#not to say I don't appreciate Billy and Marty's

[hunkydorkling]

Right, so I was watching Billy and Marty's Planet Comicon Panel, yeah. Person comes to the mic and asks who Terry Silver will bring with him once he appears, and is it Mike Barnes?

And so Billy humorously (and Obviously) evades the answer with a cheeky and warm grin, and a very professional response...

... until Marty chimes in his.

So naturally, my thoughts enter a chain:

1. "Wait, what did he say?"

2. "Ah, ten commandments." *sees Billy laugh* "Oh it must be a Christian thing, right?? That's adorable. He's adorable. Totally not thinking about that one sliver of the fandom that's absolutely feral over his cross necklace."

3. Billy chuckling PRECIOUSSSS ~Christian~ man.

4. TEN COMMANDMENTS, BUT BIGGER.

5. Marty: "It's like Cobra Kai and Ben Hur together."

At this point, I was like, okay... surely picking up crumbs. In that quest for crumb-feeding, I did a little bit of digging around about Ben-Hur and found a couple of insights that might interest everyone's pants off. It's a little long-winded, but give it a go under the cut.

ABOUT THE MOVIE (poorly summarized)

Ben Hur is about a young Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur who meets his boyhood friend Messala, who is now a Roman tribune looking to take great over control over Jerusalem. They relive the old times, and through it, Messala offers Ben Hur the opportunity to help him colonize Jerusalem, to which Ben Hur declines. The growing tension ensues when Ben Hur was accused of killing someone, leading to his imprisonment along with his family. This happened during the time of Jesus, whom Ben Hur meets. Seems fitting for Marty's joke, isn't it?

HOWEVER

After some more digging, a few articles surfaced about that specific bath house reunion scene of Messala and Ben Hur.

Eager, I went ahead and pulled up any possible visual. Thank heck for Movie Clips, right.

Awwww maaaaan but anyway, some valuable parallels I've picked up are:

1. There is "rebellion in the wind" because Messala's thinking of taking over Jerusalem. That would be the rebellion of the MD and EF kids against the CK dojo. Cool.

2. Messala left Jerusalem to travel the world and eventually grew up in Rome. Sounds like a Terry thing to me and the whole entrepreneurial pursuit to become the #1 toxic garbage truck in the whole of USA before Kreese came back to him.

3. "It was fate that chose us to civilize the world" UH-HUH... well, you know what I mean.

4. Regarding the fate situation, Messala seemed to be so passionate about reconnecting. Given that it must've been only 10-15+ years since Terry and Kreese met up again after the war, but another 15 could've easily given them more wiggle room to tell all the goss. The enthusiasm won't wane, I bet.

5. Messala talks so highly about Ben Hur. Terry to Kreese, too. Seems a little too overwhelming for some come to think of it.

6. There's a way to Messala's convincing technique that plants its way to Ben Hur's conscience. Had Ben Hur taken it, it would have added way more work to his probable damage control. But Kreese isn't like that. They both share bloodlust. There's something bound to go wrong in which Kreese would take damage control to his own hands without/because of Terry Silver. Maybe.

And while we're on the spectrum of damage control, here's a scene where Messala condemns Ben Hur after he's been maliciously accused of killing someone. He finds his way out of the prison he was in and comes after Messala:

Lots of things run through my mind, but ultimately the question I ended up picking is: what if there was something personal that factored in for Kreese into this karate war, like his family? (If any. Pretty sure Kreese made it clear that he's got no one else on his side.)

And Terry Silver being the Sugar Daddy to this Sugar Baby ends up retracting his Love Bomb and takes everything back after finding out the clusterfuck of things Cobra Kai has gone through? It's definitely his messy business now.

Would Kreese eventually (albeit slowly and painfully) turn a new leaf and side with the two karate dads AGAINST Terry Silver this time?

And I still don't know what agenda Marty had when he mentioned the two titles together, but it's your fault, you old man! Now I won't be able to stop thinking about it. I haven't even started on the Raiders of the Lost Ark x Ghostbusters parallel Billy made because whatever!

But since we're at the topic of slipping in gay context into aged media, here are some notable paragraphs from this article that's well worth the read:

So yeah. It's another day of twisting actor comments into yet another insinuation that makes me extra excited for Season 4.