When BEEF first premiered at SXSW in 2023, it was clear it was going to leave an impact. Now, with a new anthology format, BEEF Season 2 isn’t sticking to any formula other than the simmering anger that every day people are bubbling under the surface because of the choices they’ve made in life or have been made for them. 

With a larger ensemble than the first season, the series features Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny. Additionally, the series’ guest stars include two of South Korea’s largest actors, Youn Yuh-jung and Song Kang-ho. Lee Sung Jin, the series’s creator, writer, and showrunner, also serves as director. 

Having moved from a parking lot fit of road rage to a country club, BEEF Season 2 doesn’t lose its perspective on class, race, or how relationships can rot from the inside. The series pits generation against generation as lies and selfishness cloud good intentions and collide.

BEEF Season 2 embraces a larger ensemble cast with thoughtful storytelling.

The first couple is the youngest, with Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny playing a newly engaged Gen-Z couple, Ashley Miller and Austin Davis. Living together and struggling to get by, Austin is a 29-year-old part-time trainer at the country club who is trying to make it big as an Instagram trainer and prove that he has grown and changed since college. Ashley is trying to make a future for herself, but she has no high school diploma and is stuck as a drink cart girl instead. 

Right above Ashley and Austin on the class scale is Millennial married couple Joshua Martin (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay Crane-Martin (Carey Mulligan). Josh is the General Manager of the country club and is completely obsessed with status and who he knows. Lindsay is an interior designer with little to no work who gave up another life and fortune to be with her husband. 

And finally, there is the couple at the top of the class ladder, who seemingly hold everyone else in their hands: the billionaire owner of the country club, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), and her surgeon husband, Doctor Kim (Song Kang-ho). It’s here where culture clash meets class clash throughout the season’s eight episodes. 

Like Season 1, BEEF Season 2 has one inciting incident. Here, it’s a marital dispute that spirals as Lindsay grabs a golf club and begins destroying everything in Josh’s shed. Only, when Josh tries to disarm her, that’s when Ashley and Austin start recording. When the young couple decides to use this as an opportunity for self-improvement by blackmailing Josh and Lindsay, the dominoes start to fall. 

As lies grow and everyone’s circumstances become more dire, the chaotic, messy web begins to tighten around everyone in unison, as everything devolves. But it’s not just the two couples trying to maintain power over the other, they’re also trying to vie for the favor of Chairwoman Park to keep their jobs. 

Josh and Lindasy are forced to come to terms with their love-starved and resentment-filled marriage. The promises that were broken and continue to be, the lies, and a need to feel loved all push the couple to their breaking point as they try to succeed, defend themselves against the incriminating video, and fight each other. 

Every performance in Beef Season 2 is a stunner, but Oscar Isaac and Youn Yuh-jung still stand out.

As Josh, Oscar Isaac plays pathetic oh-so-well. His desperation for attention and praise is hard to watch at times as his selfishness continuously pushes him into a downward spiral. Isaac’s performance is one of the best of the season, and to even declare one of the ensemble performances the “best” feels like splitting hairs. However, Isaac’s ability to be charming one moment and repulsive the next is a testament to how well he emotes and uses every tool at his disposal. 

Carey Mulligan’s performance is also stellar, consistently matching Isaac’s energy and emotion in scenes that move from somber to happy and rage-filled. As Lindsay, Mulligan’s performance captures a woman struggling to find a light in her marriage while constantly comparing herself to richer and younger women. It’s a look at a woman struggling to love herself because she lost everything to be with the man she loves. 

And on the other side, Ashley and Austin are a sickly sweet young couple who have their rose-colored glasses shattered as medical debt mounts and lies begin to snowball. They have to watch the future they planned for themselves slipping further and further out of reach, even when they have moments of success. For them, their lies feel like survival and a realization of the lot they have been cast in life.

However, as anxiety increases, their choices start to devolve quickly. Add in the fact that Austin is experiencing having other Koreans around him for the first time and discovering his culture through Chairwoman Park’s translator and secretary, and jealousy also joins the volatile emotional mix. 

Charles Melton’s Austin is defined by his naivety and sincere love for Ashley. Not without his faults, especially when he begins to feel like Ashley is leaving him behind, Austin is the most endearing character in Beef Season 2 and helps define the characters’ stage of brokenness. Loving and honest, his innocence is hard to watch erode, but when it does, the audience realizes just how far all the characters have fallen. 

As for Spaeny’s Ashley, she balances out Austin’s innocence, having lived a harder life than he has. She is quicker to exploit the Martins and Chairwoman Park, but she is also more desperately needs to be seen as something more than a high school dropout. At the same time, medical issues mount, pushing her to confront the chance that she may never be a mother, further complicating her relationship with her fiancé. 

