After a particularly brutal year for the brand, Marvel manages to end 2023 on a last-minute positive note with the animated series “What If…?” The series continues to surprise and even disarm the viewer with the unexpected. Just when you think it’s content to provide simply entertaining fan-service-y alternative multiverse stories of your favorite with a twist— and it surely can do that too— it turns and deepens leveraging the freedom of the inventive, imagined what-if presentation to tell darker, richer versions of Marvel Cinematic Universe tales, often with a meaningfully tragic bent that really compel.
Created by A. C. Bradley, one of the main writers, with directors like Bryan Andrews and Stephan Franck, “What If…?” season one had a much similar overall architecture. At first, the series prepped and peppered you with fun, pleasurable, low-lift alt-world MCU stories— “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?”, “What If… Thor Was an Only Child?”—before pivoting and turning towards bleaker, even nihilistic cautionary tale narratives about heroes that had lost their way, turning to the dark side when consumed by personal loss, or how heroes had failed to save their worlds without redemptive notes.
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Keeping in line with the design while seizing on a theme of conquerors and subjugators—some of them who learn the folly of their way to become liberators and even become unshackled by dark obsessions and find peace— like season one, the best moments of the series are surprisingly mature and full of much more depth than one might expect from what one could easily be dismissed as a “kid’s show.”
Season two continues down the enjoyable-at-first and yet substantive path, exploring unseen avenues of the Marvel multiverse and upending some classic Marvel stories with alternative versions of what was already familiar. Additionally, this second season provides ongoing sequel stories to some of the characters introduced in season one (primarily Captain Carter and Sorcerer Supreme, a shadowy version of Dr. Strange, often driven by the character’s worst impulses voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch).
Season one, tied together by the celestial overseer character and series narrator The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), gave us episodes like “What If… Zombies?!” (soon to be its own spin-off limited series, “Marvel Zombies”) and “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” featuring Haley Atwell as the new Cap in an alternate universe (and of course in a canny cross-pollination move, she surfaced in live-action briefly in “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness”)
Written mainly by Bradley again with some help from Matthew Chauncey and Ryan Little (and primarily directed by Andrews again), “What If…?” season two intensifies and reinforces its initial ideas and expands them through themes (colonial aggressors, yes, but also wickedly and morally lost patriarchs)
The initial episodes, one centered on Nebula (Karen Gillian) in the Nova Corps (trying to escape the shadow of her father), another on a young Peter Quill, and a 1980s-centered ‘Avengers’ team that features Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Dr. Bill Foster/Goliath (Laurence Fishburne) and the corrupt legacy of Ego (Kurt Russell) are more on the straightforward and amusing side of things but still feature that aforementioned texture.
The most jovial and Xmas-themed features Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and also delights with the reintroduction of Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer character and some fun elements we won’t spoil here. Episode four, where Tony Stark ends up on Sakaar and faces off against the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, as charismatic as ever) and Gamora, is the perfect turning point episode to something more poignant. At first, it’s the typical and expected: insert a new character (Stark) into a familiar setting (Sakaar), and enjoy watching things go awry (plus the weird alchemy of Stark alongside Valryie and Korg). But then the story soon takes a more consequential bent about fate, the heritages of bad fathers, and rewriting your own destiny.
And from there, ‘What If…?’ really takes off, telling captivating, thought-provoking stories about heroic identity with weight, significant consequences, and the potential for tragedy around the edges.
If there’s one mild complaint to give against “What If…?” it’s that the series makes itself beholden to the MCU and often takes a story we already know— Tony Stark saving Manhattan from a nuke— and transports it elsewhere (though to be fair, this how the “What If…?” stories did it in the comics too, but it still feels somewhat limiting). Yet one key highlight underscores the benefits of inventions: a wholly brand new original character not from the comics or movies named Kahhori (Devery Jacobs from “Reservation Dogs” and Marvel’s upcoming show “Echo”). A young Mohawk woman from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, she discovers elements of the Tesseract in episode six and becomes imbued with its mighty power (we certainly wouldn’t argue to see her shift into live-action one day). Her storyline also centers around conquistadors, interlopers, and imperialists looking to subjugate.
Like Loki before them, some of the most absorbing ‘What If…?’ stories in season two are centered around the power-hungry individuals who feel it’s their birthright to rule and enslave, only to discover life offers alternative opportunities (not to mention often offer insightful glimpse into these wounded characters and what childhood traumas caused such blind lusts for supremacy). To that end, “The What…?” episode centered on Hela (Cate Blanchett) and her multiverse story centered around the ten rings is really terrific too, unpacking a story about identity, similar glorious purposes we’ve seen before and layering them with new dimensions.
A fall from grace, a change of heart, or a newfound sense of valor in an otherwise gloomy worldview are generally the themes “What If…?” season two satellites around, but it never feels repetitive and is always dramatically soulful and filled with the kind of melodramatic pathos that makes so many glorious tales like this feel so archetypal and epic.
Kahori pops up later—if there’s a season three, she’ll surely be in it; someone please cast Amber Midthunder in the movies immediately— and so does Captain Carter in a long-running thread, but again, it’s the ongoing story of this tragic Dr. Strange character that’s really absorbing.
We’ve seen what Strange can become in ‘Multiverse of Madness’ when his ego can run unchecked and grief can devour. Even if Strange Supreme doesn’t enter the live-action MCU in the same manner, the way the series and live-action films seem to dance in the same motif of conversation is thought-provoking food for thought (how incredible would it be to see Strange become the villain in a Marvel movie one day, and maybe do justice to the unconvincing Wanda Maximoff heel turn).
By the end of nine episodes, what starts as a little thin and light proves much more weighty and even occasionally brushes next to the profound (relative to Marvel’s recent output, anyhow). “What If…?” arguably hasn’t fully explored its true potential yet, but there’s plenty of room there to push itself and its own envelope, especially if it continues to prod the examinations it has already made into alternative versions of heroic and villainous identity while challenging the very nature of those same definitions.
Are we more than one version of ourselves? Are we capable of more and containing multitudes? Can fate intervene and change who we could become, squash a dream, ruin a potential, or challenge a tragic figure to rise above their sorrows and become something better? The best of “What If…?” not only questions the foundations of MCU history but the characters themselves, reimagining not only historical canonical context but the what-if prospects and possibilities of what might happen if a key transformative moment in one’s life went another way, or turned sideways. “What If…?” could arguably stand to really branch out, giving us newer stories centered around lesser-known characters as a way to magnify their overall distinctiveness (think everyone introduced in Phase Four). Still, it’s off to an excellent start, has continued well, and there’s plenty of prismatic possibility of what else is out there in the far corners of Marvel’s multiverse. More of this type of foundational writing and questioning in Marvel overall, please. [B+]
“What If…?” season two starts streaming on Disney+ today.
