It's like when Luke Skywalker's dad died, so Luke Skywalker wound up having to kill
all those child Jedi.
Yes, that's exactly what ... Wait, is that what happened?
I mean, a little.
Tom, which Marvel characters do you think will not survive phase four?
What a bleak prospect.
This is dark.
That's what we do.
That's what we do here.
So I feel like there are two obvious answers here, and they're both Ant-Man, right?
I feel like Hank Pym can't last much longer, right?
No.
Hank Pym was on my shortlist.
He's the-
Pun intended.
Oh, Brian.
Thank you.
Bringing the fire.
I'm feeling a little punchy.
Feeling good.
A little punchy?
A little punchy.
This is a terrific show we've made.
Oh, wow.
He's just riffing now.
Go on.
Hank Pym.
Go on.
Hank Pym.
Tell us about Hank Pym.
I feel like he's gone from kind of jerk to father figure a little bit over the last few
movies.
I don't feel like older father figures necessarily do too well in hero's journeys.
Yeah.
I can't imagine that Hank Pym's going to last too long.
There's also Scott Lang, who's terrific.
We all love Scott Lang, but he does fit into a lot of the categories that I think previously
murdered superheroes in the MCU fall into.
Mostly, he's got a younger girl version of him to take over for him right out the bat.
Like, Quicksilver had Scarlet Witch ready to step in as soon as he died.
And Black Widow died, and then it turned out that there was another Florence Pugh Black
Widow.
Scott Lang, he's got his daughter, Cassie.
She's ready to step in.
If you read the comics, they did murder her pretty good.
Yikes.
But, I feel like they've been setting up for her to fill the big shoes or small shoes,
depending.
Well, they do get big because she grows.
Her superhero name is Stature.
Cassie Lang, in the comics, is one of the Young Avengers along with Isaiah Bradley's
grandson, who we've seen Falcon and the Winter Soldier, along with the other Hawkeye who
we'll see in Hawkeye TV show, played by Hailee Steinfeld.
Kate Bishop.
Wanda Maximoff's two kids, Billy and ... Billy?
What was the other one's name?
Tommy.
I think Billy and Willie would have been better.
I don't know where you got that.
No?
No.
Terrific pitch.
So, they were Speed and Wiccan.
And then there was ... Kang had a past self that came to the past, from the future, as
a kid, as a hero named Iron Lad.
So now, we've got Kang as well, and multiple versions of Kang running around.
And then, we've got Hulkling, who was a Skrull, so we've got Skrulls.
So all the pieces are in the places that we need for a Young Avengers team to happen.
I mean, how are they not going to dip into the Young Avengers well, at some point?
They've got to.
Yeah.
I think they're pretty clearly setting that up, and then, in addition, I think what you're
suggesting, Tom, if you kill off Scott Lang, that's a pretty good motivator for someone
to be like, "Well, I'll take over for my dad and do what he couldn't."
Or, same deal, even if Hank Pym were to go, you could have a similar kind of inspiring,
"Now that now that Papa Pym has gone, I'll be the new Papa Pym."
Right.
"But a lady Papa Pym."
It's like when Luke Skywalker's dad died, so Luke Skywalker wound up having to kill
all those child Jedi.
Yes, that's exactly what ... Wait, is that what happened?
I mean, a little.
Maybe a little.
He thought about it, just for a second.
He thought about it, yeah.
That's a pretty good pick, yeah.
We were watching different Rise of Skywalkers?
Yeah, all right.
Yeah.
That was a good pick.
I think that Scott Lang or Hank Pym ... I think Hank Pym is a lot more likely than Scott
Lang.
Got to be, right?
It's a bummer.
Just because Michael Douglas, he's an older guy, and I don't think he's going to want
to do Marvel movies forever.
Yeah, he wants to go hang out with Catherine Zeta-Jones and live his life.
And for that, I respect him.
I also want to do that.