While Youn Yuh-jung and Song Kang-ho steal every scene they are in, their roles in the series serve more as a point of power and eventual anger. The top of the class ladder, Chairwoman Park and her husband have no qualms about using their crooked employees to take care of themselves. Continuing the old adage that no billionaire got that way without doing something bad, the duo’s privilege and status have shielded them. But now, with more eyes on them, it’s starting to come undone. 

Beef Season 2 is larger than the first without losing any of the intimacy. 

BEEF Season 2 has a larger cast with more mess and interpersonal drama than the first season. There are more twists and surprising decisions that alter the course of the story. And yet, all of it works. BEEF Season 2 is an exercise in understanding the rot that grows from resentment and unrealized emotions.

But where Season 1 was about individuals, the second season of BEEF is more interested in capturing how relationships carry the weight of selfish choices and how the rot begins to eventually surface, no matter how many times each couple tries to paint over it. This dynamic doesn’t improve on the previous season of the series, but it does explore anger, hate, and the shame that follows them more holistically—until it doesn’t. 

This series captures the worst in us in the best way. Throughout BEEF Season 2, the characters become visibly less put together and more gaunt as their morals spiral down the drain; you can see it draining them. The visual language of the series is just as well-executed as the script, painting the descent into their manic, reactive decisions through costuming and makeup decisions. 

Additionally, no one character in this season ends up likable, or even defensible. BEEF continues to prove that you don’t need to like or approve of a character to be moved by what is happening to them, as everyone’s life begins to grow darker.

Less shocking than the first season, Lee Sung Jin pulls back on some of the raunchier elements from before to dial in on the more heartbreaking rock-bottom moments, crafting a story with less rage and something more intimate altogether. 

BEEF Season 2 highlights the best way to do an anthology series. The answer isn’t to have the same thing happen over and over, or even use recurring characters to tie together each vignette or season. Instead, Lee Sung Jin builds the second season on top of the emotional foundation he created in Season 1, and the result is capturing the same way the first season made audiences feel. With only two seasons, it may be too premature to call the series revolutionary for the anthology format, but it is getting close. 

BEEF Season 2 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.

Season 1 |

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Prime Video’s direct-to-streaming films have been a mixed bag. Some offer just enough fun to offset bad writing, and others struggle even with a great actor. Balls Up, directed by Peter Farrelly and written by Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese, can’t offset its bad script, no matter how hard it tries. 

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Benjamin Bratt, Eva De Dominici, Daniela Melchior, with Molly Shannon, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Eric André, Balls Up is an incoherent film that tries to cover up its warts with raunchy, over-the-top comedy.

In the film, marketing executives Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser) go “balls out” and pitch a bold full‑coverage condom sponsorship with the World Cup. Yes, because what condoms need is a pocket for the balls, and the writers really needed to make jokes about genitalia.

Balls Up’s comedy lives picking the low-hanging fruit.

When they land the account, the duo takes their Brazilian investor (Benjamin Bratt) out for a drunken celebration that quickly escalates from fun to an international incident. With their celebration getting them fired, the two still get to go to the World Cup, but it gets even more hairy from there, with the duo responsible for one of the countries losing the final.

Leaning all the way into soccer stereotypes (some that land and some that don’t), Brad and Elijah find themselves with the whole of Brazil ready to, well, murder them. Throughout the film, they try to escape fans, get abducted by a drug lord played by the always racist Sacha Baron Cohen, and get help from American anti-poaching “activists” in the Amazon.

Unhinged doesn’t begin to capture the film’s narrative trajectory, which moves from story beat to story beat at a rapid pace without being entertaining. Balls Up winds up feeling like a word cloud rather than an actual story, or like a collection of TikTok skits brought together without actually having a connection between any of them. It’s one shock after another, and when the film is doubling down on the raunchy angle, it loses whatever charm it has.

Balls Up does work when Wahlberg and Hauser are on screen together without the large (and badly designed) spectacles around them. The smaller moments when they bicker with each other or make one-liners not connected to any wider point of the film are when the comedy of Balls Up is at its best. But those moments are fleeting, making up maybe 15 minutes across the entire film that come close to being a good time. 

Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser’s sparks of comedy aren’t enough to save Balls Up.

Everything else, though, is a muddled mess that feels like an eternity when in reality it’s only one hour and 44 minutes. Every twist in the story feels like another turn that is prolonging a bad trip. Throughout the film, every reveal left me asking, “Are we still going?” and “What the hell is even happening?” The trajectory for the characters’ growth is contrived and inconsistent, even if the actors behind Elijah and Brad do have good chemistry in spots; nothing else about them makes any real sense.

The film’s setting in Brazil is always straddling a vaguely racist line. At times, it feels like a tongue-in-cheek understanding of soccer culture, and at other times, it just feels wrong. And then there is Sacha Baron Cohen, as Pavio Curto, the drug lord. 

