ENTERTAINMENT

Amazon is offering an Apple Watch Series 10 42mm model for only $329 and the bigger 46mm model for $359. This matches the lowest prices we saw during Black Friday. If you own an iPhone, the Apple Watch is indisputably the best smartwatch for you. It’s stylish, boasts excellent build quality, excels as both a fitness tracker and smart watch, and complements your iPhone better than any other watch brand.

Apple Watch Series 10 From $329

IDW’s long-running Sonic the Hedgehog series recently reached a major milestone with its 75th issue. Sonic the Hedgehog #75 chronicled the final battle between Team Sonic and the villain Clutch, leading to a followup story ominously titled “Scattered Pieces.”

“Scattered Pieces” will unfold in the pages of Sonic the Hedgehog #76-80. With issue #76 now in stores, IGN can exclusively debut new art from the penultimate chapter of this new storyline at IGN Fan Fest. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a look at the three covers for Sonic the Hedgehog #79, along with the previously revealed “Scattered Pieces” covers:

“Scattered Pieces” is written by series regular Ian Flynn. Issue #79 features interior art and a main cover by Adam Bryce Thomas, with variant covers by Tyler Mcgrath and Nathalie Fourdraine.

Here’s IDW’s official description for Sonic the Hedgehog #79:

The long-running feud between ace sniper Whisper and sinister assassin Mimic is coming to a climactic showdown!

Only one of these former comrades will walk away! Can Tangle and Silver help turn the tide of battle? Or will Whisper suffer another friend getting caught in the crossfire? It’s a thrilling battle years in the making!

“IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog has been going strong for seven years now, and in that time has cultivated a number of storylines, characters and narrative elements it can call its own,” Flynn tells IGN. “A lot of those all came to a head in Evan Stanley’s latest arc. Reaching a story’s climax is always fun, but I’m also just as eager to explore the follow-up. There will be a lot of fans asking ‘What happens next?’ My arc gets to answer that, bring a few conclusions of my own, and set the stage for Evan’s next major arc with the series.”

Sonic the Hedgehog #76 is in stores now, with issue #77 due for release on March 19. You can preorder a copy of the new issue at your local comic shop (click here to find your local shop).

Also as part of IGN Fan Fest 2025, we got an early look at IDW’s new Godzilla shared universe.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Demon Slayer and Team Liquid are crossing over for a brand-new collection of gear that aims to “set your style on fire” with jackets, shirts, keycap sets, and much more.

This new collection blends “Demon Slayer’s unique aesthetic with the competitive edge of Team Liquid” and will allow fans to share their love for both with such items as the Tanjiro Varsity Jacket, Inosuke Sherpa Jacket, Kyojuro Keycap Set, and the Nezuko Crewneck.

There looks to be 26 items in total and fan-favorite characters like Hashira, Muichiro, Zenitsu, and Mitsuri all have their own gear. Oh, and even Nichirin Swords get some love with some comfy-looking cargo joggers.

If you want to own your own piece of Demon Slayer x Team Liquid gear, head over to tl.gg/demonslayer to grab them before they’re gone. You can also check out a full list of the items below;

• Tanjiro Varsity Jacket
• Tanjiro Tech Jacket
• Inosuke Sherpa Jacket
• Flame Hashira Hoodie
• Mitsuri Hoodie
• Nezuko Crewneck
• Nezuko Tee
• Zenitsu Tee
• Muichiro Tee
• Nichiro Cargo Joggers
• Hashira Tech Shorts
• Nezuko Full Art Keycap Set
• Kyojuro Keycap Set
• Zenitsu Keycap Set
• Tanjiro Keycap Set
• Nezuko Keycap Set
• Inosuke Keycap Set
• Tanjiro Mousepad
• Nezuko Mousepad
• Flame Hashira Mousepad
• Inosuke Hashibira Mousepad
• Set You Heart Ablaze Mousepad
• Tanjiro Tumbler
• Nezuko Tumbler
• Demon Slayer Keychain Set
• Demon Slayer Sticker Pack

For more on Demon Slayer, check out our review of the series’ fourth season, how Season 5 is set to be released as a film trilogy, and why the manga the show is adapted from is one of our picks for the best for beginners to read.

Also, be sure check out all the other big news from IGN Fan Fest.

