Marvel’s What If…? Review 5f5w51 A Footnote in the MCU Encyclopaedia

A galaxy-level cast, for a TikTok-level Disney+ series. 1f1iw

By Akhil Arora | Updated: 10 August 2021 18:30 IST

Marvel’s What If…? Review: A Footnote in the MCU Encyclopaedia

Photo Credit: Disney/Marvel Studios 2w5l4n

Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter (centre) in What If…?

Highlights

What If…? premieres August 11 on Disney+, Disney+ Hotstar
A total of nine episodes in Marvel’s What If…? season 1
Chadwick Boseman, Samuel L. Jackson part of What If…? cast

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What if Steve Rogers' love interest Peggy Carter took the Super Soldier serum? What if the Wakandan prince T'Challa ended up becoming Star-Lord? What if Nick Fury's big week was even busier and more chaotic? What if all of the Avengers, from Iron man to Spider-Man, were zombies? These are the kind of hypothetical questions asked by Marvel's What If…? — premiering Wednesday on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar — a new animated anthology series with half-hour long episodes that at times feels like the least consequential Marvel Studios project ever. Some of that is because we're being treated to one-off adventures (in many cases), and some owing to the fact that What If…? won't have any effect on the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Hardcore fans will want to know this: the new Loki. Spoiler alert if you haven't finished watching all six episodes of its first season. Loki ended with the Sacred Timeline split into an infinite number of branches, giving rise to a multiverse of possibilities. Pre-Loki, these “what if?” scenarios would've been clipped by the Time Variance Authority, because they “weren't supposed to happen.” Now they can roam wild. Captain Carter? Or a benevolent Star-Lord? Why not.

Though What If…? cannot change the MCU, it benefits from it. After all, over four dozen Marvel stars return to reprise their roles in voice form, including Disney to throw at an animated series. But it's honestly not that much of a problem, exactly because it's an animated series — you're not looking at the same face with a different voice.

From What If…? to F9 , What to Watch in August

Hollywood was less sexist in general and more open to switching it up when the MCU began.

And that's also tied to why some of What If…? feels disingenuous and like checking a box. Evans spent a decade playing Steve Rogers/ Captain America in the MCU — that involved a standalone trilogy and four Agent Carter would have been more fun, and that's why What If…? needed to spend more time with these alternate versions.

Maybe that's still on the cards. Critics have only seen three of What If…? season 1's nine episodes — it's why this should also be a considered a review of just those three episodes — and all three are disted and chronicle myriad tales. One of them features Boseman's T'Challa, who is said to be back in three more episodes, though it's unknown in what capacity. While reserving my judgment in that regard, I do believe What If…? would've been better off if it focused its energies on a couple of characters every year. That said, not every story needs that kind of expansive treatment, as the third tale shows. And for Disney+ and Marvel, the contained anthology approach means it can appeal to a much broader base of Marvel fans. Essentially, there's something for everyone.

The Empire, Cruella, What If…?, and More on Disney+ Hotstar in August

Benicio del Toro as The Collector, Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa/ Star-Lord in What If…?
Photo Credit: Disney/Marvel Studios

For now, the only element tying together these disparate What If…? tales is the Disney+ series' narrator The Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright, from Ms. Marvel series.

The MCU has always been like a giant TV show. For the first decade following its inception, we used to get 2-3 hour “episodes” on the big screen. And starting this year, we watched six-hour adventures broken into actual episodes. What If…? is neither. In what is a crude analogy, it's a TikTok video version of a Marvel movie. In other ways, it's Marvel Studios' first actual TV show in that its stories are contained to 30 minutes or so. It's also its first animated series — the studio did oversee Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. after Marvel Television was folded, for what it's worth — that allows it to operate on a different canvas than its standard live-action route. The first three episodes don't push the envelope though. As yet, What If…? feels like a footnote in the MCU encyclopaedia.

Marvel's What If…? begins Wednesday, August 11 on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar. New episodes will air every Wednesday until October 6. In India, What If…? is available only in English.

The recently-concluded first season of Loki is our focus this week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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What If…? Season 1 536gg

Release Date 11 August 2021
Genre Action, Adventure, Animation, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero
Cast
Jeffrey Wright, Samuel L. Jackson, Chadwick Boseman, Mick Wingert
Director
Bryan Andrews
Producer
A.C. Bradley, Bryan Andrews, Victoria Alonso, Louis D'Esposito, Kevin Feige, Brad Winderbaum, Carrie Wassenaar

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