With media evolving its Latin American narco trope to be something a bit less misguided and outright racist, thanks to the success of the Narcos franchise and how it launched careers for Latino actors in the United States, Pavio stands out as a remnant from the past. In fact, Cohen’s comedy illustrates how stunted the entire Balls Up film is. We’ve moved past certain things in media, and brown face is one of them. However, if Cohen had to remove that from his arsenal, he would be left with absolutely nothing but his Zionist propaganda. 

Balls Up is irredeemable in every aspect. 

What makes my issues with Pavio all the more interesting is that the rest of the film doesn’t peddle in what he is doing. The film overall lacks the knowledge of soccer to be funny in a sporting way and of the country to be comedic in a dialed-in way that could have made for something entertaining. Instead, we’re left with something messy, unfunny, and relatively boring. 

The abrasive swings in comedic approach make Balls Up a film that never truly understands what it is trying to be, even when it’s just trying to replicate raunchy films of the past. In fact, the film has the worst opening I have ever seen in a film. It’s not even raunchy in a good way, but instead in a juvenile way that makes the room of middle-aged people seem all the more out of touch with modern humor.

Where Ted The Series manages to be irreverent and offensive in a way that lands consistently and doesn’t hold back, it stands as one of the last bastions of raunchy humor in 2026; this Prime Original is the opposite of it. Balls Up is a stark reminder that we just do not get raunchy adult comedies as we used to. Instead, we get empty films that peddle dick jokes as currency and only ever pick the low-hanging fruit. The film is too painfully unfunny to be offensive, well, except for Pavio.

Balls Up is streaming now, exclusively on Prime Video.

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I really try not to be someone who believes that a television show alone can move the needle. But HBO’s The Pitt Season 2 has been making me double-think that stance.

The Pitt Season 1, audiences were taken into the heart of a mass-casualty event and given a holistic look at what happens in such situations. It explained why you wait for so long to know if your loved one is safe, the fear the doctors and nurses work through on the floor, and it also captured the intricacies of the choices medical staff have to make to save the many. 

I spent most of my childhood in hospitals. Whether it was my grandmother or brother, the sterile halls of hospitals were home, and that all came down to the nurses. The Pitt has already been lauded for its accurate representation of medicine, and as the series has continued, it’s doubled down on showcasing the heart of a hospital: the nurses. 

While Season 1 tightly focused on the students and attendees, The Pitt Season 2 hands the spotlight to the nurses. When an ER-regular, Louie (Ernest Harden Jr.), dies, we see Dana (Katherine LaNasa) walk the new nurse, Emma (Laetitia Hollard), through the process of preparing a body. 

The nurses are the best representation of the small acts that make an ER whole.

This isn’t some voyeuristic look at death in a hospital, but a respectful microscope that shows how nurses are trained to restore the dignity of a patient as they prepare them for friends and family to say their goodbyes. Tenderness flows throughout the nursing staff of The Pitt, even when their outward demeanor is not about mincing words, and they’re not afraid to question Attendees.

Dana’s status as the Charge Nurse puts her in charge, and throughout both seasons of the series, she is an immovable object, even in the face of violence. However, what she is teaching Emma is compassion and respect for every patient, especially when doctors are not providing it. The Pitt Season 2 is doing good work; it’s teaching the audience compassion while Dana teaches Emma.

The Pitt Season 2 goes one step further when it brings audiences behind the closed doors of a rape kit. Over the course of a few episodes, we see Dana and Emma help a woman on the worst day of her life. But more importantly, we see, for the first time on television, just how retraumatizing and how long the process of agreeing to a rape kit is. 

While other shows have shown pieces of it, often montaging the survivor undressing and their injuries being photographed, The Pitt Season 2, shows everything. It shows how humiliating it can feel to the survivor, and it sets the expectations that it isn’t a quick two-minute montage but an hour-long process that requires a nurse to give her patient the agency that was taken from her. And how hard that is to do. 

Rape is an underreported crime. It’s also one that is hard to have a court even pursue. And much of that comes from the survivors being too scared to come forward, to have their bodies in the hands of someone else to complete a rape kit, and even more, the lack of police processing. 

​It’s this last element that The Pitt Season 2 uses to cap off the section of the season. Dana and Emma have done everything right. They’ve been compassionate, and they’ve taken as much time as their patient has needed. And for the patient, she’s chosen to stay, even after trying to leave. 

But when Dana goes to put the rape kit into the locker needed to maintain the integrity of the evidence, she’s pissed. A rape kit is sitting there, and it has been for weeks, despite the need to pick them up within 72-hours of completion. It’s a stark reminder of reality and how little the police think of arresting rapists.

