Sami on Captain America : Civil War

Okay, so I went into Civil War worried about several things: 

• The movie being too grim
• How they were going to handle the divide in the team and how annoying and contrived it was going to be
• How much boring and depressing politics was going to be in the discussions about that bill
• Why Nat wasn't on Cap's side
• How they were going to handle having so many people in a movie that's supposed to be about Cap

But I really don't think I needed to worry. Captain America : Civil War is not a perfect movie, and not as fantastic as Winter Soldier, but it's still really good and better than Age of Ultron. Spoilers ahead, so don't keep reading if you don't want them!

I really hated the marketing that kept trying to force everyone to pick sides. I think it was unneccessary for the fans to be divided as well as the team, and my favs were spread out across both sides. So that was part of why I wasn't super happy about the idea of everyone splitting down the middle, but in the actual moment of the movie--though I still don't like the advertising--it didn't matter that much. Everyone was just doing what they thought was right, and Cap and Tony actually were forcing everyone's hands, so it was in-line with the theme and the feel of the film itself.

Also, one of my least favorite things about the way this Phase has been going is Tony being more and more afraid of everything. It's fully understandable, and I think it was handled well in his own third movie, but in Ultron it was making him make really stupid decisions, and in Civil War, though he was dealing with it by trying to atone for those stupid decisions, it made him come across as an asshole, manipulating the people he was trying to protect.

The part of that that struck home the best, for me, was where he considered the Avengers his family and just wanted to keep his family together--because his original family hadn't stayed together very well at all. They could have played up the idea of family a little more and not the idea of government oversight--which is distasteful, the way the real world is, but I guess that is why it's there to begin with--but whatever. When Tony was a broken kid looking for a home, that's when he didn't seem like a jerk, and that's when I liked his half of the story best.

I didn't like that all his reasoning was so small--you want to pinion your own wings because you have no self control and you want to keep your girlfriend from dumping you? That was handled better in Ironman 3, and I thought it was resolved. The family angle was bigger and more grand, if you ask me.

Cap's half of the story was more emotionally true, I feel. He'd been looking for Bucky since he lost him, and now he finally had the lead he'd been searching for, only to get it at exactly the worst possible time to be associated with the Winter Soldier. And he did anyway, because Bucky needed him. I like Steve as a rebel for good--he saw exactly how corrupt the government had become last movie and he didn't want a part of that this time...but all his talk about taking your own blame? How exactly was he going to do that for all the literal and emotional damage he has helped cause? Come on, Cap. You gonna go and rebuild those dozens of buildings yourself?*

Bucky is where the heart of the movie was. Sebastian Stan did such an amazing job with all the variations on a character that barely talks--creepy, brainwashed Winter Soldier; shell-shocked survivor trying to lay low and disappear; almost-Bucky trying to deal with what he'd done and figure out how much blame he should get, since he's aware that he's been controlled, but also that it was literally him who did those things. In the reveal scene with Tony's parents, that came to a head: he knew Howard before all this. They had friends in common even if they weren't friends themselves. And he killed him because he was told to and as Winter Soldier, he couldn't not.

Hearbreaking.

It would have been nice to see what Bucky would have done with four other Winter Soldiers, but it was clever how that was side-stepped, and it showed the villain's deviousness really well: he knew exactly how to push all their buttons, and they all fell for it. Now they're all divided and it seems like most of them don't even know just how manipulated they were.

It's a movie about manipulation, I guess.

All the really fun stuff came from everyone else, and there was lots of everyone else involved. Almost too many, but they were handled pretty well, with everyone getting a few moments to shine.

Wanda being still too untrained to really do this super-hero stuff, and her being so upset about her mistakes was a good sign on how her character is going. I really liked how Steve took her under his wind as sort of a little sister. And I liked how totally smitten Vision is with her, but how they didn't force her to like him back the same way, yet. The fact that she's the only one who has a chance against him is encouraging that they're equals if they go with the romance angle, but it also sets them up against each other if they go with comic-stories for either of them about being overpowered. Because damn is Vision unstoppable, and if she can match him, that means she's unstoppable, too. In the big airport-faceoff, both of them were pretty alarming.

Nat actually made sense being on the side of signing the Accords, but I was so much more happy when she switched sides like I'd hoped she would. And it was refreshing not having to have her be the stand-in for missing love interests...though the whole Sharon Carter thing was weird. I loved Nat and Clint basically playing along and not actually fighting each other when everyone else was being super serious about the fight. Clint is a gift, and why don't the two of them have their own movie yet?**

Ant-Man was so much fun, even though his mask made him look like a weird robot baby. I love Scott, and I can't wait until his second movie. All the current fun in the MCU is in these side heroes, and he brings a lot of it here where it's needed to balance the tragedy that is Bucky Barnes. 

Spiderman was GREAT, but not how Tony went and paid him off and threatened to expose his identity to get him to work on Team Ironman. Like. The kid is still in high school. He's an infant compared to these guys you're setting him against, and that's crazy irresponsible and potentially dangerous. Good thing he's damn near indestructible.

Rhodey did not deserve any of this.

Sam Wilson's "I really hate you" was probably his best line in the movie, but my fav part with him was when he and Bucky, both pretty large dudes, were crammed into that tiny car, waiting on Steve. Oh, my god, so much fun, both the argument over seats, and the bro-nod after that weird Steve-Sharon kiss. So great.

And Black Panther! Considering how most of his screentime was devoted to kicking Bucky's ass, he did really well with an enlightened revenge arc--he really seemed to be learning the lessons that everyone else was sort of not learning; he pays attention and lets other people make mistakes instead of making them himself, and that's really interesting in a superhero story. Also, it's amazing that both sides basically respected that he's an actual king and kept his honors.

I think Civil War actually wrapped up the Steve-and-Bucky trilogy more than the Captain America trilogy we thought we were watching up till now, and the main purpose was to mix up the teams more than to tell either Steve or Bucky's stories, but it's a pretty good movie for all that. This obsession the MCU has with everything being OMG THERE'S TWO--yeah, I got tired of that with the two SHIELDs and two HYDRAs, and I'll be glad when they get that out of their system and stop with it already, but it'll be interesting to see how a UN-sanctioned Avengers team and a rogue Avengers team will interact. 

Which one is going to recruit each of the new heroes as they pop up? Which team will Hulk and Thor side with when they get back***, assuming they're not going to just be problems for the teams to deal with? If they are problems to deal with, how will that go with half the team being their friends and half being people who came after they disappeared?

I love that so much of this movie was about the absolute damage these people cause, but it would have been nice if they'd maybe not caused more and proved the point that they do need to be kept in check--it would have made Cap's view stronger if he'd told his team NOT to destroy that airport, those planes, all that cargo and people's belongings, all those cars...Like, did you not listen at all to that totally basic part of the UN powerpoint? 

