Every great TV show has that one moment — the kind that makes you sit straight up from your couch and say something unprintable at the screen. Dark Winds just delivered theirs.

AMC‘s critically acclaimed Navajo crime drama wrapped its fourth season this week with a finale that was, by turns, thrilling, emotional, and genuinely shocking. The series — based on the beloved Tony Hillerman novel The Ghostway — has always known how to hurt you. But this time, it didn’t just leave a bruise. It left a wound.

The Season That Tested Leaphorn Like Never Before

Heading into the final episode of Dark Winds Season 4, things were looking pretty bleak for Joe Leaphorn and Billie, the teenager he and the Navajo Tribal Police have been trying to protect all season long. Irene Vaggan, played with chilling intensity by Franka Potente, proved to be a worthy adversary for Leaphorn — and an unpredictable one. After abducting Leaphorn and Billie in the penultimate episode, Vaggan held them in her bunker as a sort of dollhouse family, trying to manipulate them into pretending the kind of filial bonds she had never experienced herself.

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It’s deeply unsettling television — and that’s precisely what makes Dark Winds one of the most underappreciated dramas on American TV right now.

Zahn McClarnon, who plays Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn with a quiet, coiled brilliance that has earned him serious award-season conversations, has spent four seasons carrying the moral and emotional weight of the Navajo Nation on his shoulders. This season, he was also planning to hang up the badge for good — a retirement that felt both earned and heartbreaking for fans who have watched him fight, bleed, and sacrifice everything for his community.

The Villain Gets Her Ending

A perverted attempt by Navajo-obsessed assassin Irena Vaggan to play house in her bunker with kidnapped Joe Leaphorn and teen Billie ended with a severely burnt Vaggan telling Joe to kill her — as he sends her to prison instead

It’s the kind of morally complex ending this show does better than almost anyone. Leaphorn doesn’t take the easy path. He never does. And in that moment, you see all four seasons of character development condensed into a single choice.

Meanwhile, colleagues-turned-lovers Jim Chee, played by Kiowa Gordon, and Bernadette Manuelito, played by Jessica Matten, worked through their issues and Chee’s Ghost Sickness with a ceremony attended by all. Gold Derby After seasons of will-they-won’t-they tension, it’s a genuinely warm moment — and the show earns every second of it.

Then Comes the Sucker Punch

Just when it seemed like the season was wrapping up with something approaching peace — a rare commodity in the world of Dark Winds — everything changed.

But just when it looked like Joe was ready to ride off into the proverbial sunset of retirement, there was another shocking turn: Gordo Sena, played by the soulful A. Martinez, had been murdered.

Earlier in the episode, Sena had told Leaphorn that he wished he hadn’t retired himself — saying he wanted to die with his boots on — and mentioned that he had been digging into some old, unsolved cases.

Those words now read like a prophecy. A terrible, gut-wrenching prophecy.

Sena has been one of the show’s most beloved supporting figures since Season 2 — the gruff, warm-hearted sheriff who served as Leaphorn’s most trusted ally and, in many ways, his conscience. His death isn’t just a plot twist. It’s a loss that feels genuinely personal for anyone who has spent time with this show.

The decision to kill off Sena wasn’t easy for showrunner John Wirth. Not only was Gordo his own alter ego on the series — “He’s the fumbling, where’s-my-coffee kind of guy I love to write,” Wirth admitted — but the showrunner also knew how special that Gordo-Leaphorn relationship was to the cast on- and off-screen.

“I’m giving you a lot of reasons why it was exactly the wrong thing to do,” Wirth admitted. “But it’s also exactly the right thing to do, because it’s a seismic thunderbolt that hits the show.”

He’s not wrong. That thunderbolt lands.

The Scene Nobody Saw Coming — And One Actor’s Perfect Prank

In a remarkable behind-the-scenes detail that perfectly captures the chemistry of this cast, showrunner Wirth revealed that McClarnon wasn’t told about the planned twist until filming was nearly complete. And true to form, when he finally shot the scene where Leaphorn gets the call and breaks the news to Bernadette — he used his first take to prank his co-star.

“Kiowa was in there taking a nap while everybody was working, and Zahn answers the phone,” Wirth recalled, laughing. “Jess comes in and says, ‘What’s going on?’ and then Zahn says, ‘Jim Chee was murdered last night.’ Kiowa popped up like, ‘What?! What happened?!'”

Even in grief, this cast finds joy. That, too, is very Dark Winds.

What It Means for Season 5

Joe Leaphorn was planning to retire. Now, with his closest friend murdered — and with cold cases that Gordo had apparently been quietly investigating — he has no choice but to stay. As McClarnon himself explained: “The main reason why he didn’t retire is he loses his close friend and he needs to get to the bottom of that.”

Wirth confirmed that Season 5 is already being scripted, with the Gordo murder mystery set to run through the new story. “It sets up a wonderful opportunity to tell the aftermath story in Season 5,” he said.

