Speaker 1: Folks, get your popcorn buttered, get your fountain drink ready,
Speaker 1: because there's gonna be some spoilers from the Thor Love
Speaker 1: and Thunder movie out in theaters now. If you have
Speaker 1: not seen Thor Love and Thunder, for God's sakes, do
Speaker 1: not listen to this podcast this section in which we
Speaker 1: talk about that movie until you have seen the movie.
Speaker 1: Please do that. Go watch the movie. Lots of spoilers
Speaker 1: in here for Thor Love and Thunder and Miss Marvel
Speaker 1: episodes four and five, so please see that stuff before
Speaker 1: you've listened here. Hello, my name is Jasoncepcion, and welcome
Speaker 1: to X ray Vision The Crooked Podcast, where we dive
Speaker 1: deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, on the previously on news segment, we're
Speaker 1: be talking about the Paper Girls trailer, the adaptation of
Speaker 1: the beloved Brian Cavaon Cliff Chang comic book from Image Comics.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about some Stranger Things spin off news
Speaker 1: from the Duffer Brothers, and then we're gonna be catching
Speaker 1: up on Miss Marvel episodes four and five. In the airlock,
Speaker 1: we're diving all the way deep into Thor Love and thunder,
Speaker 1: and of course, if you want to jump around, check
Speaker 1: out the timestamps in the show notes to find all
Speaker 1: the things that we talk about and enjoining me. Now
Speaker 1: we're back baby after a week layoff, filling her mind
Speaker 1: library with ever more information, ever more wisdom to give
Speaker 1: to the people. Is the number one comics encyclopedia, now
Speaker 1: overflowing with things to tell you. It's a great Rosie, diight, Rosie,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm good.
Speaker 2: I was happy to be back. We needed the one
Speaker 2: week break.
Speaker 1: But now we needed anything good.
Speaker 2: I actually I did too much work, sadly, but I
Speaker 2: also did do I did go away for like two days,
Speaker 2: so that was nice.
Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah, I uh, I went to the desert and.
Speaker 2: Those are where I went, just after you.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you. It was like one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirteen degrees every day, but it was also very very relaxing,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whenever I whenever I go to the desert, I feel
Speaker 2: like Superman. I'm like I am being powered up by
Speaker 2: the yellow sun. Like the desert. There's something about it
Speaker 2: where I'm just like this heat is nourishing me. I'm
Speaker 2: probably getting like shriveled and old, but I feel empowered.
Speaker 2: I love the desert.
Speaker 1: Thank you Desert, I too love it, folks. Let's get
Speaker 1: into the news.
Speaker 2: Paper Girl trailer.
Speaker 1: The trailer for Amazon Primes paper Girls dropped this week again,
Speaker 1: an abdaptation from the comic series of the same name
Speaker 1: by Brian Cavon illustration art by Cliff Chang. It is
Speaker 1: a show about four paper delivery girls like twelve or
Speaker 1: thirteen year olds in nineteen eighty eight, who are pulled
Speaker 1: into a time traveling adventure where they encounter future versions
Speaker 1: of themselves. It's time copying in the way that their
Speaker 1: time traveling is kind of against the law, and it's
Speaker 1: a great if you want to dive into a completely
Speaker 1: original comics world. Paper Girls on Image Comics is their
Speaker 1: few The show comes out on July twenty ninth. I
Speaker 1: was I thought the trailer looked fantastic. The color scheme,
Speaker 1: it reminds me so much of the comic. It seems
Speaker 1: like they nailed the casting. Uh, and I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about it. What were your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm so impressed by everything to do with
Speaker 2: this show, Like from the moment that they first revealed
Speaker 2: the cast to this trailer. They just Amazon. Something we
Speaker 2: can say about whoever's making these shows at Amazon. They
Speaker 2: know when to totally commit to the comics like this,
Speaker 2: and they know when to distance themselves like the boys,
Speaker 2: and we find of said this and this is like
Speaker 2: so incredible to see Cliff's visual language and landscape board
Speaker 2: to the screen, especially in the colors, because Paper Girl
Speaker 2: uses coloring in a very specific way. Their colors by
Speaker 2: Matt Wilson are just astonishing in that book, and they're
Speaker 2: used in a very narrative, important way. And it's just
Speaker 2: also like one of the coolest looking books. I remember
Speaker 2: working in a comic shop when it was coming out,
Speaker 2: and you just wanted to get those Neon issues every time,
Speaker 2: like the beautiful covers. And yeah, this is one where
Speaker 2: I would say, read it now, or if the trailer
Speaker 2: looks really enticing to you, wait and then you can
Speaker 2: be surprised when you watch the show. I also something
Speaker 2: that I think is really cool about this, when we
Speaker 2: talk about committing to the comics, something that Amazon pr
Speaker 2: is doing here which is really incredible. Every single time
Speaker 2: they write about Paper Girls, they shout out Brian Cavaughan,
Speaker 2: and they shout out Cliff Chang and they are adding
Speaker 2: them and they are saying, these are the people who
Speaker 2: made this, these are the people, this is the reason
Speaker 2: this exists. So I think this could be a real
Speaker 2: step forward when it comes to how closely connected the
Speaker 2: creators are to the show. Also, images create our own
Speaker 2: creat so this is about to say this is their brand.
Speaker 1: Is Brian Cavon. It's so much image comics exactly.
Speaker 2: So I'm really excited. I think it looks great. I'm
Speaker 2: very stoked to see that on the Internet. Like there
Speaker 2: was a lot of people who were like, oh, this
Speaker 2: looks like Stranger Things, but the Paper Girl's fandom has been.
Speaker 3: There being like, well, actually and correctly. So a great
Speaker 3: point to bring up because it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We just I just got done with Stranger Things season four.
Speaker 1: I think uh many of us have. Uh. It's a
Speaker 1: show set in the eighties with lots of eighties references
Speaker 1: that clearly UH is inspired by you know, the work
Speaker 1: of Steven Spielberg and other kind of why A movies
Speaker 1: of the era, kids on bikes having an adventure and
Speaker 1: for both And so I was wondering, well, watching the
Speaker 1: trailer and then going back and flipping through the first
Speaker 1: couple of issues of Paper Girls on image. I wonder
Speaker 1: how much the success of Stranger Things affected voices that
Speaker 1: they made in the show, because you know, I mean
Speaker 1: the opening of the comic, there's like a reference to
Speaker 1: the Challenger explosion. There's all these pop culture need these references.
Speaker 1: There's a kid dressed as Freddy Krueger, like you know,
Speaker 1: in the opening, in the opening pages, and all of
Speaker 1: that would feel I think, pretty Stranger Things into those
Speaker 1: who are not initiated to the comics or weren't reading
Speaker 1: the comics at the time. So I wonder, I really
Speaker 1: wonder how much the showrunners and the production team either
Speaker 1: leaned into the eighties references the stuff that's on the page,
Speaker 1: or leaned away from those choices, not wanting to, you know,
Speaker 1: ride on a wave that has been created by another show.
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting to think about because I
Speaker 2: think that there's probably no way that Paper Girls gets
Speaker 2: made into a TV show at all without Stranger Things,
Speaker 2: or less not this speedily. So thank you Stranger Things,
Speaker 2: because I wanted a Paper Girls show, probably more than
Speaker 2: most other comic book shows. But Paper Girls did come out,
Speaker 2: you know, almost a year before the first issue of
Speaker 2: Paper Girls came out almost a year before Stranger Things.
Speaker 2: My gut says, you cannot. The point of Paper Girls
Speaker 2: as well as Strange Things is that to evoke that nostalgia.
Speaker 2: The question is do they do it in the Stranger
Speaker 2: Things way, which is like, look at this thing that
Speaker 2: is from that era, or do they do it in
Speaker 2: tone and ship. I would love to see them evoke
Speaker 2: different parts of the eighties that we don't necessarily get
Speaker 2: to see in the same way, So I'll be really
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the most interesting things to
Speaker 2: look for as we go into the show, is like
Speaker 2: what do they do to separate themselves from Stranger Things,
Speaker 2: And not in a negative way, just because this is
Speaker 2: a unique, different kind of story. So I'm very interested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not in a negative way at all, but just
Speaker 1: understanding like how storytellers, you know, like to work is
Speaker 1: you always want to do something that is your own,
Speaker 1: even if you're working in the same time period, the
Speaker 1: same milieu that you know, there's certain references to historical
Speaker 1: events from nineteen eighty eight, there are not you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to be unavoidable, and of course, like Stranger
Speaker 1: Things is in eighty six, so there is a little
Speaker 1: bit of air gap in terms of years.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, point. But let's Stranger Things for the late A.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd imagine if I was if I was
Speaker 1: working on this, I'd be like, I don't know, this
Speaker 1: is like fun, but like Stranger Things did this, so
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would just be fascinated to know,
Speaker 1: like what the conversation was speaking of Stranger Things. Uh.
Speaker 1: Matt and Ross Duffer, the Duffer Brothers, creators of these
Speaker 1: Stranger Things television program on the Netflix streaming platform, have
Speaker 1: announced per Deadline that they have launched their own company,
Speaker 1: upside Down Pictures, and they are working on producing as
Speaker 1: Stranger Things spinoff. Per Deadline, following the record breaking release
Speaker 1: of the two final episodes of Stranger Things Season four,
Speaker 1: creators Matt and Rosstuffer have formed upside Down Pictures and
Speaker 1: recommitted to Netflix with several new projects. Those include a
Speaker 1: live action series adaptation of Death Note, the famed Japanese
Speaker 1: manga and anime written by Tuscumi Oba and with illustrations
Speaker 1: by Taki shi Obada. An original series from creators Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Addis and Will Matthews. Dark Crystal Resistance could come out
Speaker 1: of upside Down Pictures, a series adaptation of Stephen king
Speaker 1: At Peter Straub's nineteen eighty four novel The Taosman, which
Speaker 1: speaking as a king head excited for that one. A
Speaker 1: new stage play set within the world in Mythology of
Speaker 1: Stranger Things, produced by UK based stage producer Sonya Friedman,
Speaker 1: and the aforementioned live act Stranger Things spin off based
Speaker 1: on an original idea by the Duff Brothers, with upside
Speaker 1: Down and twenty one Laps producing. Uh, this just makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. You know, this is by I
Speaker 1: think any measure, although with Netflix it's hard to understand
Speaker 1: what measure what is right by the bye, just anecdotally
Speaker 1: knowing all the people who are talking about this show
Speaker 1: and who have watched it, and understanding what Netflix the hit,
Speaker 1: what it means as a hit to Netflix, it just
Speaker 1: makes sense to do this. And Uh, I'm excited. Listen,
Speaker 1: give let's give Steve, Let's.
Speaker 2: Give Stephen Dustin spin off.
Speaker 1: Bring step and Dustin spin off. Is that not what
Speaker 1: we want?
Speaker 2: That's not the people.
Speaker 4: I was always going to say a spoiler, I'll save
Speaker 4: that from when we actually don't about Stranger Things.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what the people want. I am intrigued by this.
Speaker 2: I think that was a cool like talisman easter egg
Speaker 2: as well in the volume of The Stranger Things New season,
Speaker 2: So that's kind of a fun lead in kind of
Speaker 2: doing that Mike Flannagan world within the world sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I I'm wary of that first, the first announcement the
Speaker 2: Death Note adaptation Netflix before, but let's you know what goes.
Speaker 2: I'm open to it. There's been plenty of brilliant already
Speaker 2: Death Note adaptations in Japan, so it's not going to
Speaker 2: take those away, and maybe it'll add something really cool
Speaker 2: or new. I love anything like why a kid storytelling
Speaker 2: that's like and we'll talk about that more when we
Speaker 2: talk about Thoor like that. I'm a sucker for that.
Speaker 2: So the notion that we could see a new core
Speaker 2: version of that, I'm open to it. I'm open to it.
Speaker 2: I love Dark Crystal Age of Resistance. That was like
Speaker 2: one of my favorite TV shows in the last few
Speaker 2: years because it's, Oh my god, it is like so good.
Speaker 2: When you watch it, you almost cannot believe it's real.
Speaker 2: It is. Oh, it's so on. You're gonna love it
Speaker 2: so much. I know everything you love and you're just
Speaker 2: gonna love it.
Speaker 1: It is so the original Dark Crystal movie.
Speaker 2: It's like, imagine that, but it's a prestige TV show
Speaker 2: with like a never ending budget and everything is there's
Speaker 2: obviously incredible CG but there's a lot of practical puppet tree.
Speaker 2: So it is just like that's my ultimate I wish
Speaker 2: they would renew it show that got canceled. So the
Speaker 2: idea that that team teaming up with the Stranger Things team,
Speaker 2: who was obviously so influenced by that error of filmmaking,
Speaker 2: I think that's really exciting, and we will be.
Speaker 1: Talking about Stranger Things more on an upcoming episode. I
Speaker 1: gotta say, just as a quick knee jerk reaction, this
Speaker 1: was my favorite season of Stranger Things for Yeah, primarily
Speaker 1: because we've were finally like fleshing out the lore of
Speaker 1: the world and you know, we're both big like world
Speaker 1: building rules people and just understanding more about the upside down,
Speaker 1: how the mind flawer works, Vecna's role in all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. That was really fun to learn about all
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also brings in two of my favorite things,
Speaker 2: which is like I absolutely love horror storytelling and like
Speaker 2: fantasy horror, and that is brought in in such an
Speaker 2: expansive and unexpected way here. And also I thought the
Speaker 2: satanic panic aspect of the show and the storytelling, that
Speaker 2: is something that really speaks to me, that notion of
Speaker 2: like being othered. And I thought that Joseph Quinn as
Speaker 2: Eddie is just like, that's got to be one of
Speaker 2: my favorite characters from a TV show in ever, and
Speaker 2: I saw so much love there for him, so like, I, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's this feels again. It's been a little while since
Speaker 2: we've had one of those moments where you feel like
Speaker 2: everybody's talking about it. Yeah, you know, so it's it's
Speaker 2: kind of been wild since we've had Yeah, it's been
Speaker 2: fun to see that everyone getting excited about it for
Speaker 2: the good reasons, so that it's all it's all because
Speaker 2: people are passionate. So it's been exciting to be a
Speaker 2: part of that again.
