What If S01E03 Review: Disassembled

What If, Season 1, Episode 3: What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

While the first two episodes of What If explored what happened if two MCU characters ended up taking wildly different superhero identities from their sacred timeline counterparts, episode 3, "What If The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes", was something that's a bit more mundane, skewing a bit closer to the very first concepts of the comic-book series that What If is based on. In that one very small thing changes long enough for things to spiral out of control. 

And... the concept in this episode isn't bad! It takes the little fact that most of the original mid-Phase-1 movies happened within close proximity to each other (which is something that's not explicitly stated, but told to us in the form of tie-in material like the comic series "Fury's Big Week") but instead of the proto-Avengers being recruited one after the other... they die. Now the point of interest isn't that one single thing caused everyone to die, but it is some dark comedy as we see these characters die one after the other. 

It's just that... the episode runs a bit too long and the concept itself is taken a bit too seriously for it to really be stretched too long... and part of it is because we follow Black Widow for a majority of the episode only for her to be killed off around the start of the third act. One by one, the proto-Avengers die in mysterious ways. Iron Man's treatment from the palladium poisoning in Iron Man 2 causes him to drop dead, Hawkeye's arrow gets launched by mistake and kills a non-powered Thor, Hawkeye dies in custody shortly after... 

There is a nice bit of tension as Nick Fury and renegade agent Black Widow tries to figure out who's responsible, mostly culminating in an action scene on the set of The Incredible Hulk as poor Hulk gets turned into some Cronenberg body horror and blows up. While Black Widow goes around trying to figure this out, though, she realizes that her own name is on the Avengers Initiative, and gets killed as she figures out who is behind the killings. 

Loki, meanwhile, arrives on Earth several years too early and before his huge betrayal in the climax of Thor, so he's still the Crown Prince of Asgard (with the entirety of the Asgard supporting cast rallying around him). And he's royally pissed off. Even in his most villainous, Loki hates his brother, but that doesn't mean he wants Thor dead -- at least, not by some random mortal hand. It's a bit tangential, but I really, really did miss a Loki that was the god of mischief and Thor's asshole brother instead of the redemptive man-out-of-time that the D+ series turned him into. 

Nick Fury ropes Loki into helping him find the killer... who turns out to be Hank Pym. 

Turns out that -- in something that's honestly not foreshadowed well at all -- in this universe, Hope van Dyne is a SHIELD agent! And also, she died offscreen in the past! And thus Hank has been grieving, running around in a Yellowjacket suit and going around killing Nick Fury's proto-Avengers.

Now, this whole scene is great, don't get me wrong. This adaptation of an evil, unhinged Hank Pym as an alternate universe character? The meta joke of him wearing a Yellowjacket suit? The voice-acting of Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson and Tom Hiddleston? All very great. Special kudos has to go to Loki-as-Nick-Fury, which did this with all the subtlety and hidden winks that made the scene actually feel impactful on a rewatch, something that the live-action Secret Invasion failed to do with its own Nick Fury twist. Loki!Fury is a complete asshole about Hope, doesn't really care about the proto-Avengers, and visibly gets super-angry when Hank insults Thor. 

And just seeing Loki multiply himself, make a giant illusion and pummel Hank Pym? That's pretty great. All the voice-acting, of Loki being vengeful while also playful, of the grief-struck Hank Pym... with how under-utilized Hank Pym is in the actual live-action material, this is a nice way to give us the jackass Hank Pym from the comics without committing to anything in the live-action stuff (and Disney is very hesitant at making established heroes into villains anyway), which I appreciated. 

It's just, again, such a shame that the episode took quite a while to get to this point, and the "it's all about Hope" twist really wasn't anywhere as clever as the writers made it out to be. But I really would've liked there to perhaps be a bit more of an exploration of this. 

Of course, I absolutely really liked the Loki/Hank fight. Great moody foggy graveyard atmosphere. And the execution of the revelation of Loki's plan as he immediately backstabs the humans and marches into the United Nations building with his whole 'you are burdened' speech from The Avengers. We do get a bit of a post-credits scene as Nick Fury creates a different group of Avengers -- waking up the frozen Captain America and summoning Captain Marvel from space, making the ending a bit less of a downer. 

