Speaker 1: This podcast contains spoilers about the series WandaVision, Falcon in
Speaker 1: the Winter, Soldier Loki, and the film Black Widow, and
Speaker 1: only wat to the Watcher knows what else. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about a lot of stuff, so you have
Speaker 1: been warned. And Nowlex re Vision, Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: the debut episode of expert Vision, the Crooked Podcast, where
Speaker 1: we discuss all the happenings in the various nooks and
Speaker 1: Cranny's nerd culture joining me today. He's a writer on
Speaker 1: Rick and Morty on the upcoming She Hulk Show. He's
Speaker 1: one of our regular rotating hosts and incredible flex for
Speaker 1: My Guy on Amazing Spider Man issues seventy nine to eighty.
Speaker 1: Find them at your local comic shop in a month
Speaker 1: and a half. The great and talented Cody Zigler. Zigler,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: I am great? First of all, thank you King for
Speaker 2: that intro. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to
Speaker 2: see it. I love when I get gassed up at
Speaker 2: twelve thirty on a on a Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 3: I love I love all of it. Man. How are
Speaker 3: we doing? How are we living over here?
Speaker 4: We're living pretty well.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, and just to gas you up even further,
Speaker 1: the apartment is coming together, not just from the content
Speaker 1: that you're putting out on the social media feeds, but
Speaker 1: I can see it live and the zoom behind you.
Speaker 4: It's looking great, and it's looking thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I got this here, couch set up, I got my
Speaker 2: little bar cart. Yeah all right here. You know, it's
Speaker 2: slowly becoming from a dirt bag bachelor pad to just
Speaker 2: a normal bachelor pad. So like we're thriving over here
Speaker 2: in a storic Filipino town.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it, and the people love it, and
Speaker 1: the community is happy to have you as part of
Speaker 1: as their neighbors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the skunks have welcomed me and now one of
Speaker 2: them at one of their own.
Speaker 1: Let's go to previously on our news segment. First up,
Speaker 1: the good people at Disney and Lucasfilm announced Star Wars
Speaker 1: Visions and dropped the trailer for Star Wars Visions and
Speaker 1: anthology series featuring nine short films produced by seven of
Speaker 1: the top Japanese anime studios around, including production ig of
Speaker 1: Ghosts in the Shell Fame. It arrives on Disney Plus
Speaker 1: September twenty second. This trailer had me so unbelievably excited.
Speaker 3: I was so hyphed.
Speaker 2: It's like if you could distill down every single thing
Speaker 2: that I love that brings joy in my heart. It's
Speaker 2: lightsabers and like fast paced, nigh incomprehensible anime showed in
Speaker 2: fight scenes. I want all of it injected directly into
Speaker 2: my vein.
Speaker 1: I also love that they were like, you know what, actually,
Speaker 1: Grievous was kind of an anime character. Now let's actually
Speaker 1: do it with this multi armed lightsaber wielding Jedi person.
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 1: It looks so unbelievably good and as Lucasfilm producer Josh
Speaker 1: Rhyme said, each studio has different styles and different tones,
Speaker 1: and that really came through in the trailer, like, yeah, Settle,
Speaker 1: each little snippet from each little short film has its
Speaker 1: own vibe.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's one of my favorite. I mean, they
Speaker 2: haven't done those in a while, Like I always love those,
Speaker 2: like like like Anthology animated series used to watch, Like
Speaker 2: I think Something Circus was one I remember watching the eighties,
Speaker 2: but it was like just a like four or five
Speaker 2: different shorts off from like the top directors at the
Speaker 2: time doing stuff, and like this is something that I
Speaker 2: haven't seen in a very long time, and I'm so
Speaker 2: stoked that they're just like taking these giant swings on
Speaker 2: Disney or I guess Disney Plus. But like Lucasfilm was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna like this were based off Samurai film. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go back to like Tuitar, like the thing that
Speaker 2: that sort of kicked out all this stuff, and like,
Speaker 2: just give Studio trigger Blanche to make the wildest thing
Speaker 2: they want to possibly make.
Speaker 1: It's so so fun. Asian representation immediately increases by about
Speaker 1: thirty in.
Speaker 4: The Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it.
Speaker 1: Honestly looks so like you're the I mean, you know
Speaker 1: a lot more about anime than I do. What are
Speaker 1: your like, what are your touchstone pieces of of.
Speaker 2: Oh Boys story? I mean, hope you have forty forty
Speaker 2: five minutes. I'm gonna yell directly about them. Uh uh
Speaker 2: Astas I mean that's the ago, that's the one that
Speaker 2: got me into it. As soon as as Tunami dropped
Speaker 2: when I was like twelve, I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be my personality for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 3: All Right, this is it. It's done.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I got that, you know, Cowboy Bebop
Speaker 2: just a great mix of like all the weird genre
Speaker 2: stuff and then just like oh they also are like
Speaker 2: it's like an X file and every people they do
Speaker 2: it do a weird thing. And and and then I
Speaker 2: got I gotta hold it down for Mobile Studit Gundam,
Speaker 2: I cannot. I would be remissed if I didn't mention
Speaker 2: my giant love for Mechs if I've asked about the anime.
Speaker 2: So like there's like my three favorite series, but like
Speaker 2: like just the animation, Like I just like I loved Eva,
Speaker 2: Like I just watched the last Ava and like no
Speaker 2: spoils about the movie, but like the animation is fantastic,
Speaker 2: and like one of my favorite things about animation is
Speaker 2: that like you can do so much with it, Like
Speaker 2: they have like the two D stuff they have, the
Speaker 2: three D stuff they have like live action with like
Speaker 2: animation mixed over it. And like I love when like
Speaker 2: studios get to like let lose because I think from
Speaker 2: the West, from a Western perspective, we're used to like
Speaker 2: you know, Bob's Burgers, Simpson's like very like stripped down
Speaker 2: and like so you see when you get things like
Speaker 2: primal or even like two d original Clone Wars series
Speaker 2: and they just fucking go all out for animation. You're like, oh, wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is it, this is what I want. This is interesting.
Speaker 2: It's nice getting that that that the you know, that
Speaker 2: shot of nitrous and into like our our cinematic viewing
Speaker 2: when it comes to animations. I'm so I'm so over
Speaker 2: the moon for this. I cannot wait. I hope they
Speaker 2: get eight hundred million seasons of this, and this is
Speaker 2: something that comes out every year.
Speaker 1: It feels like a thing that kind of obviously it's
Speaker 1: in some form of fashion like a test run, but.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, this is gonna hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I've never been more convinced that a thing
Speaker 1: will hit, Like there will be there's a built in
Speaker 1: audience that is gonna snort this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Stock is at an all time high for weeb nonsense,
Speaker 2: and this is exactly what what we need right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Spider Man trailer dropped after twenty four hours in
Speaker 1: which someone associated with the VFX production maybe leaked a
Speaker 1: video of.
Speaker 4: A phone that was playing the trailer.
Speaker 1: That person has probably been sniped by Kevin Feigey and
Speaker 1: their body has been shipped to a black site somewhere,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about it, because the trailer was super
Speaker 1: exciting and has a lot of people talking, and man,
Speaker 1: I just can't believe like the audacity to be like,
Speaker 1: let's do one More Day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, enormous swing on their part. No one's coming,
Speaker 2: Like I'd been in that building and like I didn't
Speaker 2: see that one coming. I was like, this stuff great.
Speaker 2: I'd not say they picked the one the most divisive
Speaker 2: Spider Man story. You'd be like, you know what, We're
Speaker 2: gonna make this great.
Speaker 4: So let's say so let me add some context here.
Speaker 4: One More Day in the wake of Civil War.
Speaker 1: Civil War the storyline in which Spider Man's identity is
Speaker 1: revealed in one of the great like shock cliffhanger pages,
Speaker 1: like in recent Marvel history, He's a Spider Man, unmasks
Speaker 1: Tony Stark standing behind him.
Speaker 4: Uh and one More Day?
Speaker 1: Was it like kind of attempt to deal with the
Speaker 1: fallout from that. Obviously Spider Man had guarded his secret
Speaker 1: identity quite closely, and all his enemies are like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's open season on Peter Parker now, so how do we.
Speaker 4: Deal with this?
Speaker 1: So one way they dealt with it was make a
Speaker 1: deal with Mephisto. Literally the Devil, the Marvel's version of
Speaker 1: the Devil to erase this from happening in exchange for
Speaker 1: Peter and Mary Jane's marriage breaking up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was then recontextualized again by Joe Cassada as kind
Speaker 1: of like doctor Strange getting involved and making everybody forget
Speaker 1: and they're just doing it. Man, it's wild. They're doing
Speaker 1: this shit, as you mentioned, extremely divisive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 2: This is the one, Like this is the character that
Speaker 2: they got back, probably the latest, I'd say, like, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess Fantastic four, but like in the cultural like
Speaker 2: Phase three and four, like Spidy is the last one
Speaker 2: they got back. And not only is it the one
Speaker 2: that they got back, they're beating everyone to the punch
Speaker 2: with doing the first multiverse movie, like Justice League attempted it,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure they feel a little undercut now that
Speaker 2: they know that they're doing the flash one that has
Speaker 2: all the different Batman's. But like this is the one
Speaker 2: that I'm personally most stoked about. Like I love that
Speaker 2: they were finally being like all right, it opens up
Speaker 2: so many doors. It's like, all right, besides, just like
Speaker 2: Sony shit, like does it mean that like Fox stuff
Speaker 2: that they now have. Can they get in like can
Speaker 2: the Netflix people like is punched. We're gonna show up
Speaker 2: in court, like what's gonna happen?
Speaker 1: I mean it feels like, you know, X Men on deck,
Speaker 1: but so pretty much this is confirmed. Right, We're going
Speaker 1: to see Alfred Molinas in the trailer, so he's there,
Speaker 1: major villain from the original Spider Man movies. We're gonna
Speaker 1: see the Green Goblin. We see a pumpkin bomb in there,
Speaker 1: we see the fallout for what we imagine as an
Speaker 1: attack by Electro, and we see like the silhouette of
Speaker 1: the Sandman seeming like he's protecting Peter. Actually yeah, and
Speaker 1: then of course Vulture already in the movies. So we've
Speaker 1: basically got the Sinister Six on deck.
Speaker 4: This is wild. Now.
Speaker 1: In the comics, Peter only beats the Sinister Six two ways.
Speaker 1: The first way is the Sinister Six are legitimately fucking
Speaker 1: morons and they're like, yo, let's I know we got together,
Speaker 1: all six of us, but let's attack Peter one by one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah's a big final kung fu fight energy, Like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're gonna take this guy on one at
Speaker 2: a time. He's gonna kick us in the face, and
Speaker 2: then then we're gonna be defeated. Yeah, it's they never
Speaker 2: really stick the landing when it comes to beating Peter Parker.
Speaker 4: So that's the one way.
Speaker 1: And then the second way is he gets back up
Speaker 1: now strange doctor Strange in the movie doing doctor Strange shit,
Speaker 1: doing typical doctor Strange.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of a scumbag ego maniac.
Speaker 1: Me flick up the whole status quote for you real quick, right,
Speaker 1: And it's not even like I'm helping Peter.
Speaker 4: It's more like Wong told me not to do it,
Speaker 4: so I'm fuck do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like all right, I'm all right, I give
Speaker 2: you a mulligan on the time. Fool me once I
Speaker 2: messed up with the timestone right right, second time, I
Speaker 2: can do the multiverse that I got locked in the back.
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 4: King.
Speaker 1: They must like divert him somehow, right like sea way
Speaker 1: through the movie, he has to go away because he's
Speaker 1: too op like as well, like he would just like
Speaker 1: snap his fingers and then all of Sudder's six just
Speaker 1: go to like some hell dimension.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I imagining like he's gonna get sucked aside pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: He's like he's a guy that can like do his
Speaker 2: little gang signs and just makes dock Hawk's arms disappear.
Speaker 2: Like I'm imagining he's gonna get sucked away and then
Speaker 2: like we'll see what happens with him in the Multiverse
Speaker 2: of Madness Doctor Strange's second movie, and like that'll explain everything,
Speaker 2: because yeah, he embarrassing everybody in that center to sticks
Speaker 2: real quick. It'd be a one act movie. It'd be
Speaker 2: in and out. You know, it'd be very short.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, people, like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: everys's wander vision.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of like Mephisto.
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm a.
Speaker 1: Fystem, a fystem I don't And people are like, man,
Speaker 1: is this the real Strange?
Speaker 4: Is he Mephisto? He's why would he be this reckless?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like doctor Strange, not in the comics, is a
Speaker 1: reckless guy. His character loop is basically, oh, let me
Speaker 1: fool with this demonic shit to get something done, and
Speaker 1: then oh no, the fallout from the demonic shit, and
Speaker 1: then finally I've learned my lesson. I'm not gonna fuck
Speaker 1: with the demonic shit anymore, and then the cycle begins again.
Speaker 1: But unless right, notably, you know, in World War Hulk,
Speaker 1: he like drinks the vial of Zomb in order to
Speaker 1: deal with the Lulk and then has to deal with
Speaker 1: the old fallout from like being possessed by Zomb.
Speaker 4: For a while.
Speaker 1: But like in the movies, the ancient one is like Stephen,
Speaker 1: don't like steal books, don't fuck with time, don't do
Speaker 1: all that shit. And then Steven's like, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it anyway, and then succeeds like he learned the.
Speaker 4: Exact opposite lesson of what everybody told him to.
Speaker 1: So now when it comes time to push the envelope,
Speaker 1: Doctor Stranger one hundred gonna push the envelope and and
Speaker 1: Wong's warning not to do it is anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like his biggest, biggest character with this, Thus Fards
Speaker 2: giving Denos the timestone, It's like, hey, trust me, it's
Speaker 2: gonna work out in the end. It's gonna take a
Speaker 2: couple of years to get there, but trust me, we're
Speaker 2: going to take the landing even though everyone told him
Speaker 2: not to do it. So like that's that's really built
Speaker 2: into his cinematic character quality, Like that's his arc is
Speaker 2: being an ericon ansehole.
