Cthulhudrew

Another vote for keeping the Shade. I've not seen that actor before, but from the moment he appeared on-screen, he just had this incredible charm and he really played the moral ambiguity well. I hope he is still around. I'm doubtful that this episode will warm little Cindy Lou's heart any, that old Grinch, but I do like that this show nuances the characters somewhat. I guess among other budget cuts this season, Henry Thomas was also too expensive?

Not only that, but somehow his Nightwing costume got transformed by the Lazarus Pit into civvies, because that was the last thing he was wearing in his spirit journey. Agree with so many of the comments here. Oddly enough, except for a some of the random side-treks the heroes have gone on to (I guess) keep them separated and just stopping Crane outright, this season has probably been the most focused on its storyline. It's just too bad that storyline is really boring, and centered around the unimpressive performance of its main badguy.

^^^ This. ^^^ And this. It gave me throwbacks to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: "Remember a trash can!"

I was legit surprised to see that S7 had already started. Feels like S6 just ended! Anywayz, takeawayz: Already disliking this director (Kevin Mock?): too many overly exaggerated "poses" and framed scenes. Writing started off kind of hokey, but I really enjoyed it once they got into the mix. Legacy of two credited screenwriters? Perhaps. Only one original Legend left. Sad clown. Gary showing off magic tricks. Frankly, he should have more expertise than Astra at this point (more time spent with John). I kind of like that they at least acknowledged his training, disappointed that they didn't spend more time with him and Astra discussing. Still underwhelmed by Astra (writing and actor; she seems to be hyper-emotive) Hoover death? Wonder if Nate will end up by season's end having to permanently take his place. Interesting speculation. Liked: Callback to Ava and her podcast. Nate showing historical knowledge (a little bit). Query: How would a 1925 human taste compare to that of a 2000s human to Gary? More natural? Less artificial (saccharine, excessive artificial chemical taste, more fatty? #importantquestionstoask) Way past time Gideon had a regular (physical) presence on this show. I honestly thought this was going to happen a season or two back. Hooray!

Ohhhh! No wonder he looked familiar; I just couldn't place him. Thanks!

Yep. Sideline the most powerful member of the team, because the show would be over and the audience would have nothing to watch is apparently what Dick was thinking. So dumb. Was that Big Head from Silicon Valley playing the pizza guy?

I agree that the execution of Oracle was pretty bad. We were given an ominous warning a few episodes ago, and then again here, but no real explanation. The closest I can think of as to why Barbara feared it so much is that it was obviously using extralegal/illegal methods of surveillance and intelligence gathering (note Barbara's initial opposition to its request to do so, and the mention of how the NSA wanted to shut it down). Other than that, though, everything else seems kind of vague, and certainly it doesn't rise to the level of DOOM! that the characters seemed to be pressing. As to how Scarecrow got in there, again, not explained. Presumably Jason told him about it and got him access.

I am unsure what the point was of Scarecrow employing Lady Vic if she isn't even around to be his muscle when the Titans show up. They might as well have had her just show up on her own and not tie her to Scarecrow, if she's not going to be instrumental to his story. (Speaking of, I really wish they'd have ended that plot with this episode and gotten on with other things, like Donna and Raven.)

Better yet - "What if... everyone was Happy?" And all characters are voiced by Jon Favreau.

Renner did not even sound like himself.

Young T'Challa: "Back on Earth, I was a prince of Wakanda." Yondu: "Prince, eh? Stick with us Ravagers here in space, kid, and you'll be a Lord- a Star-Lord!"

Until you mentioned it, I thought I must have misheard, because I couldn't believe that no one else in the show commented on it. Kind of interesting that she physically appears younger than them; did they artificially age Batch 99, or has Omega's physical maturity been stunted?

I was actually reminded of original X-Men movie Cerebro. In any event, we were both clearly in the same headspace (pun intended).

