News

• Netflix has confirmed that its new horror game Unhinged will launch on June 30
• It will be available to Netflix subscribers on all plans
• Unhinged is controlled via your phone and focuses on a woman trying to escape a home invasion

Netflix has announced they are launching a new horror game, Unhinged, on June 30 and that it will be available to all subscriber tiers.

Unhinged was made by Oxenfree developer Night School Studio, and is a first-person horror game centering on two young women who are neighbors, as one attempts to escape from a home invasion.

Night School game director Sam Warner told Rolling Stone: "I grew up with those, and I think that focus on novel innovative play was something that we really started this game with. If you've got Netflix and you have a phone, then this is for you."

A tense social media trailer was shared for Unhinged, where Netflix confirmed it would launch worldwide on June 30.

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There's plenty to get excited about when it comes to Unhinged. First of all there's an amazing cast attached including Stranger Things' Sadie Sink, The Batman's Zoë Kravitz, and The Last of Us' voice actor Troy Baker.

Honestly, you couldn't get a better cast. I'm excited to see these stars in action, especially when it comes to the confined settings of a first-person horror like this. It has the potential to be great.

Gameplay wise, you'll need your phone for this one. Rather than being an interactive movie you control with your remote, Unhinged uses your phone to receive calls and text messages or to look around its world with a virtual flashlight.

There's multiple paths you can go down and, of course, you can die. So the stakes are high here and you'll have to pay attention if you want to make it out of the house safely. The game is said to be less than an hour in length, similar to an episode of a Netflix series, but you do have the opportunity to go back and explore new paths.

I've had mixed opinions of Netflix games so far but this one sounds promising. I can't wait to check it out on June 30.

Spoilers for Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 ahead.

Even before Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 dropped on Netflix, we knew exactly where it was heading: the Fire Nation taking over all of the Four Nations.

In the latest batch of seven episodes, the target is the hidden city of Ba Sing Se — and as of season 2 episode 6, it's been captured.

With Avatar Aang (Gordon Cormier) the only person who can save the day, the pressure is on to stop Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) from doing any more damage.

Unluckily, Princess Azula (Elizabeth Yu) is taking her dad's wishes into her own hands. But can our favorite gang cope with her fiendish plans?

Here's everything you need to know about the Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 ending... and what it might mean for the already confirmed season 3.

We kick off Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 episode 8 with a flashback of baby Aang meeting Appa the sky bison for the first time. Aang feeds Appa an apple (trying to say that three times fast), and they embrace.

Cut to the present day, where Appa has been kidnapped by the Dai Li — Ba Sing Se's secret police force — which is now being controlled by Princess Azula. Trust me, you will cry seeing him in chains.

In a meeting with the city's Grand Secretariat, Long Feng (Chin Han), Azula kills all of Ba Sing Se's highest-ranking men in the force when they question why the Fire Nation wants to control the city. Long Feng, however, begrudgingly but fearfully complies with Azula's plan: to raise Ba Sing Se's drawbridge and let the Fire Nation troops roll in, taking out anything they want in the process.

Remember, this is all coming from Lord Ozai's orders, despite Azula being a more than willing vehicle for them. But Appa isn't the only Aang ally the Dai Li has captured on her orders, with Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio) also in separate cells.

Sokka reunites with inventor Sai (Danny Pudi) in his cell, with the inventor already being captured before his arrival. Together, they try to figure out how to use the prison's underground structure to break free.

Katara has been put in a cell with Zuko (Dallas Liu), who was caught by the Dai Li after "doing a good act." This marks the biggest pinnacle in Zuko's personal struggle between good and evil so far, and Azula has no idea that he's jailed.

Meanwhile, Toph (Miya Cech) returns home to her mother, complaining that Aang and co. "don't understand her" after their huge falling out in episode 6. While initially seeming on board with how great Toph's earthbending powers are, her mother poisons Toph's tea in order to try and control her urge to leave home forever.

