Be it sci-fi, horror, fantasy, or any heightened reality in between and beyond, one must never underestimate the power of a character’s momentary stupidity in helping to move countless plots forward.
It’s no value judgment, of course; a fair chunk of the fun of genre fiction is being able to happily plug into the improbable, and contrary to popular belief, stupidity and improbability share a fairly tight correlation.
And few franchises know this better than the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose wealth of content has birthed more than a few outlandish decisions from its wide cast of multiversal champions. The most famous is perhaps Star-Lord’s temper tantrum during Avengers: Infinity War, in which a nearly-defeated Thanos was re-aggravated by a violently grieving Peter Quill.
But it seems Star-Lord’s time as that particular punching bag has screeched to a halt, with the denizens of r/marvelstudios ushering in a new era of terrible in-universe ideas in need of catching some overdue heat.
One user pointed out that Peter Parker’s entrusting of E.D.I.T.H., an extremely powerful network of Stark-grade missiles and drones, to the mysterious, aptly-named Mysterio wasn’t the brightest move on the webslinger’s part, even if that plot point did eventually lead to him coming to terms with the responsibilities of being a superhero by the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Keeping with the Spider-Man theme, it was awfully bold of Doctor Strange to risk the collapse of the multiverse in order to get Peter, Ned, and MJ into MIT during the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home; perhaps post-Blip depression just makes you do some silly things here and there.
But perhaps the current crown goes to the writers of Secret Invasion for giga-buffing G’iah to such a degree that we can’t help but quake in our boots imagining what she and the delightfully unhinged Sonya Falsworth might get up to. Indeed, this is one decision that just might be dumb enough to work.
Perhaps there’s nothing terribly groundbreaking about comic book characters making stupid decisions, but it’s a marriage we’ll never get tired of, so long as we can avoid the Quantumanias and Secret Invasion finales of the world while doing so.