In This Episode
On this episode of X-Ray Vision, Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight enter the Quantum Realm! In the Airlock (2:08), they dive deep (deeep) into Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, recapping the film, discussing the powerhouse performance by Jonathan Majors, celebrating a few We Were Rights, and theorizing on the direction of the MCU. Then in Nerd Out (52:20) Jason and Rosie discuss a listener theory on He Who Remains from Loki season one.
Note: Imprecise timestamps are an unfortunate side effect of a new ads system. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.
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Nerd Out Submission Instructions!
Send a short pitch and 2-3 minute voice memo recording to xray@crooked.com that answers the following questions: 1) How did you get into/discover your ‘Nerd Out?’ (2) Why should we get into it too? (3) What’s coming soon in this world that we can look forward to or where can we find it? If you’re sending a theory, feel free to send only a summary of your theory (no audio needed) for Jason and Rosie to react to on air.
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The Listener’s Guide to all things X-Ray Vision!
Avengers Forever [x] – 12 issue series written by Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern with pencils by Carlos Pacheco and inks by Jesus Merino. Avengers Forever Vol 1 #1 (1998)
Victor Timely Kang variant in the comics [x]
Rosie’s Den of Geek Shazam cover story
TRANSCRIPT
[AD]
Jason Concepcion This podcast contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the WASP Quantumania. What is this? A realm for ants? Hello. My name is Jason Concepcion.
Rosie Knight And I’m Rosie Knight.
Jason Concepcion And welcome to X-ray Vision, the Crooked Media podcast, where we dive deep all the way down to subatomic size, to the quantum realm to talk about your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture.
Rosie Knight In this episode, we are going to be riding on the back of giant ants to excavate.
Jason Concepcion The giant subatomic ant.
Rosie Knight The giant in the subatomic realm. But if you couldn’t see them if they were in real life, yeah, but. But we will be on them and we will be riding them into the airlock where we will talk about Ant-Man and the WASP Quantumania with a spoiler free reaction first and then a lot of spoilers. So if you haven’t seen it, go see it. In Nerd Out, a theory from listener Grant about the location of He Who Remains lair in Loki, season one. This is very good. We have actually got a lot of DMs with people who think about this, so Grant, I’m excited to hear it. And if you want to jump around, check the show notes for Timestamps. Sorry if they’re a little bit off. We’re dealing with some ad insert issues, but we are trying our best.
Jason Concepcion All right. Coming up next, the airlock. We’re stepping out of the airlock and into the quantum realm for Ant-Man and the WASP Quantumania. First up, our non spoiler reaction.
Rosie Knight It’s fun.
Jason Concepcion It’s a very fun movie.
Rosie Knight It’s like a wild sci fi romp through the quantum realm. Just that unbelievable performance from Jonathan Majors. Like it will blow you away.
Jason Concepcion I mean, that’s really for me, the headline is, if there is an actor, other than Angela Bassett, who could potentially one day be nominated for an Oscar off of a marvel movie. I think it’s Jonathan Majors.
Rosie Knight No, me too.
Jason Concepcion He’s the most watchable person that’s ever been in these movies.
Rosie Knight It blows your mind. And it is this emotionally driven, intense, scary, kind. I mean, look, we know you know this. He’s Kang the Conqueror. You’ve heard him talk about it. This is not a heroic portrayal. But I will tell you, the whole way through the movie, I was just rooting for him. He is so human and incredible, and it’s just a lot of fun. It’s a tonal shift from the other Ant-Man movie, so you still get pops of that humor in that kind of low stakes. And if you love pulpy sci fi, weird creatures, Star Wars, Cantina, all that kind of good stuff, you’re going to love it.
Jason Concepcion Yes. And again, Kang Kang Kang.
Rosie Knight Kang Kang Kang Kang.
Jason Concepcion Jonathan Majors just has an ability to make you watch him when he’s delivering any line or doing anything. And it gives his portrayal of Kang a real layer of, like, menace. Because there’s there’s points in this film where you’re like, I know he’s the bad guy, but I want to believe everything he says.
Rosie Knight Yeah. You want to believe him because he just puts himself across in such a sincere, interesting way. But the movie’s not afraid of showing you who Kang really is or who this iteration of Kang really is. His chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer is incredible.
Jason Concepcion Fantastic.
Rosie Knight She’s so great as Janet. We get more Janet here, which was something that we’d both wanted. Really fun movie for Hank Pym. If you were listening to our podcast last week and you were like, We haven’t got enough Hank in our movies. Guess what? You’re going to be. You’re going to be charmed. You’re going to get so much, Hank.
Jason Concepcion That is our quick reaction, non spoiler reaction to Ant-Man and the WASP Quantumania. Up next.
Rosie Knight Spoilers.
Jason Concepcion Spoilers, folks, the spoiler filled recap. So go no further if you have not watched the film. Okay. And Men in the Last Quantumania directed by Peyton Reed, written by Jeff Loveness. Paul Rudd as our friend Scott Lang. Evangeline Lilly is back as the WASP. Jonathan Majors. Kang the Conqueror. Michelle Pfeiffer is back as Janet Van Dyne, Michael Douglas, Hank Pym and Kathryn Newton as our third and final Cassie Lang. Let’s jump into our recap. So we open in the quantum realm. This is a flashback to the time when Janet was trapped. Time works differently down there, so we have no idea how long she’s been there or what is happening. But she sees a ship enter the realm and crash. She goes over to investigate and is attacked by some sort of alien creature that then splits into two alien creatures that then splits into four and she takes them out. But one gets the drop on her and it’s blasted off of her who saved her life, but Kang. And he’s like, Where the hell are we? We go back to the world, the above world.
Rosie Knight The above world. The real size world.
Jason Concepcion Where Scott Lang has basically been enjoying his life as a celebrity super hero who saved the world. And not only did he saved the world, he wrote a book about it, and he’s happy to talk about it anywhere and everywhere that people want to thank him and talk about it. We see him walking down the street in San Francisco. Everybody is like Scott, Oh my God, it’s great. He walks into his favorite coffee shop where he gets stuff for free. He goes to Baskin Robbins that went where he was once fired, but now is treated as.
Rosie Knight Employee of the Century.
Jason Concepcion Employee of the Century. People absolutely love him. We learn that Scott’s daughter Cassie is. It’s not that she’s not doing great, it’s more that she has very, very strong ideals about helping people who are who have been wronged and maybe who don’t have the power to help themselves. And this is led to her being arrested. So Scott and Hope have to go bail her out. And we also learn that Cassie has a little bit has a suit of her own, and she’s been using it probably irresponsibly because she’s a kid.
Rosie Knight She shrunk a cop car at a protest and Scott’s less than happy with it. Hope seems like vaguely proud.
Jason Concepcion Yeah.
Rosie Knight But you can tell Cassie’s mad that Scott is no longer an active hero.
