Category: Games

Warning: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Black Widow!

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Marvel’s Black Widow is finally here! It’s been 11 years since Natasha Romanoff made her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Iron Man 2 and now she finally has her own movie. While this could be perceived as being “too late” for the former Russian spy to get her day in the sun, it’s actually the perfect time. If this film had been made a decade earlier, we may have gotten an overly sexualized femme fatale instead of a woman looking to reconcile with her past and her family.

This film, which is currently breaking pandemic box office records, is not a traditional female spy movie. It’s not about wigs and costumes and seductions and assassinations like Alias or Red Sparrow. It could have been about all those things. We could have seen what Natasha was like as an agent of the Red Room, a weapon used to seduce and kill, similar to how female Bond villains are often depicted. However, that’s not the direction this film took. It went for a more personal story, one that touches on childhood trauma, abduction, brainwashing and human trafficking.

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The Red Room

The first time we glimpsed Natasha Romanoff in the Red Room was in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In a series of flashbacks we saw a young Natasha undergoing training: She was learning ballet, she was learning how to use a gun, and she was learning how to kill. It was easy to assume that we would have gotten a lot more Red Room flashbacks in the Black Widow movie. Instead, the film provides a series of montages during the opening credits depicting brainwashing, combat training, and more, all set to a haunting Nirvana cover. The Red Room is the entire basis of the film, but we don’t really get to see it.

While some may say this was a missed opportunity, it was actually very tasteful to omit it. What happens in the Red Room is brainwashing and torture. Most of the inductees and recruits are children. It was wise not to attempt to show the horrors of this place on screen. Instead, we see the byproducts of the Red Room. We see them in Natasha herself, in Yelena, in Taskmaster, and in the other Widows. When programmed, they were practically killer robots, completely compliant and ready to do the will of their leader, Dreykov.

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Human Trafficking

The issues that the Red Room touches on are exceedingly dark — much darker than the ballet flashback we got in Age of Ultron. The Red Room is one way to describe the reality of human trafficking. Numerous scenes in the film really drive this point home: seeing the sisters drugged at the airport and put in a shipping container to make the journey from Cuba to Russia; when the shipping crate is opened and the Russian soldiers are met with the screams of the girls who were taken; and when Natasha finds out Dreykov took her as a child, paid her mother, and then killed her mother. This type of child kidnapping happens everyday, all around the world. It’s a dark reality, one which rarely gets a spotlight in film, let alone in a major superhero franchise. Taken, the Liam Neeson film from 2008, explores this topic, as does another Rachel Weisz-starring film, The Whistleblower. However it’s still a generally taboo topic in Hollywood. 

The moment that truly sells the human trafficking element is Dreykov’s grand speech to Natasha. “The most disposable workforce in the world is girls.” Girls, being vulnerable, being targeted, being taken. According to the U.S. State Department, 24.9 million people across the globe were in some form of forced slavery in 2016. The types of slavery include private labor, public labor, governmental labor, religious labor, and sexual labor. SafeHaven expands these statistics to explain that women and girls make up 71% of those enslaved, roughly 17 million.

Dismantling Dreykov

Making Natasha’s motivation in the film dismantling the Red Room is a powerful premise. It’s personal for her. She was brainwashed and forced to do terrible things while working for Dreykov. Her sister was also brainwashed and forced to become a killer, Alexei calls her “the greatest child killer” the world has ever known. At some point in Natasha’s past she overcame her programming and left the Black Widow program. Natasha thought she had destroyed the Red Room when she defected to S.H.I.E.L.D., having killed Dreykov and his daughter. But when she finds out the Red Room still exists, with Dreykov still in charge, she is compelled to confront him again.

This premise is both incredibly personal for Natasha, because she has to revisit the darkest chapter in her life, and it’s global, because the Avenger in her must get involved. Dreykov was kidnapping new girls all the time and brainwashing them for his nefarious purposes. He had them planted, as sleeper agents, in every government in the world. As far as supervillains go, he is perhaps the most grotesque villain we’ve had in the MCU so far. In one scene he’s willing to lobotomize Yelena so he can study why she was “defective” against his brainwashing drug. He also turned his own daughter into a killing machine not to save her, but to use her as his test subject for brainwashing. Dreykov is vile and represents a type of villain that exists in our world today: human traffickers.

