What If S01E09 Review: Secret Wars

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.

One very random addition, which a lot of people disliked due to the lack of buildup but I actually like because of it, is "Thanos-Killer" Gamora. It actually is a deleted episode (which gets fully animated in season 2... a bit to my disappointment) but they kept the concept of the character. And I do really like that this is a nice little nod to how expansive the multiverse is, and how the nine episodes we're seeing in this season is just a microcosm of the MCU's multiverse. There are alternate worlds beyond alternate worlds, and the audience is never going to see everything, just snippets here and there. 

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. 

The Watcher dumps the Guardians of the Multiverse in some empty universe, and after some magical armour is cast upon them by Dr. Strange Supreme (which is going to explain how some of our more mortal heroes don't get sqiushed immediately by the cosmic Infinity Ultron) Party Thor accidentally attracts Infinity Ultron's attention with a giant blast of lightning.

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. 

We do get a whole lot of wacky stuff, like Dr. Strange Supreme using a multiplication spell on Party Thor's Mjolnir to bombard Infinity Ultron; him summoning a three-headed dragon demon that freaks the other heroes out; or him later on summoning the entire zombie horde from the Marvel Zombies universe down like a rain onto Ultron as a distraction. It's a nice way to not overload the episode with too many characters, but still incorporate these other episodes. While Ultron, Thor and Strange do all these spectacular moves, Star-Lord T'Challa sneaks in and manages to steal the Soul Stone, and everyone bounces off while Ultron has to deal with the wave of zombies. 

The Guardians land in Infinity Ultron's post-apocalyptic home universe, with Thanoskiller Gamora ready with her funky machine to destroy the Infinity Stones. In perhaps one of the weaker parts of an already cluttered episode, Captain Carter chooses this moment to talk about how she's totally BFF's with Black Widow from her home universe... just right as the Post-Apocalypse Black Widow rolls up. It feels a bit awkwardly shoehorned in, honestly, and I still maintain my stance last week that Post-Apocalypse Widow is more of a plot device than an actual character. It really is a bit hard to do much with her, admittedly, with so many moving parts. 

Infinity Ultron arrives, and we do the cool The Avengers scene of the camera rotating around the fully-assembled Guardians of the Multiverse as they all load their weapons. We get a much more cooler fight scene scene in that everyone gets to pitch in instead of just Dr. Strange, with Ultron tanking and getting hit by all the Guardians. It's not the best crowd-fighting scene, but if we're being honest it does feel a fair bit more cohesive and makes use of the assembled heroes better than some of the Avengers shows. We also get another cool moment from Strange Supreme as he fights Infinity Ultron's five stones with one of his own.

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)

Infinity Ultron blows our heroes away, and decides to focus his power on the only character in the Guardians of the Multiverse who actually is on his power level, Strange Supreme. As the two fight, Apocalypse Widow and Captain Carter find out the USB arrow containing Arnim Zola. The Guardians dogpile Ultron while we get some motorcycle stunts going on, and ultimately Apocalypse Widow manages to use the dead Hawkeye's bow to shoot the USB arrow right into Ultron's eye. Again, there is some poetic justice in that it's Ultron that caused Hawkeye's death, but as I keep mentioning, Apocalypse Widow isn't really much of a character so it's a bit hard for me to care. 

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. 

We do go from one plot twist to the next, though. As Arnim Zola takes over the core 'Vision' body and has his head appear on the techno-organic body's chest (hey, comic book reference!); Killmonger finally decides to actually remind the audience that he's still a villain, that the previous What If episode doesn't make him a hero in any stretch of the word, and ends up stealing the metallic parts of Ultron's suit, donning the infinity stones and armour. There is a brief moment where Killmonger actually tries to mind-game the rest of the Guardians by picking on what little he knew of them from the pub scene and the pre-fight drinks, trying to promise a world where Dr. Strange and Captain Carter could get their loved ones back... but it goes straight into a fighty-fight as Arnim Zola and Killmonger clash against each other... and as the infinity stones gets ripped around by the two people donning Ultron's body, Dr. Strange Supreme casts a spell that holds them in the same pocket dimension that he was trapped in at the end of his episode, except time is stopped with the two villains suspended in time. 

Dr. Strange realizes that the Watcher didn't intend for them to win, just to take Infinity Ultron's stones out of play, which... raises some questions about the logic of Uatu's plan, but he is the Watcher, not the Planner. Dr. Strange Supreme, the only one without an existing home universe, resolves to make himself the guardian that will watch over Killmonger and Zola, while Uatu sends everyone back to their own universes. 

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. 

The episode ends with the Watcher in a cosmic shot monologuing about how he'll keep watching over the multiverse, and there's a brief kinda-sorta post-credits teaser where Captain Carter finds the Hydra Stomper from her episode. 

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.