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Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle for $449

The LEGO Tropical Aquarium is beautiful. It might not be $480 beautiful, but for the right person with the right amount of disposable income, the price might not matter. The person who owns a set like this one might be older or might have been gifted it. They might be part of the emerging LEGO-as-lifestyle audience, the same audience that would buy LEGO wall art or LEGO flowers that integrate into the living space. The LEGO Tropical Aquarium has a trendy pop art appeal that LEGO's more play-intensive sets lack.

The tank's dimensions are 14 inches high, 20.5 inches wide, and 11 inches deep; were this a real tank, it would hold approximately 13-and-a-half gallons of water. You build the black framed edges of the tank, the floor of the tank (which is designed to look like sand), and the background scenery of the tank (a blue, aquatic backdrop decked with little waves and bubbles). You're not building the glass that forms the tank itself. But when you look at the aquarium from a small distance, the scenery does some heavy lifting, and your brain concludes that all the negative space is water. It's a cool optical illusion that enhances the set's attractiveness; I can easily imagine people doing double takes when walking past it.

Building the tank itself is straightforward – you layer bricks to establish tactile strength and build notches to "fit" and strengthen the connection points. But the most fun parts of the build are the tank's inhabitants: the fish, crustacean, rocks, coral, seaweed, anemones, and thematic elements that the LEGO designers thoughtfully arranged into a colorful pastiche.

The closest equivalent to building the LEGO Tropical Aquarium scenery is building one of the LEGO Botanical sets. Like the flowers in a bouquet, the coral is also composed of numerous colorful pieces, which are arranged in symmetrical, circular patterns. It is a redundant process, admittedly. But the variety of coral means you're never building one formation for too long before you're moving on to the next one. My favorite part of the scenery are the sea anemones, which sprout from the rock facade like a bouquet of poisonous flowers.

The animals do not have real-life equivalents. They bear strong resemblance to actual species, but LEGO is content to refer to them as "brickfish" in their promotional materials. A fanciful approach allows the LEGO designers to play with size and scale. Looking at this aquarium feels like looking at one through a magnifying glass; everything is larger than life. The entire tank seems a little more crowded than it ought to; there's no way that a fish of such large proportions could navigate a tank this small.. But the variety and aesthetic impact overrides practical quibbles.

Each animal and type of corral gets its own plastic bag, which makes it easy to divide the work among multiple friends or family members. You build an element, install it into the tank, and then build the next element; there is no sequential necessity to any of it. This is the sort of set that, owing to its diverse yet isolated elements, lends itself to collaboration.

There are several mechanical functions built into the tank. The rocks hide built-in gearboxes, rods, and pins, which allow you to animate four different elements by turning a crank or dial. A crab emerges from its cave. A massive fish waves its tail and torso. A cluster of orange coral sways in the waves. And a treasure chest, half buried in the sand, opens and closes. Inside the chest are gold bars and a note in a corked bottle.

As an 11th grade high school English teacher, I read a lot of college essays, and one of my students wrote a particularly memorable one this year. He detailed his efforts to incorporate a freshwater fish tank into his bedroom. For him, it was a lesson in patience, consistency, and long-term planning – of realizing there is a league's difference between creating something wonderful and maintaining that thing for an extended length of time.

The LEGO Tropical Aquarium is a stress-free alternative to the real thing – for people who want the ambience but not the ongoing costs and labor that go into establishing a nitrogen cycle and minimizing algae growth, not to mention cleaning the tank itself.

LEGO Tropical Aquarium, Set #10366, retails for $479.99, and it is composed of 4154 pieces. It is available exclusively at the LEGO Store.

Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.

Director and DC-boss James Gunn announced on social media Saturday that he has cast German actor Lars Eidinger as the villainous Brainiac in his Superman follow-up film Man of Tomorrow.

“In our worldwide search for Brainiac in Man of Tomorrow, Lars Eidinger rose to the top,” Gunn wrote on his Instagram account. “Welcome to the DCU, Lars.”

Eidinger, 49, may be relatively unknown to North American audiences, but he can currently be seen in the George Clooney-Adam Sandler movie Jay Kelly, which is streaming on Netflix.

His other film and TV credits include Babylon Berlin, All the Light We Cannot See, High Life, Tim Burton’s Dumbo, My Little Sister, Dying, Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, White Noise, and Irma Vep. Eidinger is also a rapper, musician, and DJ.

