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This article contains What If… spoilers? If you haven’t caught up yet, check out our Spoiler-free review of What If… Season 3.
There is a moment What if…? Season 3 Episode 6, “What If… 1872?” where The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) explains that we are at the ends of the multiverse, where things are much stranger. “Think less ‘What if?'” he says, “And more ‘What the hell?'” That seems to be the ethos of the entirety of Season 3 of Marvel Animation’s What If…? – and frankly, it’s where the show should have started. Instead, the animated series is ending its run, just as it found its niche.
First announced in 2019 before the release of Avengers Endgame (although more importantly it was announced during a Disney investor call, before the release of Disney+), What If…? It was meant to be a bold new expansion for Marvel, the first of its animated series to launch on the streaming service. It would explore other takes on the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). And in a move unprecedented at the time, actors from the big screen would be included, playing their voices on the small screen. As Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb used to say, everything is connected… The MCU was a big place whether you were watching TV or movies, live action or animation.
Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what happened, either way. Yes, actors from Tom Hiddleston to Josh Brolin, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo reprized the What If…? But many did not return to the animated series, replaced by excellent and veteran voice actors. And it also became clear that Season 1’s Doctor Strange exploring a multiverse of madness had nothing to do with the dark Doctor Strange on screen, er, that “everything is connected” in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. here in Nü MCU as done with Loeb’s Agents of SHIELD or Marvel’s Netflix series, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and others. one, no matter what. Not the Punisher. the other
What if…? brilliantly tried to return to the MCU at the end of Season 2 with a tag that showed The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) and Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) looking at Loktree. Loki from the season 2 finale. But as Season 3 picks up, that’s not mentioned at all. And throughout this new season, the multiverse is visually shown through the prism through which The Watcher is viewing; not one of the tree-like visual representations that appear elsewhere in the MCU.
It’s especially disappointing to see this what if he was a wizard…? has covered MCU storylines over the previous two seasons. While there have been variations, the series has mostly featured playable riffs on the MCU films. As fun as Atwell seems to be playing Captain Carter, the episodes he’s appeared in have ranged from an almost beat-to-beat recreation of Captain America: The First Avenger to a cross between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black . the widow An episode where T’Challa became Star-Lord in Season 1 was mainly Guardians of the Galaxy. There was also an off-script episode in season 2, “What if… Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” and it didn’t throw an MCU movie yet it was something else: Die Hard, in the MCU.
Perhaps more troubling is that most of the episodes didn’t work as real “what if” scenarios. They would start in one place, but then use that less as a series of dominoes that overturn the way the Marvel Comics title is treated, and end up in a different place, which would go into the plot of an MCU movie. “What if… Hela Found the Ten Rings?” for example, less about the title question and more about throwing Hela into Shang-Chi’s plot. “What if…Iron Man collided with the Grandmaster?” He sent Tony Stark to Sakaar and then stuck it into a riff on Fast and the Furious’ Thor: Ragnarok.
There’s nothing wrong with asking questions no one has ever asked, but there’s a middle ground between what comics do – which is dominoes falling from a simple twist in a story, usually with devastating consequences – and not setting the stage. presenting any new information.
Not to change shows, universes, and even streaming services, but the latest season of Star Trek Lower Decks delivered a poignant episode earlier this year about the problems of multiverse storytelling. In the series finale, “Fissure Quest,” the show checked in with another version of Boimler (Jack Quaid) piloting a multi-variant ship of various Star Trek characters. And he was driving. he’s crazy Midway through the episode, while trying to figure out who’s causing the multiverse riffs, he exclaims, “They’re probably a hacky evil version of someone we all know. Reverse Picard or Borgified Kirk or (bleep) that, I don’t know, human Worf. That’s the multiverse. All lazy, derivative mixes!” Later, he stated that “the multiverse is just a rehash of things I already know”.
Despite his angry protests, Boimler is presented with another opportunity. A multiverse take on the multiverse, if you will, from an alternate version of Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) from Star Trek: First Contact. Why is he exploring the multiverse? “To understand ourselves better,” he says. “Learning about aliens is fun, but learning about humanity, that’s something else.”
“What if… Kahori reshaped the world?” he introduced new ideas and characters without using pre-existing plots as guidelines.
That episode What if…? Season 3 premiered, the Marvel show has been very slow to come around to that idea. What if…? episodes have fallen into the “derivative remix” line (we won’t say lazy given the hundreds of people who have gone to great lengths to make these animated episodes), it’s clear that the heart of the show lies in the ongoing story of The. The watcher learns to love and appreciate humanity. And beyond that, the friendship between the cosmic being and the earthly Peggy Carter. Episodes that have almost nothing to do with the MCU are like, “What if…Kahhori would reshape the world?” he introduced new ideas and characters without using pre-existing plots as guidelines.
And Season 3 is almost completely on track. While there is little attempt to connect the show to the MCU, the dominoes are less stacked on the deck than ever before. The season premiere, “What if…Hulk fought the Mech Avengers?” It begins with the question we’re sure we’ve all asked before: “What if Sam Wilson was running around Washington DC and ran into Bruce Banner instead of Steve Rogers?” And of course that somehow ends up with the Voltron Avengers fighting a giant Kaiju Hulk. “What if…Agatha went to Hollywood?” It’s based on the plot of Eternals, but again it’s just an excuse to take a musical character (Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness) and play it with another musical character (Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo).
“What if… the Red Guard stopped the Winter Soldier?” It’s a hilarious road trip buddy comedy. “What if… 1872?”, is a Western called “What the Hell” by The Watcher starring Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). And “What if…Howard the Duck Got Hitched?” it’s one of the biggest episodes of TV aired this year, with Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) sharing an egg that every forgotten villain in the MCU wants to steal, eat, or both. The episode is not even a “what if” scenario, despite the title; This is a sequel to the Season 1 episode Party Thor, which briefly introduced Howard and Darcy at an intergalactic party in Vegas.
With the series over, it’s clear What If…? He broke down this season, throwing all his crazy ideas at the wall because they might never get a chance to do one of those ideas. The Watchers even depart from the entire premise of the show, forming their own Watcher Council and confronting their close mentors in the final episodes of the season. What Boimler discovers is that it’s much more interesting to learn about humanity, heroism, and what the characters do when the chips are down than to repeat what they’ve seen before. He, like us, is tired of seeing the same thing – over and over and over again.
Beyond that, What if…? Season 3 works hard to be a project to reclaim the MCU’s rejection. Of course, we’ve promised that these things will return, and some of them are already in the works. But we haven’t seen Shang-Chi since his own movie. Kate Bishop appeared in an end credits scene in The Marvels after appearing in Hawkeye, but that’s about it. The Eternals has been so neglected that it’s an ongoing meme online about when the MCU will finally acknowledge a giant hand emerging from the ocean. What if…? explores the events of that movie in not one but two Season 3 episodes. The second time is to dive into the character of Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who appeared in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and then split. In a TV show that’s been sitting on the shelves for years now (finally scheduled to premiere in 2025).
What if…?, due to the need to sell subscriptions to a new streaming service at the time and breaking the relative stigma of watching animation, was sold for safety. Big stars, venues you know. But most of the time it didn’t work. Here, at the end, the series has leaned into the weird, wild and wonderful corners of the MCU. What the hell, if you will… And just as it has found its place in the Marvel universe, it has.
In fact, the season ends with a montage of all the things we’ll probably never see on TV, What if…? special sometime in the future: Weapon X Thanos, Kingo Iron Man, Ms. Marvel Ant-Man, and many, many more. Things that allowed Marvel characters to be explored in exciting ways we’ve never seen before, unique to animation. Instead, we should ponder the question: what if?
