7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[Nayoko-Kihara]

Every time it gets close to episode 13 during a season of "The Magicians" (as it has), I'm both happy and sad. Happy it isn't spread too thin just to hit a 20 episode mark, and sad that I'll have to wait another year for the next season. This is easily one of the shows I get most excited about.

[Celedam]

^ It had to be that song, huh. I love that song. Now I have to watch that series as well. Damnit.

---

It's weird to have Struckers in both [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] and The Gifted. Some of the same Fox-Disney licensing overlap that gave us two versions of Quicksilver.

I feel a compulsion to expand upon this. You may ignore this utterly useless trivia, I just need to get it out of my head...

Spoiler: show

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was the original character in the comics. He was a prominent leader of H.Y.D.R.A., and he was a recurring villain for Captain America and the Avengers.

Baron Strucker has appeared in the MCU, in the post-credits scene in The Winter Soldier and then in the opening scenes in Age of Ultron. He ran the H.Y.D.R.A. project that studied Loki’s scepter and used it to create the MCU versions of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

Baron Strucker’s son Werner is also appearing in the MCU, as a recurring villain in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Over on the Fox side of Marvel’s licensing scheme, in The Gifted, the Strucker family is descended from the mutant twins Andrea and Andreas von Strucker. In the comics, they were recurring but minor villains for the X-Men, which explains why Fox got them. But in the comics they were also children of Baron Strucker and half-siblings of Werner.

The Gifted cannot mention Baron Strucker, Werner, or H.Y.D.R.A., of course, so instead it shifted the twins themselves back to WWII-era Europe to give them that “Nazi supervillain” cachet.

This is the joy of comic book continuity.

[Celedam]

From this week's episode of Legion…



That's hot.

For those who don't understand what's happening here but are still curious…

Spoiler: show

David Haller (Dan Stevens) is a powerful mutant telepath and telekinetic. Canonically, in the X-Men comics, he is the son of Professor Charles Xavier, but that's been only implied so far in this series.

In resolution of the Season 1 cliffhanger, David has returned to the mutant refuge Summerland and is using the lab there to telepathically search for his nemesis, the Shadow King. (If you're familiar with the X-Men, you can say Summerland's lab is like a jerry-rigged Cerebro: it boosts a telepath's abilities and projects them over long distances.)

The Shadow King is a purely telepathic entity that attaches itself like a parasite to other telepaths. It was attached to David for most of his life, causing him to suffer psychotic delusions that eventually put him in a psychiatric hospital, which is where we started Season 1. It is currently in the form of David's friend and fellow patient Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), although it can take the form of almost anything in order to hide in a host's mind.

With the help of Summerland, David learned to control his powers and expel the Shadow King from his mind, but it simply reattached itself to Oliver (Jemaine Clement), the founder of Summerland and another telepath who specializes in astral projection. Oliver, possessed by the Shadow King (perhaps willingly; Oliver is strange that way), escaped at the end of Season 1.

This dance battle is a metaphorical representation of the telepathic battle between David, Oliver, and the Shadow King.

Legion is an acid trip in video form, and that's perfect for the subject matter.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

Legion is an acid trip in video form, and that's perfect for the subject matter.

Somehow I had forgotten this important fact, and it took me a minute to get back into it.

[Celedam]

"YIBAMBE!" *



* Xhosa for "hold fast", "hold the line", "stand your ground".

[Celedam]

Regarding the latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.…

Spoiler: show

Tony “The Candyman” Caine (Jake Busey) offhandedly mentioned “what’s happening in New York” during his meetup with Daisy. I assume he meant the arrival of the Black Order to capture the Time Stone, in the first act of Avengers: Infinity War. If that’s true and Agents is still set in the MCU proper — rather than quietly spun off into its own MCU-adjacent universe so that storylines don’t conflict — then any bets on whether the season will end the same way that Infinity War did? Only three episodes of Agents remain, and the last one is titled “The End”.

At first I thought a television/movie crossover like that might be a bit too much, since none of the characters in Agents could know how or why THAT happens. (Happened? Will happen? I'm not sure of the tense here since it's past for Infinity War but future for Agents.) It would be almost literally an act of god against which they are powerless. But then I remembered the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier directly and permanently changed the premise of Agents, so maybe there is no such thing as too much.

Alternatively, Agents has been hinting at a multiverse escape from the time loop they're currently in. And there is also the possibility that next year's conclusion to Infinity War will rewind and undo the whole thing so that no one else — including the characters in Agents — will be aware it ever happened.

As for the events of the episode itself, I was genuinely surprised that Talbot got it. His character arc pretty much screams “insane but heroic sacrifice”, but that? Nope, I did not see that coming. And in hindsight, I should have after Robin’s reaction to him in the previous episode: she recognized him not as her kidnapper but as the Destroyer of Worlds. Another respectable head-fake in a season of respectable head-fakes.

If this is the last season for the show — it's currently "on the bubble" for renewal — and it does end in an Infinity War crossover, I think I will be satisfied with that.

[esm]

Aggretsuko on Netflix is pretty amazing.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

All of my shows are slowly coming to an end and nothing is replacing them. It's been amazing to watch my recording schedule drop so drastically. It does make the morning routine less time consuming at least.

[erilaz]

Aggretsuko on Netflix is pretty amazing.

The last thing I needed right now was another series to watch, but I just binged the first five episodes. PROTEIN!

[esm]

The later episodes weren’t as good, but I enjoyed them overall anyway.