Back in the 1970s, in Superfriends, the Legion of Doom went back in time to undo the origins of several superheros - diverting Superman’s rocket away from Earth, ensuring that Sinestro got the Green Lantern, and keeping Diana Prince on her island. Notably, they didn’t go near Batman’s origin…
It’s “easy.” The story arc is right there - you take the protagonist from “ordinary person without powers” to “superpowered person with powers.” The character journey is obvious. It’s also a really easy way to introduce the audience to both the character and the world, because they meet the character and then go on the journey to discover the world with them. And “first flight” (or whatever power they discover how to use for the first time) sequences are usually fun. They’re also only 5 minutes of a 120+ minute movie
For me, origin movies are not as interesting as the later movies when there’s more interesting stories.
Really, it’s not the type of radiation that matters, it’s the age of the radiation. Radiation emitted up until roughly 1965 gave you superpowers. After that, it’s just cancer.
I’m sure I’ve seen similar stories elsewhere. The best version of course is the Red Dwarf take on the JFK assassination, where they screw things up as usual and, due to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey jiggerypokery, only manage to fix things by having JFK assassinated by JFK.
I would disagree. Again, assuming you’re accurate, that circumstance requires a gifted mad scientist, of which there are few, and a energy weapon that malfunctioned in an unintended and unrepeatable way. That makes for a pretty unique situation and one which would be very hard to repeat on another person.
The hex has affected dozens and so far they seem unchanged. Also Wanda could presumably recreate the hex and create new superheroes at any time. So it’s highly repeatable which is a flaw.
The show’s been pretty explicit that it takes multiple exposures to the hex field to give someone superpowers. Only Monica has gone through it more than once, and the last time through, the show heavily implied that most people wouldn’t have made it through - that Monica had enough (for lack of a better term) heroic spirit to force her way through the field.
If, say, SWORD started lining up agents and shoving them through the field in hopes of creating their own army of supers, I suspect pretty much none of them would make it through unscathed, if they made it through at all.
I would absolutely not presume that.
To start, we don’t know that Wanda is solely responsible for the hex. If it was created in conjunction with another power, such as Mephisto, then this is a one-off. If Wanda is solely responsible, then she’s almost certainly going to end the show depowered or taken off the board in some way. And if that doesn’t happen, the utterly fucked up nature of what she’s doing to this town is probably going to stop her from ever trying it again. If it doesn’t, then she’s gone full supervillain.
I didn’t recognize the interiors either, but I did the exteriors. It’s the famous Blondie St on the WB lot. Home to many a sitcom exterior. Interstingly Wanda and Vision’s exterior was the home in Pleasantville. And Agnes’ belonged to the Stephens in n Bewitched!! And there actually is a pool in the backyard of Dottie’s house.
Yeah, I’m not confused about the story. I’m saying it’s weak. As far as we know, Monica isn’t special. There’s nothing stopping another motivated agent from forcing their way in. Even if there were, the idea that doing something once is fine but doing something 3 times is Superpowers! is ridiculously lazy writing.
There’s, no doubt, scores of groups like this one discussing this show in depth. So, where is the YouTube of Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, and Howard (and maybe even Stuart and Will) endlessly arguing over plotpoints?
Any agent could force their way in, but there is no way to get back out to do it again.
As opposed to…say, getting bitten by a radioactive spider? Or passing through cosmic radiation or whatever the fuck the origin of the week is for the Fantastic Four? Let’s send a bunch of people through the same experience and watch them all come away different, but super? Now that’s lazy writing.
We do know Monica is special, though: she’s passed through the hex twice, which no other human* has ever done. A sufficiently motivated agent could also force his way through the hex, but he’d be transformed into something sitcom appropriate. He’d have to figure out a way to get ejected, then re-enter, which he wouldn’t be able to do, because the hex’s mind control wouldn’t let him. Going through twice changed Monica enough that, on her third trip through, she was able to maintain her identity, and not turn into another puppet.
I don’t really see the problem with getting superpowers through gradual exposure to something, as opposed to an instantaneous transformation. Using the miniseries format to do a slower burn on her getting her powers is a good use of the medium. Sticking skinny Steve Rogers in a box, twiddling some dials, and having him step out built like a brick wall is a good scene, but making it a process where he undergoes repeated treatments over a few months, and rapidly (but not instantly) puts on muscle and mass would be an interesting way to approach his origin. Having it happen instantly is basically a contrivance to make it easier to explain why only Steve got the super soldier serum, in basically the same way that requiring multiple crossings of the hex is a contrivance to explain why only Monica (probably) gets super powers out of this affair.
Has anyone else gone back and watched some of the past scenes of Agnes?
Agnes being in complete control at those points, and Wanda not the more powerful one, seems incompatible enough with the way those scenes were acted that if so I’d be horribly disappointed by the show.
Wanda doesn’t seem to know how she did the hex (assuming she did), and might not be able to do it again. It seems to function with a mind of its own to some degree, or at least completely controlled by Wanda’s conscious mind. To some degree it may be analogous to Mjolnir, deciding on its own who is worthy of what. Monica’s focus, selflessness, and her memories, of her mother, of Danvers, as she was pushing through decided what the impact was. It judged her to be special and transformed her in kind. Don’t like the hammer analogy then go with the first pass into the ring in The Expanse or the Potter sorting hat!
A better origin story than most of the banal stupidity that usually passes. Plus there may be something more to the story … it was of note I think that Monica was not shocked or fazed that her brain scan was blank. She may have already been special in some way from a past S.W.O.R.D. experience.
I forgot my footnote from my last post, which is that potentially, the Beekeeper Agent has also passed the barrier twice, assuming that Wanda vanished him to somewhere outside Westview. If he was within the expanded radius after Wanda consumed the SWORD camp and turned it into a circus, he could also have superpowers. I don’t think that’s likely to happen - I think they’d have done more to set that up by now if it were going to happen - but it’s not impossible.
I assumed that the beekeeper agent just sorta got erased when Wanda rewinded the scene.
I wonder if beekeeper man is the strange mailman - converted from one form of government agent to another.
I wonder if passing through the hex had nothing to do with the origin of Monica’s powers. It revealed she had powers, but that may not mean the hex gave her powers. When the medical officer is talking to her about the x-ray being blank, I thought Monica seemed unsurprised and maybe wanted to avoid having them learn anything more about her condition. When they wanted to draw blood, she said, “No, no, no. We’re done here.” We don’t know everything that has happened to her between her childhood and the present. Did forcing her way through the hex give her powers, or did her powers make her capable of forcing her way through the hex?
Yeah. I think Monica was a super before the snap. She was an astronaut palling around with Captain Marvel. She didn’t get the job at SWORD because her mom was the boss; she got in because she had a super skill set.
On the one hand, she didn’t display any powers while being blasted out of Westview by Wanda. And after forcing her way back in through the hex, when we see through her eyes, and she’s seeing a broad spectrum beyond visible light, it seems like this is something new for her.
On the other hand, she doesn’t seem particularly concerned or confused about any of it, and she does the “Iron Man” pose as if she knows this is something she can do.
On balance, I don’t think she had powers before forcing her way back through the Hex, but I certainly think it makes sense that forcing her way through the Hex activated latent abilities, or was the last straw that combined with previous exposures to Infinity Stone energies and/or previous incidents as part of SWORD to give her powers.
Except the power to survive being blasted out of Westview, which is pretty impressive.