Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
The Week in Fan Theories: Arya kills the Night King, Iron Man's a super-soldier, and Deadpool
Welcome to The Week in Fan Theories, your guide to what fan theories, good and bad, are taking the internet by storm!
With so many fan theories floating around the web, it can be hard to know which ones to take seriously and which ones are wildly off the mark. Some theories are brilliant breakthroughs that reveal a whole new understanding of what a work of fiction means, or they're spot-on predictions about what's going to happen in the next installment. Others are specious bunk, deeply flawed theories that nevertheless get aggregated by some of the less scrupulous news sites.
This week, we've got Kit Harington calling an irritatingly popular Game of Thrones theory "crap," an Iron Man theory that's fun but doesn't hold up at all, and some wildly speculative Deadpool bogus. Shall we begin?
JON SNOW DID NOT HELP ARYA KILL THE NIGHT KING, THAT'S CRAP.
Fans had a lot of problems with "The Long Night," the big battle episode from Game of Thrones' final season. It was too dark, the body count wasn't high enough, the tactics didn't make sense... I could go on, but one pernicious criticism was that Arya shouldn't have been the one to defeat the Night King. It's understandable — Jon Snow's whole arc seemed like it was leading up to this, whereas Arya literally comes out of nowhere. But, some fans took it a step further, arguing that Jon Snow was yelling "go" when he faced down a zombie dragon, giving Arya the opening she needed to get to the Night King.
"Yeah, come on. What, the big man goes and tells the little girl to go and [do it]? No thanks. That's crap," Kit Harington told The Hollywood Reporter. "She did it all on her own. It had nothing to do with Jon."
Harrington admitted that he would have liked to be the one to kill the Night King, but that he was thrilled that Arya got the win, saying it was a great surprise and fitting for her character arc.
TONY STARK WAS INJECTED WITH CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SUPER-SERUM AS A KID
This theory posits that Howard Stark — a brilliant inventor in his own right — would have wanted to give his child every advantage he could. And, since Captain America: Civil War revealed that he managed to recreate the Super Soldier Serum, why wouldn't he have given his young son the serum?
The Super Soldier Serum emphasized the goodness in Captain America and the darkness in Red Skull, so maybe it highlighted Tony Stark's potential? Also, the theory notes, Tony may not have had super-strength, but he survived a lot of would-be fatal wounds over the course of the series, even accounting for the protection provided by the Iron Man suit. If he were superhuman, this makes more sense, the theory argues.
What's the point, though? Does Tony Stark become a more interesting character if, rather than through his own ingenuity, he became a superhero because his dad injected something into him? Giving Tony a hidden backstory that makes him into Captain America Jr. diminishes him, rather than making him better. And, as for surviving all those wounds? It's a superhero movie — that's kind of a trope of the genre and not something that needs to be explained with a Super Soldier Serum.
Finally, as a couple of places have noted, Tony Stark gets wasted during Iron Man 2, and is seen drinking lots of other times throughout the series. Captain America: The First Avenger revealed that Steve Rogers cannot get drunk, due to the serum. Therefore, Tony Stark cannot be a super-soldier.
DEADPOOL WILL APPEAR IN DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS
What's the difference between a theory and a guess? There may not be an exact answer, but the question really speaks to a problem with a lot of lesser fan theories that get written up and passed off as content by traffic-hungry websites. For example, this "theory," which predicts that the now-Disney-owned Deadpool will make his MCU debut in the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel.
The theorist says they think the film's post-credits sequence will involve Doctor Strange closing a portal to the multiverse, but before he does, the Merc With a Mouth will jump through and make all sorts of jokes about the Disney/Fox merger, and Strange will be confused by the Fourth Wall-breaking. Presumably, this could set up Deadpool's proper introduction in the MCU's Phase 5.
Sure, this is possible, in the sense that lots of things are possible. But, as of a week ago, top Disney brass was struggling with how they'd fit the R-rated Deadpool in the more family-friendly MCU. The Deadpool films made a lot of money, and the MCU makes a lot of money, and Disney loves making money, so it'll probably find a way. But, will it be as flippant as a cameo at the end of a sequel to a second-tier hero's film? Seems like a wild guess.
