S01.E03: What If…The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

[Kirbyrun]

7 minutes ago, shrewd.buddha said:

Also, yes: Natasha should not have wasted her dying breath with cryptic clue instead of just naming who was the killer.

Would have made so much more sense (and still served the story’s needs) if her phone just picked up the sounds of the fight, with voices, and the only clear word was “hope.” As in: Hank and Nat fight, Nat says something like, “You’re doing this for Hope!” But all Fury can make out is “hope.”

[kay1864]

5 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

Unless Pym thought the hair counted as a superpower.

Well clearly Coulson did (and Barton).

[Perfect Xero]

I feel like the episode was originally titled "What if ... Hope Died?" but they decided that too many people would figure out the double meaning.

I find it hard to believe that Sif and the Warriors 3 would go along with Loki conquering Earth, especially after the humans helped them find Thor's killer.

[swanpride]

I kind of thought that it was Hydra interfering and that Ghost was the assassin...close but no cigar. 

In any case, I liked this one better than the ones beforehand because it felt like an actual butterfly scenario, BUT it actually felt like too much time was spend on Fury loosing the avengers, and not enough time on the consequences of it. And I was kind of missing the big emotional moment. There was no real grieving over any of them. 

 

Also the big Hulk incident actually happened on a Saturday according to The Incredible Hulk. 

[blackwing]

 

16 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

That doesn't really make sense, though. He was a great brawler and strong, but he wasn't obviously something more than any other well trained agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (or even obviously a good guy). Unless Pym thought the hair counted as a superpower.

10 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Well clearly Coulson did (and Barton).

Although Coulson's true love is clearly Steve Rogers.  Apparently he likes blond(ish) men.  Hah.

[tennisgurl]

So this one had less of an obvious "What If..." divergent point than the last two episodes, which I guess makes sense considering how different it turned out to be than the main universe. I guess the point of divergence was Hope joining SHIELD, which led to her death and Hank becoming crazy with grief and murdering the future Avengers? Its a less obvious point, but I still thought it worked out pretty well. This one could have actually worked pretty well as a longer story more than the others, starting out as something of a murder mystery before we found out what was going on. Kudos to the show I guess because it took me until Natasha was taken out, then I realized that it was an evil Ant Man, and that it would have to be Hank given when this is set. 

I liked them focusing more on Nick Fury with this episode, and it was fun to stop by this early part of the franchise again before things started to get really weird. Interesting that last week seemed like the best timeline where so much of what was wrong with the original timeline was fixed but ended on a very ominous note, while this week felt like a very dark and depressing timeline with a more hopeful ending. Everyone being taken out with pretty brutal, especially Hulk being exploded from the inside in front of a horrified Betty, ouch. Poor Betty finally returns to the franchise and this is what she comes back to. At least Steve is still around and Carol is back again, and will probably flop Loki around Hulk style after causing so much trouble. 

I thought the mystery aspect was pretty solid, they built up a lot of suspense as to what was happening and why and dropped a lot of clues that we could easily figure out with an answer that made sense, even with a few needlessly melodramatic choices, like Natasha not just yelling "Its Hank Pym damn it" to her phone before being killed. I also thought that Hank's motives needed a lot more explaining, even if I think they were just going with "he just snapped in grief" as the reason for his killing spree of people who had no part in Hope's death whatsoever. It doesn't even sound like Fury was really responsible for what happened, (given the timeline it was probably Hydra, although no one really would have known that then) and the "I want you to suffer" bit was a let down after constructing a pretty solid mystery. Still, it being a now evil Hank did make sense, and I guess you could see how this could have happened. In Ant Man, Hank had to learn to respect his daughters wishes, even if means that she could put herself in danger as a superhero, and in this universe Hope died before he could learn that lesson and never learned that his daughter is a grown woman who makes her own choices, so he decided that someone must have "forced" her to go into danger instead of accepting that she did it on her own and that he had to do something about that. Possibly stretching, but its something at least. Poor Scott in this timeline will presumably never be Ant Man and will probably fall back into a life of crime as well. Unless Baskin Robbins never finds out about his past in this timeline. 

