The Avengers

"The Avengers (2012)"

Starring in order of appearance: Samuel Fucking L Jackson, Clark "Who?" Gregg, Cobie "How I Met Who?" Smulders, Stellan "Bootstrap" Skarsgard, Matt Damon's ill advised replacement for Jason Bourne, Tom "Sorry" Hiddleston, ScarJo, Mark "Not Edward Norton" Ruffalo, Tony Stark (as Robert Downey Jr.), Gwenyth "I will be more than just a decorative prop this time, I swear!" Paltrow, the voice of Paul Bettany, and two pretty, muscled guys named Chris.

Directed by Joss Whedon, who Chrissy tells me is the "genius" behind something called "Firefly". ["Not funny" - Chris]

When Chrissy and I decided to start recapping movies in the MCU, we had a discussion about which ones we should do (because obviously we're not crazy enough to try to tackle ALL of them and I don't think there's enough drugs in the world that would make "Guardians of the Galaxy" make sense to me). I thought we should focus on the ones where all the threads really came together, starting with the first "Avengers", and see how many we wanted to cover from there. Chrissy thought we should start with "Thor". I convinced her that was stupid and we should do it my way.

Chrissy: That's not what...[grabs keyboard]

This is Chris. Let me explain what really happened. I agreed we could start with "The Avengers" (five movies into the series) as long as she could answer a few questions about the movies that came before it. Think of it as a sort of superhero proficiency test. She did fine with "Iron Man", although she was under the impression that all three movies came out before this because her memory of what things happen in what order is terrible. "Captain America" she was a little shakier with, but she understood the one movie that came out before this, so I gave her a pass. Then I started asking about "Thor" and her answers suggested that not only had she not even SEEN either of the movies to date, but her entire understanding of Norse mythology in general stems from a vague memory of a romance novel she once read.

Diandra: Oh, come on. It wasn't that bad.
Chrissy: I asked you who Frigga was. When I showed you a picture from the movie you said, and I quote, "Rene Russo was in that?"
Diandra: In my defense, I think we both know I'm not watching the "Thor" movies for the PLOTS.

Which brings me to my next point. The one time she showed a glimmer of actual understanding was when I explained that Heimdall is the guardian of the bifrost "rainbow" bridge between worlds. Her blank stare suddenly cracked and she said "oh! Idris Elba!" and then made a growling noise. Basically, I decided that - while it might be entertaining to watch her fumble through the recap - it would probably be better to just lump it with "Captain America". Skip the first movie, see how this one goes and evaluate whether I want to hold her hand through "Winter Soldier" and "Dark World" later.

This is Diandra again. I believe I have pointed out before that I am a SELECTIVE nerd. Most of my understanding of comic books falls on the DC side (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman...I would say Green Arrow, but I basically watch that show for shirtless Stephen Amell). Before "Iron Man" came out my entire sum knowledge of the Marvel universe was The X-Men, Spiderman and the Hulk. I've been learning all these other people as we go.

Chrissy: Or not learning, apparently.
Diandra: Hey. Learning does not necessarily mean understanding.

Basically, I probably understand Iron Man best because he's a less brooding Bruce Wayne. And Chrissy's point about Norse mythology is basically right. My entire understanding of any mythology probably harkens back to Greek mythology, which is why when she asked me who Odin is I said "Zeus, basically".

Chrissy: And the expression "by Odin's balls".
Diandra: Yeah, that...was the romance novel. Everything was either by Odin's balls or by Thor's hammer.
Chrissy: Which we have established in a previous recap can totally be a euphemism for another part of the male anatomy.
Diandra: Just about anything in nature can be a euphemism for a penis. Just ask a Freudian.
Chrissy: A penis or a deep seated desire to have sex with one's mother.
Diandra: Yeah. He had issues.

I think this was from a Torchwood recap, but I have no idea.

So previously in the mind-bogglingly large canon that is the Marvel universe...Tony Stark was injured in Afghanistan and the only way the doctor was able to fix him was via a questionable surgery wiring a big shiny reactor thing into his chest, which he built a suit of armor around and started flying around saving people like Batman but with more snark.

Chrissy: Also, his non-blonde secondary assistant turned out to be Black Widow.
Diandra: She was introduced that far back?
Chrissy: Don't make me regret starting the recaps here.

Back in WWII some brilliant person got the idea of creating a top secret government program to make supersoldiers via questionable injections. Steve Rogers fought for a while before crashing into some ice where he stayed until being thawed, like, a year ago. WAY before any of that, some aliens from a planet called "Asgard" visited Earth and were mistaken by the idiot ancient humans as gods. It went right to their heads. More recently, prince Thor was banished to Earth for some reason and needed to prove himself worthy to use the god hammer again, becoming basically a Scandinavian Superman with a smarter Lois Lane.

Chrissy: And meanwhile, his brother Loki killed his real father in order to try to gain favor with his adopted father Odin by destroying his entire home planet. Thor stopped him, but destroyed the bridge and Loki fell into an abyss, but still seemed to be communicating to Stellan Skarsgard, unseen, in the post credit scene.
Diandra: .........really?
Chrissy: Just keep going.
Diandra: Am I going to need to drink while I'm doing this recap?
Chrissy: No, but I might.

So we open on a glowing blue box, which somebody the closed captioning identifies as "The Other" says is "The Tesseract".

Chrissy: And which was last seen falling out of the plane Captain America crashed and being recovered from the ocean floor by Tony Stark's dad. Who was also the guy who designed Steve's shield.
Diandra: Is the whole recap going to be like this?
Chrissy: I hope not.
Diandra: On the plus side, I probably don't need to consult Wikipedia.
Chrissy: You know I'm not actually an expert here, right? I just actually remember seeing these movies. Also, I have played a lot of Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Diandra: Yeah, you introduced me to that, remember? I'm not sure how that was supposed to help.
Chrissy: Try reading the character descriptions.
Diandra: I did. It lists the Chiwetel Ejiofor character from "Doctor Strange" as a villain, which would have alarmed me as I'm pretty sure I couldn't possibly have forgotten about THAT yet, except when I asked you you were just as confused as I was.
Chrissy: Yeah, they're not adhering to the comics exactly, it turns out. Although I think that might have been mentioned briefly at the end.
Diandra: So Ragnarok won't be a cyborg in the next "Thor"?
Chrissy: You have Ragnarok as a game character?
Diandra: For some reason my roster is mostly villains and duplicate versions of characters (because I MUST have two versions of Captain America and four variations on Spider Man apparently).
Chrissy: FOUR?
Diandra: Two of them are women.

He says it has awakened on a human world, where the stupid ape creatures would really like to harness its power. Lucky for...whoever...they have no idea how to use it. A glowing scepter is handed to some faceless person identified as an "ally" ready to assume a leadership of the Chitauri. I can already see this recap is going to test the limits of spell check. "The world will be his, the universe yours," he concludes. The humans are totally fucked.

Back on Earth, a helicopter flies over a NASA/Shield facility, barking evacuation orders through a megaphone. This is NOT a drill. The helicopter lands near a guy who looks like Agent Smith from the Matrix.

Chrissy: Sigh. Agent Coulson.
Diandra: Oh. Should I recognize him?
Chrissy: Agent who revealed Black Widow's identity and also found Thor's hammer.
Diandra: Oh! Right. I remember him.

Nick Fury gets out of the helicopter and asks Coulson how bad it is. Coulson says they don't know, which is why they're currently in the process of shitting bricks.

They go inside, where Coulson exposits that Stellan - Dr. Selvig - was "running an energy surge from the Tesseract" about four hours ago. Fury says he wasn't authorized to test it yet. Coulson says he WASN'T. It just kind of...turned itself on when he wasn't even in the room. The energy levels coming from it are still climbing. When efforts to shut it down failed he called for an emergency evacuation. Fury asks how long the evac will take. Coulson says they'll be clear within a half hour. Fury orders him to make it quicker. Coulson probably mentally flips him a double bird while slinking away.

The woman trailing after Fury notes that evacuation may be a pointless exercise because if they can't control the Tesseract there may not be ANY safe distance from it. Fury tells her to make sure the "phase two prototypes are shipped out". She asks if that's really a priority right now. He says until the world ends they have to assume everything will continue as normal and act accordingly. "Yes, sir," she grumbles and goes to follow his instructions.

Inside some main lab room, Fury asks Selvig what is going on. He says the Tesseract is "misbehaving". Somebody tries to touch some sort of probe to a thing that looks like a giant version of Iron Man's reactor and gets zapped. Fury asks if he pulled the plug then. Selvig points out the futility in that since it basically IS an energy source. Any time they turn off the power "she" just turns it on again. Fury reminds him that they have prepared for the eventuality that they would need to harvest energy from space. Selvig says yeah, but that's still in hypothetical stages. He doesn't have an actual harness yet. Also, the Tesseract is throwing off low-level gamma radiation. Fury asks where Agent Barton is. Selvig snorts and says "The Hawk" is up in his "nest".

This serves as an introduction to the most useless of the Avengers: Hawkeye, who is, in fact, up in the rafters brooding. Fury calls him down via radio and chastises him for not keeping an eye on things like he assigned him to do. Hawk says he does his best spying from a distance.

Chrissy: Though he might get distracted if a rodent runs past.

Fury asks if he's seen anything that would set off the Tesseract. Like...what, exactly? Back on the main floor, everyone runs around as the energy level spikes again. Hawk says nobody has come or gone and Selvig hasn't contacted anyone. So any tampering couldn't have been done "at this end." Fury lights on this last part. Hawk is like 'well, yeah, it's basically a wormhole through space, isn't it?' There's a loud rumbling that shakes the entire building and the Tesseract sparks and spits. And then it shoots a beam of energy at the other end of the facility, creates a small explosion and settles back, leaving a sparking lump on a platform. The lump turns out to be Loki, holding the same glowing staff we saw in the opening. Fury yells at him to put down the spear. Loki looks at it like he just realized he's holding it and shoots a ball of energy in Fury's general direction. It misses by a mile but that seems to only be because he was aiming at an important character. Amid gunfire from the guards he lunges around killing every red shirt in the immediate vicinity...

Chrissy: Oh, dear god, we're mixing fandoms again.
Diandra: Hey, redshirt jokes work in ANY fandom.

He shoots a few more fireballs while the hail of bullets the guards are firing seem to just bounce right off him. Once everyone is on the ground, he approaches Hawk, who gets up and makes a pitiful effort to fend him off. Loki touches the spear to his chest and his eyes go black for a second before going back to normal. Hawk puts his gun away and stares at him blankly like 'awaiting orders, master.' Loki goes to repeat this procedure on a guard while Fury steals the glowing blue cube and tries to make a break for it. Loki politely asks him to not do that because he still needs it.

Chrissy: Oh, well. You probably just killed about a dozen men and did who knows what to those two guys, but as long as you asked nicely.
Diandra: So British.

Fury says this doesn't have to get any "messier" than it already has. Loki says yeah it does. Then he introduces himself for anyone who didn't see the movie he was introduced in and are just seeing him for the first time now. "I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose." Selvig perks up from where he was checking on some of his people and the exposition fairy jabs him in the ass with her wand, forcing him to blurt that Loki is the brother of Thor. Loki glares at him like 'I'm still holding the spear. You wanna go?'

Fury says the humans have no quarrel with the Asgardians. Loki sasses back that an "ant" has no quarrel with a "boot" either. But he brings "glad tidings" of "a world made free." Fury warily asks what they're supposed to be "freed" from. "Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that in your heart, you will know peace."

Chrissy: Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Ignorance is strength.
Diandra: Yeah, close enough.

He touches the spear to Selvig's chest and I'm really tempted to compare this alien mind control thing he's doing to the black oil virus thing of "The X-Files". Fury grumbles that Loki's idea of "peace" seems closer to "the other thing". Ever the master of eloquence, isn't he? Hawk informs Loki - who he now calls "sir" - that Fury is just stalling until the place blows and they are buried under a good hundred feet of rock. Selvig announces that's exactly what will happen because the portal is collapsing in on itself and they have about two minutes. Fury smirks at Loki like 'yeah, motherfucker, that's what happens when you mess with my crazy black ass.' Hawk pulls his gun and shoots Fury, then grabs the case and follows Loki out along with the other mind-wiped minions. And there's a moment where Loki kind of stumbles and the guard minion puts a hand on his back to make sure he's okay. Combined with the fact that Loki has been sweaty and looking like he has dark bruises under both eyes this whole scene gives a somewhat altered possible context that I didn't notice the first time around.

Chrissy: I think we can safely assume you didn't notice ANYTHING the first time around.
Diandra: Bite me, Blondie.

They go out to a parking garage where the woman Fury was talking to is waiting and Hawk tells her that they are commandeering some vehicles. She asks who the hell the guy in the funny looking clothes is who is climbing into the back of a truck. Hawk just shrugs like 'they don't tell me anything either'. Her walkie bursts to life and Fury barks that Agent Barton has been turned. Her name is apparently Hill, by the way. Hawk responds by shooting at her and she ducks behind a wall and shoots impotently at the truck as Hawk drives it away.

Inside the lab, Fury is still yelling for somebody to get them because they have the Tesseract. He stumbles out of the room while things fly around behind him. He and Coulson and several other faceless redshirts start running away from the imploding lab.

Hill jumps into another truck and joins several other vehicles in a high speed chase. They go into a tunnel and Loki shoots a blue fireball that flips the car in front. And then Hill somehow gets in front of them and turns her car backward so Hawk is pushing her. They both drive one handed so they can use the other hand to shoot at each other.

Fury jumps back into his helicopter and it takes off just before the ground beneath it cracks. We pan up as the building and everything within a city block around it blows and collapses into a sinkhole.

Hill's truck is knocked aside and she chases after Hawk until the destruction reaches the tunnel, burying her in rock.

Hawk's truck emerges from the end of the tunnel level with Fury's helicopter and he takes up the effort, getting in a few bullets before Loki blasts the tail of the helicopter. Fury manages to jump out before it crashes and keeps shooting at the truck until it's out of range. Coulson comes over the radio to ask if he's okay. Fury grumbles that they have the Tesseract. He asks after Hill. She crawls out of her truck as she says she's fine, but she doesn't know how many survived that.

Chrissy: All the ones with names in the credits.
Diandra: Yep. So we're fine.

