The Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded into the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse no thanks to Loki and Sylvie's shenanigans. And because of this, Marvel Studios and Disney+ bring us the highly-anticipated animated series What if…?. Now that the first episode has been released, let's do a short recap and then I'll be giving you my honest review of the pilot episode.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead!
What if…? Episode 1 short recap:
The episode begins with The Watcher's narration explaining how the multiverse works. We are then taken to an alternate earth where Peggy decides to stay with Steve during his transformation (instead of watching from the booth like she originally did in Captain America: The First Avenger). This small change triggered a series of events that led to her having to take Steve Rogers' place on the machine absorbing all of the super-soldier serum and turning her into Captain Carter. She then takes the Tesseract from Arnim Zola in Germany and once Howard Stark got his hands on it, he builds the HYDRA Stomper. This universe's very first Iron Man armor. This armor was used by Steve Rogers to help Captain Carter save the Howling Commandos and put a stop to the Red Skull's treachery.
Basically, it plays with the entire plot of Captain America: The First Avenger with some heavy plot twists.
Was it actually good though?
If I had to rate What if…?'s very first episode, I'd give it a solid 8/10. Why? For many reasons.
First of all, the animation? Superb. Initially, I thought I wouldn't like the animation. After seeing what Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots can do, I had very high expectations for What if…?. That being said, after watching the first episode I finally understand why they chose that art style. They wanted to play with how our beloved MCU characters would look if they came straight from the comics. It looked awesome and it eventually grows on you.
The action scenes were just mind-blowing. The fight choreography was just as amazing as the ones we see in live-action. I bet if this wasn't a Disney-owned series, we'd be seeing so much blood coming from Captain Carter's enemies. I mean, the way she just disposes of them… So brutal yet so tastefully done.
The story is great. It wasn't surprising in any way because the trailers pretty much gave the entire plot away. If anything, the surprising part came at the end where the Tesseract brings Captain Carter into the present. How is that surprising? Because the Tesseract is basically the Space Stone. Meaning it's supposed to only give you absolute control over space itself. Not time. However, the Space Stone does allow interdimensional travel so that may be the case here.
The only reason I left out two points from my rating of the episode is that I felt like the episode was a bit rushed and that the trailer pretty much gave everything away. I just wish the episode was at least 45 minutes long in order for us to get a more in-depth look as to how the series of events really changed the characters.
As for the trailer giving everything away, just don't do that anymore Marvel, please? We already know it's an alternate universe where Peggy gets the super-soldier serum instead of Steve so just leave it at that. I do understand that people do wanna see more of what they're getting in What if…? but for an episode that's basically only half an hour, even a minute's worth of footage is more than enough.
But then again, that's just me. All in all, it was a great pilot episode and I can't wait to see what's next in-store. Marvel's What if…? is available on Disney+ and will be releasing new episodes of What if…? every Wednesday.
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