The Pitt Season 2 won’t directly change medicine or the police. But its audience can. The series shows audiences what happens, their rights, and educates them about situations they may not understand or know how to navigate. This is particularly true when it comes to something wide-reaching as the completion of rape kits. If the spotlight can make more survivors feel comfortable with having one completed or can help them process that trauma by knowing what to expect, then it’s clear that The Pitt is doing good. 

The Pitt Season 2 shows compassion for people on the worst days of their lives, and the series doesn’t shy away from even the harder aspects. 

This is why it’s important to remember that it isn’t the job of television to teach us something, and going into media with that expectation can be a fool’s errand. Moreso, by assigning good and bad to characters, much like the fandom has tried to do, we lose the topic at hand.

And if a show can escape the call of a “a very special episode” to put in all of its messaging in one go, there is something special about that. You can do good without meaning to, but somewhere in the choices that the show makes, I do think it’s the hope. 

Without a score and without melodrama, The Pitt is confronting the reality of an emergency room, but more importantly, our fears about them. Sometimes, they show the reality behind that fear, like when ICE enters the ER and detains a nurse who attempted to protect his patient. We see it when a deaf patient can’t get assistance because of a lack of translators. 

But knowledge is power, and understanding that our fears can be real while also giving us heroes in the form of nurses and doctors who want to help us navigate them is actively helping make the healthcare system more manageable. It’s not the representation that matters in The Pitt, it’s the reality it’s putting on screen and asking its audience to understand, and the knowledge it’s giving us about our own healthcare that we can use on the worst day of our lives.

The post ‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Is Doing Good Work appeared first on But Why Tho?.

Wargaming is evolving its tentpole franchise with World of Tanks: HEAT, a new standalone free-to-play tactical vehicle shooter. And now, it’s entering its first closed beta test beginning April 16. 2026 through April 20, 2026, on PC (Steam and Wargaming Game Center), Steam Deck, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nvidia GeForce NOW.

As a vehicle shooter, the gameplay will still be focused on the tank, but with the introduction of Agents, it adds something new that edges into the hero-shooter genre without placing the title in the crowded genre space.

What is World of Tanks HEAT?

Set in an alternate post-WWII era, World of Tanks: HEAT aims to be the next reimagining of armored combat while honoring what the franchise has built and introducing new elements to the combat. But most importantly, the HEAT closed beta test is also bringing four multiplayer modes for players to jump into. 

Made with Wargaming’s new proprietary engine, World of Tanks HEAT’s primary focus is to bring the franchise’s signature gameplay to more dynamic and fast-paced battlefields. And the key way that this is happening is through Agents.

While World of Tanks HEAT is introducing new gameplay elements, just from seeing the image stills, trailer, and media preview, the franchise’s signature gameplay is still intact, with multiplayer matches still focusing on tank combat above all else. 

As you would expect from the genre, each of the elite Agents has unique, game-changing abilities and pilots a roster of experimental vehicles. The coordination comes from balancing your choice of Agent with your choice of tank, since each one also has its own tactical strengths. 

Additionally, World of Tanks HEAT allows players to explore “deep customization” with advanced weapon systems, armor modules, and visual upgrades, which is sure to make combat even more engaging without getting too locked into a meta in matches. With cross-platform play and cross-progression, there is no shortage of ways to jump in. 

What is the World of Tanks HEAT closed beta?

During the World of Tanks HEAT closed beta, players will be able to explore a diverse lineup of tanks and Agents, supporting different playstyles across three distinct roles: Defender, Assault, and Marksman.

Developing your player identity between your class, Agent, and tanks is sure to create unique combinations, while Agents give Wargaming an even larger way to incorporate future collaborations like we’ve seen in the main World of Tanks title.

The beta will feature four PvP modes across eight maps:

• Hardpoint (5v5): Capture, defend, and hold a rolling series of dynamically changing bases.
• Control (5v5): Capture and hold a single zone.
• Kill Confirmed (5v5): Destroy enemies and grab their tokens, or grab your allies’ dropped tokens to deny the other team points.
• Conquest (10v10): Large teams and multiple capture zones make for a sprawling, dynamic war zone.

Watch the Closed Beta Trailer

What is the release date?

World of Tanks HEAT will launch simultaneously across PC (Wargaming Game Center and Steam, and has been certified for Steam Deck), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nvidia GeForce NOW, with full cross-platform play and cross-progression, but it does not have a set release date. The closed beta will run from April 16 through April 20, 2026. 

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4A Games has shared a first look at their latest in the Metro series, and it’s a stark departure from what people may expect. During the streamed first look at Metro 2039, the developers at 4A Games reshaped what Metro means now in a world at war, and more specifically, through the experiences of the studio’s developers in Ukraine. 

It’s this last bit that stands out the most, primarily with the words opening the stream reading, “Proudly made in the Ukraine.” It’s a moment of pride in the trailer, but as it begins, you can see that the game is calling to a personal experience. 

