What If S02E09 Review: Secret Wars II

What If, Season 2, Episode 9: What If... Strange Supreme Intervened?

Yeah... yeaaaah. I'm not the biggest fan of the finale of the second season of What If. And part of it is perhaps having the first season to compare to, which was a rather excellent exercise in both having your cake and eat it -- each episode before the final two episodes were entirely standalone, and the final episode had a representative character from each previous episode either as part of the huge ensemble cast, or showing up as a major setpiece. 

What If's second season... really doesn't have anything that coherent. 

Sure, this is technically our third episode with Captain Peggy Carter in this season, plus our second one with Kahhori. Strange Supreme returns from the first season and... honestly, that's it. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but the setup and premise of this episode seemed to be done amazingly well to feature all the characters both in this season and the previous one that it honestly felt rather odd that no one else in the previous episode showed up. Basically, the main concept is that Strange Supreme has been kidnapping and sealing up other potential 'universe destroyers', which... which honestly felt like it's a great excuse to have all the interesting variants -- God of Light Hela; Cosmic Kid Peter Quill; Thanos-Armour Gamora; even Super Nova Nebula and Freak Happy Hogan could've shown up here. Even if they don't quite do the same 'Guardians of the Multiverse' thing that capped off What If's first season, it would've given a nice sense of closure to the stories we've seen this season. 

But instead, for an episode that is supposed to be a huge finale for the season, with Strange Supreme having a (honestly nonsensical) plot to kidnap people from various alternate Earths... it feels awfully small. Sure, there are a whole bunch of random characters that show up, some of which looks like they would've made great episodes of themselves. There's a cyborged-up Rocket Raccoon, some kind of Thor-Hulk monstrosity that took me forever to figure out, a cowboy Loki... but in an episode that felt like it could've done so much more, all of these cameos felt really bland, particularly since they really don't do much. 

Throw in the fact that Uatu, despite supposedly being our 'guide through these vast realities'... he really did jack all, did he? We don't even really get the sense that he's particularly all that invested in Peggy's journey, which is a stark contrast to his characterization in the first season. With Strange Supreme shown to be evil-all-along, the fact that Uatu's just been completely passive... I can buy him just 'watching', sure, since that's what he does, but not trying to reassemble the Guardians of the Multiverse again? Or a new iteration thereof? It feels really truncated even without the gigantic, Giant-Man-sized writer's pet treatment that Peggy Carter received throughout this episode. 

And I didn't like that, not one bit.

I say this as a huge, huge fan of Peggy Carter. I enjoyed her character in the Captain America movie, I'm maybe one of the ten MCU fans who cared about the Agent Carter show when it was on air, I enjoyed her debut What If episode and her live-action appearance in Multiverse of Madness, and I still stand by the fact that her first solo episode in this season is the best that What If's second season has given us. But this is our third episode with Captain Carter, and... we're just going around in circles in a very short period of time. Peggy just alternates between angsting for Steve, gritting her teeth at the shit hand that fate deals with her, and then doing the typical heroic thing. And as part of an ensemble cast it might perhaps be a bit more un-noticeable, but three times almost in a row, and in the same season? 

In any case, Strange Supreme arrives in the 1602 universe, who portals Captain Carter away to his Sanctum Infinitum, a palace with a whole ton of orbs that contain 'universe killers'. This is apparently what Strange Supreme has been doing since the end of What If's first season. Not content to just keep watch over Infinity Ultron (or, well, Killmonger-with-Infinity-Ultron-Armour and Arnim Zola-in-Infinity-Ultron....) but he's since gone around plucking other random universe killers. We get to see some familiar faces like Thanos, Loki, Hela, Scarlet Witch, random members of the Black Order, some Thors, some Howard the Ducks...

He's apparently been doing this because the Watcher wouldn't, and has enlisted Captain Carter's help in hunting down one of the dangerous beings that had escaped from him.