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Severing the Nerve

One of Dreykov’s most unholy weapons is his pheromones. The women he brainwashes can’t kill him because they were chemically coded not to harm him. Not even Natasha could lay a hand on him. This was his final layer of protection, but thankfully Natasha isn’t afraid of doing a little damage to herself to break his hold on her. Severing the nerve in her nose is a powerful metaphor for her finally severing her ties to her former master — cutting the brainwashing and programming he forced on her mind and body when she was young. This needed to happen for her to bring down Dreykov, his empire, and his Red Room. And she isn’t alone. Other Widows help her bring it down. Where other films might see these types of women fighting against each other, Black Widow ultimately unifies them. Nat gives them something to believe in and something to fight for. 

The entire message of this film is about overcoming your past, reconciling your mistakes, and being strong enough to erase unhealthy programming. Natasha thought she was done with her past, but ignoring it just left Dreykov unchecked to restart the Black Widow program. By reuniting with her “family” and confronting her darkest deed, the murder of Dreykov’s daughter, Natasha was finally able to bring down the Red Room and liberate potentially thousands of other brainwashed women and girls. 

This film really showcases Marvel’s ability to tell a personal story with global implications. No other MCU film has come this close to an issue as dark and tragic as trafficking. Iron Man’s past in weapons manufacturing touches on this issue, but it doesn’t seem to go as dark as it could have. Two other Marvel properties have touched on trafficking: Daredevil and Black Panther. Those inclusions were jumping off points for this film to truly leap into the subject matter. Addressing it in this story feels personal and really illuminates Natasha’s past. Watching her lead the charge of freedom is cathartic and makes her feel even more like a hero, an Avenger who would go on to give her life for others in Avengers: Endgame.

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For more on the film, check out our Black Widow ending explained, delve into the history of that surprise character, investigate the difference between the comics and movie versions of Taskmaster, and find out about the Easter egg screenwriter Eric Pearson wanted to put in the movie.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions debuts on Friday, July 16, in U.S. theaters.

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What if an escape room were a life-and-death game? That was the simple but effective premise of the 2019 horror hit Escape Room. Competing for a big cash prize, puzzle enthusiasts reported to the mysterious Minos company only to find themselves pitched into a lethal labyrinth. Defying the odds, two survived but found that their prize was not cash — just trauma. Now, this disturbed duo is roped back into this grim game with Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, a savage sequel lacking in smarts, character development and suspense.

Taylor Russell returns as orphaned quiz kid Zoey, while Logan Miller reprises the role of Ben, a drunken stock boy who has cleaned up and crushes hard on the haunted heroine. Determined to expose Minos, Zoey drags Ben to the company’s hidden Manhattan headquarters. Despite knowing they’re dealing with an evil organization with obscene wealth, insane strategies, and an insatiable thirst for suffering, the scrappy young heroes barge in without a plan. And this is just the first eyeroll-worthy leap of logic this stupid sequel makes.

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When it comes to horror movies, suspension of disbelief is regularly surrendered with ease. We accept that the sorority sister runs up the stairs instead of outside the door. We agree that slashers can be decapitated but come back for a sequel. We cheer when Jaws gets blown to bits by some dubious MacGyvering because we’re on board for the adventure. Escape Room established a world where a mighty evil corporation could pull off nightmarish mazes that bordered on the impossible. So, we accept that a subway car can dump its rattled riders onto a subterranean bank floor, which leads to a sandy seaside beach, and beyond. However, the first film also established that Zoey and Ben were incredibly clever people. So why is their very first move against their malevolent game masters so deeply dumb?

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions will not justify this pivotal decision beyond trauma. Indeed, trauma is the special seasoning that’s liberally sprinkled over the entire cast of characters. It’s as if physical scars, scowls, and hastily delivered tragic backstories are a solid substitute for character development. In the first film, director Adam Robitel (who also helms this sequel) offered enough time to get a beat on the stock types of the puzzle solvers. So, we swiftly knew to root for the wide-eyed sad girl and the noble veteran (Deborah Ann Woll) and keep an eye on the smug finance bro (Jay Ellis). This time around, the script (by Will Honley, Maria Melnik, and Daniel Tuch) doesn’t even give us the names of this new batch of contestants before one of them is unceremoniously slaughtered. All you need to know is they’ve all played a Minos maze before, so they know the score and to be scared.

