TV Trailers of the Week: Lioness: Season 3, The Shards, Crystal Lake and More
📺 Take a peek at some of the latest trailers for upcoming TV shows.
📺 “Lioness: Season 3” Trailer: Zoe Saldaña Faces Domestic Terror, Compromised Identities, and a War With No Clear Border in Taylor Sheridan’s Military Thriller Series with Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman — Returning Sunday, August 2nd on Paramount+
“A soldier’s job is to fight.”
The full trailer for Lioness: Season 3 wastes little time reminding us what that job looks like: covert assignments, skies crowded with drones, and enough explosions to make even hardened operatives stop and mutter, “Holy sh#t.”
Taylor Sheridan’s series appears to be returning to its most immediate attractions: military operations, black-ops maneuvering, and plenty of bombs! But the spectacle still serves the show’s larger conflict. Zoe Saldaña’s Joe may lead an elite undercover unit into some of the most dangerous regions in the world, yet her most difficult mission has always been keeping that violence from following her home.
This season, that separation may no longer be possible.
The trailer points toward compromised identities, domestic threats, and the growing possibility that terrorism is no longer something happening overseas. Joe’s name could be exposed publicly. Attacks may be moving onto American soil. Protecting the country and protecting her family are beginning to look like the same assignment—and possibly two responsibilities she cannot fulfill at once.
That tension has always made Lioness more interesting than a straightforward display of military power. The series pays close attention to the complexity of counterterrorism operations, but it also repeatedly exposes how fragile those operations can be. Missions constantly go sideways. Leadership often fails. Half-baked plans are handed to people who may not fully understand the consequences of carrying them out.
If we didn’t know better, we might say Taylor Sheridan accidentally made a show about how even one of the strongest militaries in the world is useless without competent leadership, careful planning, and people willing to take the assignment seriously. Whether that criticism is intentional or simply the natural result of Sheridan grounding the series in the day-to-day realities of military operations remains an open question.
Either way, Season 3 appears ready to push Zoe Saldaña’s Joe into a war with no clean border between battlefield and home. Saldaña’s performance alone makes the show a must-see, as she has become that rare actor who can display genuine ruggedness alongside quiet emotional vulnerability without becoming overly sentimental.
With Nicole Kidman returning as CIA honcho Kaitlyn Meade, Morgan Freeman back as U.S. Secretary of State Edwin Mullins, and Michael Kelly reprising his role as CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield, along with Laysla De Oliveira, Genesis Rodriguez, Dave Annable, Ian Bohen, and Hannah Love Lanier, Lioness: Season 3 is set up for another explosive season. Quite literally.
The show returns Sunday, August 2nd, exclusively on Paramount+.
📺 “The Shards” Trailer: Highly Privileged Teens and a Serial Killer Converge in Seedy 1980s Los Angeles in FX’s New Series from Ryan Murphy and American Psycho Author Bret Easton Ellis — Premiering Wednesday, August 5th on FX and Hulu/Disney+
Yet another examination of rich young elites doing nasty things? Okay. Well, we can’t think of two creators better suited to the task than television mogul Ryan Murphy and American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis.
One has spent decades examining wealthy, beautiful people and all their carefully concealed depravity. The other has done exactly the same. So, again, the pairing of Murphy and Ellis feels less like a surprise and more like an inevitability.
Based on Ellis’s 2023 novel, said to be loosely inspired by the author’s senior year of high school in 1981 Los Angeles (Jesus, what was he up to back then?), The Shards follows a fictionalized teenage version of the author, played by Igby Rigney (Midnight Mass), navigating his final year at an elite L.A. prep school. His carefully controlled social circle begins to fracture with the arrival of Robert Mallory (played by Euphoria’s Homer Gere—and yes, son of Richard Gere and Carey Lowell), a charismatic new student whose secrets become entangled with jealousy, sexual obsession, and a serial killer stalking the city.
Kaia Gerber (again, yes, the daughter of iconic ’80s and ’90s supermodel Cindy Crawford) also joins the cast as one of the story’s highly privileged teens, making this production feel almost suspiciously well cast. Graham Campbell and Hayes Warner round out the younger ensemble, while Evan Rachel Wood and Wes Bentley bring some adult menace to this increasingly unstable L.A. world of loud ’80s fashion, big hair, and even bigger egos.
