Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by J .C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans ah .wordpress dot .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon dot .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Good morning, Brockton Bay. Get ready to take that, you worms. It's an entire episode of season three. yeah always start with ah ah i with like I literally have my breath. I'm holding it, waiting to see if Alan's going to do something to start the episode or not.
Speaker: And I've got like a backup, I've got like a backup episode start just in case. I never have to use it, which is great. Well, what is it for today? Do you want me to turn it over to you? yeah no ah let Shut Chadly with the weather. What does the weather look like in Brockton shut?
Speaker: Uh, I've got to save those for when I need them. small easy When he says he has one of them ready, it's literally just one it's one. It is the suicide round. It's the one will that will end the podcast immediately. Yeah, exactly. Welcome everybody to season three recap of dissecting worm. Got a couple of these now. So we are.
Speaker: Dinnying with the trend, going to take a look back at the last five arcs, which make up our third season of this hypothetical show we're constructing. That's arcs 15 through 19. Yay. And as always on our recaps, we've got some some familiar voices to our regular listeners. We've got ah both Nick and Hannah joining us. Welcome, the two of you. Hi.
Speaker: e Thanks as always. and then and And returning regular dissecting members, Alan and Michael as always. Hello. Hello. Hey. And it's going to be, it's going to be interesting season. We got some, we got some stuff to get into. I was telling Alan yesterday, we structured it a good bit since then, but I still think this is probably the season so far with the most room for rework and improvement. um Not that I think we did poorly, because obviously we nailed it. But ah in general, I think there's a we've we've had a lot of issues, even just talking week to week, or episode to episode, we've had a lot of issues with like
Speaker: and Do we move this? Do we cut this? How do we stretch this out? How do we paste this better? And it seems there's no exception. So going to be exciting to kind of get into it and hear your guys' thoughts and see if you've got any feedback or immediate solutions to some of our problems we've hit and see what we can kind of come up with. ah Exactly. and and sound like a play No, that's great. um Yeah. And important information. Nick and Hannah,
Speaker: aren't loyal fans who listen week to week to their dissecting podcast. So most of this, how dare they find how to listen to that. I mean, we could be available on all platforms. We just prefer to wait and until the, the, you know, the, we want, we want the big recap. Exactly.
Speaker: important exactly Yeah. The important information for that is that this is all brand new to them. So I always get really excited to, uh, see what they think about all this stuff we've been working on. And also important to note is we.
Speaker: None of this is really set in stone. We definitely, if you've listened to our recaps in the past, we're still editing as we go. So don't get upset until the end because, or if you do get upset, call us and leave a message at Michael. What's the number? I need 0999. Oh gosh. Uh, 4 3 0 4 3 8. Yes. Oh, good job. Give us a call.
Speaker: Yeah. So we're editing as we go. I mean, for, for context, like five minutes before we started this, Alan and I were still like, Oh, wait a minute. We gotta, we gotta put that in. It's made a little change. So exactly it's a work in progress there with us. It's like, uh, it's last season. Uh, we'll go through some other things, but one of the things that I really wanted to keep and I talked about was, uh, like I really liked Sierra and, um, Charlotte, and I really wish that They had a fun ah trio of friends slash coworkers together, but in truth, probably better just to cut that all together like and leave them as is. I i just really liked them. and at the end But at the end of the story, i could not like both we just
Speaker: for kind of forgot to put them yeah like more in there because, yeah you know, there wasn't sort of the mainline stuff. yeah It was a packed season. evenly yeah And this season is going to be no exception. Oh, there's a big set of stuff that I really wanted to put in here. ah Some of my favorite things. But as we'll go through, it just kind of didn't have a really good place to consistently like have it. Um, right. So I think let's ah yeah let's let's dive in. I think we're, I think we're ready. Yeah. i'm excited All right. So to keep in mind previous changes that we've done in season one, we have changed that during the bank heist, um, after sort of a post credit scene, um, trickster and, uh,
Speaker: Uh, the travelers are the ones that kidnap Dinah at the same time. Okay. Right. it's Solid. Yeah. yeah ah um and Part of this being that, you know, coil has essentially said, Hey, I need you to do this. Uh, she can help get you back kind of the vibe there. Um, the other things we had season two, more importantly, detective weld.
Speaker: ah was out there discovering the duplicitous nature of the PRT while investigating the slaughterhouse nine. yeah but I continue to imagine him looking somewhat like ah just you know in a trench coat. um i like It's stuck in my head permanently because we call him Detective Weld all the time now. I can't forget he's got that heavy Boston accent, Alan, that you love. Oh my gosh. I try to forget that he has that heavy Boston accent.
Speaker: Um, other thing is nobody really initially knows why that the slaughterhouse nine are in town other than they tend to go where like trouble is sort of, you know, uh, in the wake of the end bringer attack, they take advantage on, you know, weak towns, small towns, and in this case a damaged larger city, um, but weld.
Speaker: through going through the crime scenes and on the flip side, Lisa just being Lisa, they eventually separately piece things together that the slaughterhouse nine and are recruiting for new members. um Also ah near the middle of last season, Coyle is finally revealed to be the mysterious employer and ah it's Weld who during the meeting Uh, when tattletale keeps using numbers, you know, the, the little moot of all the heroes and villains deal with this letter house nine during that moot, it's weld. Who puts together that the numbers that tattletale spouting off are a result of Dinah's kidnapping. And it is Taylor who puts together that coil is kidnapped this kid for her powers. Um, so this is kind of when Taylor.
Speaker: realizes what's going on. She hasn't even seen Dinah until now right until until after this. like she has know it she Dinah is a conceptual thing post this. She has yet to meet Dinah. And this is how she finds out about it. ah The flip side, since season one, Piggott has always had a deputy director helping out with her. ah His name's Thomas Calvert.
Speaker: He's been helping her with the slaughterhouse nine, especially after the thing, doing all the paperwork, staying late, checking up on Piget. He might e've even help suggest the firebombing. The undersiders earlier raid of the PRT in this situation wasn't to get information on the slaughterhouse nine. It's to under mar undermine the PRT and its director. Okay.
Speaker: Another thing we have ah lady photon backstory and Amy's story. Uh, both are like epilogue events at the end of season two. Um, that like Amy going to the bird kitchen, and all that is end of season two. We don't mess with that in season three. Um, and the like final scene pro probably of season two ends with.
Speaker: Taylor asking tattletale. So tell me about Dinah cut to black. Hey. Okay. Yeah. I like good synopsis. That's everything that kind of keep in mind. Little changes we've made that'll be relevant or impactful for this season in certain fashions. So we want to, to kind of, um,
Speaker: space this out. We have broken this season into six episodes. As an immediate caveat, it'll almost certainly end up being more than six episodes. But ah we're not really counting for a lot of time. ah That happens during action set pieces of which there are many.
Speaker: and things of that nature. There's also a lot of scenes we have talked about putting in but haven't quite put in yet, just kind of as afterthoughts. So this will certainly flesh out quite a bit. um But for the moment, just sort of six major groups of plot points, essentially. And we did do kind of one little change. Actually, I don't know if this was really necessarily intentional. But instead of kind of giving scene by scene, we're more just kind of going to... I don't know what that accent was. We're kind of...
Speaker: Too much of that Boston weld. know Yeah, it's on the mind. um Just kind of hitting major ah um ah concurrent bullet points for what's happening to kind of track the ah pacing and the flow of the episode, but not necessarily like cut to this, cut to that. So hopefully it's a little bit ah cleaner to follow. yeah I don't know if you structured that. I definitely did mine to like sort of generally where you would cut back and forth, but It's a bit of column A, column B. We end the bullet point where it would make sense to cut if it's the end of the scene, but also, you'll see as we kind of get into it. It'd be a little bit simpler, I think. Yeah, it makes sense. And I think we're ready to dive into episode one. Let's go. Wait, want to kick it off? Let's go! It's okay, I'll kick it off. I'll take the first one here. Sure.
Speaker: all right All right, episode one. ah Starting off, Taylor finishes making costumes, plays the big bad villain in front of Bitch's people. The Undersiders run a rough shot on the remaining Empire 88 members, including Scrub, now called Soburn, means to purge, whom the Undersiders take as a hostage, driving them out of the city.
Speaker: the Victor situation, which happens during that. That's what normally is this is dealing with Victor. um Just made was a bit too complicated, not really a character that's ever really been dealt with or introduced up until this point. Just sort of just to lead to that and replace it with a more relevant figure with Scrub.
Speaker: I did kind of forget that happened. Yeah, right. Yeah, I had forgotten about that. Yeah, exactly. I asked you right now, what, what, what did Victor, what purpose did Victor serve? What was his hostage situation purpose?
Speaker: Um, it was, uh, because he had a power thingy and they were going to steal his power in order. Uh, uh, uh, grew was going to steal his power in order to use it on their attack.
Speaker: on the PRT, is that right? You're pretty close. Nice. I'll give you the point. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty close. It's more than I remember. Yeah, get some. Sorry, I'm really proud of myself for remembering that. As everyone knows, I have a goldfish brain, so I'm very proud of myself. I was impressed. Very proud of myself.
Speaker: But no, Victor, replacing with scrub, just to kind of, uh, he'll come back later. It makes sense. Also, I like to imagine that this point they have sat all of the, it's essentially all the young, you know, Nazis down and they're just like, you know, I'm disappointed in all of you, but you scrub and he's like, it's sobber now or salborn. And it's like, it's like, but you scrub, just ignore his name. Like,
Speaker: I expected better of you. And you one of the other Nazis goes, he was an ex merchant. And you're like, you know what? I don't know what I was thinking. You're right. I should expect worse from you. Is that a name change that happens that you guys did or that i actually happens in the book?
Speaker: and No, we give them a little yeah we give him a little name change to fit with the Empire 88 theme. um But as not nobody's going to take it seriously. That's kind of the joke there. so okay Everyone sees my column scrub. like He's just literally hanging out with the other young people that aren't the undersiders or the travelers. like Right. Got it. All his people got killed. So he is you know shit out of luck. So it's like, oh, come hang out with you know us. We're pretty cool. He's just a kid that needs a group.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. exactly and good um But they take him hostage. so Moving along, ah Taylor remarks that this is the first time Lisa has been out in a while. Lisa remarks that Coyle likes having her around more and more. Lisa also diverges that they are all running sort of Coyle's goodwill at the moment, and they should be planning for what happens if he decides to drop them. um And this is a ah running ah fear that they have through the season.
Speaker: ah Taylor and Brian talk the miasma is revealed to leave some recognition effects Brian trauma dumps calls Taylor out Taylor and learn Brian kiss very back and forth ah as that scene is And Ayesha and Regent call out Taylor a little bit of tension in the group and The undersiders, travelers, and Coyle have their meeting, and Skidder volunteers to go with Ballistic, while also being tasked with threatening the mayor. And Dinah confirms that the plan will work if Skidder goes. Skidder and Ballistic talk about their goals. Skidder sneaks off to talk with Parian, only to get ambushed by Flechette. That whole scene, Skidder negotiates her way out of it, getting Parian to think about it, much to the chagrin of Flechette. This is all pretty much in line with how it's how it's written in the story.
Speaker: And then we're going to cut and have a um ah scene with Mr. Mata and her session with Weld. That's kind of our first little change here. Okay. Thank you for putting that in. I totally thought we hadn't found spots for that.
