CINEXPERIENCE

Marvel Studios returns to the Multiversal adventures of What If? with Season 2 of the series with promises of the series expanding to bigger and crazier alternate “What If?” universes.

This is a spoiler-free review of all 8 episodes of the season.

Overall this Season of What If? is a great improvement and expansion of what was good about last season. It does faulter in the middle when it returns to some of its Season tendencies, but then strikes back with the last 4 episodes of the Season being some of the series’ best.

What If? Season 2 starts off with a dark mystery genre thriller with hints of Blade Runner and Noir films. It also straight away presents a bigger and better What If? scenario than most of Season 1. The first episode is a great start to the series, presenting some fun team ups, stunning action, and great thrills. One other feature that is instantly apparent is the far improved animation this season. Everything just flows more smoothly, and the fights and set pieces have a lot more flare than some of the flatness of the previous season. The first episode doesn’t got as big as ccrazy it coul’dve but provides enough thrill and story to make it enjoyable and certainly worth the watch.

Next we move onto the universe where Yondu does deliver Peter to his father, a scenario which doesn’t sound as interesting as they make it. This turns out to be a spectacularly fun and well written mini-Avengers film with an 80s eras team full of heroes and returning charcters we know from the MCU’s past. This presents some amazing character dynamcis and fun team ups. What prevents this from falling into some of the shortcomings of previous entries such as this is the great character development, writing, and heart. Often with such short runtimes these aspects are underdeveloped but this time writer Matthew Chauncey finds the perfect balance and gives us a fun,action packed, heartfelt and memorable Avenegrs outing. It reminds you of the greatness of the first Avengers film, and makes you miss watching those big Avengers team ups.

What If… Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?

2023’s Marvel annual Christmas themed project is the MCU’s take on Die Hard. As fan favorite character Justin Hammer Hans Grubers it up this episode returning to the MCU after 12 long years. He also carries this episodfe with his wittiness and “smarts”. The episode has a basic but fun premise, and subverts expectations by setting it up as this big Avengers level event. Then takes you back and focuses on some of the MCU’s best side characters in Maria Hill, Darcy Lewis, Happy Hogan, and Justin Hammer. As Hammer channels his inner Gruber to try to stick it to Tony Stark, Happy has to McClane it up to stop him. Until the episode takes an unexpected turn and goes all levels of crazy, before wrapping it all up with soem great christmas cheer. Sounds exciting? it is, but what actually makes it great is the great character dynamics, and the ifinite wisdom of Justin Hammer.

This episode out of place from the better bigger directiont he show has been going this season till now, and that’s beacuse it is. As the Watcher make sit clear at the start, this episode revisits a delayed episode which was supposed to premiere last season, following Tony Stark and Gamora Thanos. the same Gamora Thanos from the Season 1 finale. The episode starts with an amazing premsie, a scenario where Tony Stark never came out of that wormhole at the enf of The Avengers and the MCU never happened, a premise which could lead to some amazing interesting and crazy stories. The episode however makes it into a boring and stupid premise. What starts well turns into a brainless Hot Wheels kids cartoon. The characters feel and seem like they’ve been wrtitten for inexpensive small kids shows, with no real depth. A step back for the series, but can be forgiven, givent hat it was an episode from last season.

This episode also falls into the same trap as the last one, it’s the traditional Season1 What If? formula where it’s a replaying of a familiar MCU film just with a different character. THere’s nothing wrong witht hat, but the execution like last season remains bland. It’s a step down from the great first 3 set of episodes. The season gets better after this but Episode 4 and 5 have some of the stains of Season 1’s worst aspects. The episode is still better written than Season 1 and combines elements of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black Widow for what is still an entertaining ride. However, it’s nowhere as entertaining as the rest, and reeks of some of Season1’s blandness.

Season 2 of What If returns to form, with arguably the series as a whole’s best episode to date. Exploring an original story, with Marvel Studios’ first original character. The episode is entirely in the language of Nimkenaoun, which gives it great authenticity. It tells the tale of Kohhari a young Mohawk woman who falls into tesseract enriched waters and gains great powers. She faces the choice of fighting for her people and her morals, or the opportunity to live a beautiful life of comfort and Paradise while others suffer. The episode puts our morals to question and is really about choosing purpose over comfort. The story is complemented by great visuals, with the animation being the best it has ever been. The sound design and music is also perfect and makes you feel the emotion, the serenity, and the glory in scenes. Kahhori as a character has a very interesting arc that goes to lots of interesting places. The character is so well voiced by Devery Jacobs, and well written that I would love to see the character return in live-action.

What If next ventures to another beautifully told and surprisingly well developed personal story. This time starring Thor’s murderous older sister Hela. Years before our modern MCU, Hela is banished by Odin to Earth to learn mercy the same way Thor was in 2009’s Thor. This time around Hela lands in ancient China, where Shang-Chi’s warlord father Wen Wu encounters Hela and develops a bit of aliking to her. This leads to an epic battle between Wen Wu, Hela, and Odin with some amazing character development for Hela, done very well in such little time. The visuals of these sequences are beautiful, and the final fight is one of the MCU’s best fights to date. The episode is just generally well crafted and features allows the universe to more deeply explore some of the MCU’s best characters who didn’t get their time to shine on the big screen.

The series continues its spectacular upward trajectory with another triumph with Episode 8. A great episode which provides a complete interesting story with great references, and stakes. It’s the most fun, and exciting episode of the series, that gives us what is essentialy a mini-Avengers film. The episode has an interesting premise of a universe stuck in 1602 converging with our modern Marvel universe. This provides for some great visuals, and some truly exciting character dynamics. We see all of our favorite Avengers this episode from Tony Stark to Wanda Maximoff “The Scarlet Witch” molded into their 1602 medieval lives as they try to find a way to prevent the end of their universe. The episode is well written, has a fun story, with one of our previous What If heroes transported into this universe trying to find their way around, and eventually try to save the universe. It also manages to flesh out and give ample time to the various fan favorite characters involved. As a fan of the franchise, and even as a newbie you are bound to be entertained by this one. Scarlet Witch fan will love this portrayal of Wanda with Elizabeth Olsen also returning to voice.

The What If Season 2 Finale not only serves as a good conclusion to this season but also to storylines set up last season. The action is again awesome with beautifull and creative animation, something that was dearly missing last season. The episode features lots of surprises and twists which ends with 3 of the series’ standouts duking it out in an epic battle for the Multiverse! Lots of Easter Eggs! There were a few creative choices which I found surprising and some that I didn’t agree with, but overall it was a satisfying end to the Season.

Watch a new episode of What If…? Season 2 daily at 12 am PT on Disney+