Naturally, the trailer looks immaculate. The clothes are sharp, the homes are spotless, and nearly everyone appears ready for a magazine spread. That sleek presentation falls directly within Murphy’s wheelhouse, while Ellis—the author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho, who has long explored the sleaze beneath L.A.’s elite circles—provides the poison likely to keep audiences glued.
With ’80s nostalgia nearly exhausted as the ’90s take center stage, so too is the romanticizing of that decade. Now comes a more cynical reassessment. The rose-colored glasses are now ripped off, and Murphy and Ellis are here to expose the festering rot beneath all that neon ’80s polish; which feels especially timely as audiences have become more interested than ever in stories about privilege, excess, and the consequences that finally catch up with both.
But yes, it’s told with all that over-stylized fluff Murphy is known for. You can’t have the medicine without a little sugar, and in this case, Murphy and Ellis have baked an entire cake.
The Shards appears ready to let the beautiful people fall apart in style when it debuts Wednesday, August 5th on FX and Hulu/Disney+.
📺 “Crystal Lake” Teaser: Linda Cardellini Becomes Pamela Voorhees in A24 and Peacock’s Psychological Friday the 13th Prequel Series — Debuting Thursday, October 15th on Peacock
A24 and the Friday the 13th franchise? Together in one show.
Sure, it makes for an eye-catching combination. One is known for psychologically charged, filmmaker-driven horror that gets under the skin; the other built its reputation on machetes, massive body counts, and decades of slasher mythology. Which begs the question: can an iconic horror franchise known more for gore than introspection receive the full A24 treatment?
Seemingly cut from the same cloth as HBO Max’s It: Welcome to Derry—which makes sense, given that showrunner and creator Brad Caleb Kane worked on the Stephen King–based prequel series—Peacock’s Crystal Lake appears interested in expanding familiar mythology by tracing the trauma beneath the iconography. Expect a richer, more psychologically layered world than the franchise has traditionally explored, with this small-screen reimagining centered on Pamela Voorhees, the grieving single mother whose loss would eventually give rise to one of horror cinema’s most enduring killers.
Linda Cardellini, best known for Dead to Me and Freaks and Geeks, and coming off her Emmy-nominated turn in HBO’s DTF St. Louis, has been tasked with bringing Pamela Voorhees to life; possibly giving the franchise’s original killer a deeper, more tragic dimension than we’ve ever seen before. At least, that’s the hope.
Set nearly a year after her son’s tragic death at Camp Crystal Lake, the series finds Pamela being visited by two strangers who have been digging into her past, setting off a disturbing chain of events. The premise suggests that the series will treat Pamela as the emotional and psychological catalyst behind everything that follows.
That approach immediately gives Crystal Lake a different kind of potential. The camp, the lake, the bloodshed, and the Voorhees name are all present, but the real horror may come from watching grief harden into something far more troubling and sinister.
The teaser is brief, but it still suggests a series steeped in psychological damage, buried secrets, and emotional anguish, while flashes of blood promise it hasn’t forgotten the franchise’s core audience. Hey, you can’t have a slasher series without a little bucket of blood thrown at the screen from time to time.
After years of sequels, reboots, legal complications, and abandoned reinventions, the franchise may have finally found a way to evolve. Cardellini certainly has the dramatic range to uncover layers in Pamela that the original films never had much interest in exploring. This new version might even make audiences sympathize with her before revealing just how deeply grief has damaged her.
Co-starring Callum Vinson as young Jason Voorhees, along with William Catlett, Devin Kessler, Cameron Scoggins, and Gwendolyn Sundstrom, Crystal Lake is due to premiere Thursday, October 15th on Peacock.