Jason Concepcion Yeah. Why aren’t you doing more heroic shit? The world needs you.
Rosie Knight She’s like you literally saved the world. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing else left to do. She was at a protest to stop them sleeping. Homeless encampments. She is really the person who’s going to kind of have this moral arc to go on as the film goes forward.
Jason Concepcion They have a a family dinner. Cassie and Hank dropped the pretty big news that they’ve been building a device that will allow communication in the form of, like, mapping.
Rosie Knight Yeah.
Jason Concepcion Of the quantum realm. Janet is like, You got to shut it down. Why, Janet? Well, I don’t want to talk about it. Here’s where I want to stop and say. Janet, you got to just come clean about some stuff that happened in the room before this point.
Rosie Knight She needed to be more honest to them, but I also feel like the whole family is just constantly fucking around with the quantum realm. And she’s like, I was stuck there for 30 years. It was very traumatic. Like, give me a break. And they’re like, Well, what if we just built this device that would take us to the quantum realm in our basement without you knowing? And she’s like, I’d rather you didn’t do that.
Jason Concepcion Well, Janet tells them to shut it down, but it’s way too late. And they’re all sucked into the device and they fall into the quantum realm. Hank, Janet and Hope are separated from Scott and Cassie and Janet leads the Pyms to an old friend named Krylar, played by Bill Murray, who apparently was once a freedom fighter. In what we are soon to learn is this land that is in the midst of trying to throw off the yoke of a dictator. Well, this guy Krylar who used to fight alongside Janet, has sold out and now he’s like a rich guy. He they have a meeting with him about about trying to reunite with Scott and Cassie. And he says, Yeah, I know who they are, where they are, but unfortunately, I have to hand you over to Kang. But before that can happen, the trio escape and Hope threw an embiggoning Pym particle desk at the cocktail squid like creature, that was a delicacy that you drink in very horrific fashion. Makes it grow into a large sized squid that then takes revenge on Krylar. Meanwhile, over at Cassie and Scott, they find themselves in the midst of a group of freedom fighters, including a guy named Quaz.
Rosie Knight Yep.
Jason Concepcion Played by William Jackson Harper, who can read minds.
Rosie Knight Spoiler alert, Friends. It wasn’t Quazar, as I know a lot of fans were hoping it was. It also was not.
Jason Concepcion Pretty close. Two letters away.
Rosie Knight It wasn’t Nathaniel Richards, who I was hoping it was, but it was William Jackson Harper. And he can read minds and he’s sick of it. He’s absolutely sick of it.
Jason Concepcion Jentorra.
Rosie Knight Yes, who we spoke about last week, who is the niece of Hulk’s love interest.
Jason Concepcion That’s right.
Rosie Knight Jarella in the microverse.
Jason Concepcion Played by Katie M O’Brien and is basically ripped straight from the pages of the comic.
Rosie Knight Yeah, I’m just like a total warrior badass. Like she will fight through anything and she’s not having any of Kang’s shit.
Jason Concepcion And Veb played by David Dastmalchian. And so the the freedom fighters are kind of not very trustful of Cassie and Scott.
Rosie Knight Yeah, they think they’re spies. They’re like why would you just turn up here? Who are you? Also, interestingly, they know nothing about the world above. They don’t know about Earth.
Jason Concepcion They don’t know it exists.
Rosie Knight They don’t know anything outside of this kind of. This is the subterranean quantum realm underneath the quantum realm that we have seen before.
Jason Concepcion It’s a fully realized other universe. And Scott’s trying to, you know, make them understand. We come from this other realm where we’re a lot bigger.
Rosie Knight Him and Cassie doing some really funny, like talking to each other, her banter with bigger but we’re not bigger.
Jason Concepcion And Quaz is like they’re telling the truth, but I have no idea.
Rosie Knight He’s like they know nothing.
Jason Concepcion Meanwhile, Kang has sent his ultimate killing machine. I guess a machine really was.
Rosie Knight Only designed for killing, oh wait, mechanized organism designed only for killing.
Jason Concepcion M.O.D.O.K. No M.O.D.O.K. and M.O.D.O.K. attacks the the freedom fighter camp and absolutely raises it to the ground.
Rosie Knight Using its cosmic beam as cosmic blade.
Jason Concepcion He’s got like these lasers, He’s got these laser saw blades and the whole thing. M.O.D.O.K., it turns out, is our good friend Darren Cross, the the former CEO of of Pym Technologies. He took over from Hank Pym and kind of usurped his power and was attempting to duplicate his technology, which he was going to sell, you know, to various countries that wanted to weaponize this technology. But then, of course, he was defeated and we thought sucked into some kind of like subatomic realm to disappear forever. But clearly, he survived. But with his head all huge and his little baby arms and his little baby legs.
Rosie Knight And I will say this is a we were right because we did theorize when they revealed that it was Corey Stoll and Darren GROSS that what happened was he had got sucked in. And when he ended up in the quantum realm, he essentially was just left with his head being bigger than everything else. That was right. And we also were suggesting last week that perhaps instead of A.I.M. being the ones who would control and create him and kind of turn him into M.O.D.O.K., it was Kang And that was also right. And what I did not see coming is that you get to see like a little M.O.D.O.K butt shot. That was.
Jason Concepcion That was so funny.
Rosie Knight That was like I was I was a fan.
Jason Concepcion He’s got a very tall butt.
Rosie Knight Yeah he has it said it’s a little M.O.D.O.K. butt when he’s getting pulled out and put into his chair.
Jason Concepcion It’s like, it’s like very narrow but tall.
Rosie Knight Yeah, very good atomerish. Like an egg with about.
Jason Concepcion Cassian scatter captured. The rebels are rooted and Cassie and Scott are taken to meet Kang. Over at Janet and Hank and Hopeland. Janet is finally like, okay, here’s what happened. There’s this guy Kang. He landed. I helped him out. His ship was broken down. It needed gas. I helped him get gas for his ship.
Rosie Knight Yeah. And that gas was this swirling band of light that many people, including myself, thought could be the ten rings could be something that Phastos built. But in this case, they were almost like, taken from a clock. And they are the core that pushes Kang’s time chair through multiverses. And Janet was able to help him, which I felt like is going to come into play in the future. Like you’re going to have to have a Janet on The Avengers. Who knows how to make a time? Jack Because she knows.
Jason Concepcion But so it right when the the ship is the chair is gassed all the way up.
Rosie Knight And they are like friends.
Jason Concepcion Yeah. Kang is like hey, this is it.
Rosie Knight Connected. They’re going home.
Jason Concepcion We’re going home.
Rosie Knight This is and you don’t know how long it is. Janet says
Jason Concepcion You’re going back to the second you left. Yeah. Yeah.
