What If? #8: UltroVision Origins?
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
Meanwhile, Ultron discovers space, destroys space, destroys Asgard, kills Captain Marvel, kills Ego, and has a second, post-plan-Thanos moment while the Watcher makes the mistake of narrating Ultron's meditation. I mean, never narrate someone's meditation unless you're an asshole; no, even if you're an asshole. But especially don't narrate over the meditation of a cosmic-powered, hyper-intelligent, killer robot with a broken moveset because he will hear you! Weirdly (or is it?), the Watcher is surprised by this, despite also being surprised by UltroVision's arrival (later?) in the Party Thor episode. Now faced with a new, potentially infinite scale to his purpose, UltroVision turns his personal efforts to breaking the Watcher's fourth wall so he can invade the other realities. This complicates matters for Hawkeye and Black Widow (not that Arnim Zoltron would have been a positive outcome; see above Stark meme), as, without Ultron's main body to network in their reality, Zola is only able to commandeer a single drone for himself, and, in a reversal of fates from Endgame, Clint sacrifices himself in a beautifully framed final stand against Ultron's forces, leaving Natasha and Zola as humanity's last hope. Except for one (well, more than zero and less than two, anyway): the Watcher puts up a spectacular, reality-shattering, dimension-traversing (including one where everyone is a Skrull, and another where Steve Rogers is being sworn in as President) fight against Infinity UltroVision himself, which the Watcher almost wins. But generic rainbow lasers, super-hard face-punching, and UltroVision growing large enough to bite through a galaxy (this was that shot from the 44 second mark of Screen Culture's "Mid-Season Trailer" that I thought was Galactus, and I'll be damned if it still doesn't look like Galactus in the actual episode) force Uatu to take desperate measures.
a.k.a The Ticketmaster
It's time to get penultimate, Ticketholders! The second-to-last episode of What If...? aired this week, and it's an epic one. Originally, there were supposed to be ten episodes (see, Marvel? That's how you use "were" with proper verb agreement: with a plural noun). But in the interest of not going too dark, an episode about Spider-Man being trained by Doctor Strange didn't make the cut, so the season finale is next week.
If you haven't seen Episode Eight, or any that came before it, join the Council of Watchers and binge What If...? on the Disney+ app.
Also, check out my coverage of the first seven episodes at the following links:
Episode 2: "What If T'Challa Became A Star Lord?"
Episode 5: "What If Zombies?"
Episode 6: "What If Killmonger Saved Tony Stark?"
Episode 7: "What If Thor Was an Only Child?"
While you're all catching up, I'll be wondering why episodes about Hank Pym serial-murdering the Avengers--including that body horror Hulk explosion--Killmonger...killmongering, Strange turning into a demonic chimera that destroys his reality after watching his girlfriend get Groundhog-fridged for fifteen minutes, and a sociopathic artificial human feeding pieces of Black Panther to his zombie girlfriend weren't deemed "too dark" to air.
Also, I'm all caught up on the Infinity Saga now. I get Black Panther now (despite the laughable accents and the gangsta-fied dark mirror villain), Ant-Man & the Wasp was better than the original (despite the shrinking logistics not making sense) and had a decent female villain, Captain Marvel was pretty much the perfect female-led superhero movie with the perfect Stan Lee tribute (despite the heroine destroying Blockbuster and punching old women in the face), Endgame was an emotional rollercoaster and pretty much a perfect movie (despite it feeling like a Marvelously dick move to include the signatures of actors with expiring contracts in the credits, Hulk completing his character arc offscreen, and the movie being over three hours), and Far From Home was a big improvement over Homecoming (despite the fact that Peter could have saved over half of the movie by using E.D.I.T.H.'s facial recognition on Quentin Beck and calling the bullshit hotline on his multiversal origin story from the jump, and that Peter is a moronic screw-up in every other way that counts). Oh, and the Far From Home end-credits scene is apparently connected to Venom 2 now. Guess my "Venom is the real Spider-Man 3" theory (link here) has some newly shaky foundations to it. But how Sony and Marvel are going to reconcile the two versions of the Daily Bugle remains to be seen.
Ticketmaster's Note: It has been a few days since I first started writing this post, and in that time, the connection between Far From Home and Let There Be Carnage is public knowledge (including myself, even though I haven't seen either Venom film yet), so it seems my theory can keep its foundations intact until the web fluid holding them together snaps or dissolves in the course of time, and there is an explanation now for how the print and broadcast Daily Bugles can coexist. The new thing that remains to be seen is whether or not we will finally get a decent Spider-Man 3 with a decent Venom in it, or if Villain Super-Stuffer Syndrome will strike the same place thrice.
The other thing that remains to be seen is my breakdown of Episode Eight, which will begin after the image.
The Premise: Though not as compelling as my previous thought of Vision being so twisted and traumatized by something happening to Wanda that he turns evil and takes the Stones from Thanos to try to save her, "What If Ultron Won?" is more conventional to what the series has tried to do so far, taking a Nexus Point from Avengers: Age Of Ultron and inserting obligatory Simpsons meme here.
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| What If..."Someone set this thing to EVIL"? |
Instead of Tony transferring J.A.R.V.I.S. into the Vision body and Thor defibrillating it with Mjolnir, Ultron succeeds in putting his consciousness into the body, giving him immediate access to the Mind Stone and all of Vision's abilities. A comic book version of Age Of Ultron loosely ensues from there.
The Cast: Black Widow (Lake Bell), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), and Baron Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) return from previous episodes. The real surprise here is Ross Marquand, who previously voiced Red Skull in the Captain Carter episode and portrayed Red Skull on Vormir in Infinity War and Endgame. In addition to his uncanny Hugo Weaving impression, it seems Marquand can pull off a convincing James Spader as well. He tones down the personality of Spader's delivery that so ruined the film incarnation of Ultron for me and ups the melancholy hunger factor of who this Ultron is, while capturing the actor's cadence and tone almost perfectly.