Speaker 1: Now, some fun little tidbits from the trailer as Peter
Speaker 1: is being interrogated by Stewie from Succession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't see the bottle of coke
Speaker 2: right under his gun holster.
Speaker 1: We see that Stewie belongs to an agency called the DODC,
Speaker 1: the Department of Damage CROLL, which is a public private
Speaker 1: partnership between Stark Industries and the government to basically like
Speaker 1: clean up damage. It's one of the great Like Tony
Speaker 1: Stark is actually one of the biggest pieces of shit
Speaker 1: in the Marvel University. He has figured out a way
Speaker 1: to monetize the destruction that he himself is responsible for.
Speaker 3: He puts money back in his own pocket whenever he
Speaker 3: boots up a new Iron Man. So it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: You know, no notes, it's no notes at all. It's
Speaker 4: absolutely unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else we have MJ and Peter chilling
Speaker 1: on the roof of Midtown School of Science and Technology
Speaker 1: with MJ, which is with MJ kind of making a
Speaker 1: reference to Jessica Drew aka Spider Woman, who will be
Speaker 1: in into the Spider Verse two played by Isa Ray
Speaker 1: of course not a Marvel movie.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: We see the Black Spider Man uniform which uh is,
Speaker 1: how did I can't wait for him to pop this
Speaker 1: one out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I Also I can never trust these trailers because with
Speaker 2: the remember what the in game trailers like, they just
Speaker 2: fully threw in characters that just weren't not dressed the same.
Speaker 2: So like, I'm like, is that actually in the movie?
Speaker 2: Is it gonna be something different? Like are they just
Speaker 2: gonna use their crack VFX team to put another suit
Speaker 2: on them or what the deal is?
Speaker 4: One hundred percent?
Speaker 1: Like, there's a there's a part of this trailer where
Speaker 1: is talking to someone who is in a car. That
Speaker 1: person looks to be completely like photoshopped in over somebody else.
Speaker 4: Like who is Peter actually talking to?
Speaker 1: That is the question because that is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: not gonna be who he's talking to. The big theory
Speaker 1: is that, in addition to the Sony villains definitely being
Speaker 1: in this, will we see the previous Spider dudes? Will
Speaker 1: we see Andrew Garfield? Could we also possibly see Charlie
Speaker 1: Cox from Daredevil aligning the Netflix Marvel multi versus. That
Speaker 1: has not been confirmed at all, But what do you
Speaker 1: think Spider Ham? Could we see Spider Could we see
Speaker 1: Spider Ham in here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna see nor Spider Man. He's gonna swing through,
Speaker 2: deliver a couple of downbeat jokes, then swing out.
Speaker 3: Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can only guess with the multiverse have carte blanche,
Speaker 2: and it seems like they basically own everything Marvel side
Speaker 2: except for Sony stuff, you know, outside of the deal
Speaker 2: they just worked out with them. I feel like you
Speaker 2: can do anything, like I would love to mean, they're
Speaker 2: in New York, like I'm I'm part of me is
Speaker 2: wondering if like they're gonna use this as like, you know,
Speaker 2: our universe, like, oh, we have depowered Jessica Jones, we
Speaker 2: have depowered power Man, and maybe we'll maybe in this
Speaker 2: universe that we go to with Andrew Garfield will see
Speaker 2: Oh there's like the actual powered version of of you know,
Speaker 2: whoever character is in it. Like maybe that's how they're
Speaker 2: getting around loophole because it seems like a true combic fashion.
Speaker 2: Now they have an infinite blake check with an infinite
Speaker 2: mountain of zeros that they can cash whenever they want to.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, this was super fun.
Speaker 1: What is your wildless theory of what might possibly happen
Speaker 1: in this movie?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, okay.
Speaker 2: I think, uh, Peter is gonna get stuck in the
Speaker 2: Sony verse, like he's gonna be completely cut out from
Speaker 2: the mc years.
Speaker 3: He's gonna be sticking. He's gonna drop in. It's like
Speaker 3: a porter's gonna open up.
Speaker 2: He's gonna fall into like a crab shack outside of
Speaker 2: San Francisco and see Eddie Brock Pulp and a Mercy.
Speaker 2: I be like you would have come with us, and
Speaker 2: then like they're gonna ride off into like the sunset.
Speaker 2: That's my That's my wildest big swing pitch for like
Speaker 2: how they get around getting Peter back into the MCU.
Speaker 1: My wildest big swing pitch is Ultimate Universe, Ultimate spier
Speaker 1: Man Peter Parker spoiler like is grievously wounded taking out
Speaker 1: the Sinister Six, and in the kind of like converging
Speaker 1: of multi verses, we get Miles Morales introduced into the MCU.
Speaker 3: Boy Boy.
Speaker 2: At the last fifteen minutes, I see a fucking black
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican kid pull up the last game over. I'm
Speaker 2: doing three laps around that theater. It's game over. B
Speaker 2: You're never seeing me again. I'm done. I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: be living that. I'm gonna live at the Vista. It's
Speaker 2: gonna be game over.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait for this movie will be released December seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. See y' all there, and then finally
Speaker 1: seemingly responded to Bob Jpex's y Chi's an interesting experiment comment,
Speaker 1: The Disney CEO revealed on an investor call that hunk
Speaker 1: Chi would only appear in theaters, it was not going
Speaker 1: to be streaming, much like the Black Widow strategy of
Speaker 1: a few weeks back, and then he characterized that kind
Speaker 1: of rollout as an interesting experiment. The shunk Chi star
Speaker 1: fired back on social media, writing in part quote, we
Speaker 1: are not an experiment.
Speaker 4: We are the underdog. We are underestimated. We are the
Speaker 4: ceiling breakers.
Speaker 1: It ended there clearly, like all sides decided, Okay, that's enough,
Speaker 1: go to your corners and let's launch this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That screams like one of those things where like, even
Speaker 2: with the best context, it's one of the things you like,
Speaker 2: maybe you just shouldn't have said that out louder. You
Speaker 2: should not have left the confines of whatever zoom call
Speaker 2: you had. He's not going to do anything but poison
Speaker 2: the good will.
Speaker 1: Just like, let's be as careful as we can as
Speaker 1: we launched this film speaking of shang Chi. So the
Speaker 1: premiere was here in Hollywood at the you know, up
Speaker 1: on Hollywood Boulevard, at the l CAPI ten and the
Speaker 1: famous Manchinese Theater. And okay, so this is a story
Speaker 1: I told on social media and I'm gonna tell it
Speaker 1: here now to give it the full context.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: I received an email saying, hey, you've been confirmed invited
Speaker 1: for and I'll admit it does say in the subject
Speaker 1: line the shan Chep Premiere.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: And then it was a whole lot of text about
Speaker 1: stuff with like and it's one of those pr emails
Speaker 1: where like certain things are highlighted to let you know
Speaker 1: it's important cause there's so much text. And most of
Speaker 1: the stuff those highlighted was like what time to arrive,
Speaker 1: where to go so that you can check in? I thought,
Speaker 1: and again I just scanned the email. This is a
Speaker 1: hundred present my fault. I thought, Okay, this is just
Speaker 1: like a screening or it's one of those screenings that
Speaker 1: happens in parallel with the premiere. When Rise of Skywalker launched,
Speaker 1: right there was like the premiere and they had screenings
Speaker 1: that were going on at the same time across the street,
Speaker 1: and you didn't have to walk the red carpet to
Speaker 1: get your credential to go into like the press screening
Speaker 1: all that stuff and just knee jerk.
Speaker 4: I assumed it was that.
Speaker 1: And then I invited my friend Sean right and I
Speaker 1: forwarded him the email here's where.
Speaker 4: You got to go. He didn't flag anything.
Speaker 1: So I show up at Hollywood and Orange and I'm
Speaker 1: in black workout shorts, a black hard Boiled T shirt
Speaker 1: the John Woo movie Hard Boiled, a black like baseball cap.
Speaker 1: I got a little Man Bagget's from Tomorrowlan, who's a
Speaker 1: Japanese brand. And then I'm wearing and this is the
Speaker 1: toughest part, admittedly, and I'm wearing Adidas slides, no socks, and.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, I just I mean, I said this under
Speaker 2: the tweet. But drip God, drip god, Jason came through.
Speaker 2: You killed that game. I love it like I love
Speaker 2: I love the cadsun and stuff it. I love that
Speaker 2: you made a statement. I got no notes I would
Speaker 2: think ELD be this.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And then the slides are the toughest part, not only
Speaker 1: because it's like no socks on the red carpet and slides.
Speaker 1: But it was like these are the slides I wear
Speaker 1: to like go run get the mail. Like they're not
Speaker 1: they're not in good shape, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like they're not doing great.
Speaker 3: They seen some miles, they've seen some stuff.
Speaker 4: The shread is worn down on those.
Speaker 1: And then my friend Sean was in like bur like
Speaker 1: birkenstock clogs, white socks.
Speaker 4: This is actually kind.
Speaker 1: Of very comfortable, like Uniclo like wool blend cotton. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and then an a twenty four T shirt
Speaker 1: like a studio not the studio releasing a movie that
Speaker 1: we get there, and so we're waiting at will call
Speaker 1: and we go in and we got you know, presented
Speaker 1: our credentials, got all our stuff, showed our vaccination status,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I got our things and then realized that
Speaker 1: the only way to go, like security was set up
Speaker 1: in such a way that we had to walk the
Speaker 1: red carpet to get to the movie. And so I
Speaker 1: got in and the first person like right to my
Speaker 1: left is like Benedict Wong.
Speaker 4: People are taking pictures of him. He's right there.
Speaker 1: I look up on the platform like maybe twenty feet
Speaker 1: away is Simoulu being interviewed, Like we're walking there and
Speaker 1: we look like dog shit. Now I want to say
Speaker 1: that it was both not as bad and kind of
Speaker 1: worse than it seems through social media. In the sense
Speaker 1: that it was not as bad. It was not as
Speaker 1: bad because nobody paid any attention. Nobody'd like notice there
Speaker 1: were cause players there.
Speaker 4: Nobody cared.
Speaker 1: And also, like you know how it is like la
Speaker 1: fashion rules are that the person who's dressed down the
Speaker 1: most is like the richest person, the most important person.
Speaker 2: About to say yeah, so you lucked out because of streetwear,
Speaker 2: Like he came through like when I'm I'm looking at
Speaker 2: the picture like right now on my giant widescreen, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, this guy is so comfortable. He's his
Speaker 2: What the subtext is like, this ain't no big deal
Speaker 2: because we get six more of these beautiful movies some
Speaker 2: shang cheap babies, so it's all good.
Speaker 3: We're just rolling through and I love it. I love
Speaker 3: the casual energy.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: So but on the other hand, it was worse in
Speaker 1: that I mean we were right there, like I walked
Speaker 1: by Ben Kingsley like it was and then we get
Speaker 1: inside the theater and they're streaming the presentation, like you know,
Speaker 1: the red carpet stuff, directly to the screen, so I
Speaker 1: could see, I could imagine what we looked like walking
Speaker 1: in the background of like these shots, and I was like, Yo, this.
Speaker 2: Was someone would definitely Oh, that's got to be the director.
Speaker 2: He's like a tike. He's got like a chill, like
Speaker 2: low key vibe like that someone was you. You probably
Speaker 2: got some brownie points in that or in that end.
Speaker 2: So like glass half full, I think I think I
Speaker 2: think you played the right card. Honestly, I would have
Speaker 2: pulled up in the exact same fit. To be honest
Speaker 2: with you, like short, short sides out maybe as you know,
Speaker 2: let's go, let's let's let's let's go take it on an adventure.
Speaker 1: Well, the lesson is, folks, just read your emails. That's all,
Speaker 1: read them all the way through. Yeah, okay, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the air lock. This is the segment where we discuss
Speaker 1: whatever it is the subjects that we are exploring in
Speaker 1: this particular episode. For this episode, the debut episode of
Speaker 1: Extra Vision, we're talking about the Disney Plus shows and
Speaker 1: how they kind of like set the stage for what
Speaker 1: Phase four is going to be looking over this stuff.
Speaker 1: Wanna vision Falcon in the Winter, Soldier and Loki. There
Speaker 1: were some really earth shaking, cannon shaking reveals and changes
Speaker 1: in all of these stories that if people didn't check
Speaker 1: in to those stories on Disney Plus, as my friend
Speaker 1: Andy Greenwell says, then they're going to be like, wait,
Speaker 1: why so there's a multiverse now? Wait hold on, Like
Speaker 1: the Super Soldier program was bad. Actually, so let's unpack
Speaker 1: that stuff and just talk about what are our favorite
Speaker 1: and we think most earthshaking changes are And I think
Speaker 1: this is just like really smart strategic storytelling on the
Speaker 1: part of these showrunners, which is there's no kind of
Speaker 1: there's none of these stories are gonna are something you
Speaker 1: can check out on if you want to stay up
Speaker 1: to date on the stuff, because everything is going to
Speaker 1: have something in it that really changes the paradigm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we're obviously about to get into it,
Speaker 2: but like it's what they have captured. I mean, I'm look,
Speaker 2: the calls come from outside the house. I'm in a
Speaker 2: huge stand. I love I love all this shit. I'm
Speaker 2: a company man through and through, so like I'm very biased,
Speaker 2: but like what I love that they've been able to capture,
Speaker 2: particularly with Phase four, is the like whenever you read
Speaker 2: a comic, if you're a combook fan, like the status
Speaker 2: quo is reset often and with great temerity. And I
Speaker 2: think something that's really captured with this is like you're saying, like,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, everything that we knew about the Super
Speaker 2: Soldiar program is actually bad. It's not a good thing.
