In this week’s podcast, Glenn and Daniel return to the final space-jaunt before Avengers: Infinity War, celebrate an awesome new character who’s also a failure of LGBTQ representation, and ponder what makes “essential Marvel” (43:22).

May contain NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 6.5 out of 10

Show notes:

• Music for this episode is the tracks, “Planet Sakaar” and “What Heroes Do” from the original score to Thor: Ragnarok, by Mark Mothersbaugh.
• CORRECTION: Sorry Spidey. The last MCU film that we reviewed was Spider-Man: Homecoming. But that one took place on Earth and we both loved it, so it wasn’t the first comparison that jumped to mind.
• The TVTropes page that we referred to in consideration of Valkyrie’s proposed LGBTQ backstory is called “Bury Your Gays” – we also referred to the trope known as “Fridged“, a term popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone, a reference to a dubious storyline in Green Lantern, in which the villain leaves the corpse of Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, stuffed into a refrigerator for him to find.
• We were not able to find a definite answer on whether Thanos “court[ing] Death” could be a reference to Hela (Cate Blanchett), but there has been speculation along those lines.
• What we derisively referred to as “the Power Glove” is, of course, the Infinity Gauntlet.
• We fudged the release dates a bit – Black Panther is February 26, 2018 (in just 3 months!), Avengers: Infinity War is May 4, 2018, and the untitled Avengers sequel to that film is scheduled for May 3, 2019.

Listen above, or download: Thor: Ragnarok (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)