Marvel asks "what if?" in MCU's first animated show
Expansive and jam packed with movies and TV shows, it can be hard to imagine where the Marvel universe will take their stories in the future. With the new series What If?, the answer seems to be the exploration of the multiverse and how one decision can make a whole new alternate reality. Each episode derives from an iconic moment in the MCU, but one decision a character makes branches off and creates a new reality. The way Marvel explores the changed storyline is interesting, because most of the episodes have a character that they have already introduced into the universe and familiarized with viewers, that is if you have seen the previous Marvel movies.
For instance, the first episode is titled “What If … Captain Carter Was The First Avenger?” Peggy Carter created a new reality by making a certain choice. They also tried something new where the show is animated instead of live action. Because of this animated format, they can really try things that they have never done or could never do before. The action is more exciting, the sets more ambitious, the villains more outlandish, and the stakes even higher than ever before as the fate of the multiverse hangs in the balance.
They have the same characters and many are voiced by the actors who played them in previous movies. One actor who came back for the show is Chadwick Boseman, who plays Black Panther / T’Challa in his final time portraying the role before his death in 2020. Other returning actors are Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Karen Gillian as Nebula and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes. Also the characters look incredibly realistic, and if they wanted a character to look bigger or scarier for emphasis, then they could do that with the animation.
Even though this is in the Marvel universe and all the movies and TV shows are connected in some way, what happens in the show doesn’t really have connection to the rest of the universe. The creation of the What if show was to get fans' minds thinking about the everlasting question- what if? Each decision made by the characters is used to expand the world and create new possibilities. Animation simply expands the palette of possibility. An example of this is one of the episodes they made about zombies, and if they wouldn’t have done animation it would not have looked or turned out the way that they would have wanted it. The premise of What If? was enabled by Loki, which explored the timeline and the endless possibilities. The show had a lot of great twists and turns and it ended up being excellent in the end, despite some rocky starts.
by Natalie Rowe
Oshkosh West Index Volume 118 Issue 2
November 1st, 2021