Speaker 2: It's caused a lot of pain and suffering people across
Speaker 2: the world. Also, the big reveal is that like, hey,
Speaker 2: the multiverse exists, baby, so like we can have stories.
Speaker 2: We can have any story that we want to tell,
Speaker 2: we can now tell, and anything that we want to retcon,
Speaker 2: we can retconn or we can put things into it.
Speaker 2: And like now, if you want to see like Alligator Loki, no,
Speaker 2: let's pop in for an episode of Allegator Loki. It's
Speaker 2: gonna completely fine because we have a infinite number of
Speaker 2: universes to dive through into.
Speaker 4: That Alligator Loki will be back. I've never been more
Speaker 4: sure of anything that Allgator Loki.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna get pet Avengers at some point, Lockjaw
Speaker 1: and Alligator Loki and the other four frog Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: all of them are going to be here Rocket Raccoon,
Speaker 1: that's kind of below him. I guess let's start with
Speaker 1: Wana Vision, which came out in January of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Strange things afoot in Westview, New Jersey, an idyllic suburban
Speaker 1: town where a Vision and want to maxim Off have
Speaker 1: made their home. But of course everything is not as
Speaker 1: it seems. Their family grows quickly as Tommy and Billy
Speaker 1: are born, but there are a lot of other weird
Speaker 1: and mysterious and magical events that are taking place. This
Speaker 1: was based on Vision in The Scarlet Witch Volumes one
Speaker 1: and two from the eighties, which is a four issue
Speaker 1: and a twelve issue limited series, respectively. In West Coast
Speaker 1: Avengers forty five to fifty two, which is first appearance
Speaker 1: of the White Vision and the revelation that spoiler Wanda's
Speaker 1: kids are not real big air quotes there. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing for me with how this show changed
Speaker 1: the Marvel universe is we've with Disney's acquisition of twentieth
Speaker 1: Century Fox, has been a lot of like, how will
Speaker 1: the Mutants happen?
Speaker 4: How will the X Men happen?
Speaker 1: I think that you know, the recent Eternals trailer gives
Speaker 1: us yet another avenue for how the X Men might happen.
Speaker 1: But this was, you know, in the Marvel universe to date,
Speaker 1: you got powers either by science, experiment, science accident.
Speaker 4: Yep, you are a god and you know basically that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what we got here in WandaVision is the seeming
Speaker 1: hint that Wanda was born with her powers. Now could
Speaker 1: does that make her a mutant?
Speaker 4: Does? Is that a magical thing? We don't know?
Speaker 1: But in that flashback where we saw her parents' apartment
Speaker 1: get bombed, it is heavily suggested that she used tex
Speaker 1: powers in that moment. M.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was all these three shows hit three different,
Speaker 2: very slight different slices of the Marvel the Marvel over
Speaker 2: arching universe. We have Mystic high Strangeness Marvel, we have
Speaker 2: Espionage Military Marvel, and then my personal favorite cosmic Marble.
Speaker 2: And what really, what I really loved most about WandaVision,
Speaker 2: like you're saying, is that like it's sort of a
Speaker 2: mix of all three in a very fun, organic way,
Speaker 2: like I think you want to It was originally supposed
Speaker 2: to come out second from what I remember, is like
Speaker 2: it could being the first out of the gate where
Speaker 2: we have like we have like we have a deep
Speaker 2: dive into like what the sort of what the rules
Speaker 2: of like magic are in this universe because we didn't
Speaker 2: really get it that much in Doctor Strange, just like
Speaker 2: he does his hand things and whatever. It seems like
Speaker 2: only one it seems like really only one sect of
Speaker 2: people can learn magic in that sting. But then you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's there's different there's different gangs. There's different magic gangs
Speaker 2: running through these streets.
Speaker 3: Right now. We gotta act with the.
Speaker 2: We got lot of and I love that, but I
Speaker 2: also love the intredation of like you know, we have
Speaker 2: sword is like said on screen, like physically it's not
Speaker 2: just like Nick for You're hanging out with scrolls and
Speaker 2: space assumingly like it's we get all that, and then
Speaker 2: we have like the cosmic era, the cosmic of it
Speaker 2: all with like she's like actual projecting towards the end
Speaker 2: and like she's like gearing up and all that fun
Speaker 2: weird stuff that like, to me, it's the perfect distillation
Speaker 2: of like what a straight up comic book is and
Speaker 2: what it feels like. We're like we have this weird
Speaker 2: high concept premise. All right, we have vision and want
Speaker 2: to have a family. Uh, and we're gonna inject that
Speaker 2: with like some TV version of it by Heavy get
Speaker 2: met it, Like well, they take place in different sitcoms
Speaker 2: throughout every I love all that, and I also love
Speaker 2: that like they really held out for like the big
Speaker 2: marble of it all, like the big you know set
Speaker 2: piece fights towards the end, and like by that point,
Speaker 2: like we actually care about these characters, like you know,
Speaker 2: they've been in like six movies or whatever, but like
Speaker 2: we didn't really sit down and be like, oh, I
Speaker 2: like that Vision has a sense of humor, Like I
Speaker 2: like that he's funny, Like we don't get to see
Speaker 2: that side of it in most of these movies. And
Speaker 2: like I like that Wanda has a personalty, like she's
Speaker 2: funny in her own unique way. I and like I
Speaker 2: buy their love like I would like they end when
Speaker 2: like you know, she's erasing, resetting reality or whatever, sending
Speaker 2: it back to a road, and like like they had
Speaker 2: that that final kiss, I'm like, oh I get this.
Speaker 2: I I'm completely invested in the Vision, which is something
Speaker 2: I never would have said if I like halfway through
Speaker 2: a Silver War, We've like you're gonna cry when Vision
Speaker 2: dies again?
Speaker 3: I like, yeah that way, Yeah, then get out of here. Uh.
Speaker 4: There's also like a really.
Speaker 1: There's something really interesting about the way it the statement
Speaker 1: it kind of makes about like how powerful certain like
Speaker 1: desires are in the American subconscious, Like they're like so
Speaker 1: usually a superhero story is some one gets powers or
Speaker 1: their powers awaken and they step into this new world
Speaker 1: and have these amazing adventures out in this strange place,
Speaker 1: like Vision and Wanda have done that. They have their powers,
Speaker 1: but what they want is just like be normal. Like
Speaker 1: the next adventure to them is a house in the
Speaker 1: suburbs and let's have a family. And it speaks to
Speaker 1: the power of that desire and how universal it is,
Speaker 1: Like it's on every sitcom, as you noted, Like it's
Speaker 1: on every it's in every movie. Every story you read
Speaker 1: is some version of this kind of let's go out
Speaker 1: someplace and get like a one and a half you know,
Speaker 1: baths and three bedroom house and like have a family.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other part of it is we also learned
Speaker 1: like a really cool secret power that Vision had is
Speaker 1: an ability to buy a house without anybody.
Speaker 4: Having any idea.
Speaker 1: Like this guy, I don't know where he got the money,
Speaker 1: Like did he sell a piece of his fingernail like
Speaker 1: vibrate and get like two million dollars in money, like
Speaker 1: for vibrated, Like how did.
Speaker 4: You do this?
Speaker 3: I love the idea of him going to a bank
Speaker 3: to get a loan and then entering into escrow to
Speaker 3: buy a house in New Jersey and no one's like, hey,
Speaker 3: remember that time that giant dude floated down from on
Speaker 3: high to like buy a lot of land.
Speaker 1: He had no id, he was like apparently he was
Speaker 1: born three and a half years ago, but appear to
Speaker 1: be like a middle aged man.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely bizarre. But he had the money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that was he.
Speaker 2: Was the only dude that Tony was paying when they
Speaker 2: were on the New Avengers. That's the only one. There's
Speaker 2: like either you were or you you were or Falcon.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm sorry, I gotta go with you man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, you no money for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But like but but vision can buy a house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess like when you don't have to eat
Speaker 1: or buy cars like you do you save a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not paying for gas, he ain't nothing. He
Speaker 2: can fly, he float where he needs to. Yeah, he's good.
Speaker 2: He's probably got no doors. On the house too, so
Speaker 2: like before, because he could just like step through things
Speaker 2: and like you know, we got a lot of entry ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got he's got it.
Speaker 1: Some other things we learned are that something about Wanda's powers.
Speaker 1: She creates this hex sphere that changes the reality of
Speaker 1: everything that's happening inside, and Monica Rambeau goes inside of
Speaker 1: it and comes out with the powers that we think
Speaker 1: will lead to her.
Speaker 4: Becoming a spectrum.
Speaker 1: And so this raises the possibility that now we have,
Speaker 1: along with being born with powers, yet another way that
Speaker 1: you can be powered up, which is you come into
Speaker 1: contact with Wanda's magic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: You have these abilities, which is a tremendous thing. They
Speaker 1: also used Wanda's energies to power up Vision in his
Speaker 1: in his white vision form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very curious to see what comes out of
Speaker 2: this if we do get some like tertiary characters that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe they're not mutants or that in humans, but like
Speaker 2: this is like the their version of what that would be.
Speaker 1: Right, all those people that were inside, like what happened
Speaker 1: to them did did they were their cells mutated as well?
Speaker 1: It's like it is it's certainly on the table. Also, Sword,
Speaker 1: we get our first glimpse of Sword and we get
Speaker 1: to see how they work. They are the sentient I
Speaker 1: love Marble acronyms, so the freaking best, honestly, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: are the sentient Weapons Observation and Response Division. How long
Speaker 1: did it take them, by the way, just to sit there? Okay,
Speaker 1: Like how do we.
Speaker 4: Love it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love it because they have Hammer too in the comics,
Speaker 2: and like they just just never address what hammer is,
Speaker 2: like whatever, we're gonna fix this later, and they just
Speaker 2: never address what hammer could possibly stand for.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing also like is post Like I don't
Speaker 1: know if you read Nick Furyver Shield. It's like an
Speaker 1: eighties limited series where Nick finds out that like a
Speaker 1: shield is basically all a hydroplot like a lot of
Speaker 1: Captain America Winter Soldiers was based on this, and and
Speaker 1: so they just they dismantle Shield and then they rebuild
Speaker 1: it but also as Shield. But then they just change,
Speaker 1: like what all the what all that acronyms. They're like, now,
Speaker 1: let's turn the page at a new start, where what
Speaker 1: are we going to call it? We're also going to
Speaker 1: call it shield, but like they're just gonna change the
Speaker 1: entire agronum.
Speaker 3: We already have the shirt, so like there's a pre
Speaker 3: lock were.
Speaker 4: I got the pens. I don't want to get a
Speaker 4: new mouse path. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a rebranding. Will be good Chield two point zero.
Speaker 4: But I think one of the.
Speaker 1: A thing that I am really interested in is so
Speaker 1: sentient weapons observation and response to vision.
Speaker 4: Obviously, like the director h H.
Speaker 1: Tyler Hayward was like super invested in examining vision his body,
Speaker 1: understanding how it works. I think that there's a world
Speaker 1: in which this is like the MCU precursor to the
Speaker 1: Sentinel program, Like this is the start of the Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, I could see this.
Speaker 1: Is how this is how it begins. And then Hayward
Speaker 1: loses control of white vision. But like all the data
Speaker 1: that they got from examining him leads them to like
Speaker 1: kickstart the actual sentiment. That's a I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a theory or something that seems pretty obvious or whatever,
Speaker 1: but that's the thing that I've been saying.
Speaker 3: You know, A good thing that.
Speaker 2: I also love about Marvel is that, like you can
Speaker 2: they will leave uh they only something dangling for years
Speaker 2: and never pick it.
Speaker 3: Up for years and years and years.
Speaker 2: Yes, Like I think everything is an offering to them,
Speaker 2: Like I would be super into that's how they backdoor
Speaker 2: into the Sentinel program and like that's like, you know,
Speaker 2: if Wanda is the original mutant or like she's like
Speaker 2: the precursor for certainly mbidence, it seems like an easy
Speaker 2: end for how we get get those guys set up
Speaker 2: to fight each other.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you mentioned that.
Speaker 1: It's something I've noticed too, and as I've seen like
Speaker 1: more people writers with like improv backgrounds go into comics,
Speaker 1: it kind of like philosophically makes sense because a lot
Speaker 1: of it is this like oh there's this like yes
Speaker 1: that has been dangled for years and now someone comes
Speaker 1: in and just goes, I'm gonna take that.
Speaker 4: I'm an run with it, like another thing off that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the truly freeing thing about comics is I mean,
Speaker 2: it is daunting in that you have sixty years of
Speaker 2: sixty seventy years like Lord to deal from, but it's
Speaker 2: also like, yeah, this issue this person said he duck
Speaker 2: left under a fight, and then like you know what,
Speaker 2: six years later, I'm gonna pay that off and tell
Speaker 2: you exactly why he always Ducks left.
Speaker 3: We Heed's into a fight.
Speaker 1: Let's see, we got our first appearance of Agatha Harkness
Speaker 1: in WandaVision Ni Immortal Witch, Powerful Magic User. She tells
Speaker 1: us that Wanda is this fabled and previously thought to
Speaker 1: be legendary super uber ultra witch names Scarlet Witch, and
Speaker 1: we get that. Yeah, we get that first first mention
Speaker 1: of her actual code name, Scarlet Witch. And then of
Speaker 1: course we get the appearances of Billy and Tommy in
Speaker 1: the comics as Wicked and Speed. They're in WandaVision in
Speaker 1: their Wicked and Speed costumes, which was absolutely thrilling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: setting the stage for we can only assume the appearance
Speaker 1: of Young Avengers at some point.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're all there, They're all like, they're all
Speaker 2: later out there. Yeah, yeah, they're the only person they're missing.
