'Marvel's M.O.D.O.K.' Ending Explained: Will MODOK save his family? Season 1's cliffhanger sets up Season 2
Action, romance, drama, aliens, world domination and a whole lot of time travel. Or as MODOK would refer to it, just another day at the office. If you think striking a work-life balance is easy, try doing so while being a megalomanic supervillain.
Between fighting a past version of himself, an annoying tech CEO, aliens, Iron Man and his ex-wife's new boyfriend, MODOK proves that being a villain is not for the fainthearted. But the series will have you rooting for him and his dysfunctional family anyway!
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The final episode of season 1 of 'Marvel's M.O.D.O.K' ties in everything fans have seen throughout the series. At the start, he focused all his time and energy on getting his company, A.I.M., back, after running it into the ground. Although it was brought over by GRUMBL a tech agency, Austin Van Der Sleet and GRUMBL's board of directors were all sorts of sketchy.
Jodie decides to leave MODOK, seeing that he is too preoccupied with taking over the world and decides they need to part ways. In a last-ditch attempt to win his wife back, MODOK suggests they go back in time to catch a Third Eye Blind concert they missed, back when they were younger.
They break the most basic time travel rule -- don't interact with anyone; but when a young MODOK find out his older self hasn't achieved any of their dreams, they fight it out, before the past version ends up going travelling through time again. Stuck in the old timeline, MODOK and Jodie now have to spend their days together and realise they do love each other and while they finally meet their present-day selves, the celestial chrono-crystal powering the time machine destructs and wipes the old version away.
Between Jodie's rising popularity due to her 'fix it all' book, MODOK gets into all sort of antics while trying to get back A.I.M. - from getting sex-crazed aliens to a leadership conference to gathering this own gang of misfits, and of course, taking his good old minion Gary for granted, there is little he doesn't try.
He does eventually give up, when he sees that Jodie has moved on with a superhero named Wonder Man, even though he tries to win her back going through a classic makeover montage. No amount of cheek filler and literal human butt pads seem to help. It's here that MODOK finally decides to turn his life around and just do his job, even if it is delivering mail at A.I.M.
While no one seems to buy the act, especially Monica, his former colleague and nemesis, MODAK goes about as he hasn't been plotting and scheming. His time to shine finally comes when he volunteers to fix the GRUMBL GROME, a home device that keeps killing people instead of helping them.
But the board of GRUMBL has ulterior motives too, seeing that they are Hex aliens, trying to enslave the human race through the device. MODOK fixes it and then goes on to pull the ultimate bluff -- he gets Tony Stark, yes, Iron Man to buy his and Monica's shares of A.I.M., effectively taking it out of the world domination business (for now).
And what about Monica and MODOK, you ask? They start A.I.M.-2. Modok reconciles with his family too, after they were all held captive by College MODAK (remember him?) who calls himself 'The Anomaly.' Along with another villain, Arcade, they create clones of MODOK's entire family and the only way to make it out alive for them is to kill the clones.
While they all manage to do so (in the bloodiest and hilarious claymation scene ever) no one has the heart to kill any version of MODOK's son, Lou, resulting in two versions of them. The final episode sees the family at Lou's bar mitzvah, which is hijacked by The Anomaly yet again.
This time, The Anomaly and MODOK travel back through space and time and he shows MODOK every reality in which he was unsuccessful in taking over the world and ultimately dies. It doesn't help that a lot of MODOK's deaths happen while he is literally on the toilet, a metaphor for how shitty it gets.
He even gets taken out by every Avenger, including Hawkeye. The Anomaly assures him that in order to take over the world, he needs his family - he needs them to die. The only reality where MODOK is successful is the one in which his family dies, fueling his rage to achieving his goal of world domination.
The series ends with MODOK becoming emperor - implying that his family did die that day, but fans then see that MODOK has The Anomaly tied and tortured in an attempt to use the celestial chrono-crystal logged in the side of his head to travel back and save his family and by the looks of it, he will stop at nothing.
The series ends on a cliffhanger - will MODAK be able to bring back his family? Will he go back in time? What happens to the Hex aliens? Do they take over the world? Where is Monica in the mix? There are a lot of unanswered questions that set the scene for what is hopefully an equally hilarious season
You can stream 'Marvel's M.O.D.O.K.' on Hulu.