Category: Uncategorized

Through 3 episodes of Ms. Marvel, fans have learned much about Kamala Khan. And while she’s already gone through changes over the course of the first half of the series, one thing that hasn’t changed yet is her love for Carol Danvers. Just like the comics, the MCU’s Kamala Khan is Captain Marvel’s biggest fan, and Episode 3 of the series just provided what might prove to be the bridge between the two characters.

As Kamala learns about the origins of her bangle from the Clandestine through a flashback, the audience learns that it was taken by Kamala’s great-grandmother from the arm of a blue alien. While there are certainly several species of blue aliens in the pages of Marvel Comics and already a few established in the MCU, it seems most likely that the bangle came from the arm of a Kree. Should that arm indeed have belonged to a long-since-dead Kree, it’s incredibly likely that it is one of a pair (the other is missing for the time being) of powerful bands with ties to the Kree Empire.

While the true identity of the bands will remain unclear for the time being, it does seem safe to assume that Kamala’s bangle is either a Quantum Band or a Nega-Band, both associated with the Kree, though in different ways. The Quantum Bands, also knows as the Power Bands of Rinn, are hundreds of thousands of years old and have been assigned, over the years, by a cosmic being named Eon (who recently showed up in the trailer for Thor: Love and Thudner) to the Protectors of the Universe. In the comics, one such protector was the Kree hero Mar-Vell. The Quantum Bands have been shown to have a wide array of powers depenind on who weilds them, among them the ability to create constructs out of energy, taken from the Quantum Zone, such as those demonstrated by Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel. The Nega-Bands, of which there are multiple pair, are Kree-created weapons that mimic much of the powers associated with the Quantum Bands, but have a connection to the Negative Zone, rather than the Quantum Realm.

Regardless of whether Kamala’s bangle is one of the Quantum Bands of the Nega-Bands, it’s clearly connected to the Kree and provides a straight shot of a plot point to bring Carol Danvers into the mix eventually. While the clear and present threat to Kamala comes from the Clandestine, it’s also very likely that her use of the bangle will attract the attention of the Kree Empire, providing them a very good reason to come nosing around on Earth. With Iman Vellani set to play a lead role in The Marvels, it’s becoming very clear how Marvel Studios plans to get to there from here and why they chose to change Kamala’s origins in the MCU.

In 2017, Houston Texans owner Bob McNair told tother NFL owners that they “can’t have the inmates running the prison.” Since that day it’s always disturbed me that the Texans have run their franchise, well, like a prison. On the surface, they seem like a model team. However, what’s done in the dark will soon come to light. We’ve learned this Summer that numerous things have gone unchecked and much to the surprise of no one, their star quarterback has been able to do what he wanted as long as he performed and abided by the guardrails the team had in place.


All of that came crashing down late last year when Deshaun Watson decided he wanted out of Houston. Watson‘s demands weren’t received warmly and shortly after that, we heard news of several lawsuits related to sexual assault and harassment. In the depths of my mind, I wondered, “why did we just now hear about this?” For all we know, Watson has been a model citizen with no issues whatsoever up until this point. How did this information come to light?


It’s because the Texans built a culture that enabled it. Everything from NDAs to hotel rooms to whatever Watson needed and wanted. It was all fine as long as he stuck to his end of the bargain. Of course, we know how the story goes: Watson eventually forced his way out of Houston and into the desperation of the Cleveland Browns.


And while the Browns fawned over Watson and offered the keys to the kingdom, they alienated their fanbase, particularly women. From the way that they structured Watson’s contract to the way they trotted him out there at a press conference and swore they had done their homework, they told every woman that might ever root for them, or be a fan of the NFL, that what happened to them “wasn’t that big of a deal.” As Watson’s lawyer put it this week, “a happy ending wasn’t illegal as long as no money was exchanged”…anything to shift the blame away from Watson and his teams and onto the women who he preyed upon. As a woman and mom of two boys, as a fan of the NFL, I’m completely disgusted.