Smooth move Hank, not only are tons of people dead but you went and got Earth conquered by Loki, now with the backing of Asgard. Loki might have ended up taking advantage of the situation, but I do appreciate the fact that Loki, even right after he set his brother up because of his own issues, really did seem extremely pissed off about some random asshole killing Thor the second he stepped onto Earth. Loki might occasionally try to murder his brother, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love him or wants to see some other prick do something to him. I figured out pretty quickly that the "Fury" who confronted Hank was really a Loki illusion, especially when he got really insistent about why Hank would kill an alien who just stepped foot on Earth about five seconds before then went from collected to really visibly pissed when he found out that Hank murdered him "just because he could." Then of course Loki betrays Fury because Loki always takes awhile in any timeline to gain some self awareness and realize that his games and constant betrayals just end up hurting him in the long run, like setting his brother up to get sent to Earth only for him to get murdered there in some unrelated guys revenge plot against another guy, neither of whom any of them knew.

This continues to be a really interesting series. 

[johntfs]

20 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:

I feel like the episode was originally titled "What if ... Hope Died?" but they decided that too many people would figure out the double meaning.

I find it hard to believe that Sif and the Warriors 3 would go along with Loki conquering Earth, especially after the humans helped them find Thor's killer.

The humans helped find Thor's killer who was another human who had killed Thor out of thoughtless spite.  Thor was the beloved crown prince of Asgard.  He'd been getting away with stuff for years because he was the beloved prince of Asgard.  And one of these fucking upjumped monkeys killed him as a tangent pursuing vengeance against people completely unrelated to Thor.

In the first Thor movie Sif and the Warriors three tried to stand against the Destroyer to protect people Thor cared about.  They did that because Thor cared about those people and they (Sif and the 3) cared about Thor.

Not so here.  Here, Earth is the place whose people murdered Thor.  Plus it's a place rife with weird technology and powers - an obvious threat to the peace of the nine realms.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

3 hours ago, johntfs said:

The humans helped find Thor's killer who was another human who had killed Thor out of thoughtless spite.  Thor was the beloved crown prince of Asgard.  He'd been getting away with stuff for years because he was the beloved prince of Asgard.  And one of these fucking upjumped monkeys killed him as a tangent pursuing vengeance against people completely unrelated to Thor.

At the same time, Loki was never exactly a babe in the woods, unless that was altered in this canon as well. It was established in Loki's own show that Sif in particular didn't get along with him. Does she never find out that some upjumped monkey killed Thor because he was rendered mortal and sent to earth due to one of his brother's schemes? It seems odd that she wouldn't at least suspect, unless these versions of Loki and Thor were really close and there was never any overt backstabbing or betrayal. But that seems.....unlikely.

[Cthulhudrew]

Renner did not even sound like himself. 

[johntfs]

10 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

At the same time, Loki was never exactly a babe in the woods, unless that was altered in this canon as well. It was established in Loki's own show that Sif in particular didn't get along with him. Does she never find out that some upjumped monkey killed Thor because he was rendered mortal and sent to earth due to one of his brother's schemes? It seems odd that she wouldn't at least suspect, unless these versions of Loki and Thor were really close and there was never any overt backstabbing or betrayal. But that seems.....unlikely.

Even if she believed absolutely that this was one of Loki's schemes, it doesn't change the fact that Thor was murdered by a human.  Plus he was murdered by a human with specialized technology.  Recall how Odin treated Jane in Thor 2.  That's probably the default attitude Asgardians have toward humans.  They didn't (and won't) have Thor going "No, no they're much different" in this universe.

[Spartan Girl]

On 8/27/2021 at 12:35 PM, tennisgurl said:

Poor Betty finally returns to the franchise and this is what she comes back to.

If they ever do bring back Betty to the regular MCU, they better not retcon her into a villain in the name of making her more “interesting” like they did to Sharon. Although having her secretly plot revenge against her garbage father might actually be fun.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Spartan Girl

[paigow]

4 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

If they ever do bring back Betty to the regular MCU, they better not retcon her into a villain in the name of making her more “interesting” like they did to Sharon. Although having her secretly plot revenge against her garbage father might actually be fun.

