Streaming Showdown: Weekly Critic’s Picks Across All Major Platforms

Netflix just released a new series from the Duffer Brothers where the heroes fighting a supernatural monster are all retirees in a Florida gated community. It’s called The Boroughs, and it’s the biggest tell yet about how streaming is going to work for the rest of the decade. Last week we were talking about digging for hidden gems, but this week, the biggest story is sitting right on the Netflix homepage. So what else is moving? Well, the big counter-narrative is over at Disney Plus, which is about to enter a major content drought. After a huge start to 2026, there will be no new Marvel or Star Wars originals for the entire month of June, and not much until October.

It’s a huge, blinking gap in their schedule. Speaking of Star Wars, the new film The Mandalorian and Grogu is out, and it’s… fine. Great action, but the story is paper-thin. It’s basically a really expensive TV episode. Meanwhile, Apple TV Plus quietly dropped a potential show of the year with Widow’s Bay, a horror-comedy starring Matthew Rhys that actually manages to be both scary and funny. And back on Netflix, the creators of Big Mouth have a new adult animated show called Mating Season about, you guessed it, animals trying to hook up. Paramount Plus is saying goodbye to a landmark series—the eighth and final season of Lena Waithe’s The Chi just premiered. And if you see The Super Mario Galaxy Movie pop up on digital rental, just… don’t.

It’s a pure nostalgia cash-in, not a real movie. Okay, let's go back to Netflix and Disney, because what’s happening on those two platforms this week tells you everything about the two warring philosophies in streaming. First, The Boroughs on Netflix. The show is executive produced by the guys who made Stranger Things. It’s about a supernatural mystery threatening a small, tight-knit community. Sound familiar? It is. It’s the Stranger Things formula. But here’s the turn: the entire cast is over sixty-five. Alfred Molina is the lead. And what could have been a lazy copy-paste job actually works, because changing the age of the heroes changes the stakes. The monster isn't just some creature from another dimension; the real monster is time.

Having too much of it, and then suddenly not having enough. We’ve seen this pattern before, right? Take a proven genre, change one fundamental variable, and see what happens. It's like when Hollywood made gritty, serious Westerns, and then Blazing Saddles came along. Same structure, totally different result. The Boroughs proves the formulaic approach can still create something new if the one variable you change is the one that matters most—the human perspective. Then you have Disney Plus. Their model isn't about formula; it's about universe. It’s a machine. It’s designed to produce a steady stream of Marvel and Star Wars content to keep you subscribed. And for two years, that machine has run flawlessly.

But this June, for the first time, it’s sputtering. No big releases. This is the risk of building your house on just two plots of land. We’ve seen this with broadcast networks. A channel becomes the “crime drama channel” or the “sitcom channel,” and when audience tastes shift, the whole thing collapses. The Mandalorian and Grogu movie feels like a patch job—a fun one, but a patch. It doesn't build the universe out, it just services the fans who are already there. So this week sets up the real question for the future of streaming. Is it better to be Netflix, endlessly perfecting a handful of killer formulas? Or is it better to be Disney, building a singular, massive universe?

This week, the formula won.