Another two great films to continue our replay with.

Riding off the tail of our last replay episode, we looked at GOTG2 and AOU this week, two films that I can confidently say Taylor and I don’t rewatch often. There’s, of course, nothing wrong with these films, and AOU holds a very special place in my heart, but they usually fade into the background for us. This just means that rewatching them was a great experience, as we could pick up on some of the small things. Not to mention, GOTG2 is an extremely strange rewatch now that Eternals has come out, and I can assure you a lot of our analysis is figuring out how Ego fits into our new understanding of the Celestials. All of this being said, let’s get right to it! As always, to hear our full thoughts and explanations, you can click the button below to find your listening platform of choice or start listening live by hitting play right in this blog post.

I already alluded to the main topic on our minds about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, so let’s start with this film and get right into it. We are introduced to Peter’s dad, a character that we received quite a few interesting cues about in the first Guadians’ film. But what makes him more interesting than 90% of the horrible fathers the MCU puts forward is that he is a Celestial. Now, years ago, when this film came out, this was only the second movie, besides GOTG1 to mention this type of being. But now we can look at this from a completely different lens as we have Eternals, which broke down Celestials in a brand new way. Let’s get into some of these questions that I can’t say we have answers to, but we are still extremely curious about.

One of the most prominent things from Eternals is that Celestials need a certain amount of power, driven by living things, to emerge from the planets they are ‘placed’ in. Let’s run with this a little and apply it to Ego. Ego explains that when he was born (emerged), it was just his brain. He was aware of everything around him and pulled pieces floating in space around his brain to create his first so-called body aka his planet. My best running theory here is that for some reason, his emergence went wrong, and he never was born with a body. To protect himself, he sucked the debris from the planet his emergence destroyed back to him. Now I have no clue why an emergence wouldn’t go right, or at least how it could go so wrong the Celestial doesn’t have a body, but it’s all I can think of. Luckily, others have put some thought into this and come up with a great theory. Essentially, this theory believes that the Eternals on Ego’s planet were unable to prevent a catastrophic event from possibly killing great numbers of beings. Because of this, the other Celestials assume Ego to be unable to emerge or is dead, but rather the disturbance awakens him earlier than planned, leaving him with just a brain. Ego assumed himself to be the only one, but I figure he found other Celestials when he journeyed to other planets. This angered him and is part of the reason he wished to spread on other planets, to assert his dominance as a Celestial and prevent other Celestials from emerging.

While we sum this all up to say he is clearly a different type of Celestial/something didn’t go right with his emergence, it’s still hard to wrap your head around. The worst part is, we likely will never get more information on him now that he has been destroyed, unless Eternals 2 hits on it, so the discrepancies are just going to run wild, and all we can do is pray we find theories to fill them. I hope maybe Eros brings some knowledge to the party in Eternals 2, since he seems to have some knowledge about taking down Celestials, but we shall see.

Beyond the Celestial debate, we also have Eternity’s name dropped in this film, and yes, that’s Eternity with a capital “E.” Of course, this should sound familiar to everyone because not that long ago we were watching Thor: Love and Thunder, in which we meet Eternity. To Taylor’s point, this isn’t super weird since Ego considered himself a God, and you need a God to help open the gateway. What’s mainly the most interesting is that this was dropped to us in roughly 2015, and we didn’t think a thing of it until a movie that came out in 2022 brought our attention to it. I like when things happen like that.

Of course, as with all other Marvel movies up to this point, we also got our usual cameo from the man himself: Stan Lee. But I have to bring attention to this one specifically since it’s a little different than the others. For one, he looks as if he is talking to three Watchers, which is something we would not have thought of at all at the time this film came out. It is especially interesting because if you catch what he’s saying, he’s essentially telling them he has been playing different roles in all the storylines we see as films. Now, this gets into some of the meta things we are hitting now with the Quantum realm and Multiverses, but this pretty much means Stan was never technically a character and was instead almost crashing in, as he exists outside all those storylines, like the Watcher. It definitely has layers to it, which I don’t want to think too much about for fear of destroying my brain, but it’s pretty freaking cool.

