Imaginary Worlds - Headcanon Fodder

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Have you ever watched a movie or show, gotten sucked into a mystery and come up with your own idea of what is going to be revealed – only to find out that you’re wrong? Do you accept what’s now established as canon, or do you get attached to your own “headcanon?” We are living in the golden age of headcanon, especially in sci-fi fantasy, where many storytellers are following the template of J.J. Abrams and his Mystery Box approach. So, we did a call out to our listeners, to find out what headcanons they came up with or heard about, and why they think those headcanons work better than what ended up on screen, or on the page. Featuring Larry Brenner, Mark White, Josh Sawyer, Doug Tricarico, Chris Landon, and Judd Winick, who had the opportunity to turn his headcanon into canon. There aren’t major spoilers in this episode, but we discuss plot points in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Mandalorian, the first Matrix, Iron Man 2, Hawkeye, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Inspector Gadget, Citizen Kane, and Batman comics. This episode is sponsored by Inked Gaming and Realm. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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casting, and show lore, while staying tuned for deep dives into your favorite franchises. New episodes are released on Wednesdays. Listen and subscribe to X-Ray Vision on Apple Podcasts. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. We are in a golden age of headcanon, although that may not be a good thing. Headcanon is a term for when a storyteller is creating a mystery or telling a story that isn't finished yet, term for when a storyteller is creating a mystery or telling a story that isn't finished yet, and the fans fill in those gaps with their own ideas of what's going to happen or what will be revealed. And when their headcanon doesn't turn out to be canon, the fans don't always take it

well. Some people blame the fans for not letting storytellers do their jobs and finish stories on their own terms. But a lot of people also blame J.J. Abrams. So much headcanon has been sparked by work that he produced, like Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, Westworld, and the new Star Trek and Star Wars movies. And his approach has been copied by a lot of storytellers working in sci-fi and fantasy when they want to create a mystery and a lot of social media buzz. What are stories but mystery boxes? There's a fundamental question in TV.

The first act is called the teaser. It's literally the teaser. That is J.J. Abrams giving a famous TED talk about his favorite storytelling device, the mystery box. In the talk, he is standing next to a box with a question mark on it. He bought the box years ago, and he never opened it because he says, quote, mystery is the catalyst for imagination. In fact, he sometimes sets up mysteries without knowing himself how he's going to resolve them. And as a fan, I know what it's like to get caught up in one of these mysteries.

It can be frustrating when you get attached to a headcanon that you read about or one you came up with, but it doesn't go far beyond your own head. So we asked you, our listeners, to pitch us your favorite headcanon. And heads up, there will be some spoilers. It's hard to talk about head canon without mentioning the actual canon. So I put a list of all the movies and TV shows we'll be discussing in the show notes. Alright, going back to J.J. Abrams. The Force Awakens set up a mystery around the character of Rey and her background. The disappointment that many fans felt about how that mystery got resolved spawned a cottage industry of discourse and videos explaining why that story didn't work.

Larry Brenner wrote to us with a really interesting idea of how those puzzle pieces could have fit together. And this goes back to something that he had been thinking about before he ever saw the sequel trilogy. about before he ever saw the sequel trilogy. I take issue with the idea at the end of Return of the Jedi that Darth Vader has been redeemed, that Anakin has been redeemed. It's a redemption moment. Yes, he's turned away from the dark side. Yes, he saved his son's life, but he murdered many, many, many people.

We saw him kill children in Revenge of the Sith. He's responsible in part for the death of an entire planet and untold lives. And I don't know if in the last five seconds you save your son's life, who's only in danger because of you in the first place, that that tallies the scales a little bit. Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes. And so, you know, when I look at the first six movies and we see, you know, very clearly this is the story of Anakin Skywalker being told over six and we get part seven. There's a big part of me that's thinking, oh, is this the continued

story of Darth Vader? So that was kind of in my mind going into this. And even before I saw the movie, I know that the question that people were asking coming out of it was, who is Rey? Where does she come from? For me, the answer to this is Rey is the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker. The scales have not been set equal. There is a debt that has been owed from his past life. And so he's going to need another lifetime in order to accomplish that. So tell me about the things you saw in like episode seven or eight or nine that made you

think like, oh, yeah, this totally supports my theory. OK, so there's a number of things. Some some obviously are better fits than others. One of the major complaints some of my friends had about this movie is that Anakin had. Sorry, Rey has a number of skills that just inexplicably appear. She is surprised to discover that she can fly a spaceship. She's just this natural prodigy. This hyperdrive blows are going to be pieces of us in three different systems. What'd you do?

