What If...? Season 2 Review

This is a DynaMic Network podcast. Welcome to the Dynamic Dual Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters and stat-based battle simulations. I'm Johnny DC. And I'm his twin brother, Marvelous Joe. And in this episode, we are reviewing the second season of the Disney Plus MCU animated series What If. Of course, the show ended last year. We're barely getting around to reviewing it now. But literally it was just like a week and a half ago, so we'll let you guys know what we thought about the show later on this episode. Before that we're going to break down the latest comic book movie news to come out this past week. Of which there was really only one news item, which is that Steven Yeun has exited the Thunderbolt film. As always we list our segment times in our episode description, so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic. 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Johnny and Joe will help you develop your show, provide graphic support and consultation, and get you simulation results to announce on your show. Pitch the twins your show via email at dyna or by reaching out to the them on social media. Check it out at patreon.com slash dynamic duel. Pip pip cheerio. Thanks, AJ 9K, and thanks to everyone who supports the podcast. Guys, be sure to tune into the Max Destruction Podcast, which is part of the Dynamike Podcast Network, which last week found out who'd win in a fight between Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Dolph Lundgren's Punisher. The Sinjoworld Podcast is a show that speculates on fights between your favorite anime characters. This week. Host Zachary Hepburn will find out who would win between Tian Xinhang from Dragon Ball against Zebra from Toriko. And the newest show in the Dynamite Podcast Network, Console Combat, hosts John and Dean find out who would win in fights between your favorite video game characters. In yesterday's episode, they speculated on who would win between Earn.Rex from Mass Effect and Nemesis from the Resident Evil games. Visit dynamicpodcasts.com or click on the link in our show notes. to listen to all of the shows in the Dynamike Podcast Network. But with that out of the way, quick to the No Prize! A No Prize is an award Marvel used to give out to fans. Our version, the Dynamic Dual No Prize, is a digital award we post on Instagram and in our email newsletter for the person that we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week we asked, now that the DCEU is finished, what would you say are the top three DCEU and why. We only received two answers but it's okay because we have an honorable mention and a winner to announce. The honorable mention goes to Connor Pierce who said Connor Pierce- Hi guys, I think Shazam, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam are the top three best DCEU films of all time. They are just so good and Shazam is one of the better ones because had Zachary Levi in it and Asher Angel and I think that they need to do more movies like that. Thanks guys. Yeah so Shazam, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam are actually a pretty good trifecta of quality that DC has put out. I know a lot of people didn't like Black Adam but the superhero action in that movie was top-notch and it was really cool to get to see the Justice Society on screen. Yeah for some reason people give Black Adam shit but... Even as a Marvel guy, someone who doesn't really care about the DC characters, I had a lot of fun with it. It wasn't like groundbreaking, well, like maybe in terms of like PG-13 superhero violence, but it totally worked for what it was trying to be. Yeah, it would have been nice if Shazam was in the movie, but of course Shazam already had a really good film. It was a great origin story, a great movie with family themes, and it was funny, probably one of the most funny films in the DCEU. and Wonder Woman of course was extremely well made by Patty Jenkins. I loved the World War I setting for that first film. The sequel didn't quite hold up, but the first Wonder Woman film absolutely is one of the DCEU's best. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Wonder Woman is like Oscar caliber. I don't think it won any, but it's Oscar caliber in my book. Great answer is Connor, but the winner of this week's No Prize is Abner O'Terry, who said, Oh, this is Abner O'Terry. My answers would have to be Blue Beetle. because of his connection with his family. Black Adam, because you get to see the Justice Society of America. And then Snyder Cut of Justice League, because you get to see the whole Justice League together. And they're awesome. Thank you. Yeah, so I thought Blue Beetle was the best DC film of last year. Spoiler alert, if you haven't listened to last week's episode of the Brothers Awards yet. But yeah, I really enjoyed that movie. It actually reminded me a lot. of the Shazam movie in that it was comedic, action packed, and had strong family values. But the real reason that this answer gets the win is because I think the best DC movie ever made is Zack Snyder's Justice League. You had to get a Zack Snyder film in there for as much hate as the director and his films get. I still think that could have been a masterful cinematic universe if Warner Brothers had just let him create it. I don't know man, have you heard the reviews for Rebel Moon? The fuck do I care about that for? Hehe And then it's like a three way tie between Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam. And I don't know if I'd probably go Aquaman or Wonder Woman on that one. Yeah, the DCEU had some really good films and it will be missed now that it's over. That said, I am really looking forward to seeing what James Gunn brings us next year. We have to wait a whole damn year. Sucks. But great answer, Abner O'Terry. You win this week's no prize. If you the listener want a shot at winning your own no prize, stay tuned to later on in this episode, where we'll be asking another question of the week. And now that that's done, on to the news! Alright, this past week we learned that Steven Yeun will not be playing the Sentry in the upcoming Thunderbolts film. It was never actually officially announced by Marvel Studios that Yeun was cast as the Sentry, but it was almost all but confirmed. The reason that Yeun is leaving that movie is because, according to him, scheduling conflicts due to the writer and actor's strikes. We know that the strikes caused the Thunderbolts film to be pushed from July 2024 to July 2025, a whole year back. And yeah, that can always create conflicts for actors who try to squeeze in multiple projects. Yeah, when I first heard this news, I was actually pretty bummed. I was like, what scheduling conflicts? Like, what could possibly top starring in a Marvel movie? But it sounds like he's pretty bummed. And he said that he still hopes to one day star in an MCU film, which is nice. Yeah. I mean, he's a fantastic actor. and I think Marvel would be lucky to have him in any role, really. He was always an interesting choice for the Sentry. He never quite resembled the character from the comic books, who's like this white blonde-haired guy, but taking it in the direction of Yen