Fury orders her to get every available hand searching for the briefcase. Then he orders Coulson back to base. He declares this a "level seven." "As of right now, we are at war." Oh, come on now. Don't you think that's a wee bit hyperbolic?

Quick smash to the title card and then we're right back to a train running past an abandoned building somewhere. Inside, a bunch of thugs surround Black Widow, who is tied to a chair. They are all speaking Russian and the thugs are demanding to know who she works for.

Chrissy: Write this down: E-M-E-T-I-B. Now reverse it.
Diandra: Oh, good. You got the reference.

One thug tips her chair backward so she's dangling over the gaping nothingness these buildings always seem to have for some reason as the head goon asks if she's working for "Lamerntov", who thinks they have to send their cargo through him for some reason. She takes a few breaths, tries not to panic and says she thought "General Solohob" was in charge of the exports. Is any of this actually important or are we just establishing characters via throwaway exposition?

Chrissy: Yes.

The leader says her information is outdated and bemoans the fact that the famous Black Widow turns out to be little more than a pretty face. She says oh, you think I'm pretty? Thanks. Leader rambles about the general and tanks as he goes to grab a pair of pliers. One of his goons grabs her face and holds her mouth open a bit prematurely. Because we needed to make the "Alias" pilot parallel more obvious for the idiots in the back. They all freeze as the other goons' phone rings. He answers and says whoever is on the other end is calling for HER. The leader grabs the phone and starts to rant at them in Russian. Coulson's voice answers in English that they know exactly where he is and he should put the woman on the phone before they blow the place.

The leader jams the phone between her ear and shoulder and, before she can acknowledge that she's on the line, Coulson says they need her to come in. "Are you kidding," she says calmly. "I'm WORKING." She says she's in the middle of an interrogation and this idiot here is singing like a fucking canary. The leader looks at his goons like I AM NOT. WHAT THE HELL? Coulson calls her by name - Natasha - and says "Barton's been compromised." She gets a look like 'well, why didn't you say so?' "Let me put you on hold," she says. Then she kicks the goon who reaches for the phone, headbutts him and proceeds to beat the shit out of all three guys WHILE STILL TIED TO THE CHAIR.

Chrissy: Yeah, screw the "Alias" reference. She could mop the floor with Sydney Bristow.
Diandra: And many guys would pay to watch that.
Chrissy: Hell, I'D watch that.

We briefly cut to Coulson, who is patiently listening to the grunting, yelping and thudding noises coming down the line like 'all her hold music sounds the same'. Natasha shatters the chair and starts beating one of the guys with a leg. Then she does a cool move where she leaps at him, wrapping her legs around his neck and flipping him before landing back on her feet. She finishes by tying a chain to the leader's leg and shoving him over the gaping hole in the floor they were threatening to toss her in. Then she picks up the phone and her shoes like 'thank you for holding, what can I do for you today?' You know...this series is very male-heavy, but their token women are pretty awesome.

We see the screen Coulson is looking at - showing profile information on Clint "Hawkeye" Barton and Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff - as he verifies that Hawk is still alive, but they don't know where he is. He says they'll fill her in once she gets to base, but they need her to talk to "the big guy" first. Natasha grumbles that Tony Stark trusts her only as far as he can throw her. Which, you know, would be a lot further if he could do it BEFORE she broke both of his arms. Coulson is like 'yeaaaaahhh, I didn't mean Stark. And frankly it's alarming that you think I would refer to him as "the big guy".'

Chrissy: Please don't EVER do that in his presence. His ego is big enough.

Somewhere in India, a little girl runs through overcrowded streets into a house where a woman yells at her to go away because there is a "sickness" here that she can catch. Mark Ruffalo - who I think was just swapped in for Bruce "Hulk" Banner in this movie - barely glances up from the sink he's washing his hands in. The little girl babbles that she needs a doctor because her dad won't wake up. Bruce comes over and tells her to slow down and tell him what's wrong with her dad. He points to the kids he's been treating and asks if he's like them. She holds up a wad of money and says "please."

He follows her out to an empty shack. She runs straight through it and out the window on the far wall. Bruce sighs and grumbles that he should have taken the money up front. Instead of a bunch of guys jumping him right there, as you would expect with this set up, Natasha comes out from a corner and notes that he chose an odd place to live if he's avoiding "stress". He says it's not about avoiding stress. She says oh? So how does one prevent oneself from turning into a giant green killing machine? Yoga? Bruce notes that they are currently at the edge of the city and, as she is obviously smart, she probably has people surrounding the building already. She says no, it's just the two of them. The Exposition Fairy whaps Bruce in the face and he asks if that little actress friend of hers is a spy then. "They start that young?" Natasha instinctively answers that SHE did, so... Bruce asks who she is, exactly. She gives her name. For the people who couldn't read Coulson's screen in the last scene. Bruce asks if she's here to kill him. Because that is unlikely to go well. She says no, she's here on behalf of SHIELD. He asks how THEY found him. She says they never lost him. In fact, they've been monitoring him for a while because Fury trusts him for god knows what reason. They need him to come in. Bruce asks what happens if he refuses. "I'll persuade you," she says suggestively.

Chrissy: Yeah, we have a kick ass woman who can beat up three guys with her hands LITERALLY TIED BEHIND HER BACK, but we're going to suggest we use her to woo men with the power of her vagina.
Diandra: Well...men ARE usually that easy.

Bruce is like yeah, um...what if the big green monster me says no too? Natasha says he's gone a whole year without an "incident" and he can't break the streak now. She says they're facing a "potential global catastrophe" right now and shows him a picture of the Tesseract, which she says has the energy to wipe out the entire planet. Bruce asks what Fury expects him to do with it. Swallow it? She says no, his job is to find it because it emits a low level gamma ray signature that's too weak for them to trace, but they think he could find a way. Bruce concludes that Fury wants Banner, then, not the Hulk. But he still thinks Fury just wants to put him in a cage or something. Natasha says no, he wouldn't do that. Bruce bangs on the table and yells at her to STOP LYING. She leaps back and pulls her gun on him. He apologizes that he was just testing her there to see what she would do. He suggests they do this the "easy way" and she put the gun down before his split personality decides to do something crazy. She puts a hand to her ear and orders the men outside to stand down. Bruce is like 'yeah...but we're totally alone, right?'

Some...headquarters...or something...Fury is talking to some people on video screens who are telling him that he is in over his head. Specifically, "dealing with forces you can't control". Fury grumbles that war isn't exactly about "control". The man he identifies as "councilman" - who is obviously the now late Powers Boothe even if he is just a distinctive voice coming out of a shadowy figure - asks if he really thinks Asgard is declaring war on the planet. Fury says no, not ALL of Asgard. Probably just Loki. Well, that's not exactly a war then, is it? A councilwoman on another screen says he can't be working ALONE and asks after "the other one". You know, the pretty blond guy with the hammer and the muscles.

Chrissy: Oy.
Diandra: What?

Fury says according to their intelligence, the only thing Thor poses a threat to is Earth women's ovaries, which have a strange tendency to explode upon him removing his shirt.

Chrissy: I'm going to have to hose you down when he comes on screen, aren't I?
Diandra: Oh, like YOU'RE going to be above drooling over him.

Fury says he's "worlds away" right now, so they can't depend on him for help either. Councilman Boothe says he should be focusing on "Phase 2" then.

Chrissy: Gather the Osterhagen keys.
Diandra: Hahaha...no.

Fury says Phase 2 isn't ready yet. They need a response team NOW. The councilman says yeah, well, The Avengers Initiative was shut down. They've seen this list of his and are concerned that he's so determined to hand the fate of the human race over to a handful of "freaks". Fury sighs that that's NOT what he's doing. And sure, these people are lone wolf types and some of them are probably more than a little unhinged, but he thinks he can mold them into the perfect response team. "War isn't won by sentiment, Director," says the councilman, possibly reading off a fortune cookie. Fury says no, it's won by soldiers.

Cue Steve "Captain America" Rogers, who is beating the shit out of a punching bag at a gym and having flashbacks of his first movie, which, yes, did apparently feature the Tesseract. He knocks the bag straight off the chain and watches it hit the wall and spill sand everywhere. He goes to get another one of the half dozen or so backup bags he has lined up and starts over. Fury shows up and notes that he's having trouble sleeping because it's zero dark thirty right now. Steve notes that he slept for 70 years so...he's good. Fury thinks he should be out living it up. Steve grumbles that the world was at war when he went into hibernation and he comes out to find out that they won, but at what cost? Also, there have been, like, five more wars since. Fury channels Bush to note that they have "made some mistakes" over the years. Some very recently. And if you think this is bad, buckle up because the next few years are going to get REALLY nasty and SHIT WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS AGAIN?

Chrissy: It's like a black hole. You can't escape it.
Diandra: Superhero stuff, more than ANYTHING ELSE, is supposed to be an escape.
Chrissy: Yeah, well. It can't exist in a total vacuum. Just...try to keep it at a minimum. I promise if it gets bad I'll start slapping you every time you start wandering down that road.
Diandra: What does it say about our friendship that I am actually grateful for that?
Chrissy: It says we are dangerously close to me charging you for professional services.

Steve asks if Fury is here with a mission. Fury says yep and hands him a folder with information on the Tesseract, which Steve identifies as "HYDRA's secret weapon". Fury reminds the audience that Tony Stark's dad found it in the ocean when he found Steve. He hoped it would be the Holy Grail of unlimited sustainable energy. You know, something the planet could USE. Steve asks who took it. Fury says his name is Loki and he's "not from around here". He says the world has gotten very strange since Steve went into hibernation and they're going to need to do a LOT of catching up if he wants to join this mission. "At this point, I doubt anything could surprise me," Steve grumbles. Fury bets him ten dollars he'll be proven wrong about that. He watches Steve pick up one of the punching backs like it's full of dirty laundry and carry it toward the door. He asks if Steve can tell them anything about the Tesseract. Steve growls yeah, they should have left it in the ocean.

This segues us to Tony using his Iron Man suit like scuba gear to repair something underwater. He jets up out of the water, flying past a boat and zips through downtown New York. He announces that they're good to go and "the rest is up to you." Pepper's voice comes over the com link to verify that he disconnected the transmission lines. "Are we off the grid?"

Chrissy: Was the conscious uncoupling successful?
Diandra: Just had to go there, didn't you?
Chrissy: Yes.

Tony says yep, Stark Towers is now entirely running on self- sustainable clean energy. Pepper says yeah, well...that's assuming the arc reactor actually does what it's supposed to. She throws a switch and Tony flies around a corner just as the tower lights up in the distance. He marvels that it looks "like Christmas, but with more me."

Chrissy: Which reminds me, can you maybe get me an actual present this year instead of your usual wrapping a bow around your dick and inviting me to sit on Santa's lap?

Pepper starts talking about press conferences and going to DC to talk about new buildings and Tony grumbles that she needs to learn to just enjoy the MOMENT. She drops into her best seductive voice and invites him to come inside and she'll get right on that. As he's landing, JARVIS - his sassy British automated butler - announces that Coulson is calling. Tony says he's not in. A machine follows him along a path as he walks inside, taking his suit off like an assembly line in reverse. JARVIS says yeah, um...he's being really insistent. Tony is like 'seriously, I have practically guaranteed sex waiting for me inside. TELL HIM TO CALL BACK LATER.'

He finds Pepper fretting over some computer display. She says the levels SEEM to be holding so far. He brags that OF COURSE they are because everything he does is awesome. Oh, and "how does it feel to be a genius?" He claims this whole thing was her idea. She is apparently a good little demure woman as she scoffs that it really wasn't HER, it was the technology in his chest. And? He insists she give herself 12% of the credit. She says wait...what? He says well...fifteen maybe. She starts walking away like 'you will be "enjoying the moment" by yourself again tonight. As usual.' He protests that he DID do all the heavy lifting. He continues to babble about how that little "snafu" with the elevator earlier was totally her fault and they are never having sex again, are they? She pours two glasses of champagne and confirms that he is totally going to pay for that, one way or another. He offers to put her name on the next building. JARVIS interrupts again to warn that somebody is overriding his protocols just before Coulson's voice shouts that THEY NEED TO TALK RIGHT NOW. Tony picks up his phone, which is already on a video call, and pretends to be his own android clone, inviting Coulson to leave a message. Coulson is like 'yeah, funny. Asshole.' The door to the elevator a few feet away opens to reveal Coulson. Pepper welcomes him in because this evening isn't going Tony's way anyway, so why not? Coulson holds out a laptop to Tony. Tony refuses to take it and pouts as Pepper takes it for him with a smile. She hands Coulson her champagne in exchange, then turns to Tony and trades his glass for the laptop. She smirks victoriously as she drinks. Tony impotently whines that his consultation hours are every other Thursday. Coulson says this isn't a consultation. Pepper asks if it's about the Avengers initiative. Coulson gives her a look and she adds that she knows NOTHING about that. No idea why she said it. Tony says the Avengers initiative was scrapped, not that it matters because HE didn't make the cut. "Apparently I'm volatile. Self obsessed. Don't play well with others." Pepper snarks that THAT she did know about.

Chrissy: You know, I may not be all that impressed with Gwenyth Paltrow just in general, but you have to admit that Pepper is pretty awesome.
Diandra: Hell yeah.

Tony takes the laptop over to a table and calls Pepper over, grumbling that he thought they were having a MOMENT back there.

Chrissy: Yes. You think a lot of things. They're not always reflective of reality.

She sasses that she was having 12% of a moment. Yeah, okay. Natasha is still probably my hero, but Pepper is a close second. She asks what all that jumble of things is on the screen. Tony flicks the data out to the larger screens and several videos start playing at once, superimposed over files about Thor, Captain America and The Hulk. She blows out a breath and says this is going to take him a while, so she'll just go out to DC tonight and leave him to it. He seemingly offers to blow it off. She leans in and whispers what she'll do after he finishes this job. "Deal," he says. "Fly safe."

Chrissy: See? Men are easy.
Diandra: Well, Tony is, which...um...duh?

She kisses him and asks Coulson to drop her off at the airport on his way out. Tony has already tuned them out and is staring at a 3D projection of the Tesseract.

