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"Bernard in accounting" (who got the Puffin-1 call sign) has been mentioned twice now! The first time was the season 1 finale, in the Winter Soldier homage where Natasha talks about setting Peggy Carter up with Bernard.

There's something absolutely bonkers about Stark building in red lights into his Iron Man bots to show when they've turned evil. Like, the very fact that he installed them indicates he knows there's a chance they might turn evil. He could have spent that energy on building some anti-evil protocols into the droids instead. However, it is totally on brand for Justin Hammer to activate the red eyes because he knows he's being a dick. TBH I've never seen Die Hard. But I think I've picked up the gist from sheer cultural diffusion, and I was tickled to hear Darcy list how the situation was just like all the movies inspired by Die Hard. How does one even obtain Hulk blood? Isn't he nigh invulnerable? "Hulk Hogan" - ahahahaha! I'm also pleased by WERNER, played by Ross Marquand, who went viral years ago for doing a ton of very funny impressions. Apparently he's actually been in What If season 1. Darcy is adorable. There wasn't a post-credits scene in this, but Kat Dennings as Darcy did get to sing her full verse. I wonder if it was improvised. It's great either way. I wasn't paying attention to the background during the call to Clint and Bruce, but the credits sequence made me realize the Iron Man toys were sold out and Hawkeye toys were on 25% discount and still no one was buying em.

lol at the pretty unnecessary exposition explaining how Cap's shield isn't made of stolen vibranium. That quadjet (?) had more than enough room inside for front-facing seats. Lemme tell you as a bus rider, side-facing seats aren't great even for the kinds of acceleration and deceleration a public bus has. This goes back to the Avengers movie, but I've never been clear on how that glass circular cell is able to hold a Thor, much less a Celestial. ROFL at Marvel engineering their own sorta "save Martha" moment in What If. I'm no military tactician, but it seems bad to put tanks behind the superheroes, and who'll have to fire through em. One big (no pun intended) problem with Goliath's powers is it makes him a much bigger target or vulnerable to friendly fire. C'mon, there's no way an ant flies faster than Celestial energy tentacles. The 1980s version of the Avengers is pretty good but as far as victory meals go, I'm sad shawarma was harder to come by back then.

I was alternately charmed and put off by the cheesy neo-noir dialogue. The cyberpunk/Blade Runner aesthetics were superb, though. Why did Nebula even need Yon-Rogg to hack the door to the mainframe? She's a cyborg with incredible hacking abilities herself, as seen both in GOTG3 and this episode right here. ... and then she got double-crossed by the Kree guy she busted out of jail in order to foil the big bad Ronan, who's... also a Kree guy. Oh, her boss Nova Prime was in on it the whole time. Well, I guess that kinda works. This is still a heck of a convoluted plan for Nova Prime to have enlisted Yon-Rogg's help ahead of time without even setting it up for Nebula to know she would need Yon-Rogg. Gotta say, as someone who enjoys the MCU but forgets vast swaths of it very quickly, I'm always thrown by the MCU Nova Corps not having super powers, unlike the comics. And as with S1, I remain impressed that Marvel Studios convinced so many of the live action actors to reprise their roles for this.

THR suggests actors might be wary of taking a role where the previous guy was so publicly fired, but I think a lot of actors would make any sacrifice to get a multiple blockbuster movie contract. Anyways, THR also says Marvel could also pivot altogether to some other big bad, noting that "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" has already been internally renamed to "Avengers 5". Story-wise, Marvel isn't in a bad place. (spoilers for Quantumania and Loki s2)

Inside The Episode

Well, that was fun. Man, Marder and Harmon weren't kidding when they said episode writer Heather Anne Campbell has enough darkness for everybody. I guess the Hole had to build up something to get to the deep underlying fear of relying on Rick? I don't know, this episode faked me out so many times I don't really know what's what. I am 10000% convinced if the Hole was real that I would not jump in. The guy in the suit didn't come right out and say it, but the way he phrased things, it didn't sound like everyone who went in got out.

new trailer: "Rampage"

Now this was fun. My only quibble is that Rick already made a microverse a few seasons ago only to harvest the tiniest sliver of energy (the Microverse aliens of one planet stomping on Goobleboxes to generate electricity). If instead he had harvested the energy of the suns in the miniature universe, well, it wouldn't be infinite, but probably close enough for most purposes. OK, that aside, solid work. You'd think Rick could have figured out a way to hitch a ride to Jerry's afterlife instead, but I think Rick craves conflict so he picked the Valhalla option. I did really enjoy the whole Bigfoot story, from Morty stupidly opening the door and getting killed almost instantly, to Bigfoot's eventual truce with Rick. Shame Rick didn't put Bigfoot back into a body more like his original body.

I only watched about half of this, because I kept dozing off. Last week's was "gloriously stupid" but this one was a dud.