And here comes our first couple of giant plot holes. First up... Strange Supreme, lest we forget, is a Doctor Strange that has absorbed the power of many demons. Even if we don't take power-scaling seriously, the fact that he needs the help of a super-soldier to hunt down Kahhori (a Tesseract-powered superhuman) is a bit laughable. Second of all, with the big revelation of what Strange Supreme has been doing, it's honestly kind of moronic for him to recruit one of the few members of his old Guardians of the Multiverse friends that's clearly proven to be incorruptible.

The handwave to this? Captain Carter has some element of surprise that will catch 'her' off-guard. Captain Carter walks through an alternate universe that we're given some exposition about, but absolutely no real purpose other than to show off Red Skull's face carved onto Mt. Rushmore. I'd love to see a What If set in this dimension, where Hydra apparently won World War II, but other than Uatu's brief commentary on what happened to cause this (the bomb that the saboteur brought into the Captain America project was larger than expected and killed everyone present) nothing -- not even some token Hydraverse soldiers -- happens here. 

Captain Carter fights with Kahhori, who, for the purposes of this battle, kind of forgets about her portal-making abilities and just fights with superspeed. After a brief scuffle, Kahhori claims that it's actually Strange Supreme that is the universe killer, and tries to forge an alliance with Peggy... only for this to be enough of a distraction for Strange Supreme to show up and bubble up Kahhori. Kahhori quickly rattles off some information because Strange takes forever to bubble her up, telling Carter that Strange Supreme has been bubbling up heroes as well as villains, and he's going to feed them to 'the Forge'.

Turns out that Strange Supreme is doing all of this to resurrect Christine again, which... I can kinda believe that it's what is driving ol' Strange Supreme, but it's also a twist that honestly kind of comes out of nowhere. It doesn't help that Strange Supreme's appearance is also kind of honestly rather random as well. 

(Another plot hole? Why even need Kahhori specifically? With so many other superpowered beings out there, wouldn't he be able to find another Kahhori, or even another equivalent being -- like a Vision or a Captain Marvel -- powered by an Infinity Stone? It's the multiverse; if getting Kahhori is somehow too hard for the Sorcerer Supreme, then just leave her in Hydraland!)

Strange gives a brief monologue about how Peggy should understand what he's going through, considering how many times she's lost Steve, but Peggy's hesitation only lasts for a brief moment before Captain Carter attacks Strange Supreme, freeing Kahhori. Strange Supreme gets really pissed off, and almost goes in to kill Kahhori... but Peggy just starts grabbing the bubbled-up universe-killers and chucks them around, freeing them and leading to a whole ton of angry, confused superbeings that start fighting. 

And... I don't know. Again, I really wished that this was where we got the other What If characters from earlier this season, or characters from the previous seasons. And it really is confusing, because they clearly had the actors back to voice these characters, but the way they're utilized is very disappointing. 

Any brand-new designs that look different -- a fancy armoured-up Thor; the feral Rocket Raccoon seen prominently in the trailers; cowboy Loki; the aforementioned cowboy Loki or Thor-Hulk fusion... none of them do anything except to show up for maybe a couple of seconds. 

A lot of the older designs? The Visions, Corvus Glaives, Cull Obsidians, Collectors, Korgs, Star-Lords or whatever? None of them do anything. It would've been so easy to have them actually be different, like an evil, black-suited Captain Marvel or a Hydra'd up Captain America or something. Even if they are limited to the models that they developed for the show, it really shouldn't be that hard. 

The actual characters that show up to bar Peggy and Kahhori's way? Zombie Scarlet Witch, which... should've been destroyed by Infinity Ultron in the climax of What If's first season. Whose zombies get fucked up by Hela. But just a regular evil Hela, not the one we saw last episode. Who then fights a Surtur, and it's a regular Surtur... and how boring is this matchup, by the way? We saw Hela fight Surtur in the actual Thor: Ragnarok movie. How the heck is your writing prompt be 'let's have wacky characters fight each other' and it's not, like, Hela fighting War Machine or Makkari or Kang or Namor or something? Also, how hard is it for them to script this Hela as the one that got an entire episode dedicated to her? 

