The Ringer-Verse - ‘What If…?’ Episode 8 Analysis and ‘Star Wars: Visions’ Anime Recommends

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Mallory is joined by The Ringer’s Benjamin Solak to discuss the latest episode of Marvel’s ‘What If...?’ (03:04). They discuss the legacy of Ultron along with predicting where the season finale of the mind-bending show may go. Then Mal jumps in with Justin Charity and Micah Peters of the ‘Sound Only’ podcast to dive into Ringer-verse Recommends based on the anthology series ‘Star Wars: Visions’ (61:45). Host: Mallory Rubin Guests: Benjamin Solak, Justin Charity, and Micah Peters Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: TD St. Matthew-Daniel and Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dash terms. He's done at last. The realization nearly broke the machine. With his mission complete, Ultron was now just a program without a purpose, the victor without a war sentenced to spend all of eternity alone. Who, who said that?

And welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer podcast network. I'm Mallory Rubin, co-hosts of Binge mode, head of editorial here at the Ringer. And it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to Siberia, but also to join us on the ringer's nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Before we begin, a few programming notes and reminders. The Midnight boys, Van and Charles, have their instant reaction pod for what if episode eight and their thoughts on Star Wars visions

waiting for you right now on the feed. Another wonderful episode, check that out if you haven't. And looking ahead, we are heading into a busy week here on the Ringerverse. On Monday, it's a House of Midnight team up to talk. Venom. Special guests for that. one, the ringers, chief venom enthusiast, Miles Surrey and his symbiote will be joining as well.

That's going to be a fun and I think likely deranged episode. Can't wait for that. And then on Wednesday and Friday, respectively, the Midnight Boys and I will be back with you to discuss the what-if finale and the entire season of the show. And we will have a surprise or two on the feed next week. So stay tuned for that. How to stay tuned? Follow the ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and follow us across our social channels. We are on Twitter. We are on Instagram. We have a Facebook group. Check it all out. And of course, for today's episode, bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. Today we're going to be talking about what if's eighth episode, what if Ultron 1. And we're going to be revisiting after last week's lovely podcast with

Ben Limburg. We're going to be revisiting Star Wars visions today and the wider MCU and Star Wars and anime worlds as well. So on the spoiler front, proceed with more caution than Clint did at the Hydra base. Later today, Sound-only co-hosts Justin Charity and Micah Peters will be joining for the latest edition of Ring ofverse Recommends, going to share their anime recommendations for Star Wars Visions fans. But first, right now, joining me today. Now that he's finished calling me Skynet and telling me he's saying, he's saying, he's seen the killer robot movie.

It's Ringer staff writer, Ringer NFL show, and Ringer Gambling Show co-host, Ben, Ben, welcome into the Ringerverse. Thanks, yeah, excited to Dave, you, really pumped. I, uh, not gonna lie, did not know the SkyNet was a Terminator reference.

Had to find it. Look it up later. Because that's just, that's the age and the, uh, the scope that you're dealing with here on this spot. Yep. I got the, the plans about in the day. I got the, Death Star plans are not on the main computer. Did you know what Raiders of the Lost Dark was?

Yes. I also knew that one. I was two for three. It's just the Terminator series that I haven't quite caught up on yet. Well, Arjuna is already requesting that you be booted from the Zoom and the episode, but, you know, we have a show to make. So we are here to talk about the penultimate episode of the first season of What If? This is What If Ultron One. And I'm so excited to have you here today to talk about this because, you know, you love football, right?

Mm-hmm. You love the X's and O's. Yeah. You love the betting lines. But you know what else you love? What's that? Marvel. You love Marvel.

I bet her if I'm here, otherwise I'm far out of my depth. And I want to start before we dive into episode eight in particular, what are your thoughts for my awareness for the listener's awareness on the what-if season as a whole so far. Like, how have you enjoyed it through eight episodes? Yeah, but it's been delightful, right? I mean, it's been a lot of fun. Obviously, you know, it's not fun to- It's not fun to watch, like, Dr. Christine Palmer die over and over again and, like, you know, so on and so forth. Like, they've, they've been a little bit more, you know, high consequences and said, yeah, grim than I expected. But it has been very cool. It's, it's, you know, it is the constant.

concept in and of itself at its core is a little bit fan servicey, right? Like, we love to talk about what ifs. Like, that's what's fun about loving something, right? Kevin, Kevin Clark just tweeted earlier this week. He was like, one of the best what if the NFL season is if Brady went to the Chargers. Like, we're in week three. Like, there's a bunch of like real cool stuff actually happening right now, but it's always fun to talk about these what ifs even in those contexts. And so it's been, it's been fun, right? Like, what if zombies is just like awesome. You know what I mean? Like, that's just great. And then you hit this episode and you all of a sudden realize, like, wait, this might like, like things are happening.

Like this might matter. Like this is a springboard. Like we are bringing in new ideas. And so I very much got, you know, kind of sucker punch there a little bit where I was like, oh, we're doing cool one-offs and oh, I'm excited for the Ultron one, you know, sent of a spinoff. Like that's a fun, interesting thought to me. And all of a sudden, it feels like it really, really matters.

So they kind of pulled the wool of her eyes there a little bit. I've enjoyed it greatly. And this kind of key change here in the eighth episode, I think is a lot of fun to talk about. Yeah, we are going to look ahead about. bit later on in our chat to the finale and to exactly what you just identified, how some of these threads that are clearly now, I think, going to entwine in a way that we had not anticipated are actually going to stitch together. But in order to get to that point, in order to look ahead, we must first look back. We must reflect. So let's talk about episode eight. How does you feel

about this episode overall? Where does it? You don't have to do it a total like, totally precise 1 through 8 power ranking or anything, but where did this generally slot for you in the run so far? Yeah, I think it wasn't like, you know, like the top episode just because I thought like Party Thor was so much fun. I thought Zombies was so much fun. But it was strong because it was distinct. And I'm a very large proponent of Age of Ultron as an underrated movie,

Ultron's an underrated villain. Like, he's a very important inflection point for the entire Infinity arc for the Avengers. And so I was very happy to see him brought back. I don't love how he was presented, just because a lot of the cameos from these past characters have been about fleshing out their character more,

right? We've got like a lot more killmonger, right? We got a lot more like Peggy Carter. And Ultra was just like, yeah, he still kind of doesn't get with pieces, so we're just going to keep doing that for a while. You know what I mean?

There wasn't as much kind of like development on him, but I guess like he is an AI, right? Like he has a synthetic intelligence that does make sense. So I very much enjoyed bringing him back and positioning him as this villain, even if I don't think they did it in a way that would have been super fun for me. But I enjoyed the episode a lot for that reason. The other thing that's a lot of fun about it, and I'd be curious to see how much the finale continues to go off of this, is that all of these episodes coming up to episode eight have ended with, and this could keep

going. None of them have had a neat bow on the end, right? And obviously, episode eight here is starting to pull some of those unclosed threads, those unclosed doors from other episodes, right? We saw sinister strange, right, come back from episode four. And I imagine we're going to bring in more of the existing alliances and new characters and other episodes as we get into episode nine. Will nine actually shut things down? Like, will we actually be able to put a bow on anything? Or is it just going to be, you know, continuing springboarding into all these hypotheticals

and all this multiverse that we expect from phase four? That's really fun for episode eight because for this week now, we get to sit here and go, I don't know. Do I know, right? So it's a very, it's a very, it's a very, much feels like at the end of Infinity War where you're like, holy smokes, something's going to happen. What's it going to be? Yeah, there is a real sense, not only of anticipation, but of consequence, of stakes heading into the what if finale. And, you know, I've enjoyed the whole season.

I've enjoyed the whole run, but it does feel elevated and heightened right now heading into the finale. Like, wow, this could have kind of massive implications for the rest of phase four and how the MCU is approaching multiversal storytelling in mass. I'm glad you mentioned that you're a big Ultron Stan, because, first of all, iconic take. But that was one of the things I wanted to ask you, you know, right at the start here, like whether Ultron was a character that you had been longing to see again,

yearning to return to your time with Ultron in some way. And clearly, the answer is yes. I think that my feeling on Age of Ultron My feelings on age of Ultron as a movie are complex and well chronicled. But I have always been deeply intrigued by the character for one of the reasons you mentioned. I think that what the presentation of Ultron as an AI, but, and this is not specific to Ultron or the MCU, obviously, this is a through line of many AI-centric tales. You know, the statement and insight about humanity and consciousness. and what humanity really is and how it manifests, like, what does it mean ultimately to be human?

And I always have loved that exchange with vision and Ultron near the end of age of Ultron when they're discussing humanity and they're just vastly different perspectives on whether certain aspects of the human experience in essence are to be eliminated and derided, which is, of course, Ultron's approach, or to be, you know, recognized and, you know, recognized and cherish really and celebrated in some way. And, you know, the line that Vision has, there's grace in their failings. I think you missed that.