It’s December, meaning it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, I’m cliché and enjoy the holidays for the warmth and celebrations they bring, but today I’m more interested in reflecting on the evolution of accessibility throughout 2025. And thankfully, this year brought improvements to long-standing franchises, as well as surprise additions to the triple-A and indie scenes.

From my perspective, there were no accessibility moments that revolutionized the industry in 2025. Instead, the year demonstrated a continuous evolution of what disabled players have rightfully come to expect when purchasing a new release. In my opinion, no one game has been better than another, especially in terms of innovation, but that’s not to say this year didn’t surprise me in unexpected ways. So, for this Access Designed, let’s explore some of my favorite examples of accessibility during 2025.

Runner-Up: and Roger

This section contains mild spoilers for and Roger.

The inclusion of TearyHand Studio’s and Roger on my list may surprise some. This roughly hour-long visual novel features numerous quick-time events that guide you through the loving memories of Sofia and her husband, Roger, as Sofia succumbs to dementia. Each minigame puts you directly in control of Sofia as she completes everyday tasks like brushing her teeth, making soup, or looking through old photographs. While these may seem mundane activities, Sofia’s dementia makes each simple event feel like a monumental task. And for disabled players, the intensity of the QTEs is exacerbated by the game’s notable lack of accessibility features.

And Roger features no accessibility tools to help you complete the game. There are no alternatives to finishing QTEs, options to skip them, or settings that have the game natively complete them for you like in this year's Assassin’s Creed Shadows. You are forced to continuously mash or perfectly drag a white button for every single QTE, something that was immensely exhausting with my physical disabilities. Yet, after completing an event within the first chapter that had Sofia push Roger’s hand away by rapidly mashing a button on the screen, I realized its inaccessibility made the experience much more powerful.

And Roger, through its lack of accessibility, made me reevaluate how I critique games, something I’ve been professionally doing for six years. Sofia’s struggles with dementia were far more pronounced when I was struggling with her. And in an industry where proper disability representation is still relatively lacking, and Roger masterfully captures the truest expression of disability. There are moments of love, grief, pain, joy, and suffering – all emotions I’ve personally felt or witnessed disabled friends and family experience. I have never played a game so dedicated to having, and occasionally forcing, the disabled experience on the players, thus making and Roger one of my favorite games of not only 2025, but of all time.

Runner-Up: EA Sports FC 26

I will be the first to admit I don’t like sports games. The genre just doesn’t appeal to me, which is admittedly ironic considering I live in a very sports-centric city. Yet, EA Sports FC 26 made me appreciate soccer games (football for non-Americans) because of its incredible attention to accessibility detail.

FC 26, like most games with accessibility offerings, provides customizable controls, subtitles, and colorblindness settings. However, I appreciated the features for varying gameplay assists. Shooting, passing, defending, switching, and dribbling all have their own settings to provide relief during extended play sessions. When I was too fatigued to properly shoot, I would activate Auto Shots, which would trigger as I came close to the goal. If passing becomes too much, I can simply increase the sensitivity, making the game natively pass the ball without the need for immense precision. Even as the goalkeeper, I can use assists to help with saves. And for longer sessions, I can activate one or two button control schemes, significantly reducing the number of inputs needed to play (unfortunately, one and two button use cannot be used in competitive play).

Yet, FC 26’s greatest accessibility achievement doesn’t impact my disability. For the first time in the series, as well as in a competitive multiplayer setting, players can activate High Contrast Mode. Everything from the home team, away team, referees, to even ball color can be customized to increase their contrast. This provides blind players with crucial visual information when playing frantic matches. It’s easy to lose control of player and ball position when matches become intense, especially with online PvP, but FC 26 redefines what accessibility can be in the competitive scene. The potential to challenge industry perspectives for competitive games is why FC 26 deserves a spot among the most accessible games of 2025.

Winner: Doom: The Dark Ages

Doom: The Dark Ages, id Software’s latest in the iconic FPS series, is by far my favorite entry, as well as its most accessible. While the newest game includes relatively common accessibility options like customizable controls, adjustable subtitles, and varying difficulty modes, The Dark Ages adds new tools that redefine accessibility in this fast-paced game.

