What If S01E07 Review: Unworthy

What If, Season 1, Episode 7: What If... Thor Were An Only Child?

I really don't have much to say about this episode! I really remembered being rather underwhelmed by this episode the first time I watched it, and  now that I've got some time to stew on it... I'm still underwhelmed by this episode. 

Sure, let's get the proverbial elephant in the room out of the way -- this was supposed to be a 'distraction' episode, to let our guard down for the final surprise twist to shock you. But even back in 2021, my reaction was more confusion than actual shock. Infinity Ultron shows up at the end of the episode, which is a big random 'wtf' moment that came out of nowhere and gets explained next episode. And the two episodes that ended What If's first season was great! It was a nice twist that tied together the first season of What If very well, and I've always noted it as a very great way to have your cake and eat it -- to both have the series be serialized and episodic at the same time.

But we have to kind of suffer through 'What If... Thor Were An Only Child', which... just isn't that great. What If has had some comedic episodes in its run, but I take a look at the second season's 'Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster' and 'Happy Hogan Saved Christmas' and even this season's 'T'Challa Became A Star-Lord' to point and tell you that What If can be comedic without having such glacial pacing. The MCU tend to lean heavily on the comedic side anyway even when they breach darker topics, which means that there really isn't anything too special about this. 

The episode opens up with a 'What If' that's actually rather interesting, and has actually been done in the comics a couple of times -- what if things happened differently in Thor's origin story? In this case, this universe's Odin apparently has a heart, returned Loki to Laufey, and brokered peace with Jotunheim. The end result? A Thor raised in peace-times without sibling rivalry. And he becomes a frat boy, only that his frat boy-ish-ness ends up being cosmic, and instead of bringing intergalactic space Viking war to Earth, he brings a rave. 

Only... it's a very sanitized, embarrassing-even-for-PG-13 party. The jokes aren't really funny with the exception of maybe Darcy, Big Frost Giant Loki, and Brock "Crossbones" Rumlow constantly wanting to shoot nukes. There is some attempt at injecting some drama by revisiting Thor and Jane's relationship, and how the 'science' and 'magic' dichotomy still holds even with Frat Boy Thor, but... y'know, the actual Thor movie did it better. 

There is some tension that feels like it's lifted from a show like Rick and Morty or something, too, where apparently the 'party aura' is blowing up planets or something? This causes Maria Hill to call in Captain Marvel, leading to an... okay fight? It's very Dragon Ball Z-y, but way more stiff and it doesn't quite pack the same punch like the other action scenes in the season. I wouldn't say that it's incompetent, but it's just... uninteresting. Carol's never really been the most interesting character, and I didn't really get the feeling that the writers knew what to do with her other than 'let's have the two strongest MCU superheroes fight, but have no stakes, I guess'. 

Anyway, the episode ends with the rather unfunny gag of Jane essentially tattling on Thor, managing to get Bifrosted up to Asgard to call Frigga down and calm the party. And then Infinity Ultron shows up. 

And... again, I really didn't care about this episode, not enough to summarize the plotline like I did the rest of the season. It's so slow-paced and a lot of the jokes just didn't land for me. I don't know if, like She-Hulk, this is simply an episode that I didn't 'get', but it's by far easily the weakest episode of the first season.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• This episode technically riffs on Thor, timeline-wise, though obviously it's not meant to really be taken seriously with half of the cosmic MCU characters showing up.
  
• In addition to the cast of Thor, we've got cameos from Grandmsater, Topaz, Surtur, Rocket, Drax, Nebula, Mantis, Yondu, Ayesha, Korg, Skurge and Surtur. Brock Rumlow/Crossbones also have a more prominent role as a SHIELD agent here, when in the MCU he doesn't show up until post-Avengers material.
• Being beardless and lacking chainmail, 'Party Thor' ends up looking a bit more like how Thor was initially depicted in the comics. Unless I've forgotten something, MCU's Thor has never been shown beardless. 
• In one of the party scenes, Thor briefly goes through Baron Zemo's heavily-memed dance number from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.  
• Darcy briefly assumes that Captain Marvel was a man -- which the original Captain Marvel in the comics (Mar-Vell) was; and Carol Danvers being the sidekick and later successor to him. 
• Captain Marvel tells Thor to 'put the hammer down', which is how a different captain -- Steve Rogers -- handled Thor's arrival on Earth in The Avengers. 
• Thor manages to stop Carol from moving by placing Mjolnir on her body, which is how he held Loki down in the climax of Thor. 
• The shot of Nebula rolling the dice is shot exactly in the same way that Tony did it in the beginning of Iron Man. 
• Rocket is still mistaken as a 'rabbit', which is a running gag by Asgardians mistaking him as a rabbit in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. 
• The drinks that keep refilling magically is featured in the MCU when Thor visits Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum in Thor: Ragnarok. 
• Howard the Duck's terribly-received movie was perhaps most infamous for an 'almost-sex' scene between him and a human. In this episode, we get a PG version of this as we see him Vegas-marrying Darcy. 
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-72124
• Role Reprises: New debuts in this show include Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Kat Dennings (Darcy), Jaimie Alexander (Sif) Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Frank Grillo (Crossbones/Brock Rumlow), Taika Waititi (Korg), Clancy Brown (Surtur), Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), Rachel House (Topaz)
• Returning reprising actors include Christ Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Seth Green (Howard the Duck)
• Notable non-reprises include Josette Eales as Frigga; Alexandra Daniels as Captain Marvel; Fred Tatasciore as Hogun and Drax; David Chen as Hogun; Max Mittelman as Fandral.