Warning, this podcast contains spoilers for the premiere of Secret Invasion, streaming now on Disney Plus. Hello, my name is Jason and I'm Rosie Nike and welcome to Extra Vision, The Crooked podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode. In the previously on, we're talking about Neil Kirby's comments on the new Stanley documentary. That's Neil Kirby, the son of Jack Kirby, fame Marvel creator. In the airlock It's a Secret Invasion premiere, and in the nerd out a rebuttal on whether the coach Ben should have burned down the cabin in Yellowjacket season two finale controversial.
Can't wait to hear that one. And we'll also be talking about another Marvel story that's been making the Internet talk today, which is the AI controversy over the Secret Invasion opening credits.
Coming up previously on. First up, let's talk about Neil Kirby's comments son Marvel Comics artist, writer, all around comics legend Jack Kirby, which expressed the dismay at the framing of stan Lee's involvement in the creation of various Marvel Comics icons, but most notably Spider Man that appeared in the new Stanley documentary on Disney Plus, which is titled simply Stanley. Not quite a documentary, but we can talk
about that in a second. Essentially, Stanley's position always was one that he was willing to say that Steve Ditko Jack Kirby, those two co created Spider Man. But he was only willing to say that as a weird like Olive Branch, to make them happy. But when pressed on the issue, he would always say, well, I.
I thought of it, so I invented it. I thought of it.
Therefore I am the sole creator of Spider Man. Now Here is Neil's statement in part it says it should be noted and is generally accepted that Stanley, this is such a fucking wild way to.
I just want to say, this is years in the making, This is years of controversy. I will give you a little bit of an insight into it when we talk
about it. But this is Neil, after having to go through the legal system to get money for the things that his father created, including the X Men, the Fantastic Four, like basically a thor every superhero that you like, from Marvel was partially created, probably by Jack Kirby and alongside Stanley, So it is going to sound pretty angry, but there's context for it.
And by the way, before we get into the opening salvos of the statement, which again are crazy, it's important to note that comics, being a visual medium m HM, are naturally going to be a collaboration between artists and writer.
Like stan could say, Hey, a guy with spider powers, and maybe we call him Spider Man exactly in order for him to be sole creator, he would probably also have to say, and the costume looks like this, and I'm gonna draw it, and I'm going to draw it, and I've decided the webbings go under the arms like this, and no that like the rest of it. Yeah, you had the idea, but then other people move the ball down the.
Field, and even I will say as well, the question of what ideas stan had are very controversial. For example, as Neil gets into here, it is highly understood now decades later that Jack Kirby invented the Fantastic Four and based them on the challenges of the unknown, But even in the new documentary in Inverted Commas that Disney plus released called stan Lee. They have stan saying that he
invented them, he created the characters. So even that idea of who came up with the idea is still very much contest.
Well, I think it is generally accepted in terms of the Fantastic Four that stan said something like, hey, it would be cool if there was a superhero family.
No no, no, no, there's letters from Stan and stuff. Now, the Fantastic Four one is very deep because, as Neil points out, they're essentially based on Challenges the Unknown, which was something that Jack had done already at DC. And not just that, but the characters are named after people that were close to Jack Kirby. So stan has always said he wanted to do like a team. But it's unclear whether this one is one of the most contested the Fantastic Four.
Well, here is Neil's statement in part quote. It should be noted and is generally accepted that Stanley had a limited knowledge of history, mythology.
Or sien things that Jack Kirby loved.
I mean, listen, I'm largely on Jack's and Steve Didko's sider. But that is like you're really saying, like, hey, everybody knows Stanley didn't read.
Well, I will say, and this actually comes across in the doc documentary. Stan built a lot of his career on basically saying he was ashamed of comics, and that comics weren't adult, and comics weren't deep.
And failed novelists and.
Failed novelists would write comics, and that comics were not serious. So I think that what Neil did here that I really love about this statement As someone who's written quite extensively on this, he went at it in an academic framework and used sure the mythology which Jack was so keen on. We talked previously about his like wild DC stuff, k new gods right. So like Neil saying, look, stan probably didn't like this stuff as much as my dad. So who do you think was calling on Norse mythology?
Who do you think was calling on these kind of archetypal tropes that came from decades and centuries of law. It was probably my dad and he goes real academic with it.
It's pretty wild, the statement continues. On the other hand, my father's knowledge of these subjects, to which I and many others can personally test, was extensive. Einstein summed it up better more than I knowledge, lesser of the ego lesser than knowledge more the ego, which I'll just say makes it seem like Einstein was weighing in on Jack Kirby versus Stanley. I probably would have scrubbed that mention if I was Neil's editor. A little bit of a weird ad here.
It was posted on his Twitter by his doors, so probably no idea.
Yeah, it continues. You will see Lee's name as a co creator on every character, with the exception of the Silver Surfer Solar creator by my father. Are we to assumably had a hand in creating every Marvel character? Or we to assume that it was never the other co creator that walked into Lee's office and that stan I have a great idea for a character. According to Lee,
it was always his idea. That's absolutely the case. Here's a tweet by Brian Cronin, a great comics historian who works over at CBRS, written, I've referred personally in my own research to his articles many, many, many a time.
He does a great like comic book legends where he breaks down like, yes, famous myths and are they true? And how did they happen? And yeah, he knows extensively about this.
He knows his stuff, and he you know, here's a thread and a snippet of an article that he posted several days ago. In response to this, he wrote, quote, here's a Stanley thing that always amazes me. He was stuck on the idea that he was the sole creative Spider Man because he quote came up with the ideas, despite obviously not being the one who came up with the idea of doing a comic book called Spider Man?
Can you even imagine that? And then he posts a snippet of a conversation that Stanley had with Jonathan Ross, in which Ross asks, but do you believe Steve didco co created Spider Man? And Stanley says, I'm willing to say so, Ross, That's not what I'm asking you.
Lee.
No, that's the best answer I can give you. So it's a no. Then, really, Lee, No, I really think the guy who dreams the thing up created it. You dream it up and then you give it to somebody to draw it. Now, that's not how it works.
But that's literally a quote they use in the Disney documentary or in Stan's voice, And I think that I was really happy to see how much this was reported on because this was just shared through Jillian Kirby, Neil's daughter's Twitter account. She shared this very long phrasing and rebuttal that Neil posted, and I think everyone should read it.
It's really important and it's really great to see it in variety in THHR to see people like Giema del Toro, Brian Cronin coming forward and talking about the realities of this. No one is trying to take away Stanley's legacy. He did a very good job over his long life of building that legacy, and Marvel and especially Marvel Studios, both
comics and the films, have helped him build it. He took on a very famous role at one point Chairman Emeritus, where he just got paid a wage to essentially be like a spokesperson for Marvel and promote the Marvel brand, and in doing that he built a legend in law for himself that he was a sole creator. And while that was almost something of just a personal mythos, stan also spoke at depositions in the favor of Marvel and against his creators getting rights, getting original art, and getting money.
So he did end up doing this on the backs of other people. And that's why someone like Neil has such a personal investment in this because while like me and you, we talk about Jack Kirby all the time, I feel like since thor Ragnarok there's been a more wide appreciation of Kirby and his influence. It did take decades to get there, including a very long lawsuit that ended up with a settlement between Marvel and the Kirby family.