Warner Bros. is canceling its planned Wonder Woman game and shutting down three studios: Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier.

Schreier broke the news on Bluesky today, stating that a full report was in the works at Bloomberg. Shortly after, WB confirmed the shut downs to Kotaku in a statement:

We have had to make some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games possible with our key franchises -– Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones. After careful consideration, we are closing three of our development studios – Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them.

The development of Monolith’s Wonder Woman videogame will not move forward. Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities. This is another tough decision, as we recognize Monolith’s storied history of delivering epic fan experiences through amazing games. We greatly admire the passion of the three teams and thank every employee for their contributions. As difficult as today is, we remain focused on and excited about getting back to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans and developed by our world class studios and getting our Games business back to profitability and growth in 2025 and beyond.

Earlier this year, another Bloomberg report suggested Wonder Woman was in trouble after rebooting and switching directors in early 2024. This came amid larger struggles at the company’s gaming division, including layoffs at Rocksteady, the lukewarm reception to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and the shutdown of MultiVersus.

With this closure, the games industry loses three incredibly storied studios. Monolith Productions, which had been working on Wonder Woman, was founded in 1994 and acquired by WB in 2004. It’s best-known for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Shadow of War, the former of which pioneered the lauded Nemesis system that WB successfully patented in 2021.

Player First Games, a newer studio established in 2019, was responsible for MultiVersus. The game was well-received critically and saw launch success, but underperformed relative to WB’s expectations. WB San Diego, similarly, is a newer studio established in 2019 with a focus on mobile, free-to-play games.

These shutdowns continue a trend going back roughly three years of increasing games industry layoffs, project cancellations, and studio closures. In 2023 alone, it’s estimated that over 10,000 game developers were laid off. That number shot up to over 14,000 in 2024, and while 2025 has seen numerous closures, the exact number of impacted individuals is hazier due to fewer companies reporting these layoffs and shutdowns, or specific numbers affected.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

This article contains spoilers for Paradise on Hulu.

Hulu’s new hit show Paradise is usually a pulpy good time. Sure there’s drama in the Dan Fogelman joint, and plenty of tears and family angst (per the showrunner’s M.O. from This is Us). There’s even some action and intrigue, thanks to Sterling K. Brown’s upright secret service agent trying to unravel the mystery of who killed the President, played by James Marsden. It’s all good fun, at least until the seventh episode, “The Day,” which is the most upsetting episode of TV you’ll watch this year.

Is that a bold pronouncement for two months into 2025? Surely. But while the first six episodes are a good time at the ol’ boob tube, Episode 7 will punch you in the gut and bring you to tears for nearly the entire episode. It’s an unrelenting grand guignol of emotion that progresses multiple plot points in the show and sets up the season finale while you watch the world end.

And the focus of “The Day” – or at least what’s so gut-wrenching about it – isn’t the disaster, which we only get to see glimpses of on news footage, and hear about in phone calls and broadcasts. Instead, the episode presents what happened inside The White House in near real-time, and it is horrifying.

In the series, we meet Agent Xavier Collins (Brown), who has been tasked as the lead Secret Service agent guarding President Cal Bradford (Marsden). While it initially seems like Bradford is a young ex-president in the mode of JFK, lazing away his days after two terms in office drinking and womanizing, there’s actually a lot more going on – which becomes clear after Xavier discovers the dead body of Bradford on his bedroom floor.

In fact, up until his death, Bradford was still President – of about 25,000 people, what remains of the human race after an extinction-level disaster, who now live in the fake suburban community of Paradise under a mountain in Colorado. Over the course of the season through flashbacks, we slowly discover what may have led to this disaster, as well as how Paradise was built. Most of it is down to billionaire Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), who decided to prepare for a coming climate disaster by building this underground community, a little slice of heaven that is inspired by the dying wish of her youngest son. Again: This Is Us, Dan Fogelman, etc, you get the gist. It’s all very soap opera weepy up until this point.

And yes, this is a show about climate change, something that isn’t – as they used to say – advertised on the tin. Redmond encounters an unruly scientist in an earlier episode who warns her that there are about 10 years until a devastating climate-fueled disaster destroys the world… Not slowly, but all at once.

