Blogs and Ends: The Speed Blogging Edition
Busy day to today so I’m speed blogging. Please forgive any egregious spelling and grammatical eros.
FIRST
First Impressions: Loki
This is the first Disney+ Marvel TV series to star one of the A-Listers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. True, Loki is a villain A-Lister but he’s definitely not on the prep-squad, he’s a starter.
The series opens with Loki’s escape from Avengers Endgame. He then gets picked up by the Time Variance Authority. Loki does a fish-out-water thing for a while, which didn’t feel like Loki at all but the show did have a big wad of exposition it had to get out of the way, and trying to keep an exposition dump interesting is never easy.
The TVA’s job (at the moment) is to make sure time progresses as it’s supposed to. Once in a while, a variant will crop up and it’s their job to eliminate it in order to avoid creating a multiverse. This is actually an important plot point because it means that there currently is NO multiverse in the MCU, that has never been explicitly stated before.
Loki is processed and it looks like he is going to be executed but then a special agent pulls him aside for an interview. Loki finally starts acting like himself at this point. I’m going to skip ahead and get the meat of the first episode.
I’ve been complaining that the MCU has begun rewinding characters that have completed their story arcs to an earlier point thus negating their entire narratives. Thanos had completed his journey at the start of Endgame but then his compelling story from Infinity War got moonwalked away. Gamora and Quill had an established love story, which will now have to (presumably) be reestablished, assuming she doesn’t run off with Carol Danvers. Albino Vision is the old Vision but resurrected and for some reason has lost all interest in Wanda. Although Wanda might view the fact that she has seen Vision die (let’s see) three times now, as a relationship limiter. The important point is that Red Vision had a narrative from WandaVision that is non-existent so far as Albino Vision is concerned. Again, a character has been rewound.
And now Loki has been rewound to an earlier point in his narrative. However, the series actually addressed it. He was still bent on universal conquest but then discovered that his predestined timeline is getting his mother killed and then after a few adventures with Thor be murdered by Thanos. His life was destined to come to nothing.
He then gets a job offer. He’s needed to hunt down another Variant. A third Loki.
Of all three TV series we’ve seen on Disney+ this one actually feels like it’s from the MCU. The spent real money on the set design, which is gorgeous. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson turned in excellent performances.
Here’s the part I’m curious about, will the events of this show matter at all? Nothing of real importance happened in WandaVision or Falcon and the Winter Solider. So far, the major plot points appear to have been reserved for the Marvel films. But we know that the next Doctor Strange movie will involve a multiverse (it says so in the title). So there will either be one by the end of this series or after Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness begins.
Also, Owen Wilson made a point of saying that Avengers came together to avenge the death of Agent Coulson. Who was alive in Agents of SHEILD. It was quickly mentioned in passing which has my author’s sense tingling. There is going to be a variant that involves Coulson not being killed by Loki.
This is the first pilot episode for a Marvel Disney+ series that I honestly enjoyed.
Although, I should mention that from an overall narrative perspective, it’s the death of the MCU.
NEXT
Cheap Thrills
Here is a couple of more podcasts that I’ve enjoyed. Both are horror podcasts, if you aren’t into that don’t bother. They have proven excellent for keeping me awake if I am on the road late at night. Getting to sleep once I’m home has been another problem.
The Silt Verses.
“In this horror/fantasy serial drama, Carpenter and Faulkner, two worshippers of an outlawed god, travel up the length of their deity’s great black river, searching for holy revelations.
As their pilgrimage lengthens and the river’s mysteries deepen, the two acolytes find themselves under threat from a police manhunt, but also come into conflict with the weirder gods that have flourished in these forgotten rural territories. From Gods that bend flesh and mind to their wits, to authorities that want to hunt them down, our two worshippers try to stay alive and ahead.”
I Am In Eskew
I Am In Eskew, is a fortnightly horror podcast, taking place in a nightmarish and ever-changing city.
NEXT
The Next Round of Executions at DC Comic
Gunnar Wiedenfels the CFO of Warner Brothers – Discovery had this to say about the effects of the merger, “There’s so much structure efficiency potential in the combination that we can afford to make those content investments and get to a much more beneficial financial profile.”
*Ha! Ha! Ha! (gasp…wheez…gasp) Ha! Ha! Ha!*
Is that what they are calling mass layoffs now?!
Structure efficiency potential?
“I have no doubt we’ll be able to come up with a very compelling product with super top line economics and with a margin profile that will benefit from the elimination of this duplication…”
Yes, that is what they are calling mass layoffs now.
Poor Warner. The first thing their new CEO did was name the new company Warner Brothers – Discovery, as a moral booster for the people at Warner. Putting the “Brothers” back in the title feels a little bit like old Hollywood to them. But it turned out to be nothing but a cruel deception, a way to make them feel good before telling the condemned that there was no call from the governor that was just the guards playing a practical joke.
I don’t see how DC can survive this one but we will see.
LAST
Women Who Don’t Want Gamma Males Are Defective.
Adam mansplains to a woman that Gammas are more attractive to women than “so-called Alphas.”
Jlongbone explains that Adam has fag hair and will die an untouched incel.
Okay, I’m done here.
