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Marvel went big at this year’s D23 with news on all of their upcoming movies and Disney+ shows. We’re breaking down all the big news, casting, trailers, and footage you didn’t see, including: Ironheart, Werewolf By Night, Secret Invasion, Armor Wars, Loki Season 2, Echo, Daredevil: Born Again, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Fantastic Four, Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts and The Marvels.
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Full Episode Transcript
Alex: Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU. And right, now Marvel’s big panel at D23. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I’m Pete.
Alex: And we are going to be talking about everything that broke at D23 and Marvel’s [inaudible 00:00:25].
Pete: Roll dice that, baby. Come on. Let’s roll [inaudible 00:00:30] dice. Come on.
Alex: There we go. All right. Pete’s going to be an antagonist in this episode, is what I think is happening.
Pete: Dragon [inaudible 00:00:36], number 23. I love it.
Justin: Pete doesn’t know what news is.
Alex: So D23. Big panel. Lots of stuff going on here. There were announcements about TV shows. There were announcements about movies. Marvel came big. I think people, frankly, were expecting even bigger than this. I know I speculated that maybe they were going to drop some X-Men news. There was a lot of talk about Fantastic Four casting. But to jump ahead, and we will talk about everything, specifically with Fantastic Four, which is the big speculation here, Kevin Feige came out at the panel, said, “Hey, Matt Shakman, who directed a bunch on WandaVision, is going to be directing it. There is literally no other news to tell you at this point.” And I think there was a bunch of sighs and gasps from the audience. But they’re under no obligation to be like, “[inaudible 00:01:27], Penn Badgley, all of these people have been cast.” They’re going to do it at some point. They’re going to announce it. It’s going to be big. So everybody, stay patient.
Pete: Did you say the guy’s name was Matt [inaudible 00:01:38]?
Alex: Matt Shakman.
Pete: Oh, okay.
Alex: Yeah. Thanks, Pete.
Justin: Fact checker, Pete [inaudible 00:01:45]. Incorrect fact checker. I know everyone wanted more news. All the news is very fun and this felt like more of a show and tell rather than here’s what the next step, because they announced so much so recently it’s like, they don’t want show all their cards. They have a bunch of other events they have to wait to drop news to. And I also think the X-Men are further off than we think.
Alex: Yeah. I think so. That was definitely a very, very out there speculation for me. I am not disappointed at all that there was no X-Men things. But let’s talk about the things that they did talk about and run down all the stuff and kind of see what we thought about it as well as any speculation. First thing to throw out there is Ironheart. The big news out of that, which we kind of already knew. But Anthony Ramos has been cast as Parker Robbins, The Hood, that is coming to Disney+ next year. There was also some footage shown in the room, a trailer of Ironheart building her armor, Parker Robbins getting his mystical demon hood and building an army of criminals. And the promise is this is going to do the biggest tech versus magic fight that we’ve seen in the MCU. What are your thoughts about this? What are you looking forward to?
Pete: Now, is this going to be a movie or a TV show?
Alex: Oh my God. Oh my God. I just said it’s a TV show. It’s a TV show.
Pete: Oh wow. Interesting.
Justin: This is going home for holidays and telling your uncle what happens in the world.
Alex: Riri is going to be introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, so this is-
Pete: Wakanda forever.
Alex: … first time that we see her, but this is going to be her big series debut. And for those who don’t know the character, she builds her own Iron Man style armor and ultimately calls herself Ironheart. Justin, what’s your take on this?
Justin: I think this is cool. I like the choice to make it about tech versus magic is something that happens a lot in comics, but feels like hasn’t been done too much in MCU because it’s too counter-veiling forces in the content that we watch. So to put them together is cool. I love Red Hood, The Hood, sorry, The Hood as the villain.
Pete: Little Red Riding Hood?
Justin: Little Red Riding Hood. Great villain. I’m sort of on the wolf’s side in a lot of ways. No, The Hood I think is a great villain. Love him in the comics. I’m curious. The Hood has been done many different ways in the comics, some of them not as great. So curious to see how they bring him to the screen.
Pete: Sometimes he’s very powered up and seems like a very formidable villain. Other times, it’s like a C list villain where it’s like, yeah, [inaudible 00:04:25].
