MCUniverse: The Marvels - Movie Preview

[00:00:00] Welcome to the MCUniverse, we're the Lorehounds, your guides to the multiverse and beyond. I'm David. I'm Jean. And I'm Alicia. And we're here to guide you through the backstories of the cosmic superheroines proudly putting the she in MCU. Take that.

[00:00:37] We'll be recapping and setting up everything you need to know going into the newest MCU movie, The Marvels, opening November 10th. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about The Marvels.

[00:00:48] Email your feedback to mcu at the lorehounds.com or head over to our website at the lorehounds.com and there you can use a contact form or record us a voicemail and we can just drop that right in.

[00:01:01] We're going to be recording our review episode for The Marvels about a week after the movie premieres. So if you've got feedback and you want to get it to us, get it to us before then so that we can include you in the episode.

[00:01:15] And we'd also be forever grateful if you could help us get more ears tuned into the lorehounds MCU universe. All you need to do is drop us a five star rating and review wherever you're listening. Apple podcast is especially good.

[00:01:28] And yeah, even if it's just something a few quick words, they really mean a lot to us and are a huge help with the algorithm. For ad free versions of this and all of our podcasts, check us out at patreon.com slash the lorehounds.

[00:01:40] And before we get started, just a quick spoiler warning. We'll be spoiling the plots of Captain Marvel, Miss Marvel, WandaVision and other shows and movies where our main characters have appeared. Basically anything Marvel is on the table, comic books included. Okay. Wow.

[00:02:05] I feel like the Marvel world is pretty busy these days with all the news and Loki and the Marvels movie and then Echo. So a lot going on. Jean, we missed you last episodes, but for Loki five, but do you have just a quick take

[00:02:24] that you want to let us know how you're feeling? I mean, I keep saying, you know, I can't say that this is my favorite episode, but here I am again. I really enjoyed the episode.

[00:02:37] There's one shot that's probably my favorite shot in the entire series so far this season, at least when Sylvie's in the record shop and she has the headphones on and that long shot almost down the hallway look with the record. That's one of my favorite shots.

[00:02:56] For the record, have you listened to Alicia and I's coverage of episode five? Not yet. Not yet. Okay. So I'll be listening today because little E over here is doing much, much better. So yeah, I'll be putting that on today. Will, I do a whole-

[00:03:14] Do I find you agree with somebody? Yeah. I do a whole shtick on the camera work that was Sylvie on the couch and the way that the camera- I thought you might. I thought you might. I thought you might. It was exceptional. It was, it was.

[00:03:30] Down to the record floating as the record itself spaghettifies and it's coming up. It was exquisite. Yeah. So I really enjoyed the episode. And again, I think this series is headed in the right direction towards the finale. Yeah. The plane is going to be landed, bro.

[00:03:51] It's going to be landed, guys. We're going to get on the runway. It's going to be smooth, no bumps. We're going to collect ourselves. You can apply mascara if you're not landing. Yeah. It's going to be an orderly exit off the plane.

[00:04:06] We're going to take the tram to the baggage collection and then we're going to be good. We're good. We're going to be all right. We're going to be all right. Fabulous. So I'm excited for this week.

[00:04:16] Well, we're looking forward to having you on six and then we'll go from there. Right. So they just released the final trailer for the Marvels a couple of days ago. Is that right, Alicia? Yeah. I mean, I watched it. I didn't know when it got released.

[00:04:34] It was just sort of there. There's been a few in quick succession, but yeah. I guess yesterday they were like, this is the final, final one. And that was the one that had all of the flashback stuff with the Avengers and stuff before. Got it.

[00:04:46] Jean, did you get a chance to- I did. Yeah. I mean, the movie. I'm in the movie. You're not in it. Basically, there's nothing I could see right now that would turn me off to going to watch this film. Okay. So I'm excited for it.

[00:05:05] I mean, yeah, of course, you know, at the end when we get that big next and we see what the focus is on. So yeah, I'm super excited about that. So yeah, I'm excited to see if they actually incorporate that X into the movie since we

[00:05:21] already know that Ms. Marvel is a mutant. So yeah, I'm excited. So Alicia, do you want to talk about the X factor here? Maybe not everyone has picked up the subtle little thing that is in this trailer. Yeah.

[00:05:37] Well, that was actually, it was a different trailer that had that. It was like a 15 second spot. And then it said something about like what's coming next and as the words. Oh, right, right. Yeah. Right.

[00:05:49] So there's the trailer and then there was a little teaser that they released with the X. And it's funny because you pointed out, I didn't actually really realize that. So as this word next is fading away, we hear they're coming and the letter X in next stays

[00:06:03] around like half a second longer. Right. So they might as well put like the X-Men 97 stinger right there. Absolutely. You know, you can't put this stuff out and not, I mean, you've got to, we have, yeah, exactly. They know what they're doing.

[00:06:20] And the old joke about an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters. I sort of reverse think about that and just think about all the internet sleuths out there.

[00:06:29] And we have this giant hive mind that's going to take things apart frame by frame and look for these kinds of things. Especially, I mean, that was intentional. You have to put it in effort to make one letter stick around. Yeah.

[00:06:40] People are going to make it mean something. So I just said a weird segue. I was listening to an interview with Andy Serkis about Andor and how they were really worried about the fact that everybody was going to start making Snoke connections from his character in Andor.

[00:06:55] And they were like, no, no, no, it's not connected. Stop. People still won't let it go. I'm still not convinced. It could be. Still lights up. What are your thoughts on the teaser and trailer releases that we just had? Yeah.

[00:07:13] I mean, I'm a little bit bummed that it seems to have taken on a more serious tone and I hope that they've left some of that playfulness. I heard that there were musical scenes in earlier editions and I think that's been taken out. So that's too bad.

[00:07:30] But I'm very excited about it. I especially love Ms. Marvel. I also love Monica. Yeah, I kept to Marvel school. I'm very curious to just see what's coming out of this. It seems like there's going to be I'm very curious about the tech involved.

[00:07:45] And yeah, Tessa Thompson, Valkyrie popped up at the end. So that was a surprise to me. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I did see that. I was like, wait, I know her. Where is she from? I just scratched my head a little bit there. Yeah. So I'm excited.

[00:08:00] Like, yeah, I have to say I'm even more excited about Echo, but I'm very excited about this. I'm going tomorrow. So very cool. Yeah, I went back and I watched a previous trailer too.

[00:08:12] And I did notice that the tone in the last couple of trailers is a little bit more serious. Whereas that very first one we had was super playful and comical in a way. So I wonder why they're changing the tone.

[00:08:28] And I'm really looking forward to a fun, I want to be entertained and have that sort of silly romp. Well, I have to, I mean, so we talked a bit in the Loki episode about that variety article.

[00:08:41] And one of the things they said, talked about was that there was a test viewing with middling reviews of this movie in June. So that was five months ago. So I think it might be after that, that they took out the musical stuff.

[00:08:55] So I don't know what's changed since then. I know, yeah, there's been more that's come out about this variety article being a hit piece. So for instance, they went after the- Well let's just go, let's get into all of this news.

