The Ringer-Verse - ‘Black Widow’ Analysis and Mailbag | Mallory Rubin Featuring Joanna Robinson

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Mallory Rubin is joined by Vanity Fair senior writer Joanna Robinson to usher in Phase 4 of the MCU with 'Black Widow'! They dive into the themes and characters of the long-anticipated blockbuster (05:15). They also dive into the mystery of the villain Taskmaster and the themes of family (56:42). Later they are joined by Jomi to answer your mailbag questions (134:39). Host: Mallory Rubin Guests: Joanna Robinson Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal and TD St. Matthew-Daniel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I think that for a couple deep undercover Russian agents, I think we did pretty great as parents. Yes, we had our orders and we played our roles to perfection. Who cares? That wasn't real. What? That wasn't real. Who cares? Don't say that.

Please don't say that. It was real. It was real to me. You are my mother. You were my real mother. The closest thing I ever had to one. The best part of my life was fake. And none of you told me.

And welcome into the Ringerverse. Here on the Ringer podcast network. I'm Mallory Rubin, co-host of Binge mode, head of editorial here at the Ringer. And it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to Budapest, Budapest, Budapest, but to join us on the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things. Fandom. And there's a lot happening on the ringerverse right now.

We are here today to talk about Black Widow. But later this week, we will have two more pods for you on the Loki season finale. Midnight Boys will give you their instant reactions on Wednesday. And I will be back with you on Friday to dive into the finale and the season as a whole. Remember? Follow the Ringervaverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow us across our social channels. And bear in mind, as always, our friendly neighborhood.

Spoiler warning. Today's episode will contain spoilers from the new movie Black Widow. Lots of spoilers right from the jump as well as

details from the entire MC you run to date. So proceed with more caution than everyone who challenged Alexi to an arm wrestling

match in prison. It's my general advice. Joining me today, now that she's finished making some modifications to her many pocketed vest,

it is Vanity Fair senior writer, still watching podcast host, co-author of the upcoming book on the complete history of Marvel Studios, and the greatest child assassin the world has ever known. No one can match her efficiency, her ruthlessness. It's Joada Robinson. Oh my God, it's going to be a real challenge. Now that you have ascribed vest pockets to me for me to me to me, for me to be. to not break into my worst Russian accent at some point in this podcast.

Please. All accent work is welcome and encouraged here in the reverse. We'll see. As are all fashion choices, vest-centric or otherwise. I used to live with several Ukrainians named Alex. And so, you know, so I'm glad that we have an Alexi here in this episode to talk about. I'm always glad to talk about David Harper, just as a general life rule. Well, Joanna, welcome back into the Ringiverse.

It's great to be with you again. I would like to also extend a welcome to your beautiful cat who is here with you on Zoom. Always here. Never far. The cat is here to hopefully not purr directly into the mic. We'll see. Oh, no. I think that would be welcome sound design. Right, Steve?

All good with cat purring at all times. Great. We have so much to cover today. So much to talk about with Black Widow. The first movie of phase. four. Here we are at last taking in the first movie of phase four, the second MCU movie out of 24 overall to center on a woman, a female lead after Captain Marvel, of course. You could maybe say two and a half movies because of Ant Man and the Wasp, directed by Kate Shortland, first woman,

to direct an MCU film solo. Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck, of course, co-directed Captain Marvel and Kate Heron and Carrie Skagland, of course, have directed Marvel shows on Disney Plus. So far in phase four. Screenplay by Eric Pearson's story by Jack Schaefer and Ned Benson, produced by Kevin Feige, of course. And then what a cast. What a cast we have here, Joe. I have a question for the Midnight Boys because I didn't listen, but did they do a good old Florence Pew, Pew, Pew, Pew. Did they give it a Florence Pew Pew Treatment?

You know it. Oh, good. Oh, good. You know it. Florence, pew, pew, pew, pew. Before we get into the themes, the plots, all of the many things that we want to discuss today, let's run through some of the opening weekend highlights. It would be remiss not to mention rotten tomatoes, even if we want to immediately dismiss it. Just as a data point.

Throwing it out there. 80% among critics, 92% among audience members. And then we have some interesting early box office metrics. Yeah. Fascinating. 80 million domestically, 78 million internationally, and according to Disney,

which released this information, which is unusual, $60 million on Disney Plus premiere access. This is the best opening for a movie of the pandemic. And Disney's decision to release the at-home numbers is certainly new. And I think maybe telling, how telling do you think this is

in terms of what it might mean for the future of cinematic releases moving forward. I mean, I think they just wanted a big number to crow about, do you know what I mean? And so they're like, well, let's add in this at home data. I do always have questions when the data comes from the studio itself, like whenever Netflix is like, this is a huge, massive hit, says us, you know? And we're like, okay, probably. Probably you're not lying about that.

But, you know, it's interesting to know. But yeah, I mean, it is a big number combined over. Overall, I've seen some folks, like some box office prognosticators say it's not enough, but I don't know. It's bigger than I thought it would be. And I'm really pleased with how many people were watching because I'm a big fan of this movie. I haven't said so already. I'm curious, before we get into what you enjoyed so much about it, how you watched it. Did you watch at home?

Did you watch in movie theaters either with your initial screening or on subsequent viewings? And if you did ticket it at home at any point, how did you find that experience? Yeah, I got a screener a couple weeks ago, courtesy of Disney. And so I watched that probably on my laptop or something kind of sad. And I still really, really liked it. But then when it fully loaded on the site, I watched it on, you know, my largest TV with, like, all the cinema settings dialed up and stuff like that. and that was incredible. But I would love to see this in the movie theater,

maybe catch a midday screening when there aren't that many people there because I'm still a little COVID-shy. But I've heard, you know, there was some packed screenings in L.A. that some of my friends went to and they just, like, they felt like it was thrilling to see it with a crowd. A Marvel movie, The Crowd, after this long Marvel movie drought, you know what I mean? How about you? Did you miss that experience, that, like, shared viewing experience that a new Marvel

movie brings? Yeah, I think so. Like, I'm fond of, you know, I often. I often go to press screening, so I often go like a little bit earlier. And those are usually a little muted. But for big Marvel movies or Star Wars or other things like that, I also like to go opening weekend. So I can just hear the crowd, you know what I mean? Lose their minds over the spectacle.

So yeah, how about you? Yeah. So I watched it at home. I watched the screener link at home initially. Really felt like I was part of the movie because my name was a wordmark in the middle of it, you know? Yep, yep, yeah. Literallyizes the experience of bringing you into the story. And then watched it again on Disney Plus, on Friday night, and again over the weekend.

I will say I felt two things equally strongly. One, yes, I missed the communal movie theater experience. Some of my fondest moviegoing memories, period, are going to see Marvel movies, the cheer, the surge of emotion, that feeling when everybody is waiting with the same kind of charged anticipation, and it all surfaces,

whether it's in a shared cry, a shared cheer, a shared scream, whatever the case may be. Like, that's just a really fun experience that taps into a lot of what I love about Marvel movies and fantasy stories in general, sharing them with other people. All that said, I'm going to be honest, I really liked watching this at home and would be happy to do it again for future movies.

I'm a bit of a homebody, so I recognize that that view is not necessarily one that's widely shared. Though maybe these numbers indicate that there were a lot of people who were, you know, grateful to have that choice and would welcome it again in the future. I like being able to, you know, well, I was going to say put on pajamas, but that would be a lie. because I have pajamas on. Remain. Remade in your pajamas. That's right. You know, in the interest of candor.

Remade in high pajamas. Remade in your PJs. Have your cat there with you. Settling it on the couch. Fleece blanket. As many. Cat. As many bathroom breaks as you need.

You know, same concessions at home as I'd have in a movie theater. I recently ordered just an astonishing amount of sour patch watermelon kids. You know, I'm fully stocked. So. Okay. All right. Glad to know your poison, Mallory. Oh, man.

I love candy. Sometimes I'm amazed I have teeth still. Ten years from now, Mallory then still going to be covering Marvel gumming her sour patch watermelons. Yeah, hopefully the denture tech will have advanced by then. Anyway, the movie. Overall thoughts. You said that you enjoyed it.

Tell us why. I had a stone cold blast watching this. And I think part of it was like maybe my expectations were a little low because I was like, oh, this is going to be, there's only a few films that I would call like subpar Marvel and they're not these smaller standalones. But when it comes to a smaller standalone like an Ant Man or a Dr. Serange or something like that, my expectation is just a little different. And in that way, I wind up having a great time because I'm just sort of like I put my expectation a little lower to what the stakes are going to be or something like that. And this exceeded that in many ways. I've said a million times in many places that Captain America, the Winter Soldier, is my favorite Marvel movie.

And this owes such a debt to Winter Soldier. There's so many parallels here. And so I had a great time. And then I was surprised when I saw some of the early reactions from my critic pals who were like, this should have been a Disney Plus show or, you know, It didn't rise the level of other Marvel movies. And I was like, well, it's not a Thanos, like, world-ending event, but I think this stands up there with Winter Soldier and some of my other favorites.

I just think I like street-level action, and I like how much character work there is in this movie. And, like, Marvel sometimes forgets to put the character work in there occasionally. And there's just wall-to-wall family drama. If you want to go to a big action movie this summer with Carvel, car chases about family, I would maybe stock this above F9.

So, you know, that's my take. What's your head take, no? You know, between the, between the, the Budapest car chase and the themes of family found, I have to assume the

Dom and the fast contingent just loved this movie. I have a few different thoughts. I liked it. I liked it a lot. And I have actually enjoyed it more on each subsequent viewing. You know, there are parts of it that that didn't work as well for me as other parts of the

movie, which we'll go through over the course of our presumably, you know, multi-hour discussion here. But broadly, I thought it was a lot of fun. I found it incredibly moving in a couple parts. I want, though, to follow up on what you just said about scale, inside of Marvel, because I'm always interested in talking about that. The scale. So, of course, the grand, sweeping, vast Marvel epics are not only fun and thrilling, but, you know,

in many ways how we assess what a modern-day blockbuster is and can look like. but I've actually always appreciated, I think similarly to how you're describing, the fact that Marvel can like zoom in and out. You know, that's part of what's interesting to me about it, that much like there's genre variants across these films and installments, there's an interest and like a dedicated interest actually in not just looking at galactic stakes and impact, but focusing in on what this means for regular people. Now, maybe I'm, maybe I'm being slightly broad with the general, the everyday people, regular people label. Like, we're still talking about superheroes and super soldiers. But when you scale down, I think it's a, it's a important way to kind of ground us and

anchor us in what the impact is on the characters who we have invested in and in the case of the MCU invested in for for quite some time. You know, I think that Disney Plus point is interesting because I guess to me that that's like not a not a knock, you know, saying, oh, this could be a Disney Plus show because one of the, which is not what I'm saying to be clear, but just in terms of grappling with that idea for a minute. Like one of the things that I have really loved about the Disney Plus experience so far is that it gives us time for these character studies,

time to spend with these people who were really interested in and have watched throughout all of these action sequences and years and events of monumental consequence. So I think that porting, you know, that energy into the movies in cases when it is appropriate to do so and either the point where we are in the timeline

or the people that we're focusing on, whatever the case may be, allows for that is nice, not only because it introduces like variance and tone, pace, and scope, but because I go to Marvel movies and invest in Marvel movies and Marvel stories because I'm interested in the characters

in their journeys. And I felt like this movie was also interested in multiple character journeys, is the end of one, or the end of one for us as viewers, certainly the timeline is something that we'll talk about and how that maybe complicates things. And also then the beginning of a new journey with Yelena. But to that point, like the question of how Black Widow functions

as a standalone film, how much of a factor do you think its placement in phase four is in terms of how people are assessing it, both because of how long it's been since we've all watched a Marvel movie And because, of course, this movie, Natasha's first and long overdue standalone film comes after the character dies. Natasha dies in endgame. And this movie is set in 2016, largely set in 2016, following the events of Captain America's Civil War. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because it's going to sound like I'm going back to the last point, but it is answering your question, which is like in the question of stakes, a big question. a big question after Endgame was like, how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Thanos? Like, where do you go after something where you see this massive scrum with every single Marvel character in battle? You know, like how to go for that? The whole reason to fight Thanos is to protect the farm. That's my thing.

Yeah. Right? No, I agree with you. I agree with you. But I like, that was always a question of like, how do you balance street level here? You know, they're very street level, quote, unquote, Marvel heroes. Like Daredevil is one. etc.

Like these people who always just sort of like brawled in the streets and Nat despite the fact that she takes like some incredibly

spectacular falls that should have busted every rib and bone in her body and she gets up and she's fine and reportedly has no

no super healing abilities. You know, she's got to be a street level character because of, you know, her skill set.

