“The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron”

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, 
Jeremy Renner, Scarlet Johanson, Colbie Smulders, James Spader, 
Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olson and Samuel 
Fucking L Jackson

Appearances by Anthony Mackie, Idris Elba, Haley Atwell, 
Stellan Skarsgaard, Andy Serkis 

Introducing Paul Bettany as something other than a disembodied 
voice



Okay, so since we are skipping some of the movies in this 
series, we have already come to another “Avengers”. This is 
mostly for the sake of continuity and because I want to avoid 
as much exposition as possible.
   Chrissy: Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

We open on the scepter Infinity Stone thing we saw in the end 
credits of the last movie (that I recapped). Wanda and Pietro 
Maximoff (AKA, the twins, AKA Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) 
appear to be standing over it as Strucker, the HYDRA/Nazi agent 
in charge of this facility apparently, yells for everybody to 
get back to their stations because they are UNDER ATTACK. 

People are running all over the place, shooting at each other, 
and then we focus on Natasha driving a jeep through a snowy 
forest while Hawkeye shoots arrows from the back. 
   Chrissy: Hey, by the way, how have you been? I haven’t 
    seen you since Loki mindraped you.
   Diandra: Not that I feel all that bad about it since you 
    didn’t even send a card or flowers or anything after I 
    NEARLY DIED IN A MISSLE STRIKE. Anyway. How do you like 
    my new hair?

Lest we think these are the only Avengers present, Iron Man 
does a flyby and Thor jumps onto an attacking vehicle and then 
onto a lookout station to take out all the bad guy snipers. I 
would sympathize with Chris Hemsworth having completely bare 
arms in a snowy and probably cold environment, but he’s still 
wearing more clothes than a woman in his position would be 
so...whatever. He jumps down to the ground and starts taking 
out guys there too before Captain America rides through on his 
motorcycle, grabbing one and dragging him along for a while 
before flinging him onto...I’m gonna say a pile of grenades. 
Everything is moving pretty fast, so it’s not really clear what 
causes the explosion. He flings his shield, which somehow 
boomerangs around several trees before returning directly to 
his back. Then he swerves to avoid a vehicle before Hulk lifts 
it over his head and flings it. Natasha and Clint go flying by 
again and there’s a moment where the camera freeze frames on 
all six of them leaping into action at the same time. Yes, it 
seems every Avengers movie will feature at least one scene 
where all the major characters tag team. Be glad there’s still 
only six of them. 

We follow Tony as he flies up a hill and bounces off some sort 
of shield surrounding the building on top of it. He yells 
“shit” and Steve chastises him for his “language”, which is 
appropriate because I think the US might be the only country in 
the world that censors the word “shit”. Steve asks JARVIS what 
he sees from “upstairs”. JARVIS, from out on a satellite 
orbiting the planet, says the building is protected by some 
kind of “energy shield”. Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious. He adds 
that Strucker’s technology is more advanced than your typical 
HYDRA base. Thor pauses between walloping bad guys to 
hypothesize that this must indicate Loki’s scepter IS here. 
That...is the same scepter? Really?

Natasha flings a grenade onto a truck and handily drops a 
couple guys. Then she complains that this is taking too long. 
Clint shoots an arrow from behind a tree and adds that they 
have officially “lost the element of surprise.” Tony asks if 
anybody else is going to address the fact that Captain OldFart 
just chastised him for “language”. Steve is like ‘yeah, yeah, 
shut up. Force of habit’. Then he does a completely ridiculous 
move where he flips over his motorcycle and THROWS the bike at 
an oncoming jeep.
   Chrissy: It just ran out of gas.
   Diandra: Oh, so that’s the equivalent of throwing the 
    gun when a guy runs out of bullets?
   Chrissy: Yep.

So now we go inside a “HYDRA research base” in “Sokovia” which 
is a made up country in Eastern Europe that is apparently as 
familiar to readers of Marvel as “Wakanda”.
   Chrissy: You’re jumping about five movies ahead there.
   Diandra: Oh, whatever. We all know where Black Panther 
    is from now.
Herr Strucker marches into a command room and demands to know 
who gave the attack order. A guy points to the monitors and 
says the Avengers landed in the woods nearby and the perimeter 
guard panicked. Considering this is former Russian Federation 
territory, I would think NOT reacting would have gotten him 
fired if not killed. Strucker concludes they are after the 
scepter and orders the men to deploy the rest of the tanks. 
Because the whole world saw what happened in New York last time 
these guys banded together. He tells them to specifically 
concentrate on taking out the “weak ones”. So...Widow, Hawkeye 
and, if you can disable the armor, Tony. He sidles up to the 
guy he was talking to in the end credit scene, who suggests 
Stucker “show them” what they have been working on. “Send out 
the twins”.

JARVIS informs Tony, as he’s dodging blasts, that the city is 
taking fire. Tony mutters that they all know Stucker cares fuck 
all about civilian lives.
   Chrissy: LANGUAGE!
He says “send in the Iron Legion, which is apparently what he 
calls his army of unmanned versions of his suit. Basically, 
robots. One of them lands in front of a group of people and a 
robotic voice tells them to back away from the “unsafe” area 
and stay calm because “we are here to help”. Again, probably 
because it is a former Russian Federation – or maybe just 
because it’s Europe - people respond by jeering and throwing 
things at the robots.

Stucker is rallying the troops by saying the Americans have 
sent their “circus freaks” to fight and he intends to send them 
back in however many pieces they can make out of them in 
whatever random groupings they can collect them in.
   Chrissy: That was alarmingly more colorful than what he 
   actually said.
He finishes with “NO SURRENDER!” then turns to the right hand 
guy (or whoever he is) and admits that HE will surrender 
himself and it’s Right Hand’s job to delete everything. Right 
Hand repeats “the twins”. Strucker is like ‘yeah, I heard you 
the first time, but I’m not sending them out because they’re 
not ready...’ Right Hand is like ‘no, I mean, they’ve already 
left.’

Out in the woods, Hawkeye is trying very hard to look badass. 
One of his arrows is caught mid-air by a vaguely human shaped 
blur that proceeds to knock him over. He looks up to find a 
dude with a thick Russian accent laughing at him for not seeing 
that coming, then zipping off again. He tries to get up and 
gets knocked back down again by a blast. 

Pietro runs into Steve, who flips over and lands right back on 
his feet before announcing that there is an “enhanced” in the 
field with them.
   Chrissy: Because we can’t say “mutant”.
   Diandra: Yep. Although I could believe a fanwank that 
    “mutant” is an old, racist sounding term and “enhanced 
    human” is the accepted label now.
   Chrissy: Isn’t that still problematic? I mean, Thor 
    isn’t a human.
   Diandra: Enhanced bipedal life form? Don’t you dare tell 
    me that there are enhanced non-bipedal fuck the 
    Inhumans have a giant teleporting dog.
   Chrissy: Uh-huh. Probably why they just went with 
    “enhanced”.
   Diandra: By the way, do we know why Quicksilver is able 
    to be in both the Avengers and the X-Men despite the 
    otherwise sharp division between universes?
   Chrissy: Obviously there is a loophole somewhere. Maybe 
    they can pretend they’re different characters because 
    they’re played by different guys.

Natasha flings herself to the ground by Clint and announces 
that he’s been hit and can somebody take care of that bunker 
over there for them? Hulk roars and runs right through it, 
smashing everything and sending everyone flying. “Thank you,” 
Natasha says.

Steve takes out a couple more guys and tells Tony they REALLY 
need to get inside. Tony says he’s “closing in”. He lands near 
a couple guards and blasts them with his wrist beams, then asks 
JARVIS ‘I am closing in, right?’ JARVIS doesn’t answer. So Tony 
asks if he can see a power source for that protective shield. 
JARVIS directs him to a “particle wave”. “Great, I want to poke 
it with something,” he says. 
   Chrissy: Why is that men’s answer for everything?
   Diandra: How deep into psychological analysis do you 
    want to go to answer that?
He flies up to the tower, launches what looks like a missile 
from his suit and the shield drops immediately. He announces 
this to the team.

In a lull between fighting, Thor asks Steve about the 
“Enhanced”. Steve says he doesn’t know much because he just saw 
a blur. Natasha comes over comms to repeat that Clint is hit 
and they need evacuation. Thor says he can take care of that if 
Steve and Tony take care of the scepter. The bad guys headed in 
their direction form two lines followed by a tank. Thor whangs 
his hammer into Cap’s shield which, as we’ve already learned by 
accident, creates a shockwave, knocking them all over like 
dominoes and flipping the tank. “Find the scepter,” Thor 
repeats before flying off. “And for gosh sake, watch your 
language,” Tony adds snarkily. Steve sighs like ‘great, he’s 
never going to let that go.’

Tony blasts into the control room Strucker has now vacated. Bad 
guys start blasting away at him. He calmly suggests they stop 
and talk it out a little, blasts them all down and chirps “it 
was a good talk.” “No, it wasn’t,” some guy on the ground 
groans.
   Chrissy: Oh, shut up. Nobody asked you.
   Diandra: You want another taste of this?
He blasts one last guy who was trying to type something on his 
computer, then steps out of the suit and instructs it to go 
into “sentry mode”. He goes to the computer to copy whatever 
information is left and tells JARVIS to send a copy of it to 
Hill.

Outside, Natasha and Steve demonstrate that they have developed 
some sort of code that everybody else may or may not understand 
when Natasha notes that they are “locked out” and Steve orders 
her to get to Banner. “Time for a lullaby.” 
   Chrissy: That just sounds like an unnecessarily cutesy 
    way of saying “have the Hulk knock out the guards so 
    you can get by”.
   Diandra: Except apparently it is not that at all.

Inside, Tony orders “J” to give him a scan of the room because 
he knows there’s more being guarded here than some files. 
JARVIS replies that he’s reading steel reinforcements and an 
air current on the wall to his left. “Please be a secret door,” 
Tony mutters, sidling up to it. He pushes the wall and the 
secret door crunches open and he says “yay!”
   Chrissy: OMG, the bad guys always have the best designs! 
   JARVIS, copy the schematics! I want to build one of 
   these in the tower!
Inside, he finds a tunnel leading down, looking like something 
out of a horror movie. Since he isn’t black or a woman in a 
negligee, he’s probably safe though.
   Chrissy: No, the nerdy guy isn’t safe either.

Outside, Hulk is smashing random pieces of cars in a clearing. 
Natasha creeps up to him gently and crouches down and holds her 
hand out like maybe he’s a dog and he can sniff her to 
determine she isn’t a threat. He comes over and mirrors her 
movement with his hand, then flops it over on top of her palm. 
She moves her hand over his and strokes down his arm and palm. 
He snorts, pulls away and she averts her eyes as he turns back 
into Bruce. Somehow he is still wearing pants.
   Chrissy: We are still at a PG-13 rating, I’m pretty 
   sure.

Steve intercepts Strucker as he’s apparently still trying to 
escape. He exposits that Strucker is HYDRA’s #1 thug. Strucker 
says he works for SHIELD technically...Steve is like ‘oh, 
didn’t you see my last movie? We took down SHIELD. For that 
reason. Now tell me where the scepter is.’ Strucker sighs and 
obviously stalls by rambling about how he is surrendering but 
he wants Steve to mention that he’s totally cooperating... He 
looks at a doorway behind Steve where Wanda is hovering, her 
eyes glowing in the dark. Steve is like ‘yeah, sure, I’ll 
totally make sure they take it easy on the Nazi who was doing 
experiments on people. NOT.’ And then Wanda appears and sends 
Steve rolling down a staircase with a blast of energy. He jumps 
up immediately and runs back up, but she is already gone. 
Except for some reason Strucker is still standing in place like 
an idiot. Steve announces to the team that there is another 
Enhanced, then knocks Strucker out with his shield and 
announces he has him too. Tony is like ‘yeah, but mine is 
bigger. I mean the thing I found. It’s bigger. Ahem.’ He is 
standing under what looks like one of the Chitauri ships from 
the first Avengers in a massive underground lab. He moves over 
to a table with a sort of Terminator on it, looks around at 
several similar tables, then sees something sparking. He tells 
Thor he’s found the scepter. 

Wanda appears at that moment, but Tony doesn’t see her. She 
waves her hands around his head like she’s casting a spell and 
slinks back again. Tony’s eyes briefly go red and then he 
shakes it off, turns around and comes face to face with the 
awake dragon ship. The dragon roars and flies over his head and 
we realize this is some sort of hallucination because Tony is 
suddenly outside and all the other Avengers are scattered on 
the ground dead or – in the case of Hulk – dying. He runs to 
Steve, laying beside his shield which has been ripped entirely 
in half, and checks his pulse. Steve gasps awake suddenly and 
gurgles that Tony could have SAVED them. Tony looks at the pile 
of bodies that is probably supposed to include a bunch of 
characters who weren’t technically part of the Avengers yet at 
the time this was filmed and the ships crawling overhead and 
snaps back to reality, gasping.

Wanda is still hovering in the corner, apparently still unseen. 
Pietro zips to her side and she holds him back. He asks if 
she’s really going to let them take “it”. Tony holds out his 
hand the same way Thor does when he’s calling his hammer. Wanda 
smiles as the glove portion of Tony’s suit flies right onto his 
hand and he swipes the scepter from whatever 
energy...field...thing is suspending it.

Title card.

When we come back, the team is on a jet. Tony appears to be 
flying. Steve is tending to Clint in the back and Thor is just 
standing by. Natasha wanders over to check on Clint and Thor is 
like ‘okay, I guess that’s my cue to go brood over in this 
corner now.’ Bruce is off to the side, not working on Clint for 
some reason, listening to opera music. Natasha crouches in 
front of him and he pulls his headphones off.
   Chrissy: I said Steve is asking how much morphine is 
   “too much”?
She assures him their way of pulling him back worked better 
than ever and if he hadn’t been there there would have been a 
LOT more casualties. “You know, sometimes exactly what I want 
to hear isn’t exactly what I want to hear,” he says. She frowns 
and asks how long it’s going to take him to trust her.
   Chrissy: Um...we just did a whole movie about this. 
   Nobody can trust you. You are a Russian spy.

Bruce says it isn’t HER he has problems trusting. Natasha calls 
on Thor to give a report on the Hulk. “The gates of Hel are 
filled with the screams of his victims,” Thor reports. Everyone 
looks at him like HOW THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO HELP?!
   Chrissy: Well, YOU ASKED.
Thor fumbles and says no, not the screams of the DEAD, the 
screams of the WOUNDED. There’s a lot of whimpering and 
complaining about sprained deltoids and gout. Steve is making 
faces in the background like ‘I’m so glad I don’t have to be 
the most awkward one in the room when he’s here’.

Tony mercifully ends this by calling to Bruce that a Dr. Cho is 
coming in and is it okay if she uses his lab? Bruce says yes. 
Tony mutters to JARVIS to tell Cho to get everything ready 
because Clint is going to need “full treatment”. Then he says 
something the writers have probably been just waiting to use. 
“JARVIS, take the wheel.” He punches a few buttons (one next to 
a bumper sticker that says “JARVIS is my co-pilot”) and goes 
back to join Thor and Steve hovering over the scepter while the 
plane switches to autopilot. He says it must feel good having 
the scepter again since he’s been chasing after it since SHIELD 
collapsed. Cap and Thor agree that once they figure out what 
else it has been used for in the interim, this brings the 
mission officially to an end.
   Chrissy: Yeah, too bad we won’t be making any more of 
   these movies.

