That’s a nifty dial for O.B. A strong support character seems fitting for him.

And I’ll echo the sentiment that Ke Huy Quan’s role in this was great. He was enjoyable throughout.

I stopped commenting on the individual episodes, but I kept watching. Your reviews covered everything I might have wanted to say. Overall, I like this season a good bit more than the first one.

Many thanks, my friend! Glad O.B. felt good! Haha he was certainly easier to figure out than the other dial I made for the show.

Glad you enjoyed the season too, mostly. It felt like a glow-up from the previous season for sure in terms of pacing, stakes, and consequences. I don't know if it was wholly perfect, but I think it was a much better version of itself than it'd been.

I saw the most interesting take last night on twitter-- Why would it be a good thing to rehabilitate the TVA, which is ostensibly a fascist organization? The response was that it's a very millennial-centrist belief that bad organizations can be salvaged by having good individuals at the top.

I'd be curious to see a more progressive version of this show where Loki, the god of chaos, instead tore down the TVA and just saw what happens... let the multiverse govern itself in a state of pure, cosmic anarchy and see what happens.

LOKI S.2 E6 is what it took for me to make a Title Character, and yes, I'm mad about it.



#200 Loki
Real Name: Loki Laufeyson
Team: Cosmic Energy,Mystics
Range: 4
Points: 100
Keywords: TVA, TVA Ally, Deity, Cosmic, Mystical

6 11 18 3

6 11 18 3

6 11 18 3

7 11 18 3

7 11 18 3

8 11 18 3

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Starting Plot Points: 2
Continuity: When Loki, God of Stories is KOed, for the rest of the game, all opposing characters can use Probability Control.
(+1) Time-Slipping: FREE: Loki, God of Stories and another friendly character with Loki in their name are placed in the other's squares.
(-2) Time-Pausing: Until the beginning of your next turn, only friendly characters with Loki in their name may make Actions.
(-7) God of Stories: Loki, God of Stories has IMMUNE for the rest of the game and cannot take costed actions. Each friendly character may use Probability Control and Shape Change in addition to their printed uses of those powers. If Loki is the last character in your force, do not KO him, but your opponent scores him, then end the game.

UPDATED 11/13/23 - Thanks, Hein2208!

That’s a very good dial for this version of Loki. Perfect use of the Title Character mechanics.
Although you should probably clarify that his last effect ends the game, when he’s scored. Otherwise, there’s no way to end it (unless it’s timed).


The show’s ending with Loki basically keeping the multiverse alive all on his own, was certainly an interesting development. I like it for now, but I think it’ll live or die on how they use it in the future.
If they’re adapting the more recent Secret Wars storyline, then this Loki would pretty much have to be a central character in it. It could even be about him starting to lose his (literal) grip on the multiverse, and that’s why all the universes are dying.

Many thanks, friend! I truthfully kept thinking I could get away with just leaving it with S.1 Loki's dial... but then everything in the finale happened. Glad this feels appropriate for the episode!

I appreciate the note for ending the game! I've updated the dial and sent you rep. My thanks again!

Ooh, I like the idea of Loki losing his literal grip on the multiverse as a part of KANG DYNASTY and SECRET WARS. That said, I'm starting to wonder if KANG DYNASTY will get retitled. Marvel seems to be distancing itself heavily from Jonathan Majors, and the end of LOKI made it seem like they could choose to abandon Kang as a big bad if they wanted to. Maybe there's a version of this where Doctor Doom gets introduced early and it's just a done deal that he's the villain of the next two Avengers movies instead of almost certainly being the villain/hero of just SECRET WARS?

That could work, but honestly, I don’t see why they have to drop Kang. If they end up dropping Majors, they can just recast Kang. It's already pretty likely that Mr. Fantastic will get a different actor for the main MCU version, and No Way Home had three different looking Peter Parkers. Not to mention Rhodey got recast, and that was fine.

There's a few different answers for this:

The Mr. Fantastic and Spider-Man x3 thing were fanservice, pure a simple. A bunch of people wanted to see John Krasinski in the role, and a bunch of people wanted to see their favorite Spider-Man back on the big screen, so those were easy choices that put butts in seats. The Rhodey thing wasn't ideal, and you know Marvel Studios was probably pissed about it, but that was during the early days when everything was still getting figured out.

The big Kang issue is that Disney has to make some kind of decision, and they suck at committing to things. I know they always announce their slates half a decade in advance, but if you look at Marvel and Star Wars these days, things are constantly in flux for the dumbest reasons.