Rosie Knight And the crazy thing is, you don’t know. Janet said it was ages. This could have been most of her time in the quantum realm. This is someone she spent so much time with. She told him about Hope. They shared their lives. They had this deep connection. This is a ship that I now ship.
Jason Concepcion And I mean that. Let’s.
Rosie Knight Let’s talk about that.
Jason Concepcion So so part of the reason apparently that Janet didn’t want to talk about the quantum realm was, one, the war. I guess it was very traumatic. Lots of people died. Okay. I get it.
Rosie Knight And she said she blames herself.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, but you could mention that the second thing more understandable is she fucked Krylar LA.
Rosie Knight I’m sorry.
Jason Concepcion Which.
Rosie Knight That is unbelievable.
Jason Concepcion When did she fuck Krylar? No, I do not believe she was. She admitted she fucked Krylar.
Rosie Knight I know. She was like. She was like. Sorry, Hank. A woman has needs. I’m like, This is misogyny.
Jason Concepcion You’re getting it from Krylar?
Rosie Knight It would have been Kang. I see that.
Jason Concepcion That that that to me is like you fucked Kang. Just admit you fucked Kang.
Rosie Knight And that’s why you keep it a secret, right? Because you literally had sex with like an evil war lord.
Jason Concepcion Kang rearranged my spine.
Rosie Knight Yeah.
Jason Concepcion Hank.
Rosie Knight Literally.
Jason Concepcion You want to know what happened? You want to know whu I don’t want to talk about the quantum realm? Because King rearranged the alignment of my hips.
Rosie Knight We had time sex, and it was you could never even compare it with sex through the multiverse. And the truth is.
Jason Concepcion H’s seen every kind of sexual technique throughout every timeline. You see it, I’m like, I’m sure he’s read every Cosmo 20 tips that will blow his mind. Like he’s done it all, Hank.
Rosie Knight Every Kama Sutra from every universe.
Jason Concepcion You never you can’t possibly measure up.
Rosie Knight And the thing is like the chemistry is actually there, like between.
Jason Concepcion I agree.
Rosie Knight Between Michelle and Bill Murray is like.
Jason Concepcion Just admit you fucked Kang.
Rosie Knight Yeah it was Kang. That’s my head cannon.
Jason Concepcion I agree becasue why else not say anything?
Rosie Knight It doesn’t make any. And also like the tender moments that they shared together, fixing, you know doing like sexy ship building montages.
Jason Concepcion They are sweating all the time. Why are they sweating all the time?
Rosie Knight Touching, talking about their former lives.
Jason Concepcion Drinking. There’s that one scene where there’s like, there’s the head and they’re sweating, sitting right next to each other and like, passing a sleeve of water back. And what are you so out of breath?
Rosie Knight Yeah, we so tired. We did what you been doing, guys, What’s going on?
Jason Concepcion Come on. X-ray vision will be back.
<AD>.
Jason Concepcion And we’re back. Janet helps Kang gas up the chair and then she touches the chair. And because the chair is so linked with Kang’s mind, there’s no control. He controls with his thoughts. She is able to touch his thoughts and she then realizes, Oh, my God, Kang is a multi-dimensional, genocidal warlord who has wiped out trillions upon trillions of life forms, entire timelines destroyed because of this guy Kang. And she can’t. It’s such a stunning reveal that she can’t hide it. He looks at her and he knows immediately, and he’s like.
Rosie Knight Oh, you saw it, Janet. He’s was like, Sorry, Janet. But he offers her. He says to her, and this is like a great character moment for Janet, because he basically says to he’s like, you can just forget about it. He’s like.
Jason Concepcion Don’t worry about it.
Rosie Knight He’s I know even that I can make you forget that you even know. He’s like, You can just go home. You’ll never have left and you will not know anything about the terrible things that I did. Yeah, it’s it’s really wild stuff. And one of the best. My favorite. One of my favorite Jonathan Majors moments in a movie. It’s absolutely full of them. Janet, she’s kind of quizzing him and she says to him, like, What are you going to do when you get out of here? I’m sure she wants him to say, like, I’ll make him out and.
Jason Concepcion Not destroy your universe.
Rosie Knight And he looks at the camera and they do a full face close up of Jonathan Majors, and he goes, win. And she’s like, Nope.
Jason Concepcion I do like this kind of reading of Kang that he’s just like, He’s in it. You know, he’s in it for the thrill of competition. Yeah, he’s like the Michael Jordan of destroying timelines.
Rosie Knight And now he’s pissed off at his fucking fellow gangs, and he’s like, No, I must succeed. Has to be me.
Jason Concepcion And so I, you know, you could see Janet being like, Well, if I invite you back to my world, you’re going to fight everybody, right? Like you’re going to destroy it.
Rosie Knight And he’s like, Not your world.
Jason Concepcion Let me ask you a moral question. So Jang, you meet up with Kang in the quantum realm, things may or may not happen. And then he’s like, I’ll deliver you back to your world. And he insists that I’m not going to kill your universe, but I will kill other universes. Do you go back?
Rosie Knight Look, morally, morally, the answer is no.
Jason Concepcion Well, morally, the answer is no.
Rosie Knight But it is. I’m also not Janet. Yeah? I’m gonna be real with you. This is out of the universe. This is Jonathan Majors Kang. I’ll be like, I’ll come sit in that time chair with you. It’s like, when it’s like when Shuri was like, Oh, no, Namor, I can’t calm down the world. And I’m like, Why? Like, really destroyed your whole family. Like, this is a this is a gift. So, yes, morally, don’t, don’t let them do it. And obviously you’d have to live with that your whole rest your life. It would be terrible. So it’s bad time.
Jason Concepcion So Janet is like, okay, I can’t consign my universe to to the depredations of Kang the Conqueror. So therefore I am going to take the energy core that I help gas up and I’m going to steal it from him. And Kang gives Chase, but then Janet hits it with the the Pym embiggon particles and turns into this huge kind of swirling vortex of energy and time dilation and everything. And now Kang is trapped. And Kang, now that he’s trapped, decides, Well, I might as well just conquer the quantum realm and then goes about doing.
Rosie Knight This unbelievable empire. Like, the implication is that really what we see as the quantum realm now is mostly Kang Kang doing that was people who lived there and there are communities, but Kang is the one who has made it this kind of bustling technocratic like kind of space, obviously through nightmarish dictatorship. There’s lots of like fascistic, you know, he made cops who were like, I guess robot cops, you know, some some kind of blue faced cop. So, yeah, he’s not he’s not doing very nice things there, old Kang.
Jason Concepcion Over at Kang’s headquarters, Kang meets Scott and Cassie, who are in prison. Scott tries to bluff and is like, Oh, you fucked up this time.
Rosie Knight I’m an Avenger.
Jason Concepcion I’m an Avenger.
