While the Multiverse Saga has been fairly all over the place in terms of story and consistency, an odd little bastion of calm within the MCU as of late has been the animated anthology series What If…?, which has been reliably dicking around with Marvel continuity since 2021. However, with the second overarching saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe fast approaching its sell by date thanks to numerous Avengers movies appearing on the horizon, the window for show host and cosmic peeping tom, the Watcher, to get his jollies peering in on various superfolk has come to an end.
That’s right, the show that essentially tries to be Marvel’s The Twilight Zone has reached its third and final season – but will the final crop of hyperthetical adventures bring a bumper, seasonal harvest or will it shift the titular question from What If…? to Why Bother…?.
Over to you Watcher, let’s see what you got for us this time…
With an opening cribbed wholesale from the second Captain America movie, we instead find that the fateful “on your left” jog around the Washington Monument is the trigger that sees Sam Wilson become firm friends with Bruce Banner. Obviously witnessing a man in pain, Wilson helps Banner attend therapy to help with his Hulk hangups, but when the guilt wracked doctor accidently transform into his rampaging alter ego on a fishing trip with Sam’s family, a horrified Banner flees and experiments on himself even more to purge his DNA of the gamma powered beast.
Hey, guess what? It goes completely wrong and as a result, the rays not only separate another monstrous entity from Banner’s body, but it grows to gargantuan size, spawns slightly smaller drones and goes all Pacific Rim on the surface of the Earth. However, speaking of Pacific Rim, Earth’s mightiest heroes, the Avengers, retaliate in large, robot mech versions of the Hulkbuster armour, but even though the towering form of the Apex and it’s supervised army is turned away, it came at a hefty cost.
Ten years later another team of Avengers, led by Sam as the new Captain America, keep a watchful eye for both the Apex or Bruce Banner, but soon Monica Rambeau, Bucky Barnes, Marc Spector, Shang-Chi, Nakia, the Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff have to step into the breach once more when the Apex makes its return. However, it’s seems the only way mankind has a hope of stopping this second wave is if Sam locates Banner to get his thoughts, however, Wilson isn’t particularly happy with Bruce for effectively infecting the planet with Kaiju. But after a long delayed reunion, it turns out that Banner has a few tricks up his sleeve than not only means playing the Apex at its own game, but ensuring that the Avengers – and their sweet ass mechs – can assemble literally.
The most refreshing thing about What If…? has always been that due to its anthology nature, if you get an episode underachieves, another one will be along in a day that might be better. Sadly, Mech Avengers tends to fall more into the “not so great” category mostly because it’s a far better concept than it’s execution can manage in a mere twenty five minutes. For a start, the entire first third of the episode is literally just set up as the Watcher tirelessly narrates us through the backstory in order to get to a point where it can simply just unleash some cool anime style designs for the Avengers’ sweet machines. Unfortunately, the plot is so needlessly complicated with establishing the whys and the wherefores, it never actually allows itself the time to properly cut loose with some kick ass monster wrasslin’ thus denying us the very thing we’ve tuned in for. It’s not like Kaiju movies or certain Anime are renowed for their meticulous set ups to why giant monsters are punching buldings – Godzilla in needed, Godzilla shows up: its that simple.
However, while I do admit that attempting to establish an emotional bond between Wilson and Banner is important to the story, but also does it at the expense of a rather sizable supporting cast, mostly refreshingly made up of characters who made their debuts in Phase 4. While a lot of them will show up in later episodes, it’s still a little frustrating that such personalities as Oscar Issac’s Marc Spector and Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi are only given the occasional quip or one liner when you consider that they each haven’t even had a sequel yet. David Harbour fares better, mainly because he’s showing up Thunderbolts* later this year and Teyonah Paris also is well served after now scoring the MCU hat trick of a show, a movie and now an animated series. And yet, while it’s understandable that everything is pushed to the side for time restrictions (we never even really get a good, long, lingering look at some of those Mech designs), the show foes ultimately manage to salvage itself with some cool references.
The opening sequence that acts as an animated series based on the original Avengers’ Mech exploits is so well realised, you’ll wish it was the episode and Banner’s final transformation into something dubbed the Mega Hulk, is a wonderful homage to Kaiju history as it’s essentially a giant Hulk equipped with Godzilla spines, a tail and an ability to blow green fire. However, it really does feel like a missed opportunity, especially when you remember how well the show ran with the concept of zombies back in season one where the lore and sizable cast merged much more smoothly.
So not exactly the most auspicious start for the third season then, but we have a long ways to go yet and if we’ve learned anything from our time spent with the Watcher, it’s that a lot of this stuff ends up getting referenced at the end of the season, so stay turned because the Mechs may not be dome quite yet. However, here’s hoping that the show hasn’t run out of creative jucies so far from the end, because What If…? really has earned its keep in the past as being a nice pallet cleanser from all that established continuity thanks to the fact that it regularly shits on it on an episode by episode basis – but if a third season is going to struggle to make fighting monsters with robot suits laboured, how’s it going to tackle the more subtle stories?
Still colourful, still delightfully nerdy to spot the references and still and enjoyably easy watch at a slight twenty minutes or so, What If…? continues your warp those expectations in outlandish ways, but if the season fails to flesh them out properly, it’s only going to make us ponder what if… they didn’t bother in the first place…?
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