Shooters like Doom rely on immense speed and precision to slaughter enemies and complete levels. You are constantly dodging enemy fire, sprinting through levels, jumping over obstacles, and switching weapons within your extensive arsenal to play the game. And if you don’t have the strength or stamina to perform any of the above, the gameplay formula becomes abysmally inaccessible, even with lowered difficulty settings. But The Dark Ages has a solution: it introduces modifiers that adjust game speed, enemy projectile speed, enemy aggression, player damage, and even enemy damage. Further, The Dark Ages includes options to change the parry windows for melee encounters. Every piece of the combat system is customizable.

With accessibility, there’s often this incorrect notion within Internet spaces that options and inclusive designs ruin the intended gaming experience. The Dark Ages completely nullifies this argument with its customizable settings, which indicate that the "artistic intent" is the experience that you as a player want to have. There's no punishment for modifying the experience. Whether you have a disability or not, you control how you play. Are you a masochist that enjoys frantically throwing yourself against an onslaught of demons? Simply adjust every setting listed above to maximize their values. In my case, I would customize parry windows and game speed if I was particularly tired, but would find myself increasing enemy aggression for more of a challenge. I’ve never played a game that allows me to fine-tune every aspect of combat, and that is why Doom: The Dark Ages is my game of the year for 2025.

These three games represent only a fraction of the excellent accessible titles throughout 2025. Assassin’s Creed Shadows, South of Midnight, Split Fiction, and even Kirby Air Riders all deserve credit for their accessible tools and designs. And while the three games listed above are my personal favorite, 2025 has arguably been my favorite year as a critic, not for the innovations, but for the continued dedication to disabled players.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

It’s been a tough few years for voice actors. While it’s perhaps never been more obvious how much value they provide to a game’s characters and story – the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its beloved cast put the profession in perhaps the brightest spotlight it’s ever had – voice actors and motion capture performers face a daunting threat in artificial intelligence. That’s just one of the reasons why we wanted to honor the art of performance in this year’s IGN Awards. Actors bring our games to life, and our digital worlds would be poorer without them.

As with our other awards, we asked the IGN team to nominate their favourite performances from across the past 12 months, and then we all voted for which one we felt was the very best example. These are our picks for the best individual performances in video games this year:

Runner-Up – Erika Ishii (Atsu, Ghost of Yotei)

The role of a revenge-seeking samurai is well-trodden ground, but Erika Ishii breathed refreshing new life into Atsu, the protagonist of Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei. Lending the character a believable “rough around the edges” feel, Ishii ensures that Atsu’s bloodlust has depth.

Runner-Up – Aaron Paul (Robert Robertson, Dispatch)

Unlike Hollywood, which has long cast animated movies using celebrity movie stars, video games have predominantly held onto the idea that voice acting and performance capture is a distinct skill, and that hiring people who specialize in that is the way to go. But while Dispatch features industry titans like Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer, it’s screen actor Aaron Paul who’s the standout; our review explains that he's able to deliver "a nuanced performance as a man struggling to hold onto his optimism while reconciling with who he is outside of his giant mech suit."

Runner–Up – Konatsu Kato (Hinako Shimizu, Silent Hill f)

Lending both her voice and likeness to Silent Hill f’s protagonist Hinako Shimizu, Konatsu Kato brought to life one of the series’ most tortured heroes. While many of us will have relied on subtitles to understand her Japanese-language lines, her delivery helped instill every scene with the heavy, complex emotions intended by the script’s nuanced tale.

Runner-Up – Ben Starr (Verso, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)

In Verso, Ben Starr was able to take the gruff, dark hero voice he adopted for Clive in Final Fantasy 16 and perfect it. The maturity of Expedition 33’s themes, particularly in its final act, allow for Starr to explore a character who must revel in tragedy, but who carries enough optimism and conviction to never allow the dark to obscure the light.

Winner – Jennifer English (Maelle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)

Maelle is the heart of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and a major reason her journey rings so true is Jennifer English’s performance. Grief is a difficult emotion to wrestle with, especially when it’s part of a story that happily leans into the melodramatic, but English keeps Maelle eternally grounded and completely believable. Expedition 33 may be a game with flashy combat, monstrous deities, and an army of goofy paintbrush people, but what it’s really about is the human condition and, more specifically, how we deal with loss. As Maelle, Jennifer English ensures that Clair Obscur’s loftier, more literary themes and ambitions are never lost among the more video game-y, JRPG-inspired tropes.