Rosie Knight I called the other Avengers.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, we’re coming. I don’t want to flash my badge, but that’s what’s going on. And Kang’s like, Oh, I’ve killed the Avengers. Yeah, literally I can’t even count.
Rosie Knight He’s like, have I killed you before?
Jason Concepcion I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve killed The Avengers. Are you Thor? And Scott has a funny joke about, you know, people.
Rosie Knight They confuse us all the time.
Jason Concepcion They confuse us.
Rosie Knight It’s our body types. They’re so similar.
Jason Concepcion So, Kang. Says to Scott, Hey, you have a you have a solution to my problem, which is my embigenned energy core for my ship, You can shrink it down. And I would like you to help me shrink it down. I’d like you to go in there, shrink it down for me. And if you’ll do that, I will let you and your daughter live. And you can go leave and do whatever. But if you don’t do it, I’m going to kill her. And then to kind of, you know, show how powerful he is, he just makes a couple of gestures with this very, very futuristic and extremely powerful power suit.
Rosie Knight Kang crucially discusses Cassie. Like she’s like OP and she’s she’s in a lot of pain.
Jason Concepcion She’s paralyzed. She’s upside down. He’s like bending her arm back and and Scott is like, Fine, I’ll fucking do it. And he goes off and he dives into the energy, huge energy core.
Rosie Knight Yeah. And this is very interesting. I will stop here because this is just for people who find this. This is one of the things that we always talk about as fans. This is very different from what they showed us in the trailer. In the trailer, they kind of cut the dialog to make it seem like Scott was going to make a deal with Kang to get back the time that he wanted from Cassie. Like they he’d messed with Cassie. But I’m glad that that wasn’t the route they went. I think that was a bit of a red herring because Scott would never do that. You never know. What happens is Cassie is there, so he knows he’ll do anything to save his daughter. And that kind of pits him against what Hank and Hope and Janet are trying to do, which is get the call and take it away so Kang can’t have it.
Jason Concepcion So in the core, Scott starts splitting off into all the countless versions of himself from all the other timelines. There’s they are. They mostly all look like him. But then there is a Baskin Robbins Scott, I guess the Scott that never left.
Rosie Knight Baskin-Robbins Yeah.
Jason Concepcion And Scott is, you know, they all form kind of like an ant body structure, like an ant tower where that, that Scott, you know, climbs up.
Rosie Knight Yeah. When he hears Cassie. They all join together because the only thing that they want is to save Cassie. Before that they were all freaking out. Every single version of him is like a different possibility of what could happen. But the one thing that they all share is they all want to save Cassie.
Jason Concepcion So he’s climbing towards the core, but he can’t quite get to it. And just then, Hope, Hank and Janet arrive in Krylar’s stolen ship and Hope dives into the core and she is able to, together with Scott, help him shrink down the core back to normal size M.O.D.O.K.. Then, while this is all going on, attacks Hank in the ship and is eager to take revenge against Hank, his former mentor who he now hates because he’s an embigenned head with little baby legs and little baby arm sitting in a chair and I guess just like pooping himself all the time. Later, Hank tells Scott that he was saved by ants and that, yes, these are his ants from his lab. When everything in the lab was sucked into the quantum realm, along with Hank, Hope, Scott and Cassie, and that the ants, because of the time dilation and the quantum realm, lived like a thousand years of time in a in a minute span of time. And in that thousand years that pass in the blink of an eye, they evolved into this super smart socialist race of technologically advanced ants.
Rosie Knight Technocratic ants. And it’s incredible. And Hank is really like, there’s a lot of fun to be had. This movie with kind of Hank’s previous comic book history, which we talked about a little bit. Hank could control ants with the helmet that he created, and he beat Loki with ants. And this movie, they really lean into that Janet rags on him aboutit, Hope rags on him about it. Like this man just loves ants.
Jason Concepcion He lovesthem.
Rosie Knight He loves them. And you see, and he’s so proud of his ants now. And he is like love. He probably, if he had a choice whether to leave or to stay with the ants, I think he’d probably choose to stay with the ants.
Jason Concepcion So Kang has the now shrunken down core ready to put in his ship, and he’s making preparations to leave and invade the above realm, which we can only assume to be Earth. He’s taking his entire empire with him. Meanwhile, Cassie manages to escape from her holding cell, and she finds Jentora, who’s also being held somewhere. And together they start freeing all the prisoners inside Kang’s headquarters and in a Captain America addressing shield over the P.A. at the end of Winter Soldier moment, she is like, Hey, now is our time. We need to strike. Let’s start the rebellion. She basically sends this broadcast, hijacks Kang’s broadcast, sends it all across the microverse. Excuse me. Sends it all across the quantum realm.
Rosie Knight It’s the same thing.
Jason Concepcion And starts an insurgency.
Rosie Knight Yes, it’s very cool. And everyone knows this is always what happens. But the freedom fighters emerge. They go up against Kang and it seems like.
Jason Concepcion It’s a rise of Skywalker.
Rosie Knight It’s like huge. Like and, you know, they they came it’s kind of this huge moment.
Jason Concepcion There’s the insurgency. They come. Scott charges Kang’s Eternal City. He’s.
Rosie Knight Oh, he’s giant.
Jason Concepcion He’s giant. He’s like 100 feet tall. He’s smashing through. It seems like he might get all the way through to him, but he doesn’t. And then Kang says to Scott, like, what did you fucking think you were going to do? You think you’re going to beat me? You can’t beat me. You talk to ants. And that is the moment when.
Rosie Knight Dun dun dun.
Jason Concepcion All the ants come. And some of the ants are absolutely huge.
Rosie Knight Some of them are wearing like, stick armor and they’re like, communicating. And Hank’s there with his little red scarf on, looking like he’s leading an army of socialist ants. It’s very cute. I just have to shout out one of my favorite movies. Everyone knows that. I’m not going to say Eternals. I’m not going to not. I was going to say I feel like the final battle draws really heavily from Aquaman because that’s a good man. Good call. The whole joke throughout the movie is like, Oh, he talks to fish. Like, Well, I use less power. But the final battle is he calls upon all the sea creatures and that is what enables them to kind of win. And you might be thinking like, Well, that’s kind of wild that carrying just got beat by some ants for you. You know those things are still coming.
Jason Concepcion They say King is like he puts up a four shield, but the ants, there’s just too many fucking ants. Guys with so many hands, they sweep them away. M.O.D.O.K. comes in.
Rosie Knight Helps them break through his forcefield.
Jason Concepcion But then is grievously injured by his very, very brief fight with Kang and the ants sweep everything away and our heroes are left looking at the broken body of M.O.D.O.K. who is dying. And he’s like, Oh, my God. Like I finally did something good. At least they died in Avenger. And Scott and Hope are like, Sure, you definitely died an Avenger.
