Young Avengers Appreciation 2022

[Ibara]

SPOILER ALERT DON'T CLICK THIS TWEET IF YOU DON'T WANT DOCTOR STRANGE 2 SPOILERS:

https://twitter.com/blytemf/status/1522992998522359808

Is this really from the movie, y'all? I don't even remember this part. Maybe I just didn't pay attention. But I wonder if it's a clue about Billy's future in the MCU.

spoilers:

Yep. It's very quick. Wanda lingers across it for a moment in the Darkhold castle.

end of spoilers

[Drops Of Venus]

spoilers:

Yep. It's very quick. Wanda lingers across it for a moment in the Darkhold castle.

end of spoilers

Honestly, this is such a big deal. I know there isn't a confirmation if it's really Billy, but judging by the whole concept of that particular scene, it makes SO much sense.

spoilers:

We know the Utopian Parallel is canon in the MCU, so the Demiurge might be a thing. We know Chthon is canon too. In the comics, the OG Demiurge created the Elder Gods, which includes Chthon. In the MCU, Wanda's prophecy seems to be intimately linked to Chthon and Wundagore, since they have a literal statue dedicated to the Scarlet Witch. The fact that there is a statue that also represents Billy, potentially the Demiurge, has some pretty cool mythological implications if you think about the comic book history.

end of spoilers

This actually got me pretty excited!

[MaximoffTrash]

Honestly, this is such a big deal. I know there isn't a confirmation if it's really Billy, but judging by the whole concept of that particular scene, it makes SO much sense.

spoilers:

We know the Utopian Parallel is canon in the MCU, so the Demiurge might be a thing. We know Chthon is canon too. In the comics, the OG Demiurge created the Elder Gods, which includes Chthon. In the MCU, Wanda's prophecy seems to be intimately linked to Chthon and Wundagore, since they have a literal statue dedicated to the Scarlet Witch. The fact that there is a statue that also represents Billy, potentially the Demiurge, has some pretty cool mythological implications if you think about the comic book history.

end of spoilers

This actually got me pretty excited!

spoilers:

I just wish they did the whole thing in a more sutble and fantastical/mysterious way. Like instead of literal statues depicting the likeliness of Wanda/Billy, making them veiled figures with similar physique/outfit. That is what the Darkhold page in WandaVision did.(And the whole prophecy should not be played straight, IMO) Raimi&Waldron butchered my favorite lore elements left and right(like Book of Vishanti and Darkhold easily destroyed) But it's not a situation that is not entirely unsalvageable, I just hope the next writer handling Wanda/YA will take care of those characters/lore. Also it may sound weird, but I hope OG WV Billy/Tommy come back and scream their own "realness", the whole talk about main Wanda's kids not being real is so fucking condescending. What is more real than children who are born of wishes and dreams(yeah, Ewing gets it), meant to be wanted and loved? They undermined that entire theme of WandaVision(which is just like how Byrne screwed over Englehart's works).

end of spoilers

[Drops Of Venus]

spoilers:

Also it may sound weird, but I hope OG WV Billy/Tommy come back and scream their own "realness", the whole talk about main Wanda's kids not being real is so fucking condescending. What is more real than children who are born of wishes and dreams(yeah, Ewing gets it), meant to be wanted and loved? They undermined that entire theme of WandaVision(which is just like how Byrne screwed over Englehart's works).

end of spoilers

I get it. I also disliked when the comics tried to do the same, because spoilers:

if Wanda's kids were never real, then how do you even explain them having souls that could reincarnate? Which is another reason why I think the reincarnation thing works in the MCU. If you say that, in her final moments before undoing the hex, Wanda's desire for her kids to live on and be loved was so strong that she literally manifested a new life for them with new families, then how could you say they were never real in the first place? It would be a pure manifestation of her love and selflessness, which would be like the opposite of her selfish motivation throughout DSITMOM.

end of spoilers

[MaximoffTrash]

I get it. I also disliked when the comics tried to do the same, because spoilers:

if Wanda's kids were never real, then how do you even explain them having souls that could reincarnate? Which is another reason why I think the reincarnation thing works in the MCU. If you say that, in her final moments before undoing the hex, Wanda's desire for her kids to live on and be loved was so strong that she literally manifested a new life for them with new families, then how could you say they were never real in the first place? It would be a pure manifestation of her love and selflessness, which would be like the opposite of her selfish motivation throughout DSITMOM.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

