#-in those mad sequences with next to no dialogue

[divinekangaroo]

Finishing the Dark Knight and cannot stop laughing: Nolan's ability to finish a movie is like Sting's ability to finish a song.

[katiica1412]

How I fell in love with the Trigun franchise.

This essay ist mostly intended for those who know at least one installment of the Trigun franchise and are wondering if they should check out the others, but mostly it's about the personal journey I had with this series. It's not meant to analyze the series in any deep fashion, because I think that would take weeks or months and several rewatches/rereads.

It's just about my feelings.

I wrote this on a whim but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Consider it a love letter. Also because it is inevitable, this contains heavy spoilers, especially for Trigun Stampede, you have been warned.

Trigun Stampede was a series I was actually pretty interested in, when it was announced. A reboot of a big name that is often mentioned in the same breath as Cowboy Bebop, which I hadn't seen yet either, but everyone had some kind of big respect for it, so it mattered.

Then it was even being animated by one of the most promising studios in recent years. Studio Orange, who are the runner-ups for 3D-anime with their amazing blend of 2D-animation and CGI.

So what could possibly go wrong here? At first absolutely nothing.

The pilot episode had everyone on the edge of their seats and left most people flabbergasted. I still consider it one of the best pilots I've seen in recent years. It looked gorgeous and sold me on the main character pretty quickly.

But the main goal seemed ….not too complex..... and even a bit too…. straightforward for my taste.

An evil twin brother.

A simple good versus evil story, I thought.

Then episode 3 came along and introduced the villain doing his glorious evil deeds in an extravagant fashion. But something was off. Our main character was blamed by the townspeople, even though he meant for the best? But you couldn't even be mad at the people because they were understandably devastated? The story all of a sudden got more layers. But I didn't get how important that dilemma would become in the long run.

I didn't get it.

I didn't get how much it would make me feel…..

The next episodes I enjoyed moderately.

I was watching weekly, so I enjoyed some of them more then others. I still was a bit irritated by the plot, even if I quite enjoyed the setting.

But they were seemingly wandering aimlessly on that desert planet.

I mean, eventually Vash and Knives would have to face each other…..but I didn't get what the story was trying to do until then.

Even when Wolfwood was introduced, I still hadn't understood. He was incredibly likeable and played off with the main cast very well. His backstory was told so beautifully in episode 6. Episode 8 was another highlight for me. We were finally getting a wonderfully flashed out backstory for Vash that made him so much more rounded. It was also greatly expanding on Knives' motives.

But then the episodes after…….I didn't feel it anymore….

I don't even know why.

Maybe I fell into that seasonal anime burnout, maybe I was just down…..depressed, call it what you will….

I didn't like watching Meryl and Roberto.

The dialogues irritated me and I was just frustrated I couldn't enjoy it anymore.

But then….

Then came Vash's dream sequence.

The flower garden lightening up in a beautiful red.

Rem standing at the tree in the middle.

A little Vash running towards her.

Jumping into her arms.

Smiling.

Her arms caressing him, and him feeling the safest, the most loved he has ever been.

…and I…

I felt that too. It was like an epiphany. I finally understood the core. It was like I was blind then began to see.

It was such an overwhelming content feeling.

I saw Rem being painted as mother earth. This story was about our world.

Their world.

About humanities' exploitation of the nature, of each other.

About the human condition as a whole, about hate, if everything could be overcome, but most significantly...

…about love and peace.

In its center was Vash who embodies it all, fights for it, even if he doesn't like it, and carries his message through the world, but at the same time it's about him experiencing the greatest cruelty because of his circumstances.

But holy fuck it didn't even stop there…… The most impressive thing had yet to come. The final episode. It's never been the same for me after that.

All of a sudden this show showed all its christian inspired glory! NOT ONCE I thought about this series as christian inspired… NOT ONCE. UNTIL THEY LITERALLY SHOWED US TWO FALLEN ANGELS FIGHTING OVER THE POWER OF GOD. EVEN THOUGH WOLFWOOD LITERALLY CARRIES A CROSS THE WHOLE SHOW SYMBOLIZING HIS SINS, YEAH I WAS BLIND.

After I saw that, I saw them everywhere! The motives! Every fucking where!!! Especially in Vash.

"Even if they hunt me! I'll just run away! I'll run, run, run, and keep running as far as i have to! And when things calm down, I'll quietly settle by their side again! I'm Vash the Stampede!"

I enjoyed all that symbolism immensely. I wouldn't consider myself the most religious person, but I have been raised in a Christian household and I do want to believe in the lessons of mercy, love and charity, like Vash does. I know, I'm probably oversentimental right now, but ...in the end this franchise made me feel...it wasn't wrong to think that way.

And that's not even all the series has to offer….it's overall a philosophical playground about morality.

So there was no escaping it, I had to know more about this story now.

The next thing I did was binging the 1998 anime by Madhouse. It has a very different approach to things, but it built on the aforementioned themes in a magnificent way. The presentation of the designs and setting were a lot more Western-genre-oriented and now I think, they're even better suited to make the themes shine.

After all Stampede was more leaning into the modern sci-fi elements and mostly focusing on the main brotherly conflict and the lore surrounding it, probably due to time contraints.

This version showed us a little more of the people living on this planet, and their unavoidable struggles. Different stories about people's dependance on others and the little resources they needed to survive.

This Trigun world was more painted as a world, where the crime rate was incredibly high, everyone has to carry a gun and unnecessary duels happen everyday. A cruel place to believe in such a thing as mercy. A place where more villains actively want to break Vash and make him turn on his pacifistic ideals.

Ironically this iteration had a lot of funny moments as well, it was easier to become attached to the characters that way.

It was also a great way of filling me in on a lot of information the reboot left open or still hadn't explored.

Vash was an even more conflicted character here and accompanied with Wolfwood's inner struggles, those two make the perfect antithesis to each other and Knives. Knives in this iteration could hardly be called a character at all. He feels more like a MCGuffin, even if he still gets a minimum share of development.

In the end this anime made me feel a lot of different emotions and with all its great fitting original content managed to tell a beautiful coherent narrative with a beautiful finale that leaves everyone satisfied.

Everyone but me….because I knew there was more :D

Something was still missing here….a lot of the lore regarding the twins and history of this planet that was explained in Stampede wasn't here.

So it was time for me to get to the best part. The finished source material by Yasuhiro Nightow himself.

Trigun and especially the sequel Trigun Maximum.

Imagine it that way.

If you take the best things of both animes and mash them together, this is what you get.

That's one of the reasons those two series complement each other so well.

Oh boy, where do I begin.

This one is daaaark.

If you thought the trauma presentation and villainous encounters in the other two animes were already hard to swallow, this shit's going to destroy you. It did me. I never knew how much underlying sadness a character and I could endure. But also at the same time Vash was the same as his 98 anime counterpart, witty, a jokester, an incredible gunman sure of his capabilities, an incredibly caring hero with ideals worth following, but also a tragic hero.

"What am I supposed to do?

I don't know anymore..."

This iteration shows all of the aspects of his character the other two already had, but also a lot more...

The same with Wolfwood and Knives.

It finally establishes Wolfwood as the second protagonist he has always been, as the 98 anime does introduce him way later in ratio with the lenghth of the manga. We spend more time with him.

Although Knives has a lot more charisma in Stampede, here he has a much more flashed out motive and plan. He seems the most threatening here.

Even his followers all get the time they deserve, Trigun Maximum is where Legato Bluesummers is the craziest he will ever be!

Since this story had enough time to be flashed out, they make the journey longer and harder for all the characters, and the moral dilemmas more complex.

The attention to detail is at the highest it has ever been and the fights and action scenes are a sight to be hold, ….including gore and unsettling imagery throughout.

It works a lot with atmosphere and auras the characters radiate, it doesn't overexplain anything and has some of the best one liners I've ever read, some of them the anime adaptations obviously used as well.

The scale feels enormous by the end, so much so that it overwhelmed me emotionally sometimes…..

If Trigun Stampede really plans to follow this at least a bit, we are in for a visual treat.

But even if they succeed and make it their own, which they, in my opinion already did, the sheer amount of missing content that needed to be adapted to give it the same emotional debth as the manga seems just too great for just another cour… Whatever happens I will be there and support it.

I also have a few things I only briefly want to mention.

Meryl and Milly are awesome. They don't have a big role to play, but it's sufficient. Love them.

The action scenes and visual presentation in all of the iterations, but mostly in the manga, are nuts. The weapons and fighting choreographies are crazy and inventive, thus really enjoyable and infectious.

Legato is the best villain in this story, sorry Knives, of course you're doing well too.

No, I don't ship Vashwood, but I understand why some would.

And lastly, over the studiing of this franchise I grew incredibly attached to Vash. He is probably one of the best protagonists I've ever watched growing.

By now, I have watched Trigun Stampede three times, in sub, german dub and english dub. I have watched Trigun (1998) two times, in sub and in german dub. And last week I have finished reading Trigun Maximum the second time.

In the span of five months.

It never got boring…. And I don't see me letting go of this series anytime soon.

Thanks for reading!

[freelanceexorcist]

Some more comments on the demo.

I'm not able to play it because I don't have a PS5 and there won't be one in the cards for a while, but I at least found a good, thorough playthrough that didn't have some streamer yammering over the dialogue, so that will have to do.

I'm writing as a I watch, so there's gonna be a lot here.

Cut for Rebirth spoilers (and a Game of Thrones one) and length.

-I loved seeing Sephiroth act and speak so casually! Back then, he really was just a guy, huh?

-And holy crap, is that seriously Caleb Pierce doing the voice of Shinra Security Officer Who Is Actually Cloud? Kinda on the nose, but I like it. Maybe in Cloud's dumpster fire of a psyche, not only does he remember being the SOLDIER 1st Class, but he remembers Zack as being the security guard.

-OMFG, Master Zangan! LOL, this fuckin guy. Three seconds after meeting Cloud he's feeling him up! And man, he's got some huge Patrick Warburton energy going on.

-Only three beds in the room at the inn? Guess one of the boys is gonna have to double up with Sephiroth.

-Let me just state for the record that I really like Cloud as a character. That said, when he was a teenager? He was, uh...a wee bit of a creeper. His favorite spot to hang out just happens to face what I assume is Tifa's bedroom window. And what does he do when he knows he's alone in the house? Goes into her bedroom and starts going through her stuff. At least the ladies called his ass out for that this time, because that sequence never did sit right with me.

-I'll bet Sephiroth was ready to buy Random Villager Guy a drink. RVG keeping those looky loos and stans away like a champ! He even had to keep them away from the INN! I really understand why he wanted nothing to do with the "hero" role. Yep, let Genesis go be the Taylor Swift of the FFVII-verse and see how HE likes it.

-Tifa is so tiny next to Sephiroth! Then again, everyone is. Dude's a freakin' TANK.

-Wow, that photographer's an even bigger asshole this time around. Seriously, dude? Taking a picture not only without Sephiroth's permission but when his back is turned?

-The "oh...FINE!" body language when Cloud asked, though.

-And I reiterate. Sephiroth. SUCH a bro here. All I hear is Clark Kent when he talks.

-So it just occurred to me that Sephiroth was deliberately the first one to fall in the river because he knew he'd have to save everyone and he didn't even know how far of a drop it was. That bridge collapsed under the sheer weight of his balls.

-And his horror and devastation at losing one of his men will never not gut me. Everyone was dry by the time he got back, so you know he was out there looking for that dude for a LONG time, too. That's a huge change from "sorry for your luck, pal, but we have a mission to finish." That's what makes his tragic fall all the more inexplicable. In the OG, his coldness had you thinking "yeah, I can see this guy having a Face-Heel Turn easy." But here? With him so protective of those weaker than him and his emotional investment in his people? You don't go from that to "burn them all," even when a severe mental breakdown is involved. I may talk more about this later. ("Oh. Yay." --everybody)

-*Sephiroth has joined the party*-

-Serious question: is there anything in the lore that I missed that states there's no PPE that can protect from mako? Because when Sephiroth said "mako this thick is very dangerous," I thought "maybe bring some respirators next time then?" Yeah, probably no NIOSH rating high enough to filter out spirit energy.

-Yep, definitely no love lost between Seph and the sperm donor.

-Yeah, Barret, it's not making a whole lot of sense to me either at this point.

-"Am I even...human?" Fuck. It's going even harder in Rebirth.

-And the library sequence. Double fuck. The rage in his voice at the end. The madness. And that strange breathing after he glitched? I'll bet he was trying to fight off Jenova and he failed. Sorry, Vincent, but I think Seph is the one that should be able to take out Hojo.

Aaaand that's enough self-imposed psychological torture for the day. I can't watch what comes next.

Jenova used his anger, his devastation and his sleep deprivation to get a toehold. Which makes me think, what if in the trilogy's lore she started piloting him? No, I don't mean controlling his mind or even heavily influencing him? What if she's using him as a vessel? I mean like the deities, angels and demons on Supernatural. She's driving the boat now, and he's in the back of his mind screaming, because he's aware of the things she's making her new meat suit do and he can't stop it.

I'm not trying to let anyone's dirty rotten CGI girlfriend-ganking butt off the hook here if anyone wants to accuse me of that sort of thing. I'm merely saying that burning a village full of innocents is not the actions to expect from the Sephiroth we've come to know in the demo. Yes, he's a SOLDIER who has probably had to do some very unpleasant things under orders, but there was no reason for this. Going from zero to genocide straight out of the blue is inexplicable, I don't care how bad the mental breakdown was.

It's just the only thing that makes sense at this point. People like him get angry, sure. They rage, sure. They swear vengeance on the people who wronged them, sure. But they don't kill innocent people because of it and in such a horrific way. At their most violent, they may find Hojo and try to see how loudly and for how long he can scream.

Bog standard villains don't get this kind of "good guy" lead up to their nefarious deeds, and he's getting that treatment big time from both Rebirth and Ever Crisis. That's usually only reserved for the Chaotic Neutral and redeemable types that were supposed to like. There's nothing in that backstory so far to suggest that he was capable of a Nibelheim-level mass murder. Sure, there's headcanons that he was just a fuse waiting to be lit, but nothing official even hints at that. This came out of NOWHERE.

Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture or whatever, but the extreme change in behavior, the senseless violence...why would FFVII do that to the audience? To torture us? That's just cruel. Even Game of Thrones didn't do the audience that dirty with Danaerys Targaryen (if you didn't see her Face-Heel Turn coming from a mile away, you were watching a different show than me, because she was always a Heel. She just brutalized people who had it coming until King's Landing.).

And I'm out. If you've managed to stick around this long or even read this at all, thank you. If you want to argue, please save it for another day because I'm REALLY not in the mood. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go drink. A lot.

[rookie-critic]

Pearl (2022, dir. Ti West) - review by Rookie-Critic

Pearl, the prequel to the sleeper hit X from just earlier this year, shows us how the titular character became the disturbed and murderous antagonist that we saw in that first film. Mia Goth, if she hadn't already done so with her dual-role as an older Pearl and X's protagonist Maxine back in February, has proved herself to be one of the strongest actresses working today. The range of emotions she is able to show in this film's 1 hour and 42 minute runtime is admirable, and she carries this film on her back with a will and determination that is awe inspiring. The character of Pearl was at least a partially sympathetic character even in X, but here we get to see what really drove her over the edge. If there was one thing that I maybe wished had been done differently, [WARNING: LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD] it would be that the film depicts Pearl as having already been mentally disturbed before the events of the film. She exhibits textbook signs of serial killer behavior (killing small animals and other things like that) and, according to dialogue said both by her and her mother in the film, had been exhibiting those signs her whole life. I kind of wished that we would have gotten to see Pearl as someone who was not just pushed further into erratic outbursts and violent tendencies that already existed, but that was broken into those tendencies. Whose spirit was crushed until she felt like that was her only way out. Now, the movie can totally be read that way as is, and its impact is still there, I just feel like it would be easier to empathize with a protagonist that didn't already seem to be going down a serial killer's path anyway.

Regardless of that, we see how the closed-mindedness and puritanical school of thought of the time period wears down on the façade of normalcy Pearl has half-learned to put on around other people. Pearl, as we can kind of piece together from the events in X, is incredibly sexually repressed, and the way that affects her in this movie both informs and adds to the sex-positive messaging of the first film, so it's good to see the consistency across the franchise in that regard. Also, the style of this film is gorgeous. The cinematography and the score pair in such a beautiful way. Sadness is evoked through the framing of shots in certain scenes, as is madness, as is terror. Everything fits in its right place here, and Ti West never falters in his vision. I, again, cannot heap enough praise onto Mia Goth for her performance, which is stellar throughout the entirety of the film, but there are two particular sequences that stand out: the big dance number that occurs towards the end of the film and a jaw-dropping, 5+ minute monologue soon after, where the camera stops dead on a close-up shot of Goth sitting at a table, and does not let up until she is done speaking. Right now, Pearl and X work as a perfect duology, and I can only hope the final(?) film in the trilogy, next year's MaXXXine, can fit right in.

Score: 8/10

Currently available to rent or purchase on digital (iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, etc.) and on DVD & Blu-ray through A24 & Lionsgate Films.

[kimmkitsuragi]

OH GOD OH FUCK IT'S OVER

a looooooong dump post with a lot of screenshots and commentary :) mainly doing this to myself but well if anyone wants to read my silly ramblings ~

starting from right after the gortash fight- i already posted about karlach's incredible :((( cutscene there. but also this:

inconsolable.......... the similarities between their backstories was my first reason for being so invested in starlach from early on- but the sadness in his voice here. god. dont worry my love, i will have an origin run w u where you can go to avernus with her and wyll :((( wyllachstarion will win yet again (YES i am seriously already planning for this- but not immediately because i think i focused on them too much in my first run lmaoooo. but i will do this!!!! they are my babiessss)

alright now the ELDER BRAIN FIGHTS UGHHHHHHHHHHHH i enjoyed all of the endgame sequences sooooo muchhhhhhhhhh

as i already said in other posts, i made laezel a little mad. just a little. i didnt free orpheus 😭😭 i am so curious to see how it plays out in my next runs!! but in this one, i felt like this was the choice Lou would make. and now, let's break down wyllachstarion's reactions to the alternative decisions ~

firstly, we already knew astarion says no to becoming an illithid himself, and his reaction to u possibly becoming one is so sad too... he really keeps urging you to reconsider. and i loved how he prefers freeing orpheus, but he's also fine with the emperor route as long as you dont end up as an illithid. his voice and face in these scenes made me so !!!! it was very well done, i loved it

wyll just being okay with whatever u choose... he stands with you and trusts u in all options. wylllllllllllllllll :( it is such a wyll thing, but i also wish he had a longer dialogue here

and karlach........ god of courseee she sees it as her only way out. i hate this i hate it hereeeeeeeee it's very good writing and acting but karlach!!! i dont want u to be an illithid :((( i ofc picked those options, and she was still supportive- i kinda wished to see her a little more hurt/mad at this but :(((( that would've been a lot harder for me to say no to her lmao. i just want karlach to be happy, is that too much to ask?????

but anyway, in the end i chose to trust the emperor and let him handle the stones. it was fun to have him around in fights ngl :) i never used illithid powers in this run on purpose for rp reasons, so im looking forward to exploring them later. lou's relationship with the emperor have been very umm.... shaky? lmao 😭 lou tried to kill him once, but also otherwise he was a professional ally i think. the emperor didnt even asked to fuck lou :( (lou wouldve said no but sdfbdhbfsd) he never trusted the guy, but also most of the game, he didnt trust many people anyway so it wasnt personal for the emperor lol. he was honestly planning to help laezel and free orpheus until the moment he had to make a decision, but the choices presented at that moment......... man. siding with the emperor felt the safest option at that time, so that's what we went with. it was definitely an interesting allyship!! it was a fun one to experience tho (sidenote, since im talking about the emperor umm. he and ansur definitely had a thing right? yes? alright moving on)

THEN everyone i helped just coming togetherrrrrrrrr awwww 😭😭 even the ox came!! sdnmdshfs i ended up summoning the harpers, the gur, nine fingers' guys, rolan's spell, and dame aylin before i made it to the brain itself lol it was a fun fight too!! it came in phases and i enjoyed all phases tbh. courtyard was v crowded but fun, then trying to climb up to the brain was STRESSFULL honestly but also fun!! the last part seemed intimidating but it was fine in the end. fuck you huge brain. also, i remember fighting the mind flayers at the end of act 2 in moonrise, and they gave me such a hard time i was scared of them lmaoooo and now my lvl12 ass is like huh. astarion can take u out in one turn with his 4 attacks in a row. bitch. sdfhjsfdgs (as always astarion carries the combat so hard for me- whatever will i do without relying on him all the time in my next runs???

and now THE CUTSCENES!!!!!!

astarion on copium.......... he was so happy too. ON GOD WE WILL FIX YOUR SUN ALLERGY (in my mind) - and then having him run off towards the end of this scene :((((((((( alright not to make everything about the same trio jsfdhfdsf but! wonder how that plays out in astarion origin spawn ending?? because i NEED him in the next cutscene with karlach 😤 guess we will find out in some months lol

but for now! wyll and karlach are off to avernus :<<<< and im off with astarion to hopefully find a cure lol. and laezel got mad at me a little (seriously. just a little compared to what i was expecting sdhfhd) and left to go to space and stuff. which is very fair honestly, good luck and sorry girl :( (i wish there was an option to apologize to her for that decision because i really did want to help her, but.......... the choices that i have to make......... so hard)

i ofc said let it gooooo about the crown to gale lol (does this mean i got the "happy" ending for everyone except laezel? :<<<<)

also im obsessed how there are 4 good answers and then just "let's break up" 😭😭 no in between here

alsoooo im very happy to have an epilogue party, but i wish there was a celebration right after the victory party as well!!

nowwww the party!!! my guys arriving to the party <3

(another thing that i realized, i got so attached to playing a "big drow man" character LMAO so i will really need to push myself in character creation the next time. big drow man so lovely and so welcoming to me im sorry. i mean LOOK at my guy here 👇 isnt he so babygirl???)

and i hugged astarion and all i got was this shitty screenshot :<< i am so bad at taking these sometimes dfhdhfd i tried so hard so many times to get the good kissing ones lmao... good thing i have a hard save at the epilogue so i can go hug him again

and his dialogue ending with "i'll always be here, love"................... stop this nonsense why did this make me genuinely emotional............... promise??? promise??????????????? 😭😭😭

laezel is learning about friendship :ooooo im so obsessed with her honestly im so sorry i did you dirty girl 😭😭 i will romance you hopefully soon!!! and we will free orpheus this time!! (as i said, her showing up after not doing that is seriously so big for me lmao. i was worried she'd ditch us!! i love u bestie)

also!!!! really really cute how there were letters from our friends at the chest!!! i really liked reading them. BUT. look who else is here 🙄 miss araj u are not my friend 😒 you CANNOT reclaim darling. do not ever call me darling. goodbye. dont write again.

okay WHY does every line other than hugging him is kinda mean to gale 😭😭 it's true he is my least used companion in this run along with halsin but like.... i dont hate gale at all lmao im planning on using him more in my next run (the same with the other less used companions) (although so far i really do not care for halsin sorry bro) but yeah so i hugged gale...

tara is judging me (another thing is, i literally saw tara once in this run, im guessing she would show up more if i focused on gale more??? please say it happens because i wanna see tara more too lol)

also chose this option just for the chaos of it. can you even imagine. do we want astarion near impressionable young pupils. (gale was pretty okay with it but sir, reconsider please)

i also hugged karlach!!!!!!! well of course!!!! she's glowing blue 🥺🥺🥺 i LOVE how karlach is optimistic about fixing her engine. girl pleaseeeeee dont die the world need you :((((( i loved her epilogue scene so much oughhhhhhh how she's playful but also so emotional!!!! mama k i need youuuuu

and wyllllllllllll i wish i could hug him too ://////// but i love how he's going after mizora KILL HERRRRR let's kill her ughhh let wyll do things for himself!! i love it here!! and he became a ranger 🥺🥺 ranger buddies!!!! lou and wyll and minsc and honorary member astarion (he multiclassed into gloom stalker lol)

speaking of minsc, i want to use him more in my next run too!! this run i recruited him a little too late, and im already a ranger so... i find him genuinely amusing honestly, i dont know the general opinion on his silliness but i feel like i will really enjoy his character!! i especially want him and jaheira in the same party to have more fun lol

seriously the most important character in the game btw ☝

scratch playing with the prism was also soooo 🥺 my little friends... the cub calls scratch big brother 😭😭

and hugged shart too :)

press x to doubt tho 💀

lmaooo can't believe this is a real line:

i like how they look like they're having a conversation here. badass women i need u (also i know i said it already but, more jaheira pls?????? more jaheira im begging??????? she needs voicelines and idle animation at the party pleaseeeeeeee)

weird bug with astarion and his knife tricks made me laugh here:

also, volo literally inviting himself to the party 💀 withers dialogues and ending cutscene was fun too lmao

MY FRIENDSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

thank you for listening to my ted talk fr if anyone read all this, you're my friend too let's go to fae-run and take tadpoles together 🤝

[themovieblogonline]

Spoonful of Sugar Review: A Welcomed Dose of Horror Goodness

Isn't it amusing how they named a horror movie after a popular song from Mary Poppins? Regardless of people's opinions about the film itself, the title alone brings a sense of humor to it. Spoonful of Sugar, directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan, is a psychological horror film that stands out with its focus on character development instead of relying on an excessive number of predictable jump scares. It takes viewers on a captivating journey into the minds of a family and their caretaker, who looks after their unique son named Johnny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJNPwELdysY From the beginning, it becomes apparent that Johnny is far from ordinary. Apart from his other peculiarities, he remains silent and has severe allergies. The family hires a young woman named Millicent, recognizing that a child like Johnny requires a caregiver with exceptional skills and patience. Initially, Millicent appears to be an average young woman with ambitious goals and a compassionate nature. However, as the movie progresses, intriguing mysteries unravel, shedding light on her and the family's bizarre traits. While the film doesn't break new ground in terms of originality, it remains enjoyable and respects its concise ninety-four-minute duration. If you're seeking a chilling and twisted horror experience, this film is right up your alley. The standout performances by Morgan Saylor and Danilo Crovetti contribute greatly to the movie's appeal. Saylor undergoes a remarkable transformation as Millicent, a genuinely terrifying character whose motivations initially elude us. As the story unfolds, we gradually discover more about Millicent and her unsettling habits. In the role of Johnny, Crovetti delivers a challenging performance. Despite having no spoken lines, he successfully portrays a "creepy kid" through his eyes, body language, and facial expressions, effortlessly conveying a sense of unease. Sadly, however, there are moments in the film that resemble a Lifetime Original movie. The dialogue is often weak, and there are excessive romantic sequences that may elicit eye-rolling reactions. Nevertheless, overall, Spoonful of Sugar pleasantly surprised me and left a positive impression. While it may not revolutionize the horror genre, the film offers an enjoyable experience, bolstered by Morgan Saylor's compelling lead performance. It's not going to be one of those movies that cinephiles are going to sit around talking about for years to come, but it's certainly an enjoyable movie that has more than enough goodness to offer. Consider me super interested to see what director Mercedes Bryce Morgan does next, because she definitely has promise. Additionally, the film's atmospheric cinematography adds a layer of visual flair to the storytelling. The use of shadows, dimly lit rooms, and eerie locations effectively create a sense of foreboding and tension. The sound design also deserves praise, as it skillfully builds suspense and enhances the overall creepiness of the narrative. One aspect that sets Spoonful of Sugar apart from many other horror films is its exploration of deeper themes. The movie delves into the complexities of familial relationships, the consequences of unchecked ambition, and the blurred lines between normalcy and madness. These thought-provoking elements elevate the viewing experience and make the film more than just a mere scarefest. Despite its flaws, Spoonful of Sugar manages to entertain and keep viewers engaged throughout its runtime. It may not reinvent the genre, but it's a solid entry that horror enthusiasts will find enjoyable. If you're in the mood for a psychological thriller that relies on suspense and character-driven storytelling, give this film a chance. With its mix of eerie atmosphere, strong performances, and intriguing mysteries, Spoonful of Sugar is a treat for horror fans looking for something different. Read the full article

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Black Sails’ Toby Stephens on Captain Flint and the Final Season

Black Sails will return to Starz on January 29, 2017 for its fourth and final season. When we last left the pirates, Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) was beginning the revolution in Nassau and Long John Silver’s (Luke Arnold) star was rising. We recently got a chance to chat with Toby Stephens about the end of the series, what’s coming for Flint and working on this epic show. Check out his thoughts on season four below!