Speaker: I didn't put them all in and we're going to come back to that because it's a work in progress. spoiler that That was the one where I was like, man, I just don't have good places for these. I have these in order. I have which ones need to be cut. I just don't know what to do with them. And I love them. I love them so much. I think it makes sense. you had You had a good point because a lot of them, a lot of the the the Yamada interludes or an interview with each of the wards after a significant event in which they're a part of. So I think it would make sense to space them out right after those events or before the events. I forget, I got to reread them. um And I think that would work work just fine. It gets them in and they are they are great little conversations and they do sort of break up the rest of the kind of story building or that we're doing. I think we'll throw thing to it makes sense to throw these in there in between as well because
Speaker: Hopefully by the time, if this ever were made theoretically by a third season, you would have bought a lot of goodwill with your audience. And so they would know that it doesn't need to be focused on skitter all the time. Like there's a lot of other characters they're interested in. So I could see even this being the kind of thing where they're like, wow, I wish we had more of these kind of like we were after we read it. Right. Right. Exactly. And hopefully we give them a bit more because we do have some other ideas on that front.
Speaker: But continuing on after that scene, we have Taylor returns to talk with Lisa who pulls her aside and says she's worried that coil is fucking with her power. She feels like this plan to threaten the mayor is a trap. The travelers and skitter attack the mayor's house only to get into a fight with triumph and prism. Skitter threatens to let triumph die if the mayor doesn't do what she asks to get that whole climax. ah Taylor feels guilty and goes home to see her own father.
Speaker: And she's interrupted by Lisa calling. She tells her that Coyle knows about their plans. Skitter says she shouldn't say anything else because of the phones might be, ah they might be tapped. But Lisa tells her that he knows about everything. And that's where we're going to end the first tea episode. God damn, that is a lot packed into one episode.
Speaker: so I think the one area where maybe I'm a bit confused on how you've changed it and how you'd set it up, right? So season two ends with Taylor asking Lisa, tell me about Dinah. But has it yet been established in your show that she wants to betray Coyle, rescue Dinah and all of that? so and not part of the Yeah, this is part of part of what we're playing around with.
Speaker: um And we've gone back and forth on how best to handle this in the show. um So no, not really, because we have toned down Dinah's importance on Taylor's story, which runs into some issues here, which we do we do sort of resolve in our own way. But I think the thinking we have here is that ah Dinah is more a later catalyst in Taylor's decision to so essentially betray coil and is it's a less against the... Because her whole problem with Diana initially in season thesis season one, in arc seven, when she learns about Diana for the first time,
Speaker: is is the kidnapping. It's the kidnapping and the drugging and all this kind of stuff. And when we get to this point in the story, if that's not her focus, then a little late in the game, Taylor, to like, care about that now. Yeah, right but like our end this yeah I guess then my question would be, what would she be worried that Coyle would know about? Like, have you set up a different betrayal arc? I feel like I'm not seeing the The weight isn't there. The weight of this, like what does coil know? And why does it matter? That's, that's a great question. Is that something you're leaving mysterious on purpose? A little bit. Yeah. Okay. um Part of this is the subterfuge between the two groups, which is ah very much how they work. Like, uh,
Speaker: This almost isn't a battle between Taylor and coil. This is more of a battle between Lisa and coil. um Okay. Which is very. Actually, that's an important, that's an important note to not to cut you off there. um we We are changing part of the dynamic of the undersiders and Coils relationship just to give Lisa a bit of a stronger character arc this season, which is that ah most of this struggle is between is between Tattletale and Coil, not Taylor and Coil. Taylor has her own her own
Speaker: her own arc here that's relatively unchanged. But the audience is going to see Tattletale struggle with Coyle as well. And we're really playing into that to give ah Lisa just a bit more agency in the story, a bit more to do. And so that's a bit more satisfying at the end when she takes over his whole operation, essentially. Okay. Yeah. Like I do love the setup that they have already. um But I feel like it Well, there are small hints way back when I do feel like this. We're not going to be just like open -handedly being like, ah, yes, this is what she's doing. And it's very obvious, but we're going to leave the cookie crumbs a little bigger um as we build. Well, it'll be a build to it rather than, um,
Speaker: sort of out of nowhere. where And if you look back, you can see the careful threads. Like we're going to point them out a little bit more cookie cookie crumbs leading to a cookie crumbs leading to tattletales takeover of coils operation. You mean, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. It does. And and all the other things that she does, like, cause it all literally comes crashing in, uh, you know, with coil and then also at the end of the season with the portal, like,
Speaker: Those are two things that are set up way in advance, but, you know, that it's, you're not like, I don't know. I feel like there. Well, yeah, it does feel a bit of a, a day or six mockin on the way it's written just because it is from Taylor's perspective. So I could, I could definitely see.
Speaker: Changing that a bit to make it there. Okay, I just I just wanted to make sure I was just a bit confused there So I appreciate the clarification. I'll ride with it. And if I'm still confused by the end then yeah You know, this is this is watching this is one of the major struggles with the season. So you're caught on pretty early And I do have some thoughts at the very, very end that I'm going to touch on some good insight. We've had some, some of our listeners that I, that I kind of want to revisit, but this, this is the main problem with the season. And we'll kind of get into that airtime that we talked about this, like from episode to episode, i it would definitely be the most talked about thing that we've talked about this season. So good job. in the track Sure. Good job. Having Dinah ah good because we've said it before, but in short, having Dinah
Speaker: be on Taylor's mind for a whole season, season two, in which she does nothing about it. Yeah. For us to come into season three and finally start to do something about it is weird and better if she learns about it. Maybe mid season is very quickly like distracted, but has it on her mind to ask at the end to set up for season three. Like, okay, uh, we need to talk about the child that we kidnapped and That is what kicks off this where Taylor has concerns about what's going on. Lisa, you know, also is helping out with, you know, and it builds. So, right. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like I said, I can, I can drive with it. Yeah. I'm not upset yet. We write it out and then see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Alan, would you like to do the honors for episode two?
Speaker: All right, cold open. A a PRT team is getting ready to land. Meanwhile, back in recent times, Piggott is getting chewed out by PRT director, Costa Brown, and says that the help that she has sent should have already arrived. Meanwhile, Weld is in the PRT headquarters debriefing the triumph incident are with everyone when Defiant and Dragon show up.
Speaker: Weld wants to call out the obvious, but it's talked down by picket. They lay out their plans to test out their new equipment on the undersiders before they go on their slaughterhouse nine killing spree. Clock blocker points out that there, that the undersiders are bad, but they're not like slaughterhouse nine bad. Uh, dragon points out, um, that they have information that they've received on when and where to attack.
Speaker: Now, Skitter in the meantime has a morale boosting barbecue and hangs out with the undersiders and the newly arrived Parian when Dragon and Defiant decide to show up. Lisa apologizes as they arrive. She's trying to get help as fast as she can. As they're running, she calls up Coyle and negotiates access to the finances to buy their way out of this. So she gets on the phone and is talking the whole time trying to get in touch with the Dragon Slayers and Saint.
Speaker: ah Skitter gets caught by Defiant, but cuts her way out of, uh, the nano net with his nano knife. This pisses him off enough that he's distracted and bitch hits him real hard. Get fucked. Back in, uh, back with that PRT squad. They touched down right outside the town of Ellisburg and begin their investigation only to find out the town is empty.
Speaker: until someone spots something creepy. Meanwhile, in present day, Coyle says that he wants the dragon problem dealt with and suggests kidnapping Piggott to exchange getting the dragon defiant team off their backs. Travelers and undersiders kidnap Piggott, and Piggott talks mad smack talk for a while, which throws everyone off the game, only for Lisa to call up Coyle, say they're surrounded by dragon backs. Oh wait, did we put that in twice, Jacob?
Speaker: Oh, must have put that in twice. Yeah, must have been twice. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah. So we'll move that right here then reverse it. So this is where she calls up, uh, and uses her access to the dragon slayers, uh, to get them off their back. Um,
Speaker: Meanwhile, Weld RUs with the Dragon Defiant team about letting Piggot get kidnapped and not going to rescue her, ah which they make, you know, oh, she knew, she knew the risks. That's not what we're about. And we're not going to be, you know, hostage negotiating when it comes to the slaughterhouse nine either. Meanwhile, Calvert pops in his head and admits that she's been compromised just by being near region. Meanwhile, back in Ellisburg, the PR team and PRT team encounters the monsters and nil bog.
Speaker: and darts horn apart. In present day, Taylor gets trapped by a mech, tricks her way out of it, and eventually, Lisa ah you know calls all the robots off you know at the same time. They're all gone. Taylor comes back to check on her people in her little territory. In Ellisburg, the remaining squad is moving to the evac only for Calvert to trigger while trying to make the decision to shoot his teammate or not.
Speaker: In one world, he saves Piget and himself and the other he dies. So obviously he picks the good one. They make it out. And we finally revealed that it is Piget and Thomas Calvert. Meanwhile, present day, Weld and Calvert talk to the rescued Piget. Piget talks about how basically her career is over now. And Calvert says that he already got off the phone with Costa Brown for the time being, he is acting director now. Technically, I thought I complained about this before.
Speaker: Cauldron would have already known about coil and probably would have been the one to set him up here. Like that's how he got the job being a random consultant to director. But in this case, we just have him move up the chain of command. Um, and then finally, Taylor and Brian have a nice moment that is of course interrupted by Lisa telling them to turn on the TV to which they see the announcement of Thomas Calvert taking over. And Lisa just says, that's him. That's coil.
Speaker: End of episode two. Nice ending. So this seems to be taking out, at least at this point, the newsroom bombing, or is that later? It would technically be later, but we are taking that out. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. Interesting. I heard a lot of from Hannah. i I did make a lot of sounds, high mostly because I did get a little lost in Alan's explanation. um Sorry, Alan. It's hard to try. I will say I do like i do like the the nil bog thing.
Speaker: um
Speaker: i I don't know how I feel about uh, coil in this episode. Uh, I like the idea of, of Thomas Calvert being introduced earlier. That way we have more of a, we like, we get it so that when the moment does hit, it's like, Oh shit. Cause we know who the fuck he is. Uh, um, and I think that's great, but it feels, I don't know if it's that it feels too early in the season for this to be happening, or if it's that it just feels too,
Speaker: Obvious? Like the second you said that he sticks his head in and it's like, oh, well, she's compromised if she's anywhere near Regent. Like immediately, if i even if I didn't know, like I think like, oh, ah that's sussy wussy. Like it's true, but it's sussy wussy. Like there's something else. I mean, he could be in the room and they're talking about hostage rescue, you know, with dragon and defiant. And he's just like, you know, aren't we supposed to you know rescue him? And he's like sitting there and he goes like,
Speaker: Cause I imagine him a very bookish nerd, little literally always holding a clipboard and he goes like, no according to regulation, if she's exposed to a master, then like technically she's been compromised and you know, as of subsection B and he's like, yeah right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. ah i You, we could write, obviously this is bullet points. We're getting into details here. Yeah. Where it's a lot, where it's a lot more nuanced.
