown in the series one finale, Alice shoots Ian to avenge Zoe’s murder.

Alice is committed to a psychiatric institution after confessing to killing Reed, and despite that probably being the best place for her, Luther’s feelings for her lead him to help her escape. She proposes they run off to Mexico together, but he pledges to stay in London, having (once again) thrown himself back into his job working alongside DS Ripley. Now working for a new unit investigating serial killers led by Schenk, he helps save a teenager from a life trapped making violent pornography and helps to guarantee her freedom through rather amoral means.

Walking into series three, it’s not just unhinged killers continuing to make Luther’s life difficult — the odious Detective Superintendent George Stark (David O’Hara) is sniffing around, trying to uncover Luther’s questionable methods in an effort to bring him down, attempting to manipulate Ripley into implicating Luther in criminal activity. Despite these trials and tribulations, Luther has a new relationship making things a little rosier, as he strikes up a budding romance with Mary, who is something of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl-lite stock character (though gamely played by Sienna Guillory). Stark’s attempts to make Ripley incriminate Luther are fruitless and fully cements their friendship. 

It’s bloody typical that just as their relationship is back on track and Ripley has proven his loyalty, poor Justin is gunned down in cold blood by vigilante killer Tom Marwood (Elliot Cowan). After pursuing Ripley’s killer to a rooftop, Marwood attempts to make Luther choose between Alice and Mary. Alice doesn’t leave the decision up to Luther or Marwood, driving a hair-pin into Marwood’s neck and rendering his Sophie’s Choice scenario redundant. With Mary’s personal life and mental wellbeing somewhat in tatters, her relationship with John ends and Luther walks off with Alice over Southwark Bridge, the scene of an intense encounter between the two back in series one.

At the start of series four, Luther is alone again, this time on self-imposed exile on the coast. Living in a ramshackle cottage physically too small for him on the edge of a sheer cliff face (the imagery here is so on-the-nose it’s a bit painful), it seems that Ripley’s death and being disconnected from Alice has finally driven him away from the police force for good.

Yet when two police officers — Theo Bloom (Darren Boyd) and Emma Lane (Game Of Thrones’ Rose Leslie) — pay Luther a visit to inform him that Alice has met a grim end in an Antwerp canal, John has yet another death of someone close to him to deal with, refusing to believe she is truly dead. Bloom and Lane return to London to investigate a series of wretched cannibalistic murders that feel more than a bit influenced by David Fincher’s Se7en, congealed corpse in a bath tub and all. While looking around the flat of said congealed corpse, Bloom is killed by triggering a booby-trap bomb, leaving Lane traumatised by the death of her partner.

Meanwhile, Luther is back in London, conducting his own investigation into Alice’s death off the grid. His digging around in the underworld leads him to ‘old-school geezer’ and reputed gangster George Cornelius (Patrick Malahide). In a quick escalation of events, Luther kidnaps Cornelius and handcuffs him to a radiator in a derelict house to interrogate him. Cornelius claims he didn’t kill Alice, but admits he knew her because she had approached him trying to sell stolen diamonds worth millions — all to raise money so she could run away to Sao Paolo with Luther.

Following Bloom’s death, Luther once again digs out the old grey coat and make a triumphant return to police work — seemingly unphased by the act he has a notorious criminal chained up in an abandoned house.

The cannibal killer keeps striking in a chain of well-planned and horrific murders. The only connection between the victims is that they all have had their computers repaired by the same man — Steven Rose. Upon investigation, the police realise that Rose has infiltrated each of his victim’s computers, watching their every move through their webcams. Luther and co. arrive at Rose’s home (surely a homage to Buffalo Bill’s lair in Silence Of The Lambs) with sirens blaring, giving Rose time to attempt to wipe his hard drives and escape through a ventilation shaft. In true John McClane fashion, Luther gives chase through the vent but to no avail.

With Rose having scarpered and Luther recuperating from the chase, a mysterious blonde named Megan Cantor (Laura Haddock) arrives to pass John a cryptic message from Alice; “Stacy has the owl”, before handing him a newspaper clipping relating to Jonathan Black, a young boy whose murder Luther investigated early in his career. He has her promptly taken to the station for questioning for being a bit creepy (and potentially being related to Alice Morgan’s death). Cornelius, who Luther seems to have temporary amnesia about, escapes from his imprisonment and calls John to inform him that he has put a price on his head, which is nice of him. 

Luther returns to the station to question Cantor, who claims she is a clairvoyant and Alice has passed on her message from beyond the grave — it’s a lie, of course, but for now, her chilling assessment that “hell is real” lends her added creepiness. 