Because something that people might not know is that when these creators were creating these characters, they were not working under what we call work for Higher agreements. So these characters were created and the people who created them actually did have some kind of claim to them, but as happened with Siegel and Schuster and Superman, in the case of Marvel, those essentially ended up becoming the property of
Marvel due to payment agreements that they made. A lot of the creators actually had to just sign over those rights to get their checks. Yeah, and that happened in the seventies, So there is a lot of history here. And I watched the documentary, I actually found that it was quite sad. That was kind of how I felt about it. Even made me feel quite sad for Stan and I've written quite extensively about this history and his role in the way that creators were treated at Marvel.
But I think Neil was right to do this, and I think that everyone should watch the documentary because I think it actually doesn't paint Stan in the light that I'm sure Disney Plus wanted them to, because it is all told in his own words, so you can catch a lot of the contradictions that he would say in the way he would change these stories. But it's very interesting to see people talking about this and recognizing it
and having conversations now with a more literate audience. Like you pointed out when you read that Jonathan Ross interview quote, you just know if you read comics, that's just not how it is. But you have to be able to draw it to claim, you know, you'll the soule create a Yeah.
And I think, more broadly speaking and creative collaboration, there is no scientific way to in all cases accurately gauge what a person's influence on a particular project that is created through creative collaboration is. At any given time. If Stan says, okay, I have Spider Man, then gives it to Steve and Jack and they draw it up. You've got to figure out a way to split that that is going to probably make somebody feel bad in order
for it to be equitable. Like I personally think, you've just got to come somewhere to fifty to fifty in stuff like this. Now somebody is going to feel like, well, I did more work and I brought this person in. And that's always the way it works with this stuff. But there's just no way to accurately do it. Somebody has to be the person who says, let's just share it.
Yeah, a lot exactly. I actually think that it sounds so simple, but that's what was missing a lot of the time. Like a lot of what the documentary focuses on when it does bring this stuff up is Stan's reaction to it, And sadly, his reaction was, I am the sole creator. I came up with these ideas, and that then creates this cycle where people are unfairly pushed out of crediting, and especially with Spider Man is a really great example. So Steve Ditko is now seen as
the co creator of Spider Man. And before he passed away, you know, he was very isolated. He kept to himself. He did a lot of great self publishing, a lot of which spoke about his issues with Stanley, but he ended up getting checks from Spider Man. He kind of got a little bit more of that equity. But Spider Man was originally drawn by Jack Kirby, as you pointed out,
and then standing like the way it looked. But allegedly there are also a version of the story where Jack had come up with that idea before with Joe Simon about a Spider Man character. And then there is the very controversial fact that the Spider Man costume looks like
a costume that a Halloween company had been making. So there's all this kind of blurry conversation around it that comes from the fact that these were stories being made for what was seen as a disposable medium for kids, that people were getting paid like no money to write and draw. And it's kind of funny to now have to extrapolate this when it's about like a billion dollar project.
I think the thing to your point that's sad about this for me is setting aside all of Stanley's self aggrandizement, just the stuff that you can absolutely say with authority that Stanley was responsible for that the promotion of comics and Marvel in particular advocacy. Steve Dicko you mentioned was a you know, was a ann Randian shut in who had no inclination to be the front facing salesman for comics.
He didn't even want them to publish pictures of him. There's barely any.
Jack Kirby was a kind of rough and tumble guy who did not have the kind of charm and like eagerness to hoobknob that Stanley had. That's like not nothing being the promotional guy for comics and coming up with a lot of you know, he did come up with a lot of the ideas, and while the Marvel method was created ad hoc to deal with what the structure of Marvel was at the time, it was not like a strategized system. It also gave him like tremendous influence
in the stories that were created. So I think what's sad about this is it overshadows the stuff that he really did do, which is tremendous, like really really important stuff. Yeah.
I think that's the saddest thing is that in creating this personal legend and then in posthumously, like with stand now passed away in Disney trying to carve this idea that he was some golden child who did everything himself. Yeah, you rub away the reality of the whole man. And like you said, this is what I always say. I wrote. I wrote an a bituary for Stanley that I'm really proud of Esquy Magazine when he passed away, and it was essentially a history of all of this stuff. And
I always say, brilliant editor, unbelievable editor. A lot of what he talks about when he talks about writing, he was just editing someone else's story and giving them ideas and notes. He's an incredible talent spot I look at the people he surrounded himself. Yeah, John Bushma, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby. Also, he is also one of the original NEPO babies. They actually don't really talk about that very much. So yes, you know, he got his job at Marvel
because of his cousin and stuff like that. But he's also an unbelievable advocate for comics. Like you said, he went on college tours. He made comics. They were taken seriously in an academic way for the first time because he would go and tour and he knew that there were teenagers who read this stuff, there were adults who read it. He would go on late night talk shows.
He moved to Hollywood, and that's why you have TV based on comic books in the way that we understand, and all of those things are amazing.
He had been working since the early seventies to try and make Marvel Yeah, have an impact in TV and film, and then a lot of the stuff that we see now is because he put that flag out there in the seventies.
He has his first cameo in the Marvel universe is in one of the old Incredible Hulk TV movies. You know, this is something he was doing for a long time. And it is sad that the controversies, which I will say he did have a big hand in creating. So it's kind of like the conversation needs to be holistic and talk about what he did great and what he did wrong. And I think the sad truth is in this case, all Neil and his family are looking for
is where's the Jack Kirby documentary. If you have the Jack Kirby documentary that talks about all the things that Jack did, then nobody worries about the Stanley documentary. Because it wouldn't be raising Jack. So I think it's all about equity. Even now, it's still about who created it, who's getting the credit, and who is celebrated for these
stories that we all love. And I think in this case, whatever deal the Kirby's made with Disney, I think this somehow goes against that deal because Neil has generally been very supportive. They were at the back Panther premiere. It seemed like Disney and the Kirby Estate were in a good place and this seems to go against whatever they agreed on.
Yeah, I also think that you know, listen, we're comics nerds here. This feud and story is really not one that moves beyond the bubble of comics nerds.
Hum.
And I think it's absolutely believable and reasonable to me that very view if any people responsible for moving this documentary down the line from production to the platform had any awareness of the kind of heat that is behind this particular topic. X Ray Vision will be back. Quick reminder folks that we will be live streaming our fifteenth Anniversary of The Dark Knight retrospective episode on June twenty six,
seven pm Pacific time. Join us. Jason and Rosie Live with guests Chase Serano and Joel Monique for one of a kind of analysis, movie lore and much more. For live stream tickets, head to cricket dot com slash x ray Live and we're back, moving on to an a topic, to another heated topic. So a Secret Invasion. We're recording this on Wednesday. Came out late Tuesday night and early
Wednesday morning. It emerged that the credits sequence the opening credits for Secret Invasion were created in some form of fashion using AI. Here is a quote from Polygon quoting the director Ali Salim. This is from the article from Polygon. Quote. Like many people, Slim says he doesn't really understand how the artificial intelligence works, but was fascinated with the ways in which AI could translate the sense of foreboding he
wanted for the series. The article continues. Method Studios did not respond to Polygon's requests for comment about how exactly design the sequence. The staff for the credits includes producers, designers, and an AI technician, but the company had previously worked on Marvel shows like Miss Marvel, Loki, and Moonnight. In addition to Game of Thrones, Battle the Back, Stard's Great episode, and for All Mankind seasons two and three, some more
contacts from Gizmoto. While Method Studios work on those was seemingly on a more traditional side of VFX production, it was approached for Secret Invasion to instead use AI generated imagery for using the titles. Now, of course, there's a backlash in this. AI is a subject of a lot of heated debate because of the fears that it could is taking creative's jobs. I think those fears are foundered. We've talked about that on this podcast.
