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Are soldiers never allowed to retire? Law enforcement people? Must Obama, say, remain forever in the political fray? And does retirement means you've "abandoned" those friends still in the fight? And with Steve, he was a member of the Avengers. His Avengers no longer exist. Do whom does he now owe loyalty? Bucky? Bucky is only his friend. Do people think, "I have this career opportunity of a lifetime" or "I really want to marry the woman I love and start a family" but "doing so means I would have to move away from my best friend, so no deal?"

Valkyrie as a lesbian wouldn't be much of a reveal -- it was strongly hinted at in Ragnorak, plus I wouldn't expect her to show up in another movie soon. Long shot possibility for Black Panther (2021)?

I've noticed that the MCU re-uses a limited menu of character templates. Nebula/Bucky Barnes : traumatized, given powers through torture; arc: must learn to trust Tony Stark/Doctor Strange : brilliant, arrogant, sarcastic, egotistical; arc: must learn humility and empathy Gamora/Carol Danvers/Valkerie/the Wasp : arrogant, sarcastic, trained in hand-to-hand combat, have an "I'm smarter and more capable than these guys" attitude (which, to be fair, they are); arc : learn to function as a leader, maybe?

Rumors are just the opposite -- that Sony is trying to get the Hardy Venom incorporated into the MCU, maybe as part of the Sinister Six in Spiderman #3, and that Marvel is so far resisting.

Thing to consider is that Holland's contract is with Marvel, not Sony. Would Sony really consider rebooting the franchise for a fourth time in 20 years? Plus, Sony gets all the profits from the movies. Seems like an easy choice.

If CM is to be, according to Fiege, the new face of the MCU (replacing Downey, I guess), there is a lot of work to be done. What are her characteristics? She doesn't give up, she perseveres -- just like every other hero, in and out of the MCU. And I think that's just about the extent of her personality.

My understanding is that the Spiderman rights issue is a little more complicated than that. It is Amy Pascal, Spider-Man's producer, not Sony itself, who gets to make the ultimate decision of whether to continue the relationship with Disney -- and that decision has already been made to renew. The rumor that Osborne is the next Big Bad may be confirmed at the end of Far From Home. If so, Spiderman 3 is going to involve the Sinister Six.

Yeah, my guess is along the same lines. The Avengers break up post-Civil War, something or someone from Natasha's past draws her back to Russia to investigate her origins... I believe Bucky is in Wakanda at this point and Clint is under house arrest. Maybe the Black Widow is truly on her own for this movie?

Rumors -- and Scarlett Johansson's on-set hair color -- suggest that the Black Widow movie is set post-Civil War, pre-Infinity War.

Just rewatched 'Captain Marvel'. If she is supposed to be, as per Feige, the new face of the MCU, then she is going to need much better writers and directors. The movie lacked invention. The Kree scenes were dull. their world and culture thinly imagined. The Skrulls were banal. No sense of paranoid menace in the their ability to shape-shift. Even Carol's relationships with Maria and Monica lacked depth. Carol was presumed dead for 5 years, she re-appears, and the Rambeaus are like, "Cool".

When prominent politicians die, those from the opposing party show up and are welcomed at the funeral. It's a sign of respect. And there's no doubt that Ross respected Tony, despite their sometimes opposing viewpoints. They were allies once, they worked together, Tony is an international hero, Ross is representing not only himself but also the government -- of course Ross should be there.

The most I expect of a MCU movie is that it makes at least some dramatic sense in the moment. None of the movies can hold up to scrutiny if you think about them afterwards. They all deal in impossibilities. Super soldier serum made from an implausibly unreplicable formula? Radioactive spiders bestowing super powers? Kung fu that enables tiny Russian women to defeat multiple military-trained men twice their size in hand-to-hand combat? They wanted to give Steve Rogers a sentimental send-off. So maybe the time-travel aspects don't make strict logical sense, but then again the very existence of Captain America doesn't make logical sense. YMMV on whether Steve returning to the past makes dramatic or emotional sense. It satisfied me.

Now that there are plans to split the MCU into 2 main groupings -- the Earth-bound and the cosmic -- I wonder where Captain Marvel will end up. She's too powerful to go up against Earth villains and be an Avenger. What is the point of the Falcon -- an otherwise ordinary guy with mechanical wings -- when he's fighting alongside someone who could move planets? So, Captain Marvel part of the cosmic side of things, alongside the Guardians, Thor, the Eternals, and maybe Adam Warlock and Nova? And who then will be the core members of the New Avengers? They should have compatible power sets and character chemistry. Spiderman, Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp for sure. Would Prof Hulk continue as a full-fledged team member? Doctor Strange? Shang-Chi? Valkyrie?

Many of the mutants are the racist assholes -- they believe themselves to be the superior race. Fans tend to skip that part of the world-building when they are perceiving one-to-one analogs with real life oppressed groups. Just let the X-men be superheroes -- envied, admired, hated, feared -- without making them into metaphors for Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, trans people, or whatever.