📺 “Mayfair Witches: Season 3” Teaser: Alexandra Daddario Returns as Rowan Fielding and Heads to Salem in AMC’s Anne Rice Supernatural Drama — Coming in 2027 to AMC/AMC+
The Anne Rice universe keeps expanding, with Alexandra Daddario returning as Rowan Fielding, the brilliant neurosurgeon whose discovery of her Mayfair lineage pulled her into a dangerous supernatural world. Season 3 takes Rowan to Salem, where powerful families, buried secrets, and the lingering legacy of the witch trials deepen the series’ mythology. Her arrival threatens to stir forces that may be even darker than anything she has faced before. Harry Hamlin, Tongayi Chirisa, Alyssa Jirrels, Betsy Brandt, Michiel Huisman, James Frain, Eliza Scanlen, and Omar Maskati round out the cast. Esta Spalding and Thomas Schnauz serve as co-showrunners, guiding the series further into the increasingly troubled history of the Mayfair family. When it comes to witch lore, Salem is the one town where history still casts a long shadow.
📺 “My Life With the Walter Boys: Season 3” Trailer: Nikki Rodriguez Returns to Silver Falls for More Love-Triangle Fallout in Netflix’s Coming-of-Age Drama with Noah LaLonde and Ashby Gentry — Premiering Thursday, August 6th on Netflix
Netflix might be best known as the home of true-crime obsessions and bingeable thrillers, but it has also carved out a reliable lane for coming-of-age hits, where young people fall in love and make terrible decisions. Nikki Rodriguez returns for Season 3 of Netflix’s hit teen drama as Jackie heads back to Silver Falls, where secrets, heartbreak, and very bad timing remain part of the local scenery. Picking up after the emotional fallout between Jackie, Cole (Noah LaLonde), and Alex (Ashby Gentry), the new season pushes her toward complicated relationships, fresh ambitions, and consequences the Walter family can no longer ignore. Created by Melanie Halsall from Ali Novak’s story, the series proves that growing up is hard enough without your heart becoming the town’s main event. But in a teenager’s life, a little romantic chaos is practically unavoidable.
📺 “Euphoria: A Look Back” Trailer: Zendaya and the Cast Revisit the Chaos, Heartbreak, and Cultural Impact of HBO’s Teen Drama — Premiering Friday, July 24th on HBO Max
Still recovering from that emotionally gut-wrenching Season 3 finale? Well, HBO Max is attempting to soften the blow with a new retrospective revisiting the cast, chaos, and cultural impact of the series. Gathering interviews and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the show, this Euphoria special explores how Rue, Jules, Cassie, Nate, Maddy, and their tangled lives became part of the modern teen-TV conversation. Featuring Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Maude Apatow, and Hunter Schafer, the retrospective looks back at the performances, moments, and emotional fallout that turned the series into a cultural phenomenon. Sometimes the emotional hangover is simply part of the story.
📺 “The Walking Dead: Dead City: Season 3” On-Set Preview: Jeffrey Dean Morgan Introduces Negan’s New Ally and Bar Buddy Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) Ahead of AMC’s Return — Premiering Sunday, July 26th on AMC and AMC+
In the apocalypse, even a bar tour comes with baggage. This Season 3 preview introduces new cast member Jimmi Simpson as Dillard, Negan’s newest ally, as Jeffrey Dean Morgan walks viewers through the place Dillard calls home. With Lauren Cohan returning as Maggie and Aimee Garcia joining the cast, AMC’s New York-set Walking Dead spinoff keeps its uneasy alliances moving into another dangerous chapter. Dead cities still have room for new trouble.
📺 “Monsters of God” Trailer: ‘Tiger King’ Filmmaker Eric Goode Enters the Billion-Dollar Underworld of Reptile Smuggling in This Five-Part HBO Docuseries — Premiering Thursday, August 6th on HBO Max
The rarer and more dangerous the reptile, the higher the price... and the deeper the obsession. From Tiger King and Chimp Crazy filmmaker Eric Goode, this five-part documentary series infiltrates a global trade where collectors, alleged traffickers, zoo figures and wildlife officers battle over some of the planet’s most coveted creatures. As passion gives way to exploitation, the pursuit of the next exotic prize fuels a criminal economy built on secrecy, scarcity and survival. In this cold-blooded world, the most dangerous predators may not be the ones behind glass.
📺 “Power: Origins” Teaser: Young Ghost, Tommy and Kanan Begin Their Rise in Starz’s New ‘Power’ Prequel Series — Coming Soon to Starz
Every criminal empire begins with someone hungry enough to build it. Spence Moore II, Charlie Mann and MeKai Curtis lead this Power prequel as young Ghost, Tommy and Kanan, three ambitious hustlers whose friendships, rivalries and early choices begin shaping the legends they will become. Created by Raising Kanan showrunner Sascha Penn, the series returns to the streets of New York to explore how loyalty and ambition laid the foundation for an empire... and planted the seeds of its eventual destruction.