Rosie Knight And he’s like, You were always a brother to me. Scott And Scott’s like.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, yeah, we did it. Yeah. So the thought is Now, okay, Kang’s gone, We did it. This is fucking great. Let’s get out of here. So Janet is able in Kang’s control room to open up another portal back to the world they all jump through. Scott is about to jump through, But guess who’s there? It’s fucking Kang. And his suit is shredded now, so he’s not as powerful as he once was.
Rosie Knight But his muscles are powerful.
Jason Concepcion His. He’s obviously jacked and he can do a little stuff and he basically beats the living tar out of Scott Lang for a period of time. But then Scott manages, you know, to basically destroy the core once again, too, and embigen it and Kang gets sucked into the core and disappears. But it also destroys the portal. And this basically leaves Scott and Hope trapped in the quantum realm. Koepp had jumped back through to try and help Scott. In the end of the movie, Cassie is able to rebuild her quantum tunneling device, her quantum communication device, and they bring Scott and Hope back to the world. And we see Scott enjoying San Francisco as if he never left. It seems as if he was deposited back like almost the very day.
Rosie Knight Yeah, it seemed.
Jason Concepcion That he had previously left.
Rosie Knight Which by the way, is suspicious because we know that time works differently in the quantum realm. So that’s already should be a hint. Yeah. And then we get what is probably like my favorite joke slash moment in the movie because they play it so well. These were the pick ups that I’m pretty sure I saw them filming in San Pedro when I went to get my phone screen fixed and and Scott is walking and he’s talking about being an Avenger. And suddenly Ruben from the coffee shop knows who he is. He’s the bug man. He’s not Spider-Man. That means he doesn’t get free coffee. He’s paid $12 San Francisco prices. And then they zoom in on Scott’s face and they drop this absolutely just existentially horrifying score when Scott’s like oh, wait.
Jason Concepcion Kang’s gone, right? Yeah, didn’t we beat him.
Rosie Knight And he’s like.
Jason Concepcion It’s great.
Rosie Knight He’s like, Wait a minute, I think I remember Kang saying that something bad was coming. And if we didn’t let him out. He would die. And he’s like, But we did not let him out and he died. So I think that’s okay, Right? And he did. Getting sucked into the pool would have killed him, right? It wouldn’t have just sent him somewhere else because now for him to be a problem and then he’s like like so many of us who suffer from anxiety do, He’s like, don’t worry about Hadji is fine. And then he goes off and has like a charming dinner with his family and everything’s great, and he’s kind of making up to Cassie for all the birthdays he missed by doing a fake birthday dinner.
Jason Concepcion Then we go to stinger number one.
Rosie Knight Boom, boom, boom.
Jason Concepcion It is. We see Imortus, we see Rama Tut and we see a younger kind of Alita Battle Angel esque Kang.
Rosie Knight . And yeah, let’s talk about this. So who is that Kang?
Jason Concepcion It’s, my, I think it’s either Kid Immortus.
Rosie Knight Yeah.
Jason Concepcion Or the Iron Lad.
Rosie Knight I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that it’s a very different design. We we pretty much covered like the main Kang variants, and there are not like many that are fully fleshed out outside of just like some fun Council of Kang appearances. So I think you’re right. I think it’s it would be really cool if it was kid emotes. He looked kind of young. He was wearing this young ballet angel elite, us skinhead I and that would be awesome. I would love to see them do that storyline would also be really another young Avengers character. When we’ve gotten Cassie in this movie, it could be like Chris pointed this out where it’s like it could be a kind of modified Scarlet Centurion costume because that’s the other major character. But in this scene, the other two characters, Immortus and Rama Tut have the most like classic, like almost like Party City and I mean, not in a compliment. Like their costumes are like they still get the comic book.
Jason Concepcion Directly ripped from the comics.
Rosie Knight They look. So I think that the idea of it being someone like Kid Immortus or Iron Lad, that makes a lot more sense than them redesigning the iconic Scarlet Centurion costume, which I will shout out once again.
Jason Concepcion So Immortus and Rama Tut and the younger Kang who is either the Iron Lad, Kid Immortus or someone else are like Hey, did you hear? He’s dead, Who? Kang. And they basically are referencing Kang the Conqueror.
Rosie Knight Yeah, that one we banished.
Jason Concepcion They had banished to the quantum realm, and they’re like, This is fucking great. He’s dead.
Rosie Knight And then they’re like, Aren’t we all pissed we didn’t kill him?
Jason Concepcion Yeah, they are kind of pissed that we didn’t kill him. And then they start talking about. Okay, but. Whoever did kill him, that’s a problem. Because now they and they say something to the effect of they are aware of the multiverse now, basically saying the heroes of Earth kind of know about the multiverse. And that might be a problem because it threatens our vast inter time empires that we have all built. And therefore they have gathered all of the kings together in this vast place to have to basically call the Council of Cross Nine Kings and just vote on what their next move is.
Rosie Knight And I will say something that’s really important to kind of touch on here as well is so Kang the Conqueror, we saw the horrific things that he did, but when he explained it to Janet and later on when he was monologuing to Janet and a really nice kind of echo, he remains stuff. He clA.I.M.ed he was doing it to protect other worlds from these other gangs. He felt like they were conquering too much and he had to stop them and they were trying to stop him. So there’s this kind of constant battle, which is key to Kang. But when Scott said to him, What’s coming? He said, Me, like to me. And so we’re now seeing I’m not defending what Kang did. I don’t know the horrors that he wrought, but we are definitely seeing an immediate ripple effect of these giant council of cross-cut time gangs by, like, you know, two icons, Walt Simonsson and John Skimmer from Avengers 292. Like, we are seeing that come to fruition immediately. Like, this is going to be a problem for The Avengers. And it’s not just going to be one gang that turns up one time and another one. They are together and there are thousands of Kangs here.
Jason Concepcion Now, what maybe muddied the waters a little bit is Kang mentions that one of the main threats, alongside all the versions of him is incursions. He says, specifically incursions, which, you know, for people who have read New Avengers, Hickman’s new Avengers and Avengers Illuminati and the time runs out timeline will understand that this is a reference to the smashing together of various dimensions into the Earth. 616 dimension and the choices that some of the kind of the main. Superheroes of the 616 unit of the choices, the hard choices that they have to make to save the 616 universe. So and of course, we’ve seen an image of Persians previously. So it seems like whatever whatever the effect of all of these Kang’s is, it will be tied up with these potential incursions of various dimensions smashing into this.
Rosie Knight Definitely. And this is going to lead into you know, this is like, you know, Kevin fire calls it the multiverse saga this is going to lead into. Whatever reason we get to Secret wars. This is it, Kang Dynasty. You know, he even says it the Kang Dynasty. And then Cassie, like, breaks through him. You know, this is our big moment where we meet the people who are going to cause it, and every single one of them is Jonathan Majors. And I love it. Every kind of Jonathan Majors, they are hyped up. This is like a sports event. There’s a Skrull at the end who’s like, Is it Lizard Kang? Is it. Is it a Kang who’s a Skrull? Like, it’s very interesting and fun. And if you love the counsel of Kang’s and you love these kind of deep cut like Marvel cosmic stuff, you will be very happy with that.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, it’s very Avengers Forever. It feels like the launch to Avengers Forever.
