What If S02E08 Review: Marvel 1602

What If, Season 2, Episode 8: What If... The Avengers Assembled in 1602?

I will go on record on saying that I really think that the final two episodes of What If's second season really doesn't hold a candle to the first season. The first season had a clever way of tying in all the previous episodes and timelines together, doing its own little 'Phase 1' as it turns out all the episodes in What If's first season turn out to be interconnected insomuch that Uatu plucks a character out of each episode to show up and fight the character from the penultimate episode. 

That was a very cool little trick, which... What If's second season doesn't repeat. But it does have some kind of serialization throughout some of its episodes, with this one picking up where episode 5 left off --  with Captain Peggy Carter getting dragged into a portal, and ending up in the year 1602. Except that the year 1602 is populated by faces familiar to her and the viewers. 

The episode starts off with something hammy -- the royal family of Asgard -- Thor, Hela and Loki -- are apparently the ruling regents of the land. Loki's just happily holding a skull and reciting Hamlet when a cosmic tear in the sky creates the latest in a series of incursions, sucking poor Queen Hela into it, despite Captain Carter's efforts. With Queen Hela gone, her younger brother Thor is crowned the new king, but he's pretty furious at the death of his sister. 

We get a quick recap that the royal family had commissioned the Scarlet Witch to bring Captain Carter to help stop these cosmic storms, but so far she's proven not effective. I'm... I'm not sure what they expected one strongwoman to do? But she sure is failing at it. Driven by rage at his sister's demise, Thor demands his top minion, Sir Happy Hogan, to arrest Captain Carter. Carter manages to flee, and ends up being able to sense the presence of Uatu the Watcher enough to yell at him for a bit in an admittedly atmospheric scene on the rooftops. Where Uatu had a significant amount of character development and screentime in the first season, this is as involved as he gets in this second one, which I think is another source of disappointment for me. I did really like the fact that Peggy can her Uatu's narration and yell at him, though. 

Uatu offers Carter a way out to her own universe, but after being told that this 1602 universe is doomed, Carter refuses to write off the entire universe and vows to find a way to save it. She also figures out that this reality is the fusion of two different time periods -- the 17th and 21st century, and she needs to break whatever is holding this reality-that-should-not-exist together. 

Carter sneaks into a meeting between Thor, his spymaster Nick Fury and the Scarlet Witch. Scarlet Witch gives a whole bunch of exposition about how another traveler out of time, the 'Forerunner', is causing the breaks in reality, which is basically Carter's quest. Nick Fury, who's aware that Captain Carter is eavesdropping, gives a silent code for her to find this mysterious otherworldly traveler herself. 

Carter goes through a bunch of 1600'd versions of our beloved characters. We've got Tony Stark, who's fascinated at Carter's made-up words, who manages to find some mumbo-jumbo that leads Carter to go down into the forests to find Robin Hood. Or rather, Rogers Hood and his Merry Men, comprising of Bucky and Ant-Man. Peggy Carter meets up with Steve Rogers, who claims that Peggy's the splitting image of his dead girlfriend, Maid Margaret. We get a bunch more lovey-dovey eyes as yet again, Peggy is forced to meet and deal with another version of her dead loves. I don't think this one packed the same punch as episode 5, though the wacky costumes and the constant one-liners from Bucky and Ant-Man admittedly did make the scene a bit funnier. 

Sir Hogan then arrives with a small army of Yellowjackets and a Destroyer, which is the kind of ridiculous crossover elseworld nonsense I can live for.

Peggy sends Rogers and his band off to steal Thor's scepter, since it's a power source that Tony Stark needs. Hogan's just super-angry and it's made a bit clear that this is a version of Happy Hogan that can turn into the Freak, just like the Happy we saw in episode 3 of this season. After Rogers and company escape, eventually surrenders to Sir Hogan, not willing to really fight someone she considers a friend in her home universe. 

