Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

oh right - she gets zapped into the town before Jimmy Woo and Darcy show up, at which point "Episode 1" starts

actually, wait what am I doing in this thread? it's Friday. must... avoid.. spoilers and social media

Does Monica appear in the background of the first episode?

The nerdo dry-wit science girl spots her on her TV in a non-speaking part but i can’t remember if that was from the first ep or not

Right but I don't remember that scene from the first episode at all

no. supposedly her entrance into the anomaly was shortly before the second episode. and then she appears in that episode

she was def not in the first.

"what happened to your accent?" "what happened to YOURS?" made me LOL in this week's ep

The scene that Darcy shows her in wasn't shown in one of "our" episodes - similarly to the way that the Pietro conversation in this week's "previously" doesn't actually happen previously.

i did not expect that they would pull out that suit and hair
i have many thoughts but should wait for more to watch i guess

That was a pitch perfect rendition of Malcolm in the Middle, including the TMBG-esque incidental music!

Yes!!!!

I thought this episode was getting a little too meta for me without necessarily advancing the story forward. Did make it wider, though! I like how more and more keeps happening and yet there really is still no definitive answer as to who/what/why and especially how. Agnes most confusing to me, maybe. Was she just a red herring all along? What happened to ... Dottie? How does Vision (sort of) know what's going on (he seems like the world's slowest investigator), and what's up with Quicksilver's level of awareness? Or the neighbor dressed as Frankenstein asking Wanda if she wanted anything changed? Lots of stuff going on. Did I catch that Monica hinted against about an engineer ringer she's expecting? I'm all for shared thoughts, because I really have no idea what's going on or why beyond my loose understanding of the House of M story (which this is kinda of still mostly skirting around and hinting at).

similarly to the way that the Pietro conversation in this week's "previously" doesn't actually happen previously.

oh dangit, I went to make tea and toast during the Previously

they missed one aspect of Malcolm In The Middle* - having crew and stand-ins and so forth visible in the unprotected image

*also we totally skipped the '90s! ripped off

Btw, weirdest thing in this ep might have been Pietro calling something "kick ass" before running away, and then Wanda kind of dramatically repeating "kick ass?" "Kick Ass" the (Marvel based) movie of course starred ... Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who made an appearance in flashback footage, too.

Kick Ass also started Evan Peters. pretty sure that joke was intentional, cos I laughed and talked to my friend about it afterwards.

Yeah it’s not a Marvel property

Or the neighbor dressed as Frankenstein asking Wanda if she wanted anything changed?

I think this is cognate to Agnes, in the previous episode, asking if she should do another take of the scene; in some sense that the people of Westview know they're in a play, they're conscious of it and constrained to abide by their roles. (And we get some information in this episode that suggest Wanda's power to run the show isn't limitless; the people far from the action are idling in slow loops or completely still, the kids of the town were left asleep until they were needed for the Halloween scene...)

Did I catch that Monica hinted against about an engineer ringer she's expecting?

I also thought this was a conspicuously unexplained detail -- Monica says her ride inside the Hex is due in an hour and the other characters seem to know what she means but we don't, right? It stuck out.

I thought Kick Ass was a Marvel comic?

*starred Evan Peters

suggest Wanda's power to run the show isn't limitless

Curious what will happen to her control now that she's apparently expanded her town significantly.

xxp They originally published it, but it’s creator-owned.

The entire point of the line was that it was even more substantially creator-owned than Epic

Agnes most confusing to me, maybe. Was she just a red herring all along?

Did I catch that Monica hinted against about an engineer ringer she's expecting?

She said in the previous ep she was going to call someone (an astroengineer?) without any more detail on who it was. Lots of chat about a SWORD character, and an out-there theory it's Reed Richards and this is the back door for the FF to join *this* 616.

Pietro seems very much to be acting as Wanda's conscience in this, forcing her to acknowledge the immorality of what she's doing (and, let's face it, I know how invested some are in Mephisto or some other bad guy doing it but the chances of it not being all Wanda diminish with every second that airs). The multiverse aspects of it being the X-Movies Pietro definitely the most interesting aspect and the one that needs telling further.