I also love that Bucky's "I'm not going to kill anyone" became like a theme for the movie. The badguys killed people, but the goodguys made a point not to...though they were totally destroying property, still, and probably breaking a lot of bones.

Things I really want to know now:

• What is going to happen to Bucky? Who can help him--both with his arm and with all the Hydra mess inside his head?
• What happened to That Book? Are there other copies of it, or is that the only one? 
• Just how freaking awesome IS Wakanda? I'm really looking forward to Black Panther now! I wanna see that one lady actually get to kick someone's butt.
• Will Seb get his wish and get a love story with Nat?
• Can we trust whoever is in charge of Zemo now? And what's going on with his plan, all creepily alluded to?
• Where are Steve and Co going to set up shop now that they're technically criminals, even if they're still acting as heroes? What resources will they have?****
• Who else was at that mid-ocean supermax? Did they get out, too?
• Are the new Avengers going to get their own movies? I mean, I want Nat and Clint to get one first, but then, can we get Wanda and Vision?
• Also Falcon. Doesn't that nerd deserve a movie of his own after all he's been through?

Still lingering stories I want to see come back:

• I mean, Zola can't just be gone, right? Am I really supposed to believe that he uploaded his brain to thousands of too-early-tech computers and survived for decades developing an algorithm to track very specific people, and then he'd just let himself get exploded like that?
• Hulk. Like, where. What's he doing? Also Fury. Also Thor. Also, where the heck was Maria Hill--doesn't she work for Tony's security firm they've not done much with now?
• How does any of this affect or interact with SHIELD? Because that show is practically in an alternate universe, it has so little effect on the mainstream, and it's getting annoying. Are we going to have to have three more seasons of this before the Inhumans movie forces them to just admit that Coulson is alive and everything is really stupid with his agency? Come on, this is exactly what SHIELD is supposed to be dealing with, and the Avengers have been without backup for YEARS now because of all this fuckery on the show.
• Are the Secret Avengers / whatever the heck the Inhuman team on the show is called ever going to have anything to do with the other Avengers?
• Why are they not making shorts anymore? Because seriously, they could do a lot with these movies that don't exist as shorts--a few Nat and Clint side-missions, Rhodey and Falcon and Wasp and randoms crossovers that they can't work into the movies, etc could all do great things in the shorts. Hell, they could made a whole series based on those who who were recruited after Avegners by Sitwell, and what they've been doing since SHIELD fell!

So, overall, I really enjoyed the movie (despite any complaining above), and I'm excited to see what happens next! I just wish that there had been more actual attempt not to destroy every single thing everywhere, when that was one of the points of the Accords half the movie was fighting. It's going to be super interesting to see how a world that technically doesn't have a superpowered Avengers team anymore--since one half is in hiding and the other half has to get permission--is going to deal with all the weird stuff coming up in the next few movies. 

And I'm super-interested in what's going to lead up to the Infinity Wars and the union of the cosmic MCU and the earth-MCU.

*I would, however, pay good money to see a movie where some ex-Shield nobodies who were used to the grunt work set up a massive construction firm dedicated to cleaning up after superhero fights. You listening, Feige? I'd write that for you.
**I'd write that movie, too, though I'd probably wind up writing them as a triad with Clint's wife, and get shot down on that.
***Weird that the Avengers don't know where either of them are for what could be two years? When will Hulk get his own movie? Weren't they looking for them the way Steve's been looking for Bucky?
****Hank Pym really doesn't like Starks, so maybe he'll foot the bill?

Sami on Agent Carter 2.1

Agent Carter airs at 9pm on ABC Tuesday nights*.

Peggy is backkkkkk!!!! And she's awesome right off the bat, as she should be, because she gets so little screentime despite how important she is to the MCU. We got a two-hour / two-episode launch this week, so there's lots to go over.

Jack is still an ass who can't handle a woman who can do things. Peggy managed to track down and set a successful trap for Dottie Underwood, and she'll only talk to Peggy, but when Jack gets a call from Souza over at the new Hollywood office, she's the only agent he can spare because he wants her out of his face. Which means, of course, that Dottie won't cooperate and he can't stop the FBI from taking her away. He does, however, make some career choices that are almost definitely how Hydra gets into Peggy's project.

The ass.

Across the continent in LA, Peggy is happy to see Souza, but he's surprised to see her because he expected more than one and not her. He really shouldn't have been surprised, because he knows Jackass as much as Peggy does, but whatevs. Apparently, they never did have that drink he asked her out on last season, and things got awkward, and it's adorable.

Their case is neat: a lake that froze almost solid in the middle of a heatwave, and a body of a lady in the middle of it. While they're trying to decide if the ice was to cover the murder, or the murder was incidental, the body of the lady keeps not defrosting, and then infects the ME who is supposed to autopsy her. He shatters, she stays frozen, and they track the trail to a science firm that once worked on the rush to create atomic power during the war, and accidentally created a rift in the world in one of their tests. Which led to zero matter: this angry** black stuff that sucks up all energy it comes into contact with, which is why people and things keep freezing.

Along the way, they meet a politician who had been dating the dead girl on the side, and his would-be moviestar wife. He attends at least one overly-pompous Hydra meeting, and she pays off the nobody cop who kills the guy who would have told Peggy what this was all about, but that doesn't really slow our Pegs down much. She's caught the eye of Dr Wilkes, who works for the company experimenting with this thing, and after he gets her to go on a date with him so they can talk about this stuff in a nice safe public place, she talks him into helping her steal the zero matter.

That doesn't go well. It gets out, Wilkes gets either exploded or sucked into a portal***, and Peggy is shaken and scared and sad. Plus, the actress-Hydra-lady gets infected with the zero matter in some new way that shows as a crack in her head rather than a violent freezing.

Around this, as always, is piles of delightfulness.

Mrs Jarvis is amazing. She's a hugging chatterbox who knows exactly what her husband was up to last season and is more on board than he is--which is saying something, since he basically begs Peggy to let him be her partner again because LA is horrible and his job is boring since they stopped working together. She also makes Peggy a gun-garter that hints at her being Peggy's Q and I want that so bad. And she has absolutely not a single shred of jealousy about Peggy's interactions with her husband, even when she walks in on them tussling as he's trying to prove his new fighting skills, and when she signals that she needs him in the middle of the night.

And best of all, she thinks Jarvis is equally as adorable when he's poorly trying to catch a flamingo named Bernard and when he's going off to save the world.

Rose is there, too, transferred with Souza, and she's already got more screentime to be awesome. She's taken up surfing!

Souza now wears low-key Hawaiian shirts and has a tan, and is dating someone that he didn't tell Peggy about. Violet loves Peggy on sight, and wants to show her around town, which makes both of them super uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable as Pegs is when she finds the ring he was going to give to his cute little nurse girlfriend. Souza, however, still has feelings for Peggy--when she calls Jarvis, and Jarvis calls the office for help, Sousa drops everything and takes what he's got--Rose and Jarvis--and storms off to save her, despite her not needing saving. He was so upset! And he literally shoved people out of his way to get to her when she came out of the wreckage. Rose knows that he cares about her, too. He's not been subtle at all.

