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What If? on Disney +

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I was ready to be down on the 1602 episode, especially given how the similarly-hyped Zombies adaptation from S1 came with some weird tonal issues. Thankfully, this was a pretty solid one. Really not sure why
Hogan!Hulk was shoehorned into this, other than the producers wanting some way to have a variant of him fight (a variant of) Bruce!Hulk.
 
A "What If?" I'd like to see is "What If... Isaiah Bradley became Captain America?"

In the original timeline, Isaiah Bradley was a super-soldier during the Korean War, but after his POW recovery mission concluded, the US Govt. experimented on him and locked him away for 30 years until he could escape, and pretty much lived in obscurity. An alternate take would be for the US Govt to not be so callous (or at least circumstances occurring that they can't sweep Bradley and his men under the rug), and Bradley being officially acknowledged as the 'Captain America' of his era. Given its early 1950's setting, I could easily see it having knock-on effects on the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War at the same time. Of course, it would probably be too "politically charged" for a 30-minute cartoon to cover; but hey, M*A*S*H did a lot in a half-hour of runtime for the same time-period, and it ran for 11 seasons!
 
personal Episode Ranking

1. Hela and the Ten Rings
2. Kahhori
3. Hulk Hogan
4. 1602
5. Tony vs Grandmaster
6. Nova Nebula
7. 80s Avengers
8. Carter vs Hydra Stomper
9. Strange Supreme intervenes
 
Good finale, if based on nothing else but the strength of Peggy & Strange Supreme alone. Kahhori felt kind of tacked on, but not distractingly so.
 
I liked the Native American superhero episode. My biggest issue with ancient Native American magic stories is that it always leads to the question of, 'Where was all this magic when the Europeans were destroying the entirety of two continents?'

But since this is an alt-universe series, they're free to play it straight and threaten the colonial powers directly instead of randomly be hiding out in the middle of nowhere for centuries.
 
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I sort of wish we could get into the Captain Carter universe more.

Like, why was WASP a original Avenger? And is it Hope or Janet? Looks like Hope... It also looks like Hydra is no longer a major player, and that Steve and Bucky pretty much wiped them out. And SENATOR Barnes was a neat touch. And are the Red Room still just freelance terrorists, or more?

Spoilering because not everyone's seen it yet.
 
Shanejayell said:
I sort of wish we could get into the Captain Carter universe more.

Like, why was WASP a original Avenger? And is it Hope or Janet? Looks like Hope... It also looks like Hydra is no longer a major player, and that Steve and Bucky pretty much wiped them out. And SENATOR Barnes was a neat touch. And are the Red Room still just freelance terrorists, or more?

Spoilering because not everyone's seen it yet.
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The writer/producer has a thread on Twitter getting into it


View: https://twitter.com/TheAshBradley/status/1739780714391064766
 
IGN Article about Season 2 of What If? interviewing A.C. Bradley about the overall production and each of the season 2 episodes:

in.ign.com

Marvel's What If...? Head Writer Breaks Down Every Episode of Season 2

An exclusive sitdown with one of the key minds behind What If...? Season 2.
in.ign.com in.ign.com

(Three quick notes - 1) What If? started writing and production in 2018, 2) season 2 was deep in production before season 1 got released, 3) season 2's scripts also got written during the height of COVID. Make of that all what you will.)
 
So I haven't finished the season but the ending to the Kahhori episode left me feeling like weird about it
 
daedalus725 said:
Was make "peace" with us or we'll kill you
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The Spanish had been literally invading, slaughtering, enslaving and robbing them because they saw them as subhuman. Essentially, they are in a war that the Spanish didn't both to declare because they didn't acknowledge that the Iroquois Confederation (the nation on which the United States founders modeled our Constitution, btw) qualified as a country. Kahhori would be well within her rights to counterattack, and the fact that her only demand is "knock that shit off" shows astounding patience on her part.
 
The Narrator said:
The Spanish had been literally invading, slaughtering, enslaving and robbing them because they saw them as subhuman. Essentially, they are in a war that the Spanish didn't both to declare because they didn't acknowledge that the Iroquois Confederation (the nation on which the United States founders modeled our Constitution, btw) qualified as a country. Kahhori would be well within her rights to counterattack, and the fact that her only demand is "knock that shit off" shows astounding patience on her part.
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Uh I am from the part of the country that did get actually conquistadored so like I infact know the history of Spanish imperialism/ Spanish horror.

