What If S01E08 Review: Age of Ultron

What If, Season 1, Episode 8: What If... Ultron Won?

And after the relatively (and potentially purposefully) weak episode 7 and its wacky twist ending, we get the final two episodes of the first season of What If, which... honestly, rather beautifully tied together the seven anthology episodes (or, well, at least five of them) and gave us a climactic ending that tied the season up with a bow, while still giving us a nice feeling of having each alternate universe be separate. Again, this was a problem that What If's second season had -- which I won't bitch about here -- but rewatching the first season really did highlight just how well-done this season was. 

The actual 'What If' part of the episode is pretty all right, which really does help to wash off the aftertaste of the previous episode. This was a world ravaged by Ultron -- Age of Ultron might be kind of a messy movie, but I really did enjoy it since it was the height of Marvel-mania. One thing that was lacking was the supposedly cosmic scale. Sure, the movie mentioned that Ultron might go from one Infinity Stone to the next and cause a cosmic apocalypse, but did anyone really believe that Ultron would be any more destructive than the Transformers villain that he was? Raze the Earth, sure. Be a cosmic threat? Debatable. 

And really, it's just a lot of wacky comic-book nonsense as in this universe, Ultron is allowed to finally flex and show off what he can do with all six infinity stones. Now, subsequent MCU projects like the Loki TV series and even the second season of What If would really cheapen the Infinity Stones for what are essentially gags, but within the context of this first season, it's pretty neat to see the limits of someone who's got a completely different set of goal than the other villain who gathered the plot devices that control the universe. Ol' Thanos was super-focused on his goal, which made sense as a driving force in his mind. So was Ultron... but instead of some kind of cause, Ultron's cause was simple annihilation of all life.

We get a quick rundown of how Ultron managed to wipe out life in this universe, showing Ultron being uploaded to his techno-organic 'perfect' Vision body, killing the Avengers, and subsequently using nuclear bombs to Terminator III all of humanity. In a bit of black comedy (and obvious cheating on the part of the story-writers), Ultron zaps Thanos and slices him in half to claim the other five Infinity Stones. Just... just ignore how Thanos got the Time Stone in this reality. We then get to see Ultron create a massive army with the Infinity Stones, transform himself into a swanky caped form, and start going around on a spherical ship invading random locations in the galaxy like Asgard, Sakaar, Xandar, Ego and the Sovereign's planets. We get to see some fun wacky comic-book fanservice like Ultron drones piling into Ego's core and blowing him up, and a very brief scene of Captain Marvel fighting back before she gets blown up in the core of the planet. Which, depending on how you feel on her author's pet status, is a bit cathartic. 

And... Uatu seems ready to close the book on this story (again, ignore how he seems to be looking into this universe after 'watching' last episode, which chronologically has to take place later... ignore it for the sake of the narrative) before Infinity Ultron actually hears Uatu's narration, and this freaks Uatu the fuck out. 

Uatu then 'zips' back to Earth, where the only survivors in this post-apocalyptic world are Hawkeye and Black Widow, who's running around and dodging Ultron Sentries. And... this part of the episode is okay. Again, it's something that kind of grounds some kind of reality into the episode, but it does feel kind of jarring where we zip back to a typical on-the-ground superhero story about finding just the right file in an abandoned KGB facility to Ultron trying to breach the cosmic borders. 

The stories kind of happen concurrently in the episode, but let me go through the Widow/Hawkeye storyline first just to wrap it up. We get bits of Uatu trying to cheer these guys on, begging and pleading as the third-person narrator who's inexplicably involved in these stories now, and that's actually kind of cute... but I do appreciate that Uatu's not super involved in Widow and Hawkeye's little story. 

The spy stuff leads them to an admittedly clever (in a comic-book continuity sense) where they discover a different AI to combat Ultron, which is a backup copy of Arnim Zola, hidden in the same Hydra base that the climax of Captain America: Civil War takes place in. Zola himself isn't the most interesting character, though it's nice to see him back in a fashion similar to his wacky comic-book counterpart, since he was kind of wasted in the live-action movies and is unlikely to ever return. There is the rather odd leap of logic as the show wants us to believe that Arnim Zola is going to be able to fight back against Ultron after basically showing the audience how Ultron wiped out the entire universe, but there you go. 

The action scenes are actually rather thrilling, and while Black Widow herself doesn't have much going on beyond just being heroic and sad, we get a nice -- if somewhat subdued -- parallel between Hawkeye and his 'Ronin' persona from Avengers: Endgame, where he's just barely hanging on to sanity and is very much willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Losing his family isn't good for poor Clint's mental health. We get a pretty nice action sequence as the Ultron Sentries close in (being robotic and moving robotically is probably easy for the animation team to do) and Hawkeye's final stand as he pushes back a single robot down into the endless horde of robots is pretty great. 