Somewhere, The NFL and Deshaun Watson decided that talent was better than integrity. Talent was better than morals. Talent was better than the truth because there are seats to fill. And talent, mattered more than these women. You see, the pattern was created by Deshaun Watson, enabled by the Houston Texans and perpetuated by the Cleveland Browns. The value they associated with talent was worth far more than a woman.


So, I ask: what is the worth of a woman to the NFL?

Happy Monday, teammates! Welcome to another edition of The Morning After Huddle! Everybody wants a piece of the pie.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Add Terry McLaurin to the growing list of stars that want to be paid. It was reported over the weekend that McLaurin will not attend minicamp. Terry is seeking a new contract as he is in the last year of his rookie deal.
• The case against Henry Ruggs has a twist. Lawyers for Ruggs plan to argue that the blood sample used to confirm that he was legally intoxicated should be excluded from his trial. They say that police lacked basis for having a judge authorize a warrant to obtain blood from Ruggs without his consent.
• Last, but certainly not least, your Key Signings Roundup: 
  • Lions DT John Penisini is announcing his retirement after two years of playing football. Selected in the sixth round of the 2020 draft, Penisini started in 12 of 32 career games.

That’s it for today’s huddle. Catch us tomorrow with more news you want to know!

ICYMI: Saturday -June 11, 2022 Edition

It’s official, fans are getting another The Last of Us game. It just won’t be the one they thought would happen. It was announced at Summer Game Fest that Naughty Dog is hard at work developing a brand new entry in its world of the infected, only this time it won’t be a concentrated single-player story. Instead, The Last of Us franchise will see the release of it’s first full-scale, stand-alone multiplayer game. The project is being described as an “extremely ambitious undertaking,” and Naughty Dog confirmed it will be growing the studio significantly to make sure all the needed work can be accomplished.

The game, which does not yet have an official title, was created in response to the immensely positive reception of the original game’s “Factions” mode. There, players could take a break from Joel and Ellie’s story and jump into the shoes of a survivor working with either the “Fireflies” or the “Hunters.” The objective of each round was to gather supplies from around the given map to keep the chosen “faction” healthy, fighting off or working with other online users along the way. Players could choose to do this stealthily or in the form of an all-out firefight. After years of dedicated fans asking for an expansion, the developer decided it would be in their best interest to double down and produce a fully independent multiplayer game.

Not much else is known about this new entry in The Last of Us saga just yet. The project’s co-director Vinit Agarwal claimed it would be one of the studio’s “biggest efforts yet” in a post shared to Twitter. Also heading the development team are co-director Anthony Newman and narrative lead Joe Pettinati.

Source: Naughty Dog, Twitter

Marvel Studios’ latest Disney Plus streaming series, Ms. Marvel, had its big Premiere celebration last night at Hollywood’s famous El Capitan theater. Along with the series’ leads and crew, some surprising faces also turned up. The official release and photos from Disney are below.

Cast members Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Laurel Marsden, Arian Moayed, Adaku Ononogbo, Alysia Reiner, Azhar Usman, Laith Nakli, Nimra Bucha, Travina Springer, Aramis Knight, Mehwish Hayat, Ali Alsaleh, Samina Ahmed, Jordan Firstman, Anjali Bhimani and Vardah Aziz joined directors Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Meera Menon and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and executive producers Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum and Sana Amanat for a walk down the red carpet at the special Launch Event for Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel,” an original series streaming exclusively on Disney+ beginning June 8.

Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel” introduces Kamala Khan, a Muslim American teenager growing up in Jersey City. An avid gamer and a voracious fan-fiction scribe, Kamala is a Super Hero megafan with an oversized imagination—particularly when it comes to Captain Marvel. Yet Kamala feels like she doesn’t fit in at school and sometimes even at home—that is, until she gets superpowers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life gets better with superpowers, right? 

The series stars Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Fawad Khan, Laurel Marsden, Arian Moayed, Adaku Ononogbo, Alysia Reiner, Azhar Usman, Laith Nakli, Nimra Bucha and Travina Springer, with Aramis Knight. 

