Welcome to Off Panel.

Off Panel is the Wonder Bros Pod between the episodes. No structure, no segments, no movie to analyze. Just Cody and Josh with the mic on before they hit record on the main show — talking about whatever's been on their minds.

The name comes from the same place all our best ideas do: comics. Off panel is the world that exists outside the frame of the book. The stuff that's happening that you don't get to see. This is that.

In this first episode: Josh's grandfather was a Texas sheriff's deputy who moonlighted as a wedding DJ and said a sawed-off shotgun was his partner. Cody had a panic attack in the shower about death and his brother made it worse with a comment about 1942. The Good Place saved Cody's brain. Josh tells Cody he was born to produce. And both of them discover they've been undiagnosed ADHD for most of their lives.

Also: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, why MobLand is one of the best shows on television right now, Marvel's frustrating pattern of canceling prestige projects, whether Wonder Bros Pod could ever cover TV shows, and a belly button conversation that got away from everyone involved.

Unscripted. Unfiltered. This is us, off the record.

New Off Panel episodes drop in the main Wonder Bros Pod feed occasionally on Mondays

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We didn't want to do this episode. We did it anyway.

Captain Marvel is the most divisive film in the MCU — a 6.7 on IMDb, a review bombing controversy that changed how Rotten Tomatoes works, and a movie that made 1.1 billion dollars despite nearly every person Cody and Josh know having complicated feelings about it.

This week they finally sit down with it. And they brought drinks.

Along the way:

- Josh's big realization mid-episode: Captain Marvel isn't bad because of its actors. It's bad because it's telling two genuinely great stories at the same time and doing both of them poorly
- The Skrulls as the film's most important element — and what they're actually saying about colonialism, indigenous populations, and who gets to write history
- Why Talos is the only real story in the film — and why Josh thinks if Talos had been the hero, he might've loved the movie
- Why Carol Danvers being overpowered isn't just a complaint — it's a structural problem that collapses the entire film's dramatic tension
- Rebecca Ferguson was slated to play Carol Danvers. Both Cody and Josh think she would've been better.
- Josh's town in Mauriceville, Texas threw a party when they got a traffic light
- Cody worked at Blockbuster for the free movie rentals

Plus: Jude Law's completely broken character, de-aged Samuel L. Jackson and Phil Coulson, and the "240 pound 6'3" white male American baritone" who just wants to encourage good storytelling.

And at the end — they talk about what's coming next. Endgame. 22 films, 11 years, and they're finally there.

New episodes every Wednesday at 5AM.

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After the snap, you needed to breathe. Marvel knew that. So did Cody and Josh.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is the MCU's palate cleanser — a smaller, lighter film released two months after Avengers: Infinity War. But underneath all the comedy, something is quietly seeding the mechanism that saves the universe in Endgame. And it ends with a mid-credits scene that reminds you the snap is still happening.

This week Cody and Josh work through a film they both admit they underappreciated — and find more in it than expected.

Along the way:

- Cody watched this film in 2018 not knowing that by the time he watched the next one, every part of his life would be different
- The youth pastor line that made Cody laugh out loud in a movie full of serious moments
- The Cassie door scene — the last time Scott sees his daughter as a little girl, though he doesn't know it yet
- Why time doesn't work the way this movie needs it to — and the Quantum Realm plot hole that nobody in the MCU ever officially patched
- Scott Lang is Bilbo, not Thorin — and without him, none of them win
- Ghost's powers are inconsistent in a very specific and funny way that Josh cannot let go of
- The mid-credits scene that is, without question, the most emotionally devastating stinger in the MCU

Plus Paul Rudd is cheesier than Cody remembered, Walton Goggins deserved a better character, and the film that was supposed to elevate women quietly sets up a much larger story about them.

New episodes every Wednesday at 5AM.

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Welcome to the Wonderkin

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Some stories let the hero win. This one doesn't. And it changed everything.

Avengers: Infinity War is the film that proved the MCU was willing to lose — to let the villain win completely, cosmically, finally. In 2018 audiences left theaters confused and grieving. In 2025 Cody and Josh go back in to figure out what the film is actually doing under the surface.

Because it's more than a spectacle. It's a story about grief, sacrifice, the trolley problem, and what happens when someone who believes they're right has all the power in the universe.