It's sort of glorious.

Peggy is semi oblivious; she likes him, too, but she steps back when she sees that he has a girlfriend, and haltingly starts trying to move on with Wilkes. So of course he dies / disappears. It's going to give Peggy a complex. She can't catch a break when it comes to love, and that makes her attempts to make friends and open up to people that much sadder.

Agent Carter is off to a great start for season two! It's snappy, it's delightfully vintage, and it's now set in a great time and place for Hollywood, and an interesting point in history as the world recovers from the war and tries to figure out what happens next. That's hinted at when Red Foreman offers Jack a place in whatever comes after the now-going-obsolete-he-says SSR. Hydra is making moves all over the place in the background, and it'll be interesting to see how it does that without Peggy, who fought them directly not long ago, noticing what they're doing.

And it's also great how much lady-bonding there is! No one is jealous of Peggy in the lady camp; all the girls think she's the coolest thing and just sort of wrap themselves around her socially clumsy but professionally awesome self and make room for her in their lives without her having to prove anything.

Her and Jarvis still have a delightfully Steed-and-Mrs Peele vibe about them, maybe moreso now that he's actively going into her cases with her. Her and Souza have a bond that's under whatever they're both currently doing with their lives, and it's great and sad and charming, and it'll be great seeing them working together again. There's that scientist who feels like the field agents get all the glory and leave him out. There's Rose who is probably the best receptionist in the world. There's the SSR's cover as a casting agent that should offer all sorts of bonkers interludes--and dovetails nicely with Howard Stark's new venture as a movie maker.

There's so much going for this season, and it looks great and is just as delightful as it was before, but with new stories and new complications. If they can avoid letting the Hydra stuff take over the plot like Agents of Shield did, it could be even better than season one! I just hope that the first black character they've had isn't actually dead the same story he's introduced in, because that's lame as crap, no matter how great it is to see Peggy pissed off about racism.

What did you guys like best about these two episodes? What do you think the next episodes are gonna be like? Share in the comments below, or come talk to me on Twitter!

Tweets about #agentcarter from:pirategirljack, OR from:sineater_danyi, OR from:kiddle, OR from:trincynna, OR from:ohgress, OR from:manisandmakeovers, OR from:acciolacquer include:retweets

*For the next six or eight weeks, anyway, and up against Shadowhunters and iZombie, which is a terrible crime of programming if you ask me.
**It's like literally angry, all thrashing around and attacking things. It looks like the portal from SHIELD when it's active, and like the Ether from Thor 2, and I hope that's  intentional and not just a lack of imagination from the SFX guys, because think of those implications, dudes.
***I'm rooting for portal so a) SHIELD can meet him later when he falls through or they find wherever that stuff goes, or b) Peggy can find him again but with a Blink-episode-of-Doctor-Who time-drift where he's old and they've missed their opportunity for love and it's sad and they have to deal with it, but he's got info now that she needs. If they go that way, I want him to not die like in Blink, but to get hired as a consultant or a scientist or whatever, and still be sweet on Peggy.

Daredevil is awesome and if you haven't seen it, you should!

You guys, I am sold on Daredevil now. I didn't give two flips about the old movie or the comics before, and when they said they were making the show, I was like, okay that's fine, but I was more excited about AKA Jessica Jones because she'd be the first female lead in the MCU to get her own thing. But this show, you guys, this is how you make someone care about a dark, gritty, brutal story of a good man making extreme choices.

In no particular order, some things I want to think about:

This is not really an origin story. When the show starts, he's already a vigilante, and he's already starting to get noticed. Which is great, because I sort of hate origin stories now that we've had so many of the same ones over and over again. (cough - Batman and Spiderman and Superman - cough) He's still early in his career, doesn't yet have his suit, and because of that, he's making choices on the fly, he's hitting his limits, he's getting his ass kicked a lot, and he's dealing with actual consequences. It's unclear in the show whether he actually has powers, exactly, but even if he does, they don't include any of the useful superhero ones like healing or invulnerability--and that forces his lone-wolf-ness to compromise, and he gets Claire, who is awesome and who patches him up and sort of falls for him. And later, more people to help him, even when they still don't know what he's doing with the help.

In fact, the show constantly deals with consequences, something the MCU movies only do when it's convenient. It's not convenient here--but a thirteen episode series has a lot more space to watch things play out, I guess, so this is where it'll be.

Also, for most of the show, he's just a dude in black clothes, like a Navy SEAL with a face mask. Which I actually liked the look of more than the actual suit, but you know he had to get that suit before the end of the series.

There's connections to the MCU Big Plot, but they aren't integral. SHIELD keeps getting tangled up in their promise to connect everything, and then not actually being able to because of dumb plot points they won't drop for whatever reason, like Coulson supposedly being dead. Here, that doesn't matter much. They vaguely reference the Battle of New York, because they're there and things happened around them, but their purpose is much closer to home. Street-level, like the pre-release stuff said. They're dealing with the crime and corruption that existed before the Battle, and the fact that there are super heroes in the world is treated like the way we treat sports stars and celebrities--it's not the center of the world, it's some distant other thing that most people don't worry about on a daily basis. Which is nice, because it means this is definitely in that world, but it can tell its own story without being hampered.

SHIELD should take note.

The villain is the saddest creature ever created. Wilson Fisk is quiet, shy, possibly neuro-atypical, the victim of terrible abuse, and honestly thinks that what he's doing will save the city he honestly loves. He's extreme, but he makes so much sense, that he's way scarier than I've ever seen him be onscreen in any other version, and mostly what I feel for him is sadness. This huge, crushing sadness that can't quite excuse anything he did, but also knows why he did, which makes it a multi-layered sadness.

He obviously loves Wesley, who is a different sort of sociopath, and was loved by him in return. He fell for Vanessa almost at first sight. And a villain who can love is one that I love, because that's a well-rounded, multi-faceted character. He is complex and nuanced, and basically stole the show.

I feared constantly for all the women, and they all did fine. In shows that call themselves "gritty", I've come to take that to mean, at least some of the time, "women get really shitty behavior directed at them", so I was a little worried going in, and as I got to like Claire and Karen and Vanessa, I got a lot worried. The old lady was killed, which hurt, but Vanessa recovered from poison, Claire was not beaten to death and held her own as much as she could, and Karen didn't go insane or get killed or anything. None of them were sexually attacked, which was awesome, because too many shows rely on that to weaken or damage female characters, and this show didn't need that.

