Month: April 2019

Time is running out to catch Giratina in Pokemon Go. Niantic brought the Legendary Pokemon back to Raid Battles earlier this month, this time in its Origin Forme, but it’s slated to leave the mobile game once again today, April 29, at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET, making this your last opportunity to capture one for the foreseeable future.

Unlike Giratina’s standard Altered Form–the form it took when it first appeared in Pokemon Go during last year’s Halloween event–its Origin Forme is more serpentine in appearance and has offense-oriented stats. In Pokemon lore, this is the form Giratina assumes in the Distortion World–a parallel universe the Pokemon was banished to.

To catch Origin Forme Giratina, you’ll first need to travel to a Gym where a Giratina Raid is taking place and team up with other players in the real world to battle it. If you manage to successfully defeat the Renegade Pokemon, you’ll be rewarded with a handful of Premier Balls and an opportunity to capture it.

Like its Altered Forme, Origin Forme Giratina is a dual Dragon/Ghost Pokemon, which makes it vulnerable to its own types. Your best bet is to bring along Pokemon like Salamence, Rayquaza, and Gengar, or Dark-types such as Tyranitar and Houndoom. You can read more tips on how to catch Giratina here.

There’s no telling yet what Legendary Pokemon will replace Origin Forme Giratina, but a couple of new ones will be available through May and June’s Field Research quests. If you achieve a Research Breakthrough during those two months, you’ll have a chance to encounter Ho-Oh, Lugia, Latios, or Latias. On top of that, Shiny Meltan is appearing in Pokemon Go again right now, but it’ll only be available until May 5.

The third episode of Game of Thrones‘ final season, The Long Night, finally brought about a climax we’ve been waiting for since the very first moments of the show. The Night King’s army of the dead breached the wall, and the forces of the living, led by Daenerys, Jon Snow, and Dany’s two dragons, laid down everything to try to stop them once and for all.

It was a pitched battle that had lots of casualties–check out our full rundown of everyone who didn’t make it through, and our review for our take on whether The Long Night succeeded in its aims of resolving the conflict with the Night King. But after the dust had settled, there were still a few lingering questions. Ghost, Jon Snow’s direwolf, disappeared in the first charge, leaving everyone online asking what happened to him (here’s the answer). And then there was Rhaegal, the dragon ridden by Jon, who fell halfway through the battle and was never seen again. So what happened to him?

Despite it looking pretty harrowing for Rhaegal in the middle of the battle, we know for sure he survived the Battle of Winterfell. That’s because he appears, albeit very briefly, in HBO’s teaser for Episode 4.

Rhaegal and Drogon, the dragon Daenerys rides, were a powerful force in the battle until a snowstorm wrecked all visibility, and the dragons struggled to help out the fighters on the ground. When the Night King showed up riding the undead Viserion, things got even more hectic.

Viserion and Rhaegal literally slammed into each other in the snowstorm, with the wight dragon trying to cook Rhaegal’s rider as they slashed away at each other. The Night King took the opportunity to try to spear Rhaegal and take him down for good, just as he did with Viserion during the Season 7 episode Beyond the Wall. But Rhaegal eventually won the fight, tearing off a piece of Viserion’s face, and both the Night King and the wight dragon fell to Earth. But Rhaegal’s injuries were pretty severe, and he went plummeting to the ground, too–he crashed, throwing Jon from his back, and that was the last we saw of the dragon.

So the question that remains now is what condition Rhaegal will be in going forward. Like Daenerys’s other forces, Rhaegal took a beating during the battle with the Night King, with Viserion raking a huge gash in his chest. It’s also looks like he has tears in his wings in the teaser (although it’s tough to tell the dragons apart at any distance). It’s very likely he won’t be back to 100% for some time, and that could call into question his role in the coming battle for the Iron Throne at King’s Landing.

Daenerys has already lost a lot of her military might leading up to her final push to take down Cersei Lannister, and the dragons have always been her ace in the hole. We’ve seen her get a lot done with just one dragon, but a weakened Rhaegal (and possibly Drogon) will definitely be a setback.

Full spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame!

Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are talking about the decisions they made when scripting the final installment of the original MCU Avengers, and that includes why Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man was killed off during the film’s climax.

