What If? (Spoilers)

[DaveSumm]

45 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Huh?

The Multiverse is everything… that does not compute.

The Multiverse is all the different universes where events have taken a different course, such as we’ve seen across the series. But time still seems to be a constant between them; time still flows in all of them as it does in ‘ours’.

The TVA operates outside of the flow of time, possibly in its own timeless realm, or possibly in the quantum realm (which again, would be separate from the multiverse, presumably each universe has its own quantum realm). It’s possible that Kang is entirely aware of all these events, but because they don’t produce a rival Kang and don’t interfere with the ‘sacred’ timeline / universe, he doesn’t care.

The exact difference between Loki’s timelines and What If’s multiverses hasn’t been made explicitly clear, they could be the same thing or they might not.

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Even detonating all the nukes in the world at once wouldn't kill all mankind at once.  Plus, Clint and Natasha are people Ultron wouldn't see as a threat to go personally after, like Thor or Hulk.

I was thinking more that the nukes would disable his own drones, and possibly their flying machine (I wanna say quinjet? Quadjet?) or give them radiation sickness. I always figured when he secured the vibranium he was already planning the homemade meteor thing. 

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Marvel should really do a show called Why If? Where we nitcpicky fans get to bug the writers about perceived plot holes. 

Shouldn't Xandar have already been devastated when Thanos took the power stone?

Don't see why; could have been that Xandar didn't have the power stone in this multiverse. 

21 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I don't get why Ultron would use EMP inducing nukes, or how Natasha and Clint survived? I do love that the two "out of their depth" avengers were the survivors though. 

Why wouldn't Ultron be hardened? 
 

Natasha and Clint survived because they weren't directly fighting Ultron at that moment. They were away, flying off. Natasha is a great survivor no matter what, so I don't find it crazy implausible that they were able to go somewhere and figure things out. Presumably she went back to some secure place in Russia. 

(A better question, IMO, is why nukes didn't blow the shit out of the Kremlin)

21 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Also, I'm confused at this point as to the relationship between Russia and Hydra. Bucky was Hydra operating out of Russia but Nat and the widows were just the russian government, right? So the Red Guardian did not get his super power from Hydra? 

Unclear to me, honestly. Hydra was operating all over the place, and Hydra did know about the super soldiers  that they were making as part of the Winter Soldier program. I think some of the Russians knew it was Hydra based and some didn't know about that at all - just like SHIELD. 

[RumHam]

20 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

Don't see why; could have been that Xandar didn't have the power stone in this multiverse. 

I thought each episode showed us what would happen if one thing changed? 

23 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

Why wouldn't Ultron be hardened? 
 

Natasha and Clint survived because they weren't directly fighting Ultron at that moment. They were away, flying off. Natasha is a great survivor no matter what, so I don't find it crazy implausible that they were able to go somewhere and figure things out. Presumably she went back to some secure place in Russia. 

(A better question, IMO, is why nukes didn't blow the shit out of the Kremlin)

I just figured if you're flying when all those nukes go off your ship is going down or you're getting horribly irradiated. But yeah I guess everything could be hardened, I have no idea how that works. 

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I think some of the Russians knew it was Hydra based and some didn't know about that at all - just like SHIELD. 

That makes a lot of sense. 

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I thought each episode showed us what would happen if one thing changed? 

It shows us what changed at that time - but after that everything could change. GotG was after A2, so there's no guarantee that the power stone went to Star-Lord or shook out the same way. We did see Star-Lord with Gamora, so chances are reasonable that some of that happened the same way - but not necessarily everything. 

11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I just figured if you're flying when all those nukes go off your ship is going down or you're getting horribly irradiated. But yeah I guess everything could be hardened, I have no idea how that works. 

If you're not close to the nukes you won't get super irradiated, but I also don't think that they really cared that much at that point, and unless you're taking a Chernobyl level blast you can survive a long time with radiation. 

As to hardening - it really depends a lot on the system and the source. It can be as easy as shutting things off during the pulse and then turning them back on. It can also be that you go far away. But I suspect the QuinJet would have been designed to deal with EMPs. 

And almost certainly Ultron was able to deal with it, if only because his mind stone isn't circuit-based and he doesn't 'run' on things that are vulnerable to EMPs.

[RumHam]

6 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

It shows us what changed at that time - but after that everything could change. GotG was after A2, so there's no guarantee that the power stone went to Star-Lord or shook out the same way. We did see Star-Lord with Gamora, so chances are reasonable that some of that happened the same way - but not necessarily everything. 

I assumed Guardians 1 was before, because they were already together helping the Sovereign like at the start of Guardians 2. I guess it's not really clear how much time went by before Ultron left earth either. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

The Multiverse is all the different universes where events have taken a different course, such as we’ve seen across the series. But time still seems to be a constant between them; time still flows in all of them as it does in ‘ours’.

The TVA operates outside of the flow of time, possibly in its own timeless realm, or possibly in the quantum realm (which again, would be separate from the multiverse, presumably each universe has its own quantum realm). It’s possible that Kang is entirely aware of all these events, but because they don’t produce a rival Kang and don’t interfere with the ‘sacred’ timeline / universe, he doesn’t care.