I bypassed the compressor. Huh. Many of my friends were like, oh, she's a Mary Sue. She just can do anything. She's just so perfect. But I was sitting there going, no, these are skills that she has from her past life. Anakin, as a child, was a pod racer. So when she's surprised that she can fly a spaceship, I think that's a genuine surprise.

But I think what it really is, is skills from her past life returning to her, being called up as they're needed. And then there are the unusually strong visions that Rey has when she picks up the lightsaber that was originally Anakin's before it was given to Luke in Episode 4. For me, getting the lightsaber

is activating some past life memories for her. And she recoils from it because her past life is filled with so much darkness. You, you're afraid darkness. The single biggest clue that I have on this one is throughout the trilogy we see Kylo Ren constantly trying to commune with the skull of Darth Vader. But every time he tries to follow the path to Darth Vader, it leads him to Rey. And I don't think this is, oh, he misdialed and keeps getting the wrong number. I think his vision quest is taking him exactly where he wants to be.

he wants to be. Kylo wants to be who Rey was in her past life. Rey is hearing the seductive call of her past life, trying to bring her back to the dark side. It's the thing that she has to triumph over to prove that she has defeated the evil that consumed her in the previous life. Were you able to convince any of your friends of this headcanon? Yes. Yeah. Oh, yes. A number of them. And I was like, just wait and see. Just wait and see. This is going to happen. I clearly don't get my last laugh on that one. I do say, though, the last scene of the movie where she's on Tatooine and she's looking at the spirits of Luke and Leia makes so much more sense if she's the reincarnation of Anakin. Her story has gone full circle. We found Anakin on Tatooine and we leave we leave Anakin on Tatooine.

It's it's everything is in a circle. Everything comes back around, which is a very Star Wars thing, too. Even the title Rise Rise of Skywalker, right? It's not that she decided to take their adopted name. It's that Anakin Skywalker is back. The spirit of Anakin Skywalker is back. This is something I wanted to scream at the end of the movie theater. I was like, here's what, everybody sit down.

Here's what really happened. Stay in your seats. It's not over. It's not over. Okay. I got a PowerPoint. Yes. I've got some action figures.

We're going to do it again. Let's pull out my script. There is another Star Wars mystery out there which has not been resolved yet. In The Mandalorian, we meet Grogu, or as he's called on the internet, Baby Yoda. Although we don't know if he's Yoda's baby. I mean, we don't know where he came from. We do know that he was training at the Jedi Temple before the younglings were killed by Anakin, right after he turned to the dark side. But we don't know who saved Grogu.

Mark White may have figured it out. His headcanon centers around a character named Jocasta New. She was the chief librarian at the Jedi Temple, and we first saw her in the movie Episode II, Attack of the Clones. I hate to say it, but it looks like the system you're searching for doesn't exist. Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete. She only appears briefly in that movie, but her backstory was fleshed out in the comics,

where we learned that she escaped Order 66, the assassination of the Jedi. Here's Mark. She ends up being this badass librarian in the comics, which is kind of cool. So then I'm watching season two, episode five of The Mandalorian. And Ahsoka says when the Empire rose to power, he was hidden. Somebody took him from the temple. It was like that. I don't know if it was immediately, but it was that day. I like oh jacasta knew totally uh it totally falls in line with the timeline it totally falls in line with her character motivations and interests and things like that that's when i sort of developed the idea in my head of like oh this is my headcanon like she saved him it's still a mystery what you know grogu and yoda's species is so