Speaker 1: Miss Marvel episodes four and five the Lightning recap of both.
Speaker 1: Let's start with episode four, titled Seeing Red and basically
Speaker 1: here's what you need to know. Kamala goes to Karachi.
Speaker 1: She meets up with her nanny and some cousins. She
Speaker 1: meets Kareem, a member of the Red Daggers and learns
Speaker 1: about the Red Daggers, this group that has been working
Speaker 1: behind the scenes over there. She goes to Kamala goes
Speaker 1: to Red Dagger headquarters where she meets the leaders of
Speaker 1: the group. We learn more about the realm of the
Speaker 1: Clandestines come from, and then fucking the Department of Damage
Speaker 1: Control absolutely fumbles the fucking.
Speaker 2: Bag once again once again.
Speaker 1: Once it's like, you can just you can just take
Speaker 1: them to their cells. You don't have to be assholes
Speaker 1: about it anyway. The Department of Damage Control are escorting
Speaker 1: Najama and her group to their cells, but they have
Speaker 1: to be really racist about it, and this leads to
Speaker 1: a big fight and Najima and the Clandestines escape. Walid
Speaker 1: is killed in a fight back in Karachi, and we
Speaker 1: see a portal open and Kamala goes through and arrives
Speaker 1: That faithful night back in nineteen forty seven, when Sana
Speaker 1: followed a trail of stars to her father and Aisha disappeared.
Speaker 1: Onto episode five, we open on newsreel footage from August
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, the eve of India's independence and the
Speaker 1: creation of the state of Pakistan. We see India's leader
Speaker 1: Nehru and Pakistan's leader and founding figure Muhammad Ali Jina
Speaker 1: making speeches, and then we see crowds of people on
Speaker 1: the move as these two states are created, and Hindus
Speaker 1: who are living in what will soon become Pakistan are
Speaker 1: leaving for India and Muslims in India leaving for Pakistan.
Speaker 1: Of course, this process, historical process which was I believe
Speaker 1: the largest mass migration of people in history, in the
Speaker 1: history of the world, talking millions of people in the
Speaker 1: move was accompanied by a lot of violence, a lot
Speaker 1: of destruction, and a lot of heartache for people who
Speaker 1: for generations had been living in a place, living in
Speaker 1: the place that their family had lived in for generations,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden forced to uproot themselves and move.
Speaker 1: That's a historical context. We arrive in nineteen forty two
Speaker 1: flashback from this newsreel footage. British troops are pursuing Kamala's
Speaker 1: great grandmother, Aisha through the forest. She suddenly turns and
Speaker 1: does something which takes down the soldier. Later, we see
Speaker 1: an activist handing out handbills and talking to a crowd
Speaker 1: about the independence movement. Agitating this crowd of eager locals
Speaker 1: about why they should be an independent nation and how
Speaker 1: they can do that with the least amount of chaos
Speaker 1: and rioting possible. And then all of a sudden, British
Speaker 1: shoops arrive, and of course they've got Indian auxiliaries also,
Speaker 1: and they don't want people talking about this, so they
Speaker 1: disperse the crowd using force. Aisha later is wearing the
Speaker 1: bangal and we see her wearing the bangle. She's sleeping
Speaker 1: in a field. Turns out that's this man's field. His
Speaker 1: name is Hassan, and he wakes her up and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to, my house is right
Speaker 1: over here, if you want to come in and get
Speaker 1: something to eat and rest in there. That night, she
Speaker 1: comes in and very very very reluctantly eats dinner, which
Speaker 1: you don't have to tell me twise, if you're offering food,
Speaker 1: I'm eating. Aisha doesn't talk much, and it's we understand why,
Speaker 1: of course, but Hassan does not. It's clear that she's
Speaker 1: not from around here. It's also clear that she's not British,
Speaker 1: So who is she? What's her deal? Aisha's very closed
Speaker 1: lipped about this, but eventually she reveals that she likes
Speaker 1: Hassan grows roses and she thinks are great. That gets
Speaker 1: them talking. Now they introduce themselves and she is Aisha.
Speaker 1: We know he is Hassan. We just learned that. And folks,
Speaker 1: you can tell right away by the way they're looking
Speaker 1: at each other they're gonna make babies. And it happens.
Speaker 1: In the very next scene. We fast forward to Aisha
Speaker 1: has got Hassan's roses in her hair. They are being
Speaker 1: very loving to each other. A camera bound pans down
Speaker 1: and guess what it's baby on board time That is
Speaker 1: within that belly is Sna Kamala's grandmother. The growing family
Speaker 1: is at peace, and we fast forward years later see
Speaker 1: snap playing with Aisha's Bengal as a BBC radio reports
Speaker 1: on the violence that is gripping the country. This is
Speaker 1: post independence now and the partition is taking place or
Speaker 1: around the time of independence. As this mass migration is
Speaker 1: taking place, Hassan is upset. He is Muslim. He lives
Speaker 1: in what will become India. Already, people in the village
Speaker 1: that he and his family have lived in for many
Speaker 1: years are being shunned by certain members of the community.
Speaker 1: Although there is also a lot of generosity within that community,
Speaker 1: and he is angry because he's really grappling with the
Speaker 1: very real possibility that he's going to have to flee
Speaker 1: the home that has been his home for generations. A
Speaker 1: villager comes to offer them some food, and he rejects it.
Speaker 1: He's angry about it. That night, Aisha meets Nadama out
Speaker 1: in the field and we learned that Asha's been hiding
Speaker 1: from her fellow clandestine's. Najama has been searching for Aetia
Speaker 1: for years, it seems like, and her plan is the
Speaker 1: same as it is present day. She wants to use
Speaker 1: the bangle to return everybody home. They want to go
Speaker 1: back to their the dimension they've been exiled from. I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh the bangle, Yeah, I hit it
Speaker 1: because you know, there's all the there's all this, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all this movement of people's riots going on, a
Speaker 1: lot of chaos because of the independence movement, and you know,
Speaker 1: I got to look for it. And I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: I'll text you when I find it. I'll look for it, okay,
Speaker 1: and I'll let you know. And then Najamas like you
Speaker 1: have until the end of day tomorrow, and that's when
Speaker 1: you better have it. I usually goes back this on
Speaker 1: and urges him to flee. It's time to go. We
Speaker 1: got to go. The riots are getting closer. I know
Speaker 1: this farmhouse has been in your family and you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave it and it's really painful. But you've
Speaker 1: got a growing family. Now we have to do it.
Speaker 1: They hit the road. I should gives son on the
Speaker 1: Bengal for protection. The family heads off for the last
Speaker 1: train out of town. On the road, Hassan, who uses
Speaker 1: a cane he's got an injured leg, is struggling. He
Speaker 1: asks who Ai Shud was talking to out in the
Speaker 1: field the other night, and Aisha is like, okay, let
Speaker 1: me show you some shows us on the Bengal gives
Speaker 1: us a very short demo of what it can do,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a little telescoping feature and it lights.
Speaker 2: Up and it's very fancy.
Speaker 1: We learned through this process in this scene that Hassan,
Speaker 1: like many guys, is not a big He has a
Speaker 1: lot to say about politics and stuff, but in terms
Speaker 1: of like deep questions with a partner, has clearly not
Speaker 1: asked a lot of questions. This beautiful, gorgeous, intelligent woman
Speaker 1: showed up in his field one day with no past,
Speaker 1: not talking about where she's from or anything. And it's
Speaker 1: not until now apparently like one or two years later,
Speaker 1: because Sanna is like a toddler, right that he now
Speaker 1: begins to ask questions about, like real questions about any
Speaker 1: So this bangel, what's going on with this? I wanted
Speaker 1: it's I wanted to talk about something since it was
Speaker 1: just the fourth of July.
Speaker 2: As you know, Rosie, I do know I was.
Speaker 1: As a as a as a member of our of
Speaker 1: our extended family, our English cousin, Rosie, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about about the way. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: you often hear when people critique colonialism. You'll often hear
Speaker 1: like defenders of colonialism say kind of shritly, like, hey,
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't ideal all the time, but look like
Speaker 1: India has the post office, they have this away system,
Speaker 1: they have these beautiful harbors, they have this parliamentary system
Speaker 1: of government, they have like all these this civil service
Speaker 1: and all this stuff that's like very fleshed out. And
Speaker 1: that's because of the legacy that English rule left there.
Speaker 1: And while it wasn't always great, look look at the
Speaker 1: positives that left behind, which like all that stuff is
Speaker 1: there because the English were there. That's true. At the
Speaker 1: same time, it's like, uh, you know, the economics of colonialism,
Speaker 1: it's it's different for many cases. And I'm by no
Speaker 1: means an expert, but i will say, like the basics
Speaker 1: were the English and the English were not. You know,
Speaker 1: the Dutch were there, the Portuguese were there, France was
Speaker 1: there also, but the English came to dominate India. The
Speaker 1: English system of colonialism was they extract natural resources, gems,
Speaker 1: you know, text ales, t et cetera, and take it
Speaker 1: very for a very cheap price as all England. Right essentially, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, like there's an investment of money, like
Speaker 1: to like go and send people there. Anyway, they extract
Speaker 1: the natural resources, they send to England where they produced
Speaker 1: finished goods that they would then sell to this captive
Speaker 1: market of India where they can't buy anything else. They
Speaker 1: have to buy stuff from England. Right, So what you're
Speaker 1: basically looking at is, I mean, you could call it theft,
Speaker 1: but on a massive, massive scale, like a oh your
Speaker 1: scale to the point where you need a railroad to
Speaker 1: transport all the stuff you're taking to the harbor, and
Speaker 1: you need ships to take that home, and you need
Speaker 1: this massive like management system that becomes a civil service
Speaker 1: to keep track of all that stuff. And you need
Speaker 1: a postal service because you need to be in communication
Speaker 1: with all these people who are extracting all this wealth
Speaker 1: out of there and then selling the finished goods and
Speaker 1: taking that wealth back also. And so really when you
Speaker 1: when people say, oh, but look at the post office
Speaker 1: and look at all the railways and stuff, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like if I was a bank robber and I
Speaker 1: tunneled into a bank and I stole all the money,
Speaker 1: if I came back like now there's a tunnel forty
Speaker 1: fifty years later, say oh, I noticed you made a
Speaker 1: subway out of the tunnel that I dug. You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's exactly what it is. I mean, it's colonialism.
Speaker 2: Is like the most horrendous and vile crime in England
Speaker 2: is like one of its absolute worst perpetrators. Like it's
Speaker 2: so awful, and I just and it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: it's really strange as well because like when at least
Speaker 2: when I was in school, I don't think it's changed
Speaker 2: very much. They don't really teach you anything about it,
Speaker 2: like most feature anything country partition, and they don't. They
Speaker 2: don't even do the version where it's like, well, at
Speaker 2: least where I went to school, which was like a
Speaker 2: very like poor working class neighborhood where there was people
Speaker 2: from all over the world, like they a lot of
Speaker 2: whom came there because of what England had done to
Speaker 2: their countries during colonialism and like because of colonialism. But
Speaker 2: like they didn't even do the version where they were
Speaker 2: like we were like generous benefactors. They just like skip
Speaker 2: over it because they know that even if you like
Speaker 2: scrape the tiniest bit of it off. I think it's
Speaker 2: like in that way, like Miss Marvel. By talking about
Speaker 2: partition and kind of generally even broaching this period, it's
Speaker 2: doing that thing that comic books have always done that
Speaker 2: we love, which is like using a story to tell
Speaker 2: like an analogous import shine of light on, like an
Speaker 2: important moment in history. But instead of doing it in
Speaker 2: a way that's analogous, they're actually just talking about it
Speaker 2: and setting it during this time. And like the creative
Speaker 2: team actually shared Bisha Ali, I saw share it. This
Speaker 2: reading list they made, we can put it in the
Speaker 2: show notes of readings on partition by all different kinds
Speaker 2: of people's like so, and I think it's like a
Speaker 2: really interesting, cool expansion of that where they're not just
Speaker 2: saying like, oh, we wrote about this thing, you should
Speaker 2: go and learn about it. They're like, here are the
Speaker 2: things that helped us learn about it, and and now
Speaker 2: you can't too. So I'm glad that there are stories
Speaker 2: about this because yeah, just terribly.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be there's gonna be a significant amount of
Speaker 1: people who learn about this of this event and this
Speaker 1: period of history in this part of the world because
Speaker 1: of the show. And I think that is broadly positive.
Speaker 1: And you know, partition is it is a it is
Speaker 1: a subject of ongoing scholarship, like as you speak, like
Speaker 1: it has been kind of overlooked both in the region
Speaker 1: and and in the west in the region because it's
Speaker 1: such a painful topic with like a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of bad history attached to it. Yeah again, like
Speaker 1: millions died during this extremely violent and chaotic like event,
Speaker 1: Like it was bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's been really good This is
Speaker 2: like a really nuanced topic, like anything about this. So
Speaker 2: there's been people who've loved this version of part of
Speaker 2: the way Miss Marvel has represented it and feel like
Speaker 2: it's super representative and bringing this like moment I've forgotten
Speaker 2: moment in history to life. And there's been people who
Speaker 2: don't feel like it's actually representative of their experience at all.
