We start this week’s pop culture news recap with the announcement that another Willow star has died just one week after Val Kilmer passed.

Perhaps best known to fans of dark 80s fantasy (at least if you’re of a certain generation), British actress and author Jean Marsh played Willow’s primary antagonist Queen Bavmorda, and was also the terrifying head-stealing Mombi in Return to Oz. Before that, Marsh also racked up three different roles in the Doctor Who franchise, including playing a companion of the First Doctor, and she co-created period drama Upstairs Downstairs, which was a forerunner of Downton Abbey. Marsh died on 13 April, aged 90, from dementia complications.

Lifestyle

Comic Con Cape Town is only a few weeks away at this point, and the organisers have added a few more celebrity guests to the event, which is happening at the CTICC from 1 – 4 May.

Present on two days of the con’s four (Saturday and Sunday), and crucially present for May the 4th, is none other than Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine himself: Ian McDiarmid. McDiarmid has played Palpatine in every film where the character physically appears, and is an accomplished theatre performer, having received Olivier and Tony Awards in addition to joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974.

Meanwhile, South African cover artist extraordinaire Warren Louw will be at CCCT on three days (2 – 4 May), doing signings and panels. Louw has produced work for comic publishers like Titan and Dynamite, in addition to the Big Two: Marvel and DC.

Series

Apple TV+ continues to dominate on the small-screen science fiction front, and clearly isn’t afraid to mix things up tonally.

Leaning into dark comedy is upcoming Murderbot, an adaptation of Martha Wells’s book series The Murderbot Diaries, about a rogue security unit that secretly gains free will. Alexander Skarsgård plays the self-dubbed Murderbot, who would rather be watching TV but finds himself protecting cash-strapped scientists on a dangerous planet – and finds purpose along the way. Also in the cast are familiar faces David Dastmalchian, Clark Gregg and John Cho.

Murderbot premieres on 16 May on Apple TV+ with two episodes. After that, the 10-episode first season will have weekly installment drops.

Keeping things sci-fi, but moving over to Netflix, we have Love Death + Robots Volume 4. The Annie- and Emmy-winning adult animated anthology series returns next month as well (the last set of episodes was released back in 2022), and though very little has been revealed about Vol. 4 at this point, everything you need to know has been collected here. As before, while different animation studios create the shorts in their style, the driving forces behind the scenes are Deadpool and Secret Level’s Tim Miller, Mindhunter and Seven’s David Fincher, and Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Darkest Minds’ Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

The fourth season of Love Death + Robots arrives in its 10-episode entirety on 15 May.

Film

Keeping things sci-fi, adult-orientated and animated for a moment longer, there’s upcoming film Predator: Killer of Killers.

Coming to Hulu and Disney+ on 6 June, Predator: Killer of Killers is spearheaded by director Dan Trachtenberg, who made live-action Predator films Prey and upcoming Badlands. The Third Floor are on animation duties for this look at three other times in history that deadly human warriors (a Viking raider, a Japanese Samurai and a WWII US pilot) found themselves hunted by technologically advanced aliens.

We’re still not sure if Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (previously known as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two) will be Tom Cruise’s final Mission: Impossible film. However, it’s certainly being touted as a grand storyline cap, as Ethan Hunt must face the consequence of his decades of choices as an Impossible Missions Force agent. And, as usual, the fate of the world is at stake, this time due to the sentient AI introduced in Dead Reckoning. Cruise is joined onscreen by an assortment of allies, kinda allies and enemies played by Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales and Pom Klementieff.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas from 23 May 2025.

One final piece of movie news:

After years of campaigning, Hollywood’s stunt performers are finally getting recognition at the Oscars. As of the 100th Academy Awards, to be held in 2028, there will be a category for best stunt design. Competing films will have had to release during the 2027 eligibility window.

Gaming

Mark your calendars now. Xbox has revealed the date and time for its annual Xbox Games Showcase, two months in advance. Coming up on Sunday, 8 June (or very early 9 June if you’re in large chunks of Asia and Australasia), the stream will be on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. In South Africa, the show begins at 7pm, while other major time zones are:

  • PDT: June 8, 10am
  • EDT: June 8, 1pm
  • BST: June 8, 6pm
  • CEST: June 8, 7pm
  • JST: June 9, 2am
  • AEST: June 9, 3am

Going by previous years, you can expect the Showcase to run for around 90 minutes, which includes an The Outer Worlds 2 deep dive immediately following the main presentation.

Who were the big winners at this year’s BAFTA Games Awards?

On an overarching level, there were no real surprises, as Astro Bot took home five awards, including Best Game. However, it was a surprisingly strong showing for North Sea-set survival horror game Still Wakes the Deep (one of our absolute faves from 2024), which won three accolades, for New Intellectual Property, Leading Performance (Alec Newman as Caz) and Supporting Performer (Karen Dunbar as Finlay). Helldivers 2 was the other multiple award winner of the night, picking up Best Multiplayer and Music.

A few other notable categories:

  • British Game: Thank Goodness You’re Here!
  • Debut game: Balatro
  • Game Beyond Entertainment: Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
  • Artistic Achievement: Neva

A complete list of nominees and winners can be found here.

One other piece of gaming news:

It’s been revealed that mythology-themed rogue-like dungeon crawler Hades 2, the follow-up to Supergiant Games’s massively popular (and acclaimed) original, with be a Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 timed console exclusive when the game leaves pre-release.

PC gamers, don’t fear. While PS and Xbox gamers wait, you’ll still be able to play V 1.0 of the game through Steam and the Epic Games Store. And, in fact, you can buy and play the Early Access version already.