What If…? (2021-Present)

*A few episode premise spoilers and spoilers for season 1 of Loki.*

This is the MCU show that I think a lot of fans were prepared to be skeptical of, the seeming odd man out in the first batch of Disney+ series. It’s animated, which immediately sets it apart from WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, and it’s a series of one-off alternate-reality stories that aren’t really a part of our Marvel. So what is it? Part of the MCU, or just a tangent? Given recent events in the franchise, it’s not quite as separate as it might have initially seemed.

An anthology series, with each episode pondering what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would have been like if one particular thing had happened differently. What if Peggy took the super soldier serum instead of Steve? What if Odin never adopted Loki? What if Hank Pym inadvertently brought a zombie virus back from the Quantum Realm? In each episode, we sit back and watch the changes play out.

While, again, the show might feel completely separate from the rest of the MCU, it does have its place. These episodes aren’t just entertaining thought experiments – season 1 of Loki ends with Kang’s hold on the Sacred Timeline being broken, leaving variants and branching timelines free to spring up across all of time and space. With What If…? following on the heels of that show, it’s clear the episodes we’re watching are simply that: branching timelines that are no longer being pruned by the TVA. It’s a big multiverse out there, people.

With such a wide-open premise, the show is a little all over the place. Some hew pretty closely to the original timeline, mainly just swapping one person’s story for another. Some are really inventive, drawing on fiddly continuity details from the original timeline to think of all the possibilities that might unfold differently. Some are total bloodbaths, and some are just a rollicking good time.

Unsurprisingly then, my feelings about the different episodes similarly vary, ranging from “Love it!” to “Pretty good” to “Yeesh.” My favorite is the delightful, retroactively-bittersweet story in which T’Challa, not Peter Quill, was abducted by Yondu and became Star-Lord. It has a fun, snappy vibe, and I like its “yes, T’Challa does make everything better!” philosophy. (I was expecting to be more emotional as I was watching it, but I held it together until the very end, when the dedication to Chadwick Boseman came up on the screen.) Just generally, I feel like the first season doesn’t strike a good enough balance between the flight-of-fancy stories and the unrelentingly bleak ones, weighing too heavily on the grim side. It starts to accumulate after a while, making the gut punches of seeing alternate versions of our heroes die feel repetitive, which should never be the case.

Also, after the opening Peggy-as-Cap episode, I feel like the franchise’s women get the short shrift here. There’s a lot of fridging going on in these various universes, and that definitely starts to accumulate too. And just generally, there aren’t many episodes centering around female heroes, not to mention the few that are featured more heavily never really get to let loose as wildly-different versions of their main-MCU character, like some of the men do.

Still, this is a neat series that’s almost endlessly full of potential. I have multiple ideas for Shang-Chi/the Ten Rings alone (including Iron Man 3 with Wenwu – that fan art I saw is still haunting me.) Assuming the series continues, I’d like to see it try more, make some wilder leaps, take more advantage of some of the excellent female characters in the MCU, and play around with the newer additions to the MCU as well.

The majority of the live-action cast reprises their roles here. We’ve got Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman in one of his final roles, Paul Rudd, Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Michael B. Jordan, Evangeline Lilly, Benedict Cumberbatch, Samuel L. Jackson and literally many more. Holding it all together is the always-welcome Jeffrey Wright voicing the Watcher, who stands outside the multiverse observing the various worlds.

Warnings

Violence, suggestiveness, language, drinking, and scary moments for kids (in terms of content, this is pitched similarly to the rest of the MCU, so it’s not overtly adult or anything, but it doesn’t sugarcoat stuff just because it’s animated.)