humanist + humorist

Just finished watching this season, and had a whole post’s worth of thoughts, because wow, an incredible mixed bag. Some of the biggest quality whiplash I’ve ever seen in a Marvel thing.

One of the strengths of “What Ifs” is the ability to throw together new groups of characters who didn’t get to interact in canon, right? To dig into whole new dynamics that wouldn’t have fit into the main storyline, to explore and have fun with them.

Well, some of those are amazing. Episode 2 features Agatha Harkness as a Golden Age of Hollywood actress, while Kingo was already a Bollywood star. They’re both sassy divas who love playing to a crowd, they egg each other on and fight via magical dance-off, every moment is gold. I laughed so hard.

On the other end of the spectrum, episode 6 features versions of Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop who were born into the 1872 Old West…and there’s just nothing to it?

If you like classic Westerns, it could work for you just based on the tropes, but for the characters…I don’t know why it’s these two and not anybody else. I don’t know why they’re buddies with each other. They don’t have interesting 1872 versions of their canon powers or specialties. (Why are you doing Old West Hawkeye if you’re not going to come up with Old West trick arrows??)

(Conspiracy theory: this was originally written to be about Shang-Chi and Katy Chen. Katy could’ve done generic archery when the plot called for it, and the dialogue could’ve gotten all kinds of material based the friendship dynamic. Then someone made the writers swap in Kate — maybe because she’s a more popular character? — even though nobody ever figured out “what fun dynamic they could have instead” or “why this other friendship would be compelling to watch”.)

The other great ones are episode 3 (the Red Guardian invites himself on a team-up accidental-friendship road trip with the Winter Soldier) and episode 4 (follow-up to the earlier Party Thor episode, Darcy and Howard the Duck are still married, and various Cosmic MCU characters are trying to kidnap their newborn egg).

Episode 1 is really half-and-half. The good part is a friendship between Bruce Banner and Sam Wilson, which actually has some thought put into it! Sam also leads a new Avengers team-up that’s almost completely “why are these people here, other than some executive wanted to put their names in the credits?” Moon Knight is in it, and I kinda wish they hadn’t bothered, that’s how bad it is!

Listen, the MCU characters who should have the most deeply-personal reaction to “Bruce desperately trying to avoid getting triggered into Hulking-out” are Marc Spector and Bucky Barnes. The writers put both of them in this episode. And then didn’t do anything with that. Why?

(I opened the episode to look for a screencap, saw Monica Rambeau, and realized I had 100% forgotten Monica was in this episode. That’s how much character-specific stuff she has to do.)

Episode 5 focuses on Riri Williams, so it might be better if Ironheart was released before this (as planned) and we all had more investment in Riri Williams? Then again, it might not. Episodes 7-8 involve a team-up of characters who mostly aren’t in the mainline MCU (one is Peggy Carter, but two are What If originals, and one’s from the X-Men). I feel like I don’t know enough about Storm to have strong feelings about whether she was wasted here or not. Any Storm fans want to weigh in?

…Basically, the only episodes I’d recommend watching are 2, 3, and 4. Maybe 1 if you especially like Sam and/or Bruce, maybe 7-8 if you like cross-universal team-ups and Watcher-related worldbuilding (or just want to see how Darcy and Howard's kid turned out).

(And, Marvel, if you’re giving Oscar Isaac a tiny role in the big Avengers team-up movies…please give him something better to do than this.)