What If

Now that What If is back on Disney+ we are going to be ranking the second season of the MCU show. We will be going from worst to best. With a show like this, where every episode is self-contained I’m not sure you can really call any of the episodes “bad”. As there is no growth or fitting into an existing narrative there is really only less good, or more compelling. That said, this particular ranking list is going to be almost entirely subjective, unlike others where I have tried to speak as technically as possible.

Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper; So this episode has the same makeup of the Avengers in the first movie except with Captain Carter instead of Captain America and it's super terrible. Look this would have been cool once but no one cares about Peggy Carter. She is so ancillary to both the MCU and the comic book universe that the need to keep bringing her up seems so very forced. Anyway she fights the hydra stomper that is theoretically housing Steve, it's a bad episode and honestly I tuned most of it out.

Hela Found the Ten Rings; This started essentially as what if Hela starred in the first Thor movie and also the Ten rings are there. It's kind of meh honestly. There is really nothing interesting about this episode at all, I think just the same stories we know but swapping out the characters is a really lazy way to go about these What If stories.

The Avengers Assembled in 1602; It opens so beautifully. Tom Hiddleston can recite Shakespeare to me Shakespeare anytime. 1602 is an incredible comic, it's interesting, fun and genuinely well written. But why am I looking at Captain Carter…again. It’s just so uninteresting and it kind of just sucks the creativity right out of the episode. Also the idea that Wanda…the nexus being of realities…the scarlet witch….the one capable of rewriting reality needed help from Captain Carter is just…not even an option.

Nebula Joined the Nova Corps; I love the appearance of Howard the Duck, such an underrated and forgotten character in the Marvel universe. I thought there was a little bit too much narration, I understand that each episode has to set up a different universe but I think we can do that without excessive exposition. Nebula is however one of my favorite characters so once we got into the meat of the episode it was nice to watch a story center on her.

Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes; The Watcher is narrating again and honestly I think that is the worst part of the show as a whole. I really hate anything that is made assuming the audience is stupid. If you are watching What If…then you know the general context. That said I love this makeup of The Avengers and I love that we kind of hammer home that Hank Pym sucks as a dad.

Strange Supreme Intervened; Terrible. Honestly I have nothing else to say, Strange going crazy seems to be the only Doctor Strange story these people can come up with and I once again have to deal with Peggy Carter. Boring.

Happy Hogan Saved Christmas; Hammer invades the tower during a Christmas party and it somehow falls to Happy to save the day. I LOVE that this was not overly narrated. It was a cute little Christmas story and I got Darcy who is definitely the best MCU character so that was great.

Iron Man Crashed into Grandmaster; Tony crash lands on the Grandmaster’s planet and of course ends up in his ring. Now I want whoever’s idea it was to pair the Grandmaster and Tony together to get a raise. The banter between the two is absolutely incredible. Seriously A+ dialogue.

Kahhori Reshaped the World; First of all A+ for creating new characters that are awesome. A+ for the whole episode being in other languages. A+ for native representation. Now if Marvel could just do this on a larger scale and more consistently that would be awesome. This seriously might be the best episode of anything Marvel has ever done.

For the most part this season seemed to increase in quality as the episodes went on. Then it got really weird…like the episodes seemed less thought out and more repetitive. I love that they took an opportunity to create a new character and create an original story with Kahhori but that should have been the first instinct. The fact that we only got one of those is in fact a problem. Marvel needs to do better, because even with What If it feels like they are phoning it in.