The world goes wild for Wonder Woman. J.K. Rowling's official Harry Potter sequel comes to Broadway. And a look back on the acclaimed show The Leftovers as it ends. It's Airy Monday, our news segment on magic and religion in popular culture! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

Last week, the Warner Bros adaptation of DC Comics' character Wonder Woman finally graced theaters and was met with an enthusiastic response by both critics and audiences. Wonder Woman is, contrary to several competing claims, not the first female superhero film to be made but it is already rapidly turning into the most successful attempt. At Comic Book Resources, Stephen Acevedo considers why Wonder Woman resonates when earlier female-centered films did not.

Although J.K. Rowling has refrained so far from penning another book in her acclaimed Harry Potter fantasy series, she's certainly not shied from contributing to it in other ways. One of the most notable is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a play that debuted on West End in London last year. Now, the play's set to make its American debut on Broadway in New York City in a little over a year from now.

There are occasional attempts at big-budget horror with examples like the Alien series or Universal's upcoming The Mummy but for the most part the genre tends to thrive at the low-budget end of the spectrum. At io9, Cheryl Eddy reviews Another Evil, a horror-comedy that features a group of ghost hunters who find that the supernatural is not the gravest threat to their well-being or sanity.

You may be familiar with the concept of the Rapture, a popular idea among some Christians that immediately prior to the Biblical version of the apocalypse the good and righteous will be spirited away to Heaven instantly. But what if that actually happened? And what if it wasn't clear it wasn't all part of God's plan? That concept lies at the heart of The Leftovers, the Damon Lindelof series about the people who are "left behind" when a portion of the world population disappears suddenly and without warning or any apparent reason.

And last (but not least) we return to Wonder Woman. Considering again why Wonder Woman works when other female superhero films arguably did not, The Mary Sue's Caroline Preece argues that part of Diana Prince's strength is that she's not a stereotypical "strong woman character."