Roughly speaking, we write about 4,000 or so posts each year at io9. Sometimes it’s breaking news, like Marvel Studios announcing the entirety of its Phase 5 slate. Sometimes it’s things we want to help explain to you, like our many looks at Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Sometimes, we just want to make fun of crap. Whatever you come here for, we thank you for reading—and for making these the most popular articles of 2022.
2 / 102
After last week’s stunning, mind-bending episode, Westworld could have taken it easy this week. But after its lackluster third season, the show has returned to its roots of heady, thoughtful science fiction, and clearly has no intention of pulling up and retreating. While tonight’s episode isn’t as thrilling as last week’s installment, it’s enough because it focuses on the season’s biggest mystery: what the hell is going on with Christina?
[Read more here.]
3 / 102
The 2022 San Diego Comic-Con was held in person last week for the first time since 2019, and exhibitors made up for the long time away with a huge number of new movie and TV show trailers. The big comic book movie news came when Marvel returned to Hall H and debuted trailers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and She Hulk: Attorney at Law; A Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania trailer were also shown, but only those at Hall H were able to see it. DC struck back with new trailers for Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam.
But of course, Comic-Con has gotten a lot bigger than just comic books: By our current count, more than 35 trailers were released during the four-day festival from studios including Universal, Paramount, Amazon, Fox, and Disney.
If you missed one, don’t worry: We’re collecting them all here for your viewing pleasure.
[Read more here.]
4 / 102
Dungeons & Dragons recently released its new boxed set, Spelljammmer: Adventures in Space, a revamp of the original 1989 setting which allowed players to have campaigns in the stars rather than on the ground. Like previous playbooks, Spelljammer’s Astral Adventurer’s Guide has introduced six new playable races, and it’s the lore behind one of them that’s recently landed the TTRPG giant in controversy.
[Read more here.]
5 / 102
Jane Foster stands at the gates of Valhalla, having earned a warrior’s rest after making a sacrifice so worthy that even she, a mortal, had gained the respect of Asgard’s fallen heroes. But she waits a moment, turning from the gates of eternal paradise. All she can say is “I wasn’t ready to die.”
[Read more here.]
6 / 102
Just two months after swearing off giving Winds of Winter updates, perpetual updater and writer of Winds of Winter George R.R. Martin has an announcement: He has a Winds of Winter update.
[Read more here.]
7 / 102
“Wait,” Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Jobu Tupaki (an interdimensional being of unrivaled cosmic power and chaos, covered in blood and glitter, having just killed three men) says to her mother. “In this universe, you’re still hung up on the fact that I like girls?”
[Read more here.]
8 / 102
After over a month in theaters, Spider-Man: No Way Home is still number one at the box office. And while it’s rumored to be coming home for digital download in late February, today you can bring a piece of it home yourself. The entire script is online.
[Read more here.]
9 / 102
2021 was a big year for superhero movies, particularly for Marvel and its webheads. In addition to the massive, nostalgia-fueled juggernaut Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Hardy and his massive chompers chewed up Venom: Let There Be Carnage to sizable box office success. The conversation surrounding both films was if Sony’s Eddie Brock would come and try to use MCU Peter Parker’s head as a stick of gum, and the ultimate answer the two films landed on was... not what fans expected.
[Read more here.]
10 / 102
Everyone can now experience The Batman from home and with that comes access to loads of behind-the-scenes clips and of course the director’s commentary. The Wrap reported on highlights from Apple’s exclusive Matt Reeves commentary track, which has given more context as to why the film closed on the Riddler (Paul Dano) and the Joker’s (Barry Keoghan) meet-cute over Gotham domination.
[Read more here.]
11 / 102
If you’re a fan of shonen anime, chances are you’ve heard of Jujutsu Kaisen. Based on the manga of the same name by Gege Akutakmi, the series sees teenager Yuji Itadori learn to become a Jujutsu sorcerer to fight Curse spirits after swallowing the finger of a powerful Curse named Sukuna. It premiered in October 2020 and quickly gained a big following thanks to its characters and fight scenes from Studio MAPPA, and it’s only grown since the end of its debut season in 2021. Good news, then: the series is coming back for another season, albeit in 2023.
