Agatha All Along S01E02 Review: Gathering the Party

Agatha All Along, Season 1, Episode 2: Circle Sewn With Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate

That is a lot better than the first episode. I was a bit worried that this was going to be yet another MCU TV show that I didn't enjoy, but "Circle Sewn With Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate" is a lot more fun than I expected it to be. It's a bit more basic, but not being stuck with a confused protagonist for half an episode, and giving me the 'Kathryn Hahn chews the scenery like she did the corn dog in that one scene' that they promised is a lot more palatable to watch. 

So we very quickly establish that Agatha is going to team up with the mysterious "Teen", who all Marvel Comics fans know is either Wiccan or a gigantic red herring. Not-Wiccan can't actually speak his name, however, with some mysteries involving an inky signature that replaces his mouth when he tries to say his name, as well as a loud droning noise that blots out his attempt to explain his backstory to Agatha. So we've got that mystery, all the while the two of them go and recruit a Coven to access something called the Witches' Road. I'm still not very sure why Not-Wiccan wants to hang out with Agatha beyond fanboyism, but Agatha just wants power, and she goes on a 'time to recruit my wacky team' montage. 

Which... I always have a weakness for a good recruitment montage, so that part of this episode is quite enjoyable. The actual characters themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. Agatha is fun, and Not-Wiccan is... servicable. He's a bit over-the-top sometimes in his fanboyism, and I don't really know if that's intentionally annoying as part of what his character should be, or just bad direction. 

Meeting the witches gives us some context to just how badly Agatha has been viewed by other contemporaries, since we've not seen any other witches other than the coven in that WandaVision flashback. Of course, Agatha's just recruiting some has-beens, but she did talk about getting a 'divination' and a 'potions' and all these Dungeons & Dragons terminology that... feel a bit weird coming out of the very dismissive-towards-everything-else Agatha. 

The three witches we got are... interesting? The elderly Lilia Calderu initially seems to be a crystal ball fate-reading huckster, but turns out to actually be the real deal. She's on a bit of hard times, and was convinced to join in, and scribbles down four names on a paper that will form Agatha's coven. The second witch they recruited is Jennifer Kale, who's a more modern witch who sells... hippie bullshit candles, I guess. She runs a business that's fallen on a lot of hard times. She's the one that didn't give much of an impression to me, with the highlight of that scene being Not-Wiccan and Agatha kind of high-school-girl-mocking her for the lawsuits that she's in trouble with. Rounding up the group is Alice Wu-Gulliver, who's a 'blood witch', which is a child born to a witch. She just feels grumpy, but I do like her "I was a cop, remember" blasé reaction to everything, and seemingly having a connection to a major witch does give her a bit of a backstory. 

(Agatha and Not-Wiccan also totally fuck Alice up by causing her to lose her job, which isn't nice but Agatha is also not meant to be nice.)

They're all... all right. There's only so much you could do when you rapid-fire introduce a bunch of characters one after the other, and it's clearly meant to be an ensemble cast for the rest of this 9-episode TV show. I'm... cautiously optimistic. Just because they aren't really based on well-established Marvel characters (most of them have like 2-3 issues' worth of appearance, and the one that doesn't, Jennifer Kale, is an in-name-only adaptation) doesn't mean that they can't pull a Phil Coulson on us. Out of these three witches, only Lilia get a fair bit of characterization -- you could feel the exhaustion and defeat radiating off of her after surviving things like the Salem witch trials. 

Eventually everyone convenes in Agatha's house, and the other witches note that they need a 'green witch'. Agatha had previously very immaturely swallowed the prophecy paper when questioned by Not-Wiccan. Lilia also rather ominously note that she didn't write a name, but a 'black heart', which is most certainly a reference to the Marvel comics' demon Blackheart... but Agatha just waltzes out and picks up "Mrs. Hart", or rather, Sharon Davis, who's one of the recurring characters from WandaVision. 

I actually find Sharon to be the most ridiculously weird of the cast, and I can't decide whether I like her inclusion or not. She just pulls on her purse and is just so happy to be included in something that she goes from questioning if this is a 'drug cult' to just singing along with the Ballad. Which takes up a chunk of the climax -- Agatha and her new coven start singing this Ballad, and... it's okay. They open up a door in the floor that the party (and Not-Wiccan) go through, and of course after the door is closed, it disappears, locking them into this alternate dimension. 

Oh, just to make sure that there's some threat, Not-Wiccan, while in the process of playing with Agatha's bunny, walks out to see the Salem Seven show up. And... the Salem Seven is a dark-hooded lady that can split into seven, and there are some basic spooky effects like loud droning music, mist, stuntmen contortion and sudden jump-scares. Oh, and there's the implication that all the animals that has been spying on Agatha (crows, rats, a wolf) are the familiars of this Salem Seven. They're a'ight, certainly a fair bit more Halloween'y than anything in the first episode. 

Again, this is pretty all right in that it's fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. I also kind of like that the show is happy to highlight Agatha's very self-centered motivations, very much willing to blackmail, gaslight and even cause people to lose their jobs to get what she wants. Oh, and recruiting some random civilian to join her coven, too. Again, it's not super engaging, but it's no Secret Invasion or She-Hulk -- it's at least fun enough to keep me around for a while. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jennifer Kale is a supporting character in the 70's Man-Thing comics, a woman who had a psychic link with Man-Thing. During the many escapades, she would learn sorcery, and would eventually recur in multiple other comics, including X-Force, Ghost Rider (she's a cousin of Johnny Blaze) and Midnight Sons.
  
• The other two witches borrow names from minor witches in Marvel history., whose appearances number in the single digits. Lilia Calderu is a minor Dr. Strange antagonist who briefly was the lover of Baron Mordo. "The Wu", a.k.a. Alice Gulliver, is the policewoman and daughter of a magician, and briefly aided Scarlet Witch. 
• Alice's mother in the comics had the title of 'August Wu of the Coral Shore'. In this show, 'Coral Shore' was instead the band that she played in. 
• Lilia mentions the term 'black heart' with the show zooming in to seemingly emphasize it. Blackheart is the son of Mephisto in the Marvel comics, and a constant antagonist for mystical characters.
• The Witches' Road is a magical dimension that only magic-wielding witches can access, and was first introduced in the 2016 Scarlet Witch run. 
• The Salem Seven appearing as a single witch that splits into seven is a reference to, ironically enough, Ultimate universe Agatha Harkness. 

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 13: Rivers and Badlands

All good things come to an end, and what a good thing New Pokemon Snap has been. I've honestly been very, very surprised both at the game design of this game and the amount of content in it! When I first wanted to write blog posts for New Snap, I thought the game would take five, maybe six posts, tops. The fact that it's given me so much, and it's even driven me to grind the game a little to unlock specific Pokemon and to level up the areas. At the time of writing this post... not all the areas are maxed out, but they're all level 3 whenever possible.

And honestly, it's been pretty great. Granted, I did go in with no expectations at all, and there were definitely parts of this game that could've been improved, but the game as a whole has been so wholesome and really was what I needed. It really did make me appreciate a lot of Pokemon that I don't necessarily did before, like Sawsbuck and Liepard and Clamperl. A lot of surprisingly deep secrets and interactions that flummoxed me -- in a good way. This particular part of the blog is going to chronicle my reactions as I go through the higher levels of the two DLC locations. As I mentioned in a previous post, I consider myself having 'completed' this game after I completed the Photodex, and that's what I did at the end of this. I just thought I'd open up with a nice little speech about how wholesome and how nice the whole game experience has been. 

And I think the first time around is the River, which I had already been farming a bit even in previous segments. One of the coolest bit was showing Arbok swimming and gliding through the river, poking his head up and down until you Illumina Orb him. We always think of snakes as slithering through trees and shrubs all of the time, but snakes can swim! I don't think we've really ever seen them depict Arbok or Seviper or any of the other snakes like this, though. I mean, I'm sure the anime probably showed one of Jessie's snakes swim in a river at some point...