That’s what we get to see happen in Episode 7. Thanks to the melting of the polar ice caps, a volcano explodes in Antarctica, instantly melting a huge chunk of the ice and causing a tsunami hundreds of feet tall to crash over the Earth, destroying everything in its wake. The whole situation certainly seems to be Hollywood, Day After Tomorrow, on the surface – and it is. Having a climate disaster that is, in essence, “we’ll experience unlivable levels of heat over several years” wouldn’t be nearly as cinematic as what happens in the series.

Part of the neat, narrative trick that Fogelman and company have worked into this series is that we already know what is supposed to happen. In an earlier episode, Cal asks Xavier to walk him through the protocol for the disaster, code-named “Versailles” – likely named that due to the quick exit the royal family in France took from Versailles during the French Revolution. As Xavier talks him through the 20-minute plan they joke about Die Hard, chat about their families, and Cal strongly indicates to Xavier that his wife should stop taking business trips. Unfortunately, Xavier doesn’t really know the severity of the situation. So despite Cal’s strong looks at Xavier trying to indicate how bad things are going to get, Xavier merely defers that he can never tell his wife what to do – so of course she’s going to keep going out of town.

The signs are all there that this is going to be an emotional disaster, as well as a physical one. We also know that in the “present” Xavier’s wife is dead, and he’s solo-parenting his two kids in Paradise. We also have an inkling that Cal was drinking himself into a stupor every night before his untimely murder thanks to whatever happened on the day they left The White House. But again, given how pulpy everything has been up until now, there’s no reason to think this episode will be an emotionally harrowing hour that will leave you physically and emotionally drained.

It is, though. And the reason for that is everything starts to go wrong immediately, in big and small ways. Instead of the smooth roll-out that was presented in Cal and Xavier’s late-night walk, the sudden tsunami that destroys Australia – we get constant updates of which major cities are wiped off the face of the Earth as the episode continues – sends the White House into a frenzy. We watch as Cal wrestles with lying to the American people, ultimately telling the truth about the disaster through a final broadcast, urging everyone to spend time with the ones they care about before they die. We see that he does not escape cleanly as the people left behind in the White House realize the President and staff are exiting without them, leaving them to their deaths – those who aren’t shot down by the Secret Service first.

Of course, Xavier’s wife is out of town, and watching the usually unflappable agent fall apart as he tries repeatedly to get through to her on the jammed phone lines, working with the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff to get her a route to one of the planes to Colorado, is heartbreaking… As is the way he keeps avoiding his children’s questions about their mother. And the punch, that Cal always knew she wasn’t going to make it, leads to Xavier flipping out on the tarmac in a way that will tear your heart out.

Adding on to that is a trickle-down effect where Xavier, who is dealing with the fact that he may not get his wife out in time, is doling out the same lies to the President’s long-time secretary, who is not on the “to-be saved” list. Once she realizes she won’t make it out, all she asks of Xavier is that they save her special needs son (we don’t see him in the episode), leading to a moment right before the President flees where the action pauses on her. “Mr. President,” she says,” My sister is here with Edward, they’re at the gate. So I’ll go get him.” She turns to leave and pick up her son… But he was never getting taken along. And the level of betrayal at that moment is more crushing than any tsunami destruction footage.

That footage is brutal, though. The one time we get to see what’s happening in the world at large is through a news report from Jakarta, where a reporter is broadcasting from the tallest building in the city. They should be safe – but of course, aren’t. And as the tsunami approaches, the crash of the waves causes a repeated and off-tempo sonic boom that will make you jump in your seat. As the reporter realizes the wave is going to overtake them, the broadcast cuts out, it cuts back to a silent newsroom, and we watch the staff outside the Oval Office, similarly, silent, in tears, the full weight of what’s happening hitting them for the first time both literally and figuratively.

In the middle of this, Marsden gives the performance of a lifetime as President Bradford, initially acting strong and choosing a blue tie over a yellow one because it’s “more calming,” and then ultimately heartsick over getting to leave when everyone else is being left to die. There are classic drama moments like when he asks a White House janitor why he’s still cleaning the building with everything that’s going on, but even these more trope-y pieces of drama work because Marsden’s Bradford is so anguished over his role in not saving more people when he could.