There's humor! And it's used right! The best use was when they were contrasting how poorly Foggy took the news of Matt's side job with how happy they were in college--those scenes where they were young and drunk and happy were so silly and sweet, and then brutally opposite from the pain and struggle of the present-day dealing-with-the-truth. Plus, through the rest of it, Matt is a sweet dork, but he will dangle you off a roof and punch you three-quarters to death to get the information he needs. Foggy is adorable, and his joking only gets more poignant as she show progresses, and when Karen stops joking with him, it makes it even more so.

It makes the rest of the MCU look like it's hobbled by it's rating. The fighting is brutal, much more brutal than any of the rest of the MCU stuff. There's blood and people die and things go wrong and there's lots and lots of actual physical damage that has to be healed and never really gets a chance to--like, at one point, Matt is speared with a hook and dragged across the floor, which should have left him in the hospital, but that he just deals with.

But it's also beautifully done, with all these long, slow single-takes, and this artful use of seeing and not seeing what's happening, and the lighting and cinematography was gorgeous. I wished that I could synch my Hue lights to it, actually, because some of the lighting was that pretty.

It hammers home the stance that this show seems to take that the bad and the good are always side-by-side, and that you can't have one without the other.

The pacing is great. At the beginning, it feels a little slow, but after a few episodes you see why it's slow, and that's so you can really get to know these characters, so you can really see how everything is set up and how little movement it takes to make it all fall down. It's a remarkably quiet show, overall, with only a small cast most of the time, and these quietly tense conversations happening all over the place--and then it's punctuated with amazing fight scenes that get really violent, with Fisk flipping out and then getting control of himself again, with explosions seen from across town, with all sorts of really beautiful and terrible things that are given the actual chance to punctuate. And it's all paced perfectly so that when we get to those punctuations, they have the right weight and impact.

It's renewed for season two! This was a whole story, and it could have stood as is (with minor interaction with AKA Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, which I'm pretty sure this show set up without us even realizing it, since it deals with all these different gang factions), but now it doesn't have to. I was so happy when it was announced that it was coming back, because now we can see how these characters fare in the future! What will Fisk do? Will Vanessa become a villain in her own right? How will Foggy and Matt handle this second life, and when will Karen tell them what she did and when will she find out who Matt also is? Will Claire come back?

I can't wait.


How about you, readers? What did you take away from this show? What are your favorite details?

Fanmusic Friday - Agent Coulson

New Ant Man trailer!

This looks pretty cool, actually! And after watching seven episodes of Daredevil in two days, it's good to see some humor!

Stuff to talk about this week - Week 14 2015

Arrow maybe looks like it's gonna stop being stupid?!?

What I see:

• OLIVER AND FELICITY
• High five! And look how Ollie just can't handle the lack of angst in that whole thing.
• Lance wants to save Roy; Ollie wants to save Roy
• Thea vs Ra's
• Ollie takes on the role of Heir??
• Is that Talia? And is she awesome?

I'm deliriously happy that this League of Assassins storyline is coming to a conclusion, because I hates it precious, but I am glad that it brings Ollie and Felicity together, even if just for a night, and it makes Atom an actual super hero. If it brings Det Lance back around to their side, I'm even happier, because he's been underused and mistreated this season.

--

Avengers semi-behind the scenes:

Look at these amazing dorks who get to do all this amazing stuff for their jobs. Holy shit do I want to arrange my life to be this sort of busy.

--

Continuum is coming back July 26th! At least in Canada, and hopefully not long after in the US, because my computer is too wobbly to find Alternate Sources to watch it on. It'll be the first time I'll be watching it live (I've been catching it on Netflix so I can CONSUME IT WHOLE), so it'll be fun to get a month and a half with that fandom before it goes away and becomes a vintage fandom.

--

New shows I'm interested in checking out soon / this summer:

• Lipsynch Battle
• The Lizzie Borden Chronicles
• Wolf Hall
• Daredevil, of course
• Bitten
• Star Talk
• Between
• Aquarius?
• Sense8
• Killjoys

Older shows I'm going to at least give a chance, since I haven't had a chance yet:

• Three Musketeers
• DIG
• Dominion
• Maybe Helix? It looks like a hot mess.
• The Strain
• Penny Dreadful
• Catching up on Orphan Black because we're soooo behinnnnddddd
• Halt & Catch Fire

--

Some Linkery:

• David Bowie is working on a Man Who Fell To Earth stage musical and I really want it to happen
• New words from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

In which I have all the Bucky Feels

*

Last night, since everything in the world is on reruns because Sports**, we watched The Winter Soldier for the evening's entertainment. And you know, I saw it in the theatre, but I haven't seen it since, and between the viewings I had like a year of Tumblr pointin out tragedies to me. So here's all the Feels I was getting:

Other than Bucky:

- Peggy! I forgot that she was old and sickly and forgetting that she was talking to Steve in the middle of talking to Steve! I read a fannon post somewhere that had the idea that Shield gave her something that looked like dimensia, because she knew too much, and that made me even sadder.

- Natasha! Like, how sad she looked when Fury died, and what that meant about how important he was to her. And that moment when she didn't think she deserved the effort Steve put into keeping her alive? Oh my god. I don't ship those two specifically because I love how they function as friends--how he believes in her and how she's always amazed by it. How he's so genuine he inspires her to be honest and honorable, and how she sort of gets protective of him. Glorious.

And then onto Bucky. Bucky is a big old ball of horror and confusion and tragedy.

Like, he must've thought that Steve failed to save him back in Cap1, and who knows how hurt he was when Hydra got him. Did they tell him it happened on purpose? That Cap didn't try hard enough?

And then in the movie--he's framed as the villain, but he's a straight up victim. He's kept young and alive, but whereas Steve was frozen the whole time and woke up effectively the same a he was when he went out, Bucky doesn't even know who he was. His very identity was taken from him along with his arm. It was bad enough in the beginning, but once he starts trying to remember, it get so much worse, because then he starts to know how much he's been manipulated, starts to become aware. 

He's been an operative for fifty years, at least. How often did they wipe his memory, painfully, because he was startin to see how the world changed and he didn't? How often because he was starting to remember? 

And that fight at the end--Steve refuse to fight him, and he's so confused he gets angry. Like, that's his purpose, his only reason for being, as far as he's concerned (it seems), and Steve, who he looks afraid to remember, refuses to participate because of who he was before. Because of something he's not allowed to know--something he's probably subconsciously holding onto but suppressing. And by that point, we know for sure that he's remembering, and he's so outraged, so horrified about all of it, that it's heartbreaking.

And then after! After, Hydra has fallen, Shield has fallen, he's gone AWOL, and what does he have? A bad history of extreme violence, a lot of lies, and a lot of questions. He has Steve, but he doesn't know that, and might be actively avoiding him. 

It's a lot of Feels. I mean, I thought the Loki Feels took all the space in my heart, but apparently I have bottomless reserves of Feels.

