What If? #9: The Finale Was Early?
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a The Ticketmaster
Ironic post title, considering I'm writing this much later than I usually would. True, I haven't finished my coverage of the last two episodes until the Monday or Tuesday before the next episode would premiere. But that isn't the important thing. The important thing is that there were supposed to be ten episodes, but, as the title of this post says, the finale came one episode early. In light of the finale's events and cross-referencing with my usual sources, it turns out that I gave you all some erroneous information last time.
First of all, I fully believed (as there was evidence to support this at one time) that the missing episode was cut because it was deemed "too dark" to air. Clearly, the series had already set the darkness bar super-high by foreshadowing the potential death-by-cosmic-war of the T'Challa Star Lord Reality and depicting the revenge-serial murder of the Avengers, the numerous deaths of Christine Palmer and the collapse of Baron Strange's Reality, all of the murders that Killmonger committed, Vision going insane in the Zombies Reality, and Ultron bisecting Thanos and mass-murdering entire Realities full of people. Which would have created a massive double-standard if it had been true. But the real reason for the missing episode was that it had to be delayed to the second season of What If...? (so if you enjoyed the first season like I did, there's more coming at some point) because of COVID-related production difficulties.
Second, I also had reason to believe, early on in the season, that the plot of the missing episode centered around Peter Parker training with Doctor Strange to be the Spider-Man Supreme, that it would be a Variant sequel to the Zombies episode with Peter adopting an edgier attitude toward hunting them. The phrase, "Zombie-Hunter Spider-Man" was even thrown about the digital web at one point. But again, this was not the true plot of said episode. The image of Spider-Man wearing the Cloak of Levitation in the What If...? poster turned out to just be bait from the Zombies episode before they decided to make it uncharacteristically jokey and turn Scott Lang into the Headpool Supreme.
I will go into more detail about the real plot in the breakdown (prepare for a Variant structure to that, as well), but first, if you haven't adhered to your Watchers' Oath, check out eight of the infinitude of vast, new Realities on the Disney+ app.
Also, check out my coverage of the first eight 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?"
Episode 8: "What If Ultron Won?"
Without further ado, let us begin the breakdown after the image.
The Premise: "What If the Watcher Broke His Oath?" We've been seeing evidence that this would happen for two months now. Uatu has been getting more and more visible each week (with the exception of the two episodes that traded premiere dates: Zombies and Party Thor), and he has had several moments of emotion and fallibility, particularly when faced with beings who attain cosmic awareness ("Wait, what?" and "I know everything that is happening, everything that has happened, everything that ever will happen; and yet, what the hell is this?"), or when the word Quantum screws things up ("...that happened"). So, of course, when Infinity UltroVision pulls a Ring-meets-Stay Tuned-meets-Highlander on him--breaks out of the metaphorical cosmic television and tries to kill him by punching, Galactus-ing, and lasering him through his "favorite shows" because "there can be only one"--Uatu has an idea. The idea. So, he summons Peggy from the opening moments of Captain Carter: The Winter Soldier. Star Lord T'Challa, in the midst of rescuing Peter Quill from Ego (after the Episode Two cliffhanger), is also chosen. Killmonger is plucked from the aftermath of his episode (that mid-season trailer clip of Shuri with her Endgame gauntlets and Pepper with "Potts' Revenge" storming the Wakandan capitol with the Dora Milaje in tow), and Thor is so preoccupied with hammering Ultron drones after his episode that Uatu has to grab him up, kicking and screaming like an action figure of Fay Wray in King Kong. Also, in a scene that doesn't make sense because of the delayed episode, the Watcher summons Titan Gamora from Nidavellir (try spelling or pronouncing that, any number of times and at any speed, without Google), where she, Eitri the dwarf king (who still has his hands here because Multiverse, or because of an animation oversight), and Tony Stark (in a Sakaaran rune-covered Hulkbuster with sonic weaponry and Wolverine claws?) have just finished melting down the Infinity Gauntlet and building an "Infinity Crusher" to atomize the Infinity Stones. That's a lot of Infinity! Which is still Infinity! Math!
Because Tony's ideas are too big and dangerous for him in any Reality, he is trying to convince Gamora that they need "a suit of armor around the Universe," a nod to his similar line in the Age Of Ultron movie, and a meta-reference to Infinity UltroVision (I'm just going to write Ultron from now on because that's a lot of letters). Tony's dumb for a twelfth-level intellect, but nice reference! Also, Baron Strange is there to help Uatu provide Wong-sposition to the "people in the room who don't understand" (and everyone who isn't Party Thor, too) and trade tragic love stories with Captain Carter (his hand shudders and morphs into Shuma Gorath's tentacles in a nod to his hand tremors from the Sacred MCU films, cuing their brief exchange about Steve and Christine). T'Challa and Killmonger from different Realities (one where the latter killed the former) being in the same room is cool, and Killmonger has taken possession of a severed Ultron drone head that Party Thor accidentally brought with him. Party Thor being an idiot is apparently the signal that the "Guardians Of the Multiverse" are ready to be sent to a lifeless Reality to get Ultron's attention. Party Thor being an idiot is also how they get Ultron's attention. And deviate massively from their plan. Strange resorts to dropping the Zombie Reality on Ultron's head, including a pissed-off, but briefly conflicted, Zombie Wanda. The heroes (and Killmonger, whose Suit Of Foreshadowing is front-lit in leopard spots because he's Killmonger) take advantage of this epic distraction and retreat to another Reality, which just happens to be the Ultron Won Reality, where they have exactly enough time to get accquainted with Red Guardian Widow and the ZolaDroid before Ultron destroys the lifeless Reality and the zombies and comes looking for them. A series of spectacular fight sequences ensues, the villains (Zola because of that Not A Great Plan I mentioned last time, and Killmonger because Ultron head, Infinity Stones, and he's Killmonger) are defeated, and the Watcher returns everyone to the moment of their summoning for happy endings all around. Mostly. Maybe. More information later.