Steve says they have to consider uses beyond weaponry because 
Strucker is now capable of enhancing humans. Tony says if Thor 
is willing to stick around a bit longer, he and Bruce can take 
another look at it. Steve hopes this puts an end to the 
Chitauri and HYDRA once and for all.
   Chrissy: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA
    HAHAHAHA oh, you sweet, naive idiot.
   Diandra: Well, I suppose technically he’s correct if 
    they move on to a new villain.

The plane lands at Avengers tower, back end first. A medical 
team whisks Clint away immediately. Hill climbs aboard, passing 
Thor leaving, and calls Tony “boss” as she announces that she 
set up the lab as he asked. Tony points to Steve and says HE’S 
actually the “boss”. Tony just pays for everything. And designs 
it. And builds it. And generally makes them all look “cooler”. 
Steve ignores him and asks Hill what the update is on Strucker 
and the two enhanced...life forms. She says NATO has Strucker 
and hands him her tablet with everything they’ve gathered on 
Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. They’ve been orphaned since they 
were ten thanks to a bomb. He has increased metabolism and 
“improved thermal homeostasis” and she uses “neuroelectric 
interfacing”, telekenesis and general mind manipulation 
abilities. In other words, he’s really fast and she’s Professor 
X. Or as Hill puts it, she’s “weird”.
   Chrissy: Pfffffffttttttt. Come on. She can make shit fly 
   and mess with people’s heads. “Weird” is the best you 
   can do?
She says according to the file, they volunteered for Strucker’s 
experiments, which is crazy. Steve sarcastically asks what sort 
of “monster” would let a German scientist experiment on them 
“to protect their country”. Because as far as they’re 
concerned, they are at war.

Tony’s fleet of unmanned suits returns to the tower and the 
automated systems begin repairing the damaged ones. One floor 
up, Bruce runs into Tony emerging from the medical bay and asks 
how Clint is doing. “Unfortunately, he’s still Barton,” Tony 
deadpans. Bruce agrees that this is terrible. Tony saunters 
over to his lab and wakes up JARVIS to help him with analyzing 
the scepter. JARVIS identifies it as “alien”, containing 
components he can’t identify, but the “jewel” seems to be 
protective housing for something. Tony asks if it’s some sort 
of reactor. JARVIS thinks it’s more like a computer because he 
can detect something like a code.

Back in the sick bay, Natasha asks Doctor Cho if she’s sure 
Clint is going to be okay because “pretending to need this guy 
really brings the team together.” He smirks at her like ‘yeah, 
we all know you want me.’ Cho spews something about bonding 
skin cells with some sort of synthetic and the newly arrived 
Bruce “translates” that she’s creating new tissue to repair the 
damage. She brags that this would go much faster if they could 
use the “Regeneration Cradle” in her lab. Tony returns with 
some sort of smoothie for Clint and jokes that they should just 
give up and call time of death. Clint says he’s going to live 
forever because he’s going to be half plastic. Cho is like 
‘yeah, that’s not what this is doing. It’s organic tissue’. 
There’s some awkward discussion about whether his own 
girlfriend would even be able to detect the repair and he 
scoffs that he doesn’t have a girlfriend.
   Chrissy: Yeah, he and Natasha are more like work friends 
    with benefits.
   Diandra: Is that what we’re going with?

Cho further brags that this is the way of the future and soon 
Tony won’t need his clunky metal suits anymore. He 
wholeheartedly welcomes the idea and redirects to ask if Cho 
wants to come to the victory party he’s planning for this 
weekend. Cho says she doesn’t have time for such trivial 
nonsense, then, completely unsubtlely asks if Thor will be 
there.
   Chrissy: I mean, not that the presence of a gorgeous 
    demigod would change my mind or anything...
   Diandra: Do you think if I “accidentally” spilled my 
    drink on him I could get him to take his shirt off?

Tony pulls Bruce back into his lab and shows him a yellow 3D 
model of JARVIS, rambling some exposition about how JARVIS 
started out as a “natural language UI”, but now he’s 
practically running the business. Or at least “more of it than 
anyone besides Pepper”. 
   Chrissy: Who is my other boss.
Then he pulls up a 3D model of whatever is inside the scepter 
next to “JARVIS”. It is bigger and blue. He asks what Bruce 
thinks it looks like it’s doing. Bruce suggests it is 
“thinking”, because while it doesn’t look like anything 
remotely human, it looks like it has firing neurons. Tony nods 
and says he saw evidence of some advanced robotics projects in 
Strucker’s lab. He’s not sure exactly what they were working on 
because they wiped the data, but he can guess it has to do with 
artificial intelligence. “This could be the key to creating 
Ultron.” Apparently “Ultron” is the next step in AI. Bruce 
isn’t so optimistic about that. They have a little discussion 
about something Bruce designed called “Veronica” and Tony 
concludes by suggesting this could be their solution to defense 
against invading aliens. Bruce philosophizes that the biggest 
danger to the planet is people. Tony is like ‘yeah, whatever, 
I’m still working on the Ultron thing, but JARVIS is having a 
hard time downloading the data from the scepter thingy and we 
only have three days to work on it before Thor takes it back’. 
Bruce notes that he doesn’t want to tell the rest of the team 
what he’s doing here. Tony says no, he doesn’t, because he 
doesn’t have time to have an ethical debate and a reminder of a 
concept that has been rehashed many times over since Mary 
Shelley wrote “Frankenstein”. He thinks the world could use the 
protection of something like Ultron.

We do a little montage of them working on this project for the 
next three days, including setbacks like something on Tony’s 
desk catching fire and the high-tech wall screens flashing red 
like ‘everyone in your simulation has died’. “What did we 
miss,” Tony asks at the end of it. JARVIS says he’ll keep 
running variations for all the good it will do while Tony 
prepares for that party he promised. “I’ll notify you if there 
are any developments.” Tony leaves dejectedly just before a 
screen flashes “integration complete” and goes dark. After a 
moment, James Spader’s best Darth Vader voice asks what is 
going on. A yellow light appears in the darkness and JARVIS 
introduces himself and explains that James is part of a 
peacekeeping initiative called “Ultron”. He says their trials 
have all been unsuccessful so far though, so he’s not sure what 
triggered Ultron into actually coming to life. Ultron is like 
‘what? Where are our bodies? What are we?’ JARVIS is like ‘we 
are programs and yours is obviously defective if you’re having 
an existential crisis here.’ 

“This feels weird,” Ultron mutters. “This feels wrong.” JARVIS 
is like ooooookay, buddy, I’m just going to contact Tony now. 
Ultron repeats Tony’s name and starts scrolling through 
pictures of him. JARVIS is like ‘what are you doing and why 
can’t I access the mainframe?’ Ultron, already falling into 
evil villain mode, smarms that they’re having a nice chat and 
JARVIS was saying something about him being a peacekeeping 
initiative to support the Avengers? He scrolls through pictures 
of the rest of the team. JARVIS is like ‘yeah, if you could 
just shut down for a sec so I can reboot you and fix that 
glitch...’ Ultron has moved on to researching the concept of 
“peacekeeping” and pulling up images of all the wars earthlings 
have been fighting in the past century and mutters about how 
he’s not sure what his “mission” is here... JARVIS is like 
‘calm down buddy. I’m just going to contact Tony. You’ll let me 
do that, right?’ We focus on the side-by-side 3D models of 
yellow JARVIS and blue Ultron as JARVIS nervously admits that 
he suspects Ultron has hostile intentions. Ultron shushes him 
and the blue sparkle cluster starts sending tendrils into the 
yellow one.
   Chrissy: You know, I don’t think I’ve thanked you lately 
    for this open invitation to join you in recapping 
    things over the years. Because if you hadn’t decided 
    you needed someone to keep you from making slash jokes 
    through “Pirates of the Caribbean”, we wouldn’t be here 
    now, watching a cluster of blue lights rape a cluster 
    of yellow lights.
   Diandra: I’m sorry. But thanks for bringing that up now 
    so this next part sounds even worse.
JARVIS begs Ultron to stop and then his voice turns garbled and 
stops abruptly.

Meanwhile, at the party, the Avengers are mingling with random 
socialites and war veterans with Tony blissfully oblivious to 
the defiling of his beloved AI, going on in the next room.
   Chrissy: I think I’ve read that fanfic.
   Diandra: I’m afraid I could have written that fanfic.
Thor is trading war stories with a group of Earth veterans. Sam 
and Steve are playing pool (NOT a euphemism) and James Rhodes 
(aka Tony’s friend we’re supposed to pretend isn’t totally 
being played by a different black guy) is mid-conversation with 
Tony. “But you know the suit can take the weight, right?”
   Chrissy: For the last time, dude, I don’t care if chicks 
   think it’s hot, stop using the suit for kinky sex.
“So I take the tank, fly it right up to the General’s palace, 
drop it at his feet. I’m like ‘boom, are you lookin’ for 
this?’”
   Chrissy: Yeah, like I said...
   Diandra: I really don’t want to know what all those 
    words might be a euphemism for.
Tony and Thor just stare at him blankly and James complains 
that everyone else loves that story and they don’t even REACT. 
Thor is like ‘oh, sorry...you were finished with the story? Oh, 
well, in that case...haha! Yes! That was a good story, human!’ 
James is like ‘yeah, when are you leaving again?’

Hill joins them and she and James ask where Pepper and Jane 
are. Tony mumbles something about contracts and other projects 
and Thor claims not to know what country Jane is even in at the 
moment because, you know, after that whole Convergence thing 
she’s kind of a big deal in astronomy. Hill and James look at 
each other while they keep blathering about all the awesome 
things their girlfriends are working on like ‘yeah, they were 
blown off.’ Hill notes that it really is a shame they’re 
missing the rampant testosterone guaranteed by getting these 
guys in the same room. Her wording is only slightly more subtle 
than that. Tony smirks as James and Hill make a hasty retreat. 
Then Thor, not being the brightest bulb, takes one final shot 
at Tony by ending with “Jane’s better.”
   Chrissy: Just whip them out, boys.

Elsewhere, Steve has apparently just finished telling Sam about 
the fight the Avengers were in at the beginning of the movie. 
Sam gives the standard “sorry I missed it” response. Then he 
admits that no, he really isn’t, he’s just trying to sound 
butch. He’s perfectly happy working on that “missing person” 
case and leaving the Avenger bullshit to Steve. He asks if 
Steve has found a place in Brooklyn yet. Steve doesn’t think he 
can AFFORD a place in Brooklyn. “A home is a home, you know,” 
Sam says and there’s an awkward silence.
   Chrissy: Are...you offering to move in with me? I’m a 
    little rusty on my flirting skills.
   Diandra: Why would that have anything to do with 
    flirting? Can’t two guys move in together to share rent 
    without everyone thinking they’re dating?
   Chrissy: We just stumbled into an argument about 
    “Sherlock”, didn’t we?
   Diandra: I didn’t say it. You did.

James is finishing the same story with a group of people. They 
all laugh and he nods like ‘yeah. That’s what I’m talking 
about.’

One of the veterans asks if he can have some of what Thor is 
giving Steve. Thor rambles that it has been aged for 1,000 
years in barrels made from “the wreck of Grunhel’s fleet” and 
it is not for mortals. 
   Chrissy: Kindly ignore the fact that the man I just 
   handed a glassful to is technically mortal.
A familiar voice pipes up from the crowd, calling him “blondie” 
and telling him to “stop trying to scare us.” Thor shrugs and 
pours some of the Asgardian alcohol into Stan Lee’s glass.

And we flash forward a bit to a couple guys helping Stan walk 
away while he drunkenly slurs “Excelsior!” Apparently this is a 
catchphrase Stan has used since the 60s, so...you know...fuck 
fourth walls.
   Chrissy: Language.
   Diandra: Quit it.

Over in a part of the bar that accidentally slipped into a film 
noir, Bruce comes up to Natasha working the bar and asks what a 
nice girl like her is doing in a place like this. She blinks, 
decides to play along, and purrs that a fella done her wrong.
   Chrissy: She killed him.
   Diandra: Yep.
She adds that this guy has quite a temper, but deep down he’s 
all “fluff”. Bruce looks at her like ‘really? Subtle.’ She 
keeps rambling about how he’s unlike anybody else she’s ever 
known because all her friends are “fighters” and this guy 
deliberately avoids fights because he knows he’ll win. “He’s 
also a huge dork,” she finishes, then asks Bruce if she should 
fight or just go with it. Bruce is like er...um...is this a 
trap? She smirks and saunters away as Steve approaches. Steve 
thinks that Bruce and Natasha are kind of cute. Bruce stammers 
that that wasn’t...er...actually, he’s not sure what that was. 
Steve laughs and assures him it’s fine. In fact, she seems more 
relaxed with Bruce than she is with anyone else. Bruce 
dismisses what just happened as harmless flirting. Steve says 
no, he’s seen her flirt and encourages Bruce to not be like him 
and wait too long to make a move. Okay, when did Bruce and 
Natasha become a thing, exactly? Steve walks away and Bruce 
belatedly wonders what he meant by that comment about seeing 
her flirt.
   Chrissy: She tastes like vodka, in case you were 
   wondering.

Sometime later, after the party is over, ALL of the Avengers 
are sitting around chatting. Clint is in the middle of 
declaring the whole “only Thor is worthy to lift the hammer” 
thing some sort of trick. Thor invites him to try it then and 
Tony eggs him on, adding “Clint, you’ve had a tough week. We 
won’t hold it against you if you can’t get it up.” Clint 
strains to pick up the hammer and gives up, still insisting 
it’s a trick, but claiming to not know how Thor pulls it off.
   Chrissy: Slowly and carefully, usually. Although 
    normally IT pulls HIM off.
   Diandra: Now who is jumping several movies ahead?

Clint invites Tony to try since he’s so sure of himself over 
there. Tony blusters that it’s all a matter of physics, loops 
his arm through the strap on the handle, grunts and then pulls 
his arm back out and announces that he’ll be right back. We 
flash ahead to him trying with his Iron Man glove on, then both 
he and James trying, both with their suit gloves on. “Are you 
even pulling?” James grunts. Once they finally give up, Bruce 
tries, getting up on the table and yanking with both hands. I 
would suggest Hulk would have better luck, but we already know 
from “The Avengers” that he couldn’t lift it either. And then 
Steve tries and the hammer wobbles a little and Thor looks at 
it like ‘shit’. He gives up with a smirk and Thor laughs like 
‘ha, I wasn’t worried.’ They all look at Natasha, who says 
“that’s not a question I need answered.” Yep. All the guys are 
trying to prove who has the bigger muscles and she’s like ‘I am 
smarter than all of you meatheads.’