Has always been, like, quietly one of my favorite MCU lines and moments. And so, you know, to your point, maybe about wanting, if we were going to get more time with Ultron, maybe more reflections on ideas like that, or to get to spend more time understanding and learning instead of just seeing Ultron, like, manifest as this nearly unstoppable, though presumably not ultimately unstoppable.

Hopefully. Hopefully. That would be got to talk about grim. I hear you there. I think that in general, though, I'll offer this as a devil's advocate take, a counterpoint. One of the things that I've been reflecting on

and thinking about throughout the what if run is that the differences that we see and the similarities that we see, that we see are ultimately just as telling, right? Like, it's always really illuminating when something new happens. That one key choice the watcher's always talking about, right? Or any number of, like, nature versus nurture elements, the context, the people around a given one of our characters, where they are in their lives, that lead to something different.

It makes you think, oh, well, what if, right? If something had happened, just this one degree of distinction. can drastically alter the course of events. But because that is the inherent premise of the show and is the foundation on which all of these episodes are built, the moments where somebody or something is so constant across that variance, you're like, wow, well, that is fixed in a way that is, I think, notable.

And so the fact that there are so many of those constants with Ultron, even amid the sea of variables, right, with, of course, the infinity gauntlet, which we'll talk about, the shattering of the multiverse, the interactions with the watcher, all of which we'll talk about more as we go today. That actually, I think, is revealing in a way. The degree to which Ultron is, like, actually an AI, and obviously we don't have, like, an optimal AI to compare him to, like, in the real world,

that discussion gets opened up in age of Ultron, but then it gets shuttered pretty quickly because we get the vision, and obviously he's, like, you know, kind of an AI, but he's kind of a human and whatever, and like that, that's left muddied. The moment I kept coming back to

from the age of Ultron movie, which I agree, like movie execution, eh, importance, huge. And I like the fact that we're getting that here. The moment I kept coming back to is when Bruce and Steve

find the remains of Jarvis, right, in the lab. And I think it's Bruce who says, like, this isn't strategy, this is rage, right? Like, he tore Jarvis to pieces. And there was no need for that.

to be done. There was no utility in Ultron doing that. It's just it was rage. And what I'm very curious to watch this OP Ultron arc, I don't know what we're calling, like, you know, superpower Ultron, but we saw victory. We saw him killing Tony again. Tony's death very clearly, an

absolute point. Tony will die forever. But we see him kill Stark, the man he hates, the rage. And then, you know, he has that moment where it's done, it's finally done, and he notices the watcher. But where is he, where is he standing, by the way, the remnants of Stark Tower, like on his father's grave, in essence.

Yeah, and so you have, and then he meets this watcher, he meets another being who perceives himself as omniscient, kind of as Tony did, right, perceives himself as, as the top of the world, and he is angry that he exists, and he's angry that there's a multiverse that he doesn't know. And we're continuing to get, like, Ragedron, you know what I mean, which was opened up a little bit in Age of Ultron, but we never fully got there. We never, like, fully investigated what that would look like. It was just unbridled fury from this all-powerful being. And again, like, you know, this isn't strategy. It's rage. Reminds me of when Thanos shows up, right? And it's just...

What a moment. Yep. Just dead. You know what I mean? No, no monologuing. No, you know, forces, no whatever, just immediate kill, right? And like that... Right down the middle. Right in half. Balanced as all things should be. Thanos has no choice but to applaud it. Yeah. Right. When Thanos told Thor, you should... should have gone for the head. What he meant is you should have gone for the head all the way down through the middle, just completely one cleaving blow. So yeah, I'm very interested in this ultron we're getting. And I think it's cool that he's getting sussed out even more. Even if it's like, you know, you can only make like an AI based character so interesting and so emotional. I think

it's cool that we're getting him more. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. or road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today.

To the point about how far can you take an AI character. I will, this is both my personal opinion and also I think the MSCU's stance, given the way that vision has continued to evolve and the vision Wanda arc in particular have evolved. I think unambiguously, we are supposed to think

that these characters are people. Like, what is a person? It's the ability to not only attain consciousness, right? And we hear all in this episode about reaching a higher, level of awareness and consciousness, but to feel things,

to want things, to desire things, to forge and build connection. And I don't know how, like, I can't, I can't look at vision anymore and say,

he's an android. Like, he's a being who has fallen in love and has, every decision that he's made throughout his life has been guided by his growth

and the growth has been guided by the power of the connections that he's forging. Now, that's interesting because it's, I don't think, though, that it's a counterpoint to the point you're making about rage. I think that those ideas run in parallel because rage is also a driving force in a way, a twisted way, an emotion, right?

I'm really interested to hear you say that rage is the primary driving force that you see with vision here, because I certainly correct. I found myself thinking, largely because Ultron says it in this episode about purpose.

And how to me when he achieves in our universe, in the, not our universe, the original universe of this episode, the first universe that we're in where he's destroyed and won and emerged victorious and then finds himself alone, I didn't perceive rage there.

I perceived despair. And the despair stemmed from the absence of more work to do. I liked the way that this episode deployed the idea of purpose as this at times warped not only concept but excuse, right?

This justification the characters can use to achieve their ends because it made me think of many other characters across the MCU to this point, including, of course, our guy Loki, glorious purpose, right? And so much of Loki's evolution

in Matri, inside of the television show Loki. Stems from, of course, building connection, learning to reflect and tap into the introspection to better understand himself so that he can better understand others. But also to rethink what purpose means and how it manifests.

So, you know, Ultron is compelling, I think, because he's got the bars, right? Like when he says to Carol, you have spirit. Yeah, that was a good one. She's like, you can't win. He says, I already have. it's like, damn, that's pretty good. And there are a lot of lines like that across the episode.

And he knows, this is, I think, essential for a compelling villain, how would it undermine our heroes? And Ultron does that not necessarily only by attacking their strengths or battling them physically, though, of course, we see that as well. But by attacking their vulnerabilities and their fears and the force of their will. and he believes that his will is superior and cannot actually conceive of the fact that any other being could match his will. And that is, of course, the ultimate failing and undoing of any foe, right?

The hubris to underestimate the people that they're fighting against, which I think will probably unfold in the finale. Yeah. And I think, right, these AIs are characters, these beings, these individuals are emoting. That's also the arc we got for The Watcher in this episode. episode, right? Let's talk about The Watcher for a few minutes. Tough one for our guy here.

Listen, he experienced surprise, right? And he was like, what the dickens? Like, what are we? Like, that was at the end of episode seven. And then obviously throughout episode eight, he experienced his surprise. He experiences fear, right? We see him like, you know, oh, shoot, Orchon, like this is that everything is at stake. My unbelievable television program that is the multiverse, like, you know, is in jeopardy. And then there's that just great scene where Clint is close to finding the Zola file in the Raiders of Lost Ark. And he's like, it's right there. Like, go.

It's there. And then he's giving up. He's like, no, you're not supposed to give up. Like, that's not what you do. Like, that's not what your character does, right? And we see now that he has become like embroiled. He has become a character in that moment. Right now he has a rooting interest. He has a vested interest. He still doesn't get to know how to like act on it. Because he's

never done that before. He's sworn his oath and whatever. But he's now like, you know, as he's been, you know, slowly zooming in over the horizon, over the over the course of the season, he steps into that scene. And he's like, no, like, get up, keep going, you can do this. And that's a very, like, human emotive answer.

It's a very human emotive request of a person. And Clint, who's always been the survivors, always been this enduring force. And he knows that character. He knows that person. He thinks that he's a relationship with him. He thinks that he can help pick him up. There's a lot of, like, the weaknesses of omnipotence in this episode

and how those things make all of these characters just simply more human. So it's very much an episode about what it is to be human, what it is to have humanity. Well, and I think also it's an episode about the perils of inflexibility, right? Because we just talked about how with Ultron, this absolute rigidity drives him. He thinks it's right, but the inability to adjust is central, right? The inability to consider another perspective. And that's also true for The Watcher, because of that.

Oath, right? I was thinking of... I love that Jamie Lannister Thrones lines so much, you know? So many vows. They make you swear and swear. It's like... We'll talk in a minute about how

the watcher performed against Ultron and, you know, what that I think tells us about Ultron's power and then, you know, I think we can connect that with what we saw with some other characters because there was some really interesting power scale dynamics in this episode. But in terms of the watcher's arc and the themes inherent in that arc, like, what is the cost of doing nothing and standing by? You know, his code is the guiding principle

of his life, but it's flawed. It's wrong. And the fact that he said he would adhere to it does not make it right. You know, the universe is on the line and he's not helping. I will say within this that I like the fact that he lets the characters make choices, right? Because, that would be, I think, one of the great fraught elements and complexities of this. If he is just like, oh, you know, I'm creating a little air current here so that this box falls or this folder makes its way into your hands some way, then what is actually connecting to the choices and the decisions that the characters have made? How is free will rendering in this universe? And how isn't it if somebody else is ultimately like pulling the strings or guiding in that way?

So in that sense, I like the fact that he's, that inaction is central to his existence. But at a certain point, my guy's got to get in the game and he waited too long. Like when he says, I can show them. I can intervene. I could save the multiverse and so many, many lives. Good note. Maybe give it a go. Sounds like a noble pursuit.

