This article contains spoilers for What If…? Episode 3.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first animated series, What If…?, continues with its third episode recently released on Disney Plus. And as usual, it provides yet another bold new adventure featuring the characters fans know and love.
The first episode of What If…? was a fairly straightforward reimagining of the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger featuring Peggy Carter as a shield-wielding super-soldier in place of Steve Rogers. But by contrast, last week’s installment took advantage of the show’s multiverse-spanning premise and showed off exactly what kind of wildly different stories the series is capable of. And sure enough, Episode 3, “What If… The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?”, follows that same pattern, exploring a truly unexpected take on the familiar MCU story.
Like the series premiere, Episode 3 is focused on Phase 1 of the MCU. But in the vein of Episode 2, it combines plot elements of multiple films to create a new story altogether, instead of simply being centered around a single movie’s story. And in that regard, Episode 3 proves to be the most ambitious one yet, weaving the stories of three different MCU films — Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor — into a single narrative. Even more impressively, it does so in a way that barely retreads any ground from the films in question, combining old plot points into something entirely fresh and new.
The episode centers around Nick Fury (portrayed once again by Samuel L. Jackson) and Black Widow (voiced by Lake Bell, aka Poison Ivy in the Harley Quinn animated series) as they attempt to unravel the mystery behind a string of assassinations, with earth’s mightiest heroes as the victims. The story progresses with plenty of twists and turns as unexpected characters like Loki and even Betty Ross — appearing in the MCU for the first time in over a decade — become involved in the investigation. Once again, What If…? shows just what it can accomplish as a vehicle for unconventional MCU stories, exploring what it would be like if the Avengers were entangled in a whodunit murder mystery.
And as the episode reaches its climax, the big reveal of the culprit doesn’t disappoint. In the end, the killer was none other than a vengeful Hank Pym, clad in a Yellowjacket-inspired suit, who’s become obsessed with making Fury pay for letting his daughter Hope die. Episode 3 of What If…? proves to be a satisfying self-contained story that makes full use of its setting and characters to weave a truly thrilling narrative. And in the process, it shows exactly why animation is the perfect medium for this series.
Throughout the episode, there are multiple moments that make perfect use of the series’ status as a work of animation, most of them involving Hank Pym and his assassination methods. One of the episode’s most memorable moments is when Pym kills a rampaging Hulk by enlarging his heart, causing the jade giant to bloat and distort until he bursts like a balloon, exploding into a pile of green goo. It’s a downright nightmarish scene, one that calls to mind the sort of grotesque body horror found in John Carpenter’s The Thing or the anime classic Akira. In fact, Hulk’s death is such a horrific visual that it would likely never have been possible in live action — the idea of the Hulk swelling into a misshapen mass of flesh with photorealistic CGI is so shocking that it’s just asking for an R rating. But in animation, such outlandish imagery is much more palatable.
In regards to the episode’s less graphic moments, there’s also the scene in which Black Widow is attacked by a microscopic Hank Pym, resulting in a brutal fight between Natasha and a seemingly invisible opponent. Thanks to the series’ top-notch animation, the scene comes off as tense and menacing, playing up the mystery of the killer’s identity and methods while also emphasizing the brutality of the fight. But at the same time, it’s the sort of fantastical scenario that could have easily looked silly in live action. Watching Scarlett Johansson get beaten up and thrown around by nothing at all would probably look more than a little odd, no matter how intense the scene or how advanced the special effects. By contrast, animation tends to allow for higher suspension of disbelief, making even the strangest of situations feel real.
And of course, there’s the simple fact that animation is simply the most efficient medium for an anthology series this ambitious, especially with the amount of big-name actors in the cast. Getting Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, and Michael Douglas together to film a single 30-minute TV episode sounds like way more trouble than it’s worth, especially when the latter three only appear very briefly. But when the episode in question is fully animated, the actors are all able to record their lines remotely, without having to worry about flying out to the set, costumes, makeup, stunts, and so on. By making What If…? animated, it allows as many actors as possible to reprise their roles, no matter how small those roles may be in a given episode.
In other words, Episode 3 of What If…? proves without a shadow of a doubt that making the series animated was absolutely the right decision. Not only is it more cost-effective than attempting the same stories in live action, it also allows the storytellers more freedom to experiment with the weirdest, wildest visuals they can imagine. Between What If…? and Invincible, it’s beginning to look like 2021 might be the start of a new golden age in superhero animation.