And this brings me to What If? The show which is animated but gives the promise of showing what if scenarios where every episode starts with the premise of a question of what if this, or what if that.
Things like what if peggy carter got the super soldier serom instead of steve rogers or what if there were zombies in the MCU.
Expect that’s not exactly what they do and it is explained that each what if scenario isn’t just the answer to a hypoithetical question but is the showing of that scenario set within another earth within the MCU multiverse.
And for those who watched that show,
they will know that it is narrated by the Watcher who by the finale becomes an active character as a variant of Ultron tries to take over the entire multiverse.
This was a good idea that was wasted on a hit or miss animated show.
But it was Marvel getting a great idea for what they could have done in the movies.
Imagine if there had been an Avengers movie that started with a flashback to Ultron in the Age of Ultron and then went the direction of what they did in What If.
Within the first ten minutes showing how this version of Ultron was able to wipe out Thanos in seconds and was the biggest threat not only that the universe has seen,
but that the multiverse has ever known.
They could have done this and had him go across and cause havoc in the MCU,
variant versions of the MCU and in the Spider-Man universes and the X-Men universes and then had a collection of all the stars and characters form the history of all Marvel movies come together to defeat him…instead they wasted this on an animated show.
Still, I will say that I think part one of the What If season finale where they explore this holds up as one of the best Avengers movies…even if it wasn’t an Avengers movie.
Part 2 not so much.
Beyond this, the What If show was a fun idea, but like I said, in my humble opinion at least, was a hit or miss project. Some episodes were good and others were bad.
And this show in my opinion was a mistake to do, as it explored all kinds of alternative Marvel stories in an animated show that just because it was animated will have put off a large amount of the usual MCU audience before they even watch it.
And so now, a lot of the fun of the multiverse has already been done and wont be repeated in live action, and the long awaited return of Steve Rogers and Iron Man is again dampened because they have already returned in animated form.
Oh, and one of the big problems with the multiverse is people say that it reduces stakes as dead characters can just be brought back from another dimension.
This is true, and Marvel did it instantly with Gamora dying in Avengers Infinity War, but a timeline variant of her continuing on as of Avengers End Game.
Again, and as a side note, this is something that doesn’t fully make sense as why wouldn’t the TVA have intervened to say that she was supposed to die in Infinity War so shouldn’t have been able to skip over her own death and still live from what happened in End Game…
In What If we do get the return of Tony Stark and whilst he has Robert Downey Jr’s basic likeness, he didn’t voice the role.
And for some reason Marvel just love to take Iron Man’s death and ultimate sacrifice at the end of End Game where he defeated Thanos and just make that sacrifice mean less.
It’s not that they brought back the character that is so bad,
it’s that they constantly kill the character over and over again.
And not even in a can’t avoid fateHG Wells the Time Machine kind of way.
No they just kill him over and over again in the What If show like he is Keeny from South Park or Rory from Doctor Who.
The eventual return of Robert Downey Jr now as Victor Von Doom means less because we’ve seen him back and die again and again and they do this until the stakes mean nothing.
So, in my opinion, Marvel truly have fumbled the Multiverse thus far. But again, we’re not quite at the end of things as there was a Loki season two, which to be honest isn’t all that notable for fun multiverse stuff. Other than Loki and Sylvie which is girl Loki, there aren’t more variants of Loki, and whilst we get more of Kang variants, this came out after Johnanthan Majors got himself cancelled so they used this to wrap up the Kang storyline.
And then there was Deadpool and Wolverine, which was fantastic and finally after Spider-Man No Way Home was a good use of the multiverse concept…mostly.
The film centres on Deadpool and is a continuation of his character from the Deadpool branch of the Fox X-Men movies, which themselves were slightly off to one side of the main X-Men movies.