And now, going into Civil War, and the idea that Steve will go looking or Bucky and might die (or thereabouts), and knowing that in the comics, sometimes Bucky is Cap... How will he deal with all this? Who will want him back under control and who can he go to for help staying free? Does he remember on his own? How much more horror can he hold?

Ugh, good job Marvel! Angstiest of all the angsts!

NOTES:

*I need to make more headers for this blog because really, ALL of these posts are Geekery...

**Ugh

After tonight's episode, my ideal Agents of SHIELD roster

This week's episode was bonkers, especially in those last few minutes with that Big Reveal! I'm thinking, basically, that Shield 1 / Coulson and co will be on one side of Civil War with probably Cap, and Shield 2 will be on the other with probably Tony (and Maria, if she's still working for him). But if there's any fairness in the MCU, eventually they'll have to unite--and probably form Sword, once all those space baddies come back. So, assuming everyone lives, here's the team I want.

Coulson, of course

May

Fitz and Simmons, reunited and more unstoppable than ever

Cap

Widow and Hawkeye

A miraculously revived Tripp

Agent 33

The brain of Howard Stark in a robot body

A Banshee analogue

Pepper (because Tony pissed her off)

Maria (because Tony pissed her off)

Falcon

Jane Foster, Darcy and Selvig

Betty from the Hulk movies

And a deep-in-the-Inhumans connection with Skye, who I think is gonna turn out to be royalty, but still thinks of herself as Shield.

Subject to change as I see how cool all these new guys are vs how shitty I fear they might be.

Who would you build the new team around?

@pirategirljack liveblog roundup for Agent Carter 1.8 "Valediction"

You guys. You guys, why is this show not getting the mile-high ratings it deserves*? Did you see this episode? Peggy gets to kick ass, the team works together, Howard steps up and takes responsibility for himself, baddies get punished, Jarvis is alternately adorable and formidable, Sousa is back on Peggy's side, everyone is wonderful, and then there's amazing set up for further action!

Eight episodes does not seem like enough for this show. It feels like it's just gotten started, and that's amazing because it hit the ground running and it was amazing from the start.

So #RenewAgentCarter!

I could watch a whole show just of Peggy and Jarvis being English at each other. Or of Howard inventing stuff. Or of Sousa solving crimes and not being hampered by his missing leg at all.

Things we still need to know:

• What did Peggy actually do when she set up SHIELD and who did she hire as her first agents? Did she hire people from outside the SSR? Did the SSR cease to exist, or was there overlap?
• How did HYDRA get into those early days when she was hand-picking all the people who worked for her?
• Does she marry Sousa? If she doesn't, is it Thompson, and how far does he have to go before I will accept that??
• How does Howard go from a scoundrel but a brilliant inventor to a mogul who drinks too much and makes his only son hate him? Who is Tony's mom and how does she even start to tame that man enough to get married and have a kid? Does Tony have his idea of who Howard was wrong and will he have to deal with that later?
• What are the first cases like when SHIELD is very small and the world is still recovering from WWII?
• What happens to the Screaming Commandos? Do they join her?

NOTES:
* I don't remember if I said this before, but I feel like a) ratings are BS and only measure the lowest common denominator, and b) MCU shows, since they tie into the bigger world of the movies, should be immune to them--they have a structural purpose other than just existing on a channel, and therefore they should be allowed to run as long as they need to, even if ratings aren't stellar, because ratings are dumb and incomplete and damaging to the really interesting shows, even when they're not tied into something else.

@pirategirljack Liveblog roundup for Agent Carter 1.7 "Snafu"

• #AgentCarter time! Yay Peggy!
• Where does Marvel casting keep finding all these cheekbones? #AgentCarter
• Who's baby are you stealing, Dottie? #AgentCarter
• Yay phone girl! Rose? It's been so long I forget. I hope if there's S2, we get to see more about the phone girls! #AgentCarter
• Jarvis! #AgentCarter
• RT @The7thMatrix: Time for one of the best shows on TV! #AgentCarter
• Repulsive? Is that why your handshake was lame? #AgentCarter
• Oh no, you do not fire Peggy. #AgentCarter
• #AgentCarter
• "You know morse code?" "Your surprise wounds me." #AgentCarter
• And there's the ticking clock! Come on, Sousa, believe her and save the idiots! #AgentCarter
• RT @thisrobotboy: #AgentCarter drinking game: drink every time Peggy looks flawless even under duress
• Dooley is the least subtle ever.  #AgentCarter
• Is he a mutant? How can he hypnotize people so easily? #AgentCarter
• RT @TimmyE78: "@RaySonne: "I have never been more than what each of you has created." Wow. #AgentCarter" #RenewAgentCarter
• RT @MildlyAmused: Brilliant. I never even saw it. Three agents, three aspects: The Damsel, The Goddess, The Whore/Bitch #AgentCarter
• Maybe they should have waited until the guy was away from the window to just stroll across the street. #AgentCarter
• Huh, a genuine moment from Thompson. #AgentCarter
• How do people on TV just snap keys? #AgentCarter
• RT @Woodzette: @pirategirljack Dont' you mean WHEN? #RenewAgentCarter
• @Woodzette I'd better mean WHEN! #RenewAgentCarter
• Dottie's doing the same thing they missed in Carter--using their misogyny against them--but is way more dangerous. #AgentCarter
• I feel like Sousa was a badass and hasn't quite figured out a new fighting style yet. #AgentCarter
• Twenty minutes left??? #AgentCarter
• RT @caitlynwinn: #RenewAgentCarter bc we need more strong lead female characters in tv shows!! #AgentCarter
• RT @agentalliecasey: peggy: *packs up box of competence* #AgentCarter
• RT @Shut_Up_Jo: EXCUSE ME. PEGGY. HAVE YOU BEEN HANGED BEFORE? WHAT THE FUCK. I NEED THAT STORY. #AGENTCARTER
• RT @KristenFitzpat1: "I can't say that I have, no." "It's quite unpleasant."  LOL #AgentCarter
• RT @RachelER22: Jarvis: "I panicked and panicked again." #AgentCarter
• RT @ncis_geek: If I've learned anything from my TV shows tonight, its that learning Morse code could become a valuable life skill... #AgentCarter
• RT @cwbourque: Oooo! RT @GeekTrench Fired from the SSR? What will Peggy do? Maybe form a secret organization of her own? Maybe call it SHIELD? #AgentCarter
• I kinda like this nice villainy. Send emhome to their families instead of killing them. Ruin their careers by shift priorities. #AgentCarter
• Aw man, it was a lie. Never mind. #AgentCarter
• RT @uptownandout: Plot twist! RT @EnverGjokaj Turns out Jarvis and Dooley's wife are the same person #AgentCarter
• RT @fufflymuffins: anytime they talk about Steve it makes me emotionally unstable and that scene was not okay #AgentCarter
• HOWARD WHAT WERE YOU THINKING. #AgentCarter
• RT @TheCavalryMCU: Trying to live-tweet tonight's episode, but it's hard to look away. It's so dang good. #RenewAgentCarter #AgentCarter
• RT @FayeOnParade: Hayley Atwell on Why Agent Carter Is 'a Bit of a Nerd #AgentCarter ' https://t.co/GSiu7w8Bxb via @YahooTV
• RT @laurengregg_: "i supposed i wanted a second chance at keeping him safe" #AgentCarter http://t.co/tBY5W8kgqQ

You guys. This show, you guys. It's so so so so so so good, and if it doesn't get renewed, I'm looking at all of us. Because damn, dudes.