Alex: Based on the various scan footage that was shown, it seems like, and for anybody who hasn’t read it, check out Brian K. Vaughn’s book that introduced The Hood, which is awesome.
Justin: It’s his character, right?
Alex: Yeah. So good.
Justin: That’s cool.
Alex: It is this idea of this low level hood who gets a mystical item and suddenly gets powered up. What does he do with it? Does he commit more crime? Does he become a hero? That series very much walks the line. And then Brian Michael Bendis introduced this idea of no, here’s enough power that he could become the new kingpin of New York. And it seems like they’re going to be doing both things in this series and building him up there, maybe filling a power vacuum left by the king pin of crime, Wilson Fisk, after he was taken down by Echo over in Hawkeye. But that should be very cool. Let’s turn to another one that I know Justin is super, super excited about, Werewolf by Night. We got a trailer here. This is directed by Michael Giacchino. And it is a total, at least based on the trailer, old school hammer, horror style thing.
Justin: Yeah. This was one of the most surprising things coming out of this. This is why I said on our Slack channel, Patreon Slack. This is the kind weirder stuff that I feel like what we thought we would get when it was Marvel doing movies and TV shows and just throwing content at us all the time. The fact that we get something like this that feels very genre, very niche, very specific, not something that has these far reaching goals, I love the idea of that. And it feels like it is shot in that sort of classic melodramatic horror way. Very excited for this.
Alex: What about you, Pete?
Pete: Well, I’m a little confused. Was that a comic first?
Justin: Werewolf by Night is a classic. Back in the day, I think it was something when you couldn’t do werewolves and vampires, I believe, under the comics code for a long time. And then when they opened the door, this is the first comic that Marvel put out that covered that territory.
Pete: Cool. Thank you.
Alex: Yes. Sorry. I’m kind of gobsmacked. We’ve read Werewolf by Night, comic speed. We’ve reviewed them on our show.
Pete: Oh, we have?
Alex: Oh you’re winding me up. You’re winding to me up, man.
Justin: I think Pete’s [inaudible 00:06:48].
Alex: We’ll get there in a second. But I also love this too. I hope this isn’t just the trailer. It seems like the way they filmed it, but there’s a very quick cigarette burn on the quarter in one of the shots and then they do the whole film fading thing at the end and burning through. So I hope it’s all like that. My big question, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing, to your point, Justin, but how does this connect to the MCU? Is this just going to feel like it’s just a thing? Literally the game Werewolf, but at a house? That’s fine with me. I’ll enjoy watching it probably more that way. Or is it going to be that thing, I don’t know if you guys remember this, but there was this widely belied TikTok that got posted around of a guy being like, what Marvel should do is they should just do indie movies. Do a Richard Linklater movie and then Iron Man flies by in the background. Is this going to be like that or is it going to be entirely disconnected? What do you think, Justin?
Justin: I think disconnected. Or maybe there’ll be a light nod, like the TikTok example you just used. And I say that especially because Michael Giacchino’s directing this, someone who hasn’t directed but is famous for films course. And so it feels like a project you give to somebody that doesn’t have super high stakes, but can be something that you can show. It’s not an indie movie, but it has a little bit of that flavor, like, oh, this is a little show piece we’re doing that isn’t as functional in the larger MCU, but is something that is just a cool affect.
Alex: Yeah. I agree. Very excited to check out that one. The next big trailer that they showed off was Secret Invasion. We got our first look at that, as Nick Fury comes back to earth. Maria Hill is in it. Olivia Coleman is in it. Amelia Clark is in it. Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrulls is taking over the world. And even Don Cheadle, Rhodey, is in it as well. Pete, are you going to ask what the word secret or invasion means?
Pete: Well, what I’m wondering is, because the twist that we had in the comics versus the movies, is in the comics, the Skrulls are bad and in the movies, the Skrulls seem like they’re good. But with Secret Invasion, you think they’re going to flip that. How do you think they’re going to handle that?
Justin: I think we’re going to get some bad Skrulls here. It’s perhaps a secret. It’s a secret that they’re bad.
