Disney Plus
In the latest episode of What If…? all the dark things happen on screen, in a sharp departure of the ones we’ve seen so far. In a way, this story feels closer to the ones from the comics, where there are a lot of characters dying and things seem awfully grim. Even if they cannot help but give a glimpse of hope at the end of it all.
The star of this episode is Natasha or the Black Widow, played by the voice of Lake Bell (who’s done on screen acting and voice over roles, meta-commenting in the movie In a World) and she’s pretty good with her ScarJo impersonation. At the very least, she’s a great voice actor, which is pretty crucial to the whole episode not falling apart as she plays against Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury as the other main character.
Amusingly, the episode’s initial description focused more on Loki appearing on Earth, but that’s really an aftereffect of the murder mystery at play. It all starts normally, but what we don’t see (and that the Watcher doesn’t give away, unlike the first two episodes) is where the true divergence was — and it’s not the moment we first think it is.
As Natasha attempts to simply sedate Tony Stark during the events of Iron Man 2, something goes wrong and Tony dies in the middle of a random eatery. Thus begins our murder mystery — normally we wouldn’t suspect Natasha or Nick, and especially because they seem to be the episode’s protagonists. But one never knows when it comes to What If…?.
But soon enough, events intersect with the timeline of The Incredible Hulk and then Thor. Of course, here Bruce is incongruously played by Mark Ruffalo instead of Edward Norton, and Liv Tyler is nowhere to be found. But that’s more to be expected, I’d be more surprised if she actually came back for such a small role anyway.
Hawkeye, Hulk, and Thor all perish in various unusual ways, and it’s one of the confusing elements of the Marvel movie world that their vulnerabilities aren’t entirely clear. Hawkeye, sure, he’s just a human dude, but would Thor really die from a simple arrow? It does seem that Asgardians are vulnerable to blades, so perhaps, even if seems an ignominious end for Thor. It certainly is a shocking end, and Hulk’s is even more gruesome — they actually show the dude exploding!
In theory, I can vaguely see how that works, that maybe he’s vulnerable from the inside, but that’s … not necessarily consistent with what we’ve seen so far. That said, the Hulk did get beaten up pretty badly by Thanos, so we know he’s not purely invulnerable. Still, I respect the audacity of it.
Eventually even poor Natasha is taken out, even as she is solving the mystery — of course I was pretty sure I had figured it out with that ‘Hope’ reference anyway. It’s an interesting idea — Hank Pym as the avenging murderer — and it doesn’t entirely seem so out of character for him to go crazy like that given the instability we’ve seen from him before.
It all ties back into the Loki idea at the end, as Fury struggles to keep the peace — but it’s for naught, as the god of mischief actually manages to take over the planet this time. But it’s actually far more reasonable as an idea this time, considering he would have Asgard behind him after Thor’s murder.
And the final moments are the two Captains potentially returning again, as Fury is in the ice looking for Steve Rogers and we pan over to see Carol Danvers (voice of Alexandra Daniels this time) also arriving on the scene. This time Fury clearly used his little intergalactic pager far earlier, but I’d say he was justified.
It’s a very different sort of tale from the first two episodes of the season, but I really appreciated how willing they were to just kill off main characters and shake things up so significantly. It also does seem to be, just like the last episode, to be teasing a later adventure as the new fight against Loki and company is nigh. Perhaps not as funny nor as heartwarming as the last one, but it’s a different vibe — I think it’s a good way to show that this show will really be going places. At least I hope so.
New episodes of What If…? stream Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
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