Speaker: Yeah, the the big changes here were ah obviously giving Calvert a bit of history with Nilbog, which isn't in the original story, and also making that the day that he triggers, which we don't know when Coyle triggers, it's never ever stated. um But we felt it would give a little bit of of help in just sort of bridging the character. I think I offered that as a possible idea, but officially he was a cauldron soup cape, right? So I don't think so. I was about to say, do we have actual - You know he's associated with them, but - And I don't even think either. I don't even think about what he -
Speaker: True. I think Cauldron is just, okay has tabs on Coyle, good tabs on Coyle and is like doing Cauldron manipulation stuff to make sure their plans work kind of thing, which involves letting Coyle do his thing. But like I don't, and now maybe this was me misreading it, but I don't believe Coyle knows or is tied to Cauldron in any way. At some point Thomas found out about an approach to Cauldron before he bought a superpower.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm looking at the Wiki right now. Wiki says he bought a superpower from Cauldron. Yeah, I mean, a deal ah is in a lot of debt to try and like pay it off. Oh, way, way However, I suggested that that was his trigger event. So I appreciate that that would be included because I do i do think we did like that that feels more right. I will say from an episode perspective, um,
Speaker: I think I would suggest just for, for organization purposes that you do the entire, um, background first, because I think jumping between action scenes and time is going to get really, like I was having a hard time following like, okay, wait, you went from like, yeah only the only reason I could follow it is because I know what's happening already. And so I, I kind of feel like jumping between action scenes will get a bit confusing.
Speaker: Um, yeah potentially, um, it'll be, it would be less confusing if it was visual of course, but like. Just listening to the story, I was kind of like, okay, wait, what just happened with the undersiders? Where's Dragon? He just made Defiant, where'd Defiant go? It's kind of just like this, I don't know, it was just a bit jarring to try to follow. That's the weakness of a text medium too. and right And especially because you're dealing with two separate time periods. like i don't I don't have anything against like basically getting to the end of something and the audience realizing like, Oh shit, this is this is an old thing. And like we hopped back in time, but with so much going on, it could be very, like you said, it could be very confusing to be like, wait, where are we? like Is this happening at the same? And then by the time you get to the end, it's not a, whoa, that's so cool reveal. It's a, okay, you know all right. That was a lot for my brain to keep track of, only for it to be something that happened however many years ago.
Speaker: because i I think usually those are done best when you have calm background scenes punctuated with modern action. Yeah, and if you have action action back and forth, I just think it's a little bit. I think it's a little bit too much. Yeah. Also, not to totally go back, but the there's an excerpt from eight point Z the interlude where where coil coil says coils interlude oh yeah it says i it had been ah it's on the wiki if you look at the um the reference notes okay okay um he talks about even with his ability to game the market in a way that clairvoyant precognitives couldn't detect it taken him years to pay it off maddening frustrating endeavor um he's talking about
Speaker: securing his fight back, expensive price, too much of his time at a point critical to his plan. So it's alluding to Cauldron, even though it doesn't say Cauldron, but it is definitely alluding to it. Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah, I was totally off on that. Yeah, I was going to say, I knew him and a Cord were both Cauldron, like if not Cauldron assets, like straight up work for Cauldron.
Speaker: They are essentially working with Cauldron to a level that they're, you know, partners in crime. Like yeah a court's whole shtick is based on him just constantly buying stuff from Cauldron.
Speaker: her right and I will say I do like the idea of of coils trigger being at you know being at that moment and having to decide I think that's really cool but I also think that like the idea that coil that well the Thomas Calvert basically was like nah fuck it and like left people behind or shot people to get away is like I it it It's more to like how he is as a person than necessarily like, oh, it's because of his trigger and he knew the options. And so he went with the one that saved his life. It's more of like, nah, he was straight up cold blooded when he took that shot. Like he knew what he was doing and it didn't have anything to do with his trigger. I think i think that that hits a little harder in general, just storyline wise. I would say that the moment is not like the the way you would show that moment is that he has the two options in his head like happen.
Speaker: Um, on screen, like a split. Yes. But the vibe would be like, you have the, he literally has the option. Do I a leave this guy to like, slow me down and get us killed or do I shoot him? And all the power does is show you those two options at the same time. Yeah. There's no, like, of course he shoots the guy in cold blood, but that's not like a.
Speaker: Yeah, but like the the difference being that like with his powers, he he knows for certain that like either he will die or he won't, as opposed to if you're actually in the moment and you don't actually know and you think to yourself like... That's not something that his powers can tell him. It just gives him two different paths. I feel like that's semantic at that point. But yeah. Yeah, either way though. It's good though. Yeah, definitely want to kind of rethink that scene a bit.
Speaker: um Yeah. No, no, good, and good insights. Good insights. I like, I like those points. Yeah. I think if we didn't have like, I don't think you can put all of those together at the beginning of an episode or at the end of an episode. Um, unless you like leave out the fact and it's that the, did it, uh, picket and Thomas you know, and that he triggered there. Like you've got to leave one of those details out. Here's an idea. Yeah. Here's an idea for that then. So you have the whole no bog scene at the beginning, right?
Speaker: but leave out how Calvert got into the helicopter, right? Like maybe have the moment where he's looking back at a man, and then you cut to Pickett, she jumps in, he's already in there, and they introduce themselves, we get their names, and then it cuts to modern day, maybe with a transition with Calvert in particular. And then at the end, when we hear, like in that moment where Lisa says that's him, it flashes back then,
Speaker: ah To that moment where he shoots somebody and it shows the two options. oh that would be and then i'll do you what i mean you I'll do you one better. I'm about to um bat hu give you guys some goosebumps. I'm rewriting this right now. ah whole we did The whole opening scene is the no box sequence. right Calvert and Piget, they're not named, right but it's Calvert and Piget.
Speaker: younger versions. The whole scene plays up to the end. They get to the very end. Calvert turns to fight off some monsters against the helicopter. Piggott escapes and Calvert gets shot. End of scene. End of scene. And we see Piggott fly off and we know Piggott's face. And we think it's some backstory with Piggott. We get to the very end of the episode. That's him. That's Coyle. Cut back to the body. But now It fades and that reality gets washed away and Calvert standing there and then hops into the helicopter. I actually did get goosebumps. I like that. I like that a lot. That's good. I love that. I love the disco thing. That's good one. That's good. Yeah. I just, I just think that I'll make it more cohesive, but still have the same weight at the end of that episode, which is good.
Speaker: Have we yet talked about what coil's power is? Do we know yet up until this point? We have not really picked a scene to display it. We want to. It feels like this would be a potentially cool place to do it where we're like, oh shit, that's fucking cool. Because the whole flipping the coin in the car thing,
Speaker: Uh, always felt like a stupid way to reveal that to me. So I like this a lot better. Yeah. We've, we've, we've, we've talked about where best to reveal coils power to the audience. This might be the moment. Yeah. yeah like yeah that seems that I think that's a great way. I like that. I'm here for it. Cause otherwise I would say like literally scrap that whole thing and just figure out some way to display his power in modern day. Don't do any flashback.
Speaker: um Or just cold open them getting in the cockpit and them shooting the guy. There's still lot of fun there still a lot of fun moments where the audience can speculate yeah like when you know they're running from crawler and he is very clearly asking Dinah questions that he already knows the answer to. And it's just like things like that that the audience can start to wonder what he's doing. like What is his power?
Speaker: Um, and then to kind of see it play out. And again, this is kind of one of the limitations of visual media in this case is that we're not going to get that exact breakdown of a character's power unless they're like, ah, I'm, uh, I'm, I can do anything. I can make anything once. My name is elite, you know, and like, um, you know, that kind of thing. Um, it's just one of those, one of those things where so much of the show is going to be trying to guess people's powers.
Speaker: but yeah i like Like mirrored in and Chevalier here at the end. like We're not going to sit down and explain. This knight can fold objects into one another and create super weapons. We're not going to animate it. you know so it I mean, we could animate it. Now it's my super move.
Speaker: Anyway, let's keep going. Got a little ways to go. That's great, guys. Good work. Yeah, great insights, great insights. I just have one more question. Oh, yeah, please. Are we keeping all of the dragon bots? I think we're doing like... We're just reducing them. We're cutting it down a bit. Yeah, but we're still doing... So less dragon bot interaction, more defiant.
Speaker: Yeah. Could we put Defiant back into that scene? I do like him being there with Dragon. That just felt right. It feels good to have them together. Yeah. It just made sense. Yeah. Okay. Any other thoughts?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I was a little confused with the with the fight scene, but I'm just assuming it's like, we'll do it in a way that makes sense if we did it. Yeah, to be fair, I was reading it and I was like, i yeah was I high when I did this? I remember that I had the ah the synopsis like pulled up next to it. it's I mean, it's worse in the original plot.
Speaker: Like the only difference is we're jumping back between Ellisburg and weld. And the other one, there's just constant, there's just moved to the next drag and moved to the next drag and moved to the next drag. And you know, a bunch of dragons in a row and you're like, Oh, I guess. And then we're back here and we're back to dealing with this again. Oh, and we're back with people. Now we're by ourselves. Now we're back again. Like, yeah.
Speaker: Also, R -16 is is like it's it's packed with stuff. so like Plus, like there's so much more yeah with the with the courtroom and everything. So there's like yeah a lot going on there. Another example of works really good as a serial for every you know thing to just move. Which, come to think of it, don't they fight almost all the dragons in one chapter?
Speaker: it's like a cup It's like two, but yeah, two or three. Which is wild. It is wild. It it feels so unbalanced. like ah like Sure, the undersiders are smart, and they work great together, but um against like seven dragonbots? And just winning. And just winning. eventual for Okay, so you mentioned, are are we still getting that scene where Taylor gets out of the dragonbot situation by doing the whole um imp...
Speaker: trick thing. um Yeah, I think I don't think we're really... Yeah, I think so. and don't because i I don't think we're really changing that. Okay, because i it sounds like Aladdin does not like that section. I really do. I think it's fun because it shows dragons ah like the parameters she has to be stuck within. Oh my God, there's a cat outside my window. Hello Kitty. I think that's kind of important for establishing later if you do have the school scene. Yeah. I think there's a little bit of an important setup there for establishing
Speaker: Taylor kind of figuring out how Dragon works in some ways more. true no no yeah That and then ah I think also, um i I just love the witty talk. You could have Dragon talk through the bot with Taylor, which is a good start to like, hey, you know she has the witty thing of like,
Speaker: Yeah, more dragon talk because we've had we've had a moment where Defiant talks to Skitter and now we get a moment where Dragon talks to Skitter and they're going to be very different. I love it. I want it. I'm here for it. I'm freaking I'm a huge dragon fan. So give me more dragon. Can do come right up.
Speaker: Episode three, I'm going to get into this. As for wanting, there's a lot of bullet points here. This was mostly just not having a great place to cut this episode. I think reading this, it's, this is where I was saying like, there's multiple episodes of stuff here, but we're just going to get through it. Episode three starts with the open defiant and dragon tracking down the slaughterhouse nine, only to find that they have picked up more recruits in their wake. Dragon mentions Cauldron's involvement.
Speaker: Cut to Weld approaches the new director about concerns he has with the PRT's attention to the undersiders and the travelers given giving opportunity for other villains to stay under the radar. He brings up Coyle and Calvert tactfully dismisses it, saying that Coyle might have died or moved since the Leviathan attack.
Speaker: Because remember, at this point, Coils doesn't have a presence. He doesn't really make a presence. He's more behind the scenes. He barely had a presence before, and it was all white collar. And since all of the systems are kind of down, nothing for him to really do. That's going to be done.
Speaker: Uh, the undersiders have a meeting and talk about their worry. Uh, now that Coyle is PRT director that he might just slowly whittle all the villains out or he may keep them for a little longer, but who knows? They just have a bunch of uncertainty.
