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I had mixed feelings about the first season of What If…?, which had some great episodes and some episodes that were quite the opposite. One of the well-known aspects of the comic versions of What If…? was that they usually ended with a much worse, darker ending that made it easier to say ‘Well, we’re better off with the current state of things, right?’. Some of the episodes of Season 1 went that route, but some avoided that trap — it also gave The Watcher (with the voice of Jeffrey Wright) some legitimate characterization.
Season 2 starts off with ‘What If… Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?’ as a sort of noir-styled episode with nearly all of the returning actors voicing their characters (with the noted exception of Glenn Close but voice actor Julianne Grossman did a great job filling that role). The episode had some pretty funny moments too, mainly the ones with Howard the Duck and Korg (proving that the character can still be funny when he’s not the main character).
The divergence didn’t really make sense, though, because it had Xandar get an impenetrable shield around the planet after Ronan killed Thanos (part of the pattern of Thanos getting killed in most episodes he shows up in), but then why wasn’t that shield used in Guardians of the Galaxy? It isn’t really thought through fully, but I did enjoy the fairly basic noir plot and I like Nebula as the hard-nosed detective with a heart of gold, and Karen Gillan is pretty good as the narrator.
Next is ‘What If… Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?’ which follows the same pattern of ‘Fun if not really logical’ with nearly everyone returning except for Annette Bening (her Mar-Vell character voiced by Keri Tombazian here, also doing a good impression). The rules of how Ego and his powers work is a little shaky (like how Asgard apparently easily fell in a day), and it’s more of a cheat that the Winter Soldier is included and then easily gets over his programming.
That said, it was satisfying to see character interactions in a way that made sense, like Peggy and Howard realizing they knew him, and I really did love the connection between young Hope and Peter bonding over music and lost mothers. Hank bringing Hope along to fight Ego feels pretty irresponsible but in a way that did fit with Hank’s poor parenting characterization — why did the rest of the adults allow it though? I guess the answer is to have a cool final visual and a great tease for ‘Avengers in the 80s’, which admittedly I would enjoy seeing more of.
The big silly episode this season was next with ‘What If… Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?’, which is a self-referential Die Hard ripoff, with Happy Hogan getting turned into a Hulk monster (a deep cut in the comics) and working with Maria Hill (disappointingly killed off in Secret Invasion among the many sins of that show) and Darcy to take down the returning Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. The real problem here is simply that it’s not enough of Justin Hammer — but the episode knows how stupid it is and relishes in that nonsense — so I can enjoy it for that level.
After that is ‘What If… Iron Man Crashed into the Grandmaster?’, which was intended to be included in the first season, and is a sort of ‘Tony in Thor: Ragnarok’ riff, the only case so far of a new version of an existing movie — Mick Wingert returns as the voice of Tony Stark and he’s pretty good in his somewhat caricaturish take on the character, while Cynthia McWilliams as Gamora doesn’t sound anything like Zoe Saldaña and is a little more generic here.
The episode boasts pretty good animation for its Wacky Races homage, but the storyline is paper thin and barely scratches the surface of the potential of the idea. The idea of the race is a bit shoehorned into the world, although I have to admit it does make sense that Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster would like the idea (and of course he’s great as always). And again, Thanos dies a moment after we see him (which in this season feels like a running gag).
Episode five is ‘What If… Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?’, which is a more direct riff on Captain America: The Winter Soldier like how the Captain Carter episode last season was a riff on Captain America. As such, it’s not particularly original and banks heavily on our existing feelings about the Peggy/Steve connections (Josh Keaton returns to do his subtle but well done impression of Steve Rogers). The true joy though is the Peggy/Natasha team up (with Lake Bell returning with her excellent take on the Black Widow voice).
It feels more like connective tissue to set up the rest of the season, as Peggy ends up playing a pretty substantial role overall. I’d rather have seen a more interesting inclusion if you’re going to include Rachel Weisz back again.
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After that is the first truly original idea of all because it’s 100% not a Marvel idea — ‘What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?’ tells a story about a young Mohawk woman (voice of Devery Jacobs, who is the new up and coming superstar of that background with this and Reservation Dogs) and others from her tribe imbued with great powers due to the Tesseract landing on Earth in North America instead.
It’s a decent sort of idea that really again is barely thought through because it could go so much further — and it’s a bit historically muddled, e.g. the Spanish wouldn’t have been the early colonists to find them, it was actually the French, and Queen Isabella is portrayed here as a bit ‘yassifyed’ too (although I did like her characterization as an awful person, which is a bit accurate).
Kahhori’s rapid superpowers is a classic example of ‘person who immediately becomes the best at something because they’re the one’ which isn’t anything new for comic book movies or shows, even if her power set is a bit ill-defined. It’s interesting as a concept because the Tesseract giving people powers is basically from the ‘Space Stone’ and can do whatever the writers want to let people do. It’s also noteworthy that Mohawks were highly consulted on the episode, but the main point was to introduce a new super powerful character to be used in the finale.
After that is the pretty fun ‘What If… Hela Found the Ten Rings?’, which really delves into some interesting possibilities by combining the Wenwu villain (voice by Feodor Chin) from Shang Chi with Cate Blanchett reprising her role as Hela (the villain that was quite cool in Ragnarok and then ultimately wasted). This was a sort of riff on the first Thor movie where Hela’s powers are connected to her crown (something not said in the movies) where she gets to learn how to be a good person with the power of Asian mysticism.
As such it’s a little cliched at times, but Hela’s snark and personality was delightful, and I enjoyed the idea of her redemption arc — the fight against Odin was very well animated and choreographed. And of course we know Thanos is about to die at the end of the episode again.
Part three of the Peggy Carter tale is ‘What If… the Avengers Assembled in 1602?’ which is a very, very different adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic 1602 Marvel story, although there are elements that are similar (that one was more connected to the comics and had the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters so it was dramatically different even there).
Another example of a ‘fun’ tale that wasn’t entirely logical, but I did enjoy the past versions of most of the characters — Hogan was quite fun with his old school insults, and Loki as a Shakespearean actor wasn’t in it nearly enough. Oddly enough the Peggy/Steve chemistry here is better than in her own episode, even though it’s a bit shady (since that other Steve is still alive). In a way it’s impressive the sheer number of characters included, but the episode was far too short to really explore this concept fully.
The finale was ‘What If… Strange Supreme Intervened?’ and was another example of ‘fun but illogical’ taken to extremes. The idea of Strange Supreme wanting to bring back his Christine made sense to me, and the idea of stealing powerful people from other universes to ‘kickstart’ his universe had internal logic even if the concept was pretty quickly introduced.
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The main nonsense here was the giant fights between everyone — a hundred Easter Egg characters are shown and start fighting immediately, and the power levels make absolutely no sense. Thanos shows up with the Infinity Gauntlet and is instantly dusted by Killmonger with the Infinity Stones, who is then ‘moved’ by Kahhori with her powers (ill-defined to the end).
At least the bits with Hela controlling the zombies and her wanting to fight against Surtur made sense, some of the more interesting moments here — otherwise the rest of it is just a bunch of well-animated nonsense as Peggy somehow becomes insanely powerful as she and Kahhori fight Strange to a standstill.
When she has the Stones, that’s one thing, but then she holds them all and punches Strange in the face? That’s just … silly. The other thing that annoyed me was how all of the various heroes/villians were falling to their doom in the Forge, but were just freefalling and helpless — none of them can fly or teleport? We know that some should, but it’s just shown and hopefully ignored by us watching if even it doesn’t make sense.
So ultimately it was a fun and visually impressive tale even if the emotionality didn’t really pay off for me — sort of a summary for the season as a whole. But I do love the concept behind it, and I think there’s a lot of potential to keep improving on it. Some of the episodes stood out more, but there were no stinkers, and I’m definitely ready to see the next season whenever that happens.
What did you think of this season? Sound off in the comments below!
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