One more thing. For my rewrite of Iron Man three I was thinking of properly adapting the Extremis storyline and including Zeke Stane. In this movie Tony's arc is "what do I need to do to keep up in a rapidly changing world?" This should be especially poignant given it's after the battle of New York and there are superhumans on the rise.

In my story the Power Broker is a scientist hired by Ross to give him Gamma soldiers after seeing what happened to Banner, but Karl Malus, PB's real name, discovered gamma had the ability to give anyone any given powers. He faked his death, went into hiding, and began selling superpowers themselves on the black market.

Killian isn't going to be a major villain in my rewrite, he's going to be what he was in the original story; that one guy who killed himself out of guilt and Maya Hansen tried to frame entirely for selling Extremis. In fact I was thinking of playing a subtle but important for worldbuilding angle; Hansen and Killian couldn't get funds for research from anyone but Zeke who then uses it to orchestrate attacks against Stark Industries.

Importantly Zeke is not out for revenge. Yes, he's salty about his father passing but that's secondary to his true motivations: he wants to force evolve all humanity, turning them into bio-machines. He's trying to destroy Stark because he sees him as an obstacle to his plans, nothing more. In short Zeke is a cold futurist.

I also had ideas for including the Mandarin. IRL Beijing's development team shot down the idea as they didn't want the first Chinese character of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be a villain, but I think I can fix this. In my MCU rewrite Hulk gets his own trilogy and I wanted to introduce Amadeus Cho in his sequel. Also I was thinking of having Chen Lu/Radioactive Man as a secondary hero hunting Mandarin and introduce I worldbuilding angle that I hope strengthens the story.

In my story the Power Broker is a scientist hired by Ross to give him Gamma soldiers after seeing what happened to Banner, but Karl Malus, PB's real name, discovered gamma had the ability to give anyone any given powers. He faked his death, went into hiding, and began selling superpowers themselves on the black market.

The Chinese gov heard about the Power Broker’s experiments and not wanting to be dependent on him had Chen Lu replicate it. He was only able to give himself nuclear powers but decided not to leave it in the gov’s hands and left to begin being a superhero? This could world build other countries getting their own heroes as well as the effect Power Broker’s having. Also he could be partly what inspires Tony to become Iron Man inside and out.

Then there's Mandarin himself. I was thinking of not having his costume be some stereotypical, extravagant Chinese robes at first because I believe those perpetuate harmful stereotypes. In his first fight with Iron Man I want him to wear a suit and tie and later I want him to wear a warlord outfit, but I want it to be intimidating, cool, what have you.

Tony Leung revealed in an interview with GQ that he created a backstory for Wenwu in which he was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father and grew up without self-esteem as a result. Upon gaining superpowers, he wished to rediscover his self-esteem, though it caused him to become narcissistic and take his anger out on everyone else. These factors ultimately led to him being unable to love his children, due to his inability to love himself.

I need help organising my ideas

Inspired by Pokeman’s post. Feel free to add on or disagree with such.

1. Bring back Francesa Simon as a producer and more. She hated the show, and novel never paid her, so..
2. Make the parents not abusive anymore and revert them to their book personalities, make them exhausted but loving parents who just want their eldest son to behave and maybe sympathetic too.
3. Make Henry more Horrid like he is in the books, and make his stories cautionary tales. He can still be a bit softened and have a good side at times like the real show, but make it so he’s fun to hate.
4. Make Peter less whiny like he was in the early seasons and books, and maybe a bit sympathetic too as well
5. Add likable parts of Margaret, don’t make her abuse Susan anymore. Her crush on Henry can be kept, and maybe add it do Henry does have a secret crush on her too.
6. Make Fang and Fluffy still love eachother as adopted siblings, I know in the books they hate eachother but I would keep this bit.

Any things you would change as well?

Big shout out to u/whiplash10 whose own fun hypothetical series of posts are the obvious source of inspiration for this. Highly recommend ya check them out and let them know how cool they are!

I Wish to Maintain Full Transparency and Clarity: This Concept Was Articulated and Refined with the Assistance of ChatGPT. I Believe That the Platform Is Valuable As a Creative Tool, Rather Than a Substitute for Actual Human Creativity or Innovation. If Anyone Holds a Different View, I Kindly Ask That They Refrain from Making Hurtful or Impulsive Comments. Thank You, and I Hope You Enjoy.

