The MCU is pretty same-y aesthetic wise, but honestly I don’t care because I love the dramatic shots of people flying in the air. Also WandaVision bucks some of the more recent superhero movie trends and gives us bright colours! Really bright colours! Hooray!
Two thoughts I had while making this:
a) I really wish there was more Claymation in the MCU, it can be used to such unsettling effect!
b) Every time Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda looks directly at the camera I feel like I’m about to die.
So, this is still Loki. This is Loki who is about a thousand years old, who lived his entire life on Asgard, who is 99% the same Loki that Thor and Frigga and Odin knew. In every way that matters, this is the same Loki.
And he has to watch his parents die on what’s already the worst fucking day of his life and he doesn’t even get to say goodbye to either of them. I cannot BELIEVE that the MCU made me watch Loki have to hear that his mother died before he could make amends with her twice. Twice!
Then they made him watch his father die as well, except Loki never knows the hurt and anger they went through after his attempt to take over Midgard, he never knows the seething pit of rage he descended into while locked in his cell, he only knows that he’s failed on Midgard and suddenly he’s in this horrible place and they’re telling him that his entire world–the world he never got to say goodbye to–has moved on without him and is gone.
Frigga died because Loki told Algrim to take the stairs to the left and he never got to see her again, he never got to tell her that she really was his mother. He never got to make peace with his father as he died in Norway. He never got to see Asgard torn to atoms. It’s all just gone. And the choice of whether to sink back into rage at them or make peace with them has been ripped from him, he can’t rail at them and he can’t tell them he’s sorry.
They’re just gone.
The one bright spot is that he came to acceptance with Thor on Sakaar, Asgard, and on the ship. He was really there, Thor really could hug him, and you could see Loki’s face lighten, there was hope, even if their parents were gone, he and Thor still loved each other and could find space for each other in their lives.
Then Endgame happens and Loki realizes that this tremendous power he’s been trying to fight, the kind that makes paper weights out of Infinity Stones, has decreed that he has to die about five minutes after he finds his patch of sun.
And he doesn’t get to say goodbye to any of it, they’re all just gone.
Hm… A lot of this feels like setup for the upcoming Multiverse stuff (which I have increasingly mixed feelings about) more than anything else. Also man, it’s really pushed the MCU over into “needlessly convoluted and complicated” territory now, which I was always hoping they might be able to avoid for… well, a few more years at least.
I appreciate that Frigga (or well, her ghost) plays a large role here, and it amuses me no end that the much-maligned but actually totally one of my favourites Thor: The Dark World continues to be one of the most important films in the entire MCU.
One little throwaway line here, “You’re that criminal with the blue box!” strikes me as possibly being a nod to Doctor Who, but I could be wrong.
I enjoyed the D.B. Cooper bit more than I thought I was going to, but there is still only one D.B. Cooper conspiracy theory for me.
(Not sure if I’m gonna “review” this show every week, life is super busy, we’ll see.)
No The Falcon and The Winter Soldier tonight, obviously. But I’ve noted that so many people were disappointed with the ending, it’s the first Marvel project in ages to get a bad RottenTomatoes score even, and I think I see where they’re coming from? It was great to see Sam become Captain America and Bucky find some peace, just everything else didn’t really work.
One criticism that stuck in my mind was something along the lines of, “Would Sam getting Isaiah a statue and a museum exhibit really change things? Especially since he wasn’t asked first and now his likeness is sitting in a room filled with reminders of a past and government he hates?” And I sort of wonder if that wouldn’t have been a better ending, going with that. Sam shows Isaiah and Eli the new Captain America room with its statue and Isaiah hates it, really hates it. He gives Sam a look that says something like, “how could you do this without even asking?” walks away and that’s it. A reminder that superheroes can’t fix everything and an even more crucial reminder to us the audience that something similar happened in real life and can’t be undone.
It would’ve been a really bleak ending, but still. Maybe Eli stays.