[00:09:14] So let's talk a little bit about news about Marvel, the variety piece, Reign of Marvel book, which you finished up and we've got a bunch of general news. So let's get through all of that and then we can do some context on the main characters in the movie.

[00:09:30] And then we'll get into some predictions and what we know about the movie so far. Continue please. Yeah, so in the article they talked about the director, Nita Costa, that she left before post-production was over to start work on her next film, Hedda, which also stars Tessa

[00:09:50] Thompson by the way. And yeah, she came out in an interview this week saying basically, the movie was pushed so many times. We know this as an audience. Eventually they knew I had to go work on this other film, but I was still working long distance

[00:10:09] and it was really not a big thing. I don't know why variety is making a big deal of this. It's basically her tone. Yeah, and to jump on that, she's not the first director to actually do that.

[00:10:24] Where a film hasn't finished post-production, but they've started on their next effort. That happens, that's happened before and it is going to happen again. But the way that the article presented it was like, this is an anomaly. Like this is something strange going on. And actually it's not.

[00:10:43] So yeah, that was a very, for those who think it was a hit piece, that definitely is. It's one of the reasons there's still a little piece of evidence for that. Yeah, and to have it, to make this movie by a black woman director of a major franchise,

[00:11:02] right? And to actually try to mar that a little bit, to say, oh, this is out of bounds of what she's done and what she's doing was really untoward. And you can't take away that lens because they haven't done that for other directors,

[00:11:22] white male directors who've done the same thing. And it's sort of on top of the fact that if it's, I mean, the tracking on this is low and tracking, despite a lot of criticism about tracking, tracking is pretty good science so far is what I can tell.

[00:11:42] They're not generally off on these things. So this movie is tracking a bit low and if they had some reviews, then I could see them wanting to neg the conversation a little bit, man it, like, oh, we're going to dig down and we're going to protect ourselves.

[00:11:59] I mean, that's a very corporate thing to do is to try to protect the PR image. Oh, it wasn't our fault. It wasn't the studio fault. It was director fault or something like that. I mean, the tracking is, they're expecting for opening weekend, 70 to 80 million domestically

[00:12:15] within the US. So that won't even count like my theater ticket, for instance, which is, you know, that's still, that's a lot of money. That's for any other movie would be a fine opening, a really good opening, but it's half

[00:12:28] of what Captain Marvel got, but that's because things have changed a lot. So the tracking for movies all across the board is down. Sure. The reported budget of this film is 250 to 275 million. So I think, yeah, they're going to have no problem at least making that back double,

[00:12:46] especially internationally. So yeah, I think it's just overall MCU movies used to be like that you would get close to a billion or break it. And now that's just not as realistic in the current environment. Right. There's a lot of factors.

[00:13:04] I think, I think too, that we have to, you know, kind of reevaluate what movie openings are because post COVID let's be honest. I know, I still know a lot of folks who don't go to the theater. Right. Just don't go. They just don't go.

[00:13:23] Whereas before COVID they were in either that Friday or that Saturday or that Sunday opening weekend. Now they don't go. So there's a very, like Alicia said, there's a shift in how people consume the material that's being put out there.

[00:13:43] So we're still going by these old standards and it's not just movies. It's just in a lot of regular day-to-day life. We're still going by post COVID standards and pre COVID standards, excuse me, in a post COVID world. And we can't do that.

[00:14:01] We have to take into consideration how people have changed their normal routines. Right. So if it's not tracking as much as when was Captain Marvel, 2019? Yeah. Yeah. So if it's not tracking in the same direction as the Captain Marvel movie, then there's a reason why.

[00:14:22] And I don't necessarily think it's because Nia DaCosta did not stick around. She had another project she was always in. Yeah. To go to do another project. Right. No, I mean, good for her that she has work. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:14:36] And she's not going to throw away her career to finish a movie that keeps getting dragged out. That's right. So Alicia, you finished the Reign of Marvel book, the book that Joanna Robinson coauthored

[00:14:48] about the inside of Marvel and the rise of the studio in this big interconnected IP world. What's your hot takes on the book? Overall, it's really interesting, condensed, gathered up a lot of the stories that you've heard before with new details and new perspectives.

[00:15:10] But the only problem is that it of course ends at a certain point. So the last chapter is basically all of phase four and beyond. And so it leaves a lot of things dangling because of course, at some point they had

[00:15:25] to stop writing the book and publish it. Yeah. Put an end to it and edit it and yeah, all that stuff. Right. So, but it leaves unsolved issues still lingering in the air, like Black Panther didn't solve racism. Captain Marvel was only like the beginning of MCU complaints.

[00:15:45] I just, yeah, what is the future going to be now in this precarious era for cinema everywhere? So it needs a sequel. But good insights for what it covered. Right. Yes. Yeah. I mean, especially for just going way back to how Kevin Feige's career started and just

[00:16:04] the very foundings of the comics and how the different arms of the studios, the movies and everything and how it all worked together and the shifting pieces. Yeah. Cool. So what other Marvel news do we have? You and I talked about the Echo trailer the other day. Yeah.

[00:16:24] But there's all this like crunchy new background noise about it, but we've got now Marvel Spotlight. So you want to talk to us a little bit about that? Right. So right after we recorded our episode talking about the Echo trailer, I got a bunch of news.

[00:16:40] So I have, there's a Marvel Spotlight and then I have to issue a very happy correction to myself. Okay, cool. So let's talk about Marvel Spotlight quick. Yeah. So Echo is going to be the first of a new, what they're branding is Marvel Spotlight.

[00:16:55] They even got Michael G. Aquino, the director of Werewolf by Night to make a little new music fanfare for it. And this is going to be gritty or street level stories that they say, you know, it's not

[00:17:07] necessarily going to interconnect with what's going on in the movies so people can watch them separately. Although obviously Echo does tie to Hawkeye. So I'm like, okay, well, whatever. But anyway, grittier street level stories as we saw, you know, we saw Kingpin in the trailer.

[00:17:25] It was hearkening back to Daredevil. What did you think of that Echo trailer, Jean? It's amazing. It's amazing. I love it. I love Kingpin. I mean, he, Vincent D'Onofrio is just like on screen as that character. He's- He embodies it so well, right?

[00:17:46] You can't take your eyes off of him. Right. Because he's such an imposing figure and just the way that he delivers on every scene. And it sounds like they're going back to the Netflix series, right?

[00:18:03] The street level type of characters where they can tell different stories from, you know, our Avengers and X-Men and things of that nature. Yeah, I'm excited for it. I'm excited for it.

[00:18:15] I heard some criticism of, oh, well, like if you have to slap a label on the outside of a show like this, then you sort of already lost. And I- Oh, please. I mean, people just leave things. Yeah, I was like, no.

[00:18:29] I was happy with it because it's saying that we're going to, this is a different product. You know, we put labels on products so that we can understand them. And this is just a product label that just says, you can sit back and enjoy this and

[00:18:46] not worry about anything. It's a self-contained story. That's great. I mean, we do that for Legos. We do that for the Star Wars IP, right? With all the Lego and the kids stuff, it's clearly marketed in different lanes.