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The puzzles themselves are treated with just as little care. Sure, they’re surprising in their settings and full of traps that make for grisly kills (or at least as grisly as you can get with a PG-13 rating). However, there’s no opportunity for the audience to play along. The frantic pacing of the film allows no time for our eyes to explore the frame for clues. Instead, this Scooby Crew hurdles themselves from one wild-guess to the next, setting off boobytraps and reciting what they’re doing in case we’d miss it. “The room is filling with water!” “The tile set off a laser!” “There’s a key!” Lines like this make up much of the dialogue, and are most often hollered at top volume. Forget the screenwriting advice “show, don’t tell.” This frenzied thriller opts for “Scream, don’t show.”

It’s as if Robitel also had a sinister affluent overlord who demanded this puzzle pic finish under 90 minutes or else! To make that deadline, sacrifices must be made. The first to die was any logic about the inciting incident. Next felled would be any attempt at worthwhile character development. So, we’re saddled with hastily sketched wife-guy (Carlito Olivero), drunk priest (Thomas Cocquerel), girl with scar (Indya Moore), and girl with emo-eyeliner (Holland Roden). Even the showcase scares suffer. Creepy settings are barely established before the threat hits. Thus, the resulting deaths feel abrupt and frankly anti-climactic. Yet the real killer of sustained suspense is the dreadful suspicion there can be no winning this game.

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In the first film, Zoey and Ben got out by the skin of their teeth, because they learned Minos doesn’t play fair. Zoey talks endlessly about how Minos won’t let them live to expose its secrets. The Tournament of Champions premise, which thrusts survivors into another deadly game against their will, supports the idea that there can truly be no escape. All that might have been setting up a haunting commentary on trauma, but this movie doesn’t dare get that deep. There’s just no time. Instead, this atmosphere of dread flattens what might have been fun. The movie itself seems to smirk smugly at those who fight to survive.

Are you sure you have the best cell phone plan for your needs? It turns out, if you switch to a prepaid option rather than being tied to a contract, you could be saving huge amounts of money. That’s because while the average US cell contract is a huge $67 a month, there are some amazing pre-paid deals to be found online for a fraction of the price – and which don’t tie you to a contract. 

One of the best of those is Boost Mobile, and today you can get six months of prepaid unlimited talk and text, 2GB LTE Data, and a free SIM for just $50. That’s a 52% discount off the regular price of $104 and works out to less than $8.50 a month. 

Boost Mobile allows you to prepay your six-month phone plan upfront, giving you unlimited talk time and text messages, as well as 2GB a month of high-speed data, with 99% nationwide coverage – all with no annual contracts, no credit checks, no monthly bills, no overage fees, and no roaming charges. You’ll even get your own mobile hotspot included, too. 

You’ll be able to choose to keep your existing number or get a new one, so whether you want to swap your existing plan for a smarter, more affordable choice, or open a second phone line to use for your business (a much-needed bonus while remote working), this is the perfect way to do it.

Perhaps the best part of this deal, aside from freeing yourself from being locked into long, expensive contracts? You’ll be with America’s fastest network, as won at the January 2021 Opensignal Awards in the category USA: 5G User Experience – so you can expect lightning-fast data connections, too. 

Not only does it offer award-winning cell service, but Boost Mobile comes highly rated by its customers, too, with an impressive 5/5 star review score, who also particularly praised the ease of setup. As one recent customer wrote, “​The activation process was seamless and the service has been excellent thus far.” 

Stop overpaying for your cell phone contract today with a Boost Mobile Prepaid Unlimited Talk & Text, 2GB LTE Data + Free SIM, on sale with 52% off right now for $50 (reg. $104). 

Images can make or break a brand. In fact, research shows that 65% of all people are visual learners, while company Facebook pages that post image updates create 100% stronger engagement online. Poor quality pictures reflect the same on you – and none at all? People won’t even remember your page in the first place. 

But, one photography company is changing the game when it comes to stock photos, making stunning photography affordable for everyone, without paying huge sums of money. That business is Scopio Authentic Stock Photography – and right now, we’ve found a Lifetime Subscription to the service, plus $30 back for you to spend in store credit, on sale for just $29.99 (regular price $3480). 

With this lifetime deal, you’ll get unlimited access to an ever-growing library of more than 400,000 high-quality photographs, covering a wide range of editorial topics and current events, which are all royalty-free and available for you to use in eye-catching social media, ads, websites, presentations, merchandise and more. 

What really sets Scopio apart, though – aside from its affordability – is that it specializes in authentic, diverse images, taken by more than 13,000 different photographers around the world, which challenge stereotypes while supporting artists spanning 150 countries. 

It’s one of the many reasons that the female-founded company was even featured in Forbes’ esteemed 30 Under 30 list this year. As the publication wrote this year, “Scopio is a platform that launched in 2016, and aptly named, “scopes” out the world’s greatest photos and videos from the 4 billion pieces of content posted daily on social media.”

