Disney’s What If The Watcher Broke His Oath? Season Finale Review

So last week we finally started seeing how all of the pieces of What If were going to tie together. Where as the series had appeared to be several one off stories set within their own universe, and not connected to each other, we learned that the multiverse was all coming together to fight Ultron.

This week’s season finale didn’t spare any time to have the Watcher assemble a team of Avengers from each of the previous episodes. The team would be dubbed The Guardians of the Multiverse and would be comprised Captain Carter, Star-Lord T’Challa, Killmonger, Thor, Strange Supreme, Gamora and soon enough the Black Widow who was the focus of last week’s episode.

Straight away I was wondering why the Watcher wouldn’t have recruited many many more heroes to battle Ultron. In particular it was odd to see the Watcher proactively snub Tony Stark in one of the universes. I’ve commented in previous weeks that this show seems to be making a point of treating Iron Man like garbage and whilst this time they didn’t kill him, the sub actually felt far worse.

This episode had  a lot to fit in and almost immediately after the team was assembled they were confronted by Ultron and a massive battle starts. Again, logic would suggest that if the Watcher were to recruit 100 Thors they would have been a better match for Ultron then the rest of them as they lack the god like power…but I digress. Teamwork and their individual skillset must have been what the Watcher saw as the reason to assemble them.

Star-Lord T’Challa is able to steal the soul stone from Ultron, and the master plan is to use what kinda looked like an elaborate sandwich toaster to destroy all the stones. This naturally doesn’t go to plan as the stones aren’t compatible with the device from another dimension. Typical. It’s the interdimensional equivalent to having an iPhone charger to go with your Android phone.

There’s a very cool moment where thousands of zombies are brought back form the zombie universe and dog piled onto Ultron. This isn’t the real plan though as the real weapon was zombie Wanda. I can’t help but feel there was a missed opportunity for the zombie Wanda to half recognise Ultron as Vision, but oh well.

The Guardians of the Multiverse are able to win the day by using Arnim Zola whom Black Widow enlisted last week and shot him into Ultron’s eye via an arrow. Zola was able to infect Ultron like a virus and take over his body.

Of course things don’t quite end here as Killmonger, who truthfully hadn’t had much point of being in the team up until this point suddenly decides to betray everyone else and take the infinity stones for himself. The question can be raised of how he would be able to wield them as we saw the stones kill Iron Man and half kill both Thanos and Hulk when they were used.

This sets up a stand off between Killmonger and Zola, but it’s short lived as Strange Supreme and the Watcher lock them both in a pocket dimension. This is similar to how Gallifrey was locked in a pocket dimension in Doctor Who, so we can assume this could always return at some point.

The episode ends with the Guardians of the Multiverse each returning to their origin universe, except for Black Widow who was left in a universe where her variant was already killed. And no this doesn’t appear to be the main MCU universe, so Black Widow hasn’t been restored to the movies as yet. A post credits scene showed Captain Carter seem to discover that her Steve Rogers will have also made it through to the modern age, although we don’t see if he’s a super soldier or still skinny Steve. If he is in fact still skinny Steve he’d be very old and probably dead…so we may need to see if this is explored in a second season. It may just be a way to reference that in the main MCU timeline that Steve and Peggy ended up together and they are here too.

Conclusion

This was a solid season finale, although probably a little too rushed and full of questions to top last week’s episode. Bringing back all the characters was a thrill to see, but it meant there was little time to showcase them individually and meant there was little time even for Ultron or the Watcher.

The series overall has been a little hit and miss, but more hit than miss and this finale two part story was right at the top of the pile. It’s good to know that Marvel intend to make a second season and hopefully we’ll see some of the characters and storylines referenced in the main MCU movies and Disney Plus live action shows in the future.

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