Thought the "maybe he's a vampire" and Evan Peters mining being a mad axe murderer and other things were definitely a dig at Ryan Murphy and AHS, as is (and this is a bit of a stretch) Pietro not being able to tell completely different looking kids apart which is the opposite of AHS where near identical Murphy fkbois are immediately uniquely identified.

Been thinking about the race theories ^^^, does the latest episode turn Vision into a literal Magical Negro?

thought it was kinda sweet that vision was still clearly wearing his wedding ring when he switched to wearing his full super-suit

I think in depictions of simulations based on an individual's psyche you frequently get white blood cell type guardians that are set to correct anomalies etc and outside forces that bring disease. So could see Agnes and possibly others as being in that role.
Really don't know who was what in the pre-existing town. THough seeing a sui generis version of her in the car would suggest she had some existence outside of the Wanda influence.

Did I catch that Monica hinted against about an engineer ringer she's expecting?

I also thought this was a conspicuously unexplained detail -- Monica says her ride inside the Hex is due in an hour and the other characters seem to know what she means but we don't, right? It stuck out.

isn’t this just whoever she has in mind to create this super-protective vehicle that nerd-girl has designed that will “theoretically” work?

Feel like notions of Mephisto as the big bad are a product of a wishful thinking feedback loop, unless someone can point to something(s) onscreen that back up the theory.

Yeah, who they've mentioned two or three times now, which is some foreshadowing! Funny how in the MCU everyone pretty much gets to where they need to be immediately ... except in this case, lol.

Couple other thoughts. One, I almost felt that when Pietro asked Wanda how she was doing all this stuff, he was almost digging for information, like he really wanted to know *how* so that he (whoever he is, really) could do it, too. Or at least better understand how to exploit Wanda's apparently newfound powers. Two, this episode really double downed (quadruple downed?) on winky language that hints at a couple of potential iconic Big Bads. Again, could be easter eggs or red herrings, but there are multiple references to nightmares, and also a couple more Devil things (Pietro calls Wanda's kids "demon spawn" who can "raise hell," or something like that, which could also just be ironically mean digs at the kids). I agree with Tuomas, though, that introducing the (more or less) Devil to the MCU seems like a big lift for this show to do, which is why I was theorizing that maybe this show *won't* ultimately reveal (and certainly not resolve) a Big Bad, and in fact that story will continue directly in Dr. Strange 2 and/or Spider-Man. We'll see!

More thoughts: the SWORD guy in charge is such a jerk, and has been from the start. Could he be a reverse reveal? That is, often times the guy in charge turns out to be a villain. Could this asshole be getting set up as the opposite? There's been lots of talk of radiation going on, and now Monica is clearly ... mutating. Hmmm. (Doubt it would happen, but I saw people hypothesize that maybe this will be a *reverse* House of M, where the twist is she brings all the mutants back, but I think that would be too much.) Also, re: Agnes, we still haven't met her husband, assuming he even exists, right? Oh, and re: someone else controlling things, it's interesting that all the kids showed up in the episode after Vision noted the absence of kids, almost as if someone (Wanda or probably otherwise) realized the oversight and overcompensated.

Still no idea why this is cycling through TV show eras, let alone chronologically.

xpost

The Mephisto thing I think is a combination of several things. One, the manifestation of a need for a Big Bad, let alone one powerful enough to do/explain this. Two, this show coming ahead of Dr. Strange 2 and Spider-man 3, both of which have been rumored to feature Mephisto (who is a notable foe of both). Three, all the winking references in the scripts to hell and devils and stuff. And four, as I understand it, a lot of the weirdness echoing the MO of Mephisto in the comics (people back to life, pretending to be other people, his specific relationship to Wanda.) But I'll leave it to the real nerds to suss out.

I think the biggest reason for the Mephisto speculation is that in the John Byrne West Coast Avengers story where Wanda and Vision's kids were revealed not to be real, rather than something she subconsciously created using her reality-warping powers, Mephisto was revealed to be the ultimate bad guy behind it all. And since this series is quite obviously influenced by it (as well as by Avengers Disassembled and House of M, which are sort of sequels to it), people are expecting the same to happen here.