Speaker 2: So that's the notion of all of these things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the two sides of trying to tell this huge
Speaker 2: story in like a thirty minute episode.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that too before we get back to
Speaker 1: the recap, because this is another thing I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about a lot, which is Yeah, on Reddit and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: there's all these threads that are like basically being like,
Speaker 1: I'm not a bigot, but miss Marvel just doesn't speak
Speaker 1: to me. Here are the reasons why which and listen,
Speaker 1: certain people like things or they don't like things. There's
Speaker 1: yeah wrong with that. I will say that. I will
Speaker 1: say that, like, and I'm not trying to speak for
Speaker 1: the uh Pakistani or Indian fans of the show or like,
Speaker 1: you know, pop culture fans in general. I'm speaking as
Speaker 1: a as a person of color who loves nerd shit.
Speaker 1: It it feels a little like, uh, it feels a
Speaker 1: little weird when people are so loudly like, well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't speak to me. Considering like you know, as a
Speaker 1: as a again as a nerd, as a nerd of color,
Speaker 1: like you just know you I have to growing up
Speaker 1: and watching shows including now you basically have to eat
Speaker 1: what they make you, you know, like there's no choice.
Speaker 1: And so as when you were talking about like how
Speaker 1: the kind of obliquely talking about like the steaks for
Speaker 1: fans like who are looking to see their experiences mirrored
Speaker 1: in this show and are either satisfied or disappointed. I
Speaker 1: think that that is it. Just when there are so
Speaker 1: few opportunities to see something like that, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it carries more weight. Like if this was like
Speaker 1: Peaky Blinders or something right and it's stiffed and people
Speaker 1: were like, well fuck it, I don't you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really care about like early twentieth century Anglo Irish
Speaker 1: like Mafia Shiit Gang, people would not there would not
Speaker 1: be an uproar from the community that is looking to
Speaker 1: see themselves reflected in that Anglo Irish story, because guess what,
Speaker 1: You're going to get a million other Anglo Irish stories
Speaker 1: like you could go fucking watch Boondock Saints or something
Speaker 1: I don't know, like that's or departed you know, like
Speaker 1: it's there's a million things, but you know right, yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like listen when when crazy rich I've told this
Speaker 1: story before, I'll tell it again, crazy rich Asians came out.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it, Okay, I did. I the theme,
Speaker 1: the story is subject matter very very rich people doing
Speaker 1: very very rich shit. It just doesn't speak to me.
Speaker 1: It's not my thing. At the same time, not knowing
Speaker 1: when we would get another major Hollywood budget movie starring
Speaker 1: Asian people, and in fact it would not be until
Speaker 1: years later Shangchi the legitd of the Ten Rings, I
Speaker 1: was like, not, I'm not going to be out there
Speaker 1: being like, you know, fuck this movie. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I was just not going to do that now, was
Speaker 1: I like not speaking my mind? Yeah? But also like,
Speaker 1: those are the those are the kind of issues that
Speaker 1: you have to weigh when you're just not used to
Speaker 1: seeing yourself or your stories reflected in the broader pop culture.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the I think that's a
Speaker 2: really interesting and very very true balance we all strike.
Speaker 2: I have yet to watch a Marvel movie focused solely
Speaker 2: around a solo female character that I have enjoyed or
Speaker 2: that has spoken to me I was not a fan,
Speaker 2: particularly of Captain Marvel, and I was not really a
Speaker 2: huge fan of Black Widow. But you know, I love
Speaker 2: the MCU and there's twenty five movies or whatever and
Speaker 2: a million TV shows, so I can find different things
Speaker 2: that do speak to me. But again, I wasn't out
Speaker 2: here like boo Captain Marvel because you realize, you're like,
Speaker 2: it took them ten years to do this anyway, it's
Speaker 2: and the way that they're doing it, Like sure, I
Speaker 2: would have rather that it was a Monica Rambo movie
Speaker 2: Like that, to me is the movie I wanted to see.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna be stoked that this means a lot
Speaker 2: to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, it's just like the fullness of one's chest
Speaker 1: when announcing that this a certain thing that stars, you know,
Speaker 1: a South Asian cast that is culturally Muslim religious, you know,
Speaker 1: based on very very uniquely based and heavily based on
Speaker 1: Pakistani culture, the Muslim religion. To then go, well, thiss
Speaker 1: isten speaking to me, It's just I'm not saying little.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying also, I'm not saying it's a dog whistle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I am saying that I think that it is
Speaker 2: very interesting to see the stories that that is said about.
Speaker 2: Nobody's like, oh, Captain America doesn't speak to me because
Speaker 2: I wasn't given a super soldier serum and turned into
Speaker 2: a super soldier. No, it's like, this doesn't speak to
Speaker 2: you because most likely you're very used to being catered to,
Speaker 2: and that actually is I think that these stories they
Speaker 2: don't need to speak to you because there's so many.
Speaker 2: But also if the best thing about them is if
Speaker 2: you let yourself open up, maybe it will speak to it.
Speaker 1: I think it just give it as a universal story exactly.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's kind of it's like, uh, if
Speaker 1: if you're if we all live in this massive house together, right,
Speaker 1: and there's one hundred pictures of the wall, and a
Speaker 1: hundred of them are like people that look like you,
Speaker 1: and then we change it so that like five of
Speaker 1: them are people that don't look like you, maybe you'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, let's slip that's still. But then
Speaker 1: if we get to like say ten or fifteen pictures
Speaker 1: out of the hundred, now all of a sudden, people
Speaker 1: are like, well, let's pump the brake. We don't want
Speaker 1: to change this over and I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that going on, not just about this show, but
Speaker 1: in the broader culture. Okay, back to the train station
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. It is a fucking mess, as one
Speaker 1: would expect. Aisha, Hassan, and son Up push their way
Speaker 1: through the crowds, but Aisha gets a feeling that something
Speaker 1: is amiss and she looks and she sees Nagama through
Speaker 1: the crowd, so she breaks off because she's afraid Najamen
Speaker 1: is about to attack. What if my husband and daughter
Speaker 1: are killed or innocent people are killed, And she goes
Speaker 1: off to try and lure her away from her family.
Speaker 1: She's speaking to her, but then Najman's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it and stabs Aisa and then walks off.
Speaker 2: She's like, my what the fuck? She takes advantage of
Speaker 2: the chaos. I mean, there's one place you can stab
Speaker 2: someone and walk off stab as brutal walks off.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Hassan has lost track of his daughter in this
Speaker 1: boiling massive refugees, Aisha is dying. She's looking at a
Speaker 1: photo of her and Hassan and sona like standing in
Speaker 1: the field, and she says, what you seek is seeking
Speaker 1: you and then the Bengal glows and drops to the
Speaker 1: ground as Aisha is losing her strength. And in that moment,
Speaker 1: as the Bengal hits the ground, the portal opens, which
Speaker 1: we saw open elsewhere in present day Karachi, and Kamala
Speaker 1: arrives in nineteen forty seven. She finds her great grandmother dying.
Speaker 1: I used to thinks Kamala is actually adult. It's not
Speaker 1: her daughter, and it's unclear actually that she actually gets
Speaker 1: who she is as she's dying, but she in her
Speaker 1: final moments asks Kamala to save her family, and then
Speaker 1: she dies. Kamala finds her grandmother her infant grandmother in
Speaker 1: the crowd and is about to use her light powers
Speaker 1: to get them to walk above the crowd so they
Speaker 1: can get to the train. When there's like a they're
Speaker 1: disrupted for a second, and the sna we see is
Speaker 1: infatuated with the light and can control it in some
Speaker 1: kind of way, is playing with it in a way
Speaker 1: that is unique. Kamala is looking on at this in amazement,
Speaker 1: and this light show allows Hassan to find his daughter.
Speaker 1: He sees the glow and he guts over to it
Speaker 1: and he finds her. We're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: this means for time travel in a second. Then the
Speaker 1: bangle glows and Kamala is transported back to present day Karachi,
Speaker 1: where a portal is opening to the newer dimension. Here
Speaker 1: is Nadama that she's about to watch her plans come
Speaker 1: to filment. They're about to be able to go home,
Speaker 1: but as the Clandestines touch the veil, they die. One
Speaker 1: of one of Najama's number, Furia touches it and turns
Speaker 1: to bone and ash. Kamala tries to shoot light at
Speaker 1: the veil to close it. Red Dagger comes up, is like,
Speaker 1: I'll help by evacuating, like all, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: civilians in the area. This took place, like in a
Speaker 1: market area of Karachi. It starts evacuating people, and Kamala
Speaker 1: is like you get to Nagama. She's like, you got
Speaker 1: to help me close this thing. Like I understand, like
Speaker 1: you want to go home all this stuff, but we
Speaker 1: could we could lose everything, uh, And they have it
Speaker 1: out right there, and then finally Najamas like, okay, I
Speaker 1: get it, Like I agree, and I know how to
Speaker 1: close the veil, and she steps forward and touches it
Speaker 1: and she dies. Uh, and the veil seals just as
Speaker 1: Nagama's powers are transferred across the world to comrad over
Speaker 1: in Jersey City. As the veil closes, Weniva and Sada,
Speaker 1: the adult elderly sonat walk up just in time as
Speaker 1: it's all over. It's all over, and they show up
Speaker 1: later a Snat shows Kamala pictures of her mom when
Speaker 1: she was her age. Miniba was a huge fan of Bonjovi,
Speaker 1: which we already know Sana, And there's this really like
Speaker 1: wonderful mothers and Daughters seen generationally of Snat and Muniba
Speaker 1: rebuilding their relationship through their relationship with Kamala, which I
Speaker 1: just found to be wonderful. Like this is what this
Speaker 1: show does well, is stuff like this, like really well
Speaker 1: the I.
Speaker 2: Too plays Manieba is just so brilliant, and like the
Speaker 2: writing team does something. I really love this episode where
Speaker 2: it would have been really easy to have this episode
Speaker 2: introduce more conflict, but instead Maniba sees Kamala using her powers,
Speaker 2: realizes what her mother's son was saying was true, and
Speaker 2: just apologizes and then they're just like a team. And
Speaker 2: I thought that was really nice because that's the right thing.
Speaker 2: And Manieba is so impressed when she realizes that Kamala
Speaker 2: is a superhero, which I thought was like really cute.
Speaker 2: She doesn't tell her off or anything, She's just like wow,
Speaker 2: and I just I really like that. And I think
Speaker 2: this is like a very low key no one cares
Speaker 2: about apart from me theory. But from the beginning of
Speaker 2: this show, I thought they were establishing a space where
Speaker 2: like Manieba would design Kamala's superhero costume. And I do
Speaker 2: think after this episode that that's what we'll see next week,
Speaker 2: which I think is just so cute.
Speaker 1: Another X ray Vision prediction, get ready else That one's on.
Speaker 2: The low stakes, but full of heart, Full of heart.
Speaker 1: Back in Jersey City, Bruno is at work at the
Speaker 1: store when camraon waylays him in the alley as he's
Speaker 1: taking out trash. Korra's like, I need your help, and
Speaker 1: the two of course make a very awkward pair uh,
Speaker 1: camraon being Kamala's kind of crush, Kamala being Bruno's one
Speaker 1: hundred percent definite crush uh. And it gets even more
Speaker 1: awkward with comfront admits that he thought Bruno's name was
Speaker 1: Brian from he's been calling him that like a law.
Speaker 1: I will say, like as a person who's bad with
Speaker 1: names that I have done, I've got a system now,
Speaker 1: but I've like had numerous encounters with.
Speaker 2: People you are feeling represented where it's like, fuck, I
Speaker 2: one hundred percent should know this person's name by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ridiculous that I don't know it. And Cameras
Speaker 1: I figure out how to figure it out.
Speaker 2: In Cameron's defense, like every time they've met, it's been
Speaker 2: like a life threatening situation, like trying to introduce his
Speaker 2: immortal gin mother to Kamala, who man may not be him,
Speaker 2: Like you know, Bruno, I feel like in this case
Speaker 2: he could. He does a good job while he just
Speaker 2: like makes a joke about it because I'm like, truly, Bruno,
Speaker 2: get over it, and they just good for them.
Speaker 1: They do get So they go up to Bruno's apartment
Speaker 1: and Camraan is like, listen, I need to stay put
Speaker 1: because my mom needs to come back and find me.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know that Najama is dead. And as they
Speaker 1: are just kind of discussing their next move, they look
Speaker 1: out the window and they see one of those damage
Speaker 1: control Stark drones like lurking outside and comeron uses his clan,
Speaker 1: his new clandestine powers to knock the drone down, and
Speaker 1: we are onto the season finale of Miss Marvel.
Speaker 2: After the drone blows up the socle q where Bruno works.
Speaker 1: So let's okay, here's my this is. We were talking
Speaker 1: about this offline. Okay, So Endgame established an MCU time
Speaker 1: travel structure, by which right, It's not like Looper or
Speaker 1: the Terminator where you go back in time and if
Speaker 1: I find past you and I cut off their hand
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, like back to the future,
Speaker 1: your hand falls off or you know, or you fade
Speaker 1: out of a picture. What happens is if you change something,
Speaker 1: it starts a whole new timeline, and that timeline goes.
Speaker 2: On unless you change it back, which is what happened
Speaker 2: in Anger.
Speaker 1: Unless you change it back. But even then we can parsel.
Speaker 1: We can parse that because I think it's interesting to parse.
