LeVar Burton is no longer interested in taking over as the host of Jeopardy! During an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Thursday, the actor and Reading Rainbow host explained why he's stopped pursuing the job he campaigned for earlier this year.

“I made it public that I wanted it for myself, that it made sense to me. And [my fans] were all about it," Burton said. "The crazy thing is that when you set your sights on something… they say be careful of what you wish for, because what I found out is that it wasn’t the thing that I wanted after all. What I wanted was to compete. I mean, I wanted the job, right? But then, when I didn’t get it, it was like ‘Well, okay, what’s next?'”

“The opportunities that have come my way as a result of not getting that gig, I couldn’t have dreamt it up," Burton continued. "If you had given me a pen and paper and said, ‘Well, so what do you want this to really look like?’ If it doesn’t include ‘Jeopardy,’ I wouldn’t have been this generous to myself.”

While Burton won't be taking over on Jeopardy!, he teased a return to television hosting in the future. "We’re trying to figure out what the right game show for LeVar Burton would be."

After the death of longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek last year, the iconic game show introduced a series of guests hosts to anchor the production while a new permanent host was being decided on. A Change.org petition urging Jeopardy! to give Burton the job garnered over 287,000 signatures. The online movement became so popular that Burton was booked by the show as a guest host from July 26 to July 30.

The game show has entered a tumultuous production period in recent weeks. Former Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards was selected as the new permanent host in August before being abruptly fired from the show just nine days after taking the helm. Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings and actress Mayim Bialik will take over hosting duties for the remainder of the year while the search for a permanent replacement continues.

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Today you can save 50% off ad-free HBO Max, easily one of the best streaming services around. Catch up on recently released movies like Malignant, Suicide Squad 2, Godzilla vs Kong, and more. In other deal news, Walmart has an ASUS ROG Strix gaming PC equipped with the very capable RTX 2060 SUPER video card for $999.99. You'd be hard pressed to find a more powerful gaming rig for the same price. The best PS5 SSD upgrade – the WD SN850 1TB with preinstalled heatsink – is also back in stock at the WD Store. These deals and more.

ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming PC for $999

This gaming desktop packs a lot of punch for a rig that costs just under $1000. The RTX 2060 SUPER is a very capable video card; it's pretty much on par with the RTX 2070 and can easily handle games at up to 1440p resolution. It's paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, 16GB of memory, and dual SSD and HDD storage.

50% Off 6 Months of Ad-Free HBO Max

HBO Max is taking 50% off your first 6 months of its ad-free streaming service. That drops the price to only $7.49/mo. HBO Max hosts some of the biggest recent releases like Malignant, Suicide Squad 2, Mortal Kombat, Godzilla vs Kong, Zack Snyder's Justice League, Tenet, and more. You'll look forward to watching Dune on October 22 and Matrix 4 on December 22 with your HBO Max subscription as well. You also have access to some great TV shows like Lovecraft Country, Friends, Rick & Morty, and South Park. This is one of the best streaming services around and at this price it's a steal.

2021 75" Hisense U7G 4K QLED Smart TV

Pick up the new 2021 75" Hisense 4K TV featuring Quantum Dot technology for the lowest price ever. This ULED TV supports Dolby Vision HDR thanks to a ULED panel that's rated for up to 1,000nits of maximum brightness and boasts a native 120Hz refresh rate and full-array dimming with 90 local dimming zones. It's actually one of the highest rated TVs around, especially for its price range.

Apple AirPods Pro Noise-Cancelling Earbuds

If you regret not picking the Airpods Pro up on Amazon Prime Day, here's your chance to get it today for an even lower price. Today the price of the AirPods Pro has dropped $70, or 28% off. This is the lowest price we've seen for a brand new pair of these highly rated earbuds. The AirPods Pro is considered by many to be the best truly wireless noise-cancelling in-ear headphones you can get, and a very big step up in quality from the standard AirPods.

30% Off the Official Apple Magsafe Charger

This is the lowest price we've seen for the official Apple MagSafe charger. It's compatible with both the iPhone and the AirPods. For iPhone 12 and 13 users, the magnets on the charger align perfectly with the iPhone so there's no finesse fidgeting required for optimal charging.

Back in Stock (Including 1TB Model): WD Black SN850 M.2 SSD with Heatsink

The Western Digital official storefront has all models of the SN850 SSD with heatsink in stock right now, and that includes the extremely hard to find 1TB model. This is currently the most popular (and probably the best) SSD to get for your PS5 storage upgrade. It's blazing fast drive with transfer speeds rated at up to 7,000 MB/s and a PCIe Gen4 interface and it comes preinstalled with a heatsink. It's also confirmed by Western Digital themselves to be compatible with the PS5.

