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Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Episode had some real John Wick energy.

Just with bitterness over sellers remorse with a shield instead of a dead pupper
 
There were Asian people there, but yes, this was... probably just Atlanta? People seemed to have American accents aside from the British woman. Not that I particularly think this adaptation must respect the idea of Singapore-but-crimier. I don't like fake comic countries most of the time. If comics ever carve out a random, heavily stereotyped country landlocked between the US and Canada, they would probably approach the subject with more irony than they do otherwise.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
This was a lot more enjoyable to me than last week's entry.

I think Sharon Carter had more screen time here than in CA:TWS and Civil War combined. Hopefully we get more of her before the series is out.

Loved that the very first thing Zemo did upon seeing Bucky was try out the activation phrase on him. His pleasure at "controlling" Bucky during the bar scene was almost palpable. I bet there's fic out there.

Did not see the Dora Milaje coming at the end, though it makes perfect sense that Wakanda would move swiftly once Zemo's out in the open. Excited to see where that goes.
 

karzac

(he/him)
This was a lot more enjoyable to me than last week's entry.

I think Sharon Carter had more screen time here than in CA:TWS and Civil War combined. Hopefully we get more of her before the series is out.

Loved that the very first thing Zemo did upon seeing Bucky was try out the activation phrase on him. His pleasure at "controlling" Bucky during the bar scene was almost palpable. I bet there's fic out there.

Did not see the Dora Milaje coming at the end, though it makes perfect sense that Wakanda would move swiftly once Zemo's out in the open. Excited to see where that goes.

Yeah, I liked that twist too.

It occurred to me during today's episode that Flag Smashers is a dumbass name for a group. How the hell do you smash a flag?
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Kind of weird that Zemos ski-mask got so much focus.

It... doesn’t really have the same significance here as it does in the comics
 

SpoonyBard

Threat Rhyme
(He/Him)
I kept expecting Zemo to betray them, but aside from killing that one guy he has been upholding his end of the bargain. Heck, he could have ditched Birdman and Cyborg but came to bail them out with that hot rod he tripped over. Not that I'm expecting some kind of surprise redemption for the guy, he's totally going to turn on them sooner rather than later, I just didn't expect him to last a whole episode without doing it.

This episode does make some potential three dimensional antagonists a bit more two dimensional though. I guess any chance of Walker not being a baddie flew out the window with his "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!!?!?" fit. And Freckles (she has a name, I can't remember it though) certainly has a worthy enough cause, and hard earned support, but then she goes and kills a bunch of people needlessly. I just hope this is a genuine moral conflict she has and won't turn into a case of 'super serum done made her CRAZY'.
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
I’m not bothered by Fake Cap being a jerk, but the Flag Smasher girl was a bit of a letdown. But overall, fun episode. I was pretty distracted by work (it was supposed to be a quiet afternoon!), so I may have to rewatch it.
 
Isn't Madripoor supposed to be in the Malacca Strait? I don't think I saw a single East Asian there.
There were Asian people there, but yes, this was... probably just Atlanta?
I spent a LOT of my attention and energy this entire episode looking intensely throughout the crowds trying to spot anyone even vaguely Indonesian looking, and came up almost completely empty except for one goon who you see half of his face for a split second during the cargo container fight. I'd be disappointed if it weren't so utterly predictable coming from Marvel/Disney. They kinda can't help themselves! I try to bring this up as a point of emphasis from time to time where applicable, but don't want to sound like a broken record. This is just how it is for Asians in this country, we are invisible.

Otherwise, pretty good episode. It's nice that the plot is finally beginning to move and we're doing interesting things finally. I thought Zemo was one of the worst parts of Civil War, but here he's given more characterization and interesting things to do in just one episode than that entire film, and it mostly works well.

Not!Cap is being a dillweed, but he's not doing anything objectively too awful yet. There's a good chance this is just him being frustrated with the job and the reality of being Cap not aligning with his expectations. My hope is that he'll at some point realize he's the wrong guy and that he'll give the shield over willingly.

