What If...? (Season 1) Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the latest MCU Disney+ series What If...?, which is a fun anthology series based off of the comic book series of the same name. For the most part, it's pretty successful in its alternate retellings of pivotal MCU events. 

There were, right off the bat, some very strange things about it - the animation can often be disconcerting, creating an uncanny valley effect when it's entirely centered around human characters, making them look and feel like jelly. And, speaking of those human characters, sometimes the voice acting is terrible. 

Like, it's either a halfhearted effort (Captain Carter) where they're just better screen actors or they're the original actors sounding absolutely nothing like they do in the movies (The Collector and Kurt). I don't even know why that happened, but The Collector really didn't sound like Benecio del Toro. 

Uncanny valley much?

Just a nitpicky thing, they either needed to commit to TV-PG or TV-14. For the most part, What If...? was completely TV-PG, it just had a few swear words that felt really out of place given the mostly kid-friendly tone. Even the zombie episode was fairly kid-friendly in terms of violence. 

Like, Primal on HBOMax is listed as TV-14, and that really took full advantage of it (I doubt that every episode is TV-14, some definitely hit TV-MA). But What If...? never took full advantage of either side. It's stuck in a weird middle ground of some episodes feeling like Super Hero Squad to some episodes feeling like The Walking Dead for the family. It could have been an amazing and dark kid's show, but instead, it settles for middle-of-the-road show rated TV-14 for arbitrary reasons. I almost want to write another article about how the rating system is broken. 

What If... Captain Carter Were The First Avenger? 

My first and most immediate problem with What If... Captain Carter Were The First Avenger? is that it is far too derivative of Captain America: The First Avenger. For a series marketed and based around the hook of "One small choice changes everything," it felt like absolutely nothing changed. It's a major problem. 

I guess I did like the action sequences, though. The animation had several uncanny valley moments when the characters were just talking, but when the action started the animation kicked into overdrive and created a very slick and fluid-looking flow to it. 

The one thing I would have changed about this episode (Aside from the voice actors) was that I would have had Steve Rogers stay presumed dead so he could become the Winter Soldier. A future Winter Steve vs Captain Carter episode founds far more interesting than just another Captain Carter is Captain America and nothing else changes plotwise.

 

"How did they make The First Avenger lame?"
3/10.

What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord? 

What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord? is one of the best in the series. It's a new, clever take on the MCU world (Which felt even fresher after Captain Carter's bland retread). It was an immediate course-correct for the series - a fun concept, good voice acting, a different enough take to where it's interesting, and well-placed humor. 

Adding on to that, Chadwick Boseman's incredible performance as Star-Lord (Anachronistic name, I know) is all the more impactful after his death. It's truly great that we got an episode centered solely around T'Challa. I also loved peaceful Thanos, he stole every scene.

At the end of the day, it's not that special without it being Chadwick Boseman's last performance. It has fun easter eggs and a much, much better vibe than the pilot, but it's not special. It's just fun.

"Okay, but the Watcher calls him "T'Challa Star-Lord." 
Either pick Star-Lord or T'Challa, it sounds weird when it's both."
8/10.

What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes? 

I had a lot of problems with What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes? The first is the off-screen moment that changed everything. At first it plays like a by-the-numbers murder mystery between the Phase I MCU flicks, but the "What If" is off-screen and took place a while ago. That felt weird. 

The second was some of the humor and excessive kid-friendliness. For a concept like a murder mystery between our favorite Avengers, really strange scenes of weird humor (Coulson smelling Thor's dead body) make the entire thing worse. It did the MCU thing, it got too serious and had to make a terrible joke to make us hate it. Great. 

The kid-friendliness came into play with Hulk's death. The murderer explodes Hulk, but he just expands and then "poofs" like a cartoon balloon. It's not plausible and makes you want to laugh, not feel terrified or scared of the threat. It's too kid-friendly. You're rated TV-14 for a reason, use it! I saw darker stuff on Earth's Mightiest Heroes! 

The one thing I did like about the episode is the reveal of the killer. I thought it would be Loki (He is a trickster, after all) but it's actually Hank Pym as Yellowjacket. For a nerd like me, that means a lot. For the general audience, I imagine it was just "neat." But it was a fun subversion.

"Yellowjacket was neat."
4/10. 

What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands? is just about the only episode that rivals the dark and twisted nature of the source material. Here we see a Doctor Strange, driven by the death of Christine Palmer (I don't care about fridging, it serves a purpose), turning to the dark side of the magic martial arts force and becoming evil. 

He starts sucking the life of other beings to gain this power (Albeit glowy and kid-friendly) and becomes withered and pale. It's a sad watch, his slow descent into madness. And even sadder is the way the episode ends - Strange, after resurrecting Christine, has destroyed his universe and is now completely alone, sobbing over what he's done. 