We know it's based extensively on plagiarized art the way that they trained.
Yeah. Right. And also, you know, the industry is in the midst of negotiating deals or you know of a labor action with WGA in which the role of AI and any kind of future deal plays a major role. AI was addressed in the dga's deal that it was struck with the AMPTP. So this is a heated topic and people feel very passionate about it. Rosie, what are your thoughts.
I think this is a worrying development only in that it feels like the conversation that we have all been having on this podcast. This has really been less than a year of conversation, and I think part of the reason that the backlash has been so strong, even though, as you know, you've pointed out really well when we've been talking about this offline, is like, we don't know what the workflow is like, we don't know how the
AI imagery was used. But I understand the backlash and I understand why people are worried because this feels like it has happened incredibly quickly from the conversation of oh AI might be used by studios.
Now.
AI has been used before by Disney as a tool to dage people, like in Indiana Jones the new movie, right, but this is the first time that AI generated imagery has been used in Marvel, and it is I think another reason the backlash has been so big. It looks a lot like what we've seen when people have used AI, things like Mid Journey. The images specifically that have been coming up.
It looks like pre mid Journey, I forget it. It looks like Dolly generated Dodges, which is like a generation and a half behind previous to Mid Journey.
And I think that is quite alarming to people because even though we don't know exactly how it was used and whether this was some VFX art that they created themselves and then did through an AI generated whatever version it was. I think it worries people because this looks like they use something like Dahli and mid Journey, and that takes away from potentially jobs that could go to artists.
And also there is a tradition I would say, I think the reason this has hit so hard as a Marvel show think about the Dead Evil credit sequence that kind of changed the game with how people saw credit sequences in Prestige TV, and I think Marvel has really been a place where people we have felt even the Sheeholt credits that were at the end of the show where it was the beautiful illustration, I think Marvel has set a precedent for artistic credit sequences that set up
the tone of the show. And I think that also worries people because if the precedent is now that they're willing to use AI vendors, let's use Ali Slim's words, I think that makes people. Even people who have worked on the show in VFX have come out and said they're quite upset by this choice.
Yeah, well on one person to be accurate, I think I saw.
Cartoon Brew has a really good one that has like a few different people who've come out at this point and talked about their kind of disappointment in it. But it's I think it's a shame that this choice has overshadowed the show because this is the conversation about the show.
Now here's where I'm at. I think that we're eventually going to get to a place listen, AI is coming, right, it's the idea is that, yeah, it's here. The idea is to place humans in a position of primacy in the work flow. If for instance, which we don't know because we don't know how this was created yet.
We haven't had a comment from Method or Marvel.
Yet, right, you mentioned that as used for a lot of things, particularly for daging. If Method, which is a VFX house staff by artists, if the artist said Method decide, well, you know, Marvel said they wanted something that looks like Dolly, so they decided to use some kind of AI generated imagery as like almost like a filter, you know, like the way like a plug in, And it was the human that was directing this and using it as a tool.
I don't necessarily have a problem with that, and the issue of image plagiarism, even to me, is ameliorated by the fact that this is Marvel's imagery. This is Disney's imagery. It's not like you're not going out and taking somebody's drawing yeah of Nick Fury, which Marvel would own anyway, and and plugging it into the thing and saying, okay,
do it in a style of some like other person. Right, Theoretically, if it's an artist making a decision to use a tool, I don't necessarily have a problem with that, because I think that that's probably the best version of where we're headed, is if creatives and on the writing side it's completely different. But on the visual side, if the visual artist decides, hey, you know what would really help here is running this through this thing and to create this effect, I don't
necessarily have a problem with it. But it's worrying and some transparency, transparency, I think is the issue would be great now. The transparency on the transparency side. I also feel like, you know, what's the saying like, don't assign
to malice? What can easy ability assigned to incompetence? I think that there's a world where Disney pr was not expecting to have a heated debate about AI to Wednesday Mornings, specifically around the credit sequence to Secret Evasion, And I think the kind of sloppy way that Ali Salim kind of talks about the process says to me that this being a hot button topic was on nobody's nobody thought. I agree that this would be an emotionally charged topic that they would all of a sudden have to have
a very detailed statement about. And if I'm method, I'm now all of a sudden, you're looking at a situation where you have to coordinate your comments with Disney pr which was not a thing you have to expect. And in that sense, I think that there's probably a world in which the silence at this point is just the fact that they're like, oh shit, we have to figure out we have to comment on this now, and we have to figure out what it is that said. I would love to know how this was created.
I think that there's been some great tweets about people just being like, we just want to know the production. We just want to know how it was produced. If, as you say, it is a tool that is being used, which is something that people have kind of been selling as one of the boons for AI for a long time, then that would actually be, like you said, the best case scenario of a studio using it. The problem is because people don't know it's and what people do know
is dari a mid journey. If it's an AI generator that's been trained off of stolen art, then that worries people. If it's something where this was a job that twenty people could do and now five are doing it, that
worries people. And I do think really this all comes down to the way that the director chose to speak about it, even saying things like when we approached AI vendors, that immediately makes people go, okay, well you're approaching people to use AI instead of just you know, going to a studio and saying, hey, can you make this look like it AI? But like good.
He's quoted as saying he doesn't really understand how AI works, which is I think a sloppy way to comment about it. But honestly, it looks bad and it looks like it is not a thing necessarily that you should say in that way. But also it may come as a surprise to some people, like who aren't around the industry or It's very often that people involved in one field don't know how the other field works.
That's the problem with the VFX issues Marvel's been having. We've had heard them say, dict just don't know how the VFX process went.
Take AI out of it. Does we know how like like VFX rendered me? Probably not.
Do they know how many shots that go into one action sequence? You know? And how many people you need to work on it? How much time?
Now again we're wait. I'm perfectly happy to be irate about this once we get more information. I don't. I just don't think we have it yet. And I will say, as a final thing, I would much prefer that, though there are obviously going to be power dynamics within any company, any VFX company, between workers and management, et cetera, I would much rather have a company of VFX workers, artists, crafts people decide how to use AI. Then studios decide how to use AI in lieu of artists. I would
rather that decision come from artists rather than studios. Now here's the thing. I'm gonna get paranoid now. Now I'm going to go full paranoia to close this.
Conversation, perfect sevasion.
It's appropriate it is appropriate. You know, we know a lot about how Dolly about how Mid Journey are programmed, right, they just scraped Getty other repositories of visual images DV and art right, and that art probably contained amateur, you know, depictions of copyrighted characters, which most surely Mickey Mouse, et cetera, Superman whatever. We don't quite know yet, although it's uh.
Stories I have read have seemed to suggest that in what is a suspicious tell like that mid Journey and others have like avoided scraping Disney repositories account of legal big corporate repositories. It's weird to me that like Disney and other places haven't threatened to sue because their stuff is in there. And this is the same thing with the large language models, you know, like this is a this has been raised, you know, like every script that's
on the internet. If you go right now and be like, oh, I want to how do they how what are the what are the shooting script for Community season one? The pilot? Look like, let me get that. That's surely without question in the large language models like chet GBT. Right now, why isn't Universal sued? Why how if your IP is being used to train this thing. Why aren't these companies being like stop it or we own.
