Possibly the best episode of What If to date, this week’s show was something of a murder mystery that dealt with the question of ‘what if someone killed all the Avengers before they became Avengers?’
The episode dove back into the films Thor, Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk and as such gave us the fullest line up of Avengers in an episode of What If to date.
The episode quickly kills off Tony Stark, Thor, Hawkeye and even the Hulk, although he does get slightly more screen time before literally exploding.
The episode did a good job of building the mystery and mostly showed things through the eyes of Nick Fury and Black Widow (not voiced by Scarlett Johansen in this episode) who would be the last remaining Avengers to solve the mystery here.
For me, the most interesting part of the episode was the significant use of Betty Ross, who whilst still appearing similar to Liv Tyler, wasn’t voiced by Liv Tyler. The Incredible Hulk film is by far the MCU film furthest on the outside of the franchise, partly due to Universal Studios holding some of the rights, but also because the recasting of Edward Norton with Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk.
Since the first Avengers film came out links to the Incredible Hulk film have been slim to nil. Only General Ross making a comeback years later and the upcoming re-emergence of the Abomination have acknowledged the events of that film. It would seem things are getting smoothed out more with Betty Ross being back in the picture, who has been ignored since her only film appearance and in recent films replaced by Black Widow as Bruce Banner’s love interest. It then makes it even more interesting that Betty and Natasha would be in on screen together here, but no hints or references to any love connections are explored here.
The episode did feature Mark Ruffalo’s version of Banner, and this is interesting again in terms of the growing MCU multiverse as although this is a variant timeline to the main MCU, the inclusion of Ruffalo actually makes it closer to smoothing out the canon than the actual Incredible Hulk movie.
As discussed in our review of previous episodes (which can be found here) the visuals of this show are as good as ever and it’s great to see many scenes from past films recreated and this helps give the sense that this is just as important to watch for the future of the MCU as any film/series. More so now with the trailer of Spider-Man No way Home showing the full multiverse in action.
The big reveal and twist in the plot is that Hank Pym is the assassin who killed all the would be Avengers because he was angry at Shield because his daughter Hope, who would later go on to be the Wasp in the main MCU timeline has died. Having lost his wife previously, the loss of his daughter too is enough for Hank to become the evil Yellow Jacket. This is instead of him being an evil Ant Man, and at least keeps the Yellow Jacket mantel as a villainous role.
Interestingly though is that the episode goes the route of using Loki as the solution, so the role reversal of hero to villain and vice versa continues here. Although Loki being Loki, he still turns bad again by the end after he joins forces with Nick Fury to save the day. Because when I say save the day, I mean just one day as the next day Loki takes over earth. Like with last week’s episode we get a fairly bleak ending as things wrap up, although there is hope at the end of this one as we get the tease of Captain America still being in play and an actual appearance of Captain Marvel.
These What If shows are good and are definitely part of Marvel’s plan to get the audience used to the idea of different timelines and things in the main MCU changing to bring back old characters, or to insert characters who would be difficult to introduce afresh now. For example it would be difficult to bring in the X-Men without their having ever been mutants before. This series may explore the idea of mutants in alternate realities and this will then be less jarring when they show up in the movies.
One downside is that does this show showing all the characters we loved getting killed or made powerless left right and centre lessen the impact of when they live or die in the main films? We saw Iron Man die for the second time in the MCU and unlike it being the big emotional point of Endgame, it’s just the opening scene here on What If. Likewise did it lessen Thanos last week to have him as a big doofy sidekick rather than the most evil person in existence? Time will tell as the show plays out and we learn how this ties into the greater MCU plans.
Conclusion
This episode was it was a brilliant What If scenario and great murder mystery story. The show had some great humour and it was great to see the MCU connected with ideas like Captain Marvel and Ant Man being factors into a story that was set during Phase 1. This makes the whole MCU feel tighter and it’s good to know the world of the MCU was bigger than we realised and this gives us a glimpse of what could have been.
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