The first four episodes of What-If? are bangers. Freed from the constraints of the movies and able to go all-out with both consequences and visuals in the medium of 3D animation, the stories these tell - particularly the second episode - are fun and exciting, but also emotional and well-written romps through divergent canons. Things get a bit muddy with the Marvel Zombies adaptation, as it lacks the gory gut-punches of the comics and also features some tonal whiplash, but picks up again with Killmonger befriending Tony and Thor being raised as a frat bro, both of which are pretty solid...except for the latter, which veers into some bullshit right at the last second to set up a crossover of all the realities feature thus far.
Let's break down why this writing decision was so dumb:
For one, the point of What-If? stories in Marvel is that they're entirely standalone and unconnected to each other, which is what episodes 1-6 and most of 7 did just fine.
Then there's the Watcher's repeated emphasis on how he can never, ever break his oath of noninterference (outside of chastising Warlock Strange since his universe was dying anyway), and when he finally does? Nothing bad happens, which basically makes his oath pointless and means he let so many atrocities occur for the sake of it.
Thirdly, there's the unifying threat the Watcher is forced to act against: [[Spoiler: Infinity Ultron]], a cool concept whose buildup gets hilariously rushed and forced just to get to punchy-punchy action - you can't possibly justify Thanos rolling up with all five other Infinity Stones YEARS ahead of schedule and with the rest of the universe unaffected by his acquisition of them, only to get one-shot so Ultron can just add them to his collection and cut loose right away. To me, the far more interesting episode would've kept everything the same up until that point, with him briefly experiencing that loss of purpose until he learned of the other Infinity Stones, went on his own journey to acquire them all (including, somehow, the Soul Stone), and concluded by wiping out the universe all the same...only to realize then that he's permanently without purpose now in a dead universe, with him seeing the Watcher, breaking the dimensional barrier, and all that crap just never happening.
And fourthly, there's the culmination of all this: episode 9, which is just fanservice for its own sake. The Multiversal Avengers get a member we've never met before (Conqueror Gamora) due to her episode being cut for development time (and, honestly, it should've just replaced this one) - and she proceeds to do nothing to save the day, so that just makes her presence extra pointless. Warlock Strange does all the heavy lifting, to the point that no one other than Natasha even needed to be there, so the fight just comes down to, again, lots and lots of fanservice that accomplishes little else.
Sure, it was nice to see Ultron taken down by Zemo and Natasha getting a second chance at living in a universe where she died...but it didn't feel necessary, and that's the main problem: the first several episodes were so good at the assigned task of "self-contained story about a single change affecting everything" that this just diminishes and ridicules the outcomes and consequences OF those episodes. I can only hope season 2 doesn't pull this crap again.
WesternAnimation Season 1: Great Until It Converged
The first four episodes of What-If? are bangers. Freed from the constraints of the movies and able to go all-out with both consequences and visuals in the medium of 3D animation, the stories these tell - particularly the second episode - are fun and exciting, but also emotional and well-written romps through divergent canons. Things get a bit muddy with the Marvel Zombies adaptation, as it lacks the gory gut-punches of the comics and also features some tonal whiplash, but picks up again with Killmonger befriending Tony and Thor being raised as a frat bro, both of which are pretty solid...except for the latter, which veers into some bullshit right at the last second to set up a crossover of all the realities feature thus far.
Let's break down why this writing decision was so dumb:
Sure, it was nice to see Ultron taken down by Zemo and Natasha getting a second chance at living in a universe where she died...but it didn't feel necessary, and that's the main problem: the first several episodes were so good at the assigned task of "self-contained story about a single change affecting everything" that this just diminishes and ridicules the outcomes and consequences OF those episodes. I can only hope season 2 doesn't pull this crap again.