The message relates to Stacy Bell, a girl that Luther always suspected was Black’s true killer. Bell has recently been released from prison and is living back in the area. As she pops off to the shops, Luther breaks into her flat and discovers a toy owl that belonged to Jonathan Black that went missing after his murder. Its presence in her home confirms his suspicions and he sneaks past her as she arrives back at home. As he tries to leave the area, two of Cornelius’ pesky would-be assassins come on motorbikes in an attempt to take Luther down, but he battles them off with unerring ease and a conveniently placed bin. Cantor is actually related to the Black case, having actually been his childhood friend, Sarah Roberts. She returned to Luther implying she murdered Alice to ensure he kept a promise to make sure that Bell was found responsible for Black’s murder. It’s all a bit silly, but oddly riveting.

Cannibal killer Rose is now descending further into madness, arriving at the home of his ex-girlfriend, a university sweetheart. He murders her husband in front of her family and kidnaps her and her children. Luther and DS Lane are quickly in pursuit, ascertaining that he must have taken them to an abandoned hospital in the most cliched ‘deranged murderer’s habitat of choice’ of all time.

Just as they go to enter the building, another hitman after Luther turns up, leading to the duo being split up. After lurching his way through the hospital’s shadowy corridors and up a crumbling staircase, Luther finds Rose and his victims. Rose threatens to kill his former paramour, but Lane appears from the sidelines to shoot Rose, end his reign of terror and get a semblance of revenge for Bloom’s murder.

After the Rose case is wrapped up, Luther meets with Cornelius in an effort to smooth things over. He offers Cornelius Alice’s stolen diamonds in exchange for the bounty removed from his head and some Class A drugs. Confused by how sweet the deal seems for him, Cornelius swiftly agrees and the duo part ways with a mutual respect.

Luther breaks into Bell’s flat and plants the drugs inside the toy owl, before convincing his unit superintendent Martin Schenk to send officers to Bell’s flat to locate the drugs and eventually link the owl to Black’s murder. As officers arrest Bell, Luther and Cantor watch on, discussing how Alice was Luther’s blindspot and that she didn’t really kill Alice Morgan after all. Luther warns Cantor that he is coming for her and struts off, letting his coat flap behind him in true melodramatic John Luther fashion.

So what next?

The trailers and clips revealed to the public so far have revealed that Luther, Martin Schenk and George Cornelius will all return in series five, with the promise of more psychological thrills and chills. The trailer also seems to imply the return of Alice Morgan — but we will have to wait ’til New Year’s Day to find out..!

Luther series five starts on BBC One on Tuesday the 1st of January at 9pm

This review contains spoilers.

12.10 The VCR Illumination

The end of the The Big Bang Theory is going to be a big deal for a lot of people, from the actors and their gargantuan pay cheques to the many, many people operating behind the scenes. But the fact that we have a mere half a season left of the most popular sitcom on television has to be the biggest deal to its home network. CBS has built its entire schedule around this show, and they’re going to make damn sure that Young Sheldon gets a push before it’s over.

For that reason, you can’t really blame this episode for its shameless cross-promotion, but there are a lot of ways the episode suffers for it. This isn’t an organic crossover in the same way as Buffy/Angel guest appearances or the yearly DC TV event week is – it’s clearly a way for the network to remind its audience that Young Sheldon exists.

As with anything at this late stage, there’s very little for Sheldon to learn during one of his hissy fits. Like anyone going through a grieving period, sooner or later he has to lift himself out of it and carry on. The correct lesson for 10-year-old Sheldon to learn would have been that his dad can make a point with sports metaphors, but Sheldon’s father has never been a character on the parent show.

Instead, would it not have had more impact for grown man-Sheldon to turn to Amy for support? It’s her paper too but, true to form, it’s her husband who is babied by their friends. Having an emotional breakthrough be about a relationship we rarely hear about besides jokes from his mother feels tacked on and cynical, and distancing for viewers of The Big Bang Theory alone.

But Leonard and Penny are actually great in this episode, from their random discussion about correct breakfast foods to their genuine desire to help out their friends. If they don’t have a storyline to call their own, then I feel like this is the correct way to use them.

Howard and Bernadette’s storyline is just as limp as Sheldon’s, despite some promise that it might tie up some loose ends for Howard. This couple have a similar problem to Leonard and Penny in that the traditional TV-worthy life events have all already been depicted. Short of some tragedy, they’re really only fit for side missions and, if the A-plot is no good, they’re not enough to save an episode.