While individual performances are important, a strong ensemble cast can help bring a level of consistent immersion to a fictional world. When everyone in an ensemble gives their A-game, there’s no fracture in your belief that these video game characters are genuine people. Our picks for the best video game ensemble cast are:

• Runner-Up – Ghost of Yotei
• Runner-Up – Hades 2
• Runner-Up – Dispatch
• Runner-Up – Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Winner – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Congratulations to Jennifer English, the entire cast of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and the team at Sandfall Interactive, as well as the casts and development teams of all the games we nominated. For more from the IGN Awards 2025, be sure to check out our complete list of winners.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.

Warning: This piece contains spoilers for Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Grab your ikrans and fly to your nearest cinema, sci-fi fans, because Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters. The third of five planned entries in James Cameron’s epic space opera, this installment sees Jake Sully and his family continue their war against the Resources Development Administration and the Recombinant version of Colonel Miles Quaritch while also dealing with a new threat in the form of Varang and the Ash People, villainous Na’vi with an affinity for fire. Reviews have skewed positive with some reservations, but IGN’s Max Scoville was particularly impressed with this installment as an ending to the first Avatar trilogy, writing in his 9/10 review that the film is “an immensely gratifying finale that’s well worth the wait.”

Still, even with its impressive technical achievements and enjoyable action set pieces, some aspects of the film have left us scratching our heads. Let’s dive into the biggest burning questions we have after Avatar: Fire and Ash!

Why is Varang Not a Bigger Part of the Story?

If you went by the trailers and the title, you’d likely assume that Varang (Oona Chaplin), the leader of the Ash People, would be Fire and Ash’s main antagonist. She’s certainly the film’s most exciting addition to the Avatar mythology, with Chaplin blazing onto the screen with a level of menace and sexuality that we haven’t yet seen in the franchise. Essentially a cross between a warrior queen and a blood witch, Varang hooks up with Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch (in more ways than one), and the two seem set to be co-villains ready to literally take the fire to the Sully clan… until they don’t. The back half of the film doesn’t forget that Varang exists, but she becomes much less important in the later acts as the film settles into a retread of Avatar: The Way of Water’s finale. We end up learning very little about the Ash People’s way of life and how they use fire beyond a couple of weapons and minor rituals, and there’s only one scene set in their home territory, which is an encampment at the base of a volcano. Varang is apparently set to reappear in Avatar 4 and 5, but given that this film is called “Fire and Ash,” we can’t help but wonder why this movie doesn’t make more use of the, well, fire and ash people.

"For those who come after." It's a simple but effective phrase from this year's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one that was stuck in the minds of many for nearly an entire year. But although Expedition 33 won the hearts of many, it was far from alone. 2025 saw the release of the hotly anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong, and with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2 we got a new Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, and the sequel to IGN's 2020 Game of the Year, Hades 2. Over in the world of entertainment we got plenty of great movies like Superman, Sinners, Weapons, and possibly the best Predator movie ever in Predator: Badlands.

Every year, across all forms of media, there are situations where critics and audiences either agree or disagree. That's never going to change, we're talking about opinions, after all, although this year we definitely saw more alignment than normal. Every year, we ask you all to vote on each of our award categories, and many of our awards have gone to the games, shows, and movies that you chose, too. That's a great sign that our thoughts and opinions are aligned with our community's.

But what did you vote for? Here are the complete results for each Community Award, voted on by you, the IGN community (Results finalized at 12/20 12AM ET).

Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Movie 2025

Winner: Predator: Badlands (33.1% of the votes)

Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel

Winner: Batman: Dark Patterns (40.4% of votes)

Best Anime of 2025

Winner: Dan Da Dan (49.4% of votes)

Best Action-Adventure Game of 2025

Winner: Ghost of Yotei (29.6% of the votes)

Best Horror Movie of 2025

Winner: Sinners (41.5% of votes)

Best Playstation Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (43.6% of votes)

Best RPG of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (66.8% of votes)

Best Nintendo Game of 2025

Winner: Donkey Kong Bananza (49.9% of votes)

Best Xbox Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (60.2% of votes)

Best PC Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (51.2% of votes)

Best Strategy Game of 2025

Winner: Anno 117: Pax Romana (25.5% of votes)

Best Puzzle Game of 2025

Winner: Blue Prince (72.9% of votes)

Best Roguelike Game of 2025

Winner: Hades 2 (57.2% of votes)

Best Action Game of 2025

Winner: Hades 2 (58.8% of votes)

Best Shooter Game of 2025

Winner: Arc Raiders (28.3% of votes)

