It’s finally time. Wrestlemania 36 is here and, for the first time ever, it’s taking place over two consecutive nights without the benefit of a live audience. Of course, that’s not stopping WWE from pulling out all the stops for their biggest annual pay-per-view event.
At current, there are 16 matches scheduled for Wrestlemania 36, which likely means each night will get eight different matches. There’s also the distinct possibility of an extra bout or two being added to the card, perhaps during the pre-show.
As for what to expect from the event, there are several high-profile bouts that will no doubt be looking to steal the show. From Edge’s in-ring return against Randy Orton to John Cena facing “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt in a Firefly Funhouse match, whatever that is, this is going to be a very interesting pair of shows.
You’re able to catch all of the action on the WWE Network beginning with the Wrestlemania 36 pre-show that kicks off at 6 PM ET/3 PM PT on Saturday, April 4. You can also keep tabs on everything that happens on the big show over both nights right here, as GameSpot’s Wrestle Buddies Mat Elfring and Chris E. Hayner review every match as it happens.
Take a look at the card for the two-night event below and get ready for so much wrestling.
Wrestlemania 36 match card:
Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
Elias vs. King Corbin
Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler
John Cena vs. The Fiend (Firefly Funhouse Match)
The Undertaker vs. AJ Styles (Boneyard Match)
Edge vs. Randy Orton (Last Man Standing)
Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins
Street Profits (c) vs. Angel Garza & Austin Theory (Raw Tag Team Championship)
The Miz & John Morrison (c) vs. The Usos vs. The New Day (Triple Thread Ladder Match for Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
The Kabuki Warriors (c) vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross (Women’s Tag Team Championships)
Sami Zayn (c) vs. Daniel Bryan (Intercontinental Championship)
Bayley (c) vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Tamina vs. Naomi (5-Way Elimination Match for Smackdown Women’s Championship)
Becky Lynch (c) vs. Shayna Baszler (Raw Women’s Championship)
Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair (NXT Women’s Championship)
Goldberg (c) vs. TBD (Universal Championship)
Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Drew McIntyre (WWE Championship)
Surprising no one, My Hero Academia will be getting a fifth season. An announcement at the end of the fourth season’s final episode confirmed MHA’s continuation and teased that the fifth season was in production. The exact release date is unknown at this time, but since the next installment is still in the works and given what’s happening in the world, it’s likely we won’t see Season 5 this year.
The fourth season ended with Endeavor’s showdown with a Nomu, and if the anime continues to follow the manga’s progression (i.e. no fillers), the fifth season should pick up during the joint training arc. During this part of the story, Midoriya and the rest of class 1-A join up with 1-B to do some more leveling up and honing of their abilities. Season 5 might also cover some of the Meta Liberation Army arc, which gets into Tomura Shigaraki’s backstory as well as new moves made by his crew.
A movie, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, was also released earlier this year on February 26. You can read GameSpot’s thoughts on My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising. Reviewer Jordan Ramée says of the film, “There’s plenty to love about My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising–it manages to inject an exciting and compelling side story into the anime–but its conclusion dashes much of that goodwill with a single line of dialogue. Until that moment, though, Heroes Rising is a good superhero movie that manages to satisfyingly sell the theme of its central conflict.”
Your weekly Grand Theft Auto V Online rewards update is here, and as usual, that means certain activities have double to triple rewards attached. From now until April 8, you can get triple cash rewards and RP in the Arena War Series. For those starting to dabble in Arena Wars, Rockstar is also offering a 50% off discount on the Arena Workshop, a place to store players’ equipment obtained from the in-game ArenaWar.tv website.
If you’re looking to fill a spot in your Arena Workshop, all three different designs of the Arena Sasquatch are 60% off. They come in a “visionary Future Shock look, the ominous Apocalypse design, or the intimidating Nightmare variation.”
If players beat the par time for the Sawmill time trial and La Fuente Blanca RC time trial, they’ll receive triple cash and RP rewards too. Double rewards will be offered for Simeon’s Premium Deluxe Repo Work mission.
Other discounts include:
40% Off Invade & Persuade RC Tank
60% Off Ocelot Stromberg
40% Off RC Bandito
50% Off Grotti X80 Proto
Additionally, Twitch Prime members who’ve linked their account to their Rockstar Games Social Club accounts will receive 75% off the Arena ZR380 and MTL Cerberus.
Aside from new weekly rewards, GTA V Online is also offering a one-time GTA$500K gift to anybody who plays the game during April. Rockstar Games has also announced that it will donate revenue made from microtransactions from GTA V Online and Red Dead Online to COVID-19 relief. From April 1 to the end of May, 5% of online purchases will be used to help “local communities and businesses struggling with the impacts of COVID-19, both directly and by supporting some of the amazing organizations who are on the ground helping those affected by this crisis.”
