Marvel’s What If? Episodes 5 & 6 Review

Credit to: Disney and Marvel Studios

We’re at the halfway point now

Welcome back, y’all! This time around, we’re taking a look at the most recent episodes of Marvel’s What If? Now, we’ve been going pretty strong with these last four episodes, so I’ve been watching with great interest like I was Emperor Palpatine… all of my fellow Star Wars fans understood that reference. Anyways! I’ve gotta say, I’m noticing a slight decline with these two episodes. To me, it seems as if they started to run out of interesting ideas, and just kinda used whatever random ideas they had at the time as new entries for the series. These weren’t horrible, but… you know, meh. Let me stop spoiling my feelings, and let me just jump straight into this.

Episode 5: What if… Zombies?!

After our usual monologue from The Watcher, we see ourselves in another familiar environment. Space! Here, we see the Bifrost transporting the Hulk back to Earth, just like how it happened in Avengers: Infinity War. He crashes through the roof of the Sanctum Sanctorum (the Bleecker Street location where Wong & Strange live), and Hulk reverts back to Bruce Banner, saying to himself, “Thanos is coming.” This time however, there’s nobody to ask him who Thanos is. Bruce finds some clothes for himself, and heads outside the sanctum, only to find the streets completely empty. Suddenly, Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian teleport behind him, and Maw starts his corny speech. As Bruce tries to force Hulk out, a small portal appears behind Maw, and we see Iron Man’s glove shoot a beam at him, knocking him down. The portal widens, revealing Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Wong, who Bruce cheers on as they engage in battle with the two followers of Thanos. As Bruce cheers them on, he begins to slowly lose the happiness as he notices how brutal the three are in the fight. He is in complete shock when he sees them ripping apart the two followers, eating them. Suddenly, the two are zombified, and all five zombies turn towards Bruce, wanting to eat him alive. He’s suddenly saved by the Cloak of Levitation, who fights off the zombies long enough for a sudden swarm of ants to come in and devour the flesh of almost all of the zombies. Wong is decapitated by his own portal because of the Cloak, and Wasp suddenly comes into to save Bruce after beheading Iron Man. Gross. Bruce is suddenly picked up by Spider-Man, how swings him to safety when he assures him that he’s not a zombie. In the next scene, we find out how exactly the zombie virus began. Hank Pym is seen traveling to the Quantum Realm to find his wife Janet Van Dyne, just like in Ant-Man and the Wasp, but when he finds her, we see her as a rotting zombie, who contracted a quantum virus. She pounces on Hank, and turns him. When Hank’s transport grows back into the laboratory, we see Ant-Man himself be consumed by both Hank and Janet, as Wasp shrinks out of the way. In the next scene, we see the Avengers trying to fight off the zombie hoard on a bridge, but before Captain America can give orders, he suddenly smacks the side of his neck. We see what I think is the scariest thing in the MCU, which is a shrunken down, zombified Hank Pym taking a bite out of Cap’s neck. He grows to normal size and overwhelms Cap, and we soon see Black Widow, Iron Man, Black Panther, and Hawkeye, share the same fate. Ouch.