Take your website, social media, and personal branding to the next level today with a Scopio Authentic Stock Photography: Lifetime Subscription + $30 Store Credit, on sale today with 99% off, for $29.99 (reg. $3480). 

Investing has never been hotter than this past year, and that’s down to the huge rise of cryptocurrency. There’s said to be more than 100,000 bitcoin millionaires out there (a rise from 15,00 just a year ago), while Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency which started as a joke, experienced a meteoric explosion in value this year – much to the joy of people who had invested earlier for just fractions of cents. 

But how do you know where to make smart cryptocurrency investments? The answer is in learning from the pros – and you can do just that in your own time, from anywhere, with The Intro to Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin Bundle. Even better, today we’ve found the bundle of five different courses, usually $995, on sale for just $19.99 – that works out to less than $4 a course. Now, that’s a smart first crypto investment. 

This bundle includes more than 10 hours of training on all the skills you need to start investing and trading like a pro. Courses like the 4.4/5 rated Getting Started with Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin & More will take you from zero knowledge to having a strong understanding of the fundamentals of crypto and blockchain tech, as well as how to buy it and trading strategies. Then, cement your skills with the 4.3/5 rated Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency Investing Masterclass, where you’ll learn the right times to invest, the best crypto exchanges and more. 

Each course in this bundle is created by SkillSuccess, one of the world’s leading elearning hubs, and home to more than 2000 carefully curated online video courses which can be accessed on the go, via any device, and which has been featured on CNN, Entrepreneur, Mashable, and CNET. Your crypto courses will be taught by experts in their field, including Jason Gandy, a serial entrepreneur and online business expert with an impressive 4.4/5 star instructor rating from previous students, and the 4.6/5 star rated FinTech School, industry leaders in the latest in technology, finance, and crypto. 

Start understanding and investing in crypto today with The Intro to Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin Bundle, on sale with 97% off right now, for $19.95 (regular price $995). 

Mobile games have come a long way – in fact, Sony is set to be expanding its AAA titles into mobile gaming, while some of the most exciting new games of the year happen to be on the App Store, and taking over the small screen. 

The only problem with most mobile games is just that, though: the screen. Using your device’s touchscreen as a controller can seriously let down the gameplay of some otherwise amazing games. But, what if there was an on-the-go controller that could change that? Enter: the Serafim S1, a multi-platform gaming controller that you can use anywhere, and was such a beloved idea that it was successfully funded on Kickstarter to a rave response, smashing its original goals. Today, we’ve found it on sale for just $45.99 – that’s a 34% discount off the regular price of $69. 

Compatible with a massive 10 different platforms, from mobile gaming to consoles, consider the Serafim S1 as your go-to travel companion for gaming on the go. Simply connect via Bluetooth, and you’ll never be without a proper controller, combining a Switch-style setup of two joysticks and 12 buttons (including A/B/X/Y and trigger buttons) with the ability to map it to the virtual buttons on your phone’s screen to create your own, perfect custom controller for any game. 

Finally, you’ll be able to enjoy the full experience – and master – the most popular mobile games like Call of Duty Mobile, PUBGM, League of Legends, and Mario Kart Tour, without sacrificing any gameplay quality. 

Plus, the dedicated Serafim Play app comes with pre-loaded mapped controllers for some of the biggest games out there – so you can simply plug in and play right away. It also supports macro functions, allowing you to record and customize your macros for quick and easy looping, too. 

Change your mobile gaming experience forever with the Serafim S1: Multi-Platform Gaming Controller On the Go, on sale right now with 34% off, for $45.99 (regular price $69). 

They say everyone has a novel inside them – but we think even more of us have an idea for an awesome video game tucked away. What sets pro game developers apart from the rest of us gamers, though, is that they have the skills to turn their ideas into reality. 

Now, you can learn those skills too, in your own time, from anywhere. That’s because we’ve found The Unreal & Unity Game Development for Beginners Bundle, a complete bootcamp, with more than 50 hours of practical training, that will take you from beginner to making your very own games in Unity, on sale for just $29.99 (regular price $1200). With six whole courses included in this epic bundle, that works out to less than $5 a course. 

Ideal even if you’re totally new to game development, by the end of this complete bundle you’ll not only be able to build your own games in game engine Unity, but have an impressive portfolio full of games you’ve made throughout the practical courses – which is not only a fun and memorable way to learn but perfect to show off your skills and impress potential employers if you want to start an exciting new career as a game developer. 