Speaker 1: But so what happened here is is Kamala's grandmother's life
Speaker 1: was apparently saved by Kamala, who time traveled back because
Speaker 1: of the dropped Bango to nineteen forty seven to reunite
Speaker 1: her grandmother with her great grandfather so that she could
Speaker 1: be raised and then so her mother could be born,
Speaker 1: and so then she could eventually be born and then
Speaker 1: go back and say and then go back and save
Speaker 1: it again. So the way it is implied in the show,
Speaker 1: and the way that Marvel's official recap, written by Marvel
Speaker 1: editor Rachel Page, makes it seem is that it's like
Speaker 1: a back to the Future dominator style closed time loop
Speaker 1: where Kamala has always gone back and will always go back,
Speaker 1: and has always gone back. We would imagine infinite times
Speaker 1: before this she has done this exact thing and nothing
Speaker 1: can change it. Is it that or is it like
Speaker 1: the endgame thing where she went back and either a
Speaker 1: arted an alternate timeline. So Kamala one, the Bengal has dropped,
Speaker 1: goes back through the portal, saves her grandmother. It's creating
Speaker 1: an alternate timeline in which Kamala two does the same thing,
Speaker 1: starting a new timeline in which Kamala three. You know, like,
Speaker 1: is it that or is it still like endgame? But
Speaker 1: because now here is where it gets this is a
Speaker 1: little tricky. But like so in endgame, right that you
Speaker 1: know the stuff that they stole they put back a
Speaker 1: second later. Now I would argue that you're still changing things.
Speaker 1: You're killing bacteria, you're serving things interest, the world is
Speaker 1: still changing, you're countering people on the way there, maybe
Speaker 1: somebody that is two seconds later. Yeah, like there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, right, the timeline is significantly Like you're
Speaker 1: playing with stuff and it's still remained the same, Right,
Speaker 1: So maybe what happened. So the alternate version of the
Speaker 1: endgame version is that Hassan was always going to find Sonat.
Speaker 1: He was really not that far from her, right, he
Speaker 1: was calling her name. He was always going to find her.
Speaker 1: They were always going to get on the train together.
Speaker 1: And this is the first time that Kamala has done
Speaker 1: this thing where she goes back to the past. But
Speaker 1: she actually didn't significantly change anything. She was just there.
Speaker 1: Nobody actually saw her except the grandmother who doesn't remember,
Speaker 1: and so therefore nothing changed and no timeline was branched.
Speaker 2: I think so, I think it is a closed terminate,
Speaker 2: a time loop.
Speaker 1: I also think I think that that is what they
Speaker 1: intend for it to be.
Speaker 2: I think it is, but I do think that so
Speaker 2: I will say off the endgame, yeah might much of
Speaker 2: many of us. I tried to understand the endgame time
Speaker 2: travel logic. I wrote an I call Esquire breaking it
Speaker 2: all down right, It is the very much and narratively
Speaker 2: it's a duex Macinas style decision, like it's something they
Speaker 2: created for the show that the Russo Brothers have regularly
Speaker 2: changed or contradicted in like answers. Since so, I don't
Speaker 2: know how like tight it is when you really think
Speaker 2: about it, because like you said, like if you're taking
Speaker 2: the stones but then you're putting them back, that allegedly
Speaker 2: would stop the timeline and make it the same. But
Speaker 2: how come then Steve Rodgers can go back and live
Speaker 2: an entirely different life, entirely change the timeline. That doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense. Also, Steve, I got lots of well
Speaker 2: about that choice, the same things that you didn't do,
Speaker 2: But why will.
Speaker 1: The same here? I will say that Steve one hundred
Speaker 1: percent must have created another timeline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no question, absolutely question.
Speaker 1: There's another timeline because of he was there for years.
Speaker 2: Literally like ninety years, like and okay, so one thing
Speaker 2: I will say, I don't know how this would work.
Speaker 2: But if we look at the Infinity gems and when
Speaker 2: the ancient one talks about it, I think they say
Speaker 2: that they gems essentially they like stabilize the timeline that
Speaker 2: they're in, right, and that's why you've got to put
Speaker 2: them back to not separate off a timeline. What if
Speaker 2: the bangle, in its artifact nature stabilizes the timeline, so
Speaker 2: the fact that like it gets dropped and Kamala finds it,
Speaker 2: that's the thing that always putting back. It's like, as
Speaker 2: long as the bangle is the the thing that is there,
Speaker 2: that timeline stays the same, even if it's like a
Speaker 2: closed time loop.
Speaker 1: I thought about that too, and I thought about, like
Speaker 1: if that is what it is, and I think that
Speaker 1: is heavily suggested right, Therefore it's this written in stone event,
Speaker 1: Kamala is always going to do this. I think that
Speaker 1: there's a world in which, like much like hiding in
Speaker 1: Apocalypse in the Loki Show, hides you from the eyes
Speaker 1: of the Tva, there's a world which, like some time
Speaker 1: traveling figure who one hundred percent wants to know the
Speaker 1: safest place in the universe to hide out in or
Speaker 1: to hide something, you know, because we've seen in comics
Speaker 1: and various other stories where you hide, you know, you
Speaker 1: you magically hide something, you can shrink it down, hide
Speaker 1: it in a person you know, like or magically hide
Speaker 1: it in a person. If you want to hide something
Speaker 1: or or find out where the safest place like in
Speaker 1: the multiverse almost is it is right next to Kamala Khan,
Speaker 1: who cannot die time. She is immortal during this there
Speaker 1: is no way that anything bad can happen. She is
Speaker 1: unkillable during this time.
Speaker 2: The thing I find most interesting about from her.
Speaker 1: Baby from being born, even her parents, like the entire
Speaker 1: time that they come to the States, nothing can happen
Speaker 1: to them that will stop them from having this child.
Speaker 1: You could hide, you could hide some magically something within
Speaker 1: their the forums that could never be found or destroyed
Speaker 1: or anything, because they one must do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing I find most interesting about this
Speaker 2: choice is like one, I feel like it's like it's
Speaker 2: really interesting and I felt like it was very evocative
Speaker 2: at the end of last episode where we knew that
Speaker 2: once she got there that it was gonna be her
Speaker 2: the Trail of Stars, right, But like it does really
Speaker 2: remove Kamala from the ground level superhero thing, which is
Speaker 2: the which is what she always was was this kind
Speaker 2: of ground level Spider Man style superhero. But what I
Speaker 2: think is really interesting about this is like usually when
Speaker 2: we see these stories, it's because somebody is doing something
Speaker 2: to put that timeline in danger, which is like back
Speaker 2: to the future, you're gonna be eraised, something's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: That means you're gonna be erased, or you know, Terminator,
Speaker 2: something's gonna happen, and you need to do something to
Speaker 2: stop the timeline from being disrupted so you can still
Speaker 2: be here to stop it. It's also the most recent
Speaker 2: series of Umbrella Academy gets into this idea of like
Speaker 2: a grandfather paradox for everything to keep going. What is
Speaker 2: really interesting about this is that is not what happened
Speaker 2: in this series. There was never a threat to it.
Speaker 2: What we were seeing was just Kamala learn about it
Speaker 2: for the first time, which is more of like a
Speaker 2: Bill and Ted logic almost. It's I find it very
Speaker 2: interesting because it raises a lot of questions, and I
Speaker 2: feel like they are questions that were probably like, oh,
Speaker 2: we'll answer that in a couple of movies or something.
Speaker 1: My hot take is that if it indeed is this
Speaker 1: closed loop destiny thing, eventually they're gonna wreck on this
Speaker 1: just because and this is like takes us out of
Speaker 1: like the interior reality of the story and it's more
Speaker 1: of like a taste thing for me personally, which which
Speaker 1: is this negates Kamala's heroes journey and her agency. It
Speaker 1: was always going to happen, So it kind of doesn't
Speaker 1: matter any of the choices she made because she was
Speaker 1: always going to end up in this place, Which is
Speaker 1: why as mess and as kind of disx machine as
Speaker 1: the endgame system of time travel is, I actually like
Speaker 1: it because it makes the choices matter. Yeah, what you
Speaker 1: choose to do when you go back in time actually
Speaker 1: matters because you're trying to accomplish a goal that isn't
Speaker 1: set in stone, that it's very in flux.
Speaker 2: I think the argument. Okay, so this is like I've
Speaker 2: been thinking about this lot because I think you're totally right,
Speaker 2: and I also think it's there was a really great
Speaker 2: piece that somebody at nerdiced. I think it was Mariam
Speaker 2: wrote about the connection between Kamala and the Gin and
Speaker 2: kind of like what that really means in Western storytelling
Speaker 2: and the kind of Orientalist history of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily love the idea that Kamala is the
Speaker 2: one who gets the preordained history, the preordained fate it feels,
Speaker 2: like you said, like it could take away some of
Speaker 2: that agency. Well, I will say one, I'm very interested
Speaker 2: to see what happens next episode because it feels like
Speaker 2: every loose end has been tied up. So I want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: I want to know.
Speaker 2: But the one thing I will say, you know what
Speaker 2: we see here that happens at the end that seemingly
Speaker 2: we don't know if it would have happened before because
Speaker 2: the big change here comes essentially Kamala. That the difference
Speaker 2: in this version is that Kamala makes her family come together,
Speaker 2: but with an honesty about and the truth of like
Speaker 2: what happened, and Sna wasn't imagining things, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think like that might be the journey that they
Speaker 2: were on, which in a way again brings it back
Speaker 2: to street level. But I do find it very interesting
Speaker 2: because like maybe that happens in every time loop, maybe
Speaker 2: they always end up there, but I think Sunna kind
Speaker 2: of hints at the idea that they didn't. I also
Speaker 2: think with any time travel story, and.
Speaker 1: We talked it, there is really.
Speaker 2: Every time travel story. Also, you know what every time
Speaker 2: travel story. Anyone who writes a time travel story, this
Speaker 2: is what they want you to do. Oh, they time
Speaker 2: traveled and that's it. Are you to think about this
Speaker 2: stuff any ever one you think about time loops or paradoxes.
Speaker 1: It's like that. It's like that scene in Looper Ye
Speaker 1: Diner where the two versions of the same character like, listen,
Speaker 1: if we start talking about how it works, We're going
Speaker 1: to have straw wrappers as diagrams and we're gonna be
Speaker 1: here for three hours. We're gonna go and it's like,
Speaker 1: talk about it.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite. Thing is like what's everyone's favorite? My
Speaker 2: favorite is like, which kind of this is kind of
Speaker 2: like it, but they don't get into the power of it,
Speaker 2: which is like I like the Bill and Ted style,
Speaker 2: which is if you know you can travel into the
Speaker 2: future or the past, you can think of anything and
Speaker 2: it comes true, and that kind of it's a self
Speaker 2: fulfilling prophecy. So at the end of Bill and Ted,
Speaker 2: they'll say like, oh, you know, we're going to trap
Speaker 2: you in a cage and the cage falls down from
Speaker 2: the sky. At the end of this, when we defeat you,
Speaker 2: we'll be able to prepare this this and this I
Speaker 2: like it. I like it kind of like you can
Speaker 2: use it almost as a magical power, because anything that
Speaker 2: you say you're going to do in the future, you've
Speaker 2: already done. And this is kind of like that but reversed,
Speaker 2: but we never really see the power impact. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: so interested to see what happens in the finale because
Speaker 2: I feel like it's either going to be very intimate,
Speaker 2: which this show has kind of been but has strayed
Speaker 2: away from in the last couple of episodes, Like the
Speaker 2: first two episodes of this season are still some of
Speaker 2: my favorite MCU. That's what I wonder.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get the big, big show down with damage Control. Yeah.
Speaker 2: My hope for that this is not a theory, this
Speaker 2: is a wish and I don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: My hope for that is, like I hope that this
Speaker 2: version of damage control just gets absolutely decimated at the
Speaker 2: end of the finale. I do not like damage control
Speaker 2: as like the MCU's version of like ice. I like
Speaker 2: damage control as like weird. They're just like a building
Speaker 2: company that fixes stuff after they get broken. I hope
Speaker 2: that this.
Speaker 1: Is there is why I think that that is not
Speaker 1: going to go I know, and why I think it's
Speaker 1: actually a little interesting if I didn't love the way
Speaker 1: they did it. In episode four, we now have robots
Speaker 1: that look for powered people, run by run by a
Speaker 1: government agency that is openly antagonistic towards powered people, to
Speaker 1: the point where the rank and file are even just
Speaker 1: shitty to to the people that they have in there
Speaker 1: in their jails. It feels, I mean, we're like the
Speaker 1: sentinels are here, like it's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's always happen, okay, just like we already like here,
Speaker 5: here are the here are the autonomous drones that are
Speaker 5: looking for people.
Speaker 1: They're doing it right now.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna ask you one. I think you're right,
Speaker 2: and I think it's very.
Speaker 1: I think this is the Sentinel. I think this, I
Speaker 1: think merge and we get the Sentinel program.
Speaker 2: St I think it's very like somewhere. I think it's
Speaker 2: very likely that next week in the finale, here's the
Speaker 2: outrageous prediction. But I think you're right. I think next
Speaker 2: week somebody might even call it a Sentinel drone or something,
Speaker 2: a stark Sentinel. Also, I'm going to ask you a
Speaker 2: second question because this just came to my mind. It's
Speaker 2: completely bonkers, but I feel like it's quite likely. Now
Speaker 2: you've brought this up, so we know that all of
Speaker 2: this misuse of Stark technology is going to play into
Speaker 2: Armor Wars, right, but they have kept very quiet about
Speaker 2: what Armor is going to be about, and we know
Speaker 2: that Rody's going to be in it. But do you
Speaker 2: think that if that's the case, Armor Wars takes on
Speaker 2: a more important role in like introducing sentinels and the
Speaker 2: notion of like X like X Men's style oppression of
Speaker 2: powered people. And that's what Rody is fighting against is
Speaker 2: the use of Stark Tech for Sentinel technology.
