It made me think of Dr. Manhattan.
Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)
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The Flatland novella was written by Edwin Abbott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
The bar owner(?) who has the vision and gets killed at the start of the episode was called Edwin Abbott.
The bar owner(?) who has the vision and gets killed at the start of the episode was called Edwin Abbott.
With that one scene, AoS put more thought and explanation into altering the future than Legends of Tomorrow has so far.
As if we didn't have enough villains in the episode already...
At least they seemed to pick up just moments after they cut away. I don't think we missed much.
This was a fun variation on a "glimpsing the future" story. Fitz's view of how time works was actually a valid theory, and the explanation was fairly decent. It's worth noting that the episode didn't prove him wrong -- everything did happen exactly as predicted. I know that Marvel has tended to use a "time is immutable, but with alternate timelines" model in the comics. Have we seen anything else in the MCU that supports or refutes an immutable-timeline model?
My favorite bit was Daisy and the team using the future vision to "rehearse" the planned battle. I don't think I've seen that done in a time-related story before. "Okay, reset!"
Odd that HiveWard's idea of "true power" is something as brute-force as just having the physical strength to crush someone. That seems a bit basic for some great Big Bad. But maybe that's the point? That he's not the transcendental entity Malick expected, but just another thug? Still, he did make an interesting point about the flaw in the idea of supervillains bent on world domination -- namely, that you can effectively achieve that just by being rich and influential.
I don't think it was just about brute force - he referenced 'true power' as basically being an Inhuman. Doesn't matter what you could do specifically (control metal, burn people, show future death visions), it was the fact that you were special that gave you power. Presumably Malick isn't actually capable of becoming an Inhuman, so technology is his only possibility of gaining true power.
The fact that it was brute force technology specifically, I think had more to do with Hive's hidden agenda than his concept of power. He mentioned at the end that he was interested in that company's technology for some completely different reason than what he had told to Malick. And he also seemed to be manipulating Malick to an extent: superficially meeting his expectations (by giving him 'power') while forcing him into a new state of existence (the foot soldier/flunky instead of the hidden mastermind he's always been before).
It also simply might have had a little bit to do with Coulson's murder of Ward, since that did seem to be on the guy's mind, as well.
I thought he was afraid because he'd been forced into a new situation (as I mentioned above). It's clear now that he doesn't get to be the brains behind the operation anymore, the guy making plans and orchestrating things from anonymity and immunity. He's going to have to get his hands dirty directly - accomplish objectives himself, in the face of incredibly powerful people like Daisy and Charles, and he's not entirely up to the task (considering that his power is fake).
But the idea that he also saw something when Charles touched him is a good explanation as well. I didn't think of it at the time, but it would definitely make sense.
Good point. Hive said he remembered Coulson crushing "him" to death (clearly he has all of Ward's memories and identifies with him, since he used the first person). So maybe he intends to use Malick as a tool of vengeance, using the same technology to crush Coulson.
Just occurred to me (yeah, I'm slow, sue me!) but I think the implication by the end of this episode may be that Daisy may have come around on the concept of a terragen vaccine. Between seeing the damage Charles's gift inflicted and his worry that his daughter may have inherited it combined with her promise to protect her seems like they're moving Daisy's arc more toward the Xavier end of the spectrum than the Magneto end as it seemed last episode.
I've seen behind the scenes videos of fight scene rehearsals and they actually do look a lot like that.Using the foreknowledge of the vision to rehearse the fight ahead of time was certainly novel. I wonder If the idea for that came out of someone watching the cast & stunt team's actual stunt rehearsals.
Either way, there's something oddly endearing about May shouting "bang" at people between all the rolling and flipping around.
A baffling mystery indeed.
I didn't get the impression that HiveWard actually believes giving Malick an exoskeleton and super-strength is representative of Ward's definition of "true power," but rather what he thinks someone weak and generically human like Malick would believe it is. It was indicative of his disdain and how little he actually cares about Malick's objectives, in that he gave what he considers a small-minded and short-sighted puppet a toy to distract himself with for a while while Ward accomplishes his real goals. Ward obviously still needs Malick's connections and infrastructure at the moment, so he's not totally disposable yet and needs to be coddled, but the easy salve for Malick's quest for true power and the way he ignored his instructions at the end makes it clear their continued partnership is not long for this world, IMO.
Because it's already happened. You're occupying three-dimensional space right now. You're also occupying fourth dimensional space (your line that was drawn). The point is that the progression of time and the occurrence of events is an illusion.
