Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2079

This Barista’s Disney Latte Art Makes Caffeine Too Pretty to Consume

Anytime I go to a coffee shop and order a latte in a ceramic mug, I hope for latte art. If I get anything, it’s usually an artfully made leaf or heart. I admire it. I document it with my phone for posterity (read: I Instagram it). Then I carefully sip around the image so as not to disturb the barista’s creation. If I ever got a latte made by barista Kangbin Lee though, I’d probably never drink the hot beverage. He makes ridiculously detailed pieces of caffeinated, foamy art on top of lattes, many of them featuring moments and characters from Disney films.

Coffee + Disney? Be still my heart.

We learned of Lee’s work thanks to Foodbeast, and after scrolling through Lee’s Instagram page, my heart’s all aflutter.

This Little Mermaid art is basically sorcery:

A post shared by 이강빈 (@leekangbin91) on Apr 28, 2017 at 5:16pm PDT

This Beauty and the Beast portrait is enchanting:

A post shared by 이강빈 (@leekangbin91) on Mar 16, 2017 at 8:19am PDT

Stitch!

A post shared by 이강빈 (@leekangbin91) on Feb 15, 2017 at 4:26am PST

My heart is melting at this Winnie the Pooh and Piglet:

A post shared by 이강빈 (@leekangbin91) on Dec 28, 2016 at 3:21am PST

Sometimes Lee takes on classics with his latte art, like Starry Night.

A post shared by 이강빈 (@leekangbin91) on Apr 21, 2017 at 6:11pm PDT

His Insta feed has so much more Disney and pop culture art. Seriously.

Lee is currently based at C. Through Cafe located at Seongsu Station in Seoul, Korea. If you find yourself in the neighborhood, stop by. Part of me wants to advise ordering two drinks: a latte to admire and fawn over and something else you can actually imbibe, but that would be a waste of caffeine and dollars. So get that Disney latte, toss it back, live your best life, etc.

What’s the coolest latte art you’ve ever received at a coffee shop? Tell us in the comments or send us photos on Twitter: @amy_geek and @nerdist.

Images: Kangbin Lee 

Naming Your Kid Kylo is Definitely Not a Good Idea

A new report released by the US Social Security Administration, as reported by , says that there was a noticeable spike in the number of new babies named “Kylo” in 2016. The name jumped from the 3,269th most popular baby name for boys to the 901st in one calendar year. Yes, you read that right. Last year, new parents across the nation looked lovingly upon their newborn baby, and decided to name the child after a grown-ass man who idolizes a former tyrant and throws lightsaber-fueled temper tantrums on the reg. And those tantrums happen so regularly that Adam Driver, the actor who plays Kylo Ren, even made fun of it on SNL.

Did anyone stop to think that Kylo Ren was probably not the best namesake to give your progeny?

I get it. Star Wars is a sweeping saga that means a lot to its fans. I’m one of those fans, to be certain. I still remember the first time I watched A New Hope, and I’ll forever consider Carrie Fisher and Leia Organa as one of my first and most constant role models. It makes perfect sense to want to honor a story and characters that mean a lot to you by naming one of your children after a character from that universe.

But…Kylo? Really? Maybe you don’t buy into Kylo’s outbursts of anger as grown-up tantrums. Maybe you like his “outlaw” personality, and his choice to lead a life outside of the one his parents had originally chosen for him. So let’s look a bit closer at the legacy you’re attaching your kid to when you name them Kylo:

Our boy Kylo was born as one Ben Solo, the child of Han Solo and Leia Organa, named after the famous Jedi Obi-Wan (aka: Ben) Kenobi. Ben was trained in the ways of the Jedi by his uncle, Luke Skywalker. After being seduced by the Dark Side, Ben killed all of the Jedi padawans, joined the Knights of Ren, and set off to finish what his Sith grandpa Darth Vader started by wiping out the Jedi. When confronted by his dad, Kylo runs Han through with his lightsaber in an effort to stamp out any remaining light in his soul.

And sure, we know Kylo will show up in The Last Jedi and will likely be in Star Wars IX, so there is a chance for a redemption arc for him, too. But he’s certainly not there yet. And in a universe with heroes like Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Lando Calrissian, and even newer characters like Poe Dameron, Cassian Andor, and Finn–and we haven’t even begun to talk about the amazing female characters like Leia, Rey, Jyn Erso, and Ashoka Tano–why would you pick the petulant performer of patricide?

