Thread:Marvelus/@comment-26838855-20190116120806/@comment-26838855-20190119164642

Deleted Scenes (Edward Zachary Sunrose)
Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: Question, now that we were discussing the page of deleted scenes, it made me think of something; do we have an official stance towards deleted scenes when it comes to the timeline? Are they canon until contradicted, or are they not canon at all due to being deleted scenes?

We have seen cases in both The Avengers and Inside Voices where deleted scenes were brought into canon (Bruce mentions putting a bullet in his mouth, which we see in the deleted alternate opening, while a deleted scene from Beginning of the End was repurposed for Inside Voices). My stance, at least, is that they are in the "inspired canon" camp, along with the inspired canon comics.

The "inspired canon" label for those comics is basically defined as: "Content made with the intent of fitting into the MCU, with design and story and everything revolving around the MCU - but not actually official canon. And you can sort of consider them as canon in your mind, and they can certainly inform us unofficially about further character backstory or whatever - like an actor talking about their character - because many (if not most) of their stories' events can be pretty much considered to have happened very similarly in the universe, like Star Wars Legends. But they're not actually official canon, and are certainly disposable in terms of canon if something comes along that overrules them, because they were never official in the first place."

And does that not also very nicely define the deleted scenes? It does for me at least.

So, essentially, if there's timeline information in the deleted scenes, we definitely count it because it was intended to be part of the MCU so it's definitely a source - just it has less weight than actual official canon material.

You just can't call them canon when there are ones like the alternate Iron Man 2 ending which cannot be canon - plus there's things like unfinished visual effects which also call everything into question. And basically, if, because of the deleted scenes that are contradictory, you look at something and have to take at best the stance of "canon until proven otherwise", that means by default that the canon status is not hard and official and is in fact flexible - and therefore, they cannot be proper canon, only inspired.

As well as this, because (I don't know why but it's not a big deal) this wiki's policy is to deem inspired canon content canon-until-proven-otherwise - and therefore the inspired canon comics without hard contradictory information do appear on the timeline pages - we do include deleted scenes without hard contradictions on the timeline pages.

The example of the The Incredible Hulk scene is a great example of what I was saying about how it's similar to Star Wars Legends - for which Lucasfilm specifically said, "The thing with legends is that parts of them are true." Because that scene cannot actually fully be canon, and if it's not fully canon, it's not canon. The reason for that is the Captain America appearance in that scene, which contradicts the canon for Captain America being frozen in the Valkyrie. However, as we know from The Avengers, almost all of the events of that scene are indeed true. It's just that the scene itself cannot actually be considered canon.

As for the Inside Voices scene - that one is different because they brought it into official canon. So that scene, had it been released previously on a DVD or whatever, would have been considered inspired canon - a case where it doesn't officially count but could very easily fit into canon, just for example if the show had decided to have Quinn be alive and well, the scene would be easily thrown out, therefore meaning the scene cannot be considered cemented canon. But the moment that scene became part of an episode, then it became official hard canon.

Hope that's all clear.

The Punisher: Season 2 (additional)
Something I forgot to mention that I noticed - I guess I was only thinking about this because I've been writing up Season 1 so it's fresh in my mind: In Cold Steel, Frank says, "I'm only gonna say this once, OK? I was with Maria for 3 months when she got pregnant with Lisa. She said that she was not giving her up. Didn't wanna raise her alone, but she understood if I didn't wanna hang around. I asked her to marry me that day. Now I had friends who said I was crazy, that I'd lost my mind. But we were together ever since. Now, sure, we had problems, but I never wanted to be with anyone else." Micro, "Right...", Frank, "Why don't you shut your mouth and listen for a change? I don't want your wife. You got it? Good." He apparently doesn't want to get with any other women... But he's happy to just get with Beth in Episode 1.