Again, on paper I actually do like this episode. It's a bit more down-to-earth and a bit less wacky-woohoo madness like... oh, Star-Lord T'Challa or Ten Rings Hela. On the grand scheme of things it does make this episode a bit less memorable, perhaps, but I am a huge sucker for having evil jackass Hank Pym running around, so I do have a bit of a soft spot for this episode. Again, it really depends on what you really expect from What If episodes... and Hank Pym is one of those characters I feel the MCU never quite used to anywhere he deserves to be. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• This episode adapts events from The Incredible Hulk; Iron Man 2 and Thor. Tie-in comics "Fury's Big Week" establish that the first three movies on this list happen within the timespan of a week. 
• In addition, due to the events of this episode, certain characters end up showing a bit earlier, with Loki arriving several years earlier ahead of The Avengers; Hank Pym being active much earlier than he did in Ant-Man. And in a much smaller capacity, Brock Rumlow shows up earlier than he did in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. 
• Loki's speech to the UN is almost word-for-word the same speech he did in Berlin in The Avengers.
• Nick Fury pulls out the Captain Marvel pager that's established in later-written movies Avengers: Infinity War and Captain Marvel. 
• In the comics, Yellowjacket was always one of Hank Pym's superhero names alongside Ant-Man and Giant-Man. Nowadays, Yellowjacket has often times been associated with Hank Pym at his most deranged and borderline evil, which is how this episode depicts the grief-stricken Hank. 
• In addition, instead of being attached to the lower spine, Hank's Yellowjacket suit has the mechanical claws fold up on his shoulders, which echoes the 'shoulder fins' of his comics counterpart's Yellowjacket suit. 
• The episode is a bit ambiguous, but Hope van Dyne dies in a mission in Odessa. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Black Widow mentions that an Odessa mission was where she had encountered the enigmatic Winter Soldier before, with the unspoken implication being that unlike Natasha, Hope didn't survive the encounter. 
• While never explicitly stated in the movies themselves, the tie-in comics Fury's Big Week established that Black Widow has been spying on the Hulk undercover in the Culver University, which likely inspired the scene where she talks to Betty Ross. 
• Coulson is established as a gigantic Captain America fanboy in The Avengers, and his password is something along the lines of "SteveSteveSteveIHeartSteve".
  
• Hank's line "you took everything from me" is a reference to the now-memetic line from Avengers: Endgame spoken by Scarlet Witch to Thanos. 
• When Loki demands that Fury kneel before him, his line references T'Challa's line in Avengers: Infinity War -- "we don't really do that here." Of course, Loki is much more malicious about the kneeling thing. 
• Captain Marvel says "where's the fight", which MCU fans would recognize to the response Bucky says when he's brought back into action in Avengers: Infinity War. 
• The Destroyer, Sif and the Warriors Three all make non-speaking appearances as part of the Asgard army. Maria Hill, Janet van Dyne (Wasp I) and Alexander Pierce (the main villain in Winter Soldier) all make cameos as mugshots in the SHIELD database.
• In Times Square, you can see a billboard for Pingo Doce, the fictional drink that Bruce Banner worked in a factory of in The Incredible Hulk.
• Vita radiation, the rays that are used to turn Steve Rogers into Captain America, is mentioned as one of the radiation types coming out of Mjolnir. 
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-51825.
• Role Reprises: Michael Douglas (Hank Pym/Yellowjacket), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk), Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson), Jaimie Alexander (Lady Sif) and Frank Grillo (Brock Rumlow/Crossbones) join the cast as returning MCU actors. Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Renner also reprise their characters here. 
• It's notable that Mark Ruffalo is technically playing Bruce Banner during the time of The Incredible Hulk, before he had taken over the role from Edward Norton. 
• Notable non-reprisals are Iron Man/Tony Stark and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff, who are voiced by Mick Wingert and Lake Bell respectively in the entire season. Again, this is understandable due to the three actors whose characters were written out in Endgame -- Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson -- have essentially moved on from their superhero roles.
• In addition, Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers is voiced by Alexandra Daniels instead of Brie Larson; Colonel Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross is voiced by Mike McGill instead of William Hurt; Betty Ross is voiced by Stephanie Panisello instead of Liv Tyler.