Well, Legends of Tomorrow uses Doctor Who time travel logic for the most part (very flexible, but with a general rule of don't cross back over and alter your own events, particularly events that occurred as you were a time traveler).
Malick was probably at the point of wondering if bringing this guy back to Earth was a good idea because "what's he done for me lately?" He is an old guy whose physical strength has waned. Giving him some physical strength was a cheap way to make him feel powerful again and it could be taken away again easily enough.
I didn't take Hive's "gift" to Malick as anything other than a threat. He dressed it up as giving Malick what he wanted, in order to make him go along with it, but it was really about showing the foolish human what's really up. Humans build machines to mimic super powers. But Hive and the other Inhumans ARE power. Their gifts can't be stripped, taken away, or stopped. (Well, at least, not yet. But give SHIELD time...). Malick has now seen what he's really brought back from Maveth, and he's finally scared.
I look forward to hearing what Malick saw when he touched the seer, as well. Probably just his death at Hive's hand, but even then it spices things up.
I look forward to hearing what Malick saw when he touched the seer, as well. Probably just his death at Hive's hand, but even then it spices things up.
Yeah, that's what I mean. It's up in the air until you see it, and then you're stuck with it.
My Uncle Mike gave me that book when I was in junior high school. I took it to school and somebody stole it.
She was definitely reacting to that, as well as Andrew's situation-- hopefully this will turn around the increasing radicalization that we've seen.
That would make the 4th dimension of time fundamentally different from the three dimensions of space. Fitz's explanation is more like each quantum moment is a parallel universe and your consciousness moves from one to the next in a specific order-- or, worse, that a specific version of your consciousness with knowledge of all the parallel universes in one direction-- whatever "direction" means in this context-- but not the other exists in each universe, and that each alternate version of yourself is under the illusion that it is conscious. And, since in some of these universes, that illusion of consciousness does come with some knowledge of events in the future direction, it means that the multiverse was created as a whole, completely static, like a sculpture-- like a Creationist world with the dinosaur fossils already there. So, in this theory of time, dynamicism is an illusion, time is an illusion, and consciousness is an illusion-- but if everything is static, where does that illusion of dynamic flow come from? It's not a very good theory of time.
Boy, it was nice to get a proper episode after two stinkers in a row. Parts of it felt very weird though, like Lash showing up out of nowhere after being gone so many episodes, and Fitz's 100% certainty of how time travel / visions would work. How the hell would he know? Isn't this is the first ever instance of this in the MCU?
Also, how did Malick get away? Daisy quake-blasted him and knocked him through an AC unit. He's an old man. Then she's lying on the ground right there. Next we see him, he got away in a copter. What happened in between these two scenes? Did Malick get up and limp away? Why didn't Daisy stop him? Was she passed out? If she was, why didn't he step on her neck on his way out?
Also, how did Malick get away? Daisy quake-blasted him and knocked him through an AC unit. He's an old man. Then she's lying on the ground right there. Next we see him, he got away in a copter. What happened in between these two scenes? Did Malick get up and limp away? Why didn't Daisy stop him? Was she passed out? If she was, why didn't he step on her neck on his way out?
The whole reason science exists is to enable us to make predictions about situations we haven't experienced before. That's what makes it such a powerful tool. The universe isn't random; everything is governed by the same laws, so if we know what laws govern the things we have observed directly, then we can extrapolate how they would manifest in new situations. For instance, if you know the equation that relates the mass of the Earth to the acceleration its gravity imparts on a falling object, then you can calculate how fast something would fall to the ground on Pluto, even though nobody's ever been on Pluto.
The theory Fitz described is not something the writers made up; it's something they got from real theoretical physics. The basic idea is that, quantum mechanically speaking, the entirety of space and time is completely described by a single, infinitely complex wave equation that encompasses all events ever. The only reason we don't know the future, the only reason we don't know everything, is that we're unable to gather enough information to know the whole wave equation. The idea that our perception of time moving forward is an illusion goes back to Einstein, who once wrote in a letter that "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Granted, quantum physics does allow for parallel timelines, so there can be more than one possible future. However, it also says that if you observe one of those futures, you correlate yourself with it and thereby require that it will become the future you experience. This is similar to an idea called postselection, the idea that causal influences propagating back in time from the future may actually be a factor in shaping the outcome of events, by causing quantum states to resolve a certain way.
