Marvel’s What If…? Series Is Proving The Multiverse Problem Star Trek Revealed
The animated Marvel series What If…? provides, on paper, the most thorough franchise examination of the multiverse by showing us stories from wildly different realities. However, while all three seasons of the show have been mostly entertaining, it is increasingly highlighting the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest multiversal storytelling weakness. As Star Trek: Lower Decks recently put it, Marvel is focused on giving us “lazy derivative remixes,” and What If…? would be stronger if its multiverse had a better connection to existing movies and TV shows.
Now, some fair warning before we go any further: we’re going to be touching on major spoilers for the end of Lower Decks as well as the third and final season of What If…?, so read on at your own risk.
Star Trek Calls Out The Multiverse
The final two episodes of Lower Decks involved our Starfleet heroes investigating quantum fissures and eventually creating a kind of stable wormhole to other dimensions. Along the way, a Variant character, Captain Boimler, complained about the multiverse as a concept, saying that they keep finding “lazy derivative remixes” of familiar characters rather than anything new. Frankly, it’s hard not to see this sentiment being directed at Marvel, whose various movies and shows (including What If…?) have severely squandered the storytelling potential of the multiverse.
Movies like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and even the beloved Spider-Man: No Way Home have mostly used the multiverse as an excuse to bring us either new versions of familiar characters (like Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic) or cameos from other movies (like Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and the other Sony-era Marvel villains). Marvel’s What If…? show was designed to go bigger by creating standalone stories set in their own multiverse. However, as huge fans of the original comic, we can’t help but feel this show would be stronger if it had firmer connections to the existing universe.
What Marvel’s Multiverse Needs
In case you don’t know, the original What If…? comic was all about exploring what would happen if a major Marvel event had gone differently, like what would happen if Hulk killed Wolverine in one of their early battles. Some episodes of the show mirror this by imagining how different the MCU would be if, say, Ultron beat the Avengers or Odin never adopted Loki. But far more episodes of this show explore completely off-the-wall possibilities, from T’Challa becoming Star-Lord or Agatha Harkness pursuing great power by becoming a Hollywood star.
As Marvel fans, we’ve enjoyed some of these weirder What If…? stories, but Star Trek had it right: ultimately, Disney just keeps serving us up lazy remixes of beloved characters, effectively squandering the idea of the multiverse. The show should have been more like the comic, rooting its stories in an exploration of what would happen if major MCU events had gone down differently. There would still be plenty of opportunities to create fun Variants (got to sell those action figures, after all), but audiences would be more invested in these “new” characters thanks to their connection to the cinematic universe we all know and love.
It’s possible that Marvel has taken this advice to heart already: What If…? is ending with its third season, and we are likely to see the death (at least, temporarily) of the multiverse after Secret Wars. As fans who really want to see the franchise succeed, though, we’ll always be haunted by the singular question we ponder every time the credits roll. Simply put, what if Marvel did a better job with What If…? and the multiverse in general?
And if the TVA could zip us into that reality, please do so immediately…we can only watch Deadpool & Wolverine so often for our decent multiversal storytelling fix.
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