Here is the official synopsis:

The fourth season opens with hundreds of British soldiers dead in a forest… the Royal Navy sails back to England in retreat… the West Indies are now a war zone, and the shores of New Providence Island have never been bloodier. With the help of Eleanor Guthrie, Woodes Rogers transforms Nassau into a fortress without walls, as Captain Flint amasses a fleet of unprecedented strength, hoping to strike the final blow against civilization and reshape the world forever. Meanwhile, from within the island… an insurgency builds, fueled by the legend of its exiled leader, whose name keeps grown men awake at night… the one they call “Long John Silver.”

But as Flint, Silver and their allies are about to learn, the closer civilization comes to defeat, the more desperately and destructively it will fight back. Oaths will be shattered, fortunes will change hands, and amidst the chaos, only one thing remains certain: it has never been more dangerous to call oneself a pirate.

xxxx

Legion of Leia: I was in South Africa on the set when you were filming that crazy storm sequence in season three. What sort of set pieces are we going to see this time around?

Toby Stephens: It’s huge. There’s loads of stuff that will keep fans extremely happy, I’m sure.

Legion of Leia: Flint had a crazy few seasons. I’m curious about whether or not you think his destiny was set with Miranda’s (Louise Barnes) death.

Toby Stephens: I think yes, it kind of compounded the way he was going. I mean, I think before Miranda died, maybe people could reason him out of certain choices, but I think when Miranda dies, that’s the last nail in the coffin in terms of him going after England in this relentless way. And also, I would say, the other thing that compounds it is finding an ally in Silver. The fact that they become partners in this enterprise, it seems that Flint can only function when he has somebody who he’s allied with or is an alter-ego for him. Someone who can balance him and he can work through. So that is both good for him and bad for him in a way.

Legion of Leia: In the last episode, there is that conversation between Flint and Silver where they’re like, oh, we’re friends. But bad things happen to Flint’s friends. We know a bit about where this is going to go because of “Treasure Island.” What’s ahead for Flint here?

Toby Stephens: Yeah, well, I think it’s really the end game for the whole series, and we know it’s a tragedy because there was no great revolution in the pirate world. There was no emancipation of the pirates and the slaves. It didn’t happen, so why did it not happen and what happens to Flint at the end of that, when his dreams are crushed? What happens to Silver and him? How does that play out? And also, how does the Silver that we know become the eponymous Long John Silver of “Treasure Island?” How does that happen? And I think season four brilliantly leads us to a point where where, it’s a very satisfying ending, but also leaves you to fill in the gaps between there and “Treasure Island.” You kind of know who these people are at the end of this, but it’s a kind of really cool thing to allow people to do that themselves rather than go, look, this is what happens, all the way to the end. It leaves you to do some work yourself.

Legion of Leia: I love that. This show has sent me to Wikipedia more often than you would believe!

Toby Stephens: [laughs] I know!

Legion of Leia: How much research do you do for a role like this, or do you rely mostly on the script?

Toby Stephens: Do you know what? It’s a combination of laziness and there is method to it. I just go with what is in the script. I mean, like you, I’ll go to Wikipedia if I need to know something, if I don’t know what something is. But whether or not it has real historic context, for me is immaterial because I’m working in a fictive world. It’s a fictive world with dashes here or there of historic fact. A pinch here, a pinch there, and I need to work in that world, so it’s better if I stick there.

Legion of Leia: I did love seeing how much was actually built on the set and how many little touches were there, historical and fictive, both.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, what I love is the detail in terms of everybody else, the props, etc. There was a lot of care taken about what would have been there, what wouldn’t have been there, creating that texture of the world, where you can believe it.

Legion of Leia: When we were there, we were hearing stories of bugs in the walls!

Toby Stephens: We were always having problems with–there were these crickets. And they would get in. We would call them “sea crickets!” [laughs] You would be in a take and you would hear [makes cricket noises]. We’re supposed to be in the middle of something scene! [laughs] Or there would be birds up in the rigging going “cheep, cheep!” And you just go, oh my God, there’s another hour in ADR!

Legion of Leia: Did you have to do a ton of ADR?

Toby Stephens: Oh yeah! I have become the master of ADR. I breeze it now! I kind of like it because sometimes you can actually improve things. You know? There was a scene I did in the first season where it was with Gates (Mark Ryan), and it was a storm, and we’re having this conversation and we’re having a drink, and we’re on the set–it was the beginning when they used to gimbal the set. It was so noisy! There was water coming in, dripping everywhere. They wanted it to look authentic. Because it was quite a stressful set to be on [laughs], for some reason my [in a high-pitched voice] my voice was up here! I watched it–I mean, I had to loop it because there was so much noise there, but I thought, I sound like an hysteric! I managed to re-voice the whole thing and kind of couch it where Flint speaks normally. That’s a case in point where you can really improve on things.

Legion of Leia: I can’t imagine trying to speak clearly during some of those storm scenes!

Toby Stephens: I mean, it was mad! This job was amazing because I loved the people and I loved working on it, but there are aspects that I won’t miss. It was totally exhausting. By the end of this last season, I was literally hanging in rags, because it makes such demands on you. You’ve got enormous amounts of dialogue and enormous amounts of acting to do, and then at the same time, you’ve got all of this physical stuff to do, and it’s day in and day out. And you’re in the costumes and you’re in baking heat, and it was long, long days. No other job I would be able to do, in terms of acting–I mean, I’m not working in a coal mine–but there is no other job I could do that would come near this. It sort of made me immune to–it made everything else seem like a breeze. It was so arduous. And some of the stuff we did in season four, some of the stuff that I did towards the end, it was really difficult. Really difficult.

Legion of Leia: Having seen that storm scene and the tanks of water being dumped on you and the ship moving back and forth and the yelling–it was crazy!

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it was also the length of time it went on for. Because we also did two weeks straight, and then we kept on coming back for pickups because it was so particular. And also, it’s part of the reason why I’m so proud of the show, is that they had such exacting standards for what they wanted. They’d cut it together and realize they were missing bits, or that they could get bits better, but it was a drag. You had to get back on this deck and they were spraying you with stuff and they had the engines on. It was brutal. But you look at the end result and you go, that will stand. In ten years time, it will look amazing.

Legion of Leia: What are you going to miss the most, now that the show is over?

Toby Stephens: I think I’ll miss all the people that I worked with. One of the things about the job is, you create these very intense and very fun relationships with people, creative relationships with people, very creative, and then they dissolve and move on. I’ll miss that, and working with such great writers. John [Steinberg], Robert [Levine] and Dan [Shotz], you know, just brilliant writing, fantastic showrunners. They were so good and we had a really intense relationship. I’ll miss that.

Legion of Leia: What do you have coming up next?

Toby Stephens: So I just started doing the reinvention of Lost In Space for Netflix, so I literally just started working for them. I’m really excited for that. It’s a brilliant segue from one genre to another. [laughs] It’s a really fun reinvention of it. It’s really clever, and I’m really excited about it. I think this will be fun in terms of, it’s servicing fans, making a show for now.

Legion of Leia: Also, different costumes. Maybe not so much wool in the heat!

Toby Stephens: I think it will be differently uncomfortable. [laughs]

Legion of Leia: Those costumes were insane and it was so hot while you were filming.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it was tough, and also in the brutal sun all day long. Standing on ships. It was killer. And the boots. I remember always complaining. I bitched and moaned about my boots all the time. [laughs] These things are killing me! Can you imagine these pirates going, “Jeeze, man! Couldn’t we have flip flops? Could we have a pair of thongs? Why do we have to wear these things?” [laughs]

Legion of Leia: I feel like pirates should have worn fewer clothes!

Toby Stephens: Yeah! [laughs] But apparently they didn’t. They didn’t, actually. The whole thing of pirates wearing all of that is baloney. They actually–they had very light shirts and stuff. Apparently they just didn’t wear much.

Legion of Leia: That was for fancy pirates.

Toby Stephens: And also, it was just for show. Also, what Black Sails kind of gets into is, a lot of it was p.r. It was p.r. by the English, because they wanted to demonize these people, but it was also their own p.r.–like Blackbeard having fuses on his beard and stuff like that. It was all to make people scared.

Legion of Leia: You can see that even with what Billy [Tom Hopper] is doing at the end of season three with Silver.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, and here’s a really fun thing. You get to the end of this season, and you take a screenshot of characters at the end of this season and you compare them to screenshots from the beginning of season one and they’re just like–the journey that they’ve been on, and the toll it’s taken on them is really cool. I mean, Luke just looks terrible at the end of it! And he was so beautiful at the beginning! [laughs] And the same with Tom Hopper who plays Billy Bones. You see he’s headed towards the Billy Bones of “Treasure Island.”

Legion of Leia: I wanted to ask you about Flint and Billy. There is such a tense relationship there with so much history. How is that going to shift this season?

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it really comes to a head. It comes to blows. They’re not going to be able to–it’s really interesting the way Billy goes, I think, in this season. It’s been a long time coming.

Legion of Leia: Do you think Flint has any of the idealism left that he had at the beginning?

Toby Stephens: Well, what’s really interesting at the end of it, one realizes how personal this is for Flint. And that, actually, it’s not really some altruistic scheme that he has to liberate everybody. He’s playing out his own psychodrama in reality. And how demented–how he will not stop. How it will go on and on and on. And somebody has to stop that. You know, it’s a tragedy because we know that there was no–it’s got to end somewhere. It’s not going to be good.

Legion of Leia: I do have to ask you about working with your family! [Toby’s wife Anna-Louise Plowman plays Mrs. Hudson and his brother Chris Larkin joined the cast as a Redcoat this season]

Toby Stephens: Yeah! It was wonderful, actually! It was so wonderful because I hadn’t spent so much time with my brother for a while. And was really great hanging out with him. And it was a bit strange. We had one scene where we were given direction to look at each other across–we had no lines together, but we had to look at each other across this town square. And I suddenly realized, this is really difficult because nobody on Earth knows me as well as my brother does. And to try and pretend with one another is just impossible! There cannot be any artifice! [laughs] So both of us, it was hopeless! I said, you look at my chest and I’ll look at your forehead. [laughs] It’s impossible! You can’t hide!

Are you guys excited for season four? Let us know in the comments! Black Sails will return to Starz on January 29, 2017.

sources: Legion of Leia (unfortunately I can't put link because it wasn't secured)

[hoefette]

All the petty things I hate about fate!winx and their shitty universe/world building because

I'd added most if these in tags of other posts but I'm still so mad lmao

The way characters, Aisha and Mrs Dowling specifically make references to explicitly human or American things like instagram and Harry Potter

These people are from a different dimension for ffs why are they concerned with or are even aware of this very earth-specific shit? Do they teach earth classes at school over there?

I understand not wanting to have them be oblivious so Bloom wouldn't have to explain it to them, but it simply could be ✨omitted✨

Why would you go out of your way to date your work like this lmao ew

Ms. Dowling calling Tinkerbell an air fairy.. I cannot breeve with the stupidity why did they keep that in there

Why is Ms. Dowling.. the headmistress.. teaching classes? Where are the other teachers?

We ended up with a trio of antagonists (I guess you could call them that?) by the end of the season anyway so why not give us the trix, why have the characters play double roles as friends of our protagonists and also the villains/bullies? They clearly wanted a delinquent trio, in which case they could've gender bent the trix if they wanted to keep all the unnecessary sexual tension.

It just feels like the production team was lazy, they didn't want to hire more actors, they didn't want to bother with making the world immersive or lived in or believable at best, they just didn't give enough of a fuck

They wanted to make this show and attatch Winx to it for.. what? Like did you even google the main plot points? The abridged version or sparknotes to get details on the very literal, basic characteristics of our main characters or their roles or the world they inhabit????

It lacks wonder and intrigue.. I mean Bloom moves to another dimension, a school for fairies and we don't see her marvel once at anything.. and that's because she might as well have been in Switzerland because she's in exactly the same environment she would've been in over there anyway.

They could've said Alfea was in Europe and I'd believe it because nothing about the setting makes it feel otherworldly. I'm sorry but I'm not impressed.

Why do the teachers and graduated specialists communicate via facetime ?? In the magic dimension. ??? Why do they text each other and those texts then appear on screen like .. oh look, like a bad netflix teen movie ????? HELLO ??? it's the way technology and magic could've blended in so seamless into the world THE WAY IT WAS ALREADY DONE/SHOWN. Missed opportunity. it just takes you out of it imo every time you see the ugly, bland, gray text bar. Some fucking flavour pls I'm begging

How stupid the specialist must feel clonking around with the skinniest shreds of armor, plastic swords on their backs and battery powered flashlights and cellphones in their bags. R we larping?? I know I'd be laughing and asking why we hadn't already come up with something more effective .. idk like guns. I'm surprised I ain't see one gun in there.

In the beginning Ms. Dowling says some nonsense about fairies having lost the ability to transform to explain why there are no wings, which means they could've transformed before. So are we to assume that this supposed to be set in the time proceeding the original then?? Because something is not adding up with where they should be as a magical society technologically if that's the case

How does the production team want to keep the dark academia vibes with torches lining the walls and also want them to be face timing each other, presumably from miles and miles away in the dark forest???

Pls pick an aesthetic and stick to it everything was so unnecessarily dark. Where do they charge their phones since it's the only device we see that is the slightest bit modern and dont fucking tell me they charge it with magic I will punch you in the face

Why is there only one major monarchy that we are shown? Why are Solaria the only ones contributing to the efforts to defend the school and where is this mysterious battalion we never see lmaoo it's all so bad its laughable.

Is this set in the kingdom of Solaria? And why does the queen of an alleged interdimensional superpower monarchy pull up in black SUVs??????????? Why does she pull up with Andreas?? Is he not the king of Erakleon?? Where are his soldiers and his battalion and just?? Huh!? The world just feels empty like nobody lives here fr

Are we supposed to believe that the specialists get paired up with fairies just as a normal occurence and that they have to 'trust each other' and not because the plot demands it suddenly half way through when all we've seen so far are the fairies doing normalish school and homework, and the specialists outside, being physical everyday all day. This was never even implied that they'd have to work together apart from when we see the faculty as youngins with Rosalind. But even then.. it's like well why are they even together lmao? Is this a special team formed from Rosalind’s protégées? Were they formed after graduating from Alfea or what is this?? Are they the ONLY team of specialist/fairies hunting every single burned one?? What?

Are we now supposed to buy that Musa is being switched to 'support' because that's where her strengths lie and not in combat?? Are we supposed to believe that these girls know hand to hand combat?? When was this established? We see Terra wrapping some baby vines around a dude and I'm sorry is that the practical application of her power? Is this what the fairies are supposed to do once they graduate? Or is it just a switch in curriculum because of the threats outside the barrier?? This is never made clear.

Because if not then what's the point of this?? Why do they suddenly have endless classes together when the expectation was never set for the fairies to be like soldiers or out in the field fighting ?

Where exactly are they supposed to be what was the purpose of including Aster Dell and why is it a joy ride away from Alfea lmao?? Where Bloom is from and also not from?? Plot pls make it make sense

Why are fairies from another dimension vaping or smoking weed?? They are not human so why are they engaging in specifically human vices, yol couldn't come up with anything else to characterize 'delinquents'?? Very lazy very como se dices.. no effort. Nothing a little more spicy yol could invent, at least change the name and some properties holy shit did yol even try ??

So its fairies everywhere, having a lil party in the east wing of a phat castle.. and they are playing beer pong and dressed in t shirts and jeans..

Can you hear me screaming? Can you hear me vibrating with rage?

Not one floating decoration or magical anything in sight. Just purple lights and subpar vibes

Stella's costume design: tragic. I won't discuss further because we don't have the space or time but just know that it was absolutely atrocious and I hated it. Giving very debutante vibes

The entire budget going to that lame transformation sequence that was not a transformation sequence and those horrible, barely-there fire wings

Edgelord bloom and all her fucking leather jackets. Why do 30 yo, white cis men think girls exist in a binary? They could keep her earlier characterization and make her a hothead.. Bloom literally screamed herself into a couple power upgrades in the original come ooonnnn

Let girls be feminine without it being a character flaw what is wrong with yol its 2021. They could make her more mature, more angsty or whatever the hell else and not style her like that

The way Aisha's abilities flipflop between episodes and scenes. Very inconsistent. One minute she's struggling with a drop of water and the next she is moving an entire body of water for her bestie Bloom to fake transform because the plot demands it. Why even add in her struggles at all if you're just going to ignore it?

Why was Stella with them in that scene? She didn't do anything literally.. Aisha pulled the water and she did .. nothing.

Who the fuck is Rosalind? Why would they add her in,, to add nothing to story? The company of light was a thing, they could've plucked one of them hoes to be the antagonist. Why did the winx club need their own Delores Umbridge? Valtor was right there if you wanted an evil educator type character.

The camera work was so bland during the down beats, stagnant and fixed during a fairy party and erratic and ugly and disorienting during the fight scenes

I'm not getting over the fairy party because it was a good opportunity for the production and everyone else to show the differences between where Bloom was and where she is now but instead it just looks like a regular teen high school party?? This could have been set in Switzerland fr.

Everyone's just kind of standing?? You mean to tell me these people are from all different places in the magical dimension and their customs are all the same? They all throw parties like this ??

White and flavorless I am very bored

I guess the main question or takeaway I have is just.. who is this for? Because everyone, including the showrunners keep saying that it's for us, the fans of the original. But apart from the characters sharing some names, there are really no other similarities. So again, who was this supposed to appease or placate or satisfy? Because it sure as hell wasn't the winx club fans.

Overall, this feels very much like something I wrote and probably published on ff.net when I was 13 because I thought girls couldn't be taken seriously if they liked pink, and injected angst into everything that didn't need it and had no idea how to structure scenes or dialogue. It's just bad, objectively and N*tflix will keep making shit like this because apparently some people have bad taste??? Idk yol, be easy

[hongsside]

REGRETTED :: C.SAN

pairing :: fem reader  ✘ san

wc :: 1.1k

genre :: angst • suggestive

tags :: mini fic, oneshot, angst, breakup, fem reader, regret

author’s note :: i got the idea while reading @ poutybinz ‘s hcs on soobin’s size kink but idk how the hoodie concept came in or how i got the idea of a breakup from soobin size ink hcs??? but yk here’s san??? :D <3

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(o´ω`o)ﾉ⌒･*:.｡. .｡.:･゜ﾟ･ ❝ ˡᵉᵗ'ˢ ᵍᵒ~ᵎ ❞ -------

it had only been around noon when i felt as if i could no longer swallow the cowardice hiding inside my body, it had felt like way to long since this was necessary. were we really going to...

‘no!- no..’ i sighed as i thought internally, will i ever get the guts to tell him what i truly want? suddenly i felt as if my feet were walking on their own, waltzing with hesitance in front of san’s figure. he had been distracted by the television before him but as i peeled his hoodie off of my now shivering body all eyes were on me.

it felt like an eternity taking off this sole piece of clothing, not mention oddly suggestive. i continued to run the dialogue of what i might say over and over again, reluctant of what would spill from my chapped lips soon after.

san let out a devilish giggle catching me off guard as my shirt slipped up about an inch from before along with the hoodie.

it felt like running through a maze with a beast; unsure of where the next right turn was gonna be. my head was spinning and i fumbled with the hoodie, folding it nicely before meeting san’s blazing gaze. the tall man stood to his full height, towering over me with dark eyes and a cheeky smile. he wrapped and arm around my waist before pulling me into a deep embrace, savoring the scent lingering around my neck. my world had crashed the moment he laid his head on my shoulder, tightening his grip on my hips before i pushed him away with hesitance.

i couldn’t tell him, i couldn’t possibly do it. the way his eyes stared at me with determination and persistence, it felt like he was burning holes of guilt into my skin. that was until, i pulled away. his cat like gaze followed me intently, preventing me from spitting all the words i wanted to say.

“doll, what’s wrong?”, san said with a worried look, expression changing drastically from before.

“san, please don’t call me that..”

“babe- why? are you okay? is everything fin-?”

“san..i think we should break up.”, i finally spit out, leaving a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

“but- but why? i thought you wanted to- fuck!”, he managed to pull together with an empty tone. denial laced his voice, unable to process my previous statement.

“i don’t understand y/n...why?”

“bab- san, i don’t now-”

“why do you not know?! were you always just lying?-”

“san! i don’t fucking love you anymore, i’m sorry!”

the atmosphere was still and my head was spinning, the words that left my mouth felt like a crime. to this day if i could build a time a machine to go back and fix all my mistakes, simply, i would. this would be one of those mistakes. i couldn’t bring myself to look at him, and when i did, i met his glossy eyes. all the joy and life from his face had been completely drained, the color from his eyes felt to have disappeared and i was the culprit behind it.

could i have been anymore stupid? why did i have to say it like that?

not only his but my world fell apart too, we were the completion to each other but my sole stupidity and selfishness impeded me from remembering that and clearly he wanted me to realize it too.

feeling the pressure get to me, i handed him his hoodie with reluctance as i picked up my things from around the room before making my way to the door. just i reached to turn the nob my hand was grabbed by a crying san, his face was drenched in tears and he never looked more hurt than this.

once that first tear broke free, the rest followed in an unbroken stream. san bent forward where i stood before the door, and began begging for a chance to fix everything-- to receive a second chance. It was painful to see him like this, all I could do was look away in hopes to mask my regret, yet my own tears were starting to soak my cheeks. i could feel his grip on my wrist tightening, finding himself unable to let go, not knowing whether to be mad or to give up hope all together. he could hear my silent cries as my head continued to scream to let him go yet, i couldn't. i couldn't bring myself to look at him in this state, knowing i would only suffer more in the silent battle between us.

“san, i have to go..”, i finally choked out watching as his sparkling eyes stared at me in hopes of this all being a bad dream.

“you don’t h-have to, y/n..”

i nodded slowly, studying his trembling figure; acknowledging the hurt washed over his face.

“can- can i please get one last hug...”

“a kiss..”, he continued before trailing off, accepting his defeat.

“sannie..”, i said fondly, smiling through the tears, remembering that the weather is only sunny when we are under it, and it wouldn’t hurt to be under it one last time. i turned on my heel before meeting him face to face, inches away from his face...i’d never noticed how beautiful his eyes were until then, how rosy his cheeks got at these times, just how beautiful he was-- and i was willing to throw it all away. his lips were so alluring and soft, i felt a sequence tingle run down my spine as i recalled the way we used to kiss. then suddenly my nose touched his and his lips touched mine.

the kiss wasn’t rough, it was rather soft and passionate; so passionate that a spark hit my heart and i felt the tears blur my view once again. yet, before i knew it, it was already over...the feeling of emptiness rushed through my body as i felt all his warmth depart from me, his swollen face was all i could feel as i reluctantly let go.

it was one of us that had to rush into the hug, and it felt like it must be me. yet, almost as if on cue our bodies melted into each other’s and the warm spark once there dispersed all throughout us one last time.

“i love you angel, don’t forget that.”, san whispered with a head on my shoulder as he squeezed me softly, sharing a sense comfort with me i’ve never felt before.

“i love you too sannie.”

“even if you leave, i still love you.”

and with those last meaningless words, i had closed the door as i stared off into the distance with nothing left. only the feeling of emptiness and regret.

end of story

all works by hongsside

edit:: please leave some feedback, maybe???  - author misty <3

[9worldstales]

MCU Loki Ep 1 “Glorious Purpose” intensive analysis

So, I’ve seen the first “Loki” episode and, of course, I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it.

Beware about spoilers!

We start in New York 2012 and that part is merely “Avengers: Endgame” albeit they changed a bit the visual so there’s more focus on Loki. We’ve close up of Loki when he is ‘Captain America’, when he says by to the Hulk in the lift and so on.

It’s a good choice because he’s basically the only character the visual seems to focus on (the only other character who gets a close up is the Hulk yelling ‘No stairs!’), subtly telling us the story is about him.

On a sidenote though, in “Avengers: Endgame” you might see Loki walked vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we also have Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray, which he confirms. In “Loki” we don’t see these scenes but keep them in mind, they’ll be relevant later on.

Anyway as everyone knows Loki picks up the Tesseract and disappear.

We get the Marvel opening but without the usual ‘heroic’ music, this time it’s more ominous? Or maybe it’s just me. “Marvel studios” also gets written in green and gold on a black background.

It’s not the first time Marvel changed how it presented, in the first episode of “WandaVision” for example it was in black and white instead than in the usual red and silver but it’s still a nice touch.

So we resume… with the visual showing us an insect walking through the desert. Then the camera shows us the full view of the desert, informing us it’s the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Rather high in the sky a space portal opens for a moment and the next we know is that Loki is lying flat on his back on the ground among clouds of sand which, I guess, were raised due to him falling into the desert. Loki is without the chains holding his wrists (did the power of the Tesseract destroy them? The fall?) and easily pulls away the muzzle Thor put on him and from his confused expression as he sits up and see people coming close to him, I get the feeling he didn’t exactly plan to fall there and in such a way.

So I guess maybe this is his first attempt at using the Tesseract and he didn’t quite gave it a direction on WHERE he wanted it to take him? Because really falling from the sky flat on the ground in the middle of the Gobi desert among people who didn’t even talk his language doesn’t seem the sort of thing one would plan.

Anyway, despite being in an unfamiliar situation Loki finds a rock to stand over and introduces himself:

“I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

Which yes, it’s how he introduced himself to Fury in “The Avengers”.

The people there have no idea of what he’s saying and asks him who he is in their own language (Mongolian). It’s unclear if Loki gets what they’re saying.