$2,600 Off Lenovo ThinkPad 15" 4K RTX 3080 Laptop

Update: The ship date listed on Lenovo's site shows 4+ months, and that seems to be exaggerated. Some buyers have reported receiving their laptops in about 2-3 weeks.

Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are known for their best-in-class ruggedness and reliability, and even if it ever breaks down, Lenovo offers the best customer service in the business. Usually there's a steep price premium for this. Today, however, this $5000 MSRP laptop is discounted by $2600 thanks to a combination of an instant discount and a new coupon code that popped up today. If you're looking to purchase a ThinkPad that's got the power to do some serious gaming, you won't find a price like this anytime soon.

Dell XPS Intel Core i7 RTX 3060 Ti PC for $1369

Enjoy high end PC gaming on a budget. There is one of the best deals we've seen for an RTX 3060 Ti equipped PC and handily beats out a similar deal we saw on Labor Day by over $100. The RTX 3060 Ti is a very powerful video card; it's better than the previous generation's RTX 2080! It's a big upgrade from the 3060 non-Ti model and the one to get if you're going to play games at resolutions of 1440p or higher. This particular deal is found on the Dell Small Business site, but anyone can purchase there just like on Dell's regular site; you can treat Dell Small Business as exactly the same as Dell Home.

Video Game Deals

More Daily Deals for September 17

Age of Empires 4 is holding a Technical Stress Test starting today, and it will be open to everyone through Steam and the Xbox Insider Hub in Microsoft Store. The test will go from Friday, September 17 at 10 a.m. PT through Monday, September 20 at 10 a.m. PT, according to a news post on the Age of Empires website.

The four civilizations available in the beta are the English, the Chinese, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Abbasid Dynasty. Five different maps will be available with the developers stressing this test is "focused on the multiplayer experience." Single-player options available in the test include playing against AI in the Multiplayer Custom Lobby and playing the game's tutorial, Mission Zero.

A closed beta was held for Age of Empires 4 earlier this year. The developers made some changes since then including an increased camera distance option, "balance work" with the English and Chinese civilizations, and various bug fixes.

Age of Empires 4 is set to launch on October 28. It will be available on PC through Steam and Windows Store. Xbox Game Pass for PC members will be able to access the game on launch day.

It was recently found out that an hour of medieval history documentary material is included in Age of Empires 4.

PC players can get excited for the Steam Deck by checking out Steam Deck's specs and IGN's hands-on with Steam Deck. Anybody looking for the best PC games to play on it should check IGN's recently updated list of the best modern PC games.

Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.

Comic book fans can't throw a a wooden stake without hitting another story featuring Dracula. But how many comics focus on the artists who helped make Dracula such an iconic villain in the first place? That's where Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula comes in.

IGN can exclusively offer a new preview of this upcoming Humanoids release, which chronicles the fascinating and ultimately tragic life of actor Bela Lugosi. Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:

Lugosi is written and drawn by cartoonist Koren Shadmi, who previously published The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television through Humanoids. The book follows Lugosi's life, from his early struggles in Hungary to his move to the US and starring role in 1931's Dracula to his personal and financial hardships late in life. Humanoids' press release teases:

LUGOSI, the tragic life story of one of horror’s most iconic film stars, tells of a young Hungarian activist forced to flee his homeland after the failed Communist revolution in 1919. Reinventing himself in the U.S., first on stage and then in movies, he landed the unforgettable role of Count Dracula in what would become a series of classic feature films. From that point forward, Lugosi’s stardom would be assured… but with international fame came setbacks and addictions that gradually whittled his reputation from icon to has-been. LUGOSI details the actor’s fall from grace and an enduring legacy that continues to this day.

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula will be released on Tuesday, September 28, with a cover price of $24.99 for the trade paperback and $14.99 for the digital edition. The book is available to preorder on Amazon and through various other bookstores and comic shops.

Lugosi isn't the only 2021 release to put a fresh spin on the Dracula formula. The illustrated novel Dracula of Transylvania abandons the more tragic elements of the character, instead reimagining Dracula as "a complete horror."

Elsewhere in the comics industry, Marvel is gearing up for the release of Devil's reign, and writer Chip Zdarsky explains why Kingpin is now an Avengers-level threat.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Doom Patrol Season 3 premieres with three episodes on Thursday, Sept. 23. Below is a spoiler-free review.