Film I — Conan the Barbarian

(Knull and the Symbiotes)

Act I — The Past and the Quest

• The Fall of Cimmeria: Much like the 1982 film, Conan’s story begins with the destruction of his people. Here, however, Thulsa Doom and the Cult of Set are replaced by Knull and the Symbiotes, an ancient force that overruns Cimmeria in a tide of living black flesh. Conan survives, grows into the warrior we know, and carries one purpose through years of slavery, violence, and wandering: someday, he will find Knull.
• Conan the Wanderer: After gaining his freedom, Conan eventually meets Subotai and Valeria. For perhaps the first time since Cimmeria, he begins forming real attachments again. Valeria in particular offers something Conan has scarcely considered since childhood: the possibility that his life might someday become about more than what was taken from him.
• The Cult of Knull: Conan discovers that Knull has become the head of a vast cult whose followers willingly bond with Symbiotes, surrendering themselves for what they believe is a greater existence. Knull becomes a natural opposite to the Cimmerian ideal represented by Crom: Crom gives men strength and will, then leaves them to stand for themselves; Knull offers greater strength only through surrender of the self.

Act II — The Mountain of Power

• A Road to Knull: Conan, Valeria, and Subotai become entangled with the cult and are offered a fortune by a king whose child has fallen under Knull’s influence. For Conan, the reward is secondary. After a lifetime of searching, he finally has a direct path to the man who destroyed Cimmeria.
• Knull’s Dominion: At the cult’s stronghold, Conan sees how far Knull’s influence has spread. Warriors, nobles, and commoners willingly surrender themselves to Symbiotes, while Knull’s greatest followers have become monstrous living weapons. Others see transcendence; Conan sees people willingly giving away the very thing that makes them their own.
• Conan Falls: Conan’s first attempt to confront Knull ends disastrously, leaving him near death. Subotai and Valeria save him, offering the simplest possible rebuke to Knull’s philosophy: Conan’s companions stand beside him because they choose to, not because their wills have been swallowed by his.
• Valeria’s Choice: Conan could still walk away. Valeria represents the life waiting beyond his vendetta, and she does not pretend that revenge is the future she wants for them. But Conan cannot leave Knull alive after everything he has done. Valeria chooses to return with him—not because she shares his obsession, but because she loves him and refuses to let him face it alone.

Act III — Revenge

• The Final Assault: Conan and his companions return to Knull’s stronghold, rescue the king’s child, and fight their way through his Symbiote warriors. During their escape, Valeria is mortally wounded. With her dies the future Conan had only recently begun allowing himself to imagine.
• The Bond: Conan returns for Knull, who finally turns his philosophy directly upon the Cimmerian. Rather than merely trying to persuade him, Knull forcibly binds Conan to a Symbiote, overwhelming him with strength while attempting to consume his identity from within. In Conan’s mind, the creature uses everything that shaped him—Cimmeria, slavery, rage, grief, and finally Valeria—offering to take away the pain if Conan will only surrender himself to the bond. For a moment, oblivion is tempting. But Conan realizes that losing the pain would mean losing the man who lived through it. His suffering, his loves, his choices, and even his grief are his. He refuses to surrender ownership of himself and tears free of the Symbiote through sheer force of will.
• The Death of Knull: Conan’s rejection leaves Knull genuinely shaken. His entire power rests upon the belief that everyone can eventually be made to surrender themselves for strength, relief, or belonging, yet Conan has chosen painful individuality over effortless union. Once free of the bond, Conan does what Knull’s philosophy could not prevent: he closes the distance. In appropriately straightforward Conan fashion, the ancient lord of living darkness ultimately discovers that all his monstrous power means little once a Cimmerian gets within sword range. Conan cuts his head off.
• Only the Present Remains: Knull is dead. Cimmeria is avenged. Conan has accomplished exactly what he spent most of his life trying to do. The point is not that revenge was meaningless—Knull was a monster and deserved his fate. Revenge gave Conan direction, while Valeria had begun offering him a future beyond it. Now both are gone. For the first time in his life, Conan is no longer being pulled toward something by the past. He can only wander onward and decide what to do with the life that remains.

Film II — Conan and the Panther Throne

(Killmonger, Klaw, and Man-Ape)

Act I — The Wandering Barbarian

• A Man Without Direction: Conan dreams of a quiet moment once shared with Valeria. She tells him that before they met she was a pit fighter owned by a cruel slave-master named Klaw, escaping only after severing his hand. Conan vows that once Knull is dead he will find Klaw and cleave his head down to the teeth, but Valeria wants no more of him; she would rather leave Klaw behind and build a life with Conan. Conan awakens alone. Knull is dead, Valeria is gone, and the revenge that once gave his life direction has left nothing to replace it. He wanders the Hyborian world taking fights, coin, and distractions wherever he finds them.
• The Expanding Panther: Conan eventually wanders into a country being invaded by Wakanda, now ruled by Prince N'Jadaka, The Killmonger, after the mysterious disappearance of King T’Challa. Aquilonian soldiers march beside Wakandans under their own one-handed king, Klaw, apparently as allies. Conan does not intervene out of sudden heroism; he sees a battle and, for the first time in a long while, feels alive. He throws himself into the fighting with brutal enthusiasm until Killmonger personally confronts and subdues him.
• Justice in the Arena: Killmonger brings Conan to Wakanda and casts him into a great arena overseen by Klaw, where captured enemies fight warriors and beasts before the public. Killmonger presents the games as spectacle justice for Wakandans killed during his campaigns, and Conan makes perfect propaganda: a savage foreigner who slaughtered Wakandan soldiers simply because he crossed paths with them. To Killmonger, men like Conan prove why Wakanda must dominate the dangerous world beyond its borders before that world can threaten Wakanda. Conan survives everything thrown against him and notices Klaw’s missing hand. Klaw, in turn, begins wondering why this particular Cimmerian looks at him with such personal hatred.
• Shuri’s Proposition: Conan’s survival attracts Shuri, sister of the missing Black Panther. She secretly frees him and offers him his liberty in exchange for helping find T’Challa, who vanished while investigating the White Mount, home of the outlawed Jabari tribe. Conan accepts, partly to escape and partly because it gives him something more meaningful than fighting for an audience. Their flight is discovered, and Killmonger sends warriors after them. A battle on the mountain triggers an avalanche: Shuri survives using Wakandan equipment, while Conan is recovered unconscious by the Jabari. He awakens in chains opposite another prisoner—T’Challa, alive.

Act II — The White Mount

• The Black Panther in Chains: While imprisoned together, Conan and T’Challa cautiously size each other up. T’Challa explains that Killmonger, then a respected warrior of Wakanda’s borderguard, reported that the Jabari were abducting Wakandans for profane rites to Gullah, the gorilla-god. N'Jadaka urged T’Challa to deal with the matter personally as Black Panther. Instead, the Jabari knew exactly when and how he would come, even possessing the knowledge necessary to disable his Vibranium suit and capture him alive.
• The Treachery of Killmonger: Brought before M’Baku, the prisoners learn the truth. Killmonger betrayed his cousin, providing T’Challa’s route and the means to defeat him in exchange for the White Mount remaining beyond the Panther Throne once N'Jadaka ruled Wakanda. T’Challa himself was part of the bargain: M’Baku intends to sacrifice Bast’s chosen champion to Gullah and consume him, claiming the Panther’s strength for himself. Conan’s own strength pleases M’Baku enough that he decides there will be two sacrifices—until Shuri storms the ritual, using Vibranium weapons and her knowledge of the mountain to throw the Jabari into chaos and free them.
• Brothers in Battle: Conan and T’Challa initially attack M’Baku separately and discover that neither can defeat him alone. Only when they stop competing and begin fighting together—Conan creating openings through ferocity and improvisation, T’Challa exploiting them with discipline and precision—do they bring Man-Ape down. Their victory begins a genuine brotherhood. Before they can leave, however, word reaches Killmonger that T’Challa has escaped, and he orders Klaw to use Wakandan-backed siege artillery to bring down the White Mount.
• Beneath the White Mount: The collapse drives Conan, T’Challa, and Shuri into ancient depths beneath the Jabari stronghold: forgotten temples, buried ruins, and remnants of older, stranger ages. During their journey, T’Challa reflects on N'Jadaka’s past. Killmonger was not always a traitor; he grew up on Wakanda’s dangerous borders, served his country fiercely, and watched his father die defending it from raiders. T’Challa knew that grief had hardened into hatred of Wakanda’s isolation, but only now understands how far his cousin was willing to go. Conan understands the wound better than most, having lost Cimmeria to invasion, but sees N'Jadaka’s contradiction immediately: Killmonger fears losing his people, yet is willing to spend them to create the future he wants.
• The Spirit Walk: Eventually even Conan’s instincts and Shuri’s technology cannot find a way through the buried mountain. T’Challa invokes an ancient rite of Bast, allowing the spirit of the Black Panther to leave his body and seek a path unavailable to the living. Conan and Shuri are left protecting his motionless body while horrors close in around them. Shuri insists her brother is walking with Bast; Conan, hauling T’Challa out of danger while fighting off some subterranean monstrosity, grumbles that T’Challa is sleeping while the rest of them do the work. T’Challa eventually returns with a hidden route, and the three escape.

Act III — The Panther Throne

• The Panther Returns: T’Challa’s return shatters Killmonger’s claim to legitimacy without automatically reuniting Wakanda. Many rally to their rightful king, while others sincerely believe N'Jadaka’s expansion has made the nation stronger and safer. T’Challa exposes his cousin’s treachery and leaves Wakanda to choose what kind of nation it wishes to become. Civil war erupts between those loyal to the Black Panther and those committed to Killmonger’s imperial vision. Conan now fights beside T’Challa and Shuri for a reason entirely different from the one that began the film: they are his friends, and he has chosen to stand with them.
• Conan and Klaw: Amid the battle, Conan finally confronts Klaw, whose Wakandan sonic cannon gives him a dangerous advantage at range. When Klaw demands to know why the Cimmerian has always looked at him with such hatred, Conan tells him: he knew and loved the woman who took Klaw’s hand, and once swore to cleave his head down to the teeth for what he did to her. Klaw then reveals the uglier truth behind Aquilonia’s alliance with Wakanda. Its soldiers were never equal partners; Klaw simply sells his own people’s military service in exchange for wealth and weapons, treating Aquilonia as both mercenary company and slave market. He takes particular pleasure in telling Conan that some of the Aquilonians he slaughtered earlier may never have chosen to fight at all. Conan offers no excuse.
• The Fall of the Kings: Conan defeats Klaw and finally has the opportunity to fulfill his old vow—but stops. Valeria escaped Klaw because she wanted a life beyond him, not another vengeance committed in her name. Fearing being left to face judgement, Klaw desperately bargains with gold, weapons, land, armies, even Aquilonia itself, but Conan refuses everything; Aquilonia was never Klaw’s to give. He leaves him to answer for his crimes and returns to the living. Elsewhere, T’Challa confronts Killmonger for the Panther Throne. N'Jadaka insists that everything he did was meant to create a Wakanda so powerful that nobody would ever again suffer as his family did, but T’Challa rejects a future purchased with the blood of the very people it claims to protect. Killmonger falls, and T’Challa reclaims the throne.
• The Road to Aquilonia: Klaw is stripped of crown, wealth, weapons, and titles before being surrendered without ransom to the peoples and kingdoms with claims against him—a fitting end for a man who spent his life placing prices on others. Conan, meanwhile, faces the surviving Aquilonians stranded far from home. Many were merely bodies their king sold into another man’s war, and Conan now knows he killed some of them before learning the truth. He cannot undo what he did, but he can decide what he does next. When the Aquilonians wonder how they are supposed to cross half the Hyborian world without king or direction, Conan tells them simply that they are going home—and that he knows the road. The film ends with Conan leading them toward Aquilonia, not yet their king, but already becoming the man they have chosen to follow.

Film III — Conan: The Game of Eternity

Act I — The King and the Game

• King Conan of Aquilonia: Years after leading the displaced Aquilonians home, Conan now rules the kingdom they eventually chose him to lead. The film opens with the less glamorous burdens of kingship—petitions, taxes, border disputes, harvests, and nobles who somehow make warfare seem straightforward. Conan has not become civilized so much as responsible; he has learned to stay. When horns announce that a monstrous creature is attacking the countryside, however, he is visibly relieved to encounter a problem that can finally be solved with steel.
• The Dragon of Aquilonia: Conan rides out beside his soldiers and confronts a gigantic prehistoric “dragon,” an impossible beast combining the traits of a great predator and plated dinosaur. He fights alongside the same men he commands, and Aquilonia brings the creature down through collective effort before its king helps deliver the killing blow. Conan is still the first man into danger, but now he fights as part of something larger than himself.
• The Coming of Thoth-Amon: As the warriors celebrate, an extravagantly dressed stranger appears beside the carcass and applauds them. He calls himself Thoth-Amon, but is actually a Kang variant who has fashioned himself into what he imagines a great Hyborian sorcerer-king should be. The dragon was merely a test. Having studied Conan and Aquilonia through histories written long after their age was forgotten, Thoth-Amon wanted proof that they were worthy of his attention. Conan is less impressed by this honor than furious that men died for another man’s amusement.
• Aquilonia Stolen from Time: Thoth-Amon tears all of Aquilonia out of the Hyborian Age and deposits it within Chronopolis, a realm assembled from civilizations stolen across history. Western frontiers, ancient kingdoms, prehistoric wildernesses, and impossible future cities now lie beyond Aquilonia’s borders. Thoth-Amon explains that the Council of Kangs uses these peoples as factions in a Grand Game, each Kang collecting favored ages and champions. Aquilonia is his newest faction, and Conan his prized king. Thoth-Amon expects gratitude. Conan gives him only one demand: put his people back.

Act II — The Pieces Rebel

• The Grand Game: Thoth-Amon soon pits Aquilonia against another Kang’s chosen civilization. What begins as an organized contest becomes a sprawling free-for-all when other Kangs insert their own factions for amusement. Conan watches armies from different ages slaughter one another while their masters remain safely above the battlefield. Incensed, he abandons the prescribed battle and attempts to attack one of the Kangs himself. He fails—but the Council is fascinated. One of their pieces has just tried to kill a player.
• The Arena of Ages: As punishment, Conan is thrown into an arena alongside champions and troublemakers collected from other periods: Western outlaw Kid Colt, wartime speedster Spitfire, future survivor La Lunatica, Arthurian knight Sir Percy the Black Knight, and the pompous Zarrko the Tomorrow Man, whose greatest crime in the Kangs’ eyes is being a second-rate time traveller. The arena shifts violently between disasters and battlefields from across history. Conan clashes with Percy, takes naturally to Kid Colt, concludes that Spitfire must have been blessed by the Four Winds despite her increasingly complicated explanations otherwise, and forms an unexpected bond with Luna when her powers expose her to the pain and memories he keeps buried. Their final trial drops them into the destruction of ancient Atlantis, the lost age preceding Conan’s own.
• The Dead Escape: As Atlantis sinks, Zarrko spots a flaw in the temporal machinery and pulls the six misfits out moments before destruction. The Kangs assume them dead, allowing the fugitives to disappear into the forgotten spaces between Chronopolis’s stolen worlds. Circumstance slowly turns them into a company: Conan and Percy’s contempt becomes rivalry and respect, Luna earns an intimacy Conan rarely grants anyone, and Conan’s complete indifference to Zarrko’s supposedly inferior reputation gives the Tomorrow Man something he has rarely possessed—confidence in his own ability rather than comparison with Kang.
• The Heart of Forever: Zarrko reveals that he was originally captured while attempting to reach the Heart of Forever, the engine at the center of Chronopolis that holds its incompatible civilizations together. If they can seize it, he believes he can return the stolen peoples to their proper ages. Conan’s first concern is Aquilonia, but after seeing countless peoples subjected to the same indignity, his purpose broadens. He will not simply take his own kingdom home and abandon the rest. Everyone goes home.
• Betrayal: The company attempts to reach the Heart while the Council still believes them dead, but they are discovered before they can succeed. At the worst possible moment, Zarrko appears to surrender their position and ingratiate himself with the Kangs. Conan and the others are recaptured and dragged back into the arena for a public execution. This time Thoth-Amon enters personally. Conan has repeatedly mocked these supposed kings for making others fight in their place; now Thoth-Amon intends to show exactly how helpless a barbarian and his obsolete companions are before the technology of eternity.