Alex: Well, I think, yes. I think there’s going to be different factions of Skrulls because we do have Ben Mendelsohn coming back as Talos from Captain Marvel, also from the end credits seen in Spider-Man: Far From Home. So he’s going to play it in some way. And there’s a very quick shot in the trailer of it looks like him confronting a room of what turns out to be Skrulls and looking kind of terrified there. So yeah, I think we’re going to have these bad Skrulls who have been infiltrating the government, various governments, clearly taking over Rhodey’s security detail as well as other things, and Nick Fury coming back and trying to fight them, ultimately learning he is going to have to work with the team again, I guess.
Justin: This feels like it’s going to be directly connected to Armor Wars, also coming out. And perhaps it’s almost like a one, two punch. This feels like a very tense, sort of thrillery, almost like a great X-Files, a high end production X-Files episode, where it’s about sort of the downward spiral of learning everything you believe is a lie. We get a patchless Nick Fury.
Pete: Yeah, I know. Come on. What is this patchless stuff? Put a patch on him.
Alex: He has a patch by the end of the trailer. It’s okay. But to the point that you were saying, Justin-
Justin: Let that eye breathe. He’s letting that eye breathe.
Alex: I got very excited seeing this trailer. I mean, this looks like a Marvel movie versus a TV show, which I’ve been pretty critical of the Disney+ shows because-
Pete: You’re an [inaudible 00:10:34].
Alex: Yes. That, and also they very wobbly, I think, straddled the line between are we trying to do a six part movie, are we trying to do a TV show? And they sort of 50/50 it, instead of going one way. I think if they’re going to do it, Secret Invasion and Armor Wars, to me, feel like it’s still not my favorite thing, but if you’re going to do a six part movie, just make it a big event and feel like a big event, sort of a mini series, literally, in a way, versus other things like She-Hulk, like Loki, et cetera. Have them aim towards something more episodic, have them feel more like TV. So if they could push in both directions, I think I’m going to be good with that.
Justin: Well, I think the sort of example that didn’t go as well is Falcon and Winter Soldier. I think this shares sort of some plot device movements here. And I think that was partially due to the fact that they changed the entire story because of COVID, sort of in the middle of making it. So that made it harder to have a clean narrative arc through. And it also felt like, oh, you didn’t need as much real estate to tell this story. Hopefully, with Secret Invasion, they are using every second so it will have that sort of dynamic momentum through every episode like you have in a full on feature film. But this was one of the things I was less excited about until I saw this trailer and I was like, oh, this is actually very … It reminded me a little bit of with the way Andor’s playing in Star Wars universe, where it’s like, oh, this feels like the gritty, grounded thing that I’ve wanted in Star Wars finally is happening. And this can be that for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially the television side.
Alex: Yeah. It looks very cool. And the little thing about Armor Wars they said is exactly what you mentioned, Justin, that it is spinning out of Secret Invasion, follows what happens next with Don Cheadle’s Rhodey. That’s kind of all we know about it.
Alex: Next big fun piece of-
Justin: Quick shout out to Yassi Lester, the head writer of that. Great dude. Curious to see what his take on the Marvel Universe is.
Pete: Some inside info. [inaudible 00:12:40]. Hollywood Tyler.
Justin: Hollywood JT.
Alex: Loki season two announced a new cast member and showed off a little bit of footage here. The new cast member is Ke Huy Quan, who you probably know as Short Round from the Indiana Jones movies.
Justin: Data from Goonies.
Alex: [inaudible 00:12:56]. Also, Everything Everywhere All At Once. Very fun. He had a very fun joke on the panel. This had come after Lucas Films’ portion and he just sort of wandered on stage with the Loki cast. He was like, “Wait, this isn’t the Indiana Jones panel?” And everybody laughed. Everybody had a nice time.
Justin: That’s very fun. This guy’s career, real quick. He did Short Round to Data, two epic characters back to back, I think in years, ’84 and ’85 or something like that. Then doesn’t do much until Everything Everywhere All At Once and then boom, back in major blockbuster situations. Great.
Alex: And he seems like a perfect addition to the tone of Loki. They showed off a little footage there, mostly of Loki wandering through the TVA now that Kang has taken it over, spitting in and out of existence. And then a couple of flashes of, good news, him working with Mobius again. I don’t think that’s too much of a surprise, but going through various time periods. And I don’t know. I’m excited to see how this show turns out. I think Loki, in retrospect, was one of the strongest runs of TV shows that Disney+, Marvel has done. And fingers crossed, they’re really going to crush it here.
