Obligatory disclaimer: real life is tricky; it is autumn in Ontario, Canada now, and all of the American toads and garter snakes and the rest of the cold-blooded animals are beginning to go to their winter hibernation sites; whereas the local songbirds – i.e., the American robin and the like – are flying down south, to the U.S., and beyond. Winter is only coming, it is not yet here, but the wildlife is getting the heck out of dodge already. As such, I often genuinely wonder as to how the world of ASOIAF would function – 10 years summer, 10 years winter and the such like? The local animals would find it to be murder, hence why GM never cared about them in his novels, dragons and dire wolves aside – but we digress.
This week, Marvel’s ‘What if?’ S1 has reached its’
penultimate episode, which has Ultron killing everyone, except for Natasha ‘Black
Widow’ Romanoff and Armin Zola. Seriously, that is a character worth saving?
Bloody Zola? Yes, obviously, the concept of ‘what if’ does imply from the start
that here be unknown people with known names, but still? Zola?
…Zola aside, we got what? Further confirmation that
the Thanos from ‘the sacred timeline’ was either especially tough, or
especially lucky, or its’ Avengers were an especially measly bunch instead. Way
back when, it took them two movies to actually defeat the grape goliath, and
here in ‘What if?’, in the other timelines, various characters defeat him
hither and yon. Puts a different perspective on all of those Infinity Stones
found in the TVA, you know!
As for the episode itself, well… Yes, it is bad that
Ultron won and killed everyone, to put it lightly, but we have already seen a
variant of that, back in the episode 1x04, when that version of Dr. Strange did
pretty much the same thing – and now he is back, as the Watcher has contacted
him for help.
It should be noted that the Watcher had not shown initiative here; instead,
it was the Ultron-Vision who attacked the Watcher, causing him to flee and
start to assemble his own team, (though, notably, he has not contacted Zola or
Romanoff yet), in order to save the multiverse and himself. Guess the TVA is
going to be replaced after all, by the new mega-avengers, or else Ultron is going to kill the Marvel multiverse
instead. This has happened before,
actually, albeit by Deadpool rather than Ultron, but as we have seen, ‘What if?’
presents only the Avengers-associated characters so far, and Deadpool isn’t one
of them; if you’re going to argue that the GotG aren’t exactly Avengers’
themselves, well, ‘What if?’ has them associated with T’Challa instead, and
that hero began to be associated with the Avengers since the CA: CW film…
unlike Shang-Chi, who never was, and so this movie of his is his first true
appearance in the MCU, period. Where were we?
Ah yes, the Marvel comic arc called appropriately ‘Ultron
Forever’, in which the titular character took over Earth, Asgard, and the rest,
and only the brave yet ruthless Doombot stood in his way, so he assembled a
team of Avengers from several time periods in Marvel history, and together the
team defeated ‘the All-Father Ultron’ and brokered peace between the Doombot
and the new free world… Where were we?
Oh yeah, ‘What if?’ aimed to shock and awe as much as
anything, but the problem is that just as with many other TV series, (MCU or
not), the shock and awe wear off quite quickly, and we’re left… with a TV show
in this case, one whose S1 is coming to an end next week anyhow, and whose
final expression – so far – is more positive than negative. Yay, really!
…However, for now, this is it. See you all soon!
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