entirely works, and I think it would have been a fantastic performance because Yen is just such a quality actor. Yeah, honestly, like, the Sentry is not a well-enough known character, where I think anyone would have been up in arms over colorblind casting. I thought it was a really good choice because first and foremost, You want a quality actor who would be able to capture the psychological complexity of a character like Robert Reynolds, aka the Sentry. Aka the Void. Yeah, there's a great duality to the character of the Sentry that I think Yun would have been fantastic playing. So it's a shame I don't think that this casting change is going to alter the plot of the movie at all. I still think we're going to get the Sentry character within the film. So it'll be interesting to see who they cast for that. going forward, you'd think we'd get a casting announcement soon, considering that they should start filming here in a few months. Yeah, I mean, Marvel's pretty secretive, so I wouldn't be surprised if they held the back of the news until, like, Comic-Con. Like they'll cast someone, but they won't say what character they're playing until, you know, they're ready for some huge announcement. You're probably right about that. We'll see. But on the subject of this entry's casting, that brings us to our question of the week. Who would you cast as the Sentry in the MCU's Thunderbolts film? Now that Steven Yeun's out of the picture, we'd like to hear who you guys think would make an awesome Sentry. If you want to learn more about the character, make sure to check out our General Zod vs. Sentry duel episode. Record your answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail. Your message could be up to 30 seconds long, and don't forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast. We'll pick our favorite answer and award that person a Dynamic Duel No Prize. that we'll post to Instagram and our email newsletter. Be sure to answer before January 13th. I think that does it for all the news for this episode. Now let's move on to the main event, where we review the Disney Plus animated Marvel series, What If, season two. Season 2 is an animated series on Disney+, directed by Brian Andrews, written by A.C. Bradley, and starring many familiar names and voices from the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based on the What If comic books, the show explores the multiverse with a series of anthological tales told from the perspective of The Watcher, who is the cosmic entity that oversees the events happening in each episode. Each story is set up with a question of what if. that explores how a single change in the primary MCU timeline would affect continuity and unfolds the universal effects from that change. The season is the follow-up to the first season which we reviewed on the show a few years ago, saying that while the show has a great premise, the first season squandered its potential with a hit or miss run of episodes, some that felt so pointless that I felt more like asking but why? When watching them. Exactly like Party Thor. Yeah. That being said, I thought that this second season improved upon the first one and chose to tell more interesting tales and therefore is actually more worth your time. With that in mind, if you haven't watched What If Season 2 yet, be sure to do so before listening to this review because we will be delving into spoilers. All the reviews that we do on the show are spoiler heavy. Now one of the criticisms that we said about the premise of the What If show was that it inherently doesn't require much investment on behalf of the audience because any anthological exploration outside of the primary universe is just a sandbox that writers can let thrive or destroy and it technically doesn't affect anything that matters to the primary timeline. Because we don't have to care, sometimes it's hard to, but this season didn't feel pointless because of the worthwhile stories they chose to explore. Yeah, no, I mean... Whether they affect the main timeline or not to me was never really too much of the draw of What If. I like Elseworld Tales, What If Tales. They're some of my favorite stories because you're able to do things with characters that you would never be able to get away with in the Prime Continuity timeline. My issue with the first season of What If was that I didn't think that the questions they asked, as you mentioned, were worth asking in any way and I will agree with you that this season asked much more interesting questions. Yeah, I think in hindsight, Season 1 was trying too hard to set up its Guardians of the Multiverse team in its final episode, prioritizing that roster over telling good stories. Because of that, we got such duds from Season 1 as T'Challa Star-Lord, Party Thor, and who I like to call a more convoluted Killmonger that were less interesting versions of what was in the main MCU timeline. In season 2 however, the overarching narrative only played out as ending scenes in a couple of episodes before the finale with Doctor Strange Supreme. Beyond him, there were only two other characters that mattered to the finale which were Captain Carter and the newcomer character, Kihori. And because the show had more freedom, it could explore better concepts in its other episodes. I think that made all the difference in the world for this season. Yeah, a lot of the Guardians of the Multiverse weren't even in the season at all, which I think worked for it as a whole. Absolutely, yeah. And while the first season had some concepts that married classic films with multiversal events such as The Night of the Living Dead in the Marvel Zombies episode or Risky Business with the Party Thor episode, the second season did it with greater success, I think with episodes taking cues from movies like Blade Runner, Mad Max, Fury Road, and Die Hard. I really liked that how they were able to merge other pop culture stuff with Marvel and interesting ways in alternate universes. And they weren't shy about it either. Like they explicitly were mentioning characters from Die Hard in that Christmas episode. Yeah. It's a lot of fun when they do that though. In addition to the movie homages though, I really like the fact that this season also delved into what-if tales from the comics, like 1602, which actually isn't necessarily a what-if story, but it is an Elseworlds alternate universe tale that Marvel published. Right, yeah. It was written by Neil Gaiman. and it was a fantastic story about the Marvel Universe manifesting at the end of the Renaissance era. This 1602 episode was nothing like that story, and really didn't hold a candle to it, honestly, because I thought it was one of the lesser episodes of the season. But the fact that they're exploring ideas like that was still fun. Like, there were still great ideas there. Like, in the comic, Steve Rogers was like a Native American guy. And in this episode, Steve Rogers was Rogers-hood, a riff on Robin Hood. Even though that should have been Hawkeye, but... Yeah, you're absolutely right. I just like the call out to the comics, you know, I'm glad that they're looking towards the source material for ideas. Yeah. Usually I prefer my alternate Unova stories to be wholly