Pete: Yeah. I’m excited for more of that. They did such a great job in that first season.
Justin: It’s very funny to me that Loki is the one that sort of became the most TV of alpha shows that we saw in the first run because Loki’s a movie character and the show felt like a movie, yet now here we are with just more TV.
Alex: Yeah. The other thing that’ll be interesting about it is you’ve been very critical in particular, Justin, of what is the story of Marvel right now? What is the story of phase four? Clearly it’s Kang. That’s what we’re heading towards. Loki season two is all about that. Quantumania is all about that. And they have said that Loki season two is going to lead directly into Kang Dynasty. So we’re definitely going to see more tie in with the movies there.
Justin: But isn’t that phase five officially?
Alex: Yes. No, I’m saying-
Justin: So phase four is like a little what, a little stepping stone?
Alex: It’s a fuck around. It’s a fuck around.
Justin: That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying.
Alex: No, I’m just saying the story of Marvel is continuing from here.
Justin: Oh wow. Bold statements from Alex Zalben.
Alex: Marvel forever. That’s all I was saying. Echo. Let’s talk about Echo because they showed that off a little bit. There’s two very interesting things, I think, here. Not a big surprise. We knew Kingpin was coming back in. The footage showed though, he has an eye patch or a bandage over his eye after Echo-
Pete: Which one is it though? Come on. I mean, come on.
Justin: He got Nick Fury’s eye patch. They’re sharing.
Pete: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.
Alex: Pass it back and forth. That’s a good way to get pink eye, that’s all I’m saying.
Justin: 100%. And that’s what he’s wearing the patch for, because he’s got wicked pink eye. Embarrassed.
Pete: He could clean it after he wears it before he gives it to him. Don’t put that out there.
Alex: The other thing that seems to be happening based on the footage shown is maybe Echo is getting powers. There’s something where she falls in a glowing puddle or wakes up in a glowing puddle. Pete.
Pete: That’s the dream. I mean, that’s what you want.
Justin: Secret of the universe. And Pete, has this ever-
Pete: You want a glowing puddle and just jumped in.
Alex: And slowly over the course of the footage, I know you guys didn’t see it, she’s turning into a turtle of some sort.
Pete: Oh, nice.
Justin: Surprised. Pete-
Pete: Did you see a rat that then teaches her karate and stuff like that?
Justin: Well, she knows the karate. Some sort.
Pete: Jiu-jitsu. A lot of different forms of martial arts.
Alex: A rat comes up and is like, “I’m going to teach you karate.” She’s like, “No thanks. I’m good.”
Pete: Or maybe a rat just walks by with a slice of pizza and is like, “Welcome to New York.”
Justin: Let’s never forget, in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, that Splinter was learning karate when he was just a regular rat. And only later-
Pete: [inaudible 00:16:36]. That’s straight from the comics.
Justin: One of the craziest things in a movie at that time, I was like, that rat was doing karate before?
Pete: You don’t think rats can learn? You don’t think rats can learn how to do things?
Justin: I think rats can eat through cement. That’s a power. But karate is not in their skillset, as I know.
Pete: One time when turned on my lights real fast and I saw a rat, they were standing on top of each other’s shoulders to reach the doorknob to could get out. And I was just like-
Justin: I think you were watching Cinderella, Disney Cinderella.
Pete: Oh you’re right. You’re right. Yeah.
Justin: But Pete, have you ever encountered a puddle of ooze and made any choices?
Pete: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been waiting my whole life for that to happen. Then when it finally does, you really got to think. You know what I mean? Because you’re like, this could go really bad or it could go really good.
Justin: This is a real story that Pete told us years and years ago that he, one day in New York City, encountered a green puddle and almost drank out of it for the chance to be mutated.
Alex: And I just want to mention for our listeners who don’t live in New York City, there are greed puddles literally everywhere.
Pete: That’s not true. Because I’ve been living in New York for 21 years and I only saw one.
Alex: All the time. All the time.
Justin: Here’s a crazy, a crazy followup or sequel-
Pete: It was a bubbling, green puddle. It wasn’t just green. It wasn’t after St. Patty’s day or some shit.
