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Disney signed a 20-episode deal with Dhar Mann Studios this week. Dhar Mann. The YouTube guy. The one whose entire catalog is a mean cashier being rude to a homeless man who turns out to be a billionaire, cut to a title card that says Always Be Kind. That guy. Twenty episodes. Bob Iger sat in a room, looked at a slate of possible investments, and said yes to the eight-minute vertical morality play factory. Meanwhile Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is doing press explaining that his Marvel show got un-renewed after being renewed because "it had something to do with the viewership numbers" that Disney wouldn't actually show him. So the plan at the House of Mouse is: kill Wonder Man, fund Dhar Mann. Somewhere in Burbank a strategy deck exists that made this look smart. I would pay real money to read it.

Anyway. Onto the shows.

Lanterns (HBO Max)

Damon Lindelof and Tom King made a Green Lantern show and cast Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, and then somebody at HBO looked at the pitch — two space cops investigate a murder in rural America — and greenlit True Detective with a power ring. That's the swing. The pilot dropped Saturday, the cast has Kelly Macdonald and Garret Dillahunt, and Lindelof is on record saying he wanted this to be the anti-Marvel Marvel show, which is the kind of thing showrunners say right before either winning an Emmy or getting quietly reassigned. Early reactions are strong. It's the one thing on the calendar this week that seems to actually want to be something.

✅ WORTH IT

Reacher, Season 4 (Prime Video)

Reacher is back and Alan Ritchson is still shaped like a walking freezer full of chicken. Four seasons in and the formula is untouched: enormous man arrives in town, someone underestimates him, that person's bones are now on a spreadsheet at the hospital. This one drags in Agnez Mo and leans harder into the international-conspiracy stuff, which historically is when the Lee Child books were at their most fun and their least logical. Prime Video knows exactly what it's selling — a guy in a Henley solving problems with his hands — and refuses to overthink it. Bless them for that.

✅ WORTH IT