**This episode contains spoilers from WandaVision. **



It's no secret I love Marvel. My husband and I have one of the largest Funko Marvel collections. Our daughter's name is even Marvel. So I was beyond stoked to finally get some time to chat with one of my favorite nerd writers, Russ Milheim, all about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After all, he has been covering the MCU for our website for a few years now when he took over the reins from the OG Jesse Rolufs. We start the conversation off with what we are obsessing over. Russ has recently gotten rid of most of his Marvel Funkos and has moved onto Hot Toys. The lack of Funkos has made for an empty house, so he's been nerdy re-decorating. I've personally gotten myself addicted to The Crown lately, and even Andy's been enjoying it. But let's get back to this podcast's real topic, the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the MCU.



During the early part of its history, the MCU was meant just to mean the movies, but it's come to mean anything that is Marvel over the past decade. Unlike DC Comics, where shows and television are separate, Marvel, for the most part, has tried to keep things working together in one universe. When prepping for this podcast, it was quite awesome to see how hard we've come since 2008 when Iron Man appeared on the scene. The Nerd and Geek power were just beginning to rebuild with things like Dark Knight, Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy being released. Did we ever expect it to be this complex and amazing? Heck no, but we are glad it did. Iron Man, though was the start of it all, but Incredible Hulk really had us taking a step back. It really took Iron Man 2 and Thor to get my trust back after the horrid movie that was Incredible Hulk. Russ does point out, though, that Iron Man 2 wasn't that great. Mostly this is because it was trying to set up so much in the MCU. Both of us agree that WandaVision sort of did the same thing for Phase 4 with Agatha. It's really is amazing to see how all these things are webbed together and intricately planned. Russ and I talk in-depth about how all these different phases, plans, and easter eggs just make fans more and more interested. This results in Marvel becoming more and more tightened-lipped since comic book fans can easily try to figure out which direction the studio is going simply based on the thousands of comic storylines available. Marvel is known for silencing its actors, having no cellphone policies on set, and have NDAs with huge consequences.



We jump back into our journey of the MCU to talk about how Thor got our attention after Iron Man 2 redeemed our trust. Thor was dark and different. Darcy was a character that was so underrated through all the movies but finally got to have her shining moment in WandaVision. Russ talks about how he's not too fond of Jane Foster's character and why it has to be "Female Thor." His argument is Thor is a name, not a mantle. The mantle is God of Thunder. It's like running around calling every Spider-man Peter Parker. What really sold us both, though, on the Marvel franchise was Captain America and Avengers. While Captain America lacked in fight scenes, it did make up for it with amazing character development that lasted through the decade. The reality is Avengers did something no other franchise or movie studio has ever done before. It brought together multiple movie franchises together to make an even bigger one. Marvel is one of those unique companies. All they do is make Marvel content. Unlike Warner Bros who deals with not only the DC franchise but thousands of other hugely popular franchises. Marvel's sole attention is only on the content it owns, but this wasn't always the case. Fox had X-Men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four. It was so bad that at one point, Marvel couldn't use the word mutant because it applied too much to the X-men universe. In the Age of Ultron, Wanda and Pietro were referred to as "miracles" and that the tesseract gave them their powe...