Justin: The most important fact here is that Pete almost drank out of it. it’s a true story. Second, just this past weekend, I came home after being away. We had an inflatable pool, my downstairs neighbors had, in the backyard. I looked over and it was green in there. I was like, oh, that’s weird. And I found a dead squirrel inside of it.
Alex: Died during karate, right?
Pete: Poor karate squirrel was that close to being a master.
Alex: The other one that we only got a tiny bit of information about it, I think we kind of knew this as well, Daredevil: Born Again. They haven’t shot anything yet, but there’s going to be 18 episodes. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are both going to [inaudible 00:18:39] going head to head. What?
Pete: Just seeing those two stand next to each other was exciting. I mean, I lost my mind just seeing that.
Alex: Yeah. It’s great to see them back. They’re definitely two of the best actors from the Marvel Netflix series. There’s been a little bit of confusion because I think some of the reporting has said, oh, this is a straight reboot. They’re going again. But what Charlie Cox actually said was, “Yeah, this isn’t season four. This is season one of Daredevil: Born Again, so it’s a chance to kind of start over.” I still don’t think they’re washing away everything clean. They’re just starting clean as a new series. They’re not worrying too much about-
Pete: Do you think there’s any kind of change? You think Foggy is still going to be foggy, right? They’re not going to change out actors.
Alex: They did mention at the panel, and this was crazy, they were like, “And Foggy died,” and everybody lost it. They were so excited.
Justin: They were happy.
Alex: That was the biggest cheer.
Pete: [inaudible 00:19:36]. There were screams.
Alex: You’ve heard about the standing ovations for the Venice Film Festival that go on for 14 minutes. That went on for three hours.
Pete: No way, man.
Alex: People’s hands literally rubbed off [inaudible 00:19:46].
Pete: People love Foggy. I don’t want to hear this shit.
Alex: Just bloody finger bones hanging out.
Justin: Stumps. I bet Foggy does not return in the incarnation of the past.
Pete: Come on. Are you serious?
Justin: That’s my guess.
Pete: What about, I’m totally blanking on her name, but that blonde-
Alex: Classic character. Classic character. Blonde lady.
Pete: The blonde lady. She was great. I loved her.
Alex: Karen Page?
Pete: Yes. Karen Page.
Alex: Oh great. Yeah. Real memorable to you, Pete.
Pete: Yeah, she was awesome. She also was in Punisher. She did some cameos in some other stuff.
Alex: I could not stand most of her storylines on the show. They were always trying to force them into the plot some way. But she is a good actress.
Pete: Thank you.
Alex: I would like to see her back again.
Pete: Thank you. That’s all I’m saying.
Alex: All right. And as casting director for Marvel, I have to say definitively, no, she’s not coming back. Next up. Let’s talk about the movie stuff. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. There wasn’t much because they had just shown off the trailer, but they did show off new footage and it seems like at least part of the plot of the movie is going to be the rest of the world coming for the-
Pete: What?
Alex: Pete has taken off his headphones.
Pete: Coming for the vibranium in Wakanda. This is not a huge surprise. They did show off a sequence of Namor’s troops trying to get them, and the Dora Milaje basically shutting them down. Everything that I hear about this movie, I mean, it’s kind of all the same thing at this point, but everything I hear, great. This sounds great. This is going to be amazing.
Justin: I mean, the fact that if we’re not introducing a ton of new characters, which it seems like it’s not on the Wakanda side, having it be just the villains are the problem and Wakanda has to defend itself, awesome. Love that choice.
Alex: Yeah. Very excited. And I’m forgetting how to pronounce his name, but the guy who plays Namor talked a little bit about, and this feels like a very typical line that you use with these sort of movies but I do think he’s probably being honest, is that it really is something that reflects the reality of the world. That it’s not just about the superheros.
Justin: Yeah. I like that as well.
Alex: And that seems true. It seems true. All right. Why don’t we move on to something that Pete can listen to, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Not a ton of new info here, but they did show off a trailer for the movie. It seems like Scott Lang has become the employee of the universe over at Baskin-Robbins, so that’s great news for him. But at least part of it is them getting sucked into the quantum realm, encountering Bill Murray, who used to hang out with Janet Van Dyne back in the day when they were both trapped in the quantum realm.
