El fantástico mundo de Rey Estupendo

Some minor spoilers for Dial of Destiny and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull follow, but nothing involving the main action of either.

After watching Dial of Destiny (which is good; ignore the haters) I went back to rewatch the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Except now they're called the "Young Indiana Jones Adventures" on Disney+. For those who don't recall that far back, in 1992 when the series originally aired, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles had an ancient Indiana Jones (played by George Hall) relating stories about his youth to his children, grandchildren, and anyone who would listen. For the home video release, those episodes were repackaged as two-episode movies and the Old Indy segments were removed. (There's some other weirdness caused by this as well, including one segment that was shot four years after the bulk of the series, to pad out an episode, so the child Indy is suddenly four years older, then back to being a kid in the next episode.) Anyway, I was watching the third episode, the first half of which is about nine year-old Indy (played by a 12 year old) falling in love with the seven year old Princess Sophie, the daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (also played by a 12 year old). The actress, Amalie Alstrup, looked familiar, so I looked her up. She's not. I think she looked like a young Franke Potente might have looked, though.

But in looking up Sophie on an Indiana Jones wiki, I discovered that there's another Sophie, who has been lost in the purge of the Old Indy segments. Indy's daughter in those segments was named Sophie. Sophie lived a normal suburban American life with a couple of kids and a totally normal husband. She was in her late forties, which meant she would have been born sometime during World War II.

We don't get a mention of her or her mother in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (1957), and in Dial of Destiny (1969) when the theme is that Indy is completely alone later in life, there's no explanation of why he's not in touch with his daughter Sophie, who would have been in her mid-twenties, or her mother.

The easy answer is that she's no longer canon, but where's the fun in that?

And there's a couple of mundane possibilities that we can discount. Raiders of the Lost Ark took place in 1936. Mutt Williams was born in 1938, but Indy didn't know about that, so he and Marion had already split up again by 1938 and didn't see each other again until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 1957. She can't be Sophie's mother.

I also think we can discount the notion that Indy had a child and just abandoned her after she was born. He's kind of a scoundrel, but not a deadbeat dad, I don't think. But she's named Sophie, the same as Indy's first love, so either Indy was involved in the naming or there's a ridiculous coincidence afoot.

Instead, I think the answer lies in some more Old Indy stuff. In the episode where Indy relates his childhood love of Princess Sophie (which was returned at least enough that she gave him a locket with her picture to remember him by), he says that he did see her one more time, but doesn't elaborate.

The real Princess Sophie was married and had four children between 1921 and 1929. The last was a girl, also named Sophie. But that can't be Indy's daughter because she's about 15 years too early. Princess Sophie's husband died in 1973, while she lived until 1990. (And Indy was still alive as of 1992, when The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles aired.)

So ... I submit that during World War II, Indy reconnected with Princess Sophie and they had an affair. They parted ways and Indy didn't know Princess Sophie was pregnant with his child, a daughter. Rather than have a scandal, when the baby was born, she had it adopted by some family retainers who took the baby to the States. However, those retainers named the girl Sophie, after her real mother. The reason Indy didn't mention her in 1957 or 1969 is because he didn't know she existed. He wouldn't find out until sometime after the death of Princess Sophie's husband in 1973, when she would feel free to contact Indy to tell him they had a daughter. They don't meet up again or rekindle their romance because Indy is back with Marion and they're both in their early 70s by this point. But Indy does seek out his daughter. He just doesn't tell her that she's actually European royalty out of respect for the reputation of the Princess.

The last entry from the log of the Demeter, they were down to a crew of four, and the captain mentioned that they don't dare take down the sails because they couldn't put them back up. They don't have enough men to perform basic ship functions anymore.

And now they've lost another man with today's log entry.

The voyage of the Demeter has already been a nonstop horror show. Every so often, someone just disappears. At one point they thought someone else was on the ship, but they couldn't find anyone. Imagine the tension of that. There's a crew of however many men were there at the start, and whenever you do a head count, there's just one or two men fewer than there were before. No explanation. If there were bodies, they could at least say something was killing these men. Instead, they're just gone.

"Had I even the secret of one such mind—did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic—I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's brain-knowledge would be as nothing."

John Burdon-Sanderson and David Ferrier were real guys. JBS didn't discover the medical uses of penicillin exactly, but he was one of the people heading in that direction. Farrier did a lot of pioneering work in mapping how the brain controls the body. Unfortunately, because Victorian medical science is a horror show, both were also vivisectionists. That is, they experimented by operating on live animals to see what would happen. This was controversial even before Stoker wrote Dracula. In 1881 Ferrier was the first scientist tried under the 1876 Cruelty to Animals act.

Doctor Strange finds Wanda walking through a peaceful orchard.

WANDA: Ah, Strange, have you come to get me for what happened in Westview?

STRANGE: No, that's in the past. I need information about demons, summoned by a witch to hunt a girl. A girl from another dimension.

WANDA: And how do you know she was from another dimension? STRANGE: I dreamed about her before she came to me. She was with another version of me, who attempted to kill her and steal her power to keep the demon from taking it. I saw my own corpse, Wanda.

WANDA: For those like us, dreams can be a window into the multiverse. I know of this girl you speak of, America Chavez. I, too, have seen her while researching the Darkhold. STRANGE: The Darkhold? The literal book of the damned? You're the one who sent the demons! (Strange throws up a shield.) WANDA: I did not. I only studied the book. Is it not true that in Kamar-Taj, no knowledge is forbidden, only certain practices? I sought only to learn about my destiny as the Scarlet Witch.

STRANGE: The Scarlet Witch is destined to destroy the world!

WANDA: I did destroy the world. My world. Westview. That prophecy has been fulfilled. What I found in my studies was that, in the multiverse, there exist versions of myself who did not lose their family; I don't know how. And a version of myself who embraced all the power of the Scarlet Witch. That version of myself has, by dreamwalking--posessing her alternate selves--taken the body of an alternate version of me, and murdered that universe's Vision. She is seeking to take the children of that Wanda (cut to a clip of Wanda hearing her boys screaming in the end credits scene of Wandavision), but dreamwalking can only be performed for so long before the body dies. She seeks the power of America Chavez to enter that world physically to take the children.

STRANGE: I want to believe you, but how can I know you're not just trying to get close to America to take her powers for yourself? To take the boys for yourself?

WANDA: (shrugs) Because I don't have my boys now. I am alone here. Far from anyone. If I wanted, I could remake the Hex, remake Vision and my boys, and it would hurt no one. I have not. My only desire is to understand my power and keep anyone else from being hurt. Whether you trust me or not is your decision.

STRANGE: Genocide.

In his May 25th journal, Seward reports that he questioned Renfield more fully than he ever had before, cruelly keeping Renfield on the point of his madness. (And that he feels like he crossed a line and he’s keeping the journal in part to record his own behavior.) But, it’s important to note that journalist Nellie Bly went undercover, getting herself committed to an asylum by acting as if she were mad, then, once she was in the asylum, acting her normal self. Her normal behavior was interpreted by the asylum doctors as signs of madness and she was incarcerated for ten days until the newspaper she worked for got her released.  The exposé was published as a book, Ten Days In A Mad-House, in 1887. This is likely something Stoker would have been familiar with. Bly revealed that the treatment of psychiatric patients in an asylum involved beatings, neglect, unsanitary conditions, and spoiled and rotten food. 

Lucy: I’m sorry, Quincey, I can’t marry you. My heart belongs to another.

Quincey: You’d turn me down in favor of Arthur Holmwood?

Lucy: I must.