Is “The Day” manipulative? Sure. But it’s to prove a point, and show the weight of a climate disaster that is coming in the real world so slowly we think it won’t happen in our lifetimes when it more than likely will. Thanks to the real-time structure, the performances, the direction, and the unrelenting nature of the hour, there’s no way you can’t come out of it feeling grief-stricken about this potential future of the Earth. In next week’s season finale, Paradise should be back to the pulp and fun that characterized the first six episodes. But for one hour, Hulu’s sci-fi show makes us live on the last day of the human species. It’s shattering and will leave you in despair. Here’s hoping – and dreading – that the team will find something else as traumatic and emotionally urgent for the already-announced Season 2. It’s a lot. But if you can handle it, it’s also a must-watch.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 has a premiere release date as part of an exclusive reveal at IGN Fan Fest 2025: May 4, 2025.

IGN showed off an exclusive clip and interview with Scott Gimple, chief content officer of The Walking Dead universe, Maggie actor Lauren Cohen, and Negan actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan during Fan Fest 2025 Day 2.

Cohen described the mental state Maggie is in going into Season 2. “Sadly not everything is quite as rosy as it could be or seems or one would hope,” Cohen explained.

“My son is still a teenage boy and there are these natural tensions of navigating just family life. And I’ve got Ginny in my care and she’s a teenage girl. And so there are very relatable domestic dynamics that are playing out as we come back in Season 2, on top of this apocalyptic world and trying to eat and stay safe and sleep. That’s where we find ourselves before another big bad thing happens.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan also talked about his character, Negan, who has gone from being despised to a fan-favorite.

“We find Negan very much under the thumb of The Dama and The Croat, and on some ground he’s not real familiar with,” he said.

“He’s going to try flip that script, of course. But he’s in a place that I don’t think he’s enjoying very much. At the beginning of the season we find him having a hard time with all of it. He’s always scheming and trying to figure out how he can get on top of the situation, but he finds himself in a hard spot.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan also commented about Negan’s iconic baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, named Lucille after his dead wife.

“The Lucille of it all, what can I say?” he said. “I love that thing! But I as an actor, that’s the only prop I’ve ever had my whole life I enjoy carrying around with me. It brought back very fond memories for me. Not for Lauren!”

Gimple also discussed the conflict going into Season 2. “There is no single big bad,” he said. “There’s a lot of shifting as far as the power ranking for this season. It isn’t all antagonistic. It’s a little more complex like that. It’s a little more political. And then we get kinda physical.”

IGN also has the opening minutes of the opening episode of Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City, below.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 hits AMC on May 4, 2025. Be sure to keep up with everything announced at Fan Fest 2025.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

IGN Fan Fest 2025 has arrived and we’re so excited to be sharing exclusive reveals, trailers, gameplay, deep dives, and interviews with the people behind some of your favorite movies, shows, games, comics, and anime.

IGN Fan Fest 2025 runs through Friday, February 28, and you can check out the full schedule right here. After an exciting first day with the ID@Xbox Showcase, Day 2 has begun and promises to focus on horror among other favorites.

We’ll be gathering all the biggest reveals right here, and you can keep checking back as we will constantly be updating this roundup throughout the week!

Day 2

Until Dawn Filmmakers on Adapting the PlayStation Game for the Big Screen

Alongside revealing two new photos from the Until Dawn film, director David F. Sandberg and co-writer Gary Dauberman stopped by IGN Fan Fest to share what it’s like to adapt a beloved PlayStation game for the big screen and why it won’t just be a straight recreation of what we already know and love.

George R.R. Martin Teases Elden Ring Movie and In The Lost Lands

Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin spoke with us about Paul W.S. Anderson’s upcoming adaptation of his dark fantasy short story known as In the Lost Lands. In addition, he also looks back at working on the mythology of Elden Ring and a potential film adaptaion, his thoughts on The Fantasic Four: First Steps, and more.

Day 1

Balatro on Xbox Game Pass, a New Look at Lies of P: Overture, and Everything Else Announced at the ID@Xbox Showcase

IGN was so excited to partner again with ID@Xbox for the latest ID@Xbox Showcase, and there were some big announcements from the brightest indie games out now and on our way in the future. From Balatro being available on Xbox Game Pass RIGHT NOW to new looks at Lies of P: Overture and Tron: Catalyst and so much more, there was a ton to celebrate.