Pop culture was as confusing as real life this year.
If a loved one awakes from a coma on Jan. 1, they won’t believe your 2025 recap: Katy Perry went to space and started dating Justin Trudeau? Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year was a number — and no adult knows what “six-seven” means? What on earth is Labubu?
The entertainment industry gazed into a crystal ball and the unicorns shrugged.
Are moviegoers, once believed to be entombed in amber, ready to breathe new IMAX life into cinemas? Or is streaming the model, especially now that Netflix is trying to buy HBO?
Can music be snatched from human artists and replaced by algorithms? Do we have superhero fatigue? Can appointment television be restarted? Do readers want fiction to escape dark times or be a reflecting pool into the darkness?
The monoculture choked to death years ago.
Global culture is trying to take its place.
South Korea continued to give Western showbiz panic attacks with wave after wave of IP. The K-pop band Stray Kids recently dethroned Taylor Swift atop the charts. And she was no slouch in 2025. Her concerts triggered literal earthquakes.
It was a year in which Taylor & Travis got engaged and a previously unknown couple having an affair were outed on a Coldplay kiss-cam. It was a year in which “Ne Zha 2,” the box office champ at $2 billion, came from China and the winner of “Dancing With the Stars” came from Down Under.
It was a year of pleasant surprises and unpleasant dust-ups.
The Beatles returned to the charts a half-century after they broke up. The bitter feud between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni clogged up the legal system like classified docs in a Mar-a-Lago toilet.
Lilo & Stitch were winners, Snow White was a loser.
Oasis reunited. Ozzy departed.
TikTok was briefly shuttered in January before returning so young people could spread dangerously idiotic challenges such as the “Blackout.” Or the one in which they strap on stilettos and try to balance precariously on objects such as kitchen islands or traffic cones.
No wonder scholastic scores are nosediving.
It was a year in which viewers were baffled by a giant, floppy hat on Sarah Jessica Parker in “And Just Like That …” It looked like a parachute worn by a French baker landed on her head. Below the waist, Kim Kardashian sold thongs with fake pubic hair and Sydney Sweeney ignited a heated debate about white supremacy vis-à-vis a denim ad.
It was a year of heroes and villains:
Hero: The Blue Jays and shared culture
Mirvish had another banner year. Ontario’s Drake, The Weeknd and Justin Bieber dominated music. One of the buzziest TV series was “Heated Rivalry,” created for Crave by Montreal’s Jacob Tierney. The 2025 phenom “KPop Demon Hunters” — which became Netflix’s most watched movie in history — was directed by Toronto’s Maggie Kang. But the year’s cultural hub was the Rogers Centre where a plucky squad of ball players smashed moonbeams that landed in our hearts. From summer to fall, a new hero emerged every game to give us a thrill ride for the ages. This was sport as culture. Competition as unity. All entertainment should be this beautifully rewarding.
Villain: Elon Musk and treacherous broligarchs
The world’s richest man was ethically dirt poor in 2025. X, the social media site he overpaid for like a Gulf prince in Louis Vuitton for the first time, hemorrhaged users and advertisers. It seems people are turned off when “free speech” becomes a monsoon of racism, conspiracies and outright lunacy. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos started the year by blowing $40 million on a Melania doc even Barron won’t watch. Instead of railing against a corrupt administration, the Treacherous Broligarchs wanted in on the action. The digital robber barons snorted deregulation, tariff exclusions and fat government contracts like they were lines of cocaine on the belly of a Vegas stripper. But money can’t buy you a throne on the right side of history.
Hero: ‘South Park’ and the return of savage satire
As co-creator Trey Parker noted this year, “It’s not that we got all political — it’s that politics became pop culture.” When the show returned in July for seasons 27 and 28, the profane juvies inside South Park Elementary placed a No Mercy target on the White House. One story arc: the president impregnates Satan and VP Mascara lobbies for an abortion. As others in Hollywood cowered in a flop sweat over fears of angering Dear Leader, Parker and Matt Stone launched double-tap strikes across the grotesque ghoulscape of Trump 2.0. With animation that still looks like it is produced with Crayola on cocktail napkins, “South Park” mocked the wannabe dictator and the fawning dipsticks with fearless contempt.