original accounts as opposed to retellings of familiar tales, which is like one or two minor changes. Season 2 did something interesting where they mashed up their own franchises a bit, like the What If Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper episode. was essentially a retelling of Captain America the Winter Soldier that incorporated elements from the Black Widow film, specifically the Red Room and Melina Vostokov's work with the Mind Control Agent that worked so well within the concept of Russia manipulating an old hero that is cherished to the protagonist. I thought that was really well done. Yeah, that was really cool. Similarly, What If Hela Found the Ten Rings was basically the first Thor film, but with Hela as the lead with the setting of medieval China from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Now if Shang-Chi had father issues in his movie, Hela also had father issues. Thematically, I think it just worked for me. And I think these mashups were a very interesting way to approach these stories. Yeah, honestly, ancient China is way more interesting than modern day New Mexico. Sorry to all of our listeners from New Mexico. I don't know, man. Did they have green chili? Hell yeah. Did medieval China have hatch green chili? You win, that's fair. It's harder to go into my overall thoughts on the show without going into specifics on each episode, so let's go ahead and get into our episode highlights. Episode 1 was called What If Nebula Joined the Nobacore? It stars Karen Gillan as Nebula, Jude Law as Yonrog, Michael Rooker as Yondu, Seth Green as Howard the Duck, and Taika Waititi as Korg. Note that if I don't see an actor with the character, it just means that the character was played by a primarily voice actor who may not be a recognizable name. I just want to point out when the actual actors from the films portray the same roles in animation. I always really like that when the actual actor came back to voice the role. It really helps me decide which MCU actors are like too stuck up and snobby to return to the role for animation. You know, which ones aren't greedy assholes. Yeah. So- What the heck Robert Downey Jr. Too good for us or what? Scarlett Johansson, come on! Hahaha. But in the story for episode 1, in this timeline, Ronan the Accuser kills Thanos and his forces wage a campaign against Xandar and the Nova Corps. Nebula, without purpose after her father's death, joins the Nova Corps. To protect Xandar from Ronan, Nova Prime seals it off with a planetary force field, throwing the population into chaos. Nebula comes across the murdered body of Yondu, though there is suspiciously no investigation. Prompted by Nova Prime to covertly look into things, Nebula learns that Yondu discovered the source code to the planetary shield generator. Believing that an invasion is in the works, Nebula enlists the help of Yonrog, a former Kree soldier, to help infiltrate the Nova Corps mainframe and destroy the codes. He betrays her, however, and steals the codes, nearly killing her before revealing that he and Nova Prime plan to give Xandar up to Ronin. Nebula survives with help from Howard the Duck, and along with Korg, Groot, and Meek, the group breaks into the Nova Corps headquarters to stop the shield opening. It's revealed that Nebula suspected Nova Prime's intentions through her unorthodox request to investigate Yondu's death by any means necessary, and that she altered the shield codes to close right after opening to destroy Ronan's ship and stop his invasion. Nova Prime falls to her death in the fight, and Xandar is freed. I thought this was a really strong episode to start the series with. I really liked it. Not only did I like the Blade Runner aesthetic and the Technonore genre that it was, but the classic like Houdonnet mystery was also pretty well done, I thought. Yeah, it was a little bit convenient that Nebula was on to Novo Prime the entire time and so everything just kind of neatly fell into place at the end. But you know, it's only like a 30 minute episode and I can forgive it for how cool everything was. Just the environment of this post-apocalyptic Xandar was really cool. Yeah, I'm not sure why Jude Law had to be in this episode. I kind of feel like he was just filling a contractual obligation. But the rest of it I thought was great. My favorite part was when I realized that Korg, Groot, and Meek was rock, paper, scissors. Like, they were playing up on that whole thing. I thought that was funny. Yeah, that was fantastic. I thought it was really interesting to see how Ronin killing Thanos meant that the Guardians never formed, therefore Nebula never joins them. instead joining a different team, the Nova Corps, and finding her redemption there. So like, no matter what path Nebula goes on, it's always within this family team situation. Yeah, right. Alongside Howard the Duck in this version, which I thought was great. I thought Seth Green did a fantastic job with that role as always. Yeah, he showed up a few times in season one as well, like in the Party Thor episode and in T'Challa Star-Lord, but I thought he was best served here as this casino owner. In all, I give this episode 4 stars. So what I'm going to do since this is like an anthology thing and each episode kind of stands on its own, I'll rate each episode on a star rating and my overall score for the season is basically an average of those ratings. Yeah, I'll agree with 4 stars. Episode 2 is called What If Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes. In it you have Michael Douglas playing Ant-Man Hink Pym, Lawrence Fishburne, playing Goliath, aka Bill Foster. Sebastian Stan returned as the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes. Atandwa Connie revisited his role as T'Chaka, Black Panther. Haley Atwell played Peggy Carter. John Slattery played Howard Stark. And Kurt Russell returned as Ego. Kudos to Kurt Russell for coming back, that was awesome. Yeah, it's really interesting to see these big name legends come back to do animated work for the MCU, like Michael Douglas. For sure. They're not too cool for school, Chris Evans. Right? In this timeline in 1988, the Ravagers deliver Peter Quill to his father, Ego, who unlocks the child's cosmic powers. Escaping his father to Earth, Peter crash lands in New York and makes his way to Missouri, causing destruction in his path out of self-defense. In response, Shields Peggy Carter and Howard Stark assemble an early version of the Avengers, including Ant-Man, Goliath, the Winter Soldier, Black Panther, and Captain Mar-Vell. Their attempts to contain him at Coney Island fail until Thor intervenes, having tracked Peter across the cosmos by the destruction left in his wake. Taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, Peter is befriended by Ant-Man's kid daughter Hope, who frees him and informs S.H.I.E.L.D. about the threat Ego poses. Ego's avatar travels to Earth after losing communication with Peter, and his arrival is detected by S.H.I.E.L.D. who sends Black Panther, Goliath, and Thor to confront the while Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, and the Winter Soldier find Peter visiting his mother's grave. As the first group struggles against