What If, Season 1, Episode 9: What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?
And so the first season of What If, this extremely experimental animated series, ends with a very predictable bang. And it is still a bang. I still hold fast to the fact that the final episode of What If's first season is a nice middle ground between what everyone expected of the series. Around 80% of the season were basically standalone episodes, but there's enough interconnectivity that is expected from an MCU project with this climax that the season doesn't just get dissolved into "oh, just watch these couple of episodes, ignore the rest since they don't connect with each other". With how fragmented and haphazard the post-Endgame state of the MCU has been due to this exact problem, the fact that What If's first season ends with a rather typical team-up is both predictable and comforting.
And so, with a formula that was tried and true back in 2012 (which is more than a decade ago, holy crap) the Guardians of the Multiverse get assembled as Uatu goes around the multiverse picking the heroes that he has been seeing all throughout the season. I do really like the pick-up sequence. Not because of how fast it is, but that they actually show how our heroes from the past eight episodes haven't been standing still. Captain Carter's timeline has moved forwards all the way into an equivalent of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with her fighting against Batroc the Leaper as per that movie's cold open. Star-Lord T'Challa is going through an early variation of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 with Ego running rampant, while Killmonger's universe has him embroiled in a fight against the Pepper/Shuri alliance. Party Thor, of course, we saw fighting against the Ultron invasion, so his universe is already tied to the multiversal Ultron crisis.
Everyone is gathered in a magical, mystical pub created by Dr. Strange Supreme, which... honestly, I feel like it's just there for some style. There is some attempt at quick infodumps (which the cast has to take at face-value and nod because we need to get the ball rolling) and a plan is made revolving Gamora's very convenient Infinity Stone Crusher machine. While all of this is going on, we do get some fun interactions between the characters, though to my slight disappointment... not quite enough between T'Challa and Killmonger. I do like the little foreshadowing of how much Killmonger's going around tinkering with the Ultron sentry heads even this early on, though.
And at which point, it's just a six-on-one action scene. Again, the problem I stated last episode is amplified a fair bit since Infinity Ultron is just reduced to a generic cosmic anime enemy, without much of a motivation beyond cosmic domination and multiversal genocide. There is the odd one-liner here and there, but as someone who thoroughly think the MCU's take on Ultron is pretty damn great and is just ruined by the choppy movie, I did feel a fair bit of disappointment about Ultron's lack of personality here.
They play a bit of "everyone fight for the plot device" with the Soul Stone skidding on the ground of the combatants, until our heroes manage to grab it and shove it into Gamora's Infinity Crusher... at which point the Crusher fails to destroy it and our heroes realize that each multiversal Infinity Stone is juuuust different enough that the crusher can't work on it. It's... it's something that gets explored a bit in the Loki Disney+ TV series, and there's also the weird contradiction that Infinity Ultron spent the last episode waltzing around warping reality in worlds that are not his own, but I also appreciate the restraint of the writing team in not making the Deus Ex Machina they introduced in this episode with a character they introduced this episode be the solution to the problem.
(It does raise the question on whether we needed the whole Infinity Crusher subplot to begin with, but eh)
Speaking of not-much-of-a-character, despite having been in our face for the past episode and a half, Ultron gets very unceremoniously wiped out and taken over as the AI-fied Arnim Zola and Ultron do battle in cyberspace. There is, of course, a nice, delicious irony that Ultron -- whose goal is to replace all organic life with metal -- gets fucked by organic life that's turned into a digital one. But this thing happens so fast and Ultron is forgotten so unceremoniously that I really do wish that this episode had a couple of extra minutes to let these moments breathe.
All except for Apocalypse Widow, who finally decides she's had enough of being a plot device, and starts getting on Uatu's case and yelling at him that "we're all just stories to you". And... I really wished that this two-parter had done a better job at highlighting Uatu's character development, or if the previous episodes (other than Uatu's callousness when Dr. Strange destroyed his universe) had highlighted Uatu actually seeing people as stories. But Uatu decides to wrap up this one errant plot point by transplanting Apocalypse Widow from her universe into the 'Avengers are dead' universe, where the Loki invasion is underway.
And... it's a fun episode. A lot of action scenes, and once I try not to analyze the writers' attempt to use these characters too much, I did really enjoy the wackiness and the fanboyism going on in this episode with all the characters running around. There are a lot of plot holes going on, yes -- why doesn't the Watcher pull in more characters on the power-scale weight class as Dr. Strange Supreme? What was the point about the Infinity Crusher? There's all the questions about the lack of consistency on how or where infinity stones can work or not. There's a lack of fun interactions between the different 'what if' characters. There's a lot to be improved, of course, particularly the lack of character growth showcases for Ultron, Uatu and Widow... but all in all? It's fun. It's a lot of fun, I felt like most of the characters got a fair amount of showcase in the team-up (which is not the case when they tried to repeat the formula in season 2) and I had a lot of fun rewatching this first season.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- While the concept is a bit more dire than Secret Wars, that's perhaps the original crossover event of various heroes plucked by an otherworldly power to fight in a battle.
- Uatu gathers heroes from every single episode in the What If season (plus Gamora, from an episode cut from this season and would be released in the second season). The zombies episode get referenced when Strange Supreme summons all the zombies to fight Ultron briefly; and episode 3 (the universe where the Avengers were killed by Yellowjacket) is the one that Resistance Black Widow relocates to.
- Arnim Zola's design as a humanoid robot with his human face on a screen on the robot's torso/belly echoes his iconic (and sometimes-mocked) comic-book supervillain form. The Ultron head also only has one eye left, which, while not technically an 'eye-for-a-head', still kind of counts.
- Strange Supreme's protective spells take the form of their comic-book counterparts' attires.
- Captain Carter is going through a version of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, fighting Batroc the Leaper on top of a hijacked ship. Her costume has also been changed to the blue-and-white 'stealth suit' that Steve Rogers wore during the first half of that movie.
- Thanos-killer Gamora and Sakaarian armour Iron Man are in Nidaveliir, where Thor recruited Eitri to forge Stormbreaker in Avengers: Infinity War.
- The Guardians of the Multiverse get a 360-degree spin-around shot that is meant to resemble the iconic spinning shot of the Avengers from The Avengers.
- This Reality is Designated... Earth-29929 again, technically.
- Role Reprises: One last role reprise in Georges St-Pierre (Batroc the Leaper). Other returning reprising actors include Hayley Atwell (Captain Carter); Chadwick Boseman (Star-Lord/T'Challa); Michael B. Jordan (Killmonger); Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange); Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Toby Jones (Arnim Zola); Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Frank Grillo (Crossbones); Kurt Russel (Ego)
- A new face among the non-returning actors is Cynthia McWilliams as Gamora. Ross Marquand, Lake Bell and Mick Wingert continue their roles as Ultron, Black Widow and Iron Man respectively.
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