Then their pathway is barred by a Thanos, which gets killed by the Infinity-Ultron-armoured Killmonger from the climax of What If's first season. Is he going to be a threat? Is he going to be an ally? No, a character that the audience theoretically is invested in just gets teleported away like a joke by Kahhori...

...just so that, for no real reason, Peggy can touch the infinity stones and the Ultron armour and wear it. Because she just needs the power-up, you see. 

Oh, speaking of which, no one other than Hela and Surtur make a single bit of dialogue. Is it really just because they couldn't get the voice actors back? Blimey, then use one of the characters with replacement voice actors to speak! Like, Wenwu or Captain America or Iron Man or Black Widow or Captain Marvel have replacement voice actors, use them. Hell, even an evil version of Atahraks, Kahhori or Captain Carter herself would've been more interesting than what we got! But nope. 

Strange Supreme then fires up the Forge, which is like... it's kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon doomsday device that will grind up all of these multiversal characters and kill them all and churn them into energy or some stuff. I don't know. Even by the standards of a superhero show, this is kind of dumb. You know what's dumb? Every single character that can fly forgetting to fly. I can forgive the odd Hulk or Korg falling to their doom, but none of the Thors and Visions and people with Infinity Stones can fly out? 

We get a fight scene between Strange Supreme against an Infinity-Armoured-up Captain Carter and Kahhori, because these three are the only people that matter, apparently. We do get some nice usages of the Infinity Stones, something that always happens in the What If show, with Peggy playing around a bit with the Time Stone, and later on using the Reality Stone to match Strange Supreme's clones. Strange also puts Peggy into an illusion for a bit, repeating her origin story and leading to, as I mentioned above, the third time that this season goes through the "Peggy is sad about Steve's death" ringer. 

And the climax just kind of goes on and on as people keep falling into the forge, and... again, all these characters that forget that they can fly start throwing random power-up weapons to Peggy and Kahhori. They get Hela's helmet, a Mjolnir, Wenwu's Ten Rings... and also Kahhori finally remembers that she's got portal abilities, and she can send people home. 

Wait, back up. Here's plot hole number... oh, I don't know, whatever. Kahhori's powers are derived from the Tesseract, which should only be able to open portals in space... in her own universe, right? That's the whole point that's established not just in Loki, but also in What If's own first season! That the Infinity Stones don't quite work right in other universes. 

Anyway, Peggy and Kahhori get super-special awesome, get super-special powered-up with all of the doohickeys and plot devices from these other characters. Strange Supreme turns into a demon, but Peggy then punches Strange Supreme out with an Infinity-Stone'd-out glove. We get a frankly rather dry sequence of the Forge about to explode, and Strange Supreme randomly getting remorse. Turns out it's the demons he absorbed making him do most of the evil things, so the good Doctor Strange takes control long enough to toss the entire amalgamation into the Forge and blowing up. 

And... after all that is done, apparently Uatu takes this time to intervene, having sent Kahhori home and taking Peggy Carter into the universe that Strange Supreme apparently managed to recreate. I guess the Forge got powered up enough by Strange falling into it? There's some honestly rather tacked-on speech by Uatu about Peggy believing in the sliver of good in Dr. Strange, which I don't think the writers even bought. The episode ends with the gigantic Yggdrassil tree-of-stories that Loki creates at the end of Loki's second season. 

And... yeah. I'm not a huge fan of this episode. Like, at all. Normally, I do really enjoy this kind of nonsense, madcap multiversal madness. I love all the Spider-Verse movies, and even their less-than-stellar inspirations. I love me my Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars-es and whatnot. But... this episode is honestly just a slog to watch, which isn't something I would imagine I would say about an episode that features half of the MCU in it. But it's so clear that the episode isn't interested in telling a crossover story, or has anything to say about Strange Supreme as a character (he's less a character and more of a stand-in for the plot) or even in developing Peggy Carter. The episode instead just wakes Peggy and Kahhori and kind of just... shows them doing super-duper-special-awesome things that didn't feel earned at all. It just feels like they're the author's favourite for no real reason, tacked on to a plot that feels nonsensical even for the genre.

Honestly, at this point, when the inevitable third season happens, they give poor Peggy a bit of a break. Even if she shows up, let her show up with the Watcher, or at the end of the season. Looking back, I actually did enjoy almost all the episodes in the second season of What If... it's just this last one that rubbed me the wrong way. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Continuity nods to this season of What If... Peggy saved the 1602 universe last episode; and Strange Supreme encounters Kahhori at the end of hers. Continuity nods to the first season of What If: the events of the final episode of that season get referenced, and Killmonger-in-Infinity-Ultron's-armour shows up for a brief cameo. 
  
• In his own debut episode, Strange Supreme also used the 'illusion of a dead loved one coming back to life' on his good counterpart. Captain Carter's response is basically almost word-for-word what the good Doctor Strange said. 
• Zombie Scarlet Witch debuted in What If's Marvel Zombies episode and had a brief role in the climax of that season, but she was kind of, y'know, blown up by Infinity Ultron. 
• The Yggdrassil multiverse timeline from the end of Loki season two shows up as the final shot.
• Various different alternate universes have explored ones where Hydra won, though in the main-universe storyline "Secret Empire", Hydra used the Cosmic Cube to rewrite the mainstream reality to make it the case. 
• Strange Supreme making clones of himself homages the shot from Avengers: Infinity War, where it was one of the spells he did to restrain Thanos. Later on, Strange Supreme uses his spell to turn some Peggy clones into butterflies, which was what Dr. Strange did in Infinity War against one of Thanos's infinity stone powered attacks. 
• 'Cowboy Loki' appeared in the comics in The Mighty Thor #370, while 'Thulk' (the glowing green Thor-Hulk) is from the 'Banner of War' storyline.
• Here's a list of all the alleged 'universe-killers' that Strange Supreme captured and got released:
• A regular Infinity Ultron (seemingly pre-What If S01E09), Killmonger (with the Infinity Ultron armour, from What If S01E09), Collector (specifically using the roided-up model from What If S01E02), Thanos, Rocket Raccoon with a giant cyborg arm, kid Peter Quill (from What If S02E02), Corvus Glaive, a Thor/Hulk fusion, Loki as a cowboy, Freak (from What If S02E03), an adult Star-Lord, Captain Marvel, Korg, a Wenwu with white hair, the Ta Lo dragon, zombie Scarlet Witch (from What If S01E05), Hela, Fenrir, Surtur, Drax, two Thors -- one using the standard MCU model, the other seemingly older with a more elaborate armour, Vision, Cull Obsidian, Ebony Maw, Atahraks, and a Howard the Duck that has a Dr. Strange cape. 
• Non-named characters include a random Chitauri, a random Dark Elf, some Skrulls, some Asgardian soldiers, Wenwu's Ten Rings minions and zombies.
• Plus, in addition, in the first showcase of the bubbles is a gnome from the first season's Strange Supreme episode. 
• The three-part window that Strange Supreme shows to Peggy before sending her to get Kahhori is based on the three-part magical doorway seen in Doctor Strange that connects the four different Sanctum Sanctorums throughout Earth. 
• The Marvel comics title that opens up the episode is a brand-new, custom one made up of scenes from What If... including a shot of Red Guardian, who was apparently supposed to show up this season but was pushed into the next season. 
• Returning Live-Action Voice Actors: Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Benedict Cumberbatch (Strange Supreme), Cate Blanchett (Hela), Clancy Brown (Surtr), Stanley Tucci (Abraham Erskine).
• Returning replacement voice actors include Feodor Chin (Wenwu) and Josh Keaton (Steve Rogers). 
• And... that's it! The episode features so many other characters, but no one really talks.