Marvel's What If? Season 3 aka the final season December 22nd 2024

[BluBonnet]

This is an awesome review!

The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) is back, narrating another batch of adventures with heroes and villains from across the Marvel multiverse, but his own reluctant interventions may have unforeseen consequences.

Episodes Viewed: 8 of 8

The MCU’s Multiverse saga has been a bit hit and miss, but What If…? is one of its success stories. Since its 2021 debut, the show has asked weird, dark, funny, and ambitious questions, where decisions big and small have led our favourite Marvel characters down new, unexpected paths. That’s a trend that continues in its third and final season, which finds time for intergalactic romances and end of the world dystopias as well as an overarching plot with ties reaching all the way back to its early episodes.



The best of these 25-35 minute offerings tap into the essence of what makes each character interesting and unique beyond just their fighting capabilities. The heart of the season’s first entry – ‘What If... the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?’, which is equal parts inspired by Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and Power Rangers – is Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and his ability to give sage, therapeutic wisdom in trying times. Another standout is ‘What If... the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?’; It imagines the soon-to-be Thunderbolts* teammates as an unlikely buddy comedy duo in a story that manages to be both hilarious — thanks in no small part to David Harbour’s entertainingly OTT line delivery — and tragic, as the two super soldiers figure out they have more in common than they first thought.

These new episodes also do a better job of utilising the MCU’s deep bench, with few disappointments. Though an appearance of Moon Knight (a returning Oscar Isaac) is sadly lessened by the fact that he’s stripped of all the eccentricity that made him so endearing, Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is brilliantly reconceived as an outlaw (along with Hailee Steinfeld’s sharpshooting Kate Bishop) in the Wild West set ‘What If... 1872?’, which will only make you wonder why we haven’t seen or heard more from him since his solo movie. Even the Eternals’ Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) is fun in the tonally erratic second chapter. Throughout, Laura Karpman and Nosa Kroll-Rosenbaum’s score is pleasingly playful, adapting perfectly to each setting the stories play out in.

When it eventually comes time for The Watcher to take centre stage, the results are wonderfully satisfying. Action set pieces have always been a strength of What If…?’s animation, and the climactic battles in the final two episodes find inventive, colourful highs. There’s a vocal boost too thanks to the likes of Natasha Lyonne as Byrdie — a new original hero with an unusual parentage — X-Men 97’s Alison Sealy-Smith as a Mjolnir-wielding Storm, and most impressively, Jason Isaacs as The Eminence, who effectively voices three characters at once. It also works as a conclusion to the story-at-large, as well as The Watcher’s personal arc. The extraterrestrial observer of events we met at the start of season one is much different to the one who closes out the series, and the added focus on his origins arrives right on time.

By its very nature, What If…? could easily have been something that the MCU continually returned to. There’s no limit to the stories they could tell in this style. But if this is the end, it’s going out on a high.

A strong final outing for the MCU’s flagship animated series, with bold storytelling leading to fun, satisfying results. This exploration of Marvel’s weirder and wilder side will be missed.
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[spider-neil]

More power to the people who enjoyed this show but the 'What If' questions weren't interesting.

My favourite What if (comic) of all time is "What If the Alien Costume Had Possessed Spider-Man?" The story had weight and consequences.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/What_If...%3F_Vol_1_4

From the show my favourites were;
Evil Doctor Strange
Marvel Zombies
Killmonger

This is when I thought the series was firing on all cylinders.

[John1701D]

The first What If I ever bought and still my favorite

[Lemmy Lugosi]

My favorite issue of the series is Volume One, issue #1: What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? As for the series, each season got progressively worse, after a very “meh” start.

[RevolverOcelScott]

I loved the OG What If Comics, own so many of them.

What if Spiderman never became a hero
What if Spiderman joined the fnatastic 4
What if Daredevil killed Kingpin
What if the world knew Daredevil was blind