So the next day or something, Coulson is on a plane with Steve, who is apparently catching up on EVERYTHING so he can act as Exposition Fairy from now on. "So this Dr Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on me," he asks. Coulson says yeah, well...he and a lot of other people because Steve went down in history as the first superhero. Blah blah gamma radiation blah Banner thought he'd figured it out and turned himself into a giant green monster a la Jekyll and Hyde. Which is very different from the backstory I remember.

Chrissy: Yeah. I don't think chemical spills giving people superpowers has gone over well since Chernobyl.

Coulson compares him to Stephen Hawking in his non-mutant phase.

Chrissy: They're not allowed to call them mutants.
Diandra: What?
Chrissy: Apparently some copyright bylaw says the studio that did "X-Men" can sue them if they call anybody mutants. Even though the characters are in the same canon.
Diandra: Oh. Well. Another win for jacked up American copyright law.

Steve stares at him like 'Stephen who?' Coulson fumbles and explains that he's, like, really REALLY smart. Einstein. You could have just said Einstein. Jesus. Is this whole subplot just going to turn into References Steve Doesn't Get Because He's Old? Coulson redirects by geeking out over meeting Steve officially. He awkwardly notes that he kind of met him once already, but watching somebody sleep doesn't really count. Steve wishes he understood the concept of a rape whistle. Coulson continues to fumble for a very uncomfortable minute that he was...you know...just there. It's not like it was WEIRD or anything. I mean, he totally wasn't getting a boner and anybody who says otherwise is a vicious liar. Steve mercifully ends this ridiculous conversation with the hope that he's the right man for this job they are planning. Coulson says he definitely is. Then he proudly adds that they made some modifications to Steve's old uniform and he had some input in the design.

Chrissy: The new one is more form fitting and really highlights your pecs. Don't read anything into that.

In some underground tunnel somewhere, people in lab coats are running around helping Selvig basically rebuild his lab. Loki is sitting on the floor in the corner, staring into space. At least until the blue orb on the end of the spear staff begins to glow and everything around him warbles out of existence. A man who appears to be partly disappearing into the cliff of some rock planet set left over from a "Star Trek" movie announces that the Chitauri are getting restless. Loki vows to lead them into glorious battle when he's good and goddamn ready. Then he appears next to the guy with that ridiculous horned helmet on his head. He promises it will be a quick battle if their forces are as great as they claim. Now that we're closer, we can see the guy he's talking to is wearing a hooded cloak and his eyes are covered. And the rest of his face appears to be half melted. Meltyface rants about how Loki would DARE question He Who Shall Not Be Named, who gave him that scepter and entrusted him with this mission after he had been "cast out" and "defeated". Loki snaps that he was the rightful king of Asgard. For, like, two minutes. Meltyface snorts at his childish ambitions. They don't even care about Earth, really. The Tesseract will reveal many more and better planets to them. Loki points out that they don't have the Tesseract yet. Meltyface hisses and makes a half-hearted move to attack. Loki calmly points out that until he opens the door and gets his army "you are but words". Meltyface is like 'you're lucky we couldn't find anyone else batshit crazy enough to go along with this plan'. He hisses and makes vague threats about the pain and suffering Loki will bring upon himself if he fails the mission. Loki looks like he might be tearing up as Meltyface reaches out and grabs the side of his face, snapping him back to Earth reality where he sits glaring at the wall like 'I'm not crying. shut up.'

Coulson's jet lands on a giant aircraft carrier with a Shield logo painted on the main runway. Natasha greets them and Coulson introduces her to Steve as "Agent Romanoff". She's like yeah, hi, I just came to tell you they need you on the bridge. Coulson runs off and Natasha starts making small talk about how excited everyone was to find Steve frozen in the ice. "I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

Chrissy: Also, how sticky were they?

They find Bruce standing around awkwardly next to one of the planes and Steve shakes his hand. "Word is you can find the cube," Steve says. Bruce looks around nervously and asks if that's the only thing he's heard about him.

Chrissy: Well, some people call you "Mr. Big" for some reason...
Diandra: Oh, come on!

Bruce asks if all of "this" is strange for Steve. Steve looks at the army guys jogging by in formation and says actually, aside from the jets being a bit flashier and faster, this part is basically the same. Natasha is like yeeeeaaaaaah, it's not what it looks like. The military guys all clear the deck and the ship makes noises like a Transformer coming to life. Steve asks if the ship is really a submarine. Bruce scoffs at the idea that they would risk putting him in a pressurized container underwater. They creep to the edge of the ship as some turbines come to the surface and start spinning, lifting the whole ship into the air.

The three named Avengers go inside to find an entire command center with people bustling around giving orders and verifying that the ship-to-plane conversion has gone smoothly. Hill announces that SHIELD emergency protocol 193.6 is officially in effect. Fury orders them to put up the invisible shield now that they've reached altitude. Because of course you would want your city-sized plane to be invisible to anything else that happens to be airborne. Steve, still a bit slack-jawed, wordlessly hands Fury a ten dollar bill. Fury smirks and goes over to talk to Bruce. Bruce asks how long he's staying here. Fury says just until they get the Tesseract and hands the briefing over to Coulson, who says they are checking all wireless devices on the entire planet in their search for the Tesseract. Basically anything with a camera on it and terrible security. Natasha notes that that won't find it in time. Bruce asks how many spectrometers they have access to. Fury is like 'all of them?' Bruce tells them to call every lab they know of and get them to calibrate their spectrometers to "gamma ray" and put them on the roof. He throws out a few more things that sound vaguely sciency and says he can at least narrow the search a little by ruling places out. Fury directs Natasha to show Bruce to his lab.

Meanwhile, in a different lab...Selvig asks where the hell Hawk found all these people. Hawk non-answers that SHEILD has MANY enemies.

Chrissy: So, HYDRA?
Diandra: Who?
Chrissy: Sigh.

Hawk holds up a screen showing a file about Iridium and asks if this is what Selvig was asking for. Selvig says yeah, it can be found in meteorites. It forms anti-protons. Aren't those...electrons? I mean...I failed science class, but... I should note that they both have weird, milky blue eyes. Loki wanders over and Selvig gets distracted, gushing about how the Tesseract has shown him AMAZING things. "It's more than knowledge. It's truth." Loki is like yeah, cool. What did it show Hawk here? Hawk says it showed him his next target. Loki offers to get him whatever he needs. Hawk pulls his bow out of a case with a flourish and says he needs a distraction.

Back on the ship, Coulson has apparently gotten around to asking Cap to sign his trading cards because Steve is assuring him that it won't be too much trouble and Coulson is nervously chattering about how it's a VINTAGE set and it took him a couple years to collect them all and they're in almost mint condition and NOBODY CARES. Jesus. We get it. You're a fanboy. You can stop perving now. It's getting creepy. One of the minions at the computer bank mercifully interrupts by announcing that he got a hit. Apparently he's been running facial recognition to figure out where Loki might have gone. They found him in Stuttgart, Germany. He pulls up a video of Loki wearing a suit and walking right in front of a security camera and Coulson notes that he doesn't seem to be HIDING. Fury says Steve is "up" and Steve nods seriously and disappears to...I don't know, find a phone booth so he can change?

Chrissy: That's the wrong comic universe and you know it.
Diandra: Yeah, but he's basically a human variation on Superman, right?
Chrissy: ...............fine.

Germany. We're at some sort of gathering of socialites, all dressed in fancy clothing, drinking champagne and ignoring the live violin concerto to talk to each other. Outside, a couple guards are taken out by arrows from an unseen assailant. Loki is hovering upstairs, pretending the glowing orb staff is a fancy walking stick. Then he comes down the stairs and uses it to club the first guard he sees. He grabs one of the guests, tosses him onto some sort of decorative bench and puts some glowing, spinning contraption over his eye. Downstairs somewhere, Hawk puts an identical device over the retinal scanner next to a door. The device on the guy's face makes gruesome slicing noises while Loki smirks at all the people scattering away from him. The one on the retinal scanner creates a 3D replica of the guy's eyeball which I would think wouldn't require anything more invasive than a SCAN, but whatever. The door opens and Hawk and a couple other goons enter.

Loki follows the frantically scattering people out the front door, his suit transforming into his standard costume, complete with cape and helmet with enormous horns that are totally impractical for battle. A police car comes screaming up and he blasts it with the staff, flipping it over and sending it skittering down the street. Loki starts teleporting himself in front of the group of people, moving every time they try to turn and run the other way. He orders them to kneel before him. When they're too slow to respond, he bangs the staff on the ground, creating a shockwave of energy and screams "KNEEL".

Chrissy: Sploosh.
Diandra: You would, wouldn't you? Though given your history, I would think YOU should be the one saying that to HIM.
Chrissy: For Tom, I would make an exception.
Diandra: Mmm-kay. Let's set aside your obvious issues for now, shall we?
Chrissy: I know you like him too.
Diandra: Tom? Fuck yes. Loki is a psychopath and this whole scenario smacks of Fifty Shades of Terrible BDSM.

The crowd goes quiet and slowly kneels. Loki chuckles and notes how much "simpler" this is. "Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity. That you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel." One old guy stands up suddenly and announces "not to men like you." Loki scoffs that there could be other men like him. The guy says there are ALWAYS men like him. Which...um...I think you might have just admitted that he's right, dude. Because yes, this scenario has basically repeated itself MANY TIMES throughout human history. Loki decides to use this as a teachable moment and tells everyone to look at this man while he gets his magical fire stick charged up.

Chrissy: [snort]
Diandra: What? Did I say something funny?

He shoots a fireball and Captain America drops down in front of the old man at the last moment to deflect it with his shield. Loki gets whapped full in the face with the boomeranging fireball and winds up on his hands and knees in the crowd. Cap saunters toward him, blustering about the last time he saw a guy in Germany standing over a crowd of people giving a speech and how it didn't go well. Yeah, well. He killed millions of people before the Allies finally got their shit together and turned the war around. And then he took himself out of the equation and everything crumbled and there are still people who think he had the right idea and we should revive his legacy.

Loki stands up, laughing that of all people they sent the SOLDIER to stop him. A helicopter flies in behind Cap and Natasha's voice booms from it, ordering Loki to drop the weapon and stand down. Loki is like 'yeah, because I would totally take orders from women'. He shoots a fireball at the helicopter. Cap throws his shield at him and then all the civilians scatter as they launch into a fight. Except that Cap only has a superstrong shield and no actual weapon so he basically gets one punch in before Loki starts knocking him around the square, separating him from the shield. He winds up on his hands and knees and Loki presses the end of the staff against his head and growls at him to "KNEEL" damnit. Cap knocks the staff aside and launches into a funny sort of roundhouse kick. Loki recovers and tosses him bodily a few yards. And then Tony hacks into Natasha's com system and starts playing obnoxious rock music really loudly to announce Iron Man's entrance into the fray. He knocks Loki back with a fireball of his own and then plants himself in front of him like the cocky son of a bitch he is, aiming all the weapons on his suit at him and inviting Loki to just TRY to come at him. Also dubbing him with the nickname "Reindeer Games" because this is one of his things. Loki puts his hands up and his helmet and battle armor evaporate away. Cap comes up like 'hey, thanks man, but I didn't need the help because I totally almost had him.'

So Steve, Tony and Natasha bundle Loki into her plane and fly back to the mothership. Steve mutters to Tony that he doesn't like this. Tony gives Loki a second nickname in as many minutes - "Rock of Ages" - as he notes that he gave up really easily. Steve is like yeah. Easy. Tony decides to poke fun at Steve by noting that he was really holding his own for a while there and he's pretty athletic for an old fart. "What's your thing? Pilates?" Steve is like 'what sort of made up word is that?' Tony is like right...you spent the better part of the last century as a "Capsicle". Never mind. Steve bristles and notes that Fury didn't tell him he was calling in Iron Man. Tony taunts that there are plenty of things Fury doesn't tell him.

Chrissy: Boys.
Diandra: HE STARTED IT!

A lightning storm starts outside and Loki looks up like 'oh fuck'. Steve notices and asks if he's afraid of a little lightning. "I'm not overly fond of what follows," Loki says. The ship jolts as Thor lands on top of it. Tony puts on his helmet and opens the rear hatch to greet him. Thor appears in the opening immediately and tosses his hammer at Tony, pinning him to the floor. Then he yanks Loki out of the seat like some sort of caveman claiming his bride and flings them both out of the open hatch.

Chrissy: I love how you always act scandalized when I send you Thorki stuff and then you come up with THAT description.
Diandra: What? What is it with you and the incest ships anyway?
Chrissy: You know they're not actually related, right? They're not even technically the same species.
Diandra: Okay, but what about all the "Supernatural" stuff you keep sending me?
Chrissy: They aren't either. I ship Destiel, not Wincest.
Diandra: ...I have no idea what those words mean.
Chrissy: Sigh. Never mind. I'll explain later. Move on.

Tony gets up with a groan and mutters "and now there's that guy". Steve asks if "that guy" is their ally. Tony says it doesn't matter because Loki was their key to getting the Tesseract. Steve suggests forming a plan of attack. Tony says his plan IS to attack and jets out of the plane after the Asgardians. Steve starts strapping himself into a parachute. Natasha calls back that he should really sit this one out. Steve is like 'and let that cocky son of a bitch get all the glory? Yeah right.' He grabs his shield and flings himself out of the plane.

Thor lands on a rocky cliff somewhere and throws Loki down unceremoniously. He demands to know where the Tesseract is. Loki is like 'yeah, hang on while my kidneys realign themselves again. Urrrrrgggghhhh.' Once he catches his breath he chuckles and says "I missed you too."

Chrissy: Forgot how much I like it when you're rough with me.
Diandra: And it all begins to make sense.
Chrissy: What?
Diandra: Nothing. I didn't say anything.

Thor is like 'DO I LOOK LIKE I'M LAUGHING RIGHT NOW?!' Loki says he should be thanking him because "with the Bifrost gone, how much dark energy did the Allfather have to muster to conjure you here?"

Chrissy: You understood maybe two words of that, didn't you?
Diandra: .....no...