The Metro 2039 trailer we see is haunting, with a man on a loudspeaker saying “become a pure nation” repeatedly, which hits hard in a time when a genocide is happening in Palestine and Lebanon, with the US threatening another in Iran, and every other bit of nationalistic violence happening across the globe. The developers explained in the Xbox First Look how the future of Metro shifted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2020. 

Metro 2039 meets horror with emotion in the new trailer. 

The trailer for Metro 2039 is horrific, and it’s clear that the developers are using horror and all our assumptions about the genre to tell a larger story with a robust message that isn’t just “be scared.” In the trailer, the main character, the Stranger, is being pulled back into the Metro, but there is something else that is absolutely haunting. The children. 

One of the core elements of the Metro 2039 trailer is that there are children being brainwashed by the post-apocalyptic state. Indoctrinated into violence and hate, forced to repeat, “the enemy must be destroyed.” This is a universal element that people know all too well, and our histories show. 

But it’s also clear that this isn’t just the youth being brainwashed; they’re being stolen and then weaponized against what we can assume from the trailer is their own people. This element packs a punch when you know at least a small bit of what is happening in Ukraine, with Russians abducting and indoctrinating children in re-education schools, teaching them to hate their country and their culture. And that is a simplification of the violence this brings. 

Still, it’s one way you can understand how the developers have brought their real life into Metro and, with the horror we see on screen, made it resonate. Some people may latch onto the dragons flying in the sky at the trailer’s end, but for me, Metro 2039 is going to be a game to watch this year because of what the studio is setting out to do. 

Aert is made for any number of reasons, and here it’s clear that the team at 4A Games is processing their country’s trauma. And after the trailer, that became even clearer when the developers spoke at length about the shift in Metro’s focus from anti-war to a story about the consequences of war and silence. 

To close the trailer, the audience is given a quote: “It appears that the devastation we brought upon ourselves was complete; heaven, hell, and purgatory were atomized as well. So when the soul leaves the body, it has nowhere to go and must remain here, in the metro.”

While developers from 25 countries make up 4A Games, Metro 2039 confronts the terror of war from a uniquely Ukrainian voice. 

While we only saw a small bit of gameplay to close out the First Look, the real reason I can’t wait to pick up Metro 2039 is the vulnerability and dedication that 4A Games showed as they shared with audiences the development of the game and its narrative. 

What we know so far is that Metro 2039 returns to the underground, where people continue to exist, but all factions and communities have been consolidated under one Reich-themed Führer, who can only be the man on the loudspeaker. As the developers explained, “The game explores what they are before and what they are after,” and what the people become to survive. 

Additionally, in an effort to build a world that makes people feel, Metro 2039 was developed on 4A’s proprietary engine. Only this time, the studio is focusing on performance, adapting from lessons learned in Metro Exodus. And its used to bring to life the environment with depth, focusing on ensuring that the “frozen stories” are told. The goal is to create an intimate experience, and from what we’ve seen, it looks like they may succeed. 

By using the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the developers said that they were using their reality to highlight “the consequences of war, the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny and the price of freedom.” There are a few times that a game comes out to a world waiting for it, and Metro 2039 feels like something we need now. 

“The consequences of war, the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny, and the price of freedom.”

In the story, players will play as the Stranger, the protagonist forced to take a journey back through the Metro. While we don’t know much beyond the Reich and the Stranger, we also know that the game will be a “handcrafted single-player experience” that forces players to grapple with the impact of their decisions and war itself. 

4A Games was clear in the Xbox First Look that this isn’t a game romanticizing a post-apocalyptic world, but rather one that seeks to show the tragic reality of what war creates. And this is bolstered by the support that the author of the Metro author series has given the development team. 

As noted in the First Look, author Dmitry Glukhovsky supported the team in this new narrative for Metro 2039. A vocal opponent of Putin’s war, Glukhovsky lives in exile, a fact that the First Look took the time to highlight. And it’s for the better. 

While we don’t know what the game will be when it releases this Winter, we do know that it’s being made with an unshakable Ukrainian voice, and that was on full display in the Xbox First Look. That authenticity in turning trauma into art and in shifting a message to fit a moment highlights the important role game development can play. 

Metro 2039 is coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC sometime this Winter. To watch the Xbox First Look livestream, click here.

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Developed by the Ukraine-based studio 4A Games, Metro 2039 builds on the franchise’s anti-war legacy, but the message is shifting. And now, we are closer than ever to a Metro 2039 release date, we have a new trailer, and we got a behind-the-scenes look with the developers, which you can watch here.

During the first look showcase for the game, the studio shared the shift in narrative from focusing solely on anti-war to putting players through an experience that confronts “the consequences of war, the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny, and the price of freedom.”