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Fortnite creator Epic Games and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Games have teamed up to release a mobile game for iOS and Android called Spyjinx, a game long in the works.
In 2015, J.J. Abrams and Epic Games announced that Spyjinx was in development and a closed beta would be available in 2016. Obviously, that didn’t happen and now, four years later, the dev team has released more details and is finally inching the game closer to launch.
From the limited information currently available, Spyjinx appears to be about secret agents and espionage schemes. Game objectives such as creating and protecting your own hideout and infiltrating other players’ hideouts looks like a major component of the gameplay. Spyjinx is a mix of “action-strategy gameplay, RPG character development, and head-to-head multiplayer,” according to the game’s description.
The FAQ page offers a few more nuggets (but not much) of what to expect. Speed is noted to be important, so timed missions are likely. Players will also be restricted in missions by an “energy meter” that will decrease as players take certain actions.
The dev team launched Spyjinx’s beta test for iOS in Malaysia on April 1, and they plan to expand the beta test to Australia shortly. Currently, there’s no set date for worldwide release yet. Though it’s likely to be free, whether the full release will be free-to-play or not is currently unknown too.
Bad Robot Games worked with Valve on a Team Fortress 2 mode in 2015 and Bad Robot as a whole, inked a deal in late 2019 with Warner Bros. to produce movies, TV shows, and video games.
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Here on Potato Mode, we take our favorite games and turn their graphics into absolute mush for your enjoyment. This week, we kick it up a notch by stepping into the world of VR with Half-Life: Alyx.
Alyx is without a doubt one of the most impressive-looking VR games to date, and returning to City 17 after all these years is a real treat, which makes it all the more hilarious when we completely ruin its graphics. It’s a real trip in particular for Jean-Luc who is experiencing the whole thing up close in virtual reality. Thankfully it didn’t make him sick!
If you’re curious about Half-Life: Alyx, you can check out our video where we tested the game on the four biggest VR headsets. Or watch Michael Higham’s review, where he gave the game a 9/10, saying, “Not only has Half-Life: Alyx made good on its shift to VR, it has elevated many of the aspects we’ve come to love about Half-Life games.”
Do you dream about the Avengers gang returning to their roles from the big screen? Marvel is here to grant your wish… sort of. The animated series What If…?, coming to Disney+ in 2021, brings back over 20 of your favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe actors as they reprise their iconic roles. But these might not be the heroes you remember.
What If…? is based on the monthly comic book series of the same name created by Roy Thomas in the 1970s. Uatu, the Watcher, presents stories from other universes and timelines that show the path some of your favorite characters could have taken. But not all of them have a happy ending.
Let’s take a look at the classic comic series for an idea of the other universes we might see in the new series. We’ll discuss:
Roy Thomas was both writer, editor, and creator of What If…? Its first issue was released in 1977. In the back matter of What If…? #1, Thomas wrote that he didn’t want these Marvel tales labeled as imaginary; they were real, just not in the Earth-616 universe we know.
“I decided that my series could become, hopefully, the main (if not only) place in Marvel for a while where such parallel-world stories would take place,” Thomas said. “And, to make the series palatable as much to myself as anyone else, I would have the wondrous Watcher narrate the stories. This way, as you already know, these stories are ones which actually do take place—not in our dimension or time continuum, but in worlds coexisting alongside ours.”
Early issues began with questions like, what if Spider-Man accepted the Fantastic Four’s offer in Amazing Spider-Man #1 to join their team? Or what if Bruce Banner retained his intellect as the Hulk from the get-go? The first series of intriguing tales of alternate Earths each started with a mysterious figure on the moon narrating the story, showing first how it originally happened in the pages of Marvel Comics, and then how it happened on another Earth.
While many stories started out as pondering what might have been, more than a few became reality in later years. From Spider-Man joining the Fantastic Four, to Jane Foster becoming Thor (or “Thordis” as she was called in issue #10), to Bucky surviving World War II, to the creation of Mayday “Spider-Girl” Parker in issue #105, some of the ideas proved so intriguing that they were explored further in Marvel Comics.
What If…? took Marvel’s biggest heroes through space and time, including a version of Captain America that lived during the Civil War and a Daredevil in feudal Japan. Heroes often became villains and villains became heroes, superpowers were switched among teammates, and important characters like Gwen Stacy and Karen Page escaped death in these fascinating issues. Outcomes of these changes were more often bad than good; Spider-Man found the support he needed in the Fantastic Four, for example, but his presence made Invisible Woman decide to leave the team.