Lastly, I have to wrap up GOTG2 by saying this movie really solidified how much I love these characters. They’re extremely dysfunctional, but they are a family, and I really had fun getting to rewatch this franchise. It makes me even more nervous about what is coming in GOTG3, as I feel like I’ve fallen in love all over again with this group. And don’t even get me started on Baby Groot, him trying to free Rocket and Yondu may just be one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Turning now to the other film we watched for this replay, Avengers: Age of Ultron, I have to disclose that this film, in my mind, will never do any wrong. This is the film that brought me into the Marvel Universe and started this journey for me, so I will absolutely always hold it very close to my heart for that reason. Do I ignore the last 10-15 minutes and actually just decide the movie ends when they evacuate the city? Of course, because as far as I’m concerned, no one loses their life. I don’t know what everyone is talking about. But truly, this film doesn’t deserve some of the hate I know it gets from the fans.

The best part about this film is that it is exactly what all the fanfiction in the world is about: the Avengers being a genuine team of heroes that like each other and hang out. If you know what’s coming soon, you know this doesn’t last very long, but it’s there for at least a movie. They joke with one another and have little parties. It’s all very nice to see for the brief little bit that we get it.

Of course, what I appreciate the most is the solid continuity of some parts, while others just sort of, I don’t know, don’t work. For one, I like that the movie shows that they’ve spent so much time together because they were taking out Hydra bases, a direct effect of CATWS. But then again, Black Widow said she was going to disappear for a while because all of her covers were blown, and here she is with the Avengers. I mean, taking out the Guardians films, those movies take place one after the other. Yet, if we flip back to the other side, Sam appears talking about their missing person case aka Bucky, again a direct impact from CATWS. And then we have Fury, who goes AWOL after faking his death, showing up with a SHIELD plane at the end of the film like it’s no biggie. See what I mean? Random parts just don’t listen to the rest, but I do appreciate the scenes that do.

I warned everyone during our CATWS coverage that this film was going to get ugly when it came to talking about my girl Nat. And man, is it ugly. Once again, I reiterate these films technically take place RIGHT AFTER EACH OTHER. So tell me, how did we go from that Natasha to this? I mean, I know how, and it comes 100% down to the director of this film. It just makes me so angry. She was so freaking cool in CATWS, and suddenly they just completely downgrade her. Not to mention, the random and awkward romance between her and Bruce really sets fire to everything. There was never an ounce of chemistry between the two, I don’t know how that even happens. It is one of the biggest pitfalls of this film, and I will stand on that rock alone if I have to.

While we are on the topic of characters, I want to take this moment to talk about Wanda briefly. The first thing I have to say is I miss emo Wanda so much. The other thing, which is much more important, is that if you would have told me what this girl became and what she is capable of in the future, I would have only been shocked because I would have hoped she wouldn’t have had to go through all the pain to get there. I think many people act like she doesn’t have a dark side when quite literally she starts as a Hydra power in this film. Not to mention, look at how she reacted to Pietro’s death. And the final bit of icing on the cake is this girl mind controlled a whole town into evacuating, yet everyone was so shocked at what happened with Westview. We saw what she was capable of doing very early on, and I’m proud of her growth, even if I disagree with how MoM portrayed it.

As we are on the topic, I want to wrap up discussing Thor’s nightmare that Wanda induces. His is the only nightmare that happens perfectly, although I think people tend to focus the most on Tony’s. He loses most of his people, Asgard falls, and Hel(a) is part of the whole equation. The fear that Thor has becomes reality quickly for him, which is something I don’t think many point out. While Tony’s fear partially comes true, Thor’s, except for the fact that he didn’t directly kill his people, comes true. On top of this, he is the one who sees the vision relating to the Infinity Stones and is why Vision is born. I might argue all of this drives Thor to be one of the most integral parts of the team in this film, putting besides all his Godly powers.

While there is much more to talk about, I can’t physically write everything, so go ahead and give our latest Replay series podcast episode a listen if you haven’t already. Next week, we will be continuing the Replay series with Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War (or the more accurate title of Avengers: Civil War). After that, get ready, as we are gearing up for Ant-Man: Quantumania. Tickets are already on sale so make sure you snag those for opening weekend and stick around here, as we will be covering it from start to finish. As we finish this month, I want to remind everyone to sign up for our newsletter, making its way into your inbox on the first of each month. February’s topic is “Understanding the Quantum Realm,” just in time for Ant-Man 3. In the meantime, watch Ant-Man 1 and CACW so you can be on our level next episode, and remember, Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”, Disney

Image: “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, IMDB