‘What If…?’ Season Finale Unites the Guardians of the Multiverse
The MCU’s first multiversal series wraps season 1 and the ending has plenty of implications for the future of the Marvel universe.
The final episode of Marvel’s first season of What If…? ties the series together with an epic battle for the multiverse. The Multiversal Avengers, united by Uatu and Dr. Strange Supreme, face up to an all-powerful Ultron and his full collection of Infinity Stones. After all of the teasing, audiences finally get the multiversal team-up we’ve been waiting for.
This recap contains 100% spoilers for the ‘What If…?’ season 1 finale.
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This final episode, while spanning across the multiverse, still asks the big question: What If the Watcher broke his oath?
Uatu’s Draft Picks for the Multiversal Avengers Dream Team
The episode opens with the Watcher assembling Avengers to defeat Ultron. His first choice, naturally, is H.B.I.C. Captain Peggy Carter. She’s sporting an updated uniform and battling Batroc the Leaper, who’s stolen a Nymerian star. As they fight, the Watcher appears, asking her to press pause on her current battle to join him in an important mission.
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Next, we catch up with Star-Lord T’Challa, who swoops into a Dairy Queen where Ego drains Peter Quill of his life force to keep himself alive. T’Challa wizzes in and rescues Peter, and is immediately summoned by the Watcher as the next member of the team.
Then it’s Gamora’s turn. Unlike the rest of the heroes, Gamora’s backstory didn’t make it into this season’s episode lineup. We find her on the receiving end of Tony Stark’s famous “suit of armor around the world” speech.
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Probably the spiciest choice for the team, Uatu recruits Killmonger by scooping him up in the middle of a battle against Shuri, Pepper Pots, and the Dora Milaje. Next to come on down is Party Thor, who’s fighting Ultron bots with such enthusiasm that the Watcher has to King-Kong style pick him up as he lets out a most maidenly scream.
The Plan to Save the Multiverse
Each of the heroes is brought to a magical rendering of Steve and Peggy’s old bar. Strange Supreme explains that he got the idea from Peggy’s biography, and just like in Ragnarok, Strange conjures a beer to keep Thor hydrated. When the party god slams a detached Ultron bot’s head onto the bartop, Killmonger eyes the vibranium and we can see the gears turning in his head.
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Uatu appears and explains their mission: to work as a team in order to save the multiverse from the wrath of Ultron. He dubs the team the Guardians of the Multiverse, just before Thor tries to leave them and is almost sucked into a vortex of magic. Once he’s back in the bar and on board with the plan, he suggests they order Chinese food and the team has a good, old-fashioned group planning session.
As they form their battle plan, Gamora introduces the Infinity Crusher, a device meant to destroy Infinity Stones that sounds like it could also be Thanos’ professional wrestling name. They form a plan: get the soul stone and get it to Gamora so she can use the crusher to… crush.
A Visit to the Planet Vormir
Once the plan is mapped out, Strange uses magic to transport the team to Vormir. As he uses large amounts of magic, Strange struggles to maintain his human form for a brief moment, causing Peggy to ask what happened to him. He responds, telling her that it was love. In that vein, and because he’s clearly a Captain Carter fanboy, he tells her that in his universe, Steve Rogers received the serum and became Captain America.
As the team gets acquainted with the desolate planet, Gamora asks Thor if he trusts Killmonger. Of course, Thor clearly isn’t the best judge of character because he remarks that he trusts everyone. Preparing themselves for the upcoming battle, Strange summons a tray of cocktails, and proposes an overly philosophical toast. It’s a nice team-building moment that seems like it could be the influence of Thor, God of Parties.
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Thanks to an exuberant lightning blast by Thor, Ultron sees signs of life on the planet and shows up to poop the party. Forcing the plan to kick off sooner than expected, Strange endows each team member with a protection spell that looks a lot like the magical armor in The Eternals.
Thor impulsively starts the party early by launching a lightning bolt attack on Ultron, screaming “Viva Las Vegas!” This kicks off one of the most epic fight sequences of the season, though the action moves quickly enough to warrant a rewatch in slow-mo.
Together, the team magnifies and electrocutes Ultron while T’Challa’s sticky fingers help him yoink the soul stone. And if you were worried that the Marvel zombies would be left out of the fight, don’t be.
