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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The animated Marvel series What If…? provides, on paper, the most thorough franchise examination of the multipurpose by showing us stories from a very different reality. However, while all three seasons of the show have been generally entertaining, it increasingly exposes the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest multiverse storytelling weakness. Like Star Trek: Lower Decks lately, Marvel has been focusing on giving us “lazy derivative remixes”, and What If…? It would be stronger if his multiverse had a better connection to existing movies and TV shows.
Now, some fair warning before we go any further: we’re going to be touching on the major spoilers for the end Lower Decks as well as a third and final term What If…?so read on at your own risk.
Star Trek Calls Out The Multiverse
The last two episodes of Lower Decks involving our Starfleet heroes researching quantum rifts and eventually creating some sort of stable wormhole to other dimensions. Along the way, Variant’s character, Captain Boimler, complained about the multiverse as a concept, saying they kept coming up with “lazy derivative remixes” of familiar characters rather than anything new. In fact, it’s hard not to see this sentiment directed at him Amazedwhose various films and shows (incl What If…?) have seriously wasted the potential of storytelling.
Movies like Doctor Strange and the Other of Madness and even the beloved Spider-Man: No Way Home have used the multiverse mainly as an excuse to bring us either new versions of familiar characters (such as Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic) or cameos from other films (such as Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and other Marvel villains from Sony). Amazed What If…? The show was designed to go bigger by creating standalone stories set in their own universes. However, as huge fans of the original comic, we can’t help but feel that this show would be stronger if it had stronger ties to the current universe.
What It Takes for the Marvel Universe
In case you don’t know, the original What If…? A comic was about exploring what would happen if a major Marvel event had gone differently, such as what would happen if Hulk killed Wolverine in one of their early battles. Some episodes of the show reflect this by imagining how different the MCU would be if, say, Ultron beat the Avengers or Odin never adopted Loki. But many more episodes of this show explore completely off-the-wall possibilities, from T’Challa becoming Star-Lord or Agatha Harkness pursuing superpowers by becoming a Hollywood star.
As Marvel fans, we’ve enjoyed some of these marvels What If…? stories, but Star Trek was right: ultimately, Disney It keeps serving us lazy remixes of beloved characters, effectively wasting the idea of the multiple. The show should have been more like the comic, rooting its stories in an exploration of what would happen if it were big MCU events had gone down differently. There would still be plenty of opportunities to create fun Variations (got to sell those action figures, after all), but audiences would be more invested in these “new” characters thanks to their connection to the cinematic universe we all know and love him.
Marvel may have already taken this advice to heart: What If…? ends with its third season, and we are likely to see the death (at least, temporarily) of the multiverse after Secret Wars. However, as fans who really want to see the franchise succeed, we’ll always be haunted by the singular question we ponder every time the credits roll. Simply put, what if Marvel did a better job with him What If…? and the plural in general?
And if the TVA could zip us into that reality, do it right away…all we can do is watch Deadpool & Wolverine so often for our decent multifaceted storytelling fix.
