What if, S1 finale - October 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I cannot wait for today to be over for all sorts of reasons; as such, given that I have neither the time nor the inclination to wax poetic about the S1 conclusion of ‘What if?’ let me try to be brief instead.

The S1 finale is rather rushed; I do not know what ‘What if?’ was going for here; maybe it was some sort of a 4^th wall breakthrough, but in this case, they should have gone for a better medium than what is essentially a cartoon series, whose finale had been spoiled since the teaser trailer if not before. Marvel multiverse has plenty of stories, no doubt, but the audience of ‘team Marvel’ had been quite aware of them for a while; unlike the ‘Star Wars: Visions’ anthology, which authentically brought something new to the table due to a variety of factors, Marvel’s ‘What if?’ brought essentially some tried and true ideas to the table, nothing that hadn’t been encountered by Marvel fans before, albeit in different mediums, but still. The S1 finale assembled merely a different set of Avengers – pardon me, Guardians – but somehow they have reminded me of yet another Marvel team-up: Netflix’s ‘Defenders’. Whereas AoS was honestly bad, and ‘InHumans’ insipid, Marvel’s ‘Defenders’ were simply lackluster; a condition made worse by their heterogeneous nature: all 4 series, (plus ‘Punisher’ made the fifth), were different from each other, and when the ‘Defenders’ tried to combine all of them, (minus the Punisher) into a single show, it failed. What next?

‘What if?’ S1 finale was not a variant of the ‘Defenders’, no, but it was also lackluster: it was evident, (just as in case of the ‘Defenders’), just how everything and everyone would go so there were no twists and turns. Individual episodes were predictable enough, but in this case… Uatu threw a variant Gamora into the mix as an extra, and – period. That is it, and even the ‘Gamora killing Thanos’ case isn’t too unique – Marvel comics already did it… in one of the last pre-COVID-19 plot arcs. Yay.

…Well, the fact that ‘What if?’ had not killed the variant Zola and Killmonger off is different, though it is reminiscent of how the 1990’s Spider-Man cartoon had had its’ Captain Rogers and the Red Skull trapped in some timeless void in an eternal struggle. Here we have something similar; and has the variant Dr. Strange become Uatu’s jailer? Seriously, what are the ramifications of Uatu breaking his oath, and are there any ramifications for Uatu? That is not answered; instead, we get ‘What if?’ transformed from an anthology of independent stories – think SW: Visions for comparison – into another ‘Avengers’ variant, which is something that we’ve seen before… unlike the second ‘Venom’ film that we have also recently discussed, and which has actually brought something new to its’ audiences, (however limited or flawed it might be, yes, but still), hence its’ success and ‘What if?’-s not so much. Disney/MCU stopped taking risks after the fall of the SW Sequel Trilogy – but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it instead. See you all soon!