It doesn't sit right to me anyway
 
daedalus725 said:
So I haven't finished the season but the ending to the Kahhori episode left me feeling like weird about it
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I know exactly what you're talking about and can explain it:

That feeling is pure what I'll call 'Disney's Marvel(tm)'. It's a feeling very closely related to cringe and uncanny valley. It's when a plot and character actions seem, on paper, to make sense and clearly flow together, but when taken out of a meeting room and optimized for political acceptability and put into practice, come out feeling incredibly strange and subtly wrong at every level.

To use the ending of that episode as an example, yes, it makes sense that the newly super-powered Native Americans would tell colonizers to fuck off.

But why are they teleporting directly to the monarch of Spain's court? Where did they even get its location from? Why is the Queen confused by an expedition of conquistadors disappearing before they got there when they die all the time? Why are Spanish conquistadors even that far north anyway? Where are the British? Why is all the dialogue so cringe?

Together, all these issues form a malignant mass that weighs down the entire media at every level, turning what looks like on paper a solid work into hot garbage. This issue is prevalent among almost ALL of Disney's products, despite there not being one singular point of failure. It's a combined decay of setting, plot, characterization, dialogue and more that make everything worse than the sum of their parts.

It's an issue that transcends any singular failure point and is made of an entire cascade. You can feel it not just in Marvel but in everything Disney touches, and it's more than just genre conventions. You can even go back in time to older Disney Channel shows from decades back and see how that feeling was there even then to a lesser extent, but in my opinion it was Marvel where Disney really perfected the feeling and spread it everywhere with its optimization of garbage media mass production.
 
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Jcogginsa said:
I dunno, why are a group of people searching for a magic lake in an area where a magic lake exists due to the point of divergence.
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The thing is that Disney's Marvel(tm) effect isn't just one single issue. You see people constantly running into it and trying to blame one thing or another, like how with Book of Boba Fett everyone was focusing on the new circular CGI set Disney uses and how it 'forced' the show to suck.

It didn't.

Certainly, it had an effect on the show, yes. But one thing alone doesn't cause the whole issue.

Yes, there can be a valid an logical explanation for Spanish Conquistadors far North. I even fully agree that it makes sense and would happen if there were rumors of something magical or profitable.

But that's not the issue. The issue is that, along with a thousand other things, it's done frivolous, pointlessly, and aimlessly.

It just amounts to 'Oh, the Spanish are here for some reason. That just happened.' Followed by the next weird random thing Disney throws at you that's also a 'That just happened' moment. Which one after the other come off as cringe as when the dialogie is literally, "That just happened.".

Compare it to Code Geauss for example where the Super-British are invading Japan. Why are the British invading Japan? Because it's an alternate timeline where the British never lost the USA and became even more powerful. Does this have any impact on the rest of the story? Yes actually, the British Superpower is actually explored and is a central part of the setting, plot, characters, and style.

It's not just a random thing that happens like Disney constantly pulls.

And it certainly doesn't have an obvious and in your face political motive like Disney does either. You can FEEL the politics of having Conquistadors in Northern America because Disney's aggressive genericness is overwhelming. Even if you quickly consider and justify Conquistadors going anywhere to plunder as making perfect sense, you still know that it's just Disney not wanting to make people mad by having British/American settlers be the unambiguous bad guys. There's no getting around it.

So in this manner everything Disney makes just ends up with an unsettling sense of unease and discomfort because all of this just accumulates and drags everything down.
 
Cloak&Dagger said:
Compare it to Code Geauss for example where the Super-British are invading Japan. Why are the British invading Japan? Because it's an alternate timeline where the British never lost the USA and became even more powerful. Does this have any impact on the rest of the story? Yes actually, the British Superpower is actually explored and is a central part of the setting, plot, characters, and style.
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The rest of the world building around that is pretty shit though, because there are a bunch of nonsense changes and things that should have changed due to the other divergences but didn't, so it's not really better outside of using the core change in the story better.

Odds are pretty good someone on the art team thought Conquistadors had a better look than English settlers would, more distinctive look and such, which is the same kind of decision making as went into a lot of Code Geass's world building and narrative structure.
 
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