Pete: When isn’t adding Bill Murray a great decision?
Alex: Well, he has been kind of accused maybe of some sexual harassment on set, so those are some times that it might have been bad to include him.
Pete: Fuck. God dammit.
Alex: That all said, the way that Kang apparently gets brought into it is that Kang wants Scott to steal something for him and Scott says no and then Kang starts coming for him, which honestly, I was wondering somebody overpowered like Kang, how does that come into this movie? That seems like a perfect way to bring it in for me.
Justin: Well, and this feels like it’s such a keystone in the sort of phase five stuff that’s coming. This movie keeps getting hyped up as sort when it really starts to turn.
Alex: And I’ll say this, as somebody who likes the Ant-Man movies and particularly enjoys the second one a lot, it is surprising to me how hard Marvel goes on, “No, no. The Ant-Man movies are super important and you have to check them out and you have to watch them,” because ultimately, it was Ant-Man who saved the universe in Endgame, coming back. And they’re like, no, this is important. You had to have gone and watched Ant-Man and the Wasp. We’ll get to this in a second. But they’re mixing in Ghost, the villain from Ant-Man and the Wasp, Thunderbolts. So I feel like people kind of put it to the side as sort of a goofy series for families.
Justin: Which tracks, to me, and watching the movies.
Alex: Yeah. And they are. They’re good family movies.
Pete: They’re great movies so I don’t know why you’re undercutting them.
Alex: No, it’s just funny to be how much Marvel is like no, they’re important. You have to watch them.
Justin: Well, I mean, I think it’s partially because they were like Ant-Man, that’s the comedy. And everyone assumes that the comedy is just for fun with maybe some light things that are important. And Ant-Man in general isn’t Spider-Man. Spider-Man, you’re like important stuff’s going to happen. [inaudible 00:24:04] character, Ant-Man’s way over here. Ant-Man’s a tiny Iron Man.
Pete: He’s still a part of the team, man. He’s there. He helps.
Alex: It worked. Big Marvel got you, Pete. Pete, sucking on that tit. Why don’t we move on? Talk about, well, Fantastic Four, we already talked about a little bit. Matt Shakman is officially directing. More to come. But that’s coming out November 8th, 2024. Next one up is Captain America: New World Order, coming out in 2024. The new information here, we got Shira Haas is joining as Sabra, the Israeli superhero. Pete, you’ll be excited about this. Carl Lumbly is coming back-
Pete: Nice.
Alex: … as Isaiah Washington. As well as Danny Ramirez.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, that was huge. That was such a cool part.
Alex: It was great. And Danny Ramirez is also going to be back as Falcon’s sidekick, I guess. I’m sorry, Captain America’s sidekick, potentially in the new Falcon. But the big news is the villain of the movie is going to be Tim Blake Nelson coming back as The Leader, which is something … Even as somebody who, on our podcast previously, was speculating that maybe he’s one of the villains over in She-Hulk, I still do wonder if they’re going to introduce him in some way. But I never would’ve predicted The Leader as the villain for a Captain America movie. What do you guys think about this move?
Justin: Very surprised by this. Yeah, I think it’s cool. But when I saw this, I was like, oh, maybe we will then see The Leader in She-Hulk because it would make sense to reintroduce him there as opposed to just dusting off The Leader and throwing him into being the villain for a hero that he is not the antagonist for.
Pete: Well, that’s the fun of it is it’s a little bit out of left field, which is nice. When a comic book fan can be surprised, I think that’s a good thing.
Alex: The thing that I can’t really make a connection about it, obviously we don’t know really anything about the plot here, is why The Leader as a villain for Sam Wilson’s Captain America. How does that work? Because Falcon and the Winter Soldier dipped so heavily into racism and the history of African Americans in the United States, as well as how that tied into the Captain America mythos and all of these other things. So the natural inclination would be they’re continuing in that some way. But I can’t quite put together how The Leader is the opposite of that, as villains would be. How does that challenge Sam? And obviously, we’ll find out>.
Pete: We will. Stay tuned.
Alex: But the dots aren’t quite connecting for me yet, I would say.
