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Image by Nimesh Niyomal Perera
It's hard to believe it's already time to say goodbye to What If...?. The anthology series has been a highlight of the latter portion of the MCU, allowing viewers to spend time with fan-favorite characters without disturbing the existing canon. The concepts varied from somewhat plausible to absolutely wild and everything in between, and along the way, What If...? also took bold new steps in an inclusive direction. With Season 3, premiering today on Disney+ as an eight-day event, the series sticks to more or less the same formula, with a deeply entertaining batch of episodes burdened with the glorious purpose of capping the series off in a satisfying way.
Back when What If...? Season 2 premiered, I compared the newest batch of episodes to the first season, and found that while there were standout moments across both seasons, the first leaned more into the concept of truly standalone stories, whereas the second functionally created its own MCU elsewhere in the multiverse. Season 3 manages to be a bit of both, but perhaps because the series is coming to an end, overall takes fewer wild swings than in seasons past. There are some of those signature, out-there "what ifs," but, like Season 2, they feel prioritized in terms of importance, with some mattering more than others in the larger narrative. Just the fact that there is a "larger narrative" at all is something I've always been on the fence about, even if said narrative is the part of the story that offers the most time with my favorite characters.
'What If...?' Season 3 Isn't Subtle, and That's a Good Thing
Image via Disney+
Without a doubt, Season 3 of What If...? is the show's bleakest yet. While the earlier seasons had riffs on Christmas movies, winks at the heist genre, or cartoonish showdowns with the episode's villains, moments like this are few and far between in Season 3. This isn't exactly a surprise. It feels as though the world around us has been moving in a bleaker direction for quite some time, and all media is a reflection of the time in which it was made, be it intentional or otherwise. The topics that What If...? Season 3 touches on are hardly new to the MCU, or even the wider superhero genre; greed, power, violence, prejudice, and subjugation remain at the heart of what drives the villains. Episode 6, "What If 1872," is particularly unafraid to directly call out the injustices its heroes are fighting, and unsubtly hints at similar issues still occurring today. What is new, however, is how utterly hopeless so many of the episodes feel.
Yes, every story needs a low point in which the characters believe they cannot continue the fight; every Marvel movie has that moment. But the sheer, colossal, multiversal scale of the series really amplifies that helplessness, with the scenarios The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) chooses to visit feeling more cataclysmic than they usually do. Absent from this season is the lighthearted air of "What If T'challa Became Star Lord" and "What If Happy Hogan Saved Christmas," or the groundbreaking nature of "What If Kahhori Reshaped the World." Season 3 does have its relatively lighter episodes with fun concepts — those starring Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) come to mind — but even those are tinged with the larger, cosmic scale of everything happening around them.
However, this ultimately works in the show's favor. While it is somewhat corny when the first episode essentially ends with the sort of overt, spoken moral that we of a certain generation remember from our Saturday morning cartoons, that same idea continues throughout the rest of the season, offering a coherent throughline that has nothing to do with the multiverse and technically connects every story. Superpowers aside, it is love, friendship, and above all, hope and the audacity to keep fighting when everything is against you, that will win the day, and What If...? Season 3 doesn't even try to hide that that is the message it wants viewers to take away when all is said and done.
Does 'What If...?" Season 3 Stick the Landing?
So does What If...? actually manage to achieve that elusive goal of sticking the landing? In short, sort of. Season 3 did course-correct a little my frustration with Season 2, which put Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) — my favorite character, to be clear — at the heart of some, but not all, of the episodes, making those she wasn't in feel secondary to those she was. At least in Season 3, most episodes are given the chance to stand alone — even if they occasionally connect back to earlier seasons — while episodes that cover the overall arc are confined just to their own stories, rather than spanning the season as a whole. I'm caught between the idea that the series-long plotline did need some closure, and also loosely wishing there hadn't been one at all, which would have enabled Season 3 to take some bolder, yet smaller-scale, swings rather than staying so focused on big-picture events. There could then have been more space for comedy, or more space for another episode focused on my other favorite character, Kahhori (Devery Jacobs). But this sort of wishful thinking is a what if in and of itself, isn't it?
Obviously, this isn't a permanent goodbye to the world of What If...?. With Marvel Zombies in the works and set to premiere next October, viewers will get to stay somewhat within this little animated multiverse that's been created. But as the MCU starts to backslide into the old and familiar, dare I say the predictable, it's a shame to be losing a show that operated so well in parallel to the live-action universe. What If...? sometimes pushed boundaries and wasn't afraid to be silly, or to really take this idea of "what if" and run with it to any absurd conclusion. It's a series that, when the final episode airs on December 29, will truly be missed, even if it does stumble a little in its final steps to the finish line.
What If...? Season 3 premieres December 22 on Disney+, with one new episode dropping per day until December 29.
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Review
What If Season 3 caps off the series with a bleaker final outing that ultimately manages to keep hope at the center of it all.
Pros
- What If Season 3 revolves primarily hope, even in the face of the darkest storylines
- The wild swings the series does take are the highlight of the season.
Cons
- Too many of the episodes are big in scale, so it would've been nice to include smaller stories.
Based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name, this animated anthology looks at alternate timelines in the multiverse that would happen if specific moments in the MCU occurred differently.
Release Date August 11, 2021
Seasons 3
Writers Ashley Bradley , Matthew Chauncey
Streaming Service(s) Disney+
Franchise(s) Marvel Cinematic Universe
Directors Bryan Andrews
Showrunner Ashley Bradley
English (US) ·