Villain: Tilly Norwood and the digital impostors
Before AI kills us, it wants to entertain us. The year brought us artificial actors (Tilly Norwood), podcasters (Oly Bennet), bands (Breaking Rust) and writers (Luna Filby). Machines don’t need to go to film school or hire a vocal coach. The upcoming “The Sweet Idleness” is billed as the world’s first feature film to be directed by AI: “FellinAI.” The plot? A utopian future in which 99 per cent of humans no longer need jobs thanks to LLMs and automation. Sounds like a fantasy AI desperately wants us to believe as it rattled the dream factories in 2025 — stealing jobs, redefining efficiency and turning art into slop.
Hero: Jonathan Bailey and the return of nice guys
He wasn’t just People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” this year. The prediction markets would also give Jonathan Bailey great odds in a “Sweetest Man Alive” contest. And he wasn’t alone. Nice guys formed a bulwark this year against the swirling chaos and cynicism. Pedro Pascal was always smiling. Glen Powell’s charisma deserves its own agent. Ryan Gosling gave the gossip rags nothing to do. Paul Rudd’s secret to eternal youth is humility. And Keanu Reeves just keeps Keanuing. The nice guys are beloved by fans who no longer have the bandwidth to process sex scandals or temper tantrums. When the culture rumbled sideways with bad behaviour and celebrity overexposure, JB and company stayed grounded. Nice guys finish first.
Villain: CBS and the scaredy cat media
It was a gut-check year for the Fourth Estate. Many turtled. Agent Orange spent 2025 suing or threatening to sue outlets across the Milky Way. BBC. Wall Street Journal. New York Times. There is strength in numbers and weakness in cowardice. In July, pathetically, Paramount settled a lawsuit and agreed to pay the doofus-in-chief $16 million because he was enraged “60 Minutes” — wait for it — edits interviews. This followed ABC’s equally risible decision to give the bully $16 million for his library after he sued for a story he did not like. Both lawsuits were easily winnable. Both capitulations were a stain on journalism.
Hero: Jimmy Kimmel and the court jesters
Late night comedy in 2025 felt more like freedom fighting. Stephen Colbert’s show will end next year, but that hasn’t stopped him from hurling truth bombs at the White House. Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and John Oliver spent 2025 firing bazookas at the hypocrisies and idiocies of Dear Leader. Jimmy Kimmel was yanked off the air before quickly returning after viewers revolted. The Mad King seethed and called for their heads. The court jesters handed him his ass. This was asymmetric warfare. Ridicule versus intimidation. Mockery versus incompetence. Parody versus perfidy. And laughter kept winning the battles.
Villain: Miss Universe (dis)Organization
What happens when a beauty pageant gets ugly? Take a bow, Miss Universe Organization. You had resignations. You had allegations of racism. You had execs yelling at contestants. You had mass walkouts of insulted beauty queens. You had judges resigning and alleging corruption and illicit affairs. You had arrests and charges of drugs and arms trafficking. You had a contestant tumble off the stage and end up in the ICU. Long before Mexico’s Fátima Bosch was crowned the winner in November, the world looked away with disgust. Take all of the crowns and sashes and hurl them into a bonfire before 2026.
Hero: Television as the ultimate escape
This was a banner year to be a couch potato. The old complaint was once, “There’s nothing good to watch.” Canadians spent an average of 20 hours per week watching TV this year. Just a few standouts from 2025: “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” “Adolescence,” “The Studio,” “Andor,” “The White Lotus,” “The Bear,” “Dying for Sex,” “The Last of Us,” “Pluribus,” “The Pitt,” “Your Friends & Neighbors,” “The Beast in Me,” “Down Cemetery Road,” “The Girlfriend,” “Dept. Q” and “Task.” The new complaint: “There’s too much good to watch.”
Villain: The rising cost of entertainment
The average Canadian household spent about $5,000 this year on entertainment and recreation. Concert tickets — assuming you could get them before reseller bots grabbed them and tripled face value — continue to skyrocket. Buying stolen jewels from the Louvre was cheaper than front row seats for Taylor Swift. The streamers jacked up prices. Going to the movies now requires a line of credit. The industry is entering an era of mergers. It’s time for the Richie Rich execs to realize inflation is not limited to eggs and beef. Consumers will only pay so much to be amused before they take their wallets elsewhere. Lower the costs.