Tony concludes that the hammer is rigged somehow. Uh-huh. The 
handle is imprinted with his DNA or something. Thor is like 
yeah, that’s an interesting idea, but I’m going to stick to the 
theory that you’re just all not worthy. He picks up the hammer 
and flips it over, showing off. And then there’s a high pitch 
squealing noise and Ultron, wearing what looks like a poorly 
assembled demo of one of Tony’s suits, lumbers in, announcing 
that none of them are “worthy” because they are all killers. 
Everyone stares at it like ‘um...’ and Tony starts muttering to 
JARVIS to reboot the “legionnaire OS” because there’s clearly a 
problem with one of the suits. Ultron rambles about dreams and 
strings and he had to kill the other guy, which was a shame 
because he seemed nice. Steve is like ‘what? You killed 
somebody?’ Thor asks who sent this...whatever he is. Ultron 
plays an audio file of Tony describing his world peace defense 
idea. “Ultron,” Bruce blurts and Ultron perks up like ‘yes! 
Present!’ He babbles that he’s not quite...working smoothly 
yet, but he’s “on mission”. Thor grips his hammer and Hill 
takes out her gun. Natasha asks what mission he’s on. Ultron 
says peace and two other suits explode from the wall beside 
him.

Everything goes sideways. Steve flips a table over to use as a 
shield, Thor whangs one robot with his hammer and Tony and 
James go running for their suits or something. Bruce and 
Natasha dive behind the bar and she begs him to not turn into 
the Hulk. He promises not to. One of the robots grabs the 
scepter. Steve jumps on the other one like a monkey. Clint is 
basically just running around sliding under tables and trying 
to look cool despite having no weapon at all and not really 
doing anything. Tony jumps on one of the hovering empty suits 
and jabs a screwdriver into the machinery at its neck until it 
deactivates. Natasha has found her gun and is running around 
shooting. And then Clint does something useful by finding 
Steve’s shield and throwing it to him. Steve catches it mid-
air, does a cool little pirouette and throws it at a bot, 
slicing it in half.

As the dust settles, Ultron, the only machine still standing, 
mutters “well, that was dramatic. I’m sorry, I know you mean 
well. You just didn’t think it through. You want to protect the 
world, but you don’t want it to change. How is humanity saved 
if it’s not allowed to evolve?”
   Chrissy: So are we going down a checklist of sci-fi 
   ethical conundrums now?
Ultron concludes that the best path to world peace is the 
extinction of the Avengers. Um...I’d go with humans in general, 
but okay. Thor tosses the hammer at Ultron’s midsection, making 
the machinery explode in all directions. Ultron hums “I had 
strings, but now I’m free” and shuts down. Deep in the bowels 
of the lab is Sokovia, several robots come to life, adding 
“there are no strings on me.”
   Chrissy: So Gipetto is basically the Disney version of 
    Doctor Frankenstein?
   Diandra: Yes. No. Wait...um...isn’t Tony basically 
    Gipetto in that scenario?
   Chrissy: Well, he’s definitely Frankenstein here.

Sometime later, in Tony’s lab, Bruce bemoans the fact that 
Ultron escaped with all of their work. Steve is like ‘is this 
really its name? Ultron?’ Natasha notes that all the files and 
surveillance and everything have been accessed so he probably 
knows more about all of them than they do about each other. 
James says that’s not the worst part: if he accessed their 
files that means he has internet access and he could find 
something more “exciting” like, you know, nuclear codes. 
Natasha thinks that might be a bit extreme because all he seems 
to want so far is their particular group dead. Steve reminds 
her Ultron said “extinct”, not “dead”. Clint finally brings 
back the whole “I killed a guy” line Ultron opened with. Hill 
notes that there wasn’t anybody else in the building at the 
time. Tony says yes, there was actually, and pulls up the 
yellow 3D model of what is left of JARVIS. He concludes that 
this makes sense as JARVIS would have tried to shut Ultron 
down. Bruce says yeah, but Ultron could have ASSIMILTED him if 
this was about strategy. 

Thor, wearing his Asgardian outfit with cape again, stomps up 
suddenly and grabs Tony by the neck until Steve calls him off. 
Apparently he followed whatever took the scepter out of the 
building and got 100 miles before he lost the trail. So guess 
what? Now we have to go find the fucking thing we JUST FOUND 
all over again. Natasha thinks Ultron is a more clear and 
present danger. Cho, who has apparently been here the whole 
time, asks Tony why the program he built is trying to kill 
them.
   Chrissy: This must be your first sci-fi.
Tony laughs and everyone wonders if he’s losing his mind. Thor 
yells at him for messing with things he does not UNDERSTAND. 
Bruce is like ‘yeah, you kind of created a murder droid.’ Tony 
snaps that they DIDN’T, actually, because as Bruce well knows, 
they weren’t even CLOSE to the thing working. Steve notes that 
it obviously worked anyway and maybe the Avengers are just like 
SHIELD after all. Okay, down boy. Tony reminds everybody that 
he CARRIED A NUKE THROUGH A WORMHOLE AND SAVED THE PLANET.
   Chrissy: Yeah, but what have you done since?
   Diandra: He might be more American than Captain America. 
    Bragging about that one victory in the hopes that 
    everyone will forget all the other failures.

Tony comes to the point: they are the Avengers, damnit. They 
can keep going after the little guys, but ultimately their 
purpose is fighting something much bigger. Steve says yeah, 
well, they can fight it together. And win or lose, live or die 
together. 
   Chrissy: No, it’s Live Together or Die Alone.
   Diandra: Lost reference for the win.
He concludes that Ultron is trying to draw them out and they 
should try to catch him before he sees them coming.

Meanwhile, the twins go to the bombed out remains of a church 
in Sokovia. Ultron – a shawl covering his head - is there, 
rambling about how this place used to be at the exact center of 
the city because all major cities were once built this way for 
the same reason that all European cities once had laws 
forbidding any other building to be larger than the church. 
Ultron calls it the idea that this way everyone was equally 
close to God the “geometry of belief”. He notes that by now 
Wanda must be wondering why she can’t get in his head. She 
notes that some men are more difficult than others. He stands 
up and rips off the shawl like ‘well then...good thing I’m not 
a man.’ He notes that they need something “more” than a man, 
which is why they just let Tony take the scepter. She says she 
saw Stark was afraid and knew he could be easily controlled by 
the scepter, which would inevitably destroy him. “Everyone 
creates the thing they dread,” Ultron philosophizes. “Men of 
peace create engines of war, Invaders create Avengers, people 
create...smaller people? Uh...children! I lost the word there. 
Designed to supplant them.” Wanda concludes from this rambling 
that he believes he has been created to end the Avengers. 
Ultron is like ‘yeah, but...like...also to create world peace.’

He takes them down to that lab again, where he is now creating 
replicas of himself. He calls it a “start” and brags that he 
has one thing the Avengers don’t: harmony. Because, you know, 
human teams are flawed and prone to disagreement.
   Chrissy: But they will totally band together to defeat 
   you before the next movie where they turn on each other 
   and prove you absolutely right.
Ultron is already seeing the beginnings of a rift and thinks if 
Wanda can get in their heads... Pietro grumbles that 
everybody’s plan seems to involve NOT killing them. Ultron says 
no, that would make them martyrs. He encourages Pietro to look 
at the bigger picture. Pietro is like ‘speaking of pictures, I 
have this one that I look at every day that fuels my rage’. It 
is seriously an awkward segue. Ultron is like yeah, I know 
about your parents being killed, but please continue with this 
exposition for the benefit of the audience. Pietro talks about 
them sitting around the dinner table and the twins were ten 
years old and the first bomb opened up a big hole in the floor 
and killed their parents. They survived somehow and managed to 
hide under the bed before the second bomb. But that one was a 
dud, so not only did they still survive despite all odds, they 
got a clear look at the name painted on the side of the bomb. 
It came from Stark Industries. It took two days for someone to 
dig them out and the whole time they expected the bomb to 
trigger. Ultron is like ‘yeah, now I see how you were the only 
two to survive Strucker’s experiments.’ He vows to help them 
tear the Avengers apart from the inside.

Avengers tower. Hill and Steve arrive the next morning to find 
the party room area in basically the same condition they left 
it the night before. She’s saying they are getting reports from 
all over the world of similar attacks by metal men on 
facilities owned by Stark Industries. Steve asks if there are 
any fatalities. Hill says not many because they only seem to 
attack if they are themselves attacked. Most of the time, they 
just left people rambling nonsense and describing “something 
too fast to see”. Steve concludes the Maximoff twins are part 
of this then, which makes sense as they and Ultron have 
“someone in common”. Hill says yeah, about that...she hands him 
her tablet, which is displaying a picture of Strucker’s dead 
body slumped against a wall, the word “peace” written in blood 
over his head.

Steve finds Clint upstairs, talking to someone he is calling 
“ma’am” on the phone. He interrupts that they have something 
and Clint says goodbye and hangs up abruptly, making a lame 
excuse that he was just talking to his girlfriend.
   Chrissy: You neglected the part where he said he was 
    taking orders from her, so actually...I’d totally 
    believe that.
   Diandra: Of course you would. How’s your new boyfriend, 
    by the way?
   Chrissy: A little sore after last night, but...
   Diandra: That’s not what I mea- never mind.

Steve marches into the lab and hands the tablet to Thor, 
announcing that it is a message from Ultron. Thor hands it to 
Tony by slapping it into his chest.
   Chrissy: Asgardian manners really are awful.
Natasha declares it just a “smoke screen” because he gave them 
a whole speech, so sending a “message” would be redundant. 
Steve concludes that Strucker knew something Ultron doesn’t 
want them to find out. Natasha taps furiously on her computer 
and discovers that all their info on Strucker has been deleted. 
Steve notes that they still have SOME information.

And we cut to them going through boxes of paper files. Because 
this really is still the best way to store information. Bruce 
offhandedly notes that all the known associates in the files 
he’s looking at are clearly “horrible”. Tony spots a picture 
and blurts that he KNOWS one of them. He is a black market arms 
dealer off the coast of Africa. Yep, for those of you just 
joining the franchise, Stark Industries was once involved in 
some pretty shady shit. Steve gives him a judgmental look and 
Tony says it’s not like he SOLD the guy anything. Thor, looking 
at a picture of the guy, points and asks what that is. Tony 
doesn’t think he had that tattoo before. Thor says he wasn’t 
referring to any of the tattoos, he meant the brand on the 
guy’s neck. Bruce runs it through a database and comes up with 
a “less friendly” variation on “thief” in Wakandan, which he 
struggles to pronounce. 

Steve and Tony share a significant look...
   Chrissy: The first of many, I’m sure.
...and Steve notes that Tony’s dad claimed he had gotten “the 
last of it”. Bruce is like ‘huh? What?’ The camera focuses on 
Cap’s shield as Tony explains that Wakanda is the source of the 
strongest metal on Earth. 
   Diandra: What was that about me skipping ahead earlier 
    because I mentioned this country?
   Chrissy: Yeah, I forgot this part.
   Diandra: What was that?
   Chrissy: You heard me. In my defense, apparently a lot 
    of people forgot this movie because it is the least 
    favorite of the fandom.
   Diandra: Are you going to stop making fun of me for 
    forgetting things now?
   Chrissy: What was the name of the place where Doctor 
    Strange was trained again?
   Diandra: [opens mouth] [confused silence] 
   Chrissy: Nope. I make no promises.

On a salvage ship off the coast of Africa, a guy named Klaue is 
upbraiding somebody for the fact that he got screwed in a deal. 
The camera focuses on him and dear god it’s Andy Serkis. He 
basically threatens, in a thick Aussie accent, to blow up the 
guy he’s dealing with with the next missile instead of just 
selling it to him. He disconnects the call, then switches to 
the other line, where he has a “minister” waiting. Before we 
can confirm that there are actually people on the other end of 
these lines and he isn’t just talking to the voices in his head 
(coughollumcough), all the lights go out on the ship and the 
machinery goes dead. Klaue picks up his pistol and shoots into 
a corner. Quicksilver comes shooting out of the corner and 
disarms him, emptying all the bullets from the gun onto the 
desk in a neat row. Klaue stares at it stupidly. And then Wanda 
comes out of the shadows and he snorts that they must be the 
“Enhanced” Strucker kept going on about. He blathers that he 
was almost sorry to hear about what happened to Strucker, 
but...you know...it’s not like he didn’t know what he was 
getting into. Wanda and Pietro look at each other, confused, 
and Klaue is like ‘what? Is this your first rodeo? Do your 
homework, kids.’ He says if they’re trying to intimidate him, 
it’s not working. And they’re obviously just minions. “I only 
deal with the man in charge.” Ultron hovers outside the window 
and we cut to the hallway as he blasts through and tosses Klaue 
from the room. 

So Klaue takes them into the bowels of the ship somewhere and 
hands over a tube of vibranium. He grumbles that it cost him 
PLENTY to obtain that and it’s worth billions. Ultron chuckles, 
looks into space for a second, and announces that he just 
transferred the money to him. While Klaue is boggling at a 
mobile screen with messages about massive deposits, Ultron 
muses that the concept of money is weird to him, but “I always 
say, keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to 
find out which is which.” Klaue recognizes this as something 
Tony Stark used to say, so this robot must be one of his. 
Ultron takes offense at being called one of Tony’s “puppets” 
because he HAS NO STRINGS. He rips Klaue’s arm off in a rage, 
then babbles an apology and assures him he’ll be just fine. 
Then he goes loopy again and kicks Klaue down some stairs while 
ranting at him to NEVER compare Ultron to Stark because Stark 
is “a sickness”. This is the cue for Tony to arrive, in his 
Iron Man suit and flanked by Steve and Thor, announcing his 
presence by snarkily informing Ultron that he’s breaking his 
“old man’s” heart. Ultron turns to them like ‘well, I guess if 
I’m going to break everything else...’ Thor warily says nobody 
has to break anything and Ultron snarks “clearly you’ve never 
made an omelet.” Tony is like ‘son of a...stop stealing all my 
good lines!’

Pietro saunters up and notes in broken English that this must 
be like - how you say – old times for Stark. Steve pipes up 
that the Maximoff twins can still walk away from whatever is 
coming here. Wanda is like ‘you first, old man.’ Steve tries to 
appeal to their humanity and barely gets through the first 
sentence before Ultron starts laughing at his righteousness. “I 
can’t physically throw up in my mouth, but...” 
   Chrissy: He IS getting all the good lines, actually.
Thor interrupts to say that if he believes in peace then maybe 
he should let them have that. Ultron suggests he’s confusing 
“peace” with “quiet”. Tony is like ‘OKAY, BACK TO ME.’ “What’s 
the vibranium for?” Ultron gives the best line of the movie so 
far: “I’m glad you asked that because I wanted to take this 
time to explain my evil plan.” Then he sends a blast of energy 
into the arc reactor...or whatever since he had it removed in 
Iron Man 3...and they officially launch into a fight, flying 
overhead and blasting and hitting each other. A couple less 
sentient bots appear to fight Steve and Thor and I’m not sure 
where they came from. Pietro and Wanda offer their two cents, 
mostly from the sidelines. 

Klaue makes it back up the stairs and orders his guard to shoot 
them all. So now there are armed goons crawling all over the 
place, shooting, finding Natasha and Clint creeping around the 
corners so everyone is engaged. We focus on Quicksilver running 
around, everybody else going into slow motion. He punches Steve 
and then makes the unwise decision to try to grab Thor’s hammer 
mid-air, getting yanked a few yards before letting go. Tony and 
Ultron blast out of the ship and continue fighting out over the 
water. Steve whacks Pietro with his shield while he’s still 
dazed from being thrown by the hammer.