Speaker 2: Is I think, is Hopling right? And I'm sure there
Speaker 2: there's gotta be a scroll hanging out there somewhere they
Speaker 2: can they can Hulkling.
Speaker 3: Is it.
Speaker 4: They've already got Kate Bishop we know is coming?
Speaker 1: Uh stature uh stature, is there is like already in
Speaker 1: the universe. Kid Loki like just appeared in the in
Speaker 1: the Loki series and then uh, Miss America, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: understand is going to be in Doctor. So that team
Speaker 1: is there, Uh super excited about that. Let's move on
Speaker 1: to Falcon and Winter Soldier, which I thought, this is
Speaker 1: so for me, the the least satisfying in terms of
Speaker 1: like execution as a story. But I give them heavy, heavy,
Speaker 1: a heavy pass because COVID like absolutely wrecked their production schedule.
Speaker 1: You could tell that Julia Louis Dreyfus was on set
Speaker 1: for an hour and that she might have done her
Speaker 1: own makeup.
Speaker 4: And hair, like it might have come in her own clothes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the one that screamed the most, Like
Speaker 2: we were supposed to be led up by Black Widow
Speaker 2: and then that just did not happen for a year
Speaker 2: and a half. So like she shows up, You're like,
Speaker 2: I feel like there was a scene in another movie
Speaker 2: that gave me context like what this person, because she
Speaker 2: had like in Falcon Winnisoda, she had like ticks and
Speaker 2: stuff that she was doing, like here's like my car
Speaker 2: just the car s blink or whatever. I'm like that
Speaker 2: seems like a joke that was set up in something
Speaker 2: else that was supposed to come out that did not
Speaker 2: quite pay off for this, I sort of have the
Speaker 2: same thoughts. I also will say that espionage Marvel is
Speaker 2: the one that I am the least. I've always been
Speaker 2: the least like super tapped into. But like, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: I've never been super inspiced. I've always been like give me,
Speaker 2: give me big cosmic gods, or give me give me
Speaker 2: someone green, Like that's always been a thing that've been
Speaker 2: super into.
Speaker 3: Give me give me.
Speaker 2: Someone green, good, more goodmore, she hulked drags. I'll take anyone.
Speaker 2: I'm open to all of them. But I do enjoy
Speaker 2: what they did status quo wise, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 2: of Isaiah Bradley. Have always been a huge stand of
Speaker 2: Patriot as well, two of my favorite characters, and I
Speaker 2: love that they worked him into this, and I love
Speaker 2: that they also again set up for young Avengers, and
Speaker 2: I love that as I love that this is also
Speaker 2: this is the first show that's introduced the concept of
Speaker 2: like legacy characters in Marvel as far as I know,
Speaker 2: we're like all right, there were literal passing of the
Speaker 2: shield to to to Falcon and then like course, and
Speaker 2: you know it's gonna set up for all these other things,
Speaker 2: like we have to reset.
Speaker 3: We can't do Old Hawkeye anymore.
Speaker 2: We need to have Young Hawkey, and I'm assuming the
Speaker 2: same thing's gonna be happening to the rest of these series.
Speaker 2: Like that was my big takeaway that I'm like, oh great,
Speaker 2: now we're fully cocked into eighth gear, running running head
Speaker 2: first into like comic book fille, which I'm all for.
Speaker 4: I am all for it as well, So quick recap.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Blip, Sam Wilson, the Falcon,
Speaker 1: and Buckie Barnes aka the Winter Soldier face off against
Speaker 1: a super soldier serum enhanced terrorist group led by the
Speaker 1: passionate flag smasher Karl Morgenthau. Sam rejects Captain America's shield
Speaker 1: think he should stand in a museum, only to find
Speaker 1: it into the hands of the very aggressive John Walker,
Speaker 1: who quickly becomes.
Speaker 4: Powered up on his own.
Speaker 1: And really the big paradigm shift and is a massive, massive,
Speaker 1: massive recontextualization of marvelore is we get the storyline based
Speaker 1: on truth, Red, White, and Black by Robert Morales and
Speaker 1: Kyle Baker, in which we discovered that the super soldier
Speaker 1: program did not stop with Captain America, did not stop
Speaker 1: with the destruction of all the serum. It in fact continued,
Speaker 1: and that various black soldiers, Black American soldiers were injected
Speaker 1: with various experimental forms of the super Soldiers super Soldier serum.
Speaker 1: Many of them, if not hundreds of them, died in
Speaker 1: horrific fashion as a direct result of that serum, and
Speaker 1: that the one success story, if you could call it, that,
Speaker 1: the Black Captain America. Isaiah Bradley was then court martialed
Speaker 1: and imprisoned after doing the exact same thing that Steve
Speaker 1: Rogers does in Captain America. The first renders his his
Speaker 1: friends unit gets captured, and he knows that the army
Speaker 1: just plans to like bomb the base, so he goes
Speaker 1: in on his own rogue mission and rescues all of them.
Speaker 1: Steve Rogers became Captain America and became like the paragon
Speaker 1: of American virtue and strength. And Isaiah Bradley was thrown
Speaker 1: into like a dark cell and some military black sites
Speaker 1: somewhere where he was kept for decades and tortured and
Speaker 1: experimented on.
Speaker 4: This is a I mean, it's it's a huge thing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, shouts to Carl Lumbley, who is just you
Speaker 1: can't take your eyes off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's captivating.
Speaker 2: He's captivating, and like he's like one of those like
Speaker 2: he sort of got from the same school like Viola datis,
Speaker 2: like you want to see them in pain, Like I
Speaker 2: think when character they do pain so well. I one
Speaker 2: of the This is just like a side from that.
Speaker 2: But like what I do like about them introducing the
Speaker 2: content of like imprisoning these you know black supers or
Speaker 2: is that like for it opens Like one of my
Speaker 2: personal favorite characters is like Blue Marvel, and like his
Speaker 2: whole thing was like like he was he was asked
Speaker 2: like he was like one of the first like super superpowers,
Speaker 2: like guys like you know I can I can wreck
Speaker 2: everything if you guys look at me the wrong way,
Speaker 2: And they're like, you know what, we don't need a
Speaker 2: black superman, so like we're just gonna like make you
Speaker 2: like basically retire and in the sixties. And like I
Speaker 2: love that opened ups the door for that character because
Speaker 2: I'm a super huge fan of Blue Marvel. Like I
Speaker 2: love that this would possibly will be a back door
Speaker 2: like was he one of those super soldier guys too
Speaker 2: that like he was asked to like step down or
Speaker 2: he was the nuclear thing fell into the toaster and
Speaker 2: he got zapped into the negative zone.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Ever, like I love that what it sets up status
Speaker 2: quo wise for going for when it comes to Marvel.
Speaker 1: Same and as a layer of complexity too, because that's
Speaker 1: kind of like I want to say.
Speaker 4: More of a uh, I guess, more of a DC thing.
Speaker 1: This this idea of actually the government in the military
Speaker 1: are like unambiguously bad.
Speaker 4: They're doing bad.
Speaker 1: Shit all the time, and Superman either doesn't know about
Speaker 1: it or like is kept in the dark about it.
Speaker 1: And it's only through the actions of like quasi criminal
Speaker 1: heroes that like any of this stuff gets exposed. Marvel
Speaker 1: kind of like toes that line where it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: the Sentinel program was supported by the US military and
Speaker 1: it is an absolute project of the United States government.
Speaker 1: But also and yes, like the Sentinels wiped out like
Speaker 1: several million mutants on the island of Genosha. But also
Speaker 1: like Captain America was not involved in that PERSI didn't
Speaker 1: know and the Secret of Defense probably didn't know.
Speaker 3: Rogue operations, Yeah, they're never explicit.
Speaker 2: Like the most explicitive is like you know, winners holdiers,
Speaker 2: like you know what show was actually full of Nazi
Speaker 2: the entire time, and we do have a master kill
Speaker 2: list that from Tony start to just like regular surgeons
Speaker 2: that's on ours but like, I like this the first
Speaker 2: time they were they're like, you know what, the government
Speaker 2: actually a cab, Like maybe they are a little bit
Speaker 2: of a cab and they're not.
Speaker 4: Guess what, guess what?
Speaker 1: It wasn't good like Erskine was was definitely an outlier
Speaker 1: in that room. And we get our first appearance of Madrapoor,
Speaker 1: which is the oligarchical, quasi lawless Asian city state which
Speaker 1: is based on Singapore, which, despite its location, curiously devoid
Speaker 1: of Asians in this storytelling, but that's fine. We find
Speaker 1: out that Sharon Carter, agent thirteen in the comics, a
Speaker 1: quite often a love interest of Steve Rogers, has remade
Speaker 1: herself as the Power Broker, a basically criminal mastermind who
Speaker 1: is going to deal super soldier serum on the black market.
Speaker 1: We get the first appearance of John Walker, a k
Speaker 1: US agent boy created the fascist Captain of America named
Speaker 1: is Steve Rodgers official replacement. Of course, He takes a
Speaker 1: super soldier serum just like on his own, just like
Speaker 1: injects it into his own button, and then we get
Speaker 1: the first appearance of the Contessa Valentina Legradfontaine Julie Luis
Speaker 1: s Treyfus again on set for an hour, and she
Speaker 1: appears to be I would you know at the events
Speaker 1: of Black Widow show The Stinger at the end of
Speaker 1: Black Widow suggests that she's putting together like a Thunderbolt
Speaker 1: style Yeah, yeah, Dark Avengers squad with US agent, with
Speaker 1: Yolena and who knows who else, And of course we
Speaker 1: get our first glimpse of Elijah Bradley, who in the
Speaker 1: comics is the Patriot Isaiah, Isaiah Bradley's grandson and another
Speaker 1: member of the Young Avengers.
Speaker 2: This is the show I think that I'm it's sort
Speaker 2: of like that connected tissue in like Phase two where
Speaker 2: it's like we got to get the Avengers together. It's
Speaker 2: basically what I sort of felt from this for I
Speaker 2: mean whatever, Like that's not a condemnation or anything, but
Speaker 2: like I'm most excited about, like you said, like what
Speaker 2: this Thunderbolts is going to look like. That was my
Speaker 2: big takeaway from this, Like I love what they possibly
Speaker 2: do with Thunderbolts. I also want to just I want
Speaker 2: to honestly just want to see more of like what
Speaker 2: Isaiah Bradley is doing, like in Patriot Sure that to
Speaker 2: me is like the most mostly rich soil that like,
Speaker 2: I want to plan a little little nerd tree in
Speaker 2: and see what's brought side of it.
Speaker 1: They So that's episode five of this series is where
Speaker 1: you get the whole download on on what was going
Speaker 1: on with the Super Social Program post Captain America, uh
Speaker 1: and what happened with Isaiah Bradley. They went extremely hard
Speaker 1: in the paint. Like I did not think that they
Speaker 1: were going to go that hard, and I was actually like,
Speaker 1: fuck yeah they would shouts to Malcolm Smellman, showrunner, but
Speaker 1: it was like straight up like like Isaiah Bradley says, like,
Speaker 1: no self respecting black man would not would the shield.
Speaker 4: It was like, holy ship, we're doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going.
Speaker 2: He basically called him a cornball brother and he did.
Speaker 2: How you feel about that?
Speaker 4: King?
Speaker 3: I was?
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: I was surprised, and I was really kind of proud
Speaker 1: of of Marvel for going, Yeah, Darren going that hard
Speaker 1: with it, having that kind of conversation in that context
Speaker 1: on a Disney Plus show, Because if you're gonna if
Speaker 1: you're gonna explore that kind of subject matter in that
Speaker 1: kind of way.
Speaker 4: You kind of have to have that. Somebody has to
Speaker 4: have that conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean everyone's been thinking, well, everyone that's you know,
Speaker 2: not a straight white guy has been thinking that the
Speaker 2: entire time. You're like, you're really gonna put the stars
Speaker 2: and bars across your chest? Like that seems a little
Speaker 2: I don't know about that one. King, Like I don't
Speaker 2: know about that one. Let's run the tape back and
Speaker 2: see how the US government clocks on that one. I
Speaker 2: like that they called it out, but I'm also very
Speaker 2: curious to see, like what what what Roady, what what
Speaker 2: Wilson Sam's gonna be doing now that like he's like
Speaker 2: he sort of seems that he's like pulled himself up
Speaker 2: by his bootstraps to use a very bad in and
Speaker 2: in but like his whole thing was like I'm I'm
Speaker 2: just doing it for family, Like I'm doing this like
Speaker 2: get back on my own. So like I'm wondering if,
Speaker 2: like going forward, if it's going to be like you know,
Speaker 2: like you know, Winter social where Steve learns it, he's
Speaker 2: just been a tool for the government, Like now that
Speaker 2: he's free of that, like what's he going to be doing.
Speaker 2: Is he gonna be like forming his own sort of team,
Speaker 2: or what's he going to be doing, Like how's he
Speaker 2: going to be saving the world or putting like who's
Speaker 2: he gonna be fighting?
Speaker 3: I'm very curious to see like what he's doing.
Speaker 1: Say, absolutely the same kind of vibe. Also, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve, we're out of our heroes now will
Speaker 1: be operating we might assume out from under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of Tony Stark's incredible wealth. Yeah, so like like in
Speaker 1: the comics, like in the in the Sam Wilson Captain
Speaker 1: America comics where Sam's out there and he like sets
Speaker 1: up a one eight hundred number and he's doing stuff
Speaker 1: like on it, it's much more ground level, like he's
Speaker 1: not sure where the money's coming from. Like he has
Speaker 1: a you know, he has like the Marvel version of
Speaker 1: like a Patreon like Captain Verica. You know, like, are
Speaker 1: we gonna see Sam doing stuff independently on his own?