Part of this.
That's the part that worries me. The charge to like involve this stuff without any of the seeming aggressive litigation that always seems to come with an infringement or an even suggestion of infringement on IP. That is the part of it that worries me, because you know, if I'm going to be completely it feels like some kind of cacid agreement that said we need to know more about this particular subject vis a vis the Secret Invasion opening credits.
But it's suspicious, and I'm glad people are raising hell about it because I think it's important that the platforms and these studios understand that people are very concerned about this topic.
Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree. Also, very interesting. Hollywood Reporter just wrote a piece about how Samuel L. Jackson had talked about ever since you know, the prequels, he crosses out anything about his AI likeness being used in the future. So that's just kind of funny that we have this duel space, especially because let's be real, I saw Samuel Jackson's face in that AI, so I wonder how he's feeling about Secram Page.
I always wondered, I mean, this is off topic. I always wondered, like how Sam's reps responded to him just being straight ripped off in the ultimate.
Okay, so this is just the room, This is just the comic shop rumor. But allegedly his people just like called Marvel and were like, wtf put me in this? That was generally that's generally the rule that I've heard, because Sam Love's comics, so they thought it would be okay. But yeah, I think that is exactly what happened. Basically, that's that's one of those great comic book rumors. So yeah, wild stuff. And now there he is lead in Secret Invasion.
Okay, well let's talk about Secret Invasion. We're stepping out of their locking onto the streets of Moscow the Russian Federation for the premiere of Secret Invasion, now streaming on
Disney Plus. Episode one, titled Resurrection, directed by Ali Slim, written by Kyle Bradstreet and Brian Tucker, The show started Samuel L. Jackson, of course, reprising his role as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelssohn as Talos, Kingsley, Benadere as Gravic Amelia Clark as Gia, and Olivia Coleman wonderfully as Sonya Fallsworth and others.
Oh, the best part of the show.
Oh, there's a breath of fresh air when she arrives. But let's get it that.
Okay.
We open on the mosque in Moscow, Russian Federation. CIA agent Everett Ross, still employed despite the fact that he was betraying the agency to Wakanda, I think for the right reasons but still correct, meets with an undercover agent named Prescott. Press has a theory that several seemingly unconnected terrorist attacks around the globe are all connected and the Scrulls are behind them. The Skrulls, the theory goes, were promised a home world by Nick Fur and Carol during
the events of fucking Captain Marvel. Yeah, thirty plus years ago and in the past now, and they're fucking tired of waiting. They've been eating too long, three going on four decades now, Yeah, for the home world, and so they're taking action. They're sewing unrest and chaos in the world in order to undermine governments so that they can colonize Earth. Ross points out that, hey, I saw Captain Marmora. You saw Captain w there's on like twelve scrolls.
They were gell, they were friendly, they were chill.
And most of them were kids. There was like not a lot of them. And Prescott says, you idiot, you fool, you fool, you ignoramus, just idiot.
They can look like anyone. They you don't even know how many there can be.
And meanwhile, where's Fury, Well, this is happening. Where's he? He's disappeared. Well, apparently he's on SABER, which is the name acronym yet to be defined. I'm gonna guess it's space air bomb energy something I don't know.
I like that. Yeah, I'm very interested.
They haven't divided yet.
I don't believe they have actually acknowledged it. Yeah, and Marvel loves an outrageous acronym, as we know, so that'll be very exciting to see.
So Fury's apparently on SABER, which is both a outer space defense agency which Fury is basically spearheading, and the name of the main outer space base that Fury has been chilling on low these several past years. This is obviously so they made Sword right, the Sentient Machine Research Defense Organization and so now Saber is basically what Sword was in the comics.
Yeah, exactly, That's basically how it feels.
Which is focused on aliens. Everett then says, well, Fury's in space and I can't go to him with some crazy theory unless you have evidence. In Prescott's like, okay, look at this tablet. And he's got this tablet that has these hologram videos and various charts and graphs on it that apparently has Ross intrigued. And so he he's like, okay, I will take this tablet to Fury and we'll see what he says. And now Prescott is looking at Everett
Ross like are you a scroll? And he takes like some rubber tubing and wraps it around everittt Ross's neck and just starts choking him the fuck out because he's like, you're a scroll and you're trying to steal my shit. Ross shoots the man dead and then goes fleeing through the dark and Russian streets, and he soon realizes that someone's following him. He's radioing for an extraction team. The chase goes across the rooftops and then Ross ends up falling to the street like three four stories down.
Oh, it's really grim. It's like a brutal drop.
Very very far drop. His leg's clearly shattered. Maria Hill arrives on the scene just then to find him there laying on the ground, and then Ross's pursuer runs up. She draws down on him. But guess what the pursuer is Taylor's and Ross also a scroll.
Okay, this is the most important question I have for you from this episode. Yeah. Yeah, was Ross always a scroll? I don't think so from what they show us in this episode and what we learn here, I was kind of mad when this opening happened. One because it's it would be a great reveal, but two because one of my favorite things about Secret Invasion, which I talked last episode, we always talked about is the sea Wakanda and Die, which essentially establishes the idea that no scroll can get
into Wakanda. Yeah, so I was like, why they was nullifying the power of Wakanda in the MCU. But then I was like, I think this is a scroll. Who to get this specific information took on the visage of Ross, which means they must have captured Ross at some point.
Right they have Ross, We'll get to that.
I don't think that was a scroll who was in Wakanda forever? What do you think?
I don't know, but I think that is highly possible because, you know, a main plot point of almost every single scroll centric story, and certainly the two versions of Secret Evasion, which we talked about last episode mm hmm, always involves the Scrolls coming up with some way that they can no longer be detected. So in Secret Invasion one, you know, all of a sudden, Wolverine couldn't smell them, magic couldn't detect them, and Read Richards scroll detecting shit didn't work anymore.
And so like everybody's like, oh shit, the scrolls have up their dame. In twenty twenty two's Secret Invasion, right at the end of the first Secret Evasion, Read Richards had come up with a updated, you know, new firmware scull detector, right that was installed in like every government base across the world, the CIA, the MI I six, everybody had these, and of course like the Avengers, Fantastic four, the X Men had these scroll detecting systems in their
you know, various installations. But guess what in that story semi spoiler, the Scrolls have figured out how to not be detective by that anymore, and they have to go to like basically the method from John Carpenter's the thing in which they take the blood in like microreas. So I think it's very possible that the Scrolls have figured
out how to beat Wakandans skrall detection. And it makes a lot of sense to me that it's a win for Scroll agents to get access to Wakanda and be involved with decision binging at the highest level of Wakandan government.
Also, if the Scroll rebellion as it is being shown in this premiere is sick of like humans on Earth and the way they've treated the Scroll refugees, that could also explain why Everett Ross was surprisingly sympathetic and compassionate to the Wakandans when everyone was like, who's this CIA agent? Why would they care? Well, he turned on the American government, he turned on his ex wife. This could explain it. I like that, I like that, I like that reading.
I'll just say it's possible. I think it's very very possible that he's been a Scroll potentially for several movies, which would be so crazy elsewhere. I guess who's back on Earth. Maybe it's Nick Fury.
Well, Nick feared. Why has he been?