So where is Aang in this? Right behind his pals, having already figured out where Appa is underground just by sensing him. When the Azula-controlled Dai Li parade through the center of Ba Sing Se, he's hidden by allies made in season 2, episode 1.

When he attempts to approach the Dai Li's underground jail, he's spotted by Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and is immediately suspicious. Iroh reveals that he's also on a mission to break Zuko out of jail, thinking that the pair should team up for maximum effect.

Iroh tells Aang about a secret door that Avatar Kyoshi once installed to lead into the underground caves, but it needs all four elements bent at once to be able to open it. Aang is missing his firebending powers at this stage, so he needs Iroh just as much as Iroh needs Aang.

Together, the pair locate and open the door, and set off on their rescue mission.

While Sokka and Sai try to be proactive, Katara learns who Zuko really is. Immediately, she goes on the defensive, telling him how all of her family — and the entire Waterbending tribe — were wiped out thanks to the hostile Fire Nation invasion.

Zuko definitely feels empathy for Katara, but still has a chip on his shoulder. He tells her that the Fire Nation also stripped him of his family, with his mother dying at the hands of Lord Ozai.

The more the two talk, the more they realize that they have a lot in common. It's the closest we've even seen Zuko come to his "good" side, and it seems as though he's finally going to stay that way for good.

Looking at the burn mark around his left eye, Katara offers to try and heal Zuko using the waterbending potion in the locket around her neck. Just as she's about to apply it, Aang and Iroh storm in, having found and released Sokka and Sai first.

Aang goes to fight Zuko, but Iroh stops him, claiming that he's seen huge changes for the better in his nephew. Not quite believing that Zuko has defected from the Fire Nation, the gang sets off in search of the exit.

With the Dai Li everywhere, the gang splits up. Aang goes to find Appa after Long Feng brings him up to speed with Azula's plans, earthbending a hole through the ceiling so that Appa can fly to safety.

But as he tries to rejoin the others, he passes another prisoner who was originally being psychologically tortured by a Dai Li officer earlier on. Aang offers to bring her with them, but instead of accepting his offer, she shouts that "the Avatar is here," alerting the guards.

From there, it's fighting on all fronts. In pairs, the group makes light work of the Dai Li roaming the hallways, especially when Toph joins suits, revealing that she has invented "metalbending."

In fact, metalbending is how she ended up there in the first place. When she wakes up after her poisoning, Toph awakes in a metal box riding inside her mother's horse and carriage. Coming to the conclusion that Aang really does understand her, where her family doesn't, she bends the box and flies out of the carriage, making her way to safety.

With the fight raging on, Azula soon joins the mix, learning that her brother is among the escapees. Honing her focus on him, she tries to convince him, once again, to rejoin her side.

At first, Zuko remains hesitant, more confident in his newfound ability to do good things. But when Azula brings up the death of their mother, he changes his mind.

Where Zuko has always held a grudge against Azula for how she acted when their mother died, Azula reveals that she was only acting on her mother's orders. Their mom wanted the siblings to stay together through the trauma, breaking an emotional trigger point inside Zuko when he hears this.

By the time the rest of the gang reach a large clearing in the underground caves, Azula and Zuko emerge to fight them all as a team. This shocks Katara, who had genuinely believed that Zuko was coming around to being on their side.

After a lot of intense bending and fighting, it looks as though Azula has Aang right where she wants him — after all, the entire point of kidnapping his friends was to lure Aang to Ba Sing Se.

But in his hour of need, Aang taps into what can best be described as an "Avatar portal," seeing physical forms of all the Avatars that came before him in his mind's eye. More clearly, it's what causes Aang's eyes and head arrow to turn a shining blue, as he's essentially channelling their collective power through his body.

At this point, we see Aang's best bending to date, turning the tables on Azula and leaving her (and the Dai Li guards who join her) powerless.