it makes sense that she would know something special about this kid and as she was fleeing in order 66 like take him along with her so if if it turns out to be not canon if they reveal the big the the big reveal and it turns out not to be her, how do you think you're going to feel about that? Yeah, I think this is something that's important for me as like a fan where I go to imaginary worlds like Star Wars to get like joy from. It's also like I respect creators who want to tell their own original story and have something in mind, you know. So I think it's sort of intellectually, what's the right way to put it? Like intellectually vain of me to be like, no, it has to be this way. And if it doesn't go this way, I'm going to be super angry.

So if, you know, season three of The Mandalorian or a book or something like that, you know, comes out and it's he escaped the temple somehow else i'll be fine with it that is to say like if it actually ends up being the case that she's the one who saved him i will be like yes i called it oh no no no i will tweet it out and i'll be like as you remember in the fe the February 2022 episode of Maginary Worlds. We heard from another listener named Doug Tricario, and he told us about a headcanon that he found online, which helps explain a moment that always bothered him in a movie that he otherwise loved, The First Matrix.

I was watching it and I was like, this is awesome. This is all the cyberpunk stuff that we've been reading about for the last 15 years or whatever. Then at the end, Trinity kisses Neo and brings him back to life and suddenly it's no longer science fiction, it's fantasy. I'm like, that's just goofy. Kind of dropped me out of the movie. You hear me.

I love you. And I went on to Usenet, which was the social media at the time. And we were talking about this and somebody said, well, what if they're both in the Matrix? Both versions are in the Matrix of not just the part that they think is in the matrix, but also the part where they think they're in the real world. That's also the matrix. And I was like, now it makes total sense. Now it's still science fiction, which is cool. Yeah. It's also, it feels like such a matrixy headcanon because you could almost imagine Morpheus saying, have you ever woken up in a dream and thought you would stop dreaming, but you're still dreaming?

Yeah, exactly. You can almost imagine them explaining that. Exactly. Are there other moments too that you feel like make sense, make much more sense now with that headcanon? Yeah, like there's that moment where Morpheus explains that they use human beings as batteries. And it's like, that doesn't really make sense. Like you use it as distributing processors, maybe, but as energy that doesn't really track. But if it's all the matrix, that makes it make more sense. Not to mention the next few sequels. Doug actually told me about a few interesting headcanons.

Like here's another one he found online, which relates to Iron Man 2. There's a little boy that Iron Man saves. And somebody pointed out that the kid is the right age to be Peter Parker's little boy. I believe it was Kevin Feige himself said, yeah, that tracks. So he's now canonically, he is now Peter Parker. Really? What scene was that? It's the scene after the Vanco has said all the drones and it's the drones are attacking everyone. And there's a little kid with an Iron Man mask. And he sort of holds up his hand and says, I don't think he says anything, actually. Nice work, kid.

Yes, right. I do remember that. And they're in Queens. Yeah. So everything, it all connects. It explains why Peter Parker is so enamored with Tony Stark. And we see the Silver Globe

from the World's Fair at the beginning of Spider-Man Homecoming. And right before we talked, Doug had come up with his own headcanon about the Hawkeye TV series. At the beginning of the first episode, Clint Barton and his family are on vacation in New York, and they're watching a Broadway musical about Captain America. And as the original Avengers assemble on stage,

Clint is cringing in the audience. One of his kids asks him why he's not into this show. I know what happened, sis. I was there. You knew it wasn't there. It's that guy. Ant-Man. We cut back to the stage and see a guy in a cheap Ant-Man costume in the lineup of the original Avengers.

