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During the live-streamed JUJUTSU KAISEN 5th Anniversary Special, the first teaser trailer for JUJUTSU KAISEN Season 3 was shared, which also announced that it will air in January 2026.
Also referred to as JUJUTSU KAISEN The Culling Game, it has been decided that Crunchyroll will stream the third season of the hit anime series exclusively worldwide, excluding Asia, with new episodes premiering weekly, same-day as Japan.
Seen in the teaser trailer is Yuji Itadori in conflict and despair after believing he has killed many people from the “Shibuya Incident.” Also shown is a fierce battle between Yuji and Yuta Okkotsu, the main protagonist from the film JUJUTSU KAISEN 0. The preview also features a heated exchange between new character Naoya Zen’in and Choso. Megumi Fushiguro, Yuki Tsukumo, and Maki Zen’in also make brief appearances in the trailer, building anticipation before the start of The Culling Game.
The Japanese voice cast and characters include:
- Junya Enoki as Yuji Itadori
- Yuma Uchida as Megumi Fushiguro
- Daisuke Namikawa as Choso
- Megumi Ogata as Yuta Okkotsu
The animation production staff includes:
- Director: Shota Goshozono
- Series Composition and Script Writer: Hiroshi Seko
- Character Design: Yosuke Yajima and Hiromi Niwa
- Deputy Director: Yosuke Takada
- Art Director: Junichi Higashi
- Color Design: Eiko Matsushima
- CG Producer: Yusuke Tannawa
- 3DCG Director: Daisuke Ishikawa (Monster’s Egg)
- Director of Photography: Teppei Ito
- Editor: Keisuke Yanagi
- Music: Yoshimasa Terui
- Music Producer: Yoshiki Kobayashi
- Sound Director: Yasunori Ebina
- Sound Production: dugout
- Animation Studio: MAPPA
Yuji Itadori is a boy with tremendous physical strength, though he lives a completely ordinary high school life. One day, to save a classmate who has been attacked by curses, he eats the finger of Ryomen Sukuna, taking the curse into his own soul. From then on, he shares one body with Ryomen Sukuna. Guided by the most powerful of sorcerers, Satoru Gojo, Itadori is admitted to Tokyo Jujutsu High School, an organization that fights the curses… and thus begins the heroic tale of a boy who became a curse to exorcise a curse, a life from which he could never turn back.
Based on the best-selling manga of the same title written and illustrated by Gege Akutami, the anime series is produced by TOHO Animation and animated by MAPPA (Chainsaw Man; Attack on Titan Final Season; Hell’s Paradise).
With over 100 million copies currently in circulation, the manga was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump until the series ended in September 2024. In the US, the manga is published by VIZ Media.
The first season JUJUTSU KAISEN aired from October 2020 to March 2021. The second season, which consisted of the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc and the Shibuya Incident arc aired from July to December in 2023.
The anime series was named Anime of the Year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2021 and 2024. The global blockbuster prequel film, JUJUTSU KAISEN 0, was awarded Best Anime Film at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2023 and earned around $180 million in global theatrical box office revenue.
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Forget the textbooks, besties Hulu just dropped the real back-to-school reading list, and it’s all movies.
This September, we’re trading homeroom for a binge room, because Hulu’s Cinematic Syllabus is basically the honors class in teen comedy greatness. First up: the 30th anniversary of Clueless (yes, Cher Horowitz has been schooling us in fashion and confidence for three decades, and we’re still totally buggin’). Then it’s time to sharpen your pencils with Mean Girls — because if you don’t sit with us for this one, we can’t help you.
But wait, the lineup goes full extra-credit: School of Rock (Jack Black as the music teacher we deserved), Jennifer’s Body (Megan Fox serving demonic feminism before Twitter even knew how to spell it), and 10 Things I Hate About You (aka the reason Heath Ledger will forever own our hearts). Toss in John Tucker Must Die for gym class revenge cardio, and of course, Napoleon Dynamite, because tater tots in your pocket > cafeteria mystery meat.
This isn’t just a streaming playlist. It’s a masterclass in iconic one-liners, unforgettable characters, and the cinematic survival guide every millennial and Gen Z nerd has tucked away in their locker. Honestly, who didn’t learn more life skills from “You go, Glen Coco” than from algebra?
So sharpen that remote, grab your snacks, and consider yourself enrolled. Hulu’s Cinematic Syllabus is now in session. Streaming on Hulu (and Hulu on Disney+ if you’re rocking the bundle life).
HULU’S CINEMATIC SYLLABUS
Forget the textbooks. This semester, we’re majoring in Pop Culture 101.
