How Important was "What If...?"?

What If...? Photo: Collected

"What If...? is an anthology animated series by Ashley C. Bradley based on Marvel comics of the same name. After the result of Loki, "What If...?" represents the other possibilities, other stories, or similar stories in different ways. We have infinite variations of the same characters we have known for years. 

The Watcher, voiced by Jeffrey Wright, narrates the series. The Watcher overviews all that transpires in the multiverse. He does not intervene but watches over, at least till episode 8. 

We have all our stars voicing their designated characters. But some, like Steve, Stark, Captain Marvel, and Romanoff, had soundalikes. 

A fast overview of the first three episodes - you realise what an excellent captain Peggy Carter would have been. It is a representation of the missed opportunity - a potential super-soldier!  

In the second episode, we get to hear T'Challa - Chadwick Boseman. This was pre-recorded by Chadwick before he passed away. 

In the third, we get a glimpse of a world without the Avengers. 

The first three episodes had their flaws. But it was a simple rundown of the existing MCU stories and character variations. 

What If...? Photo: Collected

Moving on from the first three episodes that were more in the general genre, let's talk about the fourth amazing episode - "What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?" 

The episode is powerful and grabs your full attention. When you watch it, you get to see how ruthless the Dr. Strange variant can be. He rationalises his actions by going to lengths to get power to save his love. And it results in catastrophe. The story is painful and yet absorbing. It makes you realise why Strange does what he does. 

The fifth episode was all about zombies. We know zombies as mindless creatures who do not understand who they are or were. It surely was a very interesting episode that gave us random exciting team-ups of the remaining heroes. 

Episodes 6 and 7, were again different stories of other universes. One is all about Killmonger rescuing Tony and the other is about Thor being the only child. Some may argue that the episodes seemed less interesting. 

But, then comes episodes 8 and 9 connected with episode 4 to an extent. We see the Watcher finally interfering with everything happening. He is yet another hero but a complicated one. Also, Dr. Strange's variant in episode 4, who acquires power never seen before, now wants to save the multiverse. He returns to his old-savior-self. We see his imperfect heroism during his fights with the scary variant Ultron in episode 9. 

The finale was a great end to the series for sure. You get to explore the theories and existing Marvel indications. 

IMDB rated the entire series 7.6. Episode 8 acquired the highest ratings - 9.2 and Dr. Strange's episode 4 has been rated 9. 

Undoubtedly my favorite was episode 4. It is an episode that truly foreshadowed what the future holds for Dr. Strange. We can expect this variant to appear in the upcoming multiverse movies, perhaps in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" expected to come out in March 2022. 

An overview of the zombies' episode - seeing many of our superheroes turning into mindless zombies was gut-wrenching. And we can surely hope to see zombies in live-action in MCU cinemas in the future. 

Returning to Captain Carter, rumour has it, she will return in the next season to align with the other characters in this series. 

Speaking of Chadwick's last performance ever in MCU, we also learned from the showrunner that Star-Lord, voiced by Chadwick in episode 2, was supposed to get a spin-off. Sadly, his death was the end of that plan. 

Now we can expect more from the Watcher, Captain Carter in "What If...?" season 2. We are not sure how much hype or fan base this series has succeeded in accumulating. But the superfans of the multiverse will be on the lookout to find more connections of this series to upcoming MCU productions.