But this episode was so good and had so much stuff in it! What did you think?

Daredevil trailer!

I have yet to reach Marvel-saturation, as proved by how excited this teaser for a franchise I don't even really care about has made me.

See, the Daredevil movie was so dumb I don't think I've ever actually gotten through a whole run of it, and Elektra was so phenomenally bad that they still use it as proof that Ladies Can't Carry Superhero Films*, and even before all that I was just like "eh" about it. But maybe it's all about the visuals, and whatever magic-dust the MCU has, because this looks cool.

• They cast a dude who looks good in a business suit AND a superhero suit
• I like the black--makes him creepier and harder to see
• It looks modern to me, which is good, because if he was back in the 70s, there'd be that whole why-are-people-surprised-now-about-superheroes-when-they've-existed-for-fourty-years thing; and this way, there's native heroes, right where the Battle of New York was--and where people would most likely be turning to vigilantism.
• I wonder if we'll have any flashbacks to what these people were doing that day?
• I wonder if the literal darkness of the show has as much to do with the way he's actually blind as it does with grimness?
• I hope it's got some humor in it; one of the strengths of the MCU is that they can be really serious AND still be believably goofy. There should at least be dark gallows humor in this so it isn't oppressive, I think.
• I love Netflix as a release option. So I can mainline it, yes, but also so it can't be messed with by networks full of people who don't get how tech is changing TV. 
• I'm excited to see how this show supports and expands what's happening in the movies--and to see how ideally smooth a series could run, when it doesn't have to have a weekly schedule to work around.**
• And of course, there's the sheer fact of representation--Hawkeye hasn't said one way or another whether he's deaf like in the comics, but Daredevil has to be blind to work as a character. 

This is just a teaser, of course, but it looks cool.

Whadda you guys think?

NOTES:
* That is a rant for a whole other post.

** If it's good, it'll  make me that much sadder for SHIELD--they were full-on hobbled by being weekly as the movies came out, the TV schedule changed, and now with this midseason Agent Carter, which I love, but which is keeping us from finding out what happened to Skye and co.Middle of a season is a weird place to put a whole other series, though if it works, and it ties in, and it comes out phenomenal for Phase Whatever-we're-in-now, then I'll call it brilliant.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange!

(Shamelessly cropped from my own IG feed, replayed from @TheNerdTruth, which is a fun IG greeky news account)

It's official!

http://marvel.com/news/movies/23754/benedict_cumberbatch_to_play_doctor_strange

And here's why I think it will be AMAZING:

- Benedict takes roles he knows he can inhabit and just, like, roll around in-- look at how richly he played Khan*. Or anything.

- He's very good at being super-smart people in a way that's full of arrogance, but also flawed and human and relatable.

- He's friends with Tom Hiddleston, so I'm sure he has heard what it's like, and he tried out for and took the role, so he feels like he can do it.

- He's Shakespearean--he can make anything work, and you need that sort of gravitas to make something that's probably going to be a third in an alternate magical hell dimension work.

- Guardians of the Galaxy was bonkers, and it worked.

And I mean

- Imagine that voice intoning magical phrases.

- I really want to see him in that cape.

::waits until eyes stop dilating::

Ahem.

I am excited. Even if the movie is mediocre, he could elevate it--but really, I think the time for mediocre MCU movies is past. They're too far into the story now to put up with that mess.

So what do you think?

NOTES:

*He can't help that he's not Indian, and yes, they could have hired an Indian dude, but that's not what we're talking about here. This is be acknowledging the problematics and saying it's Not Okay, and then coming back to the point I'm making here, which is that he chewed up all that scifi scenery like a king. Chris Pine tried so hard and was just totally out-acted in all their scenes.

An open letter to Sony and Marvel

Dear Sony and Marvel,

I hear that you're in talks to bring Spider-Man into the MCU! This is such exciting news that I just want to encourage you to keep on this path and iron out all the difficulties--and I know there will be a lot of them. Marvel comics are based on a huge interconnected world, where team rosters overlap and heroes from one team know others, and it would be amazing if all the Big Names could even just cameo in each other's films.

But then I also hear that your plan to bring them together would involve recasting and rebooting again--when te current reboot isn't even done. This seems...wasteful. I'm the first to admit that I don't know how these things happen behind closed doors, but since the legalities will undoubtedly be super complicate to work out, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the story simple?

Here's how I see it: Spider-Man has just gotten established as a crime fighter. Okay; just say that all this happened before Avengers--even right before. So then, as a New York hero, he knows exactly what happened, he participated in it without hooking up with the Avengers, and he's been continuing to freelance while all that shit with Shield went down. Now, he's aware of all that stuff, he's living in a post-invasion world, and his villains are also aware of it. Bam! No need to reboot AGAIN, and only (I would assume), modifications to the already long-term contracts of the people already in the movies doing a really good job of it. Work it out in plot, not in reboot. 

That being said, I know I'm not one of your writers (though if you need one, I'm willing). I know that Marvel has a good track record with the balance of their movies. I know that this current version of Spider-Man was the best yet. I have faith that this will turn out well.

I'm just unclear on why it has to be done the hard way.

Your fan,

Sami

NOTES:

TV preview stuff!

Some of the stuff that's good to see! And that I'm going to be looking at as the fall happens!

Just a little more from SDCC on Marvel stuff!

You guys.

Lets talk about the MCU!

Okay. There's a lot to talk about, and this is probably going to be long and wandering, but you've been warned.

