…in a world where Thanos didn’t turn out to be a genocidal dictator, he turns into the muscle for a team of wannabe Robin Hoods who can’t stop telling dad jokes. Nobody believes that Thanos is being serious here. And why would they? Its just a joke, and Thanos is playing along because its funny. He’s playing the straightman.
This is all elementary chaos theory at play. A butterfly flapping its wings in Siberia eventually causes tornadoes in Alabama. And in a multi-verse with billions of versions of Thanos you will get the occasional one who turns out to be a good guy.
And I loved this episode. I didn’t really enjoy either of the Guardian movies and hate Peter Quill and thought Black Panther was just okay. But I really enjoyed this. It took everything I didn’t like about those three movies and turned it into something I love.
Behind the scenes I think that the writer/director combo is the strongest yet IMHO for the Marvel TV shows, with AC Bradley (from Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia) as Head Writer and Marvel veteran storyboard artist Bryan Andrews directing. I’m endlessly fascinated by what is going on behind the scenes in Marvel Phase 4. Each show alternates between male writer/female director or female writer/male director which really isn’t the norm in Hollywood: remember Game of Thrones famously only had one female director (who only directed four episodes, last episode was in Season 4) and two female writers who got part credit for 4 episodes, last one in 2013.
Marvel are doing much more than I ever expected them to do on this front, and it both seems like a long-term thing (as long as Feige stays in charge) and is something they aren’t using to ‘toot their own horn.’ They are just doing it, which I appreciate. It does mean though they have taken a punt on some relatively inexperienced talent. But I think that for the most part those punts have paid off, and I give them a bit of slack when they didn’t.