[00:19:00] So I did not buy, and it's from some podcasters that I really like to listen to generally, but they've been on a really bad run with Marvel recently. And I just don't buy that.

[00:19:13] I think it's a valid tool for consumers to look out into the entertainment world and go, what do I want to watch? Oh, here's a whole collection of stuff that's Marvel related.

[00:19:25] I like Marvel, but I don't have to worry about does this connect to that movie or this movie? I can just enjoy it for what it is. It's an interesting, gripping, compelling story. That works for me. To have a label for that, that works for me.

[00:19:39] So I don't buy any criticism. I do have a problem with that aspect of the label just because to me, it does seem like a little bit of bullshit. Because every Marvel thing should be something you can watch on its own.

[00:19:55] And that's what they've worked to make the case always. And this is already starting out as not on its own because it's tied to, she started, we met her character in Hawkeye, Daredevil's involved. So what excites me about this more is the grittier street level aspect. Okay.

[00:20:16] No, I just don't know how much is the marketing speak with this whole standing on its own thing because that just doesn't make any sense to me. But making it more like the defender's verse is interesting to me. Yeah, I think that is interesting.

[00:20:30] And I think, like I said before, we've said before that there's an expectation that everything ties into one another. That's the expectation that was set way back when Iron Man debuted. You know what I'm saying? There's going to be some connectivity to every movie, every story.

[00:20:48] We're going to get a clue into what's happening next. Get over that. Get over that. It doesn't have to happen that way. And they've been doing that for a long time now. It's just that people didn't pay attention.

[00:21:03] Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC, the defender verse, these things we thought would tie in actually never did tie in. Right. Well, now they're starting to. Now they're starting to, but at the time we were watching them, there was an expectation like,

[00:21:22] oh, how is this going to tie in? How is this going to show up? Are they going to show up in the movies? Are they going to drop a hint? They do have a chapter about that in the MCU book. Okay. So we're on the right tangent here.

[00:21:35] You know what I mean? So folks have to get over the expectation that everything you watch is going to be connected to some greater story. It's not, and that's okay. It could be self-contained and it could be its own thing.

[00:21:49] And then if you happen to see these characters show up somewhere else, hooray. If not, you've got that story to go back to. Yeah. And I'm fine with that. Yeah. So this is like, it's supposed to be a nod to the line of Marvel comics launched in 1971

[00:22:06] called Marvel Spotlight. And this was the, you know, these were characters that started as standalone, but some of them became much bigger, like Ghost Rider and Spider-Woman started there and obviously branched out past that. This goes back to the point that these are comic book stories, right?

[00:22:23] These are comic book characters. This is the source material. So we're trying to create that hybrid blend of getting our comic books onto screen and be able to do different things with this style of storytelling.

[00:22:40] But I don't think we could ever subtract, we should never subtract the idea that these come from comics. So if we're going to do little encapsulated worlds or little side stories and going back to 71 with Marvel Spotlight comics, it's kind of baked in for me.

[00:22:58] And so if there's big story arcs that connect great, and I'm happy for a lot of little stuff to be bubbling away all around and anything that they want to do to help me understand what product is what product that works for me.

[00:23:15] That helps me make my decision-making when I sit down to watch something at night. Yeah. Like for me, when folks say, how come Captain Marvel didn't show up in Avengers Endgame or Infinity War? I never questioned that because she's doing her own thing. She was offending, okay.

[00:23:35] Yeah, she's doing her own thing. She's having her own adventures. That's what, to David's point, the comic books are, right? Yes, we can have interconnected stories, but for the most part, it's these characters inhabiting the same world, but off on their different journeys, different adventures that

[00:23:56] have nothing to do with one another, that rarely ever cross paths with one another. So yeah, I think that's what they're doing. That's what I hope that they're doing because I need to see more. I want more characters. I want more stories to be told. More stories.

[00:24:11] And if the way that we get more stories to be told is to have them self-contained, I'm super excited about that. Right. So speaking of self-contained stories, let's pivot to Echo really quick. Yeah. You've got some new information, Alicia, that you wanted to self-correct, happily self-correct on.

[00:24:29] Happily self-correct. So I was talking in the Loki episode about how I really hoped that they would drill down more on the specificity of Echo's Native American heritage. And so in the comics, she was Cheyenne and Blackfoot, but it turns out, so they've decided

[00:24:46] that in the show, she's Choctaw. Okay. So they've chosen a specific tribe and they have gone all in on making it authentic to that. Now, Sydney Freeland is the director. She's Navajo, but she is Native American. She grew up going to powwows and grew up reading comics.

[00:25:03] So she's kind of the perfect person to do this. But she called Echo's backstory in the comics was a hodgepodge of imagery that made this muddled and authentic backstory. So apparently one of the main writers, Stephen Paul Judd is from Choctaw Nation, which is

[00:25:21] in the part I know anyways, based in Oklahoma. Yeah. So they actually, they involved the elders and they consulted with them to make sure that they got aspects of the story right, even though they warned them it was going to be ultra violent.

[00:25:36] And they actually held a screening of the first two episodes at the Choctaw Nation's powwow earlier this month. Okay. So cool. And they even released a trailer with Choctaw subtitles. So they're going all in on this. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

[00:25:50] That's, going to that level of effort is really refreshing to hear that a big studio, which doesn't necessarily always show its care for communities in that way, that feels nice. That's refreshing. Yeah. And they're also changing her powers slightly from the comics. Okay.

[00:26:12] So in the comics she can just, she can copy, she's kind of, I mean, it sounds too similar to Taskmaster anyway. So I can understand Taskmaster being the antagonist, one of the antagonists in the Black Widow movie.

[00:26:26] But yeah, so now they're saying her powers come from different specific ancestors. So they're going to be specific to her heritage and each power comes from a different ancestor. Interesting. Okay. The release is got some headwinds because I think people have been hearing news about

[00:26:46] the show and the fact that it kept getting pushed and whatnot. So I'm nervous for its reception. I'm going to go in neutral baseline to watch what they have, but yeah, the Marvel negativity

[00:27:02] machine seems to be grinding its gears and I'm trying to not listen to a lot of that. Yeah. I'm just going to ignore that as much as possible because I'm very excited about this. And they're also giving similar care to the fact that she's deaf. Right.

[00:27:17] So the director and a bunch of other cast and crew members learned ASL on set. Cool. And they made sure to change the way that they film closeups and just to make sure that they're capturing the sign language, the full scope of it.

[00:27:32] So for deaf viewers at home, but also just to fully capture that experience in her life and her character. Right. Right. Interesting. Okay, cool. Fingers crossed. And that's dropping in January, January 10th if I remember right? Yeah. Five episodes at once. Five episodes at once. Okay.

[00:27:52] We are definitely going to cover it and we'll just have to schedule out our timing. It's binge shows are hard to do podcasts on because all of that initial buzz and you want to be out there, it's hard to do it after.

[00:28:07] So we'll talk amongst ourselves, figure out how we want to break up the coverage, but we're definitely going to cover it and we'll just let you guys know as soon as we have figured out a game plan for that.

[00:28:18] Any other thoughts or news bits on what's going on in Marvel world? If not. More confirmation that What If is going to start airing end of December. Okay. All right. So we got a little winter holiday viewage to entertain us with.