SOCIAL STUDIES
CLUELESS (1995) — 30TH ANNIVERSARY
Cher Horowitz is basically the Founding Mother of Beverly Hills High. Between matchmaking her teachers, giving Tai a makeover, and falling for Paul Rudd (as one does), Cher teaches us that popularity is fleeting but Alaïa is forever.
(Premieres Monday, September 1)
MATH
MEAN GIRLS (2004)
The only math we care about is the geometry of cafeteria seating charts. Cady learns the hard way that Regina George runs North Shore High like a dictatorship—and yes, on October 3rd, we’ll be streaming. You can sit with us.
(Premieres Monday, September 1)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (1999)
Shakespeare never had this much eyeliner or Heath Ledger serenading us on the bleachers. Kat Stratford’s feminist fire and Patrick Verona’s charm = the kind of romance essay we all want to write.
(Now Streaming)
BIOLOGY
JENNIFER’S BODY (2009)
Science lesson: never sacrifice a cheerleader who isn’t a virgin. Megan Fox turns small-town football boys into snacks and gave us a horror-comedy way ahead of its time. Jennifer’s still bodying.
(Now Streaming)
LUNCHTIME
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004)
Forget cafeteria pizza—Napoleon’s got tots in his pocket and dance moves that could win any talent show. Vote for Pedro, feed the llama, and embrace the awkward.
(Now Streaming)
ECONOMICS
EASY A (2010)
Emma Stone gives us Scarlet Letter realness in this smart, hilarious takedown of slut-shaming. Olive may not have lost her virginity, but she gained our eternal fandom credit.
(Now Streaming)
GYM
JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE (2006)
Three scorned girlfriends + one new recruit = the ultimate cardio for revenge. John Tucker never stood a chance.
(Premieres Monday, September 1)
MUSIC
SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003)
Jack Black + electric guitar + a class of mini prodigies = the kind of substitute teacher we always wished for. One Battle of the Bands later, and the world is officially schooled.
(Premieres Monday, September 1)
AFTER SCHOOL SPORTS
SHE’S THE MAN (2006)
Amanda Bynes cross-dresses her way into the soccer team, accidentally falls for Channing Tatum, and proves that gender-bending romcoms are the real varsity win. Shakespeare could never.
(Premieres Monday, September 1)
The post Hulu’s Ultimate Back-to-School Movie List appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
Maggi’s home in a suburban neighborhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a haven for immigrants and local families. It’s a place where, after just a few weeks in Maggi’s family-run child care program this spring, one preschooler started calling Maggi “mama” and Maggi’s husband “papa.” Children who have graduated from Maggi’s program still beg their parents to take them to her home instead of school. The Hechinger Report speaks with Maggi and others about how the child care system so dependent on immigrants, is being impacted by the anti-immigration policies.
Over the past few months, fewer families are showing up for care: Immigration enforcement has ramped up, and immigration policies have rapidly changed. Both Maggi and the families who rely on her — some of whom are immigrants — no longer feel safe.
“There’s a lot of fear going on within the Latino community, and all of these are good people — good, hard-working people,” Maggi, 47, said in Spanish through an interpreter on a recent morning as she watched a newborn sleep in what used to be her living room. Since she started her own child care business two years ago, she has dedicated nearly every inch of her common space to creating a colorful, toy-filled oasis for children. Maggi doesn’t understand why so many immigrants are now at risk of deportation. “We’ve been here a long time,” she said. “We’ve been doing honest work.”
Immigrants like Maggi play a crucial role in home-based child care, as well as America’s broader child care system of more than 2 million predominantly female workers. (Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report is not using Maggi’s last name out of concern for her safety and that of the families using her care.) Caregivers are notoriously difficult to find and keep, not only because the work is difficult, but because of poverty-level wages and limited benefits. Nationwide, immigrants make up nearly 20% of the child care workforce. In New York City, immigrants make up more than 40% of the child care workforce. In Los Angeles, it’s nearly 50%.
The Trump administration’s far-reaching war on immigration, which includes daily quotas for immigrant arrests, new restrictions on work permits,, and detainment of legal residents, threatens America’s already-fragile child care system. Immigrant providers, especially those who serve immigrants and their families, have been hit especially hard. Just like at Maggi’s, child care providers nationwide are watching families disappear from their care, threatening the viability of those businesses.
In America, 1 in 4 children under the age of 6 has at least one foreign-born parent. Some kids who could benefit from experienced caregivers are now instead at home with older siblings or elderly relatives, losing out on socialization and kindergarten preparation. Some immigrant workers, regardless of status, are too scared to come to work, exacerbating staffing shortages. And in recent days, the administration announced that it would bar undocumented children from Head Start, the federally funded child care program for children from low-income families.