Best Superhero Movie of 2025

Winner: Superman (57.3% of votes)

Best TV Show of 2025

Winner: Andor (38.0% of votes)

Best TV Episode of 2025

Winner: Andor Season 2, Episode 8 - “Who Are You?” (46.9% of votes)

Best Ensemble Cast in a TV Show or Movie of 2025

Winner: Andor Season 2 (39.9%)

Best Performer in a TV show or Movie

Winner: Genevieve O'Reilly (Mon Mothma, Andor) (29.2% of votes)

Best Performer in a Movie of 2025

Winner: Michael B. Jordan (Elijah "Smoke" Moore and Elias "Stack" Moore, Sinners) (36.8% of votes)

Best Ensemble Cast in a Video Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (65.2% of votes)

Best Performance in a Video Game of 2025

Winner: Jennifer English (Maelle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33) (36.5% of votes)

Best Video Game Music/Score of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (67.5% of votes)

Best Art Direction in a Video Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (58.5% of votes)

Best Remake or Remastered Game of 2025

Winner: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered (34.6% of votes)

Best Movie of 2025

Winner: Sinners (24.7% of votes)

Best Game of 2025

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (50.8% of votes)

Thank you to everyone who participated in our community-voted awards categories this year. In 17 of the 23 categories, the winner garnered over 40% of the total votes, showing a sense of unity on what you found to be your favorites in 2025. Clair Obscur, as expected by many, ran the gauntlet to win all nine of the categories it was nominated in. Meanwhile, Andor was a huge audience favorite, sweeping all four of the categories around TV. The win by the most narrow margin goes to Predator: Badlands, which took home the win for Best Sci-fi or Fantasy Movie over Frankenstein by only 1.1%, while Blue Prince won by the biggest margin, taking home over 72% of votes in the Best Puzzle Game category. Thank you again to everyone who voted. And now, with big games like GTA 6, Marvel's Wolverine, and other major releases on the horizon, we look forward to seeing how 2026 turns out and learning your favorites this time next year.

Keepin' It Clean

Throughout the year, we have been monitoring those who do not foster a positive experience here at IGN. We remove the most problematic users regularly to improve everyone's overall experience. But we also use this time, before the end of the year, as an opportunity to remove those who were given more time to see if their infractions throughout the year was part of a pattern, or if they were potentially just someone having a bad day or week. So, in addition to recognizing the users who uplifted our community, we have also removed several users who have consistently violated our community guidelines. These banned accounts are those who have engaged in hate speech, harassment, or other toxic behaviors. We know these actions are not always popular, but they are necessary in our commitment to creating a safe and welcoming space for everyone at IGN.

As we continue to build upon our community, we will continue to monitor and address any problematic behavior to ensure that our community remains a positive and inclusive place for everyone. We can create a respectful, supportive, and enjoyable community by working together.

We appreciate our readers who regularly make us their home for gaming, entertainment, and more. We are excited to continue building and improving together in the coming months and years. Once again, thank you to all of you who regularly do your best to create a positive experience on IGN.

Jada Griffin is IGN's Community Lead. If she's not engaging with users here, chances are she's developing her own games, maxing the Luck stat in her favorite games, or challenging her D&D players with Intense combat or masterful puzzles. You can follow her on Bluesky @Jadarina.bsky.social

If we’ve learned anything from watching the IT movies and the spin-off series, Welcome to Derry, it’s that Derry, Maine is about the last town on Earth anyone should ever visit. Around every corner lurks a creepy, homicidal clown who loves to season his victims with the sweet taste of fear, and that’s not even counting the more mundane but still terrifying evils lurking in this cursed town.

Now that IT: Welcome to Derry has ended its first (but apparently not only) season on HBO Max, the time has come to break down the most horrifying moments featuring Pennywise the Dancing Clown or his various other supernatural manifestations. Check out our ranked list, and let us know your favorite Pennywise scares in the comments below.

Warning: This article contains full spoilers for both IT movies and IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1.

11. Patrick In the Sewer

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT (2017)

How quickly the bully becomes the bullied. This brief but intense scene almost makes us feel a little bad for budding psychopath Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague). Patrick chases poor Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) into the sewers, eager to cook him with a homemade blowtorch; instead, Patrick discovers the demonic clown living in Derry’s underbelly, and learns that once you enter the sewers, it’s not so easy to find your way out again.