Along the way:

- Thor says "all words are made up" and Josh connects it to the word "homosexual" not appearing in the English Bible until the 1940s — three whiskeys in, with things to say
- The case that Thanos actually grieved better than every hero in the film — he went straight to acceptance, the heroes bargained, raged, and denied
- Why Rocket is actually the captain of the Guardians and Quill is just the frontman — and how Thor figured that out in five seconds
- "With Gamora, he's creating a daughter. With Nebula, he's creating a weapon." — the single line that explains Thanos completely
- The Doctor Strange/Thanos sitting parallel that Cody caught on rewatch — and why it's too specific to be an accident
- The space physics problem reaches its peak in this film and Cody and Josh have officially had enough

Plus: the snap that never stops being devastating, "I've done enough mushrooms to wonder," and the Fury pager that ends on an even darker note than the film itself.

New episodes every Wednesday at 5AM.

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Some stories aren't made for you. And sometimes that's exactly why you need to sit with them.

Black Panther wasn't made for Cody and Josh. They know that. This week they do their best to honor something that was never theirs to own — and find that the stories that challenge us most are often the ones that do the deepest work on us.

Because that's what stories do when you let them. They don't just entertain you. They expand you.

Along the way:

- Josh has been to Dakar, Senegal twice. He walked through the Door of No Return — through the slave fort, down the plank, through the door where enslaved people were loaded onto ships. Then he watched Killmonger say "bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, because they knew death was better than bondage."
- Why Cody was wrong about Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger in 2018 — and what Josh sees in the character that reframes the whole film
- The griot Josh encountered in Dakar singing family trees on a 12-string instrument — and what Baba Maal's score brought back for him
- Killmonger's claim to the Wakandan throne was actually completely legitimate — Josh explains through a power-fear cultural lens
- The dark history behind Chattanooga's incline railway that most tourists ride without knowing
- Both of them crying at T'Challa's UN speech in 2026

The episode closes with Cody reading the full UN speech aloud. In times of crisis, the wise build bridges. In 2026, that line doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like a reminder.

New episodes every Wednesday at 5AM.

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Some stories don't just entertain you. They find you at the right moment and show you something about yourself.

Thor: Ragnarok is one of those stories. On the surface it's a god losing his hammer, his home, and everything that defined him. Underneath it's a film about what survives when everything you built your identity on gets burned to the ground.

This week Cody and Josh dig into the film that saved the Thor franchise — and the one that found Josh at exactly the moment his own world was starting to collapse.

Along the way:

- Why "He's a friend from work" came from a child with cancer on a Make-A-Wish visit to set
- The Hela detail nobody notices: her suit repairs and her antlers spread wider as her power grows
- The plot hole neither of them could fully resolve — if both Thor and Hela draw power from Asgard, why does only one lose it when it burns?
- How a story about a god who saves his people by letting his world end hit Josh personally in 2017
- Why this hire made Ryan Coogler's Black Panther possible
- Hulk has a son from Sakaar. Banner doesn't.

Plus actual Norse mythology, the Norns as a plot device, and why Loki is the only one obedient enough to let fate run its course.

New episodes every Wednesday at 5AM.

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Spider-Man has been in two franchises before this one. Twice. And yet somehow Tom Holland's version feels like the first time they got it right.

This week, Cody and Josh work through Spider-Man: Homecoming — the film that finally delivered a teenage Spider-Man who actually feels like a teenager, a working-class villain whose grievance is completely legitimate, and a third act that Cody argues is genuinely Hitchcock.

Along the way:

- Why the car scene is the closest the MCU has ever come to a Hitchcock sequence — acting with your eyes, light and shadow, a teenager having a silent panic attack in real time
- Josh on Adrian Toomes as every blue-collar entrepreneur he's ever met as a financial advisor — and why his family back in Texas would root for Toomes the whole movie
- The rubble scene isn't just a superhero moment — it's a baptism, a resurrection, and the actual moment Peter becomes Spider-Man
- Tony Stark set Peter up to fail from day one by giving a 14-year-old an AI assistant AND weapons and then telling him to stay street-level
- The best Phase Three villain debate: Keaton's Vulture vs. Zemo vs. Killmonger
- Where were Cody and Josh in 2017? Divorce, rebirth, trailer parks to business class, and a crash that was coming

Plus: Josh has been recommended to read erotica (as a second income stream), the MJ problem, and why the Captain America PSA videos actually made us angry.