Speaker: Lisa pulls Taylor to the side and says that they should assume that he definitely knows all of their secret plans, but she also doesn't know what he's going to do next because they're how she can't their sort of conflict. She asks if Taylor really wants to save the city and what does that look like?
Speaker: Cut over to Weld gets Kidwin to look into old Medtech owned buildings with Empire 88 gone and the city in shambles. Who owns the property where the undersiders and travelers are? He knows for skidders bases and asks who owns that? Kidwin points out that it was bought not long before the Leviathan fight and many of the surrounding buildings as well were purchased afterwards.
Speaker: Lots of construction happening around where no one should have been able to. ah Weld leaves Kidwin to find more, but Kidwin says he'll finish it right after he puts the final touches on this project for the director. Taylor hangs out with her dad and his friends at a small barbecue and beer to get a nice little la break in the and the normal cape world. Taylor debates with others on the pros and cons of skitter and her territory.
Speaker: She receives a word from Lisa that she wants all of the undersiders to meet up. Meanwhile, Weld goes to region's headquarters and watches all of the paramilitary dudes hanging around. He knows something just isn't quite right there. Where's all the gear and vehicles coming from? On the way back, he sees a convoy of PRT vans leaving headquarters. And we had a bit of a speculation here. Um,
Speaker: We switched the fake betrayal to Lisa and not skitter. Lisa's always been duplicatous. Yeah. Duplicitous. Duplicitous. Thank you. My English. My English no good. And Akoya wanted to keep her anyway. So yeah, now if you kind of want to expand on that, because I think you put that note in a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, and I'll be honest. I forgot I put that note in, but those were my thoughts. Um, yeah. So the big thing here being, uh, Lisa is kind of the center point of all of, uh, for a lot of this, there's a lot of doubt thrown around Lisa, given what she's done in the past in season one, season two, just small moments where like she kind of gives the go ahead on things. The end of season one being her telling coil, like she's in, uh, you know, when we kind of reveal that the to the audience that the underside was working for coil and that she is essentially recruited skitter back to work for coil. Right. Um, also she's been running the numbers for everyone, like all those percentages. She's been giving those out, not coil, um, which is why she kind of takes the hit for that. So, um, and, and once again, like she knew about the numbers, she knew where they came from. She did not tell skitter, skitter had to ask about that. So there's a lot of,
Speaker: ah a lot of Lisa not giving, ah you know, she plays her cards close to the vest. Not being forthcoming, yeah. Not being forthcoming. So we don't actually, while she is, you know, a very good friend that, you know, is helping out, we don't actually know how much she's keeping from us. um And ah there's a lot of things that she does that is very ah Interesting in terms of like how she compares to coil, which will be a big theme of like, how to skitter who is constantly having to defend herself to defiant to clock blocker to dragon to her dad's friends, essentially why she's as skitter is not evil. And in this case, even though she does, you know, villain stuff. And in this case, we also have Lisa who's constantly doing coil like things, but also.
Speaker: essentially has to prove why she's not coil. Um, a small thing, uh, that we'll get back to eventually, uh, she has also kidnapped a child scrub is like what? 14. I think he's, I think he's, uh, maybe he is. I thought he was like 16 or so, but he might be a little younger now. Um, but yeah, he is a minor very, you know, he's a minor. And, uh, she's, she's still holding him in a, in a prison somewhere.
Speaker: Mm -hmm. Yeah. So moving on from there, this is where we start to divulge a bit more from the story as originally written. Divert. Divert. What did I say? Devolge. You said divulge. i volge Yeah. Divert. Thank you. Back to my, moment another checkbox in my English lexicon.
Speaker: All right. Words to learn. Diverge and diverge. ah So the Undersiders arrived to the aforementioned meeting area and everyone is there except Lisa. They're a little bit confused until Skitter senses that the PRT is lying in wait. She goes to use her bugs and is stopped by some sort of jamming signal, courtesy of Kidwin and Armsmaster, theoretically. ah Thomas is - Spoofing Armsmasters, like eat some of his bug -stopping stuff, the same way he spoofed the lie detector in the story. yeah
Speaker: ah Thomas Calvert steps out and coats the area with foam before they can get out or they're just taken out individually before this doesn't really matter how it's done. ah Taylor avoids it though and they have a standoff. She says that she'll spill everything about coil and Thomas replies that there is no coil only Lisa. The gas lighting begins.
Speaker: ah explains that Tattletale has been puppeting everything and using the coil facade. The heists, the kidnapping, all visa. He has the PRT open fire and light the house on fire.
Speaker: Taylor refuses to believe it. She finds and destroys the jammer, blinded and concussed. She begins fighting an all out battle against the PRT soldiers. Thomas drives away in a van.
Speaker: Finally, having escaped the burning building, she's almost caught by a PRT soldier who turns out to be Senegal, but they both have no qualms about harming each other. He shoots at her and she cuts open a suit, letting the bugs in. She holds one of the PRT drivers at gunpoint and tells them to drive. And we cut over to Weld, goes back to Kid Wind, and asks what happens to all of their old PRT gear.
Speaker: He says that it goes into storage and they find an empty room. And when he asks about old vehicles, he says that they are sold in auctions, yada, yada. Thomas Calvert's name is all over them. Thomas is not that much further away, meeting with other vans near the waterfront. Taylor gets out to attack, but is jammed there as well. Thomas commands one of the soldiers to shooter, but Lisa steps out of a PRT van and says, I don't think so.
Speaker: Thomas Flounders trying to get the soldiers to shoot them, but Lisa reveals her plan. She got access to Olive Coyle's finances through the dragon fight, which she phoned in into dragon, and now owns all of his assets. While he's distracted, Taylor hits him in the back of the knees, forcing him to kneel. Lisa gives Taylor a gun and walks around to face him.
Speaker: She explains that it took a while to get a grasp on his power and how it folded to realities at once. That's how he was confusing her power because he was doing something completely differently in one reality and nothing in hers. She explains that he must have tortured her in that other reality to get all the details about their plans. Weld calls Piget and asks if how much she trusts Thomas Calvert. And she replies with her life. Weld doesn't know who to trust anymore, but tells Kidwin that they followed the chain of command for now.
Speaker: I'd never make ah a for a, oh, I know we're cutting back, yeah. I never make for a good pet, she says, you knew that. This was just a matter of who dropped who first. He explains that he has contingencies, the PRT, the travelers, all of them will come after her. Lisa shrugs and says, we'll deal. Not with Noel, you won't, he replies.
Speaker: Lisa puts a gun to his head and asks him which reality will he be able to dodge this. And she pulls the trigger as he moves out of the way only for Taylor to shoot him in the back of the head as soon as he does. And my thought here was that, again, maybe this is the last time we see Coyle's power. He's trying to pick a reality in which he lives and he gets shot in both. And it's just in the primary reality that we have is the one in which Taylor is the one that pulls the trigger.
Speaker: Yeah, well, both pull the trigger, but ours is the one where Taylor's the one that shoots him. And yeah Lisa has fired around just like into the ground to his you know right or whatever. just ah Just a difference there. And then couple of just final bullet points for the episode. Lisa takes the gun and says that she'll take care of everything. She tells Skidder that there's a good chance she gets her wish. She opens the van door and Dinah is inside as well. They drive away and Skidder almost gets her home.
Speaker: Dinah whispers that something bad is coming. Taylor gets a phone call from Lisa. Cut to Lisa looking at the massive door ripped open in coil space and saying that coil wasn't lying. Noelle is loose. End of episode. I like that ending. Strong ending. I like that ending. Yeah. yeah that That does feel like two episodes though. It does. So much. And and I think the natural split is where Coils, or Calvert sets the house on fire, right? Yeah, yeah I was thinking the same thing. That's true, that's a good one. That feels like the most natural split where it just like, he says, there is no coil, she's been lying to you. And I'm sorry, Skitter, but it's time to say goodbye. Sets the house on fire. End of the episode, right? Like that would be a really good ending to that. Kind of leaving, if you don't know the story, kind of leaving,
Speaker: Uh, I guess not really, since we know that coil is Calvert at this point, but, yeah um, you know, kind of a bit of suspense there, I think would be good. yeah There's um i one alternate for that that I thought about was that you have Lisa and him being there and her kind of going on this. Uh, like it was me, you know, the whole time where there is no coil, don't you get it? You know,
Speaker: And for Taylor to not buy that, like Lisa's got to be lying. And it is all a plan to get coil to a location in which they can kill him. Um, but, uh, it is a little bit more complicated, but that way it makes the Lisa betrayal a little more believable. Um,
Speaker: yeah Honestly, I feel like what Jacob said earlier is we've kind of been on this wiffle waffle with Lisa that not all of her information has been correct. She's not given us all of the details, lying by omission. And so it's like, has she been through time? Yes, this entire time. And I don't think it needs additional Okay. Because I think if it, if it was, it might make it feel like cheesy, like, like, yeah, like we would see that we'd be like, Oh yeah, no, something's up. Lisa's honest. Like Lisa's doing something if she was, you know, villain monologuing basically. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I just, I figured this one was a more simple, strong one. And if we wanted to do an alternate, that would be.
Speaker: Um, I do have one question you mentioned, uh, Calvert, um, foams the group and then all of a sudden he's putting the house down. So I was.
Speaker: I think that was just not poorly. was Yeah, no, no, like I was struggling to find out the big thing of just like, how do you get them into this battle? Because I think it would be really fun to see Taylor doing her all out. You know, she's throwing bugs, they're throwing grenades, she's pulling pins, yeah you know. I want to see full Full Taylor and not against heroes, against literally armed. and are Right, where she can go all out and doesn't have to worry about the morality of the situation.
Speaker: Yeah. And she's ducking and covering. She's sending clones, bug clones out, all the fun stuff. Yeah. Um, they, uh, yeah. So I like that. And I couldn't figure, I hadn't clearly figured out a way to like, do we, so I even thought, do we separate every individual member and get them foamed? Is this a thing where only Taylor got singled out and, uh, you know,
Speaker: that she was the first one to get hit or something like that. Like, you know, are they going to go base to base or are they going to hit all the bases at once or. I kind of like it as it only being Taylor because I do think.
Speaker: um I mean, in this section in worm, the rest of the undersiders do kind of take a backseat to Taylor yeah and eventually Lisa. And so I feel like reflecting that here isn't necessarily bad, right? Like it's Taylor and Lisa trying to figure out about what, what to do about Calvert and about Coyle. And I think having him single out, uh,
Speaker: single her out in some way. And maybe even like offering to be like, Hey, look, Tattletail has been lying to you. We could work together and take her down if you want. Like kind of make that offer or something, make it a one -on -one thing where it's more personal. I think that would vibe better. Cause right now what's happening is you have, and I think this is just maybe ah something that was you know accidental of course, but you have all the undersiders being taken out.
Speaker: But then the focus still remains on Taylor and it's kind of like, kind of like Chekhov's gun. Why do you have all the undersiders that are getting phoned if they're not going to do anything? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. So, um, absolutely. So yeah, just Taylor's leeward there. I think also having you, like you were saying, having this one on one between him and her, which is already supposed to be the,
Speaker: the point where like, I think him saying like, Hey, you could be with me and we could save the, you know, we could save the city, fix it up. Like we talked about, you know, everything stays on plan. You just, you know, you're just gonna have to follow my orders and trust me, or you can go with Lisa who's basically been screwing you over for this whole time. And you know, he's like, we could do now that I'm in charge, like it'll be even easier. We'll definitely like, it'll be more legitimate, like everything like you wanted. And Uh, because, you know, you wanted to be a hero and we could even work on that. And for Taylor to say, no, like Lisa, you know, Lisa made a promise to me and I trust her. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the conversation about like, what, you know, where she asks her, what do you know, you want to save the city, but what does that look like? And Taylor basically like says, I want the ferry up and running. Like that's.
