It’s been a few years since Archer ended, and while we still go around yelling “Phrasing!” whenever the opportunity arises, it’s high time for some fresh jokes from the team behind the long-running spy-fi show. HBO Max has ordered up two seasons of Merrick & Treves, a half-hour animated comedy co-created and executive produced by Archer and Frisky Dingo vets Adam Reed, Casey Willis, and Lucky Yates.
Here’s the official logline, courtesy of HBO Max: “Set inside Queen Victoria’s top secret Royal Temporal Constabulary, Merrick & Treves follows a team of unlikely heroes as they voyage back and forth through time in an effort to stop Jack the Ripper.”
The release doesn’t specify more details on the characters, but Deadline puts them into historical context: “Joseph Merrick was better known as the Elephant Man, who was exhibited at a freak show in 19th-century Britain, before he was taken in by surgeon Sir Frederick Treves and went to live at a hospital in Whitechapel,” the London neighborhood frequented by Jack the Ripper.
In the HBO release, Reed, Willis, and Yates sounded very excited about what’s to come. “The three of us are beyond excited to have found a home for Merrick & Treves at HBO. We can’t wait to start working with the creative team behind so many of our favorite shows. It’s actually quite daunting, now that we think about it. Like, holy shit, y’all. HBO.”
There’s no word yet on casting; presumably, it’ll have a British-accented cast for the most part, though Reed and Yates are both voice-acting veterans. We’re also hoping H. Jon Benjamin—the voice of Sterling Archer, as well as Bob Belcher on Bob’s Burgers—might find the time to add yet another eccentric character to his resume.
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Bumble is breaking up with the Nasdaq. According to a report from Reuters, the floundering dating app has accepted a $1.3 billion bid from Ithaca Holdings to go private, taking the company off the market as it and its many rivals struggle to figure out how to get Gen Zers and Gen Alpha to care about dating again.
The deal will see the shareholders of Bumble get a cool $6.05 per share, which Bloomberg reported is about a 138% premium on its most recent closing share price—but is still down quite a bit from the company’s $13 billion valuation when it first went public back in 2021. Unfortunately for Bumble, that’s about when the public’s love affair with it ended, and it’s been largely getting negged by the market ever since.
That’s not entirely Bumble’s fault, either (though, frankly, it was pretty wild that anyone thought that the “women go first” thing was enough of a differentiator to justify a multi-billion-dollar valuation). The dating app market has been a bad business to be in for years now. Usage of the apps has been on the decline, with prospective daters dealing with burnout and a growing disinterest in paying for a subscription just to endlessly swipe. A recent 2026 Harris Poll found that about two-thirds of singles say they aren’t even bothering with setting up profiles, finding the platforms too transactional and cringey.
Bumble perhaps contributed to that, but it also tried really hard to stave off the decline. The company tried to pivot from exclusively dating to offering a “Bumble for friends” and “Bumble for professional networking.” It even fully abandoned its “women go first” rule, which kinda just turned it into Tinder but with a yellow paint job instead of a red one.
None of it worked, and now the company has been forced to sell. As part of the deal with Ithica Holdings, Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd will be booted from the CEO chair—a spot she just returned to last year after having initially stepped down in 2024. She’ll be replaced by Ithica Holdings’ execs, former Instacart chief operating officer Ravi Gupta and former Meta chief revenue officer John Hegeman.
Notably, they’re both men taking over a dating app meant to be more thoughtful about women’s experiences in online dating. And hey, if you think dating apps are nothing but human meat markets that have been rendered completely unusable without paying by an inundation of the worst mobile ads imaginable, surely the people to fix that are one guy from a groceries-on-demand app and another who was in charge of monetizing Meta around the time that it was reportedly making about 10% of its revenue from fraudulent advertisements.
The Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal judge to hold Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive better known as “Pharma Bro” in the 2010s, in contempt of court for allegedly publicly trading in pharmaceutical industry stocks and giving his opinion on the pharma industry, according to a press release from the federal agency.
Shkreli first became internet famous after raising the price of a life-saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill and bragging about how that just made him a good businessman. But prosecutors saw it differently and said he was engaging in an illegal, anticompetitive scheme to restrict access to the drug. He was arrested in 2015, and convicted in 2017 on eight counts, including securities fraud.
Shkreli was out on bail between his conviction and reporting to prison but was sent to jail in 2017 after a Facebook post in which he said he wanted to acquire some of Hillary Clinton’s hair. The Secret Service took this as a threat.
Shkreli didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed Tuesday. When I emailed with Shkreli back in 2017 to ask him about potentially going to prison, the pharma bro turned our exchange into a trolling competition. He asked if I was “antifa” and wrote that “given we live in a trump presidency, life is basically nirvana.” One of his emails ended with “NOW SET ME UP WITH DAT WIFE OF URS.”
