Marvel Cinematic Universe

I only watched the first episode of Falcon and Winter Soldier yesterday. I haven’t seen all the material available, I admit. Then again, that shouldn’t really be necessary, or at least it should have been in the same medium rather than a TV series that shouldn’t be mandatory watching.

Just something that popped into my head, but it could have been something like a “Damage Control” movie about the cleanup crew that was introduced in “Homecoming” and also showed up in “No Way Home” who have to clean up the battle sites.

I disagree with this. If you want to follow the MCU, then you have to follow all of it, both the movies and the TV series. Both are inextricably intertwined. With Disney+ and the move towards more streaming, the distinction between the MCU movies and the MCU TV series is essentially nonexistent. They introduce characters in the TV shows that I have no doubt will eventually show up in the movies (Cate Bishop, US Agent, Agetha Harkness, etc).

The MCU isn’t like Star Wars where the expectation isn’t that if you watch the movies, you also read the novels, comics, play the games, etc. The expectation with the MCU is that you watch all of it, and it’s ALL connected/relevant.

I mean, perhaps, but that is also a new and different standard from what it used to be. The TV series set in the MCU like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil and Agent Carter were supplemental and had no real influence on the films. Seeing Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock show up for a scene in No Way Home was cool, but also was basically just fanservice and had no real influence on the story other than stating a plot point that a more generic lawyer character could have also delivered.

I guess though that this is one of the issues with such an integrated multi-media franchise, that an audience that doesn’t watch all the output or watches it out of order can get lost or confused. Also an issue raised several times in the video ryan linked above.

I think there’s a difference between the pre-Disney+ Marvel Shows and now.

Technically speaking, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t an MCU show anymore. It may have started out as one with its Winter Soldier tie-in, but as the show went on, it diverged from the MCU and is in a somewhat “gray” area now.

Additionally, up until Charlie Cox showed up in Spider-Man, none of the Netflix shows have been considered part of the MCU. Whether the Netflix shows are actually part of the MCU continuity, or whether Charlie Cox is just playing an MCU version of Daredevil, remains to be seen.

Inhumans, Runaways, Legion, The Gifted, Cloak and Dagger, and Helstrom are NOT part of the MCU.

Out of all the pre-Disney+ shows, Agent Carter has the strongest ties to the MCU, but even that show is essentially a prequel to the “modern day” MCU.

The Disney+ shows are fundamentally different from all the shows before them. They are tied directly into the MCU. They were designed from the very beginning to be an extension of the MCU. I don’t see how a viewer could enjoy any of the Disney+ shows, let alone understand what’s going on in them, without having watched the movies.

Again, the Disney+ shows are fundamentally different from any of the Marvel-related shows that came before them and were on other TV channels. The Disney+ TV shows are just as much a part of the MCU as the movies.

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Hey, I almost marked out seeing Cristo Fernández (Danny Rojas from Ted Lasso) as a bartender in the mid-credits scene.

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I think Kingpin showing up in Hawkeye carrying some of his TV show continuity with him suggests the latter, but it’s still not clear enough to say for sure yet.

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A bit late for the Nazi smasher but here ya go

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I gifted this to my oldest nephew for “Dia de Reyes” he loves it!

Not real, but boy howdy do I wish it was…

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an oldie but goodie :-p

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That was amazing. How have I never seen this?

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I just saw it for the first time today as well. It nails the Wes Anderson vibe perfectly.

This video basically made Patrick H Willems’s Channel successful on youtube.

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Trailer for the Ms. Marvel TV series has dropped.

They changed her powers, which I find somewhat unfortunate, but I can live with. The most important aspects (nerdy teenage girl from ethnic background trying to do good and find her place in the world) is in there.

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I am so in, that trailer is magic.

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I finally watched WandaVision and went to Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness today. I think both could be individually fine, but there is a major flaw here that I will talk about in the spoiler line below. I did like WandaVision. I think the gimmick of sitcoms through the ages is a lot of fun and also serves a narrative purpose later on, plus it is some marvelous production design that they captured the aesthetics of the shows they are referencing very well. However, I thought the gimmick individually takes a bit too long to unfold and the actual narrative part of the show should have started earlier. I also liked it a lot that they brought in a bunch of side characters from previous films.

