Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, now that filming of the Netflix romance film Saturn Return has wrapped on campus, Dinah Megibow-Taylor reflects on the reimagined version of UChicago the film appears to be capturing—and what that might mean.

You’ve seen When Harry Met Sally. And if you haven’t, and have only heard about it in passing on your UChicago admissions tour, I’ll save you the time and tell you that the protagonists of the 1989 film are akin to the UChicago students of today. Harry and Sally’s road trip conversation resembles one between that philosophy major who frequents Grounds of Being and the overbearing participant in your SOSC discussion. Even if unintentional, the nod to the UChicago type is appreciated, and that it still rings true today is a testament to its enduring relevance.

Saturn Return, the Netflix romance film set to release in late 2026 that dropped Charles Melton, Rachel Brosnahan, and Will Poulter onto our Quad, takes place at the UChicago of 2003. In 2003, Ratner had its grand opening. “Béla Fleck and the Flecktones” performed at Summer Breeze. Professors hosted the serious talk, “The Secret Social Lives of Eastern Gray Squirrels,” and students came abounding. It would be six more years until UChicago adopted the Common Application, and thirteen until North stood in the place of the long-lived Piece Tower. UChicago’s cultural evolution over this period has been astounding.

It’s easy to acknowledge the beauty of these places—fitting for a love story. But they’re home to an academic culture that, historically, has worked harder than it has played. Perhaps the movie will capture some of our timeless quirks, but the school they’ve portrayed is certainly not the UChicago of 2003. It’s barely the UChicago of today.

Filming scenes of Greek life at a school where fun famously goes to die is a peculiar creative choice: they chose a University of Chicago fraternity house to depict the typical model of college fun. (And, lament the brothers of Alpha Delta Phi, not even the most beautiful one.) Maybe that’s a testament to our ability to at least project happiness—the neo-gothic spires and perfectly-turning fall foliage are stately, ogled at by directors—or maybe it’s a credit to a changing culture. Perhaps this is just what admissions want: a change in image, a great loud call to those who ignore their personalized admissions flyers in the mail that says: “We’re normal now, we swear, and if you don’t trust us, trust Netflix!”

A second-year student extra said that it felt bizarre to participate in the fraternity scene: filming took more than nine hours while a mixture of around sixty students and non-students posed as partygoers, often waiting around in silence between shots. The scene was one associated with a “typical” college experience, one that UChicago might be inching towards. “It’s not a far cry from college life here now,” she reflected. “But it is easily provable that it was very different from college life here in the early 2000s, and anybody would attest to that.”

Our culture is now in flux: caught between the UChicago of ’03 and the culture projected in Saturn Return. To see Will Poulter sprawled out in the Quad or kicking around a soccer ball with members of the men’s team, to see silhouettes in the ultrawhite light pulsing from a silent Psi, still feels a little alienating. They were enjoying a certain UChicago that, for the most part, does not exist. But perhaps it will come to life more and more every year.

It will be exciting to see our campus and our friends in the background of the film, to be sure. However, it will feel a little glossy, a little smooth, and slightly disconnected from the despair that has permanently settled in Kent 107 and the angst of any good Doc Films production. Curiously, the UChicago of Saturn Return is closer in spirit to the UChicago of today than the UChicago of twenty years ago they’re trying to capture.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.