Fridging is more when a romantic interest of a more prominent character (most commonly a female love interest of a male character, but not always, see Tara/Willow in BTVS) dies for no other reason than to benefit that leading character’s story.

Congratulations, Benedict Wong; you’ve joined Sam Jackson on the shortlist of “MCU actors who actually sounded like themselves, rather than inaccurate, energy-free impersonators, when reprising their roles on What If...?”

I’m not sure I understand the need for a new round of guest hosts. It’s not like the non-Mike Richards candidates didn’t get the job because they didn’t prove themselves; they didn’t get the job because he was always planning to give it to himself. Ideally, this situation has taught them that it’s unimaginably stupid…

Jennings is the person most associated with the show apart from Trebek, and he had a very well-received tenure as guest host that a lot of people thought marked him as the most obvious candidate for the permanent position if he wanted it.

Would you say it’s an an-Amélie????

It’s clearly Vincent Price.

Thuso Mbedu’s Lead Actress snub was bad enough, but seriously? Three guys from Hamilton for Supporting Actor but nothing for Joel Edgerton?

I never knew how badly I needed an omniscient cowboy narrator, but had they kept him around, it would almost have made up for the lack of Space Cabbie in the alien season.

Corvus6: Ironically, it never even occurred to me that the moments you mention could be seen that way, because they’re callbacks to the movies. Assuming that anyone who’s interested in The Mandalorian has seen the movies isn’t a stretch. (Although if you want to argue that nobody who’s only seen the movies could…

I doubt anybody “got lost.” But one can recognize a moment as a callback that’s clearly meant to be a Big Fan Moment without being familiar with whatever it’s a callback to, and be annoyed that the show you’ve been watching, which has been more or less its own thing, is suddenly transformed into ancillary material for…

“This episodic, open-ended style of entertainment is a hallmark of dramatic TV—but it’s also very Star Wars,” Kornhaber argues, while conceding that it remains to be seen just how long Disney can manage this without caving to fan service and unnecessary tie-ins (recent episodes suggest this unfortunate outcome…

So are we just not gonna talk about how willing Sara was to have two of her running around the universe, and let the one that wasn’t “her” go back to the Legends and marry Ava because it didn’t have any alien DNA? (watches rest of episode) Okay, guess not.

Hot Take: There is absolutely nothing in the history of the MCU that could reasonably lead people to believe that every seemingly straightforward (if twisty) plot development is just a smokescreen for some even twistier future development from deep in comics lore.

“Resurrection” via cloning gets extra complicated when you live in a universe where souls are proven to be real and tangible

Given recent comic storylines like Spider-Man’s “Clone Conspiracy” and the “resurrection protocols” at the heart of the current X-Men line, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about whether a clone of a dead super-person should be considered the same person if they have all the right memories and whatnot (these stories…

It makes me unreasonably angry how desperately some people wanted (still want?) the pre-Disney+ TV series to matter to the MCU at large.

I know a lot of people are going to jump to the conclusion that the reference to the devil (including the stained glass window) is in reference to Mephisto...

Not sure how many Legend of Korra viewers we have here, but the Prince Wu vibes I get from Bishop were so strong that I had to google whether or not the latter was played by the former’s voice actor. (He isn’t.)

I am not satisfied.

That, plus, when I think of the Endless, I don’t think “white” as in Caucasian; I think “white” as in “absence of color.” Kinda seems like at least some prosthetic makeup would have to be involved to make any actors look like the characters as they appear on the page.