The first season draws to a close by pulling from the past episodes.
What They Say:
The watcher gathers heroes all across the multiverse for one final battle against “ultra-vison”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The strengths of the What If concept met up against the limited amount of material there truly is with the film franchise and that’s now lead us to this multiversal season finale. I continue to be a big fan of the concept as I loved the comics, but even in the late 70s when it started it had fifteen years and thousands of comic stories to work from as launching points. And I do get some of the hesitancy here in this series because you can’t bring a lot of comic stories to this as there’s always the potential of them being done as an actual film or series in some form. So it’s a delicate balance that worked for the most part for me with some very fun episodes, some very grim episodes, and then this two-part finale that tries to break things wider.
With Ultron having gone big with the Infinity Stones and discovering the Watcher and all the other realities, things are pretty much all over the map. And that means a whole lot of different worlds for him to bring peace to as his first one was accomplished, even if it left him uncertain of his future once it was accomplished. What we end up with here is that it pulls from pretty much all the prior episodes of the series to bring them into fold, which is helpful for some more than others because of how they ended, or didn’t quite end. I do like that it opens on a reworking of the Winter Soldier film opening sequence as we get the Watch going to the different realities to bring together a group that can help fight against Ultron. It’s building the right kind of group, though it’s amusing that he keeps passing over Tony after seeing Tony die in just about every other reality to date.
Putting together this Guardians of the Multiverse concept is certainly fun, especially with the “dark” Doctor Strange working with the Watcher on this. The action dominates this and it works well to showcase a lot of fun sequences, especially with Strange assisting and giving some additional protections while they try to swipe the stones and stop Ultron. I particularly liked when Strange dropped in thousands of zombies on top of Ultron in order to slow him down for a while, which included the zombied Scarlet Witch that’s full of a lot of power. There are some really neat creative moments throughout this, and I’m hard-pressed to be upset about getting more Captain Carter time or more of this dark Doctor Strange, but I understand why there will be those that dislike that it essentially presents an alternate version of Endgame. But that was that most obvious choice to make for the first season, which may be part of the problem for some, but the end result is something that really does delight.
In Summary:
The scale of the fight keeps going up and up here and there are, perhaps, diminishing returns in that for some. When all you have are world-ending battles to face, it loses its connection. Which is, admittedly, why I’ve enjoyed the Disney+ shows as much as I have, and with Spider-Man films, as they’ve largely kept more grounded and personal. Even Loki really was until you got to the last two episodes and it opened up the multiverse. I do like the way it wraps up and works a kind of tidy aspect to it, with some sacrifice, and that it gives us just a touch more lingering material for Captain Carter, who I still think many will consider the real breakout character of this series. I had a lot of fun with it and am looking forward to the second season, which will be working more phase four characters.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Disney+