He's been in Saber, he's been in space. A drop ship lands in Russia and Nick Fury gets off. His knee is a little balky. He's dressed very shabbily, I think purposefully shabbily. He loves to do this when he goes on the run, where a watchman's cap and like a bedraggled like car coat, and he looks a little older. And that's gonna be a major theme of this episode and probably this series is has Nick lost his fastball?
Has Nick lost it? Nick goes to meet Taylors. We learn that Taylos's partner Soren, has died off screen sometime previous to this story.
As you do when you're a wife in the MCU or in any Superherer story.
As you do when you're a wife in the MCU, and as you do when you're an actor that somehow didn't sign the five six, seven, eight nine picture deal because they didn't think they need you, which is probably what happened. Sorry to that son, Sorry to that soorin so, Nick is like, I'm so sorry about Soren, And you
know how are you. And Taylors says that Soren was apparently worried around the time of her death about a thing that's happening right now, which is the rise of scrull nationalism Scroll nationalist extremists who are like, hey, I'm tired of Nick Feured dragging his feet for thirty five years for us to get home world, and we're looking to create something for ourselves right now. And the skull nationalist is named Gravic, and apparently Nick Fury has some
history with Gravic, and of course Taylis does too. Apparently Taylos's daughter Jia is part of Gravic's cause now, and Taylos himself was kicked off the Scroll governing Council and Gravic took his place, and his message is really resonating with these disaffected Scroll youths who you know were born during this time or shortly before the time of the
alliance with humans. And apparently Gravic is set up these kind of like mini Scroll bases slash colonies in Russia, because Russia has all of these decommissioned nuclear power plants that are just like teeming with radiation. Think Chernobyl and scrolls have no problem with that kind of radiation. They just happily live there.
For those who are going to be looking for who's a scroll? I feel like this feels like a good test of like if you want to know who a scroll is going to be in this world. Sadly, I don't think we're going to get my pickle and strawberry tell I was hoping for. This does not seem like
the comedic space for that. But I do think if in future episodes of this sixth episode series, if you see somebody who's chill with some radiation, who's a human or doesn't seem to be wearing a mask or is setting off a little Geiger counter or whatever, you're probably looking at a scroll. I think this feels very much like they're foreshadowing the importance of the idea that scrolls are not impacted by radiation.
You ready for this? Elena? Oh, everybody from Russia. As far as I am concerned, right now, Major Jor's suspect from being a scroll. I'm talking Natasha, I'm talking every I'm talking her old family.
We never saw her hit the ground when she drummed a format.
We never saw it.
The gun I did serious though all of them.
Oh my gosh, the whole Red God that just scrawls, the Green God, we need to think about it.
I would love to see Elena come back. So I'm saying I like this as like the unexpectedify like everyone who's Russian is a scrawl.
Now, Okay, So Prescott's intel was about what Gravih's plan is, and apparently his plan is to foment a war between the US and Russia by setting off dirty bombs, which will then be blamed I guess on the US and long term, Gravi wants to make the planet uninhabitable for humans. Radiation would certainly do the trick, and then guess what baby scrolls are riding high? We cut to Washington, d C. Where James Roady Rhodes out of his suit, walking quite well without any kind of seeming lasting effects.
Doesn't have his cool suit anymore or anything.
Is now an undefined high ranking member of it seems like the Defense Department. He might be the National Security advisor.
He's walking for the President, who I'm gonna say is definitely a scroll. Listen, just want to put out them like I'm like one hundred percent short, dumb at mulroney, one of my all time favorite actors.
I'm pretty sure you're a Scarborough just putting out that. So he's like, he updates the President Dermot mulroney, President Mulroney that Nick Fury is a wall from Saber. Nick Fury was not allowed to leave Saber the base and he has left, and more worryingly, right before he left, he got an encrypted message from his old, oh pal fucking collaborator, Maria Hill. You can't trust those two together, and who knows what they're up to, and so Potus
is just like, deal with it. That's all he says, is deal with it.
This is another question I have off this episode, right, So like, yeah, poor old Nick Fury, ann Marie Hill. So these two us still working for the American government off the Shield was revealed to be Nazis for like sixty years.
Seems like a major failure.
Seems like a failure. I'm like, bro, Saber, Sam, I felt like Nick kind of set that up with the scrolls, like it was his own thing, like he'd learn his lesson. And now I'm like, the President's in charge of this. This seems like a mistake.
Doesn't that track isn't that one of the most realistic things about about the MCU.
This tracks so much because you're right, because they fell for it with Shield in the Nazis and now they fell for it with Saber and the Scroll, so you're right. Actually one hundred percent makes sense, great storytelling, great foreshadowing.
Back in Russia, Fury is just out for a walk. Taylor's is like, you're a black guy in Moscow at night. Like's gonna be looking at you, noticing you, and he's like, don't worry about it, don't do it. Clearly Fury is looking to provoke a reaction. He gets it. He's scooped up by some black ops team and he's taken to meet Sonya and m I six big Shot, who is also trying to quash the Nascent Scroll rebellion. As Sonya, of course, as we mentioned, played by Olivia Coleman, and
it's like a ray of sunshine. As soon as she arrives in the show, it's like what.
If Mary Poppins was a nightmarish spy master. She brings the energy wonderful that she had in Peep Show. Somehow, it's just it's so good for me. This was the moment that the show like lit. I want to see her and Sam together are so brilliant, Like I almost want this to be a two hander that focuses on them, and I hope we get more because it just doesn't change the tone. The show is inherently grim and gritty.
That's just where we're at, and I'm accepting it because the original Secret Invasion comic was so bombastic and silly and out there, and I know that's not what we're getting. But this moment brings so much light and fun and
their banter and their chemistry. I definitely felt I was like, is this gonna be that relationship that Nick has in his past, because obviously in the comics that's Valentina, you know, and they changed that here and made her ever At Cross's ex wife, So I was like, maybe these two are that weird like Spymaster Romance. I just thought they were so good together, and she is. She's this great mix.
Of like, yeah, she's fantastic.
Would make you a cup of tea, but it definitely has arsenic in it, but you'd still want to drink the tea. Like it's this cozy cruelty, this Mary Poppins Hannibal Lecter. I don't know she was just I love her so much in everything, but she is so good.
This episode and potentially this series seems very influenced by the First Mission Impossible movie. Yes, and you know, Olivia Coleman Sonya reminds me so much of Max, the kind of like independent.
Oh that's a really good call.
Intelligence broker that is like constantly flirting and charming and cajoling everybody around her in this wonderful, like light touch way that kind of belies the seriousness of what she's doing. And that's kind of Olivia Coleman move here, and it's wonderful man.
First Mission Impossible movie, What a movie. Brian de Palmer loved that movie.
Wonderful movie. And a lot of the kind of looks and paranoia engines that are used here. The way Nick notices people staring at him on the street, a romantic couple m you know, the woman they're kissing, but then the woman like looks at him out of the corner of her eye, and it just all of these moves are straight out of Mission Impossible one.
That's such a brilliant call as well, because what does Mission Impossible have that's such a key part of that first film, and then takes on that technology. Is that technology where you can wear a ma that changes your face.
The mask the masks, maybe right, and that is essentially scrolls, because the scrolls can change whoever they are, and that is more what we're seeing here is the Scrolls almost using it as like a mister Smith esque matrix technology, where it doesn't work that way.
