Someone Didn't Listen To Their Future Self

Reading last week's Gwenpool, it feels like Gwen missed one of the points her Evil Future Self tried to teach her.

Future Gwen had two overarching, connected points. One, that the universe "wants" her to be a villain. That's what a person whose power is knowing all the secrets would be, she said, and when she tried not to be, she was punished by external forces*. Gwen's aware of that one, simply actively ignoring it in her attempt to get noticed by the Avengers.

But Future Gwen also demonstrated the pecking order of the universe, that she is not going to be allowed to kill Spider-Man, whether it's Miles or Peter. She tried, and after a few pages, it turned into some awful nightmare for Miles, but that's all. The idea being Gwen isn't important enough to be a major mover and shaker (if such a character even exists). No change she tries to inflict on a big-time character is likely to stick. She might be allowed to shave Rocket Raccoon, he might even spend a couple issues in his book being teased by Star-Lord and Groot for being hairless. But she's not taking one of his arms. Although talking raccoon with cybernetic limbs, hmm. . .

He could use Cable's arm once Deadpool's done with it.

Anyway, Future Gwen felt that if nothing she did mattered, she could and should do whatever she wanted. It would all be undone eventually anyway. Don't cry, Rick Jones, eventually a Steve Rogers who isn't a Nazi will emerge from the rubble. It meshed well with her belief the universe expects her to be a villain, as doing whatever she wanted translated to acts that harmed others.

Present Gwen doesn't seem too worried about that one. She's planning to audition for the Avengers by bringing down Dr. Doom, which ignores two things. One, that Doom is trying to be a good guy these days, an actual one, not his usual shtick of doing something horrible and claiming it's for a good cause. Two, odds are she's going to try the same stunt she pulled on Paste-Pot Pete, dump Doom into the gaps between panels.

Setting aside the legalities of that, and the fact that Doom isn't going to be as flummoxed as poor Pete was (Doom visits Hell regularly, after all), there's one other problem. Gwenpool isn't going to be allowed to take Dr. Doom off the table. Doom is one of the A-list guys at Marvel, even given the FF's somewhat bereft status. He has his own ongoing - written by Bendis, no less. Doom can lose fights to people below his weight class, but taking him out entirely is another matter. It's extremely unlikely the universe will allow it.

It is possible I'm not giving Gwen enough credit. She dumped Pete out of a panel into the space between, but there are other panels around, so there are presumably ways back out of that space. Or ways for Gwen to pop back in later and pick someone back up. Maybe she just wants Pete to think about his actions. Maybe she set all this up for him to fall into a panel that dumps him in jail. And she thinks the same idea will work on Doom. I still don't think it's going to work - Marvel isn't letting Doom get tossed in the pokey by Gwenpool - but she might have given this more thought than I think.

* Although that power should have become increasingly ineffective as her knowledge grew more outdated. What, an amoral future version of a character might not have been entirely truthful with their past self? The hell you say! Or it could be that her ability to move between panels gave her access to anywhere, so she could pick up new secrets whenever she wanted.