Last week, there was a fun story about Thor and Jane Foster finding love amidst the chaos of an intergalactic house party. The end scene, however, had the only visual context to explain why this was not an amenable universe to be in. We saw Vision with an Ultron faceplate and Infinity Stones grafted to his torso and no exposition. It was a “cool down” song on the alternate reality mixtape. What If? Episode 8 began the Grand Finale.
In this reality, Ultron takes the Mind Stone and Vision’s vibranium body and kills most of humanity. It leads to an existential crisis as he, like Alexander, is sorrowed that there is nothing left to do. But the Mind Gem has his back and shows him a mind he didn’t know existed: The Watcher’s. Even the cosmic voyeur is taken aback.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye and Black Widow have survived the AI apocalypse and are on a desperate mission to find a very unconventional ally deep within the bowels of Soviet Russia’s super soldier program. The idea to upload a virtual consciousness to sabotage Ultron’s programming is more than valid. The Watcher himself watches with anxiety, tempted to guide Hawkeye’s hand to the correct path.
There’s just one little problem. By the time they get a hold of the former Hydra hologram, Ultron is outside of the roaming network. He’s outside of their universe. An epic fight ensues, where the often-touted-yet-rarely-seen immense power level of Captain Marvel (and an ironically funny line about the Terminator franchise) isn’t enough to put down the all-powerful android. It’s even enough to see The Watcher take up arms… and retreat… as Ultron crashes through the dimensional prism to seek out and conquer new universes. In a pocket dimension panic room, The Watcher meets with a previously seen What If…? version of a very powerful character to discuss their next move.
This was one of the more ambitious episodes. The action sequences were insane to watch and crazier still to imagine animating. The surviving Avengers take on dozens of Ultron drones at a time and face two god-tier tussles with the villain on top. Voice work is back up to top notch with Lake Bell providing the voice for Black Widow, The Walking Dead’s Ross Marquand filling in for Paul Bettany/James Spader as Vision/Ultron, and the rest being largely the MCU originals, including a very special appearance by Bumblebee Cabbagepatch.
The best stories are the ones that give you more questions than answers. There have been grumblings about if and/or how the individual stories are connected and what the purpose of The Watcher has been other than the narrator. We get our answers and so much more to wonder about.