It's a lot of time to walk around with little dots painted on his face so they can make it look
like Wall Street again.
Yeah.
I mean, with the return of the original Wasp, with Michelle Pfeiffer showing up at the end
of Ant-Man and the Wasp, now we've got that character in there.
And, again, from a storytelling perspective, if you have both of these elder, older heroes
running around, it makes sense for one of them to go, again, to provide motivation to
the younger heroes to go do heroic things.
The balance needs to be imbalanced in a way, you know what I mean?
So I think that it makes some sense for that to happen.
So, that's a good pick.
Yeah, you get the wrap up a redemptive arc for Hank.
He gets to stop being a jerk and do the whole, "Ah, I'm sorry for everything I did, everything
wrong."
Well, and even though Hank's more likely, Scott could also have that too, right?
He could come full circle as a dad and as a human, and that could be ... Because Marvel
does like to cut the actor off when their whole story arc is complete because then,
they're like, "Well, what do we do with you now?"
Yeah, and we don't want Paul Rudd to be collecting too many paychecks over this time.
He's been in a lot of movies.
I personally want him to get all the paychecks that he wants and deserves.
He needs to find a new talk show to show that Mack and Me footage on.
He just needs to show up on Conan's HBO show and just show it for no reason.
There you go.
they'll just recreate it.
Yeah.
Makes sense to me.
Nina, what's your pick?
So, it's funny, I kind of went with the similar idea to someone can take over.
No one is going to be surprised that I picked Hawkeye because I don't like him.
I don't want to watch him anymore.
But I'm also like, Kate Bishop's right there.
He's going to have this TV show.
How much mileage can we really get out of this guy? Jeremy Renner has music to make.
Things got to happen.
He's got to bring the app back.
Yeah, he's got to relaunch his app.
But yeah, I don't think Hawkeye's in this for the long haul.
If they're setting him up with a Young Avenger, and that was kind of my exact same thinking
is like, Kate Bishop will want to avenge him in the same way that Yelena wants to avenge
her sister.
If Yelena kills him, that would be kind of cool.
But also, he's getting a whole series of his name on it, so it's probably not going to
happen.
Yeah, it seems unlikely, but the fact that they are adding a second character who goes
by Hawkeye to the show called Hawkeye.
That's what I'm saying.
And the second Hawkeye is played by Academy Award nominee, Hailee Steinfeld.
Well isn't the first Hawkeye played by Academy Award nominee, Jeremy Renner?
She's younger, so it's more impressive.
I'm just saying, if you're going to bring in the bonafides, you got to be-
No, I think what I'm saying is they didn't bring in some like newcomer.
They brought in someone very, very famous.
Sure.
That's true.
I thought you were saying, "Hailee Steinfeld was just straight up a more legit actor."
Well ... No, I'm not saying.
There's also the cynical, logical part of me that feels like, aside from Hawkeye, it'll
be Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Contessa because how long does that woman really want to stay in
the MCU?
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think that she's-
How long are the checks going to clear?
Yeah, she's set up for a while, I think.
She's kind of the-
She is, but it's also, if that woman, with all of her armloads of Emmys, was like, "I
don't want to do this anymore."
She could get herself written off in dramatic fashion if need be.
I mean, she's clearly being set up to be available.
She's clearly being set up to be kind of the anti-Nick Fury.
Will she go at the end of phase four?
Phase four is a long one.
It's a few years, so it's possible that at the end of this phase, at whatever big showdown
her character is building these anti-Avengers for, maybe she'll bite the dust.
I think she'll last a little bit longer.
She's kind of in the background.
You think she'll move into a subsequent phase?
I think that she could because, again, what is she being asked to do?
She's not getting strapped to any rigs, right?
She doesn't have to fly around.
She doesn't have to sit through and get like a bunch of makeup slathered on her face.
She puts on cool sunglasses and a purple streak in her hair, and she just makes jokes, and
that's it.
She's basically just doing sitcom stuff and making Marvel money.