And so I think putting it in the context of the Disney Plus shows which have done a good job I think of making you know, like Wanda's story feel contained to that bubble and very intimate, or the TVA sort of slots us in Loki slots us off into a different corner of the universe. Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I think, is a little trickier because I think they tried to like kind of go too far in their globe trottingness.

But, you know, it's an interesting prompt. And to think about like the long road that Black Widow had to the screen to your original question, you know, it's not just this COVID delay and all of that. You know, the fact is that at Marvel, they wanted to do this movie for a long time. It wasn't just that, like, Scarlett Johansson maybe wanted her own movie. It's that, I don't know how much everyone knows about the, like, inner workings at Marvel, but there has been a seismic power shift over the course of, you know, the last few years since it's founding in 2008, where, like, Kevin Feigey has always been there, but he hasn't had full control over what they could do. And there was this, you know, group of folks called the Creative Committee.

There was a CEO, Ike Prowmutter, and all of these folks are standing in the way of progressive storytelling in various ways. And the main argument that comes from that New York sector of the Marvel power structure, which has now been cut out of the conversation. But their argument, because Ike Prowmiter was originally a toy guy, was that women don't say. sell toys, that women heroes don't sell action figures. And so why would we do? And, you know, and they could point to like Supergirl or Catwoman or Electra or all these sort of like failed superhero movies as if there aren't a million failed male superhero movies. But anyway, the point is like, it was a struggle. It was a struggle. This is something that Feige and like the various other Marvel execs in LA wanted. And it was a struggle to finally get it. And for some

folks, the critique is like too little too late for Black Widow. Like, how dare you give her the standalone after she's already died in the MCU? And I can see that point of view, and there's a part of me that agrees with me, but there's a part of me that loves this movie all the more for the fact that her death is hanging over it. And so we're really forced to sit and reckon with what we lost in a way that, like, in a way that mirrors like how salty I was at the end of end game when there's this big memorial for Tony and you're like, what about Natasha? It's like, okay, this is our eulogy for Natasha. And not to get ahead of ourselves, the end credits implies that there's going to be even more, you know, time to think about Natasha and what we lost here. I would have loved for there to be a million Black Widow movies and not just this one because it really sounds like Scarlett Johans is done with the MCU. This is her swan song.

But there's a part of me that really likes the way the death hangs over everything. What do you think? you know, I'll probably, I'll probably say some version of this like 50 times during the pod. Like, I don't presume that the way I feel about this movie or any movie needs to be the way that somebody else feels about it. And I'm not, I'm not really interested in, like, trying to convince people to change their minds. I think that people have different responses to stories all the time. And this one, I think, clearly has, has sparked different responses among people. And, you know, I think that the viewers who feel that this is.

too little too late. Like I certainly understand that. And I think that it is irrefutably true that Marvel waiting this long to make a standalone Black Widow movie is like a huge mark on the MCU to date. There's no debating that point. We should have gotten this movie much, much sooner. We should have gotten it much earlier in Natasha's arc. and we should have gotten many of them.

Just for me, I think I have responded to it mostly in the same way you have. I'm glad that we got this chance to learn more about Nat's life, learn more about her history, her backstory, in a way that Scarlett Johansson and Kate and everybody who made this movie really not only shaped in an effort to craft something that felt like a farewell to Natasha as well as a hello to Yelena here, but that in many ways, and we're going to talk about this a little more later,

just like mention it up top, felt like a direct response to a lot of the missteps in prior films in terms of how certain aspects of her history and her character were mishandled, badly mishandled. Well, and that's a constant in the MCU, and I credit that, to, well, to everyone, but it is an ethos that comes from the top down because like something that, I can't remember if I told you the story one of the other times of those here, but just in case I did it, something that Kevin Feigy told me once when I got a chance to interview him is that

when he was a kid, he used to go to movies and like, he would go to the movies all the time. He wasn't a comic guy. He was a movie guy. He would go to the movies all the time. And that he would go see, like, let's say he would go see a sequel that he found disappointing. He said he would go home with his action figures and, like, plot out the better version of that sequel at home, like, in his backyard. That was his favorite thing to do, like, I don't know, Robocop 2 or whatever, whatever it was that crushed his little boy heart. And so I feel like Fige himself is constantly doing that with his own work. We've talked before, I think, about the rehabbing of Ultron through Wanda Vision, making that film feel more urgent and important, or the rehabbing of... for the Dark World through Endgame and through Loki a bit here and stuff like that.

So, like, I think he's constantly going back over his own mistakes and trying to fix them. And, like, a lot of this credit goes to Scarlett and to Kate directly, as you say, because Scarlett, by all accounts, was a really hands-on exec producer in this film. Not every Marvel actor does that, but she was super hands-on. Kate Shortland was her first choice for director. She pursued her. Actively recruited her. Yeah.

Yeah. And that she and Kate, like, you know, this film went through many drafts. And that she and Kate, you know, up until the end, were sort of tweaking and fixing things that they thought were totally off. You know, so, you know, it was like sort of a group effort. But as you say, just like a real reckoning with what has come before. I'm curious, do you intend in the future to, when you're doing a Marvel rewatch, slot this in. to its place in the story of chronology in the timeline when you rewatch it or to watch it in a release order. And do you think that that will have any bearing on how you perceive it?

So someone asked me this the other day, like, should a newcomer watch things in chronological order? And I always say no to that. And to this one specifically, I would say no, because I do think you want that death, the knowledge of the death hanging over the movie. I think it really does flavor the whole thing. That being said, and I'm not a huge chronology rewatcher, like I don't usually move Captain Marvel up or First Avenger up. But I am curious now to slot this in the middle because something that I think Scarlett Johansson has said in interviews, and certainly Kate Shortland has said, is that knowing that Natasha has found a certain measure of peace with her past, maybe helps us feel more. better about her readiness for death and sacrifice and endgame. I'm probably never

going to feel great about what happened in Warmir. I'm always going to shout. It should have been Clint. A thousand percent should have been Clint, but this is Disney and Clint had kids so probably couldn't, you know, anyway, we'll talk about that. But I'm

curious to watch it. I'm curious to watch Natasha like run the Avengers. Like that, you know, I always think about that endgame section where she's just like wearily eating a peanut butter sandwich and she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders at Avengers HQ. Like that's a Natasha sequence I think about a lot. And so I'm curious to rewatch it having seen this film. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I think, again, that's one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie. In addition to just the spy thriller genre vibes, you know, all of the moments throughout the movie that make you think of not only Winter Soldier inside of the MCU as you mentioned, but like bomb. Mission Impossible, the born films, killing Eve, you know, whatever the case may be. And of course, we get the moonraker moment in the movie

where Natasha is literally watching Bond. Like all of that was so fun. But then the moments that happen to the heart of the character journeys and their relationships with each other and how those relationships directly connect to the thematic examinations of the story. I also found myself thinking a lot of like that moment in endgame where Nat is feeling so alone and so determined to save these people, but also has this sense of what connection and belonging means. And we already at that point, as viewers, of course, knew enough of her history to understand that so many of the worst Nat moments are how they make somebody believe.

that they are worthy of love and belonging. The endgame sequence, I think that the idea that Natasha felt like Clint deserved to live more than her because he had family is obviously like appalling and offensive, right? The idea that Natasha had found such clarity in her own life and her own journey, not only in terms of who she is, but in terms of how she valued and understood the bonds that she had built with other people and what it meant to her to be able to make a choice,

one of the things that I think this movie helps do is give us more clarity about how Natasha thought about the relationships in her life. Even something like the idea of sacrifice, there's the moment in this movie, not to skip ahead to the end, but where she is watching Yelena, she is watching Yelina prepared to sacrifice herself to protect the other people she loves,

to give the other widows a chance at a different kind of life when she goes to take out Drakoff's plane. And Natasha's response is, of course, to shout out an objection. No, don't do this. Like, I want you to live. I want you to be here. I want us to go live a life together. And so that really informs and adds another layer to the fact that Natasha arrived at a moment where she wanted to do that and believed it was the thing that she wanted to do for everybody that she cared about and wanted to protect. And you see so much in this movie right back to the beginning with the knee scrape to taking the gun from the Russian soldiers in Cuba. You know, I will all shoot like whatever she had to do to protect. So many moments along the way Natasha thinks about the red

in her ledger and the ledger, you know, recurs throughout this movie as this indictment of who she is. And I think that, you know, grappling with the things that the characters have done is an important part of this movie and all of the movies. But also that she has to get to the point where she is able to forgive herself and move forward and recognize that the moment where you realize you can make a choice, that is when you are accountable for the choices that you do make. And I found myself really sad, honestly, because, like, she has this family back in her. life and we hear her say to Rick in the two weeks later sequence where she's wearing Yelena's vest and has the, you know, the Infinity War outfit and hair. Like all my life, I thought I didn't have any family and now I have two. It's really sad to think of her not getting to spend that time with them anymore the rest of her life. It's heartbreaking. No, I'm so glad that you said that

because it's exactly the point I want to make. There are moments in this film where they get a little ham-fisted with this idea of like family and the Avengers family. You know, like she's told a appealing like by Elena, et cetera, like, they're not your family. Avengers are not your family or whatever. And then she has that line at the end where she's like, and I have two families. And it's a little corny. But if you think of it that way, if you think of her reckoning with not just the like Drakow's daughter red on her ledger, but the real red on her ledger actually is not going back for Elena when she gets herself out. Do you know what I mean, abandoning family in that way? And that's the real sin. I mean, it's a sin. It's a sin.

to think you have killed a child, obviously. But, like, you know, that's the real thing that she has to grapple with is that she abandoned this family, that that family was real and she abandoned it. And I think if you track, because there's a point in Infinity War and Endgame when Steve and Nat come out of their, like,

nomad phase and back into the Avengers Fold, they are kind of in this, like, mom and dad role. You know what I mean? They seem, like, they go around, they like, rescue Wanda. scoop one up, like all this sort of stuff like that. And then like when when all else, everything is falling apart, it's mom and dad sharing a peanut butter sandwich, like taking care of the family holding it all together. And so I think it's this idea that like no matter

what happened, snap, blip, whatever you want to call it, Natasha is going to keep this family together because she learned her lesson from not holding that other family together when she had a chance. Do you know what I mean? Not that they're, you know, and like, and so. she's in this position and she's like, I'm going to be mom. I'll be Malina and I will be like mom, Natasha and I will be holding everything together here at the end of the world.

You know what I mean? And I kind of, and I can't wait to rewatch those films. It's funny because Disney Plus sent me to Iron Man 2. I don't know where it sent you, but it sent me to Iron Man 2 after Black Widow. And I was like, I don't want to watch, I don't want to watch Black Widow and Iron Man 2. That's my least favorite Black Widow. I want

to watch, you know, Infinity War and Endgame. and see how these events inform her decisions there, you know? Yeah, I could do without the happy Nat scenes. Oh, no. Have you ever seen that footage of John Favreau trotting Scarlett Johansson out in her Black Widow suit for visiting press? I don't think so.

It's one of the worst things. It's a real low point, I think, in the whole MCO. Anyway. Oh, no. no. It's also, it's also, it's also, it's also, Nat's worst wig. Let's be clear, Iron Man 2. That's the worst wig, right? The long maroon curls. It's not practical for fighting, Mallory. That's very important for you to acknowledge. It's a boy, crowded field of contenders. Honestly, you know, as I told you right before we started recording, I just got my first haircut in 17 months. So who am I to judge?

really. Do you have a best gnat hair? The braids in this one are pretty high up. I do have a favorite, but I'm curious to hear what you think. Good question. I don't know if I do, actually. I've never been particularly offended by any of the hairdos

nor particularly moved by any of them. I'm always just like, Nat looks great. Listen. It's my base response. Do you have a favorite hairdo? I do. Well, I think it's just a favorite by association, but her like flat iron long bob in a winter soldier.

I do like that. That's good. So in general, that's among, I'd say my, and I, my favorite Marvel movie to be clear, but among my least favorite Steve Rogers hair dues. So I don't necessarily think about the hair in that movie fondly. I'm team long hair cap and beard in Infinity War. Oh, for sure.

One of the great wonders in the history of the world. Obviously, that's when he becomes dad That's when he gets in the beard. But yeah, the braids, A plus braids in Black Widow, let's be honest, great hair all around. I like what you said about that idea of almost like the stubborn determination to keep the Avengers and the broader global and galactic family together after this. It's even something that Nat almost says, you know, near the end of the film.

when Alexi and Melina and Yelena and Nat are having their charming simultaneous reconciliation and farewell I loved the

I'm clearly injured moment great very funny Rachel Vise physical comedy classic like mummy Rachel Vise physical comedy moment I'm really amusing I loved it but you know when that

basically says to them you know what, we could do it. Like, there's probably hope for the Avengers. And I did find myself thinking throughout the movie. And of course, the movie wants you to remember

that we're coming off the heels of Civil War. The Accords are mentioned often. The Avengers breaking up, often mentioned, that fucker, Thunderbolt Ross is in the movie. I will only ever refer to him by his full and proper name, which is not faddius,

but is that fucker. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And, you know, That gets us to the themes. And there are a few themes that are at the heart of the movie, but they're all entwined. Family you choose.