But just as he's about to deliver the final blow, Aang loses his inner vision, effectively shutting his power off. He collapses to the floor, but Katara, Sokka and Toph are able to get him to safety thanks to Appa having waited outside.

With Ba Sing Se still under Azula's control, our final scene shows the gang flying away on Appa's back. Kata uses the potion she initially offered to Zuko on Aang, aiming to heal him and bring him back to full health.

However, nothing happens after she gives it to him, with the final shot showing Aang completely unconscious and unresponsive.

Obviously, finding out if Aang has actually survived the battle is a top priority for season 3. But the mere fact that season 3 has already been greenlit basically confirms that we'll be seeing Aang again anyway.

In a nutshell, we can expect to see Aang learning to firebend, infiltrating the Fire Nation, and preparing for his climactic showdown with Fire Lord Ozai before Sozin's Comet arrives. Not too much, then.

We also know that Zuko will eventually team up with Aang and the gang to make this happen, so we can expect to see some more emotional upheaval from him.

We're hoping to see season 3 episodes next summer.

• The second season of Netflix crime drama Dept Q begins production in Edinburgh, Scotland
• Core cast set to return alongside nine new faces
• No word yet on release date or the number of episodes

Netflix has confirmed that the second season of the hit crime drama Dept Q. is now in production, filming in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Our core cast is set to return, including:

• Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck
• Alexej Manvelov as Akram Salim
• Jamie Sives as DS James Hardy
• Leah Byrne as DC Rose Dickson
• Mark Bonnar as Stephen Burns,
• Kate Dickie as Moira Jacobson
• Aaron McVeigh as Jasper
• Sanjeev Kohli as Martin Flemming

Nine new cast members will also be seen in new episodes. While we don't know exactly what their roles will be, we do have names:

• Aisling Franciosi as Kimmie
• Greg Wise as Derek Powell
• Nicholas Rowe as Thomas Fulton
• Tony Curran as Winnie Calderwood
• Hamish Clark as Christopher Herron
• Alex Ferns as Phil Allenbeck
• Ross Anderson as Ricky Daddario
• Rebecca Root as June Lovesay
• Isla Johnston as Agnes

Currently, there's no word on exactly when Dept Q. season 2 will be released, nor how many episodes will make up the series.

However, we do have a brief idea of what the plot will involve thanks to the synopsis below.

As per Netflix, Dept Q. season 2 follows "DCI Carl Morck heading up the maverick Dept. Q from the basement of an Edinburgh police station, charged with cases previously deemed unsolvable.

"This darkly humorous, propulsive show delivers all the pleasures of a procedural but takes us into the complex mysteries not just of the cases but of the detectives themselves."

Unsurprisingly, this is all very vague at this point in development. However, Rob Bullock, Executive Producer, Left Bank Pictures, added in a statement, “This season, Carl and his band of misfits tackle a terrible crime hidden in the highest echelons of Scottish society. It is a story for our times: rich and powerful people who believe they are above the law."

Executive Manda Levin agreed, "The story of season 2 is as darkly delicious as you’d expect, and Carl and his glorious gang will have their work cut out pinning down the perpetrators as we launch back in for more!”

What we know for sure is that we will continue to see an adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s original novels — but how faithful the show will be remains to be seen.

Operational performance is becoming just as important as investment performance in private credit.

As fundraising slows and investor expectations increase, firms are facing growing pressure to modernize the IT infrastructure supporting their portfolios.

In fact, transparency and faster reporting are becoming top priorities.

Without such capabilities, funds can’t clearly see across their own portfolio, amplifying stress when markets are less forgiving.

Especially as private credit scales and operational diligence become more central to allocation decisions, such back-office issues become something more structural.

Fortunately, managers that properly invest in their operational foundations now, will be better equipped to manage the increasing demands facing the private credit industry moving forward.

Private credit is operationally intensive. And many firms never built systems to match the increasing complexity of their portfolios as they grew and evolved. Instead, operations are often spread across legacy servicing platforms, spreadsheets, email-driven workflows, and disconnected internal tools, leaving firms without a single real-time view of portfolio data.

