Remember back when we were teased a multiverse and all we got was fun with geometry? The MCU has come a long way from the mirror dimension to explore what lies through all those fractured looking glasses. We’ve been treated to hordes of superpowered zombies, intergalactic house parties, and whatever the Wakandan word for a Mary Sue is.

Fun as these tangents were, it wouldn’t be the MCU these threads weren’t plucked from obscurity and woven into a greater picture. Among the alternate dimensions was one where the Age of Ultron lasted a little longer than a brisk weekend. Amassing ultimate power to himself, the prodigal love child of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner exponentially extended his nonsensical mission of saving the world by destroying it.

Ultron isn’t the only villain who’s been waiting for a chance for his true malevolence to shine, however. Across the globe, petty tyrant’s have borrowed from his playbook, smothering everything from communities to entire countries with varying degrees of oppression for the sake of saving us from a bad cough. In America this all came to a head with federal vaccine mandates through executive order.

While Americans are no strangers to taking a stand against oppressive policies, far too many of us simply rolled over, or worse, bit at the hysteria hook, line, and sinker. Sadly, much of our population has been conditioned to see our nation as practically immune to dictatorship, rationalizing the steady encroachments as hard, but necessary, pills to swallow. The ire of those wise to these tricks, however, has been largely absorbed into the diversionary labyrinth of the court system.

According to canon, Captain America should have put an end to these violations as soon as they started, but we’ve not been in the Prime Universe for some time now. In this universe, Cap has been sidelined. In fact all of the heavy hitters seem to have fallen before the hive mind of the nanny state. All that remain are us proverbial little guys.

While Ultron took his show on the road, Black Widow and Hawkeye continued the fight on the ground. They secured one last hope to stop him, a poison pill of sorts, a computer virus attached to something as unassuming as an arrow. In our neck of the multiverse, we don’t have a kill code arrow. But we do have a simple concept that can shut down the seemingly unstoppable, ubiquitous threat. We have the ability to say no.

Who better to take that shot, to brave those odds, than…Canada. It’s been said that good times make weak men and weak men make bad times. Could it be that the caricature of the overly accommodating Canadian has simply been a symptom of their further progression along this cycle? Has their apparent weakness given rise to harder times than America is experiencing, and subsequently to stronger men?

The Freedom Convoy of January and February 2022 suggests as much. Truckers from across the vast northern expanse converged on Toronto, not to march, not to boycott, but to demonstrate their power. Atlas didn’t shrug. He flexed.

Like all flexes, sadly, it could only be held for so long. Canada’s own resident tyrant, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, flexed right back, cracking down with police and freezing assets of those involved. Even as the convoy pulls back, the “emergency” powers stay.

Another one, so it seems, bites the dust. Ideas aren’t as easily expended as arrows, though. They took their shot, and while maybe it didn’t hit bullseye, it still hit the target. They didn’t inject the kill code directly where it needed to go, and things seem to have gotten worse, but the what little shred of decency may have been perceived by some to remain in Trudeau has now evaporated. He and his ilk will always have their adherents, but anyone previously on the fence has seen authoritarianism is all its ugly, unrepentant brutality. Not in some far off country. Not in some objectionable policy. In blood, before our very eyes.

Our quiver is not yet empty. Even now, the convoy is regrouping. Even now, Americans are forming our own convoy aimed at Washington. Even now, restrictions are being rolled back or legally enjoined. There is hope, but also reason for caution.

Since last year’s nonsurrection, the federal government has been itching to cast Covid dissidents as domestic terrorists. The last thing we need is for a Killmonger to co-opt our defiance into something equally oppressive or a Strange Supreme to lose his cool and implode the whole thing. The way ahead is tricky, but we ultimately each hold an arrow that, if used wisely, can be as disruptive of our would-be overlords as a that final, fatal shot to Ultron’s scheme.

We can still withdraw our consent to tyranny. The link that connects the tyrants the world over together like an unyielding army of relentless robots is us. We are the neurons connecting their hive mind, transmitting the will of would-be despots to fruition. It is individuals who inflict the tyrant’s edicts. It is individuals who can block those transmissions, who can poison the personification of collectivism and obliterate its hold on the world.

We just need to be brave enough to take our shot.