[00:28:35] So we'll definitely do a recap on that of some kind as well. Right. Cool. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and then when we get back, we will get into recapping the Marvel's story and we're back. Okay.

[00:29:11] Well, let's switch our focus to prepping for the Marvel's movie. We've got three big characters that we've got to talk about. We've got to pick up from where we left off in 2019. So let's start off with talking about Captain Marvel herself. Yeah.

[00:29:28] So in the movie, this is the Captain Marvel movie from 2019. We first meet the character and she's being called Fierce. She's in training on another galaxy and another galaxy on a planet called Hala,

[00:29:42] which is the home world of the Kree people, a space faring humanoid race who are in the midst of a war with the shape-shifting Skrulls. Who we spent a lot of time with in the show that shall not be named.

[00:29:57] This character Fierce, this person Fierce keeps having nightmares of an older woman or the memory. Her commander, Yon-Rogg, Yon-Rogg, say that three times, tells her to keep training while the Kree leader, the Supreme Intelligence, the supercomputer, tells her to keep her emotions in check.

[00:30:16] All isn't as it seems. We fast forward, Fierce is in a fight with some Skrulls. She gets captured by someone named Talos. We know who Talos is, but escapes and lands on Earth, LA to be specific. And it's the year 1995. Do you guys remember any of that stuff?

[00:30:39] Yes, I remember it all. I've seen this movie multiple times. Okay, all right. I'm reminding it well enough from your description. All right. So the agents of SHIELD, Fury and Kofin are sent to investigate this strange otherworldly person walking around LA, but they're challenged by a Skrull.

[00:30:59] And this is the first time that we actually get a fight scene with the Skrulls' shapeshifting abilities on screen, which was a pretty cool thing to watch. Fierce fights off the Skrull, Nick Fury kills the Skrull, and Fierce gets a crystal that has her memories stored within it.

[00:31:19] She uses the crystal and finds out she needs to get to this Air Force base called Project Pegasus that houses Project Pegasus. Talos, meanwhile, the same Skrull that captured her, is posing as Fury's boss and orders him

[00:31:36] to help Fierce get to Project Pegasus in order to keep an eye on her. We good so far? Any thoughts? Good. All right, let's keep going. They learn that Fierce is a human pilot who was presumed to have died in a crash of an

[00:31:52] experimental life-speed engine built by Dr. Wendy Lawson. And this Dr. Wendy Lawson is the same person she's been seeing in her dreams. Fury sees that Talos is impersonating his boss, and Fierce and him escape to Louisiana using Lawson's jet, and there's a stowaway. A little cat.

[00:32:14] Fierce, when they're in Louisiana, they meet Maria Rambo and her daughter Monica, and they tell her that her name is actually Carol Danvers, and that they're family. Talos arrives at Maria's place, tells them he's not an enemy,

[00:32:31] but and that the Skrulls are only looking for a home after theirs was destroyed by the Kree. And that Lawson- They get that. They're obviously going to get that real soon. And that Lawson was really a Kree named Mar-Vell who was helping them,

[00:32:48] helping them to find a home. He plays a recording and Carol suddenly remembers. Yon-Rogg killed Mar-Vell, then destroyed the experimental engine, but when the engine blew up, the energies were absorbed by Carol, giving her powers, but she lost her memory. Carol, Monica, Fury, Talos find Mar-Vell's lab.

[00:33:13] It's a cloaked bastion. Talos is reunited with his family who Mar-Vell was hiding from the Kree. She was also hiding the Tesseract. Oh man, so many, so many stuff going on in this movie. The Kree show up led by Yon-Rogg.

[00:33:31] Carol interfaces with the Supreme Intelligence and is able to remove an implant that kept her powers in check. Kree Star Cruisers show up in Earth Space led by Ronan the Accuser, here to destroy the Skrulls and Earth. Carol easily destroys one of the ships.

[00:33:51] Ronan flees back to Kree space. Carol defeats Yon-Rogg and sends him back to Hala, warning the Supreme Intelligence to stay away from her and Earth. Carol leaves with the Skrulls to complete Mar-Vell's mission to find them a new homeworld.

[00:34:06] And oh, the cat is named Goose and she's a Frumpkin. Who's the reason that Nick Fury needs an eye patch? Finn. Thanks, John. I'll never trust someone again. You know, I have to say I do have good memories.

[00:34:24] I haven't watched the Marvels in a long time, but I have good memories of the movie. I thought it was a good story. It told a good story. It was tight in its scripting. It left some great open-ended stuff and there was good drama and the whole mystery.

[00:34:40] I mean, it wasn't a groundbreaking plot. It didn't cut new territory into storytelling, but it was solid and entertaining. It was a good movie. It pulled a lot of strings together, you know? Yes. Yes, it did. With the Tesseract and the Kree and the Skrulls and yeah. Right.

[00:35:01] Yeah. And Fury getting his scars, that was fun. And now, forever, our domestic cats are called Flurkins. Yeah, I thought it was a fun film. It was. I enjoyed it. Yeah. And I liked the character. So it was cool. The movie was nice. It was a breezy afternoon.

[00:35:25] I think you and I saw it together, David. I think we did. I think we saw it together. Yeah, the audience was super into it, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was nice.

[00:35:35] And there was this one scene, which is probably one of my favorite scenes from the movie, is when Yon-Rogg is trying to convince her not to use her powers to fight him. And she's like, yeah, no. Here, take that.

[00:35:48] And she blasts them and it's like, yeah, yeah, that was pretty cool. I liked seeing villains get their comeuppance. Yeah, never ceases to please me. Right. And then she disappears for a while. She goes, and we don't see her for a long time.

[00:36:07] And then she sort of shows up at a clutch moment. All right. So Infinity War, Captain Marvel isn't in Infinity War. She's off doing superhero things, trying to help the Skrulls. The snap happens, boom, as Nick Fury is being dusted out of existence.

[00:36:29] He presses send on a beeper that's only supposed to be used for emergency. And we see Captain Marvel's insignia, Finn. That's all we get from her. Right. Now we move to Endgame and we have Tony, who's adrift with Nebula in a spaceship. Everything has gone to shit.

[00:36:52] He thinks he's dying. He thinks he's going to die. He'll never see Pepper again. And he's distraught. He looks out the window and there's a huge shining light. Yeah. And it's Carol. Yeah, the glowing, like what's going on? Yeah, that was a...

[00:37:09] She brings him back to Earth and demands to see Nick Fury. And that's when she learns about Thanos and everything that's happened in Infinity War. She's part of the assault on the Mad Titan and watches Thor behead him.

[00:37:27] Later on, we see her in a conference where she says she won't be coming back to Earth anytime soon as she's helping other planets deal with the fallout from the snap. In the final battle with 2014 Thanos who came forward in time,

[00:37:43] she's the heavy, she's the big power hitter of the crew. And it looks like if worst came to worst, she could take out Thanos on her own. And then once Thanos is defeated, we get to see her in the background of Tony's funeral, Finn. Right. Yeah.