Speaker 1: And what does that mean in terms of like you know,
Speaker 1: like his ability to get you know, take care of
Speaker 1: his his weaponry, his suits, all that stuff, Like is
Speaker 1: he just going to be doing it on his own
Speaker 1: dime or how that is fascinating to me. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of like Marvel DNA too, is like, you know,
Speaker 1: Marvel Heroes worrying about where the red's gonna come from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that bikes me curious.
Speaker 2: This is a complete wild pitch, but I wondered if
Speaker 2: that becomes like their version of Heroes for Hire. It's
Speaker 2: him and Bucky, yeah whoever, like getting a call on
Speaker 2: like the Falcon phone and being like, all right, we
Speaker 2: need to go bust up some guys in Lower East
Speaker 2: Manhattan or whatever. And that's how we're taking care of
Speaker 2: the boat this week maybe.
Speaker 4: And next up most recently is Loki. The series Loki.
Speaker 1: After the events of the Avengers and the Time Heist
Speaker 1: in spring twenty twelve, Loki is he escapes into the timeline,
Speaker 1: he is captured by the TVA, and there he discovers
Speaker 1: that not only are there multiple versions of himself through
Speaker 1: multiple versions of the Timeline that he knows, but reality
Speaker 1: and time itself are just like way way, way, way,
Speaker 1: way way way weird than he could have ever imagined.
Speaker 1: And this one it is like a colossal fl that
Speaker 1: just like on the final episode of like Loki, on
Speaker 1: Disney plus Marvel's just like, Okay, we've changed the universe completely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the stuff that happened in phase one, two three
Speaker 1: actually like was kind of had maybe theoretically have happened
Speaker 1: like countless times before, and it kind of was like
Speaker 1: the outcome was never in doubt, and now the real
Speaker 1: shit starts, Like now is when the actual stuff is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now the stakes a right, I mean Waltrin put
Speaker 2: his foot all up in this thing.
Speaker 3: Is that. I love that.
Speaker 2: Like you're saying, like the final episode, like we're not
Speaker 2: going to get people fighting, It's gonna it's gonna be
Speaker 2: twenty five minutes of three classically trained, fantastic actors acting
Speaker 2: the shit out of a scene, and the blocking is
Speaker 2: Jonathan Majors eats an apple and sits weird on a
Speaker 2: chair Like that's it. That's the most action that happens.
Speaker 2: As you give a huge download and red conn of
Speaker 2: like everything you've experienced up at this point for the
Speaker 2: past twenty something movies of Marvel. I love it, like
Speaker 2: they stuck the landing. This has everything that I love
Speaker 2: about Cosmic Marvel. It's weird out the gate ye you
Speaker 2: can see the DNA of of Rick and Morty, Mike Walter,
Speaker 2: and the showrunner was a Rick and Mordy described forever
Speaker 2: and I think it is like number two. Tom Coffin
Speaker 2: was another Rick and Morty person. So like when you
Speaker 2: see these weird things, like when they have like, oh,
Speaker 2: here's ice giant Loki, here's twe de France Loki, here's whatever,
Speaker 2: like all that weird stuff that you would see in
Speaker 2: like reading those like big galactic cosmic comic books.
Speaker 3: They captured that beautifully.
Speaker 2: And this is just another small detail that also made
Speaker 2: me love it, Like where they're stuck on like the
Speaker 2: at the end of Existence whatever, and they're in like
Speaker 2: the low key base and they're pinning down to the dirt.
Speaker 2: It's like a little Loki trapped in like a little jar.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's one hundred percent weird comic book that
Speaker 2: someone draws in like one panel that like yeah, people
Speaker 2: will take a screencap on and then like it never
Speaker 2: referenced again. Like this show for me is like the
Speaker 2: perfect distillation of like what weird fun comic book TV
Speaker 2: show adaptation should be.
Speaker 3: And like I.
Speaker 2: Cannot wait to see more more of this because now
Speaker 2: there's stakes, Like like you say, like they reset the
Speaker 2: new status quote like what's going to be happening and
Speaker 2: then're all with universes going forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing, the thing that has always like gripped me
Speaker 1: about comics from the first time I started reading them
Speaker 1: was just like the complete boundless energy of the things
Speaker 1: that you could see, like crazy aliens that you would
Speaker 1: never expect, like weird world stuff happening on like in
Speaker 1: the past that's also happening in the future, like huge
Speaker 1: monsters that live under the ocean, Like there's there was
Speaker 1: no limit to it. And this Loki really it went
Speaker 1: there like as much as you could go there on
Speaker 1: television you mentioned Michael Waldron and the connections to Rereco Morni.
Speaker 1: There was like some fun, some real fun, Like it
Speaker 1: felt like direct references. There's in the finale, Jonathan Majors
Speaker 1: as Kang Slash a Mortists whoever.
Speaker 4: Says something like what does he say?
Speaker 1: He says like, oh, yes, you know, we're supposed to
Speaker 1: enter into an adventure and emerge forever change, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is like a direct reference to the know the fame
Speaker 1: Dan Harmon story circle, which is how he designs many
Speaker 1: of his stories about a hero like entering a new world,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 4: And it felt like a call that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt like it had to shout out my
Speaker 2: favorite line and that it's also the exact same scene
Speaker 2: is like we're crossing the threshold, like he just blatantly
Speaker 2: says it. I'm like, oh, you can just say that,
Speaker 2: Like that's how you can like get that in front
Speaker 2: of that, Like he just blatly says it. As they're
Speaker 2: like discovering that, like the universe has now entered the
Speaker 2: point where he doesn't know what's gonna happen. Like I
Speaker 2: loved all that stuff. It's the most fun to me.
Speaker 2: It's like the most fun a fun show I've seen
Speaker 2: from Marvel. And like I think that is what the
Speaker 2: bar has been said at and like I think that's
Speaker 2: what everyone should be. Like pacing the out match like
Speaker 2: it had to like hit the same beats obviously, but
Speaker 2: like something new and weird to like keep you refreshing.
Speaker 2: It felt like a very it felt like a nice,
Speaker 2: a nice refreshing spritzer. And what in the Superhero world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's so the big setup is the multiverse
Speaker 1: exists now, and so while in the TVA era there
Speaker 1: was essentially one kind of big outcome that was cycling
Speaker 1: all the time. And while there were many, many, many
Speaker 1: we should assume different timelines. They weren't technically infinite because
Speaker 1: they were always pruning these wild timelines that diverged too
Speaker 1: much from the kind of central quote unquote six one
Speaker 1: sixth timeline. Now it's all fractured. There's stuff all over
Speaker 1: the place. You have like Peggy Carter as Captain America.
Speaker 1: You have T'shalla is is picked up by ya because yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes it becomes the leader of the Guardian's Galaxy.
Speaker 1: There's like all these kind of true multiversal worlds now,
Speaker 1: and that is you mentioned it previously. It's just it's
Speaker 1: given Marvel like the most powerful tool that you can
Speaker 1: have as a storyteller, which is like we can just
Speaker 1: bring anything we want in from any other world. Zombies,
Speaker 1: we got it. Like you you want to do mutants
Speaker 1: this way, we can do it this way. We bring them,
Speaker 1: bring them right in. What about a clash of worlds
Speaker 1: where like two worlds actually smashed together.
Speaker 3: They didn't courage, they didn'courage.
Speaker 1: It feels like they're going to do it right because
Speaker 1: so Incursions is for those that don't know, is a
Speaker 1: sprawling Jonathan Hickman storyline about the collapse of the multiverse
Speaker 1: and the kind of desperate fight by a select and
Speaker 1: secret group of heroes on Earth to allow Earth to
Speaker 1: survive by destroying every other Earth that crashes into it.
Speaker 4: That means they're destroying entire realities of other people.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the in the opening uh cinematic
Speaker 1: of the finale of Loki, you see like these two
Speaker 1: worlds kind of crashing, and man if they did it, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I'm I'm literally getting goose pumps right now.
Speaker 2: It's like that's one of my I mean, Hickman is
Speaker 2: a comic writing god, but like that to me is
Speaker 2: like one of my absolute favorite series. I hope that
Speaker 2: that's what the building towards, because they will have absolutely
Speaker 2: every single one of my sense for the next three
Speaker 2: phases if that's what they're building towards.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this series introduced the TVA, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of like bureaucratic governmental agency that manages the timeline
Speaker 1: this is this comes directly from the pages of Walt
Speaker 1: Simons's Run on Thour. Mobius was based on you know,
Speaker 1: beloved Marvel editor and writer Mark Grunwald, who also wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of the material that ended up in Fulcon
Speaker 1: and The Winter Soldier, and Mark as an editor, was
Speaker 1: known as like the lore guy. Like if if you
Speaker 1: were a writer, you're writing something like, hey, can I make?
Speaker 1: Can can I make? Like a spider man lose his job,
Speaker 1: and then you know, Markugo, you can't do that because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, Steve Ditko did this, and YadA YadA.
Speaker 3: Those the glue guys of the comic book world, the glue.
Speaker 4: Guys of the comic book world.
Speaker 1: And so it was a fun little homage to him
Speaker 1: that he then becomes Mobius in the comics, and then
Speaker 1: that carearacter is now on TV doing that exact same thing.
Speaker 1: We get the first appearance of Ravona Renslayer, who is
Speaker 1: in the comics a love interest of Kang. We get
Speaker 1: the first appearance of Sylvie, a Loki variant whose nexus
Speaker 1: event still remains unknown, and then of course we get Kang.
Speaker 1: My boy is gonna be basically like the Thanos of
Speaker 1: I don't know, Phase four, Like, so Thanos was the
Speaker 1: Thanos of Phase one, two three, So will will Kang
Speaker 1: be like four, five, six, We don't know, but like
Speaker 1: he's the big bad right, now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 2: if they're how close a sticking in the comics, but
Speaker 2: like you know, the Fantastic Four is coming out at
Speaker 2: some point, Like I'm assuming he's I mean, part of
Speaker 2: me is just like, I mean, we're gonna have a
Speaker 2: black read.
Speaker 3: Richard's like, that's that's honestly what I what I I'm
Speaker 3: opening to.
Speaker 4: I think so like that's on the that's heavily on
Speaker 4: the table.
Speaker 3: So we should let's quickly Oh sorry, I got tunnel vision.
Speaker 4: We got on back it.
Speaker 1: So Kang So the Kang the Conqueror is actually several
Speaker 1: discreet characters. They're all the same person at different stages
Speaker 1: of this person's extremely long life.
Speaker 4: They were born Nathaniel.
Speaker 1: Richards Okay, who is read Richard's father from another timeline,
Speaker 1: who gets bored with how like peaceful everything is in
Speaker 1: his timeline. He finds a time machine. He goes off.
Speaker 1: He becomes the King of the Pharaoh of Egypt, and
Speaker 1: that's his Rama tut kind of personality. The Fantastic Four
Speaker 1: tussle with him there. He goes back into the timeline decides,
Speaker 1: you know what, like Egypt is not enough. I want
Speaker 1: to conquer like all of time, he becomes Kang the Conqueror.
Speaker 1: Now Kang the Conqueror who manages to conquer all of
Speaker 1: the timelines and kill all the various versions of himself
Speaker 1: that he doesn't like, then gets like tired and kind
Speaker 1: of old and becomes this character Immortis, who is more
Speaker 1: like a managerial type who like outsources the management of
Speaker 1: the timeline to like these various subcontractors, including the TVA.
Speaker 4: So really who we saw was immortals yea.
Speaker 1: But yes, as you noted, this raises the possibility that
Speaker 1: this character is Read Richard's dad. We could have a
Speaker 1: black Read Richards, which fantastic, I love it. Yeah, we could,
Speaker 1: And I should add that means potentially like a black
Speaker 1: Doctor Doom as well, because there is also the suggestion
Speaker 1: that like doctor Doom is.
Speaker 4: A variant of one of the Kang variants.
Speaker 2: I think he's that's a long way of us saying
Speaker 2: that I think he's gonna be here for a while,
Speaker 2: Like Jonathan Major when he's like young, you know, so
Speaker 2: like he his face screams, I got ten of these
Speaker 2: in me, So I feel like I feel like he's
Speaker 2: going to be.
Speaker 3: Here for a minute.
Speaker 1: And none of this works, by the way, if he's not, yeah,
Speaker 1: like go like putting up like fifty points, twenty rebounds
Speaker 1: and twenty assists. Yeah, like it in forty eight minutes
Speaker 1: of like like he just like absolutely destroyed it. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited. And I will say that you know, I
Speaker 1: was talking with our producer Chris before this, and you know,
Speaker 1: there is that there was a little bit he was
Speaker 1: expressing a little bit of like feeling of dissatisfaction because
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's a it doesn't close, like it
Speaker 1: keeps going like there's this is like really this is
Speaker 1: like the one shot before Secret Wars, like the Road
Speaker 1: to Secret Wars of comic book. But I guess you
Speaker 1: know this is just again like you you laid out
Speaker 1: your bias a layout mine. I'm a lifelong comic book
Speaker 1: fan at whose brain has been melted by all of
Speaker 1: this stuff for years and years and years. It that
Speaker 1: is just like a storytelling format that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me. That is like, oh, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course it doesn't end here. Like we I turned the page,
Speaker 1: they're on the last page. The person rips off the
Speaker 1: hood and it's kang or it's Ultron or it's whoever,
Speaker 1: and now it's like, well I.