MoM is a fun romp with a ton of fan-service and implications for theory-crafting. Unfortunately from a narrative perspective it falls flat on its face right at the very setup of the film. I do like that it introduces America Chavez. Unfortunately she kind of has very little to do in the film as an active participant and feels more like a macguffin in that regard.

spoilers ahead

The biggest problem is that MoM (great acronym btw) is built on top a faulty foundation, as setting up Wanda as the main villain of the movie completely cannibalizes everything she should have learned during WandaVision. So by the end of the movie she re-learns a lesson she should have absorbed as a direct consequence of WandaVision (that she needs to let go rather than bend the universe to her own desires and cause harm to others for her selfish wish) and of course dies a needless death because in the film she immediately went farther by killing a whole lot of people.

I also hate what they did with the Illuminati in the film. They introduce by proxy The Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Inhumans all at once, only for all of them to die almost immediately and like total chumps. Most of all Black Bolt who gets a large warning that his power will backfire and doesn’t take it.

They could have easily set up the movie for the Illuminati to be the villains and selfishly try to rectify a bad thing that happened in their universe (be it Thanos or an “incursion”), only for them to learn the same lesson as Wanda did in WandaVision. I guess the bigger problem there is that the MCU did get their wish for a reset and was allowed to undo the calamity of Thanos in that regard, at least for the most part, and so denying it to this other universe would be hypocritical.

I also hate that they refer to the MCU as universe “616”, but that is an extremely nerdy gripe.

I have a much different interpretation of the ending of WandaVision than you do:

Spoilers

The whole point of the ending of WandaVision is that Wanda didn’t learn any real lessons after what she did to Westview. She gives a halfhearted apology, but not even to the townspeople she basically enslaved, and there are no consequences for her at all.

The Wanda at the end of WandaVision had her fake sons taken away from her and she’s devastated by that. So what does she decide to do? Find another universe where her sons exist and steal them.

It makes perfect sense for the Wanda at the end of WandaVision to be the villain in MoM because she’s been the villain the entire time.

Also, you should read this article from Polygon:

Doctor Strange 2 fixes WandaVision’s biggest problem - Polygon

" The finale never seemed to take the horror of the situation seriously enough. There was no sign that Wanda — the sympathetic, grieving protagonist who weeps as she allows the magically generated re-creation of her lost love to dissolve in her arms — really understood or cared about what she put the denizens of Westview through by using them as living props. The shame and remorse normally expected from a hero who hurts people was never in evidence. Wanda makes one small apology to comparative bystander Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), but Monica lets her off the hook by saying the Westview citizens Wanda brutally kidnapped will never understand what she “sacrificed for them” by eventually allowing them to return to their real lives.

And Wanda’s resolution with secret series villain Agatha Harkness is particularly chilling. When she traps Agatha in a simpering, shallow false persona and leaves her to live out a terrible fake life in Westview, she’s taking a useful step toward solving one of the MCU’s biggest ongoing problems. But she’s also doing something straight-up villainous, and the fact that she’s doing it to a villain doesn’t make it land any better — at least until Multiverse of Madness makes it so much clearer how the end of WandaVision was meant to be read…

But Wanda revealing herself as the ultimate villain of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness makes the tone of her resolution with Agatha a lot clearer. She isn’t a sympathetic hero doing an inexplicably terrible, merciless thing. She’s a survivor who’s given into despair, and is now fully embracing how her horrifying new power level gives her complete and utter control over other people, including the ability to take her pain out on them."

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spoilers

To me the dialogue between her and Vision reads as her having come to terms with the fact that the life she built inside the hex is fake, and continuing this is a sham that hurts others. While she does not apologize to the town, I understood that as there being no apology possible, at least in the moment. She understood that she harmed others and has to improve and find a way to make it up later on because it isn’t something that can be just corrected with a simple sorry.

Her brainwashing Agatha is cruel in a way, but it isn’t outright murder while still containing Agatha’s own immense power she demonstrated to use in a cruel manner.

Her being the villain in MoM feels like a complete relapse for with no real explanation, and Dr. Strange blames it directly on the book corrupting her, rather than a failing of her character personally.