Guerillmo Del Toro said he was in talks to do a Godfather-meets-creature-feature movie for Jabba the Hutt, but then it got canned early in pre-production. They greenlit a weird movie, got a creative team attached to it, and then canned it before anyone even knew it existed! Kevin Feige was meant to do a Star Wars movie, and it got canned. Patty Jenkins was meant to do a Star Wars movie, and it got canned. If you look over at Marvel, Blade is elbow-deep in Production Hell, and we're hearing a lot about other projects doing that, and I sincerely believe it's because of how wishy-washy and afraid of failure Marvel is.

If they don't want to do Jonathan Majors anymore, like you said, just recast him! Except they're afraid that the whole storyline is a bust because Quantumania, Kang's big debut, was a flop. So what do they do? Focus on other stories? Guardians of the Galaxy was reliable, but that's over and done with now that James Gunn has moved on. The Eternals was divisive, to say the least, and now The Marvels is reporting historic lows for the MCU. Marvel is having trouble finding purchase with its big central storyline, but it's struggling just as much with one-off or smaller-scale productions. Secret Invasion was meant to be their answer to Andor, and it was awful.

I genuinely think a lot of the upper-brass at Marvel Studios and Disney are getting cold feet. They're floundering, they're rushing pivotal productions and constantly re-setting others, it's honestly crazy to me to see playing out in real-time. They got Daredevil and the cast from the Netflix show, so you'd think it'd be a slam-dunk, right? Except they just fired 90% of the creative staff and are re-doing a bunch of it. How did that happen? How did it get so far into production with (allegedly) bad scripts and stories? How is all of this happening in the public eye without some exec pumping the brakes?

Being around for the beginning of the MCU, it's hard not to herald this as the logical end-point for the cinematic universe trend; everything is messy, half of it is bad, and it looks like there are some people at the top looking to either close up shop or pivot/reset the thing entirely. We've seen stuff like the DC Cinematic Universe, the Star Wars Universe, and the Dark Universe (lol) undergo the same problems as soon as the words 'cinematic universe' are put into a press release, but it looks like it was only a matter of time until Marvel hit the same exact problems.

I think a lot of this is true.

Recasting seems to be case-by-case. Recasting Terence Howard was under the Perlmutter regime, but easier because it was so early in the continuity. Marvel Studios didn't recast Chadwick Boseman after he passed away, which caused a ton of issues. After William Hurt passed, his General Ross character was recast to Harrison Ford.

I don't think recasting is out of the question here, but in Majors' case, yeah, I think they worry that they'll have to re-introduce the character after he was already introduced twice AND they'll have to continue using him as the villain of the multiverse saga, which is indeed rocky.

It doesn't help that multiverses are at an all-time oversaturation in western media. EVERYBODY is doing it --some better than Marvel-- and it makes the MCU's dalliances in it feel run of the mill instead of novel like the MCU continuity used to feel.

I think a HUGE issue are Marvel's D23 & Hall H slate reveals. Normally, those would only be for execs and shareholders, but ever since Marvel started doing them as a flex, we've been able to anticipate -and analyze- things that won't be out for years. The secret is that most projects behind the scenes shuffle, have reshoots, and fall out of development. The extra optics we're afforded, however, make it seem like wishy-washiness when it's just the flow of business in Hollywood. Most other companies wouldn't greenlight a project unless they're all but certainly going to produce it.

Haha but I'll certainly agree that Lucasfilm's production approach seems to be grounded in fear. Why hasn't there been a theatrical Star Wars movie since RISE OF SKYWALKER? Like, yeah, it was bad, but don't abandon the medium!

According to industry reporting and Joanna Robinson's MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, the shared issue with all the D+ MCU shows is that none of them had a showrunner. Without that, there was no consistent vision in an individual series, everything was jigsawed together with scene shot on bluescreen, and apparently Marvel's heads --Feige, Alonso, and d'Esposito-- would sign off on things or request changes for continuity. Probably why the final episode of each season goes apes*** and changes so much.

Meanwhile, quality fell across the board because it's Marvel Studios is incredibly producer-driven with Feige getting the final say. If Feige's spread too thin, the MCU is spread too thin. Sounds like because Feige hasn't been able to be hands-on until the strikes basically forced downtime upon him, the Daredevil and Blade projects all but slipped by him until now.

I don't think we're in danger of the MCU or Marvel Studios crumbling, but I think everybody knows that they're no longer infallibly on top and that their current business plan got them into this mess. Arguably, this is because of Chapek demanding they exponentially ramp up production for D+ programming, and it sounds like they're already re-evaluating (and likely massively scaling back) that plan. It also sounds like the future D+ shows are likely going to be treated as shows, not films, meaning they'll get showrunners that'll keep things at a higher level of consistency.

We'll go into this a little more with tomorrow's post as well!

To that point...

https://comicbookmovie.com/avengers/...7798#gs.0x32y3

Honestly, it's stuff like this that's led to me drifting further and further away from the MCU.