I say give it a try. Like if Nat had not found the Zola folder, would he have ultimately nudged it into Clint's face? Like at what point is the adherence not worth the cost? And we see the answer ultimately because at the end of the episode, when the doctor strange from the fourth episode of What If, who had been relegated through his own myopia into this sparkling purple prison, this shell, as he says,

of his own making, his own collapsed universe. the watcher realizes at that point he can't he can't wait any longer he says i see now i need your help but he waited so so long too long and so i wonder how we'll see that manifest moving forward to like will we just shift fully into okay it's time to act it's go time mode or will that guilt and that regret carry over into his story in any way either in what if or in the in the live action if he if he enters the rest of the MCU. I'm really curious to see moving forward how the watcher is deployed.

Yeah, so if you go and you like read a little bit about who the watchers are and like why they kind of have the vows that they do and whatever, you know, they were incidentally responsible for the destruction of the universe because they intervened and so they took a vow to never intervene. And it's like, brother.

Who among us? Yeah. Like, listen, the evil robot has six affinity stones. So this is, it's rule breaking time. This is the line. But we haven't outcrossed it. Like that, right, this is everything. And one, like, outstanding question to me that I don't, it makes it hard for me to understand

what the watchers used to and what he's not used to because kind of this being outside of time and outside of a single universe. We had Loki. We had the events of the TVA. We had He Who Remains kind of just, you know, the multiverse open up. Sacred timeline is fractured and the multiverse is unspooling, yes. And so that kind of. launches us into what we have now and what if, which is where like, oh, there's stuff to watch.

Like, there's things that previously would not have been happening because it would have been pruned off that now, like, is happening. At least that's, like, my current understanding of how the multiverse is going, which is obviously left a little bit open-ended to invite these sort of conversations. So in that way, you can understand a little bit why the watcher, like, doesn't know what to do here. You know what I mean? Like, he's never had this much multiverse action. He's never had this many timelines going as far as they've gone with as much consequence as they have, right? And that's why I think one of those initial points that you made where this is an episode with consequence, we feel that things matter is really important. Because in the first like seven, you know, episodes, you know, Iron Man died like, what, four times? And I was like, yeah.

You know what I mean? Right? Like the zombie episode. So many Tony deaths. Feeding Tony's head to an aunt. It was a particular, particularly tough one. So they're just given, they're just given us death left and right. And we don't feel it because it's what if.

It's hypotheticals. It's not real. And then all of a sudden we get to this episode eight and things become very real, very quickly. And so the agency by which like the TVA's process and all the storylines we saw on Loki, kind of opening up a multiverse for which he, for which, excuse me, the watcher is like not really prepared to like deal with all the consequences. He hasn't know the scale on which things are going to get so bad so quickly. that gives me like a little bit of mercy for him.

Like I understand like if this was like a little bit much. But at the same time, the robots got six infinity stones. Go time. Ben, you're so pure of heart. Let me, let me offer a couple counterpoints. Yeah, I agree with it. So I agree with you that we have a lot to learn still about how the multiverse functions inside of the MCU. And and also how the watcher really functions inside of the MCU.

Like, of course, there's a lot of comics canon to call upon, but the MCU for years has adjusted comics canon, right? So who knows what our ultimate understanding of all of this will be? But there are a couple things the watcher says actually in this episode. And this is just interpretation. I might definitely be wrong here that made me think the watcher was existing, like, across or independent of time. There's a line.

I have seen everything that is. ever happened, ever will happen, ever could happen. And so, you know, much like the TVA, now granted, of course, this was true for the TVA before everything that unfolded with He Who Remains in the Citadel and Sylvie's decision and the fracturing of the timeline. But the TVA, you know, was independent of our traditional understanding of the flow of time, right? So maybe there's like a corollary here to the watcher's existence. But also, like, the opening quote of the episode as well. We've seen this before.

A universe in the final days of destruction. But this particular story, this one breaks my heart. Which I don't get why this one broke his heart. Like, it was bad, but it was the other ones are bad. A lot of bad stuff has happened. A lot of bad stuff has happened. I mean, including, of course, as we know from the events of Loki, a vast multiversal war.

So, you know, we have so much that we still need to understand. I think in terms of the power display, there was really interesting shorthand across the episodes, some of which spans Marvel, including the comics, and some of which is specific

to just what we know to be true inside of the MCU. I think this applies to the Watcher. I think it applies to what we saw with Thanos and the Infinity Stones. I think it applies to Captain Marvel. While we're on the Watcher, Let's hit that one here.

The Watcher is an immensely, immensely powerful character. The fact that Ultron is stronger, like, is not only able to hang and contend, but take the Watcher to the point where it's like, all right, got to run, like need to basically scramble for time and rethink my entire oath-bound approach, instantly, you're like, okay, well, we're dealing with something

extraordinary here with this version of Ultron. In part, not only because of how Ultron is able to hang in the battle, but even just the fact that he could see him, like, there's that sequence when the watcher is saying, Victor Without a War, sentenced to spend all of eternity alone. And then we hear that, who said that? I thought that was a really cool moment in the episode. I love that.

Of course, again, Strange, Supreme, also saw and was able to interact with the watcher in that episode. So it's not the first time that we've seen this. But all of that, like those signals are instant in terms of us perceiving how strong this version of Ultron is. Of course, I thought that was interesting to talk about with Captain Marvel and the infinity gauntlet as well for a minute. But I'm curious just broadly on the infinity stone front, are you surprised? it all that the Infinity Stones are still in play in this way in Phase 4 of the MCU. Like, let's not forget that phases one through three are called the Infinity Saga.

And I remember when the drawer opened in the TVA and Loki and the stones, you know, were paperweights. There was a lot of like fan response that it was some version in essence of, how dare you, right? Like these are, but ultimately, of course, I was supposed to explain the way the TVA functions to us. But in that moment, I was like, wow, I'm just surprised that we're seeing these again because I think so much of the beginning of phase four is yes about building a bridge between the infinity saga and what's to come, but moving forward into a new era of Marvel storytelling. And so seeing them so central to how what if it will conclude is a little surprising to me. Do you feel that way or not really? No, I do. Though I understand why it's brought in for the sense of like power scaling, right? Like when Ultron kills Thanos at 0.2 seconds, that's there to let us know, hey, the Big Bad, that was the Big Bad.

that was the big bad for like 10 straight movies. Not as good as this big bad. Not as big or bad as this big bad, I should say. So I understand why it's brought in for power scaling. I would imagine, and this I think gets into our conversation in terms of what happens next, that some potential force, and there's like different theories on who it could be or what it could be, gets introduced in episode nine, such as to affirm to us, okay,

there is something out there or someone out there, more powerful than the Infinity Stones combined power, and that's going to be the person that we deal with across the course of, like, you know, maybe multiverse of madness, maybe Quantum Mania, maybe Fantastic Four, depending on who it is, they bring in, right? Like, to me, the Infinity Stones, which have been kind of like a gesture to throughout what if, right?

Like, you randomly see the Infinity Goal-Let during Party Thor, like, they just walk right by it, and you're like, what? That, ah! But... And Thanos has it in Wakanda, when the Quigodot is arriving in the zombie episode. Yeah, right. And so we've seen it like kind of gesture too to be like, yeah, the infinity stones are still around. I think that one of the objectives of episode nine will be introducing to us a force that beats out the infinity stones so that we understand kind of what phase four's big bad is going to be. Whether that's like Kang the Conqueror or something else, we'll find out.

What about Captain Marvel? Because, you know, I completely agree with you that seeing Ultron with just the minestone at that point instantly sliced Thanos who has five. five infinity stones on the gauntlet in half, you're like, okay, well, I spent three phases growing to understand that Thanos and those stones are top tier, the toughest thing that our heroes had faced to that point inside of the MCU, and this guy just made a joke of it, right?

So, when you see Captain Marvel, going toe to toe with Ultron, what did you make of that? Because we've seen more of Captain Marvel toward the end of what if. Obviously, Captain Marvel was a big part of the Party Thor episode, you know, prominent player and party pooper

in that episode. And Carol had a notable inclusion in sequence here. Love to see Captain Marvel go into binary form and use the powers. Of course, I always like to reflect on the fact that Captain Marvel, like Wanda, was a match for Thanos,

hung with Thanos. in endgame. The ingenuity that Thanos had to pull the power stone off of the gauntlet and put it into his other hand, use it independent of the tug of war for the gauntlet that they were having was what allowed him to emerge in that moment. But she was able to hang. So are you feeling like the things we've seen from Captain Marvel in what if are, in addition to what we saw in Endgame and, of course, the Captain Marvel film priming us for the way that Carol will be deployed in the future of the MCU?

100%. Yeah, because I think your least tapped Avenger to this point is Captain Marvel, right? She was kind of like the last one who dawned a little bit. Always popping out of meetings to go check on other planets. Right, exactly. And that's the thing is she gives us a nice touchpoint into different universes and different enemies in those universe, right?

