All These Worlds: The Most Exciting Reveals from NYCC 2021

New York Comic-Con has come and gone again, and, unable to choose which of the many exciting trailers and updates to cover, I decided to just put them all together and give them their own article. While I recognize this may be confirmation bias, it certainly does seem to be a particularly exciting season for sci-fi, with all of the many shows and movies delayed by the pandemic coming out of the woodwork to make their big debuts all at once. We can only hope they’ll be as good as they are numerous!

Lost in Space

In this first trailer for the long awaited third and final season of its Lost in Space reboot, Netflix gives us a chaotic yet exciting glimpse of Will Robinson and his trusty robot doing, something? Listen, it’s been a long time since Season 2, almost two years in fact, and I honestly don’t remember any of what happened except that it had something to do with robots and wormholes. Add to that Will Robinson’s “final transmission”, which doesn’t do a whole lot to clarify matters, and you may just have to wait until December to ask me what’s going on here. Nevertheless, whatever else is in their future, it seems the Robinsons are still lost and still in space, so Season 3 will be on brand if nothing else.

Dune

The third and final trailer for Dune, part one of a two part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s visionary 1965 novel, gives us our best look yet at the awe-inspiringly alien world of Arrakis. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be the best movie of 2021, which I believe it may, it will undoubtedly be the most visually impressive, with retrofuturist spacecraft and dragonfly-like ornithopters racing over striking desert landscapes fit for a David Attenborough documentary. For its visual ingenuity alone, this film’s promise is astounding.

Doctor Who

As a long time fan of Doctor Who, I really want to find something good in this trailer, but the BBC is making it pretty hard to do. I genuinely like Whittaker as The Doctor, and the current companions are pretty good too, but after showrunner Chris Chibnall summed up this season in one word as “swarm”, I have few hopes. Let’s just say it means well and leave it at that. Doctor Who returns on October 31st 2021.

Star Trek: Discovery

Discovery, the first and longest running of CBS’s modern Star Trek reboots, has had an admittedly rough journey. The show had a fantastic first season, but faltered in Season 2 with a haphazard arc that seemed to exist mainly to un-prequel the story by tossing all of the major characters through a wormhole into the future. Listen CBS, I have no problem with prequels, and I also like contemporary stories, but you can’t write a prequel and then change your mind. You also can’t fix the resulting plot holes just by having characters yell “but time travel” every time things stop making sense. Nevertheless, Season 3 was okay and I am excited to see the long-suffering Michael Burnham finally in the captain’s seat, especially when the whole crew seems to be having a weird amount of fun fighting the vaguely named “space anomaly”. Discovery returns November 18th.

Eternals

While this didn’t come out at comic-con, it arrived during the same time window and I’ll take any excuse to give Eternals some air time. While I still reserve the right to be more excited about Dune and some other releases this fall, there’s no denying that Academy Award winning director Chloé Zhao represents a lot of star power to have at the head of an MCU movie, and this teaser certainly promises to deliver a superhero experience like no other, with scale, humor, and heart that, forgive me for saying it, I just haven’t seen in a Marvel movie before. As a fan of both American Gods and The Umbrella Academy, Eternals definitely evokes both, and I couldn’t have asked for a better combination.

The Expanse

I’ll make no pretenses, out of all the amazing updates to arrive at NYCC this year, I find this one the most exciting. Last year’s phenomenal fifth season of The Expanse, my favorite show on TV, set up a war across 1300 stars that pitted world against world, friend against friend, and mother against son. In the show’s sixth, and final, season, it seems that war will come to a head, with the intertwining of galactic storytelling and heart-wrenching humanity that has become the Expanse brand on full display. Whether with excitement or dread, mark your calendars, on December 10th the Rocinante will head out into the black for the last time.