[00:38:00] And then we've only seen her since looking at the 10 rings at the end of Shang-Chi. And then of course- Oh, she was in that? Ms. Marvel. She ended the credit scene. Oh, gosh. I don't remember. I missed it or I don't remember it. So.

[00:38:16] Yeah. When they call Shang-Chi and Katie out of the restaurant with the portal. Yeah. And then yeah, it's her, Bruce. I forget one other person I think is there anyway. Okay. Doctor Strange. Doctor Strange. And they're studying the 10 rings or they want to study the 10 rings.

[00:38:36] Okay. Got it. Is that going to play any part in this movie? Do we know? Good question. We don't know. We don't know. A lot of people are wondering if there's a link between the 10 rings and the bangles. Right. And Kang.

[00:38:49] This bracelet that we see in the trailers. Right. And we know from the Ms. Marvel TV show. You know, and now that I look back on it and I said, I didn't think about this when I first saw

[00:39:04] Endgame. But when she says she's not coming back to earth, that was a pretty shitty thing. Because what about Maria and Monica? You know, did she even check up on them? Right.

[00:39:19] You know, what I thought about, I was like, oh man, like you're just not gonna go see your people, like make sure that they're okay. You're just going to bounce. So maybe we get some sort of resolution to that in the movie, the Marvels.

[00:39:36] Is that a good segue into talking about the other characters that we have here? I mean, Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan was not part of that storyline, but Monica Rambeau and Captain Marvel, it gets a little confusing with the names there. Like they're, that's her people, right?

[00:39:58] That's Carol Danvers. Supposed to be. Right. Supposed to be. But she just bounced. And I don't know how cool is Monica with that. Right. I'm interested to see their dynamic. There was a short clip released, which I mentioned in the Loki episode,

[00:40:20] that just shows her and Monica meeting briefly. And she calls her, what is it? She calls her Lieutenant Trouble. And she's like, I go by Captain Rambeau now. Man, there's some tension, which I suspect is, I thought there would be. And yeah,

[00:40:39] I think there should be some tension. Yeah. There definitely should be. Do you want to recap us on what she did in Captain Marvel, Monica? I got a quick question with this Skrull thing. Wasn't she supposed to be working to find a new homeworld for the Skrulls? Yes.

[00:40:56] Yes. And obviously that didn't- That didn't go well. Some drama, a potential drama point there. That didn't go well. That didn't go well as we watched over the summer. As we saw for multiple reasons.

[00:41:08] In the show that shall not be spoken of from the summer of 2023. It didn't go well. So young Monica, who was maybe all of eight years old, during the Marvel, she actually helped Captain

[00:41:25] Marvel with her suit. So she helped her pick the colors for the fancy suit that she now wears as she goes superhero around the galaxy. I thought that was a pretty cool thing.

[00:41:41] Now we could go to WandaVision or we could go to Ms. Marvel. What do you guys want to do? Oh, I guess let's continue Monica's story. So Monica is now grown up and she's working for SWORD. No longer 1995. SWORD is the agency,

[00:41:59] space agency that was founded by her mother. We meet Monica. She was killed in the snap and was not there as her mother passed away from cancer. She reappears at the moment that she thought she was visiting her sick mom,

[00:42:15] only to learn it's five years later and her mom has died. What the fuck? Man, okay. While dealing with this law, she's sent out on a missing person crisis in the town of Westview with her partner, agent Jimmy Woo. We love Jimmy Woo.

[00:42:40] That turns out to be some sort of energy construct that is a barrier from letting anyone inside of the town of Westview. Monica happens to cross the threshold and is brainwashed by Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, and she now believes she's a woman

[00:43:02] by the name of Geraldine. Wanda grows suspicious of Geraldine slash Monica and thinks that she's working against her and ejects her from the town. Monica and Jimmy are trying to find a solution to this problem because as we all know,

[00:43:20] the military was their first and only objective to solve problems and we don't want that to happen. Monica decides she's going to try to go back through the barrier in order to stop Wanda,

[00:43:39] to talk her down, basically. She uses a vehicle that was supposed to be able to break through the barrier but it cannot. So she gets up and she walks through. As she walks through, yeah, that's

[00:43:53] a super cool scene. As she walks through, we can see something is changing with Monica. What we come to learn from, why can't I remember her name? Oh Lord. Oh goodness gracious.

[00:44:12] Darcy, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. What we come to learn from Darcy, Darcy is the character from Thor who works with Jane Foster for those who want to remember. She's a super smart,

[00:44:27] super capable scientist and she tells Monica at one point that going through the barrier has changed her on a cellular DNA level. But so this final scene, as she's walking through the barrier, we can actually see something is going on with Monica. She's being pulled apart

[00:44:48] but the memories of her mother keep her together and she makes it through. She's able to talk to Wanda. She gets into a confrontation with Agatha Harkness who we will see soon enough again in her own Marvel show. And we get to see that Monica now has power.

[00:45:18] She can see energy across any spectrum. At the end of the series, Monica is approached by a squirrel who's in disguise, who says that he was sent by a friend of her mother who would very much like

[00:45:34] to talk to her. The friend of her mother turns out to be Nick Fury, Finn. Finn. So I made a joke with the X-Men stinger, but do you think she could be, I mean,

[00:45:53] changed on a cellular level? Do you think she's a mutant now? Wanda has of course in the comics a tie to, well to the mutants, to being one herself, but also to ending all of the mutants

[00:46:06] for a while. Could she be the mother of the mutants here birthing them with her chaos magic? That's an interesting question. So in the final trailer, not the teaser with the X, but the trailer that starts off with

[00:46:28] the Avengers stuff, there are a couple of quick scenes towards the end where it feels like somebody's appearing on a landing deck of a spaceship and it's kind of an outline of a woman,

[00:46:42] but it's really fast. And then right after that, there is a scene of, I believe Rambo is, I believe in a medical facility and somebody walks by her with some bandage wraps.

[00:46:57] And so I'd been on the X-Men hunt after Alicia, you pointed out the X in the next. And those two little kids, I tried to get a freeze frame to be able to grab it,

[00:47:07] but it's really hard because they're so fast and the YouTube scrubbing, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, wait, how did these two little clips deal with the main story overall? And they

[00:47:20] seemed very out of place for what the trailer was trying to tell me about the movie itself, and the conflict and the drama that's coming. So I could be hunting shadows here, but it did make

[00:47:32] me question what was going on from an X-Men video. I'm going to have to go back to that. It's about 1 minute 45 seconds right around in there. Okay. I didn't pick it up. Yeah. I'm going to go pay attention to that.

[00:47:46] Yeah. So yeah, one thing that is also relevant in the Monica's backstory is that her mom, Maria, she was in an alternate reality in the universe 838, they called it and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she was Captain Marvel herself.

[00:48:08] Okay. I don't know if I can keep that straight in my head. So yeah. So in another reality, 838, she was herself Captain Marvel. So in that reality, Carol never became Captain Marvel instead. All of that stuff happened to her that happened in

[00:48:25] the Captain Marvel movie, I guess. Okay. So that might be relevant. In the trailer, they do talk about this incursion thing, right? This reality permeating the walls of reality, something else is coming through. So which seems to be- Something with the Kree and Romans.

