DaveSumm

Remember when Feige said they were going to drop Phases all together? I imagined he was thinking that, kinda like comics, we didn’t need to immediately launch into the next Big Event. I think the idea was that we’d all take a breath and have some more isolated stories that introduced some new characters. But sadly this coincided with Chapek taking over with other plans; to ramp things up and have constant D+ shows. I think that’s the heart of the issue for me, this fundamental clash between taking a beat and milking it simultaneously. Suddenly Feige had to adopt phases once again, and then hurriedly announce the Next Big Thing after a few duds. Throw in Boseman’s death and Covid to really make things difficult. The good thing is, I don’t think they’ve made any decisions that ruin anything. The MCU could start churning out gold tomorrow and we’d all be back on board I suppose, it’s not like the SW prequels where they’re just so shit that there’s no course correcting. On paper, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having the return of Daredevil / Kingpin, X-Men, F4, Blade, a just-starting-out-in-NYC Spider-Man. There’s a truck load of potential there, if they can just make it all good.

Yup, throughly enjoyed that. It really tied up the season and my initial impression is that it’s a fair way better than season 1. It’s probably my favourite season of D+ MCU shows, off the top of my head. It felt a lot like how they presented the ‘real’ Scarlet Witch and the end of WandaVision, finally getting the true Norse god Loki. So my interpretation is:

Final Marvels trailer, in which they try to imply that this is some kind of Endgame sequel. Pretty desperate stuff.

I did see an interesting theory on Reddit that Loki is actually creating the TVA in episode 5, he’s getting variants together and giving them a new name before their home timeline is erased, and recruiting OB to create tempads, all in a room that could well be the same set as the room we first met OB in in episode 1. Loki could position himself as the leader from here on out.

I think the problem is, the whole first season led to ‘the TVA is done, the multiverse is open!’ But then Season 2 said… ’…or at least, it would be if not for this loom we never mentioned.’ So the stakes are basically, either fix the loom and leave things as they were when Season 1 started, or don’t and leave things where Season 1 ended. Neither are that interesting given we’ve already contemplated those outcomes.

Been avoiding the thread cos I thought everyone was talking about Loki… Really glad to see Kingpin back in Echo, that feels much more a true Kingpin than we saw in Hawkeye. Loki was entertaining … although I find I watch an episode, and am entertained, but then ponder afterwards that I’m not sure where it really gets us…? It’s a bit of a season for a seasons sake.

Oof, imagine they had to un-announce the two Avengers films. I think a recast is the least worst option, but bad news for the Multiverse Saga either way. Double oof. Desperation indeed. I’m always baffled how often people talk about bringing these characters back, it would be such a blatant admission that Phase 4 and 5 have been way below 1-2-3 in quality, and just sour what was a perfectly good endpoint for them.

Looks like he was EP for Punisher’s excellent first season, but also it’s quite shit second season. Still, sounds like good news overall.

Am I remembering things correctly, did the Loki who saw Sylvie get out of the elevator in episode one get killed with the death stick thing? Or was that a change that slightly-older-Loki initiated? If it was the same, how did that Loki get back to his present?

Sam Campbell is that great combination of funny, but also actually wants to win. I don’t mind Julian Clary but damn, he’s a contender for “most blatantly here for the pay cheque” of the whole show.

Did anyone notice how they very swiftly implied that the entire warp speed limit saga of TNG was just a hoax, and then moved on?

Maybe, but even then, delivering the manual yourself and taking some sleeping pills seems like far less work than everything he did.

Yea that’s correct, so leaving the manual was what created the branch. Although thinking about it, there’s no reason at all that the sacred timeline has to be the one that HWR is from. So the sacred timeline isn’t a timeline that contains 1 Kang, it’s a timeline that contains 0. Now that HWR remains has been killed, it looks like he’s set into motion a sequence of events that opens up all these other Kangs (Ravonna leaving the manual), to presumably create himself again. I still don’t really get why he didn’t just … not do everything in Season 1 (manipulating Loki and Sylvie to end up killing him), and just take the manual himself. Same effect, but he stays alive.