I also hope that literally none of these dudes get the shield by the end, and that they give it to Sharon Carter so she can be the next Cap. Because that would be the best outcome IMO, especially when all three guys are kinda chodes, and Carter kicks butt. But there is a less than zero chance Disney/Marvel is that forward thinking. Especially when they're going to have an entire episode of their "What if?" show be centered around "wHaT iF lAdY CaP!?" as if that's some kind of radical idea nobody would ever think to think of.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
One wonders if Not!Cap is one of those people who is perfectly nice and 'good' in public while being a complete monster in private; a sociopath who knows exactly what the public wants in a 'Captain America' and can emulate that expression without actually embodying any of those virtues.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
One wonders if Not!Cap is one of those people who is perfectly nice and 'good' in public while being a complete monster in private; a sociopath who knows exactly what the public wants in a 'Captain America' and can emulate that expression without actually embodying any of those virtues.
Really does seem like they’re running down that road already.

Anyway, the shield should go to Danni Cage, but I don’t think she’s been conceived yet, and also I don’t know if her parents’ respective series are fully canon
 

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
I spent a LOT of my attention and energy this entire episode looking intensely throughout the crowds trying to spot anyone even vaguely Indonesian looking, and came up almost completely empty except for one goon who you see half of his face for a split second during the cargo container fight. I'd be disappointed if it weren't so utterly predictable coming from Marvel/Disney. They kinda can't help themselves! I try to bring this up as a point of emphasis from time to time where applicable, but don't want to sound like a broken record. This is just how it is for Asians in this country, we are invisible.
I can see why they have have thought the optics of an East Asian country where everyone is a hardcore criminal may not be great, but just make up a different fake place. Madripoor's an interesting city and "vaguely disguised Atlanta" wasn't what I wanted at all, and did the Asian erasure thing again.
 
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Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I can see why they have have thought the optics of an East Asian country where everyone is a hardcore criminal may not be great, but just make up a different fake place. Madripoor's an interesting city and "vaguely disguised Atlanta" wasn't what I wanted at all, and did the Asian erasure thing again.
Yeah that echoes all my sentiments
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
I'm here for this.

I do wonder how Loki having the Tesseract is supposed to "break reality," though. This isn't like the Avengers plucking it out of the timeline entirely, which is what the Ancient One was warning Bruce about. It's still in the alt-2012 timeline, just in a different place. Shouldn't be a problem.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
I'm here for this.

I do wonder how Loki having the Tesseract is supposed to "break reality," though. This isn't like the Avengers plucking it out of the timeline entirely, which is what the Ancient One was warning Bruce about. It's still in the alt-2012 timeline, just in a different place. Shouldn't be a problem.

Depends on how this changes the events of Dark World, Ragnarok, and the Infinity War opening, natch.

I think there's also the implication that, after skipping town with the Tesseract (instead of Thor turning it in for storage until Ragnarok), Loki likely used it to evade Thanos however he could, leading to a much more chaotic "alternate 2012" timeline.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Plus, honestly, you give Loki free reign with the Space Stone, he’s going to break things with it.

It’s just up in the air whether it’s intentional or not, and which phase of a plan it’s going to wind up being.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
Well.

Well.

Going by pattern, Episode 4 of Loki will be the one where the audience is well and truly hooked.

Seriously, though, I just want Bucky to be back in Wakanda's good graces he had a good support network and he deserves it again ;_; (not to mention, Ayo cursing him was kinda out of line. He kept his end of the deal and stayed out of it when the DM came knocking. They were the ones who let Zemo escape because they were too busy making a big deal of a relatively low-priority offense. All Bucky did was stop them from killing Walker and Hoskins over it.)

Non-spoiler, since it relates to some muddled bit of worldbuilding: I was very confused about what the Global Repatriation Council actually did, as in, why would snapped people need repatriating upon coming back? From what I understood in this episode, it's not the snapped people, but the other half, that has the issue : during the Blip, global society and economy were in such disarray that countries basically allowed free travel in order to help stabilize and rebuild? But since everyone's come back, those same workers who were welcomed across borders and built lives and communities for five years, are now being unceremoniously kicked out, therefore, global refugee crisis that the world is treating like any other refugee crisis (that is, sweeping it under the rug). Did I get that right?
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
I think that’s basically it. Now that the other half of people have returned, they want their jobs & homes back. So, people who had been given access to nicer living conditions during the blip are being forced back out. It sounds like the GRC is supposed to be helping people settle back in the countries where they came from, but obviously they're more concerned with getting them out of the countries where they are and then not really doing much to help afterward. It would have been nice if the show had done a bit more to explain that early on, though I'm not sure what else I would have taken out to make room for that.
 
