It's incredibly frustrating how small the Marvel Cinematic Universe's multiverse is.
Let me show you what I mean. Here are the episode titles for all seven episodes of this What if…? season 2, the show about imagining all the possibilities present in the MCU multiverse, which have aired so far:
- “What if…Nebula joined the Nova Corps?”
- “What if… Peter Quill attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?”
- “What if…Happy Hogan saved Christmas?”
- “What if…Iron Man crashes into the Grandmaster?”
- “What if…Captain Carter fought the Hydra Stomper?”
- “What if…Kahhori reshapes the world?”
- “What if… Hela found the ten rings?”
Whatjust sayin', does all that mean? Nebula joining the Nova Corps isn't very exciting, because the MCU Nova Corps are boring space cops, and this episode isn't about fleshing them out. Captain Carter fights the Hydra Stomper? Sorry? I like half of that sentence, I think! Hela finding the Ten Rings? Props for finally getting out of phase 4, but Hela already had bad news without the Ten Rings out Shang Chi; this isn't a big twist.
Image: Marvel Studios
Worse yet, these premise all gloss over the cool things each episode actually does. Happy Hogan saving Christmas? That's secretly one Iron Man 2-era That hard parody. Iron Man and the Grandmaster? That's Marvel flavor Death race/Ben Hur pastiche. Kahhori reshaping the world? That's it supposed confusing, because it introduces a brand new hero, the Mohawk woman Kahhori, who is enhanced by the Tesseract in one universe and thrust into the wider multiverse by last season's Strange Supreme. (Kahhori's episode is also the only one where anything is actually attempted new here, as opposed to the mixing and matching stuff we've seen in MCU movies.)
What if…? I didn't start this way. While there were issues – issues that remain consistent, such as an animation style that's pretty good for people fighting and quite awful for people talking – there was clarity in each episode's proposed twist. Compare the titles of the first seven episodes of Season 1 to the current lineup:
- “What if…Captain Carter was the first avenger?”
- “What if…T'Challa became a Star-Lord?”
- “What if… the world loses its mightiest heroes?”
- “What if…Doctor Strange lost his heart instead of his hands?”
- “What if…Zombies?!”
- “What if…Killmonger saved Tony Stark?”
- “What if… Thor was an only child?”
These are all questions worthy of the invitation to wonder in the show's title, and proposed changes that ripple outward in ways that go beyond a one-off escapade or a slightly different lineup for the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy . (That's more or less the extent of what several Season 2 episodes do.)
It turns out that making Marvel's cinematic multiverse truly feel infinite is an impossibly tall task, because the possibilities present in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are frustratingly limited. Sure, the movies have taken us from Earth to the far reaches of space, but the people in them? They are functional. Each hero's supporting cast consists mainly of colleagues or fellow soldiers, perhaps a love interest. Few have favorite bands (how quickly Tony Stark's taste in loud rock disappeared), a clear sense of style or annoying opinions. This lack ripples outward and limits the range of imagined future writers in shows like What if…? can do magic for these characters, leaving them with no choice but to push the plot events forward, rearrange rosters, or, if they're feeling ambitious, bring some diversity back to the MCU's stolidly white early years.
In other words, What if…? urgently needs to ask better questions before asking the obvious question: What if we all did something different with our time?