The Animation: There are a few moments where the lighting and texturing look off (that first face-on of Black Widow is just fugly), but "What If Ultron Won?" is an animation powerhouse in the action department, doing what the Zombies episode almost did well a few times (but actually well and consistently), doing what the Wakanda battle from the Killmonger episode did perfectly (but for almost the entire episode), and adding epic touches of the Baron Strange episode's kaleidoscopic surreality to make this the biggest half hour in the series' short history...so far? But more on that later.
What Changed: Ultron has Vision's body now, which means he can fly, turn intangible and/or invisible, has super-strength, and can use the Mind Stone to control people, enhance his own processing capabilities, network his drones on a larger scale than ever before, or just be boring and use it as a laser. But what a laser it is! Instead of what happened in Infinity War (where Vision was just a gender-swapped damsel in distress crossed with a walking MacGuffin container made of Nerf foam), the writers made it so that UltroVision succeeded in killing almost everyone on Earth with his new abilities (leading to his first Thanos-like moment of success and empty introspection), and when Thanos himself does show up in that moment, with the other five Infinity Stones, UltroVision instantly bisects Thanos up the middle and takes the Stones for himself, using nanomachines in much the same way that Tony did at the close of Endgame. Who needs to go for the head when you can just split the entire body in half, am I right?
Hawkeye (with a cybernetic arm that begs the question: why are you relying on a robotic arm for your survival in a robot apocalypse?) and Black Widow (with Red Guardian's shield and a Sarah Connor-level affinity for motorcycles) are the last of humanity on Earth, and while they head to Russia in search of Arnim Zola's backup copy (the central processor for the Winter Soldier program, which might have been reactivated as a futile effort to stop Ultron). They plan to use his humanoid, off-the-grid programming to infiltrate the Ultron network. By the way, letting a Nazi scientist with two failed Terminator plots against the world under his belt have control of a cosmic-powered army of Vibranium robots?
Uatu revisits (or visits for the first time? How does fictional, multiversal continuity work again?) the compressed, destroyed, prison reality where Baron Strange has been confined since Episode Four ended, and begs for his help as we await the finale.
In all seriousness, though, the best thing I've got is that all of the Realities in What If...? are heavily tied to Earth-199999, and so haven't become their own Universes yet, "explaining" why UltroVision can still use his Reality's Infinity Stones in other Realities that the series has established. Thus, convenient heirarchies are heirarchically convenient, plus wizards.
The Implications: Just about everyone in the episode's base Universe is dead, except Black Widow and the Zola-Bot. The Party Thor reality is next on Infinity UltroVision's hit list. There's only one episode left. And we haven't seen Titan Gamora yet! So, with the usual "everyone's dead, the villain won" implications covered like the unsightly carcass of an over-bludgeoned horse, let's go into implications for the finale. Thanos is dead, which implies that Titan Gamora may be from this episode's source Universe, seeking revenge (or a handshake) for his murder, rather than making the writers hastily establish another reality wherein Gamora was Thanos, or something superlatively stupider-est. Hawkeye is dead, which means the trailer shot of Black Widow with his bow is from events that will take place after his death in this episode. But this still leaves a metric ton to unpack in the finale, as Pepper and Shuri's mission against King Killmonger (the "Potts' Revenge" clip from the trailer), Captain Carter's meeting with Baron Strange, Ego siphoning Peter like he did in GOTG 2, Party Thor engaging the Ultron sentries, and all of the Assembly meetings and banter, plus the threads that other episodes left dangling, like Zombie Thanos and Earth Emperor Loki, have not been given genuine screen time. So maybe an hour episode this coming week?
The other things that I've been seeing a lot online are about the Watcher seemingly being surprised by UltroVision twice, and about UltroVision being able to use a single set of Infinity Stones across realities, even though comic book lore and the Loki TV series say that they should be inert beyond the bounds of their host Universe. To the first point, I think Jeffrey Wright may be voicing more than one Watcher, or that the one Watcher can split his consciousness between fourth walls, all the better to simul-binge the infinitude of vast, new realities with, my dear. As for why UltroVision can defy established lore, may I refer you all to the common power creep Band-Aid of retroactively adding a cosmic heirarchy? To wit, the writers can choose, at any point, for any reason, to tell us that there is a difference between a Universe, an Earth, a Reality, a Timeline, a Dimension, a Realm, any Pocket, Dark, Quantum, Parallel, Alternate, or other varietals thereof, and any other levels of Existence that Continuity demands they shove into said heirarchy to make their nonsense make sense in the moment. And if all else fails, insert obligatory Simpsons meme #2 here:
The Verdict: Kind of a safe choice as Nexus Points go, and there are some inconsistencies in this episode, as well as with respect to past episodes. But the Easter eggs are on point, the dialogue tone fits the subject matter of the episode, Marquand nails Ultron, and the action is the series' most epic to date and damned near perfect. The last time I squee'd this much was the final battle of Endgame. No, wait; I definitely squee'd more for Endgame. But for an animated streaming series with a TV budget (even by Disney financials' standards), this episode did its best to go there, and succeeded. This supplants Baron Strange as my new favorite episode. Fingers crossed for an even more epic finale!
Stay tuned for the last bit of Marvelous content this coming week, and I will see you all for the next one. I have been
Ticketmaster the Watcher,
About to interfere?
Wait, what?
That happened...,
So come with me and ponder the question:
Out If?
Goodnight.
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