The Cast: You know the names, you know the voices, you know the performance quality, and I'm lazy. So let's save some webspace, shall we?
The Animation: Thor's hyper-animated scream face is hilarious! The Carter/Widow/UltroVision sequence is amazing! That symbolic focal shot of the Soul Stone while everyone fights around it and struggles for control of it is brilliant! Strange exerting himself to bind UltroVision in place looks like Gainax directed it. Heck, every sequence involving Strange is like his episode's effects were turned up to blow out the speakers and break off the dial. And of course, we get the Avengers-esque circular pan team-up shot, which just speaks for itself. More has been said in more eloquent fashion about more aspects of the animation by other content creators, so.... Let's just say, the animation in this episode is the best kind of extra, so bask in its awesomeness.
What Changed: The Watcher broke his oath, duh. For better or worse, the greatest surviving heroes and anti-heroes of their respective episodes are pulled from their Realities and assembled to defeat the most efficient (never mind Thanos' repeated claims to the contrary in the second episode: that his Snap would have been the most efficient mass murder plan) and overpowered destructive force in the known Multiverse. So this is the ultimate (until Season Two comes around) conglomeration of everything that changed, and it kind of turns Uatu from an excited kid on Saturday morning, watching hour after hour of his favorite cartoons, into that same kid grabbing up his favorite action figures and orchestrating himself into a dream crossover battle for the fate of all Existence that lasts until he runs out of ideas or Mama Watcher calls him in for dinner. When it's all over, though, most of the characters are returned to the moment they were taken from, with their experiences from the battle left intact, which influences how they would have proceeded otherwise. The exceptions to this are Killmonger (who was trapped in a stasis dimension, along with the ZolaBot and the Infinity Stones, and taken into custody by Baron Strange), and Red Guardian Widow (who is the last surviving biological entity in her Reality), So I'd like to divide the Implications section into three for this final installment of my What If...? coverage, starting with
The Implications (The Chosen): I know Uatu said the chosen characters would be returned to the moment they were pulled from, essentially freezing time in their absence. But what if time kept going? There could be an entire other season about what happened without The Chosen in their Realities. Without Captain Carter, Batroc might actually have been a successful villain for once, stealing what he had intended to steal and possibly helping HYDRA succeed in their Oversight massacre. After being rescued from his father by a vanished T'Challa, maybe Peter Quill would choose to become a Ravager and a legacy Star Lord, perhaps learning about his Celestial powers from the revived Knowhere or going on a revenge mission against Ego. Without Baron Strange to occupy it, maybe his Reality would fully cease to exist, leaving him to search the Multiverse for a new home or seek a way to restore it that would probably just break Existence even further. Without Party Thor, the remaining Ultron drones would destroy his Reality. With Killmonger gone, maybe we get a happy ending where order is restored in Wakanda and there's no nuclear vengeance war. Without Gamora and the Infinity Crusher, maybe Tony takes his Reality's Stones for himself and becomes a Superior-like dictator of a Universal martial protection state (a human Ultron, basically). As no one was Chosen from them, the Serial Killer Pym and Zombies (despite missing Cap, Falcon, Wanda, and a few others because of Baron Strange) Realities would play out pretty much the same, with Loki coming to blows with "Army" and "Air Force" (as the two Captains often called each other in the Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon), and Zombie Thanos probably Snapping more humans to feed on (or the survivors successfully curing the Quantum Encephalopathy Virus, but you know how these things really go, right?). And there isn't much to do with Red Guardian Widow because Ultron is from her Reality, and she isn't so much Chosen as she is already there (nice treatment of the character yet again, Marvel!), so this is a good place to start talking about....