Thor throws down his hammer and yanks Loki up, growling that they thought he was DEAD. Eh, Loki dies in every movie he's in as far as I can tell. You'll get used to it. Loki asks if Thor mourned. Thor says they all did, including "our father". Loki is like 'oh, so you didn't get the memo about him not being my real dad then?' Thor rants that they were RAISED together and that has to count for something. Loki spews something about being a "shadow living in the shade of your greatness" aka, the old 'mom and dad always liked YOU best'. Also, there was the part where you "tossed me into an abyss". But yeah, brotherly love. Family. Blah. Thor concludes that Loki has decided to attack his favorite planet because of sibling rivalry then. He says the Earth is under his protection. Loki laughs and notes that he's doing a great job stopping the humans from destroying each other. No, he will be a much less hands-off god. "You think yourself above them," Thor snarls. Loki is like um...duh. They've spent a couple millennia worshiping us as gods. Thor thinks this is proof that he doesn't understand what it means to be a ruler.

Chrissy: Oh, no. He does. Have you looked at the history of Earthen leaders?
Diandra: Okay, so he doesn't know what it means to be a GOOD ruler.

Loki starts ranting about all the things he's seen during his exile. All the worlds. The true power of the Tesseract. Thor interrupts to ask who showed him the power of the Tesseract. "Who controls the would-be-king?"

Chrissy: Putin, probably.
Diandra: Shhh! Don't say that out loud!

Loki yells that he IS a king, damnit. Thor demands he give up this power play and the Tesseract nonsense and come home. Loki snorts that he doesn't have it, although it's not clear if he's referring to the Tesseract or saying he doesn't have a home. Thor calls the hammer to his hand and tries to look menacing. Loki says he needs the Tesseract to get them home and he has no idea where it is. Thor hesitates and begins "you listen well brother..." And then one of the other superheroes chasing them tackles him out of frame. Loki blinks at the spot where he was just standing and smart asses "I'm listening."

Thor and Iron Man land in the woods somewhere. Thor picks himself up and glares as Tony flips up his faceplate. "Don't touch me again," he snarls.

Chrissy: That's not what you said last time.
Diandra: Is that just a reflexive comment for you?

"Then don't take my stuff," Tony snaps back, undaunted.

Chrissy: Take note: Tony ships FrostIron.
Diandra: .....frost...?
Chrissy: You should just go re-watch "Thor". We'll wait.

Thor says Tony has NO idea what he's dealing with here. Tony looks back at the cliff and says "uh...Shakespeare in the Park? Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?" Thor is like yeah, haha jackass. I'm extraditing Loki so he can face an Asgardian court.

Chrissy: I mean, they'll probably just come up with some insane punishment like sewing his lips shut or tying him up with the intestines of one of his children and dripping poison on him until he causes earthquakes, but...

Tony says yeah, he can do whatever he wants with Loki...AFTER he hands over the Tesseract. Thinking he's won the argument, Tony flips down his faceplate and goes to march away. Thor tosses the hammer at him again, sending him skittering across the forest floor. Tony is like okay, that's it, no more Mr. Nice Egotistical Jerk. He shoots a blast of energy at Thor and then body slams him, knocking the hammer away for all of two seconds. Thor calls the hammer back and holds it up. A lightning bolt comes down to meet it and Thor blasts the energy right into Tony's chest plate. Loki, by the way, is back up on the cliff like 'damn...I should really be conjuring up some popcorn or something' Tony checks his readings and, instead of finding the circuitry all fried and useless, finds that Thor has somehow managed to supercharge his suit. "Power at 400% capacity," Jarvis announces in a bored voice. Tony blasts energy directly from his chest plate, slamming Thor into a tree. Then they run at each other and go flying up into the air, grappling the whole way. Loki, realizing that everybody has probably forgotten they left him unattended, probably wanders off somewhere to find a big, stud of a horse to impregnate him again.

Chrissy: Why am I not surprised that that is the one part of Norse mythology that you actually know?
Diandra: Cracked.com. Also, kind of hard to avoid all the Loki/horse stuff in the fandom.

The fight continues for, like, ten more minutes until Captain America appears to yell at them like a dad scolding squabbling children.

Chrissy: And whangs them with his shield.
Diandra: I didn't say he was a GOOD dad. Though given the guys we're talking about, it's probably a step up.

He opens with "I don't know what you're planning on doing here..." before he can get to the "but", Thor says he's here to stop Loki. Cap is like great. Put the hammer down and we'll help you. Tony is like uh...yeah, that's not going to wo- Thor swats him aside like an annoying bug and launches himself at Cap. The most powerful hammer in the universe meets the strongest shield in the world with a low booooooonnnnnnngggg and Thor is thrown back. The sound is still reverberating as all three of them stagger back to their feet, panting and groaning. "Are we done here," Cap asks. Thor kind of looks around like he's embarrassed by the sudden inadequacy of his hammer.

Ginormous plane. Apparently Loki just stood around waiting for them to finish the fight, but they still find it necessary to have a half a dozen armed guards march his handcuffed ass to his cell. Bruce looks up as they pass the windows looking into his lab and Loki smirks at him like 'hey, so...wanna have a go later?'

Chrissy: I can't tell if you meant that as a challenge or a sexual overture.
Diandra: Is there really a difference with him? That Cracked article I just referenced noted that Loki would probably fuck anything that stood still long enough.
Chrissy: And Asgardians/Jotuns are immortal, I think, so...basically he's an alien Jack Harkness.
Diandra: Yep. I believe these characters are what is known in fandom circles as communal bicycles. At some point, everyone has had a ride.

He's shoved into a circular cell with four enormous window surrounded by catwalks. Fury saunters over to a control panel to illustrate what will happen if Loki does anything even remotely funny. The floor under the cell slides open and clouds rush by under them. Fury shouts over the rushing wind that the entire cell will be released at 30,000 feet. He closes the door, points to Loki and the panel and says respectively "ant...boot". Loki laughs and notes that this cage wasn't built for him. Fury says no, it was built for something stronger. Loki is like yeeaaaahhh, I've heard about the Angry Green Giant. Just how desperate are you that you employed HIS help? Fury is like 'you stole a magic box and threatened to take over the planet.' "You talk about peace and you kill because it's fun." Basically, Loki has made him mad and he will regret it. Loki taunts that Fury's just upset that he got so close to the Tesseract but is unable to have that power for himself. "And then to be reminded what real power is." Fury probably barely refrains from adjusting his gigantic dick pointedly before sauntering away, offering to send "real power" a magazine or something later.

In a conference room, the video link to the cell cuts off and Bruce says "kind of grows on you, doesn't he?"

Chrissy: Oh, Jesus. He's already gotten to The Hulk. Man down!
Diandra: Pretty sure he wouldn't be the one going down in that scenario.
Chrissy: ............I would compliment you on that, but I'm afraid I'm creating a monster.

Steve asks Thor what his play is. Thor, staring off into space and brooding, mumbles that he has become leader of an army called the Chitauri. They're not from any known world. They will "win" the Earth for him, probably in exchange for the Tesseract. Bruce concludes that he must be building a portal like the one he came through on and that's what he needs Selvig for. Thor lights up at that name and identifies Selvig as a friend of his. Natasha says Loki has him and "one of ours" under some sort of mind control. "I want to know why Loki let us take him," Steve blurts. Phrasing. Bruce thinks maybe they shouldn't be focusing on Loki. Well, apparently YOU shouldn't. He thinks Loki is obviously insane, describing his brain as a "bag full of cats". Thor growls that he should watch what he says about Loki because he may be nuts, but he's his BROTHER. "He killed 80 people in two days," Natasha sneers. Thor, pausing for maybe half a second, amends "he's adopted?" Bruce, returning to the original topic, asks what they need Iridium for. Tony walks in just at that moment to butt in and say that it's a stabilizer. It keeps the portal from collapsing in on itself. He pauses to pat Thor's ginormous bicep and say "no hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing."

Chrissy: Yeah. Funny. We all hate you.
Diandra: Especially the other Sherlock, who you will hopefully meet if we can finally coordinate a schedule.

Tony says that means the portal can open as wide and for as long as Loki wants it to.

Chrissy: [snort giggle]
Diandra: Yeah, yeah. Phrasing. We know.
Chrissy: No, I was going to say that's probably never been a problem for him before.

He starts giving sailing orders to the technicians at their computers and calls one out for playing something called "Galaga". Then he looks at the banks of computer screens on both sides and asks how Fury can even see the ones on the side with the eyepatch. Could somebody give the ADHD child his meds, please? Thanks. He starts futzing with one of the panels as he notes that Barton can get the rest of the raw materials they need easily. The only thing they're still missing is a high energy density power source to start the cube. Hill...oh, she's still here...asks when he became a thermoneuclear astrophysicist. Tony says he did a lot of reading last night. Because he's not just an annoying asshole with a pretty face, he's a genius. Steve asks if Loki can just use any power source. Bruce says he would have to heat the Tesseract to 120 million Kelvin "just to break through the Coulomb barrier". "Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," Tony adds.

Diandra: Are they still speaking English?
Chrissy: I'm not sure, but a bunch of science nerds are either really annoyed or popping boners.

Bruce says if they assume he can do THAT, he could use any reactor on the planet. "Finally! Someone who speaks English," Tony grins, shaking Bruce's hand. Steve is just like 'um...what?' Tony gushes that Banner's work on "antielectron collisions" is incredible "and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage-monster." Bruce is like 'yeah, thanks asshole. Did we mention we all hate you?' Fury arrives to say Banner is there to track the cube and he hopes Tony can help him with that. Steve suggests they start with that magic stick Loki was using that looks like a HYDRA weapon. Fury says eh...maybe, but it's obviously powered by the cube and he would like to find out how Loki used it to turn two of their men into "his personal flying monkeys". Thor doesn't get this reference. Steve happily notes that he does like 'yay, something from my own time!' He is seriously so proud of himself for finally getting a pop culture reference. It's kind of cute, but also kind of pathetic.

Chrissy: I should have filmed it while we were doing that proficiency test thing because I'm sure you looked just like that after the Heimdall thing.
Diandra: Shush.

Banner's lab. Bruce waves a scanner over the glowing stick and announces that the readings on the computer screen are consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract but it's going to take weeks to process the data. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around 600 teraflops," Tony spews. Okay, Joss is just fucking with everyone now.

Chrissy: Just now? Wow. You really have no idea who he is, do you?

Banner notes that Tony is working off a portable screen hidden in a briefcase and says all he packed was a toothbrush. Tony extends an invitation for Bruce to visit Stark Tower sometime because it's an engineer's paradise. Bruce says thanks, but last time he was in New York he "kind of broke Harlem". Which origin movie starring someone else was that now?

Chrissy: The one you actually saw.
Diandra: Oh. So Norton.
Chrissy: And you don't remember that either.
Diandra: This kind of movie is to the brain what Chinese food is to the digestive system. Delightful, but goes through really quickly.
Chrissy: Thanks for that mental image.

Tony promises a stress-free environment with no surprises. Then he pokes Bruce with something that gives off a small electrical charge and waits pointedly for something to happen. Steve arrives just at that moment and yells "hey!" "Nothing," Tony says innocently. "Are you nuts," asks Captain Crankshaft. "Jury's out," says Smart Ass. He notes that Bruce does seem to have gotten control of the rage thing and asks what his secret is, suggesting things like jazz music and a giant bag of weed. Captain Grandpa chastises him for treating everything like a joke because this concerns the FATE OF EVERYONE ON BOARD THE SHIP. Bruce says it's fine. Really. He wouldn't have agreed to this if his trigger was that sensitive. Steve thinks Tony should focus more on the problem. Tony thinks Steve should loosen the stick up his ass because he can MULTITASK. He asks why Fury didn't call them before. "What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equations unless I have all the variables." Steve asks if he really thinks Fury is hiding something from them. Tony thinks Fury is a spy, so...yeah. Probably. "His secrets have secrets" He turns to Bruce like 'right? back me up here.' Bruce reluctantly notes that he thinks Loki's comment about "light for all mankind" was meant for Tony, not Fury. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower it was still all over the news." Steve says what...that big ugly phallic symbol in the middle of New York? Tony sneers at him. Bruce says it's powered by an arc reactor. Tony says it's a prototype, but he's kind of the only person working on this form of green energy right now. Bruce wonders why SHIELD didn't bring in TONY when they first acquired the Tesseract. Tony offers to look into it once his decryption finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files. JARVIS has been working on it since he boarded. This upsets Steve's goody-two-shoes nature and he grumbles something sarcastic about Tony still wondering why nobody wanted him around in the first place. "An intelligence organization that fears intelligence," Tony says. "Historically...not awesome." Yeah, it's not good in the future either. Getting back to the point...maybe...Steve suggests Loki is just trying to wind them up and start a war. They need to focus or he'll succeed. They have orders they should follow. Tony is like yeah...because I'm so good at doing what people tell me to do, guy in a "spangly outfit". Bruce tries to diffuse the tension by telling Steve that hey, there really is something about this whole scenario that's a bit...off. Steve just grumbles at them to find the cube and sulks off.

Chrissy: Total aside, but did you know that the name for this threesome ship is "Stark Spangled Banner"?
Diandra: Okay, that might be the best ship name I've ever heard.

Tony grumbles that THAT is the guy his dad was always yapping about. Banner just brushes this slow burn hatred that will lead to "Civil War" aside and says he's not wrong about Loki. Tony thinks he's not much more than a misbehaving child with "an Acme dynamite kit". He's only going to hurt himself and Tony vows to get a front row seat to his failure. Bruce talks about staying in the background and Tony suggests maybe he should "suit up" alongside them. Bruce thinks that would be a spectacularly bad idea. Then they compare how much angst they're entitled to. Bruce is basically a giant green variation of a werewolf and Tony still has chunks of shrapnel dangerously close to killing him. Tony says the reactor thing in his chest is a part of him now, not just the battery that powers the suit. He says it's a "terrible privilege". Oy. The old blessing and a curse cliche? Bruce is like 'yeah, but you have control over your superpower, so...not the same thing.' He tries to go back to his files but Tony swipes them all aside so he can talk to him. He says he read the file and that sort of exposure to gamma radiation should by all accounts have killed him. Bruce snorts that he's suggesting The Hulk saved Bruce's life, but what the hell is the point? "I guess we'll find out," Tony non- answers and they both go back to their own work stations.

Steve pries open a locked door somewhere in the bowels of the ship and finds what looks like a poorly lit warehouse inside. He hears voices and jumps up onto a catwalk.