Ego's cosmic powers, the latter group tries to convince Peter to help them against his father. They join the battle, and Peter harnesses the cosmic power in Ego's expansion seed to destroy his avatar. The team celebrates their victory and prepares to venture into space to confront Ego the Planet. I loved this episode! I thought this was a really, really cool episode. I love seeing the early Avengers that could have been. Yeah, the 80s roster. It's interesting because like you forget how many superpowered beings there were in the MCU's history. It's kind of a surprise that Nick Fury was the first one to come up with the Avengers initiative in the main MCU timeline and that the idea of assembling these superpowered beings into a team didn't manifest sooner. Yeah, I agree. And this was just an awesome roster, too. Yeah, I liked it a lot. It was nice that Thor actually felt more like Thor again, like he wasn't cracking jokes at every turn. Exactly. I also liked that Mar-Vell was in there as well in a callback to Captain Marvel, although I kind of wish that her Tesseract ship had blown up and she had received the powers from the Tesseract. I thought that would have been way cooler. That would have been awesome. Yeah. I did have the question of why Peter Quill destroyed other planets like Jotunheim if Ego wasn't fully in control of Peter's actions, but that was never really addressed in this episode. I think he was just listening to his father. I think the whole reason he didn't destroy Earth was because it was his home. That's where his mom lived and he lived when he was younger. Yeah, that makes sense. I even liked the hope and young Peter Quill dynamic. You know, I didn't mind that. Yeah, honestly, I'm kind of pissed off at fucking Yondu for not delivering Quill. Yeah, because then Earth would have been equipped with an Avengers team three decades earlier. Yeah. And a dope one. That was really cool. I read this episode four stars. I thought it was really well done. I had a lot of fun despite questioning why. Thor would struggle against Ego's avatar beings just as much as Black Panther and less powerful heroes were. That's fair. I also still feel like Marvel has an issue with what they're calling a celestial and what they're not. I don't know. Yeah, that whole thing is weird. Maybe since Ego is a planet and celestials are born within planets, Ego is just like an alternate version of a celestial, one that merged into the planet as opposed to erupting from it. I guess that makes sense. I do really like Ego as a villain. I like seeing him come to planet Earth and terrorize heroes here. I really like this episode. I'm giving it 4 and a half stars. It was one of my favorites. Episode 3 was called What If Happy Hogan Saved Christmas. It had Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan aka the Freak, Sam Rockwell, as Justin Hammer, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk aka Bruce Banner, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye aka Clint Barton, Kobe Smulders as Maria Hill, Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, Lake Bell as Black Widow aka Natasha Romanoff, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor. Wait, you said the Freak. Is that an actual character from the comics? Yes. In the comics, Happy Hogan was mortally injured at one point and Tony Stark used some experimental technology on him and it transformed him into like this bald, strong, not as strong as the Hulk, but he was like about as strong as Spider-Man. It was nice that they had this precedent here for the character. It wasn't just some random thing that they introduced. Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. In this timeline, Justin Hammer escapes from prison prior to the events of Avengers Age of Ultron. He and his henchmen seize the Avengers Tower during a time that the Jarvis AI is down for maintenance, where Happy Hogan is overseeing security at the building's annual Christmas Eve party. Stumbling on the villain's plan to steal a sample of Hulk's blood, Happy works his way through the building's vents to get to the lab and retrieve the sample first. He accidentally injects himself with the sample, which causes him to begin transforming into a Hulk-like monster known as the Freak. He tries to get ahold of the Avengers members, but Natasha is fighting Hydra at the Nutcracker Ballet, Tony is playing Santa Claus for kids at a Stark charity event along with Steve who is an elf, and Bruce and Clint are shopping for a hard-to-get Iron Man action figure for Clint's kids. Happy calls his intern Darcy, asking her to reboot Jarvis and regain control of the building. But she is captured and Justin Hammer dons the Hulkbuster armor to fight Happy, who has fully transformed into the Freak. Though Happy defeats Justin Hammer, the Avengers return and attack him, believing he is a villain. Darcy convinces them that the Freak is Happy and everyone celebrates. Thor arrives late. I thought this was a fun and entertaining episode, exactly what it was supposed to be as an homage to the Die Hard movie. I thought it was great that they dropped it on Christmas Day. I did have a small issue with the dialogue, specifically Justin Hammer's dialogue was a little bit punny and kind of overwritten and not all the jokes landed, but I thought it was a great concept where Justin Hammer filled in as the Hans Gruber character. Yeah, I thought that was perfectly well done. I did not mind the puns. I thought it was totally appropriate. I was laughing a lot during this episode. I like the part where he falls out of Avengers Tower like Hans Gruber fell out of Nakatomi Plaza. They did it in slow motion and everything. So many great little call outs to the Die Hard movie. Darcy is usually hit or miss for me, but I actually really liked her in this episode. I thought she was funny. She was like, Happy, are you making me your Reginald Val Johnson? And Happy is like, wait, that's what you remember from the movie? Yeah, John Favreau is a great voice actor. I have to say he actually does really well in this episode and in the 1602 episode. He has a lot of range as a voice actor. Definitely. Yeah, I would agree. In all, I give this episode four stars as well. So far, all the episodes have gotten four stars for me. Yeah, I'll go four stars as well. I liked it. I didn't like it as much as the last episode, though. Episode four is called What If Iron Man crashed into the Grandmaster? It has Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Taika Waititi as Korg, and Josh Brolin as Thanos. In this timeline, Iron Man didn't make it back through the wormhole after sending the nuclear missile into the Chitauri ship and ended up on the planet of Sakaar. The Grandmaster invites him to celebrate his birthday and Tony obliges under threat of being melted. He witnesses the Sakaar Grand Prix, a death race in a gladiatorial arena. where Valkyrie impresses Tony with her driving, despite the fact he's put off by the barbarism on display. Tony tries to rescue Korg, but Gamora enters the scene, attempting to kill Stark for defeating Thanos' army. Gamora and Tony are hit with obedience discs and imprisoned, though Stark escapes by overloading his disc using