[00:48:41] Oh, we're getting into the new movie here. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And we also, yeah, we think she'll be called Ms. Marvel's had a reference to a photon glove, which seems to be related to her. So what were you saying, Sean?

[00:48:52] No, no. With the incursions, it's a theme, it's an ongoing theme. Because when we talk about Ms. Marvel, the series, even that had a kind of incursion, so to speak, in the series as well.

[00:49:09] So they've been laying down the seeds for this multiversal collapse for a while now. Well, we've got some collapsing happening in another place. Let's talk about that series, Sean. All right. So Ms. Marvel, full disclaimer- That's my favorite. I actually love this series.

[00:49:32] I am ashamed to be here with you guys because I have not watched it. Oh. It's so fast. We'll watch it this week. Yeah, it's a super- It's like short fun episodes. Oh my gosh, the family dynamic and the family's coming back for

[00:49:46] the new movie. I'm so excited about that. Yeah. I really... And she happens to be, along with Miles Morales, I think the last 15, 20 years, one of the most important Marvel characters created. And they're setting those two characters in the comics. They set

[00:50:03] them up to have big, big futures. These are major drivers of stories in the comics. So it's nice to see that come through on screen as well. So she's a fave of mine. All right. So Ms. Marvel, Kamala

[00:50:21] Khan is just a regular 16-year-old Pakistani-American teenage girl living with her family in Jersey. She loves Captain Marvel and she loves superheroes. She gets a package in the mail that has a golden bangle from her grandmother. She sneaks off to AvengersCon with her best friend,

[00:50:39] Bruno, cosplaying as Captain Marvel. I mean, come on, she's cosplaying. Yeah. She's one of us. She's going to AvengersCon. And the actress who plays her, Manvelani, is also a total geek herself. Right. Once she gets to the AvengersCon, she puts on the bangle, which causes some strange energy

[00:50:58] to come out of her, but she can't control it and it's causing major damage. She saves the classmates from falling debris and runs away. Afterwards, we meet some agents from the Department of Damage

[00:51:11] Controls. Can never be good. This is the name. Department of Damage Control. Who wants to find this new superpowered person? She starts to train in order to do good in her city.

[00:51:22] Bruno is able to figure out that the bangle is only channeling the energy from Kamala, not creating. She meets Cam'ron and starts spending more time with him, leaving poor Bruno out in the cold. She asks her mother and grandmother about her great-grandmother, Aisha, who no one wants to

[00:51:43] talk about. No one wants to talk about her great-grandmother and what happened in the Great Partition of India, which created two new countries that we know as India and Pakistan. Department of Damage Control targets the South Asian Muslim communities because they deduce

[00:52:01] that this new superhero or superpowered person is in fact part of the Jersey City Muslim community. We know that doesn't go well. During an Eid celebration, Kamala saves a young boy and with Kamala's help, escapes from the clutches of the DODC. Kamala learns from Kamala's mother,

[00:52:24] Najma, that she is a clandestine or jinn, a being from another dimension, and tells Kamala that her great-grandmother was also a jinn. They need Kamala's help to get back home. At her brother's wedding, the clandestines attack, warning the Bangal and Kamala.

[00:52:43] She escapes with someone named Kareem and the Red Daggers, a group dedicated to fighting the clandestine. Kamala learns that the clandestines are trying to break the veil that separates two dimensions so that they can take over the Earth dimension. The clandestines escape DODC custody,

[00:53:05] they attack the Red Daggers, and when her Bangal is struck, Kamala is sent back to 1947 on the eve of the partition. We see Aisha in 1942 in love with Hassan, an Indian independence activist. We fast forward five years to 1947. Najma is confronting Aisha and tells her to give

[00:53:31] her the Bangal, but Aisha has hidden it with her daughter Sana, Kamala's grandmother. Najma kills Aisha. In the midst of the chaos of people trying to board trains, Sana gets separated from her father. Kamala finds Aisha, who asks Kamala to protect her husband and her daughter. She reunites

[00:53:54] her grandmother with her father and then returns to the present. The veil has been broken, but no one can get through. Najma gives her powers to Karam and sacrifices herself to close the veil.

[00:54:11] Kamala's parents see her using her powers. Kamala goes off to see Bruno, but they are attacked by a DODC drone. The DODC chases them and a showdown happens at her high school.

[00:54:25] She is able to defeat the DODC with the help of her friends. Kamala is seen as a hero by her city and takes the name Ms. Marvel with the support of her family. Bruno tells Kamala that she has a

[00:54:40] genetic mutation. Everything seems great until the Bangal starts glowing and poof, Kamala disappears from her home and standing in her place is Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel. What the fuck? That's the short and brief of Ms. Marvel's series.

[00:55:07] Even though WandaVision is one of my favorites, for some reason you recapping this one makes me especially want to rewatch it. That's great. That's awesome. So yeah, what do we think?

[00:55:18] What did you think, Alisa, of this series and of the reveal? Yeah, I mean, I was very excited to have the mutant reveal because in the comics she's an inhuman, but it was so it was a funny

[00:55:29] thing where they cut off the mutants. So the whole storyline where with Wanda ending the mutants for a while, that was basically because Fox had the rights to the X-Men. So Marvel's like, we want

[00:55:41] our own thing. So they're like no more mutants and now we're going to have the inhumans. And so Kamala was an inhuman, but now she would have been a mutant otherwise they said. And so they're

[00:55:52] just making her a mutant in the MCU, but it makes me want to know. We'll take update in Marvel comics. She is now an inhuman, but she also has a mutant power that has not yet manifested.

[00:56:07] So she is in fact a mutant. Oh, so it's going to be hard light, you think? We don't know. They didn't say anything yet. We haven't seen it. They've given her the opportunity.

[00:56:17] They've given her the choice to actually have it manifest, but she so far has not taken the plunge. But effectively she is a mutant in Marvel comic canon. So she's both mutant and inhuman. Yeah. I mean, I like the inhumans too, that TV show disaster. Oh God.

[00:56:45] That was the spin off from the- From the Agents of SHIELD. Oh, that was terrible. Oh my gosh. I remember being excited by Agents of SHIELD because I thought, oh, this is cool. This is a

[00:56:57] connectivity to the movie and it was still in that genre of television production where it was a lot of episodes too, wasn't it? Like a 20 plus season or something. It was on a more traditional model. Yeah. It was like 22 episodes a season. Right.

[00:57:14] Yeah. It was on a linear ad based as opposed to a streaming based show. It was a really fun show. It was a fun show. Yeah. I love it. I want to go back and do a rewatch.

[00:57:25] And who's the actor who plays Phil Coulson? He's great. I could watch him read the book. Yeah. Well, people are hoping maybe he'll show back up because they never acknowledged that he, well, he died a few times. Sorry, spoilers for Agents of SHIELD. Clark Gregg is the actor.

[00:57:42] Yeah. He's great. Yeah. He was really good in it. He was really good in it. They brought him back for What If, right? Last season? They did. They did. If there's anything else, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back,

[00:57:53] we will talk about the new film and we'll set up for some of the things that we need to know going into this. So we'll be right back. And we're back. Okay. Let's switch tack and let's take a look at the new film.