They still have to kidnap the humans. But yeah, they're not necessarily instilled in that deep cover way that we expected them to be from the comics. This seems a little bit more like a newer invention, a newer idea that they're doing. And it is kind of that mask, you know, it's just when you need it. But yeah, she's so good.
So Nick wants to know if Sonya knows anything about this raid in cozakh Stan in which nuclear material was stolen, and she says she doesn't know anything about it, and she also says, very pointedly, one hinting at Nick's previous relationship with Gravic, that she thinks that Nick is in part responsible for Gravits rise, and furthermore, she thinks that Nick shouldn't be involved in this look at you. You're limping, you can barely walk around. You're older, you've been in space,
you lost a step. You don't know what's going on.
Everyone's saying that to Nick in this story. He's tie it, and that will telling him you at to tie it. You're not up to this, and they might be right. They might be right.
Nick is like, okay, fine, well listen. If you hear anything, let me know. I'm going for a walk again. We go to somewhere in the forest, you know, probably like around a nuclear power plant. Just guessing, just guessing, scrolling human form walks up to the gates. He's looking for quote home in my own skin, which is like the pass code, right yea passphrase for Gravis organization. And he is met bybe Gia Taylos's daughter, who welcomes him to New Scrollos. And she's got great news for this scroll,
whose name is Beato. Everything here in New Scrollos is like one hundred percent by scrolls. Four scrolls. We got scroll produce, natural scroll, we got scroll wine, we got scroll drinks.
Here's a weird scroll fruit. Enjoy it.
All the stuff you loved as a natural born scroll growing up. You can enjoy once again. And as you mentioned, like look in the glove box and there's like this big scrull like egg blands that Beto just bites into and is obviously so delighted to be at.
It's like Neon blue. It looks terrible, but he loves it.
He loves it. We learned that there's about five hundred scrolls living here right now, and it certainly looks very populated than they look to be of all ages, their adults kids. Geo then recruits Beido basically to work as an agent for Gravic to work in the field. A warrior they call them, and warriors. The thing with warriors is they have to stay in human forms so that they can more effectively pass as human and we learned that they call these human formed shells, and the shells
required by horrifically kidnapping people. The scroll then gets the physical attributes and then immediately transforms. The memories of the person are then extracted using some kind of skull technology and implanted in the scroll so they know all the things that the person knows, and then the person is kept in this kind of horrific stasis prison where we would imagine that Everett Ross is somewhere in this prison.
Yes, more than likely. And it's a very interesting an hilarious reveal because it's like, oh, they stay in human form. It's including Amelia Clarke. Of course she does. That's Emilia Clark. You want how to be in her for you want how to look like that.
We paid a lot of money for Amelia Clark.
But yeah, this is very interesting. We meet some other scrolls. If you are a fan of the Secret Invasion comic books, you may have been like, oh, Pagan, that's a big deal. That's like the biggest you know, character that we've met so far from the comics and the comics. He's Queen Varanke's lover and also most famously, he was Elektra for a very long time in the Marvel universe, a very fucking long time.
Have very long time since maybe nineteen eighty two, eighty three.
Yeah, like I'm saying, look in my brain, my brain's immediately like, whoa Pagan. He replaced the Elektra and he was ultimately killed by Echo Myolopez. So you know, maybe he's gonna become Electra and then he's gonna be in the Dead Devil Show. And then you know, Myelopas is gonna kill him. That is what my theory brain says. I'm just gonna tell you that's not gonna happen. That is not a we were right. Yeah, this is pagan,
you know. I think he's played by Killian Scott. I think he's gonna be a more grounded kind of Henchy For Gravic, we've had no inklings of Varanki yet, but it will be interesting to see where it goes. And it's fun to see them do that thing they've started to do in the MCU TV more where they put in a name there that makes you think it could be something. But that was a fun one. So yeah, Gravic, he's been busy.
He's been very very busy.
This is a very big setup he has going, and they're not treating humans particularly well.
No, it's very very scary. Back at the safe house, Taylor's Hill and Fury watch a video feed from a bug that Fury very smartly planted in Sonya's office, and they watch her just ripping an underling two absolute fucking shreds for not being up to snuff on various things
that she's asking for. And through this proloined conversation, they learn that there is this chech and rebel named Vasilli, who Sonya thinks is probably the best bet for the person the Scrolls are using to acquire the bombs, the bomb material, and to assemble the bombs that they want to use in their mission. So Fury is like, great, we have a target. Let's go after Verssilli. Fury wants to find Gravic before Sonya's people do, and he thinks
is very important. He stresses as Taylos because listen, here's the difference between me and Sonya. I love cooperating. One of the cool things about the Tailos Fury relationship is you can really tell that they are close.
It feels like they've been friends for that years.
It does there's a real, like deep emotional bond.
Mendelssohn and Jackson sell it.
They sell it really well. But Sonya, on the other hand, she just has no personal connections with scrolls and she would personally like to see all scrolls off of Earth gone. And you get the inkling that she's not really that picky about how we do it, like she just wants them gone. So it's very important that they find Gravic. Nick stresses, because we're gonna want to smooth things over with the scrolls that we can bring back onto our side. So news that Fury is on Earth reaches Gravic. Gravic
is semi concerned. Gia is then sent to make the deal with Vassili for the bomb. She finds Vassili at his art studio. The deal walks away. At the bomb, Fury and Taylos are just a few minutes late. They do a bad cop bad cop in which Nick Fury threatens to like shoot all of Vasily's belongings, and Taylo's just decides, well, I'm going to kick the shit out of you. But fucking surprise, Vasily is a scroll also, uh, And they really have it out, with Taylo's telling Nick
you can't get involved, don't get involved. Let me deal with this.
Yeah, just let me deal with it.
Let me do it. But then Taylos is kind of getting his ass kicked, and so Nick has to shoot the scroll that was pretending to be Vassilly and Taylo's who's clearly dealing with a lot of complex emotions about betraying his people and collaborating with humans and the fact that his family's been torn apart by this, his wife's been murdered, and now here he is fighting a scroll who maybe he was saying, don't get involved so that he could take the scroll in alive, and now the
scroll has been murdered by a human while he was there.
Yeah, it feels definitely to me like they're setting up a potential conflict or split here with the loyalty between Telos and the feelings he has towards Nick, but also his relationship with his daughter and that moment where he's devastated that Nick Fury shot this scroll and killed him. That feels like it could be a crack that may
turn into a chasm. Obviously, what Graphic is doing is horrific and needs to be stopped, but you would imagine that there's no way it feels good for Tailos to have his native people tell him that he has sold them out. Yeah, and also as well, I think this was always going to be a problem that came with the representation that they chose to do of the scrolls, which in Captain Marvel was this idea that they were
these kind of like peaceful refugees. In the Marvel comics, they are generally like your go to bad villains, who aren't you know, human.
Nazis an empire. Yeah, they're an empire.
And there are obviously people within the Scroll Empire who are good people. It's a complex, nuanced thing. But to introduce them as essentially refugees of a war and then in now have to establish the idea that some of those refugees are terrorists. This was always going to be a hard play, I think, and it's going to be interesting to see how they build it out. Obviously they're lucky because Kingsley Benneddet is like an incredibly talented actor, so I'm sure Gravic is going to bring a lot
of gravitass to this role. But yeah, I always think that was going to be a hard thing to sell, and the route that they're going is definitely the more serious and complex take on.