The Arbok, by the way, is how we 'rescue' Psyduck. I was wondering how I can get the three Aipoms to stop bullying Psyduck, since neither the apples conking the monkeys' heads or using an Illumina Orb on Psyduck did anything, but turns out all I had to do was to get Arbok to move from his starting position and this causes Arbok to hiss and intimidate off all the Aipoms. 

I love this, by the way. I love that a Pokmeon that's most well-known for being utilized as an antagonist's primary Pokemon in the cartoon ends up doing something pretty wholesome and protecting cute little Psyduck. That's why I adored that one episode with the evil psychotic Togepi in one episode of the anime.  

In another run of the river level, Arbok is sleeping coiled up on a branch overlooking a river. And... I can cause a Magikarp to jump up and bonk Arbok right in the nose and cause him to fall into the river. Poor Arbok. I feel bad for him, but he can probably swim. 

There is a massive waterfall that I'm sure is meant to be there to summon Gyarados to climb up the waterfall. I managed to figure out that there's a hidden Crystalbloom at the foot of the waterfall, and I managed in later levels to gather some Magikarps there, but I never managed to get Gyarados to spawn... not in this waterfall, at least. In one of my runs, Gyarados just randomly shows up swimming next to me in the final level as Psyduck floats on by, and I got a shot of him there. 

The night-time river is pretty calming. There's a bunch of fun interactions I can do with Feraligatr as it stalks on top of a cliff and later on jumps down into the river, knocking my vehicle into a shore where a bunch of Ariados-es and Quagsires are hanging out on. Even Pokemon that have shown up in older areas got a fair bit to do! Woopers and Quagsires alternate between sleeping and piddle-paddling in the river, and there's a cliffside where it seems like there's only one Aipom but there's actually a troop of a half-dozen damn dirty apes. 

At level 2 of the night river, I manage to find the little cave behind some hanging plants that I have to scare some Beautiflys away from. In the cave are some unexpected faces... there are Drillbur! And we get to see them go all Transformers and turn into their spinning bullet drill form and dig down into the rock. I'm not sure how wise it is for these Ground-types to be doing it right next to a river, but there you go. Most adorably (and unexpectedly) are a bunch of Cleffa just hanging out in this cave. What... what are you doing in this cave, Cleffa? Your big brothers and sisters are hanging out in the underground cavern like two islands away. 

Unlocking this secret cave in the night also unlocks it in the day... but I think it's only open at level 3, because at level 2 River Day I keep getting knocked to the little island where the Tropius are when Quagsire jumps his fat ass into the river. In the day, the Cleffas are waving their tiny nub-hands and practicing Metronome, that's adorable. 

In level 3 of the rivers, we finally get to see the enigmatic Ursaring that the claw marks on the tree trunks have been foreshadowing all game long... and the Ursaring is the one who shows up and roars to scare off the Aipom from bullying Psyduck. So whether I intervene with Arbok or not, Psyduck will always get saved at some point. It also seems to be an alternating thing whether it's Ursaring or Arbok that sleeps on the log, but whoever sleeps there I can always use an Illumina Orb to summon Magikarp to conk the sleeper into the raging rivers. Another part of the level has Ursaring lurk next to the river, like a bear trying to catch salmon. Except it seems like this particular Ursaring's prey of choice are the poor Magikarps!

A lot of smaller changes happen in level 3 of the river, but the most significant and the most adorable one is... a Tropius flying over the final part of the area... WITH A WOOPER ON HIS HEAD.

I say that again, a Tropius is giving a happy Wooper a ride on his head as he flies around. 

That is so fucking wholesome. 10/10 game. 

Anyway, Ursaring was the last Pokemon I needed for the Belusylva full sticker. And maybe it's a function of being designed as a DLC, and maybe it's because the river actually moves a fair bit fast at some places that it's hard for me to do what I want to, but I felt like the river content is so densely packed with content that I have barely scratched the surface of what's in here.

And... I am sorry to say that I just don't really find the Badlands all that interesting. Tepig, Shinx and Torchic's little adventure is cool (and I finally figured out that they're a Lion King reference... a bit hard to tell when Torchic really doesn't resemble Timon the meerkat) but I felt like it's just not quite as interesting as the river? I am admittedly guilty of not finding desert locations super-duper interesting, so there might be it. 

There are a couple of fun interactions you can do in both the night and day Badlands, including a point where you can goad Tyranitar to beat the shit out of a random Crustle and tip it over. There's a lot of stuff to do with Diglett, too, and I think if you time it right you can get them to knock over the giant boulder? That bit really is a bit puzzling, since my apples can do it in the day, but put like five butterflies on it and suddenly I need help from so many Digletts to tip it over? Hmm? Diglett is pretty fun in this level in general, with them popping up all over the place and basically invading the Onix holes in the canyon at the end of the level... which is very lore-accurate.

I do really like the Gliscors hanging upside-down like the psychotic scorpion-bats that they are, though. One of the Gliscors I can wake up flies right into a part of the area that gets pelted by a ton of Miniors, the poor sod. 

The legendary Pokemon in the Badlands is Zeraora, who's just sleeping in the background near the beginning of the level. I have to pelt it with apples to get it to run around the terrain like he's cosplaying Naruto or something. I really don't have anything noteworthy to say about Zeraora, honestly. He sure runs around the cliffsides and jumps and somersaults and stuff, but it also feels a bit... off? He doesn't feel as integrated into the ecosystem the way some of the other legendaries like Shaymin, Manaphy, Celebi or Lugia are. Then again, I guess it's hard to find a 'proper'place for an edgelord lightning cat-man. 

This is a wholesome game and I feel bad about badmouthing Zeraora, so I do enjoy a lot of the other interactions going on here. Swalot gets a lot of mileage out of the animations that the animators pull with his big mouth, and there's a fair bit more Silicobra than I thought there is in the level... again, I never visualized them hiding under the sand that way, with the tip of its mouth poking upwards. I always thought that they'd hide under the sand like, well, like real desert snakes, where they just burrow under the sand horizontally. 

The Scolipedes lumbering around the poison swamp are obviously very cool, and I love how at one point a Silicobra spits some sand at Scolipede and causes the big centipede monster to chase them down. Stupid, suicidal sand snakes. 

You would think that Zeraora is the last Pokemon for me to take a photo off, and that I could close this Photodex... but no, it's not Zeraora. It's actually... Salazzle! Which is such a random Pokemon to make show up in the final level of the Badlands, but why not? I have to lure it out with the music box from the rock behind Mandibuzz, which has the Salazzle come out and do a little dance. I mean... okay, Salazzle. Sure. 

And with that bit, I have obtained the Voluca island's sticker and completed my Photodex. It's been an absolute blast as I go through this calming and unexpectedly fun journey. I do know that there's probably a lot more that the game still has to offer -- and I'm sure that I could write a lot more posts about this. But it is a nice enough stopping point. See you guys on the next review series!

Random Notes:

• I do plan to put down New Pokemon Snap for a while, but it's going to be a game that, if I'm bored in the next couple of years, I can just pop in and try and figure out how to get the missing star pictures or a side-quest for some Pokemon, y'know? It's a very 'arcade-y' game, so to speak.
• Shout out to the TCG artwork, by the way. Making these blog posts really did end up causing me to go through and appreciate a lot of Pokemon TCG art, and that's always a nice thing. 
  
• Doing a starter count now that the game's over... and it's interesting! Obviously all 3 Kanto starter lines are represented in both their first and final forms, and all 3 Galar starters are represented in their first forms. But it's interesting to see who got left out! We have a representation of all 3 Johto and Sinnoh starters... but we're missing the Treecko line from the Hoenn starters, the Oshawott line from the Unova starters, both the Litten and Rowlet lines from the Alolan starters and surprisingly, no one from Kalos showed up to play. Really? I thought Greninja'd be a shoo-in!
  
