The path to stardom for Jonathan Majors has been an unusually swift one, from landing his first onscreen role in ABC’s When We Rise in 2017 to taking the lead in his very own prestige series this summer with HBO’s social horror Lovecraft Country. In retrospect, we’re lucky that the Metroplex-bred Majors managed to work in a few indie-movie turns in between, including his lead role in The Last Black Man in San Francisco and opposite Matthew McConaughey in White Boy Rick, because he’s about to become officially blockbuster-tier only. Deadline reports that Majors will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, taking on an as-yet-unrevealed role in the Ant-Man sequel that will help to usher in the next, oh, two to three decades of entertainment.

As with most things Marvel, there’s an air of official secrecy around whom Majors will be playing. Still, as with most comic-book movie effluvia on the internet, there are already plenty of rumors that he’ll be donning the helmet of Kang the Conqueror, the time-bending supervillain who may well step in to fill the apocalyptic void left by Thanos. In the comics, Kang is one of the handful of super-foes to tangle with most of the major Marvel heroes, leaving the door open for Majors to become a common link between multiple franchises. It’s yet another huge leap forward for the actor who—whatever, man—did not leak the news to Texas Monthly during his recent interview.

Austin’s Andrew Dismukes Joins Saturday Night Live Cast

Becoming part of the Saturday Night Live Universe is, admittedly, on a slightly smaller scale than Marvel, though it’s no less of a launchpad for multiple film roles, or for attracting the scrutiny and scorn of Twitter. Those exciting opportunities and awful, awful burdens now belong to Andrew Dismukes, a University of Texas at Austin grad who got his start doing coffee shop open mics around town and hosting a comedy show at a campus co-op before having his breakout moment at last year’s Just for Laughs festival. The 22-year-old Port Neches native graduated from UT in 2017—the same year he began writing for SNL, while most of his fellow College of Communication grads were likely waiting to hear back from Thundercloud Subs. He’ll join the show’s forty-sixth season as a featured player as soon as it returns on October 3, when he will instantly make Pete Davidson look like a dried-up old fossil. 

Genevieve Padalecki to Play Jared Padalecki’s Wife (on TV)

Austinite Genevieve Padalecki doesn’t have to stray far from home to make her long-gestating return to acting—in more ways than one. Deadline reports that the former Wildfire star is joining the upcoming reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger, with the actress really stretching herself to play Walker’s late wife opposite her real-life husband, Jared Padalecki. Genevieve Padalecki, who met Jared while filming a recurring role on his series Supernatural, officially took a break from acting back in 2010 to focus on raising the couple’s three children. But seeing as Walker will be one of the few Austin-set shows to actually shoot there, the series will allow both to balance work, family, and pretending like they’re not sick of each other. (Besides, since her character is dead and appearing only in flashback to the tormented Walker, she probably just spends most of her scenes laughing and walking slowly through tall grass.) Deadline adds, with a dystopian flourish, that it’s also “perfect casting in the COVID era of social distancing on set that make romantic scenes particularly challenging,” saving Padalecki from resorting to the current soap opera trend of making out with mannequins.  

Not Even a Pandemic Can Stop Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team

Supernatural, by the way, recently wrapped its fifteenth and final season, marking the end of one of TV’s longest-running shows ever—a feat that’s been bested or matched only by such venerable mainstays as The Simpsons, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and, of course, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team. The hit CMT reality series was recently renewed for its own fifteenth season that’s set to premiere this fall, when it will follow yet another new group of vivacious hopefuls who are vying to become drastically underpaid by Jerry Jones—culled this time from worldwide auditions held virtually, thanks to COVID-19. The aspiring dancers were then placed inside a protective “bubble” to live, train, and film the series, from which, as per longstanding Cowboy tradition, they won’t earn a cent. 

Did Post Malone Get a New Tattoo?

Nope, but he did tie for Songwriter of the Year with rapper J. Cole at the BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards, where El Paso’s Khalid also took home Song of the Year honors. So at least the week wasn’t a total wash for him. We can only hope that Malone is already setting his sights on toppling Khalid in 2021, using his superior songwriting skills to craft a new composition by tattooing it down the flank of his thigh, maybe with some wicked, fire-shooting bass clefs.

THIS WEEK IN MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

It’s been another bang-up week for Matthew McConaughey, who kicked the whole thing off with the premiere of his family-and-hallucination-friendly role as a talking dog. He then ended it with his long-awaited, all-star table read of the eighties classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which finally got off the ground after weeks of technical difficulties and celebrity Zoom coordinating. Although McConaughey was pegged early on as an obvious shoo-in to play the iconic stoner Jeff Spicoli, that part ended up going to an equally method Shia LaBeouf. Instead, McConaughey put on a nice button-down to assay the role of the ticket-scalping wheeler-dealer Mike Damone. You can check out the replay (and hear McConaughey’s convincing endorsement of making out to Led Zeppelin IV) on the CORE Facebook page. 

Adding some extra boost to McConaughey’s week was the announcement that he’ll be headlining this year’s (virtual) Texas Book Festival—and also, the fact that he’s extremely high. Seriously, even for Matthew McConaughey, his Monday afternoon video address—announcing a special gift to people who preorder his upcoming magnum dope-us, Greenlights—felt exceptionally green-lit, to the point where that “gift” might well end up being McConaughey’s misplaced remote control. 

Luckily, he seemed to have sobered up to a mere whiskey buzz by Thursday, showing off a new promo spot for his Longbranch bourbon. The clip finds him sitting in a field, cackling about going to a lake house party being thrown by “oak and mesquite.” All in all, another delightfully confounding episode in the Matthew McConaughey Universe, which continues to exist in a parallel dimension beyond most human comprehension.