It's rivalry week—and every developer's busting out brand-new, overpriced skins in this very special, live service edition of The Fellowship of the League: Marvel Rivals. Grab those overpriced DLC skins and costumes before the FOMO kicks in! A little early for Halloween, isn't it? Hell, don't tell that to the Q4 big box retailers because some spots already have the Christmas decorations out in full force! Life and football come at ya fast.

Week 5 had some crazy grudge matches reach their boiling points. Everyone knows that if you want to win in very competitive modern hero shooters like Overwatch and Rivals, you need the WHOLE team to work together, and this week was one for the books of the haves... and have-nots. It looks like some rosters are here to have good comms, while others are just here to buy a couple of those scantily clad Santa skins and goon-uhm-go to bed "early"... Mr. Kringle, you shouldn’t have!

Ahem... without further ado, grab your controller or mouse and keyboard, and let's dig into some Week 5 NFL action, true believers.

First, the tier list. The PowerRankings have shifted ! Groot is still certified not competitively viable in Marvel Rivals. You are Groot. And I am sorry.

*(Points Scored x2) + (Points Scored Winning %) + (Points Scored * Winning % if played vs the median score of the week)

While Abigail still leads the series 6-5, a hammer-wielding Alyssa, hot off an old-school, Joe Bye-den My Time WR stack last week—btw, what hex did she cast to get CeeDee and Tet playing out of this multiversal dimension like that? But that WR controller was malfunctioning because CeeDee's coming out of that Tampa Bay game with bruised quads. Tet was on bye for Carolina, so we'll forgive him for not balling out for the Scarlet Witch. If he pops off next week, I guess it’s just input lag. Unfortunately, Ka'imi Fairbairn was the high man for the rest of the Witch’s healthy quad squad. The closest player to his final score was Makai Lemon's now-sworn rival, Darius Cooper, who came away with 16.1 pts… which was more than Jalen Hurts! Scarlet Witch, nevertheless, is an excellent duelist and top-tier in the meta. She casted MYSTIC PROTECTION with a nothing-special but effective performance by Khalil Shaker on MNF to avoid the Haribo comeback. It was a clever evasive maneuver from the spellcaster.

Rogue, too, had the powers to win; however, it was not meant to be. She’s the first player to have a winning lineup left to wonder … what if … on the bench. Barkley was left in the lineup, and BTJ stayed in while Woody Marks and Rashod Bateman feasted without purpose. The mutant in-game has a Vanguard/Brawler fighting style. She tried to deliver a HEARTBREAKER with a great game from Joe Burrow. It wasn’t enough. There was no other chance of brawling here with the rest of Cinci’s offense, as Chase Brown and the Bengals OC were too busy playing Roblox instead of football.

The hammer has been defended! Alyssa continues to wield Mjölnir heading into her matchup against Ron next week. Abigail, meanwhile, faces off against Tom. The Haribo faithful are only 1-9 against the Beerserkers.

Can the power of Dr. Brenton Strange help alter her grim fate?

The sound of a TVA Tempad whirred and beeped.

A glowing orange rectangle formed, and a man in a brown suit stepped through. But one more thing stood out. The figure was wearing a large, glittering golden helm. He was somewhere off the sacred timeline... he was in a living room watching football? A woman with brown hair was smiling and talking smack, looking down at her phone playing a fantasy football game.

"I have the best team! Who Dat?!" Kristen cheered.

Loki grinned. Looking down on the scene, he saw a score of 200.10 against 80.15 on the screen, and on the winning side, names like Tyreek Hill scoring over 60 points while Deshaun Watson went for over 37 in a Houston Texans uniform. 

"Joe Smith State Jackrabbits?" Loki looked in the hallway mirror at himself.

"I think we can do better, can't we?"

…

First meeting between these rivals! Last year Jimmy lost to the Spaghetti Mafia. This year, he’s drawing a winless Groot. But the MacSucken' is on the line!

Welp. I am shoot—fuck—speechless 😮

Was that a 14-man league score or are we really back in Joe Smith State Jackrabbits days? Look it up ! We have a website! Not only was he the last manager to lose by more than 118 points, but he was also winless that season. The Fellowship’s very own Howard the Suck. All jokes aside, Jackrabbits we miss you. We miss your free weekly dubs on the calendar more than ever in our stacked league.

All roads eventually led us to the largest blowout of the year, and in league history! The 128.60 record-shellacking that Loki gave to Groot really made me feel for the sentient tree alien. Where's Rocket Racoon when you need him? Jimmy also scored the 4th-highest total ever, surpassing Haribo's week 5 total of 186.85 back in 2021—oh, those AJ Kappa days, IYKYK!!

Groot’s usually a tank in Rivals. This week and season have been very different. Usually, you can get away with firing off VINE STRIKE or SPORE BOMB. Not this time! Hampton and Skattebo are like a one-two (tiny branched) poke. Tyler Suck forgot he was actually good the first three weeks of the season. All the while, Rams kicker Harrison Mevis was too busy eating the points instead of scoring them for fantasy managers.

Truly, Loki is proving to be a fire S-tier character. He’s fast collecting position infinity stones left and right with Bucky Irving’s best RB performance yet. JSN’s still the league number one WR overall, and a surging Matthew Golden not far behind, are no illusion. He even used DEVIOUS EXCHANGE to swap in an older Mike Evans. A signature popoff from the legendary veteran to put Jimmy in the Fellowship record books. Hell! All this came with Cairo Santos posting a fat bagel for the week—otherwise the Kid would’ve probably cleared well over 200 with a solid kicker showing.

Next week, Loki’s dueling Dom. Dom’s won the last two matchups, so this should be a good one with both managers flying high this year. Groot, meanwhile, will look to get the monkey off his bramble back in a date with Black Widow.

Tough, tough start this year for Katie. She’s had enough on the bench in previous weeks past. There's depth on Widow's team, just like with any assassin. All it takes is training. This isn't the time for Marvel's most heroic assassin to hang up the pistols and wrist gauntlets just yet. James Cook certainly looked like a hero, playing catch-up on MNF. Trevor Lawrence also did his job this week, bouncing back into the 20s after a few weeks riding mediocrity. Moreover, Natasha’s got the crazy good aim using her RED ROOM RIFLE to snipe two 50-yard FGs with Spencer Shrader. Her starting lineup alone was enough to beat Santa…alas, it wasn’t enough to beat Isaiah Likely.

Shadowcat is climbing. Her team is hot. As one of the most requested characters for Rivals, Jess stays perfect in her Fellowship rivalry record. Stafford, too, was looking like LOCKHEED, a trusty dragon companion ready to keep her lead well intact. The real story is Gibbs. He’s scored at least one rushing or receiving TD in every contest this season. He’s already got three 30+ games so far too. At this point, she’ll phase right through the regular season and into the playoffs. Cheat code.

Kitty Pryde looks to extend her four-game win streak to five next week against Santa. Santa won that last bout by over 60 points. Kong’s Widow draws Groot, of course. I feel like the MacSucken' this year is especially unlucky.

Captain America's shield lay shattered in half. Iron Man's armor was short-circuiting and battered. Black Widow sat lifeless, her body still and eyes frozen, looking out into the vast expanse of nothing. In deep space, on some distant moon, the Avengers lay defeated. An army of Chitauri and others still heading to the desolate moon en masse. Josh Allen, half of his pads torn to shreds, looked down at a football. Scarred and deflated.

"I tried. I did... I-I'm sorry."

A gloved hand rested on his shoulder, approaching the Bills quarterback. He looked down at Josh. 

"I know, son. It's happened once before. Years ago."

Magneto helped the quarterback onto his feet. Holding him up. The mutant looked as bad, if not worse, than the quarterback. His armor was chipped and scarred. His helmet cracked, yet still intact after the Rivalry Wars.

"What happened, Rawb? You never told me what happened in 2019?" Josh called out.

Magneto considered this for a moment. It had been a long time since he thought about that day. 

"... We lost."

…

It was a marquee matchup, and it looked like an old-fashioned suck-off for most of the weekend. Kamara looked old and weak. Fannin was near invisible on the field (at the time of writing this Santa dropped Fannin to the naughty list and added Tyler Higbee to his nice list). Deebo was down, left to recover in a plastic sterile prison—no sharp metals in sight. Waddle useless and waffling in an anemic offense led by a mutant quarterback in appearance alone. 

It was omega-level mutant versus omega-level mutant. Jacoby Brissett uselessly thrived in a blowout against Detroit. Run-CMC efficiently racked up points against the Seahawks, proving his Christmas spirit and cheer for the big man in red. Zay Flowers, meanwhile, put up a ho-ho-healthy floor following his minor injury setbacks with backup quarterback Tyler Huntley (say no more—Santa’s got little helpers everywhere on the depth chart). It was a lead of 38.98 pts.

Nearly insurmountable.

But Magneto had one more omega-level mutant in his brotherhood. In Fellowship league history, Josh Allen had 32 games where he's scored over 30 pts...and those were all games where he hadn’t been called a deadbeat dad on social media all week long before the game. He'd reached these highs before plenty of times... just not on MNF. Yet! It was a rough first half, but Josh came close. To be exact, he was 7.78 points close. His MAG CANNON weapon was almost enough. Almost. Yup. RawbPeople was the third fantasy manager of the weekend to have enough bench scoring to win in a hotly contested matchup. Even the Bengals defense, with a good matchup, couldn’t match the point total of the Seahawks left on his bench.

It was all enough for Alex to take Rob's heart out of his chest for the fourth year in a row. Santa leads 6 wins to 5 losses in their rivalry dating back to that fateful 2019 Championship final.

While his defense and kicker this week did account for over 30 points of productivity, one cannot deny that Santa is a league juggernaut. This happened during a week where Mahomes and K Walker were on BYE!

It seems like everyone’s on the naughty list. Good luck Jess. Two hot teams on crazy streaks will be clashing. Rawb will lick his wounds, hoping that JT can bounce back and help slow down a magnetic descent this season against Josh in a Spider-Man costume.

Thor and Doom. The marquee matchup. Two champions. Hero and villain. Stalwart, consistent pillars of the league (and OG rivals too)... destined to make fans of both characters foam at the mouth over the potential of this epic battle. Welp. Sorry Tom. The Beerserkers roster cranked back Stormbreaker, and it was casually deflected. Thor’s STORM SURGE was no match for Viktor’s PLOT ARMOR. Not to be outdone by Loki’s high-scoring magic, Doom came into Week 5 with a masterclass, team pop-off of his own. Dom reached a career high with the score, his last high coming in Week 13 of 2020, when Bodega Cat scored 178.65—just one year before his B2B championship titles. The clinical, precise blowout win now has Dom leading Tom in their H2H rivalry 6-5...a medical prescription Tom certainly didn't want filled this week.

For the Bodega faithful, it must be great to see Pickens have one of his monster games. Purdy still has it. Warren is clearly THE guy over Rico in Pittsburgh. Christian Watson is one of the surprises of the year, standing at number 3 overall in the WR rankings. Oh! And this was all done with the Sun God putting up bust-like numbers for his standards. Wild. That matchup against Da Kid can’t come soon enough.

The Beerserkers will need some help from Heimdall and the rest of Asgard to get this roster back on track. The team’s been dominant against Haribo Lecter in years past, but the loss of Travis Etienne Jr. has placed the thunder god's team in a Dark World. The season is still young for this Avenger—but the red cape’s gotta come on at some point. Who will step up???

Trevor now leads the rivalry 4-1 overall. JARVIS, alongside the god of mischief, had the most optimized lineup because, of course, he would! It also didn't hurt that Drake Maye looked like he had hit factory reset. It worked because it notched him his first 40-point game in league history. Hell, the whole Patriots team looked like an AI-supercharged version of themselves. It's all the more hilarious that Jeff splish-splashed his way to a suboptimal lineup. He would've won if it weren’t for those darn meddling Browns! So no HEALING BUBBLES or JOYFUL SPLASHES because Marshawn Lloyd was left on the bench. At least we can all agree Jeff’s freaking so cute in that Santa sweater!

I will say this for Ron. He’s the only person who should be angrier at Bo Nix than yours truly.

Algorithm has now turned the script around. That’s some good support desk work from the IT wizard! He’s making this roster into a VISION. A sign of things to come, it looks like Justin Jefferson and Malik Nabers are a strong WR tandem after all. While J. Love may struggle with health on the Cardinals, Chuba’s still bringing his strong year back into the fold next week. Rico who???

JARVIS doesn’t need to be a character in Rivals. After all, who helped operate all of Tony Stark’s armor behind all of that steel?