Directors for the series are Adil & Bilall (Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah) [Episodes 101 and 106], Meera Menon [Episodes 102 and 103] and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy [Episodes 104 and 105]. Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, Adil & Bilall, .Bisha K. Ali and Sana Amanat are the executive producers. Bisha K. Ali is also the head writer.

For several months now, rumors of a very obscure family of characters from the Marvel Comics being adapted to serve as the villains of the Ms. Marvel streaming series have swirled. The Clan Destine, created in 1994 by Alan Davis, weren’t villains in the comics, but they also weren’t very well-known, allowing for Marvel Studios to rework them pretty much however they saw fit. While Marvel Studios has yet to confirm their appearance in the series (they truly ARE the villains, however), it’s possible that one of the actors has left enough of trail to connect some dots.

In late April, actor Ali Alsaleh took to Instagram to celebrate the fact that he no longer had to hide his role in Ms. Marvel.

View this post on Instagram

Alsaleh is a newcomer and a bit of an unknown, with only 11 credits to his name on IMDB and nothing comparable to Ms. Marvel among them. And it’s that same IMDB listing that gives us enough of a clue to at least connect him to the reimagined role of Adam of Destine.

Alsaleh’s IMDB profile shows him playing a character named “Aadam” over the course of 4 episodes, 2-5, of the streaming series. A quick Google search shows that Aadam is a popular, modern Muslim name that is, as you might, guess, a twist on the name Adam. And it’s an Adam who was gifted immortality by a Djinn named Elalyth who served as the patriarch of the Clan Destine in Alan Davis’ comics.

Elalyth and Adam’s story began in 1168 AD when Elalyth saved Adam from an accident that should have killed him. From that point forward, Adam seemed invulnerable, even as he fought battle after battle in the Crusades. In 1189 AD, while facing off against a Persian sorcerer, however, Adam was mortally wounded while destroying a powerful gem helped by the sorcerer. That gem held Elalyth, who once again healed Adam and granted him immortality. Adam and the Djinn married and had a plethora of children over the centuries, some of whom still live on to this day.

It doesn’t take much of an imagination to rewrite Adam’s story into one that would fit Aadam’s origins in the series. We’ve only briefly glimpsed the MCU version of the Clan Destine in the series and rumors have long tied them to Djinn magic. If Alsaleh is truly playing the MCU version of the Clan Destine’s Adam, it’s likely that many of the characters we’ve glimpsed are his progeny and will have a vast array of powers, much like his children in the comics. It’ll be interesting to see how much of Aadam and the Clan Destine’s backstory gets told, but with Alsaleh set to show up in two-thirds of the episodes, we could get something similar that sets him up as a legendary Muslim warrior of the Crusades.

With the press starting to screen the series next week, we probably won’t have long to wait to find out if we’ve properly connected these dots. Ms. Marvel begins streaming on Disney Plus on June 8th..

Disney Plus has allowed Marvel Studios the unprecedented opportunity to create theatrical quality streaming series that expand the tapestry on which they can tell their shared narrative. For Marvel fans, there are now more “stories” being told than ever and that’s proved to be a double-edged sword as events from the D+ series carry over into films, sometimes leaving fans less than sure of exactly what’s happening.

To date, no project has relied more on fans’ understanding of the events of the D+ series that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The motivations of the film’s primary antagonist, the Scarlet Witch, were explored in WandaVision and when fans first meet her in the film, they’re supposed to know that she had been studying the Darkhold and the dangers of doing so. The lack of understanding of Wanda’s journey has led some fans to express outrage and disappointment in her arc in the film, but at least there was a clear link between the two projects.

Fans were also clear on the idea that the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured Doctor Strange in a major role, would connect to the Strange sequel. In it, characters from other universes made their way into the MCU after a spell cast by Doctor Strange went awry. However, by the end of the film, everything seemed all nicely buttoned up and almost everyone and everything went back where it belonged.