his arc reactor. He recruits both Korg and Valkyrie to help him overthrow the Grandmaster's tyrannical rule over Gamora is also forced to participate in the race, whom Tony tries to reason with and convince her to step out of her father's shadow. Despite the Grandmaster cheating at every turn, Tony wins the race and Valkyrie becomes the new ruler of Sakaar after the Grandmaster accidentally gets melted with his own weapon. On Tony's way out of Sakaar, Gamora confronts him and the two execute a plan to kill Thanos using Grandmaster's Melt Stick. I feel like this was an episode that was really good on paper. And, you know, just hearing you describe it, it sounds like a fantastic episode. I just think the voice actor for Tony Stark was fricking terrible. I really liked it. No, I think he delivers his lines very differently from how Robert Downey Jr. would actually deliver. I don't know. The actor's name is Mike Wingert. And I actually liked a lot of his delivery here, especially when it came to Tony Stark's approached the absurdity of the planet Sakaar. His reactions to everything kind of reminded me of Robert Downey Jr's reaction to the Guardians of the Galaxy in the Infinity War movie, where he's just at his tipping point all the time with this weird cast of characters. I thought it was a lot of fun. Maybe it was just the combination of the face animation and the voiceover. I just knew the whole time that it was not Robert Downey Jr. And it just took me out of the whole thing. I also never liked Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster. What? Yes, it's you're on the wrong side of history on that one. I got irritating shit. I don't like it. It's just so unbelievably played for laughs. And I personally don't find Jeff Goldblum that funny. I know I'm on the wrong side of history there. I don't really give a fuck because that's irritating to shit. He's like the personification of debauchery and hedonism. I thought it was fantastic. I loved the Mad Max for your road premise. The action was so chaotic at times. It was sometimes hard to follow because you don't have that. depth of field in animation like you do in live action. Right. But the cars were incredible. I liked that one car that would swallow up cars ahead of it in the jet turbine and then grind them up and spit them out as bullets behind it. I was like, I need that in Mario Kart. That'd be like the perfect car. My favorite car honestly was Iron Man's suit that he made for this episode. Holy cow. It made me honestly really miss Iron Man as a character just because of all the really cool stuff you could make and do. Yeah, when his chariot car blew up and he ejected his suit, which like reformed into this race car kind of thing, that was a bad ass moment. Really cool. Honestly, that may be like one of the biggest highlights of the entire series. If only it was live action. Holy shit. This would have been a cool episode in live action. Yeah, I really like the ending where Gamora melts Thanos. I thought that was a powerful ending. This is the same Gamora that went on to become one of the guardians of the multiverse from season one. Although we never see Thanos melted. We see him partially melting. You know, he's going to melt. He's going to melt. That's what the melt stick does. It melts. True. I did not think that Cynthia McWilliams, who was the actress who played Gamora in this episode, sounded anything like Zoe Saldana, though. No, same. Absolutely. Come on, Zoe, where are you making billion dollar films, I guess? In all, I give this episode four stars again. I think the series has been nothing but consistent so far. I give it three and a half just because it's too much Jeff Goldblum for me. Did you see the after credit scene on that one? Yes, unfortunately. Wasting my time. Sponge me up. Episode 5 was called What If Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper. It had Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter, Lake Bell as Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Rachel Weiss as Melina Vostokoff, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes. In this timeline, Peggy Carter received the Super Soldier Serum after Steve Rogers was shot at Project Rebirth. She became Captain Carter in World War II as Rogers donned a precursor Iron Man suit called the Hydra Stopper developed by Howard Stark and powered by the Tesseract. Together, they helped stop a plot by the Red Skull from using the Tesseract to bring an extra-dimensional entity to Earth. Captain Carter's actions sent her nearly seventy years into the future where she became an Avenger. On one mission for S.H.I.E.L.D., she and Black Widow stumbled upon Steve Rogers and the Hydra Stopper armor who attacks them and then escapes. Peggy learns that Steve was captured by the Russian Red Room during the Cold War and brainwashed into serving as their assassin, with the armor keeping him in stasis until he was needed. The Hydra Stomper attacks the S.H.I.E.L.D. Treskeleon headquarters in an attempt to kill Bucky Barnes, who had become Secretary of State. Peggy manages to subdue him, and she and Black Widow take Steve to a secret safe house in Scotland where they reboot the Hydra Stomper and decide to dismantle the Red Room. Steve takes them to an old KGB base built like an old American suburb where they're attacked and confronted by Melina Vostokoff, the new Red Room leader and the one in charge of Steve's brainwashing. During the battle, Peggy appeals to Steve who overcomes the mind control to sacrifice himself to destroy the Red Room headquarters. Believing that Steve is alive, Peggy sets out to find him but falls through a portal that takes her to a renaissance themed universe that is looking for her help. This was another one of my favorite episodes. I really liked it because, as you mentioned, it's essentially the Winter Soldier storyline, but if Peggy became Captain America. Yeah, with, again, those elements from the Black Widow movie, which I thought plot wise played in brilliantly with the story of the Winter Soldier. Great episode. I was excited to see Rachel Weisz voice the role. She's a phenomenal actress. And for her to come back for animation for this just shows, you know, how much they, I guess, like Marvel as a whole. Right. I think like Bell does a pretty good job of voicing Scarlett Johansson. I mean, at some points I would hear just Poison Ivy speaking, but I would say a lot of the times she passed for Scar Jo. I would agree. Watching the beginning of this episode, I was trying to figure out why Captain Carter's existence in the past led to Bruce Banner not becoming the Hulk and being part of the original Avengers, though it was cool to see the Wasp as one of the original Avengers. Yeah, that was cool. I mean, not as cool as the 80s team from episode two, but still pretty cool. Yeah. I want to bring up the huge power levels problem that this show seems to have. I brought it up in a previous episode where we see how Thor and Black Panther struggle similarly in a fight against Ego's avatars. And that problem continues in this episode. Like how can Captain Carter take on the Hydra Stomper, which is basically an Iron Man suit, as well as tank dozens of widow's