The Star Wars universe, as well as the old and new expanded universes, is full to bursting of amazing, complicated, wonderful characters. None of them are perfect, but with such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to amazing characters and rich legacies to tie to your children through a namesake, both you and your kid can do so much better than Kylo. So please, don’t name your kid Kylo. Help your kids have a better namesake, Star Wars fan parents. You’re their only hope.

Do you disagree? What character from Star Wars would you name your child after? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Gif credit: Giphy, Giphy, Giphy

Feature Image: Lucasfilm

Kylo Ren has himself a new Starship

See Sonic the Hedgehog Modded into MARIO KART 8

For years now, Nintendo fans have wondered why the Mario Kart series isn’t more inclusive of characters from across Nintendo’s intellectual properties in the same way that Super Smash Bros. is. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a sign of clear progress on that front, though, featuring characters from The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Splatoon. Mario Kart hasn’t ventured outside of Nintendo for its character roster just yet, but one enterprising modder decided to insert Sonic the Hedgehog into the Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 (via Kotaku).

Modifying the game to include an additional character is no easy task, so the Sega mascot is actually just the result of replacing Metal Mario’s character model with Sonic’s. The mod is a work in progress, but it looks pretty smooth so far, and there aren’t really any major noticeable issues. Sonic turns his head to look at other racers as he passes them and he pumps his fist in the air and jumps out of his seat going off of jumps. The only downside is, he still sounds like Metal Mario.

Still, the errors are few and minor, and at the very least, the mod serves as a proof of concept for what seems like a very possible new Mario Kart character, considering all the collaboration between Mario and Sonic over the past decade or so.

Which other video game characters would you like to race with in Mario Kart? Perhaps some of your favorite Super Smash Bros. brawlers? Let us know in the comments what you think!

Featured image: CorBond57/YouTube

Does this conspiracy hint at Pokémon Switch?

Did Henry Cavill Confirm Green Lantern in JUSTICE LEAGUE?

The early tagline for Justice League promised to “unite the seven,” but you may have noticed that there are only five members of the team. Or six, if you count Henry Cavill‘s Superman, who totally won’t be dead by the end of the movie. But what about the seventh hero? If Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern film had been more popular, then he probably would have rounded out this lineup. There is a Green Lantern Corps movie coming in 2020, but Cavill has just dropped a hint that we may see a Lantern much sooner. Today’s Nerdist News is going all the way to Oa and back to get answers!

Join host, and G’nort’s training officer, Jessica Chobot, as she walks us through Cavill’s recent trip to “The Art of DC – The Dawn of Superheroes” at the Ludique museum in Paris. Keep in mind, Cavill had decades of DC artwork to choose from, but this is one of the images that he choose to share with fans.

A picture is just a picture, right? Except Cavill has already pulled off a similar Justice League tease for Superman’s black costume, and he’s dropped other cryptic hints as well. So he’s already established himself as someone who loves to play with fan expectations. And he’s not the only making Green Lantern references. Fate of the Furious co-star Tyrese Gibson has been campaigning to play John Stewart in the new Green Lantern Corps movie, and he’s been making some not so subtle allusions to it on Instagram as well.

Do you think that we’ll finally see a Green Lantern in the Justice League movie? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

New MISTER MIRACLE Series Will Tap into the Genius of Jack Kirby

It’s been teased for some time now, but it’s finally official — DC Comics’ greatest escape artist, Mister Miracle, is making a comeback. After appearing in Geoff John’s “Darkseid War” storyline in the pages of the New 52’s Justice League, the Jack Kirby-created hero will receive a new series this summer, as announced on Pitchfork. Beginning this August and running for 12 issues, the new Mister Miracle series comes from The Vision and Batman writer Tom King, together with his Sheriff of Babylon artist Mitch Gerads, who will take readers “on an episodic roller coaster of death, resurrection, mystery and intrigue.”

In a statemen, King shared, “Mister Miracle is the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on. Mitch and I asked ourselves if we could do something as good as Sandman, Preacher or New Frontier, which are transcendent, contained stories that comment upon the times in which they were made. We knew we’d be stupid to think we could, but we’d be more stupid not to try.”

