Oh yeah? Let’s see what you’ll get wrong, Darien Freeman. I fold my arms and settle back in my chair. Onscreen, Darien climbs up onto the dunk tank, securing goggles around his eyes, and gives the thumbs-up.
The woman cocks her water gun and looks at a card in her hand. “Question one! What is the name of the government that Carmindor is a part of?”
“Seriously? Too easy!” Darien shouts back at her. “The Federation!”
A buzzer dings, signaling the right answer, and the audience boos, shouting to dunk him already. Something goes flying past Darien’s head—I think it’s underwear. He doesn’t look fazed in the least, grinning from ear to ear, swinging his feet underneath the plank he’s sitting on.
“Fine, we’ll get a little tougher!” the big-chin cohost shouts. He reads the next question. “Who is Carmindor’s best friend?”
“Euci! A little harder than that!” Darien eggs them on.
“How about what Euci does on the ship? Or in which episode does he betray Carmindor to the Nox to save his colony? Or which episode does that colony blow up anyway?” I mutter. “How about that question, pretty boy?”
The crowd chants louder. “Dunk tank, dunk tank, dunk tank!”
“What’s the name of the ship?”
“Prospero!”
“What is the Federation salute called?”
“The promise-sworn!”
The female cohost grins and whips out the final card, clearly about to go in for the kill. I edge to the front of my seat.
“What does Carmindor call his love interest in the final episode of the series?” she asks.
Darien hesitates on that one. He looks around, out at the crowd.
“No cheating!” the cohost cries. “Are you stumped? Ten, nine…”
Up on the plank, Darien chews on his cheek, rocking back and forth. I snort. Of course he doesn’t know this one. He’s never watched an episode of Starfield in his life.
“Five! Four! Three!” The crowd begins to count along. The cohost spreads her feet apart and aims with one hand—very dramatically, which is not at all a good way to aim a water gun—as Darien scrubs the back of his neck, looking puzzled.
“Two…ONE!” The crowd cheers.
The female cohost fires her shot and it hits the bull’s-eye directly. A siren wails and a flashing light spins above Darien Freeman’s perfectly groomed head, and the plank slips out from beneath him. He goes tumbling into the water, and the crowd goes wild. They’re loving it.
Strangely, though, I’m not.
“It’s ah’blena,” I mutter, even though he’s underwater. Even though I’m seeing him through a TV. Even though he definitely can’t hear me and I’m just talking to a plasma flat screen. Still. If he’s going to be Carmindor, it’s something he should know. Dunk tank or no dunk tank. “Ah’blena is what he calls her.”
Onscreen, Darien emerges from the tank soaking wet and flips his wet hair out to the crowd, and they scream, reaching up their hands. He grins at them.
I scowl. At this point, the only way the movie can salvage itself is by announcing the perfect villain. Obviously, it should be the Nox King, because how cool would that be? The Nox are the natural enemies of the Federation, but unfortunately the early-’90s SFX in the original series didn’t do so hot with their giant ears. A reboot could make them look way better. Plus—let’s be honest—think of the slash fiction potential. I glance at my phone, just to check the time, but I’ve still got a good twenty minutes before I’m on Pumpkin duty.
Onscreen, Darien takes a towel handed to him by a PA and begins to dry off. But then someone yells at him to take his shirt off. He pauses, turning back to the crowd.
“Really?” he asks them.
They scream in reply.
The screams get louder as he reaches for the bottom of his soaked shirt. I can already see the definition of his chest through the fabric. Everyone can. I groan. Why can’t life have a fast-forward button?
Unlike the twins, I’m not a Darien Freeman fangirl. And I’m definitely not a fan of that teenage wet dream of a show Seaside Cove.
But then Darien Freeman peels off his shirt, and my mouth falls open. His abs and chest beam across Catherine’s plasma TV, piercing through my sleepy brain like a ray of hope in this godless universe.
“He…he’s certainly buffed up for the Federation Prince,” I mutter. “I’ll give him that.”
I stare longer than I want to. Longer that I’ll ever—ever—admit. Darien, clearly loving every minute, spreads his arms and then, after a moment, flourishes a bow toward the audience.
The woman cohost begins fanning herself with her water gun. “Well. That makes up for you losing! Can I touch them?”
Outside, a rumble rips through the air so loud that it quakes the pictures on the mantel and I jump. Crap. I’d know that sound anywhere.
The Magic Pumpkin is coming.
Quickly, I turn back to the TV, clasping the remote like a prayer. “C’mon, just announce who the villain is!” I beg. “Please let it be the Nox King! Please! Please!”
“So, as the hero of the galactic Federation”—big-chin guy gives his cohost a pitying little lady look as Darien pulls his T-shirt back on—“you need a nemesis…”
“Think of the monologues! Think of the OT3s!” I cry out to no one. “Just give me something, universe!”
Big Chin goes on as though I’m not making a very compelling case. “Now I hear the villain has been very hush-hush and there have been some…rumors…going around. About a certain…lady.”
My mouth falls open wordlessly. If it’s a lady, it’s not the Nox King. But then it’ll have to be…
I lean in closer to hear over the rumble of the Pumpkin, holding the candle on the coffee table to keep it from rattling in its jar. Darien Freeman says something snarky, fiddles with his blazer cuffs, and wait for it…wait for it…
I squint to read his lips. They’re nice lips, at least. And I recognize the syllables that push around them. The way his mouth forms the villain’s name, the way his tongue curves around the sound.
The Pumpkin honks from the driveway, and next door, Franco begins yapping. The horn blares again, but Sage is going to have to wait—she’s way early, anyway. I just sit back, stunned. I can’t believe it. They picked the one villain—the one character—I never want to think about again. In the original Starfield, Prince Carmindor shouts her name to the skies with fist-shaking agony, in an image you may recognize from the internet meme “Angry Shouting Soul-Crushing Angst.”
Then again, she’s the only villain who makes sense for a movie reboot. The only one who could rip your weak human heart out of your chest and use your spine like floss against the teeth of agony and bitterness. Prince Carmindor’s one and only love interest.