Justin: Well, New World Order, and it feels like with the introduction of Sabra, we’re going to get into outside of the United States. Maybe we’re going to set up something that may feed into the Thunderbolts from the comic style thing of a team that it’s villains masquerading as heroes and The Leader somehow builds himself up to be a leader of a country that the world seems to be celebrating and it’s up to Sam to go in and stop that.
Pete: Or it could be, and stay with me here, The Leader’s racist.
Alex: Definitely could be. I want to throw out one other thing. As much as I like Shira Haas and I find Sabra an interesting character as an Israeli superhero, it was surprising to me that they’re introducing Sabra instead of, say, bringing back Red Scarab, the Egyptian superhero from Moon Knight, which obviously they’re not one to one and they’re very different political situations, depending on what they’re playing with there. But it feels like, given they made such a big deal about Red Scarab, this would be an opportunity, if you’re going for some global thing, to bring her back into the cast. Maybe she’s still in it in some way. Maybe they didn’t want two Falcons there. I don’t know.
Justin: Yeah. I will say that when we saw Red Scarab and we were like, oh look, it’s Falcon. You would think it’d be a natural fit to drop those wings in here.
Alex: Yeah. But I guess we’ll see what happens. Why don’t we jump ahead and talk about The Marvels because they showed off some footage here. This is bringing together Kamala Khan. We are getting Carol Danvers in there and also Monica Rambeau. And this got me unreasonably excited because it’s one of my favorite genres, but it seems like it’s going to be a big body switching comedy with the three of them as was teased at the end of Ms. Marvel.
Pete: Wait. Are you talking about a multiplicity situation?
Alex: No, that’s multiple bodies.
Justin: No. That’s a clone. That’s a clone comedy.
Alex: I’m talking about a Freaky Friday situation, kind of.
Pete: Oh, a Freaky Friday.
Alex: But more of The Man With Two Brains situation, where apparently the three of them are all stuck in one body and keep switching places, at least for most of the movie. That sounds very fun to me.
Justin: Well, and let me say, if I heard this announcement and hadn’t seen the end scene on Ms. Marvel, I’d be like, no. But that’s what happens in that scene. Because it seems crazy.
Pete: More information on that because it was such a huge left turn, a huge choice, that I’m like what the fuck is going on here? So I’m glad that it finally-
Alex: Well, in terms of the character dynamics as well that was shown off in the footage, I do love the idea that Kamala is like, “Oh my God, I’m the biggest fan of both of you.” Monica is like, “I hate you Carol because my mother died and you weren’t there to save her.” And Carol’s like, “What’s going on? What is happening here? We’re not a team.”
Justin: Yeah. Well, the idea to have a superhero team that exists within one body and they have to learn over the course of the movie to switch places correctly is cool and will visually be. It’s a great sort of visual metaphor to show for a big battle at the end of the movie. That sounds cool.
Alex: Yeah. I’m excited about that one. But the last one, the biggest announcement I would argue that came out of this panel is the cast of Thunderbolts. And it’s an interesting one that I’m curious to get both of your guys’ take on. So to read it down, here is the cast of Thunderbolts. We’re getting Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is going to be Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. David Harbour is back as Red Guardian. Hannah John-Kamen is back as Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Sebastian Stan as Bucky, AKA the Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell as John Walker, AKA US Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster and Florence Pugh is going to be leading them as Yelena Belova. What do you guys think about this lineup? I don’t think this is what anybody expected necessarily from Thunderbolts.
Justin: Surprising.
Pete: Yeah. It’s very surprising. It’s a fun collection, for sure. But I’m a little worried about Bucky. He was supposed to be a good guy. You know what I mean?
Alex: So here’s my guess about it. I feel like there was a recent … It wasn’t a run on Suicide Squad, but it was one of those black label books on Suicide Squad where Red Hood was in there. And he was kind of the guy who’s kind of a hero, kind of an anti-hero, but trying to keep all of these villains on the straight and narrow. I don’t think the rest of these people are villains. But my guess is that Bucky is on the team to be the voice of reason and be like, “No, this is not how the Avengers act. We got to be more [inaudible 00:31:01] about this.” And everybody else is like, “Why can’t we kill these people? Let’s kill these people.”