The question of which Tony Hillerman novel will anchor Season 5 hasn’t been revealed yet — but based on everything this finale just set in motion, the wait is going to be agonizing.

Dark Winds airs on AMC and streams on AMC+. Season 4 is available to stream now.

Let’s be honest — nobody needed another reason to love Easter. But Hollywood just gave us one anyway.

This past Easter weekend, the domestic and global box office experienced something that studios have been quietly desperate for: a genuine, undeniable, no-asterisks-needed blockbuster moment. And it came in the form of a plumber from Brooklyn who went to space.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the hotly anticipated sequel to 2023’s record-smashing The Super Mario Bros. Movie, didn’t just open well. It detonated.

Mario Takes the Galaxy — And the Box Office With It

The sequel opened to an estimated $190.1 million domestically over the five-day Easter corridor, including a three-day weekend gross of $130.9 million. Overseas, Galaxy blasted off with an estimated $182.4 million from 80 markets.

That’s a combined global opening of $372.5 million — the biggest showing since James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash unfurled in theaters over Christmas 2025, and by far the top opening of 2026 so far among Hollywood titles

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To put that in perspective: this is the kind of number that makes studio executives forget their names.

The film — produced by the powerhouse partnership of Illumination, Nintendo, and Universal Pictures — returns the voice cast that made the first film such a phenomenon. Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, and Donald Glover as Yoshi take to the cosmos to do battle with Bowser Jr. Variety Directed once again by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, it’s a sequel that delivers exactly what audiences wanted — and then some.

Among its domestic achievements: Super Mario Galaxy scored the third-highest grossing weekend for a video game adaptation behind A Minecraft Movie and Super Mario; it is the only animated franchise to have two titles open to more than $100 million over a three-day weekend besides Shrek, Toy Story, and Minions; and it delivered the biggest five-day domestic launch since Disney’s Moana 2.

Critics weren’t entirely convinced — it sits at just 44% on Rotten Tomatoes — but audiences clearly disagreed, giving it a 91% audience score. Deadline And an A- CinemaScore means word-of-mouth is strong. The legs on this thing are going to be long.

Universal’s domestic distribution president Jim Orr called it “a powerful result for an iconic franchise and a terrific outcome for the marketplace,” pointing to audience reaction scores that suggest “a very long, successful run at the domestic box office

Ryan Gosling Quietly Became 2026’s First $200M Man

While everyone was watching Mario fly through space, Ryan Gosling was busy doing something quietly remarkable with Project Hail Mary.

Now in its third weekend, Amazon MGM‘s Project Hail Mary celebrated not just one, but two milestones over Easter weekend — crossing the $400 million mark at the global box office and the $200 million mark domestically. The Ryan Gosling-led blockbuster fell only 43 percent in its third outing to $30.6 million from 3,902 cinemas, finishing Easter Sunday with a North American cumulative total of $217.2 million. The Hollywood Reporter

Directed by the brilliant duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the same minds behind the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse franchise — and adapted from Andy Weir‘s beloved novel, Project Hail Mary has become something Hollywood rarely produces anymore: a genuinely original, critic-adored, audience-embraced science fiction blockbuster. It holds a jaw-dropping 95% critics score and 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film is now the first 2026 release to pass the $200 million milestone at the domestic box office— and it’s also already the highest-grossing film in Amazon MGM Studios history. Not bad for a movie about a middle school teacher who wakes up alone in space.

Zendaya and Pattinson? They’re Not Playing Around Either

In third place this weekend, but no less fascinating, was A24‘s The Drama — starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple whose wedding week implodes after a revelation that the internet is still arguing about.

The edgy title reported a third-place finish with an estimated $14.1 million from 3,097 locations — winning over naysayers despite a so-so B CinemaScore, and sporting a solid 81 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli — who made waves with Dream Scenario — The Drama also debuted overseas with $13.6 million for a global tally of $28 million, an encouraging worldwide opening for an original adult-oriented film against its modest budget of around $28 million

Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus describes the film as “flirting with complex themes” and “walking a tonal tightrope with impressive poise thanks to career-highlight performances by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.

And this is just the beginning for this particular duo — Zendaya and Pattinson will share the screen twice more in 2026, with The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three. Safe to say, they are officially Hollywood’s most interesting screen partnership right now.

The Bigger Picture: Hollywood Is Back

Step back for a moment and look at what just happened. In a single Easter weekend: an animated sequel made nearly $400 million worldwide, a Ryan Gosling sci-fi original crossed $400 million globally, and an edgy A24 dark comedy opened to $28 million worldwide against a $28 million budget.

Enthusiasm for all three films helped power the biggest collective weekend of the year — with ticket sales already up 25% from the same point in 2025, according to Comscore

After years of doom-scrolling through box office disappointments and streaming-first strategies, it is genuinely good to type these words: people are going to the movies again. In huge numbers. And they’re having a great time.

Mario would approve.

