"What If...?" Episode 3 - The Avengers That Never Were

by Mike Lunsford, Editor-in-Chief, Great Geek Refuge

So many spoilers, like…don’t read this if you want to be surprised. This recap is more for those who watched it because it’s THAT shocking

Welcome back to another review/recap of the latest episode of the Marvel series, What If…?. We find ourselves at the 3rd installment and this one did not disappoint. This was the most ambitious and shocking of the 3 episodes thus far! So, with no more fanfare, let’s jump right in!

We join the story at about the half-way point of Iron Man 2. Tony just finished his drunken fight with Rhodey and lost the Mark II suit to his Air Force Colonel friend. He’s also slowly dying of palladium poisoning from the arc reactor in his chest. Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff show up at the donut shop to try and talk some sense into Tony and help him back on the right path to solving his problems. The story plays out identically to the original source: Fury and Tony are having a nice chat about things, Natasha injects Tony with the lithium dioxide to help with the palladium poisoning, then Tony seizes up and dies on the floor of the donut shop. Wait….WHAT?????

Alt Text: First picture - Animated versions Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) still in his Iron Man armor, sit in the donut shop from Iron Man 2. Second picture - Tony Stark in his Iron Man armor lies on the floor of the donut shop, with Natasha Romanoff and Nick Fury looking down at him.

Holy crap, Tony Stark is dead! This alone could have been the “what if” moment of the episode, but it’s not! That’s how much insane stuff happens in this episode! What this episode does REALLY well is it makes you uncomfortable by playing on these things you already know. Tony and Fury have a chat, he gets to work on fixing his ailment, and straightens his life out. We all know this…and then it gets flipped on its head. Let’s continue.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that are revealed to be Hydra infiltrators in Captain America: Winter Soldier take Natasha into custody to question her in D.C. Thanks to her badassery, the capture doesn’t last long. Acting on Fury’s orders, she goes to investigate who sabotaged her lithium dioxide syringe and why.

As this is happening in Los Angeles, another Avenger’s origin is about to take place in New Mexico…with some equally shocking changes. Everyone’s favorite (according to Agent Coulson, he’s the “gorgeous” one) future Avenger, Thor Odinson tries to reclaim Mjölnir. Another future Avenger, Clint Barton is in his perch, ready to strike if things go south. He has an arrow drawn and then…he slips…

Alt Text: Thor is hit with an arrow to the chest as a lightning bolt lights up the sky behind him.

We all know that Clint “Hawkeye” Barton does NOT slip! Something has to be externally affecting these events because everything we know about Hawkeye tells us this CAN’T happen.

Clint Barton is apprehended by the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents but insists his innocence. He hangs his head in his cell in disbelief of the circumstances. When Fury comes to visit him, he falls over in his cell, dead as well. Someone is systematically taking out all the people on the “Avengers Initiative” list. Now it’s up to Fury and Romanoff to find the killer before it’s too late! I like that this is a race against time episode!

Natasha finds Dr. Betty Ross, a microbiologist of high esteem with no ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. She begs Dr. Ross to help her figure out how the syringe was sabotaged, and she notices that Dr. Ross might be hiding something, or someone. After we find out the syringe wasn’t poisoned (it fired a small projectile), another problem develops in New Mexico.

Alt Text: from left to right - The Watcher observes Agent Coulson drive across the desert, the rainbow-colored Bifrost transports Loki and an army of Asgardians to Earth (Midgard) to demand retribution for the death of Thor.

Loki uses the Bifrost and brings an army of Asgardians, the Destroyer armor, and the Warriors Three to Midgard to avenge (pun intended) his brother’s death. Fury is able to keep the peace, assuring Loki they are looking for the killer as well and they will gladly turn them over once found. There is a cautious truce for the time being. Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Natasha finds that Betty is hiding Bruce Banner in her lab and warns him that he is in serious danger.