King added, “In going back and reading all of Kirby, you’re dipping your head in genius. No one can out-Kirby Kirby. You can’t make an epic as great as he did. It’s like trying to make Star Wars again, or like trying to rewrite the Iliad. You can take those grand cosmic space opera themes and internalize them and use them to tell a very personal story. That’s what appealed to me about it. We were going to take the bigness of Kirby and turn that into the intimacy of Mister Miracle’s life. Kirby used a metaphor for his time, written in the late ‘60s early ‘70s when the world was going utterly insane. We’re going to use it as a metaphor for our time, the late 2010s, when once again the world is going insane. It’s almost like we’re holding up a mirror to that work, or internalizing it. We’re going step-in-step with him.”

For those of you out there unfamiliar with the character, Mister Miracle was created by comic book legend Jack Kirby back in 1971. Miracle, along with the Forever People and the New Gods, were all part of a cosmic line of comics called The Fourth World. After spending ten years at Marvel Comics, in which Kirby and Stan Lee created the foundations of almost the entire Marvel universe, he and Lee had a falling out, and he went to his rival, DC Comics. He was given free reign to create three books all his own, which resulted in the Fourth World titles and overall mythology.

The Fourth World encompassed a whole new cosmic mythology for the DC Universe, which included the creation of Darkseid, the God of Evil, who lived on the planet Apokolips. His counterpart, Highfather, lived on the bright world of New Genesis. The two worlds were at war for eons, but finally a treaty was struck, and to seal that bargain, Highfather and Darkseid exchanged their first born sons. Darkseid’s son Orion was sent to live on New Genesis, and Highfather’s son Scott was sent to live out his life in the Fire Pits of Apokolips. There, he grew up under harsh conditions and learned to become the galaxy’s best escape artist. He also fell in love with a giant warrior woman named Big Barda, and the two escaped to Earth.

Despite all the hype, the Kirby Fourth World books weren’t the sales success DC hoped for. Kirby without Lee was a little too much like Simon without Garfunkel for fans, and the entire Fourth World line was cancelled after about a year. But the reputation of those concepts and characters grew in stature throughout the ’70s, and eventually Kirby’s cosmic creations embedded their way into the DC Universe. By the early ’80s, DC started to realize just what a gift Kirby had given them, although it took them a decade to do so.

Thanks to comics like Legion of Super-Heroes and their epic “Great Darkness Saga,” and the Justice League and Justice Society taking on on Darkseid together in the pages of Justice League of America, Kirby’s cosmic characters quickly became a staple of DC lore. When DC and Marvel teamed up in 1982 and produced The New Teen Titans/Uncanny X-Men crossover, the two villains used were Dark Phoenix and Darkseid, raising his profile as DC’s biggest threat for all time. Not long after, Mister Miracle himself became a longtime member of the JLA in the late ’80s. When Darkseid became the chief villain in the Super Friends cartoons and the Super Powers toy line, that cemented him as DC’s #1 baddie for all time.

Cut to today — The whole Fourth World mythology is going to be at the core of the upcoming Justice League film, which we already know will contain Mother Boxes, which are Kirby created technology that allows for instant transport between worlds, and that the Kirby created Steppenwolf will be the movie’s main villain (with Darkseid waiting in the wings of course). If/when a Justice League sequel happens, it will no doubt take us to the Fourth World itself, which may mean our first big screen version of Mister Miracle.

Meanwhile, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been mining Kirby’s cosmic creations for years already. Almost all of the Asgardian characters in the Thor films are Kirby created, as are most of the races in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Ego the Living Planet was one of Kirby’s wildest concepts, and it was front and center of the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. Fans may argue about MCU vs DCEU for years, but one thing is true of both — neither would exist without the genius of Jack Kirby.

Mister Miracle #1, by Tom King and Mitch Gerads will hit shelves August 9. Cover artwork is by Nick Derington with variant cover by Gerads. You can see both covers, along with a 3 page preview, down below in our gallery.

Are you looking forward to a return to Kirby’s Fourth World characters? Let us know down below in the comments.

Images: DC Comics

 

Talking Burt Macklin for FBI Head, a Zuul Dinosaur, and a HARRY POTTER Mystery

Gather ’round, gals and ghouls because it’s time for another rip-roarin’ adventure into Sillytown, population: us! That’s right, it’s FINALLY Friday, and after the week we’ve ALL had, it stands to reason that every single person on this here blue marble we call home could all use a bit of jocular release with the sort of news that makes you go, “awhaaaaaaaaa?!” (Or, if you’re Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, it sounds more like “ooouuuaahh?”)