Back down on the ground somewhere, Selvig and his crew are working on the Tesseract in a mobile lab inside of a truck, which...seems like a really bad idea.

Chrissy: Nah, it'll be fine. Hey, wanna hand me that thing that could totally explode if we jostle it too much?

Back on the ship, Coulson reminds us that Natalie Portman is part of this comic universe (even if she will not be in this particular movie) by explaining to Thor that they made sure to hide her once Loki showed up. She was spontaneously offered a consulting job at a research facility yesterday. So she'll be totally safe and totally ignorant of what is going on here until the actual attack happens. Then, presumably she'll be pissed that Thor found a way back and AVOIDED her. Thor is like yeah, that's great. Now that we have that little bit of exposition out of the way, let's talk about what Loki could possibly be planning to do with Selvig once he doesn't need him anymore. This unsettles him because "Eric is a good man". Coulson notes that Selvig talks about Thor a lot and he really "changed his life".

Chrissy: God, it was ONE NIGHT and we were drunk.

Coulson says Thor changed a LOT of things when he appeared on Earth. Thor grumbles that the humans were better off before the Asgardians started meddling. He muses that they like to pretend they're a more advanced race, but whenever they come here they just start "battling like bilge snipe". Coulson has no idea what a bilge snipe is. Thor describes a giant scaled creature with antlers.

Chrissy: So Loki in his non-humanoid form.
Diandra: I have no idea when you're joking anymore.
Chrissy: He's half frost giant. They're big and blue and scaly with red eyes.
Diandra: So the horns on that stupid helmet are supposed to be actually attached to his head?
Chrissy: Maybe. Little fuzzy on that.

Thor says they're repulsive and they trample everything in their path. Yeah, well...here on Midgard the humans do that.

And then the music gets soppy and Thor bemoans the fact that every time he comes here Loki's "rage" follows and people get hurt. "In my youth I courted war." Fury butts in - because this seems to be his main function in any chunk of dialogue in this movie - to say that the war hasn't started YET. He asks if Thor can make Loki give them the location of the Tesseract. Thor isn't sure because "Loki's mind is far afield."

Chrissy: ...as a shithouse rat, yes.

Thor thinks this whole thing is equal parts insane power grab and a desire to get revenge on Thor. Fury still thinks Thor can get through to him. Also, he gets the impression that even though he's a prisoner, Loki is the only one on the entire ship who actually WANTS to be there. Which is probably not a good sign.

Loki's cell. Loki is pacing, bored, when he senses somebody outside. He turns to find Natasha standing on the catwalk and smarms that not many people can sneak up on him. She says he knew she would come though. He says yes, but he kind of thought she would be playing Good Cop after Fury kicked him around a little. Natasha is like 'whatever. What did you do to my would- be boyfriend?' Loki says he "expanded his mind". She asks what happens to his mind once Loki finishes his bullshit plan to rule the planet. Loki asks if this is love talking. She sneers that she just owes him a debt. Sure. Loki briefly transforms into the Exposition Fairy to prompt her to expand on that. Natasha rolls her eyes and for some reason plays along. She says before she worked for SHIELD she was kind of...infamous. "I have a very specific skill set."

Chrissy: Ahem. Widow? Liam Neeson is on the phone. He says he needs to talk to you.
Diandra: He's also claiming his name is Ra's Al Ghul.
Chrissy: Still having problems with the difference between Marvel and DC, aren't you?

Anyway, SHIELD caught wind of her "enhanced interrogations" and sent Barton to kill her. He "made a different call". Loki, now sitting on a bench on the other side of the cell, probably barely refraining from blowing a raspberry and commenting on how BORING humans are, asks what she'll do if he promises to spare her boyfriend. Er...whoever. She's like 'yeah, I'm not letting you out of there if that's what you're driving at'. He thinks it's amusing that her whole world is in danger and she's bargaining with him for ONE man. She says she's originally Russian, so she's kind of used to "regimes" crumbling all the time. She's not going to cry over it. Or, you know, anything. Ever.

Chrissy: Also explains why she never smiles.
Diandra: You will know I'm happy when I act slightly less miserable and bitter.

She says this isn't complicated really. "I have red in my ledger and I'd like to wipe it out." Loki is like, 'you do realize the red here is totally a metaphor for the blood of millions of people, right?' "Dreykov's daughter," he says, seemingly as a non-sequiter. "Sao Paolo. The hospital fire." She stiffens. He says oh, yeah, Barton told him all about it. He rants that she thinks saving one person barely more worthy than her is going to fix anything. "This is the basest sentimentality. Pathetic. You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate. To have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are part of you. And they will never go away." He bangs on the glass, making her flinch back, and vows to not touch Hawk until he forces him to kill her. Slowly. And then as she's dying, he'll free Hawk from his control just long enough for him to realize what he's done before killing him too. This psycho rant not being enough to drive home just how much of a bastard he is, he calls her a "mewling quim" and Joss pats himself on the back for successfully working a lesser known variation of "whiney cunt" into a PG-13 script. And then, probably, he yells cut and Tom apologizes profusely.

Natasha turns her back so he can't see her cry and declares him a monster. He chuckles and says THEY brought the monster. She stops "crying" instantly, turns and says "so Banner. That's your play?" He's like 'dur...what? How the hell did you get that from...' But she's already on her com, announcing that Loki is planning to "unleash the Hulk" and they should keep an eye on Bruce as she runs along the catwalk. Loki watches her like 'the fuck just happened?'

Fury bursts into the lab and demands to know what Tony is doing. He's supposed to be helping find the Tesseract. Bruce says the computer is already running that search based on their parameters. When it finds something, they will have a location within a half mile radius. Something beeps on one of the screens and Tony asks what Phase Two is anyway.

Chrissy: It's where we completely forget about confining any of you to your own movies.
Diandra: Except Doctor Strange because he's special apparently.

Steve arrives just then and slams something that looks like a phaser on a table, announcing that Phase Two involves using the Tesseract to make weapons, apparently. Fury, recognizing that Steve is about to go full American exceptionalism on them, says they had that somewhere on board because they gathered everything they could find related to the Tesseract. It doesn't mean that they're MAKING weapons. Tony, who has broken into the file, turns the screen around to show what looks like a bomb and says OH REALLY? Thor and Natasha show up just at that moment. Natasha suggests Bruce recuse himself because Loki is manipulating him somehow. "And you've been doing what, exactly?" he fires back. "You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you," she says. Um...kind of? I mean...we did have that conversation about you wooing him with your feminine wiles, didn't we?

Chrissy: You realize that if you follow that train of logic, Loki would also be manipulating him with suggestive...oh, right, we talked about that too.
Diandra: Mmm-hmm. If I recall the legend, this is exactly how Loki became pregnant with a horse.

Bruce says he's not leaving because she's suddenly "twitchy" and he would like to know why SHEILD is using the Tesseract to build WMDs. Fury points at Thor and says "because of him." Thor is like 'what the fuck did I do?!' Fury says Earth had a visitor from another planet a year ago who managed to level an entire small town. Thor looks like 'oh...that...' Fury says basically the humans learned they were completely unprepared for alien attack. Also, that aliens are real. Thor points out that his people are peaceful. I mean, except for the asshole his parents adopted, but he doesn't count. Fury points out that they're not the only aliens out there, or the only threat. "The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, that can't be controlled." Thor argues that his messing with the Tesseract is what drew Loki and his minions in the first place. They might as well have broadcast their readiness for war. Fury starts the argument of needing to do SOMETHING and Tony interrupts "a nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms everything right down." Fury glowers at him and snidely asks how, exactly, he made his fortune again. Steve is like 'surely he's not STILL making weapons'. "Hold on, how is this now about me," Tony asks. "I'm sorry, isn't everything," Steve fires back. "I thought humans were more evolved than this," grumbles Thor.

Chrissy: GIRLS!

This devolves into a fight that involves all six of them arguing over each other, none of them noticing the spear on the table behind them glowing.

Outside, a small plane approaches the hovercraft, carrying Hawk and at least half a dozen other armed men. Hawk shoots an arrow that guides itself right into an inner wall somewhere and attaches, activating what looks like a bomb.

Inside, Banner concludes that they aren't a TEAM so much as a mixture of unstable elements that effectively make a ticking time bomb. Steve and Tony are already starting the pissy little fight that will escalate over the next several movies. Steve thinks Tony is nothing more than an annoying little shit in a fancy suit of armor. Tony is like yeah, well...I'm also a genius. And really rich. Steve says he's seen the "footage" and knows that Tony only ever fights for selfish reasons. He would never sacrifice himself for someone else. Yeah, he's providing the counterbalance to you, who will ALWAYS fall on the grenade for ANYONE and get himself killed.

Chrissy: You don't like Captain America, do you?
Diandra: I love Chris Evans dearly, but no. Not really. I'm just saying, there has to be a happy medium between these guys.

Tony suggests he would rather find a way to diffuse the grenade first so nobody has to sacrifice themselves, but Steve isn't amused. He sneers at Tony to stop pretending he's a "hero". Tony is like 'oh, so you think you have sole claim to that label?'

Chrissy: Yeah, military guys usually do.

Tony describes Steve as little more than a lab experiment. Steve challenges him to a duel. Er...not in those exact words though.

Chrissy: Although now I have a mental image of Steve slapping Tony with his glove, so thanks for that.
Diandra: And then Tony slaps Steve with his glove and he falls over because it's made of metal.
Chrissy: You know...his exact wording was "let's go a few rounds", so...
Diandra: It isn't a "fight" going on in your head right now?
Chrissy: Well, it might start out that way, but...

Thor disrupts the pissing contest by laughing at the petty mortals trying to prove who has the bigger dick. Fury asks Natasha to escort Banner back to his room. Banner asks where that's supposed to be now that they shoved Loki in his cell.

Chrissy: Well, we could put you in there with him if you ask nicely.
Diandra: Stop it.

Fury is like no, come on, don't be like that. The cell was just a backup plan. Banner says yeah, in case they needed to kill him via ACME device. By the way, fun fact, he can't be killed. Banner tried to do it himself. Everybody stares at him like 'dude...' He explains that he tried to eat a bullet and he just wound up turning and The Hulk just spit the bullet out. So he was focusing on helping people and doing good until they had to go and drag him back into this nonsense. As he's talking, Fury stiffens and puts his hand on his gun. When Bruce finally pauses, Fury orders him to put down the scepter. Bruce looks down, startled to find he's holding the glowing spear. They are all distracted as one of the computers starts beeping, announcing it has located the Tesseract.

And then the bomb arrow goes off and the resulting fireball goes right up into the lab, throwing everybody back. Everybody all over the ship starts scrambling. Fury calls Hill, who announces that the number three engine is down and somebody has to go outside to repair it. Fury assigns Tony, who is scrambling to retrieve his suit. Then he orders Coulson to "initiate defensive lockdown in the detention section."

Chrissy: You can just say 'sit on Loki and make sure he doesn't try anything'.
Diandra: Nah, this sounds better.

Natasha and Bruce have landed on some sort of walkway beneath the lab. Natasha reports that she's fine, although she seems to be pinned beneath something. Bruce is making alarming grunting noises.

Hawk and his team land and swarm into the ship, making their way toward the holding cell.

Natasha tries to keep Bruce calm, urging him to fight the instinct because this is exactly what Loki was trying to do. Bruce yells at her in his low, monster voice and starts turning green. Natasha gets free just as he finishes turning, his shirt flying away in pieces but his pants somehow still staying on despite being essentially something between long shorts and capris now. She runs and he roars and chases after her.

In his cell, Loki hears the echoing roars and smiles.

Fury gets up to the command center and orders the ship turned around and steered over water again. The navigator says the navigation system rebooted after the engine failure, so they're kind of blind right now. Fury tells him to use the fucking SUN then because if they lose one more engine, they're going to crash.

Tony and Steve both arrive at the blast site. Tony is flying around in his suit, directing Steve to the control panel so he can relay information. This requires Steve to do some sort of gymnastics move over a gap in the metal to get to the panel. He announces that it appears to be running on some form of electricity. Tony is like 'oooooohhhh, great. I'm trying to fix a complex computer and the only person available to help me is Grandpa SpangleSuit.'

Natasha is still getting chased around the bowels of the ship. Hulk is smashing basically everything in his path, so hopefully nothing down there is essential. He knocks her into a wall and, as she's on the ground gasping, goes to finish her off and gets knocked through a wall into the cargo bay by Thor. All the mortals manning the area scramble, but Hulk is too distracted to notice. Thor tries to get through to Banner while they exchange a couple blows and gets punched through some shipping containers.

Tony gets through to the damaged engine as Steve verifies that all the relays are intact. Tony announces that the only way he's going to be able to jump start this thing is manually. Steve points out that if it gets up to speed while he's doing that he'll be turned into mincemeat. "That stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage the maglev," Tony rambles.

Chrissy: Technobabble technobabble reverse the polarity nerdspeak.
Diandra: Yeah, basically.

Steve asks for the English translation. Tony sighs and tells him to pull the big red lever on his cue, which should slow the rotors down long enough for him to escape.

Chrissy: Well, why didn't you just say so?
Diandra: Ever talk to a techie? They all do this. After they ask if you've tried turning it off and turning it back on again.

Back to the fight in the cargo bay, which slows down long enough for Thor to call his hammer to him. He catches it just as Hulk tries to rush him and whacks him into a parked plane. Hulk shakes himself off, rips the wing from the plane and throws it at Thor. Thor just ducks under it and tosses the hammer at Hulk. Hulk tries to catch it and winds up yanked several yards and pinned to the deck, yanking impotently at the handle to try to pick it up. Thor jumps back in and winds up riding Hulk's back, jamming the handle of the hammer into Hulk's windpipe.

Fury is still giving orders on the control deck when Hawk's men arrive, lobbing a grenade ahead of them. He and Hill manage to take out three of the fully armed guys with hand pistols and his fists. Because nobody fucking messes with Fury. An agent comes over the speaker to announce that the hostiles are wearing SHIELD gear, Hulk and Thor are fighting on level 4 and levels 2 and 3 are completely dark. Hill yells at Fury over the continuing gunfire that the Hulk is going to tear the ship apart. Fury suggests she redirect his attention. She shouts orders at somebody to proceed to "Wishbone" and engage.

A fighter jet pilot acknowledges the order and flies right up through the cargo door, finding the Hulk slamming Thor around immediately. He fires the ships guns, which just bounce off of Hulk. Hulk jumps right onto the plane and starts ripping pieces off it as it spirals out of control. The pilot ejects. Hulk catches him and slings him further before the parachute deploys.

A couple of Hawk's guys find Steve. One of them lobs a grenade, which he slaps into the void below before punching the shit out of one and tossing another right off the plane.

Fury is still holding off the guys on the bridge. He mutters to himself that they're not actually getting through, so...what are they trying to do here? Hawk arrives at just that moment to provide the answer, firing a couple more explosive arrows before sending a specialized one into the control panel to apparently upload a virus to the system. All the computer screens go dark. All the engines shut down and the carrier starts listing and dropping. Fury announces that Barton has taken out their systems and is headed for detention level. How does he know that, exactly? Natasha gives a shaky "copy" and staggers off from the spot where she's apparently been sitting since Hulk tried to kill her.

Tony starts manually flying the rotors of one of the engines around. Steve, who has picked up one of the bad guy's weapons and gotten into a firefight, nearly falls right off the carrier.

Thor arrives at Loki's cell just as the door opens. He screams and runs to tackle Loki, phasing right through him like he's just a hologram and getting locked in the cell himself. Loki cocks his head at him from a completely different part of the catwalk outside and asks if he's ever going to learn to not fall for that one. Yeah, well, this from the person who probably said "don't worry! I can outrun that horse!"

Chrissy: Why do you keep bringing that up?
Diandra: Because it amuses me?
Chrissy: You're not...thinking of writing an mpreg fic, are you?
Diandra: No. Well...is it still considered mpreg if the guy is shapeshifted into a woman at the time?
Chrissy: Oh my god, you're not joking.
Diandra: I mean...didn't he live as a woman for several years and have a few more children that nobody bothered to keep track of because they weren't hideous monsters or the goddess of the underworld?
Chrissy: Okay, um...yeah. Just...tell me this: in this story you may or may not be writing...is Doctor Strange the father of female Loki's baby?
Diandra: .............maybe?
Chrissy: You are so predictable. [ETA, the fic we are describing would become "Destiny" and this is probably why Chrissy continues to think of recaps as a vehicle for fic prompts.]

Thor slings the hammer into the glass. A major crack appears and everything wobble and reverberates. Loki gets an "oh shit" look, then laughs nervously. He backs toward the control panel Fury conveniently showed him how to work earlier and offers to test the human theory that they are immortal. What, before he cracks that glass like he obviously can totally do and beats the shit out of you? Before he can touch anything, Coulson shows up and knocks out one of his goons with a gun the size of a rocket launcher. Loki backs away from the panel and Coulson notes that he recognizes what the gun is because they built it from Asgardian tech. Coulson himself admits he's not sure what it does, but he's more than willing to experiment a little. Loki just teleports behind him and runs him through with the spear, which...how did it get here? Thor bangs on the cell and screams. Loki saunters back over to the panel and opens the hatch, then hesitates a moment before pushing the button to eject the pod.

Meanwhile, Hawk is stomping down a catwalk toward...the cell? I guess? Natasha drops down behind him and they commence fighting. This fight has actually been going on for that entire last paragraph, but I'm getting tired of jumping back and forth and it's basically just a bunch of punching and kicking, so... Natasha whacks his head into a railing, stunning him. For a moment, his eyes clear and he looks up at her like 'what? where are we?' before she knocks him out cold.

Thor manages to break through the part of the glass he already cracked just before the pod smashes into a hopefully uninhabited portion of land right along the coast. He is thrown a couple football fields clear.

Back up in the ship, Loki blinks at the empty space like 'huh' and starts to walk away. From the floor, Coulson, still breathing, says Loki's going to lose. He knows that, right? "It's in your nature." Loki points out that their little band of misfits is scattered all over the place right now and their "fortress" is currently crashing into the ocean, so...how is he losing, exactly? "You lack conviction." In what is quickly becoming a pattern with him, Loki begins to argue and is cut off, midsentence by a blast to the chest that sends him flying into the next room from the weapon Coulson is still holding. "So that's what it does," Coulson mutters.

On the bridge, everyone is preparing for a crash. Smaller planes and equipment are already disappearing over the side and Captain America is still hanging on via cable near the engine that Iron Man is trying to turn all by himself. He gets it going fast enough to level the carrier and orders Steve to hit the lever. Steve is like 'yeah, just, uh...give me a second...' He manages to pull himself back up onto the catwalk and reach for the lever just as the propeller pulls away from Tony and he gets whacked into the space under the propeller by the next paddle. Tony manages to fall free and flies back around to knock out the guy shooting at Steve.

Somehow, Loki has gotten hold of one of the smaller planes and someone to pilot it. It takes off.

Fury finds Coulson, who apologizes for letting "the god" get away. Fury says forget it, just STAY AWAKE because YOU'RE NOT DYING ON ME HERE. Coulson says it's okay. Really. "This was never gonna work...if they didn't have something...to..." He goes still and Fury backs away as some paramedics arrive.

Diandra: So...did they explain how he was still alive on "Agents of Shield"?
Chrissy: Not really. It was kind of funny, actually. He basically showed up like 'yep. Not dead. Don't ask how, just go with it.'

We see the reactions of the rest of the team still on board as Fury tells them via comm that Coulson is "down" and the medics just called "it". Ah, yes. I remember what it was like back when I thought it was possible for anyone to die in this universe.

Back up at the conference table overlooking the command center, Steve and Tony are slumped in chairs, staring sullenly. Fury tosses Steve the bloodied cards Coulson had in his jacket that he never got a chance to get him to autograph, then summarizes that they've lost all communications and the location of the Tesseract. Also, Bruce and Thor. So, yes, they were planning to build an arsenal with the Tesseract, but that's not all they were doing. He explains to Steve the Avengers Initiative plan he already brought to Tony back in the post-credit scene of the first Iron Man movie. Basically bring together a bunch of people with special abilities to work together as a sort of super weapon/seal team on steroids hybrid when needed. He says Coulson died still believing in this dream. "In heroes". Oh, dude. You're going to look like such an ass when they figure out he's still alive. Tony jolts from his seat and sulks off.

Thor finds his hammer in the middle of the field, goes to pick it up and then just clenches his fist.

Bruce wakes up naked in the middle of some rubble, a security guard informing him that he just fell out of the sky.

Chrissy: It's raining men! Hallelujah!
Diandra: Sigh.

Bruce looks around at the building that might have already been mostly torn down before he even arrived and asks if he hurt anybody. The guard points out that there's nobody around TO hurt. He just startled some pigeons. Bruce asks if he saw the whole thing. The guard says yep. Big green naked guy came crashing down out of the sky. He tosses some regular sized pants at him, which he notes should fit now that he's back to normal.

Chrissy: This guy really is living in the Marvel universe.
Diandra: Yeah, hi, I'm just calling to see if it's safe to come in to work today because last month some guys in spandex totally destroyed the entire city block.

He asks if Bruce is an alien. Bruce says no. He says well, then, he clearly has some major issues.

Natasha is hovering over Hawk, who is tied to a gurney and grunting and shaking his head like 'WHY WON'T THE VOICES SHUT UP?' Natasha assures him that he'll be fine. He's not so sure about that. He says he has to "flush him out". Natasha points out that he needs to sober up a little first. He says no, she doesn't understand, somebody just freaking took control of his body. Natasha reminds him that she has had experience with brainwashing, yes. Clint shudders and asks how he got back here. How did she manage to break Loki's control? She says "cognitive recalibration", which is a fancy way of saying she hit him really hard on the head and hoped for the best. He says yeah, well...thanks. He starts to ask how many agents he killed, but she cuts him off. It wasn't him and it was nothing they were ever trained to deal with. Clint says okay, but did Loki get away? She says um...yeah. Don't suppose he happens to know where his lair is. Clint says no, that was never information he was privileged with. Natasha unties him from the cot and paces, declaring they need to stop Loki. Clint asks who "we" is now. Natasha says whoever is left. Clint says yeah, well...point me in his direction and I'll happily put an arrow through him. She sits beside him and notes that he's sounding like himself again. He notes that she isn't. "You're a spy, not a soldier. But now you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?" She frowns and says nothing, but..."I've been compromised. I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out." Before Clint can ask what the FUCK she's talking about, we cut away.

Chrissy: What IS she talking about just there?
Diandra: Unless she means that she needs to pay Loki back for that conversation by kicking him so hard in the balls that they shoot through his nose, I'm not sure I want to know.

Steve finds Tony staring sulkily at the spot where the cell used to be. He asks if "he" was married. Presumably he means Coulson, not Thor. Tony says no, but there was somebody...possibly a cellist. He wasn't listening. Pepper would know. Steve does the perfunctory 'he was a good man' apology dance. Tony snorts that he was an idiot, actually. He tried to take on Loki by himself. He should have waited for back up. Oh, because you would totally have waited, right? Steve says sometimes there "isn't a way out" and asks if this is the first time he's lost a "soldier". Tony bristles and snaps that they are NOT soldiers and Fury is not the boss of him.

Chrissy: No, that would be Pepper.
Diandra: Obviously.

Steve says yeah, well, he's not exactly enamored with Fury either seeing as he has as much blood on his hands as Loki, but they need to focus on the bigger problem here. Tony looks at the blood on the wall and says "he made it personal." Steve thinks this is another argument, but Tony says he deliberately MADE it personal. Why? "Divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us. He wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience." I'm...not really sure of the logic of this. Where does the ridiculous assumption that they all loved Coulson so much that they would be fractured by his death fit into this? Steve finds the track Tony's train of thought has somehow managed to get on and notes that that's basically what Loki was doing in Stuttgart. Putting on a show. Tony says yeah, that was the rehearsal. This is the real thing. "And Loki, he's a full-tilt diva, right?" Um...well, it takes one to know one, so I'll take your word on that, Stark. He starts rambling about how Loki wants applause, parades, big ass monuments with his name plastered all over... Tony trails off as he makes the connection to the giant phallic tower with HIS name on it. "Son of a bitch," he grumbles and stomps off.

Sure enough, Selvig is already setting up equipment on the roof of Stark Tower. No word yet on how JARVIS is taking this.

Steve, back in his spangle suit, bursts into the med bay...or wherever...and tells Natasha they're leaving. He asks if she can fly one of the jets. Wasn't she doing that earlier? Whatever. Clint comes back from the bathroom to announce that he can fly it. Steve looks at Natasha, who nods that it's okay to trust the guy who was just trying to kill them hours ago, and tells him to suit up.

Thor finally picks up his hammer. How long was he just standing there? Jesus.

Tony fixes his suit.

Cap, Natasha and Hawk climb into a jet and Cap just sasses at the guy who tries to kick them out because they're not "authorized". "Son...just don't."

Chrissy: Or what, Grandpa? You gonna tell boring old war stories until I beg for mercy?

On the bridge, Hill notes that the bloodied cards Fury is still holding were in Coulson's LOCKER, not his jacket. Fury acknowledges that he was totally manipulating them there. And then something streaks past the window, followed by a larger streak of a jet and a voice announces that there has been an unauthorized departure from bay 6. Fury notes that they've "found him" and orders everyone to keep working at getting communications back up.

Chrissy: Also, somebody needs to do something about these motherfucking snakes!
Diandra: Been waiting a while to say that, have you?
Chrissy: Maybe. Sorry.

Tony arrives at Stark tower and hovers overhead, noting the spinning blue Tesseract, while JARVIS explains that he tried to turn the reactor off, but it's self sustaining. Tony orders Selvig to shut it down. Selvig cackles that it's too late and gushes that "she" is ready to show them a whole new universe. Tony sighs and sends a blast from his suit at the Tesseract. The blast ricochets, sending him and Selvig flying and startling random potential victims on the ground. JARVIS is like yeah, um...don't do that. You can't breach it. Tony sees Loki standing on the balcony and concludes that he'll have to move to plan B. JARVIS informs him that the Mark 7 isn't ready to be deployed. Tony tells him to move faster and goes through the automated removal of his suit process again while he and Loki glare at each other periodically.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," Loki sneers once they're inside the building. Tony says uh, no, he was planning to just jump right to threats. Loki says he should have left his armor on then.

Chrissy: Nah, it's more fun without protection.
Diandra: [spluttering noises]

Tony says nah, the suit is kind of weathered right now "and you've got the glow stick of destiny".

Chrissy: If you know what I mean.
Diandra: Which part?
Chrissy: All of it.

Tony reaches the bar and offers Loki a drink. Loki snorts that he's stalling. Tony says nope, still threatening. But also he wants a drink. Loki huffs and says the Chitauri are coming and they can't stop it so what does Tony think he has to be afraid of? Tony says yeah, well, they're trying this new thing called The Avengers Initiative and it's taking them a while to gain traction, granted, but they have a demigod, a super soldier, "a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend"...

Chrissy: Oh, fuck you, you egotistical prick.
Diandra: And once again: NOBODY LIKES YOU.

He keeps rambling about the guy with "breathtaking anger management issues" and a couple assassins while he surreptitiously puts on some sort of bracelets. And Loki has managed to piss them all off. Loki is like um...yeah. As you can see, I'm just beside myself with fear over here. Not.

"I have an army," Loki growls. "We have the Hulk," Tony retorts.

Chrissy: Jesus, would somebody just find a ruler already and get this over with?

Loki says oh, he didn't wander off somewhere? Tony snaps that he's missing the point: "there is no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top."

Chrissy: Oh, I'm sure you can come up with a couple.

He says even if that army of his overwhelms them, it will all be on him because "if we can't protect the Earth you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it." Loki closes in on him menacingly as he asks how his people will have time to fight him when they're so busy fighting Iron Man. He touches the spear to the arc reactor plate in Tony's chest and the glowing orb sputters and fizzles. He frowns, does it again and notes that this "usually works". "Well, performance issues...it's not uncommon," Tony snarks. Loki, clearly upset by his inability to get his glow stick of glorious purpose to work properly, grabs Tony by the neck and flings him to the floor as he's reciting statistics about one in five men having similar problems.

