WARNING: Spoilers for Season 1, Episode 3 of What If?
This week's episode of What If? is more of an ensemble piece rather than focusing on a different version of a character we know and love but it was certainly an intriguing tale and I couldn't work out where it was heading.
The episode opens with Nick Fury and Black Widow meeting Tony Stark as they do in Iron Man 2 only for his life-prolonging injection to actually kill him, leaving Black Widow in the frame for his murder. Shortly afterwards Thor is shot by an arrow apparently fired by Clint Barton as he attempts to lift the hammer, as seen originally in Thor, and Hawkeye too is soon murdered. It's quite shocking seeing these characters we know and love be killed, even if we know that this is an alternate universe.
Interestingly the episode takes us into the events of The Incredible Hulk, the one film the MCU has largely not referred to other than William Hurt's General Ross continuing to appear in films. It seems that the execs at Marvel have decided that they aren't going to pretend this film doesn't exist. We know that Abomination is returning in Shang-Chi and She-Hulk and now I wonder if other characters could re-appear too. Betty Ross is pretty prominent in this episode and the character has been rumoured to also be returning in She-Hulk- her appearance here perhaps suggests that they do indeed have plans to do some more with this character. I liked the way that they shoved Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner into the events of a film where the character was played by Edward Norton, which is further confirmation that that film is 100% canon.
It's only been little over a month since we've last seen Loki (we are being very treated in regards to that character this year) but it was still nice to see yet another version of him. Presumably Heimdall saw Thor's death and Loki was sent to avenge it- I'm sure he was more than happy to go and cause some mayhem on Earth. In an interesting move we see Loki agree to work alongside SHIELD but this is still the evil Loki from Phase 1 and once the murder has been resolved he uses a less forceful method to take over the Earth than he did in The Avengers, happily sitting in charge of the UN and basically being King of Earth.
The murderer is not obvious in this episode and I assumed it was actually Loki given that the murderer was able to sneak up on The Avengers without anyone seeing them. But no, it turned out to be Hank Pym who appears to have taken on the Yellowjacket role. He's furious at SHIELD here because in this universe Hope was a SHIELD agent who died in the line of duty. In the comic books Pym has often struggled with his mental health, often influenced by his creation Ultron, so it's interesting to see the MCU's Pym go in a similar way (and great to hear Michael Douglas voice it). This is a Pym who has lost both his wife and daughter and without either he has become more than a little unhinged.
The episode ends with a hint at a rather different Avengers line-up with Fury apparently discovering Captain America in the ice and Captain Marvel being summoned to Earth at a much earlier date than she was in the universe we know. This new Avengers team would presumably have to take on Loki but frankly Carol Danvers alone shouldn't have a great difficulty with that. The absence of Thor, Hulk and especially Tony Stark has huge implications for this universe: no Ultron and therefore no Vision, no Civil War which means no Black Panther probably emerged into the wider world and no mentor for Peter Parker/Spider-Man. It surely all paves the way for Thanos to get the infinity stones with less resistance and with Pym arrested and Stark and Banner dead there could be no time-travelling solution like we saw in Endgame.
This episode had a much bigger voice cast than the previous two episodes and it was more noticeable when the live-action actors didn't reprise their roles. Liv Tyler was quite obvious but for me it was Scarlet Johansson's absence as Black Widow which felt quite off. Fortunately many stars did return and it's great to hear Samuel L. Jackson interact with Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson in this episode. (Coulson is not killed by Loki here so perhaps in this universe we could have films like Winter Soldier with Coulson present which would be cool!).
It was nice to see this episode be a less-direct adaption of one of the films, taking in scenes from most of Phase 1 but not simply replicating films with alternate characters as the previous two episode basically did. It felt to me that this was the series being a little more imaginative and expanding what it could do. It's also the first time we've really seen Nick Fury as the full-on star of the show but hopefully with Secret Invasion incoming it won't be the last time that is the case.
Comments
Post a Comment