It seems like a throwaway joke about how inaccurate and silly this musical is. But Doug pointed out that in the film Avengers Endgame, Captain America, Iron Man, and Hulk traveled back in time with Ant-Man to the first Avengers movie. They tried to stay inconspicuous, so nobody in 2012 knew that they were there. But I've been thinking as I was watching that, it's like, but Ant-Man kind of was there because they time traveled. So I'm kind of thinking that people probably

like went back and scoured security cam footage and all that kind of stuff. And they probably got a glimpse of Scott as Ant-Man running around. So now people think that Ant-Man's been secretly working with the Avengers all along. I love that headcanon, Kevin Feige, if you're listening. Josh Sawyer is a big Star Trek fan,

and he came up with a headcanon about a storyline that has always bothered him. The movie Star Trek Into Darkness is part of the reboot series where the original characters are played by young actors. Who the hell are you? They built a big mystery around who Benedict Cumberbatch was playing, and halfway through the movie, he reveals that he is Khan, even though he looks and sounds nothing like Ricardo Montalban. My name is Khan. So, Josh came up with this theory. I just sort of pretend that Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Khan because it just comes completely out of nowhere about halfway through

the movie. It's like, what? He's playing Khan? Like from Khan Khan and so what's your headcanon uh well I just I just sort of pretend because Khan had this whole sort of cadre of other super soldiers that he was the boss of I just kind of pretend they unfroze one of those guys and that guy is saying he's Khan and that maybe Khan is more of like a ceremonial title than it is a name. So have you been able to convince other people of your headcanon? Have they been like, oh, my God, now that you've said that to me, the movie now makes so much more sense. I say it to my wife every time we watch it, and she she either pretends to be convinced or or has bought into it. So I think I've got one convert.

Make that two converts. No pun intended. Now, one of my favorite headcanons that we heard about was not from a franchise that's very current, but it was a childhood favorite of mine, Inspector Gadget. If this cartoon is a little before your time, Inspector Gadget was a wacky secret agent who wore a trench coat and a hat,

and all these robotic gadgets could come out of his body. Go, go, Gadget, wait! Uncle Gadget, are you all right? Chris Landon was always bothered by how hapless and bumbling Inspector Gadget was compared to his niece Penny and their very smart dog, Brain. And then Chris began to wonder, given how many contraptions come out of Inspector Gadget's head, does this man even have a brain?

I'm thinking maybe Inspector Gadget used to be a real-life secret agent, and he was investigating corruption in his own agency, and he doesn't know who to trust. So there's another agency that he calls, and he's like, I need some help with this. And so they send Penny over, and he's like, she's a little young, but she's like a really good secret agent. And he's like, she's a little young, but she's like a really good secret agent. And she's like, I'll pretend to be your niece. Right.

And then inspector gadget gets caught and they destroy him. He's like, has this massive injuries. And I'm thinking maybe Penny rescues him and takes them back to her agency and they put them back together as best they can. But they can't save his brain. They take his brain out and put it into the dog. And that's why the dog's name is Brain. And so basically they fill Gadget up with robot parts and he becomes like this kind of a decoy. So Dr. Claw is always going after Inspector Gadget while Brain and Penny are behind the scenes doing the real work, right?

And Dr. Claw is, you know, Chief Quimby, of course. I haven't seen the show since I was a kid. So Chief Quimby is Inspector Gadget's boss. Yeah, yeah. He's his boss and he's the real bad guy. I think that's because, I mean, who else would Dr. Claw be, you know? a real bad guy. I think that's because, I mean, who else would Dr. Claw be? You know. Because we never see Dr. Claw's face. And if he's really Chief Quimby, he is setting up Gadget to fail,

which he often does, but Penny and Brain save him. It makes watching the show much nicer because you're like, oh, there's actually really some stuff going on here. It's not just, like, silliness. After the break, a fan comes up with an original headcanon idea,

