Watching – Marvel What If … ? Season 2 Ep 3 & 4

For me, what make What If … stories worth following, the question of “Wouldn’t it be cool if …” that we used to play out in our own head cannons and action figures.

Marvel wasn’t the only one to play with this idea. DC Comics had a number of stories that started as dream sequences like the number of times Lois Lane dreamed of Superman’s wedding (sometimes to her, sometimes to someone else). The Silver Age went some strange places … places that writers like Grant Morrison picked up and integrated into the current DCU (meanwhile, Crisis events made it easy enough to erase or retcon these ideas that didn’t prove popular). For stories that truly got strange, DC called them imaginary tales (again, Superman seemed to have way more than anyone else). Later, DC used alternate Earths to set these experimental stories when a continuity fixated fan brought them up.

Then in 1989, we got Gotham by Gaslight, a tale of Batman in an entirely different timeline, set a century into the past. In the years to follow, DC labelled these as Elseworld stories. Some had long lasting impacts and reappeared as part of Multiversal Crises or as animated movies or just a one shot cameo in the various animated series. The message was clear though – here’s an opportunity to play with these action figures in completely different settings and see what happens differently because of it. At some point, I full expect to rant about this in greater details, but for now I’m just putting out there that there are some cool ideas that have come from these imaginary stories.

What kind of impact? Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Batman – Son of the Demon are two stories that didn’t take place in the mainstream DC universe initially, but planted seeds that are still bearing fruit to this day, including the change in the Batman / Superman dynamic ever since (even if you didn’t Snyder’s Justice League, you can’t deny that Ben Affleck is directly informed by Miller’s Batman) and the introduction of Damien Wayne.

Why bring this up? Because sometimes a What If … story doesn’t meet that bar. Sometimes all the characters go back to how they were at the end. Sometimes the changes are so minor that it might as well have been a writer’s personal preference to ignore that something happened the way it did and wants to put their own alternative spin on an origin story. Sometimes those experiments paid off with fan interest and spawned a new character or series. And sometimes you get Spider-man’s Clone Saga following the What If Spider-Man’s Clone Lived a decade later trying to cash in on the popularity of DC storylines at the time of Death of Superman (spoiler – he gets better and redefined as well as spawning off four other heroes) and Batman: Knightfall (spoiler – he also gets better, but spawns off several other changes in the Bat Family).

Episode 2.3 – “What If … Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?”

This really didn’t feel like much of a What If … episode as it fell in the category of let’s play with the action figures and see what happens before they all go back into the box that happened sometimes in the comic itself.

This could have easily been the content of an Iron Man or Avengers filler issue, not even an annual, maybe even a release during the infamous Assistant Editor’s months. The enjoyment comes purely from all the Die Hard references. It goes for comedy and action which is a welcome relief from the numerous down beats of Season 1. If the serum could be reversed, then its not really a What If … and there’s no reason to believe that Tony & Bruce couldn’t do that. In the 616 comics, there are so many folks with Hulk serums leading relatively normal lives (Doc Samson, She-Hulk, etc.). What I was left wondering at the end was in what way this universe was significantly different after and how would that plug into a potential season long story arc. As everyone else seemed pretty much MCU stock, Happy Hogan might be called upon to save the Multiverse …

Episode 2.4 – “What If … Iron Man Crashed into the Grandmaster?”

I’d read rumours that there was a missing episode from the first season that had exactly this plot, only hinted at by a brief appearance of Hulkbuster Tony as Gamora gets snatched away to save The Watcher. I have no doubt that this is that episode.

It’s the early Tony still believing he can and ought to fix the world with his technology, before he reached the tired and bitter Tony carrying the responsibility of the world on his shoulders and I missed that cocksure finger guns Tony that believes in second chances. And based on Gamora’s response to Peter Quill in the Guardians of the Galaxy, she appears to have a weakness for that kind of charm.

The action is all kinds of Mad Max Fury Road and Speed Racer and even more than a few nods to Ben Hur thrown in. There’s enough moral ambiguity in the supporting characters that some scenes could have gone either way and as a What If …, there should be a very real possibility of those sorts of plot twists. I have no doubt that I’ll be using this as the episode to convince a few friends who gave up halfway through Season 1 that they ought to give Season 2 a chance.

Also see thoughts on Ep 1 & 2