In the 4.6/5 star rated course Unity Android 2021, for example, you’ll learn the fundamental concepts, tools, and functions to build Android mobile games, building seven fully functional mobile games with Unity & C# throughout the course. 

Then, you’ll bring your FPS ideas to life in the 4.9/5 star rated course Develop a First-Person Shooter in Unreal Engine, which will teach you all the integral skills you need for great first-person games, shooting mechanics, animated enemies, and more.

Each course is taught by expert tutors like Raja Biswas, who has taught game development to thousands as the creator of YouTube channel Charger Games and has a highly impressive 4.4/5 instructor rating from his previous students, and the Zenva Academy, a leading online learning hub for programming skills which is trusted by more than 500,000 developers and has earned an equally high 4.4/5 instructor rating from them, too. 

Go from beginner to game developer today with The Unreal & Unity Game Development for Beginners Bundle, on sale with 97% off right now, for $29.99 (reg. $1200). 

Gaming has long been a social activity: the original two-player Pong, yelling about screen watchers in GoldenEye, logging into Battle.Net for Warcraft II, MMOs like Everquest, and even forums for comparing Sims houses. Playing with friends always enhances the quality of the game and even makes losing more fun. So why haven’t gamers had a social media network of their own?

Sure, there are Twitch and Discord, but those aren’t true social networks. Those are focused on streaming and communication. A lot of gaming networking still uses traditional social media like Facebook and Twitter, but those fall short when it comes to features that gamers want. That’s where the folks at PvP. have joined the battle.

Enter PvP

PvP is the first true gamer social media network, and it’s in the early stages of development. They’re looking for investors and users who want to get in on the ground floor of what will be the biggest community for gamers. It will have the best of everything that gamers want: the chance to brag about their big wins, find out the latest gaming news, view the latest eSports matches, check out what’s popular, and coordinate with friends across games and platforms.

Want to find new challengers to test your might? PvP will help you do that. Want to see great clips of other players and showcase your own? PvP has your back. You can even throw down with your favorite Twitch gamers by finding their matches in real-time. This is the social media network founded and led by gamers and designed to be the social media network gamers need.

PvP is leveling up fast

This investment opportunity isn’t just a pipedream, PvP has been in the beta phase and is now prepped to open to the public. They have had more than 125,000 users on their mobile app with twice the average engagement time of other social media mobile apps. PvP predicts massive growth, focusing on the 21 million active gamers in North America, a market worth tens of millions of dollars.

Across the entirety of the possible market, there is $11 billion that more than 500 million possible users are holding onto, waiting to be tapped by PvP. The founders believe that they can obtain two million active users on the network by the end of 2022 and bring in more than $100 million in revenue by 2024. This is every savvy investor’s opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

With rewards for investors who put in as little as $500, PvP is looking to open up investment in this groundbreaking company to the average person. If you missed out on the GME craze and have been perusing the best gaming stocks, investing in PvP could very well be your chance to join something big while it’s still in its early stages.

High-level players

The founders themselves have a deep well of experience in startups, gaming, and investing. CEO and co-founder Phil Stover is the founder and partner in Blue Skies Ventures, a company that invests and advises start-ups in Silicon Beach. CTO and co-founder Chris Gray is the founder of Crave Games, an eSports software solutions company. With decades of experience between them, they’ve built a strong team with deep roots in the gaming community, and they are ready to tap into a huge market with a great product.

The combination of gaming and social media has the chance to become some of the biggest generators of engagements and sales conversions for advertising companies. With millions of potential users who regularly engage and are active in the network, PvP is poised to become the beating heart of the global gaming community.

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Loki Season 1.

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Loki Season 1 did what its predecessors WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier avoided, serving up the big reveal that comics fans had basically been expecting — and that the show had been hinting at throughout its six episodes: Jonathan Majors made his MCU debut as classic Marvel time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror, or at least a Variant of the character known as He Who Remains.

The series also ended this first season by shattering the “Sacred Timeline,” which sets up the upcoming events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and probably a bunch of other Marvel projects as well.

So the question is, now that Thanos is gone, how much of a role will Majors’ character play in the MCU moving forward? We know Jonathan Majors will play Kang in 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Loki has been dropping Easter eggs indicating that Kang might be showing up even sooner than expected.