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Total Body deodorant now. All right, we have one more listener headcanon to explore. So tell me your name. My name is Judd. And what's your headcanon about? My headcanon is that about 10 years ago ago i was reading the dc comics batman series i was reading you know the main monthly series and i'm reading the storyline hush and this was like a blockbuster i remember i was going to my comic book store regularly to pick up the latest issues of yeah all of us were this was this was this was, this felt different. It was, it was hot. It was big. And at the center of it, there was this new villain aptly named Hush. We didn't know who this was. Hush was new. Hush seemed to have some insight into Batman slash Bruce Wayne that other, others should not have. And his, his costume was kind of topped off by a disguise of, he had a bandaged face, which was deeply

interesting and mysterious. And it culminated to finally Batman is facing off with Hush and they're in a cemetery of all places. And Hush reveals himself, finally his identity. It turns out he is Jason Todd, who was the was the second Robin as in Batman and Robin and Jason Todd died for those playing at home. We didn't know it. So this is Jason Todd had returned from the dead and was now a villain, not any villain, like a big, big shot villain who was making all kinds of trouble. And for me, I just, my top of my head blew off. I loved this because I could just see

the whole story of like a hundred miles of broken road. And what was the story in your mind that you started to imagine? Well, because Jason Todd represented Batman's greatest failure, the mistakes he had made both as raising Jason and Jason had become this rebellious Robin. And then these mistakes led to him being killed. He was murdered by Joker, uh, in Batman's Batcave. There was still an actual tomb to Jason, uh, as a constant reminder. So for Jason to return from the dead, oh my gosh. So it was, it hung on to this lesson of his greatest failure, but it would now go further. He was going to be a villain taking all the tools that Batman ever gave him and using them for wrong.

For me, I just, I could see it so much. It was like an opera. And then, well, then a month later, uh,

they reveal that, uh, that it wasn't Jason Todd. It was Clayface in disguise. So, and I thought like, oh, okay, well, that's another way to go, I guess. But then he realized,

wait a second, I'm not just a comic book fan named Judd. I am Judd Winnick. Today, he is the creator of the children's series, Helo. But at the time, he was a writer at DC Comics. But you don't just walk into the head office and say,

I'd like to take a shot at writing our most popular character, and while I'm at it, I'd like to change Batman canon. He had to wait a year before he finally got that meeting, and they asked him, what do you have in mind? I laid it out for him, you know him as I saw it in my head. This hundred miles of broken road that I saw when I read the story initially, my first instinct was like, oh, what a great story this is going to be. Well, I'm one of those very, very lucky few who gets to make this the great story that I wanted it to be. And so I started doing it. So yeah, I actually did bring Jason Todd back to From the Dead. So there.

It was a groundbreaking moment in modern Batman comics. And so many people have run with that storyline too. I mean, given that you have a rare experience of somebody who has had a headcanon and gets to make it canon, does that give you new insight, understanding, or sympathy for people who have what they feel like

is a great head canon that was so much better than canon, but they don't have the access to make it happen? Always, always. I'm a deep appreciator of fan fiction. I totally understand that inclination. I mean, dirty secret. Us storytellers are constantly rewriting things that we watch and read. Constantly.

I mean, even like moments after we see it. Noodling around with it and what they should have done. I thought this would have been better and we could do it this way. So I get it. Hey, even stories I've done that people are disappointed with and wish I would have gone another way with. I get it. Hey, even stories I've done that people are disappointed with and wish I would have gone another way with. I get it. Trust me. And to be honest with you, there is an excellent chance that I actually went the other way on that story for a little while, too. Yeah. Has that happened where somebody's come to you and said, I was disappointed or you read about somebody said, I was disappointed with the way you went with this.

I have my own headcanon as to what should have happened. What is, as a storyteller, what's your reaction to that? Sometimes it's absolute, you know, just irritation and disgust. Like what, what, what do you know? What do you know? It's just so easy. Yeah. After, you know, like, uh, you know, we sit, we set up this, this whole, you know, we set this whole thing up and then you look in there and noodle around with it and decide to zig when you zag. Other times I have to admit like, yeah, no, I thought about that too. Well, why didn't you do it? It's like, well, I didn't do it because of X, Y, or Z. I thought this would be a better direction or, you know, like, or actually I have to tell you, I think, I think the route that I went