10. Return to the Neibolt Street House

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT: Chapter Two (2019)

We get that the Losers Club members lost many of the memories of their childhood ordeal, but you’d still think they’d retain enough to remember one vital lesson: Never go into the house on Neibolt St. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the adults do in the sequel, and for their trouble, they’re greeted by the severed, crab-like head of poor Stanley Uris. If any moment in the IT series owes a debt to the great John Carpenter, it’s this one.

9. The Sewer Showdown

As seen in: IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 (2025)

Welcome to Derry takes its sweet time actually showcasing Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but the villain certainly makes up for lost time in Episode 5. No sooner do Clara Stack’s Lilly and friends follow Miles Ekhardt’s “Matty” into the sewers (an obvious no-no) than their friend reveals himself to be a horrifying clown monster in disguise. Even as the friends scatter into the tunnels in sheer terror, we see the Air Force’s ill-fated mission completely collapse. Worst of all is seeing Pennywise worm his way into Dick Hallorann’s (Chris Chalk) mind and open the terrible box he’s kept sealed there for decades.

8. The Flooded Basement

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT (2017)

Basements are pretty creepy on the best of days, but especially so when you’re talking about old New England houses. This scene really plays on that fear as Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) ventures downstairs to find his basement is flooded and hiding the ghost of his dead brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott). That’s when Pennywise chooses to make his stomach-churning entrance.

7. Marge the Slug

As seen in: IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 (2025)

Few things in horror are more squirm-inducing than scares involving eyeballs; the sheer thought of damaging or losing an eye gives almost anyone the ick immediately. Welcome to Derry’s fourth episode zeroes in on that universal truth when IT manipulates poor Marge (Matilda Lawler) into thinking she’s become a human slug. Watching her lose her mind and attempt to saw off her own protruding eyeballs is not a scene for the squeamish.

6. Georgie’s Death

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT (2017)

The first IT movie opens with a scene that’s very much a statement of intent for the series. We see young Georgie joyfully enjoying the rainy weather with his paper boat, only to happen across a not-at-all creepy clown hanging around a storm drain. In a tamer horror franchise, Georgie’s age would render him immune to any severe consequences, but this is IT, so of course he gets his arm ripped off and is then dragged into the sewer to become the first of Pennywise’s many victims in the movie.

5. Eddie Meets the Leper

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT (2017)

By no means should anyone ever venture inside the dreaded house at 29 Neibolt St., but even wandering around outside can be extremely hazardous to your health. Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) learns that the hard way when he walks by the house and encounters Pennywise manifesting as a terrifying leper (Javier Botet). For a kid raised to be a pathological germaphobe, there can be no greater monster.

4. The Hall of Mirrors

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT: Chapter Two (2019)

While most fans agree that IT: Chapter Two is a big step below its predecessor in quality, it does boast one of the most inventive and scary scenes in the series when the adult Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy) finds himself trapped inside a funhouse hall of mirrors. The sheer claustrophobia of that situation would be enough to mine some real fear, but the film goes the extra mile by forcing Bill to watch as Pennywise torments and ultimately eats a young boy who’s also trapped in the maze.

3. The Movie Theater Massacre

As seen in: IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 1 (2025)

As mentioned, the original IT movie starts off by making it clear that no one is safe from Pennywise, not even innocent young children. The first episode of Welcome to Derry goes one step further in its efforts to hammer that point home, closing with a grotesque, horrifying scene where Lilly and her friends are locked inside a movie theater while monsters devour them one by one. Just when we thought the series had introduced 1962’s answer to the Losers Club, It goes and eats most of them for dinner.

2. Inside the House at Neibolt Street

As seen in: Stephen King’s IT (2017)

Once again for the cheap seats: Never go inside the house at 29 Neibolt Street for any reason! The first movie really nails that down when our young heroes venture inside this dilapidated structure and encounter the full scope of Pennywise’s horrors. We’re especially creeped out by the scene where Richie (Finn Wolfhard) is trapped inside a bedroom full of unnerving clown dolls, only to encounter the real Pennywise emerging gleefully from a coffin.

1. Matty Goes Hitchhiking

As seen in: IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 1 (2025)

Welcome to Derry really makes a strong case for itself in its very first episode, delivering some of the franchise’s best scares to date. That includes the best of them all, in an early scene where Matty opts to hitch a ride out of town rather than deal with his abusive home life one minute longer. Unfortunately for him, he winds up stuck inside a ghost car alongside a family of demented ghouls and a mother proudly giving birth – very graphically, we might add – to a demon baby. This is why they always say it’s not safe to hitchhike.

