It's no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is starting to fully embrace the multiverse, especially with the release of Disney+ series like WandaVision and Loki. Most importantly, the latter ended with the female Loki variant Sylvie killing He Who Remains, thereby splintering the Sacred Timeline and creating countless timeline branches, which will no doubt lead to a ton of multiversal shenanigans. Join us as we take a look at the chaos of the newly formed multiverse through the lens of our next Disney+ outing and the MCU's first animated product, What If...?. Let's dive in.
INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)
In order to comprehend what this new series is supposed to represent or showcase with regards to the MCU, we have to first understand the source material it's based off. "What If" stories were basically Marvel Comics' way of retelling key moments/events that occurred in their mainstream continuity (Earth-616) and in the inaugural series which ran from 1977 to 1984, The Watcher known as Uatu would behave as a narrator, observing these timeline divergences from his Moon base. The very first "What If" story would alter events from 1963's The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (where the wall-crawler rejected Fantastic Four membership) to create an issue titled "What If Spider-Man had Joined the Fantastic Four?".
Over the years, Marvel would continue to publish "What If" issues, most of which were inconsequential and humorous, although sometimes they would strike gold with some of these stories, the most famous example being the introduction of May Parker aka Spider-Woman, Spider-Man's future daughter, which then spawned the entire MC2 universe (Earth-982). For the most part, each "What If" universe would be given their own universe designation, such as the aforementioned first ever issue being set in Earth-772 or the second issue with "What If the Hulk Had The Brain of Bruce Banner?" being set in Earth-774, making them all (mostly) distinctly part of the multiverse. "What If" was last published in 2018 and has yet to make a comeback in the pages but of course, we now have an entire TV show based off this comic line.
Much like with the earlier issues, What If...? is told through the eyes of The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) and explores the various splinter timelines of the multiverse, created as a result of Loki's events (although this has yet to be explicitly stated as far as episode 1 goes). As has been revealed to us through countless teasers, episode 1 is titled "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?" and as the title suggests, this is a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger where Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) became a Super-Soldier instead of Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton). According to The Watcher's narration, the timeline diverged when right before Steve would be subjected to the Super-Soldier Serum, Peggy chose to stay in the lab instead of watching from a booth upstairs, which is in line with what we know from Loki, that one small change can create a whole new timeline (in this case Earth-TRN876 as per the Marvel Database)
If you recall from the film's events, after Steve completes the experiment and emerges as a Super-Soldier, the Nazi spy Heinz Kruger shoots Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) dead and steals the only remaining vial of the Super-Soldier Serum. He then escapes and is chased down by Steve, only for him to commit suicide with a cyanide capsule. In this new timeline however, Kruger detonates a bomb before Steve can even undergo the experiment, and shoots both Steve and Chester Phillips. Before the German can escape with the Serum, Peggy kills him and in a split-second decision, she undergoes the procedure herself against her superior John Flynn's (Bradley Whitford) orders. Emerging as the Allied Forces' first Super-Soldier, she's instead banned from combat for being a woman and her blood is extracted in an attempt to reproduce the Serum for future use (similar to what happened in the original film).
The main villain of this story is still Hydra's leader Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull (Ross Marquand), who has acquired the Tesseract and plans to use it for world domination. Against her orders, Peggy works together with Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) and takes up the name Captain Carter, wearing a suit and wielding a variant of Captain America's shield, both of which are stylised with the Union Jack (as per her British heritage). She intercepts Hydra's forces, steals the Tesseract and apprehends Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), demonstrating strength and durability far beyond what Steve showed in his first solo film (more on this later). Following this successful mission, Peggy is allowed to continue operating as Captain Carter and Stark creates the very first Iron Man suit known as the "Hydra Stomper" that's powered by the Tesseract, which he later gives to Steve.
Peggy and Steve would participate in many battles throughout the war, including rescuing Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and the Howling Commandos after they were captured by Hydra. However, when the team tried to attack a booby-trapped Hydra train, Steve is the one who gets incapacitated and is presumed dead. Of course, in the film this happens to Bucky, who we know fell off the train and wound up in Hydra's custody before being brainwashed into the Winter Soldier, which also means that in this alternate reality, Bucky never became the Winter Soldier. Of course, Steve isn't actually dead and was merely captured by Hydra, who would extract the Tesseract from his suit and use it to power an interdimensional portal. Peggy and gang along with Stark head to the Red Skull's base, where they would find the supervillain opening the portal and unleashing a giant tentacled beast (more on this later), which kills him instead of helping him.