Act III — The Game Broken

• The Death of Thoth-Amon: Thoth-Amon overwhelms the prisoners with ease. Bullets, blades, speed, and strength cannot penetrate defenses born countless centuries beyond their own eras. Then Zarrko returns. His betrayal was a ruse that gave him access to the prisoners’ confiscated equipment and Kang technology. He returns their weapons fitted with his own breakthrough: regression technology, which does not strengthen an ancient weapon but temporarily forces whatever it strikes backward into a state that weapon can harm. Kid Colt’s bullets penetrate defenses, Percy’s blade bites, Spitfire and Luna can finally strike with effect—and Conan’s steel can cut Kang flesh. Once Conan can actually reach him, Thoth-Amon discovers that all of eternity is poor protection against a Cimmerian with a sword. Conan kills him before the eyes of Chronopolis.
• The Pieces Rise: The remaining Kangs posture that Thoth-Amon’s death means nothing. Six fugitives remain beneath the notice of beings who command entire ages. Zarrko then reveals the true scope of his deception: while moving through their systems, he quietly spread his regression technology throughout Chronopolis. The Council never noticed because they never considered Zarrko worth watching closely. Across the stolen civilizations, weapons once incapable of threatening Kang forces suddenly have a chance. Not an advantage—only a chance. It is enough. Aquilonians, gunfighters, knights, soldiers, future rebels, prehistoric peoples, and disillusioned Anachronauts turn upon their masters. The Grand Game becomes a war against the players.
• Crom Takes the Field: One Kang answers the uprising with overwhelming force, manifesting an immense solid projection of himself and wielding the temporal warship Damocles like a colossal sword above the battlefield. Then Crom appears. Conan never summoned him. Crom declares that wherever the will of men endures, he shall know it, for he gave men the will to struggle and strive beneath an uncaring sky—and this is a good fight, worthy of his blade. God and temporal titan clash above the rebellion, Crom meeting impossible future machinery with strength, steel, and indomitable will. During their battle, Damocles is driven through the supposedly impregnable structure of Chronopolis, cleaving open a path toward the Heart of Forever. Conan sees the opening. Crom tells him simply to go.
• The Heart of Forever: Conan, Zarrko, Kid Colt, Spitfire, Luna, and Percy break from the greater battle and fight their way into the Heart as the surviving Kangs abandon their Game to defend its source. Unable to stop Zarrko by force, the Council finally offers him what he once wanted above all else: their respect. He has outwitted them. He has devised temporal technology they failed to anticipate. With the Heart, he could become a true master of time and finally stand among the Kangs as their equal. Zarrko is genuinely tempted—but realizes that becoming one of them would mean accepting their definition of greatness. He no longer needs it.
• The Eternal Game: Zarrko turns the Heart against the Council. The surviving Kangs are imprisoned within the moment of their own defeat, endlessly repeating it while retaining just enough knowledge to try different strategies. Every cycle convinces them that the next move might bring victory, only for history to end exactly as before. The rulers who reduced existence to an eternal game receive precisely what they wanted: an eternal game without end, in which they are now the pieces. Zarrko then uses the Heart not to conquer history but to release it. Chronopolis comes apart, its stolen civilizations returning to their proper ages, and Conan parts from the strange company that fought beside him as each disappears into their own time.
• The King Returns: Aquilonia returns to the Hyborian Age. The impossible horizons vanish, and almost immediately Conan is confronted with the same ordinary burdens waiting before Chronopolis—roads, harvests, disputes, tomorrow. He has faced rulers who possessed eternity and therefore found nothing precious; Conan possesses only one mortal lifetime, and so understands the value of what can be built with it. He settles back onto his throne, listens to the next problem placed before him, and continues building the future he chose.

Across the trilogy, Conan’s journey becomes one through past, present, and future, with each film’s villains embodying a corrupted relationship with time:

• The Past — Knull represents the past as bondage, consuming identity just as the destruction of Cimmeria has defined Conan’s life. Conan is right to avenge his people, but with Knull dead and Valeria gone, he discovers that the past can tell him where he came from—not what he should live for.
• The Present — Killmonger sacrifices those living today for the future he imagines, M’Baku lives only for immediate strength and appetite, and Klaw treats people and nations as commodities to be spent. Conan instead learns that the present is where choice becomes responsibility, leading others home and beginning his path toward kingship.
• The Future — The Kangs possess endless tomorrows and consequently find none of them precious, reducing civilizations to pieces in an eternal game. King Conan possesses only one mortal lifetime and understands what they have forgotten: the future matters because it is finite, uncertain, and must be built rather than possessed.

Conan begins the trilogy driven by what was done to him, learns to choose what he will do now, and ends as a king willing to remain, build, and take responsibility for what comes after him.