I talk about like the Korean invasion and the potential storylines that you can get from that. And they definitely, right, over the last two, episodes have actually even more so than that because they keep just randomly dialing her up for stuff. I love how it took us like 15 of Marvel movies to finally hit the Carol Danvers button and we've hit it like four times and what if. Uh, just apparently Hill knows about it for some reason. But anyway, uh, when they, when I, when I saw episode seven and it was party Thor and she was called to deal with that, I thought mostly they were just kind of like, you know, giving us that, uh, like again, a little bit

of fan service because we had that good Captain Marvel Thor moment at the beginning of end game. we were like, oh? And then it never really happens from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so when she's like, she and Thor going toe to toe and party Thor is being all like hunky and stuff, I was like, oh, okay, that's cute. Like, that's fun.

You know, she ends up helping him get away with it at the end, little 80s sitcom, good vibes. But then right, all of a sudden in episode eight, she becomes her and the watcher, the only people who can, right, kind of hang toe to toe with this. And I think, right, right, we saw the team up that Thanos necessitated.

Avengers, plus Guardians, plus Captain Marvel, that it's everybody we had in a bag of chips, you know what I mean? The Ultron, 6 Infinity Stone Ultron has to demand some sort of a team up. And we've seen The Watcher and Sinister Strange kind of already start that.

You would imagine that Captain Marvel gets folded into that somehow because of the power that she's shown. And that's the thing is that when we go into the multiverse, you know, nobody's really talking about this because we're still feeling good about the fact that we closed

to that Infinity saga, we close the Avengers saga. But once we go to the multiverse, we get new caps and new Ironmans and new Black Panthers and new everybody, right? And so Captain Marvel gives us a good, again, touchpoint to step into like, you know, Avengers v. Evil Avengers fights when we get to stage four and stage five, which feels like an inevitable, you know, it might be indulgent, but you got to do it. It's going to be so freaking cool. And that's, that's been part of other major storylines before.

And so I think that yet, she has to be. a key link getting us from phase three into phase four. There's no way she isn't. Character's too good. Character's too powerful. Hearing you talk about team ups that could await on the horizon makes me think this will be one of the handful of rapid fire items will hit here before we move on from talking about episode eight.

Makes me think of our guy, Zola. The unlikely team up of this episode was Zola's. Zola's Siberia Hydra base consciousness we get a new version of the Camp Lehigh

Zola who we are quite accustomed to from the Winter Soldier Days we even get a reference inside of this one episode to the Camp Lehigh

version I absolutely loved I always love seeing Zola let me just say that and I loved it here as well Not that even the first time we've seen Zola in What If, of course,

was part of the Captain Carter episode as well. I just cherished the little dunk on Red Skull, you know. That was a delight. And I also really liked, I think, what if initially I found the pacing of these what if episodes, which are trying to just get you like acclimated to so much, so quickly, a little overwhelming. and now I'm really coming to appreciate all of the illusions and references subtle or overt that are baked into each episode. And one of the things that I loved in this was Clint pulling the box, the correct box, and either not seeing the Zola folder or not thinking that it was worthwhile, really fits, I think, with the through line of Zola's arc across the entire MCU, skirting beneath our.

attention, you know, beneath our notice and yet really actually being like highly, highly relevant and enmeshed into the fabric of so much of what proves consequential. And of course, the surprising team of pairing here came with Nat and Clint. You know, you mentioned earlier the Watchers line in that sequence about like what it means to be human. And he says, don't sit down. This is when Clint wants to give up. Get up. Come on. You're human. You. keep hope against the worst of odds. And that felt like a very deliberate reminder of why Nat and Clint were at the four,

in addition, of course, to The Watcher and Ultron of so much of this episode, the humans, the non-superpowered among the gods and the machines, really heightens those emotional through lines and themes. And I have to say, I want to hear how you felt about seeing Nat and Clint utterly cathartic to get the

inversion of the Voramere sequence. 100%. And see, and of course Red Skull is on Voramir. Zola is here, so that's one more connection, to see Clint. It should always have been Clint. To see Clint to be the one here. That always should have been Clint? Oh, yeah.

I didn't mind it. I did like seeing the shoe on the other foot, certainly. Listen, this is not the most important point. I just want to know what computer Zola does when nobody logs him on. Is he asleep? Is he playing solitaire or something? I'm going to say, on computers like that, you've got maybe Mind Sweeper, Tetris, right?

Like what? I bet he loves Tetris. Right. Is he just like reading binary code being like, oh, zero one, zero one. Like, oh, sick. Like, I just want to know what computer Zola does when he's sleeping.

But, no, getting Zola back was super fun. I very much enjoyed the entire Vormeer-Mere Redsko parallel arc, right? Down to that shot, which I think the animators have really started getting into their bag late. There were some gorgeous shots in this episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember the Wakanda fight scene against the liberation bots. Holy smokes. They really started to do some fun stuff. It was very... I keep thinking and getting called back to X-Men days of future past

just because it's like recurring out of time battles against big armies of robots. right? And that's kind of just like your general arc. But when you have that, that shot of Clint falling and they've got like, you know, the orange colors and the saturation, it's very, very voramiri. That was, it was fun. And it was cathartic because you did want that opportunity for Clint to do for Natasha, what Natasha did for him. Right. And like that continued endurance not only of their friendship, but just of them in like post-apocalyptic scenarios, right? Like when we first meet Clint and Natasha, it's Romania, right? When things were the worst and we both got out of that. And that's how that relationship has always been. They were part of the original Six Avengers, despite the lack of powers, because they were indoors. They were survivors. They were those who persisted, kind of as the watcher pointed his eyes to. So it was, I didn't mind Natasha making the sacrifice play for Clint in the movie. And I like the fact that we were able

to get Clint to make that play for Natasha here, because I think it is a nice bow on things, especially because like the last time we saw Clint, not like actually in the MCU, but in real life was the freaking Hawkeye Christmas trailer, right? Where it's like... Great trailer. Yeah, fun Clint, happy Clint, cute Clint. Like, this is great. And then you go to this Clint, he's like, yeah, I don't want to live anymore.

And you're like, oh, I forgot. You used to be like this. Yep. At least he's not on any serial killing sprees as Ronan in this episode. Speaking of the original Six Avengers, speaking of humanity, speaking of things that are lasting and eternal, as you mentioned earlier, another Tony Stark death in this episode is gotten to the point where the what-if team has had to address this. Headwriter AC Bradley did an interview with Entertainment Weekly this week and said, quote, I noticed on Twitter we're getting a lot

of crap for killing Tony a lot. He has become the Kenny of the what-if universe by accident. I thought that by accident was very interesting. I've mentioned this before on some of our what-if discussions. There's a part of me that wonders if the recurring Tony death scene. are meta in quality and there to remind us that we are moving to a different phase of the MCU because so much of how we think about the first three phases is about Tony in that version of the Avengers and that this that's that's that will always be precious to us right but that we are moving into a different phase of what the MCU is I liked as devastating as it was very very tough look for our guy Tony here yet again

But I really liked the connection to our Tony's plot, to his Ultron plot, to the hubris that manifests, and is ultimately part of not why we blame him, but why he is such a resonant and compelling character, because he is not infallible. He is so flawed and makes mistakes, you know, that I see a suit of armor around the world line here. Well, we're quite familiar with that idea from Tony, that language from Tony, and how wrong that can go from Tony. And where does that lead? Well, in our universe, it leads to the one of my all-time faves, just an iconic hand wave from Tony Stark. Ultron, my fault, in Captain America's Civil Awards.

Like, is that appropriate contrition? But there were all of these other little things, not only the through line of Tony's arc and the mistakes that he makes, but little things like that USB arrow that they used to upload Zola into the hive mind or to try to. Made me think of the USB arrow from the Avengers, the way that they're trying to use Zola to undo Ultron from within.

I mean, it's not a one-to-one, but it's not so different from Tony's Ultron plot that hinges on Jarvis and the cradle. And trusting in Jarvis and the force of another AI to be able to prove equal to Ultron. So even though we had to say goodbye to Tony again quickly, it was a rich Tony text. Yeah, and I think it was important for Ultron to kill Tony.

Like that had to happen to let him move on and go do, you know, something else in this episode. Peace in our time. Yeah. Is Tony, like Tony's death's an absolute point, right? He has to, I mean, because it doesn't happen the same way every single time. And I'm not sure if absolute points have to happen the same way. This is like, well, they don't have to happen in the same way because we see Christine die so many different ways in episode four. And that's how we learn about absolute points, right?

So I think the nature of the death could change. One of my questions, because I'm in the same place as you are with it. Is that what we're being told, right? Which would, I think, be devastating. The span of time that his deaths have covered, because they've aligned with so many different movies and points in our MCU timeline, that's the bigger question I have. Exactly, yeah.

