(looks down) “I can’t read.”

Meat Loaf had a long career, but when I think of him I’ll always remember that scene on The Celebrity Apprentice when T***p was randomly talking about politics and asked the contestants “Maybe I should be president.  Meat Loaf, do you think I should run for president?” and without missing a beat Meat Loaf said…

Even before the No Way Home movie came out and we just had the trailer, it was obvious to anyone that it was Peter Parker who was the irresponsible fuck-up in that scene where Strange casts the spell and Peter keeps interrupting him and causing the spell to go wrong.

In the What If comics the universe rarely ended.  Most stories had their realities continuing on after the end of the issue.

I mean, Jamie Alexander was in the opening credits for the previous episode, and Sif had one (?) line

Douglas’ name wasn’t in the opening credits in the previous episode, but I think that was to keep the killer’s identity a mystery. He is listed in the end credits.

Kudos to this episode for not putting Michael Douglas’ name in the opening credits and giving away that he’s in this episode (and potentially spoiling the mystery).

I came with a solution in one sentence - how is that “needlessly convoluted”? There was one hoop involved and I didn’t even have to jump through it - it was laying on the ground so I easily stepped into it.

Thanos is a narcissist, but that does not make him insane. Many people are narcissists and we don’t say they’re insane.

Most original What If stories were exactly this format - the change was made, we saw how things were different, and usually the ending left it very open-ended where you would ask “Oh wow, I wonder what happens next?”

Even if you didn’t read that promotional comic (which I didn’t), these 3 movies clearly have background scenes/references that tell you that they all take place at the same time.

“where the Collector is inexplicably buff (Swollector?) and Thanos is inexplicably nerfed.”

The entire point of this story was that it was “T’Challa” who did all of this, not “Black Panther”. Making him get the Black Panther powers for the final fight would defeat the entire purpose of the story - that it’s this man who is the real hero, not the powers.

Easy fix. Ego mentioned the name “Star-Lord” when he was romancing Peter’s mom (i.e. “I’m going to make you pregnant and you’re going to have a real Star-Lord.”), and she told it to Peter.

Maybe Peter’s mother got the “Star-Lord” name from Ego.  And Ego might have let the name slip when he told Yondu to go to Earth to retrieve his son.  Then Yondu mentions that name to T’Challa when he’s growing up, and he takes it on as his own.

They say that in this episode Thanos wasn’t the universal boogeyman going around destroying civilizations while looking for the Infinity Stones, so the Collector stepped up to fill that void, which explains why he has so much more stuff.

“Given that Thanos is insane ...”

He turned the Ravagers into a force for good, and convinced Thanos not to go forward with his plan to kill half the universe.

Despite the popular opinion that every issue of What If was a “worst case scenario” where things ended up worse than the original story, there were lots of issues where things either ended up the same or better. It’s almost a 50/50 split between “worse ending” stories and “same/better ending” stories.

Forget the Fraggles, Doc, Sprocket, the Doozers, and the Gorgs. WHAT ABOUT THE TRASH HEAP?