Disney+'s What If...? is a breath of fresh air for Marvel fans

Indiewire

"What If…? presents a bit of a paradox, and not just because of the series’ timeline-warping synopsis," says Tyler Hersko of the Disney+ animated series. "This is perhaps the most Marvel Cinematic Universe title yet, given that viewers who already have a keen understanding of the franchise’s key plot arcs and an attachment to its myriad of characters will undoubtedly get the biggest kick out of each episode. The show is also a self-perpetuating product that has obvious potential to endlessly exploit the MCU IP in order to create sequels (Season 2 is already in development) and spinoffs that should entice Disney+ subscribers to keep coming back for more, more, more. On the other hand, What If…? is the first MCU installment in years that doesn’t feel burdened by the need to meticulously fit into the franchise’s canon or blatantly tease future installments. This is a breath of fresh air for Marvel diehards that manages to offer the fans exactly what they want while still clinging to a few surprises. Longtime franchise fans will undeniably get the biggest kick out of the references and in-jokes in the animated anthology series — which questions what would’ve happened at various pivotal moments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe if certain events played out differently — but the self-contained stories aren’t so convoluted they’ll turn off more casual viewers. Regardless, Jeffrey Wright is here to help the uninitiated as the Watcher, an omniscient narrator who provides a helpful bit of exposition explaining how each episode subverts an older part of the MCU."