Family found, obviously, a central driving force across the film in terms of how Nat is thinking about the Avengers and the role they play in her life in terms of how Nat is assessing what she learns about her biological mother. And of course, in terms of the relationship between Natasha and Yelena, Alexi, and Molina, that family, the idea of family, the way that Nat is rebelling against that. We see what it means to Yelena, the absolute devastation in the family dinner scene, which we'll talk about later, when the people who she has thought of her entire life, as her family say to her, that wasn't really. real and like the absolute anguish of that moment. And the way that that journey of family, which, you know, we're going to go through the family stuff in detail later because I want to carve out a solid like 45 minutes or so to talk about the two American pie sequences, which I'll just say from the jump. Sure.

We're going to go, we're going to line by line in a song. We're going to sing. Yeah, we're going to sing together. We're going to look into each other's eyes and sing together as Alexi and Yelina did. Those were honestly my two favorite scenes in the movie. I love them. And I love the entire opening sequence and the overt, heavy,

the Americans' energy of the Ohio into Cuba span. But Found Family connects and is entwined inextricably from the other themes. Choice and control. Something that is literalized a few times in the movie throughout

with, say, red dust. You know, what do we hear about that? It's a synthetic gas, the counteragent to chemical subject the gas immunizes the brain's neural pathways from external manipulation. Well, what's the layman's explanation? I love that you went to the long explanation. It's an antidote to mind control.

Real mature. Yelena saying, you should have done that in Russian. I support your accent work, but I will not be attempting an accent on the podcast. Other than the moments where my Baltimore accent slips out, I will not be doing any accent work throughout our morning together here. Yelena saying what you experienced was psychological conditioning. I'm talking about chemically altering brain functions. They're two completely different things.

You're fully conscious, but you don't know which part is you. I'm still not sure. More broadly, choice, control, everything with Drakhov and the Red Room, everything with Natasha, Yelena, the wider widow network. All of this connects to female empowerment, banding together to combat. bat those who are exerting control, who are turning girls, women, human beings into things, weapons. When Nat says Sardayakov at the end, you took my childhood, you took my choices, and you tried to break me, but you're never going to do that to anybody ever again.

It's a summation of the entire mission of the movie, just as it is when they say to the freedwitow, you get to make your own choices now. Choice, control, empowerment, family, all connect in this film. And the other central focus is, of course, overcoming trauma, which has been central to the beginning of phase four so far. Yeah. No, it's interesting. I want to circle back on this, like, hearing you talk about all those things together

makes me think about the – I had this, like, deeply off-the-record conversation with a writer who almost got the gig to write. this film. And that person was telling me, I learned a lot about the process of like what it, what it is like to go through the pitching process of wanting to write a Marvel movie. And the thing is they give you like, they give you certain parameters and certain like vibes, sort of like mood boards that they're going for, right? Like, because the, you know, all these stories come from the brain trust of Marvel and then you as a writer, our task was shaping them. And so the vibe that they were going for was like James Cameron 90s, you know, female acts.

action hero sort of stuff. And so if you think about a lot about Terminator 2 colon judgment day, and you think about these ideas of like family, choice, control, female empowerment, all this sort of stuff. You can see the vestigial remains of that T2 prompt in the fact that like Taskmaster is essentially a Terminator sort of going after them. There's like that there's that chase in Budapest, which is like very, very, Pesh. Pesh, which is like very similar to like the LA's, you know, there's just like, there's, there's some T2 dust.

30 years later. Hey, everyone, check out Alan Siegel's excellent oral history on the ringer.com. It's so good. It is so good. But, but so, so yeah, this idea because, because T2, because it's a time travel, time loop story, that idea of choice and control has more to do with like predestination and can And we even make any choices if all these things are laid out. Well, now we're in an episode of Loki, aren't we?

Right, exactly, exactly. But, like, but this is, this is a, this is a slightly different flavor of that, this idea of, like, mind control or brain conditioning. But it still deals with similar things of, like, that limit Linda Hamilton's character in the Terminator first two Timmerine films is dealing with, which is the idea of, like, did I, did I have any choice at all? What's going on here? And also just making herself into a, uh, uh, a. like a monolith that no one can touch in T2 and then sort of cracking that back open. You know what I mean? And so Natasha has built all these walls around herself because of the pain of betrayal,

not just this idea that her mom left her in the street like garbage, which she, you know, mistakenly thinks, but also, you know, Alexi's betrayal of her and the tarmac in Cuba, like all this sort of stuff, like that extreme trauma. Why wouldn't you build walls up around yourself? And like one thing, I saw this reaction. It was on Rotten Tomatoes, but I saw it elsewhere. But someone made the like quip.

It's a funny quip, but I take objection to it, where they said, if you want to, if you want, I'm paraphrasing. If you want people think you're good at your job, don't have Florence Pugh do the exact same thing right next to you. This being sort of like an indictment of Scarlett Johansson that she looks poor in comparison to Florence Pugh. And I just completely wildly disagree because Florence Pugh is obviously playing. that kid's sister vibe, which I identify, because I'm the youngest of two sisters,

like the skipper to Natasha's Barbie, I really get it. And the fact that she was younger, when they had that found family Ohio experience, means she just absorbed it in a very different way. She's just this,

like, walking wound, whereas Natasha is this sort of, like, closed off older sister vibe. It's very different, but it's very realistic. Right. Yelena is. only six we learn. At the end of that three-year Ohio mission, Natasha has already been through the

Red Room and knows what awaits. I have a question for you. Did the very chilling opening credit sequence set to the cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit work for you? This has been a bit of a divisive one. Um, their elements didn't, elements that didn't. There's some visuals that I love, like the little red bow and the braid turning sideways into the Black Widow insignia. So like that, that stuff's really great. I'm not sure I loved that cover of Teen Spirit, though I can't really fully object to the choice, the music choice. And then I think I just didn't like the sort of force-gumpening of Dreykhov into history via Photoshop because, uh, is it a really? he's supposed to have stayed in the shadows? Why is he shaking hands with many, many a president?

Like, what's that about? I like this idea that he was always there in the background. It was Agatha all along. It was Dreikoff all along. But like, I think, I feel like it just felt, it felt a little too gump to me. What did you think? That's really interesting. The, the shadows point is a good one. I guess we'd have to check the timestamps of all of the visuals in which he appeared to see if that aligned with one of what I think is generally, I'll I'll say the like thinking face emoji parts of the film for me, which is just the idea that they try to address head on, you know, with Nat saying,

I just have a hard time believing that like this wouldn't have come across my radar. I have a hard time believing that this wouldn't have come across their radar. Nobody sees the giant fucking red room in the sky. Like, I just, I just don't buy it. I'm not an expert on cloaking tech, but that was a tough sell for me. the origin of Natasha's journey into her shield years and her Avengers years is, of course, and this has been, you know, we've had morsels across the MCU and we finally, we got the Budapest. Fascinatingly without Hawkeye.

You know, we hear him once, and he's obviously mentioned. He's a presence throughout the film. And then, of course, he plays a very crucial role in the Stinger. But, you know, I had just long assumed that. we would literally like see the flashbacks of them. I thought it worked quite well that we didn't and was an apt choice given the intent and focus of the movie. But I've raised that all to say, Nat was on Shield's radar in a way that makes it impossible first believe that Shield wouldn't have continued to pay attention to, I don't know though. I guess you can't count on Shield for

fucking anything. If we've learned one thing, it's that. So I think you have to have a, like in terms of these things intersecting, you have to have like a little bit of plausible deniability. Like, why isn't every hero at every fight is a question you constantly ask in the MCU? You know what I mean? And like, I agree with you completely.

I just think we have to yada yada that a little bit. I'm with you and I'm more interested in what you said earlier, which will get to you in a bit, which is ultimately focusing on why Nat didn't go find Yelina. That's much more relevant and a richer text to chew on. But you're not raw. You're not wrong. There's like wisps of clouds in front of that like moonwraker red room.

It's on my nitpick list. You know, along with another thing you already mentioned, which is Natasha, not only living through, but broadly being unharmed by multiple missiles or exploding arrows hitting her vehicles. Just great, great look for BMW, I guess. Her back was like it broke like four different times. Yeah, that was. And then she would just sort of like pop up and be fine. And you're just like, all right.

Superior genes indeed. But the thing I liked about the shots of Drakoff across history. And it was something that I also felt in the final act when Drakov is enjoying his big villain monologue moment. Here's my evil plan. Let me show you my evil plan. A real bond moment for sure. Got him monologuing. Caught him monologing.

running through all of the footage. I liked that in one respect, which was it made me think again of Winter Soldier. It reminded me of Zola downloading Matt and Steve on on Hydra's hand in history and all of the events that Hydra had shaped. All of the like smash cuts of girls, young children being trafficked and put through the. Red Room, I can see why that set to, like, rock music isn't for everyone. It was, it was a choice. It was a, it was a real moment. And they're trying to, like, give us a little bit of plot in there, too. Like, we have to pay attention because there's some plot stuff in there, too.

Yes, definitely. Yeah. I was interested in Shortland's quote to Polygon. She's given a lot of great and really insightful interviews. And one of the things that she, she said in an interview with Polygon, is that, quote, what we try to do is use humor to talk to the trauma. This is, obviously, that's not about the opening credits to be clear, but more broadly in terms of how the filmmakers approached trauma across the movie and assessing trauma across the movie. And, you know, again, just to get back to that point for a minute about phase four, I do think it's really interesting in terms of how the beginning of phase four, before we get to, you know, upcoming films like Shang Shenzhen.

and the Eternals, we will be meeting a lot of new characters entering new aspects of the MCU and the storytelling tapestry. So much of Phase 4 in the beginning here has been this bridge experience between the past and the future in a way that I have really appreciated

and found quite affecting. You know, we are, Marvel is a machine, of course. And like, just to be clear, I love the Marvel machine and I'm there to consume every tournament, right? But I have every year, every single year turn. I have really genuinely found myself grateful for these moments of reflection, you know, understanding the impact of these events and of these, in often cases, atrocities on the characters.

And I thought that this movie was very conscious of its charge in that respect. Yeah. And this is something I've said again and again, but like every example. bears us out that like everything we've seen post endgame including far from home um spider-man film is is about like mourning an individual character or something that we lost in end game and i like that because you know it goes back to my earlier point of like how do you follow up and act like Thanos right how do you follow up an act like this big scrum and like i think this idea of like taking a moment to reflect on what we've lost

uh in these sort of quote unquote smaller stories if you want to call them that is is vital. And so like Wanda Vision being about the loss of vision, Captain America and Winter Soldier being about Steve's absence, Loki being about, I don't know, the loss of Loki, I think,

or whatever you want to call it. That's Loki grappling with his own legacy, you know. This being about the death of Natasha, far from home, being about Tony's absence, like all, you know,

all this sort of stuff. Hawkeye seems like it's going to be about the lack of Natasha as well. And so I like that because it drives me crazy. in TV storytelling most acutely, when deaths are just there for shock value

or for an actor wanting to leave a project and they don't actually linger and reverberate throughout the franchise in some way or another. And these are just clear, lingering reverberations these ideas. There's also this theme, I don't know how you feel about this idea of mine, that there's this theme of like secret invasion. There's this theme, like I was thinking,

about that when I was thinking about all the widows that we saw that are active around the world, thousands of them seemingly. Secret Invasion we know is an upcoming Disney Plus show about, you know, based we presume on the comic book storyline about scrolls being secretly a lot of these characters we've seen for years around. They were at scrolls all along. But like that's blank all along. Iconically belongs to Agatha now, right? Agatha all along. It was Sharon Carter all along. It was maybe Mobius all along. Who knows? You know what I mean?

This idea of like, it was Jake Gyllenhaal all along. Like these, these constant treacherous twists of this phase four, I think is really interesting, you know? Yeah. I love that as this kind of consistently present idea of priming us. Never to totally believe in what we're seeing. But it is balancing actual. be a theme of our discussion today. And it's a delicate one because if you're always so on guard and so on edge about what twists might await, then it's harder to like linger in these moments

and process that grief, that trauma, those journeys. I think that you're right to identify that that is a through line and moving us towards something. I think that it's been broadly effectively rendered so far. I'll be curious to see. how long they can maintain that without the balance tipping. When you were watching it, did you have any theories about who Taskmaster was, or did you already know? So I did not know,

though as soon as we started to get multiple mentions of Drakow's daughter, I was like, wait a minute. But heading into the movie, I didn't know. I hadn't gotten it spoiled, hadn't seen anything about it. I thought maybe it will be a comics, true, comics adjacent Tony Masters kind of rendering. When we got the character posters, whenever that was fairly recently,

like a few weeks ago, a month or so ago, and Rick got his own poster, I was like, and I think a lot of people had this response. I thought, oh, maybe they're setting up a Rick Mason taskmaster reveal. For whatever reason, and I'm glad to be clear

that I was wrong about this, I couldn't shake the idea that it was going to be Melina, that it was going to be Rachel Weiss. I just really thought that was coming. I'm glad that wasn't the case because I think the journey that they travel together and ultimately like hearing Melina say to Yelena, you know, it's me, mama.