bites that are shot at her before they even seem to affect her. She also had a car slammed into her that then exploded. and she was fine afterward. It was just very strange. Not going to lie, they make Captain Carter way too OP in the series. I understand that she's sort of like the protagonist of maybe the whole what of series, but it's like, OK, yeah, we'll talk about that again later on in the last episode. But I rate episode five three and a half stars. Wait, what? Yeah, I didn't think it quite held up as much as the other ones. Mainly because the dialogue and line delivery between Hayley Atwell and Lake Bell started getting grading to me. I don't think Hayley Atwell is a solid voice actress. She kind of reads the lines like she's reading lines, you know? That's fair. That's fair. I did like the episode though. I would give it four stars. Let's go to move on to episode six, which is called What If Kehori Reshaped the World. In it, we have Devory Jacobs playing the character of Kehori. In this timeline, the fire demon Surtur... destroyed Asgard during Ragnarok centuries earlier, resulting in the Tesseract hurtling to pre-colonial eastern America on Earth. Falling into a lake, the Tesseract created a portal to an alternate dimension, causing the local Native American tribes to name the area Forbidden Lake. In the late 15th century, a young Mohawk woman named K'Hori and her little brother Wata encounter a group of conquistadors ransacking their village in search of the Fountain of Youth. Fleeing, the siblings stumble upon the Forbidden Lake. Kahori is shot and falls into it, and the portal within, which transports her to what the natives refer to as Skyworld. There she learns to control the vast telekinetic powers granted to her by the energy of the tesseract, including telekinesis, enhanced speed, concussive blasts, energy shielding, and portal creation. Though the inhabitants are content to stay within Skyworld, Kahori's knowledge of the Conquistadors motivates her to use her abilities to try and leave the dimension in order to save her brother and her tribe. She returns home and attacks a fleet of ships that had chained up her tribe, though they bombard her with cannon fire. The inhabitants of Skyworld return just in time to help, and they free her people, being referred to as Thunder Beings by Wata. Empowered by their victory, they confront Queen Isabella of Spain, though it is cut short by Doctor Strange Supreme, who recruits Kihori for a mission. I thought this was an amazing original story. When I first heard that they were going to introduce a new character within one of the I wasn't thrilled because I thought that the concept of what if should be restrained to explorations of existing stories, but I thought this was a beautiful story. The setting of Skyworld I thought was really cool. It was like Avatar. It kind of reminded me of that. I love how they chose to do the entire episode in the Mohawk language and Spanish. That was an awesome choice. I saw on the internet a few people call K'Hori a Mary Sue because she was just immediately so adept at using her powers. But I think the story provided the context and why she would be because she was the only one out of the natives in Skyworld that knew of the conquistadors. And she knew that she had to return in order to save her people, whereas everyone else was kind of complacent. In all, I loved the world building that they had here, the character building. I think Kihori is a fantastic new addition to the Marvel Universe. I'm really interested in seeing where they take her from here. I hope that she makes an appearance in the comic books. I hope they don't just relegate her to this television show because I think her character is worth further exploration. Do you think they would ever bring her about in live action? That would be awesome. And I think the actress who does the voice for her could play her in live action. I think that'd be great. In all, this is probably one of my favorite episodes of the season, so I give it four and a half stars. Yeah, it was good. It was solid. Honestly, no real gripes with it. I'll give it four and a half stars. I thought Kohari as a superhero was really cool. Her power set is just incredible. Yeah for sure. Moving on to episode 7, that is called What If Hela Found the Ten Rings. It has Cate Blanchett playing Hela and Idris Elba playing Heimdall. Fucking Cate Blanchett doing voice over, that was awesome. She did such a good job. Really good job. She really owns that character, I think. Lot of personality there. For sure. In this timeline, instead of imprisoning his daughter Hela in the realm of Hell, Odin banishes her to Earth to learn respect for life, enchanting her crown to be worn on her. Only by those with mercy, Odin sends Hella to medieval China where the Mandarin finds her. He takes a liking to her and tries to recruit her into his army, though she attempts to steal his rings. Unsuccessful, Hella flees his compound and encounters a hand-done creature that guides her to the realm of Ta Lo. There, a woman named Yi reveals to Hella her true desire of freedom from control, and teaches her the mystical martial arts, bringing Hella peace. Odin learns from Heimdall that he can no longer see Hela and that the Mandarin is in possession of a god-destroying power. Convinced his daughter is in danger, Odin leads an army of Asgardians to Earth and goes to battle with the Mandarin's forces. Hela arrives to assist and fights her father, eventually subduing him and granting him mercy. At that point she becomes worthy of her crown again and Odin grants her his throne, where she strives to free the nine realms from Asgard's empire and becomes a hero across the cosmos. later alongside the Mandarin, the two defeat Thanos, the Mad Titan. I think this is another amazing story, again melding the first Thor film with the Legend of the Ten Rings movie. Yeah it was a good episode, honestly I was just really excited to see the Ten Rings come back again. I think we were way past due for a Shang-Chi sequel, so it was nice to get a little taste of that again here. Yeah, it was funny that Wenwu took a liking to Hela. I liked how Hela was humbled by her mortal trappings. You know, she came in with such confidence and she was a good fighter and everything. But you just saw how devastated she was when she couldn't lift up her crown. And I thought it was a believable journey going from there to trying to steal the rings, to going to Talo and then really being humbled again there and coming to be at peace with herself. I thought it was really cool to see Odin in battle as well. It's something we've never really seen before in the MCU. He's a badass. He is such a badass. with Gungnir, like especially going up against the Ten Rings, where Odin was like twirling his spear, Kung Fu style, to block the rings that are flying at him. Everything about that battle was fantastic. I honestly don't think that Hela and Wenwu would ever defeat Odin in battle, so that was kind of like a power levels thing here, because Odin is pretty much all powerful. But, I think for the purposes of the story that they were telling, where Hela really grew as a character due to her experience on