It, which I like. So I should mention that while Nick and Tailos were going to see Vasilly Hill was out in the car and she happens to see Geo walking past, so she follows down to a tunnel and the two fight, but Scrolls are way stronger than humans, so he'll kind of get her clock cleaned and goes on the run, with Taylos following right behind. The father and daughter confront each other. Gia doesn't want to hand
over the bomb. Taylos is like, well, this is a really weird way to tell you this, but I have some news. Your mother is dead. Her last words were fine, Gia, which is again a crazy way to learn that your mom died. And then Taylos is like, can we just like talk and Gia rebuffs him and she goes on
the run. Fury goes to a bar where he meets Hill and they finally have a talk that they should have had probably two days prior, where she gets to ask him, you know, why did you leave Saber and he's like, well, one, you called me, and two because I was having a crisis of faith and that crisis
of faith carried over to my work at Saber. And then he clearly feels a responsibility to the Scrolls and to Taylos, and his inability to follow through in a homeland for them is kind of a major factor in what's going on right now in a really significant way. And he'll says, well, listen, I only called you because Taylos wanted Jesus.
I didn't want you here.
I didn't want you here because guess what, you're not ready for this, Fury, you were never the same after the blip, she says, agreeing though she doesn't know it with Sonya, and again you have to wonder if she's right. We then see Fury late at night, like reliving the moment of the blip, his hand turning to ash, eventually his whole body turning to ash as he drifts away.
I'm very interested in this, actually, Taylos. You know he keeps telling Fury, you disappeared, You disappeared. You know you would never say so does Maria Hill. She knows he got blipped, right, so he was gone for five years then and then he went up to say, but I feel like people are not really like giving Nick Altt like enough credit for the fact, you know, he was blipped, and then like you know, the wild was saved and everyone got unblipped, and then he's up in space trying
to protect everyone's like, where have you been? Is that? Where was half the world? They got blipped? And now he's up in space.
I kind of perceived this as, yes, of course Nick got blipped, but the fact that as soon as you got snapped, you then left Earth to go to space.
Yeah yeah, yeah, like we needed you here when yeah.
We needed you. And clearly the suggestion is what Hill is kind of like and what Sonya is kind of beating on the bush with is you were heavily traumatized by the blip. Obviously you didn't know anything when you were blipped, but when you came back and the gravity of what had occurred hit you. It's probably still hitting you. You're probably still processing it, and you need to deal with it because it's heavily affecting your ability to do
the job that you're trying to do. Yeah, And I think that's what everybody's basically saying to him, is like, we want to help you, we're your friends. You went to fucking space. How are we supposed to help you?
Yeah? Like where were you? Yeah? No, that's a good cal I also won I feel like this there's a lot of weight being put on this idea that he's not the same he's not got the same strength. I wonder how much of that is going to play into a change that is more significant. I don't think that he is a scroll. I don't think he's one of those cases. I don't think it's anything like that. But you know, Nick Fury's very old in the comics, he's
essentially immortal. Here he looks much older. I wonder if there is some kind of connection here to him aging faster, or being ill, or actually, you know, the blip affecting him in a more permanent way than it did other people. I'll be very interested to see. Obviously, the biggest impact this is going to have as this series goes on is going to be Nick Fury showing everyone that he is in fact back ye like John Wick and they're all wrong. That's clearly the route they're going. But yeah,
I found that. I was like, please give this man a break. I was like, do you know how hard the blip was? Pretty hardcore man.
I will say that I find myself with regards to the way this episode ends. Yes on rewatch like looking for clues that Nick's playing possum. They're doing a really good job of selling Nick being older, potentially over the hill, traumatized by the events of the blip, not on his a game. But it's hard to escape because this is Nick Fury. It is hard to escape the idea that, of course Nick wants his enemies, thinking that he doesn't have.
It to think that, right, and he's just come back from space. Suddenly he's got a limp. He's looking a little bit rough and tumble.
He really played up the limbs.
Oh oh my knee. Yeah he's playing it. Yeah, oh exactly like. I think you're right. I think it's at least partially a play, especially because he doesn't really fight back when these women in his life are saying that to him.
Gia brings the bomb to Gravic's people and they're like, great job. She tells them that hey, just so you know, human security forces know about us because someone tried to intercept me. But then, very interestingly, she lies and says, I don't know who it was. I didn't recognize the person, but of course it was Maria Hill and her dad. Later, Gia secretly meets with her dad. He finally tells her, shock of shocks, that it was Gravic who killed her mom off screen, and she tells him in return that
guess what that big bombing is happening tomorrow. There's three devices and Gravic knows you're onto him. There'll be like one hundred scrull agents around. It's gonna happen in a park, and I'll mark the bombs with this infrared spray so you can see it. They set up the sting operation in the park with Hill, Fury and Taylors watching Gia. Who knows how many Scrull agents are all around. Immediately things get mixed up and the bombs are now heading
in various directions, carried by various people. Everybody splits up Fury. We mentioned how when Fury was on his walk right he ran into like all these different people who were different levels of suspicious, and one of them was this girl, this very colorful outfit with this beautiful rainbow colored ball that kind of like stumbled into his path and then moves away. He sees that girl again and he knows scroll.
Yeah, and it seems like the implication here, which would be a big change, but I think is something we'd guessed before. It kind of seems like the implication is she is gravit, and gravit can maybe change between bodies. Yeah, Because it kind of seems like Nick is following one person and as he follows them, the girl disappears and then it's a man, and then the next person is
a woman. Now he is always someone else walks in front, so there's a chance it could be a trick of kind of the light or like a trick of perception. But my read here was like, this is the same girl. The scrolls are on t him, and potentially that could be Gravic, who has this kind of ability we haven't seen before with scrolls.
I thought that as well. And you know, as we've talked about in previous episodes, I think the super scrolls are gonna be introduced here. I think we're gonna.
Get I do. They'll just do a different way.
They'll do it a different way. I think we'll get scrolls that can be multiple forms of things at once.
Mm hmm.
Okay, So the scrolls are clearly onto this counterintelligence sting. Hill discovers the backpack she was following was empty, and things just happened really quickly. After that, Fury sees Gravic trigger the bombs. They go off. There's huge chaos in this park. A scroll disguised as Nick Fury shoots Hill and she very potentially dies in his arms, and the real Nick Fury, having no other option, flees, and that
is how the episode ends. Is Hill dead. She's done this before, by the way, playing dead.
I think if she is dead, it's a big mistake on the MCU's pot. I don't think it will land very well. I would say it also would It makes sense she's quite a major player in different ways in the twenty twenty two Secret Invasion and the original Secret Invasion. But knowing the MCU, I think back to the treatment of Black Widow, a character I wasn't even particularly that fond of in the famous Marvel event movie Avengers Endgame.
I think she's probably dead. I think this is a classic case of fridging.
You think she's dead.
That's my feeling. You give Nick a very important reason to keep fighting. And also, if I'm not mistaken, I believe that the scroll kind of proving our point here, or at least introducing a new path. I believe it's Gravic who is disguised as Nick Fury and shoots Maria, which again adds another reason for Nick Fury to have conflict with Gravic. Plus, that is a scroll power that we have yet to understand, because Nick Fury has not
been taken and hidden in their little magic pods. So that's a powerful.