I have no problem with how things end up -- the problem is with the speed at which events happen and characters (particularly Dany) evolve. Ideally, the whole Night King/final showdown plot should have taken up a full 12 episode season. Then, a 12 episode final season would have room for Euron, the Golden Company, Dany's growing isolation and paranoia. etc. Everything is feeling too rushed.

I find Dany's arc to be the most dramatically satisfying of all the major characters : a person of good intentions in thrall to a bad idea, this bad idea leading to her downfall. Because her ancestor invaded and conquered Westeros, she deserves to be absolute ruler of an unwilling populace? Just stating her motive exposes how ego-driven and, yes, evil it is. "Bend the knee, or die". I like that we have seen developed both aspects of Dany's character -- her innate decency, but also the cost of her tragic ambition. Because her fate is a tragic one, tragic in the tradition of the Ancient Greek playwrights : a good person destroyed by her hubris.

The only way to break the wheel is to destroy the Iron Throne and end the quest for absolute power that goes with it. Daenerys has to renounce the throne (not likely), or die. This is the end towards which GOT has always been heading. I thought that the show had made that clear, but going by the reactions of some folks, I guess not.

Daenerys has been portrayed as fatally flawed by her ambition since the end of Season 1 -- well-meaning, good-hearted, but driven by a desire for power, by a conviction of her own greatness. How else is she going to end up but dead? Are we supposed to root, in this day and age, for the triumph of absolute monarchy?

Emily and Richard had such hopes and plans -- and expectations-- for their intelligent, beautiful daughter, their only child. The finest schools, an appropriate marriage. And what they got was Lorelai pregnant at 15, a mother at 16, and a runaway at 17. She took infant Rory away from Rory's grandparents so that Lorelai could find work -- as a maid. Hard to imagine a more devastating rejection of themselves and of their values. Emily and Richard must have been traumatized. The upshot was that Emily never got over her hurt and her anger at Lorelai, and Richard just withdrew. Tempting to fall back on stereotypes of the snooty rich, but would any well-to-do parent -- would ASP, if she had a daughter -- welcome such a scenario?

The Lorelai/Chris arc was set-up to be : Lorelai holds a torch for her 1st love, then sees through the romantic fantasy she has of him and discovers she's outgrown him. Chris is well-meaning and charming, but a bit weak and shallow. And in the end, we sort of get that disillusionment arc, but it's not sharply drawn. The show fumbles it's way through in a dramatically unsatisfying manner.

The intended Lorelai/Christopher relationship arc, imo, was set up to be portraying Chris as an adolescent girl's romantic fantasy. Lorelai fell in love with when she was a teen, and part of her is still in love with him. Her maturation, then, would be coming to realize that Chris -- charming, irresponsibile, well-meaning but ultimately shallow -- isn't who she wants as a life partner. He's still an overgrown teenager, and she needs an adult. That arc doesn't quite work as the series played out, though. Lorelai would never had married the Chris who failed to show at important events in Rory's life -- graduations, birthdays, etc. Chris wasn't in Thailand, he was a few hours away, in Boston. The reason Chris wasn't at those events wasn't because ASP intended him to seen as a villain, but because of actor availability issues. These issues ruined the whole Lorelai/Chris arc.

Real world considerations like budget and actor availability distorted Chris's portrayal. I think that he was originally conceived as a romantic figure -- a rebel without a cause ( like Jess) who rejected his parent's wealth and privilege ( like Lorelai) so that he could travel the country on a motorcycle. But he's now changed, and is ready to become a more responsible father, and a plausible endgame romantic partner for Lorelai. Does Lorelai choose her charming though flighty first love, or the irascible but responsible friend (Luke)? Style or substance? Not much of a choice as things turned out, but as I said, that's because of real world cast considerations. Lorelai was always going to ultimately reject Chris, but that rejection would have been much more powerful if Chris had been allowed to be a more sympathetic figure -- if actor availability had allowed him to become a steady presence in Rory's life.

Some nitpicks have a "because it's a TV show" explanation. Like why does Lorelai, who has financial struggles and who manages an inn which serves breakfast, spend time and money eating at Luke's diner each morning? Because it's a TV show, and they need a way for Luke and Lorelai to interact at least once per episode. It doesn't make real life sense, but it does make storytelling sense. But the wide variations in Richard's and Emily's wealth from episode to episode not only don't make real life sense, there is no need for it in the storytelling. Why not make Richard the owner of the insurance firm? He can then have both his job and his millions. If ASP wants to keep the Digger drama, give Richard a partner. Richard can be co-owner.

If we're talking average salary, an insurance company CEO makes 150 grand a year versus the dentist's 175,000. I don't remember the details of Richard's financial recompense -- whether or not he received stock options, or whatever -- but I seem to recall that Richard's boss was the company's actual owner, and that there were more than one VP.

ASP is under the impression being an insurance company VP makes you part of the social and financial elite. You get to live in a mansion, have servants, dispense millions to charity. In reality, while it might still have some minor social cachet in Connecticut, financially it puts you about on the same level as a dentist. The problem of having a two-person, husband-and-wife showrunning team is that there is no one to call you on your ignorance.