If you’re not familiar with Kang or why he has the potential to be the next Thanos-level threat to the MCU, we’re here to shed light on this powerful villain and also explain the finale of Loki. These are the topics we’ll be covering here:

• Loki Season Finale Explained
• Who Is He Who Remains/Kang the Conqueror?
• Kang’s Origin
• Kang’s Powers and Abilities
• Kang’s Many Identities
• Kang and the Young Avengers
• Kang the Conqueror Actor Jonathan Majors and Marvel Universe Connections
• Kang in TV and Games

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Loki Season Finale Explained

In the Season 1 finale of Loki, Loki and Sylvie finally make it to the end of time (should that be capitalized?) to confront the mysterious figure behind the TVA. No, not the Time Keepers, who we learned a couple of episodes back were fakes, but the actual figure who has been overseeing the pruning of the Sacred Timeline: He Who Remains.

Majors plays the character as a fun figure, one who perhaps has gone a little bonkers living forever at the end of all time, knowing everything that is going to happen.

Well, to a point. As the episode proceeds, He Who Remains explains his backstory, but also that they are now reaching a moment in the timeline where he will no longer know how things are going to play out — a juncture that will finally free him of the self-imposed prison he has been living in as master of the timeline. And it’s up to Sylvie and Loki to decide what comes next.

But first, about that backstory: He Who Remains explains that it all began with a Variant of himself, a scientist from the 31st century, who discovered that other timelines/realities exist. At first things were friendly as other versions, or Variants of this scientist, began to meet up across different timelines. But then some Variants turned to conquering, and the Multiverse War we learned about in Episode 1 began. In the end, He Who Remains… well, remained. As the winner of the war, he created the TVA to keep other timelines from coming into existence in order to avoid another multiversal conflict.

And so now He Who Remains wants out, and Loki and Sylvie have a choice: Become the new masters of the Sacred Timeline, or kill He Who Remains, which will bring about the multiverse once again and, inevitably, the return of an untold number of He Who Remains/Kangs who will wind up re-starting the war. Loki wants to take over, if only to avoid the inevitable conflict that will result from killing He Who Remains. But Sylvie wants to kill He Who Remains, choosing the chaos of a multiverse — and free will — over all else. After fighting Loki, she kisses him — and then pushes him back through time to the TVA before stabbing He Who Remains, who doesn’t even fight back. We last see Sylvie at the end of time, contemplating her decision as the timeline splinters into an infinite amount of variations — a multiverse.

The finale ends with Loki landing back at the TVA, but he soon realizes that it’s a TVA from a different timeline, because Mobius and Hunter B-15 have no idea who he is. And then he sees it — a statue of He Who Remains, who now looks a lot like Kang from the comics. Is Kang the Conqueror now the master of time (and the TVA)? We’ll surely find out in Season 2, which was revealed in post-credits tease that simply shows TVA paperwork being stamped with the words “Loki will return for Season 2.”

Who Is He Who Remains/Kang the Conqueror?

It’s not easy recapping the convoluted history of Kang the Conqueror. He’s a villain who’s gone by many names and many different motivations in his countless clashes with the Avengers and Fantastic Four. But through it all the basics have stayed the same. Kang is a man who sees himself as the rightful master of the world. Using the power of time travel and the most sophisticated weaponry his future world has to offer, Kang has repeatedly sought to rewrite history to his own whims and ensure his own rise to power.

Kang’s love of time travel is exactly what makes him such a dangerous and seemingly never-ending thorn in humanity’s side. No matter how often he’s defeated, banished or even destroyed utterly, some version of him is always out there, waiting and plotting. In the Loki Season 1 finale, He Who Remains is clearly a Kang Variant, but apparently a more benevolent one than the Kang (or Kangs) we’ll likely get moving forward in the MCU.

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Kang’s Origin

While the first appearance of Kang the Conqueror is featured in 1964’s The Avengers #8, the character technically debuted a year earlier in Fantastic Four #19. We’ll try to summarize Kang’s confusing origin story as simply as possible.

Kang’s real name is Nathaniel Richards. Originally a historical scholar from the 31st century (and possibly a distant descendant of either Reed Richards or Victor von Doom), Nathaniel discovers Doctor Doom’s ancient time travel tech and uses it to travel back to the era of ancient Egypt. Crowning himself “Rama-Tut,” he lords over his new subjects and uses his futuristic tech to make himself seem like a god. That is, until the Fantastic Four show up to end his reign.

After escaping to the 20th century, Rama-Tut meets Doctor Doom and uses Doom’s distinctive armor as inspiration for his next supervillain identity, the Scarlet Centurion. However, he’s again defeated by Earth’s heroes and attempts to return to his own timeline.