Speaker: That's all I've ever wanted was the fairy. I just want to ride the fairy one more time.
Speaker: ah Exactly. A good suggestion on the break point there. I think I'm going to try to restructure that and put this into two episodes. And we can we can pad that as well, but there's a lot going on here. I think that should work.
Speaker: Uh, Alan, you want to take the next two episodes? How about that? Alan, you can take the next two. Uh, so the episode four is the traveler's arc. The only difference, uh, is that Kraus gets the team to finally agree at the end that Cody needs to die, which they kind of already do. Uh, and then he kills him. Oh, he kills him.
Speaker: Yeah, we are a little split on this one. I'll just throw that out there. I do agree. I think Cody basically doesn't do anything else in the story. He does. He does a little bit more in the story, but in terms of like what we would probably adapt very, very little. So it would make sense just to kill him here, but I'm putting a pin, my personal pin in that in case we do want to come back with Cody at any point. And obviously we'd change that here, but yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that goes for anything and everything. That's fair. That's just a permanent. You're basically keeping their whole origin. The same. Everything's the same. yeah Everything's the same, except instead of implying that a court he's given up to a court, they just gank him themselves. They gank him. Yeah. Cause the Cody story is so weird and to the side and then comes back and feel seemingly out of nowhere to do a literally a lot of damage. But then, you know, once again, it's literally just feels like out of nowhere. Um, so we just tell him here. And I think the importance here is, uh, for, you know, hinting at the end where this is not the, you know, this is the first time the,
Speaker: Travelers have essentially had to agree to kill one of their teammates. But it won't be the last. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Also, I will say I immediately got excited thinking about this arc again, just because the Simmer, Simmer, Simmer, Simmer, whatever. ho murf the The realistic biblical angel. I, I thought about it and I was just like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I know it's not the same, but I i saw chaos.
Speaker: from, uh, Hades again. And I was like, yeah, that's the simmer. Um, no, this, I didn't need any change. It's pretty but written. It's pretty much written perfectly. Uh, the other final thing at the end is right before we end the episode in present day, fault lines crew enters that quarantine zone, uh, in Madison, Wisconsin. Um,
Speaker: Oh, uh, the other thing we switched out is instead of Matryoshka, we just straight up replaced her with Sveta. Sveta. Okay. Oh, okay. Combining characters. Has Matryoshka ever come back in actual worm? Yeah. Um, uh, like, like a mentions, but I don't know. If she doesn't have an on page, you know, lots of,
Speaker: you know, functioning dialogue and interaction with the other characters, then like, I am not opposed to combining them. Yeah. As people. Um, and there, and there's other reasons why we have Sveta here cause Sveta is more of a character than Troshka is. So we just introduce her here and then we'll continue on with her through the story. Right. With her story. Yeah. That makes sense. Uh, my only question is at the end, when the travelers decide that they need to kill Cody, do we see it or do they just decide that it's going to happen?
Speaker: ah it's going They decide it's going to happen and then Trickster goes and does it. Trickster kills him. In my mind, this is played out just because everything is a movie in my mind.
Speaker: um If anyone hasn't seen the clip from Star Wars Rebels, where Obi -Wan finally kills Darth Maul, spoilers. on so um It's a very, very beautiful, but quick fight in which a superior combatant dispatches a weaker opponent. um Very samurai, right? And in my mind, because Cody and Trickster sort of have these opposite powers, it's very much a standoff where Cody realizes Trickster is going to try to kill him. Class is going to try to kill him. And so they have this moment. Cody tries to do something with this power and is just swapped places with something, you know, right into a right do a spike or a piece of rebar from a broken building. Just, you know, something kind of brutal like that. Yes. it's just I've seen as a sidebar, I've seen an analysis of that fight between old Obi -Wan and Darth Maul. And it is really brilliantly done with animation.
Speaker: Because Obi -Wan goes through his young pose, his older pose, or his ah old pose, but then he shifts into a Qui -Gon pose, sort of tricking Darth Maul into trying to do the same move that he did to Qui -Gon, right? The hit to the chin and then the jab to the stomach. Yeah. But this time it fails because Obi -Wan knows what's what. Obi -Wan knows, you know. It's a great fight. It's one of my favorite moments in Star Wars. It's beautiful.
Speaker: I said time to rewatch Star Wars. It's never the wrong time. I did the research real quick since we asked. Matryoshka only appears in 1718 and then randomly in 27. There you go. One chapter. And it's not even continuously. It's like one mention in each arc. That makes sense.
Speaker: ah the The one last change we would make to the traveler's interlude, um I don't think we, I don't know, I kind of briefly talked about this. We haven't put it in stone, but it just kind of makes sense at the very end of that, ah as opposed to meeting with a cord that they, or trickster just meets with coil, right? Just kind of establish that connection um more directly. Just something, you know, to be a little more obvious there. On the nose.
Speaker: Uh, do you want to take episode five and then I'll do episode six. Go. yeah I mean, I was going to say you, you, you did episode four. So quickly, I was going to let you continue, but it's either way. No, no. You take episode five, episode five. Weld gets off the phone and he has gathered the wards. Miss militia brings up that the director is nowhere to be found. He tells them that the undersiders have contacted them to warn them about Noel.
Speaker: When Miss Militia challenges the validity, Clock Blocker points out the undersiders have a track record of fighting bad guys, just as good as the heroes do. Weld asks, where's Vista? And everyone trucks. I cut over to Fault Lines group is exploring where the Case 53 is reported in Madison. And I pick up that. He finds Feta and figure out a way to trap her for her own good.
Speaker: um and The undersiders agree to some conditions in order to work with the PRT, one of which is the protection of Dinah and Tattletail, since Noelle thinks that they can fix her because Coyle told her so. um This is a little bit of a change from Noelle's as written motivations. Still kind of work in progress here, but with things, this is going to smooth things out a little bit.
Speaker: Clock blocker and skitter get into it in the van despite Miss militia's orders and clock blocker is left frustrated. Oh, did we? ah I said, did you skip the ah middle one? Are we what leaving that for argument? The they argue that Diana needs to stay close for her own good. Oh, wow. I did totally skip that the argue. They argue that Diana needs to stay close close by because they will need her for this fight.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, that's what I missed. Yeah. So Dinah does not get to go home. I was about to say, so Dinah hasn't gone home yet. Our main reasoning. So initially we just had her going home and then it felt a little anticlimactic and a little odd to just send her home right as this big monster is attacking the city and being like, that's okay. how long you know Here you go, kid. Have fun.
Speaker: You know, good job. So we're giving her a little bit more importance in the story and just going to make make Dinah going home like the climactic nice happy ending of the season. We'll get there. Yeah. And in this case, she's still in danger. Yeah. Because the reasoning here is Noelle is going to try to try to get to her. Right. OK.
Speaker: And especially if at this point if we've been sort of explaining what Noelle can do, the idea that Noelle capturing Dinah, eating her and creating Dinah clones, like that kind of thing, just is one of those things like to kind of want to avoid um giving Noelle access to that kind of power. So yeah, so that's a little change there. Where was I?
Speaker: Clock blocker is left frustrated. Fault Line's crew makes it back to the hotel where she gets a call from Tattletail while the rest of the crew goes upstairs and packs their bags. Fault Line sees a mysterious woman go up as well. Tattletail teases Fault Line with information on Cauldron and Case 53's if she can get into contact with Saint as quickly as possible. Fault Line turns her down. The woman leaves and Fault Line has a bad feeling.
Speaker: Cut over to director Costa Brown, giving orders to treat this as an A -class threat. Tattletale and Eidolon get into it. And there is a clearly, there is clearly a divide in the room between clock blocker, kid win, and well defending the undersiders and everyone else.
Speaker: Fault Line rushes upstairs to find her crew torn apart and a note that says, stop looking into Cauldron. Fault Line then calls Tattletail back and says, you know what, we're in. And Tattletail says, get back as soon as possible. The team begins to hunt down Noelle only to run into the Vista clones answering that question, which they kill. And Eidolon faces off against Noelle alone.
Speaker: Lisa observes the triumvirate and more heroes arriving. Now it's a new S -class threat and considered codename Echidna. Skitter tries to reason with Noelle, only to be tricked and eaten and seen. End episode.
Speaker: Banger episode ending again. Yeah, yeah, good place to end it. um So I'm, I'm guessing The change in, um, the wards skepticism towards the undersiders. I was going to bring that up. Perfect. That is a, that is a pretty big change, but there is one future worm detail. I know. And sorry, Hannah, if your goldfish brain missed it, I forgot about it. Are you trying to set up when Taylor eventually joins the words herself? I do remember that. I do remember that. Okay. I am trying.
Speaker: I think that while they are frustrated, I think we need to show like preempt there is a divide in the PRT as we're about to exacerbate. Right. I think that we need to, we are building off of the fact that welds suspicions about the PRT while he's not going to act on them have also infected kid win and clock blocker as well.
Speaker: Um, clockblockers sort of a contrarian to begin with, which I think, I mean, is part of why he challenges skitter so much is because I think it's one of those, like, nobody's going to criticize harder than the person who kind of already buys it. Like, I think that he sees the validity and he's just frustrated that skitter is kind of like, I mean, he complains about that to Yamada, like, like how the fuck is she basically, is she right?
Speaker: Like she's available. How is she, how is she correct about this shit? Um, well, maybe I'm misremembering that, but, uh, but yeah, so I just, I have those kind of in there as we're building towards that being, uh, that having a climax as well at the end of the season.
Speaker: I do like having that conversation with ah with Taylor and Clockwalker in the van. And then having that pretty quickly followed up with the divide of Clockwalker being on the side of the undersiders and it being like, even though we just had this conversation, like he's still kind of in their corner. I like that. I like that happening like quickly, relatively back to back. Yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, he could be still, you know, butt sore about this, you know, chastising him. He's like, why? I want answers. She's right here. What's preventing for me from talking her like she's not a master. Like there's no protocol that says I can't talk to her. And she's like, just stop. And he's like, no, fuck it.
Speaker: And then she's like, you're getting, you know, bathroom cleaning duty forever. And he's like, and and you know, and they get into the like, they're super villains. And he's like, I don't know. They took out more slaughterhouse nine members than any of you did. He's like, over the court yeah he's just over in the corner being like, just being a little salty about the whole thing.
Speaker: ah It's also worth so worth noting that this is a great ah time. to like we haven't had We just put in the one Yamada interlude, but the we're going to space in those other conversations as well. And again, it's just sort of building that divide between the yeah the wards whom the audience has hopefully grown a bit of an attachment to and the the elder PRT cauldron capes that we all want to distrust. right So it's just again kind of reinforcing.
Speaker: yeah rock Yeah, exactly. You're reinforcing who your protagonists and antagonists are in the story. They don't have to agree, but they're on the same side for the audience. I like it. Quick question. ah Are you going to put Clock Blocker's um conversation with Yamada in this episode? Because that would make sense. That's a great question. Since we're getting a lot of Clock Blocker.