Like, they're not one moment in time. Does that matter with an absolute point in time? Right. I don't know. Right. And the thing for me is thinking about these potential future teamups, thinking about these potential future, you know, alternate universe, like Avengers v. Avengers fights and whatever.

is that we know, you know, Robert Downey Jr. is like, out, out. So if I wanted to do future Avengers cameos... Say it or whatever, out-out-out. Okay, so in terms of what the actors have said, the most vocally out-out... You know, you pull me back in! The most... The actor has been most, like, vocal about being out-out, has been Robert Downey Jr.

So I wonder if the constant different universe, Tony deaths are kind of clearing us up for potentially bringing in, you know, reiterations of Chris Evans, Captain America, a reiterations of Scarlett's Black Widow, whatever, and having an explanation as to why Tony's not potentially around. I don't know if that's the groundwork they're laying, but that's like way, way, way out.

That's just mostly fan Ben hoping to see this. Well, Ben, Mao, do I have a theory for you? Brant. So while I don't think Tony's death is an absolute point, because with Christine, she always dies that night. Like, no matter what, that night, she cannot continue to live forward.

Whereas with Tony, we see in episode, episode three, he dies, you know, an Iron Man 2. Yeah, his deaths are spanning a wide swap.

Yeah, they're spanning a wide margin. And to be frank, everybody dies. Just that's how humans work. But for Tony specifically, I think what it is is he has to be the person

who snaps Thanos and his army away at the end of endgame, right? That's his purpose. Like, that's his absolute point. That's why it's one in 14,6505. And if he doesn't get to that point, it all goes to hell. Like, that's his cosmic reason for being here, is Tony brings back everybody after the Thanos snap.

If we're expanding that to the multiverse and not just our universe, there is no Thanos to snap. Right. In episode two, Thanos is cool dad, Thanos hanging out with Chadwick. You know what I mean? So like at times

there isn't a infinity stoned up Thanos to have to snap in some ways. But I do think there's something to the fact potentially if we connect this not only to the films

but to Loki that, boy, I might need another cup of coffee before we do this. Yeah, we're off in the weeds right now. Let's get it. Let's get it. I got track in one minute, I promise.

I can feel a note coming from Arjuna that our Tony, the Tony who snapped his fingers, right? The one in 14 million that, by the way, we were reminded of in this episode when the watcher mentioned the one last hope for this universe. Like, you, of course you're going to think of Dr. Strange and Tony and the one in 14 million, right? That moment with Tony and Thanos, with the nanogonlet, with the snap, that was the sacred timeline. That was not the multivor. That was, as we hear, I mean, it's all through the lens of TVA bullshit, right?

But the Avengers did what he who remains wanted them to do. Now, I still struggle with that because the idea that they're on someone else's tram line to borrow a devsism and not in control of their own choices is like deeply painful to me and a cause of great existential dread, right? but that Tony might just be might just be a completely different equation than all of these other Tonys because he was sacred timeline Tony

and these are multiverse Tonys it can all be true at once as Arjuna is observing right? That'd be a great podcast Arjuna everything's true all the time thanks for listening catch you next week

I mean but he's not wrong because Ultron says to the watcher right the watcher's like what's going on and Ultron's like it's the multiverse bro Like anything is going on. Yes.

Well, that gets us to, I'm glad you mentioned that because that gets us to, I want to hit our favorite Easter eggs as our final point, but that gets us to just a final moment of episode nine finale predictions here. Because I thought that, oh, but anything is possible in a multiverse line from Ultron felt like a mission statement, not only for the finale, but for phase four of the MCU at large. Like, what if is not the alternate history story that we thought it was going to? to be based on what the what if canons are it is what if comics are it is canon established mccan

in alternate universes but they are all as we see now connected so that feels like a declaration of intent and a promise that we yes as we've all said like have a lot to learn and more to understand which is part of a thrill like it's part of what's exciting that there's new mythology and lore to unlock and and absorb but how how will that manifest both in this finale and beyond? I thought the line, the other line that Ultron had, the boundaries of the multiverse are relevant to beings like you and me also felt like a primer line. Like, who else could that be true for? And that connects maybe to what you were saying earlier, Ben, about like what other figure might be a match here? Because I think that there are a couple

things that are to channel Arjuna's wisdom here. Think a couple of things can be true at once here. I think that that kind of line, and there were a few different moments in the episode that made me think about this, like, who might be a match just as an individual, right, is fascinating to think about? Is it going to be Kang?

Might it be Wanda? You know? Nexus beings. Wanda Maximoff is a nexus being. And also, of course, I think, in terms of specifically with Ultron, the Mindstone Formation or Activation connection, I think is notable.

And I think, like, because I was very surprised Wanda wasn't in this episode. So it makes me believe more, it's more like, like, that helps me believe that she shows up in episode nine because it was weird that she and her brother were not in this episode, in my opinion. I'm all set on Pietro,

but at least the age of Ultron version of Pietro. I'm ready for a new version of Pietro. Strange Supreme, obviously another contender, right, given the rise in power that we have seen inside what if and the exchange with Strange and the Watcher at the end of the episode. Shumagorath, perhaps. We've seen what we think is Shumagorath a couple times.

That's a big theory in terms of not only the rest of what if, but multiverse of madness and other stories. Here's my theory for the finale. This is not a spoiler because I have no idea. It's just a shot from the trailer, the preseason trailer. So those can be fakeouts, right? Who knows? But there's a shot in the trailer of Strange and Captain Carter.

together that we have not seen yet. So that paired with what we got from Strange and the Watcher at the end of the episode makes me think that we're heading into basically a recruitment mission, right? All this talk all season long and theorizing and speculation among the fandom about the multiversal Avengers. My theory is that all season long, and I don't think this is a unique theory, I think probably a lot and maybe even most people are expecting some version of this, right? we thought throughout much of the season

that these episodes were sandalones and that question of oh, I wonder if we'll ever come back to that final moment like you were mentioning earlier, right? Like gave you this sense of yearning to return. I think that the episodes that we've already seen that they connect more than we thought because there's connection

to the end of seven, what we get here in eight, and then of course what's going to come in nine, but also to Dr. Strange in four, I think all of those episodes are going to connect because the assembling of this group of the Multiversal Avengers

will be a character or many characters from every one of the episodes we've seen so far. So it'll be Captain Carter from the first episode. Maybe we will get Tichala's Star Lord.

Maybe we'll get the ego who we saw go off on quill at the Dairy Queen. Maybe we'll get Loki from the Pym taking out the Avengers episode. Could we get zombie Wanda? Like, could they cure her

in time for the fight? Do they need to, given that her power still work? Again, I think she's a unique match maybe, given that she's a nexus being and has that Mindstone connection. What about zombie Thanos?

There's another infinity gauntlet. Could we see more than one infinity gauntlet come into play here? Can we see Killmonger, Party Thor? All of those we will revisit that moment. Endings could come into play here, I think. Yeah, I very much agree that recruitment, like I said, like we saw the team up that had to happen

to deal with regular old Thanos. Now we've got Opie Ultron. Teamup has to happen. And why would you not go grab, you know, know, Black Widow with the Red Guardian Shield. Why would you not go grab Captain Carter? Why would you not go grab, you know, zombie Wanda if you can get that? Get a second Infinity Gauntlet in the building.

Let's go for it. So I think team up is inevitable. I agree with you on that. The big question that exists for me is whether or not they suss out Kang. Because what makes the most sense to me is, you know, he who remains shutting down all these extra timelines. But guess what? We're not pruning anymore.

All these timelines are going bananas. and he predicted he who remains, like once that happens, my iterations will begin to rise up. They will begin to develop. They will begin to create technology. We'll begin to get outside of time. So it is intuitive that,

to me, we do a team up, we try to stop OP, Ultron. We are unable to do so. And then in the last moment, we are saved by King to Conqueror. And at first we're like, yay, we're saved.

And then we start talking to this guy and we're like, ah, just that, that just didn't want someone to challenge him. Yeah. Yeah, because. Right, because it's very clear that we're going to launch into multiversal nonsense across the upcoming movies, right? So we need to be able to, to me, there wasn't enough development of he who remains as Kang the Conqueror in Logie alone that we can just take from Loki season one and start to get Kang like into stage four all the, excuse me, into phase for altogether.

I think he needs like more, you know, us figuring out what he's going to be like now that these timelines aren't being pruned. This seems like the spot where you'd be able to get him in. Well, I think one of the things that was so exciting about the Loki finale is that variant aspect in the various universes and the sense that every Kang we meet might be different, right? So every time we see a version of Kang, it might be, on the one hand, a valuable data point, as you're saying. But on the other hand, we might never be able to fill in the puzzle because every piece has the chance to be new, which is very exciting. Quickly, before we got, last thing, favorite Easter egg from the episode, because there were, as always, so many. Did you have one that stood out for you

or a few that are at the top of your list? I referenced it earlier. I liked it when Black Widow picked up the Red Guardian Shield. I thought that was fun. Especially because she wasn't like... Clint also had the bionic arm that made us think of Bucky, so we had a couple... And the sneaky cloak. Okay, yeah.