Made with the 4A proprietary engine, this entry in the franchise aims to immerse players in a deep world where choices matter. A “handcrafted single-player experience” that forces players to grapple with the impact of their decisions and war itself, Metro 2039 aims to bridge genres without romanticizing the post-apocalyptic setting like others in the genre. 

What is Metro 2039 about?

With a narrative written with the support of Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the Metro novel series and a strong opponent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, currently living in exile, 4A Games is using their lived experience as developers in Ukraine, during war, to tell a story only they can. 

In the game, players will play as the Stranger, who is forced to return to the underground, to a place he swore never to return. Only now, the factions and communities have been consolidated under a regime that is very clearly inspired by Nazi Germany. The Führer promises them a life above, but in reality, they’re stuck in the Metro with nothing but propaganda.

While it’s still early days, the studio shared the message that they are trying to get across. It is not just that war is evil and we should avoid it, but rather showing audiences the impact that a war leaves on people and places.

Metro 2039 is set to explore who people were before the war, who they become after, and what they have to do to survive the reality they’re in now. One of the key elements to doing this is through “frozen stories,” which the studio describes as the intentional setting of every room and place you enter. The dead man in the hall with an empty clip means something. The card game that has been abandoned means something. And that’s the kind of storytelling to get excited for. 

Watch the Metro 2039 Trailer

What is the Metro 2039 release date?

Metro 2039 doesn’t currently have a release date set; however, during the first look, the studio shared a release window for Winter 2026. 

The post Metro 2039 Is Coming Back To The Underground Winter 2026 appeared first on But Why Tho?.

When Marathon dropped its patch notes for the game’s first mid-season update, the focus for the first-person shooter was on becoming less sweaty and more approachable for new players or lower-skilled FPS players with investments in balance and benefits for helping others. The Battlefield 6 2026 roadmap, on the other hand, is investing big in the existing fans of the series, starting in Season 3, which kicks off in May.

With big new maps that serve as a remake for two fan-favorites from previous games, the Battlefield 6 team is leaning on their community of players who have been with them for years by playing some of the franchise’s hits, but also promising to do so with enough changes to make them all feel fresh. 

Additionally, the Battlefield 6 Roadmap is also introducing new elements into REDSEC, the game’s free-to-play multiplayer and battle royale experience, including ranked play that will eventually make its way into the base game. And finally, the one announcement on the roadmap that is exciting for fans, new and old, is the return to Naval Warfare. 

The developers have also shared a list of upcoming priority features coming this year, including: leaderboards, a spectator mode, the release of proximity chat, and a Server Browser with Persistent Servers to give players even more options to host and play preferred experiences.

Additionally, for the competitive people among us, the Open and Elite competitive series will arrive this year, following the focused evolution of the Ranked Play experience. This series will showcase the absolute best competitive play that Battlefield has to offer on the global stage, so yes, esports is right around the corner. 

Watch the Battlefield 6 2026 Roadmap Trailer

What is new in Battlefield 6 Season 3?

As with any season update, Battlefield 6 Season 3 is going to be the maps, and there will be two, both of which are bringing back favorites, thanks to the success of Operation Firestorm last year. 

• Railway to Golmund: Battlefield 6 Season 3 kicks off in May 2026 with a reimagining of a classic Battlefield 4 map, Galmund Railway. Now called Railway to Golmud,  this map will be the largest in Battlefield 6 yet. Set in Tajikistan after the events of the campaign, this map will feature new cover, larger open aerial spaces, and enough areas for both long-range and close-range combat options.
• Cairo Bazaar: Later in the season, Battlefield 6 Season 3 is also bringing back one of the legendary competitive maps. Cairo Bazaar is a reimagining of Battlefield 3’s Grand Bazaar. 

Also in Season 3, REDSEC’s Ranked Play experience is going live, which will launch in Battle Royale Quads, setting the stage for a thrilling competitive experience that will evolve in future seasons based on feedback from the community.

What is new in Battlefield 6 Season 4?

Battlefield Season 4 launches late in the Summer and will bring players Naval Warfare in both Battlefield 6 and REDSEC. Then of course, there are the maps. 

• Tsuru Reef: This will be an all-new naval-focused map, which is set to be the biggest warground yet, with equally large air and sea spaces, new naval-based vehicles, aircraft carriers with operational flight decks, and a dynamic wave system that will heighten the intensity of ocean combat.
• Wake Island: One of the most celebrated maps in the series’ history, it first appeared in Battlefield 1942 and has appeared in many other games since. So, of course, we’re getting it here.

What is new in Battlefield 6 Season 5?

Finally, Season 5 closes out the year, with the developers in the Roadmap stream highlighting that they hope to treat it like a “holiday surprise.” What we know so far, though, is that it will take players to a new location in the Battlefield franchise, rewarding them with the special holiday jackpot: three maps dropping within a single season.