Strange Supreme opens another portal, dumping a whole bucketful of zombie Avengers on Ultron’s head. Zombie Scarlet Witch buys the Guardians some extra time to magically portal off the world as Ultron explodes the planet in an attempt to kill zombie Wanda… whether he’s successful or not remains to be seen.
On the other end of the portal, our team rendezvous on Ultron’s original world. Natasha, alone after Hawkeye’s sacrifice, is immediately defensive, but Peggy draws on their friendship from her reality to confirm their status as multiversal BFFs. Ultron appears to retrieve his stolen stone, and Peggy and Widow serve him a whoop-@$$ sandwich on two slices of vibranium shield.
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Now the stone is floating all around, and everyone is trying to snag it in the chaos of the fight. Ultron manages to grab the stone. Strange goes full-on Lovecraft-monster in order to incapacitate the synthezoid. Gamora rolls in the Infinity Crusher, but I hope she kept the receipt because this crusher can only crush the stones in its own universe.
At this point, Ultron realizes that if he kills Strange, his protection spell will die too, leaving the rest of the team vulnerable. As he unleashes his full power on Strange, the spells surrounding our heroes begin to flicker and fade. Natasha spots Clint’s USB arrow with the Zola consciousness loaded onto it, and asks Peggy to give her a clear shot.
Cartoon magic allows Natasha to ride her motorcycle up the stairs of an abandoned building. She takes a flying shot off of the roof, dedicating it to Clint as it makes its way right into Ultron’s eye. Zola and Ultron battle it out inside the synthezoid body while the team takes a moment to regroup.
Gasp! A Betrayal!
Natasha gets to deliver the classic sci-fi line “I gave it a virus” while Killmonger, waiting for his opportunity, grabs the Infinity Stones for himself. He tries to convince them that they can use the stones to fix their own universes, but when the gang refuses, he offers a fake apology for having to attack them with the stones.
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Zola emerges, having given the synthezoid suit a TMNT-Krang makeover, and he and Killmonger start to duel it out for possession of the stones. Just then, Strange Supreme has a light-bulb moment. He realizes that they aren’t meant to win the battle. With their combined powers, he and Uatu trap Zola and Killmonger in a pocket dimension, forever to be guarded by Strange in his own pocket dimension, which he is clearly fated to return to.
Okay, Now Everyone Go Home
As for the remaining Guardians, Uatu returns each of them to their time, place, and multiverse. Peggy would rather return to her past with Steve, but understands that she’s needed back in the timeline where she left off. With each soldier returned to their timeline, Natasha is left alone, refusing to go back to her dead world. She criticizes the Watcher for just sitting around Watching, and challenges him to fix her world, but he’s unable to.
He does, however, bend his own rules, and drops Nat off in a world without a Black Widow. She shows up just in time to rescue Nick Fury and the rest of the planet from an MCU Phase 1 Chitari attack. Fury immediately recognizes her as a different version of the Black Widow he knows.
The first season leaves all of its characters with a warm and fuzzy ending. We get a brief flash of T’Challa and Peter Quill playing around with some blasters, indicating that Quill may become a Ravager after all. The post-credits scene also gives Peggy a surprise– her universe’s Natasha shows her a recovered Hydra Buster suit, and Widow says that there’s someone inside.
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What If…? Sets our Heroes up for Season 2
In addition to the potential return of her loverboy Steve, Guardian-Black Widow gave Peggy a hot tip about Hydra members like Crossbones who have infiltrated SHIELD. Season 2 may feature fan-favorite Captain Carter taking down Hydra in her next story arc.
The series also teased a zombie version of Thanos, and there are many rumors circulating about the opportunities for characters from the animated series to make a live-action appearance in The Multiverse of Madness.
This first season also experienced some episode changes, and it looks like a background episode about Gamora was left on the cutting room floor. A recent release from Lego & Marvel Studios shows Tony wearing the same suit he wears when the Watcher picks up Gamora. According to Lego, the suit is his Sakaarian suit, meaning that Tony’s made a trip to Sakaar and Marvel has yet to release the vacation photos.
What did you think of the season finale of the animated series? Which What If…? characters or universes do you want to see join the live-action MCU?
Marvel’s ‘What If…?’ season 1 is available for streaming exclusively on Disney+.