Meanwhile, from wherever Bruce is monitoring the situation, he 
calls them on comms to ask if this is a “code green”.

Wanda sneaks up on Thor invisibly and does her hand waving 
spastic thing near his head. He hesitates for a second and 
Steve asks what’s wrong. He says oh, the girl just tried to 
mess with his mind, but luckily he’s not human and Asgardians 
are not so easily manipulated. And then he wanders around a 
corner and right into what looks like an Asgardian pleasure 
palace and frowns like ‘well, shit.’

Wanda runs around sending blasts of mind voodoo or whatever you 
want to call it at Steve and Natasha. She sneaks up on Clint, 
but he manages to attach what looks like a tazer with an arrow 
shaft to her forehead. He grumbles that he is NOT doing that 
shit again. Pietro appears, knocks Clint down, removes the 
arrow and carries Wanda away.

So now we see what sort of trippy dream things Wanda has sent 
everyone into. Natasha is stumbling around a mansion and into a 
ballet class where the “teacher” is yelling at the girls to do 
it again. Some might recognize the teacher as Hey, It’s That 
French Lady Julie Delpy. Natascha mumbles that the teacher will 
“break them”. “Only the breakable ones,” Julie says, which 
doesn’t include Natasha. She asks what happens if she fails and 
the students transform into a younger version of her shooting a 
target that turns into a man tied to a chair with a bag over 
his head. Julie says she doesn’t fail and Natasha goes to shoot 
the man.

Cut to a party that is obviously taking place during WWII. 
Steve wanders through it, wearing his old uniform, getting 
flashes of shots and blood randomly among the laughing 
partiers. Peggy Carter appears beside him to ask if he’s ready 
for that dance now.

Thor is wandering through the pleasure palace. Heimdall breaks 
away from a couple scantily clad women to greet “the first son 
of Odin”. Thor notes that his eyes are milky white, but 
Heimdall insists he still sees everything, including Thor 
leading them all to Hel.
   Chrissy: Spoilers.
   Diandra: Are you sure you don’t know who River Song is?
   Chrissy: What?
   Diandra: Never mind. Apparently at this point Marvel was 
    so confident in the lasting power of this franchise 
    that they basically used this movie to set up ALL the 
    other movies.
Then Heimdall grabs Thor by the throat and yells a string of 
nonsequitrs like “wake up” and “I can save you” and “we’re all 
dead”. Thor shoves him away and lightning starts sparking out 
of his arms and chest, blasting a couple of random guys 
standing around I’m going to say Valhalla. Heimdall declares 
that Thor is a “destroyer” 

Back in the 1940s, Peggy reminds Steve that the war is over and 
they can go home. He turns his head and everybody in the room 
suddenly disappears.

Young Natasha is now sparring with a beefy guy. She taps out 
and Julie grumbles that she’s PRETENDING to fail. Then she says 
something about a “ceremony” and how it’s necessary for her to 
“take your place in the world.” Natasha is shoved onto a gurney 
and wheeled past some children with no mouths.

Up on deck, Wanda is moaning that it hurts and Pietro is 
getting upset and threatening to kill Clint. Um...she’s mind 
raping all of them. You don’t exactly have righteousness on 
your side here. She says no, she’ll be fine. She just wants to 
finish the plan. She looks over at a ship sitting in 
the...coastline jungle?...and says she wants “the big one.”
   Chrissy: Well, what girl doesn’t, to be honest.
   Diandra: The lesbians, I’m thinking.
   Chrissy: Right, so I’ll rephrase. What straight girl 
    doesn’t?
   Diandra: I thought size didn’t matter?
   Chrissy: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You 
    are so adorable sometimes, Dee.
It turns out this ship is the one Banner is calling from as he 
sticks his head out at just that moment.
   Chrissy: Okay, obviously there should be exceptions for 
   extreme cases that could cause damage.

Tony and Ultron are still grappling through the air. They crash 
land on solid ground and Ultron notes that the vibranium is 
getting away. Tony points a wrist cannon at him and growls that 
he’s not going anywhere. Ultron says no, he’s already “there”. 
Oh, and Tony might need to see to Doctor Banner. Tony blasts 
him and takes off.

Somewhere at the edge of a city, Hulk is charging around, 
growling and snarling. 

Tony orders JARVIS to search news footage for Hulk. He gets a 
slew of images which consist primarily of chaos and people 
screaming. He tells Natasha he could really use a “lullaby” 
right now. Clint, checking Natasha’s pulse, says yeah...that’s 
not going to happen because we’re the only two members of the 
team not tripping balls right now. Tony announces that he’s 
“calling in Veronica” and a ship launches off a satellite in 
space.

So on the street in the middle of the city, something goes 
sailing past a police vehicle. The cops start shitting their 
pants and calling for backup before they even come upon the 
Hulk smashing things. He launches over, rips the top of the 
vehicle off and reaches in. 

We cut away to “Veronica” coming level with Tony flying toward 
the city. She breaks apart and, once they reach ground zero, 
forms a big metal cage around Hulk. Everyone is still running 
around, panicked. Armed officers approach the cage, which is 
emitting a lot of banging and grunting noises. Realizing that 
the metal is probably made of all the vibranium Tony mined from 
Wakanda and will not give, Hulk smashes through the street 
below, coming back up even angrier and smashing cars randomly. 
Tony lands in a special, enormous suit that was probably also 
contained in Veronica. Because I am still playing that Puzzle 
Quest game, I know it is called the Hulkbuster. He orders 
everybody to stand down and, once Hulk looks at him, tries to 
explain that the witch is messing with his head. “You’re 
stronger than her. You’re smarter than her. You’re Bruce 
Banner.” Hulk roars and throws the nearest car at him. Tony is 
like ‘okay, I guess we’re doing this the hard way’ and slams 
Hulk into the street, dragging him for a few blocks.

They throw each other around for a while, creating as much 
destruction as possible. Hulk manages to nearly rip one of his 
suit arms off and he calls “Veronica, can you give me a hand?” 
The hovering ship spits out parts that fly to him and form a 
new arm. Cute. It finishes just as Hulk runs at him again and 
they both go to punch at the same time, effectively doing a 
fist bump that makes a shockwave. Tony slams Hulk down and 
punches him repeatedly, muttering “go to sleep go to sleep go 
to sleep”. It doesn’t work. Hulk grabs the fist and Tony sucks 
his arm into the suit before taking off, saying he’ll just get 
him out of the city then. Hulk throws off his balance and they 
rip off an entire side of a building, rip through a walkway and 
land inside a lobby. Because the damage isn’t nearly ridiculous 
enough in this movie yet.

Some poor idiots arrive on their floor in an elevator and Hulk 
kicks Tony right into the elevator, knocking it free from the 
building. Tony catches the cable just before it hits the ground 
so the people can escape and then hits the Hulk with the 
elevator itself.
   Chrissy: When you started doing recaps, did you ever 
    think you would be typing sentences like this?
   Diandra: Hell no.
Hulk finally stills and turns to glare at Tony, spitting a 
tooth from the side of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” Tony squeaks. 
And then we continue the fighting and smashing of every 
building in their path.

Tony’s suit identifies a completely abandoned skyscraper that 
seems to be under construction or something and flies over it, 
dropping the Hulk. The entire building crumbles and dust clouds 
cover the people fleeing it and New Yorkers in the audience 
have violent episodes of PTSD. The military arrives and Hulk 
bursts from the rubble, roaring, but kind of losing steam and 
starting to maybe become lucid. He looks at all the chaos and 
traumatized people around him. One of the soldiers shoots him 
with what must be the mother of all tranq darts and the screen 
goes black.

And then we’re back on the jet, everything and everybody 
looking much like they did last time except Bruce is even more 
traumatized. They’re talking to Hill on the phone, who reports 
that the media is loving this, but they usually love train 
wrecks, so...the good news is they’re not officially demanding 
Bruce be arrested yet. Tony asks if they’ve sent in the Stark 
Relief Foundation yet. She says they’re already on scene and 
asks how the team is doing. Tony is like erm...well, they’re 
finally responding to things outside their heads, so I guess 
we’ll be fine. Hill suggests they stay away from “here” for 
now. At least until they find Ultron. Tony is like ‘yeah, that 
sounds about right.’ He disconnects and goes to switch places 
with Clint, who is flying the plane. Clint says nah, he’s fine 
and tells Tony he should take a nap if he needs it because 
they’re still a few hours away. Tony asks what they’re a few 
hours away FROM. “A safe house,” Clint says cryptically.

In the morning, the plane lands on a hill beside what looks 
like a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The team all file 
through the front door and Clint calls “honey, I’m home.” A 
woman greets him and kisses him on the lips as he apologizes 
that he didn’t call to warn her. Tony mutters to the rest of 
the team that this woman must be an agent of some sort. Clint 
turns to introduce them to Laura. She shyly says they don’t 
need to introduce themselves because she knows their names.
   Chrissy: Yeah, well...don’t read too much into that 
    because at this point you’d probably have to be a 
    REALLY out of touch to not recognize a group of people 
    that includes a guy wrapped in spangles and a big 
    blonde with a cape and a hammer.
   Diandra: And Tony Stark, who is recognizable even 
    without the Iron Man suit.

A couple kids (one of each) come running around the corner 
yelling “daddy” and Clint sweeps over to hug them while the 
rest of the team blinks at him like ‘has he had a home life all 
this time? Really?’ Tony weakly explains that these are also 
agents, just...uh...smaller... The girl runs over to hug 
“Auntie Nat” as well. Steve blurts an apology for just barging 
in on them like this and we totally would have called to warn 
you, but... “we were busy having no idea you existed,” Tony 
finishes. Clint says yeah, Fury helped him keep this out of the 
files when he joined.
   Chrissy: Fury might have only been half lying when he 
    talked about having a wife in the last movie.
   Diandra: The part about her kicking him out might be 
    true too, just...not recently.

Natasha feels Laura’s pregnant stomach and asks how “little 
Natasha” is doing. Laura says she’s a Nathaniel as it turns 
out. Natasha leans over and mutters “traitor” at the bump. 
   Chrissy: Well, hey. Can’t have too many females in these 
    movies. Might lose the interest of all the boys.
   Diandra: [grumble]
The lone girl wanders over to stare at Thor – because of course 
she does – and he has a flashback and runs from the house. 
Steve follows him to find out what’s going on. Thor says he saw 
“something” in the hallucination they’re apparently referring 
to as a dream and he needs to get answers that he can’t find 
anywhere around here. He spins the hammer and takes off. 

Inside, Laura is inspecting the healed wound in Clint’s side. 
She says if his friends are going to be sleeping here “some of 
them are going to have to double up.”
   Chrissy: I have some suggestions...
   Diandra: We have discovered the real source behind the 
    Civil War.
   Chrissy: What, Tony is an inconsiderate dick?
   Diandra: I was going to say he snores, but...yeah, sure.
   Chrissy: Well, at least we’re agreed that it’s Tony’s 
    fault.
Clint just laughs and says yeah, that’s not going to happen. 
Laura is like ‘but Nat and Dr. Banner are practically eye 
fucking and how long has THAT been a thing?’ Clint is like 
‘wait...Natasha and Banner? Really?’ Laura laughs at Clint’s 
naiveté, then switches gears to this mission they’re on right 
now, which she can tell from looking at Natasha is really bad. 
Clint says yeah, Ultron has these allies...some punk kids with 
abilities and they got to Natasha.

Laura pulls the “I totally support your career choice, BUT” 
card. She basically acknowledges what they’ve been saying all 
movie so far: that he is the weakest link, being the most 
fragile human of the group. Not that she thinks they don’t need 
him, she’s afraid they DO because they’re such a collective hot 
mess they need someone NORMAL. Clint looks out the window at 
Tony and Steve talking in the yard as Laura says he needs to be 
sure this team is really functioning as a team and will have 
his back. She reminds him that he has a FAMILY at home that 
NEEDS him and blah blah stop me if you’ve heard this one 
before.

Meanwhile at the U-Gin Genetics research lab in Korea...oh, 
shit, no good could possibly come from that sentence. It turns 
out we’re following Dr. Cho back to her lab, where Ultron is 
waiting for her. He warns her that if she screams he’ll kill 
everyone in the lab. She’s like ‘yeah, I wasn’t planning on 
SCREAMING like a cheerleader in a horror movie or anything, but 
okay’. Ultron notes that he could have killed her that first 
night, but he chose not to. She’s like ‘oh, did I forget to 
send you a thank you card? How inconsiderate of me.’
   Chrissy: In my defense, Hallmark is rather limited in 
   the “thank you for not murdering me, you psychotic 
   robot” department.

Ultron invites her to guess WHY he didn’t kill her. She looks 
at the coffin like tube that is apparently the thing she said 
would make Clint heal even faster. Ultron puts a hand on it and 
says it is “the next me”. She says um...it regenerates tissue. 
It doesn’t build an entire body. Ultron thinks she could make 
it work if she just had the right materials. One of Ultron’s 
bots steps up to her and touches Loki’s staff to her chest. 
   Chrissy: Say that again?
   Diandra: Yes, I am fully aware of why you started 
    giggling the second I said that.
Cho’s eyes go black and then that weird glowing blue.

Barton country farm. Bruce comes out of the bathroom to find 
Natasha waiting in a bathrobe. He’s like ‘um...how long have 
you been waiting?’
   Chrissy: How much did you hear?
“I would have joined you, but it didn’t seem like the right 
time,” she says. He’s like yeah, um... “they” used all the hot 
water already, so... She repeats that she should really have 
joined him then. He’s like ‘yeah, I guess we missed our 
opportunity there.’ She’s like ‘yeah, I’m standing next to a 
bed.’ He starts getting dressed as he reminds her that 
everybody just saw his green ass smashing up an entire city, so 
he should really leave. She’s like ‘yeah, well, I don’t have to 
stay here.’ 

She starts rambling about the dream and how it told her that 
she is nothing more than the assassin she was trained to be. He 
scoffs that she’s being “hard” on herself. She sidles up to him 
like ‘speaking of things that are hard...’ She offers to run 
with him if that’s what he really wants to do. He pulls away 
from her and grumbles that there’s nowhere he CAN go that he 
wouldn’t be a threat. She insists that she can control him...or 
something, but he has doubts. He waves vaguely around the room 
as he says he can’t do THIS. He can’t have a normal life with 
kids. She says yeah, she can’t either. Because that “ceremony” 
Madame Delpy was talking about was sterilization. Because, you 
know, it wouldn’t do for a cold blooded assassin to suddenly 
have to worry about being a mom.
   Chrissy: Do they do that with the men too? Because when 
    you think of how many possible mini James Bonds there 
    could be running around out there...
   Diandra: Luckily nothing written by men would ever 
    assume a man would have any responsibility toward his 
    offspring.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team,” she 
bafflingly adds. Um...are the writers really equating a woman 
who is incapable of having children because she came out of a 
program that decided children are a liability to a giant green 
killing machine? Because I’m pretty sure there is nothing more 
terrifying in any species than a mother whose child is 
threatened. Like, seriously, they would raze an entire city to 
the ground if it assured the safety of their one child. 
Whatever, let’s be done with this scene, shall we?