So why don’t you join your hostess with the mostest, Jessica Chobot, as she and her merry band of stone-cold weirdos—including music editor Matt Grosinger, associate editor Kyle “The Kandyman” Anderson, and managing cold brew editor, Alicia Lutes (hey wait! That’s ME!)—as they talk down the day’s doofy doings.

Like…didja hear about the one where Chris Pratt put his own Burt Macklin into the ring for James Comey’s replacement at the FBI? It’s true! We’re even doing a poll on Twitter about it, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Or what about the bit about Zuul—no, not that one, the dinosaur one. You heard me: the Ghostbusters baddie has a striking resemblance to a newly discovered dino and we’re head-over-club-tail for this new trend of naming ancient creatures after pop culture characters. Now where’s my fuzzy Falcor dragondino?!

And last but not least, there’s a mystery that needs solvin’—and it’s magical to boot! Strange things are afoot at the Circle J.K. Rowling, where we heard this week that a handwritten short story about James Potter and Sirius Black was stolen. (This is where that accio spell could come in MIGHTY HANDY IRL. Ugh.) Now…was it a burglary or simply a case of someone throwing back a few too many Bungbarrel Spiced Meads and misplacing the thing? WE MAY NEVER KNOW—unless there is some sort of magical equivalent of Carmen Sandiego.

What sort of mythical creature would YOU name a dinosaur after? Let us know in the comment below!

The ’90s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Were Incredibly Bizarre

Warning, this post contains spoilers for the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Proceed with caution. 

For longtime fans of Marvel Comics, one of the biggest treats in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was seeing the original Guardians of the Galaxy debut on the big screen. Led by Sylvester Stallone in the role of Stakar Ogord, also known as Starhawk, the OG Guardians were re-positioned as Ravagers, much like their former teammate Yondu (the always amazing Michael Rooker).

Created in 1969 by writer Arnold Drake and artist Gene Colan,  Guardians of the Galaxy bounced around the year 3000, traveling back and forth in time and battling all sorts of villainous aliens. It was basically a generic superhero comic with a semi-rotating cast until the 1990s and a man named Jim Valentino–the very same who helped found Image Comics.

With a fresh new #1 issue, Guardians of the Galaxy relaunched with Valentino serving as writer and artist. Under his creative direction, the adventures of Starhawk, Aleta, Charlie-27, Yondu, Martinex, and Nikki got weird. Really weird and really awesome.

Guardians of the Galaxy By Jim Valentino from Marvel Comics

Does the inclusion of these characters mean that Marvel plans on showcasing some of their bizarre adventures? It’s certainly possible. With the current slate of Guardians of the Galaxy films, Marvel Studios has proven they ain’t afraid of getting weird, and that’s a good thing. If they plan on exploring the adventures of the original Guardians, things are going to get even weirder.

We encourage you to visit your favorite comic book store and pick up some of the classic Guardians of the Galaxy collections, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share some of our favorite moments from the awesomely crazy ’90s run of the series.

Taserface and the Stark

The real star of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is Taserface, the mutineer Ravager who wages battle upon Yondu. You could be thinking, in the comics, Taserface was a Stark: a race of aliens who worshiped Tony Stark. These folks loved Iron Man so much they named their entire race after him. Unlike his cinematic counterpart, the Taserface of the comics is named as such because he literally shoots a taser beam out of his facial armor–it’s not metaphorical, in other words.

Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino from Marvel Comics

Earth, home of the Punishers

The Guardians find themselves on Earth on a number of different occasions, but the strangest involves a trip to Manhattan and a battle with the Punishers. New York has all but been taken over by this brutal gang of Frank Castle devotees. The Guardians engage in an epic street war with these goons and it basically ends with the Guardians retreating. The Punishers are too vast and too insane.

Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel Comics

The Mutants of the Future

In the world of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, mutantkind fled Earth and started a new life on a different planet. The series actually lays out a pretty cool backstory for this, but the strangest footnote is that the descendants of Wolverine essentially take over as supreme rulers of all mutants.

Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel Comics

When the Guardians cross paths with the mutants, they are lead by Rancor. She’s a tyrant who looks exactly like Wolverine – that haircut ain’t a good look, lady – and murders her own father. She then takes over the whole planet and turns all the humans she can find into slaves for mutants. It’s crazy stuff.