You're not the only one. I keep wondering the same thing all the time. Can't she just make things so cold that it reduces a speedster's kinetic energy and slows them to a crawl? Or at least the two negate one another so that the speedster is reduced to "normal" human reaction speeds? I would have sworn Snart did this in one of the early seasons, but maybe I'm mistaking that for a comic storyline.

Was there a single character in this episode that didn't, at some point, blame themselves for everything that went wrong?

I'm of mixed opinion on this. On the one hand, I agree with you that I am getting kind of tired of the trope of the wise-cracking villains (and, frankly, heroes, which is another Disney Marvel thing), and I did feel his performance was a little over the top, especially at the beginning. On the other hand, knowing that he will be playing a much different version of the character in forthcoming projects (perhaps even multiple different versions, potentially), I actually kind of liked seeing it in anticipation of how JM as an actor will differentiate between them. I hope that he even gets an opportunity to play against himself in some future MCU project as different variants of Kang. Some of the choices he made felt real (I can see this guy being a little nutty, stuck alone for how many millenia in a dark castle at the end of time), while others felt overly performative. If I knew that this was just going to be a one-off, I probably would have been much more turned off and less impressed, and I can certainly see the criticisms that it was not the "wow!" performance that some reviewers have made it out to be. One option that immediately came to my mind was, "Let's lock this nutjob up and not kill him, and then decide what to do with the TVA."

You phrased this so much more succinctly than I did. As soon as I get my hands on a TemPad, I'm going to rewrite this forum to make it look like I wrote this first. 😆 I want one of next season's episode titles to be "I, Variant." (Emphasis mine) This is a really wild idea that I hadn't even considered. I'm going to go back and rewatch the timing in the episode, but I wonder if you may actually be correct, and He Who Remains actually initiated Multiversal Divergence before Sylvie did. I want to say I remember seeing the timeline already diverging through one of the windows if you looked closely enough. You may be totally onto something! Completely echo your thoughts on this, as well as what one of the other posters said (sorry, I lost the post and forget who), which is that the TVA should really switch its objective and just target Kangs if they actually want to get things under control. I agree with this. I think they can still have a somewhat redemptive Loki while still regaining some of the grinning, preening narcissm that made him such a popular figure in the first place. It was Tom Hiddleston's ability to pull off that character- in spite of his blatant villainy- that people fell in love with, and as long as you still have TH in the role, he can remain a lovable rogue even if he isn't a nefarious villain any longer.

Agreed. It may also be notable He Who Remains' time thingamawhozitz was already preprogrammed based on his knowledge up to the crisis point. So he may have been lying about not seeing everything, or he may have been telling the truth, but either way it wouldn't surprise me if he'd programmed the device to send whomever used it to a particular place and time, and it is all still part of his mad plan.

This certainly trumps their goofs, although if they were in the same situation, I don't know that I can confidently say they wouldn't make the same mistake (given their typical MO). This was definitely my feeling, as well. I think the binary choice He Who Remains was offering was too simplistic- either you kill me and restart the Multiversal Wars and I'll end up coming back to life anyway, or else you take my place and prune the timelines. I think Loki was trying to find an alternative. I think they are all Kangs; the "variant" concept didn't exist as such until He Who Remains started the TVA and began pruning anything that wasn't part of his "sacred timeline." At that point, any of what would be naturally-occurring multiversal counterparts became unacceptable "variants." Or in other words, Variance is the natural state of being, and only became a dirty word when He Who Remains decided "there shall be only one." So a couple of other questions that remain for me about this series: 1) I was under the impression that the TVA existed somewhere outside of time in order to fulfill its function, so why would there now be multiple versions of it? (If, indeed, there are different versions of it now, and the TVA we see at the end didn't just replace the last glimpse we had of "our" TVA from earlier in the show). 2) I get why they dismissed the power of the Infinity Stones in the first episode for dramatic purposes, but honestly? I don't see anything to give the impression that the Kangs, with their scientific technologies and apparent control over time (alone), have any more power than was contained within the Time Stone, much less all the stones working in combination. If anything, I would have thought that Kang would have wanted (if not needed) the Time Stone in order to provide the TVA with the resources needed to do their job effectively, or even to eliminate the need for the TVA entirely. IIRC, didn't Miss Minutes say "He thought you should look at this instead"? Implying that this was, indeed, part of another plot by He Who Remains (or possibly another version of him) to drive Ravonna to whatever her next move will be.

This would be great. John Diggle can be the TV world's new Detective John Munch.

What makes me curious is why draining the solar power out of all these Kryptonians/Hybrids doesn't seem to do anything until after they've survived a fall from hundreds or thousands of feet to the ground. Also: Is John Diggle's new superhero name Deliveryman? Doesn't ARGUS have some grunts who can go around the Arrowverse dropping off briefcases of technology? Does FEDEX not exist? That's a lot of taxpayer dollars funding an overqualified schlepper.

I wonder if there is a reason they didn't call Majors' character here Immortus, or if he's not actually supposed to be Immortus (costume, minus headdress fits; castle at the end of time fits; m.o. fits). In any case, I thought he did a pretty interesting job and it seems to me that he is playing a version of the character that will be much, much different from his upcoming big screen version (which, as an actor, I'm sure he is thrilled about.) The storyline about the Multiversal War and the different multiversal variants of He Who Remains makes me wonder just how much of a "Phase 4" Big Bad Majors may be playing (if at all), or if they are just setting him up for a role that- much like his comic counterpart- will be able to field in many different aspects and storylines going forward as the creative minds see fit, rather than locking him into a Thanos-type endgame villain. I had a feeling that we would be hearing a S2 announcement shortly (although I didn't expect at the end of the episode), because it felt like it would have been shortchanging the audience to bring in a new character in the final episode unless they were planning a cliffhanger for a second season. Plus, there is still so much room to mine here. All that said, for a season finale, this felt in some ways anticlimactic for me; there was just way too much exposition. I can't help but wonder if they could have seeded some of this better throughout the previous episodes, so that He Who Watches was really just tying things together rather than telling the entire backstory. I also feel like many of the most poignant character pieces were rushed all season long. I like the overall premise of the show, and love Hiddleston (and have even come to really like SDM's Sylvie character). The notion of the main character finding love for himself (albeit through the conceit of a gender-reversed version) and rethinking his purpose was great, but so much of the heavy lifting for it had to be performed by the actors where the scripts didn't really allow it. There should have been more synergy, and certainly less wasted screen time in some of the scenes (the dragged out beats of the two Lokis and JM's character that took up 5-10 minutes at the beginning of this episode, for instance, felt like it could have been greatly condensed and the time better spent elsewhere. There were a few places like that in earlier episodes as well.) The action scenes in this episode were better than in others, but only barely; perhaps a re-evaluation of whether such scenes are even necessary for this particular story and batch of characters is in order (in a show like Falcon and Winter Soldier, for instance, they fit; they aren't really a Loki thing, IMO). Overall, while I enjoyed this season and look forward to more, this ranks third in my favorite of the 3 Disney-Marvel shows this year. F&WS is #1, WandaVision is #2. If I'm being fair, I only rank F&WS higher due to my love of the main characters and actors in that show, including Zemo); WV is probably the tightest script of all three.

Esperanza was pretty vile up until the end, huh? Cursing Allegra for not choosing her and being happy to "die alone." Good riddance. Why is Barry suddenly so afraid to run into the future and create another Flashpoint? This is new? Didn't he just run into the future (or past or something, I forget) during the insipid "Children of the Speedforce" saga? Not to mention all the times he's done it since Flashpoint. Seems pretty made up for drama. The whole Iris plot came from out of nowhere. Was Candace Patton just off for a couple of weeks, and they decided they needed to shoehorn her into this ep for a few minutes? It was good to see Diggle again, though it kind of sucks we'll have to wait another month to see the end of that story arc.

When the MCU crosses over with Bill and Ted: ETA: Also, feel like this remix would have been a fitting coda to the episode.

Can we trade Gary for the Cowboy Narrator?