Photo: FX FX’s Shōgun was intended as a mini-series, but after earning 9 million views during its first week on streaming, maybe they will be pulling a White Lotus. The possibilities are almost endless with those numbers. Based on a book of the same name by James Clavell, the show follows a fictionalized 17th-century Japanese leader, Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who fights to survive as his enemies team up against him. However, if the series creators would like to continue on with a second season, they’d be forced to create new storylines instead of building on the story from its only book. FX has no ..read more

Photo: Katie Yu/FX “A Dream of a Dream” is now streaming on Hulu. It will air on FX tonight at 10 p.m. As befits a series filled with characters whose dual identities require them to see the world from different perspectives, there are two ways to think about Shōgun’s decision to title its penultimate episode “Crimson Sky.” Crimson Sky is, of course, the name of Toranaga’s battle plan, presumed by all around him to be a relentless assault on Osaka and Ishido. Those paying attention to episode titles had every reason to expect the series’ ninth episode would depict the battle to end all battles ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Illustration: Vulture. Photos: Getty Images, Epic Games To the tune of “Chug Jug With You” (and “American Boy,” I guess) Number one victory royale Yeah Fortnite, we ‘bout to get down (get down) Billie Eilish on the board right now Gonna headline Tomato Town Billie Eilish will drop into Fortnite on April 23 as a playable character for Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game with mechanics similar to Rock Band. She’ll be joining the likes of Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and The Weeknd. There’s no word yet on what exactly an Eilish x Fortnite collaboration will entail. From past events ..read more

Photo: Bravo The lava cake gets out to the guests with no further eruptions, but Anthony goes to bed still feeling like a failure. At 1:50 a.m., King Ray asks Barbie for lobster grilled cheese. She explains that Anthony is asleep, so she can’t do lobster or any of the typical fried drunk foods they ask for, but will put some sandwiches together. This would be fine, except Barbie says she’s not a good chef and doesn’t know how to make french fries. I get wanting to keep expectations low, but that is not luxury service. The primary Carmen is ..read more

Photo: Matthew Murphy The core ethos of The Heart of Rock and Roll might be best expressed in an early scene by the musical’s exasperated head of HR, played by Tamika Lawrence, who accedes to its peppy hero’s scheming by shrugging and saying, “Fine! What the hell. It’s the ’80s.” There’s a lot to unpack in that exchange alone. The Heart of Rock and Roll is about a cardboard-box company where the head of HR is a crucial character. And it’s set in the ’80s — like really set in the 1980s, in the same way that the French portion of EPCOT resembles actual Paris: There are tons of prop Walkmen, a pr ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty Images For almost half her life, Martha harbored an obsessive attachment to Taylor Swift. (“Martha” is a pseudonym; like most of the sources in the piece, she asked to speak on the condition of anonymity for fear of being doxed.) She created numerous Twitter and Instagram accounts dedicated to Swift, sharing pictures of everything from her squad to her cat Meredith, tagging the star and her publicist in each caption. But the 32-year-old hit a breaking point last May when Swift began dating the 1975 front man Matty Healy ..read more

Photo: MTV When Nymphia Wind won RuPaul’s Drag Race, she scored a lot of firsts. She was the first East Asian queen to win the crown, the first Taiwanese queen, and the first queen to actively hate words. Much of Nymphia’s arc throughout season 16 centered on how much she disliked writing, speaking, and comedy — preferring to let her dancing and sewing talents shine. That culminated in her finally breaking through in the penultimate challenge, a marathon of words that tested both her writing and interviewing skills. When she ended up winning that challenge, it felt like the final piece of the ..read more

Photo: Mike Coppola/WireImage Sometimes when God closes a door (Taylor Swift says “So long”), She opens a window (Tom Cruise does the splits). Cruise is living that life in London, and for him that means break-dancing, doing the splits, and watching the British absolutely lose their crumpets. Cruise has lived in London since 2021 and has, in that time, been at the former queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the British Grand Prix, according to the Mercury News. And now he has attended the most British event of all: Posh Spice’s birthday party. Fortunately, he still has the American propensity to do the m ..read more

Photo: Gilles Mingasson/Hulu It’s so easy and fun to hate Hannah and Telly because they are so generically awful you don’t even have to hinder your faculties to figure out why it is that you hate them. That is what ultimately makes them the worst characters on the show. Yes, they’re noisy and create a lot of “drama,” but everything they’re saying and doing has been said and done better by greater practitioners of reality television arts and sciences. They are more banal than hating Taylor Swift, more banal than pumpkin spice lattes, and more banal,  ..read more

Photo: Disney+ Spoilers follow for the Bluey season-three finale, “Surprise.” Last week, Disney+ streamed a very special television event. It was like the moon landing, White Walker battle, and “Who Shot Mr. Burns” arc combined. That supersize, 28-minute episode of Bluey, titled “The Sign,” dealt with Bluey’s mounting dread about the Heeler family selling their impossibly nice Brisbane house and moving to a new city — until its final moments, when Bandit changed his mind. As critic Kathryn VanArendonk wrote about the episode, this would be disappointingly unrealistic for an average episod ..read more