Betty will become Boss Thunderbolt ... and Banner is single again

[Gimmick Genius]

On 8/26/2021 at 2:09 PM, ProudMary said:

Also, thanks to James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn join the MCU/DC list.

Another I thought of: Djimon Hounsou (Korath) was also in Shazam.

Hell yeah, Keaton counts! Even more so since he's also in an upcoming DC film in addition to his two turns as Batman in the Tim Burton films. So, Michelle Pfeiffer too?

While you're at it, count Zachary Levi, Captain Marvel himself (I know, they call him Shazam now, but that's bogus. The character was Captain Marvel for 70 years between Fawcett and DC). He played Fandril of The Warriors Three in two Thor movies. Also count Taika Waititi; he's Korg in MARVEL and both Ratcatcher 1 (The Suicide Squad) and Thomas Kalmaku (Green Lantern) in DC.

Also, Idris Elba from Thor and Suicide Squad, David Dastmalchin from Ant Man and Suicide Squad, and Laurence Fisburne as Black Goliath from Ant Man and Perry White from Man of Steel.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Gimmick Genius
added

[Morrigan2575]

I loved this one, it was a True What If...

I didn't like Captain Carter because it was just a retread of Captain America with minor twists for Agent Carter. I skipped the T'Challa episode because it just looked like more of the first. 

However, this was fun, a truly different story, changing so much of reality in an interesting way.

 

[johntfs]

On 8/28/2021 at 12:48 PM, Spartan Girl said:

If they ever do bring back Betty to the regular MCU, they better not retcon her into a villain in the name of making her more “interesting” like they did to Sharon. Although having her secretly plot revenge against her garbage father might actually be fun.

Sharon's "pre-villain" role was to be Steve's contact/helper-monkey and a Carter girl he wanted to bone now that Peggy was too old and gross for that sort of thing.  Her getting to be a villain with her own agenda is in fact way more interesting than that.

 

As for Betty, it was a little difficult to believe Liz Tyler as her being in a relationship with Mark Ruffalo's Banner (though I had no trouble seeing her with Edward Nortan's Banner).  That said, Liv Tyler would make for an interesting ex for Ruffalo's Banner in the upcoming She-Hulk series.

Just lots of:

Betty: You dumped me for your superspy supermodel team-mate, you big green asshole.  How did you think I'd take it?

[Cobalt Stargazer]

5 hours ago, johntfs said:

Sharon's "pre-villain" role was to be Steve's contact/helper-monkey and a Carter girl he wanted to bone now that Peggy was too old and gross for that sort of thing.  Her getting to be a villain with her own agenda is in fact way more interesting than that.

Interesting, perhaps. It would have been better if it made sense. As it is, what we got amounted to, Steve ditched me the second he didn't need me anymore, so I'm a bad guy now. Especially since no one even acknowledges the part of where Rogers actually went, just some nonsense speculation about him being on the moon.

[arc]

11 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I skipped the T'Challa episode because it just looked like more of the first. 

You missed out!

[Morrigan2575]

16 hours ago, arc said:

You missed out!

I can always go back and watch it at the end. But if it's just a retread of GoTG with T'Challa i doubt it will interest me

Edited August 30, 2021 by Morrigan2575
Autocorrect put a bad word in for retread

[Ailianna]

41 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I can always go back and watch it at the end. But if it's just a retarded of GoTG with T'Challa i doubt it will interest me

It really isn't although the opening minute or two are quite familiar. After that it really is a different story.

[Starfish35]

1 hour ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I can always go back and watch it at the end. But if it's just a retarded of GoTG with T'Challa i doubt it will interest me

It’s really not.  I thought it was going to be for the first minute or two, but it swerved pretty quickly. 

[Morrigan2575]

2 hours ago, Starfish35 said:

It’s really not.  I thought it was going to be for the first minute or two, but it swerved pretty quickly. 

Ok, thanks. I'll give it a try.

[formerlyfreedom]

Per the pinned mod note,

Quote

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[rwlevin]

One thing doesn't make sense to me. With Thor gone, Loki is now the rightful heir to Asgard. Does he really need to rule earth when he's going to be Asgard's king? Or is he just doing this in the meantime? 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

22 minutes ago, rwlevin said:

One thing doesn't make sense to me. With Thor gone, Loki is now the rightful heir to Asgard.