In fairness, I guess Majors has been told he may end up playing dozens of different Kangs so he needs to create space for it. I enjoyed it too, although I still think the show needs to buckle down and explain what the stakes are and focus. You’ll notice the Worlds Fair stuff was all a branched timeline, implying this isn’t how Timely originally got so smart. But I assume the kid is ‘our’ Kang, that he’s always born in the 19th century. Hard to see how he would ever go on to become any Conqueror / He Who Remains without TVA intervention. I’m really hoping we don’t get the same idea we have with Lokis, that someone who clearly has different genes and a different name is just “a Kang” for some reason.

You’ll get no ‘justification’ from me, or for half the shit Thames does. But it’s the “therefore, privatisation bad” part of the logic I just never see evidence for. From Wikipedia: So what is it we should do with Welsh Water exactly?

I’m pages away from finishing Lost Metal, then I’ll start the secret projects. It’s bonkers that I started reading the Cosmere just before Lost Metal was out, and he’s released 5 more books in the time it took me to read.

Should’ve stuck around for more than 10 minutes, there were plenty of character moments. I was really glad to see others wonder if they missed an episode, I had no clue why they were hunting X5, or why they need to find Sylvie so desperately. It took me a while to realise X5 was the same guy from the first episode. The season is short on exposition but I think I read it as follows; the TVA always used to clip timelines before they had a chance to establish themselves as full Branched Universes. They thought this was to preserve the sacred timeline, but actually it was Kang preventing other Kangs. But now, the TVA all know that it was a ruse and have split into factions; Renslayer is off doing something we don’t know yet, that other women figured that bombing all of them was the best plan (clipping back to the sacred timeline, except this time it’s tragic because these are branch timelines and therefore everyone in them dies instead of being merged back). I actually don’t think I understand what Loki and Möbius’s feelings are here? They definitely wanted to stop the bombings, but also definitely want to stop Kang…? So what’s their strategy? I’m also having to adhoc some logic about the flow of things; possibly TVA time is tied to Kang, so now that he’s ‘dead’, even though that’s the end of time, they share the same linear flow of time that Kang does so he’s also not overseeing things anymore? Or something.

I’ve seen a lot of people welcome this as good news but I can’t really tell. Either it was heading to be on par with the other fairly weak shows we’ve had, and they wisely shook things up. Or, it was quite good but a bit bold, and they Marveled it and bled it dry of any distinguishing creativity and it’ll turn out fairly weak. Hopefully they just get as much of the Netflix team back and make season 4. If this turns out as good as Daredevil’s weakest season, it’d be my favourite D+ show.

Yea really enjoyed that. I hope this season starts to pull together some threads so we can start building to Kang Dynasty / Secret Wars. FYI there’s a post credit scene.

That was a pretty mental speech. I can only assume they’re trying to court the working class vote, and trying to sell the idea that two of their boogeymen (the Rich and the Woke) are actually the same? What? I was genuinely confused that I’d missed a section when she started talking about people who advocate for human rights “in their ivory towers”. I don’t associate woke with rich in the slightest.

That’s true, I just see UK water used a lot to ‘prove’ that it must be a bad idea when the stats don’t really support that. ‘Saving money’ isn’t a good general goal for governments either. I think privatisation should be considered very carefully in all instances, but for me it’s more complicated than a blanket ‘bad or ‘good’.

See tweet 11. See tweet 17. Anyway, I don’t wanna keep going to bat for this stuff, but to bring it sort of back to the thread: in this case I really don’t believe that privatisation is the root problem here. The government is entirely welcome to set whatever standards it wants for water companies, but if they were footing the bill then that’s a huge disincentive for them to raise those standards. Water quality, both drinking and waste, has unequivocally improved since privatisation.

Shared in the UK thread a while ago but I’ll share it again: https://x.com/loftussteve/status/1659637753158545414?s=46&t=OTLdG0wwYT1_7Eb_nXeJlw (Why some tweets embed and some do not, only God / Ran knows)

So this is how the last thread dies … with more PT bashing. Which I, for one, am all for. Please continue.

Anyone else hate this line? It thinks it’s a lot more clever than it is. All a bit r/im14andthisisdeep. (Also it’s liberty fyi).