Dadnology Week 36: Age Guides, Slow Horses, GTA 6 Hype

🧭 The Week That Was — Twelve Honest Answers to “Is My Kid Ready for This?”

Star Wars, Stranger Things, Fortnite, Roblox, GTA 6: five of the things a kid is most likely to ask for this month, and all five now have an honest answer that grades the thing that will actually rattle your particular child rather than the label on the box. Twelve of those answers now sit in one place. The rest of the week: three Tom Clancy novels worth the shelf space, Slow Horses’ most divisive season, a PS5 Pro reselling for more than it costs new because of a game that isn’t out yet, a niche Star Wars tactics game turning into a real Game of the Year contender, Wallace & Gromit back in brick form, and a Mac mini that sold out for a reason nobody saw coming.

Jump to: 🍿 Watch This Week · 🎮 Play This Week · 🎬 Movies & TV · 🎮 Gaming · 🧱 LEGO & Family · 🏠 Smart Home, Camera & Tech

🍿 What to Watch This Week

Top Tip: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu — Disney+. The first Star Wars film in five years is a 4/5 from us, and it works for the reason the show did: it stays small. Din and the kid, a job that goes wrong, no galaxy-ending stakes bolted on.

For the Whole Family: LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian

LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian — Disney+. The same story retold as comedy in brick form, out the same day, so both halves of the sofa are covered in one evening. If it lands, LEGO Grogu (75446) is the set that follows it — 1,200 pieces, and a 5/5.

Once the Kids Are in Bed: The Gentlemen season 2

The Gentlemen season 2 — Netflix. The one to start if you want a series to fall into rather than a film for one night. Guy Ritchie, Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, and episodes short enough that three of them disappear without you noticing.

The Classic: the Spider-Man double bill

Spider-Man: Far From Home and No Way Home — Disney+. The catalogue drop of the week, and the pair is the point: one sets up the mess, the other spends it. Prime Video’s free trial covers most of the rest of this list if Disney+ isn’t already in the house.

Also landing this week

• Kraven the Hunter — Disney+, Sunday. A 3/5: Aaron Taylor-Johnson fully committed to a film that never decides what it is.
• Mayday — Apple TV+. Landed on the 4th with no noise at all: Ryan Reynolds at full motor-mouth against a completely straight Kenneth Branagh, ninety minutes.

Still running

• Reacher season 4 — Prime Video, Wednesdays. The best thing running right now, a constant 4.5 in our book, and last week’s cliffhanger was brutal enough to make the wait sting. The finale is 16 September.
• Ted Lasso season 4 — Apple TV+, Wednesdays. Ten episodes, back to the tighter season-one shape.
• Lanterns — HBO Max, Sundays. A detective story with Green Lanterns in it rather than another origin, finishing 4 October.

If you want animation

• X-Men ‘97 season 2 — Disney+. A 4/5, and the one we would put a shade above season one — Apocalypse rises, Magneto falls, and it earns both.
• Batman: Caped Crusader season 2 — Prime Video, the whole season at once. Season one was a 3.5/5 noir Gotham that took its time; season two finally brings the Joker.

Dates, platforms and the full week are in What to Watch This Week.

🎮 What to Play This Week

Onimusha comes back after twenty years

New Games Coming in September 2026: What’s Actually Worth It is a shortlist rather than a release calendar — Onimusha’s return two decades on, Marvel’s Wolverine, Dune: Awakening’s console debut, and a free Witcher 3 remaster with a native Switch 2 version closing out the month. Each one carries the reason it made the cut, which is the part a release list never gives you.

Valheim finally calls itself finished

What to Play This Week picks the three worth your evenings between now and next Sunday. Valheim leaves five years of early access on Wednesday with crossplay across every platform at once, which is the thing that has always stopped it working as a household game. Hot Wheels Infinite Rush lands the next day for the seat beside you, and Luigi’s Mansion 3 is the answer if neither is your house.

🎬 Movie & TV News This Week

Every Dadnology age guide, finally in one place

Is It OK for Kids? Every Dadnology Age Guide in One Place is the hub we should have put front and center last week: twelve guides collected in one spot, built on the idea that a rating tells you a committee sorted something into a bucket, not whether the specific thing that will rattle your particular kid is inside it. Two of the newest entries are worth the click on their own. Is Star Wars OK for Kids? A Dad’s Film-by-Film Age Guide breaks down all eleven theatrical films individually — six are PG and five are PG-13, and the split doesn’t fall where most parents assume. Is Stranger Things OK for Kids? A Dad’s Season-by-Season Guide grades all five seasons on their own, because season one and season four share a single TV-14 label and almost nothing else. Amazon Kids+ is the age-capped option for the years before most of this shelf even applies.