Tony mutters to JARVIS that he can interrupt any time now before Loki yanks him back upright, holding him by the face as he rants that they will all fall before him. Okay, two things.

Chrissy: Sploosh.
Diandra: Okay, three things, I guess.

First...ho yay. Second...I would like to point out a little snippet of an interview Tom and Robert did where they brought up this scene. Tom, adorable, naive little boy that he is, reminded Robert "I remember you telling me to 'squeeze harder'." Robert looked at him like 'really? You're making this too easy', turned to the interviewer and said "and we were shooting [that scene] the next day."

Chrissy: And this is why we love them.
Diandra: I especially like how all through that interview they are practically in each other's laps and Tom keeps looking at Robert like a lovestruck teenager. I mean, I didn't ship...what did you call it? FrostIron?...before, but...

"Deploy," Tony squeaks before Loki tosses him through the nearest window. Something powers up on the other side of the room and Loki is knocked over as Tony's new suit shoots out after him, latches on to the signal from his bracelet and forms itself around him before he can splatter on the ground. He shoots back up to the shattered remains of a window and blasts Loki in the chest, sending him flying across the floor.

The Teseract fires up at just that moment, shooting a blue beam into the sky.

Chrissy: See? It doesn't have performance issues.

A portal opens up and some alien ships start flying through, having apparently been waiting on the other side for a while already. Tony identifies this as the army Loki was yapping about and flies to greet them, shooting a few down with...I'm going to say his shoulder guns. Obviously he can't get very many of them, so several fly off through downtown Manhattan, blasting away. Cars flip over, people run screaming and everything is generally chaos and flames.

Loki goes out to Iron Man's landing pad, his helmet reappearing on his head except possibly with even more ridiculous, less practical horns this time. He looks at the aliens flying everywhere. Thor lands on the balcony and barks at him to turn the Teseract off "or I'll destroy it". Yeah. How about you do that anyway instead of wasting time trying to reason with a person you yourself admitted is crazy? Just a suggestion. Loki says he can't stop it and jumps down toward him so they can fight.

The "K" falls off Stark tower, miraculously not killing anyone when it lands.

And then the rest of the team arrives. Natasha informs Tony from the jet of their location. "What, did you stop for drive through?" he snaps. He tells her to go to Park and he'll bring them to her. He flies past Thor and Loki, still fighting, a half a dozen aliens following. One crashes right into a building and Natasha and Clint fire at the rest. Then they get distracted by the demigod fight and hover beside the walkway, possibly readying to fire. Loki blasts one of their wings before they get a chance and they do a controlled fall into a mostly empty square, only clipping a couple buildings along the way. We see Steve pinballing around in the back of the plane in case we forgot he was on board by this point. Spoiler alert: we probably did. All three of them pile out and run back toward Stark Tower, stopping right in front of Grand Central Station as something that looks like a giant mechanical lizard flies out of the portal right over their heads. Aliens fling out of it onto buildings as it passes. Steve asks if Tony is seeing all of this. Tony is like 'uh...yeah...the fuck is this shit?' He asks where Bruce is. Steve is confused by the question. Tony just tells him to keep him "posted" and flies alongside the dragon ship, ordering JARVIS to find him a weak point.

Chrissy: It's the scale under his wing that's already loosened. Aim for it.
Diandra: .........[opens mouth]
Chrissy: If you ask what that's a reference to, I'm having you committed.

Thor and Loki have reached some sort of stalemate. Thor invites Loki to look around and ask himself whether all of this will somehow result in him ruling the planet. Loki looks around, dazed, and whines that it's too late to stop it. Thor says they can if they do it together. Loki looks at him like 'god, you're such a sucker', gets a blade in his hand somehow and stabs Thor in the ribs while his guard is down. "Sentiment," he sneers.

Chrissy: No, you're right, either of the Sherlocks are a perfect match for him.
Diandra: Yeah, I didn't realize why that was a natural impulse until just now.

Thor recovers, lifts Loki over his head and slams him into the ground. Loki just rolls off the balcony and lands on a passing alien ship.

More running, flipping cars and chaos. Cap does an action hero dive off one street onto another while Natasha and Clint hold a bunch of incoming aliens off with...er...pistols and arrows. Yeah. Apparently there was a comedy sketch pointing out how relatively lame these two are in a universe with supersoldiers and monstrous creatures. "Clint" and a couple other heroes were comparing records after a fight. Someone asked Clint how many bad guys he got. He says "nine." Because arrows are limited. One of the others splutters that there were HUNDREDS of bad guys and he gloats "and I killed nine of them. You're welcome."

Natasha yells that this is just like Budhapest. Clint yells back that they remember Budhapest very differently then.

Captain America is still running. He finds a couple police officers fretting about how long it will take the National Guard to arrive and orders them to get their men in those buildings over there. Clear out the people in the line of fire via the subway or just the basement. Also, he needs a perimeter "as far back as 39th". One of the cops blinks at him and asks why the hell he should take orders from this weirdo. A couple aliens conveniently choose this moment to attack Steve and he sends them flying with a few punches and blows from his shield. The cop is like 'okay, then' and turns around to relay the orders.

Iron Man flies around a corner and disappears somewhere beneath the behemoth. The dragon creature turns slowly around, tearing chunks out of buildings and looks right at him. He announces that they have its attention and asks "what the hell was step two?" He flies off, the creature giving chase.

Back with the non-superpowered humans, Widow seems to have gotten hold of one of the alien energy blaster weapons and she and Hawk are fending off one or maybe two aliens at a time. As the number of enemies continues to grow, they are joined by Captain America and then Thor, who is looking more ragged than the others. Steve asks how things are going up in the tower. Thor grumbles that the power source around the Tesseract cannot be penetrated.

Chrissy: Really, are we sure about that? Did anyone try the gentle approach? Maybe play some Barry White?
Diandra: So the Tesseract is a she now?
Chrissy: Well, I didn't say that, but I'm pretty sure that's what Selvig was saying, so...

Tony does a flyby and announces that Thor is right. They have to focus on dealing with this army right now. Natasha asks how they're supposed to do that. "As a team," says captain Patriot Spanglepants. Thor says he still has unfinished business with Loki. Hawk invites him to get in line behind the people he mind-raped. Steve tells him to save that for now because Loki is keeping the fight focused on them, which they need because otherwise those things could go rampaging in random directions. And then he's interrupted by Bruce arriving on a motorcycle. Bruce looks at all the destruction and flames around and says "so...this all seems...horrible." Natasha says she's seen worse.

Chrissy: Yeah, not everything is a competition, Mata Hari.

Bruce apologizes and she says no, she thinks they could use "worse" right about now. Steve announces to Tony that Banner is here just like he said he'd be. Tony says they should tell him to "suit up" because he's bringing the alien queen to them. He comes around the corner just then and the giant dragon creature takes out a good chunk of the building as it follows.

Bruce looks at the metal dragon charging down the street toward them, smashing whatever cars haven't already been destroyed, and Steve suggests now might be a good time for him to get "angry". Bruce says that secret he mentioned earlier? Yeah. It's that he's always angry. He turns into the green rage monster in half a second and punches the creature's face, slowing its approach. It starts to flip over, threatening to crush the rest of the team. Tony flies out over them and sends a blast into its tail. It explodes and pieces of it rain down on neighboring streets dangerously close to civilians. But hey, the whole team is okay. The alien creatures sense a disturbance in the force and hesitate in whatever they were doing.

Chrissy: You really need to stop being so random in your references.
Diandra: No, I don't. It's part of my charm.

The team all form a circle, standing at ready, and the camera pans around them while heroic music plays.

And then Loki orders whoever he's in communication with to "send the rest" and two more of those giant metal dragon creatures comes through the portal. Natasha looks up at this like 'OH COME ON!' and directs the rest of the team's attention to it. Steve says okay, until they can close the portal all they can do is contain the threat. He points to a roof and tells Hawk to go up there and locate enemies for them. Then he orders Tony to guard the perimeter and either take out or redirect anything that gets more than three blocks away. Hawk asks if Tony can give him a lift. Tony calls him Legolas, grabs him and flies them both up the building. Steve directs Thor to try to "bottleneck" the portal and slow down the flow. Thor spins his hammer around and takes off. Natasha stares at him and he says they're staying on the ground. And finally..."Hulk?" He points upward and says "smash". The Hulk kind of smiles and leaps toward the nearest building, smashing both the alien scaling it and a good chunk of the building itself. He leaps from building to building, doing that a couple more times and smashes one of their passing ships right out of the air.

Thor flies to the top of the Chrysler Building and summons enough lightning to electrify the needle, then redirects the blast toward one of the metal dragons that hasn't fully emerged from the portal yet.

Back on the helicarrier, because we haven't checked in with Fury in a while, the screens are showing multiple news feeds all chattering excitedly about what is going on outside. Hill announces that the council is calling him.

Up on the roof, Hawk is firing his apparently never-ending supply of arrows and informs Tony that he has "a lot" of strays chasing him. Tony, flying through the streets with a bunch of aliens following, says yeah, he's keeping them "off the streets". Hawk shows off his ability to take out one of them without even looking and tells Tony that they "can't bank worth a damn", so he should try to take them around sharp corners. Tony flies them down a few streets until the last one slams right into a building and bursts into a fireball. Seriously, is anyone keeping track of the amount of damage and possible casualties they're racking up here? Tony says 'done. Next.' Hawk says eh...Thor is taking out a whole squadron down on 6th if he wants to help.

One of the metal dragons floats up to an office building that still has people in it, standing at the window gaping stupidly at the destruction outside. It looks in at them and they start to back away and then the Hulk comes charging through the office, destroying everything in his wake and knocking people aside before blasting through the window and landing on the dragon. His weight forces it to turn, clipping an entire floor of windows with one wing. Well, that was helpful. Thank you.

Widow still has one of the aliens' weapons, which looks like a rifle with an energy blaster attached to the end. Or maybe this is an error in continuity, I really don't know. She dispatches the one on her and turns as Steve, panting that none of this is going to matter if they don't find a way to close the portal. They have the following conversation, which any Freudian worth a damn could have a field day with:

Steve: Our biggest guns couldn't touch it.
Natasha: Well, maybe it's not about guns.
Chrissy: Also, seriously? A little Barry White wouldn't hurt.
Diandra: Shut up.

Steve looks confused, like he can't process a solution that doesn't involve phallic instruments of destruction, which, you know, is typical.

She looks at the alien ships flying over head, backs up and asks Steve to help give her a boost. Steve starts getting into position immediately, though he asks if she's sure she wants to do this. She says yeah, it should be "fun". Then she uses his shield as a springboard and grabs on to the next ship, getting whisked away.

She dispatches the alien gunner on the back of the ship pretty easily, then jumps on the other and rides him like a monkey while he careens out of control. Tony flies by the camera and we follow him back down to where Cap is dealing with aliens on the ground. He takes out a few of the aliens, bounces a blast off Cap's shield and takes off again to pick a few more aliens off the nearby building. He flies past Hawk, who is on top of that particular building, somehow still not out of arrows. He fires at one of the passing ships, which flails and crashes into the dragon ship the Hulk is still taking apart whenever he can take a break from throwing aliens off its back. Thor is on the other end of the dragon, also throwing off aliens, but I have no idea how he got there.

Chrissy: I'm dizzy.
Diandra: I'm thinking I should have taken something for motion sickness. Are we done yet? Is that everybody?

Hulk and Thor keep smashing at the dragon until it crashes right into the middle of Grand Central Station, destroying the center podium and the majority of the floor and one wall. They look around at the screaming chaos for one satisfied moment and then Hulk punches Thor across the room for no apparent reason.

Selvig wakes up on top of Stark tower and looks around, horrified, as the Black Oil hypnosis thing wears off.

Back on the ground, the Army has arrived. A day late and a dollar short, as usual.

Hawk directs Cap to a bank where the aliens have cornered a bunch of civilians. Cap gets there almost instantly, diving through the window and dispatching the lookout with his shield. He takes on the rest of them, tossing one down onto the frightened group of hostages BEFORE yelling at them to get out of the way.

Chrissy: I'm starting to get the impression that these people actually suck at this.
Diandra: Oh really? JUST NOW?

One of the aliens sets what looks like a futuristic grenade and goes to toss it, but it goes off in his hand, creating a blast of energy over the hostages heads and sending Cap flying back out the window onto a parked car. He grunts and staggers to the ground as cops, firefighters and soldiers direct survivors all around, taking a moment to make eye contact with a waitress for no apparent reason except she's totally familiar looking so we'll probably see her again.

Chrissy: Patterson!
Diandra: Is...should I know who that is?
Chrissy: Probably not. I don't think you watch that show.
Diandra: Oh, thank god. You're talking about a completely different canon. Whew.

The council woman informs Fury that they have made a decision. Fury says yeah, well, considering it's a "stupid ass decision" he's just going to go ahead and ignore it. He will wait until he is sure his team cannot hold the island before he orders a nuclear strike on Manhattan. One of the councilmen spits that if they can't contain the aliens, they'll lose everything. Fury is like 'yeah, and if I turn New York into a smoking crater everything will be just great. Fuck off.'

Widow is still steering her ship via the probably half-dead alien when another one comes up behind her and starts shooting. She looks back, sees Loki in the driver's seat and grumbles "oh...you..."

Chrissy: She is 1000% done with this shit.

She tells Hawk she's about to give him that chance at revenge he was talking about earlier and flies in his direction, leading Loki. Hawk smirks as he sees the clear shot and fires. Loki catches the arrow mid-air and looks back at him like 'really? is that all you've got?' The arrow explodes, blasting the ship from under him and dumping him right back on the platform of Stark Tower. Widow jumps off her ship and lands, possibly on the roof of the same building, but it's hard to tell.

Loki is just standing up again when Hulk arrives out of nowhere and punches him through a window that was somehow still intact. He gets up again, sees Hulk charging toward him and screams "enough!" Hulk stops, cocking his head at him like a confused puppy as he rants that they are ALL beneath him because he is a GOD. And again, Joss proves his very specific preference for physical comedy involving Asgardians being ripped out of frame by having Hulk grab Loki by the leg midsentence and slam him into the ground repeatedly like a breathing damnit doll. He stomps off, snorting "puny god" while Loki makes a thin squeaky noise. Joss cuts away before Tom can start giggling again.

