Dadnology Week 27: Silo, Hail Mary & Black Flag Returns

🎬 The Week That Was — Silo Returns, Hail Mary Lands, and Black Flag Sails Again

This is the week the streaming calendar stopped being polite about competing for your Friday night. Silo Season 3 dropped its first episode on Apple TV+ today, picking up right where Season 2 left Juliette — bruised, memory-scrambled and very much still alive. Project Hail Mary, the $683-million Ryan Gosling sci-fi hit that had cinemas, then PVOD, then MGM+ all to itself for months, is now sitting inside every Prime subscription for free, no extra tap required. And on the gaming side, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced sails back into port on July 9 — a proper rebuild of 2013’s best pirate game on the engine that carries Valhalla, not just a 4K sticker slapped on the old one.

Round it out with a genuinely stacked LEGO July — five sets worth knowing about, from a 4,000-plus-piece Koenigsegg to a fully playable pinball machine — plus a quieter, more personal note: we finally did our long-overdue Lord of the Rings rewatch, animated War of the Rohirrim included, and it’s exactly as good as memory says. Add a Legally Blonde prequel, an animated Minions threequel, House of the Dragon already mid-season, and a first trailer for the animated Star Wars: Visions Presents The Ninth Jedi, and “quiet week” was never on the table. Here’s the lot, sorted by vertical so you can jump straight to what matters in your house.

Jump to: 🎮 Gaming · 🎬 Movies & TV · 🧱 LEGO & Family · 📷 Tech & Camera

🎮 Gaming News for Dads

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced sails in July 9 — and it’s not just a lick of paint

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launches July 9, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and the important detail for anyone who already burned 80 hours on Edward Kenway’s original 2013 voyage: this is closer to a remake than a remaster. Ubisoft rebuilt it from the ground up on the current Anvil engine — the same one behind Valhalla — and while roughly 90-95% of the story and open world is the Black Flag you remember, the systems underneath have had a real overhaul.

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Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced — World Premiere Trailer

The changes that actually matter for how it plays: combat is faster and leans harder on parries, with the Hidden Blade pulled out of open combat and restricted to stealth kills; new parkour moves add manual side-leaps and wall-jumps along with a proper crouch; tailing missions no longer instant-fail the second an NPC glances your way; and fort assaults now run on a dynamic morale system instead of a straight body count. There’s also roughly six hours of new content bolted onto the original campaign. It’s a genuinely thoughtful pass on a game that was already the series’ high point for open-world piracy — and for anyone whose Assassin’s Creed love affair peaked with the Ezio Collection, it’s proof Ubisoft can still do this right.

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Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced (PlayStation 5) (opens in a new tab)

The Anvil-engine rebuild of 2013's best pirate game, out July 9 on PS5 — reworked combat, parkour and a smarter tailing and fort system.

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Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced (Xbox Series X) (opens in a new tab)

Same July 9 launch, same rebuilt Black Flag, on Xbox Series X|S — also Steam Deck-verified if you'd rather sail from the couch.

🎬 Movie & TV News This Week

Silo Season 3 is here — and it was worth the wait

Silo Season 3 premiered today, July 3, on Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping weekly through the September 4 finale. It splits its time between the present-day silo — where Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) returns from her forced “cleaning” with memory loss, right into a silo still reeling from rebellion — and a “Before Times” thread following a journalist and a congressman uncovering the conspiracy that built the silos in the first place.

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Silo — Season 3 Official Trailer | Apple TV

If you’ve somehow missed this show, both previous seasons earned a full 9/10 from us — it is the rare mystery-box series that actually answers its own questions instead of stalling forever, and it hasn’t wasted a single one of our scarce weeknight hours across two seasons. Our Silo series hub has the watch order, both season reviews and how it maps to Hugh Howey’s Wool novels, if you want the full picture before diving into the new episodes.

Project Hail Mary is free on Prime Video — an absolute must-watch

After a wild release strategy — cinemas in March, PVOD in May, MGM+ in June — Project Hail Mary landed inside every Prime Video subscription at no extra cost on July 3. If you’ve somehow avoided all the hype, it’s Amazon MGM’s biggest opening of the year, it’s grossed $683 million worldwide, and it’s sitting on a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score.