Battlefield 6 Season 3 begins in May 2026. 

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The Terror is an anthology series that has shifted with time and place, but always brought horrific experiences to light on the screen. Now, audiences are getting a new one with The Terror Devil in Silver. AMC+ and Shudder revealed the trailer and key art for the newest installment of the lauded horror anthology. The Terror: Devil in Silver will debut Thursday, May 7, 2026, on AMC+ and Shudder, with new episodes airing weekly.

The six-episode limited series is executive produced by Ridley Scott, writers and showrunners Chris Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) and Victor LaValle (The Changeling), author of the novel on which the season is based, and Karyn Kusama (The Invitation), who directs the first two episodes. 

Previous seasons of The Terror focused on a British naval expedition stuck in the ice while searching for the Northwest Passage and haunting events in a Japanese internment camp in the US during World War II. Now, it’s adapting The Devil in Silver: A Novel by LaValle.

About the second season, we said, “The Terror: Infamy is not only a beautiful horror series but an amazing emotional experience. While the bulk of this review has focused on the history shown in this season finale, the reality is that Chester’s fight with the yūrei Yuko is just as important and weighted emotionally. The season uses Chester’s struggle to investigate ideas of identity, family, and belonging. Additionally, Yuko’s story, the lies her sister told her to have her sent the United States in her place, the way the community mistreated her upon having Chester, we empathize with her.”

What is The Terror Devil in Silver about?

Dan Stevens (Abigail, Downton Abbey), who also serves as executive producer, is leading the cast as Pepper – a working-class moving man who, through a combination of bad luck and a bad temper, finds himself wrongfully committed to New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital – an institution filled with those society would rather forget.

There, he must contend with patients working against him, doctors harboring grim secrets, and perhaps even the Devil himself. As Pepper navigates a hellscape where nothing is as it seems, he finds that the only path to freedom is to face the entity which thrives on the suffering within New Hyde’s walls – but doing so may prove that the worst demons of all live inside him.

Watch the Trailer

The Terror Devil In Silver Cast

• Dan Stevens (Abigail, Downton Abbey)
• Judith Light (Before, Out of My Mind)
• Aasif Mandvi (Evil, This Way Up)
• Hampton Fluker (Shades of Blue, Instant Family)
• CCH Pounder (Rustin, NCIS: New Orleans)
• b (WeCrashed, You)
• Chinaza Uche (Silo, A Good Person)
• Stephen Root (Barry, Heads of State)
• Hayward Leach (Tom Swift, Love Life)
• John Benjamin Hickey (The Big C, Lilly)
• Michael Aronov (The Americans, Operation Finale)
• Philip Ettinger (First Reformed, I Know This Much Is True)
• Marin Ireland (Sneaky Pete, Glass Chin)

What is the release date?

The Terror: Devil in Silver will debut Thursday, May 7, 2026 on AMC+ and Shudder, with new episodes airing weekly. The series will also air on AMC later this year, though a release date has been given for that time. 

The post Dan Stevens Is Striking In New The Terror: Devil in Silver Trailer appeared first on But Why Tho?.

Wholesome narrative puzzle game A Storied Life: Tabitha is available now on PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch. A cozy game that tackles the complex emotions that accompany grief, A Storied Life: Tabitha, is developed by independent UK-based developer Lab42 Games.

Published by Secret Mode, the game brings a cozy watercolor aesthetic and unique narrative design to the space, and that’s just from what we saw in the trailer. 

“This has been one of the most fulfilling projects we’ve ever worked on, and we’re so excited to finally get the full game into players’ hands,” said Lab42 Games’ Terry Goodwin and Cherish Goldstraw in the launch press release. “We’ve been bowled over by the positive reception so far, and it’s been a pleasure watching people resonate with our little game. We hope they enjoy the full experience just as much.”

What is A Storied Life: Tabitaha about?

For anyone who has lost a loved one and has taken to remembering them by making their actions your own, the trailer and description of the game are sure to resonate. And if anything, the game’s premise already seems to confront the worries we all carry about losing the stories our grandparents and parents have told us about the lives they’ve led, and even those we forgot to ask about. 

The official synopsis provided by Lab42 Games:

A Storied Life: Tabitha takes you to Lavender Laithe, the former home of Tabitha, a recently-deceased loved one. Upon arriving, you discover that Tabitha has an agreement with a publisher to print her memoirs… which have just been damaged due to an unfortunate mishap. It’s up to you to go through the house and piece together Tabitha’s life, filling in the gaps left in her memoir pages using the items you find along the way to guide you.

Return to Tabitha’s home multiple times to rewrite her story and find new facets to her life. Search every nook and cranny for hidden items and intriguing easter eggs. Or recycle everything and take nothing of Tabitha’s life with you. There are many choices to be made, and no right or wrong answers – only the memories you choose to keep.