Aannnnd that’s the end! For now anyway. I admit I found this series a bit muddled at times. So many things seem to be glossed over, I guess? For example Sharon kills a dude using a face-melting weapon so horrific it must be a war crime, and she does this while working with the good guys and it just… isn’t mentioned again. Sam hears the words “mercury gas” or whatever it was but he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions. Maybe it will come up again eventually (I’ve heard a strong theory that this Sharon is a Skrull, which I like because she is absolutely nothing like the Sharon I remember) but I kinda feel like that moment encapsulates (enCapsulates?) a lot of the MCU’s biggest flaws, like, it shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea that maybe people on the “good” side can do that sort of thing and it’s okay cos it serves a greater purpose? Am I reading too much into that? I probably am, but… Eh.
And while we’re talking about flaws here’s one that isn’t the fault of TFATWS itself but an unlucky consequence of how the MCU works. When the “previously on” was catching us up on what past bits were important one of the clips used was Isaiah talking about his wife, and a little lightbulb in my head went “Wait, time travel exists in this universe. Reality warping exists in this universe. Are they going to bring Isaiah’s wife back to him?!” And they didn’t, and they shouldn’t because this isn’t that kind of story, but… It’s always gonna be a question in MCU stories going forward I think and that’s an impossible balancing act. Blending fantasy with the worst kinds of reality is just… Hard.
But anyway – I’m glad this show had a happy ending, seeing Sam and Bucky together with Sam’s family at the end was lovely. This whole thing was such a great showcase for those two characters and said a lot of very important things, I just wish it had been a little more consistent I guess?
Another incredibly hard-hitting episode. Sam’s saying “the legacy of that shield is complicated” sums it up about as well as it could ever be summed up I guess. That scene between Sam and Isaiah is probably one of the best-acted and most important ones the MCU has ever done.
Sort of jumping off that in a way, I’m geniunely kinda surprised the government in this show actually DID dismiss John Walker as Captain America because I have a depressing feeling they probably wouldn’t in real life. God knows you can probably find all sorts of modern-day examples of similar behavior that went unpunished, sigh.
Back to the MCU rather than reality:
I had no idea who that was Julia Louis-Dreyfus was playing but it turns out it’s someone from Latveria! Setting up for the Fantastic Four movie I guess? She was a big surprise.
It was nice to see Sarah again, also I realised recently that she shares that name with Steve’s long-dead mother, I wonder if Sam or Steve ever knew about that. (I am also a Sarah.)
I like that Wakanda had a new outfit created for Sam but oh man I can’t imagine how, after Bucky said “I need another favour,” the next words out of Ayo’s mouth weren’t something akin to “Oh fuck off Bucky.”
John Walker constantly screaming “I am Captain America!” sounded like a dark mirror of “I am Iron Man” in a way. Guess Walker is a dark mirror for a lot of people.
I really wish we’re gotten to know more about Lamar/Battlestar before he was killed off, I kinda want to hear his story and how he and Walker became so close.
Hm I think that’s all I’ve got coherent-thought wise, but this show has made me appreciate all over again how probably Sam’s biggest superpower is Being A Decent Person and man there really need to be more superheroes who have that as their power.
Sigh… I keep thinking about how interesting this show would be if Karli wasn’t a mass murderer and wasn’t going round making threats to children. Sam having to grapple with the actual, geniune good guys thinking he’s not one, that would’ve been so fascinating to explore. But instead… We didn’t get that. The show is still good but..I’m bummed on several levels because a) I like Erin Kellyman as an actress and wanted to like her character and b) “These people have sympathetic motives but are also a bunch of violent a-holes, thus preventing exploration of the points they’re making” is… Not a good trope.
That last shot of John Walker (and what a great shot it was) reminded me of Homelander and The Boys. And Zemo’s speech about how being a super-soldier is a form of supremacy also did, except it reminded me of how much I hate The Boy’s take that being a superhero is inherently fascist because… How many superheroes actually ask for their powers? In the Marvel world pretty much everyone around at the moment was either born with them (Wanda, Star-Lord), got them by accident (Spider-Man) or is an alien (Thor, most of the GOTG). And labelling someone a fascist for something they had no control over makes no sense.
On lighter notes: Daniel Brul is killing it as Zemo and Wyatt Russell is killing it as John Walker, I don’t know how he does it but he just has this dead, violent look in his eyes all the time. Also WHAT he’s Kurt Russell’s son! I didn’t know that! Wow playing MCU villains really runs in the family huh?
It was really good seeing Wakanda again, I hope we get to go back there before the series is over.
Oh, and also RIP Battlestar. Your death was inevitable but you seemed like a good dude.