I was so in when I thought it was a movie. As a TV show, I’m actually slightly less enthused about it, but it still seems like a lot of fun,

It's loosely based on the 2005 Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie: suburban couple are secretly glamourous spies. But the current description of the show sounds like it diverges significantly from the movie: whereas in the movie (spoilers for the movie, I guess?) It's probably fine; the movie premise might not have sustained an ongoing show.

Yes in one sense it's recent, but in another sense Superman died 30 years ago.

Peter Parker, Superman, Barry Allen, Jean Grey, 99% of all mutants several times, most of the core X-men when Hickman introduced the reincarnation protocols to stop death being a plot point in X-comics, Matt Murdock, Kamala Khan (she got better in just two months!), Bruce Wayne ... this trope is so common TV Tropes doesn't just have a sub-page for comic books, but a sub-sub page for the DCU and another two for Marvel (616 and the Ultimate universe) Yeah, that's fair.

re: Earth-42 Miles -- possible spoilers for the upcoming third movie, just passing along what the filmmakers have said: also, check out this non-canon animation test for an action sequence involving Miles-42 that one of the directors tweeted out.

LMAO. The piece started off bad by not getting the fun and heart of EEAAO, but this is where I knew the author’s takes are awful. “What if Superman is bad” is one of the core conceits of The Boys, and Invincible, and Brightburn, and also quite a lot of joyless comics too preoccupied with being shocking to be good. Let Superman be good. (Which I gather is James Gunn’s approach, but I digress) Comics have been doing multiverses for decades. DC started their crossovers between Earth 1 and Earth 2 with their first “Crisis” storyline years before going all-out with “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, which reset their multiverse into a single universe, and then was gradually, then suddenly undone over the years because subsequent writers and editors simply couldn’t resist. And all of that was fine! What the audience cares about is the mainline version of the characters. Yes, theoretically there’s an infinite set of MCU-adjacent universes where May Parker didn’t die, but that didn’t cheapen her death in the movie. Also, comics characters rarely stay dead. Even most of the most permanent deaths have ended up not being permanent: DC’s Barry Allen and Jason Todd, Gwen Stacy… at this point Uncle Ben might be the only one not brought back to their mainline universe in the comics. Marvel’s What If? series did bring one character from one alt universe to another permanently, but that was semi-forgiveable since that version of the char was dead in the second universe and the first universe was a total wasteland with no one left to be abandoned by the character. Having already used that move, hopefully they won’t permanently undo the MCU deaths of major characters, but more importantly, the actors are aging out of those roles and probably can’t sign on for another ten years even if they wanted to.

The (possibly fake) episode titles for s2:

I liked it even though I generally don't like body horror stuff. "Gloriously stupid" is exactly right.

There was something earlier in the season that said there are "dampers" or something that prevented Loki and Sylvie from using magic inside the TVA. Presumably similar tech prevents time travel inside the TVA, which is why OB thought time slipping shouldn't be possible in there.

I don't think this interview with Dan Harmon and new (since season 5) showrunner Scott Marder was posted here yet: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/13/23951296/rick-and-morty-dan-harmon-scott-marder-interview-season-7

Blech. I sure hope not. Why didn't Rick just give Churry some new brought-to-life churro friends? It's not like they could reproduce.

I guess the benefit of casting Pascal is it leaves young Reed open for later in case they want to do the supervillain (comics spoilers)

I don’t think even most comics fans read every single Marvel comic every month. Hell, considering the longtime problem that too many of their heroes are concentrated in NYC, it’s been a longstanding issue that, for example, Daredevil should ask for the Avengers’ help, etc, and usually doesn’t. He doesn’t because it’s the Daredevil comic most of the time and the company’s output isn’t literally only company-wide crossovers all the time. The “it’s all connected but also not that connected” is just part of how the superhero universe genre works. =/

Marvel Comics has precedent for teen geniuses, from RiRi Williams to Shuri to Amadeus Cho. And in the Ultimate comics line that initially inspired the first phase of the MCU, Reed Richards was like barely out of high school or something. Definitely appallingly young. Also, it's another way to highlight that a character is super duper smart: big words coming out of a teen. But mainly as a practical matter, Marvel Studios usually wants someone who can and will play a role for a good long run, if they're a lynchpin character. They had Hiddleston for over a dozen years.

Daniel Destin Cretton to direct future Marvel projects, still working on Wonder Man and Shang-Chi 2... but will no longer direct Kang Dynasty: https://deadline.com/2023/11/marvel-destin-daniel-cretton-avengers-kang-dynasty-exits-1235612901/ Given the end of Loki s2 where I can see how Loki s2 was intended to lay the groundwork for Kang but ended up also allowing Marvel to pivot away from Kang entirely. Who knows, maybe the train is moving too fast to change tracks now, but a May 2026 premiere date seems juuuuuust far enough away that Marvel could pivot (recast Kang, switch to a different Big Bad altogether). Maybe Cretton really didn't have time, or maybe Marvel really is changing directions for this movie in a way he didn't want to continue with.