What If, Season 3, Episode 1: What If... The Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?
I was debating on whether to do Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man first or What If's third season first. Some of these reviews have been floating around as half-completed drafts in late January, but I thought that pushing out the Spider-Man reviews would be much more timely compared to What If which, to be honest, is something I'm a bit more lukewarm towards. But turns out that I'm lukewarm towards both projects, so I suppose it's best for me to do the two Marvel animated projects chronologically.
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So What If is given a third season to close the series out... which is a bit of a shame, since I've always thought that if there was a MCU concept that could run indefinitely and rotate in various underutilized actors and characters, it would be What If. But I suppose with the streamlining of Marvel's bloated output post-Deadpool-and-Wolverine, it is inevitable. And I was a rather outspoken critic towards What If's second season, particularly how the last couple of episodes were handled.
And... while I did watch some of the season 3 episodes when they aired at the end of 2024, it took me a while to actually sit down and talk about them due to how they are such a mixed bag.
"What If... the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers" is a premise that no one has ever asked. And, by the way, the Hulk did not fight the Mech Avengers in this episode, it was an evil split personality gamma clone. Get your what ifs right, people! Unlike most previous What Ifs, this one isn't really a proper spin on any specific moment in the MCU timeline, but just an excuse to give us a Pacific Rim homage. Giant gamma monsters take the place of the kaiju, and we get a bunch of mechs based on a bunch of the 'modern' roster of Marvel superheroes. The artwork and designs for the mechs were interesting, and... I'm going to say that for the most part, the episode doesn't really actually deliver on the mecha-vs-monster action that it promised.
Oh, sure, we get some cool shots of the mechas. A bunch of them do a lot of interesting things, too, with my favourite being how they attached a bunch of Gundam-sized magnetic Ten Rings to Shang-Chi's mech. But the combining scene into an Avenger-Voltron was a letdown because the episode kept cutting to the characters talking; while the actual action scenes aren't particularly interesting as the robots mostly just fired missiles and maybe swung a giant spear once or twice. Compared to season 2's Wacky Races in Space episode, I felt like this one dropped the ball.
Another complaint is that a lot of the secondary characters -- who never interacted together in the 'main' MCU -- felt, more than ever, like glorified cameos. It's also a bit hard to tell who is who with the limited screentime. Sure, it's easy to identify Red Guardian and Moon Knight since they were suited up, but it took me having to look at credits to figure out that it was Melina Vostokoff and Nakia who were part of the ensemble, with how little they actually contributed to the plot. As much as the geek in me really love seeing the return of characters like Shang-Chi and Moon Knight, at the end of the day... did it really matter when they barely did anything or said anything true to their character?
But that's the bitching part done. What did I like about this episode? The actual core of the story, however basic it is, is actually a nice one. We get a theoretical deeper friendship between Bruce Banner and Sam Wilson, and as a character that the MCU had utterly made into a joke, I really liked that this episode delved a lot more into Bruce Banner's self-loathing about how much the Hulk made him a liability and a danger to his friends. Sam Wilson is a great choice to have here, with his oft-forgotten role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a counselor to soldiers.
Sam helps Bruce out with a lot of his anger issues, until a fateful day on a boat when an accident causes Bruce to Hulk out and nearly harm Sam and his family. This is something that I really wished the MCU explored a bit more. Age of Ultron, Thor: Ragnarok and even Infinity War did a fair bit of good character work with the Hulk, but when Endgame just refused to give any proper payoff beyond a handwave... it's hard not to get frustrated for the 'main MCU' Hulk when a story similar to this could've been explored.
Driven into desperation, Bruce Banner tried experimenting and ended up creating this universe's threat -- the Apex, a spiky gamma monster separated from Bruce Banner, who quickly grows to kaiju-size and began creating a whole lot of gamma babies that ravaged the world, forcing the original Avengers to swoop in and essentially sacrifice themselves to wipe out the gamma monsters. This leads to the status quo where Sam Wilson is Captain America, leading a group of newer Avengers.
Well, I say that, but realistically it's mostly Sam Wilson and Monica Rambeau that gets any kind of screentime. Bucky gets a bit of off-panel work as Monica sends him to look for Bruce's location behind Sam's back, but it's mostly Sam being stubborn about not wanting to talk to Bruce, and Monica being the sane sidekick to him.
And lo and behold, just like any kaiju movie, turns out the monster isn't quite dead and they find thousands of them in the Arctic. We get a bunch of action scenes where the mechas are defeated, and Sam ends up meeting Bruce in his hideaway. And, again, these confrontations between Sam and Bruce are better-done than the actual kaiju/mecha stuff. Bruce is reluctant to undo all the help that his hermitage has done for him, but is willing to give Sam some help... while Sam realizes that he should've talked to Bruce earlier.
Bruce gives the Avenger mechas a combination protocol, which leads to the aforementioned 'they tried, but it's not as cool as it could've been' action scene. Ultimately, Bruce proves himself a hero and drops himself with a gamma bomb on the Apex, and merges with it to transform into a kaiju-sized Mega Hulk himself. Kaiju-Hulk beats down the Apex, and everyone else is ready to fight against the out-of-control monster... but Sam ends up taking Monica's advice and talks to the monstrous Mega-Hulk. While most of Bruce's mind seems to be gone, in true Godzilla fashion, Mega-Hulk recognizes his friend and wades off into the sunset, not causing any more harm.
That said, it's still an okay episode to start off this season, and I think they're just trying to do this to clean the slate after the primarily negative reception to how What If's second season diverged too far off from MCU content with Kahhori and a significant Captain Carter focus. I'm not the most impressed by the frankly random Pacific Rim homage, but I did appreciate the Hulk/Falcon story we got here.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Season 3 has a lot less live-action actors reprising their roles, particularly for side-characters. Returning actors are Anthony Mackie (Captain America/Falcon), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier), Teyonah Parris (Photon), David Harbour (Red Guardian), Simu Liu (Shang-Chi) and Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight).
- Meanwhile, Nakia is voiced by Brittany Adebumola instead of Lupita Nyong'o; while Melina Vostokoff is voiced by Kari Wahlgren instead of Rachel Weisz; and while Sarah Wilson is credited under 'additional voices', she definitely isn't voiced by her live-action actress Adepero Oduye.
- The plotline of this episode is more inspired by the kaiju/mecha genre of movies (particularly Pacific Rim) than any specific Marvel run, though various runs have featured kaiju-sized monsters, and while less commonly, giant mechanical suits.
- While the term 'Apex Hulk' is original to this episode, he seems to be inspired by the villainous 'Devil Hulk' or 'Titan Hulk' personalities from the comics, who have also been separated from the main Bruce Banner body. The idea that the Hulk can grow to a gigantic, potentially world-ending threat is also explored in some Hulk comic runs, most recently and famously in Immortal Hulk.
- The scene of Sam Wilson and Bruce Banner becoming friends is a spin on the 'on your left' meeting of Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, albeit with Sam taking the place of Steve.
- The idea of Hulk taking the Hulk monsters to a secluded island is a reference to the location Monster Isle in the comics, where a group of giant monsters created by a supervillain was allowed to live in peace.
- The in-universe cartoon Tony Stark is a homage to the 90's cartoon show Iron Man: The Animated Series.
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