Still, it’s fun to see Howard renounce his ambitions to join the Magic Castle based not on embarrassment or a lack of ambition, but because it’s not fun anymore. Devoting himself to learning magic may have been a good pastime when he had less going on, but now perhaps he has to accept defeat. It’s also a hoot to see Bernadette in full pageant mom mode, teaching Howard to razzle dazzle the judges in the only way she’s been taught.

Despite many reservations, The VCR Illumination has its moments. Sheldon saying that he had been saving the videotape for a time when Star Wars films were no longer being made (“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, so…”), and Beverly’s thinly-veiled preference for Sheldon over her own son. But perhaps 20+ episodes is too long for a show limping towards the grave, and they’re saving the best stuff for last.

It’s been a few years since Doctor Strange brought something a little different to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A man not afraid of a spectacular glow up, accessorising with a sentient cape and a stunning piece of bling that just happened to be a massively powerful infinity stone, the story of Stephen Strange was a masterclass in a simply shocking amount of arrogance somehow surviving a brutal gut punch from fate.

The movie managed to cash up at over $675 million worldwide, but Marvel has been quite casual about setting up a sequel since its release. A lot of ‘mayhaps’ and ‘sure, sometime’ from puppet master Kevin Feige, and the occasional ‘I’d be up for doing another one’ from the cast and crew, but nothing concrete. Compare that to the way the studio jumped to lay out plans for Black Panther 2, and we were never quite certain that the Sorcerer Supreme would open a portal back to the big screen with his sling ring for another solo outing.

Things seem to be getting started now, though, so here’s everything we know so far about Marvel’s plans for Doctor Strange 2…

Doctor Strange 2 director

An early Christmas present has arrived! THR has confirmed that Scott Derrickson has finally signed up to direct Doctor Strange 2. The director has often spoken of his desire to return for the sequel, so this is excellent news. He does seem like a genuinely lovely man, and he recently shared that his home had been destroyed during the Woolsey Fire, and he sadly lost nearly everything he owned.

Nearly everything…

Well done to him for snagging the new project. We can’t wait to see what he’ll do with this sequel, now that he’s free of the whole origin story factor.

Doctor Strange 2 cast

Benedict Cumberbatch will once again star in Doctor Strange 2, along with Benedict Wong. It’s likely that Rachel McAdams will be back, too.

Potentially, another MCU character could show up to help or hinder Strange and Wong in this new adventure. Who would you like to see make an appearance?

Doctor Strange 2 villain

As teased during the post-credits scene in the first film, Chiwetel Ejiofor could be the much more evil version of Mordo in this one, but we’ll have to wait and see.

“What made The Dark Knight so great was that the origin story of Batman had been well-told, and then it was time to bring in a villain where you really got to go deep,” Scott Derrickson said previously. “And not just the Joker, also Two-Face. It was a more visceral experience, I’d love to be able to do that for Doctor Strange.”

But there’s definitely one villain Derrickson’s been keen to develop for a while: “I really like the character of Nightmare and the concept [of] the Nightmare Realm. That’s early – that’s like the first Strange tale. I think that’s in the introductory episode of Doctor Strange, and I always loved that.”

Doctor Strange 2 rumours

After the first film came out, its screenwriter, Jon Spaihts, touted the appearance of Clea in a theoretical Doctor Strange 2.

“She’s a tricky character to interpret because her uncle is a kind of fire-headed omnipotent god and she’s kind of a hot babe who studies magic,” Spaihts told CBR. “That’s a tricky relationship to bring out of a comic book and on to a movie screen. But she’s a really compelling character as a foil, a love interest, a colleague of Doctor Strange’s, and she always carries with her that width of mystery as to whether she is human, and how human, and what that means for his relationship to her. So we might find a way to introduce her to the story.”

Currently, Doctor Strange 2 doesn’t have a writer attached, which means that anything Spaihts might have once envisioned for the sequel may be moot anyway.

Doctor Strange 2 release date

The rumoured release date for Doctor Strange 2 is said to be in May of 2021. The script will reportedly be written during 2019, with production set to begin in the spring of 2020.

This review contains spoilers.

7.9 Elseworlds Part 3

Elseworlds Part 3 had a huge mandate – show off the Trigger Twins in a fun way, wrap up Deegan and the Monitor with a satisfying conclusion, and, apparently, launch about a thousand other major Arrowverse story lines. And do it all with a million characters we love, in an alternate reality that would maintain the high quality of Elseworlds Part 1 and Elseworlds Part 2. Conclusions are always hard – answers are less fun than spinning impossible mysteries – but Elseworlds Part 3 did an admirable job and largely kept the charm and levity of the earlier entries while still managing to shock.