Major Victory

The one character that seems to be missing from the lineup of original Guardians in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is Vance Astro. The former astronaut is a time traveler, of sorts. He was in a hypersleep on a ship that veered off course, leaving him in suspended animation for over a thousand years. The Guardians discover him, and he joins up with them, eventually becoming the group’s leader and moral center. He ends up with Captain America’s shield, like the original Captain America, and wields it with telekinetic powers that he gained, uh, somehow. All in all, he’s actually a pretty cool character with a great design, that is, until he is reborn as Major Victory.

Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel Comics

Yes, Major Victory, the most 90’s superhero ever. Even in the far reaches of outer space, in the distant future, mullets and headbands became fashionable. Just look at this guy! The sleeves trenchcoat, the collar, the thigh-high boots! In a comic series filled with crazy stuff, this just might be the craziest. Major Victory, we salute you and your weird fashion choice.

There are plenty of other bizarre moments in the 62-issue run of the 1990s Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, most of them won’t make it into any Marvel movies, but some might. Hey, 20 years ago, who would have thought we’d have a big screen version of Rocket Raccoon? Maybe Major Victory is ready for his close-up? I mean, Taserface got his screen time, right? Give Vance Astro his due, Marvel!

Did you read the old-school Guardians of the Galaxy? If you did, sound off in the comments below and let us know your favorite moment from the series!

Images: Marvel Comics

Which Guardian is the Guardians’ favorite?

A Neural Net Created a Bonkers List of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Spell Names

It’s hour seven of your weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and you’re deep in a haunted goblin forest, surrounded by face-eating wolves who want to eat your stinking sacks of lard bread (and faces). Then suddenly, a White Moon Demon rises from the ground and you go to cast a spell!: Mind Blark! Or how about Hold Mouse! Maybe a quick Finger of Enftebtemang? OK, well, they may not sound like the most most menacing spells ever, but they were created by a neural network, so… +1 to artificial intelligence?

These whacky, yet oddly game-suitable spell names are the result of electrical engineer and research scientist Janelle Shane’s side project training open-source neural networks with random datasets. In her spare time, Shane, who’s “a research scientist in industry,” has been training neural networks to generate variations on themes, with datasets including everything from Pokémon names and abilities (Tortabool can Healy Stream), to pick-up lines (“You must be a tringle? Cause you’re the only thing here.”).

A reader hosted a party w recipes from these neural network-generated titles. Surprisingly, party was a success. https://t.co/Sztso6VVId pic.twitter.com/J3GFyPlcN2

— Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) May 1, 2017

Shane told Slate that thanks to a suggestion from one of her blog readers, this time around she fed a list of 365 Dungeons & Dragons spell names to a neural net. Shane used the 365-spell dataset to train the neural net to be able to predict the next letter in a phrase, but she noted that “in almost no time at all, it learned to reproduce the original input data verbatim, in order.” But by setting the “‘temperature'” flag to high — telling the neural net not to go with its best guess for the next character in a phrase — Shane says she was able to get it to make spelling errors, and then have it try to correct those spelling errors with clearly hilarious results.

Here is the complete list of Shane’s D&D spell names created by a neural net:

Moss Healing Word
Hold Mouse
Barking Sphere
Heat on Farm
True Steake
Finger of Enftebtemang
Fomend’s Beating Sphere
Purping Lightsin
Farming
Wrathful Hound
Q’s Invisibility
Cow of Auraly
Mind Blark
Stone Share
Puijune Magic Furs
Grove of Plants
Conjure Velemert
Vicious Markers
End Wall
Mous of Farts
Cursing
Gland Growth

Slate notes that even though these names are totally nuts, they do still seem to line up with Gary Gygax’s (the game’s co-creator) method of naming, which was often whimsical and goofy. Plus, this means that machines may already have more imagination than we give them credit for:

What do you think about these neural net-imagined D&D spell names? Cast a thought of comments below!

Images: Flickr / rui barros 

Watch the History of the Entire World in About 20 Minutes

The Earth has been around for a pretty long time, we’ve been told. It was 4.54 billion years, give or take, when our home planet first formed. But how did it happen? It’s a question you’ve probably asked yourself before, but there’s more to it than that initial inquiry. For example, how did space come to be? How did matter first form? This is a deep rabbit hole we’re about to go down here, but thankfully, Bill Wurtz made a 20-minute video called “history of the entire world, i guess” that explains how we all got here… kind of halfheartedly, but still.