I know cloaking tech is a part of shield lore and everything, so I guess I'll allow it. But like, yes, the flat-out invisibility cloak usage was a... No explanation. Really something. I guess we could put that into the list of pop culture references, though, because it's, you know, invisibility cloak is HP, so then you can say we got HP, Terminator, Raider, Star Wars.

Clint's got superbiotic arm and sneaky cloak, and Blackwater had nothing new. We're still killing people with motorcycles. We're still at that stage of Black Widow. But anyway, I loved what you picked up the shield. Yeah, I thought it was really fun, especially because it wasn't like, you know, you said she didn't mention Alexi, but it wasn't like, you know, oh, emotion, sad, morning.

it was more so like a reminder of like, oh, like this used to be a thing that would matter to me, right? It was in an aphorism. It was like, oh, this used to like, this would have once made me care. But now, like, and this is, we're in post-apocalyptic Ultron world. Like, it's just funny. And it very much reminded me of like when when Kat picks up Mjolnir, right, in Endgame and, you know, you just have videos of crowds and movie theaters going nuts. Marvel decision makers were like, let's just keep doing that. We're going to have her pick up Red Guardian Shield.

You know what I mean? We're going to keep on like kind of making these like odd connections between like the weapon of one of a hero and another and see if we can get some more of that energy. Because it is a lot of fun to like see her throw a shield like cap does. You know what I mean? They did that with Falcon and Winter Soldier as well. And so that was my favorite one. I thought that was cool. Especially because like Black Widow as a movie was fine.

So it was nice to do something like this, but I thought it was just like cute and fun to gesture towards it. That's a good one. We are, you know, speaking of shields, we see the the shattered cap shield and the Avengers. littered and dead around Tony right before he dies. And of course, that shot of a fractured cap shield makes you think of Tony's vision and Ultron. I had a few Easter eggs. There were so many.

I had a few that, really, that I liked. I'll note among all of the different planet jumps that we saw, there's a theory on the internet and also here on this Zoom, because this is a Jomi theory, that the fire planet that we saw is Mustafa, and that they went into Star Wars inside of this episode. Now, of course, there are, again, like, Death Star references.

I just assumed that this was Moosephalheim, Surtar's Lair, and that we were still in Marvel canon. But I will just note that the Moosevar theories are out there. Because wasn't Corg on that planet? Cork was on Sikar, I think, because we saw the Grandmaster and that sequence to. But yet, we saw so many different shots. We saw Asgard. We saw Zandar. We were the Sovereign.

We were popping all around. So that was just really fun in general. We already talked about the pop culture references, which were fun. It was, I enjoyed the moment of a president cap being sworn in Steve Rogers on the Jumbo Tron. Yeah, yeah. And I liked the allusion to Galactus, the planet eater, of course, and that shot of Ultron, you know, opening wide to munch on a galaxy. And then lastly, I just have to, I just have to say that when Ultron was dunking on the watcher by saying, isn't this more fun than just watching? And to be honest, it's a lot less creepy on your part.

I was like, someone needs to pass that along to hide. Listen, I am aware of this podcast's longstanding multi-year opinions on Heimdahl. And I will just say, for the record, Idris Elba could never do anything wrong. Heimdell's perfect character. Thank you for your time. Idris is perfection. Heimdahl, stop the creeping. It's weird.

The Jane Foster and Party Thor just screaming Heimdall. And Heimdell just pulls her and is like, yeah? What do you want? Like, Heimdahl! What he thinks happening on Midgard right now? Getting that from Heimdahl and Odin just once again ducking out into the Odin's sleep at an inopportune moment. Everyone, man. Loki's like top five most responsible person on Asgard.

They all think that he's just this, this, this gallivanting Rapscallion. Meanwhile, none of them ever do their jobs. Real sign of the times with Loki in a position of maturity and contribution. All right, Ben, this was a joy. Thank you so much. Come back anytime. I appreciate it. Thanks much for having me out, Mel.

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soft lightly lined cups for a natural shape, and no wire comfort that lasts all day. All over smooth, all-day comfort. Vanity Fair lingerie. Find yours at Target today. All right. It is time for some more Star Wars Visions talk here on the Ringerverse. And I am so excited to say that it is time for another edition of Ringerverse recommends. We did this a few weeks ago with Zach Kram to talk about time travel story recommendations for listeners and viewers who loved Loki.

And now, joining me right here today to share their Star Wars vision's thoughts and their anime recommendations for fans who loved visions and want more anime in their lives. And I'm going to put myself into that group. I loved it. I thought it was sublime. I want more. And I need someone to tell me what to check out next. It is. Ringer Writers.

and sound only co-hosts, Justin Charity and Micah Peters. Guys, welcome into the ringer verse. Hey. Thanks for having us. I'm so excited to be here with you today. Thank you for joining. Yeah.

Thank you for having us. We would love to talk about Star Wars, wouldn't we, Justin. Yes. Yeah, yes. Animates Star Wars, certainly, for sure. Yes. So there are two main reasons that this felt right.

One, we do all love Star Wars. We do. I mean, I'd say that we've talked about phantom menace, maybe more than any other people have talked about phantom menace together. Yes, yes. I think that that's fair. In the 2000s into 20s. And you guys love anime.

Your anime experts, you talk about many, of your passions and interests on your pod, sound only, which everybody should check out here on the Ringer Podcast Network, follow on Spotify. You talk about anime a lot. You share your reflections, your thoughts on what makes anime work, what you're enjoying at a given moment,

what you've enjoyed over time. So there's nobody I'd rather hear from on exactly this. But before we dive into the recommendations for other anime stories that people should check out, want to just hear generally, broadly, how you both enjoyed visions. What did you think of this Disney Plus Star Wars anime anthology? When I first was like encountering visions,

I kind of had the idea that it was going to be a lot like, like those anthology series like the Matrix anthology or the Animatrix or the also the Fincher cartoon thing that he was doing for Netflix with the

love, death, and robots where it was just like, let's throw a bunch of different animation styles at disparate

storylines and see what sticks. And it more or less is that, but also feels, like, I guess it just like feels more like

like a fan freak out. I think I disagree with that a bit. I do agree with you that, yeah, going into it, I had that

sense of, okay, Disney is gunning for the Animatrix, right? That feels like the easiest reference point for something like this, the sort of anime anthology associated with the original Matrix movies, right? And yeah, I thought a lot about The Mandalorian, because I think this, I think, I think, I think Visions works for a lot of the same reasons of the Mandalorian works for me, but also thought back to a lot of, again, the novelizations of Star Wars from that period right before we really got into, like, before we really got the Phantom Menace, like in theaters back in the day, right, during the sort of Star Wars special edition era. So much of the, the big movie making in Star Wars in the past couple decades has really leaned into the idea of Star Wars as epic

storytelling about a very small, centralized family or cast of characters. And I think this stuff works so much better, for me, at least, right? Because it gets back. into the idea of Star Wars is a really, really big world. It has all these little corners and pockets with lots of people who maybe they know who the Jedi are and they all have similar sort of mythology that they can tap into, but they tap back out of it. And they're sort of doing their own thing and having their own stories and their disparate corners of the universe. I really like that about visions. Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, I did a whole Vision's episode last week here in the Ring ofverse with Ben Limburg. And I think that, you know, we handed out awards,

talked about our favorite shorts, our favorite lightsabers, all of that stuff. But I think the through line of the conversation was just how fresh visions felt, even though it also, at once was like fresh and new and vibrant and connecting to the original inspiration for Star Wars in the first place, right, and had this cyclical feel in that respect. But, you know, the widening of the Star Wars storytelling tapestry, like beyond the Skywalker's, right? And even though there are certain parallels, certainly, and I think, connective tissue and like plot points. And, you know, I think the twins is maybe one of the strongest examples inside of visions

of one where you could map on if you wanted to one to one almost like every element. And of course, broadly, visions unlike to use your comp, the Mandalorian, is not canon, which I think is like an interesting thing to keep in mind as you watch and ultimately unlocks all of those themes and through lines even more fully in a way. because you don't have to worry about the implications or the connections or what the ripple effects are of a given story choice or character set might be. But it's interesting to maybe think about the other side of that, given again your Mando point,

because it's like, well, maybe this all should be canon. Maybe it can be in whatever the next version of this is because the primary canon shouldn't just be confined to such a small consideration set. Or alternatively, what if there shouldn't be a canon at all? Right. And that's where I think, Micah, you point about a fan freak, that's the part that's true to me, right? Is anything can be true? The universe is so big that it can contain all these multitudes, right?

They don't have to have, they don't all have to run through a central connecting thread. Yeah, I mean, like, that's the sort of idea with the very first episode, the duel being a situation where it's like, oh, it's the guy that is coming to, stop the woman with the lightsaber parasol is not like, you know, the Jedi wandering in from his vision quest, but also another Sith Lord, a bit of a subversion of the good people are not necessarily the capital G good TM people. Like it's more complicated and messier than that. I think Star Wars is ultimately more interesting when that's true, beyond even just good or evil, and the binary that runs through so many Star Wars, which, like, to be clear, I love Star Wars, right?