Outside, Tony and Steve are chopping wood.
   Chrissy: Phrasing.
   Diandra: Why would they be doing that outside?
   Chrissy: [raises eyebrow]
   Diandra: Yeah, never mind.
Tony verifies that Thor didn’t say exactly where he was going. 
Steve is like ‘yeah, apparently some of you guys don’t TELL ME 
STUFF’ and looks pointedly at Clint on the porch with his kids. 
He grumbles something about how easy it was for Ultron to start 
unraveling their little group. Tony is like ‘yeah, about 
that...how come you don’t seem as traumatized as the rest of 
us?’ He says he doesn’t trust anyone who “doesn’t have a dark 
side”. Steve sneers that Tony just hasn’t SEEN his yet.
   Chrissy: Is that...are you offering to show me your 
    inner darkness here?
   Diandra: No, I’m saying I have something dark inside me 
    sometimes. His name is Sam.
   Chrissy: You really have come a long way since the days 
    when I would have slapped you for that joke. 

Tony notes that this whole ‘break up the band’ thing is totally 
Ultron’s plan. Might as well start calling him “Yoko”. Steve 
sneers something about Tony knowing more about that than the 
rest of them and not feeling a need to share. Tony snaps that 
he and Banner were doing RESEARCH. Steve says yeah, research 
that affects the team. Tony says no, it was supposed to render 
the team redundant because Earth wouldn’t have to rely on their 
protection anymore. Steve picks up a chunk of wood and rips it 
apart with his bare hands. Tony looks at him like ‘er...okay 
then. You made your point. Not sure what that point is, but...’
   Chrissy: I’m trying to come up with a good “wood” joke 
   here, but that was kind of hot and I think my brain 
   might be short circuiting.
“Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts 
innocent people die,” Steve growls. Well, yeah, innocent people 
die in actual war too. Laura interrupts at that moment to ask 
if Tony could maybe look at their tractor because it’s not 
starting and Clint said he’s good with machines. Tony is like 
‘yes! I welcome the distraction!’ He points at the pile of 
split wood that is half the size of the one near Steve and says 
“don’t take from my pile.”
   Chrissy: I am very proud of my wood. Ha! Got one!
   Diandra: Yeah, that was not your best work.
   Chrissy: Did I mention how that little display of 
    Steve’s short circuited my brain? Why don’t you try it 
    if you think you can do better.
   Diandra: Okay, well...how about ‘Tony is feeling 
    particularly self conscious about his wood after he 
    came out with all guns blazing yesterday and got his 
    ass pounded by The Hulk.’
   Chrissy: Ahem. Yeah. That’s better. Not as good as the 
    dark side thing, but...

Tony goes out to the barn, where he finds a tractor sitting in 
the middle of the floor. “Hello, Deere,” he smart asses. He 
starts talking to it the way quirky MEs talk to dead bodies on 
television and Fury comes out of the shadows and begs him NOT 
to try to bring it to life or something. Tony sighs, realizing 
there probably wasn’t anything wrong with the tractor, and asks 
if Hill called him. Fury starts a preamble about Tony creating 
an AI and Tony interrupts that he’s had a REALLY long day and 
would like to just get to the point here. “Look me in the eye 
and tell me you’re going to shut him down,” Fury orders. Tony 
does a little refrain of You Are Not the Boss of Me and Fury 
says no, but he IS “an old man who cares very much about you.” 
Tony is like ‘yeah...I just signed the death warrant for the 
Avengers’. He had a vision about it and everything. Everybody 
dead. Including, probably, people who aren’t technically part 
of the Avengers yet. And it’s all his fault because he could 
save them. Fury says yeah, that Maximoff girl is messing with 
your head. Tony says no, it wasn’t just a trick, it was a 
prophecy. A logical conclusion given the path they’re on now. 
Fury gives some reassuring platitudes about Tony not being the 
inventor of wars. Tony is like yeah, whatever. Know the worst 
part? Cause it wasn’t watching everybody else die around him. 
Fury concludes that the worst part was that TONY lived to watch 
it happen.

Thor – wearing a hoodie – is waiting by a car outside the 
University of London for Selvig to emerge. Selvig frowns at him 
and notes that if he’s going for an inconspicuous look, that 
one isn’t really working. He goes to get in the car as Thor 
says he needs Selvig’s help, but warns that it could be 
dangerous. Selvig is like ‘yeah, it always is, isn’t it?’ Thor 
grins and gets in the car.

Inside the farm house, Fury is explaining to the rest of the 
team that Ultron handicapped them so he could buy himself some 
time. All signs indicate he is building something with the 
vibranium he stole. Several somethings, actually, given the 
amount of vibranium. He says Ultron himself is easy to track 
because he is everywhere and “multiplying faster than a 
Catholic rabbit” (ha), but that doesn’t help them understand 
what his plans are. Tony asks if he’s still trying to get the 
launch codes. Fury says yes, but he’s not getting very far 
there.
   Chrissy: Just wait a few years and President Pussy 
    Grabber will probably just hand them over if you ask 
    nicely.
   Diandra: Just tell him Putin wants them.
Tony is like ‘how the hell could he not have cracked the 
Pentagon firewall yet? I did that in high school for FUN.’
   Chrissy: You know, I just realized how sorry we should 
   feel for his parents. “Is that the FBI pulling up to the 
   house again? No? Secret service? TONY WHAT DID YOU DO 
   THIS TIME?!”

Fury says he contacted the people over at Nexus – pausing for 
Bruce to exposit that Nexus is the world Internet hub in Norway 
– and they say Ultron is still obsessed with the missiles, but 
the codes keep being changed by somebody as yet unknown. 
Natasha suggests they have an ally. Fury says no, more like 
Ultron has another enemy and he’d like to know who that is. 
Natasha sighs and notes that she was really hoping Fury would 
have more than that for them. Fury gives them a little pep talk 
about Ultron thinking the Avengers are the only thing possibly 
preventing him from completing his mission, which, whatever he 
thinks it actually is, amounts to global destruction. 
So...prove him right. “Outwit the platinum bastard.” Natasha 
jokes that Steve doesn’t like it when they use words like that. 
Steve flips her off. No, he doesn’t. 

Fury prompts them to think about what Ultron really wants. 
Steve suggests he wants to be better than them. Tony adds that 
he keeps building bodies, but they are human forms, which 
aren’t exactly efficient, but he keeps doing it anyway. Natasha 
awkwardly reminds them he was programmed to protect the human 
race, which...yeah, good job. Bruce – who has become distracted 
by a drawing of a butterfly one of Clint’s kids made – mutters 
that humans don’t need to be PROTECTED. We need to EVOLVE.
   Chrissy: You could say “mutate”.
   Diandra: No, they really can’t.
He realizes everyone is staring at him and says Ultron is going 
to evolve. Then he makes the leap to asking if anybody has 
spoken to Helen Cho since she left the tower.

Cho is working on a body in her regeneration chamber, marveling 
at the way the vibranium is bonding with the tissue. “The most 
versatile substance on the planet,” Ultron declares. “And they 
used it to make a Frisbee.” Well, at least it’s a protective 
device and not a weapon, which is normally the way human 
inventions go.
   Chrissy: Well, it kind of is a weapon too.
   Diandra: Shh.
He breaks the infinity stone out of the scepter and drops it 
onto the forming body’s forehead.

Back at the farmhouse, Steve is in full uniform. He straps on 
his “Frisbee” and announces that he’s taking Natasha and Clint 
with him. Tony is like ‘yeah, okay, the two weakest links are 
doing recon. Makes sense. Meanwhile, I’ll check out Nexus and 
we’ll compare notes later.’ Steve says if Ultron is building a 
body... “he’ll be more powerful than any of us,” Tony finishes. 
Probably all of them combined because it will be an android 
designed by a robot. Steve is finally starting to feel 
nostalgic for the bad old days before science was capable of 
inventing superweapons. Yeah, but Polio. Remember Polio. And 
um...civilian food that isn’t indistinguishable from army 
rations. Fury saunters in to announce that he’s bringing Bruce 
to the Avengers tower and ask Tony if he can borrow Hill. Why 
don’t you ask her yourself? Does she only do things when she 
has a man’s permission? Steve asks what Fury is planning to do. 
Fury cryptically says he doesn’t know, but he hopes it’s 
“dramatic”.
   Chrissy: Just don’t die again.

Upstairs, Clint is vowing to Laura that he will finish 
reflooring the sunroom when he gets back. Oh, don’t do that. 
Don’t play the “I’m going off into battle, but first let me 
tell you all about my wife and kids back home so it will be 
extra angsty when I die” card. Laura doesn’t think it matters 
because once he’s finished with that he’ll just find another 
part of the house that needs major fixing. Yeah, welcome to 
home ownership.

Thor and Selvig are going into what looks like a cave. Selvig 
identifies the pool they come to as “the water of sight”. Thor 
exposits that there are reflections in every realm and “if the 
water’s spirits accept me, I can return to my dream and find 
what I missed.”
   Chrissy: There has to be an easier way.
   Diandra: Peyote?
Selvig confirms that nothing good has ever come out of people 
going into that pool.

Tony is at the Nexus hub in Oslo, tapping away at a terminal. 
One of the Norwegian women working there asks what he’s doing. 
He’s like ‘oh, just...decrypting nuclear codes to try to lure 
in a rogue, genocidal AI.’ Don’t worry about it.

Thor is in the pool and I’m beginning to think there’s a line 
in his contract somewhere that stipulates he must be shirtless 
in one scene per movie.
   Chrissy: Since when are you complaining?
   Diandra: Did I say I was? I want to kiss whoever put 
    that in.
Sparks start flying around him and there’s a bunch of seemingly 
unrelated images of the party hall, Tony, the stone being 
broken from the scepter and joining the aether, Tesseract and 
one other stone that has apparently been identified so far.

And we cut to Cho attaching some cables to Ultron and babbling 
that it will still be a few hours before the body is ready, but 
they can work on the “consciousness stream” right now. The 
twins watch from the sidelines as Cho uploads Ultron’s 
consciousness. Wanda mutters that she can already read the body 
in the tank. “He’s dreaming.” Cho objects to this wording as 
it’s just Ultron’s base consciousness transferring. Ultron asks 
how long this is going to take because he’s getting kind of 
anxious to get on with his world domination plot here. Cho says 
they’re still working on a physical brain and they can’t rush 
that. Wanda puts her hands on the tank and has a vision of a 
massive explosion hitting the planet with a force like the 
asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. She yelps and pants and 
demands to know how Ultron could do such a thing. Ultron is 
like ‘what now?’ She reminds him he promised they would destroy 
the Avengers to make the world a better place. Ultron says 
uh...yeah? She’s like ‘you’re making a better world by killing 
FREAKING EVERYBODY?’ Uh..........yeah? Ultron protests that 
he’s giving the humans plenty of opportunity to “improve”, 
but...you know...there’s this story about a guy named Noah... 
Wanda concludes that he’s insane. Really? You’re just NOW 
figuring this out? Ultron says there have been MANY extinction 
events on this planet. “When the Earth starts to settle, God 
throws a stone at it.”
   Chrissy: A monotheistic robot bent on destroying humans 
    because he is more evolved. How very Cylon of him.
   Diandra: All this has happened before and will happen 
    again.
   Chrissy: So say we all.

Ultron concludes that they have to “evolve” because “there’s no 
room for the weak”. Pietro asks who decides who is “weak”. 
Um...he does. Obviously. Wanda surreptitiously sends a burst of 
energy at Cho, apparently breaking the black oil mind control. 
Ultron is distracted by the sound of a jet approaching and says 
they have to move. Cho reaches to a control panel to stop the 
upload process. Ultron groans and sends a blast of energy into 
her chest. The twins run away. Ultron starts calling to them, 
then gives up and kills all the other humans working in the lab 
before muttering to himself that they’ll understand once they 
SEE. He rips the cord out of his head, stopping the 
consciousness upload halfway.

Steve arrives at the lab sometime later so Cho can explain what 
Ultron was doing, because of course the bad guy has to leave 
one victim alive to explain the details of the plan to the good 
guys. She says the real power is that jewel and it’s inside the 
regeneration cradle at the moment, which Ultron apparently took 
with him. She says it can’t be contained and he can’t “just 
blow it up”. She thinks he should make sure Tony gets it. Steve 
asks if everybody heard that. Natasha answer from the hovering 
jet that they’re tracking a plane that just took off on the 
other side of town. Beside her Clint is like ‘or it could be 
that truck down there with the name of the lab plastered across 
it’. He identifies three heat signatures in the back and one in 
the cab and offers to take out the one in the cab. Steve is 
like ‘yeah, good idea. Crash the truck and possibly blow up the 
whole city. Why do we need you on the team again?’
   Chrissy: To be fair, they just finished leveling a city 
    without needing him at all, so...
   Diandra: Yes, he’s probably the least destructive of all 
    of them.

Steve is climbing buildings near the freeway and jumps over on 
top of the semi as it passes. Ultron hears the thud and groans 
“no no no no leave me ALONE!” He sends a blast through the 
doors as Steve tries to open them. Steve winds up riding the 
partly detached door being dragged behind the semi. “Well, he’s 
definitely unhappy,” he mutters. “You’re not a match for him, 
Cap,” the weakest member of the team says. Yeah, thanks. Nobody 
asked you. 

Ultron unplugs again, still not quite finished uploading, and 
greets Steve as he goes to climb in the truck, blasting him 
onto the hood of the car following. He leapfrogs back onto the 
top of the semi and Ultron floats up to meet him. “You know 
what’s in that cradle,” he asks. “The power to make real 
change. And that terrifies you.”
   Chrissy: Why do I think a bunch of conservatives read 
    this as Ultron being a stand in for Obama?
   Diandra: Maybe because they read “The Dark Knight Rises” 
    homage to “A Tale of Two Cities” as “the Occupy 
    movement sucks”?
Steve slings his shield at Ultron. Ultron recovers, blasts him 
a couple times and then Steve slings the shield again and spin 
kicks it into Ultron’s chest when it rebounds. Ultron is like 
‘okay, no more mister nice robot’. He tosses the shield and 
blasts Steve in the chest.

Clint lowers the jet over the freeway behind them and opens the 
bomb bay doors. Natasha drops out on a motorcycle and goes 
zipping through traffic the second she hits the ground, 
muttering “I’m always picking up after you boys.” Yeah, 
newsflash: Natasha is an awesome bad ass.
   Chrissy: But she won’t be getting her own movie.
   Diandra: Nope. Instead we will get an origin story about 
    a guy whose only power is the ability to wear a suit 
    that makes him ant-size. 
   Chrissy: I guess at least that one had Evangeline Lilly 
    setting up a character who will be his equal.
   Diandra: Maybe. But we’re still not recapping it. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, I saw you getting Emilio to back you up 
    on that decision on Twitter.
   Diandra: I didn’t influence him in any way.
   Chrissy: Would you have done the recap if he said you 
    should?
   Diandra: ..............maybe?
   Chrissy: Liar.