Earth, I thought it all worked well. Yeah, I thought the ending was kind of bullshit too, but overall a pretty good episode. I liked when you saw Hela and the Asgardian army side by side with the Mandarin's forces and they were charging into battle against Thanos together. And when Wu was like running on air on top of his rings, using them as like stepping stones. That was badass. I just love how the ten rings are depicted always. I want the ten rings. I give this episode four stars and all. I thought it was another solid great exploration. Yeah, I'll go four stars as well. Episode 8 was called What If the Avengers Assembled in 1602. It had Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter, Samuel Jackson as Sir Nicholas Fury, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Merlin, Chris Hemsworth as King Thor, Mark Ruffalo as the Monster in the Iron Mask, Jon Favreau as Sir Harold Hogan, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes. In this timeline, Marvel heroes lived during the time of the late Renaissance. In the year 1602, Captain Carter is summoned to save the dimension from an incursion that is slowly destroying reality due to the presence of a time displaced individual. However, after failing to stop the tears in the universe, King Thor has Peggy branded an outlaw, believing her to be the cause. She turns to Tony Stark to find the individual, but he tells her they need the Time Stone and King Thor's scepter to power the device that will locate them. To steal the scepter, Peggy turns to a group of thieves consisting of Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Scott Lang. However, their rendezvous is ambushed by the Yellow Jackets and the Destroyer, led by Sir Harold Hogan. Peggy is imprisoned, but she escapes and frees Bruce Banner. Rejoining with Steve Rogers' band of thieves and Tony Stark, Peggy and the group storm King Thor's court to get the Time Stone. With Wanda Merlin's help, the group acquires the gem to Power Stark's device, which identifies Steve Rogers as the Man Out of Time. a result of Steve striking the Time Stone in his battle with Thanos during the events of Infinity War. Peggy uses Stark's device to send Steve back to his home timeline, and after the battle, she's approached by Doctor Strange Supreme. I thought this episode sucked. I thought it was a lame excuse to have another episode with Captain Carter. Do not think she belonged in this universe or was even needed. I thought there was a lot of missed opportunities, like low-hanging fruit when it came to making Hawkeye Robin Hood and Tony Stark the man in the Iron Mask. Yes, I totally agree with that. Just too much that I did not like. The main issue with this episode is that it was a fight that could have been a conversation, right? For some reason, King Thor was the antagonist just due to his stubbornness. But ultimately what he was wanting was to stop this incursion from happening. And if they had basically, I think just had a conversation and were like, dude, we just need to borrow the scepter. We'll find out who this guy is using this device. What was the point of all the fighting? It just kind of made Thor seem like this overly stubborn character and really unlikeable, which, you know, you don't want to dislike Thor. Yeah, I know. Right. I mean, like Thor, Love and Thunder already did enough of that. I do. Question though, if the Steve Rogers that was in this 1602 episode was the one from the Infinity War battle in main MCU, because if so, does that mean that the Chris Evans version of Steve Rogers that we know has these memories of being in the past? I think it's really unclear as to what memories Steve Rogers had. Like when he was Rogershood, did he still retain his memories from battling Thanos? I think he did. And if so, why didn't he just come out as the individual who was causing these terrors in space time? It's possible that he didn't know, but you think that he would have been informed of that during the debrief as to why they needed the time stone and all that stuff. You know, a lot of questions with this episode. I mean, he knew that he had hit the time stone. He explained that. So I think it's clear that he had memories of it. I think the implication was that being flagged by the time stone kind of awakened those memories. I don't know. I don't know. And honestly, I don't care. Because this episode sucked. I think the biggest crime that this episode committed was that it was nothing like the 1602 comic book, which would have been a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm sure Neil Gaiman is like, what the fuck, guys? Really? I rate this episode three stars out of five. I'll give this one three stars as well, but even then I think that's a little bit generous. In the final episode, episode nine was called, What If Strange Supreme Intervened? It had Hayley Atwell returning as Captain Carter, Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange Supreme, and Devory Jacobs as K'Hori. In it, Strange Supreme reveals to Captain Carter that he's been imprisoning universe killers as his atonement for the destruction of his own reality. He asks her for help in catching an escaped variant, though this turns out to be K'Hori, who warns Peggy about Strange's true intentions, to recreate his reality using a dimensional forge fueled by beings of great power. As Strange attempts to kill K'Hori, Captain Carter frees his captives and they encounter Killmonger from the first season wearing Infinity Ultron's armor. K'Hori teleports him out of the suit, which Peggy then dons to wield the Infinity Stones. After an extended battle, Captain Carter and K'Hori acquire Hela's Crown, Mjolnir, the Ten Rings, and what appears to be the sword Excelsior from a variant of Hulkling. Strange is overtaken by the demonic personification of his guilt, who Carter and Kihori knock into the forge, killing Strange by creating a new universe where Strange's love, Christine Palmer, lives. The Watcher takes Peggy on a journey to see the multiverse, which manifests as the Yggdrasil tree from the end of Loki Season 2. Uh... But majority of the runtime was taken up by this insanely epic fight between Strange Supreme and Captain Carter and Kahori. As enjoyable as that fight was, I kept being annoyed by the power levels issue because it was established in season one that Doctor Strange Supreme was the most powerful being in existence in that reality. He basically overcame everybody and destroyed the universe in his quest to acquire enough power to resurrect Christine Palmer, who died in his reality. So you have the most powerful being in existence of one universe going up against Kahori who has telekinesis. And she was basically holding her own and I thought that was a little bit strange. More annoying than that, you have Captain Carter wearing the Infinity Armor that Ultron created from season one. The big thing there is that somehow both Killmonger and Captain Carter are able to wield the energies of the stones and the subsequent radiation, which we know is powerful enough. to render the Hulk out of action and kill Tony Stark. And yet these guys were wielding the stones energies effortlessly. Not only that, I don't get why the stones