Steve, Peggy and Stark attempt to force the beast back to its dimension while closing the portal, a plan that succeeds at the cost of Peggy's life, the Super-Soldier having sacrificed herself by physically pushing the beast into the portal. The final exchange between her and Steve somewhat mirrors that of their conversation in the film prior to the latter crashing his plane into the ice, a pretty solemn moment but with less stakes. We then cut to the future, specifically what should be the opening of 2012's The Avengers, where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) power up the Tesseract and open a portal. Instead of Loki though, Captain Carter rolls out of the portal, unaware that 70 years have elapsed. Similar to the ending of Captain America: The First Avenger, Fury reveals the hard truth to the woman out of time and asks if she'll be ok, with the superheroine answering in a similar fashion to Steve in the film, although she's far happier about the war being over.
Now, I have some thoughts about this episode and the prospect of this series but let's talk about the tentacled beast from earlier. Now, we know that within the MCU, Hydra started as a cult that worshipped the ancient Inhuman Hive, a parasitic humanoid with a tentacled face, hence spawning the organisation's octopus-like logo. Likewise, the being that was summoned by Red Skull in this episode was also a multi-tentacled organism, something similar to what Hydra once worshipped, so it could be an alternate universe version of Hive. Some have theorised that this is Shuma-Gorath, a multiversal being known as a Great Old One and a huge supervillain who's rumoured to be appearing in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He's essentially a giant eye with a ton of tentacles sprouting from his body, which I guess looks similar enough to the tentacled beast we see in the episode but I highly doubt they'll introduce a big character like this in such a small capacity.
Let's talk about the series proper. I'm not going to deny that What If...? opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, not only because of its premise but also because its the first animated MCU property. We know that episode 2 will be focusing on T'Challa becoming Star-Lord, episode 3 will be exploring Loki being banished to Earth instead of Thor and that there'll be a Marvel Zombies-esque story but I'm still intrigued to see what other alternate realities we'll be looking at throughout the rest of the series. All that said, how did I really feel about this first episode? Well, it was a good enough watch, I liked seeing the parallels between what actually happened in the MCU and what this alternate reality had to offer, and of course everyone likes Hayley Atwell so seeing more of her is always great, even if she's just a cartoon character. Something that I found a little weird was just how fast-paced the entire episode was.
Imagine condensing the entirety of the first Captain America film into 30-ish minutes, that's basically what this episode was and so we glossed over a ton of stuff. I also didn't really feel like the emotional payoff worked as compared to the film because in the original, it was really heart wrenching to see Steve crash into the ice only to wake up 70 years later as a man out of time and his final line "I had a date" was absolutely devastating. With this episode though, Peggy reacted more strongly to the fact that the war was over than actually losing everyone in her life, including Steve. There's also the fact that this episode could be seen as another example of the MCU's recent "woke pandering", where Captain Carter is made to be far superior to her male counterparts like the bumbling John Flynn or even her fellow Super-Soldier Red Skull. In the film, he was a menacing villain who was actually matching Captain America but here, he's killed off in such a ridiculous manner that it's almost a joke. In fact, like I said earlier Peggy is wayyyyy stronger than Steve was when he first got his powers. I mean, she was flipping cars and while you could argue that this was a result of the shield's kinetic energy absorption capabilities combined with using the vehicles' momentum but come on, they went out of their way to make Peggy look way better than Steve did.
Again, I've never been worried about the MCU's future, not really. It's still a juggernaut of a franchise but with a lot of the recent identity politics being woven into the series and films, I fear that they'll alienate too many of their fans who just want to see good products without all the woke nonsense. I'm also a little apprehensive about the fact that many people over at Marvel Studios have stated that What If...? will be essential viewing for the MCU's future. In the past, Kevin Feige has gone on record to state that you can still watch the films without having to watch the Disney+ series because not everyone will have access to these series or even bother watching them, so from a business standpoint having them too connected will also turn off film-only audiences. Now though, people are saying that we need to watch this series to understand what's to come for the MCU and while personally that's no problem because I'll watch the series anyway, this will only confuse casual viewers, which are your main market.
With all the bad though, I still think this series has a lot of potential and from a purely casual standpoint, this could be a very fun watch for those who just want to see what possible alternate universes can be spun off from the main MCU. I'll end this post off with a sentence that The Watcher has repeated over and over again in almost every teaser thus far, and I hope you'll join me for the rest of this series as we ask ourselves the question, What If...?.
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