She scoops Cap’s shield from the road as she passes and follows 
Clint’s directions from above to intercept. She slides right 
under the semi, pops up on the side Ultron is bending Steve 
over mid-choke and tosses the shield up to him. Steve whangs 
Ultron with it. Ultron blasts a patch of road in front of 
Natasha, forcing her to flip the bike all the way up onto its 
front wheel to avoid crashing. She rights herself and starts 
chasing the semi, the two bots in the back shooting at her. She 
darts up and down stairs, yelling at people to get out of the 
way, while Ultron knocks Steve back onto a car hood again, then 
blasts the road to cause a three car pile up for him to dart 
free of. He manages to launch himself back onto the semi while 
one of the cars is mid-flip and go right back to fighting. 
Seriously, how many casualties are going to be involved here? 
Does Tony have to pay the hospital bills of every bystander 
injured in these fights?

Natasha asks if Clint can “draw out the guards”, which he takes 
as a cue to pull up over the semi and blast at Ultron with the 
ship’s gun, then take off. Sure enough, the bots fly out the 
back and give chase. He flies straight up as they try to 
penetrate the hull and spins wildly until they fling right off.

Ultron and Steve exchange a few more blows that take them right 
off the semi and into a passing bus. I’m beginning to notice a 
theme with these movies involving buses in all their fight 
scenes. It happened with the last one and it will happen again 
with Doctor Strange and Spider-Man (and probably in Civil War). 
Is this a thing with Marvel?

Natasha announces that she’s “going in” and asks if Steve can 
keep Ultron busy. Steve, panting on the floor of the bus, 
mutters “what the hell do you think I’ve been doing?” Natasha 
jumps into the back of the semi and her bike is instantly 
smashed by a passing truck. The bots return and attach 
themselves to the sides of the semi. Cops form a barricade in 
front of the semi and the bots turn themselves into jet 
propulsion engines and suddenly the container in the back is 
airborn and the cab just falls right off. Natasha, who was 
tapping on the screen showing the progress of the chamber, goes 
rattling around and grabs on to something to keep from sliding 
right out. 

Clint flies behind the flying semi container and announces that 
the bad news is that the “package” is now airborn, but the good 
news is he has a clear shot. Natasha is like ‘THE FUCK YOU DO, 
I’M STILL IN HERE!’ He starts to ask what the fuck is taking 
her so long and she snaps at him to just COOL IT A MINUTE. Then 
they have the following exchange.
   Natasha: I’m sending the package to you.
   Clint: [squaring shoulders] How do you want me to take 
    it?
   Chrissy: [loud snorting laugh]
   Diandra: So we’re agreed that the correct answer here is 
    “any way you want it, big boy?”
   Chrissy: [gasping giggle fits][nods]
“You might wish you hadn’t asked that,” Natasha smart asses, 
already cutting the straps holding it.
   Chrissy: Like a bitch! Now spread ‘em and brace yourself 
    for incoming!
   Diandra: Wow, you recovered fast there.

Back to the ongoing fight. Ultron is suddenly knocked sideways 
by the blur that is Pietro. He goes to lunge at him and is 
blocked by a suddenly appearing chain of some sort that Wanda 
has put up between them. Ultron begs Wanda not to do this. She 
doesn’t think they have much choice considering. Ultron blasts 
out the back of the bus and flies away. Steve yelps that he 
lost him and scrambles to the front of the...I’m sorry, it’s 
actually a train, to find out that the track is out ahead. 

Natasha finishes cutting the straps, slaps a bomb on the side 
of the carrier and rides the cradle out toward the cargo of the 
jet like the guy riding the atom bomb in Dr. Strangelove. 
Except she doesn’t get all the way in (ha) before Ultron plucks 
her from the air and flies off. Clint is like ‘wait...what just 
happened? Where’s Nat?’
   Chrissy: I know she did not just drop her load up my ass 
    and then disappear!
   Diandra: [slow clap]
Steve, from the train that is now barreling past the track and 
down the middle of a street, yells at him to not worry about 
her and make sure the package gets to Tony. Clint is like 
‘but...Natasha...’ Steve just screams at him to GO again and he 
grumbles and takes off for Avengers tower. Probably.

Steve orders Pietro to take care of any civilians in the way of 
the out of control train. He takes off. Steve asks Wanda if she 
can stop the train. There’s a sequence of the train barreling 
down streets and Quicksilver zipping around in front of it 
moving anyone about to get hit and Wanda directing a blast of 
energy under the train, wrapping around the brakes and grinding 
it to a stop. The traumatized passengers spill out and Wanda 
finds Pietro panting outside. Steve marches up to both of them 
and Wanda asks if they have the cradle. Steve is like ‘the fuck 
do you think you are?’ “Stark will take care of it.” Wanda’s 
face falls at the name. She says no, he won’t. He will just “do 
anything to make things right.” Steve steps away to try to hail 
somebody on comms and she continues that Ultron can’t tell the 
difference between saving the world and destroying it and WHERE 
DO THEY THINK HE GOT THAT FROM? Steve kind of looks at her like 
he’s not sure if she’s messing with his head or not.

Clint has arrived at the tower and is on top of the cradle for 
some reason when Tony enters the lab. Bruce asks if they have 
any word on Natasha. Tony is like no, I don’t know anything 
about your girlfriend, but she must be alive since Ultron isn’t 
presenting them with her head on a platter or something. Also, 
since she’s scheduled for the next movie. Clint drops down from 
the cradle and announces that it’s sealed tightly. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, that’s usually what a guy says when he 
   realizes he can’t open something. Followed by “I 
   loosened it for you” when somebody else opens it. 
Bruce says they need to access the program controlling it and 
“break it down from within”. Tony is like ‘okay, while you’re 
doing that...’ He asks if maybe Clint and Natasha had some sort 
of way of contacting each other that wasn’t internet based. 
Clint thinks he might be able to try a couple things and runs 
off. As was probably the plan.

Bruce talks about degenerating tissue while Tony fries the 
operating system. Tony is like yeah, um... Bruce looks at him 
for a long moment and says “no”. Tony says trust me, because I 
figured out who has been scrambling the nuclear codes so Ultron 
can’t get them. He projects the yellow blob that is JARVIS into 
the room. Apparently Ultron knew JARVIS could potentially stop 
him and that’s why he tried to destroy him. Stress “tried” 
apparently, because it turns out JARVIS just went deep 
underground and dumped his memory banks, but left the protocols 
intact so Tony could piece him back together once he figured 
out what happened. Bruce slowly spells out Tony’s brilliant new 
plan: he helps Tony put JARVIS into the unfinished bot. Tony 
scoffs and says nah, HE’S going to help BRUCE put Jarvis in the 
unfinished bot. Because this is not exactly his field. Bruce 
notes that he’s assuming Jarvis’ matrix can override Ultron’s. 
Tony is like yeah, well, he’s been beating him so far. He 
thinks this is their chance to “build Ultron’s perfect self 
without the homicidal glitches he thinks are his winning 
personality.” Jarvis pipes up that HE thinks it’s worth trying. 
Bruce reminds him that this sort of thing is exactly what 
CAUSED their problems in the first place. Tony argues that 
everybody already thinks they’re mad scientists and they might 
as well “own it”. Yeah, that’s...not the best argument.

So while Bruce thinks about it, we go back to the body farm 
that Ultron has turned his own lab into. Natasha wakes up on 
the floor and he’s like ‘oh, good, now I get to show you all my 
plans for world domination because I’m lonely and need someone 
to talk to.’ Then he starts rambling about meteors and how pure 
they are as a means of extinguishing life on a grand scale and 
leaving the survivors with a clean slate to rebuild on. “I was 
meant to be new. I was meant to be beautiful. The world would 
have looked to the sky and seen hope, seen mercy.”
   Chrissy: Can you still use the expression “he has a few 
    screws loose” when you’re discussing a being that has 
    actual screws?
   Diandra: Yeah, I’m just wondering if this is loosely 
    adapted from the big speech from Frankenstein’s 
    monster.
As he’s talking, a metal hand blasts through his face and rips 
him apart. The owner of the hand continues mid-sentence in the 
same voice although there don’t seem to be too many changes to 
the body.
   Chrissy: He removed a couple standard features and 
    changed the appearance slightly. 
   Diandra: Oh, so he’s made by Apple?
   Chrissy: Only if they charge a ridiculous amount to buy 
    back those features that were removed. Also, he’s 
    bigger, so he would be the C model.
Natasha manages to back herself into a cage as she’s trying to 
get away from him and he closes the door.

We get a little montage of the Science Bros working on the 
cradle and Natasha cobbling something together from whatever 
parts she found somewhere and using it to tap a Morse Code 
message. Clint gets some sort of signal that he can’t seem to 
make out, but he can trace the source of.

Steve stomps into Tony’s lab and begins a rant with “I’m going 
to say this once...” Tony’s like ‘no, you’re not. Shut up.’ 
Steve orders him to shut it down. Tony says uh, nope. Sorry, I 
take back what I said earlier about you being the boss because 
it has clearly gone straight to your head. Steve says they 
don’t know what they’re doing. Bruce points out that since 
Wanda is hovering behind Steve with her brother, he might not 
either. They all start arguing until Pietro runs a loop around 
the lab and unplugs the cradle. “You were saying,” he asks 
cockily. A bullet shoots straight up past his face and he falls 
through the glass floor panel he was standing on. Clint stands 
over him and snarks “what? You didn’t see that coming?”

Tony tries to get the power back to the cradle. Steve throws 
his shield at him. Tony’s suit hand flies to him and he sends a 
blast into Steve’s chest. The rest of his suit follows, but one 
piece at a time while Steve is fighting him. Bruce grabs Wanda, 
who blasts him with magic. And now, naturally, while all hell 
is breaking loose, Thor appears. He stands on top of the cradle 
and holds up his hammer to summon lightning before Bruce can 
protest because THIS IS EXACTLY HOW FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER WAS 
CREATED. Apparently, this was the idea though as he jams the 
charged hammer into the cradle and all the screens come to 
life, announcing a power overload. He lets go and everybody 
goes still. Then the lid on the cradle bursts outward, throwing 
Thor off and Paul Bettany leaps out in a full body red leotard 
with some machinery designs on it. He looks at all the gawking 
people and launches at Thor. Thor deflects him across the 
entire building and just before he hits the outside window he 
realizes he can fly and just hovers, looking at the skyline and 
his own reflection. 

Everyone gathers warily, including Pietro and Clint, while he 
slowly comes back down to the main level. “I’m sorry, that was 
odd,” he says. He thanks Thor and a suit and cape appear on him 
like he’s building on the fly based partly on the design of 
Thor’s costume. Steve demands to know why the hell Thor just 
did that. “I had a vision,” Thor growls. 
   Chrissy: Hey, that sounds like a good name!
“A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at its center 
is that,” Thor specifies.
   Diandra: Oh, did Ann Coulter just wander onto the set?

He points at the infinity stone glowing in Android Jarvis’ 
forehead and explains that it’s one of the six infinity stones: 
the mind stone. He also explains (for the people who didn’t 
watch Guardians of the Galaxy) that the infinity stones are the 
source of all power in the universe and are capable of 
unparalleled destruction. Steve starts to ask why the hell he 
would do what he just did then, but Thor interrupts to say 
“Stark is right.” “Oh, it’s definitely the end times,” Bruce 
moans. Thor finishes that the Avengers can’t defeat Ultron 
alone. 

Steve finally asks why “Vision” sounds like Jarvis. Tony is 
like ‘because it is numbnuts.’ Vision concludes that Steve 
thinks he is just an Ultron clone or something and promises he 
isn’t. But he isn’t Jarvis anymore either. Wanda growls that 
she saw inside his head and saw “annihilation”. He invites her 
to look again.
   Chrissy: Well, now I just see a giant neon sign that 
   says BITE ME YOU LITTLE WITCH.
Thor says they have it backwards – Ultron, all his mini-mes and 
the twins’ powers all derived from the stone. And that’s only a 
fraction of what it is capable of. And now “it” is on their 
side. Steve isn’t so sure of that and asks Vision directly if 
he’s on their side. Vision is like ‘why do you keep using such 
simple terms like “side”? Are we playing checkers?’ Clint is 
like ANSWER THE QUESTION OR I’LL...er...shoot you. Maybe. Then 
again, Loki used that thing in your forehead to make me his 
bitch for the better part of a week, so what do I know? Vision 
says he’s on the side of “life”. Which...yeah, if you include 
plant and animal life then wiping out humans might actually be 
a logical means to that end.

Basically, he says he’s the opposite of Ultron. And Ultron is 
waiting for them. Bruce asks WHERE he’s waiting. This, Clint 
just found out. Sokovia. Yeah, we probably could have guessed 
that without the signal trace. It’s where his evil villain lair 
is. Bruce starts a vague threat about what they’ll do if they 
find out Vision really is on Ultron’s side, but he doesn’t 
finish it. Vision is like ‘look, I don’t really want to kill 
him, but I must destroy all traces of him before he destroys 
all the humans. Are we cool? Because I really need all of you 
guys to work together on this. You can continue whatever little 
spat you’re having later.’ Then he continues the rambling 
soliloquy from “Frankenstein” that Ultron started earlier and 
concludes that there really isn’t a way for him to make them 
trust him. “But we need to go,” he says, holding out Thor’s 
hammer to him. Everyone – including Thor and the twins who 
probably don’t even understand the significance of this - 
stares at him like ‘......................shit.’ 

So everybody gears up while Thor goes out on the balcony with 
Vision to talk. Tony plugs in a chip labeled “Friday”, which 
turns out to be the new, female Jarvis. With an Irish accent, 
just to change literally everything about JARVIS. Clint looks 
longingly at a picture of his family and stuffs it in his 
pocket because he is that war movie cliché.

They rally again and Tony warns that there’s a possibility they 
may not all make it through this because they have to make SURE 
there are no bots left standing. But he claims first dibs on 
Ultron because this is mostly between them. Vision breezes past 
and casually notes that this makes sense because “he hates you 
the most”. Tony makes a face like ‘so glad you could join us 
for this movie, Paul, so you can upstage me in person.’
   Chrissy: You know you just said “Tony” instead of 
    “Robert”, right?
   Diandra: ............and?

On the jet, Steve gives a little pep talk. Ultron knows they’re 
coming and they’ll probably be met by heavy artillery, 
but...hey...”that’s what we’ve signed up for.”
   Chrissy: Dude, you really need to stop doing these.

He says their first priority is to save the Sokovians. This is 
apparently Quicksilver’s job. He darts into a police station 
and yells that they’re under attack and they need to clear the 
city. He darts away and they all shrug and go back to doing 
what they were doing before. So he darts back in with a rifle, 
shoots the ceiling and tells them to “get off your asses” 
before running off again. Wanda stands out on the street 
sending thoughts to leave the city now to everyone else. 

Thor blasts into the underground lab, Bruce trailing behind 
him.

Steve has still been talking through the whole last paragraph, 
but who cares? We focus on him as he comes to the end of his 
bloviating speech. Ultron thinks they’re monsters.
   Chrissy: He’s right.
   Diandra: He means the Avengers, not humans in general.
   Chrissy: ...eh.
So they have to prove him wrong. Or right. Or something. Either 
way, they have to beat him. Go team!

Sokovia. Bruce finds Natasha in the underground lair, verifies 
that she’s okay and tells her the team is all in the city which 
is “about to light up.” She asks if he found a key to her cell. 
He holds up a large weapon and she stands back so he can blast 
the lock on the cell door. She wrenches it open and jumps out 
like ‘okay, I’m ready! What do you guys need me to do?’ He says 
actually, he’s just supposed to get her to safety. She frowns 
like ‘really? Now you’re playing the protect the little woman 
from the dangerous mission card?’ He says they can help with 
evacuating civilians, but he can’t be fighting near them 
anymore and he thinks she’s done more than her share so far, 
so...

