Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Down the Rabbit, er Squirrel Hole I Go

So last month in Squirrel Girl, Ratatoskr had showed up claiming she wanted to team-up with Squirrel Girl to fight the Frost Giants and Malekith. The chaotic squirrel deity also mentioned that it had been working on a team-up with Melissa Morbeck (the wealthy industrialist lady who came up with devices to control animals), but had abandoned that plan.

We saw that Ratatoskr only became aware of what Malekith was up to after Mangog's attack on Asgard inadvertently freed the squirrel from a prison cell. I'm guessing Ratatoskr wasn't able to contact a mortal on Earth in her prison from an Asgardian cell. Maybe that's a mistake, but I'm assuming years of having to deal with Loki and the Enchantress would have convinced the Asgardians to install something to keep people from calling with potential allies.

Which makes me wonder how long this frickin' War of the Realms has been going in their universe. If Ratatoskr couldn't contact Melissa until after escaping Asgard Jail, and that was 26 issues ago, what is that in Marvel time? 13 months? 6 months?

But if Ratatoskr had to escape first, then by the time she made it to Earth, she would have already observed Malekith was going to make everything about him, which she found unacceptable. Why even bother contacting Melissa at that point? But if she made contact while still imprisoned, why Melissa of all people? It's not like she's going to be able to get you out of there. She couldn't even keep herself out of Earth jail, and she's rich.

Of course, we don't have anyone to corroborate Ratatoskr's story. She may have escaped on her own a long time before the War of the Realms started. She's not supposed to be deceiving Squirrel Girl now, but she told her version of events before making any promises to stay on the up and up. Mostly I'm wondering if Doreen can trust that Ratatoskr has actually abandoned the "Team-up with Melissa to get revenge on Squirrel Girl" plan, or if that's still waiting in the wings for after this war is over.

Usually when Doreen's opponents have a change of heart it sticks. In her book, at least (Kraven reverted to type pretty rapidly once Nick Spencer got hold of him). Melissa was one of the few original foes Doreen failed to sway with her speeches, and I could see Ratatoskr being the one that appears to switch sides, but can't or won't maintain it. I think she'd get bored with it.

2 comments:

SallyP said...

Yeah...I get the feeling that Loki could just as well have filled this role as Ratoskr, but they didn't want to overuse his character.

CalvinPitt said...

I figured Loki got killed or pretended to get killed in the main War of Realms mini-series and that was why. There was something about how his brief appearance in the first issue of this tie-in ended that seemed suspicious, but maybe not.