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Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
Anyway, that was a great episode. I was very happy to see Sam use his background in helping soldiers to talk to Karli, and that he sympathized with her cause. Early on he had the motivation to stop the Flag Smashers, but for the last couple of episodes he was mostly along for the ride. There hasn't really been time to get his take on them or see what that relationship would be like. My main concern was that they were going to villainize Karli and come down too strongly against her. So, that part of the episode was great.

But also, it had a lot of great action scenes. The fight with the Dora Milaje was a ton of fun (I cracked up when Bucky's arm came off), and the fight with a bunch of supersoldiers was great. I'm glad that they gave Walker and Battlestar the moment where they talked about Afghanistan. I had guessed that things would end up they way they are now with Walker's character, but they did a good job getting there.
 

Jeanie

(Fem or Gender Neutral)
Nothing creepier than a man in a coat singing children songs and offering candy to kids.
 

karzac

(he/him)
I thought it was funny how bad at recon Sam and Bucky were. They just walked straight into enemy territory and started asking people if they knew the person they were looking for. Zemo's the only one here who's actually competent at this, except maybe the Dora.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
This was a really strong episode! Feels like the show's found its footing. Hope they can keep it up.

Loved the flashback to Bucky and Ayo in Wakanda, and Bucky's tears of relief at realizing he's been successfully deprogrammed. Really powerful scene.

During the "supremacist" discussion, Sam points out that power never corrupted Steve Rogers and Zemo immediately concedes the point. Would he really, though? Zemo blames the Avengers (and superpowered people in general) for everything wrong in the world and in his life, and Steve was their leader. Given how Zemo sees the Avengers, would he really agree that being the head of a group of inhumanly powerful vigilantes, answerable to no one and responsible for leveling a country, wasn't corruption? Maybe he was just playing nice so as not to give Bucky and Sam another reason to be upset with him.

Agreed with Patrick that they used Sam's background well here, and I'm pleased to see the Flag-Smashers portrayed sympathetically.

By dramatic convention, the longer we go without seeing the Power Broker's face, the more likely it is that it's someone we already know, and I'm starting to worry about exactly how Sharon's making her living...

The Dora Milaje fight was suh-weet. Got a kick out of Bucky's brief turn as Arm-Fall-Off Boy. Also glad Zemo's finally free to act without supervision now; I hope he's got something really good planned.

The restaurant where Walker and Hoskins reminisce about Afghanistan was called Gastronauts. Cute.

I noticed a couple of shots of Walker echoed previous Captain America scenes in composition (like him opening the door with shield and gun raised like that iconic image of Steve and the Howling Commandos from the montage in The First Avenger), and his dispatching that Flag-Smasher at the end brought to mind the final blow of Civil War, where both Tony and much of the audience were briefly afraid Cap was going to go too far. And here's exactly what that would have looked like. The final shot of Walker standing with the bloodied shield was quite the image.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Did Bucky ever get the Super Soldier Serum? I assumed that all his ro-bits were doing the heavy lifting for him being as tough as he is, but this episode implied he had both.

Also; Walker was already completely defined by being the biggest twerp on the planet, the Serum really has nowhere to go on that front
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
They neglected to mention it at all in CA:TWS and never really did a good job of explaining when he got the serum or who made it, but it's been (more or less) apparent since Civil War that he's got superhuman strength in more than just the one arm. He apparently received some bootleg variant that is separate from the batch that Howard Stark cooked up.
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
He was captured by Hydra and experimented on during The First Avenger. That’s why he survived the fall from the train.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Sure, but Hydra shouldn't have had more of the serum than what Erskine already put in Red Skull, plus Bucky went on all manner of missions between his rescue and the train, so he'd have noticed if he suddenly had super soldier strength. It's all a little hazy, is what I'm saying.
 
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