Around halfway through of this, Ultron manages to break into the Nexus of All Realities, confronting Uatu the Watcher in his own domain. Again, we need to kind of ignore the fact that Infinity Stone powers aren't supposed to work outside of their universe (which is established in Loki, which aired before this season) but just enjoy the ride. Uatu goes through a bit of a character development himself, though I really wished he was given more agency beyond just being desperate as Ultron knocks him around, forcing him to plead, to run, and to hide until Ultron punches him through a bunch of random universes and Uatu decides to fight back. 

Uatu's fight against Infinity Ultron is... okay. It's nowhere as crazy as two cosmic entities fighting each other would be, though that is kind of saved for the next episode. We've got a bunch of energy beams, some (honestly tacky even by the standards of the genre) golden armour for Uatu, and even a shot of Ultron just going cosmic and chomping down on a galaxy. These are the stuff that would look stupid in live-action, and I do enjoy seeing it here. We got a lot of wacky Kirby black-dot ink shading, a bunch of loud colours... but at the end of the day it's just a bunch of big beams before Uatu disappears and runs off, leading to the final episode... where it's revealed that Uatu's gone to the imprisoned universe that evil Dr. Strange is in, asking for his help. It's team-up time for the finale, and that's where we're going. 

And... a lot of this episode is set-up, and I'm honestly not convinced -- even after the finale -- that we really needed the stuff with the survivors in Ultron's dimension. Black Widow surviving didn't really add much to the next episode, and it's not like she's a particularly different Black Widow beyond being a bit more somber. Sure, Arnim Zola showing up is a cute easter egg and Hawkeye's death is a cool scene, but it does kind of drag the episode down.

 

What I really felt was missing was the fact that it probably should've explored both Ultron and Uatu more -- not as action figures, but as characters. Now admittedly the episode does try a bit with Ultron, but I really did wish that they had done a bit more to explore this as an alternate Age of Ultron in showing how twisted and mutated Ultron was from the original peacekeeping program, instead of the almost-generic doomsday villain he became here. I say almost because we did get some little bits and bits of character for Ultron early on, but it really isn't quite enough. There's a significant lack of the Age of Ultron's deliciously manic 'I have human emotions and impulses but I don't know what to do with them' vibe which was only really ruined by bad movie pacing which was lacking because Infinity Ultron has the menace... and not much else.

And as the titular main character, and the guy whose huge twist of 'oh, he finally decides to stop watching and finally do something', Uatu... doesn't really get to do much. As I mentioned earlier, his actions are all reactive instead of proactive, making his decision to fight back feel like he's more threatened instead of actual heroism. We have scant little to really go on about Uatu's real duty or nature as the Watcher either, which I felt was a shame since they could've added just a little bit to contextualize him more as a character. 

Again, I did really enjoy this episode, and the subsequent follow-up... but they really could've done more to make it a bit more cohesive. I have a greater appreciation of it now that I've seen how bad What If could get (*cough*seasontwo*cough*) but criticism comes where criticism's due. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The events of this episode takes place in an equivalent of Avengers: Age of Ultron. That movie gave Ultron's rise a somewhat cosmic-level threat... which felt a bit muted considering Ultron was dealt with in the span of that movie. The concept of Ultron and an army of drones taking over the entire universe is basically a truer-to-text version of the original comic book 'Age of Ultron' arc. Coincidentally, Hawkeye and Widow, though not paired together, are two of the surviving heroes in the comics' Age of Ultron timeline. 
• The scene of Ultron defeating the Avengers in this timeline seems to be taken from Iron Man's prophetic vision in Age of Ultron -- from the shattered shield up to Iron Man being the last man standing.
• The location of the Avengers' last stand, meanwhile, is in the Nexus, a location briefly seen in Age of Ultron as the location Tony Stark goes to when the Avengers split up. 
• When Uatu and Infinity Ultron fight, they briefly fall into a reality where Steve Rogers is the President of the United States. This is the premise of one of the original What If comics, specifically issue #26.
  
• Infinity Ultron's design takes several cues from his design when he takes over the Phalanx in the comics -- specifically the red cape and the four slit-shaped eyes. 
• Red Guardian from Black Widow doesn't show up in the entire series, but his shield makes a cameo here. 
• Hawkeye and Black Widow find Zola in the bunker where the climax of Captain America: Civil War happens, where Tony fights against Steve and Bucky. The climax also follows the combatants as they rise up the vertical-like bunker, similar to that movie. 
• Hawkeye downloads Zola into code with the 'hacking arrow' from Avengers.
• The shot of Ultron assembling an equivalent of an Infinity Gauntlet seems to use nanoparticles, just like what Tony would do in a much more heroic manner in Avengers: Endgame. Meanwhile, the shot of Ultron taking over Uatu's domain with red streaks floating across it seems to be inspired by the depiction of the 'digital realm' from Avengers: Age of Ultron. 
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-29929
• Role Reprises: Returning from previous episodes are MCU actors Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Toby Jones (Arnim Zola) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange). 
• Everyone else in this episode are recasted for the series. Ross Marquand, who had done work as Red Skull both in What If and Infinity War, takes over as Ultron's voice. Lake Bell, Mick Wingert, Josh Keaton and Alexandra Daniels continue to voice-act as Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America and Captain Marvel.