Elseworlds Part 3 functions largely in the traditional parallel world narrative – characters we know, behaving with many familiar elements, with a few important tweaks that, however small, impact the world in a back way – plus a fun fish-out-of-water element in the form of our three titular stars. But the back end of this episode has so many cliffhangers and launch points for future Arrowverse story lines that feel ominous that it threatens to overshadow the buoyancy of the rest of the episode. I don’t hate it, but I would also like my answers right now please, an urgency the Arrowverse hasn’t made me feel in a long time.

All of the world switchery was fun – it’s always good stuff to see Cisco evil and/or in charge, and Superman fighting Superman is fun even if a random woman doesn’t yell, “Bizarro!” at them in the middle, but it doesn’t hurt. Goth Caitlin was a cool look, if underutilised as an actual character. Straight-passing boring Alex was… well, you get the idea.

The bonding between the Danvers sisters (ish) highlighted the murky intentionality behind the multiple earths. Often enough, characters give speeches like Kara’s to Alex, about their inherent values regardless of which Earth they’re on. But as the brief flash of the Nazi version of Star Labs reminded us, sometimes the things that stay the same aren’t values – it’s importance or ability or some other trait. The Arrowverse likes to pick and choose when that’s true, but whenever it’s true, as in the case of Alexes 1 and 38, acts as though it is a hard and fast rule.

While this is technically an episode of Supergirl, it didn’t really feel like one. Within the mythos of the show, that seems to be due to the logistics of getting everyone to the appropriate earth – it’s easier to pull in the earth-1 version of Alex and Jimmy (!), relegate J’onn and Brainy to a brief appearance at the end, and leave folks like Lena and Nia out of the hubbub entirely. It doesn’t help that Lois and Clark don’t particularly feel like they belong to Supergirl, even though that’s technically how they’re classified in the Arrowverse.

But the real issue is that Oliver, Barry, and Clark have more narrative work to cover. Kara’s concern about disclosing her identity was a side topic with a couple of people, none of whom were her good friend who, six months earlier, looked into a camera and told the world that he was a masked superhero. Barry spent much of this episode having feelings about acting like a bad guy, serving as a mascot and walking reminder to Oliver of everything he taught him in the previous two episodes. Oliver, on the other hand, was hands-down the biggest focus of the overall crossover, and this episode especially.

In the final few minutes of this show, Clark and Lois packed enough life events into a sixty-second span to make any Kryptonian mother cry, apparently under the guise of Clark hanging up his cape. A curious move indeed, after going to the trouble of introducing such a phenomenal incarnation of Lois, a natural friend and mentor to Kara, and possible replacement for Thor. (I kid. Sort of.) Surely Kara could use a woman reporter to look up to in Cat Grant’s absence, and the show’s renewed focus on the need for journalistic integrity would certainly be well served by one of pop culture’s most famous journalists.

The end of this episode has given us a tonne to talk (and fret) about. First, Batwoman called Oliver. I’m not so much worried as excited, because we’re getting a Batwoman show! Did she just call Oliver’s cell with no voice changer? Is she just disclosing her identity to the whole crew, assuming that Kara squawked? So far Kate Kane seems to play fast and loose with secret identities, which works for me – secrets are boring. Tell Lena already, Kara! Anyway, Deegan is apparently sticking around, and I expect the Monitor will too. It looks like Kate Kane managed to round everybody up, which means Deegan made a friend in the form of Psycho Pirate from Part 2.

Y’all, I’m worried about Superman. Surely it must mean something that he was able to open the book and Kara wasn’t, and I’m not entirely convinced that was a good thing. We were reminded a few times that changing reality always comes with a price, which is likely why Deegan’s face was all fried. What price will Superman pay, or has he paid it already and we just don’t know?

Speaking of paying a price, Oliver. Bruh. What are we gonna do with you? You literally just got out of prison after making a deal to sacrifice yourself without talking to your wife first. You just had a heart-to-heart where you promised your wife trust, honesty, respect. Oliver. My dude. I’m also weirdly suspicious of Oliver refusing to hug Barry. He’s never managed to pull it off before, and I know he’s supposed to be the grump, but when the situation calls for it, he hugs the men in his life.

Oh and then this other little thing, Crisis on Infinite Earths. See you there in 2019! But also see you in January, because we’ve got more than half a season left and plenty of ground to cover.

Read Delia’s review of the Elseworlds Part 2 here.