Below is our list of heroes and monsters from 2022. For the last few years, we’ve taken inventory in this fashion—personal, idiosyncratic, and somehow when assembled a snapshot of yet another unsettled, strange, glorious 12 months. (You can read the full archive here.) At this point, it’s become something of a holiday tradition.

As always, our list is by no means exhaustive. Each entry reflects less the perfect distillation of the year than our personal obsessions. But if you take all of this together, we hope you have a pretty representative time capsule of 2022. If we missed one of your nightmares or loves, maybe we can pick that up next year.

We will be adding to this list over the holidays. And so if you do not immediately see some of the items it will feature—a German coup, a bot, Mike Davis, Eric Adams, cars, strikers, a flamingo—please, keep coming back. You may even discover a few more.

Top image credits: Plan B Entertainment/ZUMA; Tom Dorsey/Salina Journal/AP; Scott Garfitt/AP; Francois Nel/Getty

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