“Anti-immigrant policy can and will weaken our entire caregiving infrastructure,” said Karla Coleman-Castillo, senior policy analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. Home-based programs in particular will feel the squeeze, she said, since they tend to serve more immigrant families. “Anything that threatens the stability of families’ ability and comfort accessing early childhood education — and educators’ comfort entering or remaining in the workforce — is going to impact an already precarious sector.”
For Maggi, the fallout has been swift. In February, just a few weeks after the first changes were announced, her enrollment dropped from as many as 15 children each day to seven. Some families returned to Mexico. Others became too nervous to stray from their work routes for even a quick drop off. Some no longer wanted to give their information to the state to get help paying for care.
By May, only two children, an infant and a 4-year-old, were enrolled full time, along with six kids who came for before- or after-school care. She accepts children who pay privately and those who pay with child care subsidies through the state program for low-income children. She brings in about $2,000 a month for the infant and preschooler, and a couple of hundred more each week for after-school care — down significantly from the $9,000 to $10,000 of late 2024. For parents who don’t receive a state subsidy, she keeps her rates low: less than $7 an hour. “They tell me that I’m cheap,” Maggi said with a slight smile. But she isn’t willing to raise her rates. “I was a single mom,” she said. “I remember struggling to find someone to care for my children when I had to work.”
Like many child care providers who emigrated to the United States as adults, Maggi started her career in an entirely different field. As a young mother, Maggi earned a law degree from a college in Mexico and worked in the prosecutor’s office in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. Her job required working many weekends and late evenings, which took a toll on her parenting as a single mother. “I really feel bad that I was not able to spend more time with my daughters,” she added. “I missed a lot of their childhood.”
For a year when her girls were in elementary school, Maggi enrolled them in a boarding school, dropping them off Sunday nights and picking them up Friday afternoons. On some weekends, she took the girls to her office, even though she knew it wasn’t a place for children. Maggi longed for a different job where she could spend more time with them.
She started thinking seriously of emigrating about 15 years ago, as violence escalated. Her cousin was kidnapped, and the police officers she worked with were killed. Maggi received death threats from criminals she helped prosecute. Then one day, she was stopped by men who told her they knew where she lived and that she had daughters. “That’s when I said, this is not safe for me.”
In 2011, Maggi and the girls emigrated to America, bringing whatever they could fit into four suitcases. They ended up in El Paso, Texas, where Maggi sold Jell-O and tamales to make ends meet. Three years later, they moved to Albuquerque. Maggi met her husband and they married, welcoming a son, her fourth child, shortly after.
In Albuquerque, Maggi settled into a life of professional caregiving, which came naturally and allowed her to spend more time with her family than she had in Mexico. She and her husband went through an intensive screening process and became foster parents. (New Mexico does not require individuals to have a lawful immigration status to foster.) Maggi enrolled her youngest in a Head Start center, where administrators encouraged her to start volunteering. She loved being in the classroom with children, but without a work permit, she could not become a Head Start teacher. Instead, after her son started elementary school, she started offering child care informally to families she knew. Maggi became licensed by the state two years ago after a lengthy process involving several inspections, a background check, and mandatory training in CPR and tenets of early childhood care.
It didn’t take long for Maggi to build up a well-respected business serving an acute need in Albuquerque. Her child care program is one of the few in the area that offers 24/7 care, a rarity in the industry despite the desperate need. The parents who rely on her are teachers, caregivers for the elderly, and people answering 911 calls.
In Maggi’s living room, carefully curated areas allow children to move freely between overflowing shelves of colorful toys, art supplies parked on a miniature table, and rows of books. Educational posters on her walls reinforce colors, numbers, and shapes. She delights in exposing the children to new experiences, frequently taking them on trips to grocery stores or restaurants. She is warm, but has high expectations for the children, insisting they clean up after themselves, follow directions, and say “please” and “thank you.”
“I want them to have values,” Maggi said. “We teach them respect toward animals, people, and each other.”
By the end of 2024, Maggi’s business was flourishing, and she looked forward to continued growth.
Then, Donald Trump took office.
Data has yet to be released about the extent to which the current administration’s immigration policies have affected the availability of child care. But interviews with child care providers and research hint at what may lie ahead — and is already happening.
After a 2008 policy allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the immigration status of people taken into custody by local police, there was a marked decline in enrollment in child care among both immigrant and non-immigrant children. There was also a decrease in the supply of child care workers. Even though women were the minority of those deported, researchers found the policy sparked fear in immigrant communities, and many pulled back from their normal routines.