It's way more powerful and impactful than her being taskmaster. But I did think that was pretty likely. What about you? No, totally. That was a really common theory. I think that that I think because at some point, someone said that Taskmaster is female, that sort of leaked out or something like that.

And so people were looking pretty hard at Rachel Weiss. And you never, I think you never saw them together in the trailer or something like that for a little while. And so a lot of people were like, oh, I'm only. And I was like, that would be kind of cool. Like, I would love a Rachel Weiss villain. But as I was watching the movie, I found myself thinking, no, I don't want this. But that suspicion. And we get that, that, like, few minutes of thinking she has turned them in and stuff like that, right?

But that suspicion, I think, really does enhance the viewing because when you've got Natasha on her guard at the dinner table with the family, you know what I mean? Like, we're on guard with her if we're suspecting Molina. You know what I mean? We're waiting for that Molina twist. And watching Molina, like, choke out a pig is not really like helping us feel super glowing. I have questions. Listen. Yeah.

I was not a fan of that moment. Protect pig. Lexi at all costs. That was cruel and horrifying. It was pretty bad. Then she just says, hand waves and he could have survived for another 11 seconds.

Tough love. Tough love from Molina. What in the world. But I think that, you know, I think it was a way better, I think it was a much better reveal. And I mean, we'll talk about Taskmaster, but like I actually like how Taskmaster was used.

But I like that there was the suspicion of family with good reason. Alexi's kind of a bastard, all this are stuff, you know, so I love that tension throughout. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess.

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plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust, spectrum business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Before we talk a bit more about the family unit

with the four of them, the balancing act of saying farewell to Natasha and saying hello to Yelena inside of this movie. I was trying to think of another example where they've so clearly spring forwarded

a character in an existing property. And there's a couple examples. The best one I can think of is like Peter Parker's introduction, right? And I think what they are cleverly doing is introducing these characters in the context of a relationship, right? So Peter Parker slips in as like a Tony son figure. Spider-Boy. You know what I mean?

And Yelena bobs in and we care about her because Natasha cares about her. You know what I mean? I mean, we care about her because she's Lawrence Pugh and she's wildly charismatic. But let's pretend that they hadn't cast such a charismatic actor. And then we would care about her because she's introducing the context of a relationship to a character we already care about. And that's when the MCU is the most successful. This is what my co-host and still watching always loves to say Anthony Bresdiken, like, they give these heroes something to love or someone to love and that makes us love them. And so, you know, and so like Natasha's love for Yolene's love for Yolanda.

I mean, the look on when they encounter each other in Budapest, and there's this, like, a great Pest, and there's this great atomic blonde kitchen fight between the two of them. But before, like, before everything pops off, there's just this moment of recognition between two sisters who haven't seen each other since they were little, that you're just immediately, I mean, you're sold from the opening, just the two girls sort of playing around as kids or, or. or the traumatic tarmac sort of separation, like all of that sort of stuff, you're in it. But when they see each other, and they're highly on guard because they are trained assassins. But there's also this, like, moment of Scarlett

of Scarlett Johans's face just sort of blowing open with, like, recognition of a younger sister. And so I think, I think, and I was looking at the clock, the last time I watched it through, I was looking at the clock, we don't get Alexi until an hour in. And so there's so much of it that is just Natasha and Yelena. And I think that that is such, that's real estate wisely invested in to give us a huge

attachment to this character. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's obviously a real juggling act to give Nat, finally, that long overdue first solo, standalone movie and have as much of the mission be to introduce Florence Pugh's Yelena. and establish her for what I think we can expect is a long time moving forward and a meaningful role in the MCU.

You have to be able to say goodbye to Nat in a way that feels appropriate and like big enough for how we all feel about Nat and also allow us to invest in and care about Yelena without resenting like the time she's taking away from Nat. And I agree with you completely that the secret.

So I mean, it doesn't work if they don't have the chemistry together that they do, right? And, you know, they're both excellent. They're so compelling as individual characters and performers. And then when they're together, you just believe in the relationship. You believe in the history that's the foundation of it. You believe in how very, very, very, very fractured and fraught everything is in that moment. I mean, I, you know, that, I had that same thought about that first scene with them as adults, you know, obviously.

We have to, as you said, the wonderful sequence of them in Ohio's children. Just a great look for some red high top Chuck Taylor's on Young Nat. Wait, wait, wait. Sidebar, you promised to tell me about Converse season. What is Comber Season and why are we in it? Okay. I'm glad you asked. Well, we're always in Converse Season, but we're really in Converse Season this month because Outer Banks, Season 2 comes out on Netflix.

and John B loves to rock a pair of chucks as he's searching for gold, as he's heading out into the eye of a literal hurricane. Pogue Life! Are you not an Outer Banks viewer? I mean, I'm tempted to become one because of this advertising. You just slipped in here. I would encourage you to watch it because it is, it's an adventure. That's what I'll say.

It's a converse starring adventure. What a journey. But I don't know if John B. We'll make it to Budapest. Pesh. You mentioned Atomic Blonde. I found myself thinking about both born and killing Eve in that sequence. Like something about not only the conflict and the nature of that dance,

but the setting, you know, the heightened and surreal and highly dangerous, just existing among the mundane and the routine. And obviously, like great spy thrillers make you think about things like that all the time. That scene so instantly establishes exactly what we need out of the adult version of the Natasha Yelena relationship. They're mirroring each other, right? And of course, the idea of mirroring is also a focus and through line of the movie because of Antonia and Taskmaster. Yeah.

But here with these two, it's just this microcosm of their history together in ways both good and foul. Like this really, I think, impactful and albeit very dark encapsulation of that shared past, you know, both as people who really know each other, who know each other, who know each other. who know each other so well and so deeply. And also as to women who have undergone these shared horrors in the Red Room and through the Black Widow program. And it gets to the point where they have to call a truce because they're just lockstep with each other, right?

And so even as high as the tension is in that moment, it gives you confidence that they will be able to find their way forward because they have that rhythm, horrifying though it is to win us in that sequence with each other. I loved that moment. Well, there were two exchanges, actually. The, you know, are we going to act like grownups? Is that what we are a moment, which I loved?

And then the moment as they're lying on the floor, they've called their truce, taking a deep breath. And Nat says you've grown up. And Yelena says, no shit. And I, you feel so much resentment and bitterness and sadness in that moment because like what is the implied part there? What is the missing part? I've grown up and you weren't there. Like you weren't there to watch it, you know?

So there's just a lot really effectively conveyed in that sequence. Well, and I just, I love that you, I love that you called out the mirroring that's like, I love when you say exactly what I'm thinking in my head because there's like right before they call their truth and they're on the floor like sort choking each other out with two ends of a. curtain, right? And they're just, they almost look like a, do you know that like baby photographer, Ann Geddes, I think is her name? She photographs like babies on cabbage leaves and stuff like that. Anyway, they just look like this beautiful tableau. They're twins like in this shot. And I'm like, what a perfect, like, passing of the torch sort of thing. Like, here's two, like, this is your new widow. And you're not going to feel like it's a subpar widow. You're not going to feel like you're getting, this is not John Walker as Captain America. You know what I mean?

mean. Costco Cap, as he's referred to here on the Ring ofverse. Yeah, exactly. You're not getting Kirkland, Captain America. You're getting brand name quality Black Widow. So yeah, I'm, I think they did it brilliantly. The casting is a big part of it. Shout out to the casting in Marvel, which is always stellar. But like, but the story, it's right there in the story. Because you aren't resenting Yelena for taking screen time because so much of her screen time is just, about Natasha, you know? It's still about Natasha even when it's about Yelina. And it's still about Yelena even when it's about Natasha.

Yeah, there's a harmony. You know, they're moving forward on their own arcs as characters who we will root for and work to understand. And they are moving forward together. And that's that that's pretty seamless from, from the jump. We've both mentioned Pew a few times. I mean, she's just tremendous. She's so good.

She's. so funny, she's so charming, she's so magnetic and charismatic. I thought that she absolutely, I was just floored by the emotional weight in the most intense scenes that she delivered. I also thought she really brought it as an action star. She was tremendous. I love that she's like, I love that like Scarlett Johansson is small and then Florence Pugh is like even smaller and more compact. like again that little like kid sister vibe but um yeah to your point i mean there was something that i didn't really want to admit to myself which was that in a post endgame world with rob downy gone

chris evansson gone etc there was a little part of me as excited as i am to meet these new heroes there was a little part of me that felt like a little bit of the luster was was off off the world. Do you know what I mean? And I don't feel that way now that Florence Pugh is back in the mix. I'm like put Florence Pugh in anything and that feels like a Scarjo level allure to me. You know what I mean? Yeah. What a statement. Yeah, you're right. That's that's quite telling. Should we assume that Yelena and maybe also Alexi and Molina blipped? I think we have to assume that they blipped, right? It's the only thing that really makes a ton of sense, though, to get ahead of ourselves a little bit. I was talking to one of my VF colleagues about this, and he was like,

that's what I thought. But when she told, I'm confused about the VAL timeline, because it seems like her relationship with VAL is quite established. So how long has she been working for Val and when? Do you know what I mean? And when does that take place? Right. And all of that. So does it make sense for her to have blipped and still be working for Val? There's time that, there's, there's a couple years in the canon between this movie and Infinity War. So, I think it would be hard to explain how Yelena wasn't present, say in the sequence we already discussed earlier, which is, you know, Natasha had Avengers HQ and Endgame five years later.

But we don't know yet, I assume we'll find out. We don't know yet what Yelena was doing between the end of this movie and Infinity War. So maybe she was working for Val in that stretch. Maybe, but I feel like they're going to have to massage that a little bit because it's hard for me to solve the idea. of Elena working for someone like Val without like telling Natasha about it and Natasha not being like, I'm sorry, who are you working for and what are you doing for them? Do you know? They're being a little, not inconsistent, but like sort of all over the map with how many months or whatever time later.

These, you know, like Wanda Visions directly after where as far from home was that, you know, that many months later sort of thing. So it's, I don't know. I think we'll just have to wait for Hawkeyes. Yeah, no, you're right. And I mean, I have some questions. The truth is, I guess, no matter what, there's going to be some element of this. It's a little tough to reconcile. Like, I was thinking about the moment in endgame where all the boys are reflecting by the lake after Nat's death.

And yeah, yeah, and Tony says, do we know if she had family? And Cap says, yeah, us. Now, there's a part of that that's, like, lovely, right? because the Avengers are Nat's family and Cap feels that way and knows that Nat felt that way. But also now you're like, wait a minute, did Nat never tell them about her other family? Did she not tell them about Yelina? How did she not tell Clint, right? How does Clint not know?

Like, how has Clint not reached out to Yelena and told her the story of Warmir so that Yelina is not in a position to be gaslit by VAL? Like, I don't, I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out what explanations they have, but I do have questions. Yes. Some hard questions. Yes, me too. So, speaking of the Stinger and Val, that is obviously a sequence that is set at Natasha's grave, we see the tombstone says, daughter, sister, Avenger. We can glean from Val's some iconic JLD work here, statement that she's allergic to the Midwest, that this is in Ohio.

Ohio. Back in the childhood mission area. Overall, you know, the absence, as you noted, of a memorial, a funeral, for Nat and Endgame was stark, hard to shake. Did this feel... Star, boo. Sorry. Did this feel appropriate, like the right send-off for Nat?

Did you want something different? Did you want something more? once again, I'll forever be salty about the disproportionate memorials and endgame. Howevskis? I like now don't have much to push back on

because Carly Johansson herself has said like I don't think that would want a big showy public funeral. That would mortify her. She would want something private. So they did this very like private personal thing to reflect what they thought was appropriate for the character.

Now that might just be like some propaganda because it does feel like this whole so what's interesting about the timing of this gravesite scene there's a great interview and variety with kate shortland and florence pew talking about this end of credits theme and and in there florence pew says that they did this scene during reshoots so here's the timeline they end main production on black widow october 2019 in right around that time september 2019 is when the hawkeye writer's room gets together So right around then is when they're figuring out all what Hawkeye is going to be. And then in early 2020 is when they did the reshoots and when they did this stinger.