Most loan servicing operates on cycles such as monthly reconciliations, quarterly reporting, and batch-based payment processing. This model reflects the constraints of legacy systems and manual workflows. Data must be collected, validated, and processed in stages. Consequently, funds often view their portfolios through periodic snapshots rather than in real-time.

Many funds also maintain parallel spreadsheets to verify their servicer's calculations. Known as shadow booking, this redundancy has no other purpose than to increase control. Ultimately though, it’s a sign of mistrust in the data provided, and the underlying calculations are often difficult to inspect. When discrepancies arise, they are discovered after the fact and require manual investigation, often across multiple systems.

These realities of the private credit industry are now colliding with a more competitive fundraising environment. Even if their underlying deals aren't catastrophic, private credit funds begin to look fragile if they cannot perform operationally well under increasing pressure.

Not surprisingly, many private credit firms are looking to AI to address these issues. But automation software alone cannot repair broken operational foundations. The critical question becomes whether their infrastructure is actually prepared to support the AI model they choose to use.

AI agents can execute operational work reliably while platforms can provide real-time visibility and full auditability. The pieces are in place. But there’s a pattern in how AI projects fail in the finance industry that's worth naming and it's almost never the model that's the problem.

What’s often missing is the infrastructure surrounding the model - the systems, workflows, data access, permissions, and controls that allow AI to operate reliably inside real financial processes. Otherwise known as the harness. Generic AI tools don’t know what a rate notice is.

They don't know that a prepayment request triggers a multi-step workflow across every syndicated entity on a facility. They don't know the difference between a funded tranche and a committed-but-undisbursed revolver, or why that distinction matters for how a payoff figure should be calculated.

This lack of operational context is also one of the biggest reasons AI hallucinations occur in finance. The majority of hallucinations aren't random malfunctions, they're a context problem. The AI model wants to give an appropriate answer. When it doesn't have access to the specific data it needs, it reasons from what it does know and produces something plausible.

Private credit portfolio data isn't embedded in any public language model. If the harness doesn't provide it, through tools, memory or real-time data access, the model will fill the gap with something that sounds right. Which, in a financial operations context, is a real problem.

The fix isn’t a better model. It’s a harness that gives the agent access to the right data, at the right moment, with the right tools and controls to retrieve it.

The firms that focus on building operational systems that provide context, transparency, audibility and human oversight will receive the greatest value from its AI investments. In private credit, the long-term advantage may not come from adopting AI faster than competitors, but from building the infrastructure, or the harness, capable of supporting it responsibly and at scale.

As these operational systems mature and advance, they will also reshape what excellence actually looks like inside private credit firms. Responsiveness won't be a differentiator. It will be assumed. Real-time and instant delivery will be the new baseline.

This is because most routine interactions will no longer require human involvement. With real-time systems, shared data layers, and automated workflows, information will be directly accessible and continuously updated. What previously required a request and response cycle will be resolved at the source.

As a result, the role of the servicer shifts. They are no longer measured by how quickly they process or reply, but by how well they handle what cannot be automated - exceptions, edge cases, and judgment calls.

This is why the next generation of private credit leaders may look fundamentally different from the firms that defined the industry’s earlier growth period. Capital access and underwriting expertise will remain essential, but operational execution is becoming increasingly strategic.

Most funds are using general-purpose AI for ad-hoc analysis or are in a holding pattern. A small number are starting to build their own and discovering how much harder it is than first expected. The funds that move first on specialized operational infrastructure will have an advantage that compounds. Not because they picked the right model (the model will keep getting better and cheaper regardless), but because they built or adopted the right harness, trained it on the right context, and gave it the controls that make it trustworthy at scale.

In many ways, private credit firms are evolving into operational organizations as much as financial organizations. The ability to manage workflows, data, oversight, and execution will become a defining part of a firm’s competitive performance.

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