Speaker 2: Go, now I gotta buy like yeah, and then you
Speaker 2: see like check out King continues and Masters of the
Speaker 2: Universe numbers tventy four or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited about that. Welcome to the Omnibus. This
Speaker 1: is the segment where I will give us some historical contexts,
Speaker 1: some pop cultural context to the subjects that we are
Speaker 1: discussing during the episode. And for this episode, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Loki's history, both as a comic book character and
Speaker 1: as a figure in Norse myth. Loki on Disney Plus
Speaker 1: represents the continuation of a tale that has existed in
Speaker 1: popular storytelling traditions for over a thousand years, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly cool, right. That's a super super wild that we
Speaker 1: have currently in our pop culture, a character who has
Speaker 1: just been running around for over a millennium. So, as
Speaker 1: we think about Loki's evolution from bad guy to antihero
Speaker 1: and to perhaps by the time Phase four really gets
Speaker 1: going a flat out good guy, we should remember that
Speaker 1: the beginning of this tale isn't twenty eleven's four or
Speaker 1: even nineteen sixty two's Journey into Mystery. Eighty five of
Speaker 1: his official marvel debut. It begins with poems composed as
Speaker 1: far back as the mid eight hundred's AD. The events
Speaker 1: of Thor, The Dark World, Thor, Ragnarok, and Infinity War
Speaker 1: established that Loki is capable of evolving for the better.
Speaker 1: But of course, the Loki of this show is not
Speaker 1: that Loki, As the events of Loki on Disney Plus
Speaker 1: have shown us, the multiverse exists, and there are various
Speaker 1: versions of the characters that we know and love inhabiting
Speaker 1: those various worlds. This Loki hasn't experienced his mother Frigga's
Speaker 1: death at the hands of Malachith and the Dark Elves.
Speaker 1: He never experienced the death of his father Odin fighting
Speaker 1: side by side with his brother against Hella. He hasn't
Speaker 1: witnessed the destruction of Asgard by Serder, or the scattering
Speaker 1: of the Asgardian people, their near destruction at the hands
Speaker 1: of Thanos, nor his own death by the hands of
Speaker 1: that man Titan. Making a hero out of this Loki
Speaker 1: is or was an audacious task. Marvel's The Avengers is
Speaker 1: nearly a deck old now, so you'd be forgiven for
Speaker 1: forgetting how evil Loki, charmingly portrayed by Tom Hittleston is
Speaker 1: in that film. He commits roughly a half dozen murderers,
Speaker 1: give or take within the first few minutes of appearing
Speaker 1: on screen. And when Loki takes Hostages and Stuttgart, a
Speaker 1: German Man who is old enough to have lived through
Speaker 1: World War two compares Loki to Hitler. So basically a
Speaker 1: guy stands up and says, from my personal experience with Hitler,
Speaker 1: you are Hitler.
Speaker 4: In that film.
Speaker 1: Loki then straight up stabs Phil Colson in the back
Speaker 1: and okay, he didn't die then, as Agents of Shields
Speaker 1: fans know. And of course the last half hour of
Speaker 1: the Avengers movie is an extended reference to nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: with various buildings in Manhattan getting destroyed once again. The Avengers,
Speaker 1: which pulled in a billion and a half dollars, compares
Speaker 1: Loki to Hitler and bin Laden. And now we watched
Speaker 1: Loki in Loki's very own show, and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's great, we like him, he's hero ps. Somehow,
Speaker 1: only seventy four people were killed during Loki's Tritari invasion.
Speaker 1: Per Colonel Thunderbolt Ross's briefing in Captain America Civil War.
Speaker 1: That is hard to believe, but shouts the Avengers. They
Speaker 1: obviously did an incredible job. Loki, the show with less runway,
Speaker 1: sparks this turn from villain to hero or at least
Speaker 1: anti hero, by returning Loki to his folk mythology roots.
Speaker 1: The Loki of Norse mythology is a trickster, a prankster
Speaker 1: who galvanizes the gods with his scheming, criticizes and sometimes
Speaker 1: mocks them with his words, and who is as much
Speaker 1: a force for progress and renewal as destruction. The Asgardians
Speaker 1: of Marvel comics and films, including Odin Frigga Thorn, Loki
Speaker 1: come to us from Norse mythology, the pre Christian belief
Speaker 1: system of the North Germanic peoples who came from Scandinavia
Speaker 1: between the ninth and eleventh centuries a day, including the
Speaker 1: famed raiders who we all know known as the Vikings.
Speaker 1: Loki's historic origins are mysterious. The definitive source of the
Speaker 1: name Loki is elusive, but recent etymological research showing that
Speaker 1: Loki in medieval Iceland was used interchangeably with the old
Speaker 1: word for not seems to suggest that the meaning of
Speaker 1: Loki's name was not or tangle. This theory would seem
Speaker 1: to fit with Loki's role in Norse myth as the
Speaker 1: inventor of fishnets. A fascinating commonality of the trickster god
Speaker 1: myths from around the world is their link to fishing.
Speaker 1: In many Native American creation stories, it's the coyote who
Speaker 1: teaches humans how to catch salmon by making traps out
Speaker 1: of logs and branches. The raven in North Pacific Coast
Speaker 1: mythology created the fish hook and taught humans and spiders
Speaker 1: how to craft nets. As Lewis Hyde notes in his
Speaker 1: overview of the Trickster archetype, trickster makes this world quote
Speaker 1: east and west, north and south. This is the oldest
Speaker 1: trick in the book. No trickster has ever been credited
Speaker 1: with inventing the potato peeler, the gas meter, or tuning fork,
Speaker 1: but trickster invents the fish trap. What we know of
Speaker 1: Norse mythology comes from the prose Eda and the poetic Eta.
Speaker 1: The first is a collection of Norse poems that were
Speaker 1: compiled and probably to some extent written or adapted by
Speaker 1: an Icelandic politician, lawmaker, and history nerd with the delightful
Speaker 1: name Snorri Stirlerson Snorri Sturlison in or around the year
Speaker 1: twelve twenty. The second is a collection of Icelandic poems. However,
Speaker 1: these are of unknown authorship. The prose Eda is thought
Speaker 1: to contain the oldest Norse poems, some possibly dating back
Speaker 1: to before the tenth century. Loki is nowhere to be
Speaker 1: found in two of the oldest sources in the poetic Eda. Likewise,
Speaker 1: Loki is absent from the early thirteenth century historian Saxo
Speaker 1: Grammaticus's work Deeds of the Danes, which extensively discusses Norse mythology.
Speaker 1: Historian Emma Grunfeld writes on worldhistory dot Org that quote
Speaker 1: this might indicate that Loki was more of a regional feature,
Speaker 1: rather than being omnipresent throughout the Germanic world. Indeed, sources
Speaker 1: on Loki are limited to the northern Germanic regions, and
Speaker 1: Loki himself has no direct parallel in broader Germanic mythology.
Speaker 1: In other words, Loki might be, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: puetine or something like that, a local delicacy, but one
Speaker 1: that is renowned. Loki's role within Norse mythology is likewise unique.
Speaker 4: He is a trickster. He's fond of pranks.
Speaker 1: He creates mischief by reacting creatively to happenstance and fate.
Speaker 1: Not a hero, he's also not necessarily a bad guy.
Speaker 1: He is a foil, a kind of arch nemesis for
Speaker 1: the Norse gods and a reason for them to use
Speaker 1: their godly powers. He plays, of course, a similar role
Speaker 1: in the MCU, providing the catalyst for the avengers to
Speaker 1: assemble sometimes though the gods need to be taken down
Speaker 1: a peg. Loki plays a subversive role in this belief
Speaker 1: system by openly criticizing, even mocking, the gods for their
Speaker 1: various indiscretions, their moral failings, in their hypocrisies. He's able
Speaker 1: to criticize in part because of his essential nature, the
Speaker 1: child of a yotan, a giant, the enemies of the gods.
Speaker 1: As part god and part giant, yet belonged to neither culture,
Speaker 1: Loki acts as a bridge, a point of convergence between
Speaker 1: two opposite and opposing worldviews. Loki is what happens when
Speaker 1: someone is made to feel that they don't belong. In
Speaker 1: the prose Etta, when Loki, after making a promise to
Speaker 1: a giant disguised as an eagle lures Eden, the keeper
Speaker 1: of the Fruits of Immortality, out of Asgard. The gods
Speaker 1: begin to age and their power is going to decline.
Speaker 1: But before the gods pass away Grain wrinkled, bringing it
Speaker 1: into the entire world. Loki rescues Eden and turns her
Speaker 1: to as God, repairing the problem. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of like the essence of Loki's particular brand of mischief.
Speaker 1: He creates traps which can often threaten existence itself. He
Speaker 1: then falls into the trap that he created, and then
Speaker 1: he solves them before too much harm is done. As
Speaker 1: Lewis Hyde points out and his book Trickster Makes This World,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Loki managed to avert his self
Speaker 1: made crises, they quote nonetheless indicate Loki's potential as a
Speaker 1: cataclysmic change agent. We should do well to remember this,
Speaker 1: as Loki is basically a good guy now, but he
Speaker 1: always retains this potential to blow up everything we know.
Speaker 1: Many researchers have noted that the Loki of Snorri Stirlison's
Speaker 1: prose Eta is more evil than his depiction in the
Speaker 1: poetic Eta. Snorri, a learned man of his time, was
Speaker 1: a Christian, and his ata strives to bring the Norse
Speaker 1: myths into the context of a world in which Christianity
Speaker 1: is the one true religion. There's nobody in the Christian
Speaker 1: canon that really goes out of their way to roast
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ in the way that Loki roast Thor and
Speaker 1: Odin in the Norse poems. Snorri's Loki becomes then Loki
Speaker 1: the Liar, a stand in for the Antichrist in the
Speaker 1: prose at A, Loki fulfills his apocalyptic potential by murdering Balder.
Speaker 1: The brave Balder, the beloved son of Odin, the pure
Speaker 1: and good God of Light, the son of Odin and Friga,
Speaker 1: and the brother of Thor. Balder is handsome and heroic
Speaker 1: and bright, And one day Balder wakes up haunted by
Speaker 1: dreams that he will come to harm. He shares these
Speaker 1: fears with his mother and alarmed Frigure then travels everywhere
Speaker 1: across the heavens and the earths to ask literally everything, animals, humans, rocks, water, air, everything,
Speaker 1: to swear not to harm her son Balder. Once these
Speaker 1: promises are extracted, the gods have a party where they
Speaker 1: hurl various things at Balder and watch with delight as
Speaker 1: each projectile falls harmlessly at his feet, and Loki watches
Speaker 1: this and he's annoyed.
Speaker 4: He hates it.
Speaker 1: It infuriates him, which I find quite relatable. Right, Balder
Speaker 1: is this beautiful, powerful god. He is now totally invulnerable
Speaker 1: because his mother couldn't bear the thought of any harm
Speaker 1: possibly coming to him, And Loki is like, this guy
Speaker 1: has everything, and now he has this too.
Speaker 4: Ah but wait.
Speaker 1: Driven by this annoyance and curiosity, Loki, disguised as an
Speaker 1: old woman, chats with again discovers that Friga cut a
Speaker 1: corner she didn't get an oath from a certain species
Speaker 1: of bush which attaches itself to trees and retains its
Speaker 1: green throughout the winter, called mistletoe. Loki runs off and
Speaker 1: finds some. He makes a little dart out of a
Speaker 1: sprig of mistletoe and convinces the god Hod to throw
Speaker 1: it at Balder, and Hod does and baldered eyes.
Speaker 4: A lot of.
Speaker 1: Terrible things happen after this, including the gods in their wrath,
Speaker 1: tying up Loki with one of his children's intestines, which
Speaker 1: is aggressive, and eventually Ragnarok. Of course, the death of
Speaker 1: the gods followed in good time by the rebirth of
Speaker 1: the world. Marvel's decision to clothe Loki in green ever
Speaker 1: since his debut in nineteen sixty two is probably a
Speaker 1: function of the limited color palette available at the time
Speaker 1: of his debut and journey into Mystery number eighty five,
Speaker 1: But whether by accident or not, the color was the
Speaker 1: perfect choice. Green evokes jealousy, one of the defining traits
Speaker 1: of Marvel's Loki's always annoyed at how bloved Thor is.
Speaker 1: But on a deeper mythical level, the color calls back
Speaker 1: to Loki's most infamous weapon, the missletoe. Just as Loki
Speaker 1: is the bridge linking the gods and the giants, missletoe
Speaker 1: and evergreen links summer and winter, growth and desolation, life
Speaker 1: and death.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the.
Speaker 1: Hive Mind, our panel segment where we bring in some
Speaker 1: special guests to discuss a particular subject from this conversation
Speaker 1: now so that we can dive deeper into the worlds
Speaker 1: of Phase four and other places and other universes. Export
Speaker 1: Vision welcomes its very first guest panelist for turning from
Speaker 1: a recent visit to the void. He is my variant
Speaker 1: from the Greek multiverse. The co host of How did
Speaker 1: This get made? Please welcome Jason Manzucas. Jason's great to say,
Speaker 1: let's do.
Speaker 2: This, do this.
Speaker 1: I last saw you on the dough Boys twenty four
Speaker 1: hour stream in which I showed feet and we broke
Speaker 1: and we broke their their payment platform.
Speaker 6: But they had a they had a they were raising
Speaker 6: money for charity.
Speaker 5: We went on together and we we demanded that the
Speaker 5: audience give money so much and they they listened and
Speaker 5: they they they did it.
Speaker 6: They they contributed in such large amounts they crashed the
Speaker 6: PayPal system for that charity fundraiser.
Speaker 3: It was awesome.
Speaker 6: It was an amazing and we raised so much money.
Speaker 6: You showed your feet I did.
Speaker 1: Those are out there if you want to if you
Speaker 1: want to see him.
Speaker 6: Feet, they're on Wiki Feet.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 6: You've all got a subscription.
Speaker 1: So the thing I wanted to talk to y'all about
Speaker 1: today is has is is what we are seeing in
Speaker 1: these Disney Plus shows a kind of uh new kind
Speaker 1: of storytelling. So in the finale of Loki, the final
Speaker 1: thirty minutes is the introduction of this character Kang slash
Speaker 1: Mortis slash whoever.
Speaker 4: They don't tell you even the character's.
