WHAT IF...?
★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) EPISODES VIEWED 3 OF 9
DIRECTOR Bryan Andrews
CAST (VOICES) Jeffrey Wright, Chadwick Boseman, Hayley Atwell, Michael Rooker, Jeremy Renner
PLOT A celestial being known as The Watcher (Wright) observes infinite variations of familiar MCU stories as they play out across the Multiverse — each one centred around a different “What if…?” question, twisting characters and events from previous Marvel movies in new ways.
LIKE THANOS, IT was inevitable. Just as Star Wars spun off several canonical animated series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe now follows. In true MCU style, What If…? takes a lesser-known comic-book property (which began in 1977 with ‘What If Spider-man Joined The Fantastic Four?’) and brings it to wider mainstream attention.
Essentially, it’s the screen equivalent of a remix album — drawing on 13 years of Infinity Saga storytelling, and imagining major narrativealtering twists in episodes that play out as interpolations, reworkings, and samplings of well-known hits. Some are more straightforward (Episode 1 asks, ‘What if Agent Peggy Carter got the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers?’), while others are less succinct, but all offer the chance to run with plotlines that would never play out in the live-action films or Disney+ shows, delivered with stylish animation and a voice cast roster that most animated superhero cartoons would die for — several Marvel cast members (but notably not all of them) reprise their roles here.
In its animated form, the MCU skews slightly younger than the cinematic offerings — What If…? has a Saturday-morning serial feel. If the cel-shaded visual style is an acquired taste — character models are rendered with blocky colours and thick black outlines — the worlds of Marvel are recreated with beautiful pastel palettes and bathed in cinematic lighting. The action is slick and kinetic, and the scripts are pacy too, whizzing through concentrated re-runs of movie highlights with unexpected pay-offs.
It’s this sense of surprise that will be most satisfying to existing fans. While each episode revolves around one central change, the resulting ripple effects in every instalment feel well-considered. Peggy (Hayley Atwell) becoming Captain Carter means markedly different fates for Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). And a world in which Yondu (Michael Rooker) pilfered
T’challa (the late, great Chadwick Boseman) from Earth instead of Peter Quill results in significant shifts in the cosmic power structure. To say any more would spoil the fun — and the fun, really, is the whole point.
It’s also the one thing holding What If…? back. By its very nature, the alternate-universe storytelling makes it hard to care too much about the outcome of each episode. The series is designed as a playful, imaginative flight of fancy, a bar which it meets but never transcends. Jeffrey Wright’s The Watcher gives a nice Rod Serling-style introduction to each episode, but his arrival adds little to the overall Marvel lore. And if you’re not already a Marvel die-hard, this is anything but an entry-way — those without an MCU PHD will find What If…? more of a WTF.
Not that the series is entirely inconsequential — the recent cracking open of the Multiverse means that all of this can be considered somewhat canonical. If the MCU does continue to follow the Star Wars playbook, it’s easy to pinpoint who should get the Ahsoka treatment and receive their own live-action spin-off: we’ll take more Captain Carter, please. BEN TRAVIS
VERDICT
Marvel Studios’ first animated series is a stylish narrative experiment with fun twists and surprises — nothing more, nothing less. For the uninitiated, it’s impenetrable.