If there’s been one central frustration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s the realization that any individual part is always subservient to the whole. Each movie or series might have a slightly different tone and can offer its own specific pleasures or character dynamics, but nothing is allowed to risk its relationship to what has come before and what’s planned to come next. While those interconnections have absolutely contributed to the MCU’s massive popularity, they have also been a burden on its creative freedom.
In theory, What If…? is a way to bypass that obstacle—an entire series of stories built around divergence from the official MCU canon. And that makes it particularly frustrating that they so frequently feel the need to remind you of that official MCU canon.
Based on a comic-book concept that dates back to the mid-1970s, What If…? consists of stand-alone episodes, linked only by the narration of a cosmic being called The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) with knowledge of crucial points where the multiverse branched off. The three initial episodes available for preview all present spins on origin stories familiar to those who have been watching MCU movies for more than a decade: What if it was Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) instead of Steve Rogers who received the super-soldier serum? What if instead of kidnapping Peter Quill from Earth in the 1980s, the Ravagers from Guardians of the Galaxy kidnapped T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman)? And what if the original Avengers never formed?
Stylistically, the animated What If…? offers a fun change of pace from the live-action MCU installments. Animation supervisor Stephan Franck oversees a cel-shaded 3D style that gives things a real comic-book feel, and the action has a free-wheeling energy that often feels more satisfying than what we’ve gotten in many of the movies. Each half-hour episode moves briskly along with little time for real character beats, counting on your knowledge of their previous appearances to fill in the blanks.
That’s where things get a little messy because What If…? takes its links to the MCU to unnecessary lengths. That’s most evident in the Peggy Carter episode, which somehow interprets the freedom offered by “what if there wasn’t a Captain America” as “what if every key sequence from Captain America: The First Avenger—the rescue of the Howling Commandos, the train set-piece, etc.—instead had a woman carrying the shield?” The “I understood that reference” references are all over the place, making this less a series about brand-new timelines than about timelines where everyone seems to have a vague understanding of the way things happened in another, more famous timeline.
It’s similarly confusing that What If…? works so hard to bring in a bunch of the original MCU actors to voice their animated counterparts, knowing that by not being able to bring them all back, the “substitute” voices—like Lake Bell as Black Widow—would stand out. As wonderful as it is to get one more chance to hear the late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, it feels like it would have been a better way for What If…? to create its own universe if every voice actor had been new and allowed their own interpretation.
The strongest episode by far—the one focused on T’Challa—is the one that feels most willing to play around with its concept. Instead of a Peter Quill Star-Lord assuming his name should mean something, here we get one whose heroic actions have made him rightly celebrated, to the point that Djimon Hounsou’s Korath is practically a giggling fanboy; we also get a very different version of Thanos (Josh Brolin). The Marvel Universe has already established itself powerfully enough that it can risk getting a little crazy with ideas like that. We don’t just need to see a remake of the movies we already know, except animated.
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Let’s Hear From You
Are you looking forward to Marvel’s “What If…?” coming to Disney+ on Friday, August 11?