Categories: TV Reviews

What If…? Season 3 TV Review: Marvel Studios’ ambitious animated anthology comes to a thrilling conclusion

Plot: Marvel’s animated series “What If…?” returns in Season 3 for its culminating adventure through the multiverse. Watch as classic characters make unexpected choices that will mutate their worlds into spectacular alternate versions of the MCU. The Watcher will guide viewers as the series traverses new genres, bigger spectacles, and incredible new characters. The series features an incredible voice cast that includes a host of stars who reprise their iconic roles.

Review: When Marvel Studios announced an animated anthology series based on the What If…? line of comic books, the potential to explore different angles and twists on the same storyline seen on the big screen was almost too good to be true. The crux of the comic book is always the opportunity to see what would happen if a character made an alternate choice. However, the MCU take on What If…? centers more on the infinite possibilities of the multiverse and what could have happened if all the trajectories had been different. Instead of choice, What If…? focused on how things would unfold if characters had entirely swapped places or existed in different timelines. It makes for a fun anthology format ending after too few seasons on the air. The third and final volume of What If…? debuts today with seven more episodes hitting Disney+ nightly through New Year’s Eve. It is a fun release strategy as this season of the series packs some crazy stocking stuffers as it comes to an end.

While most of the stories in What If…? are standalone threads in the larger MCU multiverse, the second season pulled in the omnipotent Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), a multiversal being charged with monitoring the events in every timeline. Connected to his decisions to intervene with actions taken by Ultron in the first season and then Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) in the second, Uatu finds himself in hot water with the other Watchers, notably The Eminence (Jason Isaacs). The third season does wrap with three chapters that directly tie up the storyline of Uatu and the Watchers, leaving the door open for future What If…? seasons down the line, but the first five entries in this third volume are more general wackiness in exploring bizarre takes on the Marvel Cinematic Universe that are less questions posed with the titular lead-in phrase but more opportunities for the writers to see what the craziest ideas they could come up with would be.

The season opens with a story about “What If…the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?”. Yes, there was a recent comic book that looked at that exact idea. Still, the MCU version poses a new batch of Avengers led by Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) with Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Melina Vostakoff (Kari Wahlgren), and Nakia (Brittany Adebumola) as they face off against a massive monster version of the Hulk known as Apex inadvertently created by Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). The voice work is good, with so many live-action actors reprising their roles, and the scale of the story is massive, but the concept of a Voltron or Power Rangers team of mechs is silly enough to undermine the whole idea of why we love these heroes. The ending does redeem things as we get some serious Hulk action, but it is an example of where What If…? has focused too much on crazy ideas we would not likely see in live-action rather than the core point the comic series was intended for.

A lot of the episodes are fun excursions into the multiverse, including a team-up between Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Winter Solider (Sebastian Stan) that gives both voice actors a lot of fun dialogue as well as a foray into a 19th-century western led by Shang Chi and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), but others are odder choices. Two episodes deal with the Celestials as they appeared in Eternals and boast sequences that I cannot fathom being achieved in a live-action film. Still, they feel very disconnected from the characters audiences want to see. One episode centers on Ironheart’s Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a character we have not seen since her minor role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Then there is the mid-season chapter that focuses on Thor‘s Darcy (Kat Dennings) marrying Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and going on the run to protect their unborn child. That episode leads directly into introducing a brand new MCU superhero, Byrdie (Natasha Lyonne), who plays a key role in the end of The Watcher’s storyline.

The final two episodes deal with the aftershocks of The Watcher’s actions in the second season. They are the introduction of the X-Men character Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) into the MCU, but I will not reveal any other details about the ending here. Needless to say, head writer Matthew Chauncey, alongside A.C. Bradley and Ryan Little, and directors Bryan Andrews and Stephan Franck, craft a cohesive season that cannot help but feel a little underwhelming. What If…? has been one of the more popular MCU projects since it premiered, and the decision to end it after only three seasons feels like an executive decision made to focus on the floundering feature film slate. The reliance this series has had on the Captain Carter storyline and building out The Watcher as a character rather than just a narrator has given us some great moments with Hayley Atwell and Jeffrey Wright. Still, this season is anticlimactic, with the creative team simultaneously working on the Marvel Zombies spin-off. I enjoyed most of the stories this season but am left wanting more from the under-utilized potential of this concept.

The third season of What If…? brings more animated adventures featuring some major MCU characters while exploring others who have not gotten enough screen time as of yet. If this season proves anything, it is that Thunderbolts* is going to be fantastic, thanks to David Harbour’s no-holds-barred approach to playing Red Guardian. It was nice to see Dominic Cooper, James D’Arcy, Simu Liu, and other characters back after years away from their last appearances. Still, I wonder if this is the last season of What If…? because Uatu is a major presence in the Fantastic Four comics, and that team has their movie coming out very soon. Whatever the reason behind it, What If…? is again a mixed bag of intriguing stories and others that were too ridiculous not to try and tell. The series succeeds in being fun, and that is the biggest reason behind making a series like this, even if it does not quite deliver on what the source material was trying to accomplish.

The final season of What If…? debuts with a new episode each night, for eight consecutive nights, beginning December 22 on Disney+.

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Published by
Alex Maidy