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The Sussexes are coming home. In a shock announcement on Wednesday, it was revealed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving back to the U.K. for an “extended period” with their two young children after six years of living in California.

But after the pair’s dramatic exit from royal life in 2020, will England — and the rest of their family — welcome them back with open arms?

According to the BBC, Harry and Meghan’s decision to move back was made relatively recently, with King Charles only being informed of the news on Sunday. Their visit to the U.K. in July was a turning point, royal watchers believe, as they spent time with the King and also the family of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana, some of whom 7-year-old Archie and 5-year-old Lilibet met for the first time.

“I think they had a really good trip here in the summer,” Sky News royal reporter, Laura Bundock, tells Variety. “Harry isn’t homesick, but I certainly think he wants his kids to understand more about British history and his homeland.”

Their children’s education has also been a consideration for the move. The BBC said that Archie and Lilibet have both been enrolled in school in the U.K., and as most new terms start by mid-September, it’s expected that the family will settle in over the next couple of weeks.

Though the King has welcomed the move to spend more time with Harry and his family, the BBC reported that it was a surprise to him and he had no involvement in the decision. King Charles was diagnosed with cancer in 2024, and though his treatment is said to be going well, Harry admitted in a BBC interview last year that he wanted to reconcile with him, saying: “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”

Harry’s brother, Prince William, is a different story. The two’s relationship has been said to be severely damaged following the 2023 publication of Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” and the bombshell 2021 interview he and Meghan did with Oprah Winfrey in which they leveled allegations of racism and mistreatment against unnamed members of the royal family. “Their friendship circles and acquaintances overlap to some extent,” says Bundock. “But I think to say that this is a moment of great reconciliation between those feuding brothers is far from reality.”

Harry and Meghan’s announcement on Wednesday also made it clear that they will not be returning to their royal duties in any capacity now that they will be living in the U.K. They will live as private citizens — likely outside of London, according to the BBC — and continue their endeavors in production with Archewell as well as Meghan’s lifestyle brand As Ever. It’s possible they could expand these operations outside of the U.S., but they will stay headquartered in America. They also will not be selling their Montecito home, leaving the door open for an eventual return.

But as Bundock points out, when Harry is carrying out philanthropic endeavours in the U.K., it may not always be obvious to the casual observer that he is not technically there in a royal capacity. “When you’re looking at Harry, for example, on an Invictus [Games] engagement, it looks, to all intents and purposes, like a royal engagement. He is still a member of the royal family. He’s just not a working royal.” It’s a situation that may well cause tension within the royal households, particularly as the senior royals coordinate their diaries behind the scenes (to ensure no one steals the limelight from each other) in deference to the King.

While Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood ambitions were said to be a key reason behind their original move to California, Archewell Productions and its deal with Netflix has been the subject of scrutiny in recent years. Though the pact remains in tact, sources told Variety in a story about the couple’s deal with the streamer: “The mood in the building is, ‘We’re done.’” (In March, it was announced that the duo is developing a film adaptation of the Afghan war memoir “No Way Out: The Searing True Story of Men Under Siege” for Netflix.) Other lucrative opportunities have also fallen by the wayside, including a deal with Spotify reported to be worth $20 million that yielded just one show.

Then there’s the issue of security and privacy for the Sussexes while in the U.K. It has long been a sore spot for Harry that while in the country, he has not been given the official police protection afforded to working royals (Harry’s cousins do not get protection). In California, the family hired their own private security team.

Last year, Harry lost a legal battle for higher security protections in the U.K., and told the BBC: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point.” Perhaps something has now changed, although U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Thursday that he hasn’t been made privy to any decision on security matters — nor would he be as that is decided by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, an independent body. “It’s a matter for Harry and for Meghan, and we wish them well in the move that they are making,” Burnham said (via BBC).

The couple’s move is also somewhat surprising as just last month Harry lost his long-running privacy case against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the tabloid Daily Mail. He was among a group of high-profile figures, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, who accused the publication of unlawful information gathering, including phone-hacking. Associated Newspapers strongly denied this, and ultimately a judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove their claims. Along with the other claimants, he’s expected to have to pay a hefty sum, which will be decided at a hearing on a later date.

It’s one of several privacy lawsuits Harry brought against tabloids over the past few years concerning his treatment in the media, and with the couple back on U.K. soil, it’s possible that this could become an issue once again.

Bundock points out that the couple have not always helped themselves by airing their many grievances in public, whether it was their Oprah interview, their six-part Netflix series “Harry & Meghan” or Harry’s memoir, all of which contained deeply intimate details about life within the royal family, who for the most part remain beloved — or at least respected — in the U.K. “The way they’ve aired these very personal grievances so publicly caused absolutely catastrophic problems and created such suspicion and mistrust, not just within the family but within the wider public as well,” she says. “So they’ve got work to do, winning over everyone.”

“Naruto” fans will have access to the popular anime franchise’s first-ever digital card game with Thursday’s worldwide launch of the officially licensed “Naruto Ninja Cards.”

Described as “a gamified card-collecting experience,” “Naruto Ninja Cards” lets app users collect the series’ most iconic characters in card form, uncover exclusive artworks, and enjoy real-time strategic activities with friends.

While the offering, the only free-to-play “Naruto” app on the App Store and Google Play, may seem like a small-scale project, the game has been five years in the making for Paris and Tokyo-based indie studio Sekai.

After launching as an anime-focused startup in 2021 and a few rounds of brainstorming and development talks, the initial four-person Sekai team set out to land the rights to make a “Naruto” app from Japanese broadcaster TV Tokyo. (There have been many unofficial “Naruto” apps and projects launched over the years, but few approved by the IP owner.) The network not only ended up partnering with Sekai, but also invested in the studio, marking its first investment in a Western company since it backed Crunchyroll.