Speaker: That is a fantastic question. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out where they should go. Like I literally have like, they have to at least go after this chapter, but before this chapter all written down. And then I just could not find good placement. And also it was like 10 o 'clock at night. So it was time. We're working on it. We'll figure it out.
Speaker: There's a couple, there's like, there's those. We want to show at least another scene or two with fault lining crews so that they feel more important. yeah Want to show another scene or two with Defying and Dragon hunting down the slaughterhouse nine. Oh, we didn't even mention that. Well, we're absolute. Oh wait, no, wait. We do. Sorry. We have them. yeah We have them show up once ands because, you know, this is sort of divided into the first like three second, three situation kind of. yeah Um,
Speaker: But we, I mean, we have dragon and defiant showing up and doing their thing for, I mean, they're present for what? One, two, three. They at least show up in four of the six episodes. I think. Yeah, you're right. Um, and then fault lines crew also shows up in at least three of them. Um, also the phone call in which tattletale and, uh, what's her face are.
Speaker: uh, tattletale and fault line have is during the dragon mech fight. She calls her to get saints number and then gets hung up on. And we would have that happen like mid fight in the other one, uh, in an earlier episode. And then we'd, you know, her call back to somebody else, you know, and we get take doing phone calls the whole time, uh, trying to get, you know, essentially saints phone number. Um,
Speaker: or in contact with him. And then ah for this to be like, oh, the first person she called his fault line and she's trying to get here here for some reason. and and Okay. All right, moving on. Any other any other thoughts?
Speaker: No. even Very well. Alan, do the honors. All right. Episode six. We open with Dragon fighting the Siberian, only for Defiant to see through his cool visor, like probably like key tracking or something to finally spot Manton and be like, gotcha bastard. And then puts a spear through him. ha Dragon mentions that there's shit going down in Brockton Bay, but Defiant says the other heel heroes will deal with it.
Speaker: ah They have more slaughterhouse nine members to kill. They're so close. I got them on the run. I can taste them. Meanwhile, Taylor tripping on that dank while inside Echidna sees all kinds of loopy shit. Echidna engages in an all out battle with the heroes. Miss Militia and Legend keep killing clones before they can get up. Meanwhile, Alexandria and Eidolon accidentally get touched and have to face off against their evil clones. um With Tattletail's help, Weld is able to find and free Taylor and others, ah pulling them all to safety um because he is immune to her nasty powers. Tattletail proceeds to drop a building on Noelle and the gang catches their breath for a second. Now free, Taylor is cornered and questioned by Miss Militia
Speaker: and the proctor it or protectorate. And she spills every time. every I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It cracks me up. You're good. You're good. Continue. Um, and she finally spills the beans about, uh, Calvert being coil and beans, dem beans or the bean singular singular, um, scapegoat heels Taylor and sends grew and and while she sends grew and impound.
Speaker: Um, also we just, you can't leave out the scapegoat moment. but Yeah. yeah you She's blind. You gotta have it. It's so good. Also, uh, the moment that we, you know, have her, she's like, yeah, that's what you're here for. And what I'm paying you for, you know, you gotta have that moment. Right. Uh, reminder that Tattletail has deep pockets. Tattletail also starts picking a fight with Coltrin.
Speaker: taylor tells her to shut up battleddle tail on the meantime, ah proposes getting the travelers involved and ah in order to bribe them, essentially, open a door between the worlds to send them home. ah Or, you know, push Echidna into. Echidna re -emerges and resumes fighting. Clones are everywhere as the fight rages on and there's several fun match -ups as capes fight their doppelgangers and eerie conversations are shared. Meanwhile - It's just like that scene at the end of the Pokemon movie.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, for real. Sorry, go on. Which, I mean, if you're going to take, take from the best. Meanwhile, Tattletale finally identifies Cauldron to Faultline. She does her whole like shout out, like, oh, Faultline shows up with her crew and is like, all right, you know, we're not getting paid to fight these people, ah but you promised us information. Tattletale's like, cool. And she just yells Cauldron and, you know, the people who look, being the triumvirate or whatever,
Speaker: ah She points and goes, there's Coltran, default line. You wanted information, there they are. And she points at the three, yeah, gotcha. She points to the triumvirate. While Weld and Miss Militia are present, ah the Eidolon clones ah drops the breaking news ah about you know the involvement with the PRT, and then Mirden gets got by the Eidolon clone. Heavy hitters get a few good hits in against Echidna,
Speaker: ah and TikTok bisection. i'm ah TikTok is a combination of Taylor and Clockwalker. That is correct. and I can't tell if I'm here for it. Every ship is possible. you You have a full of these ships. Any one of them could set sail. Now, are some of these even boats?
Speaker: No, they're not even in then in the water. This one, for instance, god there one the first trapping isn't even technically or Taylor.
Speaker: are shipping these people i think bit when you do but go anywhere that's the best part of for any we know alllan we know you're doing yeah We made the mistake of looking up the shipping names and let me tell you there are definitely shouldn't exist some that are clever and I still, while this TikTok is great, I think the attack should be called Web of Time or something like that. Oh, I like Web of Time. That's fine. We talked about that before until I hear a better one. That's what their Wombo combo is called. I like Web of Time. The difference here between is that she kind of leans down when he's entered and is like, hey, I just need you to do this one thing. Just this one thing.
Speaker: i you know I know I'm a villain, I know that we have our differences, but if I've earned any goodwill in the short time we've worked together, please, for the love of God, just use your power on the thread when I say go. and Nice. Yeah, she just gives him, instead of giving him a gun, she literally just sticks the thread, like wraps the thread around his hand and it's like, you know, when I give the word, please, for the love of God, just do it. I like just like dropping a spider on him. You're like, well,
Speaker: Hold on to this guy. It's like a giant spider or something. like one my She's like a friend.
Speaker: That's not even a sound clip, but it will be one. ah No, no. I'm sorry, Hannah. I completely understand. i I hate it, but I completely understand. TikTok.
Speaker: ah Yeah, so that that combo, they they kill a kidna or split Echidna. Meanwhile, Tattletale has finally gathered the travelers um with the ah express you know deal that they she will send them home. um And she wheels out Scrub, who she has had captive this whole time, and using Vista's power, who is now free, ah they essentially stretch out is parallel world switching power to create the portal, um, which provides way home for the travelers. Seeing this, the remaining travelers gather together and we have a special moment where they finally all agree to put an end to Noel. Um, I'd like to think that like ballistic is just launching an entire parking lot worth of cars at her, uh, to keep her pinned down. gene Genesis, you know, makes a giant or not Genesis, um, shoot.
Speaker: No, Genesis. Yeah, that is Genesis. Genesis uses her giant like sleeping form to, you know, wrestle with Noel. And finally, some dancer is able to drop the bomb. And if it's time, Michael, because this is the hot character of the episode.
Speaker: Get it.
Speaker: Oh, it's so good. Finally. Every time this episode, Brockton Bay is drumroll Echidna on fire. Could anything be hotter? Could anything be hotter? Oh, my God. Then Sun Dancer Sun. Wow. That's good shit. In my head right now, I want to soak up the sun is playing.
Speaker: ah yeah son
Speaker: i ah right and yeah nice continue on the After the dust settles, uh, the, you know, the traveler sent home, uh, the triumvirate is faced with a very angry host of capes. Um, especially since Costa Brown has been outed in the middle of this, uh, you know, as a PRT director and the rest of them kind of You know, spoiled that the PRT is very linked with cauldron and therefore all the case 53s, uh, Taylor, uh, Tattletail and skitter kind of bounce to leave that all, uh, to deal with fault lines crew is there. So they have a lot of questions. Weld has a lot of questions. Um, and they are all very pissed. Tattletail and skitter bounce together. They catch up and have a nice moment in which Tattletail, you know,
Speaker: Kind of gives her backstory and talks about like, you know, she essentially wanted all of this ah to help save the city for Taylor. For all intents and purposes, this is like a happy birthday Taylor gift from me to you as more friendos. Speaking of chips, my God. yeah What a yacht.
Speaker: Taylor returns home. to see Danny and in the epilogue, Emma bopping around Brockton Bay, excited to be back in town, chatting with Sophia, who's a bitch, of course. She's not enthusiastic and warns Emma ah what she's returning to. The final shot, however, is Emma driving by Taylor's house, seeing her outside with her dad, looking happy and strong. And Sophia's monologue playing over the scene as Emma sees now Taylor is the sole survivor. Hmm.
Speaker: Okay. I have notes. Good. You want the sole survivor song. with the note Okay. So a couple of things. It sounds like, uh, Alexandria and Eidolon get touched pretty early as opposed to later in the fight. Yeah. I do feel like they should maybe get put that should get pushed back a little bit. Yeah. Cause they are such heavy hitters that like,
Speaker: it The fight would suck if they got touched earlier on. It'd be a lot more death and destruction. Yeah, we I mean, well, the the the issue with them and this thing was like, they essentially went toe to toe with each other's clones, I think, than the other one, um which I think is fair. like They essentially cancel each other out, kind of, but that also takes out your heroes who are doing the more majority of the echidna work. um Also, the other thing I just realized that we did not put in there,
Speaker: ah We forgot to return Dinah. Oh no, I had that. i must have yeah I did have that here. I guess maybe I got too deleted. Looks like Taylor also whoopeys forgot to return Dinah. I have a note on that. so so one yeah We yet forgot to place that. No, no, no. It's okay. ah Because I have a note. Other question. You said Vista and Scrub at the end, not Labyrinth and Scrub? Labyrinth isn't a character in their version.
Speaker: Yeah, because if you remember, we had cut labyrinth from the so from because literally the only time I know it is kind of sad. I like her power. The only time she's seen before this is literally in the slaughterhouse nine interlude. And for that interlude, we changed ah burn scars beef with labyrinth to fault line. Just as a better character. So then we had this problem. We're like, well,
Speaker: That would be a little like to quote Nick, a little bit of a some deus ex machina there at the end if we just called in the portal opener at the end of the season. Right. So yeah we kind of had to rework how how they would get the portal open. I mean, I agree that the portal way they open the portal is, you know, works within the world when you can explain it in long form. ah And even this one, like the scrub Vista combo is a little bit difficult.
Speaker: It's better to just have powers that you can kind of understand and have them just barely explain it. Be like, ah, yes, he's actually switching out pieces from different worlds and we're just having our stretch open the hole. So like, I mean, like it, it, it works.
Speaker: I'm not happy about it, but it worked. ah ah Yeah, i'm still I'm still on the fence about losing Labyrinth as a character. yeah i Visually, she'd eat up so much of the budget. Yeah, for sure, for sure, but also like... animal reason is real is the enemy When it comes to crunch time, and they're like, hey, dude, who the lone person who works on Labyrinth,
Speaker: You know stuff you got all that labyrinth done he's like done as i'll say If we're doing it if we did it live -action then yeah, no, that would be so much work if we did it animmate it ah animated it wouldn't be that much of a of a stretch. Oh it should out it should be Yeah as a note if we were writing this as like an anime style show with Leave everything. 30 episode seasons. Right, right, right. no ah You know how many fights don't change? Just a whole season of one fight. We haven't even gotten to the tournament arc yet.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, if this is done, and and and some listeners have pointed that out and and commenters have said, you know, ah if if this is done in animation form, which even for us, I feel like that's the optimal form in which Worm is told, yeah then yeah you really don't end up changing much and you just you just portray it as is, but that's just kind of not as fun to talk about because...
