Season Review: Marvel What If…? Season Two

2023 was a decidedly not great year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ant-Man: Quantumania set the tone as a dud. Marvel’s Secret Invasion followed suit with confused messaging and disappointing choices for some longtime characters. The Marvels grossed an all-time low for the franchise. News of overworked VFX employees triggered huge restructuring and slower output. Combined writer and actor strikes set back production on several productions by months. And on top of it all, the actor who was meant to set the stage for the next big storyline turned out to be a…piece of work, requiring big course corrections we likely won’t be seeing take effect for a while. The MCU may not be in “shambles” like some may believe, but it has most definitely hit its limit in handling things the way they have. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some bright spots, of course. The third Guardians of the Galaxy film gave a heartfelt send-off to one of the best teams of the franchise, both in-universe and out, Loki Season 2 did the same for the God of Mischief, and the year closed out with another voyage through the multiverse with The Watcher in the second season of Marvel What If…?

And I bring all of that up not just to give the context to where Marvel is at production-wise, but also to highlight how much Marvel What If…? stands out in the most interesting ways. As one would expect, the show explores the possibilities of the MCU multiverse, tweaking details just a bit in unexpected ways to create an anthology of strange and fascinating tales using familiar faces, settings, and tools. But it’s not as simple as changing one character’s death or having showdowns that would give Death Battle a run for their money. Each scenario is as much about embracing the fanfic-y twists and turns to mess with audience expectations as it is making a self-contained story that works beyond its connections to the MCU. Last season managed to have a sci-fi heist story, a murdery mystery thriller, a gothic tragedy, a zombie escape, and a party comedy, amongst others. All do require being familiar with the associated Marvel movies to fully appreciate, but rarely use those ties as a crutch for their storytelling. And this new batch of episodes is no different, showing and doing things that they simply wouldn’t or even couldn’t do with these characters in the main continuity.

I’ll admit, when the titles for this season were revealed, I joined many in thinking they were odd and disappointing choices for episodes, but I was quite happy to be wrong. In addition to further adventures with Captain Carter, who we see go through her version of the Winter Soldier storyline, we also get to see the unfinished episode where that Gamora she met came from, which turns out to be a story about Tony ending up on the planet from Ragnarok after the events of Avengers. We get to see what The Avengers would look like if they assembled in the 80’s, but also see how two kids from two broken families can find humanity in each other. We get to see anti-hero Nebula go on a cyberpunk conspiracy hunt with often overlooked cosmic characters. We see underrated villain Hela go on a journey of discovery and redemption with unexpected allies. We even got one of the best Christmas Specials in a long time! And we see the creation of a brand new hero, Kahhori, a Mohawk girl given powers by the Tesseract in an episode made up mostly of actual Mohawk natives in their indigenous language. All this leading to a finale that I would say fell flat a bit, but was still a fun time and still a story that only What If could tell.

The third season is already on its way (making this the only one of these Disney+ Marvel shows to get to three seasons), so it’s clear that taking the scenic route through the timelines isn’t ending just yet. This season wasn’t perfect by any means, and so far the most consistent issues I have with the show are how its finales try to tie things together a bit too much, but I can’t deny that just about every episode’s universe has made want to see what happens next for the characters involved. It seems like Captain Carter is currently the only one who gets followed up (so far), but the fact that I find myself speculating about the next adventures of the 80’s Avengers or Hela the White or Kahhori (who I hope they allow to appear in comics or other shows at some point) means that this show is doing its job and the Marvel Cinematic Universe still has plenty of life left in it. We are meant to ponder the unlikely outcomes, think on the unusual chances, and consider the prism of endless possibility. Hopefully the next season will get here a little quicker than this one, but until then, I will pose the eternal question: What If?