For more on IT: Welcome to Derry, check out IGN’s review of the season finale and see all the easter eggs for the Stephen King multiverse.

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

Spoilers follow for Stranger Things Season 5 and the Broadway/West End play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow.

We only have four more episodes to go until Stranger Things is done forever, and speculation is running high. Who will die? Who will live? And how important is the series’ spin-off Broadway show, The First Shadow, to the end of the series? While we may not know the answers to the first two questions yet, we have a pretty good idea about the answer to the last one, based on what happened in the first half of Season 5. The answer is “very important,” particularly in explaining Will’s (Noah Schnapp) power-up, where Max (Sadie Sink) is hiding, and even giving some serious clues about how the Hawkins gang might finally beat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).

That’s a lot to unpack, and if you don’t live in New York or London, your first question might be: Wait, there’s a Broadway show? There sure is, and the live-action play written by Stranger Things writer and co-executive producer Kate Trefry is crucially tied to the overall history laid out in the series and sets up a number of plot points in the final season.

In the play, we catch up with Henry Creel (aka, the kid who will eventually become Vecna) when he and his family move into what is later known as the Creel House in Season 4 of Stranger Things. Over the course of the play, we discover just how Henry got his psychic powers, how he met Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine on TV), and even get to see a tiny little version of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown on TV) meeting Henry for the first time.

But the play doesn’t even start with Henry. There’s actually a prologue set in 1943 that depicts the United States performing experiments in what they call “Dimension X,” as they attempt to turn submarines invisible during World War II. Unfortunately for them, they get attacked by Demogorgons, and then the action switches to 1959 Hawkins. Dimension X sounds like the Upside Down, right? Well… not exactly. There’s actually a lot of debate about the difference between the two, particularly because neither the stage play nor the TV show have been explicit about how it all works, though franchise masterminds, the Duffer Brothers, have promised that all will be explained “pretty early on” in the upcoming batch of episodes.

As far as we understand now, there’s the “real” world; a place that’s been called the Hellscape – aka the area Henry Creel was sent to between dimensions where he was electrocuted by lightning strikes and got real gross looking in Season 4; and Dimension X, which is where Henry met the Mind Flayer again. Meanwhile, the Upside Down is an as-yet undefined extra area – either a parallel dimension, or a bridge between the Hellscape and Dimension X, or something else entirely.

Did we just say, “met the Mind Flayer again?” This is one of the wildest twists in the play, and has huge repercussions for the TV series as well. As you may recall from the first batch of episodes that dropped on Netflix for Season 5, Max Mayfield – or at least her mind – reappeared in a strange, sunny reality that seems to be made up of Henry Creel’s memories. She’s been hiding out in one of them – a cave that Henry is clearly too terrified to enter, which is where Max breaks down how she’s alive and what happened to her to Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher). While we don’t see that cave in The First Shadow, we do hear all about it.

Dr. Brenner’s father was the only person to survive the submarine experiment in 1943, passing his knowledge on to his son. Brenner the younger established something called the Nevada Experiment, which was meant to try and access Dimension X, but one scientist went rogue, stole the equipment, and headed to – you guessed it – a cave in Nevada. Remember the spyglass Holly was using in Season 5? That’s the same spyglass Henry used to explore the cave system, dropping it just like Holly does when she runs away scared in the TV episodes. In Henry’s case, however, he and the rogue scientist are accidentally sent to Dimension X for 12 hours; there, Henry was infected by the creature later known as the Mind Flayer, and not only gained his psychic powers, but was tortured, corrupted, and driven insane by the cloud creature. So rather than Henry creating the Mind Flayer, as we’re shown in Season 4 of the TV show, the Mind Flayer – or at least an aspect of it that exists in Dimension X – created Henry, and therefore Vecna.

To be 100% clear: If you thought Henry had naturally occurring psychic abilities, you were wrong. It all comes from the infection that happened to him over those 12 hours he was missing in Nevada, which is why he’s so scared of the caves. That’s where he was driven insane. That’s where he turned evil. That’s where it all went wrong.