Speaker: is Otherwise, we wouldn't have a second half of the podcast. It would just be, well, everything's the same. Everything's the same. Because if you go the anime route, you just throw in your exposition directly into the script.
Speaker: yeah and yeah you're heavy Yeah. Oh my gosh. And it would work so well. Let me explain. Let me explain every detail that you can see. Oh my God. Let me over explain it to you twice. And if we did that, if we did that I would hate, I would hate it. I would hate it so much because Alan are watching attack on Titan and I've never seen it. And I'm yeah, I.
Speaker: Fucking hate Aaron because he's like such a whiny bitch and always talks about stuff. He's like, well, I'm a man. And I'm like, I can't deal with your bullshit. And if we had to deal with that, but Taylor being like, oh, but Dana, I think I would die and also not watch the show if that was the case. So.
Speaker: I really do stand on and the fact that I will stand on business. I knew you were gonna say that. If you, you got damn right. i will I will summon a a JoJo stand, I will stand, and then I will stand on business on the fact that if we had to witness an anime version of the Dinah like conflict within Taylor, I would, they oh my goodness. I don't think we'd watch it.
Speaker: and Let me just say, I would go into a just i think some sort of comatose state from just, yeah you know what, I'm so frustrated right now. And i think I think to be fair as a parallel example, um when the manga are artist and author of Naruto took a break before the the big time skip, um they did a ton of filler episodes and all Naruto cared about was finding Sasuke.
Speaker: And I mean, filler is all usually bad. There's very few good filler episodes, but these were painfully bad because almost every episode revolved around, where's Sasuke? I gotta find Sasuke every, and I, yeah, so I can agree with that at least. I forget they went to that one cross country race and got into a fight with a guy with a lightning sword on a rope bridge and it made, what you know, it was like its own aside. That wasn't about Sasuke. They just were going to a cross country meet.
Speaker: and And just to clarify, before everyone hits send on that comment, if there was an anime adaption of Worm, were there day one? Obviously, we're going to watch the shit out of it. Oh, yeah. it would be And I would hate every moment of it. But you know whens note what I wouldn't hate? I bet Worm would have some dope ass theme songs. Oh my gosh, they would crush it. Also, speaking of right now, just to keep us current,
Speaker: some dope -ass theme songs. You know, there's there's some bops in anime openers and closers and whatnot, but I'll be honest, I really can't listen to most of them. Like, I just go, that's cool. And that's fun. Yeah. I'm just like, Oh, that's kind of fun. But you know, it's not a, it's not something I'll go listen to. Like they are literally an opener for a show and nothing else. I know where you're going with this.
Speaker: Kaiju number eight. Yeah, baby! And it doesn't help that one republic did the, what, the closer, I think? Yeah, or something. Some very popular band did the closer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's one republic. And I was like, dang, these are bops. I listened to that opener in the morning, in the morning when I'm trying to wake up and I need to like. I think it's Opener's Youngblood, I think is the band. Yeah, it's Youngblood. But I'm just like, damn, these are both really good bangers. It's so good.
Speaker: Yeah. And the show's good too. Yeah. Okay, back to, back to worm. I have another point. um yes You said Costa Brown outed. I don't remember what, is it just that they're outed because of their connection with Cauldron? Yeah, Costa Brown is Alexandria. Oh shit. Oh, oh, oh, right, right, right, right. yeah Okay. i And that's also, you know, we've had her appear a lot in this season.
Speaker: Yeah, just against like a bit more. Because otherwise it's just, oh, you're costing around. Yeah, that makes sense. Once. That makes sense. I like that. I like that. um And then my last thought is um the Emma scene. like I love it. Don't get me wrong. It feels like it's too much. And also I don't care ah to have it at the end. So just swap it for Dinah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, Dinah's going in the end for sure. The Emma scene is really not the whole scene. I really like Sophia's monologue to Emma about who your strength being in the survivors and just having Emma make that connection for the audience. That's what Taylor is now. It just sort of gives a nice little bow to the story. It is a little extra. It's just sort of like an epilogue scene. um Yeah. Yeah, definitely. My only thought is that Oh, I'm sorry. con Continue. No, it's good. I was just gonna say my only thought with that is that I feel like this episode is already pretty long. It is pretty packed. It's pretty packed. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also not a huge Emma scene fan, but like I'm okay with it. I like um the scene. It's on the chopping block. Yeah, I like her interlude. It's on the chopping block, but i'm i but I don't like.
Speaker: I would like to get rid of it, but I also am accepting of it. I'm really, I'm really looking for, cause that like, what's the last scene of the season? You know, that kind of thing. That's gotta to be a good scene. You want the, you want the final credit to roll and the idea of Taylor with her dad, just looking strong and, and you know, happy essentially yeah feels good, but I'm open to suggestions for sure. Yeah. Okay. So maybe we replaced the Taylor returns home to see Danny with,
Speaker: ah her returning Dinah, they're like, oh, thank you. And she's like, ah yeah yeah you know I forget what she says, like, don't thank me or something like that. I think her just kind of going like, maybe not knowing what to say, ah because I think this is the catalyst for kicking off very conflicting feelings about being a villain. who like And so I think we just literally have her like turn And then kind of realized like she doesn't have, she doesn't know what to say and walks off. Then you cut to Emma on the phone, looking out the window at Rockton Bay as it stands now, you know, post three sets of destruction in a row. Yeah. Uh, but, but things are, you know, things are being constructed now. There's a lot of stuff going on to rebuild and, um, she ah literally, it can be the end of the conversation. She was like, well, I mean, things are getting, you know,
Speaker: better here and you know we're sticking around, like where the hell are you? And Sophia's like, I got out of there, yada, yada, and her whole monologue about the yeah survivor. right And then that's when we, like Emma kind of like perks up out the window and we see Taylor moving boxes with her dad. With the new car, she definitely just bought him. like Oh yeah.
Speaker: Are we including, we're not including with the Emma thing, her whole backstory, I assume. Correct. No, I'm just going to, yeah. Just not athetic ass i'll fit that in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm okay with that. now I'm okay with Emma staying a pathetic asshole. Yeah. No. Yeah. Fuck her. Anymore. ah Yeah. Anymore notes, notes here. Uh, those are my big ones.
Speaker: We didn't really change a whole lot in the end here. The biggest things were um giving the travelers just a bit more in the story and having all of them choose, with the exception of Trickster, having all of them choose to kill ah Noelle at the end. Sort of as like ah final a final little moment, felt a little bit more appropriate. yeah Yeah. We also didn't... Tamir, the whole Cody thing as well. Yeah, exactly. exactly We also didn't really explicitly put this in. Trickster still does attempt to betray everybody, does attempt ah to help Noel. ah His capture happens off screen or off offp page in worm. That's just something we'll show. We'll fit that in here somewhere. We haven't pulled it to that point out yet, but he gets captured during this fight. Chevalier just says it at the end. They're like, yeah, we caught him. He's going to the birdcage. So we'll show him getting captured or or something to that effect.
Speaker: Okay. That was, that was one thing I felt like God, I was like, wait, I didn't, I didn't hear that. So I'm glad that you mentioned that you want to fit that in because I do feel like. That is a big character moment for him. and And it could be, it is, yeah. And I really like that. And and maybe we play it because we have kind of shifted Noel's motivations a bit here. So maybe we play it as the undersiders are are trying to figure, or not the undersiders, the travelers are getting together, trying to figure out, maybe they come together that we need to take care of Noel. And Trickster's betrayal is really not against everybody else, but it's just against his friends.
Speaker: And, you know, it's a bit more, it's a bit more personal. no and Hear me out. So with the travelers have arrived. Trickster has been captured mid fight. They break open the portal and say, Hey, here's the portal. But the deal is you help us, you know, put away Noel and trickster is there, but he's like blindfolded and he's like,
Speaker: No, like you can you like you can't do this. And they're like, we'll put it to a, you know, we'll put it to a vote. Like we've got like, she's, you know, gotta be stopped. And he's like, no. And you know, he's on the ground handcuffed and restrained and they all vote. Like we got to do it. The last, of course, being Sundancer being like, ah yeah, I guess so. You know, they do it. He's like crying. And, you know, when they go through the portal, but they're like, do you want Kraus? Like,
Speaker: You know, we could probably make an exception to send him to the other world and ballistic goes, nah, keep him. We don't want him. yeah Oh, I love that. do i do if If he's close enough, he can hear it. So he can hear their rejection of him. And Noel burning. Yeah. And Noel burning. Ooh. Oh, yeah. Fuck shit. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I do like having tricks. You're on screen for more of that because Yeah, he just kind of disappears. Yeah, yeah. He betrays everybody and then he's captured off screen and not seen from again for, if I remember right, for a pretty long time. ah he I think there's an interlude somewhere coming up pretty soon, but like it's literally just him dropping into the birdcage and that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um so having having him there for sort of, and I feel like that adds a nicer bow tie to the Traveler story is having them - I agree.
Speaker: you know, kind of, especially if you do have trickster killing Cody, I think that them kind of being like, well, we don't really like it, but you know, we'll let you make the call, you know, uh, Grouse. And then he does, he kills him. And now it's like, even having him say something like, I, I want to go with you guys or something like that. And then being like, no, we, we don't want you anymore. That hurts. That fucking hurts. Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so I think there's something like that could be really, really cool. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. That's good. Any other little notes? If not, I've got a couple of final thoughts, but otherwise we're warping up outright wrapped up here on the recap. Yeah. Um, I, I don't know. I'm, I struggle with the idea that losing the big newsroom scene. I kind of struggle with that only because as a character, I guess in this version, we haven't seen coil as invested as we do in the actual worm narrative, but having him just kind of be like, eh, he's probably not in town anymore. I don't know. It just kind of feels a bit weird. Um,
Speaker: As opposed to in the actual worm where it's like he faked his own death very obviously and pretty much everybody believed it. um I don't know. and Yeah, this this was a ah hard stuff a hard scene. Here's the thing. I really like that scene in the story. um I think it's a really fun scene. It kind of catches you off guard a bit. ah you know it's a You know it's a ploy, but it's its still fun to read about.
Speaker: It was really hard trying to pace that scene well within the story because it's such a big climactic moment. And then he's literally dead within this episode or the next episode at the latest. It's just and so and a really tricky. Yeah. It's really hard to pace that out. It does bring me into a point I'm going to raise here in a minute, but Yeah, I agree. this well That was kind of a big change we made. We didn't really have a good solution um for that moment. And it also yeah it didn't work as well with the backstory and and time we devoted to Calvert. It just sort of meshed with that odd in some weird ways.
Speaker: I agree. It does it is. i think I think that's probably one of the scenes that I think a lot of big, warm fans will take issue with rewriting. It is a cool scene, but also continuity -wise, is he in season two when everybody gathers to meet and talk about the villains? Is he there? No.
Speaker: ah Well, actually, know many use he isn't real. about He isn't real. yeah I mean, is he there in your version? I was going to say, I don't know. I think we just assumed he was there, but I don't think we ever said anything about it. Which meeting are we talking about, though? We're talking about the diner meeting? No, no, no. The slaughterhouse nine meeting. The slaughterhouse nine meeting because If the assumption is that people are saying now, well, after Leviathan coil probably moved on, but a bunch of heroes literally saw him a couple of weeks ago during slaughterhouse nine crisis. Yeah, we will have to play around with the continuity for sure. Yeah, sure that that would be a. That all makes sense. Yeah, I'm with an icon, that one, by the way, yeah the the the whole like, oh, well, he probably left town like.