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Project Hail Mary (2026) | Official Trailer | Amazon MGM Studios

This is an unreserved recommendation. Ryan Gosling carries a lone-astronaut survival story that turns into something much warmer and stranger than its trailers let on, and it’s exactly the kind of big-swing sci-fi that’s worth clearing an evening for now that it costs nothing extra to watch. If it lands the way it should, the companion piece is sitting right there in the LEGO aisle: our LEGO Icons Project Hail Mary (11389) review covers the set with the working spin-gravity crank and the buildable Rocky — 8.5/10, and a genuinely fitting shelf piece for a story this good.

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LEGO Icons Project Hail Mary (11389) (opens in a new tab)

Our 8.5/10-rated companion build for the film — a working spin-gravity crank and a buildable Rocky. The perfect shelf piece for movie night.

A personal one: our Lord of the Rings rewatch (Rohirrim included) still holds up completely

Away from this week’s actual news, a quick note from the couch: we finally did our long-overdue full Lord of the Rings rewatch, and — no surprise, but worth saying out loud — it still absolutely holds up. The trilogy loses none of its weight on a tenth watch, and this time we paired it with The War of the Rohirrim, the hand-drawn anime prequel about Helm Hammerhand’s last stand. It earned an 8/10 from us on its own, but watched right after the trilogy it works even better than expected — a genuinely welcome expansion of Middle-earth rather than a cash-in, and a good reminder that there’s still room left in this world for someone to tell a new story well. If you’re planning your own rewatch, our full Lord of the Rings watch-order guide lays out release order versus chronological order and exactly where Rohirrim fits, and the film trilogy series hub is the one-stop page for the Extended Editions rule we live by.

House of the Dragon Season 3 is mid-flight on HBO

A quick catch-up for anyone behind: House of the Dragon Season 3 has been airing weekly on HBO since June 21 and runs through an August 9 finale, so it’s currently sitting a few episodes deep into the Dance of the Dragons. We haven’t reviewed it yet, but if the first two seasons hooked you, there’s no reason to wait — it’s exactly the kind of show that rewards catching up over a couple of evenings before the finale run spoils itself on your social feeds.

In cinemas: Minions & Monsters brings the yellow chaos to Old Hollywood

The kids’-afternoon-out pick this week is Minions & Monsters, which opened July 1 as the third Minions prequel and seventh film in the Despicable Me franchise. It’s set in 1927, decades before the original Minions, and follows the little yellow chaos agents trying to make their own monster movie in Old Hollywood — with a genuinely stacked voice cast including Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg and Jeff Bridges. It’s not a film built for a dad’s personal watchlist, but as a guaranteed, low-stakes cinema trip with younger kids over the summer, it’s an easy one to say yes to.

On Prime Video: Elle rewinds Legally Blonde to high school

Also new on July 1: Elle, an eight-episode Prime Video prequel series that follows a teenage Elle Woods through 1990s Seattle high school, years before Harvard Law. Reese Witherspoon executive-produces through her Hello Sunshine banner, and the show has already been renewed for a second season, so this isn’t a one-and-done experiment. We haven’t watched it yet, but it’s on the list — the first two Legally Blonde films earned their status as genuine comfort-watch classics in this house, and a well-made prequel with Witherspoon’s own backing is worth the benefit of the doubt.

Star Wars: Visions Presents The Ninth Jedi gets a series — and a trailer

Save the real animation news for last: Lucasfilm dropped the first trailer for Star Wars: Visions Presents The Ninth Jedi, graduating the anthology’s best-loved short into a full series, landing August 5 on Disney+. If you already know where we stand on Filoni-era animated Star Wars sitting above most of the live-action era, this is the one worth clearing a slot for — Kenji Kamiyama returns as supervising director, with Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass) on animation. We broke down the full trailer, the returning cast and why it matters over on our beat: read the full Ninth Jedi reveal.

🧱 LEGO & Family Round-up

July came in loaded. Five sets are worth a dad’s attention this month, spanning three different LEGO lines, so here’s the rundown in order of how much shelf space they’ll actually need.

LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian Imperial Lambda-Class Shuttle (75459) launched July 1 at 961 pieces and $139.99 — a 33cm Imperial shuttle with flight and landing configurations and five minifigures, including the first-ever Dr. Pershing minifigure. It got its own full reveal write-up on our LEGO beat, with the complete minifigure lineup and play-feature breakdown: read the full 75459 reveal.

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LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian Imperial Lambda-Class Shuttle (75459) (opens in a new tab)

961 pieces, five minifigures including the first-ever Dr. Pershing, and flight/landing modes on a 33cm-tall Imperial shuttle.

LEGO Technic Koenigsegg Sadair’s Spear Megacar (42232) is the big one — 4,104 pieces, $449.99, 18+, and the new flagship of the 1:8-scale Technic supercar line. It’s not a small purchase or a small build, but it’s the set this range has been building toward.

LEGO Technic Aston Martin Aramco AMR25 F1 Car (42240) is the more attainable Technic pick at 1,547 pieces and $229.99 — a genuine 1:8-scale F1 model with a working V6, two-speed gearbox, differential and steering, not just a static shell with sponsor stickers.

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LEGO Technic Aston Martin Aramco AMR25 F1 Car (42240) (opens in a new tab)

A 1,547-piece, 1:8-scale F1 car with a working V6, 2-speed gearbox, differential and steering — genuine engineering, not just a shell.

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LEGO Technic Koenigsegg Sadair's Spear Megacar (42232) (opens in a new tab)

The new 1:8-scale Technic flagship: 4,104 pieces, 18+, and the biggest supercar in the range this year.

LEGO Icons Arcade Pinball Machine (11374) is the one we’re most tempted by personally: 2,274 pieces and $229.99 for a fully playable pinball table, complete with a spring-loaded launcher, dual flippers, spinning bumpers and new Classic Space minifigures. A LEGO set you actually keep playing with after the last brick goes in is rare, and this is one of them.

LEGO Marvel Venom Bust (76356) rounds things out as the small, easy entry point — 413 pieces and $49.99 for an adult-display bust with a Venom minifigure and a removable tongue, if a 4,000-piece megacar isn’t in this month’s budget. We gave it the full beat treatment too: read the full 76356 reveal.

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LEGO Icons Arcade Pinball Machine (11374) (opens in a new tab)

2,274 pieces of fully playable pinball — spring launcher, dual flippers, spinning bumpers, and new Classic Space minifigures.

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LEGO Marvel Venom Bust (76356) (opens in a new tab)

A 413-piece adult-display bust of Venom, with a Venom minifigure included — a compact, shelf-friendly Marvel pick.

For the full picture of what else is worth a look, our best new LEGO sets of June 2026 guide covers last month’s drops if you’re catching up.

On the family-ritual side, a quick update: our LEGO date-night guide has genuinely stuck. Building together instead of defaulting to Netflix turned out to be one of the better evening swaps we’ve made this year — no screen, something to actually talk about while your hands are busy, and a finished object on the shelf at the end instead of another half-remembered episode. If a couple of these July sets are calling to you, that guide has the honest pacing math on how long a big build actually takes.

📷 Tech & Camera Round-up

Sony’s Alpha 7R VI is officially out after its May 13 announcement, and the numbers are genuinely eye-catching: a 66.8-megapixel fully stacked sensor, the new BIONZ XR2 engine, blackout-free shooting at up to 30fps, 8K 30p and 4K 120p video, and up to 8.5 stops of stabilization. It’s $4,499.99 for the body, which puts it firmly in “serious hobbyist or working pro” territory rather than casual-upgrade money.

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Sony Alpha 7R VI (opens in a new tab)

A 66.8MP stacked-sensor resolution monster with 30fps blackout-free shooting and 8K video — if you're not already committed to a different mount.

The honest take from this side of the Nikon fence: it’s an impressive piece of engineering, and if resolution is genuinely your bottleneck — landscape and studio work especially — it’s the camera to watch this year. It’s just not a system switch for us. Our whole kit is built around the Nikon Z8, and menu logic and glass you already own matter more day-to-day than a few extra megapixels on a spec sheet. Sony dads, this is your year. Nikon dads, keep shooting — nothing here should make you second-guess what’s already working.

The Dadnology Week archive: missed last week? Catch up with Dadnology Week 26.

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