Less clear was the link between Multiverse of Madness and another Marvel Studios’ streaming project: Loki. The final episode of the 2021 streaming series saw Loki and Loki Variant, Sylvie, make their way to the Citadel at the End of Time and meet He Who Remains who, as it turned out, was responsible for managing the timeline. As He Who Remains warned them, if he died, the timeline would begin to branch wildly, creating a truly mad multiverse without oversight. Loki director Kate Herron’s wonderful explanation of the creation of the Multiverse, which you can see below, made sense of the seemingly complex set of circumstances and, as the series concluded, the audience saw some of the consequences of Sylive’s decision to kill He Who Remains.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that the old “It’s All Connected” maxim is now more true than ever, according to Marvel Studios One Above All, Kevin Feige. As Feige pointed out at the premiere of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and producer Richie Palmer further details in a new article at Marvel.com, the death of He Who Remains played a crucial role in No Way Home (it “allowed for the spell to go wrong“)and led to the madness Strange and America Chavez experienced as the traversed a multiverse that wouldn’t have been there if Sylvie had stayed her hand.

If the events of Loki never took place, if Sylvie didn’t do what she did, this movie and the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home wouldn’t have been able to happen. It was the activation of the Multiverse, or maybe the reactivation of the Multiverse at the end of Loki that really led to the possibilities that you see in What If…?, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. At that moment, the Multiverse expanded indefinitely forward into the future, back into the past, sideways, left and right, to alternate realities we can’t even comprehend.

Richie Palmer

It’s truly fascinating to see a series of events, that take place over several projects, blend so smoothly together, even though it’s becoming increasingly harder to connect all the dots. Thankfully, Palmer summarized it nicely in one, concise statement: “If it wasn’t for Sylvie, we wouldn’t be here right now.“

Loki, What If…? and Multiverse of Madness seem to converge to form the tip of the multiversal iceberg. Over the next several years of projects, fans should expect more of that iceberg to be revealed and with it, as writer Michael Waldron hinted, the growing multiversal threats to become more clear. Fortunately, we can count of Marvel to help keep things cleared up…for now.

Source: Marvel.com

Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron has gone on record saying that he envisioned the Scarlet Witch as the villain of the latest entry into the MCU right from the start. That decision hasn’t resonated with Wanda’s internet stans, many of whom feel it undoes her character’s arc in the Marvel Studios streaming series WandaVision. In an interview with Playlist, Waldron addresses their concerns and gives some insight into Wanda’s journey.

I guess I would say to the WandaVision fans, like, I get it. Watching a character you love do bad things sucks. That elicits a strong feeling, which is what we’re trying to do in the movies. We never would have done it if it didn’t feel like the next step in her character journey.

Wanda’s villainy is not unprecedented in the source material, where she was first introduced as a villain in 1964’s X-Men #4, nor in the MCU itself where she began as a Hydra experiment meant to counter the Avengers and was responsible for holding an entire community hostage in WandaVision. And while she ultimately freed the people of Westview, the series ended on an even darker note with Wanda studying the Darkhold, leaving fans to understand she hasn’t quite overcome the traumas she’s suffered, as Waldron points out.

To me, my interpretation of the story of WandaVision was, that Wanda is confronting her grief in that show, but I don’t think she’s necessarily conquering it. It’s a show about her living in denial to some extent and she’s conquering her denial, but I don’t think that she’s properly reckoning with her anger over what she’s endured, and that anger is what she carries with her as she walks away with the knowledge that she is the Scarlet Witch and with the Darkhold, this evil book. And I think it’s that anger that the Darkhold preys upon and pushes her on what is a, to me and I think to Wanda, a very justifiable, noble journey. She just wants her kids.

Wanda’s journey in the MCU has been nothing short of the universe’s most tragic. Defined almost entirely by what she’s lost, Wanda has rarely had time to breathe between tragedies. With Lizzie Olsen keen on continuing the character’s story, it’s worth considering that Wanda’s best days almost certainly lie ahead of her.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters now and you can stream all 9 episodes of WandaVision on Disney Plus.

Source: Playlist