There are some doors that, once closed, simply cannot be reopened. For Dan Levy, standing on the very street in Goodwood, Ontario where Schitt’s Creek was filmed, that truth hit harder than he ever expected — right in front of a camera, in real time.

In an emotional appearance on CBS News Sunday Morning that aired April 4, 2026, the Emmy-winning actor, writer, and co-creator of the beloved Canadian sitcom admitted something fans had long quietly hoped for: he was thinking about a sequel series. At one point, he was “thinking about” a follow-up to the hit CBC series.But then came January 30, 2026 — the day the world lost Catherine O’Hara — and those plans dissolved into grief.

When host Anthony Mason asked whether a sequel was still possible, Levy’s answer was quiet, devastated, and absolute. “No. Not now. You can’t he said. Three words. That’s all it took to crush every revival fantasy fans had been quietly nursing.

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Back to Where It All Began — And the Tears That Followed

During his interview, Levy visited Goodwood — the small town in Ontario, Canada, where Schitt’s Creek was filmed — for the first time since the sitcom wrapped in 2020. The Hollywood Reporter He stood outside the very storefront that served as Rose Apothecary, the artisan boutique owned by his character David Rose — a shop that, in real life, now sells Schitt’s Creek merchandise and houses a condolence book dedicated to O’Hara.

He choked up while discussing the possibility of a sequel, a little over two months after O’Hara died at 71. The emotion wasn’t performed. It was raw, unfiltered, and deeply human.

“It’s tough. It’s tough being back,” he said, turning his body toward the store and wiping his eyes. “I didn’t think that I’d have quite an emotional reaction

Asked what exactly he was feeling, his voice wavered before he said, “Just a lot of memories… lot of memories with Catherine.

The Woman Who Made Moira Rose Immortal

For anyone who has ever watched Schitt’s Creek, the character of Moira Rose — the eccentric, wig-obsessed, accent-shifting former soap opera actress — is impossible to forget. And that’s entirely because of Catherine O’Hara, who breathed impossible life into her.

O’Hara died on January 30 at age 71 from a pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause. Variety She played Levy’s mother on the Emmy-winning sitcom, making their bond both fictional and, by all accounts, profoundly real.

O’Hara was a comedy icon with 10 Emmy nominations and two wins — one for best actress in a comedy series for Schitt’s Creek and another for her writing on SCTV Network

And just when it seemed her career was approaching its final chapter, she kept defying expectations. In March, O’Hara posthumously won an Actor Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a comedy series for her work on The Studio. Co-star Seth Rogen raved about her when he accepted it on her behalf

Her legacy wasn’t fading. It was growing. Right up until the end.

A Family Mourns Together

The grief within the Schitt’s Creek family has been as public as it has been heartfelt.

Levy said at the time of her death, “What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years.” He added something that tells you everything about what she meant to them beyond the set: “Having spent over 50 years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it.

His father, the legendary Eugene Levy — co-creator of the show and Dan’s real-life dad — also spoke with quiet devastation. “Words seem inadequate to express the loss I feel today. I had the honour of knowing and working with the great Catherine O’Hara for over fifty years. From our beginnings on the Second City stage, to SCTV, to the movies we did with Chris Guest, to our six glorious years on Schitt’s Creek, I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her.”

Annie Murphy, who played Alexis Rose, O’Hara’s on-screen daughter, also paid tribute, describing her laugh as “a perpetual Yes, And… It challenged anyone who heard it to join in, and be as delighted as she was.”

“She Knew How to Meme”

In a rare moment of lightness through tears, Levy shared a small, perfect detail about O’Hara that somehow says everything. When Mason noted she left behind “an incredible clip reel,” Levy echoed warmly, “Listen, for someone who was not on the internet, she knew how to meme.”

That says it all. A woman who didn’t live online but somehow became one of the most shared, screenshotted, GIF-ed presences on the internet — through sheer force of talent and absurdity and heart.

What Comes Next for Levy

Despite the heartbreak, Dan Levy is not disappearing. He recently appeared to promote his new Netflix comedy series Big Mistakes, co-created with Rachel Sennott. The Hollywood Reporter He’s moving forward, carrying O’Hara’s memory with him — not as a shadow, but as a standard.

On The Tonight Show, Levy told Jimmy Fallon, “It’s like a collective loss. She was the greatest. She’s irreplaceable. I think the great comfort for me has just been to see how loved she was. The outpouring — everyone felt like they kind of knew her.

And perhaps that’s the most fitting tribute of all. Not a sequel. Not a revival. Just the honest, aching acknowledgment that some stories end exactly when they should — and that the people who made them magic can never, ever be replaced.

Schitt’s Creek ran from 2015 to 2020 on CBC and won nine Emmys during its run, including an outstanding comedy series win and an outstanding lead actress award for O’Hara, both in 2020. Variety

There will be no sequel. And after hearing Dan Levy speak, you understand — with a lump in your throat — exactly why.