Chrissy: And then apologize for giggling.
Diandra: And then probably apologize for apologizing.

Natasha is, in fact, on Stark Tower. She walks toward the glowing Tesseract. The newly recovered Selvig calls "the scepter." She turns to him and he explains...sort of..."the energy. The Tesseract can't fight, but you can't protect against yourself." She crouches beside him and assures him this isn't his fault because he didn't know what he was doing. Selvig says actually...he thinks he did. He put a safety in that cuts off the power source. Loki's scepter might be able to cut off the portal. Conveniently, it is still sitting on that walkway below.

Thor is on another alien ship, tossing aliens off it. One of the dragons clips a skyscraper so deeply that it begins to topple and give every New Yorker over the age of, say, 25 PTSD. Tony is flying behind it, firing a continuous laser at it. JARVIS informs him that he will lose power before he can will breech the outer layer. Tony stops blasting and flies down a side street while the dragon destroys a couple more buildings. Tony asks if JARVIS knows the tale of Jonah and the whale.

Chrissy: Might want to ask Thor about that one.
Diandra: That's...Moby Dick.
Chrissy: And the difference is?
Diandra: I have no idea.

Before JARVIS can talk him out of it, he flies right into the dragon's open mouth and sets off blasts all the way down to the tail where he blasts out of it, crashes through a bus stop and into a taxi. He is just picking himself up when a couple alien foot soldiers start blasting him right into a giant ad for Farmer's Insurance. Product placement!

Hawk finally runs out of the apparently six dozen arrows he started with and resorts to kicking one last alien off the building. He turns to see a swarm of ships headed his way, pulls a special arrow from his ass or something, and jumps off the building, firing it back into the wall. It is attached to a line. He swings down and blasts through a window into an office building, landing on the floor with a groan.

Hulk is back out smashing alien foot soldiers around. The swarm of ships surrounds him and starts firing while he roars like a baby dinosaur.

The woman on the council announces that Fury is no longer in charge and orders an override of "7-alpha-1-1". In immediate response, a jet starts taking off.

Up on the control deck, Hill yelps that they have a rogue plane and scrambles to try to shut it down. Fury just runs out on the runway with a rocket launcher and blows the wing off before it can get airborne. And the lesson here is that if you want something fucking DONE, you ask Nick Fury to do it. Unfortunately, another jet takes off immediately after it and he only has one rocket. He runs back inside and calls to Tony, warning that there is a missile headed for the city that will completely wipe out midtown. It will be there in three minutes.

Tony is getting knocked around by aliens at that particular moment. He rolls onto his back and sends blasts in seemingly random directions before ordering JARVIS to "put everything we've got into the thrusters". He takes off, throwing off one of the aliens that tries to hang on to him.

The guy in the jet fires the missile and announces that it will strike in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Which probably translates to five minutes of actual screen time.

We check in with Cap and Thor, picking off footsoldiers. Cap is thrown onto his face and doesn't get up right away, grunting in pain. Thor helps him up when there's a lull and verifies that he's okay to keep doing this. Cap makes some male pride bullshit comment along the lines of 'what, is this your way of saying YOU want to quit, you wuss?'

Chrissy: Yep. He's definitely with the Army.
Diandra: Oh, ALL guys are like that.

Up on Stark Tower, Widow has apparently make the trip down to retrieve the scepter and has just returned. Selvig sets up a monitor and directs her to the exact spot to stab the...phallic object into the glowing orb around the Tesseract...and I'm getting flashbacks of all those videos they showed in health class of tadpoles stabbing at a giant nerf ball until one manages to stab through in a simulation of sperm meeting an egg.

Chrissy: And the irony here is that Tony, the macho man whose name is on the giant phallus they're standing on, was unable to do what this Russian woman with no special powers could.
Diandra: Well, that's not really surprising since the other theme of this movie seems to be that the answer to the problem is not necessarily big dumb guys using brute force.
Chrissy: Oh, you mean diplomacy is preferable to just beating the other guy senseless, no questions asked?
Diandra: Crazy, I know.

She announces that she can close the portal now. Steve yells at her to do it then. Tony says no, wait, he has to deal with this nuke first and he needs the portal open a little longer. He flies under the missile and wraps his arms around it as the New York skyline looms ahead. We do the standard hero stuff where Steve notes for everybody that this is a suicide mission and JARVIS offers to call Pepper so he can say goodbye. Because they totally weren't already planning an "Iron Man 3" at this point.

Pepper is on a plane somewhere over...who the hell knows where. Is she coming back? Where was she going again? She's watching news reports of the chaos going on in Manhattan and doesn't hear her phone buzzing as JARVIS tries to put Tony through.

All the team members look up as the missile passes overhead and Tony guides it up at the last possible second, scraping the side of his tower as he flies up into the portal and disappears.

Everybody on the ground and in the control center of the helicarrier cheers.

Tony loses power and lets go of the missile as his thrusters seem to fall off entirely. He watches the missile go right up to the Chitauri Mothership and detonate in a giant fireball.

Because all alien armies in movies follow the same logic as the ones in "Independence Day", all the aliens on the ground drop dead immediately and the dragon ships fall right out of the sky, taking out several floors of whatever building they happened to be next to. Tony seems to pass out and fall back toward the portal. But not fast enough for the team, who assume he is dead. Steve orders Natasha to close the portal. She jams the scepter fully into the...whatever...and once the tip touches the very center the whole rig shorts and the portal starts closing. Tony falls through just before it finishes. Everyone just stares dumbly until Thor finally realizes that he's not controlling the fall at all and starts spinning his hammer. Before he can take off, Hulk catches Tony by slamming him into the nearest building, doing a barely controlled fall to the ground, acting as the world's hardest pillow and then just flinging Tony off of him unceremoniously. Thor and Steve crouch beside him and roll him onto his back, frantically asking things like "is he still breathing?" Tony is really still and they all just start backing away and acting somber like there's no way they can possibly bring him back.

Chrissy: Oh, I've seen this before. Just give him the injection and he'll come back to life.
Diandra: He might call you "Watson". Just ignore it. He'll be fine.

Then Hulk - who in his human form is a doctor, mind you - roars at him and he jumps and gasps awake like 'who what huh WHERE AM I?!'

"What just happened," Tony asks the hovering faces. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Chrissy: Oh, the horror of coming back to life and finding out that you might have had Chris Hemsworth or Chris Evans performing rescue breathing on you.
Diandra: Yeah, I mean, poor guy has been through a lot in the last few...minutes? Hours? I'm sure there are plenty of people who would happily trade places with him here to spare him this one indigni-
Chrissy: Dibs.
Diandra: I was going to say I would totally fall on that sword, but okay.
Chrissy: Ahem. Yes. I will "fall on" both of those "swords".
Diandra: How selfless of you.
Chrissy: Call it taking one for the team.
Diandra: Are you done yet?

Steve looks around, sighs and announces that they won. Tony sags and suggests they take tomorrow off work and go to this schwarma place nearby to celebrate. He has no idea what schwarma is. He just always wanted to try it.

Chrissy: Wanna start listing other things you've never tried but been curious about?
Diandra: Let's dial it back a bit there, Chris.

Thor says they're not finished yet. Tony and Steve both look at him like 'fucking hell' and Tony says fine, but they are GETTING SCHWARMA AFTERWARD.

Up in the tower, Loki is just now crawling out of the Loki- shaped crater Hulk made for him like...how long was he laying there? He looks up to see all six Avengers hovering menacingly, Widow holding his scepter. He says yeah, um...he'll take that drink Tony was offering earlier now.

The media screens are playing multiple images of the city-wide disaster area and people making memorials and comforting victims' families. A reporter rambles about confirmed extraterrestrial attack and reports of a giant blue naked guy with a pet tiger.

Chrissy: THAT'S ALSO DC.
Diandra: It is? Damnit.
Chrissy: Also, Dr. Manhattan didn't have the tiger and I'm not sure it was technically a tiger.
Diandra: Oh. Right. I'm thinking of that black guy with dreadlocks camped out in an elemen...wait, that's "Walking Dead". Is that Marvel or DC?
Chrissy: Sigh. I think maybe I need to broaden the scope of my proficiency test.

We see some starry eyed people being interviewed about their new heroes "The Avengers" and the reporters show some fan art and a parade held in their honor. I won't ask where they found the money for that considering the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF PROPERTY DAMAGE THEY HAD TO CLEAN UP. One sane couple soberly admits that knowing they're out there doesn't really make them feel safe because it feels like there's more to this that the authorities aren't talking about. This leads to Stan Lee's cameo, which is so late in the movie I was beginning to think I had missed it somehow, as a tinfoil hat wearing old fart who thinks the whole thing was a hoax. This leads to a politician yelling about how these "so called heroes" must be held responsible for the damage done to the city.

Chrissy: Well, that escalated quickly.

Another reporter questions the sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance of these superheroes. What, even Captain America didn't stay behind for the clean up? The Hey, It's That Girl waitress who ran into Steve in the middle of the chaos is interviewed and defends them, insisting Captain America saved her life and the whole idea that the massive destruction of the attack is their fault is ridiculous.

This brings us to the Council asking Fury where the Avengers are now, exactly. Fury is like 'oh, NOW you are interested. Sure.' He snots that he's not keeping track of them at the moment seeing as he figured they could use a vacation. The woman asks for a status on the Tesseract. Fury says it's "where it belongs" and we get a quick shot of Selvig and Banner getting it back into the carrier it was in at the beginning of the movie. Councilman Boothe snarls that it wasn't up to Fury to make decisions on what happened to the Tesseract. Fury says he didn't. He let the blonde demigod handle it. We see Selvig handing the case over to Thor while Councilman Boothe bemoans that they just handed the Tesseract over to Thor along with the lunatic that they should be trying for war crimes. We see Loki standing nearby for some reason, handcuffed and with a weird metal gag on his mouth. This image was the wallpaper on Chrissy's phone for a few months back when this movie came out.

Chrissy: I know you think you're shaming me with that, but...I am not ashamed of that.
Diandra: No, I actually wasn't surprised by that. I've seen worse. Which is why I've learned to not look at your phone too much.

Fury doesn't think they need to worry about Loki facing justice for what he did. Thor comes over, the Tesseract tube in his arms. He takes the handle on one end and Loki takes the other and they disappear in a blue flash with the rest of the now plainclothes Avengers watching. The councilwoman grumbles that Fury doesn't understand what he's started letting these dangerous people loose on the world. Um...aside from Thor, they were already scattered around the planet, so... Fury says yeah...dangerous. Yep. And now the whole world, no, fuck that, ALL the worlds know what sort of force they are to be reckoned with. Councilman Boothe asks if that was the point of this whole exercise. Showing the rest of the universe what sort of insane mutants they'd have to tangle with if they mess with Earth? Fury is like 'uh...yep.' He turns off the monitors and saunters out of the room.

Back at the command center of the helicarrier, Hill asks how this Avengers thing works exactly if the band has basically broken up again. What happens if a situation like this comes up again? See, this is why Bruce Wayne has the bat signal.

Chrissy: [deep breath]
Diandra: Wrong universe. I know. I'm just saying.

Fury is pretty confident they'll come back if they're needed. Hill asks how he can be so certain of that. Fury basically says 'because'.

At what is left of Stark Tower, Tony and Pepper are playing around with a redesign to turn it into the Avengers Tower. To heroic music, as the closed captioning guy proudly notes. We pan out through the windows that have been shattered approximately twelve times over to show that the only letter remaining after that battle is the "A".

And we smash to credits. But since this is a Marvel movie, we know we will have to watch all ten fucking minutes of them to find out how many additional scenes there are. There's actually some pretty cool photography the names are playing over, including shots of symbols and weapons relevant to each character as the actor's name comes up. Except Tom Hiddleston having to share the arrow quiver with Jeremy Renner because fuck Loki apparently.

Chrissy: Mmm...yes, please. Oh, wait. What were you saying?
Diandra: [heavy sigh]

Mid credit scene. On a very dimly lit planet somewhere, the "Other" from the beginning of the movie is bemoaning that the Humans are not as docile and easily controlled as they were led to believe.

Chrissy: Er...yes, we are. You just have to be more methodical about it. Send spies ahead to infiltrate. Gain followers. Become world leaders.
Diandra: Basically, do what Loki was trying to do, but not be so obvious about it.

A shadowy figure shakes his fist at a...planet? It's really dark here...in the distance and growls that challenging the unruly humans is like courting death. He turns toward the camera and smiles creepily and...okay, I recognize him because of the game, but I don't really know who Thanos is.

Chrissy: An alien with an unhealthy obsession with Death, who is an actual person in this universe.
Diandra: Isn't she one of Loki's kids?
Chrissy: No, she's...hell, I don't know.

I'm just going to fast forward through this annoying song by the guy who did the theme to one of the worst James Bond movies. [ETA: apparently I have the guys who did the themes for "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace" confused]

The scene after the credits basically looks like a deleted scene that was thrown on the end just for shits and giggles. All six Avengers - still dressed in battle gear except, seemingly, for Tony - are sitting around a table at that schwarma restaurant he was yapping about. It looks like it suffered a little damage from the battle, but not much. Everyone looks exhausted, especially Steve who might actually be falling asleep on the table. [ETA: this being the best way they could think of to hide the beard he needed for his next movie and avoid the mustache debacle of the DC universe] He is the only one not eating. A woman is sweeping in the background like 'oh, are there weirdos in spandex at table one? Huh. Must be Tuesday.'

Chrissy: Yeah, welcome to New York.
Diandra: Yep.

One movie down...um...how many to go?

Chrissy: Next one is "Iron Man 3", which we can probably skip because his storyline pretty much stands alone and he's in all the Avengers movies anyway. What came after that?
Diandra: Uh...[pulls up ridiculously complicated diagram]..."Thor 2".
Chrissy: [makes a strangled whimpering noise that she immediately covers with a cough] Um...sure. I guess I can do that.
Diandra: Yeah, I'm sure recapping a movie with Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Idris Elba will be a real hardship for you.
Chrissy: Well, when you put it that way, I'm sure I can find a way to get myself through it.
Diandra: Thought so.
Chrissy: Never let it be said that I don't make sacrifices for you.
Diandra: Don't push your luck.