It's the unfortunate state of those stories written by people who have very narrow understanding of the subjects they are talking about. They seem to forget about the fact this is a fantasy land with superheroes, Englehart has Dr.Strange act totally cool with the whole magic babies thing because how could he not? Dude has seen weirder shit in his life. Magically conceived life forms are a very common trope in this line of fiction. Take Wonder Woman for example, her old origin has her being a clay sculpture given life by her mother. I don't think anyone care to make a story about people calling Dianna "not real".(Also just a funny thought, if Thomas/Tommy had been born a girl, she would be called Dianna.) I guess the whole fake babies thing is just used to dehumanized Wanda/her kids and invalidate her emotional journey. MoM could have easily worked under another premise, say the Illuminati kidnapped Wanda's OG kids after Westview, they got dumped into some multiversal current and get scooped up by the Illuminati. They are considered dangerous yadiyada, their lingering connection allows them to call for help. Wanda study Darkhold and travelled through the multiverse, went all murderous on the Illuminati herself, get too violent and still scare the kids. Get some senses screamed into them. Wanda goes to destroy Darkhold, entrust the kids to Stephen(also let America and the twins meet). The story structure doesn't even have to change that much. But I guess they could not afford Wanda this tiny bit of reasonable motivation and humanity, or else she won't make a good slasher villain.(Also someone pointed out Raimi kinda just copy-paste Doc Ock's arc from TSM2 onto Wanda, except with even less sympathy and nuance.) Anyway, I will praise the living heck out of whoever can sort out this mess.

end of spoilers

[Confuzzled]

spoilers:

What is more real than children who are born of wishes and dreams(yeah, Ewing gets it), meant to be wanted and loved? They undermined that entire theme of WandaVision(which is just like how Byrne screwed over Englehart's works).

end of spoilers

This reminds me of YouTuber James Somerton making a great point in his How Wanda Became An Accidental Gay Icon video about how people's dismissal of Wanda's children as not real and hence justification for taking them away from her correlates to gay parents being denied adoption rights or constantly being told that their kids are not theirs or having to face threats of their kids being taken away from them.

[legion_quest]

The one thing I took from the movie that could suggest a level of hope

spoilers:

If Billy and Tommy exist in the multiverse with no problems then they must be real, however they were created, and not linked to the Westview hex. If the other Wanda's can have those kids and not be doing a Westview or stealing souls or whatever, then why would 'our' Wanda need to do that? That means she could always just create them without needing a Westview hex - which then begs the question where did they go? Does someone have them kidnapped - and if they are out there, they can return easily enough. Otherwise we have to accept the Wanda that got possessed by our Wanda was doing a Westview with no Agatha and was keeping it going still, which is the only way her fake children could still exist, which there was no evidence of at all. I doubt Raimi considered any of that at all, but there are definitely enough dangling threads to knit a new story from pretty easily.

end of spoilers

[MaximoffTrash]

The one thing I took from the movie that could suggest a level of hope

spoilers:

If Billy and Tommy exist in the multiverse with no problems then they must be real, however they were created, and not linked to the Westview hex. If the other Wanda's can have those kids and not be doing a Westview or stealing souls or whatever, then why would 'our' Wanda need to do that? That means she could always just create them without needing a Westview hex - which then begs the question where did they go? Does someone have them kidnapped - and if they are out there, they can return easily enough. Otherwise we have to accept the Wanda that got possessed by our Wanda was doing a Westview with no Agatha and was keeping it going still, which is the only way her fake children could still exist, which there was no evidence of at all. I doubt Raimi considered any of that at all, but there are definitely enough dangling threads to knit a new story from pretty easily.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

Like I posted before, the kidnap angle would have worked so much better for this movie(and save them some troublee), giving Wanda a good and sympathetic cause without introducing more confusing bits.(Like what you said, how AU Wanda's kids come into being.) As for why the AU kids are considered real, my worst assumpton is Waldron/Raimi and their creatively bankrupt mind thought "kids are only made when mommy and daddy loved each other very very much", AKA AU Wanda made the right choice and banged a real man to have real kids, lol. The burdne lies on the next creators now, and they have my blessing, work something out of this mess is surely no easy work.

end of spoilers

[Drops Of Venus]

The one thing I took from the movie that could suggest a level of hope

spoilers:

If Billy and Tommy exist in the multiverse with no problems then they must be real, however they were created, and not linked to the Westview hex. If the other Wanda's can have those kids and not be doing a Westview or stealing souls or whatever, then why would 'our' Wanda need to do that? That means she could always just create them without needing a Westview hex - which then begs the question where did they go? Does someone have them kidnapped - and if they are out there, they can return easily enough. Otherwise we have to accept the Wanda that got possessed by our Wanda was doing a Westview with no Agatha and was keeping it going still, which is the only way her fake children could still exist, which there was no evidence of at all. I doubt Raimi considered any of that at all, but there are definitely enough dangling threads to knit a new story from pretty easily.

end of spoilers

Technically, nothing is stopping them from saying that the twins from WandaVision survived somehow and are trapped somewhere just waiting for Wanda, but my issue with that particular narrative is that I fear it would just constantly reverse Wanda into ''baby-seeking mode'', and after this movie, she desperately needs to evolve from that. What was the point of making her let her children go twice if you're just gonna keep giving her this plot? Which is why I'm fine with the idea that the twins from WandaVision really died in the physical sense, but might come back in a spiritual sort of way through Young Avengers.

