Elden Ring has some incredibly tough bosses. You’re very likely to get wrecked by the many towering enemies roaming the Lands Between—unless you’re this one player, who decided to take a load off and do absolutely nothing against a rather challenging early-game encounter.
So, there’s this optional field boss in Limgrave called the Tree Sentinel. Apart from the multi-armed Grafted Scion that kills you in the beginning and the easy tutorial knight you fight before hitting the game’s first location, the Tree Sentinel acts as Elden Ring’s first major obstacle. You see him, clad in gold armor and atop a golden horse, just patrolling some nearby woods, looking for shit to kill. He’s hard, and this isn’t the only time you encounter him in the game. Thankfully, you can skip the Tree Sentinel entirely if you’re underleveled or don’t wanna deal with his stupidly big golden halberd just by running away.
YouTuber InfernoPlus, who makes meme videos about games and dives into popular discourses, didn’t appear too worried about the Tree Sentinel, though. In fact, in a recent Twitter clip, Inferno was so tired, they just plopped their butt on some rocks while their summons did the dirty work.
Inferno didn’t do anything until nearly the end of the fight. After summoning the Raya Lucaria Soldiers, a spirit ash you find in the Road’s End Catacombs that calls forth a trio of warriors, Inferno sat down and watched the squabble like some anime boss waiting for a fight to finish before taking on the contender. Inferno took one hit, but because their health pool was so high, it wasn’t a fatal blow. Once the Raya Lucaria Soldiers were dispatched, after almost killing the Tree Sentinel by themselves, Inferno went in to clean up shop with a quick series of spear thrusts. It was hilariously glorious to watch.
Not everyone understood that Inferno’s video was a joke. Because they wrote “Game is hard” with the clip, folks online were losing their minds over the implication that Elden Ring isn’t as hard as it actually is. (It is!) Some mocked Inferno for beating a “beginner boss.” Others shared their strategies for killing the Tree Sentinel, most of which consisted of returning after leveling up a bit. That’s the most likely explanation for how the soldiers in the video are able to take on the boss, too.
Kotaku reached out to InfernoPlus for comment.
I love cheesing enemies like this, and FromSoftware seems to encourage it with the ability to summon both spirit ashes and real-world players in the game. I did something similar when fighting the Tree Sentinel, calling upon my ghostly wolves while also getting help from a magic-based warrior. We totally destroyed him, but it wasn’t anything as effortless as Inferno’s method. Folks are getting good at Elden Ring, killing enemies in style. I, on the other hand, will probably never hit the credits.
Before Disney+ monopolized the Marvel TV show game, Netflix had the best offering of Marvel-based series, with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Punisher, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. They were gritty. They could say “fuck.” And most importantly, the shows offered something deeper than the typical Marvel Studios blockbuster fare. But Netflix is losing those titles soon.
Deadlinereports that Netflix’s license to the Marvel series is coming to an end, and Disney will be re-acquiring the rights. Unfortunately, this news had to come at the shortest month of the year, so there are only two more weeks until the shows are gone (for now) on March 1. Netflix is keeping true to the “keep mum on Marvel” mentality, and the streamer has not confirmed what will happen with those titles yet.
Deadline does say Netflix is expected to announce the shows’ new home soon, though. The new home will likely be Disney+, but it would still be a big gamble for the streamer, considering the streamer wouldn’t even allow the now-scrapped Lizzie McGuire reboot to contain any hint of the beloved character engaging in “adult behavior.” So how Disney work around shows that prominently feature topics like alcoholism and surviving abusive relationships? The House of Mouse has been careful to keep its squeaky clean image, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of Jessica Jones and the rest.
In the meantime, there are certain A.V. Club staffers who’d be willing to shell out on bootleg Blu-Rays (though we can honestly do without Iron Fist—sorry!). We’ll even settle for those pixelated YouTube videos that are barely watchable. And if it does come to Disney+ acquiring the titles, the silver lining is that the shows can expand their fanbase even more, and give Marvel fans something to watch (or rewatch) while waiting for a new season of WandaVision.
Fortnite’s next big chapter is nearly here, but before the official launch of Chapter 3 Season 1, a trailer for the next era Epic’s mega-popular free-to-play shooter has leaked online revealing new skins, game mechanics, and characters coming soon.
