What If? Season Two Review

I will admit to not be a huge fan of season one of What If?, the animated MCU series that allowed for a bit of fun to emerge into the convoluted world of Marvel – and that allowed some of our dearly departed characters the chance to appear in some more stories (even if not all their original actors were willing or able to lend their voice talents to the series). I did appreciate that the first season allowed for some tie-ins to the Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness film, but I forgot a lot of the episodes after watching them and wasn’t all that invested in checking out the second season. But you know what? I’m pretty glad I did.

Did season two of What If? finally manage to start tying the Multiverse Saga together in a meaningful way? Not really – although a moment at the end of the season finale did hint that perhaps the ending of season two of Loki will resonate out into the wider MCU moving forward.* But what it did do was give us more time with some pretty interesting characters, introduce us to a new hero who would be incredibly fun to see in live action, and build on some of what season one of What If? did particularly well: Let us spend time with new and complicated versions of characters we know and love and see just how they can and potentially will impact the MCU in the future.

*Arguably the worst part of the Multiverse Saga has been how utterly unconnected nearly every Marvel project has been – and that’s taking into account how, frankly, plain bad several of the films and television offerings have been on their face. What was so compelling about the Infinity Saga was how each film felt like a key component of a larger tapestry that was being created. Each post-credit scene linked to the next film, creating hype and excitement – and fear of the growing threat Thanos presented to the universe. Now, each film and television series is its own tiny piece of a disconnected whole. I mean, Secret Invasion – arguably the absolute worst MCU property to date – wasn’t even referenced in The Marvels, despite every event that occurred within it mattering to what happened within the film. The simple reference to Loki within the final moments of What If? season two felt so cool and really highlighted how much that inter-connectivity has been missing from the MCU over the past several years.

Season two of What If? provided us with stories and mixtures of characters I didn’t even know I wanted to see – watching Hela interact with the residents of Ta Lo, a Die Hard-inspired episode that saw Happy, Darcy, and Maria Hill (ok, I definitely knew I wanted to see Maria again after how poorly she was treated in Secret Invasion) being the heroes to save Stark Tower and Christmas, the introduction of Kahhori to the MCU in a truly stunning episode – and did so with strong writing, great voice acting (I continue to be impressed at how close some of the non-MCU original voice actors get to the original performances), and fun character combinations to make for a pretty great season of television. And, as someone who has covered every MCU live action TV series for this site, it’s pretty nice to get to write up a positive review after having to write so many negative ones over the past couple of years.

What If? season two isn’t going to change the face of the MCU, but it’s definitely a major win for the struggling world of Marvel when they really need one (we’ll see in the coming weeks if Echo turns out to be another positive step forward – I really hope that it is). I loved that we got a ton of time with Captain Carter, one of the standouts of season one of the series who gets several excellent adventures again this time around – and who also factors in so interestingly with Strange Supreme’s continued arc in the series. Kahhori’s story was fascinating to watch, and I really enjoyed that Mohawk was chosen instead of English for the language of the episode (with some Spanish thrown in as well). And as a self-professed Shakespeare nerd, I certainly had a laugh at watching Loki traipse across the original Globe stage playing Hamlet in the 1602 universe. There was a magic to the older MCU titles that has been hard to come by in recent years as the universe expanded and the connective tissue was stretched far too thin to keep everything together. But this series? It definitely found some of that old magic again. We’ll have to wait and see if it turns out to be something that can stick with the MCU moving forward and connect to the greater story being told.