[Read more here.]
12 / 102
Before the trailer for Indiana Jones 5 was released, the world hardly knew anything about it. They knew who was in the cast and its release date, but until the trailer hit, 99.9% of the world didn’t even know the film’s title. In some deep, dark pockets online, though, certain fans think they know everything, and director James Mangold just fired back.
[Read more here.]
13 / 102
If I told you the best part of tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead was a doorknob, would you believe me? Because it’s true, but that sounds like a bigger knock against “Variant” than I mean it to be. It was a pretty cool doorknob.
[Read more here.]
14 / 102
The era of the 13th Doctor is over, and it went out how ultimately much of Chris Chibnall’s time as Doctor Who’s showrunner went over the last four years: with moments of brilliance outshined by a plodding, unwieldy mess of narratives that threatened to drag its excellent star down with it. In that way, it’s perhaps a fitting finale, if an unjust one.
[Read more here.]
15 / 102
If you’ve been curious to know what’s in that infamous $5,000 Star Wars-themed drink, it’s no longer a complete mystery. The Kaiburr Crystal, available exclusively aboard the Disney Wish cruise ship in its Hyperspace Lounge, is an extravagantly presented, themed cocktail that should come with the camtono it’s served in but alas is not—probably because the boozy elixirs it’s concocted from are some of the most expensive top-shelf selections in the galaxy.
[Read more here.]
16 / 102
Jurassic World is the most Jurassic movie of all the Jurassic movies. It takes the structure of the first movie—a theme park run amok—and blends it with the franchise’s ultimate fantasy, finally revealing what a fully functioning dinosaur theme park looks like. It’s John Hammond’s vision come to life. The result, however, is a mixed bag, because for everything Jurassic World does to imitate the original film so well, it makes two or three mistakes along the way.
[Read more here.]
17 / 102
Out of nowhere this evening, Ryan Reynolds teased that a new Deadpool film, coming in 2024, will bring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—alongside his own beloved take on the merc with a mouth, of course.
[Read more here.]
18 / 102
Today, on the Nintendo Twitter account, we got the first look at the upcoming Mario movie via its movie poster, as well as a drop date for the upcoming trailer, and... wait... what’s going on with Mario’s butt?
[Read more here.]
19 / 102
Andor is so refreshing in part because it does not feel like the kind of Star Wars show that is going to drop everything, point at a familiar character arriving onto the scene, and go “Look! Star War!” And yet, out of nowhere, this week’s thrilling episode dropped maybe one of the most absurdly deep-cut canonizations this era of Star Wars has ever seen.
[Read more here.]
20 / 102
Another New York Comic Con, another overwhelming, arguably intimidating number of exclusive Pop Vinyl figures. In fact, 2022's slate includes nearly 50 toys ranging from the MCU to obscure Disney characters—so we’ve decided to let you know about every single exclusive Pop coming to the con and where you can get your hands on them, even if you aren’t attending.
[Read more here.]
21 / 102
Two years ago, io9 premiered the trailer for The Phenomenon, a UFO documentary built around the “unavoidable fact” that aliens are real. Now filmmaker James Fox is back with a follow-up that explores that anti-skeptical thesis through a more international lens, delving into “the Roswell of Brazil.” It’s called Moment of Contact, and io9 is once again excited to premiere the trailer.
[Read more here.]
22 / 102
Now that we know a fifth Indiana Jones film actually exists, is coming out, and even has a real title, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Thursday’s reveal of the first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was chock full of recognizable Indy action with plenty of Nazi punching, cave exploring, and train jumping. But there’s still not much in the way of what exactly this movie is about, who these characters are, or what the heck a Dial of Destiny is.
Is this movie actually about time travel as has been so rampantly speculated? Why does Indy look so many different ages? Let’s look at all the little details we found in the first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
[Read more here.]
23 / 102
Every time Marvel Studios makes an announcement about its upcoming Moon Knight show, social media is typically blanket Source: Gizmodo