The trailer leaked via Fornite’s official Polish YouTube channel. It was yanked from the channel quickly after it went live earlier today, but the internet never forgets and many players saved copies of the trailer and have since uploaded it to Twitter and elsewhere, giving us a good look at what to expect in Chapter 3. Do you like Spider-Man? If so, good news! Spider-Man is coming to Fortnite.
It also appears that the Daily Bugle from Spider-Man’s version of NYC is also going to be a part of the new map in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1. Also shown off in the video is a web-swinging mechanic that looks a lot like the web-swinging in modern Spidey games.
The leaked trailer, which features a Polish narrator, also briefly reveals that Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz from Gears of War will be coming to Fortnite in Chapter 3, too.
Via Gamespotand pequleaks, here is a full translation of the Polish narration found in the trailer:
“The island you’ve known, has flipped!
Welcome to Chapter 3, where you’ll find brand new places to discover and previously unknown ways of experiencing Fortnite. Start to earn Battle Pass XP beyond Battle Royale. Play and level up as you like, to unlock the battle pass outfits, including Spider-Man!
New features are also waiting to be discovered. Move around the map faster and avoid enemies with the new sliding mechanics. And even set up camps where you and your squad will heal yourself and store items between matches. In addition, new weapons and items have been added to Fortnite to help you win the Victory Royale and the prestigious Victory Crown. Keep winning and keep it.
Besides these features, the island is completely new. Explore the Sanctuary, the hidden house of The Seven and the Spider-Man Neighborhood – The Daily Bugle, as well as other locations. Remember, due to the new weather conditions, anything can happen. Also check out the Season 1 Chapter 3 Battle Pass, where you’ll find Spider-Man, The Foundation, and other visitors.
What are you waiting for? Jump into chapter 3 and explore a brand new island. It is unknown what you will find there.”
Fortnite’s Chapter 2 finale and the switch to Chapter 3 happens today during a big event that starts at 4 p.m. EST.
Earlier this week, Chapter 3 content began leaking ahead of today’s big event. Some of those leaks seemed to confirm the fan theory that Dwanye “The Rock” Johnson is the voice behind the mysterious The Foundation.
It’s not surprising that Fortnite is continuing to build its own “metaverse” but it also continues to be disappointing and sad watching every piece of pop culture slowly get consumed by Epic’s free-to-play monster. And with rumors swirling that Matrix characters may appear in Fortnite soon, it seems like the Fortnite machine is still hungry for more content.
The satisfactions of parenthood are, reportedly, many. Watching your child grow into a complete person. Reflecting on the joys of opening a present on Christmas morning. Imagining them being crushed on all sides by the oppressive forces of capitalism, causing them to be susceptible to malevolent game show hosts offering moderately large amounts of money in exchange for putting their lives on the line. It’s a rich tapestry.
That’s what we can infer, anyway, from a new Variety report this morning that asserts that—in addition to its popularity among the “on solid foods” set—Netflix’s Squid Gamehas also dominated the rankings of Google search results for baby costumes this Halloween. (Squid Gameis actually topping the rankings for all Halloween costumes, but it’s the baby ones that are really licking our mental honeycombs right now.)
To claim this crown, the series—which is getting ubiquitous enough now that it’s getting banned from schools in various forms—had to defeat a whole host of more classic costume searches, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” “spider,” “Peter Pan,” and “Addams Family.” (Are people dressing their kids up as Pubert Addams from Addams Family Values? That’s fantastic.)
Now, let’s be clear: Baby costumes are rarely, if ever, suggested, purchased, and executed by the actual infants wearing them. (Their reference pools, buying power, and hands are just too small, more’s the pity.) But if an enterprising parent wants to use your gestating person as a billboard for their own personality/Netflix queue, more power to them, we guess.
The real issue here is that Squid Game only started popping off in the public consciousness a couple of weeks ago, which has apparently not given even the most relentless trend-chasing costume companies much time to put something together that really make you think “murder marbles!” when looking at a pre-verbal child. The best result most people are getting is apparently just a onesie with a Squid Game character on it—the modern equivalent to a Spider-Man costume that just has pictures of Spider-Man on the chest piece—which is especially tragic because this beautiful nightmare creature is right there:
Da-da?Photo: Netflix
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Just Dune it Play the game based on the new book the movie is based on.