In a must-read interview with The New York Times, the writers talked about why Tony was always slated to die in Endgame.

“The watchword was, end this chapter, and he started the chapter,” said McFeely of Iron Man. Of course, that is true as Downey Jr. launched the MCU all the way back in 2008 with the first Iron Man film. At the time it would’ve been impossible to predict how far this shared universe of heroes and villains would go. But the fact is, Tony was the start of it all.

Continue reading…

For the second year running, Pokemon Go developer Niantic teamed up with Playmob to host a series of Earth Day cleanup events during the month of April. The initiative turned out to be a big success; according to Niantic, more than 14,800 people participated in these events, and as thanks, the developer has rolled out a batch of exciting rewards for a limited time in the Pokemon mobile game.

From now until May 2, Ground-type Pokemon such as Diglett, Sandshrew, and others will appear in the wild more frequently than normal. On top of that, players will have a chance of finding a Shiny Diglett, marking the first time it has been available in the mobile game.

Rounding out the Earth Day rewards, players will receive two times the normal amount of Candy and Stardust each time they capture Pokemon. Finally, the Legendary Ground Pokemon Groudon will also appear as a Raid boss again until May 2. You can see the full list of rewards on Niantic’s website.

In addition to the Earth Day rewards, Niantic recently announced that a new set of Field Research tasks are coming soon to Pokemon Go. The tasks will go live beginning May 1 and will be available through the end of June. Moreover, each time you achieve a Research Breakthrough during that time frame, you’ll encounter one of the following Legendary Pokemon: Ho-Oh, Lugia, Latios, or Latias.

Shiny Meltan has also returned to Pokemon Go for a limited time. Meanwhile, the game’s next Community Day event is scheduled to take place on Sunday, May 19. The featured Pokemon this month will be the Gen 3 starter, Torchic, and players will be able to earn triple the normal amount of Stardust for catching Pokemon.

For all its Easter Eggs and call backs, for all it managed to do with Tony Stark, one of the most memorable and satisfying moments of Avengers: Endgame came at the hands of fan favorite character Captain America, who, just as the battle against Thanos looked its bleakest for Thor, saved the day–by wielding Thor’s original hammer, Mjolnir.

Now, there are a lot of reasons that this moment is extremely cool–c’mon, it’s Captain America swinging a lightning-powered warhammer around, what’s not to love?–but it actually becomes even more interesting if you take a look at just what picking up a weapon like Mjolnir actually means in the context of Marvel history.

Let’s break it down.

What’s Mjolnir’s deal? Isn’t it gone?

It hasn’t come up in the MCU for a while, but Mjolnir actually has an inscription. It goes like this: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” If you think all the way back to the very first Thor movie, this part was pretty critical–Thor was stripped of his “worthiness” by Odin and cast out, leaving Mjolnir stuck in a crater on Earth with Thor unable to lift it. Of course, he eventually learned a valuable life lesson about his hubris and ego and was able to pick it up again–yay! Then, later, the “worthiness” drum was beaten again when, in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, it was played for a bit of a party trick. After the Avengers took turns trying to lift it from a coffee table, Steve was able to make it wiggle the slightest bit. At the end of the movie, it comes back as another gag with Steve, Thor, and Tony debating what would happen if you put Mjolnir in an elevator.

“Elevator’s not worthy,” Steve says, shaking his head.

The conversation was prompted after Vision, a synthetic humanoid built out of Ultron’s AI, Tony’s AI butler Jarvis, and the Mind Stone, was able to pick up Mjolnir during the final confrontation with Ultron himself. The ins and outs of Vision’s whole deal vis-a-vis worthiness aren’t really examined too thoroughly, but the implications are there. Not only is Vision a new, and therefore wholly “untainted” creation, he’s also born of one of the universe’s most powerful artifacts–a potent combination.

Since then, however, Mjolnir’s symbolism and place in the MCU has shifted dramatically. With Thor: Ragnarok, we saw Hela destroy the hammer altogether, sending Thor into a crisis. Eventually, he realized that his power–his worthiness–didn’t come from the hammer itself at all. “Are you Thor, god of Hammers?” Odin asked. Of course not–and we have a whole fight montage set to Led Zepplin to prove it. Later, in Infinity War, he’s given a new, better weapon, an ax named Stormbreaker with no worthiness clause attached.