📺 “Gone” Trailer: David Morrissey Falls Under Suspicion After His Wife Disappears in This Twisting British Crime Thriller — Premiering Thursday, July 23rd on US’s BritBox
When a headmaster’s wife suddenly vanishes, the search for answers quickly turns into a case against him. David Morrissey stars as Michael Polly, whose seemingly quiet life begins to unravel as suspicion closes in and every secret becomes potential evidence. Eve Myles co-stars as DS Annie Cassidy, the detective determined to uncover what really happened, even as Michael fights to prove he is not the man everyone believes him to be. Written by George Kay and directed by Richard Laxton, this BritBox crime thriller turns a missing-person investigation into a tense battle of motives, mistrust, and buried truths. The wife may be gone, but the secrets are still very much present.
📺 “The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare” Trailer: New True-Crime Docuseries Reexamines the Shocking University of Idaho Killings Through the Lives Behind the Headlines — Premiering Wednesday, July 29th on Netflix
Four students went to sleep in a quiet college town. By morning, Moscow, Idaho, had become the center of one of the most haunting murder cases in recent memory. Directed by Skye Borgman and executive produced by Emmy Award-winner Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), this Netflix docuseries examines the 2022 killings of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle through bodycam footage, text messages, and interviews with those who knew them best. Moving beyond the headlines and speculation, the series focuses on the lives that were cut short and the questions that continue to surround the case.
📺 “The Dynasty: UConn Huskies” Trailer: Geno Auriemma’s Championship Machine Gets a Generational Breakdown in Apple TV’s Basketball Docuseries — Premiering Friday, August 21st on Apple TV
Winning once can change a program. Winning for four decades creates something much harder to explain. This three-part sports documentary traces the rise of UConn women’s basketball under coach Geno Auriemma, revealing how a once-overlooked program became the standard every rival was forced to chase. Sue Bird, Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, Paige Bueckers, and other UConn greats pull back the curtain on the pressure, discipline, sacrifice, and culture behind the championship banners. Through archival footage and firsthand accounts, the series looks beyond the victories to the relentless work required to sustain excellence across generations. It also examines how winning became part of UConn’s identity, and why preserving that legacy presents a challenge as demanding as building it in the first place.
📺 “One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part Two” Trailer: The Buendía Family Faces Its Final Reckoning as Macondo Marches Toward Ruin in Netflix’s Sprawling Gabriel García Márquez Adaptation — Streaming Wednesday, August 5th on Netflix
It’s the grand finale for this sprawling Colombian series based on Gabriel García Márquez’s classic 1967 novel. Completing its 16-episode run with eight final installments arriving this summer, this Spanish-language family saga follows new generations of the Buendías through uneasy peace, political violence, the arrival of the railroad, and a banana company hastening Macondo’s decline. Claudio Cataño, Marleyda Soto, Janer Villarreal, Viña Machado, Ruggero Pasquarelli, Moreno Borja, and Salvador del Solar return as history tightens its grip on the family’s legacy, carrying them through an era of turmoil as the country itself is reshaped by war, modernization, and exploitation. The final stretch suggests destiny isn’t written in glyphs alone; it’s etched into every choice that cannot be undone.
📺 “All the Truth in My Lies” Trailer: A Bachelorette Road Trip Turns Into a Camper-Van Confessional in Netflix’s New Spanish Rom-Com Series — Premiering Friday, August 28th on Netflix
Secrets travel badly in tight quarters. Based on Elisabet Benavent’s novel, this Netflix limited series sends Marin, Coco, Blanca, Gus, Aroa, and Loren on what should be a breezy bachelorette getaway, until buried feelings and messy truths turn the summer escape into emotional gridlock. With Daniel Ibáñez, Itziar Manero, Ricardo Gómez, Clara Sans, Lucía de la Fuente, and Brays Efe along for the ride, the road trip starts looking less like a celebration and more like group therapy on wheels. The destination may be fun, but getting there is the real disaster.