Jumping ahead quite a bit (because the next few scenes are VERY slow), we see a joint effort of Spider-Man, Wasp, Bruce Banner, Happy Hogan, Bucky Barnes, Kurt (Scott Lang’s Baba Yaga fearing friend), Sharon Carter, and Okoye. Okoye debriefs them all on intel she received about a survivor camp which may have developed a cure for the virus. The team agrees to head there, but the issue is that this camp is all the way in New Jersey. Happy drives them all to an abandoned Grand Central Station, where the team agrees to split up so that one team can hot-wire a train, and the other team stays to guard the perimeter. We see Kurt, Wasp, and Bruce trying to fix the train, but to no avail. Spidey tells them to engage the brake lock, and he jumps in front of the parked train and shoots two webs at it. He begins to pull the webs with all of his might, creating a whole lot of tension. In the next scene, we see Happy get shot through the shoulder with an arrow attached to some rope, and he’s pulled into the darkness yelling “Blam” as he uses the Iron Man glove. So stupid. Anyways, Hawkeye shoots Sharon through the shoulder, pinning her to the wall, and we see Happy and Hawkeye miss their shots from super close because plot, Happy is saying “Blam” as a zombie for some reason, Sharon kills Happy, everyone runs back on the train as Wasp fights off the horde, aaand Spidey’s webs do the trick when Bruce suddenly disengages the brake, forcing the train to slingshot forward. Everyone’s on the train safe and sound, hip hip, hooray, we’re on our way to Jersey. Bad news though. As Sharon looks out of the window in the back of the train, she hears a thud and some creaking. Something crashes through the top of the train, knocking her down. Bucky runs through the train cars to investigate, and finds Sharon being eaten by a zombified Captain America. Bucky and Zombie Cap get into a pretty short but badass fight, which ends after Bucky catches Cap’s shield and throws it back at him, cutting him in half. Zombie Sharon is put to a quick end when Wasp flies into her mouth, and grows, blowing her up. As everyone runs to the back of the train, Bruce points out Wasp’s unfortunate cut on her arm, which spells certain doom. Jumping ahead, the train finally stops close enough to the camp, but a massive horde of zombies is blocking the fastest way. Wasp decides to sacrifice herself, as she grows to a giant stature, and takes out enough zombies to clear a path for the team. They make their way to the camp, but Wasp sadly falls. Inside the camp we find Vision and Scott Lang, who’s head is in a jar, keeping him alive. I won’t spoil too much, so to wrap up here, we hear a BUNCH of terrible jokes, we find out that the Mind Stone has been keeping the zombies away from the camp, we find out Black Panther is still alive but is missing a leg, and we also find out why. Vision has been keeping a zombified Wanda imprisoned, and has been feeding her non-infected people, including Black Panther. Wanda gets pissed, the team escapes on board a quadjet, all except Okoye who’s grabbed by Wanda’s magic and is killed, and Bruce, who stays behind so he can finally transform into Hulk, so he can keep Wanda at bay for the rest of his team’s escape. The fly away with the Mind Stone to Wakanda so they can broadcast the stone worldwide to cure everyone, and we see Scott say his final goodbyes to his love interest Hope, who throws another zombie at the jet in an attempt to stop them. Sad, but the end.

Uuuum. Hmm. I mean, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good necessarily, but it wasn’t bad. It was… fine. Horrible humor, annoyingly apparent plot armor, but it at least had a pretty good story with some cool/crazy surprises. I did expect a little more from this, but I guess this is what happens when we don’t have a full Marvel lineup just yet (X-Men, Fantastic Four, DAREDEVIL, etcetera). I hoped for more, but hey, at least we got some zombies.

3 out of 5.

Episode 6: What if… Killmonger rescued Tony Stark?

Ugh… here’s where it becomes apparent that, as I mentioned before, they seem to have run out of ideas. I mean, I did have a feeling this one would be weak, but WOW this one was weak. I don’t think I reacted to this episode at all, besides the occasional eyebrow raise or yawn. Jeez. It’s just a long, super slow, and super fast waste of time. Anyways, we start off this episode reliving the moments from the first Iron Man movie: Tony’s chatting with the soldiers as they escort him, they’re suddenly ambushed, Tony runs out of the car to find cover behind a rock, and we see a Stark Industries missile land next to him. Instead of it going off next to him, we see Killmonger suddenly step in to pick up the missile and throw it into the air, where it safely detonates away from Tony. Killmonger opens fire on the enemy and helps up Tony. The two talk for a brief moment until Tony is forced to take cover behind Killmonger as the enemy returns fire, but Killmonger quickly takes them out singlehanded. The two walk off into the distance, engaging in further conversation. We get more monologue from The Watcher, explaining that in this reality, we don’t get Iron Man due to him being rescued. Since he wasn’t captured in Afghanistan in this reality, he never made the Iron Man suit, so the Avengers never come to pass. We cut to a corny scene with Tony Stark speaking to the press about what happened in Afghanistan. We get terrible jokes, and we suddenly see Tony promote Killmonger to be his chief security officer of Stark Industries, much to the surprise of Pepper Potts, and much to the dismay of Happy Hogan. The reporter Christine Everhart asks a sudden question against the wishes of Stark Industries COO, Obadiah Stane, asking what Killmonger was doing near Tony during the attack. Killmonger suddenly reveals that he was undercover within the Ten Rings, and he actually found out the plans for Tony’s assassination, which was orchestrated by Stane himself. Killmonger uploads the information online, and Stane is knocked out cold by Happy. Ouch. We move on to a scene where Tony is sharing a drink with Killmonger at a party, where Tony presents Killmonger with yet another promotion: to become the new COO of Stark Industries. Pepper Potts walks away from the conversation after Killmonger accepts the offer. She heads outside where she meets our good old Colonel Rhodes, who gives her some information on Killmonger and his history. Rhodey suspects nothing of Killmonger, considering what he’s done for the country, and so does Pepper, which is exactly why she’s suspicious.