• Which actually makes me appreciate this game a bit more, particularly the whole Sawsbuck spiel I did in the previous post. You'd think that some of the rather obvious 'superstar' evergreen Pokemon like Jigglypuff, Lucario, Zoroark, Mewtwo, Dragonite, Togepi, Ditto, and some others would be given prominence... but even some super-classic Pokemon like Snorlax, Psyduck and Gyarados are relegated to DLC! It does really speak to how much the game designers tried to make this a full Pokemon experience instead of just the all-stars that we get a lot of stuff from more obscure Pokemon like Vivillon or Lanturn or Tropius or Shinx! 
• My reflexes are not fast enough to hit the Crystalblooms as we go down the waterfalls. I can hit one of them, but never two of them in quick succession. I assume that's related to how I summon Gyarados.  
• There is, surprisingly, no legendary in the river? The Badlands had Zeraora, and the other DLC area, the secret path, is connected to the nature reserve and Shaymin hangs out there. But with how well-hidden a lot of the legendaries in these other areas are, I'm surprised level 3 didn't unlock a legendary for the River area. I don't know what would work here... Zarude, maybe, swinging through the treetops? That monkey would've been new at the time that this game was released, right? 
• Psyduck eating an apple is adorable.
• Honestly, the highlight of the Badlands is seeing the nonsense that Torchic, Tepig and Shinx get up to as they run around and wander everywhere and poke in and out of the Onix holes. 

Agatha All Along S01E01 Review: Witches, Oh My

Agatha All Along, Season 1, Episode 1: Seekest Thou The Road

Happy Halloween! I wanted to wait until Agatha All Along was over before watching any of its episodes, but it also kind of lines up rather nicely with Halloween and the end of my coverage of the first season of What If. So we're starting off with the first episode now on Halloween. 

(Yes, I know I haven't done Deadpool vs. Wolverine yet. Someday.)

And... it's nowhere as spooky as I thought it would be, nor is it an 'unsettling' kind of spooky like WandaVision's initial episodes were. Agatha All Along acts as a sequel to WandaVision, where we follow the antagonist of that show, Agatha Harkness, as she breaks out of the imprisonment that Scarlet Witch put her in, and fights against other witches that she implied to have betrayed before. 

And... this first episode of Agatha All Along tries, a bit, to capture what made WandaVision work. We get a parody of a particular type of TV show, and then our main character realizes that some of the things going on are a bit creepy and very, very wrong. It just... didn't really work. With WandaVision, starting things out of context and parodying a much older format ended up with something whimsical, and the acting of familiar characters Vision, Scarlet Witch and their supporting characters are so over-the-top cheesy that you're confused... and the horror that they did when Vision's boss choked and died was a huge sudden reminder that, hey, we're supposed to be in a superhero show, something is seriously wrong. 

Agatha All Along's first episode parodies a typical cop show, where Agatha is 'Agnes', a daredevil cop with an attitude and a swagger who chews her gum loudly and argues with her boss and all that... but we're still making shows like that. That's not particularly special, not the way that WandaVision's various TV parodies were. In addition, the horror is almost expected, so when things started to go weird, I go 'oh, finally, we're getting somewhere' instead of actually being shocked. The supporting characters are... well-acted for what they are, but I really didn't give two shits about them, and I'm really just waiting for things to go on. 

It's not as bad as Iron Fist's legendarily terrible first episode where they wanted to make the audience question if Danny Rand is actually hallucinating about the temples and magic chi fists or whatever, but it's also a version of being quite slow where the audience knows, exactly, what happened to Agatha. We saw Scarlet Witch put her in that weird trance. So prolonging it for 20 minutes just really feels pretty bland.

There is also the problem that Agatha Harkness... isn't a particularly interesting character. I'm genuinely a bit baffled why she got a spinoff out of all the side characters from the Disney+ MCU content. Maybe I still feel a bit burnt out on Echo, and I acknowledge that Kathryn Hahn is a fun presence, but I am still cautiously worried that they thought that the huge meme-moment of the Agatha song to actually equate to marketable popularity.

Eventually, in reaction to Scarlet Witch's death, the spell around Agatha seems to unravel. The 'Jane Doe' body turns out to be a (conveniently face-covered) representation of Scarlet Witch and the Darkhold, and some of the people in Westview is starting to ask questions. We get to see the emo blue-jacketed teen who's totally a teenage Wiccan/Billy Kaplan, and the snarky new FBI agent Rio Vidal (played by Aubrey Plaza, previously of Legion fame). Eventually Agnes realizes that she's actually Agatha, reality unravels, and she finds herself in the 'real' world, buck-ass nude and confronting the citizens of Westview who apparently have been okay with treating her as just a slightly loony neighbour for three years. 

And then we get the true identity of Rio Vidal, who's a witch with a knife, and we get an honestly rather tepid little magic fight... but that magic fight was tepid because Agatha doesn't have access to her magic anymore. Rio and Agatha talk a bit, with the implication being that Agatha betrayed their coven or organization or whatever the "Salem Seven" is. Agatha manages to pull off a "wouldn't you rather kill me at my strongest" bullshit to get Rio to walk of. She also has Not-Wiccan kidnapped and tied up in a closet. 

And... again, Kathryn Hahn is a great lead. She unfortunately doesn't get the chance to chew the scenery as much as I expected her to, since she spends so much of the first half in the dour True Detective knockoff, or is just confused in general. It's kind of a shame, but while this is still an enjoyable episode to watch (most certainly better than She-Hulk, Secret Invasion and Echo, three rather embarrassing recent projects from D+/MCU), I didn't find it to be MCU's best work... but with that pesky setup done, hopefully the next couple of episodes would be better!

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Salem Seven are a recurring group of seven animal-themed witches who menaced the Scarlet Witch and the Fantastic Four. In the main Marvel universe, they were actually grandchildren of Agatha Harkness.
• Various call-backs to WandaVision and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness are made here. Agatha was trapped in that hallucination at the end of WandaVision, various supporting characters from WandaVision return (including the rabbit), the Darkhold is mentioned via the acronym of the book, and when Agatha regains her mind, she goes through a montage of all of her looks from the various television time periods in WandaVision.  
• A cute (if morbid) joke was that the mysterious corpse was 'blunt force trauma' from being 'crushed by a massive object'. Scarlet Witch's end involved her being squished between two halves of a mountain. 
• The book, in addition to being an acronym of DARKHOLD (Dialogue And Rhetoric: Known History of Learning & Debate), is also written by Andrew Ugo, which is an anagram of the mountain "Wundagore". 
• In her illusion, Agatha' room contains an empty child's room belonging to Nicholas Scratch, which is Agatha's son from the comics. 

What If S01E09 Review: Secret Wars

What If, Season 1, Episode 9: What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?

And so the first season of What If, this extremely experimental animated series, ends with a very predictable bang. And it is still a bang. I still hold fast to the fact that the final episode of What If's first season is a nice middle ground between what everyone expected of the series. Around 80% of the season were basically standalone episodes, but there's enough interconnectivity that is expected from an MCU project with this climax that the season doesn't just get dissolved into "oh, just watch these couple of episodes, ignore the rest since they don't connect with each other". With how fragmented and haphazard the post-Endgame state of the MCU has been due to this exact problem, the fact that What If's first season ends with a rather typical team-up is both predictable and comforting. 

