phantoms

Supergirl Flirts with Horror and Fights Phantoms

This SUPERGIRL article contains spoilers for Season 6, Episode 4, “Lost Souls.” Supergirl Season 6 Episode 4 To vanquish the Phantoms and escape the Phantom Zone, Supergirl motions toward horror with its body-snatching plot in National City and eerie quest over in the Phantom Zone. With the Prime Phantom still terrorizing National City and Kara and her father still trapped, the Super Friends had their hands full while still trying to come to terms with the emotional aspect of losing Kara, mostly by consuming Scotch or doughnuts. (Come on Nia, be the innovator who makes it Scotch and doughnuts!) In an early…
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How Julie and the Phantoms Normalizes Straight Male Affection

The following contains spoilers for Julie and the Phantoms season 1. Straight male affection in media has been handled with, charitably, mixed results. For every deeply moving film or TV show about the bonds between straight men and how much they care about each other, there are 20 others that conflate male intimacy with weakness or downright evil. Talking about manly feelings is one thing but physical affection? There’s still a strong stigma that straight men (and boys for the matter) who show too much physical affection are somehow out of the ordinary, immoral, or automatically seen as gay. For…
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Julie and the Phantoms’ Charmingly Cute Queer Romance

This article contains spoilers for Julie and the Phantoms season 1. For all the improvements in queer representation in children’s entertainment there are still only a few shows that have queer characters and even less have them take center stage. We’ve seen a growing number of queer main cast members in recent years but many of them (such as She-Ra and Adventure Time) only confirmed their leads were queer in the final episode.  Others have queer leads but their queerness isn’t a major factor in the show. There’s of course something to be said for a character being queer and…
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Julie and the Phantoms Review (Spoiler-Free)

This review of Julie and the Phantoms contains no spoilers. Probably the only thing you need to know about Julie and the Phantoms before going in is that its executive producer is Kenny Ortega. If that doesn’t instantly ring a bell – well, he’s the guy who directed the High School Musical movies, the Descendants movies, and, of course, the evergreen Halloween classic Hocus Pocus. This nine-part supernatural teen drama is the first of his projects for Netflix, and it’s just as charming, warm, and finger-snappingly musical as you’d expect.  Julie (newcomer Madison Reyes) is a 15-year-old singer-songwriter who recently…
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Julie and the Phantoms Trailer Gets on with the Show

“You only live once but you can rock forever,” promises the tagline in the first trailer for Netflix’s YA musical series Julie and the Phantoms. To which we say…rad. Julie and the Phantoms is a nine-episode series set to arrive to Netflix on September 10. It follows high schooler Julie (Madison Reyes) struggling to regain her passion for music after the loss of her mother. Thankfully, some rockin’ ghosts from the distant past (1995) will soon arrive to help out. Check out the first full trailer below. “Why have you been keeping those cute boys a secret?” one character asks.…
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