When last we left our heroes… they were dead. Or hiding in a pocket dimension. Or totally oblivious to the fact that Ultron, in Vision’s vibranium body, had obtained the infinity stones, attained godhood, and begun to invade alternate universes. It wasn’t good.
In a nearly word-for-word and shot-for-shot reimagining of the opening to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain Carter is pulled away from a tussle with Batroc (UFC legend, Georges St-Pierre!) by The Watcher. He’s recruiting “Guardians of the Multiverse” and plucks some familiar faces. The Star-Lord T’Challa from episode two, Thanos-slayer Gamora from an unknown reality, Dude-Bro Thor from episode seven, the Lovecraftian Doctor Strange Supreme from five, King Killmonger from six, and the sole survivor Black Widow from Ultra-Vision’s base reality make up an unexpectedly kick-ass D&D party and the game is afoot.
Thanks to Strange’s mystical protections (“Plotius Armoris!”), they manage to frustrate the almighty android until the well-foreshadowed Diablo ex Machina saves most of them. They’re all to be sent home with varying levels of satisfaction. And that’s when it stops being the end of the episode and becomes the end of the season.
Yours truly didn’t know what to expect in this episode. Well, kind of. We’d expect Ultra-Vision to be defeated. And some of the previously-seen alternate Avengers to be involved. What this writer never expected was to see a defense against the philosophical problem of evil/suffering.
The Watcher’s Black Widow isn’t just unhappy about the prospect of being sent back to be the last person alive on her world. She’s upset that it happened at all. She challenges The Watcher as to why, with his incredible cosmic powers, he could ethically allow these tragedies to come to pass.
It has been a long-running joke amongst comic book fans that, since his first appearances, Uatu the Watcher has constantly been breaking his oath of non-interference. Numerous parodies throughout pop culture have poked fun at it (“Ignore me!”). But the fact is, if he didn’t, he would lose the only thing important to him: the stories.
The poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The notion is purely speculative but that’s the point, isn’t it? Marvel (like their adopted parent company, Disney) is woven into our collective culture because from the moment Namor the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch were printed to a page in 1939, it has given us what we have craved since the prehistoric campfire. It gave a starting point to our imaginations. Marvel prompts us to ask, “What if… ?”
Spoiler Alert: It’s the ending to a Marvel project. Don’t turn it off when the credits start. And maybe keep a tissue handy.
Marvel’s What If…?: Season Finale is now streaming on Disney+