Not necessarily. If this timeline follows the original one, Loki's still adopted and not actually an Asgardian. Even with Thor dead, I can't see Odin relinquishing the throne to a son he distrusted enough to put his fratboyish oldest ahead of him in line. Of course, this just makes me wonder if this Loki's idea of ruling is also to lounge around drinking wine and writing bad plays, so there's that.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 8/26/2021 at 6:44 PM, shrewd.buddha said:

What was Pym's motivation?  He was killing innocent, potential SHIELD recruits ... similar to his daughter's situation. 
Why not kill the man that he considered responsible for her death? Fury has has never shown any close attachment to .. anyone .. so it's not as if the killings would have done anything more than frustrate Fury. 

I suppose one possible mindset is: Fury and SHIELD took away my Hope, so I will take away their hope. I will make them suffer slowly. And there's no such thing as an innocent SHIELD recruit since the whole construct is evil and guilty.

I agree with you that the motivation doesn't quite work because the deaths of Stark, Thor and Hulk have absolutely no personal meaning for Fury, and even the deaths of Natasha and Clint are not going to hit him in the same sort of way as Hope's hit Hank. 

It seems to me that a genius with technology like Hank had at his disposal and decades of insider spy knowledge probably could have executed dozens of better revenge attempts than this one.

12 hours ago, rwlevin said:

One thing doesn't make sense to me. With Thor gone, Loki is now the rightful heir to Asgard. Does he really need to rule earth when he's going to be Asgard's king? Or is he just doing this in the meantime? 

It Need? Probably not. Want? Why wouldn't he?

A different question would be whether Odin (and for that matter, Frigga) would allow Loki to take over Earth. I suppose they too could be "They killed our Thor. Screw em." Or Odin could be broken up over the fact that his attempt at a morality play ended up costing his son's life.

[The Crazed Spruce]

19 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

A different question would be whether Odin (and for that matter, Frigga) would allow Loki to take over Earth. I suppose they too could be "They killed our Thor. Screw em." Or Odin could be broken up over the fact that his attempt at a morality play ended up costing his son's life.

Going by the timeframe, Odin would've been in his Odinsleep, and wouldn't have been able to object if he wanted to. And Frigga would've been too busy watching over Odin to stop Loki. Not to mention she was no doubt grieving her son's death, and wasn't exactly inclined to stop him anyway.

[Chicago Redshirt]

16 minutes ago, The Crazed Spruce said:

Going by the timeframe, Odin would've been in his Odinsleep, and wouldn't have been able to object if he wanted to. And Frigga would've been too busy watching over Odin to stop Loki. Not to mention she was no doubt grieving her son's death, and wasn't exactly inclined to stop him anyway.

Odin had emerged from the Odinsleep by the end of Thor, and I would have to imagine that the timeframe of this What If? went beyond the timeframe of Thor. In other words, the time between when Thor attempted to get Mjolnir back to when we see Odin awake in the MCU is seemingly a matter of a day or two. I think the time between when Thor is killed and the rest of the events of the What If? are about the same timeframe or longer. Thor seemingly gets killed on a Tuesday and Loki's speech to the U.N. comes on that Friday. Even if we assume that Odin was still asleep when Loki made his move, presumably at some point he will wake up and Loki will have to answer for what he did. (And Odin will have to come to grips with having caused the conditions for Thor to be killed.)

[swanpride]

Odin most likely never woke up due to his grief....

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 9/3/2021 at 12:27 AM, swanpride said:

Odin most likely never woke up due to his grief....

That's presumably not how the Odinsleep works. While he is asleep, he is presumably not any more aware of what is going on around him in the real world than any of us are when we are asleep. So he would not be aware of what had happened to Thor until he woke. and would not have had reason to grieve. 

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

That's presumably not how the Odinsleep works. While he is asleep, he is presumably not any more aware of what is going on around him in the real world than any of us are when we are asleep. So he would not be aware of what had happened to Thor until he woke. and would not have had reason to grieve. 