Here's where we are, as I see it:

• Tony has dealt with his demons and isn't but is Iron Man, which I take to mean that the trilogy of his movies is actually a trilogy and there's no immediate plan to do an IM4--but we know that he's back in some capacity for Avengers 2, so there's that. As a fighter or just a consultant or a tech guy remains to be seen.
• We still don't know if Pepper was cured of Extremis or just stabilized, and if she was cured, why isn't Tony sharing that info around, and if she was stabilized, can we look forward to Pepper-as-hero later?
• We know from SHIELD and Cap2 that Extremis is still in play, and that it, along with Centipede (which uses alien tech), has been absorbed into the massive experimental mess that is HYDRA. And the special that came on TV before Cap2 informed us unequivocally that Extremis, Centipede and the Hulk are all attempts to recreate the Super Soldier Serum that created Cap, so that's still in play--and in HYDRA's hands.
• Cap now knows that Bucky is still around and will definitely be going after him, and Bucky now knows that he's been used and lied to, and will also go  in search of himself. Which should be cool.
• SHIELD meanwhile, is a mess. Fury is assumed dead (though Coulson and Cap and Widow know he's not), loyal agents are in hiding or dead, and it looks like up to half their roster was actually HYDRA all along. The powerful half, it would seem, leaving Coulson as the highest ranking field agent and Hill as the highest ranking leader-agent (since Fury is underground), but both out of a job, though they're handling that in different ways.
• HYDRA seems to be based on cells like a terrorist organization--Garrett has taken over Centipede, and thinks he's a big deal, but there's also those who turned Bucky into Winter Soldier, and he doesn't seem to know about cyber-Zola, and neither of them seems to know about Nazis messing with the Staff and Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
• Thor brought us an understanding of the Nine Realms and showed how SHIELD isn't able to respond to this stuff anymore--they didn't answer Darcy's call and they didn't show up early to deal with this stuff before it went wonky the way they did all through Phase 1. Now they don't exist at all, except for whatever bases are so-called "safe" and whichever field agents rally behind Coulson or people like him.
• Thor also brought us a Loki who faked his own death to replace his father and get his brother out of the way, and it's super-unclear as of yet whether that was just to rule, or whether there's still some tie to the Other, the Chitauri, and Thanos that lingers after the Avengers--some debt he owes them, some further plan of Thanos's that we don't know yet, but that Thanos's creepy smile at the end of Avengers implies?
• And we're informed in the credits that the Aether is an Infinity Stone, and that the Tesseract is another, and that the Collector wants all of them.
• And there's definitely a third Thor movie coming, where he'll almost definitely wind up going against Loki again, and if they defeat him--if he doesn't play the "I'm a manipulated victim, I HAD to try to kill you" card--then he's back in play as a villain and he's already tied to Thanos who is already tied to the stones, and we've got one third of them already, so...
• SHIELD brought us a bit of fallout from Asgard already with Lorelai, who escaped because of Malekith's men busting up the prison, but wasn't killed because "Odin" wanted her brought back alive, and we're pretty sure that Loki has totally replaced Odin, so what's that all about, then?
• SHIELD is also bringing us all sorts of potentials--the Berserker Staff, that helmet that infects people, Gravitonium, mind-altering tech, that probably-Kree half-body in a place that wasn't SHIELD but probably also wasn't HYDRA since Nick didn't know for sure if he was going against HYDRA, Deathlock, a name drop for Abomination...Some of this has to feed back into the movies, otherwise, why bother having SHIELD around, the perfect incubator for plot-bunnies and fallout and foreshadowing?

Near future:

• Guardians of the Galaxy hasn't happened yet, so I can't really say definitively what it'll bring to the story, but a lot of articles seem to be already dismissing it as silliness or something out of left field, whereas I'm more than sure there'll be important things there--Benicio del Toro is in it and he's playing the Collector again for sure, so I'm willing to bet there's going to be a connection there--he knows of another stone, or he's actively looking for one, or the Guardians have a lead on one even though they don't know it.
• Also, they're already in space, where people have just started to notice that Earth is around, messing with Cosmic Powers, and being protected by gods, and being attacked by aliens, and so on, and one of the characters comes from there, so I bet he'll wind up being directly connected in some way, too.
• One of the articles below claims that Marvel doesn't have plans for a GotG2; if that's true, there has got to be a really strong and plot-specific reason for the movie to show up now that they're into mega-plot-land and have just announced a tentative plan up to 2028. It's all got to matter, eventually.
• The Netflix original series' for Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist that are coming out soon-ish have been confirmed once and for all to be in-continuity. They're smaller productions than the movies, and, being that they're people with a specific location (Hell's Kitchen, where Cap's mom lived, apparently) and without massive showy powers (that I know of), they might even have smaller budgets than SHIELD even. The Powers That Be keep talking about "street level" and "gritty", which will add a dimension of realism that might otherwise start disappearing as the movies get cosmic, so that'll be nice.
• It's unclear whether they'll be set in the past, when Hell's Kitchen was the way it was when the comics were written, but if they are, that'd give precedent, in this world, for people to be dressing up and fighting crime, making all this Avengers-centric stuff less crazy.
• If they're set modern / current, then I'm guessing they'll be in direct reaction to the Battle of New York, which, as I see it, is something we need to see. New York was trashed by friggin aliens and saved by a monster, two spies, a guy in a cape, a guy in a metal suit, and someone who froze to death 70 years ago; everyone with a single semi-heroic bone in their body--as well as anyone with a villainous bone--would start coming out of the woodwork all over the place. A precedent has been set for costumed crusaders, and they should be everywhere, and most of them should be nuts or incompetent or power-hungry.
• The whole meaning of Agents of SHIELD has been shifted from people who work for SHIELD to people who are all that's left of SHIELD, and I'm willing to bet that the next season will be about getting them functional again--and I'd absolutely love it if they were reorganized as a freelance group associated with the Avengers, rather than having the Avengers associated with them. Like, the big-name heroes set the bar, and the normal people and small-name heroes doing the same job are what makes up the new SHIELD. 
• There was a rumor I heard that Team Coulson might show up in one of the movies, and, sooner or later, Coulson is going to have to tell his actual friends Tony & Pepper, Thor, Cap, Widow, Hawkeye and Bruce that he's not actually dead. Hopefully this'll happen in Avengers 2, because I really need more SHIELD and more Coulson in my movies. And it's useful to do it all at once so that he doesn't have to repeat himself a jillion times over the whole course of the next Phase as he meets each one again individually.

Wild Speculation Time! 

There's no way to really know what's going on until it happens, and part of the joy of this series, for me, is that I can't guess what's coming up (rare, since I both write and know how plot works, and watch a lot of TV and movies and understand how those are built), but here's what I think could be factors going into Phase 3 and beyond.