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"He may have been your father, boy. But he wasn't your daddy." 

This week, Cody and Josh work through Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 — the MCU film that hides an emotionally devastating story about abandonment and found family underneath all the comedy, needle drops, and Baby Groot. 

Along the way: - JD reconnects with his biological father after 30 years — and Ego's catch scene hits him like a gut punch 

- Why Yondu's death lands harder than Natasha's sacrifice on Vormir — and what JD's Navy service has to do with it 

- The Ravager funeral as the first MCU moment that made JD cry on camera - The stepdad JD hasn't spoken to in 12 years — and the Rocket/Yondu cell scene that made him reach out 

- "It stops being a comedy and becomes what the movie really is — a film about being abandoned and learning to let yourself be loved" 

- The Yondu mutineer kill scene set to "Come a Little Bit Closer" — pure cinematic satisfaction 

- The Awesome Mix as emotional storyteller, not just needle drops 

- Why Rocket's overdone emotional arc is the film's biggest fizzle - Ego as the avatar of narcissism — love as expansion, not sacrifice 

Plus: the Baby Groot button communication problem, why GOTG2 is better than both Vol. 1 and Vol. 3, and what the Guardians' family dynamic does to set up every subsequent MCU generational storyline.

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Marvel went off the deep end with this one. And we mean that in the best way possible.

This week, Cody and JD work through Doctor Strange (2016) — the film that took the MCU from political thriller (Civil War) and dropped it into a psychedelic mysticism trip. Inception meets 2001 meets Marvel meets actual quantum physics. Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Benedict Cumberbatch (who can't say "penguin"), and a cloak with a personality.

Along the way:

- "People used to think I was funny." "Did they work for you?" — JD on his five years in Africa as the big white guy with the bag of money, and why this line landed harder than any other in the film
- The Ancient One's "surrender to the river" speech is actually 12-step recovery 101 — "that which you resist, persists"
- "Time will tell how much I love you" — the watch inscription Christine carved that Steven carries through every film after
- The Hong Kong climax has a cinematography detail almost nobody notices: time is reversing across the city EXCEPT for the sorcerers fighting in forward time. JD slowed it down twice to verify
- The "worlds without end" line — Cody and JD's Anglican liturgy connection, and why Doctor Strange might be more accurate than the church
- The arrogance of Western rationalism and why the Ancient One's first lesson isn't a spell, it's "open your eye"
- Mordo's rushed arc and the cost of compromise
- The third-act villain problem strikes again — Kaecilius is great until Dormammu shows up as a CGI face in the sky

Plus: Cumberbatch in Sherlock, the watch as an anchor across the saga, and JD's defense contractor brain breaking down why Kamar-Taj's spell books have a technical writing problem.

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Phase Three begins not with a bang, but with a fracture. And the Russos called it "a film with no villain."

This week, Cody and JD work through Captain America: Civil War — the film that broke the Avengers, introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man in the same movie, and gave us the six-word exchange JD calls the best two-line moment in Phase Three.

Along the way:

- The "He's my friend / So was I" exchange and why the Russos identified that single personal moment as the key that unlocked the entire film
- Why Zemo — a Sokovian colonel with no powers, no army, no doomsday device — is the most effective MCU antagonist of his era
- Steve Rogers keeping the secret about Bucky and Tony's parents — and JD's read on why the *silence* is what gives Zemo everything he needs
- T'Challa breaking outside his own power-fear culture to choose forgiveness — Hofstede framework included
- Rhodey paying the price because the best stories have real consequences (Boromir has to die)
- The Underoos hand gesture that has confused JD for a decade
- Why "Tony Stank" only works because Don Cheadle is the one reacting
- The Sokovia Accords falling apart in real time when Tony has to lie to Ross to protect Cap

Plus: JD's Ethiopian Coptic ceremonial shirt, why Captain America: Civil War is secretly just Captain America 3 (and why that matters), and the 15-minute airport fight scene that was filmed with 2D IMAX cameras.

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