In the child care sector, that’s problematic, experts say. Immigrants in the industry tend to be highly educated and skilled at interacting with children positively, more so even than native workers. If a skilled portion of the workforce is essentially “purged” because they’re too afraid to go to work, that will lower the quality of child care, said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who has studied immigration policy’s effect on child care. “Kids will be ill-served as a result.”
Home-based programs like Maggi’s are among the most vulnerable. Children of immigrants are more likely to be in those child care settings. In the decade leading up to the pandemic, however, the number of home-based programs declined by 25% nationwide, in part due to financial challenges sustaining such businesses.
On a recent morning, Maggi stood in her living room, wearing white scrubs adorned with colorful cartoon ladybugs. Last year, the room would have been buzzing with children. Now, it’s quiet, save for chatter from Kay, the sole preschooler in her care each day. (The Hechinger Report is not using Kay’s full name to protect her privacy.) While Kay sat at a table working on a craft, Maggi cradled the infant, who had just woken up from a nap. The baby’s eyes were latched onto Maggi’s face as she fawned over him.
“Hello, little one!” she cooed in Spanish. He cracked a smile,, and Maggi’s face lit up.
As one of her daughters took over to feed the newborn, Maggi followed Kay outside. The preschooler bounced around from the sandbox to the swings to a playhouse, with Maggi diligently following and playing alongside her.
Finally, Kay came to a standstill, resting her head against Maggi’s hip. Maggi gently patted her head and asked if she was ready to show off her pre-kindergarten skills. The pair sat down at a small table in the shade, and Kay watched eagerly as Maggi poured out small plastic trinkets. Kay pulled three plastic toy turtles into a pile. “Mama, look! They’re friends!” Kay said, giggling.
Kay came to Maggi’s program after her mother pulled her out of another program where she felt the girl wasn’t treated well. Here, Kay is so happy that she hides when her mom comes back to get her. Still, a key aspect of the child care experience is missing for Kay. Normally, the girl would have several friends her own age to play with. Now, when she is asked who her friends are, she names Maggi’s adult daughters.
Maggi worries even more about the children she doesn’t see anymore. Most are cared for by grandparents now, but those relatives are unlikely to know how to support child development and education, Maggi said. Many immigrants are unable to run around with the children like she does, and are more likely to turn to tablets or televisions for them.
She has seen the effects in children who leave her program and come back later, having regressed. “Some of them are doing things well with me, and then when they come back, they have fallen behind,” she said. One child Maggi used to care for, for example, had just started to walk when the mother pulled them out of full-time care earlier this year, at the start of the immigration crackdown. In the care of a relative, Maggi found out they now spend much of the day sitting at home.
Before the second Trump administration began, the child care landscape looked bright in New Mexico, a state with a chronically high child poverty rate. In 2022, New Mexico started rolling out a host of child care policy changes. Voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to early childhood education, with sustained funding to support it. The state now allows families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or nearly $125,000 a year, to qualify for free child care. That includes the majority of households in the state. Among the other changes: Providers are now paid more for children they enroll via the state’s assistance program.
The increase has been helpful for many providers, including Maggi. Before the pandemic, she received about $490 a month from the state for each preschooler enrolled in her program, compared to $870 a month now. If she enrolls infants who qualify for child care assistance, she gets paid $1,100 a month, nearly $400 more than pre-pandemic. She needs children enrolled to get the payments, however. Running her program 24 hours a day, seven days a week, helps. She earns extra money from the state when caring for children evenings and weekends, and she is paid monthly to cover the cost of housing foster children.
Child care advocates in New Mexico are concerned that immigration policy will affect the industry’s progress. “I am worried because we could be losing early childhood centers that could help working families,” said Maty Miranda, an organizer for OLÉ New Mexico, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “We could lose valuable teachers, and children will lose those strong connections.” Immigration crackdowns have had “a huge impact emotionally” on providers in the state, she added.
State officials did not respond to a request for data on how many child care providers are immigrants. Across the state, immigrants account for about 13% of the entire workforce.
Many local early educators are scared due to more extreme immigration enforcement, as are the children in their care, Miranda said. They are trying to work regardless. “Even with the fear, the teachers are telling me that when they go into their classrooms, they try to forget what’s going on outside,” she added. “They are professionals who are trying to continue with their work.”
Maggi said she’s so busy with the children who remain in her care that there is no extra time to work an additional job and bring in more income. She won’t speculate on how long her family can survive, instead choosing to focus on the hope that things will improve.
Maggi’s biggest fear at the moment is the well-being of the children of immigrants she and so many other home-based providers serve. She knows some of her kids and families are at risk of being detained by ICE, and that interactions like that, for kids, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, disrupted brain development, and behavior changes. Some of Maggi’s parents have left her with emergency numbers in case they are detained by immigration officials.