In the comics all Asgardians, can speak every language thanks to the ‘Allspeak’ or ‘All-Tongue’, in which what they say is understood by every species in their own native language.

In “Thor” earlier script though there was this dialogue:

Darcy: So, how can you speak our language? Volstagg: Your language? Ha! Silly girl, you're speaking ours.

In an interview Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) discussed that bit.

Part of this seems to be set in a world where you guys fit in perfectly and the rest is very much on Earth. Ray: Yes, but on Earth we started it all, you see. This is just one of the realms. This is where all the legends come from. All the ruins have gone into myths and Norse mythology. It’s all us, love. It was all us before that. They’ve forgot their place, really. They think, “Oh, you speak our language?” and it’s actually, “No, you’re speaking ours.” Joshua: We invented it. [Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) On Set Interview THOR]

The implication seemed to be that there was no Allspeak, they just spoke the same language because Asgardians invented it and Midgardians learnt it.

We also have this bit from “Avengers: Infinity War”:

Rocket: You speak Groot? Thor: Yes, they taught it on Asgard. It was an elective.

This implies it’s not that Thor was magically granted the ability to understand Groot, he had to study his language.

So well, I would say that no, so far Asgardians didn’t have Allspeak in the MCU, hence, unless Loki studied Mongolian or his magic powers granted him Allspeak, he can’t get what whose people are saying to him. So really, I don’t think he wanted to end up in Mongolia, he should have thought he wanted the Tesseract to just bring him somewhere very far from New York City. That is unless it’ll turn out someone managed to interfere and have him fall there for some purpose.

But, back to Loki.

As I said he doesn’t really get to talk with those people because a door opens up out of nowhere and near to the Tesseract which is lying forgotten in the sand and people in an armoured suit and carrying weapons start to appear.

Loki is kind of confused but he recovers fast.

Putting up a tone of confidence he orders the guy not to touch the Tesseract, thinking they aim at getting it. Another door opens up out of nowhere and we get another person in armour. To save time I’ll say the woman is supposed to be Hunter B-15. I wonder if she’ll get a name beyond this or not.

The situation of the people at the TVA isn’t exactly great but I’m running ahead.

Now, I think Loki preferred to deal with the Mongolian people because although he can understand what Hunter B-15 says, it clearly makes no sense for him.

Honestly I’m not going to blame him.

“Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branch is growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.”

This isn’t the kind of sentence that makes sense in a conversation, if you aren’t familiar with the TVA.

Hunter B-15 doesn’t care what she says doesn’t make sense to him and wouldn’t make sense to any other normal person. She calls him ‘Variant’ and talks as if everyone should know and respect the Time Variance Authority as an authority to defer and obey to.

I love Loki’s reply here:

“It's been a very long day, and I think I've had my fill of idiots in armored suits telling me what to do, so, if you don't mind, this is actually your last chance. Now get out of my way.”

He had a very bad day, he’s probably still bruised and sore due to his ‘meeting’ with the Hulk and his fall from the sky, he might very well be exhausted and he’s clearly confused but he acts as if he’s in control and won’t let himself be intimidated. I love him.

As he moves close Hunter B-15 hits him and informs him although he’s moving at 1/16th speed he’s feeling all the pain in real time.

Now… from when “Loki” trailers had started going around there had been a debate if the TVA is the good guys or the bad guys.

I’ll jump a bit ahead and tell you they clearly believe they’re the good guys.

But just from this bit you can start to question the idea they’re good guys.

They aren’t just acting as Vigilantes but they’re claiming an authority that no one on planet Earth gave them and demanding submission, not hesitating to beat people when they do not complain.

I know, some of you are thinking that Loki is a bad guy so serves him right but that’s not really the point because they aren’t even beating him for what he did to New York but for a crime he didn’t know he was committing, acting with an authority no one on Earth gave them. They just took it. And they would have taken it if the one picking up the Tesseract and ending up in Mongolia were to be a random person that out of bad luck had picked up the Tesseract and had ended activating it by accident.

This is not about Loki, this is how the TVA operates and it’s scary.

I don’t know if “Loki” will want to dig into police brutality and I honestly don’t dare to hope in it but it would be an interesting turn.

Hunter B-15 seems to be enjoying her work. I won’t call her evil yet, it’s clear she thinks she has the authority to do so, that the TVA enabled her to think she’s doing a good thing but she doesn’t seem to have… hesitation in doing so. One can still do his duty and not enjoy beating up people and causing them pain, yet the dialogue gives me the impression she’s very cool with beating up resisting Variants who has no idea they’re Variant and causing them pain.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe she’ll prove she’s actually a gentle soul but, for now, she doesn’t look as such. We’ll see.

Anyway she straps a collar around Loki’s neck and then, finally, she let him fall at normal speed before two of the men with her grabs him and carry him away while she picks up the Tesseract and orders to ‘reset the timeline’, which, at first I thought would mean they use that sort of mechanism to send back the time, erasing Loki’s appearance from the timeline. I’m not sure now. It might as well erase everything there. Loki turns to see what this mechanism does and from the look on his face it doesn’t seem anything good.

I hope not but well, in a way, sending everything back of some minutes erases lives that could have possibly be lived differently so yeah, in a way they erased lives. It’s the dilemma of changing time after all.

Whatever, Loki is dragged through the door that opens out of nowhere and appears at the TVA. The door disappears behind him and he has no idea where he is.

Now I guess it’s a good point to point out how people had been wondering which kind of Loki this one was, if he was based on the Loki on “Thor”, the one in “The Avengers”, the one in “Thor: The Dark World” or the one in “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In itself he can’t really be based on neither of them.

Loki’s characterization in “Thor” is split in two, there’s Loki prior to discovering the truth, and there’s Loki after discovering the truth, mad in shock and grief until he realizes his father would never accept him and let go of Gungnir.

This Loki can’t obviously be the Loki pre-truth but he can’t even be the one post it, as in that one the pain was still too new and raw and mixed with the desperation of denial and the attempt at ‘fixing things’.

So, can he be “The Avengers” Loki?

Marvel’s site confirmed that during “The Avengers” unknown to Loki, he was influenced by the sceptre as well. Very likely he wasn’t influenced in Clint Barton or Erik Selvig style, as the site says:

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.”

Basically the sceptre on Loki works in a manner similar to how it worked on the Avengers when they started arguing in the Helicarrier. It warped his perception to the point he might have seen them as his most hated enemies, making difficult for him to see Thor was extending his hand to him or that the people were actually just scared but it didn’t make him a mindless, loyal servant. A different type of control on him but one that’s no less dangerous. Anyway I’ve talked at length about it while replying to a post so I’ll just link it here.

Loki is now very far from the sceptre so the mind stone shouldn’t be able to influence him any longer. As a result he’s probably more in control of his emotions.

So… “Thor: The Dark World” Loki?

Close enough but not quite, as that Loki had to go through Odin telling him some pretty awful things and spending a year forgotten by Odin and Thor in a jail.

Even more clearly he can’t be “Thor: Ragnarok” Loki as that one lived a huge chunk of things he hadn’t lived yet… never mentioning Waititi wanted “Thor: Ragnarok” to be his own thing, not a continuation of “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World”…

“I was lucky enough they didn’t force me to acknowledge things- there were certain things in the film, like the play, which makes fun of the scene in The Dark World where Loki dies, but there’s a point to that play, sort of to recap what happened, but also to tell the audience, “This is not what you think it’s going to be, this film is not going to be a continuation of that. It’s its own thing, and what you think you expect from this film ends at this play.”” [Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi]

… while Loki is an alternate continuation of “The Avengers” so it has to be more “The Avengers” compliant than “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In short this Loki is his own Loki… or a Loki we hadn’t seen yet because we weren’t really shown much of Loki post sceptre influence, pre one year of solitary confinement.

Back to the story two things are interesting to point out.

One is that there’s a Variant Skrull as well in the TVA.

The other is that once there the Tesseract lost part of its shiny light as if it powered down.

Last but not least, instead than a futuristic look the TVA has the look of midcentury modern aesthetic as if, instead than going in the future ore remaining in the present, we’ve gone back in time.

Anyway, as another prisoner is dragged into the room, Loki tries to escape and discovers that Hunter B-15 can rewind his time so he’s back where he started. She then gives the Tesseract to a man at a desk, telling him to log it as evidence.

The guy, I’ll spoiler you and tell you his name is Casey, has no idea what it is and it’s Loki who has to explain him it’s the Tesseract and one should be very careful with it. Casey merely find it sounding dumb.

This is our first clue that to the TVA the Tesseract doesn’t matter at all. We’ve finished Phase 3 with the infinity stones raised at the level of immensely powerful artifact but, for the TVA, they’re nothing.

This is the first blow that the “Loki” series gives to the MCU as we previously knew it.

On a sidenote it’s nice Loki explained what it was to the unsuspecting desk man. If this weren’t the TVA he might have ended in the Gobi desert as well just by handling it carelessly.

Hunter B-15 drags Loki to a door and Loki tries to threaten her only to be showed inside that door.

Have you noticed how no one read Loki his own rights so far? That’s because he has none and the story is about to make it even more clear.

In the room there’s a robot of some sort (which I find slightly creepy despite its smile) which would like for Loki to undress. At Loki’s refusal accompanied with a comment that “This is fine Asgardian leather” the robot, without any warning, merely disintegrates his clothes.

Some assumed it was played for laugh but the music doesn’t suggest it, and Loki is clearly upset as he stutters when he speaks again. In real life, when you’re arrested, in many states your belonging are confiscated but they will be returned to you once you’re released or they’re returned to your family.

The TVA destroys them.

A trap door opens below Loki and he finds himself in another room, dressed up in TVA uniforms for Variants.

There’s something I think I need to mention which is I love how the show is characterizing TVA desk people.

The guy we’ve met before had his own character which we could guess despite the few lines and moments in which he appeared.

This new guy is also characterized.

He has a kitten in the room, which moves away slightly as Loki appears, probably scared and a mug with the image of a kitten. It’s tiny details but they made him a person instead of merely something that’s there.

He pushes in front of Loki a huge stack of papers telling him to sign to verify this is everything Loki said. Loki’s two following comments get printed and he’s demanded to sign them as well.

It’s another aspect of the TVA that’s actually unpleasant.

The amount of paper is huge and it would take a lot to read it all in order to check it but… the truth is the request is impossible. People isn’t made so that they can remember everything they’ve said, exactly as they’ve said it and it gets even more troublesome if there isn’t the other half of the conversation but just what we said.

So it’s not even a point to discuss if Loki really said just that stack of paper and nothing more or that stack of paper is too small, or if maybe there’s more paper he’ll have to sign or if that stack of paper only cover his time as a Variant and not the time in which he followed the Sacred Timeline.

The request doesn’t just make the TVA look like a bureaucratic place but shows it demands impossible tasks from its victims.

Oh, another interesting thing I noticed is that the camera is at a slightly lower point when it is on the TVA guy, so, despite the guy being seated, it gives him the impression of being higher than us viewers. On the over side when the camera is on Loki, it’s far from him, with the result of making him look small.

It’s a fine detail that gives us a certain subconscious impression.

The TVA guy stares at Loki as the latter gives up and start signing. It seems he only signed one paper, without even trying to read them all. I wish they had let us see how Loki signs. I wonder if he writes his name with runes, since the inscription on Thor’s hammer was in rune.

We’ll see, we’ll find out Loki knows how to write in English so he might use it to sign.

Anyway as soon as he finishes signing another trapdoor opens below him and he finds himself in another room.

So far the TVA is reminding me more and more of “The House that sends you mad” from “The Twelve Tasks of Asterix”. Well, of a very dark Variant of it to be exact, a Variant that reminds me of something way more unpleasant, but we’ll get there. In the next room Loki is asked:

“Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being, were born an organic creature, and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul.”

Loki just asks if there are many people who don’t know if they’re robot and this is taken as a confirmation at which he’s urged to move through it. At Loki’s question he’s told if he actually were a robot and didn��t know it, the machine would melt him from the inside out.

Before thinking the situation is absurd let’s remember Vision exists in the Marvel universe and he’s a robot and he could have been programmed so that he wasn’t aware of this or might lose awareness of it due to a malfunctioning.

So if a Vision variant unaware to be a robot where to show up at the TVA they would just melt him from the inside out, no big deal.

The machine turns out to be a photographic machine, which doesn’t take Loki’s mug shoot but photograph his temporal area, which Loki has no idea what is and no one bothers to explain him.

Again, through the whole procedure there’s no request of consent nor explanations, Loki has no rights for the TVA, he’s merely supposed to comply.

Loki ends up in another room with another ‘convict’. They’re both demanded to take a ticket. The first convict refuses, Loki complain there’s just two of them so it’s useless but complies and put it in his pocket. Loki clearly has better manners or has figured out there’s no point discussing and is bidding his time to when arguing or rebelling might be worth something.

As Loki complains...

“This is a mistake. I shouldn't even be here.”

...we’re introduced with Miss Minute. Miss Minute is a cartoon watch which is supposed to FINALLY help people catch up before they stand to trial for their crimes. We’ll find out that Miss Minute is there not for the convicts’ benefit but for us viewers’ benefit as it explains us the origins of the TVA.

If we want to stretch things it might be there also for the TVA benefit as it might give them a sense of legitimacy.

Anyway Miss Minute’s speech feels like Odin’s speech at the beginning of “Thor”.

Is a self glorifying narration in which they paint themselves as the heroes and something that exist for other people’s benefit.

But it only paints the TVA in an even darker light because when it explains how one becomes a Variant it says:

“But sometimes, people like you veer off the path the Time-Keepers created. We call those Variants. Maybe you started an uprising, or were just late for work. Whatever it was, stepping off your path created a nexus event, which, left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another multiversal war. But, don't worry, to make sure that doesn't happen, the Time-Keepers created the TVA and all its incredible workers. The TVA has stepped in to fix your mistake and set time back on its predetermined path. Now that your actions have left you without a place on the timeline, you must stand trial for your offenses.”

A break here.

From this little bit we’re introduced to the idea there’s only 1 timeline because each time another timeline could be born, the TVA erases it. This begs the question of how we’re supposed to judge this bit in “Avengers: Infinity War”

Stephen Strange: [Panting] I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. Peter Quill: How many did you see? Stephen Strange:14,000,605. Tony Stark: How many did we win? [Dr.Strange stares intently at Tony for a moment.] Stephen Strange: [Pause] One.

If there’s only 1 timeline, it seems impossible there could be 14,000,605 futures… but actually the key might be that there could be 14,000,605 futures… but the TVA erases them. The time stone might show those futures who had the possibility to be born… and that the TVA squashes under their feet, all for the sake to make canon their favourite future, while all the others have to cease and desist. If this is true I do wonder if the actions of the TVA can be undone, so that we can have “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.

Back to “Loki” and to what Miss Minute said, which is pretty worrisome and not at all uplifting.

I mean… we can speculate who starts an uprising might be someone bad (which is not necessarily the truth, what about the people involved in the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War or the Resistance in WW2?) but a poor guy who’s just late for work?

They don’t really see the difference between him and a guy starting an uprising because for them the matter isn’t what they were trying to do or which kind of people they were, just that they created another timeline, a crime they clearly weren’t aware to commit as no one warned them about how this was forbidden by this self imposed authority.

Loki clearly finds all this idiotic but then he hears the previous guy arguing with some sort of guard who demands his ticket. Now the previous guy is clearly a dumb liar, as insists he asked for the ticket but wasn’t given one, when he was loud enough and alone enough everyone in the room could notice he was the one refusing to take a ticket.

Anyway at this point the guard vaporizes him. In short they just murdered him, without trial or anything for the terrible crime of ‘not taking a ticket’.

Loki is appropriately shocked and hurries to get his ticket.

Something that’s also worth mentioning is the whole TVA is clearly structured to make people feel powerless.

There’s no explanation, they’re forcefully dragged in an unknown place by people claiming authority from an unknown structure, they’re forced to comply, they’re stripped naked against their will, dressed all the same, handled like objects who’re not called by their name but ‘Variant’ with even assigned a number, threatened to be melted if they don’t know they’re robot (and what if they know? They don’t take their picture or they just melt them?) and subjected to an explanation in form of a cartoon that feels absurd and that merely has the point of legitimizing the TVA as heroes and them as criminals.

Anyway Loki finds his ticket and shows it in a scene that reminds me of “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade”. Do you remember when Indy and his father board a Zeppelin to leave Germany and Indy tosses a Nazi out of the window and explains his actions by saying the guy was without ticket so everyone shows his ticket at him?

Anyway at this point we’re shown the title, “Loki" with a filter that makes it look like an old movie and the letters changing font.

Okay, I’m a bit late but I should probably mention that, form when Loki go to the TVA the colouring had a huge abundance of yellow and brown with basically no blue (except a little in the Miss Minute cartoon) which gives an idea of this being like an old movie. The music is kind of creepy and there’s a clock tickling as we see it.

Which is an interesting idea. Even though the TVA seems so modern, furniture and the structure of the place felt all but modern. Even the robot that stripped Loki felt as if it just came out from a very old and outdated idea of how a futuristic robot would look like.

We resume the story but this time we’re at Aix-En-Provence, in France in 1549.

We’re in a beautiful gothic church and one of the TVA agents, explains that the corpses on the ground belongs to some Minutemen (the name for the TVA agents who do field work apparently) who responded to a routine Nexus event. As soon as they arrived someone jumped on them.

Mobius is there as well, and he’s apparently playing the part of the detective as he’s studying the corpses.

Hunter U-92, another poor guy who apparently has no name but just a number clearly suspect of someone and tells so to Mobius who agrees as the stab wounds look consistent with the previous, the Minutemen were hit on surprise and the reset charge (remember? The stuff that erase the deviation from the timeline) is gone.

Oh we’re also told this is the 6th attack in the last week THAT THEY KNOW OF. I hope for them it’s Saturday, because this would mean ‘only 1’ attack each day. This would be rather terrible if they were just at Monday since the day hadn’t even ended yet.

Now… remember when I was comparing the hunters of the TVA to police and wonder if the show would dig into police brutality?

Well, we’ve this scene in which someone enters in the place and Hunter U-92 is immediately ready to attack him with the wand they used against Loki or some other similar TVA weapon.

Only the one who got in is, apparently, just a kid, not the dangerous variant they’re searching and it’s Mobius who has to stop Hunter U-92 from attacking a kid who, for all they know, is completely unrelated to the crime, a kid that’s far from them and weaponless.

I don’t want to know what would have happened in Mobius hadn’t told him ‘Wait, stand down! Stand down’ (note how he has to say ‘stand down’ twice) and had physically stopped him in his track with his arm.

Mobius approaches the kid, speaking gently in French, apologizing for Hunter U-92’s behaviour, saying he’s just an imbecile.

Hunter U-92, annoyed by his comment, reminds him that he too can speak every language on the timeline, and that in short he can understand what Mobius is saying. The sentence though is more for our benefit, telling us those men can use the TVA version of Allspeak or whatever the “Loki” series wants to call it.

There’s a lovely visual showing us the kid and Mobius met in front of a beautiful stained glass window which depicts Satan.

To get the boy to talk Mobius draws a stick figure on some sort of small tablet he has and then passes it to the boy, telling him to tap on it. The boy does and the figure becomes a walking holographic projection which causes the boy to smile instead than assuming it’s witchcraft and running away screaming.

Okay, we are in 1549 and not in middle age, but that would still feel like magic even at the end of Renaissance age. But whatever, boys sometimes can put aside their fear for something that amuses them and this one had no troubles dealing with the guy killing all those TVA agents.

Anyway Mobius asks the boy if he knows who did that and the boy conveniently does. He points to the figure in the glass stained window, a horned demon, likely Satan. We might think it’s symbolic, that for the boy whoever kills someone is a demon… but… wait a moment.

Anyway Mobius says the boy shouldn’t worry because that devil is afraid of them and that they will put the boy back to where he belongs.

The boy smiles and Mobius notices his teeth are blue. It turns out that the ‘devil’ has gifted the kid with some… candies? Bubblegums?

I’ve no idea if those ‘Kablooie’ are actually some kind of American food, sorry about it but it’s clear although the kid has pointed to a devil, he wasn’t so scared by him to turn down his gift or to not try it out. And a devil giving him a gift doesn’t really feel like someone who wanted to harm him, despite the boy seeing him.

I get this feeling this ‘devil’ is targeting specifically TVA hunters only instead than the timeline or people inside it. He leads them somewhere and then attacks and dispose them. If he’s doing so because the TVA hurt him or because he wants to control the timeline that’s up to speculation.

We’ll later be said this guy is another Loki variant, and in this scenes we were given clues to figure out ourselves, like how he stabbed the TVA agents and how the boy pointed to a demon or, more specifically, to a horned figure, and we knows Loki wears horns when in his full Asgardian attire.

Anyway Mobius takes the ‘candies?’ ‘bubblegums?’ away from the boy and orders Hunter U-92 to run the candies for sequence period and temporal aura… not that Hunter U-92 thinks they’ll find anything but he’s worried because the branch is nearing red line and they need to go. In my understanding if it reaches the red line it could risk creating a multiverse.

Mobius sends the boy to play outside while Hunter U-92 orders to set a reset charge.

Again we aren’t explained what a ‘reset charge’ works.

However we’ve seen the cartoon with Miss Minute and in that one there was a reset charge and when it activated it didn’t rewind the timeline… it erased it. So the creepy things is it could be this reset charge just… destroys everything, erases all the lives in that alternate timeline because, in a way, they’re all Variants, and the TVA disposes of Variants.

Well, I hope I’m wrong because otherwise it means each time the TVA resetted a timeline they basically killed each life living in that universe, which would make Thanos, who ‘only’ killed half the population once, a rather tame mass murderer.

Anyway before the timeline is resetted another TVA person joins Mobius and it shows him a file about the just apprehended Loki. Maybe nobody except me cares but they had previously shown an image of a Loki file and in it there were question marks on where the race was. Now they’ve written ‘Frost Giant’. Either the file shown was for another Loki Variant or they managed to remember Loki was a Frost Giant and fix the file.

It could be the file for another variant though, as his height in it is given as 6’4” while in this file he’s 6’2” (1.88m) which is Tom Hiddleston’s true height (for who’s curious 6’4” is Jeff Goldblum’s height… not that I think the Grandmaster is walking around pretending to be Loki because well, this would be weird…)… or they messed up Loki’s height as well. We’ll see.

As I know some have wondered about it, Loki’s eyes are given as blue and not as green… which is correct as Tom Hiddleston said:

Loki is a sexy villain, but that’s not part of his ambition, is it? He doesn’t seem to be interested in love or sex but he has this sexuality about him, maybe it’s his lust for power. What do you think of Loki as a sexy beast? Tom Hiddleston: [Laughs] That’s the first time anyone has ever used that phrase about Loki. It’s fascinating isn’t it? I don’t know because it’s not a part of the conscious construction. I take relish in playing him. I think there’s a physical self-possession about him, a self-acceptance. Of course I’ve been very exacting about his physicality. You know, I was born with very blonde, curly hair, and a mixture of Scottish and English genes, and my complexion is very ruddy and healthy. In making him with this raven black hair and blanching my face of all color, it changes my features. Suddenly my blue eyes look a lot bluer, which lends a severity to my face. And even my own smile has a distorted menace to it. Whatever comes through me naturally is distorted. It’s almost like a filter on a light. ['Thor: The Dark World’: Tom Hiddleston on boom times for evildoers]

Which implies he never wore green contact lenses to play Loki.

Whatever, we’ll go on.

We’re back to the TVA and Loki’s trial starts.

He’s taken in front of the judge Ravonna Renslayer who addresses to him as Laufeyson. Except for a small comic later retconned in “Thor: The Dark World”, this is the first time in the MCU Loki is called Laufeyson… which is a little sad as he never identified as such (the closest he goes is to say he’s Loki of Jotunheim when he tries to trick Malekith) yet meaningful as well as the TVA evidently never recognized Odin’s ‘adoption’ as valid. For them he’s not Odinson, he’s Laufeyson because that’s what he’s born. ‘Loki Odinson’ in his file is labelled as an alias same as ‘God of Mischief’, nothing more.

But well, they aren’t really interested in his name, for them he’s ‘Variant L1130, AKA Loki Laufeyson’. Renslayer informs him he’s charged with sequence violation 7-20-89 which can mean everything and nothing at the same time as, to us, and to Loki, is just a collection of numbers, and asks him how does he plead.

Loki tries, as it’s his habit, to put up a polite yet confident front.

He claims a god doesn’t plead and has been a very enjoyable pantomime, but he'd like to go home… and boys, we know he would really like to do so. He’s putting up a front because we saw how uncomfortable and scared he was through his permanence at the TVA.

In an old interview that’s sadly no more available Tom Hiddleston said:

“The thing with Loki is that, if he’s afraid, he won’t show it. He’s been highly trained, through the experience of his slightly traumatic life, to shield his fears.”

Why didn’t we see him scared in “The Avengers” even though he took risks in it too while now we’re allowed to catch glimpses of his fear here and there?

“The Avengers” had to paint him as the big adversary, the great obstacle the heroes have to overcome.

Are we going to feel that bad for you in this movie, or are you gonna – ? Tom Hiddleston: Yeah. He does some pretty nasty things. On one level, it was like, I knew I had to up the ante because there’s seven superheroes that make up the Avengers, and, in order for the film to work, the film is the most redemptive, feel-good, kind of fist-pumping story. And, in order for the audience to be pumping their fists for Iron Man, and Hulk, and Thor, and Captain America, they need to overcome a really big obstacle. And, unfortunately, that big obstacle is me. [LAUGHS]. I hope I have retained a sense of his kind of emotional damage [like we saw in Thor]. There is a lovely scene with Chris Hemsworth where you see a glimmer of his — his vulnerability, but… he’s yielded to the dark side, you know? [Interview With Tom Hiddleston AKA Loki]

In this episode the Loki we met isn’t the adversary, he’s the main character, so we get glimpses of his true mind. He’s afraid or confuse, yet he reacts to all that by putting up a front, by presenting himself as confident and in control. It started from when he found himself in an unfamiliar situation, facing the Mongolic people and it continues and will continue and mind you, it’s a good and popular technique to hide your fear.

By presenting yourself as confident, your opponent might believe you might have some reason to be confident and be more careful and hesitate in attacking you, and sometimes this is all the advantage you need.

Renslayer remains unfazed, as she likely knows Loki has no advantage over her. She knows he’s powerless, in an unfamiliar environment he knows nothing about, forced to wear a collar that somehow controls his time, submitted to rules he knows nothing about and surrendered by enemies.

Loki isn’t the first who was carried in front of her and she knows he won’t be the last. The system is unjust and the trial a farce but she’s persuaded for it to be righteous and the right way to deal with ‘Variants’ as this leads to the greater good of avoiding wars into the Multiverse so justice and fairness are clearly not something she has to care about.