We cut to a scene inside Tony’s house where Tony shows Killmonger his tech. They get into a conversation about their dads, violence, etcetera, until Killmonger sneakily mentions how he tried developing plans for a combat drone. This catches Tony’s interest after Killmonger admits he couldn’t quite crack it. Tony offers to help, and of course that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Anyways, we see the two start up this project, which Killmonger dubbed “Project Liberator”, and the two get to work on it. They successfully build the mech, but it fails during testing. The wonder what exactly they would need to get it properly working, which leads them to a solution: Vibranium. Killmonger shows Tony a ring he has as a necklace, which is made of vibranium, but of course they need more. Tony happens to know someone, which is none other than Ulysses Klaue. Jumping ahead a bit, we see Rhodey successfully contact Klaue, and they do business for Tony. However, the transaction is put to a quick stop, when none other than Black Panther pops in and starts wrecking Klaue and his men, including Rhodey. Black Panther assures Rhodey that he means no harm against the US, which Rhodey of course argues against. Suddenly, Killmonger pops in with a deadly, powerful sound cannon, which he uses to kill not only T’Challa, but even Rhodey. We find out that Klaue wanted the Panther to come after leaking out word of the sale to the Wakandans, and both he and Killmonger were working together. Cutting ahead, we see simultaneous funerals for both T’Challa and Rhodey in their respective countries. We cut to Tony who watches the news on the two deaths, until Killmonger presents a vibranium spear to him. Here we see Tony inform Killmonger that he knows everything that happened, and he shows Killmonger a video of him killing Black Panther and Rhodey. Before Killmonger can retaliate, Tony shuts down the entire room, and calls in one of the vibranium war mechs to fight Killmonger. Of course, Killmonger wins because plot, and he stabs Tony with the spear, killing him. Jumping ahead, the US military sees the death of both Tony and Rhodey as the retaliation of the Wakandans, so none other than General Ross pops up to make things worse. He seizes control of the war mech project, and applauds Killmonger for “his” invention. Let’s take a break here. The next few scenes are going to be reeeally boring, and reeeally confusing, so I’ll sum it up. Ross sends Killmonger and an army of mechs to Wakanda. Killmonger sneaks off into the barrier of Wakanda where he’s stopped by the Dora Milaje, but shows them his Wakandan lip tattoo to prove he too is Wakandan. He meets his uncle King T’Chaka, who foolishly accepts him as his nephew and a Wakandan, and Killmonger uses the trust of the Wakandan people to make it seem as if he’s fighting for them. We cut to a battle between the Wakandans and the mechs that Killmonger himself activated inside the shield barriers, but he fights alongside the Wakandans to prove his loyalty and to prove that he is a warrior. We cut to him receiving the herb that gives him the powers of the Black Panther, and he’s taken to a spiritual realm where he meets the spirit of T’Challa. T’Challa asks his cousin if it was worth it, to which Killmonger defends his choices. T’Challa lectures him on the meaning on power, and how volatile it can be when it’s stolen. We cut to Pepper who speaks with General Ross, as he informs her of the growing tensions between the US and Wakanda. She walks away and into her office where she sees the young Shuri with intel on Killmonger’s treachery against both the US and Wakanda. Instead of this actually meaning something for the story, the episode just ends abruptly. Um… okay?

Ugh. This one was VERY disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy to see more Black Panther, and it’s great to get more Killmonger, but this story was just so ridiculous with its constant plot armor and its ridiculously bad pacing. I couldn’t stand this episode, and I genuinely couldn’t wait for it to end. Speaking of end, that was it? That’s the ending? “Here’s the solution to our mutual problem!” “Great, let’s go use it behind the scenes, where we’ll never revisit this story ever again!” Like really? Oh boy. I really wanted more from this episode. It was either SOOOO slow, or WAAAY too fast, and that’s really what made this episode suffer so much. The idea of Killmonger saving Tony is fine, but everything after it just has horrible pacing, so it’ll really takes away from the story in my opinion. What a shame, man.

1 out of 5.

Final Thoughts

I mean… okay? Like, we still have three episodes to go, so don’t lose hope, right? It’s just that after watching these two episodes, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, and made me wonder how good the next few episodes can really be. I’m hoping that this was just a slight miss, and they’ll get back to some good storytelling soon. The zombie episode was okay, nothing memorable, but nothing horrible. But the Killmonger episode? I just can’t believe how boring it was. There was way too much going on, and they clearly didn’t know how to handle it. We’re not always going to get these crazy, amazing, fantastic adventures, and that’s something we all need to realize, but at the same time, it really is a shame to have two forgettable episodes back to back. But what did you all think? Let me know on our Instagram and Twitter accounts, and be sure to follow them both to get all of the latest entertainment news and reviews on your favorite topics. That’s all from me, this has been The Wolf Den.

2.5 out of 5.