That was some straight-up What If? material right here. If I feel sad, disturbed, and small in the universe, you've adapted What If? properly. After this episode, I was pumped for the rest of the series. Now I know it can be dark and dreary, I was getting worried. It's not afraid to end sad. It just made me even more excited for: 

"Very schway."
10/10.

What If... Zombies?

What If... Zombies? was my most hyped episode of the series. I remember being, like, 9 and having a guide to all the Marvel characters, and for just one corner of a page, it talked about Marvel Zombies. The image on there (Wolverine's claws reflecting to show Hulk's mouth full of eyeballs) gave me the curiosity to read the plot on Wikipedia... and ay yi yi, that was a mistake. That disturbed me for a long, long time. 

So hopes were high for a disturbing episode, and hopes were even higher after last week's. Alas, What If... Zombies? proved to be just about the most kid-friendly of the bunch. Because it had to appropriate the zombie genre (Lone survivor wakes up -> Rescued by a group of unlikely friends -> Finds a radio for a cure -> It's a trap -> Has to go to get the real cure to the world) in typical MCU fashion (Every serious moment, character beat, and disturbing event being usurped by a joke), it felt... weird.

Some scenes were unnerving and gave darker concepts - a legless T'Challa is being kept alive by Vision to satiate Scarlet Witch's hunger, for example - but two seconds later Ant-Man is shouting the lamest, most poorly-written jokes in the entire MCU. I mean, his best friend Kurt literally dies and his first response is a joke and 0 sadness over what just happened. It was terrible, you couldn't take anything seriously. 

Or when Happy dies and Sharon Carter sadly says "blam," as if it were anything more than a lame throwaway joke, or when Sharon dies and Hope, mildly disgusted, says that she "Has Sharon all over her!" This episode needed to be an entire movie to spread out the jokes or needed to remove the jokes, because nearly none of them landed and each one undermined the potentially interesting tone. 

And the episode is so full of plotholes it hurts - how was Wanda caught by a zombie when Vision is always at her side? How did Thanos get the time stone from Doctor Strange? Why did it take Hope agonizingly long to transform into a zombie? Why did Vision kill himself immediately instead of waiting until they got to the quinjet? Why were the zombies not afraid of the mind stone after Vision's death? Why was Thanos in Wakanda if they didn't have the mind stone there? Why, when you're a TV-14 show, did you have the zombies eat no one and their virus spread through saliva instead of bites? 

Just about the only redeeming factor of the episode is Peter Parker. The Peter Parker here is almost better than the "Sacred Timeline" Peter - out of Stark's shadow and talking about how Uncle Ben's death motivates him to never give up, two things the last Spidey movies have missed out on. 

"You had so much potential."
7/10.

What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark? 

What If.. Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark? was like if someone wanted to watch Iron Man but accidentally switched it to Black Panther halfway through. It's a fun twist on Iron Man with the flamboyancy of Iron Man 2 at first, it's a lot of fun. You don't know what's going to happen next. But then it jumps to Age of Ultron's Klaue trade, and then immediately into Black Panther with Killmonger asserting his place as a royal and fighting a massive CGI army. 

It reminded me of the Captain Carter episode. Yeah, you changed your thing (And it looked dope in the trailer), but you didn't deliver on it. You gave us the same thing but repackaged it. Wouldn't it have been cooler if Tony made Killmonger an Iron Man suit? Or if they joined forces? Or if Killmonger gained complete control of Wakanda? There were so many places they could have gone with this and did what was familiar, and that's terrible for a "What If" concept. 

And, much like Captain Carter, this episode is burdened by halfhearted voice acting. Michael B. Jordan shouting "Wakanda forever!" only sounds cool when he's doing it in-person, apparently. Otherwise, he sounds like a kid trying his best. 

The episode also jumped the shark towards the end, what with the U.S. military invading a third-world country with an experimental armed force of hundreds over the death of a billionaire. That's... not how it works. 

"Out of all the possibilities this episode had, why would you choose a lame one?"
4/10.

What If... Thor Were an Only Child?

What If... Thor Were an Only Child? was a shockingly fun episode. Chris Hemsworth once again shines as a Thor relieved of Shakespearean drama sensibilities and gets to play an even more loose version of the character - in this one, Odin gave Loki back to the frost giants, leading Thor to live the extravagant life of an only child. This, of course, creates a radically different Thor, one who never learned responsibility. 

Out of all the episodes, this one is the one that felt the most like something directly aimed at children - everyone's having fun, it's about a big party, the climax is that the goofy protagonist's mom arrives and wants him to clean up the mess he made, and then he learns his lesson. The humor is well placed and sometimes cartoonish, and Loki's fun turn as a chill frost giant was a masterclass in alternate reality theory in the vein of good Thanos (And reminding me of the whale from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). 

The entire episode was like a fever dream.