It's not that I'm against it in the slightest! I want it to pull me in. I want to be invested in it again. It used to be something my dad and I would send articles over to each other and would schedule days to check out the newest releases together. It was something my fiancée and I would excitedly keep up with. I mean cmon, our first unofficial date before we actually started dating was going to see Endgame together.

But what has felt to me like a clear lack of vision along with the severe over-saturation of a couple years ago left me feeling far less charitable towards the MCU. Kang is one of my all time favorite comic villains, but even before everything with Majors I just couldn't bring myself to be too excited for it.

Here's hoping they can start righting the ship soon. It at least sounds like they're starting to become aware of the very things that have left me feeling a little apathetic towards their projects.

Echo is their last hope for me. If it turns out to be a let down then...I dunno I guess I'll just keep being impotently disappointed? It's not like I'd ever be able to completely give up on them even if I've been feeling more apathetic and burnt out towards their recent stuff haha

Can’t say I blame you for any of that. The last 4 years of MCU stuff has been incredibly rocky for a host of reasons, and it’s easy to understand that they might be losing dedicated viewers.

As much as I want to believe in ECHO, if only for how strong its trailer was, it’s been in development hell for awhile, and it’s being dropped all at once instead of weekly. Knowing that it was produced under the nakedly dysfunctional system, I worry it will bear the hallmarks of that system.

I stress that there’s reason to hope. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 was very strong. LOKI S.2 was very strong. THE MARVELS was extremely fun. I don’t think Marvel is down for the count, but I think their adjustment period is extremely timely.

THE MARVELS (a very fun movie!) comes at a time when Marvel Studios is under fire from the exploitation of VFX workers; for their CGI-heavy, jigsaw puzzle approach to storytelling and filmmaking; for the glut of mixed-bag content across their movies and Disney+ TV shows; for having too much continuity to memorize; for having Jonathan Majors, the much-hyped Kang actor, on trial for domestic assault; and for the overall perception that their brand is waning. Prior to its release, THE MARVELS was tracking low box office numbers (signaling apparent low attendance or low interested) and was under siege from a cottage industry of right-wing YouTube trolls. It scored a 61% RT score from critics, which was taken as a sign that Marvel no longer “had it.”

There’s blood in the water and the sharks are swimming for Marvel Studios.

As I’ve indicated in the past, it’s not entirely undeserving. Their conveyor belt of blue screen-dominated movies and house style tone of flippant comedy interjected into almost every scene is seen as anti-cinema by critics and somewhat samey by armchair critics. Marvel’s reshoot-heavy approach means everything is found in editing and VFX workers will always be the ones crunching. That style of filmmaking also means that Marvel films are usually made by committee and the director’s vision tends to be secondary. It’s a producer-driven cinema. None of that is seen by critics as art, and when a title like THE MARVELS releases -one written by, directed by, and starring a diverse group of women, featuring characters who are not apparently the primary MCU characters- it’s a chance for critics to air grievances with the filmmaking machine; not the film.

There are criticisms of the film to be made, but not to the degree that the knives are out for this one.

The MCU is fairly egalitarian with mostly progressive sentiments, especially in these later phases, and that means to win the American culture wars, far-right influencers have a vested interest in seeing “the M-She-U” fail. Other Hollywood pundits have noted the homogeneity in these critics’ youtube videos, thumbs, and talking points, indicating that these voices are being bankrolled by larger entities literally invested in smearing the MCU’s message.

Again, a movie creatively dominated by a diverse group of women has sent these people into apoplectic fits. (Good. These people should not be comfortable).

That is all a long way of saying that a fun-as-f*** superhero party movie about a bunch of women discovering themselves through their friendship emerges into a turbulent atmosphere of criticism for Marvel and all that it does, good and ill, and maybe that shouldn’t be the case.

We’re starting to get in a regular cycle where we go through this same song and dance with EVERY Marvel release that makes it feel like the film has been judged long before it actually hits theaters.



#201 Ms. Marvel
Real Name: Kamala Khan
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: 100
Keywords: The Marvels, Young Avengers, Celebrity, Teen

5 11 18 3

5 11 18 3

5 11 18 3

5 11 18 2

5 11 17 2

5 10 17 2

5 10 17 2

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Quantum Entangled: FREE: Change this character’s place with another friendly character who has this trait. If you do, they have Shape Change until the beginning of your next turn.
Light Constructs: FREE: Generate a Light Construct bystander [Max: 1].
Time to Shine!: Giant Reach: 3 and Barrier.

#201b Light Construct
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0

0 10 17 3

Light Shield: Adjacent friendly characters may transfer damage to Light Construct.