That being said, if you really want to tap into the most horrifying moment of Squid Game, we bet you can still find a few bright red fright wigs that you could cut into a boy band haircut somewhere on the cheap.
Next week, Square Enix is putting out another Marvel game, this one for the Guardians of the Galaxy. While it looks like a typical third-person action game where you control Star-Lord and command the other Guardians, there is one thing that warrants a special shoutout for how surprising it is.
Like every big superhero game, Guardians has around 40 in-game costumes that you can find throughout the game. Some are original designs, but most are pulled from the comics and films. IGN’s got a video highlighting the ones they managed to find during a recent preview, and they look pretty cool! The movie skins look good, and even costumes from the older comics seem to hold up fairly well. (Rocket in a suit and glasses from his rather excellent 2017 solo book looks awesome.) It’s pretty fun to see Drax from the movies do a combo with Groot in his skin from the 2015 “Black Vortex” comic event.
What’s interesting is that at the bottom of each description, not only do the costumes pulled from the comics highlight the comic where it first showed up, plus the writer and artist, they also highlight the lesser known folks behind the comics: the editors, cover artists, and even colorists. A small thing, sure, but it’s important at a time when creators for the Big Two aren’t being properly compensated the way they should be. And thus far, it’s the only game to be doing this: Insomniac’s two Spider-Man games don’t reference creators in any of their costumes, and ditto the Avengers game.
Does it make the game an automatic hit, obviously not. But hey, isn’t it nice of them to do that instead of just providing an in-game description and then just stopping there, as many recent superhero games tend to do?
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy releases next week on October 26 for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC.
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Here’s the one weird thing about Hot Toys toys: While the face sculpts are so accurate that people (mostly me) have speculated that dark magic is involved, they’re sculpted with completely neutral expressions. That’s fine most of the time because they’re made as collector’s items, not toys to be played with. But if you want to pose two figures together in, say, a fight scene, it’s incredibly odd to see two people who are supposed to be in some sort of emotional state have completely blank looks on their faces. Shang-Chi and Wenwu’s bodies and limbs are in the fight of their lives, but their heads are wondering what’s for dinner.
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Spanish Captain America comicPhoto: PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images
From Al Jaffe to Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, there’s no shortage of comics artists, creators, and writers getting screwed by publishers. Pretty much as soon as the likes of Marvel and D.C. realized that they could cheat creators out of money, they began doing so. And according to a new report by The Guardian, the big two are still playing the hits, preventing creators like Ed Brubaker and Jim Starlin from reaping the benefits of introducing the world to the likes of The Winter Soldier and Thanos through ridiculous contract agreements and pitiful bonuses.
In a recent newsletter, Brubaker, who was already not feeling great about a Winter Soldier TV show, lamented about being so closely related to the world of the Winter Soldier while being left out of the part that puts food on the table: the money. “For the most part, all [co-creator Steve Epting] and I have got for creating the Winter Soldier and his storyline is a ‘thanks’ here or there, and over the years that’s become harder and harder to live with,” Brubaker wrote.
“I have a great life as a writer and much of it is because of Cap and the Winter Soldier bringing so many readers to my other work. But I also can’t deny feeling a bit sick to my stomach sometimes when my inbox fills up with people wanting comments on the show.”
The Guardian goes on to explain that “according to multiple sources, when a writer or artist’s work features prominently in a Marvel film, the company’s practice is to send the creator an invitation to the premiere and a cheque for $5,000.” This is one option. Several sources said that they could also receive nothing or a rare “special character contract,” which allows creators to claim payment when their characters or storylines are used. One anonymous Marvel creator said, “I’ve been offered a [special character contract] that was really, really terrible, but it was that or nothing […] And then instead of honouring it, they send a thank you note and are like, ‘Here’s some money we don’t owe you!’ and it’s five grand. And you’re like, ‘The movie made a billion dollars.’”
Sometimes, even actions that should amount to polite business dealings, such as invitations to premieres, slip through the cracks. The Guardian reports that Brubaker and Epting showed up for the Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a film very much indebted to their Captain America run, premiere party in tuxes, only to find out they weren’t on the list. Sebastian Stan, who plays the character they created, had to get them in.
