Category: Blog

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.  

These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome. 

In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934)  for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna.  The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language? 

The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders.  Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist),  graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip).  Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants.  This convivial circle was far from unique.  An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely. 

In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler:  Destroying everybody is my business.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor.  This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.

Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.

The End Of Red Vienna

Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing  ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews.  Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability?  This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.

Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.  

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices.  The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous.  Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

Not every movie sticks to its original vision. In fact, some take a sharp turn long before they ever reach theaters. Whether it’s due to director changes, studio intervention, or reactions to early footage, certain films end up shifting tone in major ways during production.

What may have started as a dark drama can become a lighter comedy, or a grounded story might evolve into something far more exaggerated. These changes don’t always happen quietly either, and in many cases, you can feel the shift while watching. They offer a glimpse into how unpredictable the filmmaking process can really be.

The post Movies That Completely Changed Tone Halfway Through Production appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

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Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

Rewatching a movie can often give us details that enrich the experience, although sometimes, those same details end up bringing the experience down. Beneath familiar stories and iconic scenes lie details, implications, and logical gaps that can make a film feel far more unsettling in hindsight.

These aren’t always intentional twists or hidden clues, but observations that shift the tone once they click. Whether it’s a troubling ethical implication or a flaw that raises bigger questions, these moments have a way of sticking with viewers long after the credits roll, no matter if you’re watching them for the first or second time.

The post 15 Unsettling Movie Facts That Might Change How We See Them appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

Casting can make or break a movie, and sometimes the most controversial choices turn out to be the right ones. Over the years, plenty of actors have faced skepticism the moment they were announced, whether due to past roles, public image, or simply not fitting what audiences expected.

In some cases, the backlash was immediate and widespread. But once the movie finally hit theaters, those same performances ended up winning over critics and fans alike. These are the casting decisions that seemed questionable at first, only to prove that the right actor isn’t always the most obvious one.

The post 15 Casting Decisions Nobody Trusted Until The Movie Came Out appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

Movies are designed to transport audiences to entirely different worlds, even when those worlds are built on the exact same foundations. Behind the scenes, filmmakers often reuse sets and real-world locations, carefully redressing them to look new while saving time and budget.

The result is a kind of cinematic illusion where the same street, building, or interior quietly appears across completely unrelated films. Most viewers never notice, but once you know where to look, it becomes hard to unsee. These reused locations reveal just how much creativity goes into making familiar places feel entirely different on screen.

The post Movies You Didn’t Know Recycled Sets And Locations appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

It isn’t hard to find an aerial view of the world’s most major metropolises. The Empire State Building, Shanghai Tower, Lakhta Center, and countless other structures boast perfectly safe observation decks that provide birds-eye panoramas of the cities below. It is much more difficult to reach the true apex of those buildings, to climb to […]

The post Isaac Wright Combines Urban Exploring, Photography in Drift  appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

Some movie scenes look natural on screen, but behind the camera they were incredibly difficult to pull off. From extreme weather conditions to complex stunts and technical limitations, certain moments pushed cast and crew to their absolute limits. These scenes often require innovation, patience, and a willingness to take risks to achieve something truly memorable. What makes them even more impressive is that audiences rarely see the struggle behind them. These are the moments where filmmaking becomes a feat of endurance as much as creativity, resulting in scenes that feel as real as they are unforgettable.

The post 15 Movie Scenes That Were Almost Impossible to Film appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episode 1. “The Female (of the Species).” Those words, presented in a caption block of white text on a black background introduce the world to the one member of the Boys who isn’t a boy. The caption appears in 2006’s The Boys #2, written by Garth […]

The post The Boys’ Kimiko Reveal is the Ultimate Improvement Over the Comics appeared first on Den of Geek.

The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.

The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THE BOYS (@theboystv)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.

“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”

A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme. 

“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”

Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.

“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”

Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information. 

“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”

Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought. 

“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”

Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s. 

“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”

For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak. 

“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”

Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.

“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”

New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.