Wednesday, January 03, 2024

What If…? Season 2

What If…? is still my favorite Marvel TV series, but I can’t say I liked season 2 as much as season 1. For starters, it just didn’t seem long enough. Secondly, the concepts weren’t as good as season one’s. But most of all, too many of the episodes were connected.

I’ve seen a few people complain that Marvel is “shoving Captain Carter down our throats.” I won’t go that far. I like Captain Carter. I think she’s a fun character, and I’d like to see more of her. I even hope she gets her own series. A lot of the complainers would have no problem if it was a male character getting all that screentime.

But that said, I do think What If…? works better as an anthology series, where none of the stories are connected to each other. Sure, the finale of season one was fun, where they took a character from each episode to form the Multiverse Avengers. But I don’t need to see them revisit that concept again.

The whole point of an anthology series is that we get to see something new each episode. And the whole point of What If…? is to show us unique versions of the Marvel universe. It ruins everything when I’m watching an episode and I’m like, “Oh goodie, Evil Strange is back.” An anthology show shouldn’t have recurring characters (other than the narrator of course).

Maybe they just don’t feel there’s enough content to draw from. Sure, there’s over 30 movies in the MCU, but that’s still a relatively small pool of characters compared to the comics. There’s only so many “what if x had y’s powers” or “what if z got the infinity stones” stories you can write. Maybe they should postpone season 3 until after the MCU has X-Men and Fantastic Four movies to work with.

But regardless of when season three gets here, I really hope they resist the temptation to give it a series arc. Just give us some individual stories with creative concepts, like the comic books series it’s based on. ‘Nuff said.

No comments: