What If S02E04 Review: Iron Man, Guardian of the Galaxy

What If, Season 2, Episode 4: What If... Iron Man Crashed into the Grandmaster?

Four episodes into the second season, and we finally answer a question -- are we going to revisit the first season's alternate-universe cast? The answer is 'yes', on at least one of the characters. This one makes a lot of sense, though, and is technically something that was already somewhat foreshadowed in the first season. 

Or, well, less 'foreshadowed' and more 'it was an episode taken out of production' in the first season. 

So 'Thanos-Slayer Gamora' showed up in the final episode of What If as a completely random alternate-universe character that Uatu pulled out to join the Guardians of the Multiverse last-minute. I actually thought that this was super-cool, a testament to the sheer scale of the Multiverse that the Watcher can show us a whole ton of universes but he can't show us all, and in some of them there are a lot of very funky stuff going on -- like a Gamora that has killed Thanos and obtained his armour, working together for some reason with Tony Stark in a patchwork Hulkbuster armour. IN SPACE!

Turns out the real-world explanation for this is a lot more mundane, with COVID-19 hitting the first season's production a bit hard and causing one episode to simply be cancelled and moved to the second season. 

But I think that's an okay compromise too, even if it was unintentional -- it's something that the MCU has done before with characters like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Luke Cage and Echo; where they drop in a character into a different movie or show, get us invested, before taking time to delve into their backstory. 

And... I don't really like the this episode when I view it through that lens, as a vessel to explain the genesis of Thanos-Slayer Gamora. Hell, where isn't even any Thanos-slaying until the last 30 seconds of the episode, and it's treated as such a gag! And for an episode that should theoretically be about Gamora, she just... she literally goes through a truncated, less-emotional version of the same story arc she went through in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Sure, there are some attempts to bring in some commonality between Tony Stark and Gamora's daddy issues, and Tony wasn't the nicest person before he became one of the most heroic characters in the MCU, but... the emotional stakes just wasn't there. There was an attempt, and I appreciated it, but it's clear where the bulk of the focus of the development team went. 

And it's really emblematic into how the episode is titled... "What If... Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster". Those two are the main focus of this episode, with Gamora just along for the ride. And the thing is, it's not really a super-bad ride. It's just kind of a shame that Gamora, who the audience theoretically is more invested in thanks to the first season, gets what's barely better than lip-service in terms of character storytelling. 

And, again, the story that they chose itself is pretty interesting, if obvious -- what if Iron Man was stuck in space after The Avengers? What if those thrusters pushed him a bit too much, what if the portal closed a bit too early, et cetera, et cetera? Well, it turns out that it means Tony Stark lands where all the garbage in the universe lands, Sakaar, and gets dragged into the Grandmaster's shenanigans. Again, just like the Collector in What If's first season, we get another 'cosmic' character be treated a bit closer to the source material as a chronic gambler who likes more kinds of games than just gladiatorial combat. 

Gamora goes through the aforementioned character growth as someone who starts off wanting to do an evil thing (steal the Power Stone/kill Tony Stark), gets trapped in an unfavourable situation (trapped in jail/held hostage by Grandmaster), meets an ally that gives her a hero speech (Star-Lord/Iron Man) and eventually becomes good. Again, it's pretty obvious and it's kind of a shame that we didn't get much more from Gamora. There is a nice touch where she goes by 'Daughter of Thanos' for almost the entirety of the episode until Tony manages to talk her out of defining herself only by a single trait, but that's about it. 

Tony himself is portrayed well, even if ultimately this is kind of an obvious direction to take him. Of course he's going to excel in a junkyard planet, of course he's going to innovate and create a fucking Transformer power suit that's able to transform from a Hulkbuster armour into a dragster and beat the shit out of the Grandmaster's racers in this Wacky Races meets Mad Max meets Alita: Battle Angel fusion of a madcap race derby that the Grandmaster wants our heroes to participate in. 

There's really not much to be surprised at here. There's a bit of a 'will he/won't he help?' when his priorities early in the episode is understandably returning to Earth, but of course the hero is going to stay and help liberate the oppressed planet. So no huge surprises there. The interaction between Tony and Gamora, as mentioned, isn't the most interesting one... again, I would like to note that both voice actors for Tony and Gamora are pretty well-done, so it's not a bad episode. It's just not refreshing, neither does it tickle the 'oh, interesting, I've never considered this scenario' bud. 

But just like the Nebula episode earlier this season, once you get past the fact that this is a 'mood' episode and that 'mood' is WACKY RACES WITH EXPLOSIONS DIRECTED BY MICHAEL BAY, it's... it's surprisingly fun? What the animators can do in these couple of episodes have really shown that they've had a fair amount of improved budget compared to the first season. And that part of the episode is really enjoyable, with random spiky cars and explosions and some nice cameos from Thor: Ragnarok's cast Valkyrie and Korg. 

There are some fun jokes that may or may not land. Throwing chinchillas at losers in the arena, or Tony coming up to the god-disabling-zappy-lock that managed to keep Thor in Sakaar for half a movie within five minutes, or... well, basically anything with Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster. I do find him much more hilarious than many of the other 'comedy' characters that the MCU projects like to parade around a lot more, so it's nice to see him get a bit more lines. 

Anyway, we get a couple of fun madness with alien elephants, exploding cars, one-liners, slo-motion shots, transforming cars... and the Grandmaster gets accidentally turned into a blob by his bodyguard's magic stick. He's still alive, though, enough to express curiousity about sponges. Valkyrie (who I keep forgetting is in the episode) gets crowned the new king of Sakaar, while Tony and Gamora go off to kill Thanos in the aforementioned tie-in to the first season.  

So... yeah. The episode itself isn't bad! As you probably gathered, I love the animation, and the voice-acting was pretty neat for Tony and Gamora. It's just that the episode was kind of pitched -- even within the episode itself, by Uatu -- as something highlighting Gamora's origin story, but it's kind of jarring that Gamora's search for her own identity kind of happens in disjointed sequences. Bit of a shame, but it's not one of What If's stronger episodes. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The events of this episode is a riff on the climax of The Avengers, with the difference being Tony didn't fall through the portal back to Earth. Most of the cast and setting are taken from Thor: Ragnarok, however. 
  
• "Thanos-Slayer" Gamora is featured as one of the multiversal superheroes in the final episode of What If's first season, with this episode apparently planned to be part of the first season but was ultimately cut out due to animation studios being hit hard by COVID-19. The episode was significantly rewritten during the transition as well. 
• Valkyrie gets crowned a king here, just as she was at the end of Avengers: Endgame and Thor: Love and Thunder. 
• Tony calls Valkyrie's alcoholism as "Demon in a Bottle", the title of one of the most famous Iron Man comic storylines that tackles Tony's alcoholism -- aspects of which were very loosely adapted into Iron Man 2.
• The Grandmaster calls Tony "Mojo" at one point. While it could just be a coincidence, Mojo is a recurring X-Men villain that has a rather similar modus operandi with the Grandmaster, forcing his captives to participate in games for amusement. 
• Iron Man is an on-and-off member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and while he doesn't actually join the group per se, his close partnership with Gamora in a space setting is likely an allusion to that. 
• In the comics, specifically the Bendis run of Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man and Gamora actually did hook up. Tony couldn't keep up. 
• Returning Live-Action Actors Are... Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Rachel House (Topaz), Taika Waititi (Korg), Josh Brolin (Thanos)
• Returning from previous What If projects are Mick Wingert and Cynthia McWilliams as Iron Man and Gamora respectively.