Speaker 1: I think that that's on the table. And I had
Speaker 1: another thought about just as I was rewatching this episode
Speaker 1: and being like, holy shit, like we're doing it like
Speaker 1: these are I know it's very very very early days,
Speaker 1: but this is basically what the Sentinel program is. We've
Speaker 1: often talked, We've talked ad nauseum for anybody about how
Speaker 1: could they do it, how they bring the dex Men in,
Speaker 1: How is it going to be because of Westfield? Is
Speaker 1: it gonna be because of because of the Blip? Is
Speaker 1: it gonna be interdimensional? Are they already here or is
Speaker 1: it magic? And I think there's a world in which
Speaker 1: you program right using Star Tech you program these autonomous
Speaker 1: robots who get smarter and smarter and smarter in learning
Speaker 1: how to detect people, and all of a sudden they go,
Speaker 1: oh wait, there's a bunch of them here in upstate
Speaker 1: New York that we found that nobody knew about that
Speaker 1: have been like underground this. They've already done it with
Speaker 1: the eternals, and maybe they wouldn't do it exactly like
Speaker 1: that again, but I do think that that is a
Speaker 1: doorway they could walk through if they wanted to, where
Speaker 1: this increasingly powerful sentinel system discovers mutants. And just to
Speaker 1: backtrack for one second, in this is gonna seem like
Speaker 1: an aside, but I swear it is. And Captain America
Speaker 1: inn Soldier, right, there's that there's the scene where uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they take a cap and Nat and take
Speaker 1: sit well to the roof, right, and they throw them off,
Speaker 1: and then Sam brings him back, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden he spills and he's like, yeah, you know, we've
Speaker 1: this algorithm. It's looking for power for people who are
Speaker 1: in the threats still and Strange is one of them. Right,
Speaker 1: How the fuck did the algorithm know that Stephen Strange
Speaker 1: was up to Stephen Strange was up to literally nothing
Speaker 1: at that time. So Ratcon they well, definitely reckcon because
Speaker 1: that was like an easter egg to get people excited.
Speaker 1: At the same time, How does how does comic book
Speaker 1: storytelling work? That is ongoing storytelling work? It works because
Speaker 1: creators look back and they go, here's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I can blow this up and make
Speaker 1: this something. Yeah, in the interior reality of the MCU,
Speaker 1: there was already a computer eight years ago that was
Speaker 1: predicting who would be powered threats. So like in the
Speaker 1: interior reality the MCU, this technology already exists. No, I
Speaker 1: think it's so impossible that it could that. Much like
Speaker 1: Jasper Sidwell knew that Dandri Strange was going to be
Speaker 1: a player years before he would ever be a player,
Speaker 1: Maybe there's this ongoing project that eventually will discover people
Speaker 1: who are not even on the radar right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that are in this world.
Speaker 2: Also, I think you're so. I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: I can't believe you've turned me back onto the I'm
Speaker 2: like such a Dane McDuffie stand not every week, I'm
Speaker 2: like watching this and I'm just like damage control would
Speaker 2: never but you're right. Once you bring the X Men
Speaker 2: into it, I'm like, oh, this is actually very interesting.
Speaker 2: I think you're right as well, because what have they
Speaker 2: been doing the whole time that they've been doing this
Speaker 2: thing that I talk about every week, so get ready
Speaker 2: to hear it again. I've been thinking it's about secret Wars,
Speaker 2: but I think maybe it is about introducing the X Men,
Speaker 2: because what they've done in every single movie in this
Speaker 2: phase shang Chi, you know what was there? Oh, it's
Speaker 2: a secret group of people you've never known about, who
Speaker 2: are not on the radar, who have a certain way
Speaker 2: of fighting. Miss Marvel. Oh, there's this whole secret, hidden
Speaker 2: group of people or who live behind the veil in
Speaker 2: a hidden world. Maybe that they have some secret powers
Speaker 2: you don't know about setting up this idea that all
Speaker 2: around us are these worlds of powered people that we
Speaker 2: do not know. And the Eternals is another one, you know,
Speaker 2: and that very much took on a kind of almost
Speaker 2: Inhumans esque storytelling of like they've been here for so long,
Speaker 2: so it really would fit in with what they're doing
Speaker 2: to introduce an enclave. Also, we've talked about this before,
Speaker 2: but like Professor Xavier and Augean Gray. Either of them
Speaker 2: is powerful enough to essentially use their psychic powers to
Speaker 2: stop people knowing about them.
Speaker 1: They're very, very adept at doing that. Tune into this
Speaker 1: space to find out if we're right, and if we're not,
Speaker 1: just forget it.
Speaker 2: We've never said sentinels, We've.
Speaker 1: Never said that. Up next door, Love and Thunder, kids,
Speaker 1: get the popcorn, now hit me tell you the story
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 2: Space viking Thor. He was no ordinary man.
Speaker 1: He was a god. After fading planet Earth for the
Speaker 1: five hundredth time, Thaw set off on a new journey.
Speaker 6: Will he cut in shape?
Speaker 1: He went from dead bard to god board, and after.
Speaker 3: All that, he reclaimed his title as the one and
Speaker 3: only thor.
Speaker 2: Oh spook too soon, Jane.
Speaker 1: Folks were stepping off the goat boat into the shadow
Speaker 1: realm to break down Thor. Love and Thunder, which is
Speaker 1: in theaters now, directed of course, by TAIKOA. Tit, written
Speaker 1: by Takowa Tit and Jennifer Robinson, produced by Kevin Feige
Speaker 1: and Brad Winderbaum, and starring all of our favorite people.
Speaker 1: Once again, we opened somewhere in space. Our friend Corg
Speaker 1: is narrating the story to date. After the events of
Speaker 1: Avengers Endgame and the victorious fight to undo Thanos's step.
Speaker 1: Thor went to space to just get healthy. It didn't
Speaker 1: just mean losing weight. It means his mental health, it
Speaker 1: means his physical health. He just wants to feel better
Speaker 1: about himself, and that's what he went to space to
Speaker 1: do with his friend Court. And it took a while,
Speaker 1: but with some dedication, a healthier outlook, some exercise, some
Speaker 1: regular meditation, and of course the company of his now
Speaker 1: very close friends, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor becomes fitter,
Speaker 1: a more at peace former god of Thunder. We find
Speaker 1: Thor and the Guardians and the process of evicting some
Speaker 1: rodent alien bandits from a temple that they have occupied
Speaker 1: and stolen, essentially from a native population. In the end,
Speaker 1: Thor does find it necessary to destroy the temple to
Speaker 1: liberate it, and the indigenous population are more or less pleased.
Speaker 1: They would prefer not to talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: temples destroyed, but they're kind of thankful. And it's very
Speaker 1: clear from this that adventures such as these have been
Speaker 1: a regular thing for the Guardians and Thor, who have
Speaker 1: been at this for a while. This kind of this
Speaker 1: kind of adventuring these kind of fights where the guardians
Speaker 1: are fighting, and then thora Is the big Gun, comes
Speaker 1: in with his own catchphrase. But now Thor has a
Speaker 1: new mission, and that is to hunt down the god
Speaker 1: Butcher that slayed the gods of this planet. Speaking of
Speaker 1: that god Butcher in the past, long long long ago
Speaker 1: and some far off world, Gore and his daughter are
Speaker 1: staggering through an endless desert and they are praying to
Speaker 1: their gods, who it turns out, have abandoned not only
Speaker 1: Gore and his daughter, but their entire people.
Speaker 2: Which probably mention is dies we didn't explicitly.
Speaker 1: His daughter passes away in the desert, Gore finds the
Speaker 1: garden of his people's God. Turns out he's a pretty
Speaker 1: petty person, very vindictive, not at all caring about the
Speaker 1: people who worship him. And Gore comes to this beautiful
Speaker 1: garden in the moments right after his god had killed
Speaker 1: some creature who is wielding the Necro Sword, which is
Speaker 1: an ancient blade made of symbiote stuff that is capable
Speaker 1: of killing God's This god is like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't care about you, I don't care about your people.
Speaker 1: I'll get more people. That's how it works, so you're
Speaker 1: annoying and I'm going to kill you now. And as
Speaker 1: the god is about to kill Gore, the Necro Sword
Speaker 1: chooses Gore as its next wielder, and Gore slays this god,
Speaker 1: and right then and there dedicates his life as the
Speaker 1: wielder of the Necro Sword to killing all gods everywhere
Speaker 1: across the universe. Back to Thor and our friends Thor
Speaker 1: and Cork say goodbye to the Guardians. They are getting
Speaker 1: ready to leave this planet. The natives of the planet
Speaker 1: are like, oh, thank you for saving Slash destroying our temple.
Speaker 1: We'd like to give you this gift of two huge
Speaker 1: goats that scream all the time as a thank you,
Speaker 1: but clearly also because we want to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: And Thora is like, thank you so much. I love
Speaker 1: these goats. I will name them tooth Nasher and tooth Grinder.
Speaker 1: They then travel to a snowy world. Corgan Thor do
Speaker 1: where because they got a message from Sif, And there
Speaker 1: they find a dead god, a huge dead god, this
Speaker 1: dragon like god that we saw in the trailer. Faligar
Speaker 1: the Behemoth has been slain by Gore, the god Butcher,
Speaker 1: and there in the field of war. In front of
Speaker 1: Faligar is our good friend, the warrior Sif, who is
Speaker 1: grievously injured and has had her arm cut off, and
Speaker 1: she sees Thoris. She's like, oh my god, thank god, Thor,
Speaker 1: it's you. I died in battle. Look at me, like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Valhalla. This is awesome. This is what
Speaker 1: asked guardian warriors dream about, is dying in battle and
Speaker 1: going to Valhalla. And I'm about to go, and it's
Speaker 1: great to see your face in the moments before I go.
Speaker 1: And Thor is like, the battle is like long over.
Speaker 1: If you die now, you actually won't go to Valhalla,
Speaker 1: so sorry to spoil that for you. It's it's like fuck.
Speaker 1: So then Siff is like, okay, then just take me
Speaker 1: back to wherever you're going. They grab Sif and they
Speaker 1: buy Frost back to Earth. Meanwhile, back on Earth, our
Speaker 1: good friend, doctor Jane Foster, is now a successful public
Speaker 1: intellectual and the author of a very influential and successful
Speaker 1: book about physics. Unfortunately, she's also in the fight of
Speaker 1: her life against cancer. Her friend and former assistant Darcy Lewis,
Speaker 1: is there to kind of like support her through this.
Speaker 1: We recently saw Darcy, of course, taking part in the
Speaker 1: government response to the Westview incident in Wanda Vision. She's
Speaker 1: there to support her friend Jane, but of course Jane's
Speaker 1: cancer is stage four, which is the final stage. Darcy,
Speaker 1: at her wits end, contacts their old friend, the brilliant
Speaker 1: doctor Eric Selvig, who of course has been with us
Speaker 1: since Thor and the Avengers and etc. And he agrees
Speaker 1: also that he just doesn't know. He's not a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: but he looks at the scans and looks at the
Speaker 1: data and says, I'm not sure what we can do
Speaker 1: for Jane. But one day, Jane, here's a voice calling
Speaker 1: her to new Asgard is the voice of Mulnir. Much
Speaker 1: like in the comics, we find out that Munier has
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of consciousness. Now Thor's hammer
Speaker 1: forged from the magical Uru by the power vote himself.
Speaker 1: And then we need to back up here because we
Speaker 1: get a flashback about what Jane and Thor had been
Speaker 1: up too between Thor the Dark World in Ragrok. So
Speaker 1: after the events of Dark World, Thor and Jane moved
Speaker 1: in together very much in love. So deep and pure
Speaker 1: was their love for each other that it actually imprinted
Speaker 1: itself into Mulnar. Their love became like a magical spell.
Speaker 1: But as often happens, Jane and Thor grew apart. They
Speaker 1: started arguing a little bit, hanging out different places, and
Speaker 1: then eventually they broke up unhappily, but they did do so,
Speaker 1: but the magic of their bond remained imprinted on Mulner.
Speaker 1: Now back to the present, Jane, desperately sick, she travels
Speaker 1: to new Asgarden, Norway, where the pieces of Thor's hammer
Speaker 1: are kept like under a little dome. They're immovable, of course,
Speaker 1: unless you're worthy enough to move them. That is the
Speaker 1: very place where they fell after Hella crushed them in
Speaker 1: the opening act of Thor Ragnrok. And then Jane comes
Speaker 1: and then the pieces assemble themselves into the hammer, which Jane,
Speaker 1: as the worthy wielder of nil Nerd, lifts, thus becoming
Speaker 1: worthy of the power of Thor. In New Asgard, we
Speaker 1: see that King Valkyrie's reign has been great. It's actually
Speaker 1: been pretty good. Like it's very very peaceful, and on
Speaker 1: the economic front things are going great. It's a tourist destination.
Speaker 1: People are coming through all the time. It appears that
Speaker 1: they have a kind of like Norwegian style European style,
Speaker 1: like healthcare and system, because everybody seems very well taken
Speaker 1: care of and everything's great. Unfortunately, it is also very
Speaker 1: very boring. King Valkyrie has to sit through endless meetings
Speaker 1: all day and she's bored by this. Our friend Meek
Speaker 1: at least seems very satisfied in their role as a
Speaker 1: member of the King's cabinet, but overall King Valkyrie is
Speaker 1: a little like is this all there is to life?
Speaker 1: Thor Korg and the Goats arrive back in New Asgard,
Speaker 1: and the very night they arrive, go strikes because this
Speaker 1: is the next target on his list. He's killing gods.