This is where Kang the Conqueror is born. Richards accidentally travels forward too far in time, arriving in an era when human civilization has collapsed. As the only person left who understands the advanced but forgotten technology of the 40th century, the newly minted Kang is able to quickly conquer his new timeline and even extend his new empire beyond Earth’s borders. Not content to be ruler of a futuristic empire, Kang begins a recurring game of toying with time and attempting to rewrite history to suit his own whims.

Kang’s Powers and Abilities

As an ordinary human from the 31st century, Kang has no innate superhuman powers. However, he’s a gifted physicist and historian, using his knowledge of science and history to manipulate the timeline and accumulate power. His distinctive green and purple suit of armor (inspired by Doom’s own armor) both enhances Kang’s strength and allows him to survive in whatever inhospitable environments he may find. Kang has a time-ship that allows him to freely travel through the time-stream, and he’s also assembled a vast army comprised of the best warriors from throughout history.

Kang also sometimes wields a ray gun that can sap a person’s strength and willpower, along with various doomsday weapons only a 40th century tyrant could dream of.

Kang also seems to be functionally immortal. Because he’s so fond of abusing the timeline for his own selfish ends, there are countless variations of Nathaniel Richards in existence. No matter how many times Kang is defeated, there’s always another incarnation of the Conqueror ready to continue his crusade.

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Kang’s Many Identities

Kang is every bit as convoluted a character as one would expect from a man whose favorite hobby is manipulating time. But part of what makes Kang such a confusing character is that he’s had so many different names and identities over the years. It doesn’t help that these various characters weren’t all originally conceived as being the same person, so a lot of these connections have been forged after the fact. If you’re familiar with the comic book storytelling term “retcon,” Kang is basically its living embodiment.

As we’ve already covered, Nathaniel Richards uses names like Rama-Tut and the Scarlet Centurion early on in his career as a time-travelling tyrant. But taking up the mantle of Kang isn’t his last identity shake-up.

At some point in his long life, Kang gives up his name and his empire to instead forge an alliance with an advanced alien race known as the Time-Keepers. In exchange for true immortality, Kang agrees to preserve the timeline and ensure the Time-Keepers’ rise to power. At that point he becomes Immortus. Ironically, his younger selves are responsible for much of the damage Immortus is tasked with undoing.

Kang has held other cover identities while masquerading as a 21st century human, including a small-town mayor named Victor Timely and a business tycoon named Mr. Gryphon.

If all this isn’t complicated enough, thanks to time travel these various incarnations of Kang basically coexist alongside each other and sometimes collude or wage war against one another. There’s even an entire team of Kangs known as the Council of Cross-Time Kangs. Picture the Citadel of Ricks in Rick and Morty, but with less alcohol and self-loathing.

Kang and the Young Avengers

There’s another notable incarnation of Kang who may well factor into the MCU at some point. The 2005 series Young Avengers introduces a team of teen heroes modeled after classic Avengers but with very different backgrounds and origin stories. The team’s founder, Iron Lad, isn’t a descendant of Tony Stark, but is actually a teen version of Nathaniel Richards from a splinter timeline. Kang attempted to travel back in time and rescue his younger self from a group of bullies who had left him hospitalized for months. Kang saves himself and gives the young Nathaniel an advanced suit of armor in the hope of hurrying along his transformation from ordinary man to Kang. But instead, young Nathaniel is horrified by his older self and travels back in time to form a new team of Avengers.

Ultimately, this version of Kang is killed and Iron Lad is forced to wipe his own memories and return to the future, restoring the proper timeline. But he leaves behind a copy of his consciousness inside his armor, which fuses with the broken remnants of Vision to form a new version of that iconic Avenger.

Iron Lad is an important Kang offshoot to know, given that Marvel is showing every sign of introducing the Young Avengers in the MCU.

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Kang the Conqueror Actor Jonathan Majors and Marvel Universe Connections

We know Jonathan Majors will be back as Kang in Ant-Man 3, but Kang’s love of time travel and perpetual habit of returning to threaten the Avengers all over again make him perfectly suited to become a recurring antagonist across the MCU. It doesn’t hurt that he has deep connections to so many different Marvel characters and teams. Will he also play some kind of a role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or the reportedly multiverse-focused Spider-Man: No Way Home? Nothing is confirmed yet, but it would seem likely.

