Happy weekend, dear friends. It’s been a whole week but you made it through, and now you’re already looking ahead to the next seven days and thinking to yourself, “What am I going to get up to with all that time?” We’re so glad you asked, because we have some suggestions! It’s Popverse Playlist, your weekly guide to the must-do pop culture of the week ahead, because we know there’s way too much stuff out there to keep track of, and we wanted to help you out.

This week: it’s the end of the world as we know it not once but twice for Marvel Comics, a bunch of school kids are showing the limits of human civilization on Netflix, and Karl Urban is making sure that punches land with good humor and no small sense of the ridiculous on the big screen.

If you only watch one show this week, then it really has to be… Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is one of those classic pieces of literature that seemingly everyone knows, but few people are actually that familiar with. William Golding’s 1954 novel about a group of children stranded on an uninhabited island is both a fine metaphor for the darkness inside human civilization and a particularly big influence on Stephen King — where do you think the name “Castle Rock” comes from? — but how many people can actually tell you the plot? That is likely going to change with the release of this acclaimed four-part adaptation, newly released in the US on Netflix, developed and written by Adolescence’s Jack Thorne. Expect brutality, heartbreak and perhaps even a little bit of beauty.

All four episodes of Lord of the Flies will be released on Netflix May 4.

If you check out one movie this week, then it should be… Mortal Kombat 2

2021’s Mortal Kombat movie was a fun punchathon, but it was missing one thing: Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage. Okay, to be fair, Johnny was teased at the end of the movie, and it’s not as if Urban was even cast in the role at the time, but everything we’ve seen about this long-awaited sequel suggests that it’s doubling down on the humor and shamelessness that worked so well about the last movie. (Kano was the highlight for everyone else, right?) Having the movie described by filmmakers as “a purposeful swing into the crazy” that features twice as many fights as the first feels like it’s giving us exactly what we want, with Urban — who’s already called the movie the best video game adaptation yet — right at the center. Toasty.

Mortal Kombat 2 hits theaters May 8.

If you can only pick up one comic this week, then make sure it’s… Armageddon/X-Men Comic Giveaway Day #1

It all starts here — well, maybe not starts, exactly, as both storylines in this special freebie issue have been building in Marvel’s comics for the last year or so, but this is the core central issue that will ignite what are likely to be the two big Marvel Comics stories of 2026. Avengers: Armageddon is promising to remake not just Earth’s Mightiest Heroes but the entire Marvel (comic book) Universe, while the X-Men half of the issue introduces DNX: a crossover between the X-Men and the Fantastic Four as villains plan to unleash a bio-weapon that will either kill humanity or transform them all into mutants. The future of... well, potentially everything hangs in the balance, and this is the issue that sets readers up for both big events… and it’s available for free in participating comic stores this Saturday.  Get more information about Free Comic Book Day here.

Armageddon/X-Men Comic Giveaway Day #1 will be available from participating stores May 2.

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