That's a fair point, but I also am just like, if I were Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I think I'd
be like, "I want to do a couple of these max."
That's fair.
But, I could be wrong, and I don't want her to get killed off.
I am thrilled anytime I see Julia Louis-Dreyfus do literally anything.
I would watch a movie of her just sitting in a chair for six hours because it would
probably be really funny.
We might get it.
Yeah.
But yeah, I'd enjoy it.
But no, I don't want her to get killed off, but I'm very cynical about how actors make
decisions about their lives and their livelihoods.
And also, she has Seinfeld money.
This is not about checks for this woman.
Yeah, that's true.
She can write her own TV.
She can do whatever.
Yeah, she's fine.
Yeah.
She's not hurting.
I had a list of names that I came up with.
I had a few, and I have one ultimate pick, but I'm just going to run through a few.
One is a Rhodie, War Machine, from Armor Wars.
Oh, yeah.
Oof.
Rough.
Bummer.
Right?
He's been around since Iron Man One.
Two, Cheadle.
He's like the old guard, yeah.
The character has been around since the very beginning, so it strikes me as a fitting end
to Armor Wars if he goes out in a blaze of glory, especially since we're going to have
Iron Heart coming through in the Black Panther sequel soon.
So I see that as a potential exit.
And again, he's been doing this for a while, and each project that they do, they command
a higher and higher paycheck, so eventually, they may just be like, "Yeah, Don Cheadle,
we're done.
You can go do some other prestige television."
Same deal with Nick Fury.
Nick fury has been around since the beginning.
Samuel L. Jackson is getting older.
How much longer does he want to do this?
I thought about him, and then I was also like, "I feel like he just wants to do this forever."
No, there's that.
Yeah.
I mean, again, they're not putting him in major prosthetics.
No, he just gets to show up with an eye patch and be cool every now and then.
Like, it's not ... yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so he's doing fine.
Another one I thought of was Drax the Destroyer.
Ooh.
You think they're going to kill Drax?
I think they could because Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is going to be in phase four.
We know that Dave Bautista is not super thrilled with the Disney machine, right?
Recently, at the time of this recording, someone asked him on Twitter like, "Hey, why didn't
you do the voice of Drax on the second episode of What If...?"
He was just like, "How about because they didn't ask me."
And it caused this mini-controversy, where everyone's just like, "We did ask you.
We asked your agent."
And then, the agents were like, "You never asked us."
I don't know, it's a little-
He's also getting way more popular.
Everyone's casting him in everything, I would say, largely thanks to Guardians.
He's having his John Cena phase of his career.
For sure.
And I would bet that the nature of his contract was probably not super good because when he
first signed it, the first Guardians of the Galaxy was his first major role out of being
a wrestler.
Yeah.
And now, he's a Knives Out 2, a huge leap.
Yeah.
So he's probably ready to be done.
I'm not in the cast of Knives Out 2, somehow.
None of us are.
You don't know that.
That's true.
I'm actually in the cast of Knives Out 2, sorry.
I meant to tell you that.
I was going to save that for after.
Please put that in Brian's name tag, "Appearing in Knives Out 2."
"Appearing in Knives Out 2."
So that's so that's one thought.
So I think a big way to end Guardians of the Galaxy 3, a big death, right?
We had Yondu at the end of the second one.
I don't think that they're going to kill off Chris Pratt's character.
They're already working on ... Gomorrah's already been brought back to life, so it doesn't
make sense that either of that couple would get killed off.
But I do think that Drax feels like he has a bit of a target on him, especially because
he's also gone on record as saying he doesn't like all the makeup application.
I think he's done with it.
I think he's done.
So that's my prediction, but that's actually not the character I was going to talk about,
which is Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder.
Oh.
I think they brought Natalie Portman back to do this one movie, where she gets to be
the protagonist.
It's going to be the reunion of Jane Foster and Thor Odinson.
They're going to reunite.
That's the love.