Stark’s AI assistant will look to keep his efficiency rating up against the wild card of all wild cards, Bully Maguire. Jeff takes on the Scarlet Witch. Water vs. Dark Magic. Seems like an easy answer of who comes out on top when put like that, actually.

Thwip! Webbing shot out from the webshooter's spinneret. For the middle of the night, it was quiet in the city. Almost too quiet, thought Peter Parker. Then, a bright flash of light, and suddenly Spider-Man was letting go of his webline, flipping with acrobatic ease to a nearby rooftop.

His spidey sense was off the charts, a sharp pain shooting all around his skull. The still autumn air was now crackling. Sparks formed a perfect circle, and out of nowhere, a dark figure emerged. Peter instinctively pointed, and so did the shadow in front of him.

It was him... ?

Two Spider-Men with extended fingers? Only this one was wearing a black suit with silver embossed webbing. Before Peter could even react, the black suit Spider-Man threw his hands in the air, leaning back like a jazz dancer, yelling out:

“Now dig on this…”

Coming out of the scene, a man with spiky dark hair in a basement sits gaming in front of his monitor. He’s wearing a gaming headset with an Xbox controller in hand. A box of tissues sits behind him. He’s looking at the video game cutscene of the two Spider-Men with an annoyed look.

"This is the new Spider-Man skin in Rivals?! How am I supposed to goon with all of my Mahomies to this!?"

In the background, the black suit Spider-Man was still dancing and shouting, "I'm gonna put some dirt in your eye."

…

The bully has already been bullying his rival these past few years! Are you Spider-Man? No! I'm Spider-Man! Brothers by marriage were left pointing at one another all weekend! Waiting for one player to pop like Peter Parker’s peter tingle popped in Far From Home. Until, well, it was the modern MCU Spidey wearing the Smeagles jersey coming out on top. Yes! Josh scored his first-ever win over Tony, and even though Tony still leads 3-1, it must feel pretty good to slow down the jazz club dance party. You’ll get your DUB when you fix this goddamn door! Anyone? Moving on…

Tobey was surging like the early 2000s. Climbing the tier list like Chad Kroeger’s Hero climbed the charts once upon a time. Now, he’s purging because I’d be vomiting too if RJ Harvey was in my starting lineup. Bully’s DANCE MOVES are no match for Josh’s IMPACT WEBBING. Although in this matchup it looked like he was just doing that thing cartoon characters do in movies. You know, just holding out one hand extended and letting the smaller guy flail around trying to hit him? Jayden Daniels and Parker Washington are the hand-extenders, and then DK Metcalf and the entire Cowboys defense are the flailers. Plus, Davante Adams and Scary Terry more than made up for Kenyon Sadiq's mulligan.

We’ll see how the multiversal Parker boys fare against their opponents. Tony’s Bully takes on JARVIS, and Josh’s Peter will try to score another first victory against Rawb.

For now, Tobey Maguire isn’t the GOAT of Spider-Men…

It’s true that nothing beats the original. Unless the new thing keeps making billions and billions of dollars and is married to Zendaya.

Rivals!

A draining week. Just like any battle in the infinity war that is Fantasy Football.

It’s just one of the many events we have left on docket this season. The stakes only get higher.

That’s right—if you’ve bought the Fellowship of the League Battle Pass, then you already know what’s in store for you. I’d give you another hint. But, ah, it’s probably too significant…

Here’s what’s coming to the league later this season in Week 9!

…

COMING SOON

…

Mjölnir flies through the air. It looks like it’s heading right for a happy and peaceful husband. Watching TV. Football, in fact. Not an absolute care in the world.

The hammer zips by. Nearly cracking him in the skull.

WHOOSH!

The television remote also flies off the coffee table. Standing over Thor is … his wife? Dressed like a woman in an old sitcom, like I Love Lucy—hair curled perfectly and neatly pressed kitchen apron, she mockingly scowls at Thor, scolding him while wagging her finger.

“Are you still watching football? What have you done today? The trash needs to be taken out. You should really be more productive!”

The TV cuts out—static. It flashes back on, images and title cards flowing together in quick succession: Love and Thunder. WandaVision. Zendaya.

The screen cuts out again. Thor looks down. He’s wearing a cardigan.

He mutters aloud to himself.

“Huh. What’s going on? What am I wearing?”

She smiles.

“Let’s go apple picking!”