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Amazon Kids+ (opens in a new tab)

The kid-safe, age-capped option for the years before most of this week's age guides apply.

Three more Clancy novels join the shelf

Patriot Games Review earns a perfect 5/5 — Clancy’s most personal novel, where Jack Ryan stops a terrorist attack in London while on holiday and the people responsible come looking for his family at home. The Cardinal of the Kremlin Review also lands a 5/5, the purest espionage novel on the shelf, built on tradecraft and a thirty-year Soviet asset rather than fleets and hardware. Clear and Present Danger Review rounds out the trio at 5/5 too, the angriest book Clancy wrote, where Washington starts a deniable war in Colombia and then abandons the soldiers fighting it. The Sum of All Fears Review is the one exception at 4/5 — terrifying in its middle stretch, bloated at its edges. And The Best Tom Clancy Adaptations has turned from a standalone opinion piece into a real ranking, now that all four film adaptations Patrick has actually seen and scored are live. Audible’s free trial carries the whole shelf if reading four more Clancy novels this month sounds like a lot.

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The Clancy shelf keeps growing — three more novels this week, all narrated in full.

Slow Horses’ most personal season, and its most divisive

Slow Horses Season 4 Review earns a 4.5/5 — Spook Street turns the espionage into a family matter, with Hugo Weaving as the best villain the show has had, and it costs the team someone real along the way. Slow Horses Season 5 Review follows at 4/5: the most shocking opening the show has ever staged, and then, honestly, its weakest season so far — still very good, just not up to the bar the first four set.

DC’s full roadmap, in one place

Every DC Movie and TV Show Scheduled for 2026 and Beyond maps every confirmed DC Studios project through 2028, from Lanterns and Clayface to The Batman Part 2 — worth bookmarking, since Peacemaker Season 2 left fans on a genuinely unresolved cliffhanger with no Season 3 confirmed yet.

Pokemon’s first new movie in seven years

Pokemon: Wild Card Is the First New Pokemon Movie in 7 Years was announced at the World Championships closing ceremony, and it’s built around the Trading Card Game rather than another training-journey adventure.

🎮 Gaming News for Dads

Is Fortnite or Roblox actually OK for your kid?

Is Fortnite OK for Kids? A Dad’s Honest Age-Rating Guide untangles the three separate questions parents actually mean when they ask — the violence, the chat, and the spending — and the shooting turns out to be the least important of the three. Is Roblox OK for Kids? A Dad’s Guide to the 2026 Age Accounts covers the platform’s 2026 account rebuild, because Roblox isn’t a game with one rating so much as a platform closer to YouTube, and most of what’s written about it online predates the rebuild entirely.

GTA 6 hype spikes PS5 Pro resale prices

GTA 6 Hype Sends PS5 Pro Resale Prices Past $1,300 covers a genuinely strange moment: PS5 Pro consoles sold out at Best Buy and Target after Rockstar’s Extended Look, with resellers now charging up to $1,300 for an $899 console — before Rockstar has even said what its PS5 Pro-specific enhancements for GTA 6 do. If your kid is angling for the game itself, Is GTA 6 OK for Kids? is still the guide we’d point you to first.

Star Wars: Zero Company is a real Game of the Year contender

Star Wars Zero Company Reviews: A Niche Game of the Year? rounds up the reception for the XCOM-style Clone Wars tactics game — Dual Shockers scored it a 9, PC Gamer gave it 90/100, and Metacritic’s press average sits at a strong 85. Niche, but genuinely good.

Marvel’s Wolverine, two weeks out

Marvel’s Wolverine Gameplay Trailer: Rage & Adaptations skips story beats entirely and goes straight to mechanics — Adamantium claw strikes, a Rage meter built through attacking, dodging and parrying. It launches 15 September, mature-rated, and our age guide is still the read before your kid makes the case for it.

Naughty Dog wraps Intergalactic’s motion-capture shoot

Naughty Dog Wraps Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Filming confirms a genuine production milestone — the studio’s first original IP since The Last of Us has finished its cinematic shoot. Still no release date attached.