You know I’m normally not wild about gimmick dials. In the case of the main three characters, I dialed all of them before for this thread, and the only difference in their powers would be the quantum entanglement. Challenging myself with gimmick dials for them hopefully will keep them fresh and interesting. I don’t know if all three work, exactly, but hopefully they’re fun!

That's a fitting gimmick for this version of Kamala Khan. Seems like it would be fun to play.
The Quantum Entanglement effect is simple, but flavourful.


I enjoyed "The Marvels" a lot. Admittedly, I was mostly there for Kamala, and Kamala was great, so I was happy.
But the rest of the movie was fun, too. The main trio had some fun chemistry, which was definitely important for this kind of movie.
All the silly antics like the musical planet and the Flerken evacuation strategy just put a big grin on my face. It was fun!


I'm not surprised about it bombing, though, since most people had dismissed the movie before even seeing it.
(I honestly wouldn't have been in any rush to see it, if Kamala wasn't in it, although I would have checked out the home release eventually.)

A lot of people have soured opinions of Carol Danvers (Civil War II in the comics, power-levels in the MCU), so a movie centered around her was always going to have cynics.

Add that to people's declining faith in the MCU in general, and this movie was doomed from the start.

Many thanks, friend! I know you're a big Ms. Marvel fan, so I figured you'd be the toughest critic on this one C;

I was a little leery about giving her Impervious, but I figured it could double for how she can project herself with her light constructs.

Yeah, the big takeaway everyone seems to have had from this movie is "holy s***, Iman Vellani is fun!" She's absolutely the most charismatic and effervescent character of the film, and pointedly so to contrast against her co-stars.

As you say, there are so many fantastic scenes that are just charming and funny as all get-out, and it's just so pleasurable to vibe with this movie.

Weirdly, I think the biggest mistake in the pre-production phase of this film was greenlighting it as "THE MARVELS" instead of "CAPTAIN MARVEL 2" or "CAPTAIN MARVEL AND THE MARVELS." Carol's solo film was a global billion-dollar winner, and she seemed heir apparent to lead the next version of the Avengers-- or at least to replace Black Widow, before we knew Yelena would be filling that role. Clearly, her name has equity, as does her character. Making the story more decidedly hers and adding Ms. Marvel and Monica as major supporting characters, much like how WINTER SOLDIER brought in Black Widow or BLACK WIDOW brought in the Romanov family.

Making it a three-hander, even in the title, made it seem like one HAD to have watched WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL to be invested in the leads.

I do think you're right, though-- it sure feels like this movie was DOA, being judged long in advance by trades, critics, and bad faith commentators.

THE MARVELS is great fun all-around, and I’ll certainly get into that, but first, let’s talk about what the detractors likely bumped against.

1. There’s nothing going on under the hood. While all the character motivations are strong, there isn’t a powerful thematic takeaway to it like ETERNALS or WAKANDA FOREVER offered.

2. Dar-Benn, the villain, while also being well-motivated, is kinda bland and seemed so from the trailer. I don’t know why she, a rando apparently only ever having been in a couple of issues, was selected over literally anybody else. I don’t know or care about Kree stuff, and this did not convince me otherwise.

3. The drama could be richer between the three leads. This is a pretty short film by MCU standards, and maybe taking more time to dwell on everyone’s hangups might’ve helped. I personally had no problem with the amount of drama we got.

4. There’s a lot of CGI, and that’s scary. Some of it, like in the mid-credits scene, could be better.

5. There’s a lot of MCU continuity, and that’s scary. I think the movie breezily catches us up to speed with just a few lines. You don't have to watch the D+ shows to enjoy this, and the movie doesn't expect that of you.

I said “detractors” because, going by the 61% RT score, this seems to have split evenly among critics. If you ask me, It’s fine movie on its own, but if it wanted to spruce itself up a hair, it wouldn’t need to change much; just add a little more here and there.



#202 Monica Rambeau
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 5
Points: 100
Keywords: The Marvels, S.A.B.E.R., Scientist, Soldier

5 11 18 2

5 11 18 2

5 11 18 2

5 11 18 2

5 11 18 2

5 10 18 2

5 10 18 2

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Quantum Entangled: FREE: Change this character’s place with another friendly character who has this trait. If you do, they have Shape Change until the beginning of your next turn.
Out of the Visible Spectrum: FREE: Generate an Invisible Monica bystander [Max: 1].
Intangibility and Military Combat Training: Combat Reflexes and Super Senses.

#202b Invisible Monica
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0

5 0 19 0

Didn’t See That Coming?: Ranged lines of fire cannot be drawn to Invisible Monica, and she cannot tie up or be tied-up. Toughness & Super Senses. // FREE: Invisible Monica may change places with a friendly Monica Rambeau. When Monica Rambeau is KOed, KO Invisible Monica.