But we also know that from the comics, she became Thor while she was also undergoing
treatment for cancer, and that was tied in with her power, where she was getting chemotherapy,
but every time she turned into Thor, it would purge her body of toxins, and so the chemotherapy
didn't work.
A common medical ailment.
Yeah.
Right, it happens to the best of us.
It does.
So at the end of that comic storyline, she dies.
Now, because this is comics, she's brought back to life.
She gets chemotherapy and she's okay, but she doesn't have powers anymore.
But I think this is a Taika Waititi movie.
This is a guy who's really good at blending super-duper dramatic, emotional stuff with
wacky goofy stuff.
Like, if anyone remembers Scarlett Johannson's shoes in Jojo Rabbit?
I was just going to bring that up.
Oh, that was.
Mm-hmm. Hunt for the Wilderpeople, that's some heavy duty stuff in a really fun, funny
movie.
But, it's serious stuff.
Even Thor: Ragnarok has some pretty emotional stuff where Odin dies.
It's not necessarily the big cry moment.
It's much more subdued in that one.
It's much more of a fun comedy, that movie.
But I think Taika Waititi, now that he's confident, now that they're just trusting him to do whatever
he wants.
They brought Natalie Portman back.
They convinced her.
I think they said, "Hey, do this one movie.
You're the star of the movie.
You're going to have a really dramatic death, and everyone will cry after they saw you kick
a bunch of ass in the movie, fighting like Thor, fighting as Thor, and then, at the end,
you get to die in this tragic dramatic way."
Man, what a legendary way to go out after leaving a franchise you weren't really that
into for the first two movies.
That's my pick.
What do you guys think?
I've been talking a lot.
That's really good because that would be the perfect way to get a movie star like Natalie
Portman to come back to a franchise.
She famously hated to be like, "It's just the one movie."
Because the whole time, I was like, "Oh, she's coming back because it's Taika Waititi, and
he has an Oscar, and everyone loves him."
I mean, I'm guessing people are lining up to work with him.
I would, if I were an actor.
I just want to work with him now.
I just want to hang out while he writes and be like, "What are you doing?
What are you doing?
What are you writing?"
"What is it now?
What scene is it this time?"
You'll get the call after Knives Out 2 comes out.
No, but that's a good point, that maybe they were like, "Hey, you only have to do one thing.
We're not going to pin you too."
Because, I mean, it has to be one thing or the other with her, right?
Either she dies, or she takes up the mantle from Chris Hemsworth, I would think.
I mean, that's entirely possible too because Chris Hemsworth's been doing this for a while.
But from what I understand in my limited role as guy on the internet, he seems to really
love doing Thor.
Is that who you're playing in Knives Out 2?
Yeah.
I'm playing "guy on the internet" in Knives Out 2.
I'm just doing this.
I'm just typing on my keyboard.
Don't spoil it for us, God.
I don't want to know anything.
But yeah, I think Chris Hemsworth really likes doing this.
And so, I think having Natalie Portman come in, it doesn't make sense that she's going
to take over a franchise.
I'd love it if she did.
I think it would be really fun, but it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing prestige
actor, Natalie Portman, would do.
I think we're a one and done situation.
I agree, but she also hasn't been like doing a ton of stuff lately.
That's true.
This might be the comeback that she was waiting for.
Come back, like she needed a comeback.
Yeah.
She's Natalie frigging Portman.
She's just ever-present.
Yeah.
So yeah, those are my picks.
That's what I think will happen.
So we'll come back in a few years, assuming that we're still doing this a few years from
now, at the end of phase four, and we'll see which one of us was right and which one of
us was wrong.
I bet all of us were right.
We're all right.
Every single one we said.
I'll still be doing this.
I don't know about you guys.
Yeah.
And also you can see all of us in Knives Out 2.
We're both going to be movie stars.
Yeah.
Knives Out 2, something, something boogaloo.
I couldn't come up with anything.
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