Rosie Knight I definitely think that’s the route we’re going, especially because there is like a really interesting thing here with Hank becoming the one who’s obsessed with the ants and Scott kind of being moved away from the ants. I think, you know, we were talking before this, but you were kind of mentioning like some characters that Scott or some moniker Scott could take on aside from Ant-Man.
Jason Concepcion Let’s talk about that in a second, after we mention stinger number two. So we go back we go back to the early 20th, late 19th century, and it’s some kind of like, you know, traveling showman, kind of vaudeville, kind of set up in somewhere in a small theater. And the a scientist named Victor Timely, played by played by Jonathan Majors, is showing off what he clA.I.M.s to be his time machine. And in the audience are friends from the Time Variance Authority and elsewhere. Mr. Mobius and Loki are sitting there watching him, and Loki says, That’s him. That’s that’s the bad guy. That’s Kang. And Mobius is like, Are you sure.
Rosie Knight He seems great.
Jason Concepcion It’s great. He seems awesome. And then we cut and this very much seems to be a trailer for Loki Season two. But this is going to be some sort of Kang launch into the rest of the universe. X ray Vision will be back. And we’re back. Let’s talk about our takeaways from this. First, we mentioned Avengers Forever. But this is a movie that feels like heavily edited. We’ll talk about that in a second. Like they definitely moved a lot of the deck chairs around to all throughout the production process of this movie. It seems to me that if they go the Avengers forever route, which we won’t spoil, but you should read because it’s very fun. It’s really fun. It’s 12 issues, it’s really great and you’ll get a lot of the backstory of Kang and A and some of the other Kang’s. But in that story, Immortis and Kang end up kind of going head to head with their own set of allies. And Kang is kind of the good guy. Kang who kind of allies with The Avengers against Immortus and the things that Immortus wants to do, which listen, I think that I think that Marvel looked at what Jonathan Majors is doing and kind of said, how do we make him kind of good? Yeah. What how can we get a good version of Kang?
Rosie Knight I absolutely agree with you. He’s definitely there’s so many different iterations of the character that throughout history it would be so easy for them to cast a version of Kang, whether it’s Nathaniel Richards, whether it’s, you know, a tired, kind of weary aged immortals, or whether it is actually Kang the Conqueror who comes back and realizes the error of his ways or realizes the only way he can get what he wants is to help The Avengers. We’re definitely going to see a heroic version because Jonathan Majors can just sell it so hard and make sure he like his performance in this movie is so good. I love the final episode of Loki is one of my favorite episodes of MCU TV because of Jonathan Majors. And this movie, his performance is so good that you understand why someone would be like.
Jason Concepcion He’s amazing.
Rosie Knight Let’s just build a whole part of the franchise around him. Like, let’s see what he can do.
Jason Concepcion Let’s. Tell us about your Victor Timely theory, which I like a lot.
Rosie Knight Okay. So spoiler alert for Victor Timely is like seven appearances. Yes. As the as the listeners know, I like a strange character. So I am a fan of Victor timeline in the comics. Victor Timely. As I mentioned last week when I was there, when I was just talking about Kang Variants and I didn’t think that Victor Timely would be in the movie. Victor Timely was version of Kang who everyone thought was dead and it to hide in space and time. He went back in the past. He went to the night. He went to like 1902 and he found that this time a town called Timely, Wisconsin, a nice reference to the old Marvel Comics. And basically he used his skills and intelligence and all of the weaponry and technology that he had known throughout the years to basically create. It’s a super technological town, even though it looked like kind of an old west town. He has a cool mustache like Jonathan Majors. So my gut says. If they’re going to do this, they will end up doing what they did in the comics, which is this is really Kang, probably the Kang that we just saw.
Jason Concepcion Right.
Rosie Knight It’s not like this true different version of Kang. This is a persona that Kang puts on to hide. I think the coolest thing one, because I want him to be in every episode. I think that this Victor Timely is probably going to team up with Loki and Mobius and be like, Yes, we must stop the other Kang’s like, I am just a good old time traveler. Like, Yeah. But then we’re going to learn at some point that he is actually Kang the Conqueror who escaped from this part of the quantum realm.
Jason Concepcion The thing about Kangs, just as an aside.
Rosie Knight This is an aside or Kang aside.
Jason Concepcion The thing about Kangs and Immortus included, is they are all the time plotting against the other. Kang’s like they have.
Rosie Knight They are like the pettiest motherfuckers like these.
Jason Concepcion The Council of Cross. Hey everybody show up. Meanwhile, like, they’re like they’re putting in so.
Rosie Knight Brewed to each other.
Jason Concepcion Like putting explosives again under one of their seeds. Like one of them. They’re like, planning on stabbing in the clock. Like, they’re always, always, always plotting against each other. So I do. I like that.
Rosie Knight Yeah.
Jason Concepcion One of the things that we talked about is Casio’s stature. And we kind of got it in this movie.
Rosie Knight Yeah, she she she turns giant. She has a giant hug with her dad. I think it will be really cool to see Cassie on her own, like, especially if they establish Tara as this kind of freedom fighter. Ask like someone with big morals that could be really good for a young Avengers team. It’s also going to be interesting because early on in the movie, in that kind of first, like really swift 10 minutes that sets up the Quantum realm, Scott is wary of her being a hero, and I think that conflict is going to come into play. I also think it’s interesting because I do think that probably Scott is going to move away from my mantle and it will be like Goliath or Giant man.
Jason Concepcion Yellowjacket even.
Rosie Knight Yeah. You know, actually, in memory of Darren Cross.
Jason Concepcion In memory of my good friend, Darren Cross.
Rosie Knight My brother. I have to say, look man, I’m a, I’m a big M.O.D.O.K. final over cosmic beam. I’m not one. I’m not 100% sold on the Darren Cross M.O.D.O.K.. I Hope that we will see a different version of M.O.D.O.K. in the future, but maybe that’s unlikely. It is such a weird character to do so maybe it’s one of the ones where it’s bad to just do it in a unique way, but that to me was the biggest. Like that felt like a real solid, like Rick and Morty joke, like you see M.O.D.O.K. and then you’re like, Yo, that’s Darren. My friend from was like, That was the one where I felt like it really crossed over into that rather than being a reflection of all the things that inspired Rick and Morty, because I think that’s where those similarities come across, is Rick and Morty draws so heavily from the comics.
Jason Concepcion Let’s. Let’s talk about the the Rick and Morty of it all. So Jeff Loveness, screenwriter behind this this film, of course came up from the Rick and Morty pipeline.