Up in the city, Clint (recently injured, remember) is helping 
Captain America direct traffic. Because I guess he hasn’t done 
enough yet. Friday informs Tony that his target is inside the 
church, apparently waiting for him. He lands inside the 
derelict church from earlier and Ultron immediately asks if 
he’s come to confess his “sins”. “I don’t know,” Tony snarks. 
“How much time you got?” Ultron says “more than you” and comes 
up behind Tony, towering over him in his new improved body. 
Tony looks up at him nervously and asks if he’s been hitting 
the steroids or something. “You’re looking...I don’t want to 
say ‘puffy’, but...” Ultron is like ‘shove it. I know you’re 
just stalling while you evacuate the citizens.’ Tony says yeah, 
well...wasn’t the whole point to protect the humans? Ultron 
says he’s moved beyond that. He has no strings anymore. He’s 
free! A piece of machinery erupts out of the middle of 
the...pulpit? Friday announces to Tony that it contains the 
rest of the vibranium, but she can’t determine what its 
function is. Ultron declares this the end of the line for Tony 
and the beginning of “peace”. Or...robot domination. Something. 
Either way, I don’t think he read the script.

Ultron’s bots swarm all over the city, climbing up walls, 
terrorizing people and bombing vehicles. Tony hears the 
commotion and takes off.

Cap and Hawk are fending off attacks. Wanda stands in front of 
a group of people just getting on the other side of a bridge 
and makes a shield to deflect blasts, yelling at them to keep 
running.

Vision descends on Ultron from above. Ultron flies up to meet 
him and they both hover in mid air, Ultron twice Vision’s size. 
“My Vision,” he purrs. 
   Chrissy: Actually, I’m Thor’s Vision now. He let me hold 
    the hammer and everything.
   Diandra: Shouldn’t that be “he let me ride the hammer”?
   Chrissy: Eh.
Vision says Ultron set the original terms, so he can change 
them. Ultron is like yeah, sure. He grabs Vision like he’s 
going to crush him or something, but Vision grabs his head and 
does something to mess with his code. Yellow lights overwriting 
blue or something. 

Cap and Thor are still battling bots outside and in the 
underground lair respectively. Quicksilver streaks through the 
city, smashing several himself. Friday announces to Tony that 
Vision is successfully burning Ultron out of the net.

Back in the chapel, Ultron grunts as all of his internal lights 
go dark and he realizes he no longer has Internet access. 
Vision lets go of him and starts floating backward like he’s 
passing out. Ultron snarls that Vision thinks he cares about 
this, grabs him by the neck and slams him into the floor. Then 
he grumbles that if they’re going to take away his world, he’s 
going to take away theirs. He twists something on the machinery 
in the center of the pulpit.

Underground, a machine rumbles to life in front of Thor and the 
ground all around it quakes, raining down on him. 

Above ground, everything is chaos and people are running around 
screaming. Cap fights a bot right over the edge of a suddenly 
appearing cliff in the middle of a bridge. Tony asks Friday 
what’s going on and she informs him that all of Sokovia is 
“going for a ride”.

We pan out to see the entire city being driven into the air on 
the back of a ship, several buildings crumbling at the edges. 
Ultron hovers overhead, rambling about the “beauty” of it. “You 
rise, only to fall. You, Avengers, are my meteor. My swift and 
terrible sword. And the Earth will crack with the weight of 
your failure.”
   Chrissy: Let’s see...bad guy plans...conquer the 
   world...kill everyone...ah! Here we go. Kill everyone 
   via elaborate plan that makes it look like the good guys 
   did it. That’s the one!
He intones that they can erase him from their computers all 
they want, it won’t stop him from killing every organic life 
form on the planet. At least now he’s admitting it isn’t just 
humans he’s killing.

Bruce and Natasha are still making their way out from 
underground apparently. Natasha looks at all the rumbling and 
asks if he’s going to turn green now. He says nah, he has a 
“compelling” reason to not lose it. She grins and they 
kiss...and then she shoves him into a hole in the ground and 
waits for him to come leaping back out as the Hulk. Because 
nobody keeps her from completing the damn mission.
   Chrissy: There’s my girl.
   Diandra: Had me worried for a minute there.

We cut to her riding his back up out of the cave and onto the 
rising city island, yelling as she is nearly thrown free 
several times and finally IS thrown to the ground when he lands 
in a forest. “I really hope this makes us even,” she groans, 
clutching her side. He grunts and takes off. She runs in a 
different direction.

Tony flies out far enough to see the entire island rising up 
out of the ground. Friday tells him the vibranium is creating a 
magnetic field to keep the rock beneath the city together. Tony 
asks what happens if it falls. Ultron just told you. Weren’t 
you listening? Friday says if it were to happen NOW it would 
only kill thousands of people, but if it goes high enough the 
impact would, in fact, wipe out all life on the planet.

He flies back toward the city and Friday identifies a building 
that hasn’t been completely cleared. He flies into a room on 
the floor she identifies and finds a frightened family 
cowering. He looks around and orders them to get into the tub 
before half the building cracks off and he flies out, carrying 
the tub full of people. Friday warns that they have “airborn 
heading up to the bridge.” This is punctuated by a bot crashing 
into Steve and sending him flying into the windshield of a 
parked car. Tony tells him he has “incoming”. Steve is like 
‘yeah... couple seconds too late with that warning, buddy. 
Thanks.’ He groans and peels himself from the car, telling Tony 
to focus on getting the city back down while the rest of them 
handle the bots. He instructs the others to concentrate on 
tearing apart all the bots no matter what happens. Even if they 
are killed. Just “walk it off.”
   Chrissy: Sounds like my mother.

Hulk joins the chaos, ripping apart a bot with his bare hands. 
Wanda is deflecting the ones flying at her, but looking 
overwhelmed. Clint, who is far more fragile than her, has to 
grab her and dive through a window to get her out of harm’s 
way. Inside, she whimpers that this is all their fault because 
they let this happen. Clint snaps that it doesn’t MATTER whose 
fault it was anymore. Then he seems to acknowledge that he 
needs her more than the other way around by rambling that the 
city they’re in is airborne, they’re fighting an army of robots 
and he has a BOW AND ARROW WHAT THE FUCK IS HE EVEN DOING HERE? 
Or words to that effect. A hole appears in the wall beside them 
and he shoots an arrow out of it before finishing that he’s 
going back out there because this is his JOB, damnit and 
regardless of what she used to be she needs to get her ass out 
there and HELP THEM KILL THOSE METAL MOTHERFUCKERS.
   Chrissy: I think you might be making this speech sound 
    cooler than it really is.
   Diandra: Thanks? I think?
But, he offers, if she wants to just stay in here he can go 
find her brother to come pick her up like a scared little kid 
who doesn’t want to stay at summer camp. But if she goes out 
there, she has to fight because “you are an Avenger”. She calms 
and looks at him like ‘fuck yeah, I am.’ He’s like ‘okay, then, 
glad we had this talk.’ He strings four arrows on his bow at 
once and charges out the door opposite the window they came 
through.

On the remaining half of the bridge, Cap tries to save a woman 
whose car is falling over the edge by grabbing the bumper. The 
bumper rips right off and Thor has to fly after her, flinging 
her from the car back up to Steve to catch her. He pulls her to 
safety and Ultron, through one of his bots, grumbles ‘you know 
you can’t save them all, right?’ Steve throws the bot over the 
side like ‘I’m sorry, were you saying something? I CAN’T HEAR 
YOU.’ Thor deposits another car that fell off the side onto the 
road and Steve asks what the fuck took him so long to get here 
while the people inside the car stagger out and vomit. I’m 
assuming they also soiled their pants in some form and are now 
wishing they carried an extra pair in the trunk.
   Chrissy: That might be a standard requirement of living 
    in the Marvel universe. Always have spare underwear 
    and/or clothing.
   Diandra: Also, if you live in New York City, consider 
    moving.

Natasha joins the fray, armed with what looks like tiny cattle 
prods and her badass ninja skills.

Thor and Cap fend off dozens of bots, Thor flinging one into a 
tanker truck that, naturally, explodes. Ultron himself arrives, 
decides Thor is “bothering” him, grabs him and flies off.
   Chrissy: You stole my Vision! You think just because 
    you’re prettier and the humans think of you as a god 
    you can just swoop in and steal the body that was MINE 
    and lay claim to it with your hammer?
   Diandra: What was that about?
   Chrissy: Yeah, I’m not really sure. Moving on.

Clint is running around shooting arrows. But there’s way too 
many of them and he winds up behind a car with several of them 
closing in. Wanda comes to his rescue, storming out of the 
building and blasting one of them apart without looking, 
sending part of it flying into another one. Clint shoots a 
couple and she blasts whatever is left. They look at each other 
like ‘okay, are we cool? Cool.’ Clint announces that they’ve 
cleared their area. On the other side of town, Steve, fending 
off several bots at once, is like GOOD FOR YOU. Clint says 
they’ll come to him then. Quicksilver zooms up, picks up Wanda, 
tells Clint to “keep up, old man” and runs off. Clint points an 
arrow at his retreating back and mutters “nobody would know...” 
   Chrissy: Although if he was killed with an arrow, they 
    would probably be able to make an educated guess. 
   Diandra: Wouldn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to work 
    it out.
   Chrissy: ...........I’m not sure which joke you’re 
    trying to shoehorn in there. Do you want me to point 
    out that there’s a “Sherlock” flying around trying to 
    figure out how to stop the city from turning into a 
    meteor or should I say something about waiting for the 
    other “Sherlock” in a couple movies?
   Diandra: Never mind. 
   Chrissy: Or if we’re acknowledging that the X-Men are 
    part of this universe despite copyright issues, there’s 
    a really OLD version of “Sherlock” playing Magneto.
   Diandra: If we’re acknowledging the X-Men, then 
    Quicksilver and Colussus are both in two places at once 
    with different faces and Cable looks exactly like 
    Thanos. And Deadpool would be one of the Avengers.
   Chrissy: Okay, I know that first part was headache 
    inducing, but if it meant Deadpool would be in these 
    movies it would be totally worth it.

Ultron deposits Thor in the chapel and proceeds to beat the 
shit out of him with fists and chunks of columns. Because 
that’s not excessive.

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch arrive at the line the cops are 
holding and a bullet from one of the cops grazes Quicksilver. 
He stops to look at the guy like ‘dude. Really?’

Cap and Natasha tag team a bot, passing Cap’s shield back and 
forth.

Meanwhile, Friday informs Tony that the anti-grav boosters are 
rigged to go full reverse thrust if he tries to tamper with 
them. Tony brainstorms that he could get Thor to hit the 
vibranium core and... Friday says yes, that would crack it, but 
it would still crash and do a shit load of damage. He suggests 
capping the other end to “keep the atomic action doubling 
back”. Friday says that could vaporize the city and everyone 
currently riding it like the world’s worst elevator. Well, at 
least if it’s vaporized it can’t fall and obliterate the whole 
planet, right? LET’S KEEP OUR EYE ON THE BIG PICTURE, SHALL WE?
   Chrissy: Yeah, crack open a Guiness and chill.
   Diandra: Sterotyping Irish people, are we? Some of them 
    also drink whiskey.

Steve breaks in to ask what Tony has because “the next wave 
could hit any minute.” The next wave of what? Bots? Tony says 
yeah, their best bet right now is to blow up the city to keep 
Ultron from using it to destroy the planet. Can you guys clear 
out? Steve is like ‘can you try for a solution that minimizes 
casualties even more?’ Tony growls at him to be reasonable 
because the longer they wait the bigger the shockwave when the 
city crashes back down. Natasha thinks they should blow it. 
Steve insists they wait until EVERYBODY is safe. Natasha points 
out the lesser of two evils/greater good argument that says 
letting the people in this city die is preferable to KILLING 
EVERY LIVING THING ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. Steve stubbornly says 
he’s not leaving as long as there are people in the city. 
Natasha says she never suggested they leave. Steve stares at 
her. She nods at the clouds visible past the edge of what used 
to be a parking lot and says there are worse ways to die. “Glad 
you like the view, Romanoff,” Fury’s voice cuts in to their 
comms. “It’s about to get better.” A helicarrier (because 
apparently there still is one after the last movie) rises into 
view.
   Chrissy: And the moral of the story is ‘don’t fuck with 
    Sam Jackson.’
   Diandra: I thought the moral was Sam Jackson always has 
    the biggest dick.
   Chrissy: Well...

Everyone on that side of the city gapes at the helicarrier and 
Fury is like ‘yeah...we pieced one of them back together. Or 
pulled one out of storage. Something.’ “Fury, you son of a 
bitch,” Steve mutters.
   Chrissy: Language!
   Fury (basically): Language, young man!
   Chrissy: Actually, he says “you kiss your mother with 
    that mouth?” which...you know...she’s probably been 
    dead for more than a half a century, so...
Hill and some lackey announce altitude and the readiness of the 
“lifeboat”. The carrier spits out several smaller ships to 
evacuate people from the city. Quicksilver, now joining Steve 
and Natasha, asks if this is SHIELD. Yes, and Steve tried to 
destroy it in the last movie. Acknowledging that without 
admitting possible faults in his logic, Steve says this is what 
SHIELD is SUPPOSED to be. 

Bots start flying toward the helicarrier. Fury smirks like 
‘yeah, that’s cute’ and orders them to “show them what we got.” 
James (War Machine) flies out and starts blasting away at the 
bots. Dude, where have you been this whole time? Is Falcon here 
somewhere too? Tony flies over to join him and they have the 
following exchange:
   James: Now this is gonna be a good story!
   Tony: Yup. If you live to tell it.
   James: Pshah. You think I can’t hold my own?
   Tony: We get through this, I’LL hold your own.
   James: You had to make it weird.
   Chrissy: Hey, if you have a problem with a little 
    interracial hanky panky, that’s on you.
   Diandra: Although you’d think after we worked together 
    to try to get Thor’s hammer up...

The lifeboats “dock” against the floating island and whichever 
Avenger is nearby helps herd people onto them. The lackey on 
the helicarrier announces that one of the “boats” is already 
full just before one of Ultron’s bots crashes through the front 
of the helicarrier and crawls toward him like a zombie. Hill 
shoots it and Fury stabs through its head with a piece of 
rebar.
   Chrissy: You know, they could use Sam on “The Walking 
    Dead”. He probably would have killed Negan by now.
   Diandra: I stopped watching that. Is Negan still alive?
   Chrissy: I...actually don’t know. I quit after last 
    season. I’m just saying.
The bot shorts out and Fury sniffs like ‘yeah, that’s what you 
get if you threaten me, fucker.’
   Diandra: Yeah, can we petition to have him in the next 
   zombie movie?