In the movies they’ve established that is how the Odinsleep works.

”It's said you can still hear and see what transpires around you. I hope it's true, so that you may know that your death came by the hand of Laufey.” - Laufey in Thor

Odin also sheds a tear when The Destroyer beats Thor so his awareness in limited to what is happening around him. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

8 hours ago, Dani said:

In the movies they’ve established that is how the Odinsleep works.

”It's said you can still hear and see what transpires around you. I hope it's true, so that you may know that your death came by the hand of Laufey.” - Laufey in Thor

Odin also sheds a tear when The Destroyer beats Thor so his awareness in limited to what is happening around him. 

Good citation, but on its own terms it points out that it is unclear that Odin knows even what is going on in his own vicinity  during the Odinsleep and that it's Laufey's hope that he is conscious of stuff so that he would know that it Laufey killed him.

This is different from: "It is known that you are conscious during your Odinsleep. So watch me kill you." Which is again different from Odin being conscious of Thor having been killed on his own. Which is again a step removed from Odin choosing to remain in Odinsleep out of grief. 

We can read anything we want into the sleeping Odin tearing up. The film does not establish conclusively what level of awareness he has. As far as I remember from the comics, the Odinsleep was a deep sleep from which he simply could not be awakened. That seems inconsistent with someone who is well aware of events around him. 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Good citation, but on its own terms it points out that it is unclear that Odin knows even what is going on in his own vicinity  during the Odinsleep and that it's Laufey's hope that he is conscious of stuff so that he would know that it Laufey killed him.

This is different from: "It is known that you are conscious during your Odinsleep. So watch me kill you." Which is again different from Odin being conscious of Thor having been killed on his own. Which is again a step removed from Odin choosing to remain in Odinsleep out of grief. 

We can read anything we want into the sleeping Odin tearing up. The film does not establish conclusively what level of awareness he has. As far as I remember from the comics, the Odinsleep was a deep sleep from which he simply could not be awakened. That seems inconsistent with someone who is well aware of events around him. 

YMMV but it feels like a stretch to me to assume that a deliberate cut away to Odin crying at the exact moment Thor is dead/dying is purely coincidence. Movies don’t need to (and shouldn’t) explicitly state every thing. Plenty of accepted movie facts are merely strongly implied. Laufey saying what commonly believed about the Odinsleep followed by Odin appearing to react to something happening says that it is more likely than not until contradicted. Particularly when a editing decision like that is generally done for a narrative reason.

At best it’s ambiguous in the MCU and no one can say definitively what would happen in this hypothetical scenario. 

[Abra]

Up until the fight with Natasha in the library, I though the killer was someone in SHIELD, like a member of Hydra - Rumlow or some such. I figured it had to be someone already there that we could see but not suspect.

Lake Bell did a great job as Natasha (although anyone would be better than SJ's soulless monotone). Tom Hiddleston was also fantastic, although I'd expect nothing less from him. That man knows he's got a voice of honeyed gold and he knows how to use it. Whoever voiced Betty Ross was terrible, however. For the balance, I guess.

Remember back in like the 80s when that dead whale washed up on the beach in the PNW and someone had the bright idea to blow it up with explosives instead of carting it away or finding some other way of getting it off the beach? That's what that Hulk scene reminded me of. :/

 

[arc]

late thought: I don't even know how the "there was an idea" speech even worked in the Phase 1 movies, but it more or less did. But it is very fragile and any minor change threatens to expose it as glib and unsatisfying, as happened here. I can't even really pinpoint why it bugs me so much now, but it does.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 8/25/2021 at 4:55 AM, phalange said:

At first, I thought the person behind the murders of the Avengers was Loki

On 9/5/2021 at 3:59 PM, Abra said:

Up until the fight with Natasha in the library, I though the killer was someone in SHIELD, like a member of Hydra - Rumlow or some such. I figured it had to be someone already there that we could see but not suspect.

I thought it was Coulson, because he had complete access.

On 8/26/2021 at 12:36 AM, kay1864 said:

Show of hands now, on first viewing, how many people thought for a second that wiseass Tony Stark was messing with them with a collapse on the floor?

Totally.