#michael waldron

I love you, I’m with you, and Agatha x Rio will get their turn.

But Billy is a big deal, he’s headlined Marvel Pride literally every year since its inception, and it was horrific what Multiverse of Madness did to him (going from the “love is for souls not bodies” WandaVision ethos to “two of Marvel’s only queer characters exist exclusively in the imagination of the mentally ill woman we’ve now decided is homicidal and suicidal” 🙃).

He needs this moment. Wiccan x Hulkling (Wiccling), Marvel Pride & yes, Wanda—who was also blatantly character assassinated—they need this moment.

Before Jac Schaeffer has to hand them off to another writer (again).

We shouldn’t be in this position: Where Jac Schaeffer has to join the likes of Allan Heinberg, Anthony Oliveira, Tom King and Steve Orlando as Wanda’s cleanup writer in the MCU—battling Michael Waldron and Sam Raimi the way they have long done battle with misogynistic comics writers, like John Byrne and Brian Michael Bendis. Her colleagues should’ve treated WandaVision as the precious gift it was, not left her an editorial mess to clean up.

But this is where we are. Billy, Tommy & Wanda didn’t deserve to be discarded—they deserved proud legacies as representation for the women, people with mental health struggles, and queer youth who look up to them. So she’s fixing it. Then, she’ll get to the lesbians. Have a little faith and

Let her cook.

The way I got SO EXCITED for a minute thinking this was Loki’s hand holding the TVA card, because it’s his left hand and he has a ring on his left ring finger and WHY DOES LOKI HAVE A WEDDING BAND ON HIS LEFT HAND?!?! OMG DID HE AND SYLVIE GET MARRIED?!?! HAS SHE REALLY BEEN VISITING HIM ALL THIS TIME LIKE WE HOPED?!?! MICHAEL WALDRON HAVE YOU ABUNDANTLY BLESSED US BEYOND WHAT WE COULD ASK FOR OR BELIEVE?!?!

Before I realized it’s far more likely that this is Steve’s hand. 😭

2015:

Joss Whedon (Director, writer and producer: The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

"And the Coulson thing was, I think, a little anomalous just because that really came from the television division, which is sort of considered to be its own subsection of the Marvel universe. As far as the fiction of the movies, Coulson is dead. But I have to say, watching the first one with my kids—I had not watched the first one since it came out—and then watching it with my kids and watching Coulson die but [thinking], “Yeah, but I know that he kind of isn’t,” it did take some of the punch out of it for me. Of course, I spent a lot of time making sure he didn’t. And at the time it seemed inoffensive, as long as it wasn’t referenced in the second movie, which it isn’t."

Mental Floss interview by Dana Schwartz (Apr 15, 2015)

""As far as I'm concerned, in this movie, Coulson's dead," he said. "If you come back in the sequel and say Coulson's alive, it's like putting fucking John Gielgud in the sequel to Arthur. It mattered that he's gone. It's a different world now. And you have to run with that.""

BuzzFeed interview by Adam B. Vary (April 20, 2015)

2016:

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Writers: CATFA, Thor: The Dark World, CATWS, Agent Carter (show), CACW, Infinity War, Endgame; Producers: Agent Carter (show), Endgame)

"Anything about the registration act won't be as much of a big deal but at the end of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D,," we now have the fish oil that will clearly be awakening Inhumans… MARKUS: It sounds like a good show that I should watch. I have to confess, having come here, I've seen no TV since I got here in April. One, I haven't seen any of "Game of Thrones," and I haven't seen the vast majority of this season of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D,." There's fish oil? McFEELY: Is there really fish oil? What are you talking about? What happens is… McFEELY: Perhaps we shouldn't spend this valuable time [crosstalk] doing that."

Collider interview by Matt Goldberg (Mar 8, 2016)

2018:

Jed Whedon and Jeff Bell (Writers and showrunners: AoS)

"ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys had been hinting at possibly incorporating the Infinity War ending. Why didn’t we see that in the finale? JED WHEDON: There’s some of that we can’t answer. JEFF BELL: Part of what happened was, they changed the release date. WHEDON: Yeah. BELL: And we move at a different schedule than they do and so suddenly everything was a week earlier, and so we had to make some adjustments and that’s how we end up with our story. WHEDON: Right. And the other thing is that there’s certain story points that are so — there would really be no way for us to address it and keep our show intact. Given that there’s another movie coming out, and there’s gonna be constant repercussions of their universe, so what we felt was that the safe play for our story, and for the integrity of our universe, was to operate outside of it.

Continuing with what Joss said in 2015:

"WHEDON: What we do think is that there’s an emotional impact with everything that happened this season and we would never wanna undercut that. That being said, our show’s founded on a man who had been killed in the movies, and Clark Gregg is the foundation upon which our show is built. So, it’s a good question and one we’ll hopefully get to answer by having another season."

Entertainment Weekly interview by Natalie Abrams (May 18, 2018)

2019:

The final episodes of Season 5 take place during the events of Infinity War (2 days in the MCU). Season 6 jumps one year into the future, without showing or explaining the consequences of the movie's events. This created the largest chronological discrepancy between the series and the MCU.

"ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Last season we got a reference to the events in Avengers: Infinity War, but there wasn’t an MCU reference in the premiere. Can we expect any references or nods to Infinity War or Endgame in the new season? JED WHEDON: We are pre-Endgame. That means the season is taking place during the years with the vanished. Does that have any bearing on the story at all? JEFF BELL: We’re actually pre-Snap. WHEDON: For the multiple reasons, we had to do that. One of the main ones being that we were not positive when season 6 would air. We were pretty sure it was going to be in the summer, but if they moved us up to January and we had tied into in any way, it would’ve destroyed everything. So the safest course of action for all parties involved was for us to stay pre-Snap."

Entertainment Weekly interview by Chancellor Agard (May 10, 2019)

Kevin Feige (You know who he is)

“After ‘Endgame,’ thinking, ‘What can we do next?’” said Feige. “Disney+ is going to give us this opportunity to tell even deeper stories with characters you already know and love…in a new type of cinematic way that we haven’t done before. We’ve already started shooting two of them and they’re very, very special.” He added, “And it all, for the first time, will interlink. So, the MCU will be on your TV screen at home on Disney+ and interconnect with the movies and go back and forth. It’s exciting to expand the MCU into even bigger and better heights.”

The Playlist, based on the CCXP presentation in Brazil (December 9, 2019)

2021:

Michael Waldron (Writer and producer: Loki)

"Asked if he toyed with having Coulson’s resurrection mentioned in Loki, Waldron replied, “No, look, that is one other tendril of the multiverse, perhaps. I think just seeing mention of Coulson again, the very fact that it raises those questions, is exciting.”"

Fandom interview by Eric Goldman (Jun 11, 2021)

2023:

Kevin Feige

"On the Multiverse note, we recognize that there are stories—movies and series-that are canonical to Marvel but were created by different storytellers during different periods of Marvel’s history. The timeline presented in this book is specific to the MCU’s Sacred Timeline through Phase 4. But, as we move forward and dive deeper into the Multiverse Saga, you never know when timelines may just crash or converge (hint, hint/spoiler alert)."

Marvel Studios’ The Marvel Cinematic Universe - An Official Timeline foreword

The events of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are not included in the book, and Coulson's story ends with his death in The Avengers.

2024:

Brad Winderbaum (Head of Streaming, Television and Animation)

"Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we’re like, “We should just do it. Let’s do it.” It was also spurred by the redevelopment of Daredevil: Born Again, once we started to really lean into some of the mythology and backstory that was established in those Netflix shows. I was asked about this during the press for Echo, and I realized, “Oh, it’s not just assumed. People have an active interest and they want confirmation.” So we were able to do it fairly quickly, and it’s interesting that the service of Disney+ actually became the statement just by rearranging those tiles. That’s our medium to define the canon now, which is wild to think about."

The Hollywood Reporter interview by Brian Davids (March 18, 2024)

AoS is not part of the MCU timeline on Disney+.

"It's exciting for me to think about how to square those ABC shows with the canon. That to me, if you know me and the way my brain works, is fun territory to imagine."

ScreenRant interview by Joe Deckelmeier & Tatiana Hullender (Dec 20, 2024)

2025:

Chloe Bennet ("Daisy Johnson/Quake" in AoS)

"We are not considered canon."

Dragon Con panel

Simply put:

AoS is part of this -

But not this -

Like, not to generalize all Sylvie stans, but when you ask these people what their favorite thing about Sylvie is it’s always “She’s a Loki too! She’s a female Loki and I just love my lil sassy snek snek woman for that! :3” (Hence why she eats up all of FemLoki and Lady Loki’s tags. It sucks so much looking for genderfluid Loki art.) this tells me, if Waldron didn’t slap the Loki label on her, she wouldn’t be nearly as adored, and people would see her as the poorly written character she actually is...

So like. I don't know if this is entirely the case. It may be for a couple (and I don't personally interact with a lot of Sylvie content on here), but from what I have seen from them and other sites, I think her being a Loki is not why they like her so much

What I have personally seen is that they like Sylvie because she's very independent. She's snarky and speaks her mind, and on the surface, this can make her a fun character. I remember when I was originally watching the show when it aired, and I liked her, too. Her being a "female Loki" could help contribute to that, since women being outspoken is a character trait that's really only showed up in the past 30 years or so, like majority of films and shows are still led by men, but I do not wholly believe that is the prime reason for liking her so much

I point as well to season 2, where a lot of that behavior is toned down. Sylvie is outspoken as always, but it's to the point that it is getting in the way of the rest of the characters making any progress. She doesn't actively help Loki and co, just constantly mocking them and thinking she's in the right. And maybe that would have been fine for her character if they gave her anything else to do, but that was literally all she did, and it got so grating so fast. As much as I dislike Kate Herron for her handling of Loki's character, at least she bothered to give Sylvie a bit more of a personality. It is so incredibly obvious that s2 had almost 0 women on production (as Sylvie stans themselves have pointed out). From what I have observed from them, many of them were not wholly happy with the way she was treated, which further adds to my belief that it isn't just her being a Loki that they love so much

I also feel very disheartened when I look for femme!Loki or genderfluid Loki content and most of it is just her, and I think you are right when you say that was she not listed as a "female Loki", it would be easier to find content of Loki being openly genderfluid. Instead of "oh, people only like her bc she's Loki", I think it is more of a case of people liking her less because Waldron got to call all the shots and not many women were involved in producing/writing the show (in the sense of that applying to s1 as well)