Speaker 1: Name, tell you basically nothing about him, accept some exposition
Speaker 1: about how he came to be in this place, and
Speaker 1: it's and much like the way Thanos was introduced at
Speaker 1: the end of Marvel's The Avengers, where it was just like,
Speaker 1: who's that Loki the finale just kind of said, here's
Speaker 1: this character. If you want to know more about him,
Speaker 1: please ask your nerd friends, or read like screen rants
Speaker 1: easter eggs you didn't notice from Loki's finale, or go
Speaker 1: on YouTube and watch any number of YouTube explainers, or
Speaker 1: go on wherever you get your podcasts and listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 4: People will explain it to you. We're not going to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: We understand that, and we're just going to get on
Speaker 1: with the show. That was like a wild move and
Speaker 1: flex to me, and it worked.
Speaker 5: Yo. When you consider I mean to me, it is
Speaker 5: absolutely bananas. And I think we talked about this on
Speaker 5: a text chain we're on, Jason, It's absolutely bananas to me.
Speaker 5: That one of the most significant moves, yeah, in the MCU,
Speaker 5: which is one of the largest, most significant, like IP
Speaker 5: kind of existing franchise monoliths like the MCU is so
Speaker 5: big and so important and so significant and so woven
Speaker 5: into the fabric of pop culture at this point that
Speaker 5: they made a move that is so titanically significant and
Speaker 5: they made it in episode six and he'son one of
Speaker 5: the TV show Like that is absolute lunacy. And it's
Speaker 5: so exciting to me because I feel like we were
Speaker 5: talking about this. There was a lot of like inside
Speaker 5: of the conversations around Wanda Vision, a lot of conversations
Speaker 5: about like, oh, is Nightmare going to show up? Or
Speaker 5: is this person, yeah, Mephisto going to show up or
Speaker 5: any of these like big kind of really villains of
Speaker 5: that of.
Speaker 6: The magic world? Are they going to show up in that?
Speaker 5: And I feel like they really kind of gave us
Speaker 5: a good example of like, oh no, that's not happening,
Speaker 5: this is the TV shows.
Speaker 6: And then they did it.
Speaker 5: It was almost like they lulled us security because to
Speaker 5: put to put Kang in not just any because you say,
Speaker 5: you know, like yes, the fan of teaser is just that,
Speaker 5: it's like a post credit to teaser.
Speaker 4: This is you.
Speaker 5: They give Jonathan Majors a like thirty minutes and just
Speaker 5: are like, Okay, go do it.
Speaker 1: And he.
Speaker 6: It was electric to watch him.
Speaker 5: It was so exciting and I say that as a fan,
Speaker 5: you know, as a fan of Kang and as a
Speaker 5: fan of this kind of storytelling and all of that.
Speaker 5: But even still I was like, even to me, I
Speaker 5: was like, I cannot believe they're doing this. I cannot
Speaker 5: believe this. This is exciting that.
Speaker 6: They're doing such a huge move buried into this TV show.
Speaker 2: It works because like my mom knows who Thanos is.
Speaker 2: Like my sixty three year old black Southern mom from
Speaker 2: North Kronta knows what the Infinity gyms are strictly because
Speaker 2: of Marvel. So like the fact that like, like you know,
Speaker 2: parents are like two years behind. So the fact in
Speaker 2: two years she can be like that Kang fella is
Speaker 2: so handsome like that is a mind boggling to me.
Speaker 2: But speaking to Jason's point, I think another thing that
Speaker 2: they've really cracked, that Marvel is cracked is like they
Speaker 2: have a viewer to comic book reader pipeline now just
Speaker 2: like piped in, Like you're saying, like you wake up,
Speaker 2: you see the thing on comic book resources, you see
Speaker 2: the tweets on whatever, like you read these top five
Speaker 2: issues to see what prayings go about to crack them
Speaker 2: wide open, like and now like you're gonna go download
Speaker 2: the app, or you're gonna go to Comicxology and like
Speaker 2: you're gonna buy them because they're always like half off
Speaker 2: because no one's reading Kane comics until like he appears.
Speaker 2: So like you're you're just like building like this, Like
Speaker 2: it's like an an infinite energy machine. Like you're just
Speaker 2: building like fans by putting like weird swings like this
Speaker 2: in the TV shows, and like, I personally love it
Speaker 2: because like I'm a huge nerd for life, and I
Speaker 2: love that there are more being fucking sucked into it.
Speaker 2: So I'm like I'm like star, like I'm throwing out
Speaker 2: like more little mini nerds to them Adam to Mike Lex.
Speaker 6: Just shooting them out of your out of your Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's why.
Speaker 3: I got this.
Speaker 1: It really does feel like a new potentially a new
Speaker 1: kind of format because Okay, you mentioned like that the
Speaker 1: previous shows like Lulled Us to Sleep a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I agree.
Speaker 4: Like for Wanda Vision, it was like, oh, who is
Speaker 4: is it gonna be? Is it gonna be a fisto?
Speaker 1: Who's gonna be And then it turned out to be
Speaker 1: Aga though, who's legitimately the third character after Wanda and
Speaker 1: the vision that is introduced in the like but one
Speaker 1: of the first characters that is on the screen.
Speaker 4: And then for a Falcon, the Winter Soldier.
Speaker 1: The power Broker turned out to be Sharon, who was
Speaker 1: there all the time and was so obviously shady that
Speaker 1: it almost felt like a red herring.
Speaker 4: How obviously shady she was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she would just be like, hold on,
Speaker 1: let me shoot these guys just as they're about to
Speaker 1: tell you the secret.
Speaker 3: Ye, who's theer?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Let me put on my leather jacket and bring some
Speaker 3: dark liquor. That's so you know that.
Speaker 1: Uh? And then and then that was you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of as as the kind of speculation kicked into
Speaker 1: high gear as we ended, as we like came towards
Speaker 1: the finale of Loki and people like, oh, who's you know,
Speaker 1: who's who's ultimately behind the Timekeepers? Who is it is
Speaker 1: gonna be another ary of Loki? Is like gonna be Friga,
Speaker 1: which is my personal theory, Who's it gonna be?
Speaker 4: And uh?
Speaker 1: And I kept coming to well, there's no way it's
Speaker 1: gonna be Kang because you don't introduce you don't do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you like there's no hints that it's him, Like there's
Speaker 1: no suspicion that it's him. There's no you don't see
Speaker 1: his picture on the back of a screen somewhere.
Speaker 6: Like they don't it's he. There is no they don't
Speaker 6: seed it at all, which is.
Speaker 2: There's where someone's like to do that, you have to
Speaker 2: be some sort of conqueror, Like there's just like nothing
Speaker 2: that pipeline is. Lady just pops up. It's like, Yo,
Speaker 2: we're about to act for thirty minutes. I hope you
Speaker 2: guys are ready.
Speaker 5: And what I think what I loved about it was
Speaker 5: because and and yeah, zag I think you're right, like yes,
Speaker 5: this is turning on a lot, like how pop these
Speaker 5: things are are kind of it's so weird, you know,
Speaker 5: like I grew up, you know where nerd culture was
Speaker 5: for nerds and you were bullied for liking these things.
Speaker 5: And now nerd culture obviously is culture, which is all
Speaker 5: of pop culture, which is you know, great and exciting.
Speaker 6: And I love that.
Speaker 5: It means I get more Marvel stuff and more Star
Speaker 5: Wars and all and more of all the stuff. I have,
Speaker 5: more sci fi, more fantasy, more like I get it.
Speaker 5: Like I'm like so excited, but it's I'm I'd be
Speaker 5: curious because there it's such a Marvel now, the mcu
Speaker 5: is is so big that yes, I'm certain there are
Speaker 5: a lot of people who are getting turned onto the comics.
Speaker 6: But I really wonder for casual Marvel fans, what does
Speaker 6: this feel like?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 6: What does this like like like when they're watching that
Speaker 6: Loki season finale.
Speaker 5: Obviously it's enjoyable, and do you get the same out
Speaker 5: of it if you have no idea that that's Kang
Speaker 5: or who Kang is?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: They have to be threading the needle of giving the
Speaker 5: casual viewer a satisfying experience and a satisfying, frankly season finale,
Speaker 5: even if you're like I don't know who Immortis is,
Speaker 5: or I don't know who Kang is, or I don't
Speaker 5: know about the multiverse or I don't know I'm a
Speaker 5: casual fan. So I think that the fact that it
Speaker 5: even worked for those people is testament to like what
Speaker 5: a good job they did with this show, you know,
Speaker 5: like Loki to me is and I enjoyed WandaVision. I
Speaker 5: mean I really enjoyed WandaVision. I liked Falcon and Winter
Speaker 5: Soldier but Loki to me was like playing on a
Speaker 5: different level mostly I think mostly because it really is
Speaker 5: the tipping point for the future of the MCU, and
Speaker 5: they knew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we've been we've just yelled about this
Speaker 2: for the past hour. But like it's the most distilled
Speaker 2: version of what a comic book gets. It's big, it's weird,
Speaker 2: it's cosmic. You're talking about like ends of time. You're
Speaker 2: talking about these abstract entities and deities that you know.
Speaker 2: It's like we fight a giant cloud monster like that
Speaker 2: represents the end of time, and like that's what this
Speaker 2: show does, and it sticks to landing in it will
Speaker 2: be so to the point where like we can introduce
Speaker 2: the concept of like, oh this is uh, this has
Speaker 2: been happening across infinite number of universes, all within the background.
Speaker 3: Thanos wasn't even like that.
Speaker 2: He was just some dude, like you want some vinity zones,
Speaker 2: We got a whole fucking drawer full of them. Like, well,
Speaker 2: let's move on to the next thing. So, like what
Speaker 2: I love is that it's setting up a completely new
Speaker 2: status quote, which is also my favorite thing about comics
Speaker 2: is that like we're gonna reset this after that we
Speaker 2: do like a twenty issue run and now it's done,
Speaker 2: and now we're gonna move on to the next thing.
Speaker 2: And I love that what this means going forward, like
Speaker 2: any story that you want narrative wise, like Marvel wrote
Speaker 2: themselves an infinite check for rope when it comes to
Speaker 2: like what they need to do, and like, I love
Speaker 2: what it opens up story wise, narrative wise, it's gonna
Speaker 2: be fantastic.
Speaker 6: And I think it's really exciting that they did it
Speaker 6: with Loki.
Speaker 5: You know, Loki is like the MCU's closest thing to
Speaker 5: like a Jamie Lee, Yes, yeah, yeah, like a character
Speaker 5: who is beloved and charming but has gone from a
Speaker 5: villain to a good guy to existing in the gray area.
Speaker 6: They both are obsessed romantically with their twin.
Speaker 5: They both fall in love with a with an identical
Speaker 5: twin of their of themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean they unambiguously in Marvels the Avengers compared him
Speaker 1: to Hitler, like a and a Holocaust survivor in Germany
Speaker 1: stands up and says, they have always been met like
Speaker 1: you and by which I mean Hitler, who, by the
Speaker 1: way I experience firsthand, you are Hitler's And now they
Speaker 1: have managed to turn that character into like.
Speaker 5: Somebody that we like, that is, and not only like,
Speaker 5: not only like, but this season of television we got
Speaker 5: like a before Sunrise rom com. We not only do
Speaker 5: we like him, but like we're rooting for him to
Speaker 5: have like a walk and talk with a beautiful woman
Speaker 5: and try.
Speaker 6: And kiss her.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're like, this was a genocidal lunatic some
Speaker 5: years ago, and that I think is a pretty cool feat. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And the fact that they were able to do it,
Speaker 5: I think I think they were very smart to use
Speaker 5: Loki as the pivot point because he's beloved, people want
Speaker 5: to watch Loki. It wasn't I don't think they could
Speaker 5: have done this introduction of the multiverse inside of a story.
Speaker 2: With other characters, and you know benefit of that's also
Speaker 2: like it's a new Loki a variant obviously, so look,
Speaker 2: you get to hit all it's like the greatest hits
Speaker 2: with this beats Like you get to see him go
Speaker 2: from bad to good within an episode, and then like
Speaker 2: it catches up anyone else who has not seen all
Speaker 2: the Thor movies who like necessarily isn't caught up on
Speaker 2: like Thor lore or Loki lore and like you see
Speaker 2: who this character is. And it's also it's a classic myth,
Speaker 2: like everyone has been reading these types of stories for
Speaker 2: since humans could could could share speech, and like it's
Speaker 2: a perfect encapsulation of like how that stuff works out
Speaker 2: with like, all right, we have their journey's gonna be
Speaker 2: a bad guy going on like basically like a road
Speaker 2: trip with himself, a cosmic road trip, and they fucking
Speaker 2: killed it.
Speaker 1: They did a great job too, just like grounding all
Speaker 1: of these shows actually, but like Loki in particular, grounding
Speaker 1: it in a real, like deep like emotional question, and
Speaker 1: like what does it mean to try and be a
Speaker 1: better person in a world in which your specific role
Speaker 1: requires you to never become a better person? And if
Speaker 1: you ever actually make any headway in accepting the pain
Speaker 1: that you've caused others, in trying to better yourself, in
Speaker 1: trying to be empathic and understand other people's situations, we
Speaker 1: will cull you from that. We will erase you, we
Speaker 1: will throw you into the void, and you will never
Speaker 1: be seen again. That was That's a really dark and
Speaker 1: kind of I think meaningful question for anybody who's like, man,
Speaker 1: how do I not be an asshole?
Speaker 4: All the time, What is there a way to not
Speaker 4: do that?
Speaker 5: This show is the inverse of the good perty yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah, where people are encouraged to get better and
Speaker 5: evolve and become more empathic and become better people. This
Speaker 5: storyline is if you diverge and you try and be
Speaker 5: a better person or try and change the way a
Speaker 5: loki is a loki, You're gonna get prune.
Speaker 6: You know, you're gonna it's over.
Speaker 1: You were talking about Jason how like that. You're just
Speaker 1: like a fan of this stuff, so of course you're biased.