And so, with a formula that was tried and true back in 2012 (which is more than a decade ago, holy crap) the Guardians of the Multiverse get assembled as Uatu goes around the multiverse picking the heroes that he has been seeing all throughout the season. I do really like the pick-up sequence. Not because of how fast it is, but that they actually show how our heroes from the past eight episodes haven't been standing still. Captain Carter's timeline has moved forwards all the way into an equivalent of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with her fighting against Batroc the Leaper as per that movie's cold open. Star-Lord T'Challa is going through an early variation of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 with Ego running rampant, while Killmonger's universe has him embroiled in a fight against the Pepper/Shuri alliance. Party Thor, of course, we saw fighting against the Ultron invasion, so his universe is already tied to the multiversal Ultron crisis.

One very random addition, which a lot of people disliked due to the lack of buildup but I actually like because of it, is "Thanos-Killer" Gamora. It actually is a deleted episode (which gets fully animated in season 2... a bit to my disappointment) but they kept the concept of the character. And I do really like that this is a nice little nod to how expansive the multiverse is, and how the nine episodes we're seeing in this season is just a microcosm of the MCU's multiverse. There are alternate worlds beyond alternate worlds, and the audience is never going to see everything, just snippets here and there. 

Everyone is gathered in a magical, mystical pub created by Dr. Strange Supreme, which... honestly, I feel like it's just there for some style. There is some attempt at quick infodumps (which the cast has to take at face-value and nod because we need to get the ball rolling) and a plan is made revolving Gamora's very convenient Infinity Stone Crusher machine. While all of this is going on, we do get some fun interactions between the characters, though to my slight disappointment... not quite enough between T'Challa and Killmonger. I do like the little foreshadowing of how much Killmonger's going around tinkering with the Ultron sentry heads even this early on, though. 

The Watcher dumps the Guardians of the Multiverse in some empty universe, and after some magical armour is cast upon them by Dr. Strange Supreme (which is going to explain how some of our more mortal heroes don't get sqiushed immediately by the cosmic Infinity Ultron) Party Thor accidentally attracts Infinity Ultron's attention with a giant blast of lightning.

And at which point, it's just a six-on-one action scene. Again, the problem I stated last episode is amplified a fair bit since Infinity Ultron is just reduced to a generic cosmic anime enemy, without much of a motivation beyond cosmic domination and multiversal genocide. There is the odd one-liner here and there, but as someone who thoroughly think the MCU's take on Ultron is pretty damn great and is just ruined by the choppy movie, I did feel a fair bit of disappointment about Ultron's lack of personality here. 

We do get a whole lot of wacky stuff, like Dr. Strange Supreme using a multiplication spell on Party Thor's Mjolnir to bombard Infinity Ultron; him summoning a three-headed dragon demon that freaks the other heroes out; or him later on summoning the entire zombie horde from the Marvel Zombies universe down like a rain onto Ultron as a distraction. It's a nice way to not overload the episode with too many characters, but still incorporate these other episodes. While Ultron, Thor and Strange do all these spectacular moves, Star-Lord T'Challa sneaks in and manages to steal the Soul Stone, and everyone bounces off while Ultron has to deal with the wave of zombies. 

The Guardians land in Infinity Ultron's post-apocalyptic home universe, with Thanoskiller Gamora ready with her funky machine to destroy the Infinity Stones. In perhaps one of the weaker parts of an already cluttered episode, Captain Carter chooses this moment to talk about how she's totally BFF's with Black Widow from her home universe... just right as the Post-Apocalypse Black Widow rolls up. It feels a bit awkwardly shoehorned in, honestly, and I still maintain my stance last week that Post-Apocalypse Widow is more of a plot device than an actual character. It really is a bit hard to do much with her, admittedly, with so many moving parts. 

Infinity Ultron arrives, and we do the cool The Avengers scene of the camera rotating around the fully-assembled Guardians of the Multiverse as they all load their weapons. We get a much more cooler fight scene scene in that everyone gets to pitch in instead of just Dr. Strange, with Ultron tanking and getting hit by all the Guardians. It's not the best crowd-fighting scene, but if we're being honest it does feel a fair bit more cohesive and makes use of the assembled heroes better than some of the Avengers shows. We also get another cool moment from Strange Supreme as he fights Infinity Ultron's five stones with one of his own.

They play a bit of "everyone fight for the plot device" with the Soul Stone skidding on the ground of the combatants, until our heroes manage to grab it and shove it into Gamora's Infinity Crusher... at which point the Crusher fails to destroy it and our heroes realize that each multiversal Infinity Stone is juuuust different enough that the crusher can't work on it. It's... it's something that gets explored a bit in the Loki Disney+ TV series, and there's also the weird contradiction that Infinity Ultron spent the last episode waltzing around warping reality in worlds that are not his own, but I also appreciate the restraint of the writing team in not making the Deus Ex Machina they introduced in this episode with a character they introduced this episode be the solution to the problem. 

(It does raise the question on whether we needed the whole Infinity Crusher subplot to begin with, but eh)

Infinity Ultron blows our heroes away, and decides to focus his power on the only character in the Guardians of the Multiverse who actually is on his power level, Strange Supreme. As the two fight, Apocalypse Widow and Captain Carter find out the USB arrow containing Arnim Zola. The Guardians dogpile Ultron while we get some motorcycle stunts going on, and ultimately Apocalypse Widow manages to use the dead Hawkeye's bow to shoot the USB arrow right into Ultron's eye. Again, there is some poetic justice in that it's Ultron that caused Hawkeye's death, but as I keep mentioning, Apocalypse Widow isn't really much of a character so it's a bit hard for me to care. 

Speaking of not-much-of-a-character, despite having been in our face for the past episode and a half, Ultron gets very unceremoniously wiped out and taken over as the AI-fied Arnim Zola and Ultron do battle in cyberspace. There is, of course, a nice, delicious irony that Ultron -- whose goal is to replace all organic life with metal -- gets fucked by organic life that's turned into a digital one. But this thing happens so fast and Ultron is forgotten so unceremoniously that I really do wish that this episode had a couple of extra minutes to let these moments breathe. 

We do go from one plot twist to the next, though. As Arnim Zola takes over the core 'Vision' body and has his head appear on the techno-organic body's chest (hey, comic book reference!); Killmonger finally decides to actually remind the audience that he's still a villain, that the previous What If episode doesn't make him a hero in any stretch of the word, and ends up stealing the metallic parts of Ultron's suit, donning the infinity stones and armour. There is a brief moment where Killmonger actually tries to mind-game the rest of the Guardians by picking on what little he knew of them from the pub scene and the pre-fight drinks, trying to promise a world where Dr. Strange and Captain Carter could get their loved ones back... but it goes straight into a fighty-fight as Arnim Zola and Killmonger clash against each other... and as the infinity stones gets ripped around by the two people donning Ultron's body, Dr. Strange Supreme casts a spell that holds them in the same pocket dimension that he was trapped in at the end of his episode, except time is stopped with the two villains suspended in time. 

Dr. Strange realizes that the Watcher didn't intend for them to win, just to take Infinity Ultron's stones out of play, which... raises some questions about the logic of Uatu's plan, but he is the Watcher, not the Planner. Dr. Strange Supreme, the only one without an existing home universe, resolves to make himself the guardian that will watch over Killmonger and Zola, while Uatu sends everyone back to their own universes. 

All except for Apocalypse Widow, who finally decides she's had enough of being a plot device, and starts getting on Uatu's case and yelling at him that "we're all just stories to you". And... I really wished that this two-parter had done a better job at highlighting Uatu's character development, or if the previous episodes (other than Uatu's callousness when Dr. Strange destroyed his universe) had highlighted Uatu actually seeing people as stories. But Uatu decides to wrap up this one errant plot point by transplanting Apocalypse Widow from her universe into the 'Avengers are dead' universe, where the Loki invasion is underway. 

The episode ends with the Watcher in a cosmic shot monologuing about how he'll keep watching over the multiverse, and there's a brief kinda-sorta post-credits teaser where Captain Carter finds the Hydra Stomper from her episode. 

And... it's a fun episode. A lot of action scenes, and once I try not to analyze the writers' attempt to use these characters too much, I did really enjoy the wackiness and the fanboyism going on in this episode with all the characters running around. There are a lot of plot holes going on, yes -- why doesn't the Watcher pull in more characters on the power-scale weight class as Dr. Strange Supreme? What was the point about the Infinity Crusher? There's all the questions about the lack of consistency on how or where infinity stones can work or not. There's a lack of fun interactions between the different 'what if' characters. There's a lot to be improved, of course, particularly the lack of character growth showcases for Ultron, Uatu and Widow... but all in all? It's fun. It's a lot of fun, I felt like most of the characters got a fair amount of showcase in the team-up (which is not the case when they tried to repeat the formula in season 2) and I had a lot of fun rewatching this first season. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• While the concept is a bit more dire than Secret Wars, that's perhaps the original crossover event of various heroes plucked by an otherworldly power to fight in a battle.
• Uatu gathers heroes from every single episode in the What If season (plus Gamora, from an episode cut from this season and would be released in the second season). The zombies episode get referenced when Strange Supreme summons all the zombies to fight Ultron briefly; and episode 3 (the universe where the Avengers were killed by Yellowjacket) is the one that Resistance Black Widow relocates to.
  
• Arnim Zola's design as a humanoid robot with his human face on a screen on the robot's torso/belly echoes his iconic (and sometimes-mocked) comic-book supervillain form. The Ultron head also only has one eye left, which, while not technically an 'eye-for-a-head', still kind of counts. 
• Strange Supreme's protective spells take the form of their comic-book counterparts' attires. 
• Captain Carter is going through a version of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, fighting Batroc the Leaper on top of a hijacked ship. Her costume has also been changed to the blue-and-white 'stealth suit' that Steve Rogers wore during the first half of that movie. 
• Thanos-killer Gamora and Sakaarian armour Iron Man are in Nidaveliir, where Thor recruited Eitri to forge Stormbreaker in Avengers: Infinity War. 
• The Guardians of the Multiverse get a 360-degree spin-around shot that is meant to resemble the iconic spinning shot of the Avengers from The Avengers.
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-29929 again, technically. 
• Role Reprises: One last role reprise in Georges St-Pierre (Batroc the Leaper). Other returning reprising actors include Hayley Atwell (Captain Carter); Chadwick Boseman (Star-Lord/T'Challa); Michael B. Jordan (Killmonger); Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange); Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Toby Jones (Arnim Zola); Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Frank Grillo (Crossbones); Kurt Russel (Ego)
• A new face among the non-returning actors is Cynthia McWilliams as Gamora. Ross Marquand, Lake Bell and Mick Wingert continue their roles as Ultron, Black Widow and Iron Man respectively. 

Movie Review: Punisher - War Zone

The Punisher: War Zone (2008)

I forgot to upload the review for this movie, despite watching it around the same time that I did the other two pre-MCU Punisher movies! And... and I think that's mostly because I really didn't really like this one as much as the previous two. 1989's The Punisher was somewhat forgivable due to how relatively old it was, and 2004's The Punisher is probably the best out of the non-MCU live-action adaptations. 

Punisher: War Zone, released in 2008 and explicitly noted to be yet another reboot, tries to go for a less 'origin story' vibe, tries to make it less about Frank Castle dismantling a criminal organization, and brings in several plot points from the comics to spice things up. Headlining the antagonistic side of things is Billy "Jigsaw" Russo, one of Punisher's comic-book nemeses, who gets his origin story here and is accompanied by his psychotic cannibal of a brother, "Loony Bin" Jim. Dominic West's utterly hammy performance as Billy Russo is easily the highlight of the movie, with the rather random sequence in the middle of the Russo brothers (heh) walking around giving a whole-ass speech to recruit the various ethnic criminal groups with what's essentially a modified US army recruitment speech. 

Another aspect that is actually rather mature is the effects of the Punisher's ruthless war against criminals, adapting an arc in Punisher MAX where Frank accidentally kills an undercover cop and has to deal with both the moral and emotional fallout. Both the dead policeman (and his family, which become recurring characters throughout the movie) as well as the fact that Punisher essentially created his own villain by torturing Billy Russo and not finishing the job, would be a nice little critique and exploration on the whole ultraviolent 'Punisher' vigilante. In fact, the Netflix show does a somewhat decent sorta-attempt at this. There's even a minor character, Carlos Cruz, who was a former gang member allied with the good guys that Frank has a visceral reaction to. There are many aspects that would've made this a nice exploration about morality and redemption, and when the Punisher method works or doesn't work.

But Punisher: War Zone is... it tries to explore these themes, but at the end of the day it just handwaves everything -- rather conveniently -- just in service of continuing the action. We get the angst built up, of course. Obviously the dead cop's wife is super-angry at Frank and no soulful puppy-dog-eyes or money is going to bring her husband back. But all of that is handwaved aside hard when terrorists like Jigsaw and his goons show up, kidnap and threaten to kill her and her daughter, meaning that Punisher's ultraviolence gets 'redeemed' by default.

The aforementioned gang member, Carlos? There's some headbutting with Frank, but that plot point ends up, again, kind of handwaved aside when Carlos gets tortured and brutally left to die by the Russo brothers. At least this one had some sort of a satisfying ending with Frank sharing one last manly-bro moment with him. The second act really does focus a lot on the Punisher wanting to hang up the proverbial cape after being traumatized by killing that undercover cop. 

And... at the end of the day, the movie is more about the action scene, first and foremost, and I unapologetically am entertained by the movie because of it. We get some hammy acting from the secondary characters (Billy's old boss, as well as Billy himself), and even if some of the over-the-top acting is a bit ridiculous... again, I'm here to enjoy the glorious over-the-top violence. It's just that it's a bit off whenever the movie tries its best to go to the deep discussion about the morals of vigilante justice and the redeemability of criminals... and then Frank casually murders one of the lesser antagonists just to get Colin Salmon's character to curse and I laugh at it. 

And... in a sense, I guess that's okay. The movie's focused more on the action and the gore, with some moments that are in rather stark contrast to some of the more hammy scenes like Jigsaw's recruiting moment, or everything about Loony Bin Jim. We get a fair amount of Punisher's allies killed (including some civilians who are absolutely sweet and did nothing wrong), there was the brutality of Billy Russo's origin story, and there's a nice stab at trying to have a rather thematic storyline...

But I do think that was where it falls short slightly because it really did feel like we're building up to something... and then the movie just goes into an action scene and a hostage scene and another action scene. Admittedly, the action is pretty dang fun, and I can't argue about that. It's just that I felt like I was promised more in the first act, and we really didn't get much of it. Frank and his remaining allies unleash some gangsters upon Jigsaw's army of gangsters, and then the Punisher has to face off a sadistic choice of saving his friend or the civilians. 

Which, I do think is where some of my biggest frustrations with this movie lies -- Ray Stevenson is a pretty good Punisher, and the script clearly had some ideas on where to go. You can have your cake and eat it; you can have all of this over-the-top comic book ultraviolence and still wrap up Punisher's angsty character arc. The comics do it all the time! But... but as a violent action movie, it was pretty enjoyable. And I think these merits are what Punisher: War Zone should really be judged for. It is just a shame that I really did feel like there's a huge, somewhat wasted potential here. 

What If S01E08 Review: Age of Ultron

What If, Season 1, Episode 8: What If... Ultron Won?

And after the relatively (and potentially purposefully) weak episode 7 and its wacky twist ending, we get the final two episodes of the first season of What If, which... honestly, rather beautifully tied together the seven anthology episodes (or, well, at least five of them) and gave us a climactic ending that tied the season up with a bow, while still giving us a nice feeling of having each alternate universe be separate. Again, this was a problem that What If's second season had -- which I won't bitch about here -- but rewatching the first season really did highlight just how well-done this season was. 

The actual 'What If' part of the episode is pretty all right, which really does help to wash off the aftertaste of the previous episode. This was a world ravaged by Ultron -- Age of Ultron might be kind of a messy movie, but I really did enjoy it since it was the height of Marvel-mania. One thing that was lacking was the supposedly cosmic scale. Sure, the movie mentioned that Ultron might go from one Infinity Stone to the next and cause a cosmic apocalypse, but did anyone really believe that Ultron would be any more destructive than the Transformers villain that he was? Raze the Earth, sure. Be a cosmic threat? Debatable. 

And really, it's just a lot of wacky comic-book nonsense as in this universe, Ultron is allowed to finally flex and show off what he can do with all six infinity stones. Now, subsequent MCU projects like the Loki TV series and even the second season of What If would really cheapen the Infinity Stones for what are essentially gags, but within the context of this first season, it's pretty neat to see the limits of someone who's got a completely different set of goal than the other villain who gathered the plot devices that control the universe. Ol' Thanos was super-focused on his goal, which made sense as a driving force in his mind. So was Ultron... but instead of some kind of cause, Ultron's cause was simple annihilation of all life.

We get a quick rundown of how Ultron managed to wipe out life in this universe, showing Ultron being uploaded to his techno-organic 'perfect' Vision body, killing the Avengers, and subsequently using nuclear bombs to Terminator III all of humanity. In a bit of black comedy (and obvious cheating on the part of the story-writers), Ultron zaps Thanos and slices him in half to claim the other five Infinity Stones. Just... just ignore how Thanos got the Time Stone in this reality. We then get to see Ultron create a massive army with the Infinity Stones, transform himself into a swanky caped form, and start going around on a spherical ship invading random locations in the galaxy like Asgard, Sakaar, Xandar, Ego and the Sovereign's planets. We get to see some fun wacky comic-book fanservice like Ultron drones piling into Ego's core and blowing him up, and a very brief scene of Captain Marvel fighting back before she gets blown up in the core of the planet. Which, depending on how you feel on her author's pet status, is a bit cathartic. 

And... Uatu seems ready to close the book on this story (again, ignore how he seems to be looking into this universe after 'watching' last episode, which chronologically has to take place later... ignore it for the sake of the narrative) before Infinity Ultron actually hears Uatu's narration, and this freaks Uatu the fuck out. 

Uatu then 'zips' back to Earth, where the only survivors in this post-apocalyptic world are Hawkeye and Black Widow, who's running around and dodging Ultron Sentries. And... this part of the episode is okay. Again, it's something that kind of grounds some kind of reality into the episode, but it does feel kind of jarring where we zip back to a typical on-the-ground superhero story about finding just the right file in an abandoned KGB facility to Ultron trying to breach the cosmic borders. 

The stories kind of happen concurrently in the episode, but let me go through the Widow/Hawkeye storyline first just to wrap it up. We get bits of Uatu trying to cheer these guys on, begging and pleading as the third-person narrator who's inexplicably involved in these stories now, and that's actually kind of cute... but I do appreciate that Uatu's not super involved in Widow and Hawkeye's little story. 

The spy stuff leads them to an admittedly clever (in a comic-book continuity sense) where they discover a different AI to combat Ultron, which is a backup copy of Arnim Zola, hidden in the same Hydra base that the climax of Captain America: Civil War takes place in. Zola himself isn't the most interesting character, though it's nice to see him back in a fashion similar to his wacky comic-book counterpart, since he was kind of wasted in the live-action movies and is unlikely to ever return. There is the rather odd leap of logic as the show wants us to believe that Arnim Zola is going to be able to fight back against Ultron after basically showing the audience how Ultron wiped out the entire universe, but there you go. 

The action scenes are actually rather thrilling, and while Black Widow herself doesn't have much going on beyond just being heroic and sad, we get a nice -- if somewhat subdued -- parallel between Hawkeye and his 'Ronin' persona from Avengers: Endgame, where he's just barely hanging on to sanity and is very much willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Losing his family isn't good for poor Clint's mental health. We get a pretty nice action sequence as the Ultron Sentries close in (being robotic and moving robotically is probably easy for the animation team to do) and Hawkeye's final stand as he pushes back a single robot down into the endless horde of robots is pretty great. 

Around halfway through of this, Ultron manages to break into the Nexus of All Realities, confronting Uatu the Watcher in his own domain. Again, we need to kind of ignore the fact that Infinity Stone powers aren't supposed to work outside of their universe (which is established in Loki, which aired before this season) but just enjoy the ride. Uatu goes through a bit of a character development himself, though I really wished he was given more agency beyond just being desperate as Ultron knocks him around, forcing him to plead, to run, and to hide until Ultron punches him through a bunch of random universes and Uatu decides to fight back. 

Uatu's fight against Infinity Ultron is... okay. It's nowhere as crazy as two cosmic entities fighting each other would be, though that is kind of saved for the next episode. We've got a bunch of energy beams, some (honestly tacky even by the standards of the genre) golden armour for Uatu, and even a shot of Ultron just going cosmic and chomping down on a galaxy. These are the stuff that would look stupid in live-action, and I do enjoy seeing it here. We got a lot of wacky Kirby black-dot ink shading, a bunch of loud colours... but at the end of the day it's just a bunch of big beams before Uatu disappears and runs off, leading to the final episode... where it's revealed that Uatu's gone to the imprisoned universe that evil Dr. Strange is in, asking for his help. It's team-up time for the finale, and that's where we're going. 

And... a lot of this episode is set-up, and I'm honestly not convinced -- even after the finale -- that we really needed the stuff with the survivors in Ultron's dimension. Black Widow surviving didn't really add much to the next episode, and it's not like she's a particularly different Black Widow beyond being a bit more somber. Sure, Arnim Zola showing up is a cute easter egg and Hawkeye's death is a cool scene, but it does kind of drag the episode down.

 

What I really felt was missing was the fact that it probably should've explored both Ultron and Uatu more -- not as action figures, but as characters. Now admittedly the episode does try a bit with Ultron, but I really did wish that they had done a bit more to explore this as an alternate Age of Ultron in showing how twisted and mutated Ultron was from the original peacekeeping program, instead of the almost-generic doomsday villain he became here. I say almost because we did get some little bits and bits of character for Ultron early on, but it really isn't quite enough. There's a significant lack of the Age of Ultron's deliciously manic 'I have human emotions and impulses but I don't know what to do with them' vibe which was only really ruined by bad movie pacing which was lacking because Infinity Ultron has the menace... and not much else.

And as the titular main character, and the guy whose huge twist of 'oh, he finally decides to stop watching and finally do something', Uatu... doesn't really get to do much. As I mentioned earlier, his actions are all reactive instead of proactive, making his decision to fight back feel like he's more threatened instead of actual heroism. We have scant little to really go on about Uatu's real duty or nature as the Watcher either, which I felt was a shame since they could've added just a little bit to contextualize him more as a character. 

Again, I did really enjoy this episode, and the subsequent follow-up... but they really could've done more to make it a bit more cohesive. I have a greater appreciation of it now that I've seen how bad What If could get (*cough*seasontwo*cough*) but criticism comes where criticism's due. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The events of this episode takes place in an equivalent of Avengers: Age of Ultron. That movie gave Ultron's rise a somewhat cosmic-level threat... which felt a bit muted considering Ultron was dealt with in the span of that movie. The concept of Ultron and an army of drones taking over the entire universe is basically a truer-to-text version of the original comic book 'Age of Ultron' arc. Coincidentally, Hawkeye and Widow, though not paired together, are two of the surviving heroes in the comics' Age of Ultron timeline. 
• The scene of Ultron defeating the Avengers in this timeline seems to be taken from Iron Man's prophetic vision in Age of Ultron -- from the shattered shield up to Iron Man being the last man standing.
• The location of the Avengers' last stand, meanwhile, is in the Nexus, a location briefly seen in Age of Ultron as the location Tony Stark goes to when the Avengers split up. 
• When Uatu and Infinity Ultron fight, they briefly fall into a reality where Steve Rogers is the President of the United States. This is the premise of one of the original What If comics, specifically issue #26.
  