Many of the children Maggi cares for after school are old enough to understand that deportation is a threat. “They show fear, because their parents are scared,” Maggi said. “Children are starting to live with that.”
Amid the dizzying policy changes, Maggi is trying to keep looking forward. She is working on improving her English skills. Her husband is pursuing a credential to be able to help more in her program. All three of her daughters are studying to become early childhood educators, with the goal of joining the family business. Eventually, she wants to serve pre-K children enrolled in the state’s program, which will provide a steady stream of income.
In spite of all the uncertainty, Maggi said she is sustained by a bigger purpose. “I want them to enjoy their childhood,” she said on a sunny afternoon, looking fondly at Kay as the girl flung her tiny pink shoes aside and hopped into a sandbox. It’s the type of childhood Maggi remembers from her earliest days in Mexico. Kay giggled with delight as Maggi crouched down and poured cool sand over the little girl’s feet. “Once you grow up, there’s no going back.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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Peacemaker‘s Christopher Smith keeps his helmets inside his father Auggie’s Quantum Unfolding Chamber. That massive extradimensional room is so much more, though. It contains doors to parallel dimensions. Nobody every explored any of them during the show’s first season, but that changed in the second season’s debut. John Cena’s superhero discovered a dimension where he’s part of a celebrated superhero trio along with his still alive father and still alive brother. Then he accidentally killed his other self, a death that warranted a gruesome, hilarious, existential dismemberment and burning in episode two.
With Peacemaker season two telling a sliding doors story about the lives we might have led, it seems obvious the Quantum Unfolding Chamber was always going to be more than just a fun place to store some shiny headgear. James Gunn said, however, he never had plans to make that extradimensional space a major part of the show. It really did start as a simple solution of where to put Peacemaker’s helmets.
Nerdist took part in a virtual media roundtable with James Gunn prior to Peacemaker‘s return to HBO Max. During the discussion he addressed a question about the origins and importance of his Quantum Unfolding Chamber. “It was just a place where [Peacemaker] could keep his helmets,” Gunn said. “It wasn’t going to be as important as it became when I first wrote it.”
Obviously it become very important during the writing of season two. That parallel world where Peacemaker has both adoration and his family is the crux of Christopher Smith’s story, both in terms of plot and in terms of theme. Gunn said the ideas of season two are very much influenced by novels he loves. He cited Philip Roth’s The Counterlife, which explores ideas of identity and how our experiences shape who we are, along with Ken Grimwood Replay. It follows a main character who gets to relive his life starting at age 18 with all his old memories intact.
“This is about one emotional journey with the world that seems slightly better than ours and how that helps Christopher Smith to learn about himself,” said Gunn about season two’s overarching idea. “And so that’s the story that interested me, the fun of that singular universe, of the small differences, not the big differences.”
Considering the Quantum Folding Chamber went from being a clever and entertaining idea to a core aspect of season two, we wanted to know how Gunn connects to this ideas himself. He frequently talks about how he personally relates to his characters and their stories, but the current creative head of the DCU would seem to be doing pretty okay in this dimension. So how much does he relate to Christopher Smith’s plight in season two? Here’s what he told us and why even though season two might appear to be a multiverse story it’s not.
It’s personal for me just in that I am a person that thinks back to, “What if I did this thing a little bit differently?” Or, “What if I did that thing a little bit differently? What if I kept that person in my life? What if I wasn’t so mean to this person in the past? How would my life be different? How much do the small choices we make in our lives affect us in really big ways?”
That is really the difference. That’s why this isn’t what has come to be considered a multiverse story. People will say it’s a multiverse story, but it’s really much more contemplative than what we’ve come to see from a multiverse story. As we were saying earlier, it’s a much more of a literary story than that. And it is about the emotional journey of this person who’s really lost everything in his life that has been important to him, from his brother to any sort of real relationship with his father that he never had. And now he’s presented with those things in a way that absolutely is going to be compelling and that we cannot blame Christopher Smith for his actions throughout the season.
The creative process, even for big interconnected cinematic universes, isn’t always linear. They’re certainly fully planned. Small ideas that weren’t important can sprout into big ones. Gunn says he loves to do exactly that. It’s how sometimes a simple storage solution can become the basis for an entire season of stellar television.
But this does raise one obvious question. It’s a fitting one for the show. What would Peacemaker‘s new season look like if Christopher Smith always kept his helmets in a normal basement? Maybe the answer exists Quantum Unfolding Chamber.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He would die for Vigilante, even if Vigilante was the one killing him. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermikeOpens in a new tab. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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