Speaker 1: I am too, Like I've acknowledged my bias many times,
Speaker 1: and I think part of that is, like, and the
Speaker 1: thing that fascinates me about this question is this idea
Speaker 1: that like serialized storytelling through comics, that kind of style
Speaker 1: of storytelling is like merging with TV in interesting ways.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is like, if I'm
Speaker 1: reading a comic book and I am turning the page,
Speaker 1: I'm like, who is this villain?
Speaker 4: Who is this hooded villain whatever?
Speaker 1: And then at the end they take off their hood
Speaker 1: and it's like Ultron or someone I never expected in
Speaker 1: the comic books. I'm like, yo, I get that that
Speaker 1: I'm buying the next issue. I understand this, this is
Speaker 1: set up. This is fine in television that never really happens,
Speaker 1: and we're so programmed by the various structures of storytelling
Speaker 1: that are very common, that stuff that, when you really
Speaker 1: think about it, that is actually kind of weird and strange,
Speaker 1: feels very normal.
Speaker 4: For instance, like.
Speaker 1: If you watch a Marvel movie with a kid and
Speaker 1: there's that opening scene where it's like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some heist going on, and then like somebody says, mysteriously, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have the thing?
Speaker 4: Yes, I have it. I'll inform the master. Does he know? Yes,
Speaker 4: he knows. Like if you watch all with the kid,
Speaker 4: the kid's like, what what's happening? What are they taught?
Speaker 1: Whereas you understand they're gonna tell me what this is.
Speaker 1: I don't need to know anything about this. I understand
Speaker 1: that this is set up for a thing that happens later.
Speaker 1: So it really feels like they're through these various flexes
Speaker 1: of we are the biggest like storytelling engine in entertainment
Speaker 1: right now, they're actually creating these weird new pockets and
Speaker 1: styles of storytelling.
Speaker 5: What here's what they're doing. I think this is and
Speaker 5: which is interesting. I wonder if this is purposeful or
Speaker 5: if this is just kind of how they run, which
Speaker 5: is they have successfully Kevin Figy, I'll put this at
Speaker 5: Kevin Figy's feet. I think Kevin Figy has successfully trained
Speaker 5: the public to watch Marvel movies to at the very
Speaker 5: beginning was they were comic book movies, but they didn't
Speaker 5: operate like comic books, right. They were just the characters
Speaker 5: from your comics in a story. Sometimes those stories were
Speaker 5: pulled loosely from comic book arcs or something like that,
Speaker 5: but really they stood alone, unto themselves until they were connected,
Speaker 5: and they connected in very clean ways, right for that
Speaker 5: first ten years, for phase one, phase two, that's what
Speaker 5: it is. Phase three, and now especially phase four, the
Speaker 5: MCU and comics movies are feeling more like comics.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 5: So like when sometimes you know, you'll pick up a
Speaker 5: comic I'll read I'll pick up a Spider Man at
Speaker 5: you and I'll be like, suddenly he's wearing like a
Speaker 5: different suit and he has like and someone's dead and
Speaker 5: I'm like, wait, what did I miss? I've read this
Speaker 5: every month and.
Speaker 6: Someone is like, oh.
Speaker 5: There was a six issue mini series in which in
Speaker 5: which Aunt May died and something.
Speaker 6: You have to go read that.
Speaker 5: And that's what they're doing now in their properties over
Speaker 5: across platforms. So if when we come back and ant
Speaker 5: Man in the Wasp, or when King variants Yeah starts
Speaker 5: showing up in Doctor Strange and and ant Man in
Speaker 5: the Wasp, when Kang starts shout up, there's gonna be
Speaker 5: a lot of people who didn't watch Loki, but who
Speaker 5: watched but who watch all the movies, who are like,
Speaker 5: who's that guy?
Speaker 6: And people are gonna have to be like, oh, he
Speaker 6: was introduced in Logi ba ba bah.
Speaker 5: And that's comics. That is the that is how we
Speaker 5: process comics. Important things happen not always in the mainline book.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it happens in the offshoots or one offs or
Speaker 5: in an annual you might not have read all sorts
Speaker 5: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's absolutely one d percent how it works.
Speaker 2: And like I love that they're at this, I mean,
Speaker 2: for better or for worse. Like I know people have
Speaker 2: thoughts about that, especially if you're reading a bunch of
Speaker 2: books at the same time a month, but like I
Speaker 2: do love to thrill the page turn like and this
Speaker 2: is exactly what it captures like the end of a
Speaker 2: after end of like you know, a run on Spider Man,
Speaker 2: You're like, all right, see, like they'll have like oh
Speaker 2: doc option, you'll see like a caw and like in Silhouette,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, is he gonna be like the next
Speaker 2: big bat that shows up in the mix running Spider Man?
Speaker 2: Like that's exactly what's capturing with with the DMCU shows.
Speaker 5: And they're they're just constantly making it possible so smartly
Speaker 5: in a way that I think the DC films have failed.
Speaker 5: They've smartly, like they're walking their audience into more and
Speaker 5: more complex storytelling and bringing them along for the ride.
Speaker 5: They're not just dumping this huge audience into the deep
Speaker 5: end like they're on you know, this has been going
Speaker 5: on since you know, so this is twenty years in.
Speaker 5: You know, like you couldn't have done Loki the TV
Speaker 5: show in twenty twelve. You couldn't have done you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, Like you couldn't have you couldn't have introduced.
Speaker 6: Kang at the end.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't work really, you know, to have such an
Speaker 5: important you're a cur in movie five or something like that.
Speaker 5: This is to introduce the multiverse. You needed twenty years
Speaker 5: of runway to be like, now everything is possible, and.
Speaker 1: This is really what sets up What If, which is
Speaker 1: the animated anthology series currently wearing on Disney Plus.
Speaker 5: Which I want to say, if there are people out
Speaker 5: there who are thinking I don't love cartoons or cartoons
Speaker 5: feel like the they sometimes people think like, oh, those
Speaker 5: must be for kids, those must be like the Marvel
Speaker 5: kid like, and I'm telling you watch What If.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 4: The action is so good.
Speaker 1: First of all, the animation style is it's gorgeous, beautiful,
Speaker 1: like I want to watto fall into every single pan.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: On top of that, like the animation of the action
Speaker 1: is so seamless and smooth.
Speaker 4: I don't it is.
Speaker 1: There's one scene in the in the first episode where
Speaker 1: Peggy Carter becomes you know, infused with the super Soldier
Speaker 1: serum and she becomes Captain Peggy Carter where she like
Speaker 1: jumps through the canopy of a German bomber using the
Speaker 1: shield and it is like pulse found it stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh yeah, it's great that that episode and the
Speaker 5: second episode that Chadwick Boseman What If T'Challa was star
Speaker 5: Lord episode incredible, incredible fight sequences.
Speaker 6: The Yeah, the animation is like straight.
Speaker 5: Out of the gate, incredible, I think, Yeah, I know,
Speaker 5: I've read other places that people don't love it.
Speaker 6: I don't know why. I'm totally into it. I really am.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 5: I mean, I have a few little nitpicks here and there,
Speaker 5: but most of those are because again, I think the
Speaker 5: things that I'm nitpicking are the things that I'm nitpicking
Speaker 5: because I'm a super fan. But I suspect for a
Speaker 5: casual fan, it has to run this way, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean? Like and and I understand that. I
Speaker 5: think I think for such again again, for what could
Speaker 5: have been a toss off animated show for kids, like
Speaker 5: what If?
Speaker 6: Because what If?
Speaker 5: We should say, I don't know if you've already talked
Speaker 5: about it, forgive me if this is repeat information, but
Speaker 5: what If.
Speaker 6: Is based on the.
Speaker 5: It's based on the comics what If, in which they
Speaker 5: take traditional Marvel storylines and flip it on its head.
Speaker 6: So what if Gwen's Stacy had lived?
Speaker 4: Or what you know, like what If?
Speaker 5: And so they'll basically use it as an opportunity to
Speaker 5: tell a one off story or a or a little
Speaker 5: chunk of a story in a world in which the
Speaker 5: circumstances were totally different, right, and those are they're fun.
Speaker 6: They're like Twilight Zone episodes of the MCU kind of.
Speaker 1: Is that Yes, I think that's exactly correct, exactly yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the TV show is uses that as a
Speaker 1: jumping off point, but they're they're wetting it to their
Speaker 1: new introduction of the multiverse at the end of Loki.
Speaker 5: So so these aren't just kind of fantastical hypothetical like
Speaker 5: what if this happened.
Speaker 6: They're saying, these are the events of the multiverse.
Speaker 5: So there is a universe in which Ta'chala has taken
Speaker 5: not Peter Quill or Peggy Carter was turned into Captain
Speaker 5: Carter instead of Steve Rogers. Like, so they're saying, through
Speaker 5: the character of Uwatu the Watcher played by Jeffrey Right,
Speaker 5: they're saying, all of the multiverse is now available to us,
Speaker 5: let's tell stories inside of That's cool.
Speaker 2: It's dope as fucking Also, it gives you like the
Speaker 2: possibility of like, yeah, maybe we loved maybe want to
Speaker 2: see more of Captain Carter, so we're just gon spin
Speaker 2: out to like her own TV show or like yeah.
Speaker 6: Well you know what they said.
Speaker 5: They said that every season of What If will have
Speaker 5: another installment of oh.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh wow, that's actually great because I was like,
Speaker 1: where's so that for the other seventy minutes of this
Speaker 1: show when she popped.
Speaker 6: Out exactly because that, I will say that is my
Speaker 6: only complaint.
Speaker 5: My only complaint is there I feel like they're trying
Speaker 5: to fit move length plots into thirty minute shows, and
Speaker 5: my feeling is no, no, no, don't don't think you
Speaker 5: need to adhere so much to the But this, again,
Speaker 5: I think, is them walking their audience into that more
Speaker 5: complex idea because I think there's a lot of people
Speaker 5: probably being like, what the fuck's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, well, Jason Manzucus, thank you for walking into
Speaker 1: the debut episode of Extra Vision.
Speaker 4: It has been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I have you.
Speaker 5: Thrilled to Jason, There's nothing I want more in the
Speaker 5: world than listening to you. I've missed it in my life,
Speaker 5: talking about pop culture, talking about the stuff that we
Speaker 5: both love.
Speaker 6: Yes, I get to text with you and rant and
Speaker 6: rave about it, which I adore.
Speaker 5: But it makes me so happy that you're doing the show,
Speaker 5: and I cannot wait to smash the subscribe buttons and
Speaker 5: listen to it every week.
Speaker 4: Can't wait to Gig and Zig.
Speaker 3: What a what a delightless of you.
Speaker 6: It's so fun so great, so funny.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our endgame segment where we play a game
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode. That's right, it's a
Speaker 1: very clever title. Today's game is Who's Your Neville or
Speaker 1: Who's Your Gollum? This is a reference to Nevill Longbottom
Speaker 1: from Harry Potter and Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 4: Who is the character that is seemingly on the outside,
Speaker 4: not really that.
Speaker 1: Important, kind of like on the edge of the story,
Speaker 1: but then all of a sudden at the very end,
Speaker 1: they take the sword of Gryffindor and they slay the
Speaker 1: snake or they become the only way that Frodo can
Speaker 1: get away from the ring, like they become vital in
Speaker 1: the final moment in that final fight when everybody steps
Speaker 1: out of the portals against Kang. So the characters will
Speaker 1: be from only these Disney Plus shows that we've talked
Speaker 1: about today, WandaVision Falcon in the Winter Soldier and.
Speaker 4: Loki and Zig. Who is your Neville or who is
Speaker 4: your golle I?
Speaker 2: It is a hard decision. I Ye, I think I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna put my money on Wickan. I think,
Speaker 2: oh this is good. I think it's gonna be all.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a long walk to get there. It's
Speaker 2: long payoff. It's gonna take a couple of movies and
Speaker 2: a couple of TV shows. But I think I think
Speaker 2: they're gonna be like Wicked, You're the only you and
Speaker 2: and kid Loki, They're gonna come together and like you're
Speaker 2: the one that's gonna defeat him through the power of
Speaker 2: friendship or love. I'm putting it on him because we
Speaker 2: haven't had a big magical, a big magical fight yet,
Speaker 2: a big magical like sind Depth.
Speaker 3: So like, I'm money's all on Wicked. Baby, I'm going
Speaker 3: all in.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm going to uh man, I'm gonna use
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna repurpose my Tyler Hayward is the progenitor
Speaker 1: of the Sentinels theory, and I'm gonna say it is
Speaker 1: Director Tyler Hayward of Sword the Sentient Weapon observation and
Speaker 1: response to vision. His interest in thinking machines that are
Speaker 1: also weapons leads me to believe that maybe he will
Speaker 1: create a program of thinking robots that whose only mission
Speaker 1: is to kill people with powers. In that case, he
Speaker 1: would be my Gollum, and hopefully he is also the
Speaker 1: key to dismantling those robots too in the future if
Speaker 1: should they come to a rise. Those are our answers.
Speaker 1: Who are your answers? Feel free to hit us up
Speaker 1: on social media and watch this space.
Speaker 4: That's it for today. Thank you for listening to the
Speaker 4: debut episode of X ray Vision.
Speaker 1: Check us out wherever you get your podcast zig It's
Speaker 1: been fantastic hang out with you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me brother, always a fan, love that
Speaker 2: you're back in the nerd game. That you ever really left,
Speaker 2: but I'm stoked. Thanks for having me man.
Speaker 4: Let's go.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by myself, Tason Cantepsiona and Sandy Gerard.
Speaker 1: Caroline rest and Rest in Peace and Carlton Gillespie are
Speaker 1: our consulting producers, and our editing and sound design is
Speaker 1: by Sarah Gibblaska and the good Folks.
Speaker 4: At chapter four. Thank you to Brian Vasquez for our
Speaker 4: theme music.