Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ rides off into the sunset

If you’re reading this edition of Popculturology, it means that your phone didn’t melt during this week’s heatwave. (Every thing is fine. The planet is fine.) A few quick items before we hit the news of the week ...

You’ve just crossed over into ...

Thanks to Syfy's annual marathon of the show, I’ve been rewatching episodes of The Twilight Zone over the past week. I’m not a revolutionary genius to say that this show still holds up in 2024. (If you’ve never watched “The Shelter” or “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” check them out. The entire original series is available on Prime Video, but you can’t always trust these streaming platforms so I picked up the full Blu-ray set too.)

Rod Serling’s original series hits in a way that Jordan Peele’s well-meaning recent take on the franchise failed to capture.

“Everyone must be sacrificed to fulfill their destiny”

Oh boy, you screwed up, Sol.

The penultimate episode The Acolyte took us back to the fateful day on Brendok when everything went wrong for the Jedi and everyone who had the misfortune of crossing paths with them.

While this episode didn’t reveal any connections between the witches and Qimir or the Sith, it did make Jedi Master Sol the villain of the story. Like many other Jedi we’ve seen across Star Wars lore, Sol refused to follow the guidance of his superiors — an action that repeatedly made things worse for the Jedi, for Osha and Mae and for Mothers Aniseya and Koril.

Breaking up this group — this family — was more important to Sol than letting Osha and Mae live their lives as they had been before he (and Torbin) came stomping into their home.

With one episode left to go, The Acolyte is putting the finishing touches on what’s probably the definitive story of how the Jedi are not the good guys in Star Wars — and they never have been.

• (Not) seeing double: I know that child labor laws probably came into play here, but The Acolyte choosing to have fraternal twins play the young versions of Osha and Mae seemed even more bizarre this episode. So much of the show has depended on the conceit that these two characters look identical, and now this episode tells us that not only are they identical, they’re basically a single soul split for the Force. There was even a hilarious moment when Sol mistook Mae for Osha despite the two looking very different in this episode.
• “They do not know each other”: The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland debunked the theory that Mother Koril and Qimir were connected along with a bunch of other insights into this episode while chatting with Nerdist. (Nerdist)
• “Someday, those noble intentions you all have will destroy every Jedi in the galaxy”: Spoiler alert, Mother Aniseya.
• Not gonna say it: The Acolyte now joins the final season of The Bad Batch as Star Wars shows that reference M-counts — which is just a way for Star Wars to discuss Midi-chlorians without coming out and saying it.

Don’t drink and dragon

And that, kids, is why you never fly your dragon into battle after having a few drinks.

This was probably the best episode of House of the Dragon’s current season so far, finally giving us some dragon-versus-dragon action. Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi does raise some good questions about how those dragons work, though ...

• “They have two legs (not four, never four) and two wings. LARGE wings.” House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin weighed in on dragon lore on his blog. (Not a Blog)

NEWS, NOTES & TRAILERS

I mustache you to pull Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 from your release calendar

Things weren’t looking great for the future of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga franchise. Despite Costner pouring $38 million of his own money into the series, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 opened with an $11.1 million weekend. By last weekend, Chapter 1 had fallen to No. 6 with a measly $5.4 million.

But the good news for Costner and the handful of people who saw Horizon in theaters was that Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 was already on the calendar for an Aug. 16 release.

Or, it was.