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The Guardian explains how these contracts work:
Comic creators are “work-for-hire”, so the companies they work for owe them nothing beyond a flat fee and royalty payments. But Marvel and DC also incentivise popular creators to stay on with the promise of steady work and what they call “equity”: a tiny share of the profits, should a character they create or a storyline they write become fodder for films, shows or merch. For some creators, work they did decades ago is providing vital income now as films bring their comics to a bigger audience; they reason – and the companies seem to agree – it’s only fair to pay them more. DC has a boilerplate internal contract, which the Guardian has seen, which guarantees payments to creators when their characters are used. Marvel’s contracts are similar, according to two sources with knowledge of them, but harder to find; some Marvel creators did not know they existed.
The whole report is very much worth reading as it breaks down the fraught history between the people who create comic book characters and the companies that profit off those creations. Read the whole article at The Guardian.
Disney+ has been quietly teasing its What If…? animated series for a while now, having released a quick teaser late last year that was fairly light on the wacky potential of Marvel’s What If brand. Today, though, Marvel Studios celebrated the long-awaited announcement of the show’s premiere date (August 11!) with an extended trailer that cuts right to the chase—and by “the chase” we mean good shit like Killmonger saving Tony Stark from the attack at the beginning of Iron Man, T’Challa leading the Guardians Of The Galaxy (and wearing a much cooler coat than Star-Lords, let’s be honest), what appears to be a Hawkeye Hulk (Hulkeye?), and, best of all, the arrival of Captain Peggy Carter. The idea, like the What If comics that the series is named after, is that these are alternate versions of the stories shown in the movies, presumably with easy hooks like “What if Peggy Carter got the super-soldier serum?” or “What if Hulkeye?”
Jeffrey Wright is playing Uatu The Watcher, here giving the usual “I’m just here to see what happens, I will never, ever, ever intervene” speech that comic readers know is complete and utter bullshit. The rest of the cast is similarly impressive, with Marvel Studios calling in pretty much everyone who has ever been in one of these movies who isn’t Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, or Robert Downy Jr—as far as we can tell. Some of the voices are immediately recognizable (nobody does a classic “Michael Rooker voice” like Michael Rooker, and that’s very clearly Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter), but IMDb, as untrustworthy as it is, also promises Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Jeremy Renner, Mark Uffalo, Paul Rudd, Sebastian Stan, and even Chadwick Boseman. We’ve reached out to Disney for confirmation on the cast list, but if it’s really him, it would mean this will be the last chance to hear him playing T’Challa and that this will be his final role.
Anthony Mackie and Emily VanCamp in The Falcon And The Winter SoldierPhoto: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
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Good storytelling involves using tropes, and one trope I always appreciate in action movies is you can always tell when a plan is going to work. Plans fail when you see characters discuss them beforehand, but they come through when you’re just thrown into the scene.
The best part of “Power Broker,” the third episode of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, is when that trope is deliciously skewered. Bucky describes to Sam a “hypothetical” about how they could break Zemo out of his maximum security prison, right before Zemo walks out the door. It’s too bad the prison breakout plot is one of the most boring I’ve seen—Avatar: The Last Airbender’s “Boulder” episode was more interesting. But then, I guess that’s not what this episode’s about.
What is this episode about, exactly? On its face, “Power Broker” seems to be about gathering intel on the super-soldier serum and the Flag-Smashers, and even expanding Sam and Bucky’s universe of associates. But it seems most interested in playing into action movie tropes more than anything else, and you know what? It fails. The whole episode, I was just thinking of the times I’ve seen better versions of each of these scenes.
The scene in the club makes me think of the far better casino scene in Black Panther. Heck, even those scenes in Tenet where the main character’s pretending to be someone else have a better handle on the particular balance of irony and suspense. Perhaps it’s the strange direction, where it’s hard to tell where people are in a scene at any time. Or maybe it’s the editing—the way the snake cocktail scene was cut together made me feel like they were trying to get a laugh out of the audience, but the joke fell flat for me. Maybe because I like snakes, or perhaps because a snake gut cocktail doesn’t even seem cool, just gross? Now, if they were using venom, that would be hard-core in a funny way. What might actually undermine the whole enterprise is the fact that we get very little context or humor for the character Sam is supposed to play, or even how exactly Zemo is so well connected to Madripoor. After he breaks out of prison, he’s conveniently very rich because he was royalty in Sokovia.
