Spoilers What If...? discussion thread

It ends just when it was getting interesting.
Rather gruesome episode I thought. Surprised the Mouse allowed it. I did like that it recommended to watch the Walking Dead afterwards. That’s good promotion.
Spider-Man felt the most Spidey like here. Maybe it was his look that sold it. He actually looked like his comic version.

 

"Uh, splitting up? Do you guys just not have horror movies in Wakanda?"

"We don't need them. We have American reality shows."

I'm not a fan of zombie films (except for 28 Days Later) but this episode was a pretty good take on the genre and I particularly enjoyed Peter's constant riffing on the classic tropes.

I like that the origin of the zombie virus came from the Quantum Realm and brought to the our plain of existence thanks to Hank and Hope's mission to find Janet. Makes me wonder if such a thing exists in our reality and whether if we'll get some kind of reference to it in Quantumania.

I loved the random assortment of survivors, ranging from the superpowered like Peter and Bucky to those who relied on technology like Hope, Okoye, and Happy to those who survive with their wits and humor like Sharon and Kurt. And the Cloak of Levitation!

Speaking of Kurt, I loved the inclusion of David Dastmalchian's Kurt in the mix of the better known characters, one that is not an obvious choice but I really enjoyed his levity in partnership with Peter's own upbeat nature. Then we got the wonderful Scott in a Futurama head jar just before Kurt died and that was even more fun than I thought it would be! I want Headjar Scott get his own show!

We didn't get much in the way of actual combat of zombie heroes versus the survivors beyond just a minute here and minute there, but I did love seeing the face off between Hulk battle zombie Wanda. That's the one fight I wish we had gotten more of.

Two things nag at me. Why would Sharon take the Iron Hand blaster from Happy had after he was infected? She risked infection by using it directly on her skin...and yet nothing came of it and she died at Steve's hands. Not a big deal obviously, but it still nagged at me. However, a bigger deal is how Hope's suit worked to become Giant-Woman when there was a breach in it. Shouldn't that have been impossible? Oh, well, at least we got the cool moment with giant Hope saving her friends in a big sacrificial moment.

I loved the dark ending, addressing the very thing I wondered about since the set-up: What happens when Thanos arrives? Oh, goody! Zombie Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet!

Lastly, I suddenly found myself bawling when Chadwick talked about the Wakanda belief that death is not the end and that they're still with us as long as we don't forget them. I know he has said that before but, man, it really hurt to hear him say it as one of his last recorded lines.

 

With all the references to zombie movies and tropes, I'm kind of surprised they didn't go into any meta references regarding Okoye being an expert in fighting zombies.

 

The zombie episode was more fun than I expected, going heavily for humor. More Shaun of the Dead than The Walking Dead, I guess. I don't like zombie stories and don't understand their popularity, but the stuff other than the zombies was pretty good here.

Is this the first time the name "Uncle Ben" has ever been spoken in an MCU production? I think it is. And it wasn't even Tom Holland saying it.

Because the goal of the TVA was not to prevent meddling in general, it was simply to preserve He Who Remains' own timeline (aka the "Sacred Timeline") and eliminate competitors. So any events that led to the version of reality that produced He Who Remains are okay, and indeed necessary, whether they involve time travel or not. And that includes the events that let the Avengers bring back half the universe post-Thanos.

Yeah, that was a potent moment.

 

Yeah, I believe so. They've referred to him but never explicitly "Uncle Ben."

Speaking of which, Hudson Thames did a pretty good job of emulating Holland's Peter...but I still find it weird that Holland himself wasn't involved. He has been very enthusiastic about his time as Spider-Man and said he would keep doing it if asked. So what happened here? It couldn't have simply been a scheduling issue considering the vast number of people they've managed to cast among the original actors and it's not like they need to all record at the same time in the same place (even before COVID!).

 

A guy named Hudson Thames and he was born in LA?

 

A couple of points of order:

One, if Hope's ants devoured zombie Tony, Strange, and Wong, are the ants now zombies? Is it wise to infect a swarm of flying ants with zombie virus?

Two, why did Hope hold out for hours after being scratched when everyone else was turned within seconds?

 

Severity of the wound, perhaps?

I wish she had had the wherewithal to shrink back down to normal size before being completely overcome by the hoard. Her resurrecting as a giant zombie wasn't really necessary.