“We spent a year and a half in Japan convincing the IP’s owners to trust us, and became the first foreign studio ever licensed to build this,” Samy Therain, cofounder and CEO of Sekai, says. “We’re giving our soul to this project. Half a million fans felt it, and showed up before we ever asked. Today’s launch is theirs.”

“The Sekai team’s genuine passion for ‘Naruto’ is what truly resonates with fans worldwide,” TV Tokyo head of global distribution Hiroaki Saiki says. “I trust that their care, patience, and deep understanding of the series’ core spirit will drive the success of this product!”

Sekai’s investors also include Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park (a band whose music is closely tied to the “Naruto” fan-edit community), NBA All-Star Rudy Gobert, Skycatcher, Makers Fund and Alexis Ohanian’s fund 776.

According to Sekai, since “Naruto Ninja Cards” soft launched Feb. 5 the app has seen 500,000 downloads, 93% of which it says is from organic search. The team credits its early success to “never-before-seen hand-drawn artworks, Easter eggs hidden for those who know the series by heart, and updates shaped by fan feedback since day one.”

Though today is the worldwide launch for “Naruto Ninja Cards,” just a few years ago the Sekai team was mourning the project before it even got off the ground.

After months of grinding at licensing expos and networking events, a chain-reaction of high-profile introductions (including meetings with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao and former Toei Animation boss Kanji Kazahaya) Therain says Sekai had its first sit-down with the TV Tokyo team in January 2022. Over the course of a year and a half living in Japan and months of discussion and negotiations and relationship-building with TV Tokyo, Therain says Sekai was “ghosted” by the network and didn’t know why.

From here, Sekai plans to not only grow the “Naruto Ninja Cards” app, but also expand into additional anime-inspired AAA games and even live events.

“When they don’t reply to one email, you know something is wrong, and so that’s what happened. And for a month, we had no news,” Therain tells Variety. “So that’s why I flew. I flew again to Japan, and I wanted to get a chance to go to them. That’s why my hotel room was across the street from their office because I knew, when I’m there, I need to be available if they want to talk to me. I’m right across the street, and so we went there with two of my co-founders and we waited a bit.”

The rain says the Sekai team received guidance from industry insiders that this turn of events likely meant the deal was going to “fade away.” Then they learned “Naruto” author Masashi Kishimoto had not signed off on the project.

“And then I get a call telling me it’s over,” Therain says. “Then I’m like, what can we do? It’s either we start with another IP from the ground up, and so it’s going to take a lot more time, or I don’t know — find something, do something.”

The Sekai team was at a loss, and Therain recalls calling his wife crying in the lobby of a hotel in Tokyo.

“The dream is over. It’s over. It’s just over. And she’s like, ‘What? Why? What happened?’ So I tell her, ‘The author said no,’” Therain says. “And you can’t talk to the author. You can’t get an audience with him. Once he says no, goodbye. And she’s like, ‘That’s great news!’ I’m like, ‘What didn’t you understand? The author said no.’ And she reminded me that the entire adventure was under the, let’s say the protection of Naruto, and our motto as a company was ‘Live your own shonen adventure’ or ‘Live like a shonen,’ which literally means when something goes bad, just fight for it.’”

The rain says his wife inspired him to keep trying and “so I just went home, and I wrote a letter to the author of ‘Naruto,’ not knowing if he would get it or read it or anything, I just put it on paper.”

“Because that’s what Naruto does. Naruto is famous for what we call talk no jutsu, which is literally the power of words,” Therain says. “And so, whenever he beats an enemy, it’s never with his fists. It’s after they exhausted all the weaponry and the magic and all this stuff. That’s when they start talking, and he turns the bad guy into a good guy because in ‘Naruto,’ no bad guy is bad entirely. You can turn anything into anything else. So I wrote on paper what ‘Naruto’ meant to me, every reason why I loved him, and how he changed my life, how he was there all the time, every time. And I ended it with [a part] which was exactly like Naruto: “I don’t know if you’re going to say like ‘Sorry, yeah,’ but no matter what happens, basically I will try again and again and again. Akiramenai, I will never give up because this is my ninja way. And this is what you taught me with ‘Naruto,’ Sensei.’”

The rain says he can’t disclose what exactly happened from there, but notes that after he sent the letter to TV Tokyo, the deal was approved by “Naruto” author Masashi Kishimoto.

“It was a beautiful loop, in a way, because I was in this moment where everything seemed lost, and I felt like Naruto, and I was listening to the music and I was crying because I was like, this is just reality matching with the dream,” Therain says. “So after that, the dream came true, basically.”

“Until the end of this year, it’s mainly two things: product iterations, to bringing more and more and more. On Discord, we have almost 1,410 people, and we’re known to reply to everyone to take into account what they ask for, to steer the product into the direction of what people really want, so there’s a lot of product shipping,” Therain says. “Obviously, we’re shipping a new set of cards every three months, and that’s a lot of work. So shipping more cards so that more people see their favorite characters that they can have, and they and they are happy about that. And then communication.”

The next part of the plan is “doing more stuff around ‘Naruto’ because our IP deal covers more.”

“So one of them is live events in stadiums like no one has ever seen before, and so we’re already working on that with people from Hollywood and backers,” Therain says. “But we really want to create events that will feel to people after they participated in these events that they can’t go to any other type of event ever again. We call that the ‘Super Bowl of Anime.’ So we really, really want to bring the epicness that we feel when we watch a Naruto fight to a real live stage, and that obviously involves pyrotechnic effects, holograms, and things like that. That’s very important to us.”