But I really, really doubt they're gonna do the same twists as in that WCA story, because no one besides John Byrne hates Vision and Wanda enough to pull off that shit.

i just read the two Vision and Scarlet Witch minis which had implied none of that, amazed Byrne hated the characters and Steve Englehart that much. also hope they don't pull off that ridiculousness. also really don't want to see the Devil in the MCU

The guy heading SWORD has been called Striker hasn't he? Or am i hearing that wrong.
I remember taht name as teh guy who was experimenting on logan and introduced teh Adamantine in the X-men films.

Not sure what teh story is on who owns what and if the X-men are about to be introduced to teh rest of the MCU are tehy both concerns owned by Disney now or teh time of teh contracted licensing running out or something?
I see that the new pietro is the guy who was in the X-men films though. Though I think hge was only in the not so good ones wasn't he?

Another easter egg (which could be more than that) is that the movie theatre is playing (along with The Parent Trap) The Incredibles. Which of course can be referenced because Disney owns everything, but also The Incredibles is basically the Fantastic Four, and we've seen the hex/void/zone behave pretty literal minded when it sucks things in, not to mention (as with Monica) potentially giving them powers when they emerge. Of course, while that may give some credence to the reverse switcher-roo of Wanda *creating* mutants, again, that just seems a little too much.

It does also raise the question of how the MCU would handle *too* many superheroes.

Yeah, on top of the revelations about Billy and Tommy, Byrne also killed Vision's personality, so he became a cold, unemotional AI, which also killed the relationship between him and Wanda. It took over 10 years and Kurt Busiek's excellent Avengers run to rebuild the two characters... And then Brian Bendis decided that it was really necessary to revisit the Byrne story, so he killed Vision (again) and had Wanda's character ruined for years (again).

Considering how beloved Wanda and Vision and their love story are among older Avengers fans, it's amazing how willing some writers are to screw it all up for shock value. I guess it would've been sorta palatable if Byrne and Bendis got actual good stories out of it, but they didn't.

(xpost to Nhex)

The Incredibles

Discussion this week on bits of the internet about the 'Frozone gets back in the game' scene from The Incredibles which appears to have been directly referenced in the post-credits scene of Infinity War.

https://screenrant.com/infinity-war-incredibles-samuel-l-jackson-connection-video/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

the racial equality retconning nicely explained - though indirectly - in the conversation pietro has with wanda about how people in her world have better hair etc - that she has basically constructed this world as she wishes it to be

also just want to say how much i agree about bettany’s resemblance to rik mayall when he does his goofy grin

and also think it needs to be noted for the record how sensational bettany looks in high-waisted trousers

It won't be Mephisto because it makes no sense for it to be Mephisto, and the idea that anyone seriously thinks it is makes me worry about the Dan Brown-isation of the world. The MCU has already shown that their priority is telling stories that make sense rather than drag in continuity from the comics - even when they have the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube, they rewrote the Winter Soldier to make it make sense in accordance with what they'd already shown on screen.

It's also not going to be Agnes - I genuinely have no idea what's wrong with some of you.

Bettany's been great throughout, I really liked how well Evan Peters settled into the wayward uncle role. I was struck by the idea that he'd make a good Jim Carrey - sure there's a "Jim Carrey during the making of The Man in the Moon" germ rattling around somewhere in Charlie Kaufman's head.

The theory of Agnes is that she had no Westview counterpart, that they didn't identify the name of a civilian "playing" her.

xxpost Well at least you've chosen a reasonable metric by which to assess the soundness of others' minds.

Besides, the MCU architects intentionally feed the speculative nature of fans. They want people to jump to conclusions based on the source material if only to pull the rug out from under them by going in some completely different direction with the filmed material.

To that end, tossing in a character whose name is a portmanteau of a character with strong ties to Wanda in the comics and then having that character (a witch in the comics) dressed up like a witch while everyone else is Halloweening about in goofball iterations of their comic outfits may in fact suggest that hints of Agnes's involvement is a total red herring. It's too on the nose.

Xxp yeah Pietro was doing straight up Ace Ventura ham that I appreciated.