 

There was no evidence the virus infected anything other than humans in the episode. Maybe the virus only infects living things with a certain level of intelligence.

 

So if Zombie Thanos got all the stones, I wonder what he'd use them for. Clearly he wouldn't reduce all life in the galaxy, that would give them less food/people to turn. Maybe he'd double all life lmao, or just use them to subdue people easier.

Also why was Thanos in Wakanda? He only went there in the movie because that's where Vision was.

 

Maybe they didn't actually consume the zombies, but destroyed them by a different means?

That would also make sense. Either way, something like that I'm not going to dwell on too much.

That makes the most sense to me. Perhaps it wasn't a direct wound (i.e. the cut came from a weapon) so it took longer for the virus to spread?

Maybe so, but again, recording audio for a single episode doesn't take more than a day or two (depending on number of lines and retakes) and it's not like he's not the only person involved with What If...? who is super busy these days.

Doubling all life in the universe would be a brilliant inverse of his original goal.

I just double-checked, he does have the Time Stone, so perhaps it got to Wakanda somehow? Maybe the Cloak of Levitation fled with it after Strange was compromised and Okoye decided the safest place to store it was in Wakanda, underestimating the level of threat Thanos posed?

 

Except Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, and Thanos.

Resisting a wisecrack about Scott or Kurt...

Wakanda was the only non-zombified place left on Earth, according to Okoye. And if even the Black Order was vulnerable to the zombie virus, maybe Thanos decided it was best to conquer the one remaining non-zombie part of the planet and figure out getting the Stones from there. Though clearly it didn't work out as he intended.

 

Very mixed bag in this episode

The first half was a really great blend of humor, action and personal drama but it fell apart in the second half.

It started off great as a sort of Zombie comedy like Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland, with some tense moments and great action. Peter kills it with a very emotional scene explaining how he can remain so upbeat despite all those gut punches he gets from life but revealing Vision as a sort of villain who can't kill Zombie Wanda simply didn't work so well with me and the less said about Futurama head Scott Lang the better ( that was really dumb).

The cliffhanger with Zombie Thanos and 4 of 5 Infinity Stones ( and the group bringing the 5th right to his doorstep) was cool though - any chances they will continue that storyline in season 2? I think quite good.. Marvel Zombies has been quite popular over the years.

 

I found this episode boring and the way characters moved on from the ends of other significant characters bothered me. I guess this is the "grieve for one second" universe.

 

This episode really emphasizes how these are essentially one-offs with little to no correlation with the MCU proper. In the first episode things are different just because Peggy made a single different choice, whereas here things are different not because someone made a different choice but that the quantum realm in this story simply effects people very differently from how it was depicted in MCU proper.

It’s also the second instance we get a “and they were doomed” ending. So I guess we’re not gonna see any follow up eps like I assumed. This series truly lives up to the phrase “what if?” and just has fun with it.

 

It wasn't the whole quantum realm; it was a virus that Janet picked up there. Presumably here she chose to go somewhere she didn't choose to go before, and thus got exposed to the virus when she didn't in the main timeline. Or maybe she ate something she shouldn't have, or maybe she failed to evade an attack that she successfully evaded in the main timeline.

I gather those are fairly common in the source comic. It's pretty common in fiction for alternate timelines to have "kill everybody" outcomes because you're free of the need for the characters to survive to the next installment; see TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise" or Stargate SG-1's "There But For the Grace of God."

Also, you want to believe that the heroes of the main story are actually making a positive difference for their world, making it a better place by being there. So you don't want to have too many stories that turn out better in the alternate version, like Star-Lord T'Challa.

 

And yet even in that Starlord episode we see Peter Quill captured by Ego, which was another “and they were doomed” ending. Ego can presumably go through his plans of enveloping the universe and no one is even aware to stop that from happening.

 

They should do, “What if… the mutants were around?”

 

It would be even more fun if it was the Fox cast. Snagging Jackman, Stewart and McKellen would be a big get. And because this is only a “What If…?”, they don’t have to worry about establishing an MCU proper mutant story.

Worth noting, like with Raimi’s Spider-Man films, Kevin Feige was also producer of the initial X-Men trilogy, just prior to running Marvel Studios. So there’s already a history there.