The end is in sight for What If…?. Not just for the season, but for the entire show itself as Marvel seems to be tying up those multiversal threads one by one in time for Avengers: Secret Wars. However, for a show that literally uses infinity as its starting point, how do you even begin to wrap up a series where anything can happen – well, for a start, to drop in a set up episode.
That’s right, with the anthology format requiring that the writers better lay down some narrative track, it’s time for one of those textbook, two episode endings that often wrap up another season of the Watcher doing his thing, but with such gargantuan stakes on the table, where would you even begin?
Well, it helps if you go back to the start and with that, it’s time to say a fond welcome back to the closest the series has come to having another regular cast member – Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter. With a brand new line up for the Guardians Of The Multiverse and the Watcher himself in dire peril, can we get things up to speed quick enough to bring the multiversal house down?
As a switch from the usual opening narration tells us, the Watcher isn’t calling the shots anymore and the numerous times he’s interfered when he’s supposed to be operating in a strictly hands-off capacity has finally caught up with him. Meet the Eminence, the Watcher who watches the Watcher, and after witnessing the rules be broken time and time again, he and his cronies, the Incarnate and the Executioner, have taken the Watcher to be tried for his crimes. However, during his arrest, broken shards of reality fall from the fifth dimension and make their way to a universe where the Guardians of the Multiverse are aiding the Nova Corps to kill a huge Hydra space squid. Joined by the godlike Native American Kahhori; Brydie the grown offspring of Darcy and Howard The Duck and a varient of Ororo Monroe who has the powers of Thor, this current team of Multiversal warriors correctly surmises that the Watcher is in some deep, cosmic do-do and plan on using the shards to locate the fifth dimension to help, but believe it or not, it’s surprisingly hard to manipulate pure reality as an energy source – even if you have Kang’s Chronosphere.
However, there is one who has the raw power to traverse the Multiverse the way other people simply wander in and out of other rooms and that’s Infinity Ultron. If you don’t recall, Infinity Ultron is a version of the killer A.I. than not only got the body of vision, beat the Avengers and claimed all the Infinity Stones, but he waged a war across all of reality once he discovered the Watcher was spying on him. Of course, the gang isn’t going to use that Infinity Ultron, but instead locate a reality where one hasn’t yet discovered the Multiverse – however, can you simply just ask a genocidal, cosmically powered A.I. to just pitch in and help?
Whenever What If…? deviates from the anthology path things always gets risky. While season 1 stuck the landing pretty well, season two felt a little thrown together as Captain Carter and Kahhori used a ton of superhero bling to defeat Strange Supreme. However, to set up the end of What If…? it’s going to take a bit more than just a string of twist endings and stings to set up what’s to come, so The Watcher Disappeared indulges in a spot of MCU scrapbooking to set the scene.
After rescuing the universe of Super Nova Nebula (last seen in season 2) from the Hydra Space Squid (first introduced in season 1), we get a role call of Captain Carter’s new buddies and while it feels a little too similar to the exact same scenario laid out by The Marvels, there’s some serious firepower contained within. Firstly, Kahhori has already been introduced in season 2 and her Tesseract given powers are still very much in effect, but the second member turns out to be Brydie The Duck, the child last seen from the fourth episode of this season who was born from the ungodly coupling betwixt woman and duck (Howard and Darcy). However, the third is pure geek fuel as yet another member of the X-Men has managed to bleed into the MCU in the form of Storm. But while we’ve seen everyone from Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to Kelsey Grammer’s Beast pop up here there and everywhere, this version of Ororo Munroe hails from the animated realms of Mutants who protect a world that hates and fears them. Yep, that means the powerful vocals of Alison Sealy-Smith get another spirited workout after the triumphant return of the X-Men animated series and we even get a version that’s become the Goddess of Thunder to boot, just to give some extra oomph to those nerdy joy-gasms that it will no doubt incur.
However, while the world building is up to the series usual standard of mixing and matching everything it can, the actual plot to set everything up ends up being somewhat anticlimactic as it’s literally the quartet spitballing ideas about how to breach the fifth dimension and then promptly failing. Seriously, it feels like a good third of the episode is literally Carter, Kahhori, Byrdie and Storm floating random ideas only for them to crash and burn. It’s only when someone brings up Infinity Ultron that the plot actually gets moving, which is strange considering that you’d maybe want to spend a bit more time in his presence considering how important he is, but because of the sub-continuity of What If…? that exists beneath the actual continuity of the sacred timeline of the MCU, more explanations have to be made. This isn’t the actual Infinity Ultron we saw before, but one who has only(!) succeeded in wiping out all life in his universe, however, we now have so little time, the show has our heroes instantly find an Ultron who has been alone for eons and has chilled out substantially from his “kill all humans” phase. So after going to great lengths to explain how they can’t get to the fifth dimension for most of the running time, the episode suddenly fast tracks us right into finding a nice Ultron on our first try which is kind of annoying when you think about it.
Still, it’s always nice to have Atwell back, Natasha Lyonne’s wiseass, rock chick persona as Byrdie translates rather well to the MCU ahead of her upcoming appearance in Fantastic Four: First Steps and the inclusion of Storm is yet another creeping step toward the inevitable rise of the X-Men. However, considering that this is the penultimate episode of What If…? ever, I thought that the show would leave us with a cliffhanger somewhat more substantial than this to keep us hungry for the 24 hour wait for the big finale, but while it’s legitimately good to have an Ultron back in the mix again, I can’t say I’m on the edge of my seat – which is actually a little disconcerting considering this comes from the studio that ended one of the biggest films in history with half the population of the universe turning to dust.
What If… we punched this up a bit, eh guys?
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