The twists don’t stop there, though. Thanks to Henry reconnecting with Dr. Brenner in the second act of The First Shadow, Henry’s blood containing the infection from the Dimension X Mind Flayer is harvested and injected into prospective mothers as part of the MKUltra program codenamed Indigo. There are at least 10 psychically powered babies born in that program, including – you guessed it – Eleven.

So again, to be ultra-clear – MKUltra clear, if you will – the world of Stranger Things isn’t a Firestarter or X-Men situation where some folks are born naturally with psychic abilities. Instead, they all come from the infection Henry contracted in Dimension X. This also means that if the Mind Flayer in Dimension X was destroyed or cut off, there would potentially be no more psychic powers on Earth, including those used by Vecna and Eleven.

That said, it’s possible there could be still another twist, with Eleven being the lone exception. In the play, we’re shown a family tree with all the program kids branching off from Henry, except Eleven, who he meets in the closing moments of the show. It’s possible that Eleven could be something different than Henry and his “children...” or not. Who knows?

In a roundabout way, though, this also explains how Will shockingly got powers in the final moments of “The Sorcerer.” As we saw at the beginning of Season 5, young Will was pumped full of goop during his first trip to the Upside Down, connecting him to the Hive Mind that is ostensibly controlled by Vecna. But as explained in The First Shadow, Vecna’s power comes from Dimension X. Will does not have powers on his own, because they all – Vecna, Eleven, Will, even Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) – come from the same central source. In Will’s case, he is very specifically drawing from Vecna’s power… but it all goes back to Dimension X.

There are other aspects of the play we need to discuss. When Max first describes traveling through Henry’s memories, we see a scene of Hawkins High School featuring younger versions of the parents from the TV show, and the reveal of a leaflet advertising a performance of Oklahoma featuring, among others, Henry Creel. In a nutshell, that’s the main plot of The First Shadow, following a production mounted by Joyce (played on TV by Winona Ryder), starring Henry and Patty Newby, Bob’s (played on TV by Sean Astin) sister. Henry and Patty sort of fall in love, with Patty ultimately leaving Hawkins to find her mother in Las Vegas, which is why she hasn’t appeared on the show yet. So Joyce, Hopper (played on TV by David Harbour), and Bob (RIP) all knew Henry back in high school, and even worked on a play with him. Will that ever get mentioned? It did look like Joyce wanted to shout “Henry, come on,” in that final sequence in Season 5’s fourth episode before he flipped her into the air.

Also possibly of note: In The First Shadow, Bob is hosting a pirate radio show out of a mobile rig he built that he carts around school. Well, on the TV series, Season 5’s fifth episode is titled “Shock Jock.” Though the online speculation around the episode has pointed to Robin (Maya Hawke) and Steve’s (Joe Kerry) show on WSQK, and the fact that they pointed out one could get electrocuted by the radio tower in the first episode, is it possible the shock jock of the title isn’t either of our ’80s kids getting literally shocked – it’s Bob Newby circa 1959? Given the subsequent episode is titled “Escape From Camazotz,” which references a key location in A Wrinkle in Time and suggests Holly and Max will try to flee Henry’s mindscape (which is a whole other explainer), it’s possible we could be getting some flashbacks to specific events from The First Shadow in the next episode. That could definitely establish how Joyce and Hopper know Henry, as well as why they haven’t brought it up yet. Regardless, this seems to be too important a detail not to bring up in some capacity, particularly as that otherwise extremely confusing flyer was seen on the TV series. This brings us nicely to how this whole thing might directly set up how to beat Vecna: They don’t.

If you’ve been paying attention to what we’ve laid out so far, most of what’s happened on Stranger Things isn’t Henry’s fault. He was corrupted by the Dimension X Mind Flayer, used and abused by Dr. Brenner, and even tried to escape the influence of the creature in the play thanks to his love for Patty. Joyce and Hopper know him as a weirdo, but not a bad one (at least not initially), and there’s every chance this is what Max and Holly will discover once they more fully explore his memories. Certainly it seems incredibly likely they’ll find out what happened to Henry in the cave in Nevada, and discover that he has been infected… and can potentially be cured.

There’s a running theme throughout Stranger Things that love is far more powerful than hate. That’s true in The First Shadow as well, though in that case, hate – at least with Henry – ultimately wins. In the TV show, it’s looking increasingly likely that the way to beat Vecna isn’t to kill him, but to bring him back to humanity, cut him off from Dimension X, and save the day. Beat him with love, not hate? That would definitely be worth the price of admission.