Speaker: I mean, I'm okay with removing him from the meeting, honestly. Well, but that meeting is like important because. That changes so much about that meeting and the way the undersiders feel about him. Right. Well, I mean, it already changes the thing because, well, yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, I wouldn't remove him from the meeting. I think you're right about that. Well, yeah, we'll we'll probably just have to re just have to kind of re -examine that scene where we talk about where Coyle's been.
Speaker: and just kind of play around with that for a little bit. i think I think if you can, here's another option that I think would work is that um if they were like, well, reports have seen him up in New York with some activity up there. He seems to be buying a property and trying to move in on the villain scene there. something And then like maybe even having that as like a background news story um or something, just something that proves he's moved out of town. It can still be the whole body double situation. That's fine.
Speaker: But rather than having him faking his own death, it's like, oh, he's just, you know, after the slaughterhouse nine, he moved on to a new town and here's the evidence he has. Yeah. Well, and when I put that, like he, you know, Thomas Calvert just kind of like waves it off. Like that was originally what I said. Like it just literally, he just goes like, oh, like, I mean, we have more pressing matters or maybe he's dead or maybe he can move. Like it literally is just a placeholder for him to fucking somehow like,
Speaker: Well, that's cool. Like, you know, is he doing anything right now? And well, it's like, well, no. And he's like, then we have bigger fish to fry. like and And you could even change that to be like, is he in Brockton Bay right now? No, he's in New York or Boston or wherever you want to put him. Yeah. Just as a way to say, no, he's out of town. We have the evidence that he is. And like, you know that, right? Well, and he's like, yeah, but something feels off. I think that would be.
Speaker: That would be better. And i'd I just like to get, I guess, specific on that, especially since I i was worried it was a continuity issue with that meeting with the slaughterhouse. That's a great, no, that's a good point. yeah And continuity and is going to be a major thing we have to keep track of because of what we're changing. So, yeah, it's good. to Good companies hire people to take care of that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Once we once we say who you're targeting there. Yeah, exactly. um On that note, though,
Speaker: Yeah. and That actually does bridge well and like unless you had to dip another bullet point. Um, I was trying to think if there was anything, I think that's, that was the one thing that stood out to me. Okay.
Speaker: um Well, on that note, that does that does tie in very well to my last point, which is just, ah yeah we record these episodes several weeks in advance, ah just for Michael's own sanity, so that he has time to edit them. But what that does mean is that as ah older episodes come out, we get a lot of really good ideas and feedback from listeners that we don't get to incorporate until much later, because shout out, we are sleepy stapler. We added some great ones.
Speaker: Yeah, we've had a lot of really good like little just little ideas and and and yeah and comments over the weeks. So I had two thoughts because I had posed um question to a couple ah commenters on a Reddit post about how to handle what we've took kind of talked about, the diner problem of motivation and the pacing and her being kind of left forgotten for a season. That whole thing, got right? How to deal with that. And got two very different answers, which was kind of funny. And they both sort of tie into the same scene that you were talking about, Nick. So the first was from the user Husser on Reddit.
Speaker: who suggested ah who is not really a fan of stretching out the slaughterhouse nine and not really a fan of the echidna fight and suggested that we just condense ah season two and three in our version to just season two slaughterhouse nine being the first half and then do everything with coil putting more emphasis on the on the newsroom scene and all of that, that whole scene, and then like the final episode being the echidna fight. And then actually ah they even ah suggested extending the season past that to the next arc or two and actually ending it a bit further down the line.
Speaker: which was just really interesting to read. Obviously, we've got a very different direction, but a totally different way of framing the season with just, like, essentially two arcs within the season. The first arc being the Slaughterhouse Nine, second arc being Coyle and Echidna all in one, um which would solve our problem. yeah We're about to move in what I like to call, like, sort of an empty arc, in my opinion. Yeah. So, like,
Speaker: I mean, imagine if we were if we moved into this with coil still alive and still in charge, like it would be pretty interesting, but not yeah like not very completely out of the way at all. And the the two problems that solved was ah feeling like coil is axed too early or kind of caught off guard.
Speaker: Um, cause in this version, coil would be present through most of season two. And it also kind of resolves our issue with Dinah being forgotten. We just show more of her, or she's just only not, she's only not seen for the first couple episodes of the season, but it's more prominent later on. So it's an interesting solution. Um, again, just kind of a funny way, yeah lots of different ways to kind of think about how, how we break things up. Small things I was thinking about with the, uh, with the Dinah thing too, is essentially having a scene just once.
Speaker: We show Lisa sneaking in and talking to Dinah and asking her questions. Um, and just basically implying that this will not be the last time that she sneaks in and asks Dinah questions like, Hey, what is the percentage I fuck over coil in the future? You know, stuff over like that. I've succeeded with pulling this off. yeah Um, so, you know, we just throw that in there. And then also we, we've kind of separated this.
Speaker: season into two smaller arcs. There is the first three episodes, which is the coil, you know, part and the last three, which are the echidna fight. And I think having them set up as their own one, two, three, one, two, three makes them like, even though it happens mid season for coil to die, um, it does feel like the conclusion of a small arc as opposed to kind of a weird rush. Um,
Speaker: pacing wise, just as a arc in the middle of a bunch of other arcs.
Speaker: And then the last suggestion was just from ah user WolfTamer9, who ah made the first suggestion that you we just don't condense the story as much and use more episodes, which is very valid. We've put the restriction on ourselves to just do ah like essentially 10 -ish episodes a season. um But don't let me forget, I have a fun challenge for our ah for Nick and Hannah here. I want to get to...
Speaker: But yeah, that i would that would obviously work. And then they also said that, ah they just kind of funny, um said, oh, I think you could at least make five episodes out of arc 15 and 16, which is the coil, everything. and I mean, you could. You definitely could.
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, I mean, if you're stretching out episodes, you probably could do it that way. And again, that would kind of resolve some of our issues. And if it weren't anime, they would. If it weren't anime, 15 episodes. I think of the Naruto fight where they're like post one of their graduation challenges and they're like chasing down the snake guy. I'm not going to remember any of the names, but like. That's fine.
Speaker: ah They stopped like and yeah wrote tomorrow and they fight like every one of his guys. That's like chasing them and and Each one of them is like a five episode battle. It felt like I might be wrong, but like it feels like Some of those were episodes that was my action the actual things that were in the manga were really strong and fast -paced generally and Well, like there's the one guy who has the, uh, who does the eight trigrams, you know, 64 poems, that guy. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Like he stops and has the, like, literally a standstill with the one guy for, you know, it might be two episodes. It felt like five. I'll just say that right now. And imagine if you had to do that with every single dragon Mac. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, I think that while, yeah, mean I mean, I will say that while generally, generally with worm, I would say that I would enjoy more content over less. I think that would apply solely to the one idea of combining the slaughterhouse nine and echidna arcs just because I really like the slaughterhouse and nine. I think that they function as really good.
Speaker: Yeah. ah Really great villains for an arc. And I would hate to see their story just get condensed and mixed in with coil and echidna, right? yeah yeah that's just Yeah. That's just my feeling, but obviously you know everybody has their own preferences. so Yeah. that's And that's why I highlighted those because I thought they were they were just fun ways of very different ah routes than we've chosen to go, but just kind of Obviously, it's going to be one of those things where it all depends on formatting and everything like that and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, a lot of different ideas out there. It's fun. We love reading comments like that. We love hearing suggestions, so keep them coming. Again, there's a couple of us here. It's very fun. Usually, I'm not the one commenting for Reddit stuff, but I do read everything because
Speaker: I ah to me like it's it's it's really cool that we actually have people that are engaging with us in this content and the idea that like even if you don't agree with the choices that are being made in regards to like the show or dissecting worm.
Speaker: Because ah obviously not everyone agrees. like To me, it is so freaking cool that this worm community is so tight knit. We're so, I don't know, united on the front of Worm and Wild, those works in general. and like Even if we don't all agree, like I still greatly enjoy reading all the comments and like the back and forth. and Oh, it's so fun. Oh my gosh. it's it's just It's really cool to be part of... like It feels like I'm part of a special little club of like people who have read Wurm and who like know the story and heart who are excited about it. And like even defending the whole like, you know don't cut this. like Why are you cutting like this that? would you do that?
Speaker: Completely understandable. like I don't want to cut anything either. but ah but yeah it's just it's It's super great. and and By the way, if if anyone wants to like really get get into it and like really yell at us and use your outside voice, ah you can just leave us a voicemail. We're more than happy to listen and maybe play it on the podcast. ah You can leave us a voicemail at 980 -999 -0438. Please do so. We want to hear you guys. You guys are you guys are because of the bomb.
Speaker: And then reach out to us at, yeah, we're at, at Brockton Bay, BC on all platforms, ah social media platforms, Reddit, Instagram. ah um Most active on Reddit, most not active on Instagram. Yeah. my dad my best We are everywhere. Reddit and YouTube are the main spots. Those are the big ones. Those are the big ones that we read and see and interact with. And you can just click the link in the description if you're already here. There you go. all right We're already there.
Speaker: Uh, so with that, I think we're about that. I did want to leave one fun little thought. Uh, yeah. Alan and I talked about this briefly in our last episode for dissecting. Well, I'm just going to plug it now because I thought it felt like a good time. and so surprised You have, uh, you're tasked. Uh, Hollywood executive comes to you just bought the rights to worm. And they said here, uh, here's warm. We are, uh, we're doing a trilogy film trilogy.
Speaker: break it up for us what could all of olive worm all of women in three movies and three movies um two to two and a half hours each movie how are you breaking it up what's the like we're doing this now i will say ah ah someone who who does not remember what happens even in the next arc that we're reading. I i have no... i i That's okay, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: There's no wrong answer here because there's no right answer. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, man. That's a tough one. I honestly, my thought was that I was going to post this and then we'd come back to it, not to put you on the spot. Oh, okay. Thank God. Yeah, no, I can think about it. Here's my initial thoughts. Patreon special that is available only on Patreon. Find out what Nick's going to say. no We'll revisit this thought experiment at the very end of the story. The very end of worm. We'll try to do it in one movie. I don't want to think about that. I don't want to think about the end of worm. Holy shit. Is it bedtime? It is bedtime.
Speaker: Thank you all for listening. It's been an absolute pleasure. Hannah, Nick, thanks for joining us. Love your thoughts. Thanks for having us. Had some great thoughts, great insight, caught things we missed. So definitely have some work to do as always. We're going to make some notes, make some edits and continue on. Very productive session. Yeah. Thanks for making us sound good. Appreciate it. We're going to give our shout outs. Disappointed are people less than before. So I'm happy. I think so. I think a few big changes, but not quite as ah no no um No pitchforks just yet, I think. I think we're okay. Hopefully not. We'll find out. Let us know. Let us know. yeah Put some pitchforks in the comments if we're wrong. And we do appreciate all of our listeners. We really do. Thank you for listening. Let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, any solutions to problems that we raised that you didn't like our answers to. Give us some other answers. ah We'll read them all. We'll talk about them and give us a call. Reach out to us on all social media platforms and take that, you worms.
Speaker: So we cut coil. Thank you so much for listening. Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress dot .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, etc. as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on
