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The season finale of What If…? is called ‘What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?’ and it indeed has the Watcher breaking his ‘Oath’, which is something that is still unclear and mysterious. The reasoning behind his oath has never actually been explained, nor do we really understand anything about the Watcher beyond his title and that he is the protector of the ‘stories’ or in other words, the multiverse.
Tellingly, when the Watcher is confronted at the end of the episode by Natasha, the lone survivor of an entire universe, she accuses their lives of being just ‘stories’ to him (a bit of a fourth wall nod to us watching at home) but he counters that they are actually ‘everything’ to him. Again, what that means is unclear, but Jeffrey Wright sells that emotional moment enough so that you still believe him.
The episode mainly pulls together every prior one in one way or another. The Watcher builds his team of the ‘Guardians of the Multiverse’ using Captain Carter from Episode 1, Star Lord T’Challa from Episode 2, Supreme Strange from Episode 4, Kilmonger from Episode 6, and Party Thor from Episode 7. Amusingly, we even get the zombies from Episode 5, even if Zombie Wanda is apparently no match for an Ultron that can blow up a planet. We also get a Gamora (not voiced by Zoe Saldana here) that apparently was in an episode that didn’t make it to air on time and is now going to be in Season 2 — I guess we know how it goes already though!
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As per usual, some logical issues are still unresolved, and here again things are complicated — after they steal the Soul Stone from Ultron using a clever callback to T’Challa Star Lord using sticky fingers in his tale, he is still able to move between universes — despite now missing a stone. And later he says that the ‘Infinity Crusher’ from Gamora didn’t work because the Stones are unique per universe — which still doesn’t explain why they work for him everywhere.
All that aside, it was fun to see how everything built together. The start and end were all about Peggy, from starting with her Winter Soldier parallel movie to discovering who might be Winter Soldier Steve after the end credits. She gets, along with the surviving Natasha, the epic ‘hero’ shot to inject the Zola arrow and destroy Ultron from within. But everyone else gets their own fun moments, including Strange utilizing some of his absorbed monsters. Or in Erik’s case, his own villain moment.
I also appreciate the mirroring of the classic heroes assembled shot from The Avengers with the camera rotating around these guys instead, and in general the animation was really quite excellent and often evocative. Considering how much they put on Natasha, it’s impressive how easily Lake Bell fell into the character’s voice. I didn’t realize at first about the ending, that the Watcher actually puts her into the murder mystery episode (episode 3) of the season, but it was quite an elegant solution.
The season overall was still a bit of a mixed bag; despite how I liked them pulling it all together at the end in a clever way, some episodes weren’t as interesting or as well executed. But some really worked well, specifically the Dr. Strange and T’Challa episodes, and Jeffrey Wright is an absolute legend. Although I still put Loki above this show, I think it was ultimately quite a fun and engaging story — despite the little issues along the way. I’m certainly excited to see Season 2 when it finally comes out.
All Season 1 episodes of What If…? are streaming on Disney Plus.
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