And Florence Pugh also said she didn't know that Marvel was going to come back, use her again so quickly. Like she was like, yeah, I knew that they kind of wanted me for future stuff, but I didn't think it was going to be this fast. And so there's a question of like, you know, knowing how these TV rooms come together and how they think about characters and buckets, they're writing Hawkeye. and I'm pretty sure the execs at Marvel are like, listen, Florence Pugh's are really popping in this movie. You know, in that assassin role that we had planned for this show, can we just make that Yelena? And then they put together this end of credit sequence. And that's just always like an interesting way to think about these things. But it also is a very conscious reaction to the salty fans who are mad that Natasha didn't get her own giant fly in every cast member lied to everyone and tell them it's a wedding.

Tony Stark's end up, you know what I mean? I, yeah, I would still, you know, like some, some scenes in future movies where we see that, because Natasha's wishes, beautiful, wonderful, that's great, that actually makes sense to me. What about the other people across the world celebrating Natasha? I'd like to see some of that. Like, one of the really impactful things in Far From Home is that Peter can't escape both his own grief and the weight of Tony's, looming shadow because Tony's shadow is literally all around him, plastered across murals, the signs in the airport, he's everywhere.

And the grief that people feel for him is everywhere. In terms of her own personal choice, I think the idea of Nat living many different lives has always been central to her character. And so her wanting that, something private, something that felt intimate and specific to the bonds that meant the most to her in her life, I like that part of it. Yeah, it is interesting, though, because when the endgame creators, Marcus, one of the co-writers and Joe Russo, one of the co-directors, gave interviews basically reacting to people's anger that there was no funeral. You know, their point was kind of Nat's a cipher. She's lived her life in the shadows.

She wouldn't have this, like, there wouldn't be this big public consciousness about her. I was like, okay, but she testified in front of Congress. So she's not like exactly an invisible figure. Yes, she's more of a shadowy figure than someone who's as splashy as Tony Stark. But like, I don't know. I still think the world knows that she's an adventure. Yeah. And that there should be some monuments to her.

And that was one of the interesting things in this movie, actually, the way that that idea manifested, her celebrity as an Avenger. Right. You know, you're on the cover of magazines. We'll talk specifically about the way that Yelena kind of weaponizes the idea of of the role that she plays as a hero. But there's no way to say that the world wouldn't know who Natasha was. That's not true. It just felt like a moment, you know, where the creators were like,

oh, we did not foresee that people would be this mad about what happened. And I'm like, I'm still mad about it. Still a little salt here. Because we're talking about the Stinger, might as well just spend a minute here talking about Yelena's MCU future. I mean, what are you foreseeing in the near term with Hawkeye, as you already mentioned,

and beyond? Do you think that we're going to get standalone Yelena Black Widow movies? Will we get a broader Black Widow franchise across the MCU timeline? Perhaps. There's some sequel talk out there already. I mean, I think they set it up, right?

They've got this, like, they've got a scientist in Molina, they've got this antidote and they've got thousands of girls. to go rescue around the world. Do you know what I mean? Like to go wake up, right? So that's a possible premise. But I do think it's going to depend.

Then would that movie be set between this movie and Infinity War? Or would that plot point linger until after endgame and the present-day MCU timeline? That's a little tough. Did Molina get blipped? I don't like that. Did Malina get snapped? And then it's going to come back. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. F the blip. Like, you know, did she get snapped? Hopefully someone cared for her pigs while she was gone. And she's like,

oh, I was not done with my research. And then she comes back and she's like, I will finish, I'll finish my research. I can get away with Molina because Rachel Weiss's accent was a little on the side of dodge. But,

but yeah, it's, I don't know, it's confusing. I think it'll depend. Like, the MCU is very malleable. This is something that they've learned to do. They announced their slates, but they leave those mystery spots. And, you know, they're not doing what the DCU does, which is overpromise and under-deliver on certain, like, film projects and stuff like that.

They don't do that, right? If they say they're going to make the movie, they're going to make the movie, and they'll make it eventually with, like, one exception, I think. You know, and so I think they're going to wait and see how Black Widow continues to do, how the Pew Hive continues to assemble. And I think as affection for her grows, if it does, then she will, she could get her own movie. You know what I mean? But I definitely think she's going to show up in Hawkeye, go after Clint for who knows how much or how long.

Because that cast is already very full. So she might even just be in one episode. You don't know. But like go after Clint and then I can only assume we're going to have to have a moment where Clint's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is how it was on Vormier. And the answer to that hangman question in the vent was Butterfly.

I don't know. of something like that. You know, I love your sister like a sister. But it is wild that Natasha, who knew about Clint's secret farm family, never told him, presumably,

about Yelena. I have a really hard time believing that. I can't believe it. That doesn't track for me with their relationship and what they shared with each other and the role that they played in each other

lives. So maybe he'll have the other half of the photo strip from the photo booth and he'll be like your sister gave this to me to give to you and it's why you're not going to kill me right now. And of course, we don't know Val's true agenda either. Like is she actually seeking to recruit him for her Thunderbolts or Dark Avengers, whatever's happened in there? Do you have a theory? I think she says track down and take a shot at, but she doesn't say kill. Recruiting Clint is a really interesting prospect and what I hadn't considered until you sort of floated in the show notes here

I thought it was some sort of retribution for something he had done when he was doing his Ronan stuff because Clint has a bunch of red on his ledger now. Yeah, I mean Clint Barton went on like literal serial killing sprees. Here's exactly

what Val says. I want the raise Oh yeah, you and me both. Believe me you're going to earn it. I've got your next target. I thought I'd hand deliver it. Maybe you'd like a shot at the man responsible for your sister's death. I don't know a cutie, don't you think? Oh, Julia. Oh, God. Yeah, so there's no, there's no direct mention of killing or anything like that. And so it could be recruitment. It could just be like detainment, something like that. But the idea, I mean, Clint is going to be reckoning with a lot

of things in Hawkeye. Hawkeye, by the way, top of my list of things that I'm really excited to see. because based on one of my all-time favorite Marvel comics, I'm not a huge Hawkeye in the films fan, but the Hawkeye comic that they're drawing from, it's one of the best things I've read in my life. And there's just like a, this is a broken down Clint is what we're going to see. And I think the guilt over Natasha is going to be,

even if we might all be ready to let Clint off the hook, he's probably not let himself off the hook. And that's where I see more opportunity for reckoning with the loss of, Natasha. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty, limited time flavors.

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That sounds delicious. Get savings with Yuzhou Yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. There will be a lot to balance with Clint, a lot to balance inside of Hawkeye. And let's stick with balance for a moment here because this movie, one of the other balancing acts here, was the desire to simultaneously honor Nat

and critique certain aspects of Nat's past inside of the MCU. Let's start with some of the parts of that that come from Yelena, some of which are very amusing. Can we talk about the poser routine recurring bit for a minute? It's fantastic. It's so good. Especially like, you know what part I rewound, like on my last rewatch? The part I rewound and rewashed over and over again was the physical comedy of Florence Pew like first imitating it when she's like kind of injured and maybe like burdened by like a satchew. or something like that.

So she's kind of like struggle. Even though she's like very nimble and limber throughout, she's kind of struggling to get into the position. And it is so funny. And she's tossing her double ponytails back and forth. It's great physical comedy. Yeah. No, something that this film is not afraid to do.

And something that the MCU in general has gotten really good at not being afraid to do is make fun of itself. You see this a lot in Ragnarok. And also when like some of the guardians come in and interact with the Avengers and stuff like that. You know, you'll see like Rocket will just like make fun. You know, it's like they're just ready to make fun of themselves and they're not taking themselves too seriously.

And that's great. That's phenomenal. If the DC EU threw a Martha joke at some point into one of their future films, I would have nothing but respect for them. Do you know what I mean? So like, I think that that is an attitude we've already seen established. I think it really does source from the infusion of humor that came from. introducing Guardians of the Galaxy, the irreverence, and how people responded to that and how

well it works here. To go back to that quote you had earlier from Kate Shortland about using humor to sort of process through trauma, I think that, you know, and we get that in the great sort of back and forth about the hysterectomy line from Ultron, which is sort of one of Black Widow's most controversial moments in the MCU. Do you want to talk about that? Yes, let's do so. Well, yeah, so there's this

interaction between Nat and Bruce in Ultron, written by Joss Whedon, where you know, she talks, she talks around sort of this hysterectomy that that the Red Room program performs on

all of its women, or all of its graduates, I suppose. They're all women. And this idea that in that scene, Nat says she felt like a monster. And there was a huge backlash to this for a number of reasons. Big, big, big, big, big objections to this idea of equating for infertility to monstrosity or all the sort of stuff like that. And, you know, the Whedon of it all in the entire, I mean, I'm a big, like, Buffy Vampire Slayer fan.

I'm an original Joss Whedon fan. I have my own complicated feelings about this, but there's no question that that is a complicating factor in the MCU. And so the fact that, like, as Kate Shortland tells it, I believe to originally to the Little White Lies podcast, and then it was part of this great article on Slate that Sam Adams wrote, this idea that originally in the script, and I have to think this was Eric Pearson's past,

I can't believe that Jack Schaefer would have written this line. But the line that, like, Alexi has about the girls being on their periods was just, that line was just in the script with no rebuttal. And both Scarlett and Kate hated the line. And they hired Nicole Holofsner, who, a writer-director who's made some great films walking, talking enough said, a bunch of fantastic films. They hired her to do a pass. And her idea was like, let's not cut that line. let's just have the girls hook right back with strength and humor. I don't get my period.

Dip shit. Yeah. And the line is the moment is fantastic. It's kind of tossed away. Scarlett is just looking up the helicopter window while she's saying her part. Like it's just sort of tossed in there. It's funny. And it's a reckoning with this like big clinky, awkward moment that exists earlier in the MCU.

I think it's really adeptly done. I loved it. Yeah. I mean, every moment of that exchange was. really carefully, clearly carefully crafted right up to the final, oh, I was about to talk about fallopian tubes, but okay, reply from Yelena

after Alexi is objecting to what he's hearing. And I loved in the slate piece that you just mentioned and quotes something that Shortland said on the Truth in Movies podcast, I believe, which was, if you want to talk about it, let's talk about it. And that's at the heart of this moment.

And I think more broadly, what the movie is working to grapple with, including some of the real missteps in the MCU's own past, as you just noted, it is important. Even if it is hard, especially when it's hard to find a way to engage with those ideas and to not just hint at them, but to actively discuss and engage with them. And I was glad that the characters did. Well, again, this it goes back to, I think, that Kevin Feige in its backyard redoing Robicop 2 idea. You know what I mean?

Just sort of like, let's not pretend that this was perfect, that Ultron was perfect, that the dark world was perfect. Like, let's engage with it and let's fix it and let's make it feel, let's just keep perfecting it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the MCU

is this massive living document. And hopefully one of the reasons that we will all continue to return to it and not only find something new every time we revisit a prior story because of what has come since, but are so interested in everything that is yet to come is because in a meta sense,

the stories and the way that they're made feel like they're progressing in a meaningful way along with the characters themselves. And, you know, of course, it is a challenge to balance tones. That's why, you know, we've both mentioned it already, but I was really interested in Shortland's commentary around how humor was so central to the approach when assessing trauma. And just in general, humor is quite present in what is often a very bleak and dark story.

Obviously, Alexi delivers a lot of the story. the levity and the bits and the jokes and is often the butt of the joke. That's like one of his functions in the movie, though obviously he plays a crucial function in the family dynamic as well. But Yelena also delivers a lot of the humor in a way that really helps establish not only her voice and her identity as a character, but again, that sisterly family dynamic. Like, the best part of that pose routine was in addition to the physical comedy and everything that she's saying about why do you always do that thing, that was that last little bit about it does look like you think everyone's looking at you

like all the time. Always. I just loved that they put that line in the movie because that's commentary on the deployment of the character to that point. And then you get the payoff of Elena, you know, dropping down in the red room during the final sequence. and striking her own pose and then saying, ugh, that was disgusting. You know, I really thought that was great.

And then, like, that whole gas station sequence where they have the poser conversation, there's a lot actually to unpack, not only inside of the store, but then in the following sequence at the table outside, there's a lot of really rich text for their relationship in that stretch of the film. You know, that's also where we get the big ones,

ibuprofen moment where Yelina is saying well one of the big ones would come to avenge you like if the red room made a move on that right and that says wait what are the big ones and I loved this not only because

of the very amusing Yelina well I doubt the god from space has to take an ibuprofen after a fight reply which is a great line but because the dynamic inside of the original Avengers has always been one of the fascinating things to talk about. There are certain aspects of it that have not been as successful across

the MCU, right? And then there are like, like, and of course that connects to the larger point hanging over this discussion of how long it took to give Natasha her own movie, right? So there's a meta-commentary I play there too. But I also thought that there was something interesting wrapped up in the idea of like why Nat and Clint, I'm also not the biggest MCU Hawkeye fan, But one of the things that's really effective about their roles and the functions that they play inside of the MCU is that they're in many ways more relatable. Like, we are not as guardians, much to our or my, at least, to just disdismay, you know? Love those grapes and nuts. Right, right.

