If we look at the Journey of Marvel Comics it is quite long and have given the fans a huge amount of interesting and adventurous content over years. This was expected and also delivered by DC Comics and in 90s when we were kiddos Spider Man was the only hero we knew from Marvel whereas whole Justice League and teen titans were known to us from DC. Yes some may say that they are not like us. They knew Iron Man, Captain America and Thor but this was reality in my childhood era. We hardly knew or heard of any Marvel Characters. Yes, X Men were quite well known and Spidey on the other hand was inspiration.
Cut to 2008 when we were in 6th, First instalment of Iron Man trilogy hit the theatres and many of us realized that there are heroes or rather characters beyond Spidey in the Marvel World and Marvel was like Yes bro!!!! that's why we have started a Cinematic Universe to showcase our heroes, their stories, struggles and powers. That year nobody expected such huge success of Marvel Cinematic Universe and today its still expanding to new heights, creating new standards and delivering up to the mark.
One question came up in everybody's mind after Avengers Endgame and that is Now What? Because It was the highest standard movie with power pack star cast a movie has ever seen post Avengers Infinity War. These two movies were Peak of any Cinematic Universe. All Avengers, Guardians, Wizards, Wakandians and Shield came together in the biggest story of all time to defeat the greatest threat called THANOS. As said earlier, this was the highest Peak of any Grandeur movie. So after all this question arises, Now What?
Recently One actor made a comment that Marvel movies are copy paste from other movies. That is not completely wrong as Black Widow is the example of the same where we can relate the movie to Captain America Winter Soldier a lot. Even If we see Falcon and the Winter Soldier, we can relate it many movies like Dr. Strange, Spider Man or even Captain America, Thor to certain extent where the main plot is same. I repeat where the main plot is same. Its a transformation and upgradation of the character in all these movies.
So when everybody thought Marvel and Kevin had lost their Midas touch, in reality they had another plans and that worked like hell. They introduced us to the Multiverse through Wanda Vision and Loki on which I have already written a brief article and secondly they brought us What If? which are the answers to Now What? Frankly speaking this series I first thought as a filler series to the main storyline but actually Marvel has taken efforts to create interesting stories in that horizon.
They heavily introduced the character of Watcher and he is the one to narrate story. Some episodes are quite basic storylines changing the main characters like Peggy Carter becomes Captain America or Hank Pym becomes villain as we know the name What If? and here we are to explore other timelines. But certain episodes were quite good and the last two episodes were OMG!!!
There were 3 total episodes in which Characters break the third wall and recognize the Watcher. One was Dr. Strange losing his heart where Watcher has a significant role and other 2 were last 2 episodes. In episode 8 Super Robot Ultron with Vision's body recognizes Watcher and actually have a quite good action sequence with him. And the last episode was epic as Watcher himself forms the team of Guardians of the Multiverse.
One thing I liked in whole series is the justice given to Black Widow character. Overall a quite good series to watch with some surprising elements like Thanos character is completely opposite of what we see in MCU movies. Here in What If? Thanos is very harmless and in some episodes he is protagonist. I even like how they introduced Loki as a Jotunheim prince. One think I felt a lot is Tony's death in couple of episodes and Zombie episode was quite an entertainment. So according to me following are some quite surprising and adventurous moments in What If?
- Character of Thanos
- Captain Marvel vs Thor
- Avengers becoming Zombies
- T'Challa as Starlord
- Dr. Strange vs Dark Strange
- Dr. Strange saving Palmer with the help of time stone (Resemblance to the Anime named Steins Gate where main character tries to save his sister with the help of time travel)
- Altron killing Thanos in seconds
- Watcher vs Altron
- Altron eating Galaxy (Resemblance to Galactus)
- Altron and Zola Confrontation
- Altron vs Dr. Strange
Honourable mentions are Loki as Frost Giant, Loki helping Nick Fury, Meeting of Shuri and Pepper, Meeting of Black Widow and Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers using Hydra Stomper (Iron Suit) and many more.