Shkreli also noted that the sentencing guidelines for his crime were 0-6 months so he could just do some leisure reading in prison and “make paper from inside,” a suggestion that he’d still be making money. In 2018, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and ultimately served about four years. He was banned in 2022 from trading any pharma stock and broadcasting his opinion on the business or management of pharma companies.
The FTC alleges that since his release Shkrlei has been “publicly trading in pharmaceutical industry stocks of at least 60 companies and broadcasting online his opinions about the business and management of many pharmaceutical companies,” despite his lifetime ban. The agency even quotes him saying on one of his many livestreams, “I’m showing you how to trade and invest in biotech.”
The FTC also alleges that Shkrlei has “used his livestreams to wage multiple public campaigns to short certain pharmaceutical company stocks based on his prediction that their key clinical trials would fail.” The federal agency has been joined by seven states in asking a federal judge to hold the pharma bro in contempt.
According to the FTC’s press release, Shkreli should:
“After a full trial, the court found that Martin Shkreli’s conduct drove up prescription drug costs for American patients and blocked the entry of lower-cost generics,” said Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. When judgment is entered by a court, whether it’s a settlement or an order following a trial, defendants must fulfill their obligations. Today’s action should serve as notice that the FTC will not hesitate to enforce violations of court orders.”
Garmin has announced the Marq Gen 3, a new version of its family of high-end luxury smartwatches it last updated in 2022. And luxury is the key word here: While the Fenix 9 Pro—the watch the Marq most closely resembles—isn’t cheap at $1,100, it’s definitely cheaper than the $2,500 starting price of a Garmin Marq Athlete. Of course, that money isn’t necessarily wasted. All the Marq watches support the company’s inReach LTE network so you can stay connected without a smartphone, offer the usual health and fitness features, and come preloaded with maps that will make them great for navigation right out of the box. Still, it’s safe to say Garmin’s newest smartwatch is for a very particular kind of affluent customer.
The Marq Gen 3 is available in the same Athlete, Adventurer, Golfer, and Aviator styles as the previous generation, along with two new third-generation additions, Commander and Diver. All the watches are made from Grade 5 titanium, a more scratch-resistant blend of the already scratch-resistant Grade 2 titanium on the Fenix 9 Pro, and come with a sapphire lens that covers their 1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen. Depending on the style you pick, you’ll get a slightly different design on the ceramic bezel and different watch bands, too, ranging from a silicone band on the slightly more affordable Athlete model to a leather band on the Aviator.
© Garmin
The actual features of the smartwatch span the gamut of Garmin’s recent releases. Any Marq Gen 3 watch will be able to track heart rate and heart health issues like atrial fibrillation, sleep, workouts, and recovery. They’ll also be able to connect to the company’s new Garmin Epic feature, which summarizes multiple types of workouts into a longer narrative, and have the ability to see notifications and take calls from a connected smartphone. Unique to these new watches, Garmin says they’ll also come preloaded with worldwide TopoActive maps and support up to 18 days of battery life.
Given their exorbitant prices, the real draw of these watches is their looks and the more personalized features they ship with. For example, the Athlete watch features ClimbPro, a software feature that can display information about your upcoming climbs, while Garmin’s Aviator model includes a collection of navigation tools for pilots. If you’re paying thousands of dollars for a smartwatch, it might as well cater to your specific luxury hobby.
The Garmin Marq Gen 3 watches are available to order today and will ship in the coming weeks. The Marq Athlete starts at $2,500, the Marq Adventurer starts at $2,700, the Marq Golfer starts at $2,800, and the Marq Aviator, Commander, and Diver models all start at $3,100.
For years, Netflix has been trying to get a new Chronicles of Narnia movie off the ground in the hopes of starting a new franchise. Now, with Barbie writer and director Greta Gerwig behind the camera, the streamer is getting its wish with Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.
Based on the sixth book in C.S. Lewis’ series, Nephew is a prequel set in the 1950s. (A notable change from the book, which was set in the early 1900s.) The important thing to know is the film will show how Aslan the lion (voiced by Meryl Streep) created Narnia, here inspired by British rock and roll. Also along for the ride are Digory Kirke (David McKenna) and Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell), a pair of real-world kids who accidentally cross over into the realm. No surprises for guessing that both kids wind up playing a substantial role in Narnia’s history going forward, and that they’ll cross paths with both Aslan and Emma Mackey’s Jadis, the eventual White Queen.
With a cast that also includes Carey Mulligan, Susan Wokoma, and Denise Gough, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew may be worth the theatrical, IMAX-heavy release Netflix is giving it on February 12, 2027. And if you can’t see it on a big screen, you’ll be able to watch it on Netflix beginning April 2, 2027. Peep the equally cosmic poster below.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. Trailer Tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/4X758BYrp1
— Netflix (@netflix) October 12, 2026
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