[00:58:28] Alicia, you want to set us up with some of the production details for this? Uh, yeah. So we mentioned that it's directed by Nia DaCosta. So she's someone who started as a production assistant under directors like Scorsese and Steve McQueen, Soderbergh. She directed some

[00:58:47] of her own films, like Little Woods and Candyman, a couple episodes of Top Boy. She's obviously got that film Hedda coming up with Tessa Thompson. But she also just is a comic book geek. So she

[00:58:59] approached Marvel with an idea for a Fantastic Four X-Men crossover movie. And obviously that didn't end up happening. Yeah. Okay. Yet. But she ended up being able to direct this instead, and this makes her the youngest director and first African American woman to have directed a Marvel film.

[00:59:19] Okay. And she also directed that Ms. Marvel mid-credits scene. And you might've seen a few months ago, or I don't know, it was a while ago now. Uh, there was a video going around online about

[00:59:31] a Marvel's movie on a cruise ship. So you can, you can find, you know, people have recorded it and it's on the internet called Quantum Encounter. And, uh, she directed the side that has Brie Larson and Iman Vellani. Okay.

[00:59:45] And they just, they fight Ultron on a cruise ship. Okay. That sounds like fun. So, uh, hopefully a director who's hit director level and got multiple projects under her feet. Hopefully she is going to start moving and shaking, right?

[00:59:59] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she, she seems to be someone who's quite promising. She also was one of the writers she wrote with. Well, there was a whole cadre of writers, but they all have like three different levels of expertise. So then she wrote with Megan

[01:00:12] McDonald who Megan McDonald wrote a couple episodes of WandaVision, uh, episodes three and four, and also episodes of the upcoming Darkhold Diaries and Vision Quest. So she's really into the WandaVision and witchy characters. Okay, cool.

[01:00:27] But so she helped introduce Monica. So it makes sense that she works on this. Another writer was Alyssa Karasik, who is a member of the Loki writing room. She wrote the variant in the first season, the episode that starts at the Ren Faire and, uh, stops

[01:00:43] in Pempey and ends with the introduction of Sylvie. Okay. And, um, yeah, also like other shows like We Crush and Lessons in Chemistry. And the other writer is Zeb Wells, who's a Marvel comic book writer, especially of

[01:00:55] Spider-Man comics and also a voice actor on Robot Chicken, a de facto showrunner of Marvel Zombies and wrote the She-Hulk episode, The Retreat and came out in another episode. Wow. A lot of, a lot of connectivity here. Marvel Zombies. Hmm. And I did Jean's eyebrows

[01:01:14] just raise up there, but you were talking about the DC, uh, zombies last time we Yeah. I just said, you know, DC did it a little bit better. I'm excited for Marvel zombies.

[01:01:26] We've talked about it at Marvel zombies on this show a few times. It's going to be TVMA. So yeah. And hopefully with this new, what is it called again? I'm like, you're in my brain. Marvel spotlight, you know, yeah. I don't think this will be connected to that.

[01:01:41] Yeah. Well still let's, let's get some different stuff going on, right? Yeah. Please give us more special presentations. That's right. Cool. So what are some of the other characters that we need to pay attention to in

[01:01:58] this movie? Well, Nick Fury, of course. God, where is he coming from out of the show that shall not be named? Do you think, uh, Jean, is there any aspect of Nick Fury's story that you're hoping gets picked back up and continued from secret invasion? I said,

[01:02:18] no, no, no. Yes. We left him shooting up, right. He was getting his new leather jacket on is going with him on the ship, the peace conference, the peace summit or whatever that is. But yeah, I know as far as I'm concerned that it didn't happen.

[01:02:34] His wife's going to be there, but do you think they'll mention Maria? I'm still mad about Maria. I'm going to die mad about Maria. Yes. They have to mention her. They have to mention her. They have to. They have to.

[01:02:45] I did see in one of the, oh God, I can't remember which trailer it was now or teaser or whatever. There was a scene in one of the Marvel's promo materials of a group of scrolls in the background

[01:02:57] for a brief moment. I'm assuming that there's going to be some connectivity there. Of course, there's the whole Gaia of it all. Maybe they'll just leave her off screen for now, but I don't know. I feel like they have to at least say something.

[01:03:10] For sure. All right. Who's our big bad in this? Well, it looks like there's at least as far as the trailer set up, the big antagonist as being someone called Dar Ben played by Zawa Ashton. Dar Ben is a character from the comics

[01:03:24] that they gender swapped. I don't know if you know much about Dar Ben. No, not at all. No, not really. I wanted to not delve into the character because I want to see what they do

[01:03:39] because as much as I know of, not a major driving force of plot in any of the books. Yeah. She seems to be blaming Carol for something in the trailers. We know that this is also going

[01:03:56] to tie to Aladna, a planet from the comics where everyone speaks in rhyme. That was going to be where the singing stuff was, but I don't know if any of the singing stuff is left. We have also

[01:04:07] Park Seo-Joon is playing Prince Jeon or Jeon. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. That's the Prince of Aladna, also from the comics. I know the comic story. I guess I'll bite my tongue

[01:04:20] on it for now because it might be spoilery, but I'm wondering if he might play a similar role, if he might be a love interest or if there might be comedic elements with him. Do you know anything about him?

[01:04:32] Again, no. Not in any of the books that I've read. I'm not doing a lot of backup on the movie because I have a feeling... I don't know if Dar Ben is the big bad. You think they got something behind the trailers? Yeah. Yeah, I'm wondering the same.

[01:04:54] Because it's just been too much of her. For her. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's going to turn out to be something else, but it does seem like she's the one who's playing with the Kree technology and she has the other Bangol and something happens

[01:05:08] with the Bangol. Carol takes it from her and that's how she gets tangled with Kamala and ends up swapping spaces with her and ends up in her bedroom. But then at the same time, Monica is

[01:05:20] inspecting this space anomaly, that wormhole, and she gets tangled in it as well. So the three of them all have some sort of energy-based powers and they get tied up in a knot together and anytime

[01:05:31] they use their powers, they switch spaces, which could be really fun in fight scenes. Yeah, because we get entirely too much of Darth Kree in the trailers. So I'm wondering if there's something else driving the story and propelling

[01:05:49] the narrative forward. So that's what I'll be interested in seeing and finding out. I might be wrong. I might be really off base here, but I just, yeah, I'm quietly hoping that there is something else behind the scenes.

[01:06:05] I'm wondering too if there's more. In any case though, I'm very interested to see what's going to happen with them, swapping every time, with Dar having the other Bangol and then becoming entangled and every time they use their powers in different places. Quantum entanglement. Yeah.

[01:06:23] Didn't you just bring up quantum entanglement on the Beacon 23 preview, Alicia, about how- Yeah, though it's in the book. That's how they communicate across space. Okay. Well, I'm all for quantum entangling our ID stories. It's also relevant in Loki. Yeah.