Here in Endgame there’s a bit of an abrupt pivot. During the whole time travel adventure heist, an extremely downtrodden and depressed Thor visits the Asgard of 2013, talks with his mom before she dies, and summons the Mjolnir from 2013 into his hand. This delights him because it means, after everything, he’s still “worthy,” something he couldn’t test with Stormbreaker.

So Mjolnir–albeit a temporally displaced Mjolnir–is back in play in time for the final fight against Thanos.

What does it mean to be “worthy?”

As far as esoteric comic book things are concerned, “worthiness” and Mjolnir is up there with the Infinity Stones in terms of being, uh, fluid to say the least. In the MCU, worthiness tends to be defined through Thor’s selfishness or lack thereof–or at least by what Odin thinks is Thor’s selfishness or lack thereof. After overcoming that first brush with unworthiness, Thor does just fine–even when he’s behaving extremely brashly–which makes a reliable barometer for the MCU’s take on the concept pretty difficult to craft.

The comics, however, have it a little bit easier. Very recently, Thor was rendered unworthy by an omnipotent Nick Fury (don’t ask) who simply whispered these three words: “Gor was right.” Gor, a villain known as “The God Butcher,” had been one of Thor’s newer enemies. He was an alien who made it his life’s work to exterminate all “gods” in space. Gor’s mission stemmed from his belief that all gods were petty, useless, and selfish creatures who deluded themselves into believing they were above mere mortals. During a fight, he told Thor just that: “You know I’m right. That’s why you fight so hard. Why you try so desperately to seem noble.”

At the time, Gor’s words did nothing but make Thor more angry–and fueled him to ultimately take Gor down–but it definitely got a little under his skin. The confirmation from a man who, at the time, was literally all seeing and all knowing, was enough to completely shatter Thor’s self confidence and render him unworthy of his own weapon.

So what does that tell us? There are a couple ways to slice it, but the easier of them is that worthiness directly ties into belief in one’s self more than any lack of arrogance or hubris. You can be a pretty cocky guy, at the end of the day, but if you truly believe in what you’re doing, and are completely free of doubt, you’ll probably be worthy.

Steve’s had experiences with Mjolnir in the comics as well to really drive that idea home. The most recent was actually pretty bleak and involved an incarnation of Steve who had had his backstory cosmically re-written (comics!) to be a HYDRA agent. This evil Steve was a ruthlessly loyal HYDRA zealot who was able to pick up the hammer because–again–Mjolnir isn’t really looking to judge whether a person’s intentions are good or bad; it’s only looking for absolute confidence of self.

So, what does that mean for that Endgame scene?

Steve tossing Mjolnir around like a champ in the final battle against Thanos is not only just a smorgasbord of fantastic visuals for any MCU fan, it’s also a fun little wink to fans who have never stopped thinking about that scene in Age of Ultron. Because of the MCU’s lack of clarity on Mjolnir’s specific rules, it’s difficult to surmise whether or not it actually says anything about Steve’s character–though certainly if you prescribe the comics logic, it says he is absolutely confident that he’s in the right in that moment–and who can blame him?

Sure, if you think too hard about it, it gets a bit confusing. In the comics, Mjolnir is the conduit not only for Thor’s lightning and thunder powers but his entire identity, costume, speech pattern, and all. When a new worthy person picks up Mjolnir, they (sometimes) get a new costume out of the deal and a cool Olde English style accent as part of the package while Thor himself remains an Asgardian with strength and endurance but can’t otherwise go around zapping people with lightning or flying. In fact, when other characters pick up Mjolnir in the comics, they typically adopt Thor’s name entirely, leaving Thor to go by “Odinson” to prevent confusion.

In the MCU, however, all of Thor’s abilities exist within him innately, essentially meaning there can be two Thor-powered people running around at the same time. Thor’s own magic is no longer beholden to the hammer at all. It’s really just a very cool weapons upgrade with an extremely high level requirement–one that Steve finally hit after around a decade’s worth of work.

Does it make a ton of sense? Not really. But in the comics, a frog and a horse-monster-alien regularly toss around versions of Mjolnir like its nothing while Thor’s still kicking, so we’re more than happy to write them a pass on this one for the sake of an extremely cool fight scene.