Speaker 1: He wants to kill the gods and New Asgard. King Valkyrie,
Speaker 1: Thorns and whoa mighty Jane Foster fight the minions of
Speaker 1: Gore and repel them, but unfortunately the god Butcher also escaped,
Speaker 1: with like two dozen as Guardian kids among them. Heimdahl's
Speaker 1: son Axel named for Axel Rose, apparently, who has similar
Speaker 1: powers to his late father, but hopefully is better at
Speaker 1: using them, unlike Himdahal, who missed every single fucking threat
Speaker 1: in every movie he was ever in. I rest my
Speaker 1: case that's enough about Himdhal. I won't speak. That's why
Speaker 1: I won't. Let's not speak ill of him, Heimdahl, you
Speaker 1: did a bad job, but let's move on. Well, we
Speaker 1: love you. Love you. Now. Through Axel's powers, Thor is
Speaker 1: able to basically astral project to where Axel is. They
Speaker 1: find out through the kids that Gore is heading to
Speaker 1: or hanging out at the Shadow Realm, and so Thor,
Speaker 1: King Valkyrie and my Jane Foster are like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to we need to go there and stop Thor
Speaker 1: and rescue the kids. Now, Thor, King v Jane and Korg.
Speaker 1: That's a good start, but we need more. They need
Speaker 1: an army. So Thor is like, I know where we
Speaker 1: can get one. Let's go to Omnipotent City, which is
Speaker 1: like the Las Vegas of the gods. Supposedly they're there
Speaker 1: like doing god governmental work, but they're never doing that
Speaker 1: Adam Nipputen City. Zeus is like the big daddy rock
Speaker 1: star of all the six one six gods. He holds
Speaker 1: sway there and he's pretty much like a dirt bag
Speaker 1: whose current calling is fucking and drinking his way through
Speaker 1: the anxiety of the ongoing Gore menace. Zeus very aggressively
Speaker 1: does not want to help Thor and is in fact
Speaker 1: terrified of Gore and would prefer to just hide here
Speaker 1: in a city, having orgies and drinking wine and not
Speaker 1: doing anything. So that's your answer, Thor, take it or
Speaker 1: leave it. Our heroes decide that's not good enough. They
Speaker 1: fight Zeus. In the course of the fight, korg Is
Speaker 1: turned to Rubble, very very scary moment here where I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, fuck, corg is dead.
Speaker 2: They definitely want you to think that Thor thinks that
Speaker 2: Thor thinks.
Speaker 1: My whole movie theater thought it. It was very very
Speaker 1: bummed out for a little hum. Don't worry corg Is.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say, okay, but corg is alive. At
Speaker 1: the end of the fight, though, Zeus has a big
Speaker 1: old hole blown in his chest thanks to his own
Speaker 1: lightning bolt weapon, which are heroes take for themselves because
Speaker 1: that's the only backup they have and now they're down
Speaker 1: Corg so they need all the help they can get.
Speaker 1: In the course of the argument and fight with Zeus
Speaker 1: in a city, our heroes realize that Gore's endgame is
Speaker 1: to reach Eternity, who is like a Genie at the
Speaker 1: center of the universe. You can think of him as
Speaker 1: essentially and if you reach Attorney, whoever can get there.
Speaker 1: No one's ever gotten there, but if you can get there,
Speaker 1: Attornity will grant you one reality altering wish, and we
Speaker 1: can assume that if Gore gets there his wishes, all
Speaker 1: God's be dead and there will be a genocide of
Speaker 1: God's across the universe. Okay. Meanwhile, Jane's cancer, which has
Speaker 1: never truly banished, much like in the comics, reasserts itself
Speaker 1: now while Jane is holding Milner. She has the power
Speaker 1: for but it comes at a price because it weakens
Speaker 1: her defenses, makes her weaker when she's not holding Milner,
Speaker 1: and thus speeding her towards her death. Jane begins to
Speaker 1: weaken dramatically after our heroes fight Gore in the Shadow Realm.
Speaker 1: It's clear that she cannot continue. Thora's heartbroken at just
Speaker 1: the thought of losing Jane. Hear their love has been rekindled,
Speaker 1: and now he's about to lose her before he can
Speaker 1: even get to spend time with her again. Jane, to
Speaker 1: Thor's relief, goes back to Earth to basically wait out
Speaker 1: her final hours This is some of the best stuff
Speaker 1: in this movie, the Jane Thor stuff. It's crazy that like,
Speaker 1: ten years after, I mean, you know, after the first
Speaker 1: Thor movie, we're now like paying off this relationship in
Speaker 1: a way that feels like really.
Speaker 2: Great, definitely, And I think something they do that's really
Speaker 2: heartbreaking but amazing and this is like they really make
Speaker 2: it very explicit that the reason that Thor and Jane's
Speaker 2: relationship failed is because they both loved each other so
Speaker 2: much that they started to put up walls because they
Speaker 2: were terrified of losing each other. And then in this
Speaker 2: moment where Thor is reunited with Jane and they share
Speaker 2: this honesty and they're both holding the mantle of th
Speaker 2: Or and they say, well, Thor says, you know what,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be scared of that anymore. I
Speaker 2: want to be with you. And Jane's like, well, I've
Speaker 2: got cancer, and Thor's like, look, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 2: I love you. Go and stay in the hospital, like
Speaker 2: we will sort this out, but don't you be picking
Speaker 2: up that hammer again. And it's like it's so it's
Speaker 2: so well done, and I love the relationship in this
Speaker 2: and I totally understand why this is the movie where
Speaker 2: Natalie Portman came back. Like, Jane gets so much great
Speaker 2: stuff in not just like heroically, but also emotionally.
Speaker 1: There's also Thors. Well. The other thing I liked about it,
Speaker 1: how is how it built on Thors again very dude
Speaker 1: like inability to access like his feelings of hurt and pain.
Speaker 1: You know, we saw it in Thor the Dark World. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we saw the way he responded to his mom's death.
Speaker 1: We saw the way he responded to the events of
Speaker 1: Infinity War and the opening of End Game, where he's
Speaker 1: just like a shattered person, unable to grapple with his
Speaker 1: failure to save his mother, unable to grapple with their
Speaker 1: his and the Avengers failure to save half the living
Speaker 1: things in the entire universe, and he's just crushed by this.
Speaker 1: And here even again as he's urging Jane to go
Speaker 1: home and like and seek medical care and stop picking
Speaker 1: up this hammer that is making her powerful but at
Speaker 1: the same time making the cancer more powerful, he's also
Speaker 1: in this very very human way he is unable to
Speaker 1: like acknowledge that Jane will die like he's still holding
Speaker 1: and again a very human way as anybody who's like
Speaker 1: ever dealt with somebody having like a like an illness
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh, you got to fight, Like you can't.
Speaker 1: Keep doing it. You have to go home and you know,
Speaker 1: like you can fight for every day and we can
Speaker 1: spill and and Thor still has that. That is where
Speaker 1: Thor's mind is at. He has not even begun to
Speaker 1: accept that he could lose Jane. And and it's really
Speaker 1: humane and heartbreaking. Thor tracks Gore and the kids to
Speaker 1: the Temple of Attorney and we get this great moment where.
Speaker 2: It's like one of maybe my favorite ever.
Speaker 1: It's this is why Tiger is great, because he balances
Speaker 1: just fun and creativity and wacky humor with epic action
Speaker 1: and real like emotional weight. So Thor uh, he's he's
Speaker 1: with the kids and he has them all pick up
Speaker 1: something that they can use as his weapons. Some have
Speaker 1: like a stuffed animal, Others have picked up like some
Speaker 1: stick that they found or a rock or a brick
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then, much like Odin did centuries ago,
Speaker 1: Thor bestows for a limited time only his power on
Speaker 1: all these as guardian kids, so that together they are
Speaker 1: wielding the power of Thor. And they opened a huge
Speaker 1: can of whoop ass on Gore, who, despite getting molly
Speaker 1: wopped all around the temple, does manage to break through
Speaker 1: to Eternity and crawl through to make his wish. So
Speaker 1: the kids are fighting Gore's shadow monsters of black berserkers.
Speaker 1: Thor is fighting Gore but steadily losing, and just in
Speaker 1: the moment where it seems like Thor is about to
Speaker 1: get his head cut off by the necro sword, Jane
Speaker 1: shows up and beats Gore's fucking ass. Unfortunately, the byfrost
Speaker 1: does manage to drill through to the realm of Eternity
Speaker 1: while all of this is going on, and Jane has
Speaker 1: spent the very last of her strength, and so Gore
Speaker 1: goes through to Eternity. Jane dies in Thor's arm, heartbreakingly,
Speaker 1: turning to gold dust and drifting away. Thor confronts Gore
Speaker 1: right in front of Eternity in this water realm that
Speaker 1: looks like something. It honestly looks like one of the
Speaker 1: boss fights from Elden Ring. That's it. It looked beautiful.
Speaker 2: So what happens? They go through to Eternity and Gore
Speaker 2: is gonna both of them and he but Thor says
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like, fuck you, you on wish, make your wish.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna spend the last moments with the woman that
Speaker 2: I love. And he's like, you could do the same,
Speaker 2: you could bring back your door. And then and then
Speaker 2: Gore says, and then Gore is like, He's like, but
Speaker 2: she'd be alone, And just before Jane dies, she's like, no,
Speaker 2: she wouldn't. And that's like, and that's when they make
Speaker 2: the agreement or whatever that Thor was gonna raise his kid, and.
Speaker 1: That's what that's what happens. So Gore passes away, but
Speaker 1: not before with tears in his eyes, he sees that
Speaker 1: his daughter has come back to life, and it's clear
Speaker 1: by the very fact that she now exists once again
Speaker 1: that he accepts that this girl will be entrusted in
Speaker 1: Thor's care. We flash forward Coorg narrates his relationship with
Speaker 1: another Cronan. It turns out that all Cronans are male,
Speaker 1: and this Cronan, Dwyane, he's fallen in love with him,
Speaker 1: and all Cronans to pro create, they go into the
Speaker 1: heart of a volcano where they hold hands and then
Speaker 1: create a baby. And so together they do this and
Speaker 1: they father a beautiful Cronan child. As the film ends,
Speaker 1: Korg still narrating, we see that Thor stay true to
Speaker 1: his word. He and the girl, now named Love. Together
Speaker 1: they are known as Love and Thunder are adventuring amongst
Speaker 1: the stars, as Thor has been doing with the Guardians
Speaker 1: of the Galaxy to open the film, and just doing
Speaker 1: good across the galaxy. And we close with this big
Speaker 1: splashy logo of Love and Thunder, and in that which
Speaker 1: is like a really cool surprise to realize that, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like, weirdly, this entire movie weirdly is like
Speaker 1: a prequel to the Love and Thunder relationship, that is
Speaker 1: Thor and his daughter Love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this so much. And also something that's
Speaker 2: really cool is like we can get into it a
Speaker 2: bit deeper later. But in the first established notion of
Speaker 2: Thor having a daughter was in the next Avengers movie
Speaker 2: from two thousand and eight, Next Avengers Heroes of Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: and in that she's called Torn, and Torn means Thor's love.
Speaker 2: So I think like DELI kind of continuing that tradition here,
Speaker 2: which I think is really cool.
Speaker 1: That Toran is the daughter of Thor and sif Yes,
Speaker 1: who throughout the comics and a little bit in the
Speaker 1: movies have had it on again, off again, on again,
Speaker 1: off agin on again, offship all throughout time. In the
Speaker 1: comics much more. You know, it's like pretty much like
Speaker 1: Sif has a crush on Thor, and Thor occasionally reciprocates
Speaker 1: but mostly doesn't. So we go to our first stinger.
Speaker 1: We see Zeus. He is pissed. He's got a hole
Speaker 1: in his chest. It's mending, but he's still got this
Speaker 1: big hole in his chest and he's got one of
Speaker 1: his servants that's looking after it. He is talking about
Speaker 1: Thor and how Thor did all this stuff and put
Speaker 1: up punched a hole through his chest, and how he
Speaker 1: was happy just kind of like chilling out and up
Speaker 1: nipping and city drinking wine. But now he's he's back
Speaker 1: to being the vengeful god that he always was, and
Speaker 1: he's mad and he wants to strike back. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you, my son, are you going to be
Speaker 1: the instrument of my vengeance? And the camera pans over
Speaker 1: and it's his son Hercules, who's like, Yep, I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4: It, And also who is can we Just like Brett
Speaker 4: Goldstein from Tea, it's one of the most shocking castings
Speaker 4: of all time. I am so excited to see him
Speaker 4: get Marvel buff.
Speaker 2: Because you have to be buff, they see have to
Speaker 2: be you have to be buff.
Speaker 1: They did c GI him? Did they see Gi Helmsworth,
Speaker 1: Because I gotta say, some of those lats looked at
Speaker 1: you like.
Speaker 2: The Marvel Dyer, as Kamel spoke about, is a a
Speaker 2: truly terrifying thing. And and and they I think before
Speaker 2: they made these movies they're probably not allowed to drink
Speaker 2: water for like two days because they have to have
Speaker 2: that muscle definition that comes only from dehydration. But I
Speaker 2: would have been I mean, thoughs a god, so a
Speaker 2: little bit of CG would it would make sense? But yeah, Brett,
Speaker 2: very c G. Understandably, Hercules is a mammoth man.
Speaker 1: Hercules is here baby. No, of course, Hercules, Hercules and
Speaker 1: Thor fight a lot in their early incarnation. In hercules
Speaker 1: early incarnations in the Marvel Comics universe, they fight all
Speaker 1: the time. But of course Hercules, as often happens, it's
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding and he's a good guy anyway. And then
Speaker 1: he eventually does become a longtime member of the Avengers.
Speaker 2: And of course was there Jacket Avengers.
Speaker 1: It was there drunkenly during the Masters of Evil invasion
Speaker 1: of the Avengers mansion that Rosie and I love so much.
Speaker 1: This was during the reign of Janet van Dyne as
Speaker 1: leader of Leader of the Avengers. Anyway, in our second stinger,
Speaker 1: we see a beautiful green landscape glimmering golden hall on
Speaker 1: a hill and Jane Foster has arrived in this place
Speaker 1: and can only be Valhalla, the realm where as Guardian
Speaker 1: warriors go when they die courageously in battle. As Jane
Speaker 1: very very obvious just has who is there to welcome her?