[01:06:41] Perfect. I like it. Great. What else should we be thinking about? Anything else that we need to know? You guys keep talking about 10 rings. Well, let me just say one thing first. I think in relation to how people are viewing the stories and

[01:06:56] wanting to see the connectivity, I think this is where I want to see that. Mm-hmm. Right? I want to see that in this movie. I want to see how it branches off into the other Marvel

[01:07:11] overarching story details that are going to happen in this next phase. So I will be disappointed if we don't get that and I'm hoping that we do get that. So that's my expectation coming into this

[01:07:24] movie that we do get some sort of connective tissue to the overarching phase of story details that are going to happen. Okay. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think they need to start paying these teases off and there's obviously

[01:07:41] something with this technology going on and tell us things now. Yes. I think it's one of the things that we learned coming out of Lost is don't keep setting up mysteries without really good solid payoffs. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Don't keep setting up these things.

[01:07:55] Yeah. But then again, hey, that's what they did in phases two and three setting up the Infinity Stones. They would give you things like, well, this is a Tesseract. This is the reality stone. Right. Mm-hmm.

[01:08:12] And we didn't know that they were part of this bigger thing so we weren't like, oh, wait. Right. But they would give us things. Yeah. That's the most important thing. Yeah. Yeah. They would give us things.

[01:08:22] Set up mysteries, but make sure you pay them off in good ways. Mm-hmm. Right. That's the art of this medium, right? This is what showrunners and writers have to figure out. How much is too much? How much is too little? All of these things. This is what

[01:08:38] it takes to be a good showrunner, to be a good writer, to be a good executive producer. That's the art of dialing these things in, right? Give us something to sink our teeth in and to wonder about and question and have theories on

[01:08:57] and see if those theories bear fruit. That's what I want. I want to see things. It doesn't have to be something... You don't have to tell me, this is the person that we're up against. It doesn't have to be that, but just give me something. Right.

[01:09:13] Alicia, what are your hopes and expectations for the marvels? Yeah. I hope it's a fun time. I hope that we get some of these questions. I hope that there is... They give us just a little bit more lore and tease what's coming next in a significant way. Okay.

[01:09:33] And maybe some X-Men, who knows? Very cool. Yeah, I'm looking for some humor and entertainment. I'm just going to be about it. This is three heroine characters, three women leads. Looks like on surface as a woman big bad,

[01:09:54] let's go. Let's tell a story here. I want to see something, a black woman director, let's go. I'm ready for some different content in this way. And I'm just really hopeful that

[01:10:11] they put in a solid win here. Let's have an entertaining, fun movie that we can all have good vibes and good time talking about. Right. But it doesn't feel empty like Thor 4. Sorry not to call it out, but I did.

[01:10:26] No, call it out because it needs to be called out. Call it out. I'm really optimistic about this story in part because of the characters and what we've seen of the characters before this movie.

[01:10:43] So what I've seen from Ms. Marvel on TV, what I've seen from Monica, what I've seen from Carol, I'm excited about these characters, the traits that they've given us in what they've shown us,

[01:10:59] these characters, who they are, what they are, what they're about. So if they can bring those traits forward into the movie, I think we're going to have a good time.

[01:11:09] So I think with that, we'll wrap it up here. We will be back around a week to 10 days after the movie premieres with our recap, telling you what we thought of the movie. We want your feedback.

[01:11:25] So write in to mcu at the lorehounds.com and let us know what you thought of the movie. We've also got the Discord. So hop on there and we'll have an MCU channel. It's the Loki

[01:11:37] channel right now. And we'll just roll that into, back to Marvel's once Loki is over. So hop in there, let us know. Alicia, you are busy with some podcasting stuff. You want to give us a

[01:11:51] quick update on your plans for the Worship Dust feed and the book club? Yeah, well, you and I just recorded a quick little preview of the Beacon 23 coverage, which has been released in this speed. And there will be a longer preview with Luke and I coming

[01:12:11] out in the next couple of days in the public Worship Dust feed, where we just look at what are we expecting from this show? What do we know so far? What you need to know going in spoiler free.

[01:12:23] And meanwhile, on the book club feed, Abby and I have broken down the books. So that episode will be coming out. That's the shift dust book. Worship Dust. Yeah. No, but you, which book? Because you didn't you do one? Is Beacon 23.

[01:12:39] Oh, Beacon 23. Oh, okay. I thought Abby, is Abby going to be working with you on the Worship Dust trilogy as well? Okay. And then we're going to... I can't keep track. You're all over the place. You're busy. And then you and John have been

[01:12:53] talking. We're not going to spoil too much. You guys are still working some things out, but... 124 is going to be nice. Yeah. New year, new feed. All right. Very cool. Very cool. Over on Lorehound Central, we're just playing

[01:13:05] catch up with a lot of stuff. It's going to be a light month for November and December, but we're going to be filling it up with some... We're going to catch up on our Ursi trilogy

[01:13:15] books. Actually, it's not trilogy. We're going to read all, I believe all six of them. Oh, wow. With Silmarillion stories. Sorry, John, you said? I said, oh, wow. Yeah. We've got Silmarillion stories. We have a second breakfast coming up, which is our Patreon

[01:13:32] exclusive. And then we're figuring out what we're going to do for the new year. We're looking at some different options. So we'll keep everybody posted there. Properly Howard movie review, Anthony and Steve have finished up their series on remake films, but you can go back and check out

[01:13:49] all of those titles in their feed. They covered things like The Thing, Sorcerer, Cape Fear, The Departed. They had a lot of fun with that. They did a Dune part one of the Villeneuve,

[01:14:00] which Alicia and I were on. Looking forward to the Dune movie when it does come around. Great. Yes, fingers crossed that they don't play more silly games with it. So lastly, we always like to give a shout out to our Patreon supporters. If you're interested

[01:14:17] in our Patreon and you want to support us, check us out at patreon.com slash the lorehounds. We have three tiers for as little as three bucks a month. You get ad free episodes.

[01:14:28] We also have annual memberships. So if you want to do that, if that makes more sense for you from a budgetary standpoint, that's great. We throw you a little bit of a discount. That's about 10%.

[01:14:38] So for just under $35 for a year, you get a lot of great content and the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting a bunch of hardworking creatives at this stuff. But for our top tier

[01:14:51] members, the lore masters, we always like to give a shout out to say thank you for your ongoing support. So Samartian, Cyrus, Mark H, Michael G, Michelle E, David W, Brian P, Nick W, SC,

[01:15:04] Peter OH, Bettina W, Adam S, Nancy M, Lavinia T, Dove 71, Brian 8063, Frederick H, Sarah L, Garrett C, Eric F, Matthew M, Sarah M, DJ Miwa, Andra B, Kuang Yu, Laura G, DeadEyeJediBob,

[01:15:21] Nathan T, Alex B, Aaron T, Subzero and Adrian. Thank you all so very much for your continued and ongoing support. Thank you to all our subscribers. Thanks to everyone who listens.

[01:15:31] We appreciate it. We are looking forward to being back with you in just a bit with Loki season two wrap up episode six. That's going to be exciting. And then we will be with you for Marvels. Alicia, John, thanks so very much. Thanks guys. See you.

[01:15:50] The Lorehounds Podcast is produced and published by the Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the lorehounds.

[01:16:05] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities.