Review of the Third Season of What If should go here! We’ll be covering in two parts: Part I (1-4) will be this week. The second will be recording Monday evening around 9:30pm ET!
I never really appreciated that there were no chairs until now. And how on earth did he make the microwave bigger on the inside? I wish we got more Anita, or that we come back to her à la
Donna. Err… wrong thread.
The theme of unlikely relationships being the key point of every episode, and more to the point of people just supporting each other, is a lovely theme so far. The episodes that leaned in to that more were the ones I liked the most. They’re also really having fun playing with expectations about which of the episodes provides ingredients for the finale’s recipe.
Hello all. It’s now time to ask the question What If… Blind Avenger actually wrote a short piece of feedback? (Imagine Uatu having to watch me fail at this task over and over again. Would he intervene to spare WH from my short stories?)
While the high points of What If have been done extremely well (Strange Supreme and Kahhori for example,) many stories haven’t felt interesting enough overall. For me, the show is at its best when they radically reinvent things or pick a unique genre and go all in with its tropes.
With that being said, I was really disappointed with the first episode. If they were going to do the mech Avengers, go all out and spoof an episode of Power Rangers with all of its campy goofiness or something. Instead of putting the MCU through the filter of the other genre, they filtered the genre through the MCU and it left me feeling bored as a result. The short runtime created pacing issues and Banner grappling with being a monster for the millionth time didn’t help either. It’s not that I disliked the idea, I just thought they wasted a lot of potential by not taking it even further.
Pacing issues continued with the second and fourth episodes, but the latter was still a lot of fun. Drastically reinventing things in Party Thor’s universe, I also enjoyed the use of KISS’ I Was Made For Loving You. Howard and Darcy’s interactions were great and the entire episode was a fun romp.
The episode with Agatha was okay, but it felt like there was something missing for some reason. I also thought that Kingo professing his love came out of nowhere along with Agatha’s change of heart. It just didn’t fit her character at all and took me out of it a bit.
What if Red Guardian stopped the Winter Soldier from killing Howard and Maria Stark was my favourite episode of the first half. They played the perfect buddy cop duo and it has me hoping they share a similar dynamic in Thunderbolts* now. Although having Bill Foster playing a Nick Fury role in this universe seemed random, I really like what it added to the overall story.
Starting with the convergence episode, The season’s back half was much stronger. This was probably my favourite of the season and maybe the whole series. Perhaps it’s because I’m a mark for Mysterio, but Riri Williams was also quite excellent. The idea of merging with white Vision was really interesting and the way Mysterio used his illusions with nano tech to create swerve after swerve gave the plot some legs. This one had perfect pacing and that went a long way too.
The western episode was interesting enough while not groundbreaking. I know it’s a thing in the comics that Uatu is the multiverse’s worst Watcher, but having him interfere so nonchalantly was hilarious for some reason. It’s like he had a fever and the only cure was more interference. This led to a really nice two part finale with good pacing, cool interactions and plenty of throwbacks to the series as a whole. I just wish that the insane battle had seemed a bit less anti-climactic. (Still, how can you go wrong with a mention of Madisynn with two N’s and a y, but it isn’t where you thiiiiiink!?)
Some final thoughts:
- Did What If add some backstory to the sacred timeline by revealing how Winter Soldier found Howard and Maria Stark? I know it’s an alternate universe, but the retcon would be a neat touch.
- Why did they have to ruin the Howard the Duck episode by including Zeus from Love and Blunder? I hate that character and I hate that movie.
- Is Stormwatcher officially one of the most OP characters in the MCU now? An omega level mutant who’s the goddess of thunder with the powers of a Watcher is kind of insane.
That’s it for me. Hope you got some downtime during the holidays to relax and enjoy a crisp ice cold can of Canada Dry (or other drinks) with family and friends. Until next time, make mine MCU L8r and get well soon, Rich! Park mark out… brap brap!
1 Like
Dude I give the equivalent of a sci fi fart joke in 4 lines and you write an actual post worth reading. You make the rest of us look bad! Ok, so there’s no rest of us yet, but come on! Fine, for the finale I’m going to make an effort like I did with the deadpool one. You’re gonna need so much canada dry after this.
1 Like
I’m in book 3 of the Mistborn series and two episodes share a lot of tropes with those of those books. Funny how things line up like that!
What if? comments:
This final season reaffirms the show’s premise that there’s only a few archetypal stories to tell and they’re told over and over in infinite variation. But they’re always about people, and what makes people admirable.
- Season 1 was playing with different ways people are heroes, and how they can be heroes sometimes regardless of circumstance (and that leads to the guardians of the multiverse). These stories are what we tell children.
- Season 2 was a lot about external and internal redemption, finding your place giving yourself your own destiny, self judgement and ultimately, self worth with finding your own standards for yourself (this is what makes Strange Supreme’s final scenes conquering his demons). Both finding your own destiny and living up to your own standards are to contrast what we think we’re supposed to be, a bit like Thor in Endgame. These stories are the ones we play out ourselves are we grow up and find our place in the world and navigate what we’re told vs what we experience.
I’m doubling down that this season’s theme was about relationships, more specifically friendships and how they manifest differently but can be equally deep. In the end, however you viewed things early on (season 1) and during growing pains of life (season 2), how you connect and bond with others ultimately gives our lives value and meaning (season 3).
- Wilson and Banner: It’s a good pickup from Strange’s demons coming out and in this ep Banner supercharges his demon after spending all episode expressing shame and hesitation about it. But ultimately he chooses to out it warts and all (and tail?!) for the greater good. But Sam was still there for him no matter how bad it was, because that’s not Banner, and that was the thesis of that episode for me.
- The Russian odd couple buddy cop trope is pretty apt about loyalty (again) being the foundation of a friendship.
- The ducks has the, erm, well it also has parental love which is its own kind of awesome and literally going across the universe to protect them even if you’ve never met them.
- 1872 is an exposition of an established duo of people who have their own lives but support each other with their own stories since everyone in your life also lives their own complicated, tumultuous life, but you may never know it. Or maybe its role was just a soft introduction to the Hood to get people into Ironheart.
Unlike what I thought, none of it (except Byrdie) had much of a role toward the finale. The relationships, over and over, show what people will do for others. Nothing novel about that, except it’s always novel in the multiverse. Carter starts off by just wanting to help and old friend and it culminates a self sacrifice mirroring Strange’s ending. She personifies the themes of all three seasons of the show this way. Two Carters in one day 
.
The two exceptions for the season’s themes specifically involved Celestials: one where Tiamut emerged and we learn that Riri is supposed to be even more capable than we thought, possibly as primer for Ironheart; and Agatha becoming a Celestial and drawing in the other Celestials and hinting a return. Both eps involve relationships too, especially between Kingo and Agatha, but they weren’t as thematic to me as in other episodes. It seems the primary purpose of those episodes were to poke memories about the Eternals (and I’m going to follow some WH wisdom and rewatch!). Maybe it’ll be in Brave new world, or maybe Ironheart, but I think it’ll play a non-trivial role. I mean, you could really solve world hunger issues with Tiamut’s body and some bbq sauce. Finger licking good.
I want people to know that MCU L8R is my personal season 3 this year.
I say it below, but I think the team that we just saw (Jeffrey Wright, Jason Isaacs, Devery Jacobs, and Natasha Lyonne) can all show up live action.
Where What If? might tie in to future projects::
Plot-wise, we just saw another secret war, so to speak. I’m guessing that Secret Wars will be a multi-faction multiversal war kind of like how civil war was about a bunch of different conflicts put together.
- There’s an incursion that prime-universe Strange is dealing with, with Clea. Stupid funny Tangent: (I used a spoiler tag to help you skip over this if you want but there’s no actual spoiler to anything)
I still think Clea and Strange got married for technical multiversal plot reasons and that was referenced by Wong to Madisynn about still having drinks left over from a wedding in She Hulk. Also, where the merde is the episode about Uatu saving Madisynn? And is the reason that the Eminence has a stick up his butt just because he couldn’t figure out where the y went in Madisynn?
- There are artifacts from other dimensions (Shang Chi and Ms Marvel).
- Rambo is stuck in the xmen universe and if an incursion destorys one universe, xmen and avengers are going to have some differing thoughts on how to address that.
- There’s a brand new collection of branches of the multiverse created by Strange that are markedly different than the rest of the multiverse, maybe it only has Doom and no Kang. I can see a Kang/Doom conflict resulting in Doom coming out on top.
- And of course, we have slighted Watchers. I have to imagine Jeffrey Wright and Jason Isaacs will stuff some baldcaps for liveaction. It would also be a good excuse to bring Devery Jacobs and Natasha Lyonne to live action as well, especially since the animated versions were made to look like the voice actors.
- There is one universe in the multiverse where WH praises DC all day long.
Forgive me as I’m desperately not trying to sound like another person from Chicago leaving feedback…but Marvel what is going on?
Why would you show us Weapon X Thanos, Samurai Ghost Rider, Sorcerer Maestro, Man-Spider, Star Lord Shang Chi, and Jubilee Silver Surfer knowing damn well we got the shit end of the deal when it came to the “What If?” concept?
Nobody wants more Captain Carter besides Kevin Feige and despite this being the THIRD time we’ve seen Peggy Carter die on screen, I can almost guarantee you she’s popping up again in the next Avengers movie.
Even the one cool concept, what if Storm becoming Thor, didn’t get any screen time and was just yada yada’d without any explanation.
There’s a universe in which this show could tie into Loki or any of the upcoming live action Multiverse movies as a way to bring some of these characters into live action and further the multiverse saga, but hey I’m glad we got a bestiality episode with Howard the Duck.
1 Like