But it is energizing to see these new versions of it. One of the reasons that I love Asoka so much, like, Asoka's not moving along the spectrum of good and evil, but she's unwilling to just abide by all of the logic and rules of the Jedi Order because that's what so many other people do. It's like, well, what if there were a different path in a different way? And so, like, to stick with Micah with your example of the duel, Ronan, he's a really interesting one because I found that so gripping that short. That was the village bride was my favorite, but the duel was definitely in my top tier.

It's like, man, I would love to learn more about this character and what motivated his choices and how he's navigating the galaxy and why. And then it's like, we're getting a novelization. So is that going to be canon? Like, when do these things move into the primary canon order to charity's point? doesn't matter. There's going to be so much to talk about here for so long. And I think that, you know, one of the things I was really interested to chat with you guys about and hear more from you on is at the most like elemental sense, why all of this is possible and why, you know, charity, this is something that you were, you were mentioning when we were slacking about visions

just to prep for today. Why anime feels like such a strong medium and such an apt choice for unlocking that aspect of Star Wars action adventure stories. When you think about Star Wars, if you are coming at it from like a child's remove going to the movies with your parents, the things that you see or understand about it are cool cloaks and lightsabers. And like knowing like the way that that moves around and how the, exactly. And anime is like a good medium to explore how. how

like the kinetics of those things, how they move around, like how, like, and to make them look as cool as possible and have that be the centerpiece. But also, another thing that I, like,

realized when I was, like, watching visions is that I didn't, it didn't really stick for me when I was watching it in English because the production company is, is Japanese. Everybody that did the, the animation,

everybody was, like, it was a Japanese production. So, like, when you watch it in English, it feels like, Nine shorts, seven different anime studios.

The cheesy emotiveness of like the dialogue works better when it's in when it's in Japanese. I think that like Charity and I talked about this like on the podcast a little bit before, but it's just kind of like there is a certain element of saying the quiet part loud that goes into anime that only really works when you are listening when you're like washing it in Japanese. Yeah, yeah, you get a lot of, again, the sort of ecstasy of animation meets the ecstasy of a certain kind of voiceover performance. They're good, like, I'm not one of those sort of

dub versus subpartisans, but yeah, there are sometimes when you do just need to watch the dub of something to really get the full force of that, especially if it's an action thing, right? If it's one of those shoddy action, the acting, yes. It's like you need, you need, like just like the guttural vocal performances that are just like go for broke, leave it all in the field. And it sounds dumb or it sounds whiny when it's in English somehow. Can I also just say

though, it's like I think the other thing going on with this though, right, is like I think because Disney owns Star Wars and Disney is also putting out Marvel movies, right? You have all this live action stuff that kind of starts to crowd out the big obvious fact to me, which is that Disney is the most famous animation studio in the world, right? And yet, Disney exists on a spectrum where at the end of that spectrum is anime, right? These two things influenced each other, I think, right, in the previous century, right? But they're very different things. And I think American, it's sort of like you have American film animation that Disney dominates, right? I think on the one hand. And then you have anime, and I think anime, the stronger format for anime is TV.

And anime is so much more than American animation about physicality and about being naturalistic and realistic in terms of human movement and human proportions. Right. And so to me, it's like, it's so obvious as to be profound why anime suits Star Wars in this way, right? It's because anime is just very good. at saying, okay, you want to give a really high action, high, you want to give like fantasy and action and people moving around with lightsabers and appearing exhausted and colliding, you know?

That's what anime does more than American animation. But it also gives it like a consistent internal logic. Like, you know, one thing leads to the other and it makes sense. Like, although it's fantastical. And there was such a visceral quality to watching all of visions and, you know, each short, this is a, again, very obvious thing to say, right? But you mentioned film versus television.

Well, these are shorts. You know, the studios have to get the entire feel and pace and character set and world and theme and intention, the sensibility, all of it across in 13 to 23-ish, 24-ish minutes across these nine shorts. So I'm curious for your thoughts as well on the studios, the seven Japanese animation studios that worked on Visions and why they felt like the right fit for this particular vessel and project.

And then also, as part of that, the particular animation styles that we see here in Visions, you know, Charity, you mentioned when we were chatting this week that the blend of the 2D and the 3D is something that you were thinking about as you were watching. I'm curious to hear why that left such an impact on you guys. Yeah, I will say that like one of the most, like speaking in super broad strokes and sort of based off what I was just saying, right, about the actioniness in the physicality of anime. I think it's notable that a lot of the studios involved in this are studios that are both

associated with series that have a lot of good physical action and yet none of them are really I would say like Shonen specific. Micah, do you agree with me about this? Like, I think the sort of core theme and watching these shorts is that it's a lot of action and it's a lot of that kind of animation. But it's not a situation. It's not in the Shodan style where people like announce what they're doing. And then like, and then when the chips are down, they have a flashback where, you know,

their father comes to them in a dream and tells them how to do like this move that's going to save them. Like, it's really, it's more so, like, in the, in the spirit of, like, the Jindy Tartovsky, like, uh, Clone War stuff where it's like, where you basically, it's, it really is a storytelling device. I'm thinking about, like, the twins. That one, I think is like the, like, the biggest, like, visual feast, especially, like, at the end with the Star Destroyer. Yep. Like, recreates the moment in The Last Jedi where every, like, it was like the one silent moment where you could hear everybody go. Yeah.

But like it was like a real. Yeah. Like it was each like the frames in that episode, each of them feels like you could pull it out and put it in a like a picture frame and hang it in your house. Multicolored lightsaber, gigantic chiber crystals, people breathing in the vacuum of space. But also in the same spirit of that, Micah, to me, it screamed out to me as like, this is the kind of, I mean, they're great as shorts, right? But they're also the kind of things that you present to someone.

where you're saying, okay, give me more money to make more of this, you know? It's very much, like, they're short stories, but they're also showcases. They're kind of just teasing to you what a studio trigger show looks like. That's what I meant like in terms of like the love, death, and robots thing. Here's what we could do if you gave us more money to tell a story about wherewolves enlisting in the military and going to Afghanistan. which was, I shit you not, one of the storylines in that Love Death the Robot show.

But like, you know, yeah, I think it is sort of like a tour to force. To that point about the shorts feeling like showcases, you know, that's a good segue into our recommendations here because I know one of the things I was feeling after I watched Visions was, I hope we get to return to some of these worlds, right? To some of these stories, that they become standalone series or films or that we get to see more shorts from these studios and another season of visions,

whatever the case may be. But independent even of future Star Wars possibilities, what anime do you guys want to recommend to everybody who watched Visions who doesn't have the maybe anime expertise or prior experience that you do? Okay, you loved this, whether it's Visions as a whole,

maybe a specific short, maybe what one of the studios did, go check out this. Let's run through your your handful of recommendations here. What do you got? I'd say my favorite of the studios is Science Saru,

which is Masaki Yuasa's studio. I guess the first one I'd recommend from Science Saru is keep your hands off Isaac in just because that one, that show is actually a pretty low-key, it's a drama about three

or comedy, too, about three high school girls launching their own animation studio, but they sort of work in a similar style where the episodes are following them making shorts, right, that are kind of just testing the bounds of their imagination. And so, yeah, every time I watch one of these Star Wars Vision shorts, I thought about Isaacan because that sense of, yeah, you know, the animation is doing all the work. The animation is telling you a story just based on the idea that there are certain things you can only really do in this medium visually. And then I

think the other thing from Sciencearu is the nightish short walk-on girl, which is kind of, but also kind of not a continuation of this show from Masaki-Wasa called The Tatami Galaxy. You don't really need to watch that series. That series is a little more overwhelming, but the night is short- Really difficult to watch that series. Why? Because everyone speaks so fast. Like, it is, like, the guy is trying to- A stylistic choice, but yeah. Yeah. From the splash screen, the guy starts talking and does not stop until the episode is over.

And it's fast. Like, and he's talking about, I don't know how to create this TV show. And I went to get some ramen. And then the guy, this family, Robin did do blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, all these characters are like hastily rendered into this universe and the rules are all over the place. And it's, but it's beautiful. It's my favorite, you also if you really want to challenge yourself, watch the Tommy

Galaxy. but I would say the movie, the night is short walk-on girl, I would check that out. Very boozy, very boozy anime movie. I like a lot. And then I feel like the more obvious stuff is stuff like

Fully Cooley, right? Making Kill a Kill A Kill. That is studio trigger. Also, Pro Mare, which is like this crazy movie that is also like an orgy of blue flame and the same sort of thing that was with the twins

and like the B&A art style. So you guys have mentioned just to just to establish this. You've mentioned Science Saru and Studio Trigger so far. Those are the two studios that each did two of the shorts inside of vision.

So Science Saro did T-O-B-1. My dear Toby Joy to be killed the Jedi. Wonderful. Wonderful stuff. And Akakiri, which was gorgeous and absolutely soul shredding and heart-wrenchingly sad. And Studio Trigger did The Twins, which has come up, you know, multiple times today already.