Anyway she pressures the issue and, understanding she won’t let go, Loki shifts the blame on the Avengers, pointing out how he came into possession of the Tesseract because THEY traveled through time, according to Loki in a ‘last-ditch effort to stave off his ascent to God King’.

So yes, even though he was soundly beaten by them and he’s in a bad spot Loki still tries to play highty and mighty and not cower up in fear. But how did he know about the Avengers travelling through time? We saw he noticed the whole thing with the case, but how did he knew the Avengers were involved and not some other guy?

Remember how I mentioned that “Avengers: Endgame” had Loki walking vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray?

Well, Loki clearly has a fine nose because he recognized the Axe body spray coming off from 2022 Tony Stark and figured out he was a future version of 2012 Tony Stark.

It’s kind of a pity they hadn’t kept these bits in the series but whatever, I get why they might have cut them.

Loki, like most of the fandom, blames them as the Time Criminals and suggests if Rendlayer were to provide him a taskforce he could eliminate them for her.

As he spoke we see Mobius intruding in the trial and sitting down as it carries on.

Back to Renslayer, she isn’t interested in the Avengers, claiming they were supposed to go back in the past but Loki wasn’t supposed to grab the Tesseract and escape.

Loki laughs at the absurdity of the statement and demands to know who decided this.

The answer is the Time-Keepers who dictate the proper flow of time so that Renslayer can dictate the proper flow of time according to their dictation.

And you start to see the horror of this system.

The Time-Keepers arbitrarily decide which is the proper flow of time and impose it on everyone. They basically make the rules according to what they like the most… and, of course, they don’t inform anyone of which ones the rules should be.

When Loki picked up the Tesseract and escaped there was nowhere a big warning sign saying ‘if you do so you commit a crime’. He didn’t even know there were Time-Keepers and a sacred timeline and the TVA did nothing to fix this.

While in many countries you’re supposed to know the law and pledging ignorance is not an excuse, the TVA is a self imposed and not recognized Authority of whose existence nobody knows anything which dictate rules according to the Time-Keepers’ tastes.

There’s the risk of total annihilation due to a multiverse war?

Fair worry but then why they get to decide how the sacred timeline should be? Which are their criteria for it? Why the Avengers going back to time was okay?

Although they saved lives, the whole things was incredibly messy as discussed in “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier”… and that series only touched the tip of the iceberg.

But whatever. The Time-Keepers, which Loki defines gods because that’s basically how the TVA paints them, at the moment remind me of the gods of gods in the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” comic and with them the whole idea everything is a tale.

The Sacred timeline feels like nothing else but the tale the Time-Keeper enjoyed, their canon, as if they were Marvel. Everything else is a fictional Au written by fans that gets a ‘cease and desist letter’ and is erased from the net.

Anyway Loki is feed up. He decides to plea ‘guilty’ but not of the crime they’re trying to pin on him but of… using his magic against them. Only his magic doesn’t work.

Hunter B-15 is probably the first who realizes what’s going on and, chuckling, explains it to Renslayer who’s not catching up. As Loki gets angry for not managing to use them, Renslayer explains magic powers don’t work at the TVA, which might explain why she didn’t recognize what Loki was doing while Hunter B-15, used to fieldwork, did. Renslayer might have never seen people using magic powers but Hunter B-15 might have done so.

Only no, because in an interview Gugu Mbatha-raw said about her character:

“She had a history of a hunter and a more military role like Wunmi’s character” [Many Sides of Loki | Marvel Studios' Loki Cast & Creators]

So, no, I’ve no idea why she didn’t catch up. Was she playing dumb? Has she been so out of the field she didn’t recognize the signs? Or, despite being the judge at Loki’s trial she hadn’t read his file and didn’t know he could do magic? It can be, as I said the trial is a farce so she might not have cared to document herself beyond a certain point.

Hunter B-15 is still laughing. She’s enjoying this.

Anyway she decides Loki is guilty and sentenced to be ‘reset’… you know, like the timelines.

Note again how Loki had no rights in this. He had no lawyer, he wasn’t explained things, he was just asked how he pled but that one was more a pro-forma than anything else. They had already decided he wasn’t allowed to do what he did and therefore guilty.

The trial was a farce to give the TVA a semblance of justice but it’s all a show.

Back to Loki, he has no idea what they mean with ‘reset’ and they didn’t even have the courtesy to explain it to him. Angrily he says:

“You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends!”

To which Renlayer replies:

“It's not your story, Mr. Laufeyson. It never was.”

So yeah, now they’ve started with the references to stories which are another subtle jab at the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” plotline.

By the way, keep in mind Renslayer’s reply.

As Loki complains they have no idea what he’s capable of and tries resisting being taken away Mobius speaks up.

Fundamentally Mobius wants Renslayer to pass Loki to him as he has a plan.

There’s clearly a story behind the relation between Renslayer and Mobius, they aren’t just professional to each other, they’re closer than that.

Renslayer agrees although she says he’ll get the blame for whatever goes wrong.

Mobius looks at Loki, Loki stops struggling and asks him who he is and Mobius smiles in a satisfied manner and doesn’t reply.

The scene shifts to them walking through the place, Loki threatening to burn the place to the ground. Mobius clearly doesn’t take him seriously, saying he can start from his desk.

The fact is… Loki is powerless and Mobius knows. We know too, we’ve seen how the trial went. However there might be more at play. Mobius knows the whole of Loki’s life which as far as we know, included only episodes of violence post discovering who he was and during his permanence on Earth.

To him Loki’s statement might feel more an expression of frustration than a sincere threat.

As they walk Loki happens to see the world outside the place he’s in from what looks like a window. He’s surprised and Mobius encourages him to have a look.

Loki points out he though there was no magic there. I’m not sure if he’s saying so because he sees car flying and assume it’s magic.

In “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World” magic was compared to science so maybe that’s what he’s saying, that the world he sees seems to advanced.

Mobius insists there isn’t magic there so Loki says that’s not real.

They exchange some more lines in which Mobius continues to play on Loki’s declaration he’ll burn the place down.

I’m curious.

We know Mobius is actually chasing another Loki Variant, one who killed many TVA agents (we’ll see some of them got burned down too).

He’ll later claim this Loki is not dangerous, but what’s the difference between this Loki and the other? What makes the other dangerous? And can’t this Loki get dangerous too?

Is Mobius doing the same that Loki does?

Acting confident and joking about Loki burning down the place because he actually fears he might have the potential to just do so if not handled correctly?

We’ll see.

Once they’re on a lift Mobius decides to introduce himself as ‘Agent Mobius’ and offers him his hand to shake… and I’m reminded of this scene from “The Avengers”.

Natasha: But you figured I'd come. Loki: After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.

The TVA doesn’t see what they’ve done as torture or even as ‘wrong’… but many states wouldn’t approve of some sort of vigilante capture a person for something THEY labelled a crime, force him to undress, destabilize him to the point he’s not even sure if he’s a human or a robot, put him through a mock trial and then threaten him to be ‘reset’.

It’s in dystopic universes you find authorities who can just arrest you for breaking laws they made up without your knowledge and then decide of your life.

Mobius might not be looking like Natasha but, after all this, someone acting like a friend would make him automatically more cooperative and, in a way, it does.

Hunter B-15 had to drag him where Loki just follows Mobius more or less quietly.

Anyway, back to the story.

Mobius decided to introduce himself in a friendly manner and I would want to remark Loki asked him who he was when they were at the trial so this is a rather late introduction which he might be doing right now because we just hear Loki sighing as he’s clearly unnerved.

Mobius is playing the role of the good cop in a way, trying to gain his trust.

Loki doesn’t handshake, he’s not going to make friend so easily, but asks him if he’s taking him somewhere to kill him.

Mobius says no, that’s where he just was which, if it’s not a lie, means that resetting Loki would have meant to actually kill him. So again… what about the timelines that get resetted? All the people in them get killed? The place gets razed to the ground? Disintegrated? What?

Mobius’ reply might be truthful but it’s also clever because he’s setting himself up as Loki’s ‘saviour’. Others wanted to kill Loki but he? He just saved him which begs the question of ‘shouldn’t Loki be a good boy and comply with Mobius’ requests and trust him and all the stuff?’

Now… I know that people feel like Mobius is a good guy because he saved Loki but the story will make clear he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart… but merely because he needs him.

We’ve seen Mobius with the boy before, he made him comfortable so that the boy complied and gave him info, which is one of the many interrogating techniques.

That’s what Mobius is doing here.

Anyway we proceed with the best known scene of “Loki” as it was in the very first trailer.

I remember people discussing Mobius’ words about Loki liking to talk, as in the first movie he was often silent and quiet.

Well, to be honest if the movie had been left in his original cut Loki would have surely talked more, but what stuck with me watching “Thor” wasn’t so much that Loki was often quiet, but that many times he attempts to speak but he’s silenced.

On the Rainbow Bridge Volstagg asks him:

Volstagg: What happened? Your silver tongue turn to lead?

…which means Loki normally was skilful at persuading people to believe what they say or to do what they want them to do, which doesn’t necessarily makes him a chatter, but surely someone who knows how to talk. And we see that in “The Avengers” when nobody is there to interrupt him he allows himself to monologue. It’s an interpretation, of course, with whom people can disagree.

Anyway Loki decides to talk with Mobius. It’s not a stupid decision. Mobius is clearly not seeing him as a threat but he’s not being overly hostile either. Loki is completely a fish out of the water so it’s in his own interest to play along with Mobius, talk with him and find out more information about the place. In fact the first thing he asks is how long Mobius had been there, because this is tied in how much knowledge he could have.

In fact, the more he’d been there, the more he might know.

Mobius though remarks since time passes differently at the TVA he has no idea… which is a convenient reply as it only confuses Loki and explains nothing. In fact he could have said not the exact time he’d been there but give an approximation like ‘a lot’ or ‘very little’, instead, by giving out a vague reply he gives Loki an info he could do nothing with (time passes differently) and no real info about himself. At the same time, by giving out an answer, he again seems amicable, like how, when Loki asks what his answer means, he says Loki will catch up, as if he’s not withholding information, it’s just ‘complicate’.

Loki resorts to check the information Miss Minute gave him in her cartoon, which Mobius confirms because he has nothing to lose.

Loki laughs and tries to spark a response by being rude in defining the TVA system.

“The idea that your little club decides the fate of trillions of people across all of existence at the behest of three space lizards, yes, it's funny. It's absurd.”

Note, ‘little club’, ‘three space lizards’, ‘funny’, ‘absurd’.

He’s mocking the system, likely in order to get a response, but also in order to gain some measure of control.

It’s something he has done during the trial and is something he did in “Thor: The Dark World” facing Odin… or in “The Avengers” when he was held captive. But in “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World” he had some understanding of what to expect. Here he’s blind flying, trying to test Mobius to see what he can get out of him while still trying to hold a façade of control.

On another note Loki says rather often how all this is absurd. To him this is a world of nonsense, like the one Alice found when she ended up in Wonderland (and it’s ironic how “Alice in the Wonderland” also contain a mock trial about the stealing of tarts in which rules are made on the spot as well as Alice here and there questioning her own identity or discussions about paths…) but I think having him repeat ‘it’s absurd’ so often it’s also for us viewers, to drive home we’re in a dystopic universe.

The TVA isn’t good, it’s absurd, with its rules that don’t make sense, a huge bureaucratic world and we might laugh at it if it wasn’t that’s also an organization that kidnap people from their timelines and subject them to their rules, rules they follow without questioning, like religious fanatics.

Who says what the Time-Keepers chose it has to happen is better than something else? They don’t know but, what’s more, they don’t care.

But let’s go on.

Mobius don’t fall for Loki’s provocation, he just retorts

“I thought you didn't like to talk.”

Which is a convenient way to answer Loki without giving Loki any answer.

They enter in a room which, Loki comments, looks very much ‘like a killing-me kind of a room’.

Mobius turns the situation by shifting the blame on Loki. It’s not that the room looks like a killing-him kind of room, it’s just that Loki is not big on trust. Because Mobius is totally deserving Loki’s trust because he saved him and was nice to him and acted like the perfect good cop so Loki really, should trust him. If he’s not doing it then it’s because he’s lacking in the trusting department.

But Loki had had his fill with trusting people and then discovering he wasn’t his parents’ son nor an Asgardian. His answer his moved by all the pain that discovery caused him.

“Trust is for children and dogs. There's only one person you can trust.”

Mobius’ reply again doesn’t take Loki’s words seriously, as if they were just something to slap on a shirt. He’s being passive aggressive in order to force Loki to question himself and keep control of him. The more Loki is unsure and question himself, the easy for Mobius is to manipulate him.

A break here.

It’s not that everyone has only one person they can trust… actually sometimes you can’t even trust yourself, while some other times you’ve plenty of people you can trust.

The idea you CAN’T trust in anyone is as damaging as the idea you should blindly trust in people but, in Loki’s situation yes, he should definitely only trust in himself, everyone in that situation should do it, trauma of being lied through your whole life or not, because Mobius isn’t doing all his out of good will but out of his need to use Loki.

So he’s not to be blindly trusted, he’s to be assessed so that one can see up until which point Mobius can be of some aid, so as to turn the exchange one of reciprocal benefit. If Loki were to hand himself in his hands, instead, only Mobius would get a gain for it, while Loki would risk to be used and then disposed once he has ended his purpose.

As Mobius is fiddling with a round thing that apparently control a projector, Loki questions him again, but with those words he has raised the bar a little.

If Mobius wants him to trust him, he has to start giving more clear answers.

“If the TVA truly oversees all of time, how have I never heard of you until now?”

Mobius is still good at diverting the attention as his reply irritates Loki and causes him to lose track of the conversation.

Mobius: 'Cause you've never needed to. You've always lived within your set path. Loki: I live within whatever path I choose. Mobius: Sure you do.

There are two things from the exchange.

One is that Mobius ends up confirming that the TVA is sort of a secret organization that decides for others, that’s ABOVE OTHERS. They don’t let you know which rules you’ve to follow, they decide which rule you’ve to follow and then let you blind fly until you stumble into a rule you didn’t know exist and break it. And then they come to punish you. And that’s when you learn they existed.

The second is that again Mobius, while not openly disagree with him, is dismissive of Loki. He has made him defensive by pushing him to say ‘I live within whatever path I choose’ then he hadn’t outright said ‘no, you don’t’ but by the way he replied he hugely implied it in a manner that sounds more like he had said ‘oh, you naïve child, and your delusions, of course you don’t chose your path’.

As Mobius invites him to sit down Loki tries to attack him since Mobius gave him his back but Mobius uses what we’ll learn is a Time Twister to loops him and send him standing back where he was. Then Mobius very calmly insists for Loki to have a seat, again driving home the point that Loki has no choices and is powerless.

Loki complies and sit down.

We can argue if he should have or not but the truth is there was no real point in resisting beyond making things difficult for himself because if there’s something true here is that he’s powerless and he should just bid his time and search for a weakness, instead than resisting.

Of course this is all well and good for Mobius, as things are proceeding in the way he wants.

Loki crosses his arms, which, in body language, hints that he’s feeling anxious, resistant, tense, insecure, afraid, or responding to distress. Arms crossed indicate also defensiveness, unyielding attitudes, and perseverance working as an act of self-comfort.

Long story short, Loki is not comfortable or willing to cooperate and he’s physically putting a barrier between himself and Mobius… and letting Mobius know of this.

Mobius is unfazed.

“If looks could kill.”

It’s a simple sentence that let Loki know that yes, he gets the message Loki isn’t going to go down to this willingly, but also reminds him of Loki’s powerlessness and of how Mobius is unafraid and in a position of power. ‘If looks could kill… you would kill me, but looks can’t kill so you’ll have to sit there and do as I say. Your resistance is futile. Amusing even.’

Loki doesn’t play along, making clear he doesn’t plan to cooperate. At least not easily. Mobius doesn’t believe him.

“Really? Even when you're wooing someone powerful you intend to betray? Come on.”

It’s an interesting sentence for Mobius to say, because he’s lampshading Loki isn’t using with him the same technique he used with Thanos and the Grandmaster. Since the story knows Loki should act more cooperative and obedient according to his previous records, I wonder which point they’re trying to make. Is the idea that Loki started to act as such after his one year imprisonment in Asgard, understanding opening defiling Odin got him nowhere and that he should have instead played along, therefore this Loki hadn’t gotten to that point yet?

Or is the idea Loki is deliberately choosing to act like this because he has already figured playing along with Mobius wouldn’t work?

We’ll see.

The answer could as well be a Doylist one, the audience expects him to act a certain way, the author is aware Loki normally acted in a certain way but they wanted him to act differently for… reasons.

We’ll see.

Mobius continues to make a show of his power. He is specialized in the pursuit of dangerous Variants but not like Loki, Loki is just a pussycat… only it’s EXACTLY like Loki… as it’s Loki he’s pursuing. Another version of him. He’s not telling him that though, exactly because the whole point of the discussion is making Loki feel small so that he can control him.

Credits when it’s due, Mobius is playing a dangerous game because the Loki he’s pursuit and this one might be two different Variants but they’re always Loki and this one has all the potential to become the same as the other, if he’s not already and just keeping it buried inside himself.

Anyway, the fact that Loki is so contrary, forces Mobius to act as if he were willing to make Loki some concessions for his cooperation. A reward for good behaviour if so we can call it.

“You answer them honestly, and then maybe I can give you something you want. You wanna get out of here, right?”

The truth is I genuinely doubt Mobius can grant him that, or, at least, not that in the way Loki might intend it. The TVA erased the timeline he came from. He has no more a place outside of the TVA. The most ‘getting out of there’ could mean is what will later happen, make him a worker for the TVA. He won’t be allowed to go back home, he’ll just have to serve them in exchange for having them not delete him.

Mobius though shifts cards and pretends it means he can go back to where he was, asking him what he would do, should he return.

I particularly enjoy this dialogue.

Mobius: You wanna be king? Loki: I don't want to be, I was born to be. Mobius: I know, but king of what exactly? Loki: ( Scoffs ) You wouldn't understand. Mobius: Try me. Loki: Midgard.

The ‘I don’t want to be’ echoes what Loki said to Thor in “Thor”…

“I never wanted the throne! I only ever wanted to be your equal.”

…and ties in with what Odin told him as a child…

“Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.”

Which is something Loki hints at in “Thor: The Dark World” as well.

Frigga: You know full well it was your actions that brought you here. Loki: My actions. I was merely giving truth to the lie that I had been fed my entire life, that I was born to be a king.

“The Avengers” suffers of a huge plot problem in this regard, which is the jump between Loki in “Thor” and Loki in “The Avengers”. In the year that went between the two Loki is deeply changed but “The Avengers” refused to explain why, it just shows us a different Loki.

To search for an explanation we’ve to read interviews:

“And in the time between the end of Thor and the beginning of the Avengers, Loki has explored the shadowy highways and byways of the universe – and he’s met some terrible, terrible people and probably had some awful experiences, which he has survived and overcome. So by the time he arrives in The Avengers, he knows the extent of his power – and he’s unafraid to use it. And more importantly, he’s unafraid to enjoy it.” In Marvel’s The Avengers, Loki sets out to remake Earth as his personal kingdom. “That’s his motivation. Thor has his own kingdom in Asgard. Why shouldn’t Loki have his own? As Loki sees it, planet Earth is a world at war with itself. All of these races and tribes are fighting each other. And if they were united in the reverence of one king, there would be peace. It’s not that he plans to attack Earth. It’s that he plans to ‘restructure’ it as a new kingdom of which he will be the head. Loki feels that it’s his birthright. He feels that he was born to rule. And he sees the human race as an incredibly weak people who actually were made to be ruled. And, in his mind and in his opinion, the human race functions better under rule.” [The art of The Avengers]

“I think he went, like with everything else, to—Joss Whedon and I discussed it—to a sort of… it was just, like, the worst place imaginable. I think he went to, sort of, all of the darkest recesses of the universe. I’m sure he had a brush with—several brushes with death. I think he ran into the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. It was really, really, really unpleasant, I think. I don’t have any frame of reference for that, except for imagining what it might be like to be kidnapped by a terrorist or something and have to survive a very, very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for The Avengers, that whatever compassion he had left was absolutely shriveled to a minimum because of the experience that he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life—in a way that Thor and Odin and Frigga find very, very difficult to understand.” [Tom Hiddleston - live on stage Q&A: Popcorn Taxi - part 2]

And in the end we stumble into this:

“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what went on because it’s this dark, dark secret that I didn’t make up yet. But, the other day, I had trouble with that because he had this very passionate Shakespearean tragedy thing going on in Thor and then I needed a villain who’s not only capable, but ready and willing and anxious to take on all these heroes. For me, he just basically went on some horrible walkabout… That was pretty much as far as I got.” [Joss Whedon told Comic-Con the question he doesn’t want us to ask ever again ]

So fundamentally “The Avengers” didn’t know what happened to Loki that changed him, they just went with the idea something bad happened, which of course should have happened since Loki met up with Thanos, who’s famous for torturing his daughters. They also tossed in that while on Midgard he was under the influence of the Mind stone.

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.” [www.marvel.com/characters/loki/on-screen]

Ultimately though, what happened is never stated nor explained.

When Loki wants Asgard’s throne it’s clear he’s doing so because he associates it with his father’s love. Who gets the throne is the son Odin’s love.

“To prove to Father that I am the worthy son. When he wakes, I will have saved his life. I will have destroyed that race of monsters. And I will be true heir to the throne!”

But Midgard? Midgard is chosen by Thanos, because he needs the Tesseract, which is there. Did Loki wanted it too? Or was it Thanos who chose for him? Hard to say but “The Avengers” still ties Loki’s wish for a kingdom to his father.

THE OTHER: You question us? You question him? He who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated? LOKI: I was a king! The rightful kind of Asgard! Betrayed! THE OTHER: Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond the Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.

It makes sense. When Loki is told his whole life is a lie, his first action is try to erase the truth by erasing Jotunheim. That was as much personal as practical (they were at war with Jotunheim). Becoming a king might have been another attempt at still erasing the truth. He doesn’t attempt to become king of Jotunheim, as it would be his birthright, but of something else, Midgard. He’s imitating Odin.

Loki: I went down to Midgard to rule the people of Earth as a benevolent god. Just like you.

All this to say that Loki’s reply ‘I don't want to be, I was born to be’ is actually a lot more layered that it sounds is actually a lot more layered that it sounds and that’s why he doesn’t think Mobius would understand it and gives him a simple answer, something he thinks he could understand. A location over which he could rule.

At the same time the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. A moment ago Loki said he ‘live within whatever path he chooses’ yet he claims he was born to do something. This wasn’t a choice, this was predetermination. Or letting Odin dictate his path.

Anyway Loki claims he would then move to conquer Asgard and the Nine Realms and agree when Mobius suggests him to go for the space… and honestly I think here Loki is just playing a part. He’s giving Mobius the answers he thinks Mobius wants, an evil Loki. “Loki” clearly is not going to retcon “Thor: Ragnarok” and we’ve seen that in that movie once Loki had the throne of Asgard he didn’t start a conquering rampage but just contented himself with it.

So, no, Loki doesn’t want to rule the universe, he just wants to prove himself something he was told was true.

Mobius don’t take him seriously, either because he knows Loki doesn’t aim to universe domination or because this is convenient for him. He says something interesting though, albeit misleading.

Loki: Mock me if you dare. Mobius: No, I'm not. Honestly, I'm actually a fan. Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering why does someone with so much range just wanna rule?

With ‘I’m actually a fan’ I don’t think he means he supports Loki, I think he’s subtly hinting he’s very interested in Loki. The other Loki, the Variant he’s trying to catch and that holds them all in a stalemate. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes might have appreciated Professor Moriarty’s intellect. This Loki and his other Variant might have a shared past… which makes this Loki interesting as well.

Then Mobius lead Loki in a loop in Loki’s reasoning. Loki is big on how he decides what he does. He values his own freedom. A huge part of why he reject the TVA system is because they want to dictate what he can and can’t do.

Yet in “The Avengers” he said:

Loki: I come with glad tidings, of a world made free. Fury: Free from what? Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart...[Like a gunslinger, Loki turns to face Selvig who's standing behind him and places his spear against Selvig's heart. Selvig's eyes glow black.] Loki: You will know peace.

and

Loki: Kneel before me. [The crowd ignores him. Three more Loki's appear, surrounding and blocking the crowd from escaping.] I said KNEEL! [While the crowd quietly kneels, Loki embraces out his arms with a wide smile] Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

It’s unclear how Loki came up with those ideas, albeit the fact he came from Asgard, which is a place where Odin rules as a supreme ruler and humans are viewed as inferior…

Odin: She does not belong here in Asgard anymore than a goat belongs at a banquet table.

…this might be another result of Odin’s awesome parenting, and not necessarily the result of Thanos’ manipulation… though the two might have superimposed so that it’s hard to say where one stop and the other begins.

Loki confirms this view here as well.

Loki: I would've made it easy for them. Mobius: People like easy. Loki: The first and most oppressive lie ever uttered was the song of freedom. Mobius: How's that one go? Loki: For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.

On a personal note I think Loki wants to see himself above of this, but it’s clear that he too had to deal with choices that breed shame, uncertainty and regret, never mentioning he believes he was seen as inferior by Odin and deprived of his path.

Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me.

The fact he thinks Odin would have never put on the throne of Asgard a Frost Giant (a monster and therefore even more inferior in the Asgardians’ opinion than humans) no matter what and that he thinks this got confirmed when Odin told him he couldn’t do it, which pushed him to let go of Gungnir.

Loki wants to be above… he wants to be the master of his fate after instead he was forced to dance on other people’s strings (Odin, Thanos) but deep down he’s drawing from his own experience the downsides of freedom. He just wants to overcome them.

Mobius then says he’ll show Loki a sampling of Loki’s greatest hits… which are basically the end of the battle of New York.

It’s fundamentally a close up of how he was beaten and how he asked for a drink, which Mobius mocks further offering him a drink, which Loki refuses pointing out he remembers that scene.

We kind of stumble in a problem the series has. Mobius says:

“It's funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature.”

The problem here is that the sentence is misleading. Loki at the moment has two big failures on his shoulders, the one in “Thor” and the one in “The Avengers”. It doesn’t make a lot and note that in “The Avengers” he also had minor successes. He walked away from SHIELD’s facility with the Tesseract, he managed to have Clint Barton steal the Iridium, he let the Avengers capture him so that he could let the Hulk lose, which worked and he could recover the scepter and escape, he managed to open the portal and let the Chitauri in. Basically, since he let himself be captured and even Steve knows, Loki won all the battles except the one who decided the war. Which yes, was a big loss because it was the one that mattered the most but still it shows Loki’s losing record isn’t as big as Mobius makes it look like.

Loki ends up bringing up Coulson. To prove his point that Loki isn’t really good at winning Mobius could bring up the fact that Coulson was resurrected in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” but no, he prefers to say the Avengers came together to literally avenge him by defeating him.

Now yes, Coulson’s death played a big part in all that, they felt guilty and sorry for him, as they all were tied to him one way or the other and this made what Loki did personal enough they could easily put away their differences… but I’m not overly fond of this theory because it implies if Coulson hadn’t died the Avengers would have never came together, would have never overcome their difficulties and would have lost.