was going to wind up being better than, than what you were thinking of or what we were thinking of. Yeah. I mean, what do you think is the difference between headcanon and fanfiction? For me, headcanon is when you specifically look at a direction a story was going to make, then it spirals down into a different direction and it's gone. Fanfiction is just like you're pulling characters out and making up an own story that goes with them instead of creating like an alternate reality. Yeah. It's kind of a sense of like, I gonna tell the story of ray skywalker and harry potter joining you know forces

um against thanos and you know it's uh yeah i know this will never happen therefore i'm having fun as opposed to oh if you would only let me in the room. That is exactly it. Yes. No. If I just had the opportunity to call the shots. Oh, man. Does social media make this kind of the headcanon thing? Does it exacerbate it? And certainly everyone can not just present their stuff with, um, on Twitter, but you can have a whole 20 minute YouTube video dissertation. Oh God. Yeah. I think, uh, social media has completely changed how we view everything, how genres changed, how people comment on stuff. Uh, I mean, they're commenting and making changes practically in real time. I mean, just, you know, the, the show will air and suddenly we're, we're rewriting it. It's like, slow down. Let us actually

see where the story goes before we're commenting on where the story goes, because the story might go exactly where you think it's going, or a little bit different, or almost there. Yeah, to say it's thrown like a match on a gas fire is like, please, it's, you know, it's, you know, throwing more gas on a gas fire and making the fire, it's just, it's an inferno. Social media has completely changed it. Yeah, like Mephisto is a villain that I never really particularly cared about. And then halfway through WandaVision, my Twitter feed had completely convinced me that Mephisto was going to show up. He was going to be the big bad. Like the whole series was basically like a vehicle to bring Mephisto into the MCU.

And if he doesn't show up, I should be bitterly disappointed because the clues were all there. Look, there's an M. Look, there's another M. If you turn this upside down and tilt it a little bit, it's an M. And they said magic. Magic is Mephisto, clearly. So yeah, no, I'm with you about that. And honestly, I think social media in a lot of ways sets us up for disappointment. And I think when storytellers actually get nervous about like, listen, it's okay if like, they're going to guess everything. They're going to guess everything. Sometimes you just have to take the hit and realize that this many of us actually trying to guess and working on our head

canon, you're going to guess it. You're going to have the story come out there. And that's okay. You just need to tell it well. That's all we want. Yeah, I'm trying to imagine, like, I started thinking about what if Citizen Kane had been an HBO miniseries and Twitter was obsessed with finding out

who was Rosebud and what was Rosebud. How would they feel at the end, you know? Because I feel like a great mystery should reveal character and theme and story and not a like aha i didn't see that coming how true is that how many people disappoint the sled seriously the stupid sled well you know and first like how are we supposed to guess that well you weren't supposed to guess that that's what the story's about like oh but still they barely gave us a hint. The flood doesn't show up except

in the beginning and then the very end. How are we to know that? Like, I know, but it's representative of who he was and his childhood loss and a path of the only time when he had, like, true happiness and the last time he could remember that in his life when he was like, yeah, but so what? How are we supposed to guess that? Okay, back to the guessing that. That's not really your problem.

It's like, yeah, it would have been a mess for sure. Oh my God. You just, like, I could just see my Twitter feed. You're welcome. One of the reasons why I'm really interested in headcanon is because I tried to be a screenwriter for years. I took screenwriting classes screenwriter for years. I took screen

running classes outside my regular job. I read screen running books. I submitted my scripts for feedback in Los Angeles and New York. So many times I thought I had written something which sounded great in my head, and then I put it out in the world. It was a very humbling experience, and I learned it's a lot easier to figure out why someone else's story doesn't work than to create one yourself. So I'm always impressed when a story has an ending that's really satisfying to me, not just in terms of the puzzle pieces coming together, but it's an emotionally satisfying ending. If the storytellers can make me feel something, really feel something by the end, how they manage to do it,

for me, is what's inside the mystery box. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Larry Brenner, Mark White, Josh Sawyer, Doug Tercurio, Chris Landon, and Judd Winnick. And also thanks to everybody who wrote in with their headcanon. Even if we didn't get to talk to you, it was really fun

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