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The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become full of superhero teams protecting the universe from threats at the planetary, cosmic, and multiversal levels, but the team at the heart of the universe has been The Avengers. It is The Avengers who get the spotlight in the second episode of What If…?'s second season, telling of how a different version of the team could have come together if Peter Quill's life had gone a bit different.
*Warning: This article contains spoilers for What If…? Season 2, Episode 2*
Recap
Episode two opens with the crash landing of a small, mysterious ship in the middle of New York City in 1988. It is then revealed to be carrying a young Peter Quill who, in this reality, was delivered to his father Ego by the Ravagers as intended rather than being taken in by Yondu Udonta.
Quill immediately finds himself at odds with local police and military forces, but these prove ineffective thanks to the young boy's celestial powers inherited from his father. The fighting prompts SHIELD, under the direction of Howard Stark and Peggy Carter, to call on a team of powerful individuals from across the world to try and stop the boy.
Hank Pym, aka Ant-Man, is brought in along with his daughter Hope to a SHIELD base where they are introduced to Dr. Bill Foster, aka Goliath, and King T'Chaka of Wakanda, the Black Panther. The Winter Soldier arrives shortly after as the Soviet Union's liaison to the team, who immediately recognize him as Bucky Barnes. Finally, the team is introduced to Dr. Wendy Lawson, better known as the Kree operative Mar-Vell, and her Tesseract-powered ship.
The team is then dispatched out to Coney Island, where Quill has been enjoying himself in the deserted waterfront amusement park. He is initially caught off-guard by the team before fighting back and nearly defeats them before the timely arrival of Thor, who subdues Quill.
Once back at the base, it is revealed Quill has already helped Ego absorbed Asgard, along with multiple other worlds, using a seedling Thor recovered from Missouri and the god has come to bring him to “Asgardian” justice. The rest of the team debates how best to handle the situation when Hope, who swiped her father's access card, stumbles into Quill's holding cell and reveals he simply wanted to go home to Missouri. Sensing his genuine feelings, Hope helps Quill escape from the facility.
Ego arrives on Earth shortly after, forcing the team to split up in order to address both situations. Hope, Ant-Man, and Mar-Vell go to bring Quill back to try and help fight Ego while the rest of the team tries to hold the celestial back.
Quill is found visiting his mother's grave when the first team arrives, with Ant-Man taking the lead by sharing how he and Hope lost her mother Janet not that long before. However, the Winter Soldier is revealed to have followed the team with orders to kill Quill when Stark manages to break through his comms and speak to him directly. Stark is successful in talking down the assassin with the mention of Steve Rogers, causing something to change in the Winter Soldier's mind.
Just as the rest of the second team is about to be overrun by Ego's artificial copies, the first team arrives with Quill to stop his father from absorbing the planet. Ego then reveals to Peter he was the one who made Peter's mother sick, causing the boy to snap and blast his father's corporeal body back out into space.
The team celebrates its victory while contemplating their next move and Winter Soldier's absence. Just as Thor is about to leave to continue his hunt for Ego, the rest of heroes note how they're a team now and it will take a team to stop Ego.
Review
Episode two is about as straight-forward an episode of What If…? as viewers can expect to find on Disney+.
While the first episode of season two blends the typical Marvel action and humor with a healthy dose of noire, episode two is presented far more like a typical Marvel Studios-style adventure. It is effectively a retread of 2012's The Avengers, with the Earth under threat from a mysterious alien force that only “Earth's Mightiest Heroes” have a hope of stopping. This approach doesn't make the episode bad by any means, but coming off the season premiere makes episode two feel somewhat uninspired by comparison.
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The voice cast, however, does help make up for it as the episode features a proverbial all-star cast of MCU veterans playing this alternate universe version of The Avengers. Chris Hemsworth, Michael Douglas, and Hayley Atwell lead the way, once again slipping into their roles as Thor, Hank Pym, and Peggy Carter, respectively, with relative ease. Same goes for John Slattery's Howard Stark and Kurt Russell's Ego as the two screen veterans make their first MCU appearances after several years. Atandwa Kani also gets a chance to shine as T'Chaka in the episode after only appearing as Wakanda's protector only briefly in the opening of 2018's Black Panther.
Sebastian Stan delivers as the Winter Soldier, though he gets very little to work with in terms of dialogue due to Bucky still being under Hydra's control.
Ending Explained
While the episode largely follows the same plot structure as 2012's The Avengers, the ending does manage to differentiate it a bit from the MCU's first major team-up.
The team celebrates their victory over Ego when Thor is about to leave to continue his hunt for the celestial being's true form. Rather than the rest of the team going their separate ways, as they did in the 2012 film, everyone else decides to join Thor on his quest to find and stop Ego once and for all. It solidifies the team as this universe's Avengers and doesn't waste time in sending them out to the stars, something that would not happen until 2018's Avengers: Infinity War in the main MCU timeline.
Keeping the team together suggests their may be plans for some, if not all, members of this new Avengers team near the end of the season. The Watcher has already recruited heroes and villains from across the multiverse to deal with the threat Ultron presented in season one after gaining all the Infinity Stones and the Infinity Gauntlet. A similar threat could require The Watcher to call on members of this Avengers to combat a new threat, though only time will tell if that's the case.
Should you stream What If…? season 2 episode 2?
Despite feeling a bit derivative and safe compared to the season premiere, What If…Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes? is still an enjoyable and easy watch at around 30 minutes. It isn't an episode viewers necessarily need to go out of their way to see immediately, though how the season goes could easily change that in a matter of days.
What If…? is available to stream on Disney+.