Watch the Trailer

Lab42 Games also highlighted some key features in the game: Exploring Tabitha’s house, fitting everything you can in a box to pack it up, completing Tabitha’s memoirs, and finding out more about her. 

The game will task you to explore the house room by room and decide what you’ll keep, what should be sold, and what can be recycled. It’s a sorting process of any estate that those who have lost people remember, and not always fondly. In the process, players will move furniture and search cupboards and drawers for tucked-away items that may hold more intriguing memories to help you rewrite and complete Tabitha’s story in her memoirs.

The packing mechanic, however, is the one that immediately made me emotional while watching the trailer. There is only one cardboard box for keepsakes per room, and anyone who has had to do this process knows how hard that is. Players will have to make the difficult decision of what to keep and leave out, creating the life that you want to remember for Tabitha. With packing, players will rotate and align items, fold objects, and arrange everything so that nothing gets broken. 

Finally, the process of writing is to fill the gaps in Tabitha’s memoirs using the items you’ve chosen to save and uncover the many sides of her. The promise of A Storied Life: Tabitha is for players to experience what it is like to take over a person’s memory. It’s up to you, the player, to decide how Tabitha is remembered. The examples that Lab42 Games give are “caring mother,” “budding botanist,” and “dabbler in the arcane arts.”

Now officially launched, it’s time to put a spotlight on a game that is looking to put players into a sensitive moment in life, while embracing the intimacy of crafting the memories you shape after a person is gone. 

A Storied Life: Tabitha is available now on PC and Switch with a 10% launch discount on Steam.

The post A Storied Life: Tabitha Asks Players To Create The Memory Of A Loved One appeared first on But Why Tho?.

Prime Video has already announced that Young Sherlock Season 2 is on the way. The Guy Ritchie-directed series starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Sherlock Holmes hit with critics and fans thanks to its irreverent humor, great action, and, of course, the mystery at its center. The stat line for the series is rather impressive, with Young Sherlock reaching 45 million viewers and ranking among the top 10 Prime Original Seasons all-time. And thankfully, we’ll be getting more of the Sherlockian origin story. 

“Young Sherlock has that rare magic—millions of fans around the world aren’t just watching a detective story, they’re falling in love with the origin of an icon,” Peter Friedlander, Head of Global Television, Amazon MGM Studios, said in a comment to press. “Guy Ritchie and Matthew Parkhill have cracked the code on making Sherlock’s early years feel fresh, dangerous, and utterly addictive, and have introduced a compelling take on James Moriarty that sets the stage for what’s to come. We can’t wait to see where they take him next in Season Two.”

About Young Sherlock Season 1, we said, “Young Sherlock is expertly scored, with modern songs echoing alongside folk ones, and fights are sharply choreographed; this is one of the very few examples of how to use slo-mo effectively without becoming overwhelming. Young Sherlock is something that has earned being around for far more seasons to come.”

The series will have Guy Ritchie returning to direct the first episode of Young Sherlock Season 2, and the series was created for television and executive produced by showrunner Matthew Parkhill with executive producers Marc Resteghini, Dhana Rivera Gilbert, Simon Maxwell, Ivan Atkinson, Simon Kelton, Colin Wilson, Harriet Creelman, and co-executive producers Steve Thompson and James Dormer. Motive Pictures leads physical production for Young Sherlock.

What is Young Sherlock about?

An origin story for one of the world’s greatest detectives, Young Sherlock takes viewers into Victorian London to a time where Sherlock was a young man, Moriarty was his best friend, and Lestrade was just a regular old police officer. 

Official synopsis from Prime Video:

When a charismatic, youthfully defiant Sherlock Holmes meets none other than James Moriarty, he finds himself dragged into a murder investigation that threatens his liberty. Sherlock’s first ever case unravels a globe-trotting conspiracy, leading to an explosive showdown that alters the course of his life forever. Unfolding in a vibrant Victorian England and adventuring abroad, the series exposes the early antics of the anarchic adolescent who is yet to evolve into Baker Street’s most renowned resident.

Young Sherlock Cast

We do not have any new information on the casting for Young Sherlock Season 2. When we do, we’ll update this article with the right information. But for now:

• Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Sherlock (After series)
• Dónal Finn (The Wheel of Time) as James Moriarty
• Zine Tseng (3 Body Problem) as Princess Gulun Shou’an/Xiao Wei
• Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale) as Silas Holmes
• Natascha McElhone (Halo) as Cordelia Holmes
• Max Irons (Condor) as Mycroft Holmes
• Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)

What is the Young Sherlock Season 2 release date?

We do not currently have a release date or window for the second season of Young Sherlock, but it will stream exclusively on Prime Video.

Young Sherlock Season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video. 

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