Which, I guess, might be a possibility “Loki” might want to explore, we saw in a trailer an image of New York completely destroyed… but it’s something I don’t particularly like because it paints the Avengers in a pretty dark light.

If they didn’t have a common grief, they would have never cooperate for the common good.

Of course it’s not that Mobius care, this explanation is convenient for him, an Augustinian view of evil in which evil collapse its evil’s own doing. Because Loki killed Coulson, Loki set up his own defeat. Evil loses because it’s a snake that bites its own tail… which is an interesting view, really, but, in this case, it put a huge shadow on the Avengers.

Whatever, let’s go on, Mobius’ point is to make Loki feel small, not to explain him why he lost.

But still… he would manage to make a better point if the series weren’t forced to use only the footage from the movies. But well, I guess they had no other choice.

I enjoy the next bit of discussion. Mobius asks Loki:

“Do you enjoy hurting people? Making them feel small? Making them feel afraid?”

Which is exactly what he’s doing to him. There’s a huge irony in the whole discussion. They both think they’re in the right doing what they’re doing/what they did and that this excuses their actions.

They set up a moral motive, Loki sees himself as a liberator, Mobius sees himself as the saviour of the sacred timeline so they are above others, they came make them feel small and afraid and don’t have to feel guilty for it.

They get to a stalemate, although Loki isn’t looking at the screen, which is our clue he isn’t enjoying what he’s seeing, the people suffering. He didn’t like to look at them in “The Avengers” either, not looking when he ‘freed that eyeball’ as Mobius put in. Even when Thor forces him to look at the attacked city he shows he’s distressed. Loki however enjoyed being at the centre of the attention, it’s that what got him to smile, not hurting that man.

But whatever, to try to compensate, the series shows us some unseen material from Loki’s past, namely when he played the role of D.B. Cooper.

On a sidenote this hugely confirms my theory Loki used to hang out on Earth since he could play that part. Among the other things which the series didn’t show Cooper appeared familiar with the local terrain; at one point he remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly mentioned that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive (at that time) from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He asks for 2 bourbon and soda, paid his drink tab (and attempted to give flight attendant Tina Mucklow the change). He even offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle This makes Loki someone who knows very well how things work in Midgard… contrary to Thor.

Mobius introduces the whole thing saying

“You're really good at doing awful things, and then just getting away.”

And yes, it was awful. Although Cooper is described as extremely polite I can’t imagine that the crew who knew he had a bomb onboard felt comfortable with dealing with that situation. The worst part though is that he did it because he lost a bet with Thor.

Now they don’t exactly dig in what the bet was, but Heimdall was likely watching his every move and Thor asking him to do something similar as penance for losing a bet paints Thor also as pretty awful.

The best part though is that Loki excuses it by saying ‘he was young’. The whole thing took place in 1971, in short, 41 years before “The Avengers”. 41 years are a lot for a human, enough to make them say ’41 years ago I was young’, but Loki is at least 1047 in “The Avengers”. We don’t know how fast exactly Frost Giants and Asgardians age but, unless they do an abrupt jump, if Loki was young 41 years ago, he probably still is, which would match with the fan theory he’s actually around 17 in human years.

Now we can take Loki’s sentence as something a young person would say, as in a span of a short time they effectively grow and change a lot so their slightly younger self might feel a lot younger to them, or he might be talking in a more metaphorical sense.

Discovering the truth about himself and what followed forced him to grow faster. Now he wouldn’t do such immature things… which is a rather sad though.

At Loki’s request of where was the TVA back then, Mobius replies they were right there with him, just surfing that Sacred Timeline. Loki asks then if that has the Time-Keepers' seal of approval.

He scores one on this one as Mobius can’t reply, he just says not to think in terms of approval or disapproval.

Let’s remember something else that had the Time-Keepers' seal of approval was Thanos wiping away half of the universe but not just that. There’s also Thanos travelling through time to get to that future and stop “The Avengers” from undoing what he did with the infinity stones, which means they approved Tony Stark’s death in order to stop him.

Awesome people, don’t you think? More similar to writers who’ve to sell a good story than to people who care and wants to protect the people who lives in the timeline.

Anyway Mobius says they’ll go back to Loki’s escape and to a little psychobabble, which tells us not even Mobius sees this as a psychology session or therapy or whatever you want to call it. This interrogatory’s aim isn’t to let him know Loki better, he believes he knows him already. He’s trying to shape Loki into a willing collaborator because that’s his goal, not heal Loki or whatever.

Mind you, I think he’d like to get to know Loki in the sense he’s trying to catch a Loki and knowing Loki better might help him in his work… but so far he really hadn’t asked anything he didn’t know already so no, this isn’t a big ‘let’s get to know Loki’, though he might find some interest in seeing what makes him tick in the conversation, this is just a ‘let’s manipulate Loki into cooperating’.

Loki wants to stand, Mobius uses the Time Twister to loops him ‘back in his cage’. Because don’t mistake the situation just because he’s not being aggressive or physically abusive, Loki is in a cage and Mobius makes a show of showing it to Loki. He can’t stand up without Mobius’ permission and Mobius further remarks it by saying he ‘can play the heavy keys, too’, in short that he can play the role of the ‘bad cop’ that slams back the prisoner in his chair when he tries to move.

Or should we assume Mobius feared Loki was going to attack him?

Maybe, as I said Loki and Mobius might be more similar than it looks like, both acting in control and high and mighty to hide they are actually in a tight spot. Mobius isn’t a hunter, he might not be strong, he might not know how to fight beyond waving that Time Twister and the TVA wand, while Loki knows. We don’t know from which race Mobius is, but Asgardians and Frost Giants are naturally very physically strong, much stronger than humans, and Mobius might belong to a race that’s just not the same.

But still the scene works conveniently for Mobius, because it’s another chance to drive home how he completely control Loki.

Loki’s reply, regardless of it being sincere or not, is good because it says Mobius just overreacted as Loki merely wanted to make a point.

After an exchange in which Mobius gives him permission to stand and Loki remarks he’ll do what he wants, which in a way he did since ultimately he stood, he asks him what he wants.

Mobius says

“I want you to be honest about why you do what you do.”

Loki calls it a lie and he’s probably not completely right but neither completely wrong. Mobius likely doesn’t care about why Loki did what he did in the past, that’s not a time he has to deal with, but he cares about forcing Loki to be honest. Loki has to trust him and cooperate with him and this includes that he has to open up. Mobius has to already know the answer to his questions, otherwise he could never know if Loki is being honest and he knows them because he knows Loki’s future, how he evolves, how it pained him to see Frigga die, how he saved Thor even though it lead him to be stabbed, how he didn’t aim for space domination when he was king of Asgard, how he came back to save Asgard, how he died for his brother.

So Mobius is not lying when he says he wants Loki to be honest… but that’s not because he cares about the answer, which is what Loki figured and why Loki called him a liar. It’s a matter of control and Loki can see it.

Loki: I know what this place is. Mobius: What is it? Loki: It's an illusion. It's a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate attempt at control. Now, you all parade about as if you're the divine arbiters of power in the universe.

And Mobius claims to be sure to have such a role which again, it’s an awesome irony because they both play the same game, they act as if they’re superior than others.

Mobius shows him his speech about freedom, which of course feels like a slap on his face because now it’s turned against him and his mad scramble for power.

Loki catches up and insists on his freedom, on how he’s the one in charge of his destiny who will win because HE did it, not because it was supposed to happen or was allowed by the TVA.

Mobius tries to bring him down again informing him if he hadn’t picked up the Tesseract he would have been taken to a cell on Asgard… or, you know, he might have been out there killing TVA men staging the 7th attack in the last week that they know of. But let’s not tell this to Loki at this stage. It might give him ideas about not being completely powerless against the TVA.

Mobius shows him the scene of his return to Asgard, which Loki rejects as a trick as ‘it never happened’.

Mobius agrees, it didn’t happen TO HIM, but it would have because they know also how his future was meant to be and that he should think of it as ‘comforting’. Which is not considering how his life was meant to be.

Note how Mobius is showing him only Frigga. How she was there for him when he came back, how she asked him if she wasn’t his mother and how he rejected her, hurting her. Loki doesn’t know what the argument was about or what pushed him to say so, all he sees is her being there for him and him hurting her and as he watches he moves closer.

Then Mobius explains how Loki believed to send the dark elves to Thor and instead sent them to Frigga… only he’s conveniently overlooking Loki had no idea they were Dark Elves or that there was a Dark Elves attack. Loki assumed the Kurse was just another Marauder arrested by Thor.

The Marauders were a collective of loosely affiliated alien pirates composed of many different races. When the Kurse is captured no Asgardian figured out what he is, they’re all persuaded the Dark Elves are dead, exterminated by Bor. For all Loki’s know this is a prison uprising, the Dark Elves’ ships hadn’t even appeared yet and started their attack when Loki sent Kurse on his way.

Mobius is cherry picking facts so as to shape them the way he wants.

Loki is shocked at seeing Frigga’s death which Mobius knew would have happened because he knew how he reacted when this happened.

He tries to rationalize what he saw by thinking they captured Frigga and forced her to play that part, while Mobius insists that’s the proper flow of time and that’s what has to happen because it has to and the TVA makes sure of it. However, although the TVA ensures Frigga’s death, he tries to make it all Loki’s fault. He caused it, and now Mobius wants to know if he enjoys hurting people, as if he could not know how devastated Loki was when Frigga died. He asks him if he enjoys killing people like he did with his mother.

He knows the past time Loki felt completely responsible for it, he’s trying to get him to feel the same even if Loki actually never meant to kill Frigga.

On a sidenote, he’s trying to send him on a vulnerable loop to get his collaboration like Thor did that time… but it’s a dumb move. Let’s assume Loki swallows they could send him back to his time and accepts to submit to being jailed. The TVA would still ensure he would direct the Kurse to Frigga so that she’ll die because this is the proper flow of time for them.

Although I doubt he meant it, Mobius actually isn’t giving Loki reasons to cooperate with him permanently, just to think harder to a way to avoid that future.

I don’t really know what Mobius is thinking but he seems so sure that he can come out as so overly powerful and righteous he can both bend Loki to his will by saying he’s to blame for Frigga’s death and, at the same time, that he should do nothing to prevent it.

Anyway at this point Loki attack him and is looped again. He ends on the ground with Mobius apologizing, BEFORE PUTTING THE TIME TWISTER IN HIS POCKET, saying it because the Time Twister just loops him, not the furniture… but he actually meant it, because Loki had been standing by a while and he could have looped him to just standing there.

Mobius goes on trying to make him again feel even more smaller.

“You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.”

In short he was born to be used by the sacred timeline to create heroes. But it’s a ridicule argument, in itself, because every living being create pain and suffering in his life, albeit sometimes in smaller measure than Loki or for better reasons. And the idea that people become better only through pain and suffering and death… is scary because somehow it legitimize it. It makes right to kill Coulson because then the Avengers can be born. It makes right for Thanos to wipe away half of humanity because so the Avengers joined forces again.

It’s a damaging and wrong mindset… that Mobius is of course pushing forward because that’s the narrative the TVA spins. They don’t save people, they just decide who lives and die according to their taste… which works if you’re a storywriter but it’s awful if you’re talking of real people.

Loki calms down and asks again what is that place. Mobius offers him his hand in a classic stick and carrot game. He wants Loki to obey. Loki complies and they’re interrupted by Hunter B-15. Mobius is forced to leave with her but not before telling Loki:

“Don't go anywhere. It was just getting good. Spirited.”

In short he was enjoying making Loki feel miserable, which I don’t think he does because he’s a jerk but just because that’s his job. Like Hunter B-15, they’re very motivated in doing their job to the point they don’t realize the other isn’t just ‘a variant’ but a person with feeling. They think they’re doing the people a service by murdering the extra.

Kind of like how Thanos saw himself as noble when he murdered half of the people in the universe to save the other half and expected people to feel grateful to him.

By the way, do you think that Loki is complying too easily?

Not really, do check the way he let Mobius pull him up and how he then moves his left hand for a moment inside his pocket to pull it out immediately afterward. We’ll come back to it in a moment. For now let’s follow the plot that has Hunter B-15 claiming that talking ‘to that Variant’ is a mistake as he should just be reset, read, if Mobius had been honest, killed.

For Hunter B-15 Loki is not a person, he’s just a Variant, a Variant to destroy. Actually it’s not even because the other Loki Variant is killing their units, because Mobius says she thinks all the Variants should be reset.

And remember about how Loki could be in a jail or plotting the 7th attack in the last week that they know of? Well, that’s just what the other Loki variant did as they just lost another unit.

I know I should be cheering for this Loki but I’m also really cheering for that other Loki variant. Go burn the TVA to the ground.

Mobius goes back to Loki and… discovers he disappeared. Because when Loki let Mobius pull him up he caught his chance to stuff his hand in Mobius’ pocket, steal the Time Twister and put it in his own pocket. That’s what Loki was thinking when he calmed down, a plan to get out of there, a chance to take the Time Twister.

Now… don’t the TVA know in advance what happens in the TVA? What the Variants would do once they’re captive? Because Mobius seems genuinely surprised and they’ve to search for Loki so for all their bragging about knowing everything and controlling everything maybe they actually don’t. They can’t control the Variants, which is why the other Loki Variant can attack without them knowing in advance. Their sacred timeline doesn’t cover it so they’re blind to it.

Of course it’s possible he let Loki take it on purpose but I want to think against it.

We see that Loki has looped himself in an early point of his entrance in the TVA and has noticed Casey, the guy at the desk who has taken the Tesseract. He follows him, clearly planning to get the Tesseract back and, with it, to leave the place.

Mobius and Hunter B-15 search for Loki, giving each other the blame for his disappearance. Hunter B-15 would like to catch this chance to dispose of Loki but Mobius rejects the idea since he believes he can still help.

Loki tracks Casey down. Casey recognizes him and he forces him to kneel behind the desk. He asks him his name and once he has it he tells him in his most threatening tone to give him the Tesseract or he’ll gut him like a fish.

Only Casey wants to know what’s a fish because he wants to know what he’s being threatened with, before complying and he has spent all his life behind a desk so he has no idea what a fish is. I guess he also doesn’t know what it means gutting.

Loki can’t imagine not knowing what a fish is… which is kind of weird because he should know for example humans never head of bilchsnipes… but maybe due to his name he’s thinking Casey is human. Honestly the whole TVA staff seems human. Can I say I don’t like it?

In the comics though, the TVA staff was made by people cloned. They literally were made by the TVA. I wonder if this is Casey’s situation.

Anyway Loki clarifies he’s threatening him with death. It doesn’t unfazed Casey much (do people die INSIDE the TVA?) but, to Loki’s relief, he complies, opens his drawer and give him the Tesseract whose light is still mostly turned off. Loki feels a moment of relief before noticing that in the drawer there are assorted infinity stones.

At Loki’s confusing Casey explains they get a lot of those, enough to use them as paperweight. I guess the infinity stones influence might allow people to do different choices and become Variants as they can influence them.

Something inside the TVA though, turns off their power.

Loki is confused as he picks up a green one, which should be a time stone. We hear the sound of stones moving but we can’t see if he placed it back where it was.

Loki is utterly confused as he walks away with the Tesseract in a daze looking at the sacred timeline and wondering if the TVA is really the greatest power in the universe. Behind him, Casey nods.

The elevator opens, Hunter B-15 tries to hit Loki but Loki uses the Time Twister to disappear again so she misses him completely and almost hits poor Casey. Note that the blow would have been fatal for either Loki or Casey.

Hunter B-15 didn’t care of how Mobius said no pruning or resetting, we can see that the cart, which gets hit instead of Loki, disappear.

This time Hunter B-15 didn’t go for physical pain, she went for the kill.

Loki is back in the interrogation chamber where he put the Time Twister on the table and watches on the projector his future. First Frigga’s death, as if to try to accept it, and he’s almost in tears, then he lash forward to Odin telling him and Thor that he loves them and that they should remember that place. This too touches him emotionally. He sees Thor telling him how he thought the world of him and he sees them fighting side by side against Hela and then telling him maybe he’s not so bad. He smiles at seeing that, laughing sadly but then… he sees his death at the hands of Thanos. It’s obviously traumatic but, I hope, when he can think at all that in perspective, he’ll be able to see the truth.

He wasn’t born to cause pain and suffering and death. He also saved lives, his brother’s specifically but also the ones of some Asgardians.

And, at the same time, he could see, he could learn his father and brother did love him, or at least that was the intended message of those scenes (I won’t dig into them portraying it correctly or not).

The file about him ends.

Loki gives into a slightly hysterical chuckling and the door behind him opens. It’s Hunter B-15 who asks him what’s so funny.

Loki replies ‘Glorious purpose’ which can mean all and nothing. According to the file his glorious purpose wasn’t to become king, but not even to cause pain and suffering and death. At the same time it’s not a particularly uplifting message the one that file gave him. The moment he could start again with Thor, Thanos killed him. In the end, even if he tried to change, his life would be one of pain and suffering until his death.

Loki and Hunter B-15 fight and somehow she doesn’t have anymore her murdering wand nor the men following her.

She’s alone and disarmed but she’s clearly a trained to fight and rather strong. Loki is smarter though. As soon as she slams him on the table he grabs the Time Twister, unlatches his collar and wraps it around her neck. Then takes on her his revenge for having been looped way too many times that day by looping her a lot until he makes her disappear. Where to I’ve no idea but I hope for him far enough. He was clearly taking out on her all the abuse he suffered from her and Mobius. In the end he tosses the Time Twister again on the table.

Meanwhile Casey is retelling his misfortunate meeting… evidently finding the idea that Loki would turn him into a fish much worse than the idea Loki threatened to kill him and then complains about the hunters showing up and pruning his cart.

Really, it makes me wonder if the TVA doesn’t use the world ‘dead’ in conversation. It’s all ‘reset’ or ‘prune’. I’m not saying they don’t know of it, just that they don’t use it to define what they do because it would make them look bad. You murder a living being. You reset a timeline, prune a branch. There’s a psychological difference that allows them to see Variants not as living beings but as objects.

As he speaks Hunter B-15 appears in front of him so that’s where Loki sent her.

Meanwhile Loki has remained in the room in which he was. He seems worn out as he sat on the floor against a wall, his face in his hands and the Tesseract set next to him.

Mobius, who gets into the room holding one of those TVA wands, finds him like that. Mobius rubs in he has nowhere left to run.

Loki states how he can’t go back to his timeline, then decides to comply with Mobius previous request. He tells him he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because he has to, because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. And claims to be a villain.

Is he being sincere or just telling Mobius what he wants to hear?

I like to think he’s being both. In “The Mentalist” Patrick Jane once tried to teach Teresa Lisbon how to gain someone’s trust. His first suggestion was to ask that person for a favour, so that they would feel more powerful, when this didn’t work he told her to get that person to lower their guard she should lower her own. I get the feeling Loki is doing this. He’s lowering his guard, giving Mobius what he wants, so that Mobius will lower his guard too. Like when he accepted his hand only to steal the time twister.

There’s a power in being sincere as well, which is to make Mobius feel more powerful by giving him power and therefore push him to underestimate Loki.

Mobius, who previously told him

“You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.”

Now saying him that’s not how he sees it.

He’s either giving him the carrot in his carrot and stick game or he’s just remarking one of the main characteristics of the TVA. The TVA is neutral, they don’t approve or disapprove actions, people has no choice, they’ve to follow a path and Loki’s path was to do what he did so that others could become better. The TVA doesn’t really seems to care of the moral axis of Loki’s alignment… or their own or everyone else, they only care of the ethical alignment.

Now, as I’ve seen fandom discuss this, in roleplays people created character alignments to give an ‘ideal’ for a character to live up.

This caused the birth of two Axis, the moral axis (Good, Neutral, and Evil) and the ethical axis (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic).

The alignments of the moral axis are pretty easy to figure out, so I’m not even discuss them, but the one of the ethical axis are basically meant to tell if a character follows the law or not.

The TVA is clearly lawful aligned, they blindly follow their rules as if they were a dogma, a faith. Hydra is lawful. Steve Roger is lawful, as he wants to follow rules.

Loki in a good part of the movies doesn’t follow the rules, we saw it from the start, in “Thor” he decided to act to interrupt the coronation, which was against the rules of Asgard, and then he tricked Laufey, which is against the rules of war. In “The Avengers” he let himself be arrested so as to unleash the Hulk. In “Thor: The Dark World” he pretended to join forces with Malekith so that he would remove the Aether from Jane and then stole from Odin the throne… and so on. He’s not the only one though, Thor himself as moments in which he’s chaotic, like when he invades Jotunheim against his father’s order and how later will invade that SHIELD facility, or how he’s challenge his father again in “Thor: The Dark World”.

Actually all the Avengers here and there had been chaotic… and here and there had been lawful.

Loki’s situation places him more on the chaotic axis because he has no other master but himself. In short he doesn’t respect anyone else’s rules, sometimes not even his own as he claims Frigga isn’t his mother when he clearly feels she is and fights to avenge her… but he too had his own moments of being lawful.

That’s because people aren’t roleplay characters and they wouldn’t feel realistic if they were just sitting on one alignment.

But whatever, let’s go on.

Loki picks up the Tesseract, and Mobius asks him if he tried to use it.

“Oh, several times. Even an Infinity Stone is useless here. ( Scoffs ) The TVA is formidable.”

And here we’ve Loki trying on ‘wooing someone powerful he intend to betray’, to put it with Mobius’ words. I wonder if Mobius can realize it or he’s so sure in his idea he’s powerful he misses it.

Either way he has gotten what he wanted, Loki acting this way means he has acknowledged they’re powerful enough he has to play along with them.

Mobius tell him:

“I can't offer you salvation, but maybe I can offer you something better.”

And here I feel an echo of Thor in “Thor: The Dark World”:

“I did not come here to share our grief. Instead I offer you the chance of a far richer sacrament.”

I wonder if Mobius is trying to play that same game to get Loki to cooperate. Loki though has seen the video. Maybe he knows too. And well, at least Mobius came out more honest because he told him he can’t offer him salvation. Remember when he babbled about what Loki could do if he were to go back to his timeline? It was all a pourparler, words that weren’t meant to turn true as Loki is not meant to go back to his timeline. Ever.

That timeline doesn’t exist anymore it was reset.

But at this point Mobius has to be honest and give Loki something back, the reason why they’re interested in him… which is the dangerous Variant they’re hunting is HIM, or better another Variant of himself.

Meanwhile in Salina Oklahoma, 1858 Hunter U-92 and his men are checking on something. They find an object from the early third millennium but discover there’s oil on the ground and think it’s just someone who found himself a time machine and came back here to get rich. Hunter U-92 thinks he’s not worth the paperwork of searching for him and that they should just prune the timeline. Then they notice a figure in a black cape.

The figure has a oil lamp which they drop on the petrol covered ground. The fire spread to the Minuteman who start to die by arson. Hunter U-92 tries to crawl to the reset charge but someone grabs him and pulls him back. Then a hand, clearly not his own, picks up the resect charge.

And either this is the story sharing with us the 7th attack or the other Loki’s Variant has just managed to make the 8th attack in the last week that they know of. Really, I would say for the TVA it’s better to hope it’s not Monday.

As for me, I’m sorry for them but I hope it’s Monday there.

I’ve no sympathy for bureaucratic regimes who views people who don’t complain with their wishes as things… pardon, as Variant, and implement on them the ��Final Solution” under the guise of pruning or resetting them.

This doesn’t mean everyone at the TVA is necessarily evil… but they’re dangerous, they’re fanatic who live in a regime that elect them at judges of other people’s lives. Judge Ravonna Renslayer dictates the proper flow of time according to the Time-Keepers dictations without bothering to question them, or the justice of it. At the TVA no one asks himself if it’s right or wrong, they just do it, they don’t know any other way to do it.

It’s not that they want to be evil, they actually want to be noble and just, they believe in the propaganda that’s all spread on the creepy posters around them and think they’re incredible, courageous and dedicated workers and don’t question their work or their lives at all.

They’re just many little Adolf Eichmann mostly bereft of initiative, cultural and moral depth; the latter did not go beyond the conditioning that had been given to them by society.

They lack empathy for what they destroy, for what they prune or reset and so they won’t stop thinking at what they’re doing.

Long story short, we should be grateful the TVA doesn’t exist because, really, that’s a creepy organization that pulls out the worst from people empowering them to murder others and telling them they’re doing something good.

Mobius, Casey, Hunter B-15 are brainwashed by the TVA worldview. It’ll be interesting to see if prolonged interaction with a Variant, Loki, might open his eyes or not. For now they’re like children who can’t distinguish good from bad because they buy a wrong narrative in which they’re above it.

I’m curious to see if they will ultimately eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the good and the evil or if they’ll remain ignorant and dedicate executors of the TVA. We’ll see.

Well, this was long. Thank you to all the people who remained through this long, long episode study of mine. I can’t wait to see the next Loki episode!

[warsofasoiaf]

Character Analysis: Jon Irenicus

Irenicus is a fun villain, and I think nailed one interesting element of writing down, that of bringing down the villain’s threat in an interesting and believable way. The hero typically grows in power in any story, not just in a game where your progression is literally your XP, but what the villain does, how they grow, is also interesting. If the villain is more powerful than the hero, and also does things to grow and learn, theoretically the villain should still be wrecking house. BG2 wove this into the story itself, where the more you learned about Irenicus, the less menacing he became, culminating into where he was arguably your lesser at the end: he was powerful but only aping what you were. 

Obviously, spoilers for BG2 abound.

Baldur’s Gate II introduces us to our villain almost as a cold open. Fresh off the high of defeating Sarevok, you leave Baldur’s Gate after being pressured to leave by “dark forces” and by those who suspected that you shared similar heritage to Sarevok. Seems a bit odd, honestly, to oust the Bhaalspawn with suspicion given that during the course of Baldur’s Gate I, you saved two of the Grand Dukes. It’s certainly understandable that folks would fear your heritage and you’d want to move on to greener pastures, but something more than a 3-minute cut scene would have probably set the scene better.

However, this opening, and the ‘cutscene’ that follows gives Irenicus a grand initial reveal to the player. This guy is an ultra-powerful wizard, and he speaks with a clinical detachment as he states: “It’s time for more experiments.” It’s a wonderful opening to illustrate exactly what you’re dealing with. He’s clearly interested in your godly soul, and exploiting it to some unknown purpose. What is unknown, as he gets called away by some unspecified intruders by a golem. In the next scene, magical traps are set off as an unspecified Shadow Thief gets disintegrated. Story-wise, this serves no purpose, it’s purely meant to be a way to show off the new spell effects and other cosmetic changes to the engine from Baldur’s Gate II, with the disintegration dust and the screen shaking. But it does help illustrate the power level that Irenicus is throwing around. Save-or-die spells were relatively rare in the lower level of Baldur’s Gate I, even Semaj, Sarevok’s mage companion, wasn’t firing off disintegration willy-nilly. Throwing around disintegration spells clearly shows that Irenicus is a new high-level baddy. Later we see that he killed characters from Baldur’s Gate I off-screen, Khalid and Dynahier, two of the three sets of paired companions from BG1. This gives their partners reason to join in with the player character, but it also serves to show his power; Irenicus is such a bad dude that he can wipe your party before the game starts, like he was getting coffee. It might be a cruel cut, but that’s its intent, to make the player character mad at the villain, to want to punch his smarmy face in.