As mentioned before, Kang may well be a descendant of Mister Fantastic or Doctor Doom. Both characters have certainly played a key role in his development as a villain. He also has connections to major characters on the cosmic side of the MCU. In the comics, Kang once competed with the Grandmaster for a chance at godlike power, and he attempted to claim the so-called “Celestial Madonna” (better known as Mantis) as his bride.

Decades after it was originally published, Marvel added more layers to the events of Fantastic Four #19 by revealing Nathaniel’s true motivations for travelling back in time and becoming Rama-Tut. He was actually seeking out a young En Sabah Nur, the mutant destined to become Apocalypse, to crown him as his heir. He never succeeded, though Apocalypse turned out to be a chip off the old block in terms of harnessing futuristic technology and seeking to dominate the world.

With Kang now firmly linked to the Fantastic Four, Avengers and X-Men, Marvel forged yet another connection in the 2015 series Uncanny Inhumans. There, Black Bolt gives his son Ahura to be fostered by Kang, seeing the time travelling tyrant as the only safe haven in a world growing steadily more hostile toward the Inhumans.

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Kang in TV and Games

• TV: Given his status as one of the greatest Avengers and Fantastic Four villains, it should come as no surprise Kang has enjoyed a healthy career outside of Marvel’s comics. His first animated TV appearance came way back in 1967’s Fantastic Four animated series, with the episode “Rama-Tut” adapting the events of Fantastic Four #19. Whether as Kang or Rama-Tut, the villain has appeared in numerous other Marvel cartoons like X-Men Evolution and Avengers: United They Stand. He even had a brief cameo as Immortus in an episode of X-Men: The Animated Series. But Kang’s most significant animated appearances have come more recently. He played a recurring role in both Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (voiced by Jonathan Adams) and Avengers Assemble (voiced by Steve Blum). He made his live-action debut in Loki.
• Games: Kang has appeared in F2P games like Marvel: Avengers Alliance and Marvel: Contest of Champions, but his most notable video game appearance so far has been in 2017’s LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2. Kang (voiced by MCU veteran Peter Serafinowicz) serves as the main villain of the game and is also available as a playable character.

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July 14, 2021: This story has been updated with the latest information about Loki.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Halo 2’s announcement trailer influenced the design of a new gameplay feature in Halo Infinite, according to Infinite’s lead multiplayer designer Andrew Witts. Specifically, the bit where Master Chief grabs a BR-55 rifle that’s dispensed from a mechanical wall rack before jumping into space.

In a developer spotlight blog, Witts detailed his background as a game developer and revealed which parts of Halo Infinite’s design he’s most proud of, and how 343 Industries is trying to improve upon previous Halo games.

“If I’m playing multiplayer and I play it for the first time and I’ve never played a map, I don’t know where weapons are spawning,” Witts said. “We wanted to make it a better experience for players, and we invested into what we call Item Spawners. The Item Spawners are assets like Weapon Racks and Equipment Spawners.

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“It’s nothing new for Halo in terms of what players expect, but we wanted to call out where weapons spawn in the world,” he continued.

“We developed these awesome Halo 2-inspired weapon racks, a callback to the Halo 2 announcement trailer where the gun comes out of the wall and Chief grabs it. We put the weapon racks on the walls because we wanted to develop a visual language around scavenging in the game so that players can make split-second decisions around where to find a weapon. Map knowledge is still an important skill to maintain but we wanted to find a way to ease the burden of developing that knowledge by creating assets that pop off the environment enough that you can make quick decisions on what item you want to fight for next.”

Witts also said that the wall-based weapon racks factor into Halo Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer design, allowing for new weapons to be introduced more quickly.

“We wanted it to be possible to spawn a new weapon on weapon racks across all the maps versus needing to wait for that new map to be in the current playlist rotation to come in,” he said.

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Witts also dived into how the development team took inspiration from various Halo levels, including Halo 2’s “Delta Halo” mission, where the UNSC drops heavy ordnance pods during your assault on the Covenant.

“We wanted people to play [Big Team Battle] and see those weapon pods incoming and hear that crunching crash in the ground with a Halo 4 impact but have the excitement of combat of the Halo 2 mission,” Witts said.

Expect to see other eras of Halo’s canon explored through multiplayer, as we recently learned that the first season will be themed around “the heroes of Reach.“

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Halo Infinite is slated for a “holiday 2021 launch,” and Xbox boss Phil Spencer says the team has locked their calendar down to a 3-4 week window for an exact date. Don’t forget to check out what you may have missed from the Halo Infinite multiplayer preview last month.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/grunt for IGN.