The last season of What If…? was released once a week, and I reviewed each episode as it came out. Given that Marvel/Disney decided to put the second season out each night over nine nights, like some sort of janky comics Hanukkah, we thought it’d make more sense to do one big wrap-up essay for the series. Thus! I will give you an overall impression, then some non-spoiler notes on each episode, and then a somewhat more in-depth take a few paragraphs down. I’ll warn you before I get into any spoilers in case you haven’t seen the whole season yet.
My overall impression is that there was some fun stuff in this season! Personally, I vastly prefer the episodes that work as standalone stories to the ones where the show builds an overarching plot.
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Cascade Failure
And the best aspect of this is when the show takes two characters and crams them together in an unusual way. So for instance, hurtling us back into the 1980s, where we get to see the Avengers that might have been if Howard Stark had managed to assemble them in that decade. Or throwing us even further back, into the 1600s, where our heroes get to take embody different archetypes. Matching Tony with the Grandmaster, or Hela with Xu Wenwu, is going to lead to more surprises than “Peggy and Steve have to sacrifice their love for the good of the universe again.”
And while I’m a sucker for Peggy and Steve, that tragic love story would be better served I think by longer episodes than the 30-ish minutes a piece we get here. (Though to be fair, I wanted the Elizabethan one to be longer, too. Like, maybe a whole series of just that.)
The voice acting is excellent across the board. I might advise skipping the episode intros just so you can be surprised by who shows up, and I’ll discuss particular actors more below a spoiler line. Up here, I’ll say that Jeffrey Wright once again plays the Watcher as wise, world-weary, resigned to his role as an observer who cannot, must not intervene—which makes it hilarious when he inevitably gets involved. (I’ll also say: If you haven’t seen American Fiction yet, get yourself to a theater!) Hearing the Watcher interrupt his own somber monologue to stammer “What the hell was that?” because an unexpected portal just opened, or gasp in surprise when Peggy Carter snaps: “I can hear you, you know” as he describes her plight, is always, always funny to me. I really loved that the last season allowed the Watcher himself to grow as a character, and I’m pleased that they leaned into it a bit this time, too.
Several of the episodes rely on a character who’s traditionally heroic gradually wearing a more “evil” character down until they have a change of heart. This should have gotten old, but I found myself charmed by it every time. Less charming is that once again many episodes devolve into characters hitting each other a lot, or multiple people of indeterminate power hitting each other with beams of different colored light/magic/energy force (???) until, for some reason, one is stronger! Who knows why! And then everything dissolves into smoke or white light and we get to find out who won. Doing this once with two extremely powerful Marvel characters could be fine. Doing it repeatedly over a season that you’re expecting people to marathon, and doing it many, many times in one 35-minute finale where everyone’s powers are so vague the stakes are never clear, is a bit much.
Overall though, I liked a lot of this season. One of the episodes I was most looking forward to turned out to be kind of a dud, and one I didn’t have high hopes for turned out to be my favorite. I was startled to see that one of these episodes has a scene with more sexual chemistry in it than the last ten MCU movies put together. I’ll mention that it’s frustrating to see that this alt-universe cartoon is still willing to give more prominent roles to non-white, non-male heroes than the live-action movies. Here, at last, we get a version of the Avengers that has an equal number of men and women! Huzzah! But also I’m glad that we at least get it here, and it’s fun.
And I know I keep using the word fun, but… remember when this used to be fun? When you and your friends would go see the new Marvel movie on Friday night (maybe even a midnight show!) and the whole theater would whoop and yell and you’d have a great time, whether or not you knew all the comics lore, because each new movie told its own story? And if you did know the lore there was stuff there just for you! Remember when there was maybe one Marvel movie a year, and you didn’t have to do homework to enjoy them?
This is kind of how What If…? feels to me. Because so many of these stories are remixes, it doesn’t matter as much if you’ve seen all the rest of the MCU. Even if you didn’t see the last season you can probably have a good time until the finale, when things might get a little confusing. And even then, you can probably work it out from context clues.
It turns out I’ve missed sitting down and having a good time with these characters.
What If… I recap the episodes in a sentence or two because there’s a lot to cover?
“What If… Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?” doesn’t entirely work, I don’t think. Which is frustrating, given that it’s the season opener! Nebula ends up joining the Nova Corps and has to investigate a conspiracy on Xandar amid double-and-triple crosses galore, and some surprising characters come to her aid.
“What If… Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?” takes us to an alternate 1988. After Yondu delivers Peter to his father, Ego, the boy ends up attacking Earth and facing off with an ‘80s version of the Avengers led by Howard Stark and Captain Carter. This one works well because of the interplay of the alt Avengers; of all the episodes this season, this one felt the most “alternate reality” to me, because it leaned into the idea that the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are archetypes to be inhabited by whomever is available. I also loved seeing Peter Quill as a little kid, and that in any time, in any universe, he and Rocket will find each other.
Favorite Quote(s):
“…and I thought my kid was a pain in the ass”—Howard Stark
“I’ve got a plan. Retreat.”—Hank Pym
“What If… Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” is a bonkers remake of Die Hard, with Stark Tower standing in for Nakatomi Tower, Happy Hogan as our intrepid John McClane, and Darcy as our Al Powell. This one’s set pretty soon after the events of the first Avengers, and not only does it work as a riff on Die Hard, there are lots of festive references to other Christmas movies. I might actually add this one to my usual roster of holiday watching. There’s also a shot of a glossy science magazine with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner on the cover under the headline: “Science bros: what are they cooking up?”
Favorite Quote: When a character refers to himself as “Tony Stark’s greatest adversary” Maria Hill whips back with: “Greatest adversary? What are you, a wealth tax?”
“What If… Iron Man Crashed into the Grandmaster?” also goes back to the first Avengers movie, with Tony Stark landing on Sakaar right after the Battle for New York, and forging an alliance with Valkyrie, Korg, and a few other familiar faces as he tries to outwit the Grandmaster. But again with the ‘80s nostalgia, this one gives us a decidedly Mad Max-ish demolition derby. I’m not sure if I was in A Mood or what, but this one made me kind of emotional. I love seeing Tony as the mentor who wants to help someone else with their redemption arc, but even more than that, knowing that he’s only barely started his own arc at this point, watching him reach out to someone else got to me more than I expected.
“What If… Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?” drops us into Peggy and Steve’s Doomed Love, already in progress. This episode functions as a sequel to last season’s “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” and “What If… the Watcher Broke His Oath?”, and while I thought this one packed too much plot into too little time, I want the world for Peggy Carter.
Favorite Quote:
“I don’t do sequels. Normally”—The Watcher
“What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?” introduces a new character, a young Mohican woman named Kahhori, in a world where the power of the Tesseract has infused a lake with mysterious powers in pre-colonial North America. I talk about this a bit in the spoiler section, but I really wanted this episode to do more with Kahhori’s actual character, because the plot takes her in a direction that made me, frankly, ecstatic.
“What If… Hela Found the Ten Rings?” sees Hela banished to Midgard during the medieval era. Here I am of two minds. I love Cate Blanchett’s voice acting here, and I love that the real question is “What If… Odin Was a Terrible Father?” because that’s always the question when you’re dealing with Asgardians. At the same time, I wish the episode had done a little more with the idea beyond giving us more training montages and more redemption arcs. Does Hela, Goddess of Death, really need a redemption arc?
Favorite Quote: “I’ve not survived a thousand years of war to die at the hands of foliage!”—Hela
“What If… the Avengers Assembled in 1602?” is my favorite. Maybe my favorite Marvel thing ever. This episode has so much fun with the premise and with remixing the characters, and, genuinely, I wish it had been feature length.
Favorite Quote: “HULK SMITE THEE!”
“What If… Strange Supreme Intervened?” continues Peggy Carter’s arc, with some help from Stephen Strange, and wraps up the season with entirely too much fighting.
Favorite Quote:
“…right. So you’re here to narrate.”—Captain Carter on The Watcher’s refusal to help her
[heavy sigh] “It’s my job.”—The Watcher
What If… I talk about spoilers now?
I think they needed to restructure this sucker a bit.
Kahhori is good in theory, but she’s introduced halfway through the season, in an extremely exposition-heavy episode. She and her brother have a conversation that no two kids who grew up there would be having—it’s just for our benefit. It’s jarring to go between her paradisiacal life and what’s being done to her people back home. There’s also no reason given for why she’s suddenly better at wielding all this magic than all these other people who have been using it for centuries. We know nothing about her as a person, only as a hero. When she comes back in the finale, there’s no sense of relief that she’ll be fighting at Captain Carter’s side, because we don’t know enough about her as a person to be like “Oh yeah, she and Peggy will get along great!”
What if… the show had used its pilot to introduce her, in media res, and given her more memories of her life at home, so we knew her as Kahhori, the Mohawk woman whose life was suddenly thrown into chaos and had to use unique skills and personality traits to deal with that, rather than Kahhori, the super-powered person who is OK with all the time travel and portals and magic-wielding cause the plot needs her to be? And then she’s back for the finale, and we have no idea how much time has passed from her perspective, and she and Peggy team up after two sentences of introduction?
Instead we open with one of the weakest episodes of the season. Again, in theory “Nebula uncovers a government conspiracy in a Blade Runner-esque version of Xandar, with help from Howard the Duck” is the kind of plot I want to inject into my largest biggest vein. Unfortunately, we’re dragged through, again, A LOT of exposition, very quickly, so Nebula can be the person the plot needs her to be instead of the character we know. And then her noir storyline is punctured by a constant stream of quips from Korg, who is bartending in Xandar for some reason.
And let’s talk about that. I am a person who processes everything through humor. Silly, deadpan, gallows, whatever a situation calls for, I’ve got jokes. Yet even I have grown weary of the quips. Scott Lang throwing zingers out as fast as he can think them? Sure. Darcy providing witty commentary on her own life as it unfolds? OK. But when it’s every character it flattens all the emotion. Again, Mick Wingert does a fantastic job as Tony Stark, and it makes sense for that character. Getting to see Cate Blanchett as an earlier, much snarkier version of Hela, one who wasn’t imprisoned and embittered, worked really well for me. But when every character matches witticism with witticism, and every potentially serious moment is interrupted, it gets to be kind of a problem. Especially with Korg, whom I loved in Ragnarok but who really didn’t need to be in Nebula’s episode, and who maybe gets a little too much screentime in the one set on Sakaar as well.
The voice acting really is great. Cate Blanchett makes Hela snarky, mean, and seductive as well as breaking out her “IN PLACE OF A DARK LORD YOU WOULD HAVE A QUEEN!” voice a few times. Hayley Atwell makes for the perfect thoughtful, moral steel rebar character, sacrificing her own happiness time after time, in ever time. Jeff Goldblum might be even better as an animated Grandmaster than he was in Thor: Ragnarok. As I mentioned, Mick Wingert’s take on Tony Stark is in the neighborhood of Robert Downey Jr., but it’s a little smarmier and smugger and calls back to Comics!Tony in a way I really like. Kat Dennings sings! Jon Favreau is a riot as a Hulk-blood-infused Happy and as Elizabethan Happy!
OK and now let me go off on the 1602 episode. To start—to start—with Tom Hiddleston as Loki doing the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy in front of an impatient audience? To make all of Sir Happy’s dialogue over-the-top Shakespearean insults? To make Scott Lang and Bucky Barnes a pair of Merry Men, trading japes? Rogers Hood??? Are you kidding me??? THIS is where the series excels. Thor is a good and capable king, but also quick to anger and a bit of a blowhard. Of course, Loki is part of Will Shakespeare’s crew, and thinks Iago is the good guy in his boss’ latest play. Naturally, Tony is a drunken tinkerer, accused of madness because his mind is centuries beyond everyone else’s. Sure, Banner is The hulk in the Iron Mask, locked away for everyone’s safety. And obviously Steve Rogers, transposed into this world, would steal from the rich to help the poor. Watching this remixed team plan and execute a heist is everything I want from one of these shows.
Since we’re getting a Marvel Zombies spinoff, and at least one more season of What If…?, I really hope that the writers will lean into the sheer possibilities afforded by being able to take these characters anywhere and everywhere in the Multiverse, and remember that most of us fell for these character in the first place because they were fun to spend time with.