We're also not billionaires. Like Tony Stark, right? That seems less attainable than the Super Soldier serum for a lot of viewers, I'm sure. And so the more like, this gets back to the street level idea from earlier, too, but the characters who are in those roles in some way, the viewer can project and latch onto them more so than someone wielding Milnear. Well, it's, okay, first of all, I never retire the way that you pronounce Milnear, because you give it this, like, flourish that I just love.

Also, I can see it behind you on your bookcase. But, like, also, I think it's really interesting when and where the various Avengers names are mentioned or not in this film. I was trying to track it because when Thunderbolt Ross talks about who they have, I believe he says, Barton Wilson, and then he says the incredible shrinking convict or whatever talking about Ant Man, right? Tough beat there for Wanda, folks. Yeah, Wanda's also there. And then Yelenis has got from Space, she doesn't say Thor. So I was like, it's interesting,

and they're kind of, and I don't think she says, she might have said Tony Stark, but I think she might have also said just like billionaire tech friend or something like that. You know what I mean? There's this way in which they're not saying the names

other than, of course, Alexi constantly talking about Captain America and Natasha talking about Clint. Good up forerous. Yeah, but like, but this idea, you know, there was this big rumor that Iron Man was going to have a cameo in this movie.

And there's this interview with Kate Shortland where she says that, that Kevin Feige told her, like, Natasha doesn't need the boys. Like, we don't need to put cameos in this movie. We've got a Clint voice cameo, and that's it. And she doesn't need the guys to, like, lift her up, you know what I mean? And I do think that that's really interesting. And I think it's interesting the way that they talk about them, the big ones, but they're not there, you know?

And they're not really named very much. Yeah. No, that's really fascinating. And especially, you know, again, if we think about the time frame, the rifts, the fracture. with the Avengers after the events of Civil War. And then, you know, one of the other really impactful moments in that sequence that we're just discussing is that that's when Yelina says, I'm not the killer that little girls call their hero.

And that was brutal. Absolutely brutal. But there's a lot to unpack there. You know, Nat is expressing in that moment, you know, all the time I spent posing, I was actually trying to do something good to make up for all the pain and suffering that we cause, trying to be more than just a trained killer. And that then is Yelena's response. This taps into so much.

Nat's history of working to forge a new path, which has always been central to her character, both before this point in the story canon and certainly after. That Clint, you know, do you know what it's like to be unmade? You know I do. line comes into play there, certainly. But also, I was interested in how that tapped into the idea of like when the MCU assesses the Who Watches the Watchman idea, you know, assesses the role that a hero plays in society and the level of acknowledgement of that, of when heroes air, when they fail, the fact that they are fallible, and then the fact that they are at times culpable. And that gets to

something else that I wanted us to talk about today, which is the weight of the movie grapples with culpability. We'll talk about Melina and Alexiana in a minute here, but you mentioned the key instance here, which is Nat not going back for Yelena. And what I love about that is that that takes a plot hole, a question of why wouldn't not have gone back for Yelena and making it a character moment? Do you know what I mean? Because in the in the attempt to shove this film in the middle of an existent franchise, you're going to have continuity questions, right? And so this idea of like, like, how do you solve for the question of where was Carol

Danvers when all this stuff was happening? And then you're like, well, we'll send her to space for a while. That's why she wasn't there? And it's like, why, why if Nat got out of the red room way back when she did when Dreykow's daughter was still a child? Have we not seen Yelena until now or even heard about Yolena? until now. That's a potential plot point. Let's make it a character choice. Let's make it a character moment to grapple with. I think that's really smart. And I love it. It's done so well and

Florence Pugh's performance of Yolena's sort of betrayal. I kept checking the news, expecting to see Captain America bringing down the red room. Oh, you know, and the way that Matt learns about that everything she did and thought she had done was for nothing. She thought she had eradicated this big, you know, her abuser. And he was still out there in the shadows, in the clouds. Right. It is completely cloaked by some wists of clouds,

sky layer, exploring more and more young girls, killing more and more young girls. You know what you mean? Yeah. And, you know, the, of course, Nat initially is like, what are you talking about?

I killed him. I eliminated the red room. This was the last. step in my defection to shield. That is at the heart of the Budapest history. But this is the thing. Whether Nat believed that, and clearly she did believe that, genuinely thought that she had eliminated the Red Room, eliminated Drakow.

It doesn't explain why she didn't find Yelena, see how she was, work to be in her life. And I thought one of the most devastating and gut-wrenching exchanges in the movie, was about that when Yelina says, Where did you think I was all this time? I thought that you got out and we're living a normal life. And you just never made contact again? Honestly, I thought you didn't want to see me. Bullshit.

You just didn't want your baby sister to tag along whilst you saved the world with the cool kids. You weren't really my sister. So brutal. And of course, you have to establish that moment for them to then work their way toward the ultimate resolution. after they bring the red room literally down from the sky and you get the, you know, moon raker skydiving sequence payoff.

Nat asks for her forgiveness at the end and says, I should have come back for you. And they have moved forward together so far that when Natasha is able to say that out loud, they're also at the point where Yelena doesn't need to hear it anymore. You don't have to say that. It's okay. And they say it was real to me too when they cry and they embrace. I cried. It was lovely.

There are so many refractile echoes across this family. Like, there are moments. There's that moment when Natasha gets back in the helicopter and they're escaping the prison break. And Yelina says, like, I need help up here, which is what Molina says when they're escaping in the plane at the beginning of the film. There's also the fact that, you know, Scarlett Johansson's signature move as The Black Widow is something that her stunt doublehead Heidi Moneymaker calls the widow throw, which is that like wrap the legs around the neck and flip. And Molina does it. She widow throws Taskmaster into the cell, right?

And so there's just these like nice family reflections. And so in that moment when, as you say, Nat doesn't need to hear it, she's at a point where she doesn't need to hear it. With Alexi, he has tried twice to give this big grand speech to Natasha about like asking for forgiveness. And at the end, he just, like, says, I would just mess it up. And then she holds his hand. Like, they're at a point beyond words. They don't need to say it anymore. It's just they've been through this thing.

And now they're family again. You know, and then I guess Nat never see them again, I suppose. I can't believe they never saw each other again. I just simply cannot accept it. But, yeah, it's interesting because to get to the point where they don't need to say anything, where they can just stand there together and peace and shared understanding, a lot actually did have to be said along the way. And so as we're assessing character culpability and how we can kind of reconcile where the characters really did err and fail each other and then where they maybe can't be held accountable for something because someone else was controlling them or the circumstances they were in.

I think it's also worth talking about both Molina and Alexi for a minute here. Let's talk about Mama for a minute. Mama Malina. Fascinating journey here. I think it is so crucial. It really stood out to me on a rewatch that we have the early moments

in 95 in Ohio with her not only because of the real tenderness that we see her show the children, but because we hear her say to Alexi, I don't want to go. Exactly. It's a huge moment that I didn't catch

the first time through, but the second time through it was like, that is a huge moment. And the fact that she's taken out, so we don't even, she does, she never makes the active choice to let the girls go. She's, she's unconscious and she's carted off. You know what I mean? It's Alexi who does the betraying there. But like, we don't see Molina let the girls go. Right. And even when he says it's time for the big adventure, you know, back at the house, she says to that, I'm sorry. Like, this is not

something that she wants. And I felt that on a subsequent viewing, that really helped me then go through the additional steps of their character art together because there's not a lot of actual screen time for Rachel Weiss. There can never be enough. I could watch her forever. She's an icon. But hurting pigs.

Well, no. I want Alexei, the pig, to go live in peace and not be in any more scenes with her and her fucking breathing control device. Horrible. But when they arrive at her home, There's so much right away that causes not only the characters, but us as viewers, to bristle and to feel not only a lack of trust, but like real disappointment. And then you have to swing back from that pretty quickly.

So, you know, she says of Dracoff, for example, you can't defeat a man who commands the very will of others. Well, as viewers, you know, we're inside of the MCU and what do we know? if a character is trying to command the very will of others, then that is, of course, exactly why they must be stopped, why they must be defeated. That is not something natural or acceptable, not something that can be allowed and must be challenged. But she is also under his control.

And so it is this, again, delicate balancing act of us needing to assess where she could have done something differently and also to be able to feel empathy for the situation that she is directly. and I was glad that the movie basically gave us a conversation between Melina and Natasha about exactly that. You know, this is on the heels of her explaining to them. The Winter Soldier control that they stole from Ohio, right? We didn't steal weaponry or technology.

We stole the key to unlocking free will. And Nat calls her a coward. Says later, you weren't even the first mother that abandoned me. I mean, these are brutal, brutal moments between them. And then she sees that Molina kept that family album. The very one that Malina told her. her not to take to leave behind, holding on to this relic of their life together of something that they will say out loud was a fiction, but all believe was quite real. And when Natasha says to her,

why are you doing this? She says, why does a mouse born in a cage run on that little wheel? Do you know I was cycled through the red room four times before you were even born? Those walls are all I know. I was never given a choice. And that says, but you're not a mouse, Molina. You were just born in a cage. but that's not your fault. And that's the key idea, right? That it's never too late to choose to change, to choose to try to be better or do something different. When you are controlled, when you are imprisoned,

when you are weaponized, you are somebody else's pawn. Once you realize that you have agency or arrive at a moment where you have agency, then it is on you if you do not express remorse or try to use that agency to do something better. And I, you know, they're not, they're not ultimately in this key moment blaming each other for what others have done to them. That's the key, right? They in the film are holding each other accountable for what they decide to do or not to do once they break away or know that they can break away.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that line that you said about Molina being cycled through the red room so many times, that that was the thing that I really latched on to this idea of like, generational trauma and how like as we go through the generations, you know, the people who have been oppressed by whatever system, it may be often feel more, hopefully feel more and more liberation. And you have to have empathy for the generation that came before you and just didn't experience that in the same way that you did. Does it mean you have to excuse every single thing that they did, but there has to be some measure of empathy of like how many times that Molina comes from a different generation of widows,

as I think Yolena says, Malina's generation of widows. You know what I mean? Like, it was a different experience. And Yelena herself went through something different than Natasha went through because she went through chemical mind control. And so it's, I don't know, I find her turn a little interesting,

but the more I watch it, the more it makes sense to me, as much sense as someone who has a casual wig room in their house. Makes sense. Do you know what you mean? Just some wigs and masks hanging around waiting to be used.

It's fine. Gotta, got to keep the nanomasks handy, you know? One more winter soldier callback. The second time throw, I was like, they show you the wig room

before they use the wigs. And the second time through, I was like, okay, thanks for, thanks for showing me those wigs, just hanging on the wall. Just in her gun room. I love it.

You know, what an eye for home decor. How about Alexi? How did you feel about the balancing act of Alexi's culpability and establishing that and then also allowing for that remorse, that empathy, and that way forward? It's so interesting. I posted this thing on Twitter last night because as I was going back through, I was like, I noticed or I decided to try to translate some of his tattoos. And on his upper bicep, he has Natasha and Yelena and two roses in Russian on his bicep. and I was like, oh, I love that. I couldn't quite put a finger on wine. Someone responded to me and they're like, the reason I love it is this is like performative show.

Like there's some sentimentality there maybe, but also this like perform, like I'll abandon these girls to this awful system, but then I'll get these roses tattoo to my arm and their memory. And it's just sort of like perfect for who Alexi is, which is kind of a trash person. And but like with the tenderness, somewhere in there.

And just like a, I mean, Harbor plays him perfectly. He's just sort of this, this complete mess and kind of an idiot and a blowhard, but there is enough like Papa Bear affection there somewhere that you don't completely hate him. But the way in which the girls react to him is perfect.

And, yeah, I loved it. And like, this is, can we talk about American Pie in this moment? because in the second iteration of American Pie, right before things go sideway at the farm, like Harper's sitting in a, like, they're sitting in the corner, like barely muttering out the words with tears in his eyes.