• Ant-Man is confirmed and already being made, and according to comics cannon, he's involved with Ultron and Vision, who are both in the next Avengers movie. So yay, a reason for Ant-Man, of all people! He's also one of the original Avengers in the comic, so if he joins up by A3, we'll have most of the original team on board at once.
• One of the incarnations of Vision in the comics was in love with and married Wanda Maximoff, and they're both in the next movie, so there's something that can be carried forward there. He's also part of one of the reasons she went bonkers (one of the times she went bonkers), but Elizabeth Olson is saying Wanda is already totally off her gourd, so maybe her being married to him and improbably having kids and improbably losing them is not a story they're going to be tackling at all. 
• They also seem to have changed her powers from "probability manipulation" to a combo of telekenesis, psychokenisis and mediumship, so who knows. Although, being able to speak to the dead or to aliens across the universe or anything like that could be very useful for introducing magic-based characters like Dr Strange, or reaching across space to get to, say, GothG or Thanos or Loki, or any of the other space-based stories that may or may not tie in to the main story here on Earth.
• They could easily spin off GotG characters into other stories set in space, or bring them down to join the Avengers. One incarnation of the Guardians that doesn't include any of these characters are semi-members of the Avengers, so there's at least a little link between the movies there.
• It's super-unlikely that any of the X-Men characters will show up, but after Age of Ultron, there's space for the Avengers to expand all they want. It might even be necessary as the threats to the world get bigger and stranger, and SHIELD is already starting to uncover people with powers, tools of power, or scientific accidents that look like a crop of crazy new villains. Sooner or later, they'll start teaming up and causing havock, and there you go, excuse for an expanded team, especially if SHIELD never gets back on their feet, or takes too long doing it.
• In the comics, there are a number of spin-off teams, and Fury DID go to Europe to make contacts, so...
• Daredevil was a member of the team at some point, and he's got a show in the works, so maybe some of the other Avengers and Avenger-linked characters could get their own shows if these four are successful and well-done?
• I feel like this is sort of a test-run for another branch of the MCU; they take a few years and put out TV shows that are delivered whole and then link up at the end. If it works, they can do it again with other heroes, and shuffle the resulting characters into the movies, or into other shows, or have them pass through SHIELD or whatever.
• We saw in IM3 that Trevor wasn't the Mandarin, but we also saw in the short about him that there's apparently a real Mandarin somewhere who wasn't happy about his use of the name. Does this mean he'll be coming out of the shadows, too, another villain for the crazy world here? Or will be turn out to be someone else we already know--good or bad, and I'm sort of hoping someone who seems good--and that he'll be revealed to be, all along, part of HYDRA's plan, or Thanos's, or Loki's, or behind some of what we've been blaming on one of those guys and part of a separate thing? Layers in layers in layers, and it's better every time we find out we've had it wrong all along, after all!
• If you follow me liveblogging SHIELD on my Tumblr, you'll have noticed that I don't think it's a coincidence that Garrett was posing as the Clairvoyant, using SHIELD info to act like he knows the future, at the same time that Zola was existing as a sentient computer and creating an algorithm that does the same thing. So with HYDRA and Nazis back in play, of which he was both, I think we'll see the algorithm again, and that it'll be sentient, and that Garrett was actually using some of those results or the List of potential threats to HYDRA as his info-source--or that he actually had nothing to do with that and, just like he was feeding info to dudebro (who's name I can't remember, the rich guy) and to Raina, he was having info fed to him by Zola and / or the Algorithm, whether he knew it or not.
• I also think this is why Zola, who cared enough about his own preservation that he was willing to translate his consciousness into computer form when computers barely existed, wasn't worried at all about a giant bunker-buster missile headed straight for his abandoned safe-house--because he's got backups elsewhere, or because he didn't just make the Algorithm, he IS the Algorithm, and that it'll be WAY IMPORTANT at some point in the future.
• Agent 13 just feels like she's going to be important. I'm pretty sure she's going to turn out to be Sharon Carter, descendant of / family of Cap's Best Girl Peggy, but maybe she'll also be important in rebuilding SHIELD or expanding the Avengers or something that still hasn't happened yet.
• Falcon is the grandson of one of Cap's Howling Commandos, and I feel that that's going to be important, too.
• I heard a rumor, too, that there was a specific reason Hawkeye wasn't at all involved in the fall of SHIELD--or even mentioned as it happened--and that we'll find out what that reason is, eventually. Which is good, because when they were questioning people's loyalty in the middle of Cap2, Cap could have pointed out that Clint was compromised before, and Nat could have defended him, but he wasn't even brought up, so I assume they both know he's beyond question and I want to know why!

A digression: If Marvel keeps being a crazy juggernaut of money-making, I really hope the other studios decide that making nice and getting a cut is better than maintaining strict divisions in franchises that are not naturally divided at all because:

1. I want to see how they can make X-Men and Spiderman work in the MCU
1. Spiderman, I feel, would be easier to stitch in--they just have to mention the Battle for NY once, and we'll know that all this costumes-and-experiments stuff was brought to a head by aliens.
2. X-Men? It'll probably have to do with how they handle the continuity-stitching they're already up to in Days of Future Past, and I'll probably do a post about how they could do it after I see that movie.
2. I want to see what Fige and Whedon will do with those things
3. I want to see who wins out in the battle to be Quicksilver
4. I really want an Avengers vs X-Men movie

But back on point. So here's what we have in play, in summary:

• Extremis, Centipede, and through Hulk, the Gamma Tests, all working to recreate Cap, who is the only successful example of that work.
• Hydra, who has a lot of heads, as befits the name, and a lot of independent scientific experiments running at once--and so far, no indication of who is in control of all of it, or if it's just a super-invasive and totally decentralized thing. Which might be cool, but we need a face to make it personal, at least for a while.
• Loki on the throne, and Asgard back in control of the Nine Realms, now that the Svartalves are out of the way and the Convergence is done.
• Thanos, who is, in the comics, obsessed with the Infinity Gems, and two of which are now in the hands of the Collector.
• Space-based bounty-hunters.
• Chitauri remnants after the Battle for New York, and Chitauri leadership that still knows where Earth is.
• Mandarin who may or may not be a real thing after all.
• Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, separated from the baggage of having a father who is a major villain in another studio's epic, but still possibly connected with A LOT of great stories in the Avengers cannon.
• A quartet of on-the-ground lower-powered but very well-trained heroes about to work into the continuity somehow, and who will likely decide whether other heroes like them get to get shows of their own, too.
• A history of Shorts that add to the stories and will likely keep doing so.
• A history of in-credits scenes that stitch the stories together and had better keep doing so.

But how does it all fit together? And how does Ant-Man fit in? And what wonderful new weirdness will we get AFTER that?

What do you think?



Sources, cuz I actually have a few this time:

• http://www.nerdist.com/2014/04/confirmed-marvels-netflix-shows-will-be-part-of-the-marvel-cinematic-universe/
• http://www.nerdist.com/2013/11/new-shows-based-on-marvel-characters-coming-to-netflix/
• http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline
• http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/04/how-does-the-winter-soldier-fit-into-marvels-grand-plans/359989/
• http://sciencefiction.com/2014/02/18/marvel-studios-phase-three-plans-leak/
• http://sciencefiction.com/2014/04/27/kevin-feige-talks-thanos-guardians-of-the-galaxy/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Gems
• http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/kevin-feige-marvel-has-plotted-693317
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Avengers_members
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Avengers_members#Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_.281978.29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_(Marvel_Comics)#Second_android_Vision.2F.22Jonas.22
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2015381/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395427/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron