The Gifted S02E16 Review: Hollow Victory?

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 16: oMens

Well, I have to hand it to The Gifted... even if the second season is cancelled, they at least did wrap up things well by killing most of the bad guys and tying up most of the loose ends. And it's kind of hard to review this episode through that lens. Judging by the cliffhanger at the end -- the thought of more mutant uprising, and Blink showing up alive, with good hair, and asking the cast to follow her into a burning wasteland, clearly meant that the writers were planning for a subsequent third season. The fact that there are still plot threads left dangling -- like whatever the fuck was up with that music box and the Andrea/Andreas hair charm -- are pretty obvious. But all in all? I guess it's a pretty decent ending. It's such a shame that The Gifted never really ended up living up to its full potential, although for what it was, it's definitely been a charming ride. 

The episode was quick to set up the confrontation between the good guys and the various bad guy factions, with the last episode getting all the pieces in place. Fade and the Stepford Cuckoos kidnap and forcibly mind-control Andy and Lauren while everyone else is getting ready to engage in a proper shoot-out with the Purifiers, and this ends up getting Thunderbird to finally break free from his "oh no I miss Blink" power incontinence to finally do some tracking, before deciding to charge straight into battle and take on an entire army of Purifiers on his own. 

Acting as bait because he is borderline-suicidal and has nothing to lose is stupid and goes against everything Blink told Thunderbird about, but it's significantly less stupid than his comic-book death of "IMMA FIGHT A PLANE WITH MY BARE HANDS". And, credit where credit's due, that face-paint was pretty badass, and so is him just being a tank and beating up waves of Purifiers, and eventually teaming up with Erg, who talks him out of just giving up. Thunderbird punches Erg a couple of times to build up energy and allow Erg to blast the Purifiers, while Thunderbird embraces his X-Men codename and finally beats the fuck out of Jace Turner, that horribly-written character. That was the most satisfying beat-down I've seen in a while. 

Meanwhile, the Cuckoos get Andy and Lauren and force them to use their Fenris powers to blow up a the Sentinel Services building. And by blow up, I mean "send a glowing white ball of light that burns everything but the bleached framework of the building". It's... it's an interesting visual effect. And I guess this was meant to set up something for the hypothetical third season, because after blowing the building up, it's sort of... not really brought up again? 

The rest of the heroes show up and face off against the Cuckoos, who are very much ready to use Andy and Lauren to blow up our heroes, until Polaris talks to Esme and, of course, being an actual character, Esme realizes that, shit, maybe they're going too far with enslaving and murdering their own kind. Esme's heel-face-turn is pretty well built-up and kind of obvious, so her deciding to side with the Mutant Underground is understandable. And then Marcos just shoots her sisters in the chest, what the hell! And... and I'm surprised Esme didn't flip out right then and there. 

With a couple of sub-bosses out of the way, the adults go off to bring down Reeva once and for all to stop even more atrocities from happening, because this is the night where Reeva's army of mutants (who we never see) will be out of the building. Doing... things that we never see the impact of. There's a shoot-out with Fade and the rest of the ship-killer crew in some loading bay, and honestly, the ship-killer crew is kind of shit, huh? That's like the shittiest usage of the powers of teleporting objects and blowing up objects, honestly. Also, Caitlin kills Fade as he tries to choke Reed. 

But everyone's pinned down by the ship-killer crew except for Reed, who decides that, after flashbacking to a conversation with Lauren (which we saw from the first season) about purpose and whatnot, decides to be a hero, charge in solo into the elevator and challenge Reeva alone. Which is kind of stupid, but Reed at least recognizes his power is going to blow up out of control sooner rather than later, so. It's just pretty fortunate that instead of decaying the floor and missing Reeva entirely, Reed's power just straight up fucking explodes and decimates the upper half of the skyscraper. It's... it's a nice end for Reed, I suppose, who's been confused about his place in the world for a good chunk of this season. Not the best arc, and probably took up more screentime than I wished it would, but it was a decent exit. 

And... and I don't think we get to see the ship-killer crew die, but the Mutant Underground and their new allies (Erg and Esme) regroup afterwards, with most of their enemies down and out -- Reeva, Fade and the evil Cuckoos are dead; Jace is probably in a coma; and in a short scene we see Benedict Ryan mind-controlled by Esme to confess on live television. The Underground decide to rebuild as a brand-new organization, which is just as well because this season really shows how incompetent their previous organization was. And... and, of course, we get that whole next-season-teaser with Blink being alive and a burning hellscape behind her. 

Overall, though, it was... it was a pretty all-right finale, all things considered, for both the season and the show. The Gifted was always a show that had potential, but never really properly realized it, and even if it wasn't due to the circumstances of the Disney/Fox merger, I'd wager they would really have to step up their game in the next season or just fall into the same rut of talking big and not really delivering. 

Movie Review: Avengers: Endgame [Geekery & Pedantry Edition]

I did a more proper review of Avengers: Endgame in a previous post, and this one will be geared more towards the discussion of the geeky stuff like call-backs, minor characters, some potential plot holes and how they may or may not have made sense in retrospect, and discussion about foreshadowing, some plot holes in the movie, and other stuff. Because as much as I did enjoy Endgame, it'd be a lie to say that the movie is tightly-plotted. It's only the sheer power of the performances of the actors that the movie worked out a well as it did.

Anyway, this review was written before I watched Spider-Man: Far From Home or the special extended cut.

As with anything involving this movie, spoilers are at your own risk.

TIME TRAVEL DISCUSSION -- ALTERNATE TIMELINE OR STABLE LOOP?

This is the elephant in the room, I think. The biggest problems when you introduce time travel into a story, particularly one that's already jam-packed with like three dozen characters, is that... time travel, inherently as a plot device, really invites plot holes. The movie itself sort of brushes aside the whole "naaah, time travel can't change time, we'll always be creating a stable time loop" during the discussion between Hulk and the others. And... and evidently, that's not exactly true? While our heroes' sojourn to the '70's and Dark World-era Asgard went without a hitch, the two glaring continuity snarls of causing Loki to escape with the Tesseract in 2012 and 2014-era Thanos and his forces arriving onto the present day are both events that would cause a significant change in the timeline. The former might be explained with Captain America off-screen beating up Loki and returning him back to Avengers custody so the rest of the 2012 Avengers movie could take place, but Thanos and company got all killed and wiped out in 2023.

The other plausible reason, I guess, is that Tony used his Snap to undo any temporal paradoxes, becasue we know Tony's smart and he's also someone who wants to preserve the events in the present day at any costs. But we don't get any real confirmation from any of our heroes beyond "yep, Steve's going to play time police and return everything back to their proper temporal space".


That's all potential handwaves, of course, and another potential handwave is that the Ancient One and Bruce's discussion about branching timelines actually did end up causing branching timelines in the couple of timelines that the Avengers failed to maintain the flow of time. After all, what Bruce and the Ancient One were discussing -- that the time stream is maintained as a single cohesive flow -- can only be accomplished if the stones are returned to their original positions in time, making it look as if the stones have never left in the first place, and only in that position that no branching timelines are created. Something that, while certainly possible with the stones themselves, is not quite so possible with the temporal-displaced Thanos, Nebula, et cetera. Because unless Tony wished them back to 2014 to continue their original histories and ensure that the pre-existing history isn't changed, history now has a huge glaring hole where Thanos and his forces are supposed to be.

Which is why I really wished the initial conversation establishing the rules of time travel between Bruce, Rhodey and Scott was a bit more clear. I think what the movie ended up telling us, particularly with the Ancient One monologue later on, that if they cause a significant enough change, i.e. remove an Infinity Stone without returning it back later on, they'll cause a splinter timeline. And so far, from what we saw in Endgame, only two splinter timelines happened -- one where Loki escaped and teleported away with the Tesseract in 2012, and another one in 2014 where Thanos, Gamora, Nebula and the rest of their forces disappeared. And in the latter's case, it'll explain why the present-day heroes are able to kill the 2014-alternate-timeline Thanos and their forces without destabilizing the timeline. I just really wish the movie explained this a bit more, instead of doing the whole "haha, time travel isn't like other movies" gag.

So... I don't know. I do appreciate, honestly, that Avengers: Endgame is a movie that prioritizes character over plot. I really do -- I'd rather have a movie with a strong emotional core and a slightly handwaved plot than the other way around. That's how you get sub-par superhero movies. But they spend so much time yakking on about reverse-mobius models and slapping "Quantum" behind everything but not really making clear just how the specifics of their time travel work particularly when things go awry. The easy part is to just handwave it and say that either Tony's Snap or Steve's Great Time Travel Adventure end up putting everything back in place, but I really felt like we could've gotten a line or two addressing the whole time travel stuff, particularly after the paradoxes have happened.

Or maybe we're just putting too much thought into it, and that it's this exact time paradox that created the Multiverse we'll be exploring in Spider-Man: Far From Home? I'm not the biggest fan of that theory, honestly, but it's one that I'll probably accept depending on the execution. Alternatively, people are saying that because the Avengers fucked with time in this movie, the next supervillain's going to be Kang the Conqueror, born out of the time paradoxes... but considering how relatively poorly time travel is handled in this movie, I don't have confidence that we can satisfactorily get a proper time travel movie that makes sense of these paradoxes.

Magic is a bludgeon

So one of the biggest praises I had for Infinity War is how visually appealing the spectacle of utilizing both magic and the Infinity Stones are. One of my biggest complaints about the usage of some of these Stones and reality-warping abilities is that... they're so... mundane. The Aether was just a swirling liquid metal goop in Dark World, and magic in Doctor Strange are primarily either just portals or magic swords. In Infinity War, they try their best to change this around. Thanos's fight with Doctor Strange is nothing short of phenomenal. From launching the mirror dimension itself to Thanos, to turning things into bubbles and butterflies, to altering reality to create a fake Knowhere, to doing the whole clone thing and summoning the chains and all that jazz.

Here? None of the Infinity Stones are even used in any sort of interesting capacity. The magicians all just essentially make shields and shoot beams, and the only interesting thing Dr. Strange does is to manipulate some rocks one time, and then he just gets stuck with waterspout management. Again, the action scenes work fine without the magic, but... it's just such wasted potential, y'know? The Infinity Stones quite literally get reduced to plot coupons, and the sole time anyone uses the Stones individually was when Thanos pulls the power one out to punch Captain Marvel in the face.

Again, the movie's pretty damn crowded as it is and the special effects budget is probably already through the roof as it is, but still... that final battle would've been a lot more interesting if the Infinity Stones were used, you know? Maybe have Thanos come into possession of one or two of the Stones by the time Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel and the other heavy hitters start coming into the play? Which leads into...

POWER LEVELS: IT'S OVER 9000

Another pretty valid criticism that I've seen is that by the moment the reinforcements arrive, Thanos really ended up feeling not quite as threatening, and a lot of people argue that he sholdn't even be that powerful in the first place. Sure, he's got a fancy new sword, but this is 2014-era Thanos, without any of the Infinity Stones. Sure, the argument that he's actually taking things seriously this time around and actually going for the kill instead of being detached and just dispatching the pests in his way goes a long way in explaining why a stoneless Thanos is so dangerous.

But the thing is, Thor with Stormbreaker in Infinity War was able to strike through Thanos with a completed infinity gauntlet, and... sure, Thanos might be preoccupied and slightly distracted in that movie, but in this one, Thanos is ostensibly weaker, while Thor has help. He's out of practice, maybe, but he's got Mjolnir and help in terms of Iron Man and Captain America. Power levels is not a thing in superhero shows, of course, and the main reason is so that it'd be an exciting action finale, but y'know.

Also, while it's certainly not one-on-one, it is interesting the same argument that happened to Scarlet Witch able to hold off a five-stone Thanos in Infinity War with her powers -- which came solely from a single Mind Stone -- also holds true in this movie. Captain Marvel, whose powers came solely from the single Space Stone, is able to hold Thanos off with ease. I suppose the infinity gauntlet really doesn't work as that much of a power-up, then, but more as an energy regulator or something? For all the introdump the movies do about where the Infinity Stones come from, I really wished we actually got some exposition about just what they do and how they relate to the gauntlet.

Also Doctor Strange is another super-powerful member on the battlefield who probably should be gunning for Thanos, huh? He managed to hold his on against a Thanos with four stones that was abusing the powers of the reality stone, he really should've done a lot more in this finale.

A little less egregious are the Black Order, who are basically fodder in this movie. Ebony Maw's the only one who's doing anything that looks particularly threatening, levitating rocks and shaping the terrain and everything. Meanwhile, the other three members of the Black Order, previously needing multiple powerful members of the Avengers to take down, end up basically being dispatched very simply. Corvus Glaive just dies in the background, skewered by Okoye. Cull Obsidian gets to fight Iron Man and Spider-Man for all of three seconds before Giant-Man accidentally stomps him flat. Proxima doesn't even get an action scene I don't think. I really do kind of wish we had gotten some more... mini-bosses, as it were. More ships, or something, to keep Dr. Strange and Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch busy instead of, y'know, a waterspout.

Whatever happened to the mouse?

No, I'm not going to talk about the actual mouse that showed up in the movie. "What happened to the mouse" is a trope describing a character or a plot point that was brought up, but never really explored and is just sort of dropped and shrugged off. With how busy and jam-packed Infinity War and Endgame are, there defintiely are a couple of plot points that I wished we had more clarification of. Again, these could all be explored in future movies, and they certainly don't exactly ruin my enjoyment of Endgame, but these are conspicuous questions for me, and ones that could've easily been handwaved aside with a single line or two.

Whatever happened to Xandar?
It really could've been handled a lot better, all things considered. By the time Infinity War begun, Xandar's just fallen and Thanos already has the Power Stone. We really could've snuck in a post-credits scene somewhere (ideally Guardians 2) showing Thanos arriving at Xandar, or showcase one of the Guardians trying to hail Xandar and getting a reply informing our heroes of the devastation, or have the Xandarian survivors show up in the final battle... Didn't Rhomann Dey or whoever that dude is called survive Ronan's assault?

The Collector?
So is he dead? Alive? The Collector we saw in Infinity War was a projection of the Reality Stone, and while Knowhere is burning, we never actually got to see if he survived or not, and I'm genuinely not sure if the Collector is high on any movie's list of "hey, what happened to this character?"

Red Skull?
So is Red Skull, former leader of Hydra, just... a ghost guardian man now? Even with the missing confrontation between Steve and Red Skull, does he just sort of... hover there in Vormir until the Soul Stone is returned? Is he released of his curse? Did his character as a person change at all?

Infinity Stones power imbalance? Why don't they use individual stones?
How is the Tesseract able to transform the Red Skull into the immortal guardian of Vormir and the Soul Stone, or give Captain Marvel such immense strength; or the Mind Stone able to create Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Ultron and Vision... but when combined together, the stones are just sort of parts of a whole to Snap this and that? It's... it's part of my complaint, really, that they sort of forget about the Infinity Stones as individuals and are just treating them as collectibles. Alternatively, they have learned enough from the events of their various movies that messing with any single one of the Stones can really cause some massive fuck-ups. As for the power imbalance... comic book logic, I suppose.

Thanos: Rising?
We know Thanos's motivations. Or, well, at least his mission statement. We also see some bits and pieces of his past, particularly how it relates to Gamora. But we really have no real concept about what, really, made Thanos tick. What made him so, so convinced that wiping out half the population is the key to world peace? What alien race did he come from and why is he so damn powerful? As a quasi-comic-book-reader, I know some of these answers, but in the movies themselves, I kinda wished that either Infinity War or Endgame had at least explored these topics a little.

Cap's Big Journey?
So alternate timeline or not, Steve goes aroud returning every single Stone back to where they took it from. Fair enough -- presumably Steve goes around time with the Pym particles and used the Tesseract to travel through space. Returning the Power, Time and Mind Stones, as well as Mjolnir, would probably be simple enough as long as Steve can sneak in and out unseen. But how will Steve deal with the others? The Reality Stone in particular -- how is he going to get that back into Jane's body? As a side-note... I didn't think about it this way before, but, man, considering a huge plot point of Dark World is how difficult it is to extract the Aether out of Jane, the fact that Rocket did it with a syringe is probably a sly nod to how silly that whole movie is, huh?

Also, considering that the Tesseract and Loki's scepter respectively have to be shattered to access the stone inside, how did Cap get those stones back into their respective forms? Presumably Red Skull and Vormir just sort of accepted the Soul Stone too, huh? Considering how Steve talked about how he's going to 'prune all the branches', presumably Captain America's journey kept alternate timelines to a minimum.

WHY DID THEY NOT DO [X], a.k.a. Plot Holes Everywhere

Let's be nitpicky, and talk about some of the more... interesting plot holes in this movie. The real answer for any of thee is just "the movie would've not flown as well otherwise" or "it's the less interesting way things could've gone". But really, I kinda wished they sort of acknowledged or handwaved some of these. And I think I've talked enough of the time travel paradox questions above, which at this point I'm just going to shrug off as "Time Travel Works Don't Ask Us"... which, admittedly, is 100% consistent with the inconsistency that time travel is portrayed in superhero comics.

They should've called in Captain Marvel!
...and the movie would end up like Justice League, where Superman ends up cleaning up everything. There are a lot of moments where Carol really would've been useful. The Time Heist. Looking for someone to do the Snap. Hell, even when Doctor Strange was gathering allies. But this is a slightly less nitpicky bit as we could assume Carol is just still busy in space throughout everything that's going on. Would've been nice if we had a throwaway line talking about how Carol's fighting the remnants of Thanos's army or something, though.

They should've brought Okoye and Valkyrie and [insert character here] along!
I kind of get, to some extent, why they didn't bring certain characters along. They have a limited supply of Pym particles, after all, and someone like Okoye, despite her competence, wouldn't really have anywhere in her past to hunt for Infinity Stones. But arguably, neither did a lot of the other characters. War Machine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and Rocket really have nothing to do with the stones they are assigned to, and, again, while Captain Marvel might be busy in space, it is kind of odd that the Avengers would pick a slightly mentally-unstable Hawkeye (at the beginning of the movie, at least) and a fat, drunken Thor as opposed to Okoye and Valkyrie, or literally anyone else. I dunno. It's the unfortunate reality when you juggle so many characters and so many actors, sometimes these things happen, but I really do wish we had gotten some explanation instead of them just being out of the movie for no real good reason.

Would it not be easier to get the Tesseract from Asgard in 2013? Or take the Aether from the Collector in 2014? Or the Mind Stone at any point in time it's in Hydra possession?
...that's a fair point, I guess they just didn't think about that. Out of universe? Because we're picking the most ideal plot points for our main Avengers characters to get emotional payoffs. Like, clocking the Collector in the head and absconding with the Aether would be ridiculously anticlimactic as opposed to Thor meeting Frigga.

Thanos's plan doesn't make sense!
That's the whole point of the goddamn movie. Thanos is a madman, and you should not be rooting for mass murder for the greater good.

So did Steve supplant the identity of Peggy Carter's original husband?
It's honestly a pretty interesting conundrum. Honestly, Steve creating a stable time loop is how I interpreted the movie's ending in the first place. After getting the Infinity Stones back to the points in the time that they took the stones out of, Steve ended up returning to the 1940's and marrying Peggy in secret, and the mysterious husband Peggy married in the prime timeline is Steve. It makes sense, and you can thank the super-serum that Steve ended up surviving all the way to 2023, all the while content to be 'retired'. But that would also mean that this 'old' Steve Rogers stood idly by while all sorts of horrors and deaths he could've prevented happened, which was why apparently the directors ended up putting out a statement that Steve went to an alternate timeline, and married the Peggy Carter there. Which is... it's a lot weirder and honestly I think makes the ending feel a lot less sweet, and I do believe that I liked the earlier explanation of Steve just being in the background of the original timeline all along. And even if Steve did end up creating a splinter timeline (which is presumably what happened in the 2012 where Loki escaped, the 2014 where Thanos disappeared, etc) the fact that he was able to return to the 'prime' timeline baffles me.

Why didn't they pick up the Infinity Gauntlet from when Thanos has completed them? Why didn't they go to 2018-era Titan and knock out Star-Lord?
After all, they could've had a very ideal point in time when Thor struck Thanos down with Stormbreaker, before or after the Snap. Just take the entire gauntlet from the weakened Thanos in 2018, and return back to 2023. Which... I don't really have an answer for that. I guess they were looking for spots in the timeline where they can theoretically cause minimal damage to the time stream? The original plan was to sneak in, cause minimal changes to the timeline, and then sneak out, after all. Showing up right in front of 2018-era Thanos will guarantee him reacting and causing a splinter timeline, I guess? I dunno. I really, really wished the time travel stuff was made a lot clearer.

Nebula's wi-fi?
...yeah, okay, this one is kind of an ass-pull, not going to lie. Doesn't bother me as much, but I do admit that I really wished the Nebula stuff had gotten some foreshadowing, either here or in previous movies.

Why didn't Nebula just time-travel immediately?
She's panicking. Thanos is still a pretty sore spot for her, I'd wager, and the idea of being captured and tortured again, and dooming their entire world-saving mission because of her mistake, is enough to cause her to panic and do stupid things.

Why did Clint and Natasha go to Vormir? Isn't it too convenient?
Yes, yes it is. Either Nebula is secretly a sadist and assigned them together without telling them the sacrifice plan (which is unlikely) or that it's simple, sheer coincidence. Considering Clint and Nat are both normal human super-spies, their skill-sets would've been a lot more useful quite literally in any other mission, either the New York or Asgard ones, or, hell even the Morag one, with the experienced space traveler Nebula taking the far more protected War Machine to the unknown Vormir. I guess it just comes to chance? Or maybe just lazy writing.

2014-Nebula opening a portal without Pym particles?
It's a bit of a plot hole, but it's later clarified by the directors that Thanos's scientists easily reverse-engineered the Pym Particles and copied the science from 2023-Nebula's mind. Kind of what you can easily infer, honestly, although it really wouldn't have hurt them to have added in an extra scene showing Ebony Maw experimenting with the Pym particles or something.

Where did War Machine get his spanking new armour?
...somewhere in the Avengers mansion, I guess? That one was a bit weird.

Why didn't they do [X] when they snapped?
Why didn't Hulk bring back Vision, Loki, Heimdall, et cetera? Even if Gamora and Black Widow are out of bounds, why didn't they reverse the other deaths? Or reforge an alternate Mjolnir, or immediately wish for the stones to be returned to their origin points in the timeline? Well... I dunno. Could be a couple of reasons, really, from the Stones causing even more harm depending on the complexity of the wish, to Hulk really already struggling to maintain the stones on his fist at all, so wishing for even more changes would've been problematic, or... y'know, plot reasons.

Also, for anyone out there who goes "why not wish Thanos away from the get-go", they had absolutely no idea 2014 Thanos was even coming until the Avengers mansion was firebombed, and the gauntlet and stones fell next to Hawkeye. Also, any other question about "why didn't they wipe Thanos from history" or any sort of actual alterations to the past is implicitly because Tony Stark had vowed to keep the events of the past couple of years intact to protect the existence of his daughter, and the heroes, being heroes, would not risk changing the timeline even further.

Why didn't Dr. Strange use the Time Stone to reverse time and bring back Tony from the dead?
...you got me there. Considering we've seen the Time Stone reverse Vision's death... yeah, I have no idea. Not even a "his death was caused by the full power of the infinity gauntlet, there's no reversing it" explanation. I guess it's part of the whole "good guys do not abuse absolute power" thing? Sounds like a hollow explanation, though, considering how they just, well, abused the Infinity Stones to restore the universe, but I suppose these superheroes have a far, far better adherence to their moral code than us. I guess the real explanation was the showmakers going "come on, that death scene was perfect."

Why didn't Ant-Man shrink into a small size and go up Thanos's butt and expand / Why didn't Wong sling ring and slice of Thanos's arm, et cetera, et cetera.
Out-of-universe, it wouldn't made for as epic of a movie. In-universe, they didn't think of it, or they were not in the right place at the right time.

"What, you wanted more?"

Yes, yes I do.

So that's the line that Wong says when Dr. Strange asks him if that's all the reinforcements that they could've summoned. It's greedy, I know, and considering a lot of the characters that actually do show up like half of the Guardians or Falcon or Bucky or Wong don't really do anything significant... it'd still be a particularly badass sequence just to have them show up, y'know?

And, yeah, in an ideal world, this would be the place to sneak in the Defenders, Ghost Rider, the Agents of SHIELD, the various Inhuman factions, the Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, and all the rest of them. But I know it's unrealistic. Even if the studio is willing to pay a couple dozen extra actors for a cameo, the mainstream audience would be baffled who the hell, say, Jessica Jones or Daisy Johnson or Deathlok or Karnak or whoever are. So while I'm sad that they didn't make it into the movie, I understand why, from a movie-making perspective.

I've also discussed how it's such a huge, huge shame that Nick Fury, Maria Hill and the remnants of SHIELD -- even if you don't show Coulson's SHIELD -- didn't show up for one last hurrah, especially considering that it was Fury that started this whole thing. But without further ado, and just drawing entirely from the movies, here are a bunch of characters I wished did show up:

• Lady Sif: She was also MIA in Thor: Ragnarok, so I wonder if there's some bad blood between her actress and Marvel Studios? Sif is the original Asgardian action heroine, and honestly it'd be a pretty damn powerful moment for Thor to see another one of his old allies being alive. It's perhaps one of the more major misses, I think. 
• Sharon Carter / Agent 13: Sure, Sharon's not the most impressive or colourful superhero out there, but she was basically considered an honourary superhero in Winter Soldier and Civil War. She didn't really get any sort of proper closure with Captain America, too, and while I realize she's nowhere as prominent as, say, Falcon or Winter Soldier, she definitely deserved better.
• Other SHIELD & Military Agents: Discounting Nick Fury and Maria Hill and the TV people, we could've had Jimmy Woo, or Colonel Ross, or Everett Ross in a Wakandan fighter jet. I dunno. It never struck me until now that we didn't even have any military presence in the final fight, huh?
• Eitri: Not even a single mention to everyone's favourite dwarf? I don't expect him to actually fight, maybe, but having him show up and throw around some Nidaveliir weapons would be pretty damn awesome, particularly since he's one of the few characters who have suffered greatly at the hands of Thanos. 
• Talos and the Skrulls: Talos is a great Skrull-bro, and when a lot of random alien spaceships showed up when Dr. Strange summoned them, I would've thought that the Skrulls would show up in the finale to help out Captain Marvel. The only reason they're not added, I guess, is that Captain Marvel and Endgame were filmed simultaneously, so it's just a matter of timing. Man, how badass would it be if 2014-Ronan followed the time-displaced Thanos to 2023, allowing Talos to fight one of the Accusers that have wiped out many of his people? 
• Ant-Man I & Wasp I: Hank and Janet did show up in the finale, but man, I'm kinda sad we didn't see these two old retirees suit up. I know they're retired, but if there's one fight that they would suit up for... hell, at least have Hank throw some of those tank keychains around, it'd be hilarious!
• Goliath & Ghost: Not as prominent characters as Hank or Janet, but these two characters from Ant-Man & The Wasp are technically allies to the Ant family, right? And even if Ghost is in pain from using her abilities, we know Goliath has limited Giant-Man style powers. It'd be a badass redemption. 
• Nakia: She, like, still counts as one of the Wakandan warriors, right? But she just skipped out on both Infinity War and Endgame. I know Okoye's a lot cooler, but still, it's a bit of a shame. 
• The Nova Corps: Or as I mentioned before, at least give us confirmation if Xandar is just fucked or something. I dunno. I confess I don't super-duper care about Nova Prime or the faceless army of space cops, and maybe some of their ships did show up in the background and I'm talking out of my ass, but it'd be neat to see them fight side by side with the Guardians and Ravagers. 
• Stakar Ogord and the old Guardians: A bit of a pipe dream, since Sylvester Stallone is expensive, but c'mon, they introduced the old, original Guardians team in Volume 2, why not use them and see how cool they are?

Also, on the bad guys' side... by 2014, The Other should be alive, isn't he? He's certainly nowhere as charismatic as Ebony Maw, but would've been a neat continuity nod seeing him fighting alongside the others. 

Click under the break for easter eggs listing!

Pokemon S01E38 Review: D-D-D-Digimon Digital Monsters [Banned Episode #3]

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 38: Electric Warrior Porygon

Yeah, this episode is the famous 'seizure episode' that caused hundreds of children to be hospitalized in Japan, and perhaps is one of the most controversial episodes in the history of animation, ever. The controversy surrounding this honestly pretty unremarkable episode is probably one of the biggest things back during the Pokemon hype in the 90's, and I mostly remember it from detractors who use the incident as total proof that Pokemon is totally the brainchild of Satan or something. It's just a huge, unfortunate incident unforseen by the animators, and it's very fortunate that no one was too seriously hurt by this. Of course, while the Porygon episode have basically been napalmed and unperson-ed by Japan, it's easy to find bootlegs of this episode online. Just, y'know, make sure you are in a well-lit room and don't look too closely during the seizure flash moments.

I watched this episode for the first time in my life yesterday and... and it's an alright episode? For all of the grief that some people throw in Nintendo's way for exorcising Porygon's episode, it's a genuinely pretty throwaway episode whose biggest claim to fame other than the real-life incident is perhaps the setting, which takes place in a bizarre Tron-esque digital world.

Basically, our heroes arrive in Matcha City, and when they arrive in a Pokemon Center, they discover that some shit's been going down and the Pokemon Transfer system is compromised, with rare Pokemon being sent and not arriving, or replaced with Magikarps. We get our heroes investigating this thing, coming into the laboratory-mansion of exaggeratedly hammy mad scientist, Professor Akihabara, who greets them with a bizarre 3D image, and later forcibly recruits our heroes and transports them with his Porygon into the d-d-d-digital world, where they have to do combat against the digital monsters wreaking havoc in the system. No, not you, Agumon, sit down.

Apparently Team Rocket stole Porygon-Zero, sort of a prototype version of Porygon (it's just Porygon with a Rocket flag on its tail) and has been putting up roadblocks in the "information highway", represented, of course, with a literal futuristic highway. It's clear that the episode's written or meant to be a parody of someone who's seen the internet jargon, and since it's the 90's, just sort of makes up things as they go. The "anti-virus program" is a literal attack drone controlled by the tech service. The "bug" is a literal hole in the digital world. The information highway is a literal highway. It's... it's frankly ridiculous.

Porygon shows off his ability with the Conversion ability, which I didn't see coming because it just changes its exterior to match Weezing's, with those little craters all over his body. Considering the games and comics tended to just show Conversion as Porygon just changing its type, it's genuinely fun to see the exterior changes that happen. Porygon Zero and Porygon fight each other, and I'm not sure why Zero is allied with Team Rocket? Did they really capture this one successfully? We get a fun bit where the Porygons just transform into giant shields, a sword-bill, a hammer bill and whatnot, which is not something I associate Porygon with, mostly just knowing him for being weird and able to digitize itself into data. It's neat.

I also do love the visual image of Ash and company moving the roadblocks, causing the pokeballs to turn into light and data, Star Wars lightspeed style. Speaking of Star Wars, Nurse Joy calls in a tech specialist, who installs an antivirus program, represented here by a drone that the tech dude controls. It's first a weird futuristic ambulance, then a giant syringe X-Wing, and finally a gigantic cannon. The anti-virus will kill every foreign body indiscriminately, which is more silliness caused by someone who thinks a computer virus is anything like a real-life microbe virus, but eh. Our heroes rescue Team Rocket from a 'bug hole', and as they zip towards the exit from the digital world, Pikachu use thunderbolt on the missiles, which... which unfortunately causes that particular seizure-inducing visual effect to happen. If nothing else, it did give me a headache due to how fast the light flashes.

Somehow, this digital explosion is transported to the real world, blowing the shit out of Akihabara's house and all of his human-transportation machines. And... and the episode is resolved, just like that, with them making sure the Pokemon Center's okay.

And... and ultimately, it's a pretty throwaway episode that would mostly be remembered for its weird-ass setting if not for the unfortunate real-world accident caused by that red-and-blue flashing lights. I did enjoy Porygon's wacky abilities in this episode, and the writers clearly understand jack shit about actual computer system (or are pretending to be dumb). It's pretty tongue in cheek... and it's a bit of a shame that this did end up being the most infamous of Pokemon episodes for a pretty unfortunate reason. 

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Psyduck, Pikachu, Chansey, Ninetales, Magikarp, Porygon, Meowth, Arbok, Weezing, Bulbasaur
• Humans: Misty, Brock, Ash, Nurse Joy, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes:

• "Fantasy in My Pocket", a far more livelier tune, replaced Meowth's Song as the ending theme in this episode. They really go through the ending themes pretty fast, huh? 
• The names of the two Porygons, "Unit 0" and "Unit 1", are apparently homages to Neon Genesis Evangelion. 
• Apparently, in the anime, Akihabara built the Pokemon Transport System instead of Bill, who... who's just a weird cosplayer in this universe, I guess. Akihabara borrows his name from a famous electronics district in Japan. 
• The Ban:
• Other sites can inform you in a better and more elaborate way to talk about the actual events of the unexpected and unfortunate accident caused by the strobing effect caused by the alternating red-and-blue light effect used in this episode, causing hundreds of children to be affected and hospitalized after this episode aired. The numbers vary from around slightly more than a hundred to more than 700 depending on news outlets, but it's clearly a fair amount of children that suffered from headaches and seizures. 
• Thanks to this episode, the Pokemon anime was quickly pulled off air and went into a hiatus for four months while an investigation went into place to figuring out what caused the seizures, with Pokemon videos being pulled from stores and rental places. When the series came back, some episodes were shuffled around, the episode was banned and as far as Nintendo is concerned, will never ever see the light of day ever again.
• Porygon and his future evolutions Porygon2 and Porygon-Z would also be exorcised from the anime, with their only appearances being limited to brief cameos in "the world of Pokemon" sequences of certain movies released a couple decades afterwards. It's interesting, though, that Nintendo still ended up approving Porygon2 and Porygon-Z's creation in future games considering what happened here. Their appearances in games, manga and the TCG are unaffected.
• Every single episode before this was re-edited for future broadcasts, dimming or slowing down certain scenes with flashing effects. It's the post-edited versions of the episodes that would be featured in future broadcasts and DVD's, and are the ones used to make the international dubs. Other older anime like Dragon Ball, Doraemon and a bunch of other anime were also subjected to this edit change. Some newer ones also tend to feature slightly-dimmed scenes whenever flashing effects are used -- ones that come to mind immediately are the season 3 openings for My Hero Academia, which features sudden dimming of scenes when lightning-style effects flash across the screen. 
• A vast majority of TV shows aimed at children would often add a message in front of their shows that goes along the lines of "make sure the room is well lit, and that you're watching a good distance from the TV". You can blame Porygon for this.

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 8: Excavator Dragon

Last time we left off, we entered Vinoville Town, after witnessing that local jerkface Sheldon is apparently terrorizing some local farmers out of "boredom", so after nearly falling asleep at some huge religious sermon, Ura heads off to kick gym leader Sheldon in the dick! In this part, behold the mighty showdown of Ura's faithful companion, the fire-breathing dromaerosaurid Charlie, as he holds a one-man crusade against Sheldon's troop of mechanical monstrosities!

Also, something something about nuclear meltdowns and a crisis in the region, too. That's also sort of important.

Reviewing Monsters: Darkest Dungeon, Part 3

The final part of my commentary on Darkest Dungeon monsters, this final part talks about the last one of the four main areas, the Cove, as well as the final dungeon itself, the titular Darkest Dungeon. Without further ado...

Cove: The Pelagic Fishmen

Pelagic Grouper & Pelagic Shaman: The Cove is populated by monstrous fish-men, a reference to The Shadow over Innsmouth, one of the more iconic and popular Lovecraft works, which featured creepy fish-people, and these Pelagic monsters (pelagic is an adjective referring to fish originating from the open sea) are pretty neat! There's always something grotesque about fish and their creepy eyes and open mouths, and putting these weird piranha-style heads on a mostly humanoid body is pretty creepy.

I love that the basic enemy, the Grouper, has a harpoon and a cutlass, making it kind of similar to a pirate of sorts. I have the utmost respect for the Grouper, and compared to the basic "footsoldier" for the bandits, undead, swinefolk and fungus people, the Grouper's in my experience the one that hits the hardest. The Shaman is both a healer and a stress-inducer, and I do like the weird little glowing beard it has and the kooky sea urchin staff it has. All the Pelagic monsters are pure-Eldritch, and they are resistant to Bleed effects.

Pelagic Guardian: The Pelagic Guardian are the heavy-hitters of the bunch, and he's an octopus-based fishman. I'm genuinely not sure what those bizarre dangling tumours hanging down the sides of his face are supposed to be -- egg sacks? Scrotum? They just feel bizarrely odd on an octopus-themed monster. The Guardian acts like a supporting warrior in combat, using that huge, fancy ornate shield to basically buff up and protect the harder hitting but far more fragile Groupers. It's got an anchor or something replacing its right arm, which is neat.

Uca Major: Borrowing his name from the genus of fiddler crabs, the Uca Major is the "big" enemy in the Cove areas, and unless I'm missing something else, the only one. I do like how the Uca Major combines designs of a fiddler crab's prominent large claws with the bulkiness of mudcrabs and the like, and it also has barnacles and random ship parts encrusting its body. Despite being a crab, it's got this genuinely bizarre reptile-mouth which just sort of throws me off. Still looks creepy, though. These giant crabs don't hit hard, but inflict bleed damage, stuns and fucks up your formation, and take a while to bring down. Alone, it's honestly more annoying than terrifying, but when it appears with buddies, it suddenly becomes a pretty considerable threat.

Sea Maggot: Interestingly, the animals we encounter in the Cove are considered "Eldritch", instead of beasts like the Rabid Gnasher or the spiders. The "Sea Maggot" isn't even a maggot, but more of a bizarre sea-snail with a spiky shell and instead of a pseudopod it's got octopus sucker-tips or some shit. I do like the weird implication that these snails are considered "maggots" somehow. 

Deep Stinger: The Deep Stinger could've just as easily been a generic jellyfish enemy, but I do really like that even this already octopus-esque animal gets a bunch of mutations to have its inner arm resemble a mutated octopus tentacle, while the outer 'ring' of tentacles look like the longer tentacles of a squid. It's little details like this that I appreciate. They're not very powerful, but inflict a fuck-ton of effects like stunning, bleeding, debuffs and disease. They're pretty!

Drowned Thrall: Oh god, these fuckers. These are bloated zombies resembling how human corpses bloat up if they're dead at sea, and they're just shown to be utterly pathetic. Unlike the other undead monsters in the game, the Drowned Thrall are pretty fucking weak, but leave them unattended and in exactly two turns it will rush towards your party and blow the fuck up as a human bomb. Pretty fun concept, and a pretty creepy artwork to match. 

Squiffy Ghast: Only appearing in the hard-mode levels for the Cove, the Squiffy Ghast has just such a fun name, and is the only undead pirate to appear in the Cove. Which is a shame, I really wished we had one or two generic undead pirate (undead fish pirate, maybe?) enemies, particularly since one of the Cove bosses is an undead pirate crew. I do like the cheery expression on the Ghast's grinning face as he plays on that violin atop a barrel of rum. The Ghast is unique in that it just jumps around like a madman across the enemy's ranks, while dealing the Horror status on your heroes, demoralizing them with the songs of the dead. 

The Siren: The first boss of the Cove is this huge, mutated mermaid with the most sorry-looking and wretched face, huge webbed claws, and an anglerfish lure. There are many mermaids out there that look pretty and badass, but not the Siren -- she's just so utterly wretched-looking, and apparently she used to be a lover of the Ancestor, but as part of a deal that the Ancestor made with the vile Pelagic creatures for underwater riches (again, a reference to the Shadows over Innsmouth story), the Ancestor threw the poor girl as a sacrifice, and the Pelagics made her "their queen... and their slave". Which carries some really uncomfortable connotations.

In combat, in addition to summoning random Pelagic creatures and unleashing damage upon your enemies, the Siren's biggest gimmick is to temporarily assume the illusion of a sexy mermaid with nipples to take control of one of your party members -- gender notwithstanding -- and you have to fight the Siren and one of your party members. If you kill your party member, he/she dies for real. Once you know what you're doing it's actually pretty simple, but the Siren can utterly stomp an unprepared party to dust by simply playing on her conch and stealing your party members.

Very interesting that the aquatic-themed level doesn't actually have a Cthulhu boss fight, although I supposed that'd be too obvious!

The Drowned Crew: Your Ancestor apparently made a deal with a crew of pirates to gather resources, artifacts and relics, but they began to charge more and more money for funds and to keep your Ancestor's secrets quiet, the Ancestor called upon foul Cthulhu magic to weigh down their anchor to drown the entire pirate crew. And somehow they are transformed into this gigantic undead amalgamation of ships, chains and pirate crewmen.

I really kinda wished that we sort of see more than just the Squiffy Ghast to hint that there are undead pirates involved, but at the same time I also like the implication that the entire pirate crew was bound in place. The gimmick is that the Drowned Crew is the big boss dealing damage, while a small buddy, the Drowned Anchorman, throws the cursed anchor to completely immobilize your of the party members, so it's sort of similar to the Brigand Pounder fight in that you need to get rid of the Anchorman before it does anything. I like the design of the main Drowned Crew, though, and how sometimes it just attacks by having its members throw bottles of rum at your party members. 

The Darkest Dungeon: The Cthulhu People

Brave the horrors of the undying skeletons of the Ruins, the grotesque swinefolk of the Warrens, the shambling fungal wretches of the Weald and the indecipherable pelagics of the Cove, and take down the area bosses, and you slowly gain access to missions to enter the titular Darkest Dungeon, the true source of all the horrors that have been plaguing the town of Hamlet and mutating all of its creatures into horrifying monstrosities that defy good nature. 

Ascended Brawler & Ascended Witch: The main weak enemies in the Darkest Dungeon are the Ascended Brawlers and Ascended Witches, who, unless they attack (as pictured here), just look like palette-swapped versions of the Cultist Brawlers and Acolytes... and then they attack, and they transform into this grotesque, tentacle-encrusted, spike-tipped, eyeball-speckled monsters. The Ascended Brawler looks pretty cool particularly with that massive giant insect-like arm stabbing your prey, and I find the bizarre quintuple-chin deal that the Witch has going on to be pretty hilarious.

Rapturous Cultist: Sort of a counterpart to the Madmen you find in most of the dungeons, Rapturous Cultists are those who embrace the whispers of the "new" god beneath the dungeon, and just have this utterly insane, shit-eating grin on their face while their flesh is slowly being transformed into a mass of tentacle-like veins, red flesh and these beady black eyes. I remembered that I keep mistaking them as Madmen equivalents, when instead they exclusively do supportive things to their allies. Either "guarding" them with an ability called Flesh Wall, or biting himself to somehow heal his allies. These are considered Human/Unholy, so they're at least partially dead. 

Cultist Priest: The higher echelons of the cult worshiping the entity beneath the dungeon has been remade into a new form. And while the Cultist Priest looks like a generic dude in dark robes when not attacking, its true form is quickly revealed in battle and it's pretty creepy! A mass of tentacle-flesh is basically the style of elder-god corruption in Darkest Dungeon's art style, and I do like this bziarre, hunchbacked creature with a giant worm-like head, teeth and gums that jut out, octopus limbs, and random human skulls peppered around its eyeless head. Its alternate attack is "The Finger", which unleashes a giant stabby bony tentacle. I remember them to be pretty fucking annoying.

Also, the Cultist Priest is Eldritch/Beast, so even if it was once human, it definitely isn't now. 

Flesh Hound: Appearing in later ventures into the Darkest Dungeon are the Flesh Hounds, and as it name (if not its visual design) implies, it behaves like a souped-up version of the Rabid Hounds from the Weald. And it's just such a bizarre creature, with an almost bat-like membranous set of legs, two separate spider-legs, a bizarre tumour-encrusted head ending in a Cthulhu tentacle mouth. A pretty horrifying design that's offset by the fact that its attacks are called "Fetch" and "Nibble". 

Polyp: Not to be confused with the actual Flying Polyps from Cthulhu mythos, the Polyp is just... well, another one of the abominations that sprout out of the walls of the Darkest Dungeon. Sort of resmbling a variant of D&D Beholders and other floating heads/eyeballs and the like, I really do like that the Polyp has these bizarre giant bat-like ears, as well as a mouth that splits its face in a pretty weird way with fangs all over it. I don't think there's any particular lore behind this one, it's just one of the many creepy tumour-horror thing within the Dungeon.

Malignant & Defensive Growths: So while it relies mostly on the army of cultists and fleshy horrors to defend it, sometimes the fleshy growths takes over the infrastructure of the dungeon itself, and manifests in these flesh-tentacle-tumour encrusted spiky metal barbs. The Malignant Growth casts stun and bleed effects, while the Defensive Growth guards and heals its allies.

Antibody: Playing to the whole "the dungeon is a giant, twisted fucked-up organism" thing, some of the monsters that sort of replace the Growths in more difficult ventures into the dungeon are called Antibody, and it's this two-mouthed giant stalk with multiple eyes all around it. Despite looking pretty creepy, I actually remembered them being genuinely trivial and are just there to stun your enemy and unable to actually damage your party, relying on allies to finish you off. Considering how annoying every other enemy in the Darkest Dungeon levels are, it's actually a bit of a godsend. 

Shuffling Horror: The first boss you meet in the first Darkest Dungeon mission is the Shuffling Horror, who is a version of the Shambler, and apparently even eldritch beings from beyond space-time aren't immune to being corrupted by the bizarre red flesh-cysts of the dungeon. My feelings about this thing is still pretty much the same as the regular form, but it is pretty cool to re-use one of the more powerful bosses you meet (and most of the time avoid) in the previous dungeons as one of the henchmen of the Big Bad.

Templar Impaler & Templar Warlord: The bosses of the second sojourn into the Darkest Dungeon are these two, which are the buffed-up versions of the Ascended Brawler, where the mutation have turned him into a giant scorpion monster thing. I feel like the mutation feels a bit too "clean" compared to the more metastasis, tumour-like body horror of most of the Darkest Dungeon's denizens? Particularly the Impaler on the right, whose tail and claws are fully chitin, and has neon-green material for the sickle. At least the Warlord's tail is full flesh, Tokyo Ghoul style, with a bunch of poorly-arranged barbs on the tip of the tail. Their attacks mostly involve a fair amount of body horror, including the pretty devastating "Revelation" where they show off the massive eyeball encrusted on their crotch to inflict a fuck-ton of stress on your party. The Warlord also has a bunch of bizarre configurations it turns its tail into. After the quest where the two of them are fought as bosses, weaker versions that have a less-ornate crown are found as regular enemies, known as Templar Snipers and Templar Gladiators.

Pretty cool-looking bosses, all in all, and while giant scorpions are still sort of bland compared to what I expect from a Lovecraft-style game, they're still cool. 

Mammoth Cyst & White Cell Stalk: That's more like it! The Mammoth Cyst is, well, a gigantic tumour within the depths of the dungeon, and it's essentially a giant version of the Polyp that's anchored to a network of messy fleshy tissue, with a cluster of those eyeball-style black spherical things, a huge central eyeball and itty-bitty little tentacles. I don't think I actually ever killed the Cyst, and its level might be the one that my save file is currently stuck at being unable to defeat, and part of it is because the Mammoth Cyst summons these White Cell Stalks -- Antibody recolours that have the ability to warp the Dungeon's dimensions to quite literally teleport your entire party to another part of the dungeon, forcing you to travel and be subjected to a lot more stress and travelling damage as you go around the dungeon. Pretty awesome boss design, though, and a fitting end as the penultimate boss. You really do have the feeling of navigating through a giant organism, fighting the polyps, cysts and antibodies within it until you reach the "central" mammoth cyst guarding the Locus Beacon. I do find it interesting that the monsters mix names that are diseases and human immune system parts.

The Ancestor, Perfect Reflection & Imperfect Reflection: So the revelation at the end of the Darkest Dungeon is that, if you haven't been able to tell from the not-exactly-subtle-by-this-point rantings of the Ancestor-narrator, is that he was the one responsible for unleashing the unspeakable Cthulhu creature into the world from beneath the dungeon, and he basically wants you to "embrace" the cosmic horror, and apparently has discovered that all mankind is part of this ancient horror that is both the creator and destroyer of humanity.

Anyway, the Ancestor's pretty neat as a design, and in the first phase of the fight he basically summons multiple Perfect Reflections (which is exactly the same as him) or Imperfect Reflections, which is a pretty cool, split-in-half monstrosity of flesh glued together. Pretty neat stuff, but honestly it's only as cool because of the plot relevance.

Ancestor & Gestating Heart: The second phase of the fight has the Ancestor be more permanently mutated into a half-flesh-tentacle form, teleporting around his side of the field between these breaks in reality called "Absolute Nothingness" you can't interact. It's basically a relatively simple, if annoying phase, as I gather it, and more of a mercy from the game creators to allow you to heal up. Afterwards, it cocoons itself in a Gestating Heart, which is this gigantic purple tumour with tentacles. Neat? 

Heart of Darkness: The final boss is the Ancestor as he fuses himself with the horror from underneath your mansion, turning himself into a giant, vaguely heart-shaped thing with his human body vaguely consumed into the giant tumout. These are black eyeballs all over it, the Ancestor's hair has gone Super Saiyan, and there's a gigantic creepy row of teeth running on the back side of the Heart. It's the true form of the cosmic horror (its race is "Cosmic" instead of "Eldritch") that has been mutating all the critters and people in Hamlet into these weird fleshy abominations with red tendrils and black beady eyeballs.

Not the most interesting design, but as a giant body horror mixture that an Elder God is trying to use to enter the physical realm, it's still a pretty all right design and apparently fighting this form is pretty damn hard and one of your party members is guaranteed to die. The concept of the Heart of Darkness is pretty neat as far as Lovecraftian Horrors go, being implied that it's the source of all life on the planet as we know it, and we'll return to it in due time, and apparently your family in particular is trapped in this endless cycle of defeating, merging and re-defeating the thing over and over again. I do appreciate the fact that the final boss isn't a Cthulhu clone, although I'm also slightly disappointed that we didn't get one. Oh well.

That's about it for Darkest Dungeon, and I did really, really enjoy my time playing through this game and enjoying all of the monsters. The DLC gives us some really awesome monsters to deal with, so I'll cover that some time in the future as well.