What If…? Season One – Review

Marvel has been producing some great television series on Disney + over the past year. This is a great time to be a superhero fan. While all of them have been very different style, What If…? has been particularly unique.

The premise of the series is that things that we are familiar with in the MCU could have happened somewhat different. With the building up of their multiverse, those alternate possibilities have a new kind of reality. What If…? explores what would have happened if things turned out differently as we observe through the eyes of the cosmic being, The Watcher.

First the good news. One of the things that is unique about this series is that it is animated. And it is beautifully animated. It really is a pleasure to watch. They also came up with some clever plot lines that really got the audience thinking. Finally, they were able to get back many, although not all, of the actors who played the characters in the movies.

Now the bad news. Each episode varied wildly in the quality of the story. While the premise was usually good, the execution was not always great. Some of them were excellent and kept me glued to the screen, others were somewhat boring. Some were really good and then ended on a disappointing note.

I will say that the last two episodes were fantastic. This two parter looked at what if Ultron won. The consequences go far beyond the defeat of the Avengers. Taking Vision’s body and Thanos’s infinity stones made Ultron almost unstoppable. It was one of the most fun and exciting moments in comic book story telling, better in fact then some of the movies.

I’m definitely looking forward to more What If…? stories in the future.

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