Choice, right. I think she's alive. I think this is a classic reverse Winter Soldier Nick Fury move.
Ooh, like an LMDC situation.
You know, when he's like in Steve's apartment and gets shot and then dies in air quotes. I think we're just I think it's just another one of these where Hill is now the one pretending to be dead, so that the scrolls can think that they are on the front foot.
And then they think Nick is alone. Oh that's pretty good. That's a long game plan. I like it.
This is just looking at Nick Fury's history. It would not surprise me at all that.
Would be from the Nick Fury playbook.
Any other scroll predictions. Now that we've seen again, I will go on record as saying I think everybody based in Russia for any period of time needs to be looked at as a potential scroll. Yolena, I'm looking at you.
Okay. In that case, let's talk about the one that could be their big reveal. Bucky always a scroll.
I would love it.
Well, you know what else as well? So that one of my favorite things about Sucre invasion. There are some scroll who are scrolls for so long they forgot that they actually start to believe that they are that person. That could play into the relationship he had with Steve, that could all be real. That would be very cool, that play into your Russia theory. I think this is gonna play more heavily into that twenty twenty two Secret Invasion mini series you were talking about.
I think the President is surely a scroll.
I think this is gonna be people in high placements. I think, you know, maybe maybe Rody I guess because he is up there as well in that space. But I think that it's gonna be more like that. I don't think we're gonna get any of those bigger reveals. I sadly don't think Hawkeye is a scroll, which has been my ten year theory that I've been arguing at every website I write at. But my big theory that I do think. So we get a really cool thing right this episode, which is no eyepatch for Nick Fury.
I love it. It's great aesthetic, it's very cool, but to me, it feels very important. And when he puts the little buzz in Sonya's room, he puts it on the same eye. It's the left eye of the owl, the left eye of his eye in the comics. Sorry to everyone who listens to this podcast, because I always talk about him. Three D Man has the glasses he can see who's a scroll. I think the more grounded version of that that we're gonna get is Samuel L. Jackson's eye that was,
you know, scratched by a flirkin. I think that's gonna give him the ability at some point to see scrolls or sense them. It's not gonna be crazy, it's not gonna be three D Man, but there's something about this left eye being able to see it. I think he is essentially going to take on that role as the person who can find a way train himself or activate something with him so he can sense who the scrolls are, and he will essentially then be that lone voice of
reason that nobody else believes, the paranoid but right conspiracy theorist. Yeah, very interesting.
Now in Captain America Winter Soldier right the end, the climax of that film h in part on Natasha's use of really really high tech like facial scrambling technology that allowed her to.
Yes, see, I see it's very famous Jenny Agata face mask.
Yeah, that allowed her to pose as a member of the council, So we know that humans have this similar technology. Hmmm, I'm gonna get crazy for one second.
I want to hear it.
Nick Fury no eyepatch and limping, who has a leg injury famously in the MCU leg braces for a period of time, although it didn't seem oh oh, what if they are flipped?
What if roady Sam?
Yeah, Nick is pretending to be roady and.
I would love to see it. I love that. I think that could be so cool. Also, you make a great point. If that technology is not in this mini series, I will eat my hand. It's gonna be the human. That's the human way of mixing and messing up the scrolls the way that they do to us. That's such a great call. God, I would love that. That's my I'm into it now. That's that's my head canin.
I can't wait to see what happens next. Will be following this series as progresses up Next nerd Out.
Warning, The following nerd Out contains big spoilers, big, big, big spoilers for the season two finale of Yellow Jackets. Be warned in today's nerd Out, where you tell us what you love them. Why a theory you're excited to share, or a quick question that we can answer. Cody offers a rebuttal. I would say Cody adds support to Coach Ben's actions from The Yellow Jacket season two for.
Do you want to read it? You should read it? Yeah.
Loving all the deep dives this year, I have to say I think Coach Ben made the smart move burning down camp Yellowjacket. That is a controversial take, Cody, but I'm here for it. Let's listen to begin. He should should he have reinforced the doors better and locked them inside? Yes, I agree, if you're gonna do it, don't let them escape. But he can't just go up with a hammer and nail and board up the windows and doors. He's working with one leg and no hammer, and they'll hear him.
The murder Cannibal Cult girls definitely have some difficulty getting out the cabin as it unfolds, and they are all asleep until Shauna wakes them up. Prompt one does Seana save the girls from burning up after a Hervey induced food coma is the fact that she is upstairs journaling and being perfectly petty. Are you their wilderness? It's me Seana. The reason the girls didn't die from smoke inhalation or not wake up until it was too late. Yes, I think I love it. I love that. If Shawna wasn't
that's writing her ridiculous? Why wasn't it me, journal? I think you're right. I think they would all die. And I actually that was what I was gonna say. I do think Ben probably could have hammered and nailed and no one would have known except for little dear diary Shana. Yes, and he's gonna say. Finally, Cody says, the one other thing I will say in defense of Coach Ben's plan is that the girls could easily die of exposure without the cabin. One more blizzard, a few nights of exposure
in the open air with no fireplace, donezo. It's a solid plan, Cody said. These girls are gonna die. Ben's gonna be fine. It's a solid plan in bad circumstances to deal with it must be said again, he is dealing with a self created cult of murder cannibals. All that said, I mean, I mean, what do you think.
I think that's very fair to Coach Ben, And I think that's probably right. Listen, he has no good options and no allies. So ah, everything that he has to do, he's got to do on his own initiative. Certainly, it could He's absolutely right, it could still work. They could die of exposure. There's there's not a ton like there's not enough space in the tree for everybody.
If you know, what do you think? Yeah? No, I love it, And Cody finishes with a perfect line. Ben is not making out of the wilderness. If you come for the antler queen, you bear not miss it. Ain't that the truth about yellowjackets. So I think Ben is done. But you know what, I understand his motivations. Cody, you did a great job selling us it's okay to murder teenagers if they're cannibal murder teens stuck in a forest.
I mean, I think that that's fairer like you. You would any right thinking person would naturally be terrified for their life at all.
Yes, I agree, Thank you, Cody. If you have theories passions are quick questions that you want to share, hit us up at x ray at crookeet dot com. Instructions in the show notes.
Well that's it for us, Rosie.
Any plugs, just that we have a live show coming up, So tell everyone all about that, because that's really cool and we want to make sure everyone gets to enjoy it.
Well. First, our next episode of Extra Vision will be on June twenty eighth, and that is our live episode. We're taping it on June twenty sixth. If you're in LA, please come if you're available. If you're not or you can't make it to the site, there's a live stream and information for that will be at cricket dot com slash x ray Live. Can buy your tickets to join the live stream, and the topic of conversation is gonna
be the fifteenth anniversary of the sequel to Batman. Begins the famous the Dark Night I ever heard of it? Ever heard of it? Heath Ledger's iconic turn is the Joker, and we'll please announce it. Two of our special guests at this time Chaserano, noted multi time New York Times bestselling author, showrunner and creator of Primo on Amazon Prime. N Joel Monique, noted comics and pop culture figure. Go to cricket dot com slash x ray Love to get your live stream tickets.
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That once in a while five Star ray five star and we gotta have them. You gotta get him to his Here's one from Emily k a weekly must love this pod. Historically not a comic reader, so getting insights int nerd stuff from the comics is great and inspiring to pick up more comics and finding cars. Thank you, Emily Kelly. We'll see you next time.
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