Spring is in full swing, and plenty of awesome titles are available from the most popular streaming services – and sometimes, they even intersect with the franchises we feature!
We want to give you a round-up regularly of some of the best you can stream to compliment your loot when it arrives, so this month, get psyched with us for ARTIFACTS and these titles, featured across Loot Crate, Loot Crate DX and Loot Wear this month!:
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Streaming on Netflix)
So, for reasons unknown, at this point only one of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is available to stream on Netflix: The first chapter in the series, covering the discovery of The One Ring and the formation of The Fellowship of the Ring to ensure that the ring is brought back to Mordor and destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. Now, if you want to see how that resolves in the next two flicks, you’re stuck with renting them on Amazon or getting the old discs out…. come on, Netflix, why such a tease?! Well, at least we’ve got the amazing Council of Elrond to enjoy at the touch of our fingertips.
Marvel Prep for Infinity War (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.)
If you need to get in the spirit for Avengers: Infinity War (which is now less than a month away, whaaat!), you have quite a few options available to you to stream; the most obvious one is Captain America: Civil War on Netflix, which is more or less a glorified Avengers 2 1/2 what with all the team appearances and lack of focus on our man Steve Rogers. (Captain America: The Winter Soldier is Cap’s finest hour, as well as among the best MCU films to date, don’t you forget it.) In the meantime, if you want more Marvel fun that teases some of the conflicts we might see in the new film, Amazon has many of the best Marvel cartoons available to rent, including Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes – arguably the very best of all.
The Dark Crystal (Amazon Prime for now, but get ready for Netflix!…)
Let’s be honest, all of our Dark Crystal watching and re-watching at this point is kind of a precursor to what we’re really anticipating, the debut (someday! soon!) of a new Dark Crystal-universe set series from the Henson Company on Netflix. Until that wonderful day arrives, your best bet (if you don’t already own the special edition BluRay) of The Dark Crystal is to stream the Henson classic as a rental via Amazon Prime or YouTube.)
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (Streaming on Netflix)
Okay, now we’re talking… and by talking I mean flailing our arms and being total giggly geeks, because one of the best among Netflix updates over the past couple of years has been the arrival of Filmation’s Masters of the Universe series’ first full season. There’s something oddly comforting about spooling up a half-hour of He-Man and his pals’ adventures and letting it roll as background while you’re folding laundry, or scrubbing the floors, or other such household chores. (Totally not like I’ve done this in the past few weeks…*cough*) BONUS: The entirety of She-Ra: Princess of Power is on Netflix, too!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Streaming on Hulu)
If you are a devotee of all things Sunnydale High, then Hulu is where it’s at for you: The entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s run is available for you to consume all at once, or in short, sharp bursts. However you’d like to consume your doses of demons, hellmouths and high-school drama, it’s yours for the taking! (We’d be remiss if we didn’t update the newbies to Joss Whedon’s seminal series with the following: If you can’t find the groove in the first couple of seasons, stick with it. Seasons three and four are where it really shines the brightest.)
South Park (Streaming on Hulu)
For those comedy geeks who remember the early days of Comedy Central, full of various specials of the stand-up variety and a lot of vintage sitcom syndication, it feels like a whole other network to the CC of today. You could almost say that the network had two incarnations: Before South Park and After South Park. There really isn’t any way to describe the seismic shift of the comedy network’s output unless you saw both, but Hulu has all of South Park‘s run so you can experience the breadth of the groundbreaking show for yourself. (If you want one of the best examples of Trey and Matt zeroing in on the mature-audiences animation that is partially responsible for their baby existing the first places, see the episode presented in the above clip: Season 12 episode 3, “Major Boobage.” The Heavy Metal parodies are side-splittingly spot on.)
Adventure Time with Finn and Jake (Streaming on Hulu)
There honestly is no better time to start indoctrinating your friends, family… and especially your little ones, if you have them… to the magic of Adventure Time. This year, the greatest kids’ series of the 21st century is about to end in a tremendous way, having seen its young protagonist Finn through boyhood to manhood in real time, aging as he goes. (Jeremy Shada, who voices Finn, has aged more or less exactly as his cartoon counterpart has.) Adventure Time is a heart-rending, brain-bending, extraordinary tale of adventure and wonder, and Hulu’s got it for you to share with those young at heart, or to relive it all over again before the sure-to-be-epic finale…
