So after eight episodes and a whole load of Tony Stark deaths (seriously, give the dude a break), we finally reach the final episode of What If…’s first season and the biggest twist of this ambitious anthology show was that… it wasn’t an anthology show after all.
That’s right, in the MCU old habits die hard and one thing the world conquering franchise loves more than anything else is to stage a good old assembling as they fling a whole bunch of random heroes together in order to form a super team to get those pulses a’ racing.
It worked in The Avengers, it certainly worked in Avengers: Endgame and now a panicked Watcher attempts to do the same in the dual hope that Ultron’s multiversal rampage could be thwarted while similarly making the series required viewing in the ever more cluttered release schedule of Phase 4.
Assemble again, I guess…
After having his butt kicked from one side of the multiverse to the other by the malevolent A.I. known as Ultron, the Watcher realises that to save infinite universes from the robot’s wrath, he’s going to have to break is solemn oath and intervene. To start, he goes to Strange Supreme for help, a variant of the sorcerer who had gathered so much power, he had cause the collapse of his universe and from there they start cherry picking champions from various universes in order to fight and destroy Ultron once and for all. The team includes Star Lord T’Challa, Captain Carter, Black Panther Killmonger, Party Thor and a version of Gamora that managed to kill Thanos and after being given the lowdown of the task at hand, the newly dubbed Guardians Of The Multiverse hurl themselves into the fray.
However, it wouldn’t be an MCU team if there wasn’t some dissension within the ranks and while such issues, like Party Thor’s horrible attention span, create minor problems, the power hungry Killmonger starts cooking up plans within plans. However, for the most part, their plan is sound as they pound the metallic maniac with the hope of destroying the Infinity Stones with the aid of Gamora’s Infinity Crusher, but Ultron manages to persevere on the account of a cosmic technicality.
However, hope arrives in the form of the Black Widow from this ruined version of earth who still has the Arnim Zola computer program stored on a data arrow and so with renewed vigour the Guardian renew their attack. However, while Ultron is undoubtedly the main threat, can either Arnim Zola, the digitized consciousness of a Hydra scientist or Killmonger, a man who orchestrated a war between America and Wakanda for his own ends, be trusted with the infinite power that the Infinity Stones provides?
Anthology shows usually have the luxury of resetting the audiences expectations with every new episode and the benefits come from the fact that a duff episode or two doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire season is a wash. On the other hand, if an episode turns out to be fantastic, it usually ends up being the main thing a viewer remembers from the experience, making it, in most cases, a win/win situation. However, the most beneficial aspect is that if you blow your season finale, you haven’t necessarily ruined the entire season – but thanks to a couple of meta, MCU twists, What If…? seems to have put itself in the firing line.
The last episode, which dealt with a triumphant Ultron taking on an extra case load of destruction as his possession of the Infinity Stones allowed him to conquer the universe and beyond it, pissibly the multiverse too. However, after a bout of galactic fisticuffs with our cosmic host, the Watcher, the decision was made to form a team and bring the platinum bastard down once and for all. While this unsurprisingly proves to be spectacular – Marvel’s fallback method of putting a superpowered team together does cause a few drawbacks when you look at the big picture.
The first is the ditching of the anthology format which was – when the show first started, anyway – the whole selling point of the series as it was supposed to give us an entirely new set of circumstances each and every week; however, thanks to the change, we’ve now had the exact same adventure for two weeks in a row. Another issue is that it creates something of a curious pothole, because while a gang of disparate heroes who each have made dubious choices to get to this point make for great single episodes, it doesn’t really explain why the Watcher would choose them over the literal trillions of realities he had at his finger tips. Oh sure, Captain Carter is golden and Star Lord T’Challa is a solid choice too, but Party Thor? Also, if the Watcher has full knowledge of everything these guys have done, why on earth would you risk reality itself on trusting the barely human Sinister Strange and the back stabbing prone Killmonger to play nice with others?
The final problem that tries to tarnish What If…?’s big finish is one you can’t even really attribute to the makers of the epidode as that old enemy known as scheduling (surely a far bigger threat to the MCU as a whole than Ultron) means that the episode that introduces the Gamora that killed Thanos didn’t even air and thus leaves the character feeling more like lazily convenient plotting than a legitimate member of the team as literally nothing about her, including her Infinity Smasher, has been set up in the slightest. While the eventual release of this “lost” episode (which apparently deals with Tony Stark getting stranded on Sakaar instead of the Hulk) will no doubt fill some much needed holes, I guess it now creates the later problem of us knowing how the episode ends over a year after we’ve seen it.
Still, as regrettable as all the above is, thankfully the episode manages to pull through on sheer momentum alone with expansive, cool fight sequences the order of the day and the sight of Ultron getting drilled by multiple shield hits courtesy of Captain Carter and Black Widow is ridiculously satisfying. Speaking of Widow and Carter, the two benefit hugely from the episode picking them to have the most satisfying bits of character development with Hayley Atwell’s fan favorite alter ego going through the opening action sequence of The Winter Soldier by laying out Batroc on the Lemurian Star to possibly having a reunion with Steve Rogers after a post credits sequence. However, with Romanov, the show continues to tie up loose ends by having the Watcher further break his rules by taking her out of her destroyed reality and slotting her into the fallout of the third episode after that version of Natasha was assassinated.
While the finale of the MCU’s first animated certainly had its fair share of speed bumps (Strange Supreme is suddenly nice now?), it still manages to end things on an enjoyably messy high, which is great considering that season 2 is all but a cosmic certainty.
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