This ain’t your mama’s Baba Yaga.

During a Saturday panel at San Diego Comic-Con AMC+ and Crave debuted a new trailer that highlighted a wickedly dark and feminist slant to the tale of the Slavic witch Baba Yaga. 

Based on the play by Kat Sandler, who serves as writer and showrunner, Yaga reimages the witch, who is known to live in a hut on chicken legs, and potentially as a murderous seductress or powerful enchantress depending on the author of the tale. 

In Sandler’s version, Yaga is a contemporary mystery thriller that follows Rapp (Noah Reid), a private investigator who arrives in a small coastal town to investigate the disappearance of a young heir to a powerful fishery, Henry Park (Hudson Williams). He finds himself at odds with an apprehensive local detective, Carson (Clark Backo); a charismatic university professor with a taste for younger men, Katherine (Carrie-Ann Moss), and a labyrinth of enigmatic suspects, secret lives and ancient magic. 

The trailer started with a voiceover from Moss’ Katherine, explaining the myth of Baba Yaga in a luxurious dimly lit living room across from a slightly moist and a little horny, Williams’ Henry. “There are versions of her all over the world. Sometimes she’s an ugly old witch. She lives in a [dilapidated] house on chicken feet. Sometimes she’s a wise woman, an enchantress, a healer. Sometimes she helps a hero on his quest. Sometimes she tests him. Sometimes she kills them. Sometimes she eats them. Sometimes she fucks them. But, she always has a name.” Katherine says seductively. 

Then in a series of quick cuts, the series’ characters, especially Williams, are caught in compromising x-rated and dangerous positions from lustful thrusts and sweaty threesomes to blood sacrifice and errant chicken feathers revealing an old, haggard witch. The last frame revealed a release of October 2026. 

As soon as the steamy trailer was over, Reid quipped: “[Hudson] cannot keep his hands off himself. I mean, I don’t blame him.” 

Williams, who could not be at the panel in person, addressed the audience in a pre-recorded video where he teased that the show was “a blast and a wild one to film.” 

Confirming his co-star, Reid stressed William’s role is “a wild performance that is scary hot.” 

Moss, who also could not attend in person, shared well wishes for all that wanted to watch the series when it debuts in the Fall. 

Other surprises at panel also included another clip that featured Backo’s Carson and Detective Rapp meeting each other the first time upon being called to seemingly investigate a person seen burning on a makeshift pyre in the woods. The clip also featured another haunting voiceover from Yaga explaining the mystery that shrouds her lore, alluding perhaps to the show’s mission to dismantle what we know about the witch. “You say I’m wicked as the night but wise and powerful as the sea. You say I eat naughty children and their bones. You say I’m ugly and lonely and that no one will love me,” Yaga cries in the trailer. “No one will love me. Who will love such a beast, such a witch as I am.” 

Sandler explained that the show was “a feminist revenge-tinged reimagining of the myth that is sexy, propulsive, vicious and scary.” As to why she baked the dark fairytale into that of a detective narrative, Sandler added: “I think the detective mystery element of it is a really big piece of it. And it comes so much from a pastiche of all of the stuff that I have loved my whole life and that we kind of pulled out of our childhoods like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella, Grimm Fairytales. But it’s also that the theme of witches is so aligned with [bad behavior and darkness]. So, I think a feminist bent is good for right now, and that maybe we’ve been burning the wrong witches for centuries, and this show is about what would happen if a witch survived long enough to hunt back and tell her own story.” 

Yaga is produced by Blink49 Studios and Front Street Pictures in partnership with Crave, with David Frazee and Rachel Talalay the co-directors. The series is executive produced by Mackenzie Donaldson, Andrew Miller and Moss and produced by Charles Cooper. The series is distributed globally by Sphere Abacus, a Bell Media company.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 has just begun, literally on Thursday July 23 on Paramount+, but today at San Diego Comic-Con, co-showrunner and executive producer Akiva Goldsman wanted everyone to know what’s in store for the rest of the season.

New episodes are dropping weekly on Thursdays through Sept. 24.

In season four, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise – led by Captain Christopher Pike – continue to journey to strange new worlds, battling inner demons and external threats, and encounter familiar and terrifying faces. Of note this season, there are myriad big genre swings that put the crew in western, horror, disaster movie, and literally puppets set-ups and backgrounds. Also, La’an continues her cutesy relationship with Spock, while Pike manages a post-Batel world. Scotty and Oregas are beginning to see a relationship gain some footing.

Season four stars Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun and Martin Quinn, along with guest stars Carol Kane and Paul Wesley.

The series is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. 

Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers serve as co-showrunners. Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers, Aaron Baiers, Dana Horgan, Alan McElroy, Robbie Thompson, Frank Siracusa, John Weber, Chris Fisher, Anson Mount, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as season four EPs.