worked outside of the universe that they originated to begin with. Right, that's a whole thing too. In the comic books, the stones don't work outside of their native dimension. I'm not sure if that's the case within the MCU. Well, Loki said it was. We learned that in Loki season one. They didn't work in the TVA because the TVA is outside of time and space. but we don't know if the same rule applies to, you know, carrying stones across dimensions. We just know that they don't work in the TVA. Okay. Now, some people might say that the reason that Peggy Carter was able to wield the Infinity Armor was because the armor granted the wearer enough protection against the stones' energies, to which I reply, there is a shot in this episode where Peggy loses the stones from the armor and Kihori telekinetically throws them back at Peggy. Peggy catches all the stones in her hand, which she then uses to deliver an insanely epic punch against the demon creature that is Strange Supreme. So she has the stones in her hand, which should have just torn her apart. Right, like the Power Stone alone should have done that as we saw in Guardians of the Galaxy, unless she's like half celestial like Peter Quill was. There's no way she's even close to being half celestial, right? It's a problem. I have questions. Last point about the stones. I made this point in our review for season one is that I feel like these people aren't wielding the stones right. Like literally you just have to snap things away. Like wire Infinity Ultron and Captain Carter using the stones with a warrior's mentality. Like you don't have to do all that. Once you have all the stones, you're literally omnipotent and you can do anything and you don't have to like shoot laser beams. Like why would you do that? Just blink Doctor Strange away. That's all you have to do. It's weird. It's true. Yeah, I mean we saw Killmonger snap away Thanos with his Infinity Gauntlet. Why not just do it to Doctor Strange Supreme? Yeah, it was really cool to see all the like bonus characters in this episode from previous seasons and from, you know, the MCU and stuff. We saw Thanos, we saw Hela, we saw Zombie Wanda. That was all really cool. I'm really curious why we didn't see benevolent Hela like. If there were any characters that could like change the universe completely, you'd think that version of Hela would do more to change things than Kehori. You're not wrong. Honestly, I'm not sure why Dr. Strange Supreme even needed Captain Carter to capture Kehori for him. Like this whole thing was fucking pointless. That's entirely true. That is a great question. Um, I guess because Dr. Strange wanted to capture both of them ultimately. But you're right, with how powerful as Strange Supreme is, he should have had no problem getting Kahori back into his collection. And also it's not like if he needed to capture both of them, he didn't need one to do the other. He's fucking Doctor Strange Supreme. Right. I did think that the ending for this episode though, was kind of a poetic for Strange Supreme's story. Wherein he ultimately got exactly what he always wanted, which was Christine Palmer reborn in a new universe, but one that he would never be born into. at the end of the day. It was ironic. Yeah, it was definitely poetic justice, like you said. I did think it was cool that they managed to squeeze Yggdrasil in at the very end of this considering that just happened in Loki. Yeah, that was really cool to see. I know that they're working on a Season 3 of What If, and they've already released a preview clip of that. I think it's supposed to come maybe sometime this year. I hope that they kind of explore the whole Loki serving as the multiversal loom thing within this upcoming What If season. They hinted at it here. I think it's worth exploring and we'll see what happens. As we talked about this episode, I actually originally gave this episode four stars, but I think I'm gonna knock it down a half star because while I thought the action was awesome, there was just kind of a lot to question, such as like why Dr. Strange needed Captain Carter. Although the ending was good, I'm still gonna give this episode three and a half stars. I'm gonna give it three. I think there were just too many plot holes that were. critical to the story such as why Captain Carter got involved and how Dr. Strange was punched in the face with infinity stones. Things like that just break the episode for me. Yeah, but those are all the episodes. When you average out all my ratings, it comes to around four stars, which is one whole star higher than what I rated season one. And I think that sounds about right. I really enjoyed season two. I think it was the first time that audiences will see the premise of the show really come to life. The stories were just better. You know, the sophomore season focused less on the overarching narrative and more on telling worthwhile, compelling stories that better serve the show's concept. I rate the season 4 stars, a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah, I would agree with 4 stars. I do think it was better than season 1. I just love anthology series in general and there were a lot of great episodes in this season. Definitely better than what we got in season 1. So yeah, I'll agree with four stars. Do you know if all your star ratings averaged out to about four stars? Yeah, I'm not doing the math. I'll just agree with you. Yeah. But that does it for this review, guys. Let us know what you thought about what if season two by writing to us at dynamicdualpodcast at gmail.com or by visiting us on Instagram or X. You can finally see all of our accounts by checking out our show notes or visiting our website at dynamicdual.com. And on our site, you could also find a link to our Patreon page where you could join our Dynamic 2.0 tier and chat with us and fellow listeners are fantastic 4 tier which gets you bonus content each month our ex-force tier that makes you an executive producer of this podcast or our newest here that lets you join our dynamike podcast Network if you can't join patreon you can still support the show by signing up for our e-newsletter Also at dynamic duel comm so you'll never miss an episode or you could also rate the show on apple podcast Spotify Podchaser or on our website In our next episode, we will be doing a duel between the characters of Livewire, the Superman villain, and Claw, the Black Panther villain. Yeah, these are two energy beings, essentially one made of electricity and one made of sound. I think it'll be a pretty fun duel episode. It'll be nice to get back to the duels, considering it's been a few weeks since we've done one. But that does it for this episode, we want to give a big thanks to our executive producers Ken Johnson, John Storosky, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Balkam, Miggy Mathengian, Brandon Estregard, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yeaton, Nick Abonto, Austin Wiselowski, AJ Dunkerley, Scott Camacho, Adam Spies, Andrew Schunk, and Dean Molesky for helping make this podcast possible. We'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away, true believers. What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?