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Zemo always seemed like he was presented as a cipher, a boon in Captain America: Civil War, but beyond that, his characterization felt somewhat rote and boring to me. (Zemo? More like ZERO, am I right?) It’s not necessarily the fault of Daniel Brühl, but I have to say that my image of him in the MCU has always been clouded by Inglorious Basterds. He played that Nazi hero creep a little too well, which I think speaks to his acting skills. But I guess I also have to give credit to Quentin Tarantino for how he directed Brühl in those scenes, because I get the sense that he was given a lot less for his character in this episode.
Zemo’s most interesting scenes are also in the beginning, because of how he alternately aligns with Sam and Bucky. As someone who was obsessed with breaking up the Avengers using their own flaws against them, you see small parts of that emotional intelligence pop out in this episode. Bucky watches him fearfully yet seems drawn to Zemo’s power over him. (Wow, he really is the MCU character that needs the most therapy.) Meanwhile, when Bucky and Sam bicker over how Bucky’s been holding on to Steve’s notebook, Zemo wins over Sam when he says the “Trouble Man” soundtrack says much about the African American experience. Sam, shocked, says, “He’s out of line, but he’s right.” Once again, I am aligned with Sam and his thought process. How dare Bucky say he “just likes ’40s music.” Open yourself up, man! I guess he is pretty different from Steve—he can go on dates (and dating apps apparently set to “both men and women”) but he can’t enjoy the music of the modern era? Come on, man. Also, as I’m sure we can all agree (and please do chime in in the comments), when share some of your favorite media with someone, you need to offer a lot more than “I liked it.” Sam suffers with us, my friends.
But okay, does Zemo have Black friends? He also dismisses Sam’s frustration with his disguise, saying, “Only an American would think a well-dressed Black man looks like a pimp.” I…WHAT? Does Zemo listen to Solange? Unfortunately, that aspect of his personality falls to the wayside as [sigh] they try to make a deal with Selby, a British woman who has the intel they need. I’m sorry, this scene just read as “James Bond references without the verve and humor” to me. After Selby is murdered, Sharon’s reintroduction to our characters even feels like a failure of writing. In fact, this whole episode has some strange characterization.
I feel like that’s the biggest problem with “Power Broker.” Even little moments, like Walker yelling to the café owner in Germany “Do you know who I am?” while Karli kills several people with a car bomb with a real blasé attitude, feel extremely out of sync with last week’s episode.
Finally, the worst aspect of the episode is how it leaves the best part of the show in the lurch. Sam and Bucky barely speak to each other or check in with their plans. Sam does ask Bucky several times if he’s okay, but Bucky does not seem to even know how to reply. And when Bucky asks him, Sam tells him he is overwhelmed by the people that have been caught in the crossfire—Sharon and Isaiah, especially. And while he does take back his decision to give up the shield, he feels more that he should’ve destroyed it.
Stray observations
I’m pretty sure, thanks to Sam’s call with Sarah, that this and the past two episodes all pass the Blackdel test, the Black version of the Bechdel test. (They also just pass the “DuVernay test.”)
Even the club scene is disappointing. They leave the next day acting like they partied hard, but Sam and Bucky just stood around awkwardly! Zemo does a little dance, but I just do not see why they couldn’t go all out and gift us with the MCU equivalent of this scene from Parks And Recreation.
The scene with Nagel reminded me of this scene from The Man from UNCLE, except, of course, the latter was better. Nagel seemed to be channeling Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor from Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
I did love Sharon’s fight scenes—her use of knife throwing in gunfights mirrors Steve at his best. Bucky was also in fine form when returning as the Winter Soldier.
I half-expected Zemo to leave them in the lurch. I really expected him to be putting Sam on with that snake cocktail, or even have poisoned the food he so kindly serves Sam and Bucky. WHO is this guy?
When they hang out with Sharon in her amazing apartment (I believe?), Bucky says, “She’s kind of awful now,” lying to himself because he knows he won’t ever be this cool in his life, not even if he’s alive for another 100 years.