What If…? would eventually go on for 13 volumes over the years, and more recent stories focused on specific turning points in blockbuster crossover events like Civil War, Infinity, and Avengers vs. X-Men.
Who Is the Watcher?
The Watcher, whose real name is Uatu, made his first appearance in 1963’s The Fantastic Four #13 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He was a member of an advanced extraterrestrial race, the Watchers, who made it their mission to observe and record life in the galaxy. But they swore an oath to never, ever interfere in a planet’s affairs. Uatu was assigned to Earth and its solar system.
As he watched the Earth from his base on the moon, Uatu couldn’t help but become fond of its denizens—and its heroes. He met the Fantastic Four during one of their initial adventures. He allowed them to keep their knowledge of his existence and began to interact with and even help the team.
Uatu crossed the line, however, by stepping in the first time Galactus came to devour the Earth. (Eventually he would meddle in humanity’s affairs hundreds of times. The guy can’t help himself.) This interference was against everything the Watchers stood for, and Uatu faced the consequences. He was stripped of Watcher status. He would eventually be reinstated, and occasionally appeared before the planet’s protectors as a precursor to earth-shattering events.
“I know all that is—most that has been—and much of what will be,” he told the reader of the first issue of What If…? “I have also many windows into the strange parallel worlds of what might have been.”
Marvel has released a few tantalizing details about the upcoming animated series. Rather than pure adaptations of the long-running comic book series, the series will focus on landmark moments in the beloved films. Each episode will focus on a specific MCU movie with one story element changed, revealed Kevin Feige at D23.
Concept art shows Peggy Carter as the super-serum infused Captain Britain, Steve Rogers in an Iron Man-like suit, and quick glimpses at the Winter Soldier and Star-Lord. There’s also a zombified Captain America, hinting that the grim Marvel Zombies comics are another source of inspiration for the animated show.
The Watcher returns as narrator, with Jeffrey Wright providing his solemn voice, and many of the MCU’s brightest stars will be alongside him.
Most notably, Robert Downey, Jr. will be returning to voice Iron Man, according to Jeff Goldblum. Michael B. Jordan, Sebastian Stan, Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Haley Atwell, Chadwick Boseman, Karen Gillan, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, and Michael Douglas are just a few of the big names confirmed to be joining him behind the mic.
Marvel’s What If…? is currently scheduled as part of Phase 4 of the MCU with a planned release of summer 2021. Disney+’s other Marvel shows, including The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye, are all also slated for Disney+.
Kelly Knox is a freelance writer who also contributes to StarWars.com, DCComics.com, Nerdist, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @kelly_knox to talk Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and comics.
As more and more people’s homes becomes their “workplace,” The Office executive producers Ben Silverman and Paul Lieberstein are currently lining up a new workplace comedy based on working-from-home conditions amidst the current COVID-19 crisis.
“So many of us are jumping on daily Zoom meetings — for work and beyond,” Silverman told Deadline. “We are in a new normal and are personally navigating ways to remain connected and productive at work and in our home lives.”
“With the brilliant Paul Lieberstein (who played Toby on The Office) at the helm, we think we have a series that not only brings humor and comfort during this troubling time but will also be an inventive and enduring workplace comedy for years to come.”
The series is reportedly about “a wunderkind boss who, in an effort to ensure his staff’s connectedness and productivity, asks them all to virtually interact and work face-to-face all day.”
“Start with the office comedy, lose the office and you’re just left with comedy. The math works,” according to Lieberstein.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
According to Sports Illustrated, “staying at Raymond James was at one point a consideration,” though naturally the show would have been held with 70 to 80 thousand empty seats.
For “for reasons outside of [Vince’s] control,” the course was altered and everything, including WWE’s regular weekly TV tapings, were shifted to the Performance Center.
WrestleMania 36 will be the strangest WWE PPV in history, as not only has the roster lineup changed due to the pandemic, but the show itself has now been pre-taped and spread out over two nights.
With 16 matches split up into two parts — April 4 and April 5 — the main marquee matches are reportedly being divvied up as follows:
Part 1, April 4
Braun Strowman) vs. Bill Goldberg
Shayna Baszler vs. Becky Lynch
John Cena vs. “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt – Firefly Funhouse Match
Will you be watching WrestleMania 36? Both nights? If so, what match are you looking forward to the most?
IGN will have a live-blog running for the event on both nights, so make sure you check the homepage for all the WrestleMania match results and reactions in real-time.
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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