Commensurate in the danger of Irenicus is the need to find out what’s going on. Irenicus clearly knows something about your godly soul and so you want to find out what he knows. Even for an upstanding lawful good character, growing in power means finding a way to effect good on a larger scale, and perhaps to overcome the evil in your tainted blood. After all, no matter how good you were in Baldur’s Gate I, you still were an incredibly powerful killer. Sure, most if not all of them were bad dudes, Mulahey the iron ore poisoner, the bandits of Cloakwood, the Iron Throne and their plans to take over the Sword Coast. But chaos and destruction follow in your wake, and that chaos undoubtedly would hurt innocent civilians; Saradush in Throne of Bhaal is clear of that enough. Even just knowing more about what is going on could better prepare you for the next Irenicus or the next Sarevok.

When you go through the starter dungeon (another piece of game design, you are being tutorialized but the pastoral instruction of Candlekeep makes no sense for someone who already had an adventure), pieces of the man start to fall into place. He holds a bunch of captive dryads as concubines to remind him of someone he lost. He keeps an immaculate bedroom for a companion that is never there, with an alarm ready to dispatch the golems to kill any who cross the threshold. There’s a woman that was in his life that is no longer there, and the loss pains him, or at least, it seems that it should. Chatter with Imoen and the dryads show that this mystery man is trying to elicit feelings that he had lost, and that’s an entirely different case of worms than pining over a lost love. There’s some element of almost-unwilling psychopathy to these actions. Other hints in this dungeon illustrate this as well. His servants, discarded in vats and forgotten about entirely, would at first evoke classical evil overlords casually disregarding their own subjects. He’s almost all of the way there, but there’s enough there that the player is suggested that there has to be something more to it than that. He does seem to have some sort of sociopathy to him, where people are objects that he can find fascinating but he has no empathy. We see this later with Wanev, who Irenicus spares solely because he was hit by a spell that left him a lunatic, which Irenicus found funny, the administrator of a jail for the insane now rendered an insane patient himself.

He is powerful though, that much is clear when you break out of the starter dungeon. His display of magic collapsed part of Waukeen’s Promenade, and when the regulatory magical body of the Cowled Wizards comes to shut it down, Irenicus is capable of swatting mages like they were mosquitos. Just like the Shadow Thieves that he had been fighting, Irenicus seems more annoyed at the interruptions than any physical threat posed by his myriad foes. He’s definitely a powerful wizard, and when he finally submits to the Cowled Wizards, he does so clearly as their superior, dragging Imoen along with him. It’s fairly plain from a game design perspective what Irenicus is doing; he’s going to Spellhold so you have to get there. Good characters want to rescue Imoen, evil characters want to interrogate him to unlock the power in your blood. Either way, the player character is given a goal, and Irenicus disappears physically from the story for the moment.

He isn’t absent though. In your dreams, Jon Irenicus waxes philosophical at the player character, evoking thought-provoking questions. He explains the paradox of your existence of being born of murder, given life from the act of taking life. He speaks about accepting the gifts that will be given to you, regardless of whether or not you want them. These dream sequences are clear upgrades in quality and presentation from the spoken-dialogue text boxes from the first game after you beat major milestones. David Warner does a great job here in delivering Irenicus’s lines, he feels like a evil mentor speaking about philosophical topics with the same detachment that he tortured the player character with in the opening. While we find out later that these dreams aren’t sendings from Irenicus but rather parts of your character’s godly subconscious, they suggest to the player going through Chapter 3 that Irenicus does indeed know a hell of a lot more about you and your godly blood, keeping the player interesting in finding out exactly what it is you need to find out. The other quests in Chapter Three don’t have much to do with Irenicus, aside from some random events with the guild war in Athkatla at night, where the player will find out pretty quick that one side is powered by vampires, the level drain and click-dialogue of “your blood is rather inviting” isn’t exactly hiding that there be vampires engaged in a secret war with the Shadow Thieves. Even then, it’s tangential. You knew the Shadow Thieves were attacking Irenicus, which suggests at least some level of camaraderie with the vampires, but as we saw with the deep dwarves in Irenicus’s lair, he doesn’t care about followers, and they might simply be disposable assets if anything at all. If you want to know about Irenicus, you’re going to have to get it from the man himself. 

Of course, as befits a high-level mage, Irenicus breaks out of the prison in a cutscene, kills the Cowled Wizards and goes back to whatever unsavory plans he thought up for Imoen, teleporting into the lobby and chewing the scenery with his “I CANNOT BE CAGED!” speech, reinforcing his position as the central big bad and confirming the Cowled Wizards as mere obstacles. This part of his plan has been made clear. Far from the meddling Shadow Thieves and Cowled Wizards, Irenicus can continue his experiments on Imoen in Spellhold, and it falls on the player character to go there and end it. Irenicus, of course, knows this too, and he makes sure he has contingency plans to deliver you to him. I’m of three minds on this. On one, he’s so powerful it seems that he is so powerful, and Amn so large, that plenty of these isolated areas within the continent would service just as well for Irenicus’s lair. Why waste time with all of this blah-blah-blah and just take what he wants? It’s not like teleport spells are beyond his ken. On the other hand, it’s a good way to break up into the freeform quest design that Chapter Three gives, offers the chance for your characters to level up and get cool gear, lets you rock the stronghold quests which definitely let you feel your class and increase replay value, and the idea of the forbidding wizard in the island lair is an excellent backdrop. On the third, it’s in-character for an immortal mage to have plans within plans, even to the point of complexity addiction, although his conduct afterward sort of torpedoes this idea. 

That is, after he recaptures you, he immediately goes back to work to his experiments, and after another trippy dream sequence with Imoen, you find his plan. His goal is to absorb your divine soul, taking it for his own. He doesn’t explain anything more, but now that he has you, he discards you just as he has so many others. Telling his sister Bodhi to dispose of you is what keeps him from being someone like the Riddler, since he’s actually going for a proper smart villain play and killing the soulless husk he leaves behind just in case he pulls a protagonist move and comes clawing back for his stolen soul. It’s Bodhi’s instability, her desire to hunt you brought on by her vampirism, that keeps you alive. After the player character becomes the Slayer, Bodhi tells Irenicus, but true to his condescending nature, he simply...ignores the PC, writing them off as someone who is going to keel over any second due to their lack of soul, completely oblivious to the fact that Bhaal’s avatar was the Slayer, and it’s clear that something is replacing the void that he left within you. The PC must effectively turn that dismissiveness against him, by releasing the imprisoned mages within Spellhold, from the powerful but mostly harmless Dili to the megalomaniacal Tiax. Yet this hard-fought battle does not end with Irenicus’s death and your victory, instead Irenicus goes to pursue his other, as-yet unknown goals while he sends another band of cutthroats to die at your hand. 

Yoshimo is sort of my feelings on this Irenicus’s Spellhold plot writ small. As powerful as Irenicus is, he really doesn’t need Yoshimo, not if he has Sarmon Havarian and so many others. Yoshimo shows up in the starter dungeon, and is useful if a bit obsequious in a “who me?” sort of fashion. He doesn’t have a really good reason to stay with the party from a story reason that he gives you. He could have said: “Hey, thanks for getting me out. Deuces!” Yoshimo’s geas gets him to want to stay with the party, otherwise he’s dead. In that sense, it makes sense for him to want to be with the group. And as the only thief who gains levels aside from the absolutely annoying Jan Jansen, he’s useful for dealing with annoying traps, because reloading a game because your main PC tripped a trap and got petrified is certainly frustrating. Game mechanics though, interfere with this. You as the player character have control over the six-person party and if you want Yoshimo to be there, he’ll be there, and if you don’t, he’ll sit in the Copper Coronet, geas be damned. He’ll stand right there until you go back in after the Underdark chapter, in which case he flops over dead and hardly anyone cares. That’s a system engine limitation certainly, but it’s remarkably clumsy. What is good though, is Yoshimo’s regret during this. He knows he has to betray you and is forced to do so, and he genuinely likes you. The writing that happens is crisp, Yoshimo truly does apologize and Irenicus backs up his dismissive assholery by telling him to shut up. When Yoshimo confronts you in Spellhold, his writing is crisp. “No redemption, and no second chances. My heart to Ilmater.” He fights you and goes down swinging (which was annoying the first time I played because he had the Celestial Fury +3). And you can actually take that heart to Ilmater, occupying a valuable inventory space through the next chapters until you can reach Waukeen’s Promenade again, where you can choose to forgive him or not, but give the heart to Ilmater either way. It would have been saccharine to restore Yoshimo, but this way, I feel, is more powerful in a world with such powerful enchantments to see the effects on the people whose lives it ruins. So the game can be clunky at parts, and Irenicus can be as well, but there’s true craft and joy in it.

Back to Irenicus though, we get the sense of more to him when we see the intro splash screen for the next Chapter. Making a dark bargain with the drow, we see that they have captured surface elves, one of whom immediately refers to Irenicus as Joneleth, suggesting a backstory far deeper as Irenicus immediately resorts to killing the prisoner after being the one to suggest interrogation instead of immediate execution, a lashing out that seems out of character for the clinically-detached evil villain we’ve been coming to know. The backstory is clear in the Forgotten Realms, the dark elves and surface elves are mortal foes and anyone who is known to the surface elves to ally with the dark elves is a great betrayal. As the PC goes through the Underdark and comes out, they are captured by the surface elves. Through a conversation with Eldoth, it can become evident that the surface elves know more than they are letting on, such as when they are the ones who suggest holy water and stakes to fight Bodhi, despite not knowing anything about either one of them. After you slay Bodhi and restore Imoen’s soul to its rightful place, you can call Eldoth out on it. Irenicus is “the Shattered One,” an exile of the elves, and it’s here that Irenicus’s story becomes apparent.

Irenicus was a powerful wizard and lover of Queen Ellesime named Joneleth. Yet in his heart, Joneleth yearned for more power and sought to take the essence of the Tree of Life, the lifeblood of the city of Suldanesselar, for himself and Bodhi. This dark ritual nearly killed many that existed within Suldanesselar, and so Joneleth and Bodhi were punished, stripping their elven nature and immortality away from them, leaving them with a mortal lifespan, thus Joneleth became Jon Irenicus, the Shattered One. Bodhi sought to become a vampire to transgress the mortal years she had, but Jon had felt that it degraded her to that of a high-functioning beast. Irenicus’s scheme was far more grandiose if also possessing an elegant simplicity: he lost an immortal soul and so he needed to take one for himself. The Bhaalspawn was the perfect choice, powerful enough to defeat Sarevok and awaken the power within, weak enough to be captured and have the divine soul snatched away. With his stolen soul freshly acquired, Irenicus now looked to the second part of himself, to revenge himself on the elves. The dark elf invasion ultimately failed, helped out by the PC butchering the leadership of Ust Natha, but Irenicus is still going with golems and summoned demons to destroy the city, usurp the power of the Tree of Life, and complete his long ago schemes. 

I... I do not remember your love, Ellesime. I have tried. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory, but it is gone... a hollow, dead thing. For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory. And then nothing. The Seldarine took that from me, too. I look upon you and feel nothing. I remember nothing but you turning your back on me, along with all the others. Once my thirst for power was everything. And now I hunger only for revenge. And I... WILL... HAVE IT!!

When confronted by Queen Ellesime, she even asks if there was any part of him that remembered the love he had for her, and the PC sees that it’s her that was in his mind for the beautiful bedroom way back in chapter one. It was almost certainly her that Irenicus thought of when he was with his dryad concubines. And when she poses that question, he answers with the above quote, that he feels nothing. While it seems like this is a loss of depth, that he’s just a flat character, I don’t think this is the case. Irenicus had the chance to change, for self-reflection. Instead, he remembers it as all the others turning their back on him, without any recognition that his schemes nearly killed them. It’s the classic abuser mentality, how dare you make me do these things to you. When his victims tried to defend themselves, he lashed out and remembers only their ‘cruelty’ to him. It’s this that makes Irenicus, for all his great arcane might, so small. Where before he was this intimidating figure, now he’s a petty man, and fittingly, it’s here that you can kill him. Temporarily, at least, because there’s still one more dungeon. Irenicus and you are still battling for your divine soul, and after a few self-reflective quests of your own, you duel Irenicus, who dies pitiably, torn to shreds by demons as his power fails him. It fits the heroic and thematic heft of the arc. As you grow in power, Irenicus diminishes in threat. He was your torturer, an inhuman menace, then he became just a man, torn apart by tiny demons that you probably could take down by the truckload. 

There’s good things to learn here. Irenicus isn’t a super-unique villain, although some of the villain tropes are personalized for the sake of the Baldur’s Gate story specifics. But he does his job admirably. David Warner’s voice work, and the special effects (pretty good for when the game came out in 2000) really was able to sell Irenicus as an enjoyable villain. 

Thanks for the suggestions, Anons who were looking forward to this.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 17X4

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

This week we finally got the answer to the question that was on everyone’s minds: Who’s on the beach?!?!? And the answer was none other than George O’Malley! I was right! Ha! I love it when that happens. Yes George was on the beach and we got to see him have a lovely heart to heart with Meredith about life and death, how things were for her and the others after he died, and what life is like for her now.

I was surprised that the heart to heart meaningful conversation turned out to be between Meredith and George and not Meredith and Derek, but I feel like that is coming later. I think the meaningful conversation with Derek will happen right at the end of Meredith’s beach adventure just before she recovers and comes back to the land of the living.

I like that they addressed why Derek and George look older than they did the last time we saw them by having George say that maybe they look older to Meredith and by virtue the audience because that’s how she likes to think of and picture them. The sand isn’t real, the water isn’t real, and Meredith’s perceptions of them and their physical appearances aren’t real either.

We see Richard and Bailey join Meredith and George on the beach at the end sequence when the real life Richard and Bailey move closer to Meredith’s bedside and talk to her which establishes that the beach is neither here nor there. It’s not the afterlife, but it is. It’s not heaven or hell, but it can be. It’s all happening in Meredith’s head, but it’s not. It’s a dream, but it’s also reality.

I liked the call backs to how Meredith, Alex, Cristina, and Izzie laughed a George’s funeral at the ridiculousness of it all. We also got some introspection from Meredith when George asks if she still dances it out like she used to and she says no and that she hasn’t really since she lost Cristina. George gently reminds her that Cristina isn’t dead like him. 

She’s still very much alive she just lives someplace else and that she shouldn’t give up on something she loves that makes her happy because Cristina lives in Zurich, Switzerland instead of Seattle, U.S.A. But we also get some insight here that to Meredith, Cristina moving an ocean away felt like a death and still does. She hasn’t danced it out like that since she left because she’s mourning that loss and to her not being able to see Cristina whenever she wants to is akin to not being able to see people like Derek, George, and Lexie like she used to because they’re gone.

Alex’s departure is different in that way in that once the pandemic is over and travel has opened back up and she’s done being mad at him she can go see Alex and Izzie and the kids whenever she wants. She doesn’t even have to get on a plane if she doesn’t want to. She can drive or take the train. The same holds true for Callie and Arizona. But the loss of people like Cristina, Derek, George, Mark, and Lexie is different because she can’t. Getting to Cristina means enduring at least two separate several hour flights across an ocean and she hates flying. 

Seeing all of those other people is impossible because they’re not alive anymore. And she feels that loss everyday whether she’s able to verbalize it or not. I loved Meredith’s ending line about finding your people and holding them close because those are the ones that get you through the tough times. The fact that she made Richard her POA comes full circle in this episode when we see him trying to comfort her and make a decision at her bedside. 

Richard is struggling about whether to enroll Meredith in the trial when he realizes she’s trying to say something. He gets closer and tells her he’s here for her only to realize she’s mumbling in her sleep and talking to George. Because Richard has seen Meredith and the others through it all he knows exactly who George is. He knows what the significance of that is and he realizes that she’s not trying to speak to him or get better. She’s talking to her friend George on the other side. She’s dying and if he doesn't do something soon she’ll join him. This realization causes him to decide to enroll Meredith in the trial.

I like that we also got an update on George’s Mom who we last saw in Season 8 talking to Callie about her marriage to Arizona and the birth of her daughter Sofia. George tells Meredith that grief is different for everyone and that his mother carries hers and that makes him sad and that sometimes he tries to shake it out of her and try to let her know that he’s still there and he’s still him even though she can’t see him anymore.

I loved how Meredith commented that he’s basically haunting her and George replied, “Well sure if you want to call it that.” The gentle teasing nature they had between them as friends was one of the things I loved most about their relationship and it was nice to see that here. I also liked their conversation about choices. Meredith asks if it’s her choice whether she stays or goes, and George says that it depends. Some people get to choose, and some don’t. He would have stayed if he could, but she appears to have a choice. On the one hand she’s worried about the kids and how losing her and becoming orphans will affect them.

On the other hand, she’s tired and has been through a lot and all the people she loves are on that beach. So, it’s a tough call for her to make. When they were sitting there on that beach and George turned to Meredith and said, “If you stay here you might break him,” and they turned to reveal Richard sitting next to her? Ugh that got me! Also watching Meredith shake convulsively from COVID while unconscious and talking to her dead friend was unnerving and a little scary especially since this is a real disease that is hurting real people. My heart breaks for anyone going through this in real life.

I also loved their exchange about the kids. Where he tells them how great they are and she says he never got to meet them and he tells her that he checks in on her and them from time to time. I also love that his comment establishes that all of the other people Meredith has lost are able to check in on her and the kids and that the other people that other characters have lost can do the same. It’s a nice image and something I think all of us in the real world like to imagine and believe when we lose a loved one. That they’re watching over us.

I loved how in Meredith’s Voice Over this episode she says that Medical schools often ask applicants for an essay describing a time they faced adversity and how they overcame it because they want to know how people will cope with the challenges they'll face as a doctor. And that some students worry they have nothing to write about because they haven't faced difficulty. She didn't have that problem. LOL!

Meredith is the main character, the lead star, and the anchor of the series and they introduced this plot in the premiere this season which mostly likely means that she won’t die or be sidelined by this permanently. And since the show is reflecting a real world disease and pandemic that means that if Meredith lives one of the other characters or someone else close to them will be dying from it most likely. Sadly, it looks like that might be Tom after this episode.

Tom’s got some funny dialogue when he tries to interrupt the staff meeting Richard is holding about COVID by tablet and with Helm when she comes by to drop off his COVID test. I liked how Jackson just walked over and knocked over the tablet to shut him up and everyone just laughed and carried on. His scenes with Helm were pretty funny too. The Zombie appearing on screen scared me though!

In the end we see that Teddy finally comes to talk to him and bring him soup after Helm tells her how bad he’s doing and how much he needs a friend as she desperately tries to save Meredith. When Tom didn’t answer the door or make a sound my first thought was that he had collapsed, but no it’s worse than that because as Teddy turns to leave the camera pans over and we see Tom cold and shaking in a blanket on the other side of the door unable to respond.

Which means his condition has worsened and he’s in pain, but he can’t communicate that to Teddy because he’s too weak to speak or he can’t make his voice loud enough to be heard over the pouring rain. Man that was some downpour! I wonder if it was fake rain that they created or if it rained that heavily the day they filmed that scene. Good to see Tom finally bought a house though! Seeing as last we saw he was living out of a hotel and then got Teddy a beautiful apartment only to find out at the last minute that she had gotten back together with Owen so he went back to living in a hotel again. Glad to see he got some digs.

I’ll be sad if they write Tom off as a character as I’ve really come to like him and he’s interesting and complex. Plus, I love seeing someone call Owen on his crap with such humour! We also got some good social commentary on how health practitioners often base treatment protocols and assessments on the standards of care and presentation developed for white patients, but that because diseases present differently in people of different races and genders that needs to be accounted for.

Especially because your race, gender, and where you grew up affects your predisposition for certain illnesses and can affect the presentation. Owen failed to catch something serious with his patient when they were initially brought in because he was using the standard developed for white patients which is different from the standard for Asian patients. 

One of the new interns who is Asian brings this up to Nico who eventually says something to Owen who brings it up to Bailey who calls him on his privilege and reminds him that he needs to not only check himself, but because he is white and is the head of Trauma for the hospital it is his responsibility to update and improve protocols to make sure that every patient is getting the best care possible.

As Bailey says true equality means taking into account that we are all different. And when it comes to medicine conditions present themselves in different ways based on race and other factors. Giving everyone the exact same care based on a standard of care developed by and for white people is not equality because it means that people of colour like his patient receive a lower standard of care which can lead to unnecessary suffering and death.

True equality means providing equitable care that takes into account who a patient is physically when treating them. As Bailey says equitable care is not the same as equal care. One takes into account the reality and ensures true equal treatment while the other gives the appearance of equality while disadvantaging anyone who’s not a white straight cisgender man. While I like that they addressed that Nico was a complete jerk to everyone this episode.

He acted like the whole thing was no big deal when the intern brought it up and brushed off her comments about Anti-Asian racism from earlier in the episode that we’re totally valid. The intern was looking for some solidarity and for someone above her to back her up on some real issues. Instead Nico blew her off and talked down to her only to bring the issue up himself to Owen in the exact way he told her not to. Nico’s a good surgeon and he was right to say something, but he is a horrible human being, teacher, and boyfriend.

He continues to treat Levi horribly for no reason and as Jo says Levi deserves better. I liked Jo and Levi’s interactions this episode. They were funny and I love them! Also did anyone else think it was weird that Jo and Levi were having a conversation about how horrible Nico is as a person and how horribly he treats Levi when Nico was literally a metre or two in front of them and could hear everything they were saying? Nico’s an ass and apparently, he doesn't care that he’s an ass and that everyone thinks that of him.

I’m actually liking the whole Jo and Jackson friends with benefits situation. So far, its made for some good comic relief! I like too that we finally saw Jackson admit that he’s jumped from one relationship to another way too fast for his whole run on the show and that he needs to take some time and get some therapy and figure out what he wants. I love that Jo was immediately on the same page and laughed at the idea of them having a relationship right now. She needs a sex buddy, not a partner. He’s got work to do on himself and as she says she feels broken and is still trying to heal from the trauma she has experienced.

I also liked the scenes with Amelia and Link. I like that Amelia was able to express herself and her frustrations and that Link made the decision to support her. My best friend that I watch with made comment that she felt like under the same circumstances Owen would have just stormed back into the house whereas Link angrily moved some toys aside so that he could sit next to Amelia while she felt all her feelings and talked about them because that’s what she needed to do. 

I also liked that when Amelia tried to push Link to talk later on he opened up about his process and was straight with her. Talking about all of her feelings out loud and in the open because if she bottles them up, she’ll wind up relapsing is her thing. Link’s thing is to focus on the positive and play his guitar. As Link says he’s happy to support her on her thing, but if she wants their relationship to work she has to support him on his thing. And she does. 

My favourite line this episode? “What are you playing?” “It’s a song called ‘If The Virus Doesn’t End Us, Then Climate Change Probably Will.’” Too funny! And accurate! We also learn that Amelia loves to garden and is apparently quite good at it and they appear to have a herb and vegetable garden at Meredith’s house. We get some awkward dinner interaction courtesy of Maggie and Winston’s relationship this episode when he invites her to a virtual Birthday dinner for his beloved Grandmother which is then crashed by his estranged father. 

His Grandmother invited him and within five seconds of being on the call he insults Winston and says that the idea that his son who is a Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Tufts is a genius is laughable because apparently he failed sixth grade. This man is an asshole and I can see why Winston hates him. That being said Winston exiting the call and leaving Maggie hanging there with his Grandmother, father, and some other relatives that she’s never met was not okay.

It was extremely rude. He should have told Maggie he had to go before signing off or said that they should both leave the call. Maggie is a class act for staying on that call and asking his upset Grandmother if there was cake. Side note: I did love Maggie and Winston’s conversation about what pencil nerds they both are! This is a match made in heaven so whatever issues they do have they’ll work through them because this is clearly meant to be.

My only real complaint about this episode was the absence of one Cormac Hayes. As my best friend said after we finished watching, “Did you notice who wasn’t in this episode? McWidow. Where the hell was McWidow?” I concur with this sentiment 100%. Hayes makes everything better and I’m sad when he’s not there. I get that Meredith was on the beach with George this episode and that was the focus on her storyline, but it would have been nice to see Hayes stand outside her window or sit next to her or talk to Jo about her condition.

That’s the other thing. Season 16 established that Jo and Hayes are friends and that she’s rooting for him and Meredith to be together and live happily ever after. So I’m surprised that they haven’t had a scene yet this season. We’ve seen Jo interact with Link who she’s close friends with and Levi who’s her roommate, but not Hayes. I’m hoping we’ll get that next episode. So far the majority of Hayes’ scenes have been with Meredith, followed by Jo, followed by Bailey. 

If Hayes can’t interact with Meredith like he normally would because she’s unconscious I want to see him interact with Jo, Bailey, Maggie, and Richard more. The fact that we’re seeing intimate scenes with Jo and Jackson gives me hope that we’ll get to see those kinds of scenes for Meredith and Hayes. Although it’s entirely possible that those scenes were filmed last season before the pandemic hit so maybe not. 

I also like that we got some important timeline information this episode. Jo mentions murder hornets (remember those?) which puts this episode at the beginning of May. She also says that her and Alex divorced the same year they got married which means that Seasons 14 and 15 span the same year. Which makes sense given the other information that we have and means that the relationship we saw in Season 15 only lasted a matter of months. 

Which is good news in the sense that nobody really liked any of the ships from that season apart from Tom and Teddy and Amelia and Link and this establishes that all of those relationships were short lived and occurred over a matter of months, not a full year or more. Based on what I caught of next week’s promo it looks like Meredith’s condition is improving (!) while Tom’s condition is deteriorating, and Bailey’s Mom is in bad shape and is being admitted! COVID is no joke! Buckle up everyone!

Until next time!

[deadwalkerpedia]

The Walking Dead, “Days Gone Bye” | Analysis

The final season of The Walking Dead comes in August, so I decided to rewatch the show from the beginning as the end is nigh. TWD has been a part of me since I started to watch TV series, and I’ve watched Days Gone Bye more than seven times, so this is certainly one of the pieces of audiovisual media that I’ve consumed the most. To add a new interesting layer in my rewatches, I’ve decided to see the episodes with a critical and analytical lens, seeing it more than just as a pastime, and write my thoughts here. This will be a great ride for me, and I can’t wait to see again some iconic moments from TWD throughout the seasons and write about them.