There’s definitely truth to what Wurtz is saying in his fast-paced narration, but we wouldn’t cite this video in any sort of academic paper. His approach of the subject is more broad, putting complex concepts into terms we can easily understand, or at least terms that are funny.

After rambling about nothingness and everythingness and the ethereal nature of time and space, he goes on to talk about quarks getting married in groups of three called protons or neutrons, that time a ball of flaming rocks (the Earth) got hit with another ball of flaming rocks, and from there, works his train of thought all the way up to cell phones.

If you’ve been looking for a history of everything in the abstract, this is your best bet, so check it out above and let us know what part of all that’s ever happened is your favorite! (We’re partial to the Cambrian explosion).

Featured image: bill wurtz/YouTube

How long could Star-Lord survive in space unprotected?

This RIVERDALE Deleted Finale Scene Gives Us So Many Questions

There was so much packed into Riverdale‘s first season that the pacing always felt off. In a TV series about a murder mystery with the characters from Archie Comics, it’s to be expected that the show would move at a breakneck pace as that story unfolded over only 13 episodes.

One big casualty from the super fast pacing was that a lot of characters got pushed to the sidelines if their stories weren’t integral to the main murder mystery, resulting in deleted scenes galore. But I’ve made my feelings known about how Riverdale should have gotten more episodes than just 13 for its first season. I’m not going to rehash everything I’ve already said again. But the deleted scene that The CW and Warner Bros. TV just released from the season one finale confused me. A lot. I have so many questions.

First, check out the deleted scene for yourself below:

It’s a funny little scene showing Betty (Lili Reinhart) helping her pregnant older sister Polly (Tiera Skovbye) settle back in to life at Riverdale High after the drama of Jason Blossom’s (Trevor Stines) murder investigation died down. In a moment scored to Josie (Ashleigh Murray) and the Pussycats’ “Fear Nothing,” Betty and Veronica (Camila Mendes) walk Polly through the school halls, all three wearing Riverdale Vixen uniforms.

Of course, other students are obviously shocked to see the pregnant Polly not only back in school like nothing had happened but also in a cheerleader’s uniform (I honestly didn’t know they made maternity cheerleader uniforms until now). I love how the trio don’t even bat an eyelash at the camera phones flashing in their faces. Their confidence and no-f-cks-given attitude is just the best. I’m all for the basically-widowed Polly returning to some semblance of normalcy after losing the father of her (cough, incest-bred, cough) unborn baby.

And then Reggie Mantle (Ross Butler) crashes the female empowerment party, ruining the moment with a classic Reggie leer and gross comment about “mommy issues” and how good Polly looks pregnant. Gross, yes, but this little moment wouldn’t normally be a big deal …

But The CW already announced two weeks ago that Riverdale was recasting the role of Reggie for season two.

Butler, who stars as a series regular on Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why (also renewed for a second season), had scheduling issues with the two series and chose to give his time to the buzzy Netflix drama over The CW’s series. That resulted in Riverdale effectively not using the iconic character of Reggie for most of the first season. That definitely hurt the series, as Reggie is a huge part of the Archie Comics world as Archie’s (KJ Apa) rival, and the producers decided to recast the role for season two so they could use the character more without having to work around Butler’s 13 Reasons Why production schedule.

It’s a sad loss for Riverdale as Butler made a great Reggie, but I’d rather have more Reggie played by a different actor than no Reggie at all. You just can’t tell a good, complete Archie Comics story without Reggie!

Based on this deleted scene, however, that decision to recast came after the finale was filmed. I find it nuts that the producers not only wrote a scene with the old Reggie, but they had Butler fly back to Vancouver to film it. It was edited out before the hour made it air. But then the network released the scene online anyways! I don’t have to tell you how weird it is that they brought Butler back to film this scene, only to cut the scene and recast his role and then release this scene regardless. I mean, why release the scene at all?!

Of all the twists and turns presented in the season finale (#prayforFred), this is the one I just can’t get over. Am I overreacting or do you think it’s weird too? Tweet me at @SydneyBucksbaum and let’s chat all things Riverdale … including the mysterious case of the reappearing Reggie.

Images/video: The CW, Warner Bros. TV