Marvel’s ‘What If’ plays it a little fast and loose on a fun season finale
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NOTE: Spoilers ahead for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe up through the Season 1 finale of the “What If…” series.
I don’t want to be “that guy.”
But for a moment — just one, brief little moment — I feel like I have to be that guy.
During his reaction video to the Season 1 finale of Marvel’s “What If,” as a group of characters we’ve come to know this season are doing battle with an Infinity-Stone-powered Ultron, one of the hosts of the YouTube channel Preview’d commented, “We’re playing a little fast and loose here, but we’re having fun.”
Which is true. Last week I observed that, for the MCU stickler, it’s been established that Infinity Stones from one universe can’t be used in a different one. And I was totally happy to throw all that out the window because it was too much fun thinking about an utterly overpowered Ultron conquering the multi-verse.
Heck, for all I care, Ultron could be collecting a new set of Infinity Stones from every universe he conquers, just swapping them out of his chest-plate like cellphone SIM cards. Perfectly reasonable comic-booky explanation.
But the initial plan to defeat Ultron hinged on an object that sticks to the pre-“What If” rules for the Infinity Stones. And that is bothersome.
You know what? Let’s get to my one complaint later. Because aside from a relatively minor gripe, this was a great way to end a pretty great first season of the show.
Ever since the early trailers showed a team-up-style superhero shot, Marvel fans were expecting this “anthology” series to eventually coalesce into some sort of multi-verse crossover event.
But it was still pretty great to see everyone’s reaction to, in Peter Quill’s words, “the giant baby in the sky,” as The Watcher broke his oath and recruited the Guardians of the Multi-Verse — Captain Peggy Carter, Star Lord T’Challa, a seemingly out-of-place Killmonger, a version of Gamorra who defeated Thanos and took his armor and weapons, Dark Dr. Strange, Party Thor and last week’s Black Widow. And technically, Zombie Scarlet Witch.*
This new version of Gamorra, who didn’t get her own story in the series, has a machine she says will crush the Infinity Stones into nothing. During a fight scene that rivals last week’s Ultron-versus-The-Watcher showdown, our heroes manage to pin Ultron down, the machine goes to work, and then Gamorra has to go and fry the MCU Canon lobe of my brain with this little nugget: “The machine was made to destroy the Infinity Stones in my universe. It won’t work on these.”
“What If” or not, this is trying to have your cake and eat it too, Marvel.
Either the stones are specific to each universe, or they aren’t. If they aren’t, then Ultron can use them anywhere, and Gamorra’s machine can grind them up. If they are, then it doesn’t matter what her machines does, because Ultron shouldn’t be able to use those stones in this universe.
Look, in the big scheme of things, this is not a big deal. As Preview’d host Jay Schmidt said, “playing fast and loose” is a concept hardly confined to just this episode. And “What If” stories have traditionally been treated as one-offs, a way to explore storylines that would be wholly unacceptable in the “main” Marvel universe.
But it was just enough to take me out of a great viewing experience and bug me a little for the rest of the episode. At the end of the day, our heroes throw everything they’ve got at Ultron, with Captain Carter and Black Widow teaming up to stick Hawkeye’s Arnim Zola USB arrow into the cyborg’s eye. Zola shuts him down, only to have Killmonger don his armor. Killmonger tries to convince everyone that they now have a chance to fix their own universes. Then again, he’s about to go up in flames back in his own universe. When he and Zola begin to fight over the suit and the stones, Dark Dr. Strange traps them in the same type of protective bubble he used to save himself when his universe collapsed. The Watcher sends the bubble out of time, and appoints Dark Dr. Strange to watch over it for the rest of his days.
And so ends a pretty awesome first season of this show. And there’s really no telling where it might go next season. There are a lot of possibilities. We could simply pick up where each of the Guardians of the Multi-verse left off. We could pick up a whole new set of heroes getting the “What If” treatment, with one or two episodes that check in on things like the zombie storyline, Black Widow returning to the universe where Hank Pym murdered most of the Avengers, or really anything involving Captain Carter, who turned out to be the breakout star of the series, quipping her way through one beat-down after another and becoming BFFs with not one, but two Black Widows along the way.
Some characters’ stories seem pretty well over. Dark Dr. Strange is just going to be sitting around for thousands of years watching Killmonger and the Zola-bot fight. We saw Party Thor fighting Ultron bots, who will all be scrap metal when he returns to his universe.
And what of The Watcher, our one-time emotionless narrator who is the subject of the finale’s title, “What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?” These types of multi-verse-meddling shenanigans surely won’t look good during his yearly review.
But strictly speaking, Ultron intervened first. He threatened The Watcher’s very existence, along with the entire multi-verse. That’s a pretty good argument for disregarding work policy.
Then again, if The Watcher had just been watching and not narrating, the whole Ultron situation wouldn’t have happened in the first place. There’s a lot of weird fourth-wall dynamics that could be explored there. Maybe the next season of “What If…” will be all about The Watcher battling human resources to keep his job.
You can’t discount it entirely. After all, this season had Kat Dennings marrying a anthropomorphic duck. Anything is possible.
A FEW MULTI-VERSE MUSINGS
• “Not you, Stark.” That was a great line, not just because it’s got the same type of snark that Tony Stark himself would typically use, but also because Iron Man has clearly won the title for “Killed the Most Times” this season. That poor guy always ends up dead.
• *Technically speaking, the Guardians of the Multi-Verse includes all those thousands of zombies, right? They played a fairly critical role in holding off OP Ultron.
• “I mean, the door is mostly a metaphor, really.” The Watcher got all the best punchlines in this one.
• The mid-credits scene shows Peggy Carter discovering the Hydra Stomper suit. Black Widow tells her there’s someone inside. Either she got the happy ending she asked The Watcher for, or we’re going to be checking back in with Captain Carter next season…