Part 1: The World Before

Before getting into the first act of the episode, let me talk about the teaser – the first five minutes of the episode – quickly. As this is our introduction to the world of TWD, Days Gone Bye couldn’t simply start with Rick and Shane having a chat. So it was necessary that the teaser served as a way to establish both the tone and setting of this story, and it certainly does. The teaser tells us that what we are watching is a gritty survival horror story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and the teaser establishes this perfectly without no more than two lines of dialogue. It is established visually: Rick stops his car on a deserted road with no traces of civilization anywhere, then goes to an abandoned gas station where other cars are  – and those cars have dead bodies inside. From there, we know right from the start that this isn’t the world we live in. When Rick sees the young girl that is in fact a walker, it is established that this is a world where the main threat are zombies. At least for some part, as in future episodes the series will show us something far more scarier than walking cannibal dead bodies is the real danger. 

Now storytelling-wise, TWD already proved its value in the first five minutes. Frank Darabont directed the episode and wrote the script, and his work in the episode both as director and writter is fantastic and set the bar high if the series wanted to have a consistency of greatness in its episodes. After the perfect five minutes purely composed of visual storytelling, the first scene of the first act is dialogue-heavy and character-driven. One would think that it is to establish to us that Rick and Shane are friends, that Rick has a wife and son and that they are cop buddies, and one would be right, but it is also more than simply introduction and exposition, and that’s the beauty of the audiovisual medium as a whole.

Reading books about screenplay writing, I’ve come to know more about subtext and its applications in both movies and series. Despite this first scene doing great work in introducing us to the two main characters of the season – their mindset, persona and some backstory – it also adds so much worldbuilding-wise. Shane goes on his rant about women not switching off the lights in a house before leaving it, and Rick talks about a discussion he and Lori had earlier. See, the teaser showed us a decaying world with walking bodies. Now, the first minutes of act one show us a world where people worry about such trivialities: switching off the lights. In the tagline for the first volume of the comic book, it reads “The world we knew is gone. The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility“. The scene I mentioned is basically the live-action adaptation of it. We see the world of commerce and frivolous necessity in this introduction so we can understand better and fear the world of survival and responsibility that will come later in the episode. TWD started geniously: it went from visually-driven to dialogue-driven, and after that to visually-driven storytelling, all without losing its verisimilitude and charm.

Now, something about the visuals I loved: the grainy aspect. Because this episode was shot on film – in fact, up until season ten all episodes were shot on film – the film grain is obviously visible. But instead of being just an aesthetic choice – shooting in film or digital – I think it’s also meant to have implications tone-wise. The comic books this series adapt is in black-and-white (something unusual in American comics), but it’s because the writer Robert Kirkman wanted the comic to feel like a classic George Romero zombie flick, and it worked completely. Commercially, a black-and-white TV series wouldn’t be much embraced by a large and mainstream public, but I think that Darabont solved that problem and succeeded in maintaining an aesthetic similar to the feel the comic book wanted to transmit. The excessive film grain – something that made me feel like watching a Panos Cosmatos’ movie but without the acid trips – works because it resembles the Romero zombie flicks in color, like Dawn of the Dead. It is a classical and archetypal zombie story – even if it subverts some conventions various times throughout the series – and the visuals tell us that.

Not only that, but the episode has many moments that resembled The Mist in some ways: the camera being close to its characters to make the story feel grounded and experienced by real people, the back shots to make the audience feel like they are following the characters in their journeys, the handhold camera moments that gives a documentary feel, adding a realistic perspective. All that grants a grounded vibe to the episode, which works because this is a story about how people react and live in a lawless world which can kill them at any possible moment without any warnings. It’s where chaos and anarchy reigns and where death always lurks. A story like that works better when it’s experienced through the eyes of the characters. It’s also best represented in the moment where Rick leaves the hospital and sees the sun for the first time. In the shot, the Sun is blinding us with its shining light, but then there’s a cut, and in the next shot we see only Rick covering his eyes while the blinding sun rays don’t make it to the camera. It’s the switch of subjective to objective perspective, as in the first we see the world with Rick eyes – it’s a man getting out of the dark for the first time in months – and in the second we see the same moment but from outside lens, and it showed us that this a day like any other where the sun doesn’t blind you. Besides, this episode has a low budget sensitivity – not meaning that the quality is subpar, but that it has an authenticity that is extremely convincing. It is that low budget quality that makes the story feel real in a certain way. That is, of course, until the tank in the middle of a city is shown, but even with the realism, it is still tangible, and the story continues to feel realistic in its depiction of a zombie apocalypse in the “real world”.

Not only that, but the episode has many moments that resembled The Mist in some ways: the camera being close to its characters to make the story feel grounded and experienced by real people, the back shots to make the audience feel like they are following the characters in their journeys, the handhold camera moments that gives a documentary feel, adding a realistic perspective. All that grants a grounded vibe to the episode, which works because this is a story about how people react and live in a lawless world which can kill them at any possible moment without any warnings. It’s where chaos and anarchy reigns and where death always lurks. A story like that works better when it’s experienced through the eyes of the characters. It’s also best represented in the moment where Rick leaves the hospital and sees the sun for the first time. In the shot, the Sun is blinding us with its shining light, but then there’s a cut, and in the next shot we see only Rick covering his eyes while the blinding sun rays don’t make it to the camera. It’s the switch of subjective to objective perspective, as in the first we see the world with Rick eyes – it’s a man getting out of the dark for the first time in months – and in the second we see the same moment but from outside lens, and it showed us that this a day like any other where the sun doesn’t blind you. Besides, this episode has a low budget sensitivity – not meaning that the quality is subpar, but that it has an authenticity that is extremely convincing. It is that low budget quality that makes the story feel real in a certain way. That is, of course, until the tank in the middle of a city is shown, but even with the realism, it is still tangible, and the story continues to feel realistic in its depiction of a zombie apocalypse in the “real world”.

The whole sequence of the car chase and the shooting between the cops and the criminals is beautifully conducted by Darabont, who knows his craft remarkably and executes it in a manner like no one else does. The memorable shots, shot by Darabont, immortalize the whole sequence and reach its climax – the gunshot Rick suffers – perfectly in a crescendo that works better here than in the comics, this being an easy task, but still, Darabont managed to do it in an impressive way, totally deserving a bravado status.

Also, something that I also appreciated, and I think it’s overlooked: when the police cruiser where Rick and Shane are passes through a road, we see a single crow eating a roadkill. What do this mean exactly? Animals can’t turn to zombies so one might think this is only a moment with no meaning behind it. But now I interprete it as a symbol. It is meant to represent that society has be decaying long before the dead came to eat the living. It remembers me the first Mad Max, where the world is not in the same level as it appears in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior – a full-on post-apocalyptic society – but it is in its final stages, leaning to barbarism and uncontrollable chaos. The producers of TWD announced an anthology spin-off series named Tales of the Walking Dead, and it certainly would be interesting to see more of the transition between our world and the post-apocalyptic zombie-ridden world, showing the process in-between of transformation and decay.

Part 2: Brave New World

The second act starts as Rick steps out of the hospital and faces the current reality of his world, and it’s an ugly one. Rick sees dead bodies everywhere and discarded military gear. Something dreadful happened when he was in a coma. The world undergone a change so great in his sleep that it’s impressive that Rick didn’t drown in total madness when he first saw what’s left of society. Most of act two is about Rick having to come to terms with his new life: one entirely ruled by survival. Now, another interesting element that is also a symbol in my interpretation: the bicycle girl. The bicycle girl (which is the zombie without its lower body) is the first walker Rick encounters. He is scared by her and runs away from her with the bicycle that was there next to him. The bicycle girl is nothing more than the remains of the past life of Rick and the world before. It is dead and alive at the same time – like the walkers – but in a pitiful state. It can’t be on its feet and is always trying to grasp and touch Rick, but, ultimately, it can’t. Rick fears it, and because of that he runs.

Most of the second act is focused on the interactions of Rick and Morgan Jones. Morgan, after encountering Rick and saving him from a nearby walker, takes him inside his house, but fearing that the gunshot wound was in fact a walker bite, Morgan rightly tied Rick to a bed and waited for him to wake up to ask some questions. Now, it’s incredible how this episode never misses a beat and is not made of only three truly great scenes, but all of the scenes are great. The whole dinamic of Morgan explaining to Rick what happened and what it takes to live in this new world felt so natural that no critic could say it was bad exposition. It was exposition done right, revealing more about Morgan’s character, showing him as a good man and a father to his son Duane. It’s easy to understand why Rick and Morgan liked each other one day after meeting for the first time. The chemistry is real, and it’s unbelievable how seasons later, when they see each other again, the chemistry is still there. 

Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James are spectacular actors. Their acting in this episode is astonishingly extraordinary. I’m pissed that they didn’t won any awards for it, they certainly deserve it. Andrew’s acting was great all way through, but when he first arrives at his house and cries for Lori and Carl you could feel the man’s pain and suffering. One moment that is perfect and maybe one of the bests of all TV history is when Rick is having an existential crisis. “Is this real? Am I here?”, asks Rick while facing the ground. It’s such a powerful reaction to the absurdity he is experiencing and it feels so damn real because Andrew Lincoln can cry like a pro and give the gaze of a man that is lost. Rick is lost. And this scene can provide such a powerful punch to the audience that you can’t help but be already invested in Rick’s journey. He just wants his family, so he can put some sense in a mad world. Without them, Rick is lost.

The second act makes us empathize more with Rick and Morgan. They both have admirable goals. They just want to live and provide for their family. Their bond is developed exceptionally in their final moments together – before Rick travels to Atlanta – that you are left caring for them and wanting a reunion. The final scenes of act two were made to make you feel emotional without doubt, and I’m sure that it worked on some people and made them fall in love with the series instantly. It’s when Rick kills bicycle girl and Morgan fails to kill his dead wife, now a walker. The soundtrack by Bear McCreary is phenomenal and adds so much dramatic and emotional weight to the scenes, and it fits perfectly with the tone of pretty much the core of the series. It’s a haunting song, a sorrowful one full of melancholy, but it also has a spark of hope in it. It makes a statement: everything is sadly collapsing around us, but there’s still hope of rebuilding. The Mercy of the Living is TWD summarized in an orchestral piece, and I feel like crying every time I listen to it, just like the piece Alive Inside of Telltale’s game, that also does a masterful job in creating a sad but hopeful atmosphere in its melody. The bicycle girl – which is the past Rick and the world before – must be killed by Rick if he wants to continue his voyage, to which destination is his family. Rick is teary and heartbroken in killing bicycle girl because now he has to fully embrace a life ruled by survival. “I’m sorry this happened to you.” is Rick final message and requiem to the world and consequently to his past self – a quiet Rick that didn’t want to discuss with Lori in front of Carl –, both who had problems that they couldn’t resolve before the tragedy that hit them.

Part 3: The Beginning

The third and last act are in fact the beginning. We saw a peak of a world before the zombie apocalypse and Rick waking up in this desolated society in the first two acts, but the third one is to introduce and set up what the series is about and what will do to its end: show the characters in a battle for survival, and ultimately in a quest for the return of humanity and civilization. Both are depicted in the scenes where Rick is trying to save himself from a horde of walkers that attack him and his horse, and the other with Shane’s group listening and trying to talk in the radio with a mysterious survivor (Rick himself) who warns about his coming into the city, showing their efforts to help fellow survivors who might enter Atlanta without knowing its dangers, thus demonstrating that they are still human after all.

The episode show us a little about the relationship of Shane and Lori, as well as a glimpse to their group. It wasn’t exactly necessary, but it doesn’t hurt in any way the season’s progress and development. The third act is best represented by Rick entering Atlanta and having to escape a humongous horde of walkers. Rick manages to survive by hiding in the tank that was parked in a street. The scene also show us that zombies had some intelligence  – they crawl and try to open things – and some of them look cartoonishly green or grey, instead of the realistic putrid rotting flesh look the marvelous make-up by Greg Nicotero can provide. And both of these things are common to the iconography Romero made for the zombies. It’s very clear that Darabont takes inspirations from his movies and respect their legacy by expanding it to a new range of people and an audience that is maybe not that familiar with Romero – I wasn’t when I first watched TWD and when I saw Romero’s movies I was impressed by how it influenced the series. 

Days Gone Bye is a masterclass of how a pilot should be made. This quintessential pilot introduces a storyline that will be finished within the episode. while also setting up what’s coming next in the season, laying ground for all the future episodes in the best way possible. It introduces a protagonist that proves that he can sustain a show on his own – he is a caring father, loving husband, a good man and a kind of Western hero, we see him riding in his horse towards the imminent danger full of guns and determination searching only for his family. The Walking Dead may not be recognized as a TV series that revolutionized the medium, but it revolutionized its genre, and overall it is a great series that deserves recognition, and so does Days Gone Bye. It is simply the perfect pilot.

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press: A Thorough Breakdown of All the Marvel Easter Eggs on WandaVision

POPSUGAR: WandaVision has finally arrived, and it’s chock-full of hidden goodies for Marvel fans to devour! While the series is built upon a mystery that we’ll be spending a reported nine episodes trying to figure out, the smallest details in each episode provide clues on where the show is heading. From supermarket banners to foreboding commercials, viewers have an abundance of references and callbacks to classic comic lore and pivotal MCU moments. Are they setting the stage for a big reveal at the end, or are they just fun details included for fans to enjoy? While we try to figure it all out, scroll through to see what we’ve gathered! And check back every week for an episode-by-episode breakdown as WandaVision progresses.

WandaVision Episode 7 Easter Eggs

The episode opens the morning after Wanda has expanded the border of the Hex, finding the Avenger hiding from the world under her comforter. The comforter in question has a hexagon pattern, which is both a nod to the overall theme of the show as well as a metaphor for how Wanda is literally hiding away under a hex.

Billy and Tommy run into the room to reveal that their video game console has been messing up. Everything in the house is glitching, trying to transform back to earlier versions of themselves.

Billy also tells his mother that his head hurts and things are “noisy.” Since the twin inherited his mother’s ability to read minds, it seems he’s able to hear the thoughts of everyone in the bubble (and near it on the outside, since he was able to hear his father when he was dying). It’s a sign that Billy’s powers are growing, which means we could see the little boy reach his Wiccan potential before the end of the season.

Wanda wanders into the kitchen as the news drones on in the background. The news station is called W.N.D.A. or Wanda. The newscaster makes pointed comments, noting that there’s “not a thing weighing heavily on your conscience,” and that they “hope your little ghosts arrived home safe last night. It’s always such a treat to see those creepy kiddos out and about once a year.” The comments refer to Wanda’s building guilt at her actions in the previous episode and the rare appearance of children during the Halloween episode.

As Wanda makes her breakfast of “Sugar Snaps,” a nod to the big Snap of the universe, her milk carton reverts from its modern design to the old school glass bottle and back. The carton has a missing person’s ad on the back with a picture of a little boy on the back. This could be a reference to the oft-mentioned absence of children of Westview, and what could have happened to them.

Wanda and the twins “break the fourth wall” frequently to talk to the camera in the same vein as Modern Family.

This week’s theme song sounds similar to The Office’s, which also usings talking head segments like Modern Family. The opening credits are similar to the show Happy Endings and allude to the show’s focus on Wanda, even attributing the creation of WandaVision to her with the title image. Vision is notably completely absent from the opening credits, but there’s a clue that someone else is watching in a message that reads, “I know what u are doing Wanda.”

Agnes stops by to take the boys off of Wanda’s hands, which the exhausted mother is exceedingly grateful for. The twins are visibly uncomfortable with the idea, with Tommy asking Wanda if they have to and Billy telling his mother that someone has to stay to take care of her. It seems like they can sense that something is off with their “kindly” neighbor.

Wanda sends them off with Agnes, but once they’re gone, her magic goes incredibly haywire. All the furniture begins glitching again, with the stork from the painting in episode three making a reappearance. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Wanda laments during a talking head segment. “Why it’s all falling apart and why I can’t fix it.” The off-screen interviewer responds, “Do you think maybe it’s what you deserve?” which visibly unnerves Wanda, who notes that they aren’t supposed to speak. It’s another sign that Wanda does not have as much control as she’s been led to believe.

Cue the sixth commercial, and it’s even more pointed than any of the others have been. It’s an ad for the antidepressant Nexus, for “when the world doesn’t revolve around you. Or does it?” The drug allows people to anchor themselves to the reality of their choice with side effects that include “feeling your feelings, confronting your truth, seizing your destiny, and possibly more depression.” Whew, the pointed commentary is even making me sweat. Nexus is a nod to two things: Wanda’s crippling inability to deal with the trauma she’s been through and her depression that’s pushed her into the creation of Westview, and two Marvel comics concepts. The first is the Nexus of All Realities is a kind of gateway point between dimensions from which all universes in the multiverse can be accessed. (Remember, Wanda’s next reported appearance is in Multiverse of Madness.) The second concept is the existence of Nexus beings, people who have powers that can alter reality, probability, and the Universal Time Stream. Guess which two Westview residents are considered Nexus beings? That’s right, Wanda and Vision! The commercial can either be just a cheeky nod to the couple’s seemingly infinite power or an allusion to the bigger picture that WandaVision is leading to.

While Darcy and Vision are attempting to make their way to the house, the doctor gives the synthezoid a brief rundown of his origin story, explaining how he died twice in an attempt to save the world. Vision points out that it seems like someone is trying to keep him from getting home, which spurs him to fly off, leaving Darcy behind in the blocked truck.

Billy and Tommy are watching Yo Gabba Gabba in Agnes’s lowkey creepy home. (It tickles me that Yo Gabba Gabba is more canon in the MCU than the X-Men or Fantastic Four right now.) While Billy pets Agnes’s bunny Señor Scratchy, he notes that he likes being around the older woman because he’s unable to hear any of her thoughts. “You’re quiet inside,” he says, an allusion to the idea that Agnes can hide her thoughts from him because she has magic.

Back outside the Hex, after the super-rover isn’t able to penetrate the field, Monica decides to run through it again. As she struggles through the barrier and we watch her, a montage of dialogue from Captain Marvel plays. The voices of Maria, Nick Fury, and Carol play over Monica getting through, and as Captain Marvel says “when they were handing out little kids, your mom got the toughest one,” Monica she pushes through to the other side. She lands in the stereotypical three-point-stance of all Marvel heroes, and her eyes glow, showing that she can see energy. We just witnessed the rise of Photon, folks! (Or Spectrum or Pulsar.)

Monica confronts Wanda in her home, and as their fight spills onto the lawn, the residents of Westview watch from their own homes. The delivery man is wearing a “Presto Delivery” uniform, a reference to the magic words said by magicians before they pull a magic trick.

In the first blatant show of Agnes’s ulterior motives, the older woman stops the fight when she realizes Monica is getting through to Wanda and pulls the young mother into her home. But when Wanda gets there, she notices the green bug and rabbit in the living room and the lack of her sons’ presence. When she asks Agnes where the boys are, she’s told to head to the basement, where the big showdown occurs. The scene hints at the eventual disappearance of Billy and Tommy.

Wanda notices a book on an altar, which could be the Darkhold, also known as The Book of Sins, The Shiatra Book Of The Damned. Originally a collection of papers known as the Chthon Scrolls, the book contains all the spells and ideas of the evil Elder God known as Chthon. The book is a conduit for Chthon’s power and can open a doorway from Earth to Chthon’s dimension. If that book is in Agnes’s basement, it stands to logic that she may be working with the evil god. The Darkhold emits an orange glow, which is a distinctly different color than the purple of Agatha’s magic.

Speaking of magic, Agnes finally reveals herself as the witch we’ve known her to be. Although the show tells us that “it’s been Agatha all along,” it still doesn’t ring completely true. There’s definitely more at work than just Agatha’s magic.

In the mid-credits sequence, Monica is caught snooping in Agnes’s backyard by Pietro. Her eyes seem to glow purple, the same color that signals Agatha’s magic. Does this mean she’s now under the witch’s spell?

  WandaVision Episode 6 Easter Eggs

The opening credits for episode six seem to be a tribute to Malcolm in the Middle, which ran for seven seasons between 2000 and 2006.

The entire Wanda and Vision family wear their comic book character costumes for Halloween.

There’s another reference to Thanos’s snap as Director Tyler Hayward talks about dealing with the repercussions of all the people “who left.”

The terrifying Yo-Magic commercial seems to foreshadow Vision’s future. Even though Wanda was seemingly able to bring Vision back to life, it looks like he won’t stay alive for long as it’s implied that he can’t exist outside of the Hex later in the episode.

Blink and you’ll miss the fun Disney movie Easter egg on Westview’s movie theater. The sign outside the theater shows a double feature of The Incredibles and The Parent Trap. Connecting right to Wanda’s family, The Incredibles is about a family of superheroes, while The Parent Trap is about a pair of long-lost twins reuniting.

Wanda’s changing accent has been brought up countless times by fans, and in episode six, Pietro makes a slight reference to it when Wanda asks, “What happened to your accent?” to which he quips, “What happened to yours?”

There is another reference that Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness as she is spotted wearing a witch costume on Halloween.

It appears that Vision has no memories pre-Westview, as a conscious Agnes tells him he’s one of the Avengers, and he has no clue what she’s talking about.

The episode further hints at Monica’s powers as Darcy confirms that the Hex rewrote her cells on a molecular level.

A few interactions between Pietro and Wanda have fans wondering if he might actually be Mephisto in disguise. Not only is he fully aware about Wanda creating Westview, but he makes several references to the devil and hell throughout the episode.

  WandaVision Episode 5 Easter Eggs

Wanda and Vision’s brand new house, suitable for a family of four, is reminiscent of homes in ’80s sitcoms such as Full House and Growing Pains.

When Agnes comes in to offer her babysitting help, she refers to herself as “Auntie Agnes,” which is eerily close to her comic counterpart’s nickname, Auntie Agatha.

An uncomfortable break in conversation leads Agnes to ask Wanda if she wants her to “take it from the top.” Though Wanda appears confused for a moment, she readily smoothes the conversation and carries on. Vision is visibly perturbed, though Wanda attempts to redirect his attention. It seems like the facade is fading all around.

To the surprise of their parents, Tommy and Billy age up five years while the two argue over Agnes’s break in character.

This episode’s opening sequence shows Wanda and Vision growing up, which we know didn’t happen in real life for the synthezoid. The theme song sounds very similar to those from Family Ties and Growing Pains, and consists of lyrics noting that “we’re just making it up as we go along.” Sounds pretty close to how things are going with Wanda and Vision!

When Wanda’s scans come back, they’re inconclusive and show up blank. Considering Monica gains her powers due to bombardment by extradimensional energies in the comics, it’s entirely possible that the blast from Wanda back in episode three, coupled with passing through the forcefield around Westview twice, have given her those abilities. We could be seeing the rise of Photon!

While Jimmy Woo is explaining Wanda’s backstory to the agents of S.W.O.R.D., Director Hayward asks if she’s ever used a “funny nickname” like the other Avengers. She hasn’t, in fact, she’s never been referred to as Scarlet Witch in the MCU ever. Since her powers are different from her comic book counterpart, there’s never been a reason for anyone to call her a witch.

That never-before-seen post credits scene from Infinity War has officially made its debut. Director Hayward reveals footage of Wanda entering S.W.O.R.D. headquarters to steal Vision’s disassembled body. The video harks back to a moment in the comics where Vision was kidnapped and taken apart — but still very much alive. Much like that Vision, the one in Westview has his memory wiped and doesn’t remember anything before he woke up in his new world. So, the question is whether Vision is actually alive or not. Wanda’s hallucination from episode four might suggest he’s a walking corpse, but there’s more to the story.

Jimmy mentions that Wanda’s stealing of Vision’s body violates the Sokovia Accords, which haven’t been mentioned since Captain America: Civil War. Unfunnily enough, the Accords were a direct response to the mission gone wrong in Lagos where Wanda lost control of her powers and caused the death of many civilians.

Darcy mentions that Vision is playing “Father Knows Best in Surburbia,” referencing the ’50s sitcom.

Tommy and Billy find a dog that, with the help of Auntie Agnes, they name Sparky. The Vision family has a dog with that exact name in the King and Walta comics, but he’s green. Sadly, he meets a similar fate as his live-action counterpart.

Wanda blatantly uses her powers in front of Agnes, who has seemingly handled the magic around her with ease. It’s almost as if she’s used to magic.

Darcy calls the Westview anomaly the “hex” because of its hexagonal shape. Although the magic has been taken out of the phrase, Wanda’s powers are known as hexes in the comics.

Jimmy, Monica, and Darcy try to understand how Wanda can revive Vision and control the Hex, which takes much more power than she’s ever displayed before. Monica notes that Wanda has always been powerful, being the only Avenger who was close to taking down Thanos singlehandedly, which Jimmy interjects to note that Captain Marvel could as well. Both are empowered by Infinity Stones, with Carol’s Kree biology giving her a power boost.

When Jimmy brings up Captain Marvel, Monica is visibly uncomfortable and changes the subject back to Wanda. What happened there?

Vision’s office mates learn about the sweet glory that is dial-up internet! But when he and Norm open their first bit of electronic mail, it’s a transmission picked up from S.W.O.R.D. talking about the Maximoff anomaly.

Vision breaks through Norm’s conditioning, revealing that he’s under the control of a woman (alluding to it being Wanda). He directly references his family, a conversation that Jimmy mentioned in his notes in the last episode.

The twins have aged themselves up to 10 by this point and are seemingly completely aware that Wanda has control over certain aspects of life, like time. They point out that it was Saturday when they woke up, but Wanda says it’s now Monday. She apparently changed the day to send Vision to work. Is their awareness because they also have magic or because she doesn’t control them?

Monica sends an ’80s drone into Westview after working out that Wanda’s Hex is rewriting reality to suit each era occurring in the bubble, and the drone would need no era-appropriate change. Though she attempts to speak with Wanda through the drone, Director Hayward commands agents to fire a missile at Wanda instead — directly ignoring that Monica said she doesn’t see Wanda as a danger. The action results in Wanda leaving the Hex and confronting the S.W.O.R.D. agents outside. She’s wearing the suit we last saw her wearing in Infinity War and Endgame and has her accent back, although it’s much thicker than it’s been since Ultron.

Episode five’s commercial is more pointed than any of them have been. Lagos brand paper towels directly reference the city in which Wanda accidentally killed several people in Civil War by blowing up a building. Thus, the Sokovia Accords were born.

While Wanda and the twins are searching for a missing Sparky — with no one calling out the fact that Wanda disappeared for some time — the mailman tells the boys that their mom “won’t let him get far.” It seems almost like a dig at how no one can leave Westview, like the doctor mentioned during episode three.

When Agnes reveals that Sparky died after eating too many azalea bush leaves, the boys ask their mother to reverse his death. Agnes seems particularly surprised by the idea of Wanda having that ability despite having seen other displays of her power and watching the twins age up rapidly twice. Wanda tells the twins that they can’t reverse death as there are still rules to things, which almost seems hypocritical considering her circumstances. Is she trying to say that she hasn’t revived Vision? Or is she simply trying to keep her boys from expecting too much from her?

