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What If? on Disney +

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king208 said:
That was always something of a staple of the "What If" comics and the big event Marvel AUs like Age of Apocalypse or Marvel Zombies.

Writers weren't generally allowed to do it in the mainline books so they did it when they had the chance in the 'will be reset in a couple months' continuities.
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Well it's something I hate and just lazy writing in my opinion, should do a what if, without so many character deaths, just show something different and entertaining.
 
Anyway, the first episode's plot really doesn't hold together. It's all very contrived and not very well justified.

You have a bunch of characters acting like they're criminals that have to sneak about doing something, despite the fact that they're the legitimate authorities, with no real reason to keep things secret or do all the double crossing.

And of course a shield generator system that, for no real reason, is designed so that it can only be controlled by our protagonist. Very kind of whatever architect that was to design a system their entire civilization can't use.
 
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I thought the episode was fun. What If? is a chance to do stories that you normally couldn't do, in this case a neo-noir set in a rain-soaked cyberpunk cityscape straight out of Blade Runner, complete with the flying cars with the doors that swing up and forward.

There is some contrivance to the plot. Not so much in the question of why Nova Prime didn't just open the shield herself instead of going through all this trouble to manipulate Nebula, because I think that's easily explained. Something as monumentally dangerous as accessing the codes to open the shield probably requires authorization from multiple people in the government to prevent exactly this kind of collaborator betrayal. And there's no way that it could be done openly even if Nova Prime is in charge, because most of Nova Corp wouldn't approve of betraying Xandar to invaders and would fight back.

However, that last twist of "I knew you were playing me" didn't quite land for me, because if she knew it was a setup, then you'd think she'd have been better prepared and not nearly died? That needed more groundwork in the first part of the episode to support it.
 
The Narrator said:
Not so much in the question of why Nova Prime didn't just open the shield herself instead of going through all this trouble to manipulate Nebula, because I think that's easily explained. Something as monumentally dangerous as accessing the codes to open the shield probably requires authorization from multiple people in the government to prevent exactly this kind of collaborator betrayal
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That would have been better than the explanation they used, which is that the shield would would be up for 50 years, and by implication, can't be opened by regular means, hence needing a cyborg to interface with the obscure mainframe orb where the source code is stored.

Which is narratively coherent enough, but just, why would you design your planetary shield that way?
 
Flectarn said:
That would have been better than the explanation they used, which is that the shield would would be up for 50 years, and by implication, can't be opened by regular means, hence needing a cyborg to interface with the obscure mainframe orb where the source code is stored.

Which is narratively coherent enough, but just, why would you design your planetary shield that way?
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Construction contracted out to the lowest bidder?
 
Episode 2 was a hell of a lot better then the first episode, my only complaint, you think the Red Guardian would've been sent along with Winter Soldier, not just Bucky alone considering the threat Earth was facing.
 
I'm not entirely clear on the timeline, but Red Guardian might have already been undercover in Ohio by this point, and if not, might already have been considered such a washed-up has-been that the best use for him is dumping him in Ohio for years.
 
The third episode was very good, look forward to seeing episode 4, the one I'm most looking forward to seeing in Season 2.
 
The first episode I didn't care much for (mostly because I'm not much of a Nebula fan to begin with), but I did enjoy the following two. Was surprised at how much I did like the 80s Avengers ep, given the otherwise uninspired premise.
 
LOVED the new Captain Carter story. I wish they'd do a full series of her running the Avengers.... I wonder why WASP was there? Huh.
 
Catching up after being busy with the holidays...

Episode 3: Pretty standard Die Hard parody. Fun. I can't help but wonder, is Happy turning into an ugly purple Hulk a dig on the super-low-budget rip-off film The Incredible Bulk?

Episode 4: IIRC, the episode that was supposed to explain the origins of the alternate Gamora from last season had to get cut for time, so presumably this is it here. Also pretty fun. The racing thing was a bit random, but What If...? is the creators' chance to try different stuff. I don't find Tony very likeable, but he was okay here.

Episode 5: Now we're getting into the meat of it. It's very good to see Captain Carter again, in a real story about her instead of just being unceremoniously murked in the background during Multiverse of Madness. Heck, it's just good to see Peggy again. I was quite fond of the Agent Carter TV series. Liked her relationship with Nat. The title of this one probably should have been "What If Steve Rogers Was The Winter Soldier?" instead. Sudden twist at the end that is presumably this season's equivalent of Infinity-Stone-Ultron showing up in the previous season. Presumably we've found our plot for the season finale.
 
Was nice to get another Captain Carter story, definitely one of the stronger ones this season. Kahhori's episode was fairly alright, too.
 
Nice story. Although I'm not sure that the Mohawk and Spanish conquistadors ever crossed paths. The Mohawk lived in the northeastern US and Quebec, and I don't think any conquistadors made it that far north. Their first encounters with European settlers would have been the French, I think.
 
GuestLurker said:
I could see some sailors and fishermen and the like exploring the coast a bit to see if anyone else was as good a target as the Aztec were.
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They're apparently looking specifically for the Fountain of Youth, which in real life they were searching for in Florida and the Caribbean, but I guess the stories of a Forbidden Lake might have drawn their attention. Still, IRL, it seems like the furthest north they ever came on the east coast was Virginia.
 
The Narrator said:
Nice story. Although I'm not sure that the Mohawk and Spanish conquistadors ever crossed paths. The Mohawk lived in the northeastern US and Quebec, and I don't think any conquistadors made it that far north. Their first encounters with European settlers would have been the French, I think.
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It's safe to assume Asgard being destroyed thousand of years in the past had massive world altering knock on effects.
 
Was sorta 'meh.' Other than Asgard and the Tesseract, seemed entirely disconnected from anything Marvel. Maybe if they added a framing sequence to show how it impacted modern times?
 
GuestLurker said:
Maybe some local versions of some more recognizable characters, like in the 1602 comic? I understand why not to do it, but it was an option.
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Part of me was surprise this wasn't a direct tie-in into the 1602 episode, because I feel like you could probably use her fill in the Virginia Dare role in the original comic and switch the semi-random "Roanoke colony is independent now" you could go "We're leaving the native population alone" as part of the broader resolution of the story. (I thought the English might work better than the Spanish in the episode scenario, but the timing doesn't quite match either if were are explicitly in 1602)

Shanejayell said:
LOVED the new Captain Carter story. I wish they'd do a full series of her running the Avengers.... I wonder why WASP was there? Huh.
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Vaermina said:
It's safe to assume Asgard being destroyed thousand of years in the past had massive world altering knock on effects.
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Apparently, Captain Carter cause women's rights to progress faster in that timeline, Hank and Janet are SHIELD founders, leading to Hope becoming the wasp
 
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