• Infinity Ultron's design takes several cues from his design when he takes over the Phalanx in the comics -- specifically the red cape and the four slit-shaped eyes. 
• Red Guardian from Black Widow doesn't show up in the entire series, but his shield makes a cameo here. 
• Hawkeye and Black Widow find Zola in the bunker where the climax of Captain America: Civil War happens, where Tony fights against Steve and Bucky. The climax also follows the combatants as they rise up the vertical-like bunker, similar to that movie. 
• Hawkeye downloads Zola into code with the 'hacking arrow' from Avengers.
• The shot of Ultron assembling an equivalent of an Infinity Gauntlet seems to use nanoparticles, just like what Tony would do in a much more heroic manner in Avengers: Endgame. Meanwhile, the shot of Ultron taking over Uatu's domain with red streaks floating across it seems to be inspired by the depiction of the 'digital realm' from Avengers: Age of Ultron. 
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-29929
• Role Reprises: Returning from previous episodes are MCU actors Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Toby Jones (Arnim Zola) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange). 
• Everyone else in this episode are recasted for the series. Ross Marquand, who had done work as Red Skull both in What If and Infinity War, takes over as Ultron's voice. Lake Bell, Mick Wingert, Josh Keaton and Alexandra Daniels continue to voice-act as Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America and Captain Marvel. 

Bleach TYBW E28 Review: bAckstory

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 28: Kill the King

Oh yeah. This cour is really changing a lot of the source material by expanding it a whole ton. That was why this episode (and the next couple) took a bit for me to review, since I reread this chunk of the manga that this cour adapted. And, to be frank, from here on out, with the exception of one or two fights is where Bleach basically self-destructs. Juhabach's plan is nonsensical and too oblique to care about, while alleged main characters Ichigo and Uryu do jack-shit and are kept out of the climax until it's way too late and the story rushes to its abrupt end.

But not here, no. We start off with another flashback, this one showing us the apparent dismemberment of the Soul King from Juhabach's POV. It's al a bit confusing and still non-voiced, and I do wonder if we'll ever get a proper showing and monologue of the Soul King backstory... or if these fragmented flashbacks are the compromise between keeping the ominous feel from the source material while still giving us some context that we could piece together if we rewatched the whole thing (or read the manga, so these scenes feel less random). 

We see the Soul King doing some ritual with a sword in an ethereal lake, before Juhabach gets submerged into the water, gets younger and younger, and gets turned into a baby which leads to the creepy cult-baby imagery we've seen in the previous season. We see more flashes of the Soul King being cut apart and then chained up in his crystal chrysalis-prison-throne, a young Juhabach crying at the sight... and then a bizarre sequence of the Soul King being wrapped around by Ichigo's skin as Juhabach looks over. 

Again, I do wish we get some proper explanation at the end, but there are enough clues to put into more context why Juhabach wants to kill the Soul King and thus 'free' him from his humiliation.

We cut away to see some of the Shinigami and surviving Sternritter reacting to all the shaking, with Mayuri theorizing about the 'wedges of the three worlds' being disrupted... but we also see some of the scenes in the real world. Isshin reacting is nice, but what's more important is Ryuken, who is holding some diamond-like fragments in his hand while looking at a picture of his dead wife. This isn't explained, but if you're familiar with the source material, this is the Still Silver he extracted from his dead wife's chest, and the very thing he used to create the Plot Device Deus Ex Machina Arrow that Icihgo and Uryu use to seal the Almighty in the final battle. Actually giving us some foreshadowing... still won't make that arrow scene better, but hopefully this builds something up for something extended with Ryuken in the anime.

The opening credits roll, and Ichigo and his four companions arrive, with Juhabach giving a 'I've seen it all' monologue. Ichigo's allies note how off Juhabach seems, and then Ichigo pulls out his two Zanpakuto -- his brand new Shikai that he spent a whole season reforging. In the source material... none of what is going to take the majority of this episode actually happens. Ichigo and company arrives while the manga keeps cutting away to the Shinigami assembling on Urahara's location, and when Ichigo arrives, Juhabach monologues a bit, they see the Soul King stabbed, and Ichigo immediately jumps to pull it out. It's all done for shock value, which there is merit in that for sure, but boy it really made Ichigo not do anything after his training other than battle Candice. Here, even though the end result is the same, having Ichigo battle a non-Almighty Juhabach beforehand actually makes him feel way much less of a dunce, while also maintaining Juhabach's threat level. 

We get a badass speedy clash between Juhabach creating some blue Reishi flames an Ichigo charging in, and then there's a cool little spin-around shot mid-air as Ichigo and Juhabach flies towards each other and Ichigo unleashes Getsuga Tensho. Notably, at around this point, Juhabach's eyes return back to their one-pupil stage which is a nice way to not shake up the power balance of the story, but is also a nice "by the way, I am not left-handed" moment.

A nice sequence is that Ichigo then charges and slams Juhabach down onto the Squad Zero realms, making landfall in Tenjiro's hot springs. It's a nice usage of these areas which aren't relevant for the rest of the story anymore, while also makes he fight not just be a static sequence of them charging and clashing in the sky. 

Juhabach blocks the sword strike with Blut Vene, then unleashes a ring-like spell called Sankt Bogen, which creates a pretty impressive explosion. We get a badass shot of the smoke clearing away while the shrouded Ichigo crackles with lighting. Ichigo apparently used the little Getsuga to block it, and, again, I do like that the animators picked certain stuff that both Ichigo and Juhabach have been shown to be able to do previously to script this fight, and they're not just pulling shit out of thin air.

The two then charge each other all Dragon Ball Z style, with Ichigo surrounding himself in yellow aura to match Juhabach's blue, and they just shoot through the air and slam towards each other again and again, before clashing swords. Juhabach mocks Ichigo for daring to even take it easy towards him, and summons his anime-excusive spell Qualkreis, creating a bunch of spectral arrows around Ichigo that fire, which Ichigo blocks with his twin swords. Ichigo unleashes a Getsuga Jujisho, which Juhabach blocks with Sankt Zwinger. The massive Jujisho creates a gigantic cross that dwarfs the Soul King's Palace, and we rotoscope around it for a while, which is quite cool. Juhabach gets sent slamming down to someone's temple, and Ichigo acts all victorious while backlit by the Jujisho cross, which is, I'm not going to lie, pretty damn cool even if I know what's going to happen next. 

Juhabach, while lying on the ground, commends Ichigo for his training with Squad Zero and walking through Irazusando. Juhabach then says that he's finally going to get started, activating Almighty and his creepy triple-pupils as he creates a gigantic pillar of Reishi and summons another Qualkreis. This time Ichigo is forced to Getsuga Tensho to survive the barrage, bursts out of the smoke to attack Juhabach... and then Juhabach does the "I've seen it" trick he uses against Ichibe and seemingly teleports behind Ichigo during their little clash. Juhabach then grabs Ichigo in the face, both of them glowing with Blut, and he mocks Ichigo for daring to fight him despite knowing the difference in their strength. 

In a very cool scene that's a pretty neat callback to the old-school inner realm sequences of Old Man Zangetsu and Ichigo, Juhabach blasts Ichigo to the bottom of the Soul King's palace, before he lands upside-down and talks to Ichigo. They have an exchange that's taken from something actually much later in the manga, where Juhabach tells Ichigo that he's going to feel more and more hopeless the more they clash, while Ichigo does his "I will protect everything" declaration. Juhabach then beats Ichigo again, punching him up to where Yoruichi and the others were left behind. 