Sam’s awkward phone call also just falls flat as a device for humor? Suspense? I was more trying to puzzle out why he brought his phone at all, much less why he couldn’t put it on Airplane Mode.
I wonder if Sharon killed Selby. I figure she’s not working for the Power Broker, but I’m curious where her loyalties lie now.
Bucky Barnes, just after rolling through some German fields with his best friend Sam Wilson.Screenshot: Marvel Studios
For years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s textual approach to LGBTQ+ characters has been heavy on speculation and light on actual representation. Fans have spent years and years shipping Avengers with other Avengers in romantic crossovers to rival Endgame, while the studio has either asked them to wait, or offered them a Russo brother in trying times. So far, it seems like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s taking the former approach—although it could end up giving fans the latter.
The first two episodes of the new Disney+ series have been a lot of setting up, but one thing that’s been clear throughout is that the series wants to sell the chemistry of Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s titular heroes as not just teammates, but goofy, occasionally homoerotically-charged buddy cop pals.
As Gavia Baker-Whitelaw notes over at The Daily Dot, episode two, in particular, emphasizes the shipping vibe between the two heroes for laughs and attempts at gravitas. Sam and Bucky rolling together in the fields just outside of Munich after their scrap with the Flag Smashers is played as a quick gag, as is Doctor Raynor’s impromptu (and intimate) therapy technique between the two afterward, albeit one that opens up a level of reflection for Bucky unlike anything else in his treatment in the show so far.
But there’s more to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s queer theory vibes than a few gags—especially when it comes to Bucky Barnes. Marvel fans have long considered the potential for Bucky to be seen as a queer character, casting him as a sort of lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers foil for Steve Rogers ever since Stan debuted in Captain America: The First Avenger. Even as Avengers: Endgame took Steve Rogers’ personal arc down a path away from Bucky, the theory has lingered, only to heat up again with the arrival of the new show. In the first episode of the Disney+ series, Bucky goes on a cut-short date with a waitress from a local sushi place, only to comment that his foray into the world of modern online dating apps lead “to lot of weird pictures,” only to add “I mean, tiger photos?”
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Fans longing for a queer version of the character immediately latched on to the line, positioning it as a reference to the mid-2010s phenomenon of a primarily masculine trend of dating profile pictures, especially on Tinder, of men posing with big cats in an attempt to attract potential matches. If Bucky was seeing lots of pictures of people posing for tiger selfies, these folks reasoned, then it was very likely that Bucky Barnes had swiped right on more than a few men, seemingly, but quietly hinting at the character’s bisexuality. The chatter grew enough that, speaking to NME last week, lead writer Malcolm Spellman addressed the rumors.
“I’m not diving down rabbit holes,” Spellman said. “But just keep watching…”
So, will The Falcon and The Winter Soldier reveal one of its lead characters to be a queer man? We don’t know yet, and creatives like Spellman certainly aren’t telling. But it’s not really surprising to anyone at this point that Marvel creatives would dance around rather than confirm a smattering of queer representation in their work for the studio. After all, this has been part and parcel of the push-and-pull in asking for visible LGBTQ+ representation in Marvel’s work for over a decade at this point. Time and time again, actors have played vague about the potential for queer romantic partnerships, only for executives to tell fans that one day, textual representation will come.
For the most part, they’re still waiting. Avengers: Endgame made waves for the first on-screen LGBTQ character in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie for all the wrong reasons, when the pre-hyped moment of queer representation was ultimately revealed as a seconds-long cameo by co-director Joe Russo. Since then, as Marvel laid out “Phase 4” of its moviemaking plans and beyond, the game has once again been one of patience on fans’ behalves. Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie was confirmed to be queer at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, but audiences will have to wait until 2022 to potentially see that acknowledgment on-screen in Thor: Love and Thunder. Eternals, Marvel’s cosmic-tinged team-up of obscure Jack Kirby comics characters, is still on track to release later this year, and will feature Bryan Tyree Henry’s superheroic Phastos as a married queer man, sharing the franchise’s first on-screen queer kiss with his husband, played by Haaz Sleiman.
Those are all still promises of things to come for queer Marvel fans looking to see people like themselves in the stories they love. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier may yet join them, or, like many opportunities before it, become part of Marvel’s long history of queerbaiting audiences. I guess, as is the Marvel manner, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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