Leading up to SDCC 2025, the headlines were screaming doom and gloom. “No Marvel in Hall H?” “DC Studios sitting out?” It felt like the sky was falling. For a decade, the rhythm of this convention has been dictated by Kevin Feige wearing a baseball cap and announcing movies that won’t come out until my future kids are in college. Without that anchor, I honestly thought we were looking at a ghost town. But walking out of the San Diego Convention Center on Sunday, sunburnt, exhausted, and clutching a custom King of the Hill trucker hat like it was the Holy Grail, I realized something.
The sky didn’t fall. In fact, this might have been the best San Diego Comic-Con in years!
Here’s the thing: SDCC 2025 wasn’t about staring at a big screen in a dark room for four hours. It was about being there. It was the year the convention finally spilled out of Hall H and turned the entire Gaslamp District into a living, breathing theme park.
The Hall H Pivot (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Xenomorph)
Let’s address the elephant in the room – or rather, the lack of Avengers in the room. Marvel sat this one out. Well, mostly. Robert Downey Jr. was practically trolling us from his Instagram feed all weekend with Doctor Doom hints, but he wasn’t on stage.
And honestly? It was refreshing.
Instead of a conveyor belt of logo reveals, we got depth. Saturday in Hall H felt like a film school masterclass. When George Lucas walked out, his first time ever at the con, the air just left the room. Seeing the creator of Star Wars sitting there, talking about narrative art with Guillermo del Toro? That’s not hype. That’s historic. You could hear a pin drop. It was emotional in a way that a trailer for Avengers 17 never could be.
But the real “I was there” moment came from FX. Noah Hawley didn’t just bring a teaser for Alien: Earth. He walked out and played the entire pilot episode. Just dropped it on us. The show is set in 2120, grounded, gritty – proper horror. Watching a room of 6,000 people collectively realize they were seeing something no one else in the world had seen yet? That energy is unmatched and definitely one of my favorite SDCC moments ever.
The Gaslamp Events
If you stayed inside the convention center all weekend, you did it wrong. This year, the studios realized that buying our attention is expensive, but earning our memories is priceless.
The undisputed champion of the weekend was PeaceFest.
HBO Max took over the Nova Nightclub and turned it into a glam-rock dive bar from an alternate dimension where Peacemaker is a festival organizer. It sounds ridiculous because it was. You walk through a “Quantum Unfolding Chamber” (fancy light tunnel, but it worked), and suddenly you’re drinking hard tea while a hair metal cover band screams Ozzy Osbourne covers.
And they had a live eagle. A real eagle. I don’t know who signed off on the insurance for that, but I salute them.
What made it work wasn’t the spectacle, though. It was the chill factor. They let us hang out for 45 minutes. Usually, these activations herd you through like cattle – get your photo, get your swag, get out. PeaceFest let us actually party. It felt less like marketing and more like a Saturday night out in the DC Universe.
Paramount brought out “The Lodge” where you could not only grab sliders but also get a custom-made Star Trek inspired cocktail as well as take some great pictures at their assorted photo opps.
Propane and Propane Accessories
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Hulu won my heart with Hank’s Backyard.
They terraformed a parking lot into Arlen, Texas. It was simple: lawn chairs, fencing, and a propane grill. I played “Alamo Pong” using trash cans and giant balls, which is way harder than it looks, by the way.
The best part? The swag station. Instead of handing out generic posters that end up crumpled in your hotel room, they let us customize trucker hats with patches. I waited in line for maybe twenty minutes, drinking “Alamo Beer” (which was just canned water, but let me have my fantasy), and made a “Dale’s Dead Bug” hat that I have not taken off since.
It was tactile. It was comfortable. It was exactly what you needed after walking ten miles in cosplay boots.
When Immersion Gets Scary (and Messy)
Not everything was a home run, though. FX’s Alien: Earth activation, “The Wreckage,” was visually insane. They built a crashed spaceship site next to the Hilton that looked movie-set ready, dripping with black goo and smoke.
I went through during the day, and it was… fine? A bit of a confusing maze. But I heard the “Code: Red” night mode was terrifying. The actors turned the aggression up to eleven, and the lighting did a lot of heavy lifting. My big regret of this year’s con is that I didn’t get the chance to do the night event.
Then there was the Twisted Metal bumper cars. Yes, Peacock let us drive bumper cars dressed up like Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck. It was chaotic fun, especially when Anthony Mackie showed up and started handing out PS5s to random people. Talk about a lottery ticket.
But we gotta talk about the Sonic Racing event at K1 Speed. Great idea: Sonic-themed go-karts. Execution? Oof. I heard horror stories of people waiting two and a half hours for food orders. It’s a reminder that no matter how cool the IP is, logistics are the real final boss of Comic-Con.
The Vibe Shift
Walking down 5th Avenue this year felt different. With the big superhero movie machine taking a breather, other fandoms stepped up.
The cosplay was fascinating. You couldn’t walk five feet without bumping into a group of four people in blue jumpsuits – the Fantastic Four hype is real, even without a panel. And Wicked? Everywhere. I saw at least three pairs of Elphabas and Glindas holding hands near the convention center steps.
Japanese gaming also had a huge moment. Western devs were quiet, so Bandai Namco and Sega just owned the floor. There was this life-size motorcycle from Code Vein II at Lou & Mickey’s that people were lining up just to sit on. It’s cool seeing gaming take up space that used to be reserved for Hollywood blockbusters.
And I have to give a shoutout to barleymash. They rebranded the whole restaurant as a “Retired Video Store” (think Blockbuster). I ordered a “Make it a Blockbuster Night”, bourbon and peach, and it came with a Red Vine straw. It’s cheesy, sure, but that’s why we come here! We want the cheese!
The Verdict
So, was SDCC 2025 a “quiet” year?
No way! It was a decentralized year.
We’ve spent so long thinking that Comic-Con is defined by what announcements come out of Hall H. But this year proved that the soul of the con isn’t in the press releases. It’s in the streets. It’s in eating BBQ in a fake Texas backyard, listening to hair metal in a fake dive bar, and getting scared by a fake alien in a hotel parking lot.
The big studios might have taken a break from the megaphone, but the culture didn’t skip a beat. If this is the future of SDCC—less staring, more doing—then sign me up for 2026.
Just remind me to bring better shoe inserts next time. My feet are never going to forgive me.