Rosie Knight Like so many Marvel talents.
Jason Concepcion So many Marvel talents. And it was interesting to see people say, Oh, man, this is like really influenced by Rick and Morty when in fact.
Rosie Knight Rick and Morty was influenced by this weird shit.
Jason Concepcion By this weird shit, and it just kind of repackaged it. And everybody forgot.
Rosie Knight The reason there’s a council of Rick’s is because there’s a council of Kangs. Like that comes directly from it. So it’s kind of that interesting cyclical stuff, especially because the sci fi of it all and the pulp of it all that’s been in the veins of this storyline since we were talking about, you know, Captain America 43 or something like that, some oh or 23 or something where it’s like some old for these comics where pulp written by a pulp writer. So yeah, it was definitely interesting to see that the M.O.D.O.K. thing was the only one for me where I was like, That feels like it could be in Rick and Morty, everything else. I was like, This is just someone who loved playing in that playground. And with these genre tropes finally getting to do it in a way that’s actually canon, which is really cool to see. And I loved the inclusion of like, but I love like a weird monster and I think David Dastmalchian so good. I missed seeing his character from Ant-Man. I missed seeing Luis, but I understand what the choices were that they made and why it needed to be this kind of expanded science fiction film.
Jason Concepcion I will say so to think about the things that were changed. It is. I’m pretty sure there’s a version of this movie where. All the secondary characters that you meet in the quantum realm, like Jentora, like VEB.
Rosie Knight Quaz.
Jason Concepcion Like Quaz, got a core treatment where you learn some of their backstory and it feels like that really hit the cutting room floor. And secondarily, and I think this is like what people are responding to in some of the bad reviews. I think that if you gave Victoria Alonso and Kevin Feige like the ability to snap their fingers style, like L.A. style, excuse me and and recreate the reality the way they wanted to. I think that Kang would make his debut in, like either an Avengers movie proper or Thor or somebody.
Rosie Knight Iron Man or Spider-Man or like, an A-list.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, somebody who is not Ant-Man. No disrespect to Ant-Man who I love, and I, I, I think the first Ant-Man movie is really, really fun. And I think the briefcase fight is maybe my favorite action scene in all of the Marvel movies. I think the second one is good, and I think Scott Lane, you know, fills a very specific niche in the MCU. I think if your supposition is that Kang he’s so scary that Janet doesn’t even want to talk about him anymore unless, you know you fucked him.
Rosie Knight But that’s the version I want to see. That was what was on the cutting room floor for me.
Jason Concepcion He is this scary warlord who is so scary that other versions of himself throughout the multiverse scared of him. Then it’s a little bit like. So he got beat by the ants.
Rosie Knight So this is, I think, another thing that I think people are reacting to. You are 100% right in the context of the MCU. Right. But isn’t that like the most comic book thing ever that Kang would just get beaten by some random yes, like lower tier hero who managed to see through him? It’s so comic book in the same way you pointed out after the cinema, when I talking about M.O.D.O.K., you were like, That’s so M.O.D.O.K. like, M.O.D.O.K. will come in and just get wiped out.
Jason Concepcion The first two.Pages of the issue.
Rosie Knight Right, and I think in that way, this kind of same with I found Multiverse of Madness. I think when the movies become very similar to the way that comic book narratives are told, where they’re a little bit more like, you can be here for a couple of minutes and then your hair and some really wild powers happen, and then the stakes aren’t necessarily as emotionally driven and grounded. That’s not always going to sit well with people who grew up with Winter Soldier or people who really loved the early era of Iron Man. You know, this is a very different beast. And I do think that also I wonder this. There’s not I think it’s more of a question. I wonder if people who really wanted it to feel different from phase four. I think that also might be a bit of a feeling because this feels to me like a it’s in that same wheelhouse.
Jason Concepcion Well we’re in that multiverse of era. And to that. You know, in that vein, part of what basically all of what makes King so hard to fight is that he’s got weapons that are a million years more advanced than anybody else’s because he can time travel. He’s fought everybody, every version of everybody. And so he’s like a video game player with endless lives, just like the.
Rosie Knight Living cheek code.
Jason Concepcion Yeah, he knows how to speedrun every fight there is. And then he gets beat by the giant super smart ants, which I love. That said, it feels like the other thing that makes I think people maybe not so satisfied with that ending is that it? I could see a world in which you needed a setup for the ants. Like, and this is going to sound like a joke, but like Anthony level character development for the ants so that there is a little bit of journey ants show up and murk cans.
Rosie Knight No, this is why this is me. This is why I would have done this would have been my bit that ended up on the, you know, the chopping room floor. I would say this is like the ants were so technologically advanced that they knew about Kang. They knew that he had this power and they basically hid their identity from him in every universe so they could be him in this one universe. You could have like a 32nd to one minute kind of bet about something like that. But like you said, I really felt that the first two acts that was a lot of I felt like maybe like a bit of puzzling. Yeah. Putting together where that was probably a little bit more time spent with each character.
Jason Concepcion I do think you need that ant piece because. You know, it begs the question, in future fights with Kang.
Rosie Knight Can you just always beat him with an ant.
Jason Concepcion Wherer are thefucking ants? Can we go back to the quantum realm and get the ants.
Rosie Knight Hank where are those fucking ants?
Jason Concepcion Where are the ants?
Rosie Knight And like, in, like four years, we’ll be like, we’ll be like, Oh, shit, the ends they came like I was The Dua X Machina.
Jason Concepcion Kang’s like beating the fucking shit out of all Shang Chee.
Rosie Knight Thanos has come back. He’s on their side. It’s him and Adam Warlock. And then just the ants only thing that can defeat him.
Jason Concepcion Somebody’s like Hank, the ants. And Hank’s like like. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, they come up like The Last of Us bloaters. Like.
Jason Concepcion But that’s, I mean, that’s part of it that the movie is getting absolutely crushed on Rotten Tomatoes, which I think is I do think it’s part of what you’re saying. This is a very this is this is a six issue arc that I would read in an Ant-Man comic. And I think it is. It’s it’s if you’re not in love with this world, it might be a little difficult to deal with. The other stuff, there’s some critiques like of like Michael Douglas sleepwalking through this movie. I thought Michael Douglas was great. He was great. I think if you’re going to like to me, it’s definitely not a a like an Odin level, literally. And like Odin actually sleeps through his role.
Rosie Knight Yeah, baby iconic like that’s part of his character is for large chunks of the movie he’s he’s and.
Rosie Knight Then when he’s awake he’s just like I’m dyin. He’s like, I’m dead, babe. Okay, so currently is that 52% when we recorded this, which is 5% higher than Eternals. So will it become the lowest rated MCU movie? I mean, Rotten Tomatoes is just subjective. It’s just a bunch of different critics. I end up on there sometimes, you know, it’s a bunch of different critics who come together. I was very happy to see when I was checking the Eternals Rottten Tomatoes score, 77% audio coming out.