Later that night, Vision reveals that he unearthed Norm’s repressed memories and demands to know what’s going on. He tells Wanda that she can’t control him, which she cooly responds asking him, “Can’t I?” Although the credits start rolling, their argument continues as Vision unleashes his frustration with not knowing his past and his confusion over their circumstances. Wanda tells him that she doesn’t control everything, saying, “I don’t even know how all of this started.” Vision believes it began subconsciously, but chastises Wanda for letting it get that far. Wanda reiterates that she isn’t controlling everything, which gives weight to the theory that there’s someone else behind the scenes. But who could it be if Wanda isn’t the “she” that Norm was referring to?

Mid-argument, the Vision family doorbell rings, which Wanda states she didn’t do. I’m inclined to believe her because when she opens the door, she is genuinely shocked speechless. At the door is her “brother” Pietro, now sporting the face of Evan Peters. Darcy asks the question we were all thinking as the episode closes, “She recast Pietro!?”

  WandaVision Episode 4 Easter Eggs

This episode opens with the heartbreaking reveal that Monica Rambeau was one of the people lost to the Snapture from Infinity War. She returns from Endgame’s Reverse-Snap in a hospital where she had been awaiting news after her mother Maria’s surgery.

As Monica is waking up, we hear familiar voices echoing in her head. It’s Captain Marvel calling her by her childhood nickname, Lieutenant Trouble.

As Monica weaves through the chaos of people reappearing in the hospital post-Reverse-Snap, she finally locates someone who recognizes her. Although Maria survived the surgery five years ago, she died from cancer three years ago in real time, having not been blipped with her daughter.

We finally have some information on S.W.O.R.D.! The acronym stands for Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division, rather than the meaning in Marvel comics, which is Sentient World. It sounds a little more ominous, right?

Maria’s badass legacy continues well past her friendship with Captain Marvel; according to S.WO.R.D.’s acting director, Tyler Hayward, Maria helped build the agency during its inception. She was the acting director until her death.

Tim gives Monica a mission to help out the FBI in the town of WestView, NJ, where something super freaky is going on with a missing person’s case. This confirms that WestView is, indeed, a very real place.

Welcome back, Jimmy Woo! Monica’s FBI contact is none other than Scott Lang’s parole officer and semifriend, Agent Jimmy Woo.

Jimmy reveals that a person in witness protection has somehow dropped off the map in a town that no longer seems to exist where no one recalls anyone who lived there. In an attempt to figure out what’s going on, Monica sends in a S.W.O.R.D. drone that vanishes inside the forcefield. It’s revealed to have transformed into the retro-style helicopter that Wanda picks up in episode two! We can only assume that since it’s an item from the outside world, it gained color when it entered Wanda’s reality to show that it doesn’t belong.

Darcy Lewis is back! Now a doctor in astrophysics, Darcy is called to help figure out what’s gone wrong with WestView. She’s the one who figured out a signal for the broadcast and is the owner of the hand we saw watching Wanda and Vision in episode one.

The mysterious beekeeper from episode two is revealed to be S.W.O.R.D.’s Agent Franklin, who journeyed through Westview’s sewers to investigate. His hazmat suit became a beekeeper��s uniform, and the cable around his waist becomes a jump rope as he travels through the tunnels.

Darcy explains that the sitcom that’s become Wanda and Vision’s life is literally being broadcast through the signals that S.W.O.R.D.’s viewing, with an audience and everything. There’s no explanation for how this is happening, but Darcy and company watched those first three episodes just like we did, credits and all.

Darcy also points out that Vision is supposed to be dead-dead, which leaves his presence in WestView still unexplained.

While Darcy and Jimmy can identity a majority of the neighbors we’ve met in WestView to their real-life counterparts, Dottie and Agnes are the only ones who are missing real information.

It’s revealed that Agent Woo was the voice behind the radio disruption, just as we suspected! But while we can see Wanda and Dottie’s reaction to the call, Darcy’s broadcast didn’t show the same thing. She explains that someone is “censoring” the visuals they’re receiving, which means someone knows they’re watching.

Back in the sitcom WestView, we see that Monica’s slip-up resulted in Wanda blasting her through the house and the energy field. It’s the first time we physically see Wanda using her powers again, so she still has them. But the lapse in her facade has consequences — when Vision returns from his talk with Agnes and Herb outside, Wanda hallucinates him as she last saw him in Infinity War, a corpse with his head crushed in.

It’s important to note that Vision seems to become more aware of the strangeness of their world with each episode. It makes sense because no matter how human he may seem, he’s still a synthezoid who has always been able to see beyond the superficial. It harks back to his “birth” in Age of Ultron. He’s omnipotent and always learning.

When Monica lands back in the real world, all she says is, “It’s all Wanda.” That seemingly serves as an answer to what’s going on in WestView, but it’s not a whole answer. Wanda seems just as confused and unaware as everyone else, but she is willing to stay in her “perfect” world. The question is, who put Wanda in the position to have her perfect world?

  WandaVision Episode 3 Easter Eggs

Much like the comics, Wanda magically becomes pregnant! But this time around, things are progressing much more quickly, and her doctor isn’t Dr. Strange.

The first of the episode’s weird glitches happens with Wanda and Vision’s neighbor Herb, who is attempting to saw through the brick fence separating the two houses instead of trimming his hedges. When Vision points out that his aim has gone a bit askew, Herb’s detached reaction is a bit creepy. He thanks Vision but keeps sawing through the wall! And unlike the previous weird behavior, there’s nothing that triggers the moment, especially not from Vision or Wanda.

Wanda and Vision contemplate what to name their baby boy, with Vision suggesting Billy and Wanda throwing out Tommy. (The argument becomes moot when they have twins!) These are the names of the pair’s sons in the comic, who later become members of the Young Avengers. In the show, Wanda chooses her name because it’s “all-American,” which is also a fair indicator of why her perfect reality is framed around sitcoms. Vision cites William Shakespeare as his inspiration and uses a quote from As You Like It that seems pretty on the nose. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” seems like a pointed reference to the fact that WandaVision is, in fact, all a show.

Wanda decorates the nursery using Simser brand paint, which is most likely a nod to Jeremy Simser, a storyboard artist for Marvel Studios and WandaVision.

The second glitch appears when Wanda says the residents of WestView always seem “on the verge of discovering our secret.” Vision has a moment of sobering clarity where he notes that something is wrong in WestView, citing the incidents with Mr. and Mrs. Hart and their neighbor Herb. A second after his says this, reality glitches and the scene starts over with Vision seemingly worry-free. The last time this happened with the beekeeper, it was clear Wanda was the culprit in turning back time, but in this case, she doesn’t seem to do anything to force the change. This suggests someone else is pulling the strings.

Wanda mentions that their child could be human or “synthezoid,” a term that originates in the comics. Although fans like to joke that Vision is an android, he’s technically a synthetic human. He’s not made of metal or machinery — in the comics, his body is composed of the bioengineering tech of Dr. Helen Cho, while in the MCU, he’s made of organic tissue mixed with vibranium and “powered” by the Mind Stone.

Vision jokes that Billy will be just like his mom, which is funny because, in the comics, Billy has magical abilities similar to Wanda’s powers. Tommy ends up having superspeed abilities like his uncle, Pietro.

It’s time for the third commercial! Much like the previous episode’s watch promotion, this break references Hydra — though a tad more directly. It’s all about Hydra Soak, and the message is decidedly more pointed than we’ve had before. “Escape to a world all your own, where your problems float away,” the announcer says. “When you want to get away, but you don’t want to go anywhere: Hydra Soak.” Marvel: Agents of Shield fans will recall that Hydra Soak HAS been mentioned on the show. During the series’s Framework arc, Phil Coulson claims that Hydra is brainwashing people using soap, so he makes his own. Is the commercial another sign that Hydra is behind the mystery of WestView? Is it a warning that no one in the town will be able to get away? And what’s that about finding the goddess within?

The actors in this ad are the same ones as the previous ones, Victoria Blade and Ithamar Enriquez. Their recurring presence might mean they have some significance in Wanda’s life. Maybe they’re her parents?

In what feels like an ominous follow-up to the Hydra Soak commercial, the doctor reveals that he and his wife won’t be taking their trip away after all. “Small towns, you know, so hard to escape,” he mutters, pointedly. I think we’re starting to get the hint, folks! Wanda mentions she is a twin and that her brother was named Pietro. It’s been a hot minute since anyone has talked about MCU’s Quicksilver — he made his debut back in Age of Ultron, the same film in which he was shot and killed.

When Geraldine lets it slip that she knows about Pietro’s death at the hands of Ultron, Wanda interrogates her and discovers her necklace bears a familiar symbol — it’s that damn S.W.O.R.D. logo, and Wanda is apparently not a fan.

In another sign that something is UP, Agnes and Herb seem to warn Vision about Geraldine. They note that she’s “brand new” to town with no family and start to say that “she came here because we’re all —” before they’re cut off. It’s worth noting that the two figures that may be MCU versions of formidable Marvel characters are the ones who seem to understand that strange things are going on in WestView. If Agnes and Herb are the MCU’s Agatha Harkness and High Evolutionary, they would definitely be the ones in the know. But why would they try to warn Vision about Geraldine if WestView is a trap?

Agnes is wearing her infamous brooch as a necklace that could be referencing an MCU supervillain mentioned before. The necklace has three figures close together, with the center figure holding what looks like a giant scythe. Is it another clue that the Grim Reaper is on his way?

Wanda literally throws Geraldine out of town — though she tells Vision that she had to run home — and Geraldine passes through what seems like a magical forcefield. While fans have been assuming WestView is a fake town, this shows us that physically, it’s a very real place. But it’s currently bubbled off with a barrier that Wanda can apparently allow people in and out of. And the song that plays as Geraldine finds herself outside the barrier? “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees. It seems pretty appropriate for a situation that feels like a surreal dream.

When Geraldine lands on the outskirts of real WestView, she’s instantly swarmed by cars and agents all bearing the S.W.O.R.D. logo. Since we know Teyonah Parris is playing the adult Monica Rambeau, it’s safe to assume Geraldine was an alias she used to go undercover in WestView. Combined with the mystery agent watching the show within the show from episode one, we can conclude that Wanda and Vision are being closely observed by S.W.O.R.D. for some reason. But they clearly aren’t the ones in control, since Monica is so easily forced out. What will they do next?

While the opening credits of this episode are a reference to The Brady Bunch, it’s the end credits that give us another clue about the big bad coming our way. Just like the previous episodes, Wanda and Vision are framed in a hexagon as the end credits roll. The symbol is so important because it’s the preferred shape of the creators at Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM, who are last seen in Iron Man 3. Remember the beekeeper suits that resemble AIM agents’ clothing? It seems like the evil organization might be making a comeback.

  WandaVision Episode 2 Easter Eggs

The opening credits for this episode aren’t just an adorable homage to Bewitched but a whole bevy of Marvel Easter eggs! The illustration of the moon happens to be surrounded by six stars, and we can’t help but be reminded of the Infinity Gauntlet.

When Vision phases through the floor, there’s a dark shape that looks exactly like the helmet worn by Marvel supervillain Grim Reaper hidden in the space. In the comics, he’s the brother of Wonder Man, whose brainwaves were used in Vision’s creation.

When Wanda goes to the supermarket in the opening, three references hang above the aisle! Bova Milk refers to Bova, the humanoid cow who raised Wanda and Pietro on Mount Wundagore. Auntie A’s kitty litter is a witchy reference to Auntie Agatha or Agatha Harkness, whom we’ve discussed before, and her cat-like familiar named Ebony. And Wonder Mints is most definitely a cheeky reference to Wonder Man, aka Simon Williams, the superhero who Vision’s brainwaves are based on in the comics!

When animated Wanda and Vision settle on their couch, the small figure on their side table is a statue of the Whizzer. Featured in 1982’s Vision and the Scarlet Witch, the Whizzer thought he was Wanda’s father but later discovers he was wrong. Whizzer and his wife were offered the chance to adopt Wanda and Pietro when they were kids on the mythical Mount Wundagore, but they declined.

When Wanda hears a crash outside the house, she heads out to the front, where she finds a colorful toy helicopter in an otherwise black-and-white world. Not only does the red-and-yellow helicopter have the number 57 stamped on it, but it also bears the S.W.O.R.D symbol! The number is likely in reference to Vision’s first appearance in Avengers #57, while the symbol hints to the presence of S.W.O.R.D outside Wanda’s perfect world.

The creepy, cult-like refrain spoken by the fundraiser organizers of it all being “for the children” seems to be a reference to Wanda’s involvement in the comic event The Children’s Crusade. The story follows her son, Billy, who’s trying to gain control over his reality-warping abilities by looking for a missing Wanda.

Well, here’s another blast from the angsty past! The Strücker timepiece is a very obvious callback to Hydra and Baron von Strücker. The watch bears the unmistakable octopus skull symbol of Hydra, and Strücker is the Hydra leader who recruited Pietro and Wanda for the experimentation that gave them powers. He was later killed by Ultron in his prison cell. Does anyone else hear that ticking noise? Remember good ol’ Herb? In the comics, a character named Herbert is also the High Evolutionary who runs Mount Wundagore, the very same safe haven where Bova delivered the Maximoff twins. Time will tell if the super-scientist is the same character, but it can’t be a coincidence.

Wanda and Vision’s magic show has two gems that we’ve noticed! First thing, the literal Mind Stone happens to be the design on the doors of the Cabinet of Mystery that plays a huge part in their act. Second, Wanda and Vision use the names Illusion and Glamour for their actor, which are also the names of the magicians that Vision goes to see in an issue of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Though we all enjoy a good jam, The Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” gets interrupted by someone asking, “Who’s doing this to you, Wanda?” And doesn’t that voice sound an awful lot like Randall Park’s Jimmy Woo?

While it may seem weird that Wanda shows her pregnancy in an instant, it’s in line with what goes on in the comics. Wanda uses magic to help her have children, which checks out since her husband is a synthezoid.

Oooh, that mysterious beekeeper! Not only does their presence lead to the reveal that Wanda has some control over the reality they’re in, but it also sets off some alarm bells. Even though the beekeeper’s suit bears the S.W.O.R.D logo on the back, the costume is reminiscent of the yellow costumes worn by A.I.M., a military science organization founded by Baron von Strücker. Could this be a sign that Wanda is being watched by more than one organization? And is this a hint that Hydra is back!? (Obviously, it is.)

  WandaVision Episode 1 Easter Eggs

When Wanda accidentally smashes a plate into Vision’s head, he jokes about his wife and her “flying saucers,” and she comments back about his “indestructible head.” Considering that Vision died after having the Mind Stone ripped from his head, it’s a dark joke to kick off the series.

Vision’s work tie has a visual reference to his comic-book alter ego! In Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Vision, whenever the character dresses as a human, he wears a tie clip that emulates the diamond pattern on his chest.

Vision’s boss, Mr. Hart, is likely named after comic creator Steve Englehart, who created 1985’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch with Richard Howell, a miniseries that heavily influenced WandaVision. It’s been heavily implied that Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes is the MCU’s Agatha Harkness, a witch who helped train Wanda’s magic back in the ’70s and ’80s.

When Wanda magically saves dinner, the bottle of wine she pours from is Maison du Mépris, which translates to house of contempt or scorn. As fans have pointed out since the trailer drop, this seems like a reference to the House of M comics storyline in which Wanda bends reality into a new world ruled by her family.

The Stark commercial break refers to two things: Avengers icon Tony Stark and his part in Wanda’s dark past. As Wanda and her twin brother, Pietro, explain in Avengers: Age of Ultron, their parents were killed by an explosive Stark Industries device, leaving the twins trapped under rubble. The Maximoffs were trapped by a Stark Industries shell for two days, expecting it to detonate before they get rescued. Even though Wanda eventually fights beside Tony in the future, there’s still some trauma from that experience and her brother’s death. If it weren’t for the Starks, Wanda could have been a completely different person.

The episode closes with a mysterious observer watching the “show” and taking notes on a pad with the logo of S.W.O.R.D. on the cover. For those who don’t know, S.W.O.R.D stands for Sentient World Observation and Response Department and is a subdivision of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a counterterrorism and intelligence agency that deals with extraterrestrial threats to world security. Expect to see them around more.

  Press: A Thorough Breakdown of All the Marvel Easter Eggs on WandaVision was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

It’s always fun jumping into a movie I know next to nothing about, and this requested review for Wes will be no exception. All I know is that Girls Just Want to Have Fun is an 80s teen romp with the worst photoshopped cover photo I’ve ever seen. It looks like Michael Scott put it together. I know it stars girls, AND I know what those girls want. That’s half your narrative battle right there. So do they achieve the fun they seek? Well...

They do! A lot of weird shit happens along the way, but yeah, fun is had and that’s all that really matters. God, 1985 was a simpler time. I mean, I know everyone was living in constant fear that the Russians were going to invade Kansas and we’d be faced with a neverending nuclear winter, but in the face of all that existential terror you also get movies where the entire pitch is “So there’s this girl (Sarah Jessica Parker) who wants to be a dancer on tv, but her parents don’t want to let her. But she does it anyway! And her partner is chosen for her and, boy, they do not see eye to eye. But then they do! And they have to practice a lot. And then they win the dance contest!” 

You know some studio exec heard that and screamed at his secretary to hold his calls for the day so he could sign the contracts and then do a mountain of blow off them. 

Some thoughts:

It’s so weird to see Sarah Jessica Parker without curly hair! I was never a Sex and the City fan, so my exposure to SJP is purely Hocus Pocus based.

This dance sequence over the credits is incredible. Why do we not have shows anymore that are just a large group of young attractive people dancing in sync? No host, no dialogue, just the power of dance. I was born in the wrong decade. I would have appreciated the shit out of the 80s when I was alive.

Poor Helen Hunt - she must be one of those people who always looked like she was 35, even in high school. Granted, she was 22 when this was filmed and she’s playing a teenager, but still. 

Helen Hunt is wearing dinosaurs in her hair. 80s fashion was on a wavelength that I don’t think any of us living will ever see again.

Omg this rich bitch (Natalie, I guess? She’s not named for at least the first 30 min of the movie) had Claire’s closet from Clueless 10 years before the movie existed! This is already groundbreaking.

NOW SHE HAS A BUG ON HER HAT. A big plastic green grasshopper. This review is mainly going to be about the insane things Lynne (Helen Hunt) wears.

Speaking of - I’m getting big lesbian vibes from Lynne Stone and I am so here for it. The homoerotic tension when she acts like she’s gonna fight the rich bitch? Delicious. The immediate intimate connection she makes with SJP? Practically U-Hauling. 

I love an 80s dance montage, and this movie promises to contain basically nothing but that tied loosely together with some nonsensical dialogue in between. This is gonna be my new favorite movie. 

Ooh Nestle Quik syrup! I forgot about Nestle Quik. 

Favorite line: “There is a time and a place for calypso music, young lady.”

Ohhh I see what this is gonna be - Janey (SJP) is a classically trained dancer and gymnast, and Jeff (Lee Montgomery) is more of a rough and tumble music video kinda guy from the streets. You can tell cause he’s got a motorcycle and a leather jacket. And he wears cutoff sleeves! He’s a white guy in Chicago, who could be more street than that? And they’re butting heads! How will they ever be able to make it work for the big dance contest??

How did Natalie know Janey’s phone number? She specifically said it was unlisted. Unless she remembers it from overhearing it offhand after the dance tryouts...? That’s insane, I can’t even remember what I wore yesterday let alone a 7-digit number someone shouted in a crowd.

Lynne Fashion Alert: Is she wearing a belt made out of bullets? And a Davy Crocket hat. This is galaxy brain lesbian fashion. If the costume designer for this movie didn’t win 10 Oscars...

The music director on the other hand...not sure what is up with all these weird KidzBop covers of excellent songs like “Dancing in the Street” or the titular “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” but if you’re gonna include them, you gotta spring for the originals. This is just sad. 

I’ve never been at a party with an ice sculpture. I think that’s how you know you’re among the rich. 

Whatever happened to Jonathan Silverman? I miss when he was the nebbishy sidekick in every 80s movie. 

Who enters a party by catapulting through the damn window?? Punk does not mean that you no longer know how to use doors, sir! 

Who serves a full roasted turkey at a party? Is this how rich people live? This feels like the equivalent of using Google translate to identify rich people food in another language, then translating it back to English. 

Lynne Fashion Alert: Now I think she has space shuttles in her hair.

Wow we got a real 1-2 punch of sexual harassment in this club. Who wrote this Tune in Tokyo gag and was like “You know what would be hilarious? If this shitty little nerd convinced this girl to raise her arms so he can just grab her boobs full on, front and center. And then she gets upset and runs away. God I’m good at this *snorts another line*”

Lynne Fashion Alert: Now it’s two globes (like, two Earths) with crab claws on them? This is a choice that I don’t understand, but I think I may just not be seeing what it is clearly. I am digging her mirror sunglasses though. 

I know Janey is smart but when did she learn how to hotwire a security system? It’s not like Google or Youtube existed, and I doubt there was a library book about how to dismantle that specific system. MYTH BUSTED.

Oh god oh no I’m so gay for these Dixon sisters from Kansas City, these two gorgeous black women in tuxes and spandex leotards. They 100% should have won this dance contest. 

Why did guys stop wearing crop tops? Can we bring back slutty quarterback as a fashion trend for dudes? Seriously, the costume design here is everything. 

I really love Jeff and his little family - his sister and his dad are so proud of him and supportive. You never see that in dance narratives featuring guys. I like the reversal here of gendered expectations.

Did I Cry? No, but my heart was warmed at various moments. 

Honestly, why can’t more narrative arcs in movies be solved via dance battle? 

Lynne Fashion Alert: She’s now dressed as...Cleopatra? Wait why the fuck is there a horse here? 

Oh that’s it that’s the end! Man, you can’t be mad at a tight 90 min film like this - it gets in, it gets out, bing bang boom you’re done with enough time to read before bed. 

Is this a cinematic masterpiece? No. But is it good clean fun? Absolutely. Barring the brief [obligatory 80s] sexual harassment scene, there’s very little to be upset with here. Kids wanna dance, they’re told they can’t dance, they dance anyway! It’s the power of dance! You’re either into it or you’re not, but if you’re not, I ask that you search your heart and try to find one teeny tiny sliver of joy inside it. You’re gonna need to feed that joy if you wanna make it through 2021, and watching this movie is a darn good place to start. 

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[whileiamdying]

‘Air Conditioner’ (‘Ar condicionado’): Film Review | Rotterdam 2020

The debut fictional feature by Angolan director/co-writer Fradique, 'Air Conditioner,' world-premiered at the Rotterdam film festival, with The Hollywood Reporter’s review calling it “very chill.”

BY NEIL YOUNG JANUARY 26, 2020 8:30AM

A breezily off-beat affair from the West African coastal nation of Angola, Air Conditioner (Ar condicionado) should beguile and captivate those able to adapt to its idiosyncratic rhythms and humor. A highly accomplished and promising first full-length fictional outing for U.S.-trained mono-monikered multi-hyphenate “Fradique” (a.k.a. Mario Bastos), this magical realist tale set and shot in bustling capital Luanda is buoyed by a quite outstanding original jazz-inflected soundtrack by Aline Frazao, whose renown already stretches beyond her continent’s shores.

Frazao’s contributions will help open festival doors for this confidently handled picture following its world premiere at Rotterdam, where it arguably wouldn’t have looked out of place in the main-slate Tiger Competition. Fradique’s gently freewheeling slice of science-fiction-inflected urban strangeness instead bowed — somewhat surprisingly, given its quality and charm — in a non-competitive section of the event.

The wacky premise of the screenplay, co-written with cinematographer Ery Claver (also making a promising feature debut), is that many of the air-conditioning units, which help cool buildings across tropical Angola, have simultaneously developed a severe fault: they abruptly come loose from their wall fittings and plummet to the ground. Numerous injuries and even fatalities have resulted, as we hear in a radio news broadcast in the opening moments of the film proper. This follows a confident and striking titles sequence displaying photographer Cafuxi’s atmospheric monochrome images of the Atlantic-facing metropolis, home to some eight million people.

Over the course of the next hour or so — the end-credits roll at the 68-minute mark — we’re guided around the city’s vibrant, neighborly downtown. Claver’s widescreen steadicam images follow lanky, easygoing security guard Matacedo (Jose Kiteculo) on his odyssey to pick up a malfunctioning air-con unit from a notorious repair shop. At several junctures his path crosses that of maid Zezinha (Filomena Manuel), whose foul-tempered employer is the owner of the faulty appliance — their lengthy conversations make up the bulk of the picture’s relatively sparse spoken dialogue.

Matecedo is also able to communicate with certain folk using telepathic methods, their chat related only by subtitles. One of several Lynchian touches here (as when Matecedo is gnomically informed “the thing you’re looking for, you’ll find it in a TV set”), it’s also a rather nifty and economical way of smoothing out performance-levels among inexperienced and non-pro actors. These characters’ supernatural talents are presented in an utterly matter-of-fact manner, in a film that is solidly grounded in quotidian detail.

With a background that includes music videos, shorts and documentaries, Fradique (who studied film in New York and San Francisco) takes a deadpan, nonchalant stance towards material that could easily have been presented in more elaborate, sensational ways. Whatever “special effects” the film boasts, for example, are unapologetically and appealingly lo-fi.

This approach yields cumulative dividends, including a particularly delightful sequence at the much-discussed repair shop run by the enigmatic, mad-scientist-like Mr. Mino (David Caracol.) It’s Mino who apparently reveals the secret of the hazardous air-conditioners, which turns out to be simultaneously absurd and profound. The answer to the riddle touches obliquely on ecological considerations as well as Angola’s complex past as a Portuguese colony and its recent bloodshed during the 1972-2002 civil war, subject of Fradique’s 2015 documentary Independencia. “This is the land of grieving folk,” intones rapper Tito Spyk, “inheritance of the exploited.”

Matecedo’s status as a war veteran is mentioned on several occasions, with implications that he may be suffering from a form of PTSD. In any case, he’s an engagingly laid-back protagonist, guiding us through Fradique and Claver’s gently surreal labyrinth. Their construction has the logic and pace of a dream, vividly realized as an evocation of crumbling inner-city scruffiness punctuated with lyrical, poetic grace notes and interludes of heightened visual and aural intensity. Crucial to its impact is Frazao’s intelligently interpolated, percussive soundtrack, which augments jazz traditions by deploying relatively unfamiliar instruments such as the fliscorn, dikanza and kissanje. Air Conditioner is Frazao’s first score for a movie. It will not be her last.

Production company: Geracao 80 Cast: Jose Kiteculo, Filomena Manuel, David Caracol, Sacerdote, Tito Spyck, Filipe Pali Director: Fradique Screenwriters: Ery Claver, Fradique Producer: Jorge Cohen Cinematographer: Ery Claver Production designer: Prudenciana Hach Editor: Zeno Monyak Composer: Aline Frazao Casting directors: Ely Claver, Fraqique, Prudenciana Hach Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Bright Future) Sales: Geracao 80, Luanda, Angola (info@geracao-80.com) In Angolan Portuguese No rating, 73 minutes

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