Speaker 1: It's heimdahal Hella. Guess what We're going up there to
Speaker 1: that hole on the hill, and and then we were off, folks,
Speaker 1: and that is the end of our film. Uh. Some thoughts, Rosie,
Speaker 1: Your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Well, I really loved this movie. Like for me, it
Speaker 2: just it worked for me on a lot of levels.
Speaker 2: Like I I really love stories about kids and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. I think that's my eighties baby and me
Speaker 2: like so, I loved I thought Kieran al Dyer's axe
Speaker 2: Al was so great, and I loved that kind of
Speaker 2: nod of like Axel being the chosen name and Heimdel
Speaker 2: had named them astrid and stuff. There was so much
Speaker 2: fun stuff. I loved how creepy Christian Bale was. I
Speaker 2: thought he was so scary, and I loved.
Speaker 1: I had one Yeah, if I had one critique, it's
Speaker 1: like more Gore. That was like right, we were.
Speaker 2: So good and like needed so many creepy moments they were.
Speaker 2: He was really channeling the child Catcher from Chitty Chitty
Speaker 2: Bang Bang. This movie I really love like it balances.
Speaker 2: It does one of my favorite things. It's kind of
Speaker 2: in a way, it's kind of like a Chazam in
Speaker 2: the MCU, but like the Shazam movie had these really creepy,
Speaker 2: scary horror elements, but then this really fun family aspect,
Speaker 2: and I feel like if I was a kid, I mean,
Speaker 2: I loved horror stuff when I was a kid, But
Speaker 2: if you're a kid and you're a bit spooked by
Speaker 2: the scary stuff, you will get the biggest payoff of
Speaker 2: your life when you get to that battle sequence. Like that,
Speaker 2: to me, that balance between the family fun. There's also
Speaker 2: like I found the overall arc of Thor's story like
Speaker 2: very moving, and I thought that they did a really
Speaker 2: good job in terms of the stinger of kind of
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about that more in a minute, but like,
Speaker 2: they do a good job. I didn't feel like anything
Speaker 2: was done to get an emotional reaction for no reason.
Speaker 2: I felt like it was very well thought out and
Speaker 2: fun and wacky and wild and like so much guns
Speaker 2: and roses in this movie, but it just works so well,
Speaker 2: and like Taiker, just like they spent that money budget
Speaker 2: on that and they're gonna make it back. I was
Speaker 2: looking at going to see it on Friday, and it
Speaker 2: sold out at like every cinema Emmy, like almost Spider
Speaker 2: Man levels, and so I'm really excited for people to
Speaker 2: see it same.
Speaker 1: I really it is. It's my favorite movie of this phase.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, listen, you know I've talked about
Speaker 1: a million times. I'm a lifelong comics fan. I love
Speaker 1: MCU movies. I love the bad Ones. Like I'm also
Speaker 1: a big Taicho wat fan. I think that I don't
Speaker 1: know that anybody again can quite match the mix of humor, action,
Speaker 1: and emotion that he particularly brings to it. Like the
Speaker 1: opening of Thor Ragnarok. I remember I remember watching it,
Speaker 1: and that that monologue that Thor has in front of
Speaker 1: sir in the cage where he's talking about all the
Speaker 1: stuff that he's been doing.
Speaker 2: And he's like, oh, I'm just spinning like it is.
Speaker 1: Like it's it. It gives you story. It is incredibly funny,
Speaker 1: and it was. And it was simultaneously completely unlike anything
Speaker 1: that Thor had done in Dark World, and Thor won
Speaker 1: right that was a more serious Thor.
Speaker 2: This is like not that.
Speaker 1: And it also felt of a piece with the character
Speaker 1: that had been established in that it was not jarring,
Speaker 1: It wasn't like the funny was this guy. It felt
Speaker 1: like a different facet of a character we had or
Speaker 1: a own, but was completely unexpected and funny. And that
Speaker 1: continues in Yes, where we're getting new facets to characters
Speaker 1: that we know and love, but we're seeing them in
Speaker 1: the in this really unique, funny, unexpected way that I
Speaker 1: think only type in the MCU is this is doing
Speaker 1: in this particular way. I just love you stuff me too.
Speaker 2: And something I really love about this is it's like
Speaker 2: it's like Gragnarok, but it's not like Ragnarok and the
Speaker 2: kid aspects of this stuff, which is something Tiger does
Speaker 2: so well, it feels much more like he's channeling his
Speaker 2: early stuff like Boy or Hunt for the Wilder People
Speaker 2: that charm of like the unexpected kid character that you
Speaker 2: actually like who is relatable and funny and sassy and
Speaker 2: like weird. And I loved where we left thora at
Speaker 2: the end of this movie, and I loved this kind
Speaker 2: of notion of of him carrying mole near and Love
Speaker 2: carrying Stormbreaker and that just and she has cool like
Speaker 2: cyclops powers where she can shoot lasers out of her eyes.
Speaker 2: And something I thought was really cool was when they
Speaker 2: mentioned they say he calls Carl, calls her like the
Speaker 2: girl born of Eternity, which one just sounds really cool,
Speaker 2: but feels like this is film that I think kind
Speaker 2: of like Doctor Strange too, which I really liked as well,
Speaker 2: But like this feels like a kind of a new phase,
Speaker 2: which is like movies that are just allowed to stand
Speaker 2: by themselves and just be crazy, wild, fun adventures. But
Speaker 2: if there's one thing that feels obviously like it's gonna stick,
Speaker 2: it's going to be Love. But also I think that
Speaker 2: notion of her having cosmic beginnings is going to be
Speaker 2: important and is essentially going to establish her as like
Speaker 2: a force that can help in the future when we
Speaker 2: inevitably start to see more epoch Eon celestials. Whoever else
Speaker 2: this is someone who's standing next to her, you know,
Speaker 2: Uncle Flora as she calls him, who is the god
Speaker 2: of Thunder. That's going to be able, They're gonna be
Speaker 2: able to put up a fight against these kind of
Speaker 2: cosmic elders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to take a moment, Rosie, to tell us about
Speaker 1: Eternity and some of those cosmic elder characters that we
Speaker 1: see in the Temple of Attorney. Eh, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: the heads we see them in the trailer, including a
Speaker 1: watcher perhaps who are to other figures there, like, tell
Speaker 1: us about what the role that these super super weird cosmic,
Speaker 1: super cosmic gods play in the MCU.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Eternity is like incredibly cool and was actually
Speaker 2: brought to life in the movie. If you've watched this now,
Speaker 2: which I hope you have, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: or if you haven't, you can go and google the
Speaker 2: comic because they brought it to life. Basically identically is
Speaker 2: brought to life as kind of this like walking being
Speaker 2: made of space and time. It's it's really impeccable to
Speaker 2: see and this is old. This is a sixties character,
Speaker 2: no surprise, because it's absolutely out there created by Stanley
Speaker 2: and Steve Dicko to icons first appeared in Strange Tales
Speaker 2: one thirty eight, which was in sixty five, I believe.
Speaker 2: And so it depends which canon. But basically Eternity is
Speaker 2: sort of like the beginning of all things Eternity and infinity,
Speaker 2: and in the Marvel Universe, different universes are created out
Speaker 2: of them and from of them. My understanding is Attorney
Speaker 2: currently is basically the living representation of the six one six,
Speaker 2: which I think is jevery so interesting. It's everything right, yeah,
Speaker 2: And then we actually so they they've had Attorney has
Speaker 2: had many children in the comics because, like you said
Speaker 2: something earlier which I just loved, Jason, where you were
Speaker 2: basically like, the reason comics are good is somebody sees
Speaker 2: something weird and says, oh, what can I do that?
Speaker 2: How can I blow up? This is a great example
Speaker 2: of that. So Attorney's had a bunch of kids. Most
Speaker 2: famously is Eon, who we thought might have been one
Speaker 2: of the statues. We're still not sure if it's Eon
Speaker 2: or EON's daughter, so Attorney's grand daughter Epoch, and these
Speaker 2: are all essentially these like abstract entities that represent huge
Speaker 2: beginnings and your ends in the Marvel universe Eon and Epoch.
Speaker 2: If you're like, oh, that sounds like something you guys
Speaker 2: have talked about before, that's because they are the creators
Speaker 2: of the Nega Bands, which we hyperphesized is something being
Speaker 2: adapted in Miss Marvel with the Bengals. I still believe
Speaker 2: that is the case. We saw the bangle on a
Speaker 2: cree arm. Yeah, so eternity like only usually turns up
Speaker 2: when there's like a terrible Fanos level threat, which is
Speaker 2: why he would have been able to be there for Gore.
Speaker 2: And I just thought this was like so cool, the
Speaker 2: wish thing I think they created for this movie, which
Speaker 2: also feels very relevant with the Miss Marvel reveals recently.
Speaker 2: But I just thought I couldn't believe how well done
Speaker 2: this was. And I think that the notion something that
Speaker 2: Zeus says in the Stinger, which is very funny because
Speaker 2: it's like it essentially sets up this notion of the
Speaker 2: old gods versus the New gods, Jack Derby, but also
Speaker 2: it sets up this idea that like something that you
Speaker 2: know many comic book fans and academics and storytellers have
Speaker 2: put forward this notion Grant Morrison being one of them,
Speaker 2: and it's been taken in kind of this ongoing conversation.
Speaker 2: Are superheroes the modern pantheon of gods? Is that what
Speaker 2: they are? Because we've created these stories and we've put
Speaker 2: them on this place, and now we worship them, you know,
Speaker 2: on the TV and all these things. This is making
Speaker 2: that text in the MCU where we're gonna see Zeus
Speaker 2: wants his attention back. So we're going to have the
Speaker 2: pantheon potentially some of those gods from the Ennead that
Speaker 2: we saw in you know, Moonnight, We're gonna see a
Speaker 2: version where the more traditional mythological gods are pitting themselves
Speaker 2: against what they see as new gods, these people in
Speaker 2: the sky, superheroes. I think it will be very interesting
Speaker 2: to see how Eternity and the actual most ancient creatures
Speaker 2: deal with that. And also something else I thought was
Speaker 2: really interesting to throw it back to my absolute favorite eternals.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone who always is like commenting, like
Speaker 2: don't stop talking about Eternals, Like I do it for
Speaker 2: you guys. But like the one statue that we didn't
Speaker 2: see in the trailer that was there was a celestial
Speaker 2: So I think that implies with that notion that like
Speaker 2: the celestials are that ancient as they are in the comics,
Speaker 2: and I think we're just entering into a really interesting
Speaker 2: world of like gods. But also it's much more like
Speaker 2: meta texture than I realized, because I think we are
Speaker 2: going to be looking at that more boys style conversation
Speaker 2: of like, are these the modern gods?
Speaker 1: Are these people we see? We do see a pair
Speaker 1: of celestials as our difference speed the goat boat out
Speaker 1: of them. I los see that we see a couple
Speaker 1: of celestials who were too big to fit inside the
Speaker 1: whole of God's just kind of like what so Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that I wonder if that hints that when we
Speaker 2: think about that old gods, it's not just Zeus and
Speaker 2: Dionysus and all the ones that we know, right I
Speaker 2: maybe in a Marvel universe, Yeah, it's also the celestials.
Speaker 2: It's eternity, you know, Attorney's chilling. They seem pretty chill.
Speaker 2: And also I feel like in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 2: Turney probably pretty happy that that was the wish, like
Speaker 2: birthing a child that's gonna attend maybe do good, but generally,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think that's where we're going, is
Speaker 2: seeing these kind of ancient deities want to take back
Speaker 2: their power from the soups.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. In the comics, Jane uh
Speaker 1: It becomes a member of the Congress of of Worlds,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a parliament of God's essentially
Speaker 1: governing body. I wonder if, I wonder if valhal is
Speaker 1: gonna be a little like that. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they do, but and I would have met well Odin
Speaker 1: actually probably would Odin get there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He just wasn I don't think so, I don't think right,
Speaker 2: he just kind of draw. So I'm gonna this is
Speaker 2: We're gonna we're gonna double dip theories here so that
Speaker 2: we cover this double.
Speaker 1: Li because I do think I love that we've the
Speaker 1: last of Jane, and I certainly don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. But I think another version that
Speaker 2: is equally as likely. In the comics, Jane goes to
Speaker 2: Valhalla because they think that she died, they allow her
Speaker 2: to go like they did here, but Jane goes back
Speaker 2: to Earth and then after that she ends up becoming
Speaker 2: a valkyrie. And I think there's actually a Jane Foster
Speaker 2: Valkyrie comic, and I think that is very likely as well,
Speaker 2: because I don't think if you're an Alie Portman, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you come back and you get to hold the
Speaker 2: hammer and wear the armor, which by the way, looked
Speaker 2: fucking banging like they bought Suscil Daughterman's like stuff to life.
Speaker 2: And Russell and Jason were both at the premiere, which
Speaker 2: is so great, and like, I don't know if you're
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, I'm chilled to be on like a
Speaker 2: cosmic Council. I bet you're like, so, what's the next superhero? Like,
Speaker 2: who is next? I want to So I think we
Speaker 2: could see a Valkyrie where we have Jane Foster as
Speaker 2: Valkyrie or some kind of super heroic iteration that is
Speaker 2: more connected like Valhalla. And I also think as well,
Speaker 2: like I just think that this isn't going to be
Speaker 2: the end of I don't think so Jane, And here's
Speaker 2: what's relationship.
Speaker 1: Here's my here's my prediction. This is based on absolutely zero.
Speaker 1: This won't happen. But this is me just fan ficking
Speaker 1: in real time. Odin doesn't get to Valhalla. It's like
Speaker 1: a you know it was he he dropped dead. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a it was a you know, a close call.