Justin: This feels very Suicide Squad, to me. It feels not at all the Thunderbolts from the comics. It feels like put together sort of a rag tag group of heroes who aren’t very good at it and they’re going to muddle through and find their way and be heroes. And I love the Suicide Squad movies, especially the second one I thought was really great. I’m just surprised. Marvel doesn’t usually sort of eat DC’s lunch in the movies, in the major properties. So I’m sure they’ll do a good job with this, but I was surprised.
Alex: It is a fun bunch of actors so I think it’s going to be a fun time regardless. There was something dropped on our Patreon Slack that was going around on Twitter a bunch about how other than Ghost, it’s basically a bunch of people all with kind of the same powers, which are just, we fight. And one of them has a cybernetic arm and one of them is kind of a super soldier, but they’re all sort of the same thing.
Justin: The same. Yeah.
Alex: So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out visually. But as a anti-hero spy team that is doing the stuff that other people can’t do, I think that makes sense to me rather than a villain team. I’ll throw out a couple of theories that are based on nothing to you. And one of them isn’t even a theory, it’s just kind of an idea that I’ve seen bounced around a lot. For people who haven’t read the Thunderbolts comics, most of them are usually based on some sort of twist. The first Thunderbolts comic was after the Avengers were gone, this new team of heroes led by a guy named Citizen V came in. And the kicker at the end of the issue was Citizen V was Baron Zemo and the Thunderbolts were the masters of evil. And basically, they were pulling off this big plot where they were going to become heroes and pretend to be heroes. And eventually, it became very complicated for them because they were doing heroic stuff and how did they feel about it? So that was the big twist that’s kind of set the tone for every Thunderbolts after that. So there’s a big question about, is there going to be a twist here either with this team or another team? What do you think? Do you think they’re going to take anything like that from the books?
Justin: I would think there would have to be, especially since this does feel like Suicide Squad. I think we could get a thing where we’ve come to find out Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’ character is not working. They find out they’re working for someone bad and so they have to undo what they’ve done, essentially, which could be a cool sort of two part story. They do something where they think they’re being heroes, but it turns out they’re being villains. So it’s sort of the reverse Thunderbolts. I also think we could introduce a new team or something that they will be fighting against, perhaps a Young Avengers.
Pete: Interesting.
Alex: I could see that, mainly because I was a little disappointed we didn’t get Kate Bishop on this team because Florence Pugh and Hailee Steinfeld were so much fun together in Hawkeye. But I could see them taking something like that down. I’ll throw another possibility. I think everybody expected Zemo to be in this movie in some way because he’s so intrinsic to the Thunderbolts. This is based on absolutely nothing. But what if there’s a scenario where Zemo was recruited first, put together a team of heroes or villains or whatever, they go rogue, steal all of Valentina’s secrets, and this Thunderbolts is essentially the B squad. They’re the second list people that she brought in to go after Zemo’s team.
Pete: Oh, interesting.
Justin: That’s cool. That’s fun. But what I was saying, it feels like we’re going to be introducing another team of some sort, sort of underneath or next to this team.
Alex: I hope so because one of my biggest, annoyance is probably too strong, but one thing that I’ve wanted from the MCU pretty much since Avengers, it felt like it was setting up, this villain team to fight this hero team and we’ve never seen that. All of these big movies have always been one overpowered guy and a bunch of nameless goons fighting back. So I would love if Thunderbolts really does have two super teams going head to head. I think that would be a lot of fun.
Pete: Don’t forget about clouds. Like they’ve had to fight evil clouds.
Alex: They have had to fight clouds.
Justin: A team of clouds.
Alex: And they did fight The Black Order in Infinity War, but they sucked. So there you go.
Pete: Wow. Shots fired.
Alex: Yeah. I like them in the comics. I didn’t love them in the movies.
Pete: I’m going to go with Justin on this and say it’s going to be a reverse Thunderbolts.
Alex: Oh, reverse. They should call the movie Reverse Thunderbolts then. So there you go. That’s all the big dudes that came out of D23. Exciting times for the Marvel universe and exciting times for all of you because you can support us patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to chat with you about everything in the Marvel universe. Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe, listen, and follow the show. @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, stay marvelous.
Pete: See you at D24.