The exact difference between Loki’s timelines and What If’s multiverses hasn’t been made explicitly clear, they could be the same thing or they might not.

Dr. Strange brought time with him into the “Dark Dimension”.  Therefore time cannot be constant throughout the multiverse.

[Maltaran]

29 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I assumed Guardians 1 was before, because they were already together helping the Sovereign like at the start of Guardians 2. I guess it's not really clear how much time went by before Ultron left earth either. 

Guardians 2 happens about three months after Guardians 1

[DaveSumm]

59 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Dr. Strange brought time with him into the “Dark Dimension”.  Therefore time cannot be constant throughout the multiverse.

Did he? I assumed he used the time stone to bind his death into a loop that kept repeating until Dormammu got bored. But time was still normal there, and I guess he could’ve enacted the same plan in any other location. 

(It’s not entirely clear if the dark dimension counts as a universe, I suspect Doctor Strange 1 didn’t intend it as such but Multiverse of Madness might clear that up).

[felice]

15 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

if the Multiverse is infinite… why aren’t there infinite universes where the Infinity Stones don’t work?

The set of all integers is infinite, but it doesn't contain even one toasted sandwich.

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Did he? I assumed he used the time stone to bind his death into a loop that kept repeating until Dormammu got bored. But time was still normal there, and I guess he could’ve enacted the same plan in any other location. 

 

 

He could have enacted the plan at any other location, he couldn't normally have enacted the plan in the dark realm if Dormammu hadn't made it vulnerable to time leaking in by invading a realm where it exists. 

[ithanos]

Ultron flat out stole the soul stone from an overconfident and unprepared Thanos. I'd like to imagine the writers didn't want three big battle scenes, given vs Captain Marvel then vs The Watcher later on, so opted for this abrupt (but plausible) encounter. Thanos needs to work on his coming out of the portal game. Bet he got bitten as soon as he stepped out on Wakanda in the zombie episode - and now this!  

The Watcher has more streaming services than everyone else combined, he should know already not to talk through the end scene of a programme that was not being renewed for another season, especially one starring a being who could come through the screen like that girl from the Ring. Sure added to the tension of the episode though.   

Seeing all the nuclear missiles hit their targets on the world map I noticed NZ escaped attention, along with the Philippines, large parts of Indonesia, and the Sahara. Australia got stuffed however, but who the hell put Fiji on the target list?  

Anyway, great episode. At the start of this show I was expecting it to be a collection of separate, unrelated episodes. Then we got the prospect that several episodes appear open for a follow episode, maybe in season 2. Now its nice to see that there's this unifying event that will see several characters we've met so far brought together.  

RELEASE THE FOAM.

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

He could have enacted the plan at any other location, he couldn't normally have enacted the plan in the dark realm if Dormammu hadn't made it vulnerable to time leaking in by invading a realm where it exists. 

Fair enough. Anyway, my original point was that there’s no reason to think that Uatu could just access the TVA as if it were any other universe. 

[Which Tyler]

2 hours ago, ithanos said:

Seeing all the nuclear missiles hit their targets on the world map I noticed NZ escaped attention, along with the Philippines, large parts of Indonesia, and the Sahara. Australia got stuffed however, but who the hell put Fiji on the target list?  

Was it not American Samoa?

[ithanos]

16 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Was it not American Samoa?

Good point, it may well be AS. There were a couple other targets too, slightly north.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Did he? I assumed he used the time stone to bind his death into a loop that kept repeating until Dormammu got bored. But time was still normal there, and I guess he could’ve enacted the same plan in any other location. 

(It’s not entirely clear if the dark dimension counts as a universe, I suspect Doctor Strange 1 didn’t intend it as such but Multiverse of Madness might clear that up).

Watch the “I’ve come to bargin” scene again.  He drags time in with the Time Stone.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, felice said:

The set of all integers is infinite, but it doesn't contain even one toasted sandwich.

The TVA exists.  The Infinity Stones have no power there.  Therefore, there is a universe where the Infinity Stones have no power.  QED.

[sifth]

5 hours ago, ithanos said:

Ultron flat out stole the soul stone from an overconfident and unprepared Thanos. I'd like to imagine the writers didn't want three big battle scenes, given vs Captain Marvel then vs The Watcher later on, so opted for this abrupt (but plausible) encounter. Thanos needs to work on his coming out of the portal game. Bet he got bitten as soon as he stepped out on Wakanda in the zombie episode - and now this! 

 

I mean Thanos has nothing on Tony Stark, when you're talking about killing a character. This show might as well be renamed, "how will we kill Tony Stark off, this week".

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, sifth said:

I mean Thanos has nothing on Tony Stark, when you're talking about killing a character. This show might as well be renamed, "how will we kill Tony Stark off, this week".

Tony is Kenny. Who knew?

[Leofric]

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The TVA exists.  The Infinity Stones have no power there.  Therefore, there is a universe where the Infinity Stones have no power.  QED.

If the TVA exists within the quantum realm of one universe, then potentially every universe has a location where the infinity stones have no power and the quantum realms could be refuges in every universe from Ultron and the Infinity stones.   Did Scott/Antman survive the snap because he was the part of the half Thanos picked to live, or because he was outside the reach of the infinity stones in the quantum realm when the snap occurred?