This episode really took advantage of MCU's extensive lore in a way none of the other movies or episodes really have. Because it's animation and a multiverse story, it's all up in the air. Here we have Skrulls, Howard the Duck, Ayesha, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Grandmaster all vibing at a party held by Thor until Captain Marvel interrupts (And Thor told her to smile more! That was a hilarious nod!). It even contained the Grandmaster theme from Thor: Ragnarok! Ha, I love that theme!

Thor and Jane actually had better chemistry than in the first Thor movie. Or, rather, Jane was just a bunch of fun here, which she hadn't been in her previous appearances. Everyone was more fun here, even Captain Marvel! She got a chance to be the cocky god, but this time it worked (Probably because she was up against an even cockier god). 

"That Great Gatsby reference was smooth."
9/10.

What If... Ultron Won?

One of the first things you'll notice about What If... Ultron Won? is that Ultron is a legitimate villain in this one. I love James Spader's portrayal, but he's too quippy (How does an all-knowing A.I. forget what children are?). Unfortunately, the voice actor for Ultron here kind of sucks, a recurring problem for this series. But his Ultron's cool! He's actually a threat, and his age lasts longer than a week! 

But I fear this episode may have given him a bit too much power. Vision, despite being half of his titular show, is still largely underdeveloped in the MCU. His power level and moral code are still untested. Here, Ultron-Vision slices Thanos in two - this leads to the question "Why didn't Vision do that in Infinity War?" Does he have a no-kill rule? No wait he doesn't, he killed Corvus Glaive in Infinity War. So... what the heck, Vision? Why you gotta keep screwing the universe over?

The overall plot I really love, though. Sure, Loki and What If...? are either OP-ing the Infinity Stones to hell and back or turning them into paperweights to rescale the past 23 movies, but the stories are still good and What If...? is easier to write off given how non-canon it seems right now (I'm sure the Watcher'll show up at some point, but I doubt the characters do). 

I also loved the Watcher v Ultron fight, that was awesome. I liked them bringing back Zola, and I liked how Ultron was terrifying (Again though, multiverse. How many other Ultrons are going to destroy the multiverse? Just him?).

The timeline also slips up here. Thanos' quest for the infinity stones is completely undercut in this universe, which is weird when the show hooks us with "What if one thing changed?" He has the power stone, but Xandar is still standing. He has the soul stone, but Gamora is alive. He has the space stone despite it being on Asgard, he has the time stone despite the Ancient One's death at the hand of Ultron. And why was the snippet of Guardians from Vol. 2, which takes place in 2014? You can say "Well it's a multiverse!" but that doesn't pan out. It's just the writers working with a decade of material. 

And, extremely minor nitpick, but Tony Stark's death in this one brings me back to my TV-PG or TV-14. It's just a vague electronic explosion, something you could find in a My Little Pony cartoon. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Justice League Unlimited got away with a lot more as TV-Y7 shows. 

"Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow did it first."
8/10

What If... the Watcher Broke His Oath?

After a pretty cool series and a pretty cool Ultron episode, the hype was real for the finale. Sure, they had to delay the Iron Man on Sakaar episdoe to season 2, but it's relatively inconsequential for the episode given the audience has basic intuitive skills. Unfortunately, the episode is kind of bad regardless. 

My biggest issue is that the Watcher brings together a group of heroes specifically designed to defeat Ultron-Vision, the only heroes in the only team in the entire multiverse that could. But then it feels like none of them are necessary. Strange Supreme carries the entire team (And at this point, the entire series) to the point where Party Thor, T'Challa Star-Lord, Killmonger, and Captain Carter feel useless. Thanos-slayer Gamora at least brought an infinity crusher, the other guys were just filler. It felt more like they were the main characters "because" instead of "because they were the only ones that could."

For the most part, it ended the show's cliffhangers unsatisfyingly, brought up that "Watcher can't interfere" jargon that the previous episode blatantly disregarded, and featured the lamest plot twist of all-time since Sharon Carter as the Power Broker (Killmonger, who did nothing in the fight against Ultron... turns evil? No way!). The episode also suffers from Michael B. Jordan's line readings, which continued to be lackluster. 

It's not a great ending like previous episodes might have you believe. Instead, it's a rather low-energy episode, a whimpering end to a once-promising series. Ha, even Wikipedia stopped caring and stopped giving episodes separate pages. 

"Sure, that may as well happen."
6/10.

I have to question how the MCU works though. The TVA is controlling everything, maintaining a single flow of time. Its destruction led to a bunch of branches which lead to the Watchers to watch them. But the Watchers appear in Guardians Vol. 2 before the multiverse was set loose. So... what's going on? 

Also, why did the three concepts they rejected - Spider-Man as an actual spider, Dinosaur Avengers, and Luke Skywalker as an Avenger - all sound infinitely cooler than the episodes we got? 

Overall, I give What If...? a 7/10. "Uneven quality and questionable voice acting aside, What If...? is a pretty fun anthology series."

Loki was better.