Like, can you believe that this is a Marvel movie? What do you think, Mel? I'm happy to talk about the American Pie moments at long last. They were, as I mentioned, my, I think two favorite scenes. in the film, certainly among my favorite scenes overall. The second one between Alexei and Yelina, and this is after Yelina has gotten up from the dinner table, after the conversation has gone so wrong,

you know, it calls back to the car ride at the beginning, which we can talk about more in a minute. And I just loved it. I loved everything about this scene so much. I thought it was beautiful. the and again a nice encapsulation

of the tonal shifts across the movie where you start with this just ridiculous story from Alexi about how his dad once like pissed on his hands

to stave off frostbite fathers I think he says go went toilet on my kids went toilet that's like

that's a writing moment that is just incredible unbelievable and we we get this just total disappointment from Yelena, who notes that he keeps mentioning, you know,

on the helicopter ride, et cetera, like how boxed in, how bored he felt in Ohio, how she was just a chore. And she says, you know, to me, you were everything.

That's also when we get the outstanding Crimson Dynamo, Easter egg. And I love that little bit of intentionality there. And then, you know, after she says to him, get out, and you think he's walking away. And he starts to kind of initially, like, speak, speak the lyrics to her song,

you know, their song, American Pie. And he's not really singing at first. He's like, I can't remember if I cried. And this was just really like declaring the words. And you're kind of, wait, I recognize those lyrics and you're having the same experience as a viewer as Yelena's. And then when he says, you know, something touched me deep inside the day the music died and you realize what is happening, she smiles. But also looks like she's about to cry.

And then it shifts. I'm probably going to cry talking about this. I was honestly so moved by this. The tenderness in this sequence. I thought this was so lovely. Like, he starts to actually really sing and they were singing. and he's doing it so gently, and she's chuckling and starts to sing too, and they're both laughing, but they're also both crying.

They were singing by, Miss America, bye. I drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was there. And good old boys drinking with. She has become not only just like a kid again in that moment, but somebody who believes in one of the true forces in her life, which was the idea that that time and that family was real, like that this sense of belonging could mean something. And that is just a wonderfully powerful thing to be able to convey.

And like I thought the look on his face, have I mentioned I love David Harper, the look on his face as he's singing to her. I think, you know, to that point about Alexi's journey and he does some bad stuff, like really bad, not a good showing from him in Cuba. And we ultimately hear him voice that he recognizes that that wasn't bravery. It was cowardice, right? But like a moment like this is when you really see and feel what they're. time together actually did mean to him and how it rooted itself in his heart as well. Like, it doesn't excuse what happened, but it's what he feels and she feels and they need to make sure the other person understands that they feel like the root of that connection. And despite

everything, devotion, like that's that theme of the power of that found family and how that found family can help you overcome anything that you have to face. And it's just so, it's like so gentle and tender and there's such gratitude for rekindling that belief. I just loved it. No, I loved it too. And something, and I'm so, I'm so glad and, and honored to have you cry on Mike with me, Mallory. Ruperman. This is, this is a thing that Florence Pugh, we already knew she's good at if you saw the film Little Women. Sure did. Her wish, she was awesome. of all the actresses and there are great actresses in that film the only one who's convincingly a girl and a woman is Florence Pugh that she can like vacillate between those two modes

kind of it looks effortless I'm sure there's effort involved and that that quality comes through in this performance the child that little blonde girl that they cast the meeting of the movie like just comes comes through in that dinner scene when she's like crying and And she's like, don't say this, you know, like, you were my mother. Like, it was real. Like, that is some of the, like, best acting I've seen, most emotional acting I've seen in all of the MCU. Once again, I just really shout out to Kate Shortland and the folks at Marvel on the final

cut for being great, for being okay with having these moments. You know what I mean? It's some of those moments that we see in the Disney Plus shows. As you say, that space for character stuff. And it just makes the action stuff, you know, when the action gets a little like silly and CGI heavy in the end, I'm not that mad because I'm emotionally invested. So I'm not, I'm stressed about it, you know? I agree. And of course, like one of the things that made that sequence so powerful and touching is that it was a bookend to the earlier American Pie scene. And, you know, Alexi's role overall, the decision to make him this father figure, this family man instead of a love interest, smart. he has that hilarity, you know, farewell douchebags after the prison escape. Oh, you can't hear me on the jopper.

That perfect little, I don't think we have enough fuel for St. Petersburg. No, we're good. We'll make it. Okay. Boom. Crash. Like a lot of really funny, really effective injections of like dupiness, but also real heart and you know David harbour is I think very good at striking that balance like I love i love watching

him as hopper and stranger things that first american pie sequence the opening stretch of the movies start start to finish i thought was awesome we already talked about the americans energy and vibes which were overt that drive though was my favorite part of that opening sequence I love a needle drop inside of the MCU. And this is instantly like a- Thanks again, Guardians. Yes. This is instantly like a top fiver for me.

This is up there. The use of American pie in that car ride is up there for me with Kat Stevens' father and son, with Quill and Grudge. I just fucking love. Dear Mr. Fantasy. I mean, on and on the list goes, but this was exceptional.

I will say, say quickly. I can't get through the pod without noting. This is mostly about emotional connection and heart. I simply must observe that the scoreboard at the football game appears to read, I think I need glasses, so maybe I have some of this wrong, but I believe this reads 9-7 was 12-06 left in the first quarter. And my question is simply how for a couple of reasons. First of all, high school football quarters are 12 minutes long, not 15. Now, maybe it's supposed to be a college, but I got a real vibe of like Friday night lights.

This is the end of a workday when Alexi swipes this data, right? Americana. Yeah. So think of this is supposed to be Ohio high school football. You know, we see school buses, et cetera. It's not just that only a few minutes have passed and the score is already 9-7. I can maybe touchdown in a safety, perhaps a touchdown missed extra point field goal. they're, it's fourth and six.

They're about to punt. That means a whole other drive is taking place. There just simply is not enough time for that. Anyway, anyway, other than that, I loved the sequence. Driving by the brightly lit illuminated American flag on the bridge, driving by the Hardee's, the gas stations, the football game, Friday night lights, like Main Street USA. Yeah, and the idea of American Pie being like this song you jammed to when you're a kid.

But yeah, but also about the death, yeah, the false, you know what I mean? Like what's hollow at the center of this idea of our family here? You know what you mean? And the thing is they find it again. They find true family at the end. But like here is a punctured exposure of how fake this American dream life we've built in Ohio is. Well, that's a really interesting way to put it because I think the reason that this gripped me so fully is because it plays differently for every character in that scene. right? So the adults know that and feel that way. There's that great moment where Alexi is like watching in the rearview mirror. He's looking up. He's looking back at young Yelena as she sings. When he is then melting the words, this will be the day that I die. And Melina is like almost half rolling her eyes, her head and her hands at the irony of it all. But for Yelina, it's not about the death of the American dream. It's all about.

promise and possibility. And I just felt like soaking up every second of what that told us about their dynamic and what they wanted and what they needed and also what they knew they couldn't have was just really, really incredible. Yeah, I loved it. Great stuff. We're running so long. We have so much more to hit. We're going to have to go rapid fire from here, but family dinner. What a sequence. Great. I love that Molina had like many tubs of various salads ready to go to put it on the table. There was slaws and stuff for days. Yeah, fantastic scene. You have the notes here that Eric Pearson credited screenwriter told The Washington Post that, like, he had the most panic about this scene, which he called their biggest. And that's that, to me, once again, that speaks to what

movie they're making here, right? The biggest is not the fuck, sorry, excuse me, the, like, Moonwaker, you know, set piece, the third act set piece. It's this character moment between these four family members sitting down and in. You know? And Yelena's absolute despondence in response to not just what she's hearing from Alexi. Alexi's really leaning into the idea of family as he's leaning into the Red Guardian soup. That's a super soldier. Can't wait to just get out there and be a super soldier again.

I don't know what Melina is saying, but what Nat is saying. Don't say that. Please don't say that. It was real. It was real to me. You were my mother. You were my real mother. The closest thing I ever had to when the best part of my life was fake.

and none of you told me. And like you think back to then another moment in that car ride at the beginning where she says, where are we going? And Melanis is home. And she says, Mommy, you're silly. We just left home. Like that was home.

That was family to her. I thought that was so affecting and so touching. It's also like so disturbing off the heels of like Alexi congratulating them for being such accomplished. Child assassins.

So efficient. So ruthless. Your ledgers are drifting. Yeah. And he has. Yeah, he has that callback. It's actually my least favorite kind of callback that Game of Thrones is kind of guilty of in its final seasons, which is like a character who would have no reason to say the exact same line as another character did earlier.

So Loki says that thing. Your ledgers must be gushing red. They must be dripping in Avengers. And there's no reason for Alexi to say the exact same words in this movie, but he does. I don't know. That just slightly took me out. But like, but overall the point is that he's like proud of them for all the wrong. Yes, praising them for the very things that they are working so, so fully to try to move beyond.

Oh, Alexi, what are your theories for, first of all, how we'll see Alexi and Melina in the MCU moving forward? And then also, we got to talk about the cap thing. Alexi is insistent that he battled cap. He absolutely turns a human wrist into like pretzel dust when that, that, that, that, that guy, the Ursa Easter egg, dares to question the timeline, oh, well, Cap was still, you know, frozen in 83 or 84. What is your theory on this? Time traveling cap?

Could he mistakenly have assumed Bucky was Captain America? I kind of love this idea because we do see that Taskmaster takes the form, the fighting technique of Bucky when fighting Alexi also takes the cap fighting form for what it's worth. But that would just feel very like Alexi to me that he is in a way to read. force how closely entwined a bucky even in the brainwashed winter soldier years are? Could it be another character assuming the Captain America mantle at that time? Time traveling cap? I don't think so because like I think, well, possibly, but all we know is that Isaiah Bradley was Captain America at one point, but he's, I think, rotting in jail at the time that Alexi would be talking about. And so like,

I think the explanation Harbour gave was that he's just like a fabulous who believes his own bullshit. And that's sort of my most satisfying explanation. I don't think it's any sort of sci-fi hijankery. I think it's just sort of a lifelong bullshitter bullshitting once again. And I love that vanity that he has, that petty, petty vanity.

And I love how the girls, like, seem to know that like, you know, because a whole like jailbreak hinges on him pulling the string of that action figure that they send him, because that's what pops the heads off. So they like knew that if they sent him an action figure of himself, that he would pull that string, absolutely. And, you know, that's because they know exactly what kind of man he is. I think,

I think it's great. Love it. Let's talk for a few minutes before we wrap about the final act and the villains. Does the final act work for you? Do the villains work for you? We'll talk about Dracoff and Taskmaster. But broadly, the red room sequence overall, did that work for you? It's not my favorite, but it's not my least favorite either. And once again, it reminds me a lot of Winter Soldier because, like, you know, airship's falling in the sky. of course, they're always going to make me think of Winter Soldier, but, like, there's an emotional component to it. Taskmaster is the Winter Soldier of this movie, right? This figure from Natasha's past, who she feels guilty and responsible for in some way, even though it's definitely not Steve's fault that Bucky is Winter Soldier, but, like, she doesn't want to fight her. She wants to save her.

That's sort of, you know, it's the same story. I don't mind it. I don't mind them recycling my favorite story. And I think there's some people who talked about how they thought it would be more effective if Yelina had been Taskmaster, if it had been like Yelina was the antagonist. But like I wouldn't trade all the sisterly stuff that comes forward just to put Elena in that villain position. So as a result, because the emphasis is on family and like all that dynamic, that was my Vindiesl impression, did it come through? Anyway, that Drake Hoff and now say American Mussel. Merck Mussel, like that. Jacob and Antonia, like, suffer. They pale because they're barely there. And like, Ray Winston is great in a lot of things. I don't think he's great in this. I think his Russian accent's pretty deplorable.

Give me your Russian accent power rankings. Oh, yeah. It goes number one, number one is Lauren's Pew, only because she's so consistent. at number, and close number two is David Harbor. Number three is Rachel Weiss. Number four is Ray Winston. And then Scarlett doesn't really do much Russian accent, but she does speak Russian at the end,

and it's actually not very great. So I'm not going to give her a high ranking. What are you? What's your Russian accent? Yeah, clearly Pew is number one. Harbor really slips in and out of it a lot, but I chose to view that as intentional and a reflection of the time that he's,

spent undercover in Ohio. That's how I'm going to process it. Yeah, overall, the third act, the Red Room sequence, definitely not my favorite part of the movie. You know, I thought overall the action in the movie was pretty fun. I thought there was like some nice sweeping cinematography

that the taskmaster sequences are compelling to watch as fights. That obviously is where the idea of like the stakes and knowing that Natasha makes it out of this movie alive come into play a bit because you're never, you're never quite worried about her fate in any of those sequences, right? Though, and again, like, mileage may vary. For me personally, as a viewer, I just think stakes come in forms other than life and death. And so I'm ultimately okay. Yeah. Okay with that. I don't, I didn't love the flashback construction inside of the final act. I, like, thought that was,

like, a little clunky and we don't need flashbacks in that tight of a span of storytelling. I think all the Jekoff stuff is like a little clunky just because like I don't know if there could have been an actor who would have done a better job with that but it all felt a little heavy-handed in a film that had otherwise been like kind of balanced on a knife point you know what I mean yeah well I think it was you know it was nice obviously that we got the uh the payoff of the Loki Nat exchange in Avengers where he specifically mentions while discussing the gushing red ledger

Draikov's daughter the way that that actually manifested in central plot here was interesting. I think that in terms of Drake off as a villain, I mean this is just a purely, purely vile person who does purely vile things. It's not even like Alexander Pierce

in Winter Soldier level where there's like this sort of charm to his, you know, whatever, it could have easily been that. Instead, it's just a real borshty, mustache-twirling sort of role in a way that I just don't think fits the nuance that is in the rest of this film.

But the reason why it doesn't bother me is because, once again, he's barely in the movie and really the villain is like the trauma that he's inflicted. Like, that's really, like, what we're fighting through is, like, the damage that he's inflicted on these people, their effort to come back together.

So, like, I think Taskmaster is a fun fight prop in terms of it is so fun to see her do a Peter Parker move or a Tachala move or whatever it is. Like, that is fun. But ultimately, all that villain reveal stuff in the end isn't the best part of the movie, but it doesn't, to me, bog the movie down. Yeah, the Pierce point is interesting because I do think they're, you know, again, we've mentioned the Winter Soldier parallels quite a bit. And I think they're going for a bit,

even if it's just like an adjacent connection between that idea of like shadow power, which is something that Pierce talks about a lot in Winter Soldier. You know, when we hear from Drake off here, you know, the real war was fought here and the shadows, right down to the like Red Room Insight, Helic carrier comp that you just made. I think that to your point about some of the distinctions,

between Pierce and Drakoff, and there are many. Like one of them that just comes to mind is Pierce and Fury had a relationship. And so we are contrasting this role inside of this cell, this hydrocell inside of shield with what we know other people who we have experience with. And to some extent, trust in, think of this person. There's none of that with Drakoff. Like he is just a, he is, he is, he is abhor. in every respect and everything he does is horrendous and totally deplorable.

Right down to the pheromone lock, which obviously the fairmone lock is one of the ways that Natasha is goading him and she has this information that he doesn't know that she has. And, you know, she really, I think, relishes making him the puppet in that sequence where he doesn't understand how he's being played, right? And is saying out loud all of these things about how he exists in the shadows and nobody understands the way that he controls the world. But as she says, like, you seem desperate to impress me. And he needs, because of the way that he is in the shadows, for the people who see him and know what he's done to tell him that he's great. He needs that. And something like the pheromona lock, this like base biological level of control that he has

sought to exert, right? A man thinking that just his very scent, his very chemical nature should give him power. Like, he is an absolutely atrocious figure. And I hope that this time when the flames took him, they took him for real. I think that the idea of like getting him monologuing in that sort of Bondian way, a callback to the moonraker, see that's planted earlier, given that this whole sequence is very Moonraker is smart. And I think also if you're going to make a Black Widow movie, you know, and you're looking at Nat's greatest hits, like the double, you know, get someone monologing move that she pulls in Avengers first tied to a chair and then with Loki.

Like that's a fun. Thank you for your cooperation. That's a classic move. Like, yeah, like that's a fun callback to make. So I like that part of it. I think it all could have just been tightened a bit more because he really is unimportant in the long run. Do you know what I mean?

he really isn't the point, ultimately. Yeah. How did you feel both in terms of his connection to Taskmaster, you know, the fact that this is his daughter, this is Antonia, and even somebody in his life, his family member, he is willing and ready to treat as a thing, not a person, you know, a thumb drive into the back of the neck, turning his own daughter into a weapon, thanking Natasha for giving him his greatest weapon. How did you feel overall about the taskmaster twist and the fact that, you know, this wasn't the comics character or this was Antonia? And I'm curious specifically, actually,

what you thought in terms of the connection to the overall themes. I think, as is always the case when there's like sort of a fandom backlash, there's like good reasons to not like this and there are bad reasons to not like this. I think there's some disingenuous arguments about why this is like a quote-unquote betrayal of the taskmaster comic legacy, which I think is, I feel frankly think is kind of silly, but at the same time, I don't have an emotional connection to the taskmaster character in the comics. So if that was a character that was important to you, and you're frustrated that it's not how it was in the comics, I can see that. For me, I think it was really important that whoever was in that suit was someone with a connection to Natasha.

And if it wasn't going to be Molina and it wasn't going to be Yelena, and it wasn't going to be Alexi, like, the fact that his Drakhov's daughter, this, like, her guilt, her biggest sin, like come back to haunt her, unmasked in front of her. And she has to grapple with that. Because even if she didn't kill Antonia, she put Antonia in this spot. She is as responsible as Drake for putting her in this suit, right? She is scarred her. She has like done all this stuff. And so I think that that thematically is interesting and compelling and emotional to me. I think the moment when Antonia is in the cell and everything's falling and Natasha goes to free her and she's like, you're going to come after me. And it's okay. And Scarlett Johans's performance in that.

I think that's such good emotional stuff to put inside this whole like CG fight, you know, michigas. And, you know, and the fact that it ties into the larger theme of manipulating, controlling these women is good. I just think that's that whole sequence of Draikov teeter on the, on the edge of pushing the theme in a way that I don't think you need to. I think it's there. And it reminds me a little bit of that I'm just a girl needle drop and Captain Marvel where I'm like, I don't need you to hammer the point so hard. I see it.

And you don't need to like drop it so hard on me. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. You know, I think there's something, it's, there's a little bit of a corollary with the the recurring nature of the pain makes you stronger idea across the film, which, I want to be careful in how I state this.

I think that it is really important and powerful to express that you can overcome your trauma and that you can find that strength and find the other people who help you find and build that strength. The line is not implying ever. So something that you used to talk about with Sons on Game of Thrones a lot, that women need to suffer in order to find their strengths. Marvel or Game of Thrones or whatever certainly didn't invent this idea.

And it's not always gendered, this idea that like, or it's often not gendered, that the hero needs to be wounded. so many of our superheroes come from trauma. Like, you know, their parents have been killed or, you know, they're a man out of time or whatever it is. There's a wound somewhere that spurs the hero forward. For women, it is often, and, you know, specifically I think, I mean, I guess other than like the wasp,

like the women that we've seen in the MCU, it is often, like, connected to just extreme relentless drama in a way that, you know, it's not just an incite, incidents, but an ongoing gaslighting or whatever it is. So, yeah, I think that's worth watching. I don't agree that, I agree, pain can make you stronger, but not pain makes you stronger. That kind of feels like Molina repeating some red room verbiage, you know what I mean? And did it give the girls what they needed to get through it?

Maybe, but like, you know, at what cost? Exactly. Okay, five minutes on the mailbag before we wrap. Jomey, welcome. Mailbag, what do we got? We got some good ones this week. Our first question comes from Scott. Scott wants to know, what would your hero pose be like?

Oh, boy. My hero pose would be reclining on the couch, you know, feet kicked up, left arm, out so that my cat, Halo, can curl up in my elbow nook and hip nook, what she loves to do, right hand, you know, just some bicep curls so that I can eat my Doritos and Sour Patch Kids. That's my hero pose. How about you, Joanna? I honestly at this point in 2021 think it's a nap. My hair pose is a full nap.

That's what I said. Next question. From Shelley. Where did Taskmaster get her shirt? strength from. The suit? Mind control doesn't give you super strength. Interesting. What was your read on that? Yeah, I think it is the suit. I mean, she's also like, she's got a chip in the back of her head. It's not just mind control. She's got, she's like wired in a different way, you know, sort of some. Someone was asking me, they're like, do you buy Olga Kirillenko in that suit? Like, and like, you know, or Olga Kirillenko being like a very

slim young woman. And I'm just sort of like, I don't, I never see her body. First of all, secondly, there's technology involved. So I'm not, she's a Terminator. She's in a Terminator. She's in a Terminator suit. I'm not, I'm not worried about it. Yeah. Robert Downey Jr. is not the same size as an Iron Man Mark suit. So that's, that's, you guys are exactly. He and surprisingly, he and Chris Evans are not the same height. Exactly. So who would have thought? I think whether we see the taskmaster suit, Jomey, I mean, this was something you mentioned on Midnight Boys, whether we, will we see Antonia again? I think that ties into how we see this, this, you know, wider storyline across the MCU. But could we

maybe see the taskmaster suit come into the story in a different moment in time or a different way, maybe wouldn't roll it out. It's definitely possible. You know, the MCU likes to, you know, give us surprises to those for a loop. So it's definitely. Reuse. That's the MCU. Exactly.

Exactly. All right, what's next? All right. Next from T.J. T.J. asks, I found the mind control antidote looked a lot like Wanda's magic. Since they stole the hydro scientists working for Shield, do you think the chemical creation could have been made from experimenting on Wanda? I've been paying pretty close attention to the color of magic ever since they said specifically around Wanda Vision that they were being very specific with how they color code magic.

So all the Loki magic is green. Agatha's magic is like the dark hold magic stuff is purple, et cetera. For this, I think they were trying to make claim that this was science and not magic. What would Jane Foster and Arthur C. Clark tell us, though? Oh, fair, fair point. But, like, I think the red coloring has more to do with, like, the widow color scheme than anything else. Like, something I love that we didn't talk about is that the, like, the suits that the widows are wearing are kind of very similar to suits that Nat has worn. They're just her electricity is usually blue and they've got the red electric stuff all over there in their sticks and everything that they're using.

So that's what I was thinking. Though I would never rule out the possibility. Poor Wanda. Just been through all right. What's next? Next from MCU John Oliver. Shout out to MCU John Oliver. Red Guardian anthology series where he breaks out of a prison each week.

Injected in my veins. Yeah, I'm in. I'm in on more Red Guardian stories moving forward. I'm in on any sort of Alexi-centric anthology. Every episode could just be the story behind another one of his tattoos. You know, Joanna already mentioned that he has. He has the girl's names. He has Melana's face tattooed on him.

You know, I don't want to know about all of them. So I'm in. I'm in on more Red Guardian Tales. Also, David Harbour just clearly wants this to happen, which is great. He's like, give me my Disney Plus show now yesterday. I love a prison break in general. As much as I love a heist. I love a prison break.

This prison break reminded me a bit of the one at the beginning of Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, one of my favorites of all time. So yeah, I would watch so many prison breaks with David Harbor or no. I would watch Red Guardian just like lie for 12 episodes, right? Like a rapper, you know? Yeah, I was in the streets. I was getting it hard. You know what I'm saying?

I was out here finding Captain America. I fought the Chala the next day, you feel me? Like I was just everywhere, you know, just lying, lying to us. And I would honestly, you know, sign up for Disney Plus again. We need to get Red Guardian on TikTok. He's like made for the social media era. Yes. Yes.

He'd be great. You got to stop the cap, but it would be fun. Our last question from Robert Bloom. This is a question specifically for Mao. Does Yelena's dog join the rising cast of Marvel pets? This is for all of the pet lovers here on the pod today. You know, it was great to see after Yelena mentioned specifically that she wanted a dog earlier in the film. We see her pup in the stinger.

The pup is named Fanny. That's a couple Fanny's in the movie because there's the Fanny Long Bottom fake alias in one of the Natt Rick scenes earlier in the movie. This was a, you know, great-looking dog. I would love to see more of Yelena and Fanny's adventures. Joanna and I are just still sitting here waiting for Bucky's Cat Alpine to be brought into the MCU.

You know, I don't want to get into lo-key spoilers here in case anyone's not expecting that, but we'll just say there's a lot of, a lot of Pet Avengers stuff happening right now. And I, for one, am ready. If they, oh, I just dropped, never mind, cut that out. Just after Mal's like, we're not going to spoil it.

I'm like, boom, sorry. We'll leave it. No, we'll leave it in. We'll just bleep it. Yeah. Steve, just bleep it. Yeah, exactly. And leave it in.

Just bleep it and leave it in. Exactly. Yep. That's for us. We get to have that one. That's for us. I love it. Well, friends, what a journey.

Listen, dad just told me that there are fruit roll-ups in the car. So that is a wrap on today's episode. Thank you, as always, to our pod guardians. Our intrepid producer, Steve Allman, as well as our Juno Ram Gapal, T.D. St. Matthew Daniel and the entire production team for their help with today's episode. Thank you to the Lord of the Memes, Jomi Adoneron, for his work on the social for this episode. And thank you.

Of course, to the one, the only, Joanna Robinson for suiting up with me today. Remember, follow the Ring ofverse on Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, follow us on social. Head back into the Ringerverse this Wednesday and Friday for our Loki finale chats. Until then, I want my song. What's the difference between butter and butter made from Real California Dairy? It's the Real California. Farm families behind it. Real people. Real care.

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