Much like the other stories being similar to their original counterparts, this scene echoes the scene in The Incredible Hulk. Only this time we get Mark Ruffalo as Bruce, and Natasha is on the campus of Culver College. Interesting side note, the director of Incredible Hulk had initially wanted Ruffalo to play Bruce Banner but the studio execs wanted a bigger name, so they went with Edward Norton. Now you get to see Ruffalo in these scenes! Kind of a cool twist. OK, back to the recap.

General “Thunderbolt” Ross and a whole armored division show up demanding Banner stand down, but this time he’s shot by a sniper! This triggers him to turn into the Hulk with the usual results: he kicks ass and takes names…until he inexplicably explodes in a puff of green smoke! Betty Ross sobs and repeats “he can’t die.” RIGHT? I said the same thing Betty!

Another Avenger down.

Our heroes race against time as they try to uncover who’s taking out the members of the Avenger Initiative. Natasha logs into S.H.I.E.L.D’s files using Coulson’s adorable password. She discovers that someone has been accessing the files of a long-dead S.H.I.E.L.D agent: Hope Van Dyne. Natasha discovers this as she is attacked by an invisible foe. She warns Fury via voicemail that Hope is the key. THAT’S THE WHAT IF! “What if Hope Van Dyne was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D and died on a mission?” HOLY CRAP! MIND….BLOWN.

Fury puts the pieces together and makes his way to San Francisco. There, he visits the grave of Hope Van Dyne and meets an alternate version of a character we’re all familiar with: Hank Pym, this time in the Yellowjacket suit. He is a distraught man, who blames S.H.I.E.L.D. for the death of his daughter. He made it his mission to destroy Nick Fury’s life’s work: the Avengers. I wanna give props to Michael Douglas for his voice work here: there was nuance in his performance as a father who is both distraught and bent on revenge.

Alt Text: Hank Pym, donning the yellow and black suit of Yellowjacket, confronts Nick Fury in a graveyard in San Francisco

The two begin fighting. Fury has the upper hand, but something is clearly off. He is kicking Hank’s ass with very little effort. It turns out Loki accompanied Fury on his mission and helped him defeat Pym using his magical ability to create illusions. Hank is hauled off by the Asgardians and all seems to be corrected, right? Not so fast. Some things may be different in this universe, but if Loki taught us anything, regardless the variant, Loki loves being Loki. Instead of leaving, he decides to stay on Earth, and, without the Avengers to stop him, his path to ascension is easy and he takes over the world as its malevolent leader. Oh no!

Alt Text: Loki stands before the United Nations,

But Nick Fury isn’t cooked yet! He has a backup plan. Luckily, he still kept that retrofitted pager we saw at the end of Captain Marvel and he also has another Avenger on ice as a fallback.

Alt Text: Nick Fury wipes frost off of a block of ice that shows Captain Americ'a’s shield and Captain Marvel arrives on Earth after being “paged.”

Caption: If you listen carefully when this scene first aired, you can hear the exasperated sigh of countless Captain Marvel-hating neckbeards

Does this mean we’re going to get a two-part What If…? Oh my god, I hope so! Will we get to see a follow-up where both Captains are teamed up to kick ass and take names? Then they’ll have a buddy cop movie after this called The Marvels of America: Captains of Justice! OH SNAP! I’m so excited by this prospect I have to finish this article right now and write my fan-fic!!!!

As you can tell, I really enjoyed the heck out of this episode. There was a lot going on, and it was much more complex than the first two episodes. Captain Carter and T’Challa as Star Lord focused on the idea of swapping one character for another, but the third episode features a much more complicated scenario that has us guessing what’s going to happen next. Plus, it gets very dark in comparison to the hopeful message of the first two.

This was the first installment that the Watcher didn’t come right out and tell us exactly what was different. It made for a more interesting experience, because rather than playing a half-hour game of Easter Egg hunt and “here’s what’s different,” we become invested in solving this mystery. For all you super Marvel nerds, I’m sure you were also digging deep into your mental files trying to figure out who was behind this. I figured it was Hydra (I’m telling on myself). A distraught Hank Pym was a fun twist. Instead of a reshoot of sorts like the first two, this was a whole different story-telling experience, and a full on who-done-it.