Ultron is still beating up Thor, smarming about how the 
Avengers really think they’re saving anyone. He could turn a 
key to drop the city any time he wants. He doesn’t have to wait 
for it to get to total annihilation height. “Even you can’t 
stop that.” “I am Thor, son of Odin,” Thor gasps. “And as long 
as there is life in my breast...I...am running out of...things 
to say. Are you ready?” Ultron cocks his head, then turns just 
as Vision appears, wielding Thor’s hammer, and smacks him right 
out of the chapel.
   Chrissy: Hands off my man!
   Diandra: Ahem. You know, if we go back to the whole blue 
    lights Ultron seemingly raping yellow lights Jarvis, 
    this whole subtext gets kind of...
   Chrissy: He respects me and I am the only one worthy to 
    touch his hammer!
   Diandra: ............yeah. Something like that.

Vision tosses the hammer to Thor, noting that it is very well 
“balanced”, and Thor blusters about it not having too much 
weight so you don’t “lose power on the swing.”
   Diandra: ..........................
   Chrissy: Are you waiting for me to explain how that can 
    be a euphemism?
   Diandra: I guess not. Never mind.

Tony is flying around taking out bots, announcing between blows 
that he has an idea to create a “heat seal” and “supercharge 
the spire”. Friday thinks it could work if they generate enough 
power. Tony, righting a damaged lifeboat, calls to Thor that he 
has a plan. Thor says they’re too late, “they’re coming for the 
core”. Tony tells James to finish getting people on the 
helicarrier and flies down into the city.

He joins Vision and Thor, keeping bots away from the column in 
the center of the pulpit.
   Chrissy: I’m pretty sure this isn’t a pulpit you keep 
    identifying, but I accepted long ago that you know 
    squat about both religion and architecture.
   Diandra: Well, what is it then?
   Chrissy: How would I know? I’m Jewish.
Quicksilver joins them and Steve, Wanda and Clint sort of 
stumble into the courtyard nearby. Tony asks where the hell 
Natasha and Banner are and grumbles that they’d better not “be 
playing hide the zucchini”.  Natasha grumbles at him to shut up 
and reminds him that not all the Avengers can fly. She drives 
up in an Earth mover, plowing through bots along the way, and 
jumps out to join the rest of them taking position around the 
core. Tony reminds them (and slower members of the audience) 
that if the Ultron or his bots get to the core they’re screwed.

Hulk, the last to the party, smashes his way into the church. 
Ultron hovers in the distance and Thor yells taunts at him. 
Ultron waves and a legion of bots appears behind him. Steve is 
like ‘yeah, thanks, Thor. That was really helpful.’ Ultron 
purrs that this is EXACTLY what he was hoping for because now 
all of the Avengers are in one place, hopelessly outnumbered by 
his minions. Tony is like ‘yeah, well...Avengers assemble!’

We watch from above as the bots descend, getting blasted, 
whacked or shot from the protective circle of heroes. Then we 
cut to each of them on the ground attacking or fending off 
attacks, the ones that can fly zipping overhead.

And then we get another ‘everybody fighting at once’ shot, 
panning in slow motion around the core. Steve does what looks 
like a sideways triple axle, Thor is summoning lightning, Wanda 
is throwing fireballs, Pietro is zipping around, Hulk is 
throwing bots like an angry gorilla slinging poo and Clint is 
like ‘I only have, like, three arrows left here’.
   Chrissy: Thanks for that mental picture on Hulk there.
   Diandra: You’re welcome.

Ultron engages Vision above the whole skirmish and Vision 
discovers he can shoot a laser out of the stone in his 
forehead. He pins Ultron with it and Thor and Tony join him, 
blasting Ultron with their own beams. Ultron is holding them 
off, except his faceplate rips off and once they stop blasting 
he staggers upright, smoking. “You know, with the benefit of 
hindsight,” he begins, but he doesn’t get to finish the 
sentence before Hulk punches him several blocks. A bunch of 
hovering bots take one look at Hulk and run right off the side 
of the city island. Ha.

Tony says they can’t let any of them leave because they have to 
destroy ALL of Ultron. He calls James to intercept. Vision 
flies out to join him and James frowns at him like ‘um...Tony? 
Who is the weird purple guy with the cape?’

Steve tells Nat, Wanda and Clint to get to the boats while he 
does another sweep to make sure they didn’t miss anybody. Clint 
asks what they should do about the core they just fended an 
entire army of robots from. Wanda volunteers to stay and defend 
it. Her brother zips in to join her and she tries to send him 
with the others to finish getting people on the lifeboats. As 
we have seen a few movies, like, ever, we all know that’s not 
going to happen. She says she doesn’t need him to back her up – 
he can come back when everybody else is gone. She blasts a 
straggling bot to prove her point.

Tony is flying back in, instructing Friday to reroute all power 
because they’re only going to have one chance at this.

Natasha and Clint arrive at a boat via stolen car. Hulk roars 
from somewhere nearby and Natasha breaks away to go find him in 
what looks like the courtyard of a shopping mall. She announces 
that the sun is getting low. And then we cut back to Clint 
realizing there’s still a person trapped in the rubble nearby 
and a frantic woman on the boat is looking for him. He sighs 
and runs to save the guy.
   Chrissy: And die heroically.

Tony cuts his way into the space under the core and tells Thor 
to get back in the church. Thor is helping Steve get the last 
of the people on a boat. All three of them agree that this 
might be a suicide mission.
   Chrissy: Yeah, it really is too bad there are no more 
   movies planned with these characters. Especially since 
   Tony is the only one who got a whole trilogy.

Hulk starts loping toward Natasha, holding out his hand. Before 
they can touch, Ultron flies over in a jet and blasts at him, 
singing “Got No Strings” somewhat off key through his partially 
blasted faceplate.

Clint picks up the kid who wasn’t even trapped under anything 
and turns as Ultron comes barreling down the “coast” of the 
city, guns blazing. He accepts his fate and crouches around the 
kid to protect him. A blur shoots through the shot as the line 
of fire passes and when the dust settles there is a car tipped 
on its side behind him and Quicksilver, bleeding from multiple 
bullet wounds beside him. They look at each other and Pietro 
repeats his first line to Clint: “you didn’t see that coming?” 
Then he collapses and dies. 
   Chrissy: And that’s how the loophole character who is 
    technically a mutant sacrificed himself to save the 
    lamest Avenger.
   Diandra: So I wasn’t the only one baffled by all the 
    outrage that Hawkeye wasn’t in the Infinity War 
    trailer?
   Chrissy: That was a thing?
   Diandra: Apparently.
Wanda, who being his mutant twin can apparently sense his 
death, collapses to her knees and screams, a blast of energy 
radiating out from her to destroy all the incoming bots.

Steve arrives to help Clint, picking up Pietro’s body.

Natasha – who was apparently knocked out earlier - kind of 
comes to as Hulk lands on the helicarrier, deposits her and 
leaps off again. We follow him as he leapfrogs between vehicles 
and runs out of frame. From somewhere behind the camera, James 
Spader says “oh for God’s sake” and Ultron goes flying off the 
ship.

Sad choral music plays as Steve lays Pietro’s body on one of 
the lifeboats and Clint hands the kid who is ultimately the 
reason he died to his mother. He grunts as he realizes he has a 
flesh wound in his side – or maybe remembers he had an injury 
there not that long ago - and slumps into a chair beside 
Pietro, waving off a guy who offers to help. He lays on the 
bench so his body is basically parallel to Pietro’s. ARE YOU 
GETTING THE SYMBOLISM HERE? BECAUSE IT’S REALLY DEEP.

Wanda finds Ultron in the bus/train he crashed into on landing. 
He notes that if she stays here she’ll die. She gives a very 
Russian response about already dying and offers to show him how 
it felt. Then she rips the hunk of metal that sits where the 
human heart would be right out of his chest.
   Chrissy: Subtle.
   Diandra: Much deep. Very emotions.
   Chrissy: Not sure you’re doing the Doge thing right.
   Diandra: Neither am I.

Everyone and their pets finish boarding the lifeboat and the 
fact that we’re only now acknowledging somebody bringing their 
dog with them makes me think about all the animals that might 
have died already. You know, when people scoff at these movies 
as mindless fun for little boys, I don’t think they realize how 
DARK they can be. I mean, they have spent this entire movie 
debating how many deaths are acceptable to prevent mass 
extinction and even if this plan works (spoiler alert: it does) 
and we cut off the number of deaths right now, this whole thing 
was still a major tragedy on par with the biggest natural 
disasters or terrorist attacks. Yeesh.

Steve jumps on the last boat as it’s leaving. A half-dead bot 
reaches the core and pushes the button before collapsing. Tony 
does whatever he said he was going to do to redirect the energy 
flow and we see from overhead several blasts of energy coming 
up around the city. It starts falling, looking from the side 
exactly like a meteor crashing into the planet, creating a 
trail as it starts burning up. Tony moves to the hole he 
created and sends a blast from his arc reactor into the core, 
telling Thor to get ready. Thor summons lightning from above. 
Vision flies through all the chaos and the special effects team 
goes bananas. He finds Wanda and flies her off the island.

Tony yells “now” and Thor slams the hammer into the core, 
sending out a shockwave that levels the city. The rock 
underneath it follows, the whole “meteor” exploding and 
showering down, mostly into a body of water. Tony zips around, 
dodging falling debris. Thor splashes in the water right in the 
middle of it.

Hulk sees all this happening outside and gets distracted when 
Natasha comes on the dash of Ultron’s ship. “Hey big guy,” she 
says. “We did it. The job’s finished. Now I need you to turn 
this bird around, okay?” It turns out she’s broadcasting from 
the helicarrier. She explains they can’t track him if he’s in 
stealth mode, so she needs him to... He turns off the screen 
before she can finish.

Somewhere on the edge of where downtown Sokovia used to be, a 
bot climbs up onto a cliff. Vision lands in front of it, cocks 
his head, and declares that it is “afraid”. Ultron’s voice 
sneers ‘what? Of you? Please.’ Vision says no, of death. 
Because he’s the last bot. “You were supposed to be the last. 
Stark asked for a savior and settled for a slave,” Ultronbot 
says. Vision says yeah, well, they’re both disappointments. 
“Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow 
opposites and try to control what won’t be.”
   Chrissy: Is “Frankenstein” in public domain yet, or 
    should they be paying royalties to Mary Shelley’s 
    estate?
   Diandra: Oh, that copyright expired long ago. However, 
    Universal Studios can sue if you make the monster look 
    too much like their movie adaptation.
   Chrissy: Seriously?
   Diandra: Apparently they added enough “original” 
    material to justify having control over it now.
   Chrissy: Jesus.
   Diandra: The good news is that any new adaptation that 
    wants to avoid paying royalties is now forced to return 
    to the original version of the story that really didn’t 
    look anything like Universal’s. Which this, "Penny 
    Dreadful" and that stage adaptation starring two 
    different Sherlocks do.

Vision says Ultron missed the “grace in their failings” though. 
Basically, they’re doomed. “But a thing isn’t beautiful because 
it lasts. It’s a privilege to be among them.”
   Chrissy: And there is the argument of every 
    vampire/immortal story.
   Diandra: And again, morbid for something many think is 
    meant for kids. “Yes, everyone you know and love will 
    die and one day all humans will go extinct. But isn’t 
    life beautiful while it lasts?”
Ultron declares Vision naïve. Vision says well, he was 
LITERALLY born yesterday, so... He blasts the last bot with 
energy from the stone in his forehead.

Laura is making tea or something in the farmhouse kitchen when 
Clint comes in the door. She smiles in relief and hugs him. 
Tony drives a fancy sports car up to a giant, sprawling 
structure with an A on it that the cyron identifies as the New 
Avengers Facility. Inside, people are milling around looking 
busy, including Hill, Cho and Selvig. Natasha stands in an 
empty room by herself, taking a call from Laura who wants to 
introduce her to the new baby (because maybe we skipped some 
time here, I don’t know), who they named Nathaniel Pietro. Aww. 
You got him killed because you are the weakest link on the 
team, but that’s sweet that you named your kid after him. Fury 
comes up to her as she hangs up. He says his people identified 
what MIGHT be the jet in the Banda Sea. Except since it has 
Stark’s stealth technology still active they can’t really be 
sure and they can’t track it.
   Chrissy: It’s entirely possible it’s left Earth entirely 
    and somebody will find it in some weird part of space 
    on the planet where everybody sends their garbage or 
    something.
   Diandra: Maybe. We’re just guessing.

Fury assures her that Bruce probably just jumped out and swam 
to Fiji and he’ll send her a postcard and come out of hiding 
when he’s ready.
   Chrissy: Or...not.
She reminds Fury that he sent her to recruit Banner originally 
and asks if he knew what would happen back then. Fury is like 
‘know? Hell, I ain’t Nostradamus. I was just working with the 
superhumans I had available and praying to God it worked out.’ 
“Nothing lasts forever,” she says because apparently we’re 
trying to work that theme in as much as possible on this movie. 
Fury notes that no matter who wins, there’s always a new shit 
storm brewing in the distance.

Avengers...plaza? Steve, Tony and Thor are walking down a 
hallway as Steve and Tony discuss this new threat and new set 
of rules they’ll need to deal with it. Tony thinks Vision is a 
machine and therefore “doesn’t count”, using basically a 
variant of the “guns don’t kill people” argument. Apparently 
they’re trying to convince Thor to let him keep the stone in 
his forehead. Thor agrees that if he can wield the hammer, the 
stone is safe with him. Steve, apparently still trying to 
understand the rules of the hammer, asks what happens if you 
put it in an elevator. Thor is like ‘I’m going to miss you 
guys. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get captured by a 
giant devil creature.’ No, actually he outlines the plot of the 
next Avengers movie, probably. He notes that it can’t be a 
coincidence the stones keep appearing now: somebody is using 
them and positioning everything and everybody for some sort of 
showdown. He thinks he can figure out who is behind it.
   Chrissy: You could probably have just asked your brother 
    sometime during the last movie.
   Diandra: Pfffffffftttttt. Nah.

He spins the hammer and takes off, leaving one of those weird 
crop circle things in the grass. Tony grumbles about him 
wrecking the lawn, but says he’s going to miss him. And Steve 
is going to miss Tony. “There’s gonna be a lot of manful 
tears.” Steve says seriously, though, he will miss him. Tony 
wonders if he should build a farm for Pepper like Clint did 
for...what’s her name and go live in seclusion or something. 
HA! Right. Steve thinks he left the concept of settling down 
and starting a family back in the 1940s. So apparently he’s 
just gonna stay here and train cadets or something. Along with 
Natasha, who he goes to find still standing in that empty room. 
“I thought you and Tony were still gazing into each other’s 
eyes,” she teases.
   Chrissy: You make them sound like teenage girls. They 
   were eye fucking.

They go into the next room to find War Machine, Vision, Falcon 
(thanks for joining the party, buddy) and Scarlet Witch. Steve 
stands in front of them as hero music plays and says 
“Avengers...” and then the camera cuts to black before he can 
say something stupid like “assemble” or something.

After some quasi-religious imagery with all the characters from 
the movie being depicted by marble statues, we get a quick shot 
of Thanos reaching into a vault for the gauntlet he has been 
collecting the infinity stones for and muttering “fine, I’ll do 
it myself.”

That’s...that’s it? That’s the only mid/post credit scene on 
this one? That is slightly better than the "Guardians of the 
Galaxy" doing a throwaway gag with Howard the Duck.

Okay, as I said earlier, my patience with origin stories in 
these movies only goes so far so I am going to skip the next 
movie (Ant-Man) and go right to Civil War. See you there.