Jason Concepcion People are coming around.
Rosie Knight They learn in the Good Book of the Eternals.
Jason Concepcion And yeah, you know what I.,I need to watch it again. I watched it but I kind of watch it again because I will say that I liked Ant-Man and the WASP Quantumania significantly more in the theater than I did initially The Eternals, which is now, as you mentioned, climbing the ranks of the tomato.
Rosie Knight The audience scores.
Jason Concepcion The audience scores of the tomato machine. But that’s it. It is a wild, wacky movie.
Rosie Knight If you love the MCU, you’re going to be happy. It’s a wild MCU ride. Jonathan Majors. Jonathan Majors. Jonathan Majors. Jonathan Majors. I like your prediction. I feel like when we get like, you know, Kang Dynasty, it surprises us all. It’s like not an Avengers movie. It’s just like a solo. Jonathan Majors Kang movie. That’s definitely going to be the Oscar. I see it in his future.
Jason Concepcion Kang Is there. All the Kang’s The The Avengers are routed, and then you hear on your left and the Portals Open and it’s ants
Rosie Knight Actually, I was just going to say before.,I think we hit every other we were right. But the one thing I want to say last week when Jason did his very good MCU timeline of the Ant-Man family and I was kind of pepperring in some little comic book footnotes, One thing that we did have a lot of fun talking about was how much Hank loves ants. Yeah, So I have basically taken that as a we were right because that has not been a part of the MCU in the way that it was in this movie. So I’m saying I’m saying we were right.
Jason Concepcion Let the ants, like, colonize the savage land and let them just, like, live there anymore. That’s cool. That’s a free idea for Kevin Feige.
Rosie Knight Yeah, free with royalties. Yeah.
Jason Concepcion Up next, nerd out.
Rosie Knight In today’s Nerd Out where you tell us what you love and why, or a theory that you’re excited to share, which you know, we love to hear. Grant tells us a very relevant theory about He Who Remains from season one of Loki, and Grant actually sent multiple emails to explain this theory. So, Jason, I’ll let you do the reading.
Jason Concepcion Here’s Grant. I was watching the finale of Loki again before quantum theory comes out, and something that always bugged me that we didn’t know was that we didn’t know where He Who Remains’ palace is. I’ve always thought that the end of the multiverse saga would find us back with He Who Remains at his palace, which is which led to my theory, He Who Remains palace, is located on the ruins of battle worldWow, that’s pretty cool.
Rosie Knight Oh, I love that.
Jason Concepcion That’s actually really cool. Also, He Who Remains says he won the Multiversal war by taming Ali off. What if the snap like event at the end of Kang Dynasty in the lead into secret wars is He Who Remains unleashing aliens on the multiverse? One. Okay, sorry. One last thing. Why is the question of which timeline will become the sacred timeline is what Secret Wars is fought over. Oh, that’s where all of Earth’s mightiest heroes brought from all the timelines to figure out which one is sacred. Okay.
Rosie Knight Grant might get hired because I think.
Jason Concepcion It’s actually really good.
Rosie Knight Also, Think about that. That kind of takes my very good Kevin fight behind me idea of Deadpool being, like, hired by the TVA to kill off all the timelines. I like this vision better where it’s almost like all of them have to come together to fight alongside. But as they’re doing it, they realize the only thing they can do is save one timeline, and they all basically have to choose which one. That would be really, really interesting.
Jason Concepcion I think that is really cool. I particularly like the He Who Remains palace is built on the ruins of Battle World. That is really cool.
Rosie Knight Quick because I think a lot of us like a lot of people had thought like is it in the quantum realm? Like I had a lot of people do me ask me if that was something that they thought could happen. And and I really like that theory, but that one is really exciting to me because I like the idea that his ruins are in the remain of something that has already happened for him, but that we don’t know about. That’s very Kang
Jason Concepcion And just for those of you who aren’t familiar with Secret Wars Battle World, basically in a post incursion world, the universe is remade by Doctor Doom, who creates this battle planet that is ruled by, you know, by these different warlords and these different fiefdoms.
Rosie Knight Where kind of every universe exists on one globe.
Jason Concepcion On one globe, there’s a universe of Thors. There’s a universe beyond the wall, etc., etc. Universe of zombies, yeah, etc., etc., etc. All in one planet. That’s a really cool. That’s a really cool theory. Grant, thank you so much.
Rosie Knight Yeah, that was the best. Thanks so much, Grant. And if you have a theory like Grant or passions that you want to share, like so many of our other awesome Nerd Outs, hit us up at xray@crooked.com. As always, find those instructions in the show notes.
Jason Concepcion And that is it for us. Rosie, Any plugs?
Rosie Knight Read the stuff that I’ve read and if you want to know about M.O.D.O.K. the real version, not Darren Cross version. Our big explainer. IGN I have a cover story for Den of Geek that you can now read and it has some cool interviews with people like Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu. That was incredibly cool. Rachel Zegler who was just a total delight, who are going to be playing the villainesses in Shazam. I also interviewed the director and the lead of that movie. So you can pick that up a comic shop or you can read it online. And Rosie Marx at Instagram and Letterbox’d, that’s where you can find me other than here every week, twice.
Jason Concepcion In addition to the fact that we are now dropping twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays and your podcast feed, we are proud to announce that X-ray Vision merch is available at the Crooked store. That’s right. You can get X-ray Vision was right t shirt. You can get the t shirt with the wizard guy on it just man you can get all manner of X-ray Vision merch at the Crooked store. Now some housekeeping. We’re taking this coming Wednesday, February 22nd off because of Presidents Day, which is Monday. But like, don’t worry about it. That’s when we record. That’s just for us. That means our next episode is going to be Friday, February 24th. We’ll be covering The Last of US.
Rosie Knight Yeah. And if you’d like to see us with your eyeballs as well as your ear holes, you can subscribe on YouTube where we now are full episodes of the show. If you want to follow us on Twitter, it’s @XRVpod where we retweet cool stuff and share stuff about the show and talk to our fans. And speaking of talking to your fans, you can come to our Discord, which is absolutely amazing and has a ton of great people in that bunch of great channels, all different spaces to buy your fandoms and Manchester, and that’s a.
Jason Concepcion Five star ratings, five star reviews. We need them. We love them. We got to have them. Here’s one from student at a community college. Hilarious. Show never fails to make me laugh. The creators are extremely knowledgeable about their topics and their interviewees are always interesting. Thank you so much. Student Community College. X-ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Ruben. The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy Girard. Our editing and sound design is by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Delon Villanueva and Matt DeGroot provide video production support. Alex Reliford handles social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for a theme music. See you next time. Janet fucked Kang.