[Confuzzled]

Technically, nothing is stopping them from saying that the twins from WandaVision survived somehow and are trapped somewhere just waiting for Wanda, but my issue with that particular narrative is that I fear it would just constantly reverse Wanda into ''baby-seeking mode'', and after this movie, she desperately needs to evolve from that. What was the point of making her let her children go twice if you're just gonna keep giving her this plot? Which is why I'm fine with the idea that the twins from WandaVision really died in the physical sense, but might come back in a spiritual sort of way through Young Avengers.

Well, they could literally just copy paste from the comics and reveal that the twins are reincarnated into separate families, join YA, realize they are brothers and that their mother is the Scarlet Witch, and then set out to find her.

The Agatha show could help with the build-up to this if required. The showrunner there is Wandavision's Jac Shaffer so Wanda fans should be comfortable in her capabilities.

[Drops Of Venus]

Well, they could literally just copy paste from the comics and reveal that the twins are reincarnated into separate families, join YA, realize they are brothers and that their mother is the Scarlet Witch, and then set out to find her.

The Agatha show could help with the build-up to this if required. The showrunner there is Wandavision's Jac Shaffer so Wanda fans should be comfortable in her capabilities.

I didn't even know Jac had been confirmed for Agatha: House Of Harkness. That makes me happy, although I'm not really sure how much she'll be allowed to touch on Wanda after DSITMOM. Part of me feels like it might be too soon for them to follow up on it, but I certainly wouldn't complain if they did.

I used to think A:HOH was also the perfect place for older Billy and Tommy to make their debut, but now I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think we're really gonna have to wait until YA to get that. D:

[Krakoa]

There's a new Unlimited one-shot today starring America and Clea. It's written by Ewing, so it's good, but it's very tied up in the recent origin retcon for America unfortunately. I am so confused why they made that retcon when her MCU origin is much closer to her Gillen/McKelvie origin. It's the same thing they did to Carol Danvers -- retcon her right before the MCU in a way that takes her further from the MCU origin lol.

[Frontier]

Technically, nothing is stopping them from saying that the twins from WandaVision survived somehow and are trapped somewhere just waiting for Wanda, but my issue with that particular narrative is that I fear it would just constantly reverse Wanda into ''baby-seeking mode'', and after this movie, she desperately needs to evolve from that. What was the point of making her let her children go twice if you're just gonna keep giving her this plot? Which is why I'm fine with the idea that the twins from WandaVision really died in the physical sense, but might come back in a spiritual sort of way through Young Avengers.

Sexism, maybe ?

[Confuzzled]

I didn't even know Jac had been confirmed for Agatha: House Of Harkness. That makes me happy, although I'm not really sure how much she'll be allowed to touch on Wanda after DSITMOM. Part of me feels like it might be too soon for them to follow up on it, but I certainly wouldn't complain if they did.

I used to think A:HOH was also the perfect place for older Billy and Tommy to make their debut, but now I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think we're really gonna have to wait until YA to get that. D:

I think there can be references to 616 Billy and Tommy surviving the destruction of the hex in AHOH. The Darkhold can be explained as the reason for Wanda not detecting this and being misguided to find them in another alternate universe instead.

Quick question, are you interested in Julian Hillard and Jett Klyne growing into the roles or do you want them to be recast by actual teenagers? I checked their ages and Jett is around 12-13 and Julian is 11 so it won't be that much of time before they turn the same age as Billy and Tommy were at the start of Young Avengers.

There's a new Unlimited one-shot today starring America and Clea. It's written by Ewing, so it's good, but it's very tied up in the recent origin retcon for America unfortunately. I am so confused why they made that retcon when her MCU origin is much closer to her Gillen/McKelvie origin. It's the same thing they did to Carol Danvers -- retcon her right before the MCU in a way that takes her further from the MCU origin lol.

I think it just shows that the comics side knows nothing about what's going on over at the movies side due to the Feige and Loeb/Perlmutter divide. The comics side probably thought the movies would use an origin without the lesbian utopia angle as that may not fly with homophobic governments like China and Russia. The joke's on them though as Marvel movies aren't releasing in China and Russia anyways nowadays so might as well be as gay as possible.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, China banned them (sometimes for stupid reasons - Eternals was banned because of a gay couple, but Spider-Man No Way Home was banned because of the presence of the Statue of Liberty! If that's a problem, you'd think they'd have banned everything Captain America was in) and Russia's been blacklisted (due to Ukraine). Which does still leave the middle east, a few countries there have also banned DS2.