We briefly see a couple more scenes of the Shinigami on the Soul Society, with some comedic moments here and there -- like Renji having no sense of direction, or Soi Fon noting that there would be more survivors since a fool like Omaeda survived. We get a brief scene of Ukitake helping the medical team heal those that are injured in the previous cour like Kenpachi, and we have a short scene of Nanao asking Urahara about why, if the Quincies are doing this because of a grudge match against the Shinigami, did they leave so many Shinigami survivors and go to the Soul King Palace directly.

But Juhabach monologues to Ichigo, talking about the world of darkness that came before, and how that world of darkness was driven away by the Soul King. But despite these heroics, the Soul King was used like a tool to keep the realms stable. Juhabach notes that with those magic eyes, the Soul King can see the future... including the misfortune of the Quincies. So why did the Soul King Adonaeus let the tragedies happen? Especially since they were almost wiped out twice because they 'didn't fit into the world's rules'? It's a nice little bit that gives a fair bit more depth to Juhabach's plan and feelings towards the Soul King, and giving the Soul King a name is pretty cool! 

Again, while it is obviously hypocritical for Mr. "I'll Kill My Own Sternritter If They Are Of No Use To Me", Juhabach, in principle, has an actual motivation for his whole recreate-the-world agenda. It's something that was sorely lacking, and presumably would've been revealed later if Bleach wasn't rushed to its conclusion. 

At this point, Ichigo faces off against Juhabach again, crossing his swords after trading some more 'protect the world' barbs against Juhabach. In a very nice touch, Orihime zips in and uses Santenkesshun to heal Ichigo's wounds from the extended fight, while Ichigo readies a massive Getsuga Tensho. While this happens, Ichibe, sitting legs folded where we left him, apologizes to the humans for sending them to a fight they can't possibly win. Ichigo and Juhabach clash, leading to a fade to black .

We cut back down to the people below, where Rukia notes that while he initial shaking seems to be from Squad Zero using Bankai, the shaking still hasn't stopped -- which of course is a reference to Juhabach already stabbing the Soul King while all of this is happening. Rukia and Renji arrive at the research lab.

Back to Ichigo and Juhabach, and we take another conversation repurposed from elsewhere in the manga (after the Mimihagi sequence, in fact), where Juhabach mocks Ichigo and why keeps doing it, to which Ichigo replies that others might be able to do it, but he can't just ignore it and walk away. Juhabach prepares to monologue about the Soul King being a sacrifice again, but Yoruichi zips in with her death-strings attack, which happened after the Soul King's death in the source material. 

Juhabach burns off the strings, and the flames from the strings fall onto the curtains covering the Soul King's body, revealing the fact that Juhabach has already stabbed the Soul King last episode, and the sword is still embedded within. Ichigo zips in with a very cool super-speed sequence and tries to drag the blade out of the Soul King. His crystal have also turned all red, which is interesting. This is dragged out a bit, but ultimately just like the manga, Ichigo's Blut takes over his right arm and forces him to slice the Soul King's crystal prison completely in half while Juhabach monologues about how the Quincy blood within Ichigo will absolutely deny the existence of the Soul King.

The destruction of the Soul King is drawn out a bit, while everyone looks on in horror, and Juhabach gives his whole "my will is your will" speech... but also adds a bit of a caveat, in that to completely destroy the Soul King's seal, Juhabach needed someone with all the qualities of Quincy, Human, Shinigami, Fullbringer and Hollow powers. 

This line wasn't in the source material, but it was implied to be the case in the Can't Fear Your Own World novels, and most certainly explains a couple of things. Firstly, why Juhabach took the time to dick around with Ichigo and spare him in both of the fights they had, and secondly, why he even bothered to enslave Hollows very early on in the arc instead of just exterminating them entirely, presumably in the case that Ichigo wasn't ready for this sequence. 

And then the Soul King seemingly explodes, radiating out an explosion of aura that goes through and rattles the Soul Society, Hueco Mundo and even the human world, giving us some nice pretty shots of the real world as well as a cameo from Ichigo's human friends. The Shinigami on the ground level react to this in panic, while Juhabach acts all ominously about how this is the end of the Soul Society.

Ultimately this is a very great expansion. Being the supposed main characters of the arc, both Ichigo and Juhabach are actually severely lacking in confrontation, screentime and even motivations. Giving them an extra fight and rearranging some scenes to make Team Ichigo's arrival and the Soul King's death a fair bit more dramatic and played out fixes one of the pacing problems I had with this part of the source material. But more importantly is giving some context to the weird things that Juhabach does beyond just some vague 'creepy eyes tell me the future' handwave. The motivation, as well as the reasoning around the Soul King's seal, are all pretty nice additions. Again, I don't know if we'll get much more about the prehistoric era of the Bleach universe, but even giving us these kinds of additions go a long way to making this ending feel a fair bit more cohesive. 

Random Notes:

• Adonaeus seems to be a combination of "Adonai", a Hebrew term for God, as well as "Deus", a Latin term for God.
• Among some of the scenes cut are a sequence of Juhabach killing the nameless, strange hooded attendants of the Soul King. Any previous scenes that these guys had, the anime moved to Ichibei, which I thought was always a nice way to condense things by trimming the fat of non-named characters. 
  
• Also cut is a scene of Soi Fon getting shocked and overwhelmed-with-cuteness at he presence of Shihoin Yushiro, because Yushiro is about as irrelevant as those nameless hooded attendants.
• Notably, out of the surviving Sternritters on the Seireitei, we see Bazz-B, Liltotto and Giselle (and zombie Bambi), all of whom go up to the Soul King's Palace in the source material. We have no confirmation about Candice and Meninas's fates (who just disappear in the manga, but would be retconned/revealed to be alive in Can't Fear Your Own World, or NaNaNa Najahkoop (who would have a short scene afterwards), or Robert (whose death scene closeup was adapted out of cour 2).
• It is admittedly thanks to deviations from the source material, but it is rather silly that Ichigo's backup really just stood around in the background while all of this is going on. Can't really blame Orihime, Chad and Ganju, but Yoruichi is a captain-level warrior famous for her speed. The anime moves her little string attack sequence to happen before Ichigo's defeat instead of after, so it's a bit better in that regard, but it is kinda embarrassing for them.
• In the source material, Ichigo only ever unleashes Getsuga Jujisho exactly once to beat Candice, which always felt pretty strange for the fact that Kubo finally gave Mr. One-Trick-Pony a new move. 
• While not a surprise, the anime having cut Shinji and Bazz-B's confrontation means that we also have Omaeda's comment about Shinji doing "something really cool" to save them offscreen (which always felt tongue-in-cheek) was cut out. Will Shinji get to do something this time around? Hopefully. 
• Also cut is another physical-abuse comedy between Soi Fon and Omaeda, though we get a verbal-abuse sequence as replacement. More significant is a huge chunk of exposition that Urahara does in 612 when describing their plan to storm Reiokyu, which is condensed and combined with anime-original dialogue of them reacting to the realms shuddering. 
• The novels would later give it an explanation, but in the manga, this was the final appearance of Ichibe, giving his cryptic 'sorry humans' line.  
• Yoruichi's unnamed strings attack is given a name in the anime: Tenshiheisho: Hissaki Kumoi, translating to Heavenly Gift Armaments: Shredding Spider's Web.
• The scene is tense and dramatic, yes, but presumably Juhabach had to go and put the curtains back in place after the first stabbing of the Soul King, just for the dramatic flair of what he knew was going to happen in the future. He's got a flair for the dramatic, that Juha.