Speaker 1: But they went to var and did and looked at
Speaker 1: it on video replay and decided he didn't actually die
Speaker 1: in battle, so he's got to go to straight hell. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thor and Hercules of course have their square off at
Speaker 1: the beginning of four or five, but then they decided
Speaker 1: team up. With King Valkyrie's help, they managed to contact
Speaker 1: Jane and Heimdahl in Valhalla, and then it's a mission
Speaker 1: in the afterlife to charge into Hell and rescue Odin. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love the help.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna take all of that. I think I
Speaker 2: love all of that. But instead I'm going to flip
Speaker 2: it at the end and what they have to actually
Speaker 2: stop Odin because he's so pissed about not being in
Speaker 2: Valhalla that he's teamed up with like Zeus, he's a
Speaker 2: petty guy, man.
Speaker 1: I could see. I could see open News who's having
Speaker 1: a very very complicated relationship.
Speaker 2: I love that, and I think that you're onto something
Speaker 2: because I mean with Ragnarok Tyker basically just establish this anyway,
Speaker 2: but this very much once again establishes Thor as like
Speaker 2: the place for cosmic stuff. The place for weird stuff.
Speaker 2: They would do a whole movie in hell Cirta. The
Speaker 2: beginning is essentially already leaning into that kind of aesthetic
Speaker 2: and narrative, and like, I hope that. I think when
Speaker 2: they announced that Sif was going to be in this movie,
Speaker 2: and you know, when Testa did her speech at San
Speaker 2: Diego Comic Con and said, you know, King Valkyrie's gonna
Speaker 2: find a queen, I think a lot of people were
Speaker 2: hoping that would be like a love connection. I really
Speaker 2: hope that whatever the next Thor movie is, or maybe
Speaker 2: wherever we see King Valkyrie before again, I would like
Speaker 2: to see. You know, they did a really good job
Speaker 2: talking about queerness in this movie and establishing like the
Speaker 2: queerness of the Cronins and stuff, But I would love
Speaker 2: to actually get to see that explored a little bit
Speaker 2: more for Valkyrie, like that love romance finding that again,
Speaker 2: just like thought after she lost the person that she
Speaker 2: loved in battle, you know, I would love to see
Speaker 2: her get a chance to like find someone to connect
Speaker 2: with and like go around doing like cool.
Speaker 1: Battles Necro Sword. Where do we see it again?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Or because this is good, let's talk about this. This
Speaker 1: is actually not the last we've seen, the netcor sort
Speaker 1: of appears to be destroyed, although pieces of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like pieces of it actually went into Molnio,
Speaker 2: which I found very interesting. Okay, so let's talk about
Speaker 2: this because I think this is going to be a
Speaker 2: big talking point right in the comics. It was established
Speaker 2: in the recent Donnie Kates Ryan Stegmann Venom series. I
Speaker 2: think Venom issue four that the Necrosorders we knew it
Speaker 2: from Thor, God of Thunder, which we talked about a lot.
Speaker 2: Revik Jason Narron was actually the first all Black the Necrosord,
Speaker 2: and it was manifested by Null. Who is this like
Speaker 2: another ancient Eldritch kind of deity. Now, I would say,
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty fair to say that in this
Speaker 2: movie they very much want to say that the Necrosord
Speaker 2: is like not a living because in the comics, the
Speaker 2: Necrosord is literally a symbia, and people who have the
Speaker 2: symbia can manifest a separate symbia that is the Necrosord.
Speaker 2: I think they very clearly want you to be like,
Speaker 2: this is a shadow thing, Like this isn't a symbia,
Speaker 2: this isn't connected to Venom blah, blah blah. But that said,
Speaker 2: this is very much like that early version that we
Speaker 2: saw in God of Thunder, which this whole movie is
Speaker 2: basically taken from. So I think there's definitely a way
Speaker 2: in the future that this was just like an early version,
Speaker 2: or that's how it manifested for Gore, who had this
Speaker 2: connection to the shadow realm once he got corrupted, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, hilariously deep cut their shadow realm is
Speaker 2: like barely even in any Marvel comics. I just that
Speaker 2: was like the best Tiger deep cut. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: think it could not necessarily be retcon because I think
Speaker 2: this was probably always the purpose. But I think that
Speaker 2: in the future we should still see it take on
Speaker 2: those symbiotic tendencies, because I do think a lot of people,
Speaker 2: a lot of fans, they assume that once they announced
Speaker 2: this so close after the reveal in Venom, yeah, that
Speaker 2: this was going to be Symbia's. They've kept it open,
Speaker 2: so you could in the future say, oh, it kind
Speaker 2: of was, But it's definitely there's nothing textual here to
Speaker 2: say this is a Symbia or this is And also
Speaker 2: the Necrosord is more of a standard weapon that can
Speaker 2: weird shadows rather than being something that obviously replicates venom.
Speaker 1: I will say it does. It does you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like the Dark Hole. It does imprint itself.
Speaker 2: And yeah, very much like the Dark Cord.
Speaker 1: It corrupt very much like it. Very much like there
Speaker 1: are all. It corrupts the wielder and you know, to
Speaker 1: get it kind of into the weeds about like IP strategy.
Speaker 1: It may not be the symbiote, that might not be
Speaker 1: the plan, but it gives him the option exactly symbiote
Speaker 1: to do a non non symbiote if they so wish
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: We know that there is a version or there is
Speaker 2: a tiny droplet of the venom symbia in a stinger
Speaker 2: with another Ted LASSU member. By the way, Marvel was like,
Speaker 2: we're gonna do that Ted making it into the mc
Speaker 2: They were like, it's dandy. I mean that has to
Speaker 2: be he has to come back. There's no way that
Speaker 2: was just a cameo. But that venom symbia lives in
Speaker 2: the MCU, in our version of it. In our world.
Speaker 2: Now we have this necrosord that is already manifesting symbia
Speaker 2: style shadows and monsters and beings. It does not seem
Speaker 2: very hard to imagine that those two things could come
Speaker 2: together and create a non Tom Hardy's chaotic and van.
Speaker 1: Now let me ask you, and let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: We have in your favorite MCU movie of all time,
Speaker 1: the Eternals. In the state of that film, we saw
Speaker 1: Dane Whitman the comics Black Knight come into possession finally
Speaker 1: of the Ebony Blade, which when they showed it rippled
Speaker 1: in obition, it was very symbial like, now we've got
Speaker 1: these two black swords in the MCU proper. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: Black Blade is you know, Arthurian legend magical except does
Speaker 1: correct people, that does corrupt people also, So I wonder
Speaker 1: how they if there is either a connection or if
Speaker 1: there's going to be very definite ways that they define
Speaker 1: these two swords differently from each other.
Speaker 2: So I I realized Slash Free lun Slash kind of
Speaker 2: cemented something today when I was writing about this, and
Speaker 2: a piece that you will inevitably be able to read
Speaker 2: when this comes out about the necrosord. Right, So very interestingly,
Speaker 2: in Thor Ragnarok, Hella's blades are called necroswords, and that
Speaker 2: is confirmed in what If that the helmet the reason
Speaker 2: it can shape shift and control the swords is because
Speaker 2: it is a necrosord, right. So I obviously it's not
Speaker 2: the version we've seen in the comics, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be connected to this, But I think the
Speaker 2: notion is going to be Like in the comics, there
Speaker 2: are many necro swords, and I think that whatever we whatever,
Speaker 2: I think the Ebony Blade is going to be the
Speaker 2: first necrosword. Maybe that's the one that was created by Null.
Speaker 2: I think that we're gonna and there's already multiple things
Speaker 2: called necroswords in the MCU now, both introduced by Tiger
Speaker 2: and then confirmed by what If. So I think that
Speaker 2: that Ebony Blade rip all that can't be a coincidence,
Speaker 2: just like no Way.
Speaker 1: I agree. I Finally, the question that everybody wants to know,
Speaker 1: where do we rank this movie in the pantheon? I
Speaker 1: will go first. I I don't have a number ranking.
Speaker 1: I want to see it again before I give it
Speaker 1: like a top five, top eight, top ten ranking. That said,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's better than Ragnarok, but I have
Speaker 1: it right there in whatever tier, which is the top
Speaker 1: tier of MCU movies, which for me is like Ragnarok
Speaker 1: Winter Soldier Infinny were in game, et cetera. Like I
Speaker 1: have it there because I think it's so fun and
Speaker 1: original and really great. Like I have it right there,
Speaker 1: not better than Ragnarrock, but in the tier, whatever tier
Speaker 1: you want to put Ragnarok in, it's right there with it.
Speaker 2: Where do you get you mine's exactly the same, Like
Speaker 2: my my, that top tier for me is like a
Speaker 2: little bit different. You know, obviously the A Tunnels does
Speaker 2: sneak in that, but like you know, Ragnarok is up
Speaker 2: there for me. Like I absolutely loved Doctor Strange in
Speaker 2: the Multiverse of Madness. I'm definitely being like catered to
Speaker 2: in this weird kind of like strange adventure phase. But
Speaker 2: also like, yeah, this is whatever that top tier is this.
Speaker 2: I agree Ragnarok had that like you couldn't you couldn't
Speaker 2: see it coming and you could never know what it
Speaker 2: was and that made it like so impactful. But definitely
Speaker 2: like Ragnarok Black Panther that top tier. But the first
Speaker 2: twenty minutes of shan Chi that's just like the opening.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like this is definitely in that top tier
Speaker 2: for me, and I'm I'm really excited for people to
Speaker 2: see it. I think this is I saw it when
Speaker 2: I saw Spider Man No Way Home when I came
Speaker 2: out of the theater. I saw it obviously at screening,
Speaker 2: and that's how we talked about it, but like I
Speaker 2: went to see it again and there were so many kids,
Speaker 2: every little kid, every gender, every kind of kid, in
Speaker 2: every kind of costume, in every kind of Spiderman T
Speaker 2: shirt from like four to you know, twenty one, like
Speaker 2: everyone that you could ever define as like a young person.
Speaker 2: And that was so cool. And I feel like that
Speaker 2: audience is gonna really love this movie, and I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about that because like, yeah, we are the generation
Speaker 2: that we're lucky enough to basically like come up and
Speaker 2: be there when the MCU first happened in a way
Speaker 2: that was noticeable to us because we'd lived through like
Speaker 2: the nineties where there was like no superhor movies and
Speaker 2: then we'd had you know, these incredible non Marvel Studios movies,
Speaker 2: but like we got to feel that impact.
Speaker 6: But they're a kid who like that's all they've ever
Speaker 6: known as like blockbusters, and I kind of love the
Speaker 6: notion that this might be their favorite, this might be
Speaker 6: the one that really gets them excited and that makes
Speaker 6: them want to be a superhero or want to read
Speaker 6: more about superheroes and stuff that that just.
Speaker 2: Warms my heart. I'm a grandma that way.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what's one of my favorite things, Rosie
Speaker 1: is hosting this podcast with you. I say, another great one.
Speaker 1: It's great to be back after a week off. Rosie.
Speaker 1: What do you have to plug? What's going on with Godzilla?
Speaker 1: What is happening in your life and career that you
Speaker 1: can take part in that we can read, that, we
Speaker 1: can watch it, we can listen to.
Speaker 2: Well, I will have lots of thought because going up,
Speaker 2: no surprises. I'm also got Miss Marvel stuff going up.
Speaker 2: You can find that nerdist IGN also doing a lot
Speaker 2: of anime coverage IGN. I know I got a lot
Speaker 2: of manga and anime lovers out there who listen to
Speaker 2: this podcast. So that's really cool. That's been nice to
Speaker 2: dip into Godzilla Versus Batchel. The final order cutoff has passed,
Speaker 2: but that does not mean that you cannot go to
Speaker 2: your comic shop and say, hey, I would like a
Speaker 2: copy of Godzilla Versus Batchel of Rivals, which we found
Speaker 2: out sold very well in pre orders. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: To everyone who pre ordered, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: really exciting. We're going to be doing sie. We are
Speaker 2: going to be doing an x ray Vision giveaway that
Speaker 2: we will have more information about soon.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're going to be air dropping Godzilla Batra.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be dropping it over your home when this
Speaker 1: time it comes out, Folks, stay tuned right here, because
Speaker 1: we're going to be delivering it to you in a
Speaker 1: major way. Folks. Check out the show notes for the
Speaker 1: listener's guide to Extra Vision, where we provide more details
Speaker 1: on everything that we talk about in each and every episode.
Speaker 1: Next week, we're back on Friday, July fifteenth to the
Speaker 1: Miss Marvel finale, a bunch of TV ketchup including the Boys,
Speaker 1: and more exciting housekeeping announcement, x ray Vision. The YouTube
Speaker 1: page will be moving from Uncultured on YouTube to its
Speaker 1: own channel starting this week. Xtra Vision will be taking
Speaker 1: over the Takeline YouTube channel as the dedicated x ray
Speaker 1: Vision channel, So check there for all the video versions
Speaker 1: of the podcast, as well as different video content that
Speaker 1: we will be releasing each and every week. Please subscribe.
Speaker 1: If you have thor loven thunder questions, send us an email.
Speaker 1: X ray at Crooked dot com. Or any questions about
Speaker 1: anything whatsoever reach out on social We may have a
Speaker 1: time to answer them in a mail bag segment coming
Speaker 1: up next week. But of course we'd love to hear
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Speaker 1: X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by Chris Lorden soul Rubin. The show is
Speaker 1: executive produced by myself and Sandy's Rhard Are editing and
Speaker 1: sound designers by Facilla's Photopoulos. Dilon Villanueva and Matt Degroup
Speaker 1: provide video production support. Alex Rella for to handle social media.
Speaker 1: Thank you Brian Vasquez for thee music. See you Next
Speaker 1: Time by folks