In a cell, Uatu the Watcher offers her another way out, but she refuses to take it. Uatu notes how hopeless everything is, how even if Peggy finds the Forerunner there's no guarantee she can fix the universe... but being a determinator, Peggy Carter refuses to let a whole universe die if she can help it.  This argument gives her enough determination to rip her chains and cell door apart, before she finds another prisoner that Rogers told her about... the Monster in the Iron Mask... who turns out to be Bruce Banner. Carter unleashes the bearded Hulk, who rampages and leads Carter to Tony Stark. One night later, and Tony's created a device that can locate and send back the Forerunner as long as they can find Thor's scepter (which contains the Time Stone) and insert it in. 

Rogers Hood's men arrives and they hatch a plan to steal the scepter through an elaborate mission... which is gloriously subverted immediately by Hulk rushing in yelling "Signal! Signal!" Oh, and another crack in space-time appears, leading to a chaotic fight between King Thor's army and Rogers Hood and his men. In the midst of it all, we get Thor swordfighting Peggy Carter while Sir Hogan transforms into the Freak and fights the Hulk. Wanda and Fury, more concerned in protecting the realm than the court, ends up assisting Peggy's team and inserts the scepter's Time Stone into Stark's device. 

Using the device, Carter blasts everyone in the room... finding out that the Forerunner is, in fact, Rogers Hood. Turns out that Steve Rogers was transported to 1602 and caused all this timey-wimey mess because he fought Thanos in the future and struck the Infinity Stones with his shield. Which also gave him a convenient dose of amnesia. We get another well-acted (if somewhat repetitive) scene of Peggy and Steve going through another doomed, tragic romance as Peggy gets so tired at losing Steve Rogers all the time that she can't bear to send him back... causing Steve to trigger the device for her. 

Peggy goes off to a local tavern to drown her sorrows, only for the episode to end once more with the arrival of Strange Supreme. 

And... overall, not the biggest fan of this episode, if we're being honest. As a pragmatic adaptation of the original 1602 storyline, I felt like it's a great job at taking the broad strokes of that comic run and excising some of the more questionable-in-modern-days content in that story. There are a fair amount of comedic moments in this episode, too, with lots of great lines by Loki, Happy Hogan and the duo of Bucky and Ant-Man in particular. But I also did feel like the episode had way too many characters than they knew what to do with. And while I don't mind Peggy Carter as our main POV character, I also did feel that her character arc in this episode is basically the same thing she went through earlier this season.

(Also, the Happy Hogan 'Freak' thing... I think that's literally only there for red herring purposes, to make us think that this is the Happy from episode 3 of this season, transported through space-time and becoming villainous thanks to his Freak-ishness, but I guess in this alternate Earth, Happy just became the Freak... just because? )

Contrary to what was seemingly implied by the previous episodes, the whole 1602 crisis isn't quite what kickstarts the apocalypse the way that the 'Age of Ultron' timeline did for the first What If season. Which does make me look at this episode a bit more fondly now that I'm judging and reviewing it as a mostly standalone comedic episode, but it also makes me wonder if the final episode of the season would've worked better if it had better buildup. Ultimately, upon rewatch, I did enjoy my run through this one a fair bit more, mostly due to how ridiculous some of the period comedy is. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The events of this episode is heavily inspired by the Marvel 1602 alternate-universe timeline. Even the idea that the eccentricities of this timeline is caused by a dimension-hopping traveler is taken from the original Marvel 1602 storyline, although the specifics differ wildly due to many characters from the original 1602 miniseries being adapted out; and many MCU characters added in in this What If. The idea of a 'Forerunner' causing breaks in reality, and the identity of that Forerunner being Steve Rogers, is taken from the original comic run. 
• Sir Hogan, for some reason, keeps his 'Freak' transformation that his alternate-universe counterpart had earlier in this season. 
• In addition to the named characters, 1602 versions of the Destroyer from Thor and a full army of Yellowjackets from Ant-Man also show up. 
• Steve Rogers is brought into the 1602 dimension after a fight that is near-identical to the one that he had against Thanos in the climax of Avengers: Infinity War, other than the fact that he accidentally struck Thanos's infinity stones, causing the events of this episode. 
• Loki reciting Shakespeare is another nod to how Tom Hiddleston is also a stage actor. 
• Returning Live-Action Voice Actors: Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Sebastian Stan (Bucky), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange)
• Returning replacement voice actors include Josh Keaton (Steve Rogers), Mick Wingert (Tony Stark)