‘Mankind’ Finale, Scorsese’s ‘Flower Moon’ Begins Streaming, Kevin Hart Gets a ‘Lift,’ ‘Transplant’ Transplanted to Friday

Season Finale

“Can someone steal an asteroid?” That’s the billion-dollar question (posed by NASA’s perplexed administrator) that hovers around the nail-bitingly suspenseful season finale of the alt-history space drama. Double-crosses and reversals will keep fans on the edge of their seat as a team of saboteurs, led by veteran astronaut Ed (Joel Kinnaman) and ruthless entrepreneur Dev (Edi Gathegi), attempts to take control of the approaching asteroid and keep it in Mars’ orbit to ensure the future of the space program. Back on Earth, Margo’s (Wrenn Schmidt) loyalties are torn between her desire to escape her duplicitous Russian masters and the fate of the asteroid. This is an episode that earns its supersized (1 hour 18 minutes) length.

Season Finale

On the other hand, it took this tedious MonsterVerse spinoff way too long to build to its action climax, with Shaw (Kurt Russell) and his Scooby sidekicks Cate (Anna Sawai) and May (Kiersey Clemons) stuck in the upside-down world of the Titans’ realm, where time passes almost as slowly as it does during this show’s dialogue scenes. Reunited with a character whose return is hardly a surprise, Team Shaw engineers a way back to the Earth’s surface—if they can avoid a monster attack along the way. It’s a decent cliffhanger and a solid set-up to a second season—but please, more monsters and less Monarch the next time around, should there be one.

Streaming Premiere

Just in time for the height of awards season, with the Oscar nominations a little more than a week away, Martin Scorsese’s epic tale of corruption and murder among the oil-rich Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma makes its streaming debut three months after its theatrical launch. Named Best Film of the Year by the National Board of Review, the three-hour-plus epic features Robert De Niro, Leonard DiCaprio and Oscar front-runner Lily Gladstone.

Movie Premiere

Some heist movies aim higher than others, but the action-comedy Lift goes to extremes: think 40,000 feet. From director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job), the movie stars Kevin Hart as a master con man enlisted by an Interpol agent (Loki’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her boss (Avatar’s Sam Worthington) to nab $500 million in gold from a terrorist. The twist: He’ll need to pull it off midflight, with the help of a crew that includes an ace safecracker (Billy Magnussen) and a master of disguise (Vincent D’Onofrio). What could possibly go wrong?

8/7c

The Canadian medical drama makes its move from Thursdays to Fridays a week earlier than originally announced—a shift prompted by next week’s return of the Law & Order triumvirate from the long strike hiatus. This utility player, which has been renewed for a fourth and final season, piles on the medical mayhem when Bash (Hamza Haq) and Emergency Chief Novak (Gord Rand) deal with a bride and groom whose walk down the aisle was sidelined by gunfire.

Season Premiere

9/8c

The addictive murder-mystery game returns for a second season, with tartan-clad Alan Cumming having a ball as the devious host. A Scottish castle is the backdrop for 21 players, most from the world of reality competition: Dancing with the Stars’ Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Survivor’s Parvati Shallow and Sandra Diaz-Twine, RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Peppermint, plus alums of The Challenge, Big Brother and various Real Housewives franchises. (The cast also includes a former member of the U.K. Parliament.) They’re pegged as either “Traitors” or “Faithful,” with the former plotting to eliminate the latter unless they’re discovered first. Whichever team survives to the end reaps a prize fund worth up to $250,000.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• Bluey (streaming on Disney+): Great news for the family audience: 10 new episodes of the preschool phenom join the library, with the adorable puppy enjoying adventures including trips to the beach and the pharmacy and a wild ride on a waterslide.
• RuPaul’s Drag Race (8/7c, MTV): Singer Becky G is the guest judge as more cast members strut their stuff in a talent show.
• True Justice: Family Ties (8/7c, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries): Katherine McNamara stars as a law student who rallies her friends to help her clear her brother of a wrongful murder charge.
• True Crime Watch: ABC’s 20/20 (9/8c) reports on the 2003 abduction and murder of North Dakota college student Dru Sjodin, including the first interview with her father since her killer’s death sentence was overturned. On Dateline NBC (9/8c), Andrea Canning revisits the 2018 slaying of Austin jewelry-shop owner Ted Shaughnessy during a night-time hit in which his wife Corey survived.
• CMT Campfire Sessions (10/9c, CMT): Chris Young kicks off the third season of the intimate concert series, joined by collaborators Mitchell Tenpenny and Chris DeStefano to perform his hits including “At the End of the Bar.”
• Reacher (streaming on Prime Video): In Season 2’s penultimate episode, Reacher (Alan Ritchson) and his team rebound from a tragic loss, heading for a (what else) violent showdown with this season’s Big Bad, the (what else) sadistically evil Langston (Robert Patrick).
• Self Reliance (streaming on Hulu): Jake Johnson (New Girl) is writer, director and star of a dark comedy about a single guy whose chance encounter with Andy Samberg (as himself) leads to him accepting an offer from a dark-web reality show in which he’ll win $1 million if he can stay alive for 30 days as assassins try to kill him—but only if he’s alone. Anna Kendrick co-stars.
• Top Class: The Life and Times of the Sierra Canyon Trailblazers (streaming on Amazon Freevee): The fourth season of the sports docuseries from UNINTERRUPTED follows the Trailblazers in their elusive quest for a state championship, the fourth and last chance for senior Bronny James (son of LeBron, an executive producer).
• Destroy All Neighbors (streaming on Shudder): Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Jonah Ray Rodrigues stars in an over-the-top splatter-horror comedy as a would-be musician whose obnoxious neighbor (Alex Winter) leads him down a raucous path of accidental murder and animated corpses.