And the Elder, which was also one of my favorites, I thought, quite brooding and intense. And I loved it. There's also Geno's Studio who did the, like, the second to last, the second to last episode. They also produced a show called Golden Camois, which like are, like people that write into the podcast have recommended to us a lot. I watched like a fair bit of it. It's kind of like your classic treasure hunt anime, but like it's basically a group of people that are like stuck together

and have a lot of survivalist mishaps and, you know, in service of finding this giant, you know, gold treasure that was, that belonged to this indigenous people. and there's like a legend behind it. But really a lot of the show is centered around the party, like eating. Like they just are sharing their culture with each other, like around the campfire in between, like, moving on or hiking to like the next place. It's really like a calm.

It's a good hang. It's a good show. I'm reading the manga. I haven't watched any of the anime, but I'm reading Golden Comedy manga right now, actually. And then the other one I hadn't recognized immediately. You know the Kimmer Citrus at one of the shorts. And it took me a second to realize that that's a studio founded by a bunch of people from Bones. Mike, I don't know which Bones shows you'd recommend the most.

I think for people who are into visions, I'd recommend Blood Blockade Battlefront. So their short was the Village Bride, right? The fourth short, which happened to be my favorite. I thought that was astounding. Yeah. I mean, Bones has a lot. Bones, like a lot of stuff, and Blood Blockade Battlefront would be my wreck there, a Matsumutter show. Also, you mentioned production IG earlier, and their Vision short was the 9th Jedi.

Yeah, but like, production IG is huge. And like, there are a lot of, they're doing a, what is the definitive production IG anime recommendation. I feel like we'd be here all day with Rex. But, um, but like, Bones is, is just so necessary that you just got to, I'm just going to, I'm just going to say that you should watch Mob Psycho 100? Yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, I agree. You should watch Mob Psycho 100, and you should also watch Space Dandy. Mob Psycho 100 is, like, has, it's basically centered, well, it's centered around this kid that has

extraordinary telepathic powers. Like, he has the powers of telekinesis. But he's like an empath, and he has to use those powers to exercise the souls that have lingered on our plane for too long that have become angry, homicidal, giant, misshapen sludge monsters, usually. But like the animation style is like really like this ecstasy of color and crazy-ass contour lines or whatever. And it's also like a very emotionally tender show.

Very funny. I highly recommend MobCycle 100. And also Space Dandy is just kind of enough. one of those shows that's a little like cowboy bebop where it's like a group of freelancers living on a ship trying to make rent but like they go through a bunch of random like hijinks like in one episode they go searching for the perfect bowl of ramen like all over the universe like it's it's such a dumb show but it's great and mallory to your point about production IG though like fully Coolie, also known as FLCL, it's like the main production IG show that we'd recommend.

I have two Fully Cooley tattoos. I honestly learned something new every time I go back to watch it. Those are my favorites. The rewarding rewatches where you can either appreciate a different perspective because of what you've watched since or you just stumble upon a new line or nugget that, yes, exactly, or your perspective has changed when you come to it again. Love that. Yeah.

Fully Cooley is crazy because it. It doesn't make linear sense at all. Like actually the plot of the show gets in the way of the message of it. Things do not matter for longer than five minutes. And yet there's like all this stuff, all this really like thoughtful stuff about coming of age in it. That's useful at basically every stage of life. I love a coming of age tale. This all sounds wonderful.

I can't wait to dive in. There's so much here to check out. I'm so excited. Any other recommendations you want to throw out to the listeners? This is a lot. This is a bounty of goodness here to explore. Honestly, if people are listening to right now and they're like, oh, my God, I can't believe. They got the anime dudes on here recommending the anime.

Just go back and listen to our own podcast. Like Sound Only was originally an Evangelian podcast, like a kind of retrospective recap podcast. So go back and listen to our episodes about Neon Genesis Evangelion. We did six of them mad long ago at this point, 100 episodes ago. A hundred episodes ago. I'm sure that the anime bullshit episode has a whole lot of recommendations in there. Yeah. We have a whole theory of dumb anime bullshit instead of the term for it.

We did a whole episode about it. We did an episode about Avatar too. that. Don't listen to it if you will get mad at me. No, listen to it. Listen to it and and respond as if it was like the episode that we just did to our email, which is Sound OldiePod at gmail.com. But the other thing that I was going to say is that the show that I've been watching most recently is a VV Florite song, which I'm not even going to attempt to explain the premise to it because like I'm just going to sound crazy and it's going to take me 15 minutes.

But it's some of the best physical animation I've seen this year, outside of like the throne room battle between Isaac and Carmilla and Castlevania, which was like probably top of the tops. Yeah. You know, can I make that point? You brought this up and I forgot to address it, Mallory, your point about the CG in this. Like, Doug, I don't know if you know, but turn of the. century anime, it was when anime really started trying to do that integration of, you know,

2D animation and 3D computer graphics, right? And it was rough back in the day. And I look at something like this. And, you know, I look at something like Star Wars Visions. I think the integration of the 3D and the 2D and visions is so spectacular. And it's really only been like the past decade where anime, where TV anime really has started to come into its own and not making you feel that kind of uncanny valley feeling when you look at some 3D stuff pop up in a 2D animated short. And yeah, a lot of the shows we're talking about are good at that. Evangelion too, actually. I feel like the Evangelian reboot movies.

Like, I don't know. I love watching good action anime that knows how to incorporate. the computer-generated stuff. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think without having the anime, the grasp of anime history to be thinking about that, like, consciously as I was watching it, of course,

it's still something that struck me, just as a viewer, because there's something that feels kind of like ever-evolving and fluid, not only inside of each short, but then across the shorts. And that was one of the things that I really loved about

visions as a whole. And to Micah's point from a few minutes ago, just in general, like thinking about rewatching things, which is always something that's top of mind for me when I'm watching it for the first time. I'm already like, what will I think when I see this again? I struggle to stay in the moment, guys. But I love the idea that you can watch it in Japanese. You can watch the English dub, as you guys noted earlier. You can watch it in order one through nine, start to finish. You can just go back and check out the one short that is like calling to you at the moment and maybe it's because of the specific style or blend or pace. Maybe it's the characters.

Maybe it's the particular Kyber Crystal not canon evolution in a given story. So many Khyber crystals. But it's really just such a rich and I thought thematically, like quite poignant viewing experience that I loved. So it was really fun to talk to you guys about it today and really fun to learn some more about some other things that I and others should check out. I'm excited. Before we go today, while we're on Visions, just for a moment here,

I want to ask Steve Allman to pop on and join us for a minute because I was listening, was listening to the Midnight Boys. Yeah, brother. This is about Star Wars Visions. This is about lightsabers. All right.

And you mentioned in the, in response to the prompt about what everybody's lightsaber would be, that you would have two, that you would have a green and a red, and you said that there was a story

behind it and that it involved someone close to you and then you didn't say anything else and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Did you kill someone in single combat? No, no, no. Steve, are you at Sip? I am not a SIFT.

What if I told you had fallen under the control of the Dark Lord of the SIP? No, so this was a culmination of a story that I had done with a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with some longstanding Chicago friends that had since ended in 2019

and I had played a Jedi that was just at the end of his rope come the beginning of Order 66 and through the span of our campaign was separated from his lost Jedi love after the execution of said Order 66. Separated from, is that a euphemism for saying she was brutally murdered by the clone army? No, she was, I was off-world

and we were separated from each other when it happened. Okay. So I was in pursuit. to find her. And when our DM decided to reintroduce that character into the, into the story, we had found out that she had defected to the Inquisitors. No! Darth Vader, no!

No! I was going to say it. No. Choice of words here. Yeah. It's tough. Oh, boy. So who amongst us hasn't looked into the steely, beautiful eyes of a murderous villain and

thought we could fix them? Wow, Steve, what a heart-wrenching story. Long story short, I had now had two. I had a green one and a red one. You didn't purify the Khyber crystal? You carried it that way intact. I did. A reminder of what was lost.

Can I just say the way Steve pronounced the specific way he said, off-world was just there was a beauty. It was like the entirety of human history was contained in the way he said, off world. That was stirring stuff. You're just feeling it.

Yes, we were. Thank you for sharing that with us. We are all new. Of course, happy, happy to. Justin and Micah, thank you so much for popping on with us today. This was so much fun.

Everybody, if you want more anime takes, more everything takes from Justin and from Micah, follow along with sound only every week on Spotify. or wherever you get your podcasts.

Well, friends, my will to pod meter is flatlining, so it's time to wrap today's episode. Before we do, thank you as always to our AI, Steve Allman, for producing today's episode. Our Watchers, Arjuna Ramgapal and TD St. Matthew Daniel for their additional production work on this episode, and our Century, Jomi Adenaron, for his work on the social for this episode.

And of course, thank you to today's Jedi. Hi, Ben Solac, Justin Charity, and Micah Peters for joining me today. Remember to follow the Ringervverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the Ringerverse across our social feeds and head back into the Ringervor's next Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for our Venom and What If Talks? Until then, remember, anything is possible in a podcast multiverse. 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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