No matter what WandaVision or Loki would have you believe, Doom Patrol is the most bonkers, cuckoo-bananas superhero TV show that’s also a complex, layered, and poignant character-driven exploration of grief and trauma. This is a series that can go from a muscled man accidentally giving everyone standing on a street an orgasm by flexing a muscle, or actual butts with teeth attacking people, to one of the characters being shunned out of a party for his own son because he’s considered a monster. Season 3 continues this trend, with hilariously weird moments seamlessly giving way to internalized therapy sessions you can't find anywhere else in the genre.

The second season ended on a huge cliffhanger, with the Doom Patrol losing the fight against the Candlemaker, an apocalyptic entity residing inside the mind of young Dorothy Spinner (Abigail Monterey). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the last episode of Season 2 was not finished in time, being pushed into becoming the Season 3 premiere, "Possibilities Patrol." This is by far the weakest of the three-episode premiere, with the long wait working against it. For one, we pick up exactly where the previous episode left off as if there had just been a week between seasons rather than a full year. Likewise, even if this show has never really relied on big superhero fights or long action sequences, the Candlemaker ends up as an anticlimactic villain that is dispatched just as quickly as he is introduced. The rest of the episode, then, is all about tying up loose ends for the characters. Worse yet, the episode over-relies on big, CGI monsters for spectacle, with the digital effects looking like something out of network TV.

Thankfully, the next two episodes are much better, as they get the ball rolling on the story for the rest of the season as well as manage a nice balance between hilarious weirdness and complex character stories. Episode 2, "Vacation Patrol," introduces the Brotherhood of Evil, who are as nefarious as they seem foolishly incompetent, sending an alien conqueror to a mountain resort on a mission and forgetting about it for decades. The second and third episodes serve as a single cohesive story about trauma and how you can’t just overcome it in one fell swoop; it’s something you have to continue to work through and improve on bit by bit. As opposed to doing a hard reset like many shows do with new seasons, Doom Patrol dresses the same character beats with wildly different and unique plots, making it feel fresh and exciting.

This season seems to be about acknowledging when you need help and learning to ask for it, whether it’s Victor (Joivan Wade) struggling with the fact that he can't control his remote-controlled body, Jane (Diane Guerrero) reeling from her experience in the Underground, or even Cliff (Brendan Fraser) realizing that a robot form doesn't necessarily make you invincible. After beginning to accept their powers and fates — then the origin of their powers — this season is about acknowledging that they won't be able to fully heal on their own, but that they need each other before becoming a proper team or even a family. The cast continues to give great performances, with Guerrero being a standout in the premiere, showing vulnerability and strength with nuance.

The third episode, "Dead Patrol," sends our don't-call-them-heroes heroes down a fun trip to hell with the assistance of the Dead Boy Detectives, in what is essentially a backdoor pilot for the potential spin-off based on the characters created by Neil Gaiman. Still, this works much better than the time the Doom Patrol was clunkily introduced in Titans Season 1. The boys are a fun, gloomy addition to the patrol, with their own emotional baggage, fun dynamics, and scary villains that they don’t give a s**t about, since they have better things to do than play superhero. Like usual, the episode gives us a few wild moments, like Cliff's dad hunting down pegasi in the afterlife, and a cool horror moment with a spider-mouth lady that tortures dead souls. By the end of this episode, it’s clear what the goals are for the rest of the season, setting the table for the characters' individual stories and motivations for the future. It’s a testament to the show's commitment to intimate character stories that the premiere ends before we learn who the Big Bad or the overarching plot for the season is, but we do know what each of the characters wants for their own self betterment.

In fact, these first three episodes give only glimpses of the villains for the season. We get the briefest of introductions to the enigmatic time-traveling Madame Rouge (Michelle Gomez), but spend more time with the evil duo of Garguax, the alien conqueror that has spent 70 years hiding in a mountain resort, and his faithful assistant, an alien completely covered in red body paint played hilariously by Billy Boyd. Like our patrol, the alien duo is also struggling with their own sense of purpose, and whether their lives have been building up to something or if they've spent decades waiting in vain.

Despite production problems murking the first episode, Doom Patrol Season 3 is off to a promising start, having tied up loose ends and setting up some emotionally devastating stories for the main characters, and also some time-traveling shenanigans that will hopefully pay off this season rather than in the next one. By the time "Dead Patrol" ends, Doom Patrol has fully reintroduced itself as the most imaginative and nuanced superhero show currently on TV.