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• What If...? is a thrilling ride into the multiverse, though it has minor irritations: "Animated series like this tend to be passed over by a mainstream audience that still hesitates to take such presentations as seriously as live action shows," says Melanie McFarland. "What If…? won't be the title that changes that attitude, although it makes a fierce case for relaxing such a limiting paradigm. Regardless of any irritation people like me might hold toward the principle of one-off alternate universe stories, there's a strong throughline of personal power and consequence in the best of these stories. Perhaps it reminds us why these narratives continue to exert a pull over our collective imagination for good or ill, revitalizing a franchise that has stretched past two dozen interconnected films. Maybe it's just an exciting late-summer diversion. Even if it is, it's one worth considering."
• What If...? does for the Marvel Cinematic Universe precisely what the original What If...? series did for the Marvel Comics Universe: "It's bright, bold, cleverly written and fluidly animated — and it features over 50 of the actors who portrayed various MCU characters on the big screen returning to voice them," says NPR. "The series' character designs are closely based on those original actors, and there is often a rotoscopic, motion-captured quality to the animation, which occasionally locates the series in the darkest depths of the uncanny valley. But the series takes full advantage of its status as an animated property in which the special effects budget is unlimited, and employs those effects in deft, stylized flourishes. It is perfectly natural to want to go into any given episode knowing precisely which MCU storyline is about to get tweaked, and how. Smartly, however, none of the three episodes made available to critics gave away the game upfront in the episode title, say. I'd recommend going into each episode knowing as little as possible, as the creators have deliberately structured them with built-in red herrings and minor misdirects; the reveals of these twists are a big part of this show's appeal."
• What If...? is more like a cynical remix album: "The series debuts with great timing to a recently published article in The Guardian about how Marvel and DC Comics are barely paying some of the original comic book storytellers behind these entities," says Nick Allen. "Not that all of these particular characters come from that generation, but that they are from the same school of thought of Disney and Marvel repurposing, of taking brand storylines and characters, and making whatever they can from the same pieces; the honoring of originality is more of a bonus, like the $5,000 check sent to creators when their characters are used. I love the idea of different dimensions in general, and think it's fascinating to think about—this series is like a 101 version of it for kids, which beats showing them the movie Rabbit Hole. But playing with different realities in What If...? feels kind of weightless here; when the series is more staying within the parameters of what we’ve seen before, it’s kind of obnoxious. It starts to branch out a little more as the episode moves on, but the lack of truly messing with things makes clear how much the web of possibilities always leads to the lesser ambitions of the almighty IP."
• What If...? brings comic book-style storytelling to television: "As Marvel Studios continues its nascent transition into the television industry, it dives deeper and deeper into the ink-splashed territory of comic books—in both style and substance," says Daniel Chin. "With the upcoming release of the animated anthology series What If…?, the MCU is leaning further into its comic book storytelling than ever before."
• There’s only so far even the Marvel multiverse can stretch: "Some what-ifs prove vastly more compelling than others," says Angie Han. "That Peggy Carter episode? It’s a lovely idea turned into a lukewarm Captain America: The First Avenger rehash, dusted with vague female empowerment themes. The third episode, in which Nick Fury’s campaign to recruit the Avengers is derailed by a string of deaths, has still less to offer in the way of emotional or thematic depth, and can’t even scrape together a satisfying solution to the mystery it presents. On the other hand, the second episode — a zippy heist set in a galaxy where T’Challa, rather than Peter Quill, became Star-Lord — combines the goofiness of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies with the earnest heroism of Black Panther to delightful effect, and in the process allows Chadwick Boseman to voice a lighter, funnier version of his beloved character. It’s easily the best of the three, and the only one that comes anywhere near shedding new light on familiar territory, or imagining how dramatic the ripple effects of such a change could be. While the stories vary in genre, theme and ambition, all enjoy a boost of gravitas from narration by Jeffrey Wright, playing the aforementioned Watcher — an omniscient being whose function here is basically to be Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone. Less fortuitously, all episodes also share an animation style that sits awkwardly between hand-drawn 2D and computer-generated 3D, resulting in several scenes that veer too close to the uncanny valley. It doesn’t help that some of the voice performances verge on robotic. Though the cast mostly consists of actors reprising their live-action roles, some apparently need to be seen in order for their charisma to come across."
• What If...? is arguably the most “out there” of Marvel’s Phase 4 offerings: "That’s a result of its high conceptuality and a sheer number of 'wow' moments which are better thought of as important narrative details than mere Easter Eggs," says Charles Pulliam-Moore. "While the significance of What If...?’s metanarrative is certainly clearer the more familiar you are with the rest of the MCU, each of the episodes are crafted in such a way that an encyclopedic understanding of the canon isn’t really all that necessary. What If...? understands that by this point, you probably know who the Avengers and their foes all are in a general sense—just enough to make the Watcher’s (Jeffrey Wright) guided tour through the multiverse all you need to dive in. What If...? eases you into the multiverse with a number of episodes that cleave close enough to the beats of movies like Captain America: The First Avenger and Guardians of the Galaxy to feel comfortably familiar, but not so much so that it feels as if head writer AC Bradley simply swapped characters around. Tonally and thematically different as each episode is, what becomes clear as you watch them is how What If...? puts the bulk of its energy into altering the contexts that its characters exist within rather than the characters themselves."
• What If…? yields uneven results, as anthology series often do: "Without giving away any major spoilers, the show is at its best when it strays from its film origins in order to create original story lines, and at its worst when it does little more than alter scenes from past MCU movies," says Daniel Chin. "What If…? thrives when it positions T’Challa as the space-traveling Star-Lord in a new plot that wasn’t featured in any Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and it falters when it focuses on the original Avengers team in a way that starts to feel like an extended remix of Marvel’s Phase 1. In the case of the Captain Carter premiere, the episode retreads the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger from the moment Steve is injected with the serum to his final goodbye with Peggy, albeit with the roles reversed and some other adjustments made along the way. The result is a 30-minute episode of TV that tries to fit in all the main beats of a two-hour feature film. Scenes like the Red Skull retrieving the Tesseract in Norway, Steve springing Bucky and the Howling Commandos from Hydra’s captivity, and the mission when Bucky falls off the train are all repurposed, with some of the same lines and shots carried over from the movie."
• In this anything-goes world, What If ...? can also leap from genre to genre: "Apart from Captain Carter biffing the Nazis, there is a space heist that imagines T’Challa (in what turned out to be Chadwick Boseman’s final performance as the Black Panther) taking the place of Peter Quill as Star-Lord in a Guardians of the Galaxy reboot," says Jack Seale. "There is also a serial-killer whodunnit, in which the Avengers never assemble because someone keeps murdering them, prompting Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) to turn into a sort of one-eyed Poirot...So What If ...? is canon, but not heavy, continuing a run of Marvel TV shows that refuse to repeat themselves. It occupies a very different space to the feverishly imaginative WandaVision, the resolutely vanilla The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the impishly complex Loki. Viewers who like a bit of superhero gubbins, but who long since gave up on staying across the nuances of the MCU, can approach What If ...? without trepidation. For dedicated Marvel enthusiasts, on the other hand, What If ...? might feel inessential. But the prospect of speculative fan-fiction with a stamp of approval will be hard to resist – especially when it transports them back to the original source of their obsession."
• What If...? is like a love letter to MCU fan theory: "This is a show that dares to ponder what might have happened if Peggy Carter had received Dr. Erskine's super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers," says Adam Rosenberg. "Where would Peggy's life have gone? What about Steve? Or Bucky? Every episode calls back to Marvel's comic book roots in some way, but What If...? cleverly avoids the path of least resistance by simply turning Captain America into a gender-swapped Captain Britain. The MCU has had a knack all along for neither zigging nor zagging in ways that fans expect. So when a mysterious assassin starts taking out Avengers in episode three, the eventual surprise reveal comes tumbling out of a realm you never would've guessed. The same vibe persists through all three of the episodes Disney provided for review. Even still, the MCU as we already know it defines every frame of What If...?, offering Easter egg hunters a wealth of material to sift through. There are slightly twisted recreations of familiar scenes and even specific lines of dialogue, such as a return to the campus where an Edward Norton Hulk faced off against Thunderbolt Ross (it's Ruffalo Hulk now, and things go quite differently)."
• The Captain Carter episode was a top priority for Marvel: “Captain Carter was one of the first, if not the first, concept we came up with for What If…?,” says executive producer Brad Winderbaum. “She had an amazing story to tell, with just that one little element shifted, and we knew that we’d be able to challenge the character in ways that were born of that time in that era, if all of a sudden the sole super soldier on Earth was a female hero.”
• Jeffrey Wright says the Watcher’s less of an impartial observer and more of an active fan, much like What If...?'s audience: “In some ways, I think that the passion behind fans’ connection to these characters (comes from) this level of trust, understanding, and hope that is imbued in them in a way that maybe is not found outside of this mythology,” says Wright. “The deepness of that connection, I think, for fans is a powerful one, and also for the Watcher.”
• The late Chadwick Boseman was one of the first MCU actors to agree to sign on for What If…?: Director Bryan Andrews says Boseman was drawn to the idea of playing T’Challa as Star-Lord because “he was the king without the mantle” and could have a little more fun as a distinctly sillier version of the character.
• What If...? creator A.C. Bradley praised Marvel for giving her creative freedom to explore all the characters, regardless of gender: “So often in these kinds of media, women write the female characters and writers of color write the heroes of color, and white men get to write everything else,” says Bradley. “And the fact that they were trusting me, a woman, to tell an Iron Man story, to go have fun with Thor, to run with an idea for Killmonger, was a real treat and an honor. They were letting [me] play with all parts of the multiverse.”
• Will What If...? tie into the rest of the MCU?: “Marvel always has plans, whether or not anyone actually knows what those are and how often they change is anyone’s guess. I have no idea to be honest with you,” says Bradley. “Hopefully, it will tie into the bigger picture more and more as the Marvel Universe expands.”