What If…the World Lost It’s Mightiest Heroes?

In this third episode of Marvel’s What If…? series we see what would happen if the Avengers could never have assembled? In this timeline, as Nick Fury starts to meet up with the various future members of the Avengers such as Tony Stark, Thor, Hawkeye, and Black Widow they are killed in mysterious ways that leaves too many questions. Even Hulk (blasphemously played by Mark Ruffalo and not by Edward Norton) is gruesomely killed before he can confront Abomination in the original timeline. However, we do get to finally see Betty Ross again and she has some interaction with Black Widow during the story. I feel that not including Betty Ross during the initial run of the MCU was a big mistake, so it’s good to see her character back where she belongs

Loki shows up to avenge his brother’s death.

When Thor is killed on Earth, Loki shows up via the Rainbow Bridge with an Asgardian Army asking for his brother’s killer to be turned over to him, Nick Fury requests time to finish his investigation which Loki grants him 24 hours. Fury sends Natasha (before she is killed) to investigate a lead and she ends up finding out a key name, Hope, before she is murdered and is able to tell Fury this. That name eventually leads Fury in the direction of the Van Dynes.

Earlier on in this timeline Hope and her mother were killed on a SHIELD mission and Hank Pym has been mad every since. Hank is wanting revenge against SHIELD and has come up with a plan to do so. He is using his Ant-Man tech to kill off the future Avengers and to shut down this new Avengers Initiative before it starts.

Nick Fury, or what appears to be Fury, goes to visit Hope’s grave and Hank shows up in the Yellow Jacket suit no less, thinking this is his chance to get rid of Fury. They talk and Hank does the villain monologue and explains his whole plan and admits to killing the Avengers as well as Thor. We then find out that Fury is really Loki disguised as Fury and Hank Pym is then captured before he can hurt anyone else.

With Loki now on Earth, he sees the possibility of staying a little longer. Which he does and ends up taking over Earth and becoming Earth’s new ruler real quick. This leads Nick Fury to use the Captain Marvel pager to summon Carol Danvers back to Earth. The episode ends on a cliffhanger before she arrives.

So with Loki now as world ruler, and these heroes dead before the Avengers can start, the world is counting on Captain Marvel, and with Captain America out there (we see Fury finding the frozen Steve Rogers at the end) as well, to take on Loki.

In my mind this episode is the ultimate What If…? as pretty much the whole established MCU timeline is changed before it can really start. Up to this point I find this episode the least interesting of the season as most of the characters that make up the MCU stories that we’ve grown to enjoy watching are now dead. If there does end up being a follow up episode then it would be that episodes task to make me care about any new iteration of the Avengers and any new heroes the come along. This would be a big task for a 20 minute animated episode and would be interesting if it could pull it off. Being as it originally took how many movies to set up the current Avengers timeline, and to be able to do it as in animated shorts would be impressive.

Overall, I give this episode a low grade, a 2 out of 5, because it destroyed everything we’ve grown attached to over the past thirteen years and didn’t provide enough follow up after changing everything.