A first hands-on for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Preview covers Owlcat Games’ first proper hands-on for its Mass Effect-style shooter, running alongside seasons 1-3 of the show — early word is this could be one of the better video game adaptations in years.

PlayStation ran two showcases in one morning

PlayStation Runs Two State of Play Shows Back-to-Back Sept 3 closed its main broadcast with an extended look at Final Fantasy VII Revelation, immediately followed by a second show, State of Play Japan, spotlighting titles from Japanese and Asian developers.

A Switch 2 bundle before the price hike

Nintendo Switch 2 + Sports Resort Bundle Set for Winter pairs the console with Nintendo Switch Sports Resort for October 22 — the same date the Switch 2’s European price rises to €499.99, which makes this bundle Nintendo’s own answer to “buy it now.”

🧱 LEGO & Family Round-up

LEGO Ideas revives Wallace & Gromit

LEGO Ideas Wallace & Gromit (21371) Revealed: 1,038 Pieces is this week’s headline LEGO story — the Grand Prize winner of the “LEGO Ideas ’90s Throwback” community challenge, $99.99, out October 1. Worth knowing before you buy it as a family gift: it’s rated 18+, a shelf piece for the Aardman fan in the house rather than a toy to hand a kid.

🏠 Smart Home, Camera & Tech Round-up

The Mac mini is an AI machine now, and it’s sold out

The Mac Mini Is an AI Machine Now, and That’s Why It’s Sold Out explains why Apple pulled last week’s Mac mini and Mac Studio launch three weeks early: enterprise demand for hardware that runs AI models locally arrived faster than Apple had planned for, and a global memory shortage is compounding it. Strange to write about a computer we mostly recommend as a family desktop, but here we are.

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Apple Mac mini (2026, M6) (opens in a new tab)

The $899 entry model at the center of this week's AI-driven sellout story.

OpenClaw 2.0 ships, with a security catch

OpenClaw 2.0 Is Out: Team Features, and a Real Security Warning covers a genuinely large release — over 16,000 code changes from 933 contributors, turning the single-user AI agent into something built for teams. Worth reading before you install it: sandboxing is disabled by default.

The Dadnology Week archive: missed last week? Catch up with Dadnology Week 35.

❓ FAQ

What were the biggest dad-relevant releases in week 36, 2026?

Twelve “is it OK for kids” age verdicts now sit in one place, including a new film-by-film Star Wars breakdown and a season-by-season Stranger Things one, at /guides/dadnology-age-guides. The spy-thriller shelf grew with three more Tom Clancy novel reviews and Slow Horses Seasons 4 and 5. In gaming, GTA 6 hype sent PS5 Pro resale prices past $1,300, and Star Wars: Zero Company’s reviews landed at a genuine 85 Metacritic average.

What is the best family pick from week 36, 2026?

The age-guide hub itself — twelve guides in one place, each grading a film, show or game the way a parent actually needs it graded, not the way a rating board does. If you want one film pick, The Mandalorian and Grogu is our top tip this week — a 4 out of 5, now on Disney+, with a LEGO version of the same story landing beside it for younger kids.

Should I buy a PS5 Pro right now?

Not from a reseller. Major US retailers sold out after Rockstar’s GTA 6 Extended Look, and third-party sellers are now asking $1,200 to $1,300 for a console that retails at $899 — before Rockstar has even detailed what its PS5 Pro-specific enhancements for GTA 6 actually do. Wait for restock unless you need it for something else entirely.

What did Dadnology publish this week?

The age-guide hub plus new Star Wars and Stranger Things age guides (movies-tv), Fortnite and Roblox age guides (gaming), three new Tom Clancy novel reviews (Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger) plus The Sum of All Fears and the freshly ranked Best Tom Clancy Movies list, Slow Horses Season 4 and Season 5 reviews, our first-ever What to Watch This Week picks article, September’s games recommendations, seven gaming news briefs (GTA 6/PS5 Pro pricing, Star Wars: Zero Company reviews, Marvel’s Wolverine gameplay trailer, Intergalactic’s motion-capture wrap, PlayStation’s double State of Play, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn preview, and a Switch 2 winter bundle), a DC movie and TV schedule through 2028, the Pokemon: Wild Card movie announcement, LEGO Ideas Wallace & Gromit (21371), and news on the Mac mini’s AI-driven sellout plus the OpenClaw 2.0 release.