The Implications (The Return): Returning the Chosen characters to their home Realities poses many of the same logistical problems as when the Avengers undid the Snap in Endgame. As they keep their experiences of the battle with Ultron, and are returned to their Realities in their current states of mind, things can potentially get messy. We see this when Captain Carter is returned in the midst of her fight with Batroc and takes a knockdown hit to the jaw. We see through a clipshow format that T'Challa and Peter Quill team up when the former gets back, but it's just as likely that, in a moment of distraction, he could get seriously wounded by laser fire from a Ravager ship. We might get another girlish scream out of Party Thor when he returns to find an inactive Ultron bot poised to attack him. With the Infinity Crusher destroyed trying to stop Ultron (apparently, multiple instances of Infinity Stones can exist and function simultaneously in one Reality, but things like the Crusher can only affect the set of Stones from its own Reality because Variant Physics are a thing now, and the TVA, which exists in a Dimension without rational physics, can render any set of Stones inactive, go figure), there's no telling what Gamora would return to (especially since we have no basis for her story yet). Since Red Guardian Widow basically has no Reality worth calling home, she is placed in the midst of a battle between S.H.I.E.L.D. (led by Nick Fury, Steve Rogers, and Carol Danvers from the Serial Killer Pym episode) and the forces of Earth Dictator Loki. Had the Watcher not given her a preview of where she was going, she could have easily been dropped into a warzone completely unprepared, and died a horrible, laser-y death at the hands of one side or the other. As What If...?-relevant as this would have been from a darkness perspective, happier things happened for almost everyone, so let's move on to....
The (Real) Implications: Though she is reluctant to return to a present where Steve Rogers is presumably long dead, Uatu convinces Captain Carter to do so, and, with her position on secrecy changed by the battle with Ultron, she and the Black Widow from her Reality discover the Winter Soldier site from Civil War, where Soviet forces have been keeping the HYDRA Stomper in stasis...with Steve inside? Captain Carter has been identified by Marvel as the new recurring character of Season Two, so this would be a great plot for one of her episodes. Maybe we'll get a "What If Captain Carter Met Captain America?" episode out of it? Also, as previously mentioned, the missing Tony/Gamora episode will air in the second season. T'Challa and Peter Quill team up following his return, so it would be interesting to see how they write T'Challa out of any continuations of the story, or if they recast him. Strange is back in his prism Reality, so he (or one of the demonic entities he absorbed) has all the time in all the Worlds now to figure out how to exploit the Infinity Stones, Zola, and Killmonger, who are frozen in time in his possession. This is a great setup for him to be the main villain of the second season, especially considering the established dichotomy between himself and Captain Carter this episode. Party Thor presumably gets his date with Jane Foster (possibly after screaming like a girl at the dead Ultron in his face), but is otherwise unchanged as a character. Maybe something interesting could come out of this (like "What If Frigga Trained Jane Foster As A Witch?"), but it wasn't exactly my favorite episode of the nine we got. With King Killmonger trapped, we could get the happy ending I mentioned for his Reality, assuming it continued without him. Or maybe there's a timeskip episode where he comes back years later, but with Ultron inhabiting his Panther suit. Red Guardian Widow needs an episode set after she is reassigned to the Serial Killer Pym Reality and stops Loki, where she has to explain to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Captains why she isn't dead, why she knows how the scepter works, why she has a Soviet shield, etc. And the Zombies Reality presents all kinds of possibilities, like "What If Zombie Thanos Won?," "What If the Survivors Won?," "What If the Hulk Beat Wanda?" (her appearance in the season finale hints that she might have killed or turned the Hulk, which is a good story prospect of its own), "What If Zombie Wanda Survived Ultron?" (the Virus is based on energy from a Dimension where the Infinity Stones have no power, and Wanda has Reality-warping powers, so it's totally possible for her to return), and "What If Vision Was A Zombie?" (I mentioned this possibility in my coverage of the Zombies episode a few weeks back). There are even plans to do Zombies in live action, and to include Baron Strange in Multiverse Of Madness, No Way Home, or both. So, what did I think of the finale?
The Verdict: "What If the Watcher Broke His Oath" has some plot holes with regard to how the Choosing and returning of the main characters works, the cross-Reality functionality of the Infinity Stones is conveniently convoluted, Party Thor is just there to be an idiotic screwup, Gamora is severely underutilized beyond looking cool in the lineup and having a McGuffin-destroyer that doesn't work, Killmonger is too easy to figure out but leaves a strong impression as a twist villain, Black Widow finally gets the treatment she deserves, Captain Carter is practically perfect in every way (inserting obligatory Simpsons meme here),
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| "I'm Shary Bobbins, y'all!" |
Baron Strange leaves an even bigger impression than Killmonger, and the animation makes for the best action sequences in the series. My biggest criticism is the handling of Gamora's introduction and usage in this episode. She could have been integrated into the story more smoothly with a few new lines of dialogue and some editing, like changing the background, cutting out or replacing some characters and items, having Uatu say something different, and giving Gamora some kind of alternate motivation (like Ultron killing Thanos). Or even, considering her minimal involvement in the finale, just eliminating all references to her could be done with minimal effort. It's downright lazy that they just left her in the episode and said, "more information in Season Two; see you whenever!" But I'm a sucker for action, so...great episode!
It'll be awhile before more Marvel content comes along, so stay tuned for my coverage of the Chucky miniseries, coming later this week.
Ticketmaster,
The Former and Future Watcher,
Out Of Episodes.
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