After six seasons, the Once Upon a Time showrunners decided that the series needed a change. Performing a soft reboot, they recast most of the characters and moved the action to a suburb of Seattle. The season met with mixed reactions. Many found it hard to get used to the new characters and the revised personas of the few characters that they’d been following for years. Others felt that the series lacked the depth that it had had in previous seasons. Others appreciated the new take. In this episode, we take a deep dive into season 7 and discuss what worked and what didn’t, how we felt about the characters in this season new and old, and whether we felt that it ended too soon.
The five-minute controversy this week asks what franchise we think that James Gunn would be best to take over.
This week Ryan and Anji join the cast.
Like what you heard? Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/42cast. You can also find us on Twitter as @42cast. We can also be found on Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and iTunes. Please, leave us a review. Have a question for the Ultimate Answer? E-mail us at [email protected].
The 80’s were a time cartoons were becoming more and more popular. Greater channels and the rise of syndication meant that there was a lot of content out there. When you combine that with the rise of licensing and cartoons being created by toy companies, and you had a recipe sure to win over any child’s heart. In this episode we discuss our favorite cartoons of the 80’s and why we feel that they were special. We also discuss the attitude that cartoons stopped being good in the 80’s because the toylines became involved and share our opinions on that topic. 
Avengers: Infinity War was a unique event in the history of cinema. Never before had 18 movies and multiple franchises culminated in a single movie combining all of the franchises and giving payoff for the various stories. In this episode from the archives we do a deep dive into the storyline. We talk about the ways that all of the existing characters are handled. We talk about the epic scale of the crossover, and we discuss breakout hit character Thanos. 
Greetings, chums! The Tick has been entertaining us in various media for over 25 years. The Wild Blue Yonder is a fun character, often waffling between silly and profound, while telling offbeat superhero tales. In this episode we briefly discuss his comic origins before discussing his rise to popularity through the animated series on Fox Kids. We also talk about the two live action iterations, first on Fox and then on Amazon Prime. We talk about why the character endures, what our favorite incarnations are, and how we’d like the Tick’s adventures to continue. We also discuss his supporting cast and the crazy, offbeat villains that have been such a signature for the show. 
Video games have been a hugely popular form of entertainment since their debut in 1972. As an art form almost 50 years old, historians have started to take a look at the saga of video games, chronicling and analyzing how they came to be what they are today. One podcast endeavors to look at the history of arcade, console, and computer gaming history. That podcast is They Create Worlds. On that podcast, historian, 
Our epic length recording about the life and works of legendary author, J.R.R. Tolkien, comes to a close. In this episode we ask whether The Hobbit truly needed to be three films. We also discuss the musical language of the Lord of the Rings movies. Bree mentions what it’s like to live near so much Tolkien history. Anji laments missing her chance to hear Billy Boyd sing in person Stephanie discusses similarities between names in Babylon 5 and Lord of the Rings. Stick around, because we have outtakes after the episode! 
We move on to part two of our discussion of J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. This time we talk about Tolkien’s love of language, and how that makes for a more convincing world and makes it more interesting to read. We also discuss diversity within Lord of the Rings, modern interpretations of the text, the overall theme of the story, and the character assassination of Faramir. 
Over 65 years ago, Fellowship of the Ring, the first book in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings epic was published and literature would never be the same. That one work changed the way that fantasy literature was written and received by the public. It propelled a quiet academic into the public eye and has spawned a plethora of adaptations, interpretations, and imitations. In this episode and the three that follow we take a look at Tolkien’s life and the influences that helped inform his writing style. We’ll also talk about his many books and works, including those published posthumously, and we’ll discuss the various animated and live-action adaptations. 
The Black Panther was a character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in the 1960’s. Portraying him as the ruler of a technologically superior African nation, Lee and Kirby showed just how visionary they could be in a time when the idea of a black superhero was controversial. Knowing the history behind the character and the potential for this movie, Marvel took it’s time introducing the character to ensure that it gave him a movie of the quality that he deserved. In this episode of The 42cast we delve into Black Panther and talk about whether it succeeded in its goal and what we thought of the storytelling, characters, and it’s place within the greater MCU.