What If…? Episode Three Review | What If The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes aka The Avengers are the center of What If’s Episode Three. The Avengers came out in 2012, back when I was in college and it was the first MCU movie I saw in the theatres. And I’m excited that we’re going back to our roots with this episode!

This review contains spoilers so please tread lightly or watch the show first.

What If…? Episode Three: What If The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

Quick Recap 📝

Packed in half an hour, the episode calls back to the MCU Phase 1 movies. Over the course of one week, Director Fury began The Avengers Initiative with the help of Natasha Romanoff.

They first meet with Iron Man, who was then suffering from palladium poisoning due to his arc reactor. Romanoff gives Stark an injection to help his illness, but Tony ends up dying. SHIELD arrests Romanoff, but Fury helps her escape. In New Mexico, Thor attempts to collect Mjolnir but was accidentally shot to death by Hawkeye. SHIELD also detains Barton but was killed in his cell. Fury concludes that someone is targeting his Avengers lineup.

Romanoff seeks Dr. Betty Ross to figure out what killed Stark. Dr. Ross finds a microscopic particle that was injected in Stark along with the syringe. Romanoff also discovers that Dr. Ross was hiding Bruce. Outside, General Thaddeus Ross’ army awaits for Banner. Banner gets shot in an attempt to escape and turns into Hulk. He attacks General Ross’ army before suddenly exploding to death.

Loki goes to Earth along with The Warriors Three and the Asgardian Army to avenge Thor. Fury negotiates for a truce and Natasha discovers that someone accessed SHIELD’s files using a deceased agent’s profile. She gets killed but she was able to tell Fury it was all about “hope”, which he linked to Hope Van Dyne who had died on a mission.

Fury partners up with Loki to defeat the killer, who turned out to be Hank Pym in a Yellowjacket suit avenging Hope. Loki defeats Pym and they take him to Asgard, but Loki decides to stay behind to rule over Earth. Meanwhile, Fury starts to assemble more heroes, starting with a frozen Steve Rogers and Carol Danvers.

Related: What If Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?

Episode Thoughts 🧠

Marvel really said “Can’t move on from your fave characters dying? Have some more!” What if Avengers were gone? Well, here we go. 🥲

I’m a big Agents of SHIELD fan so seeing Coulson again was amazing! I love that they got Clark Gregg back to voice Coulson. Seeing him fawn over Thor’s majestic hair was really hilarious. But of course who is Coulson if not the biggest Cap fanboy? #stevestevesteveiheartsteve0704

This episode also crammed three movies in 30 minutes, well if we get technical we can also count the first Cap and Avengers movie. But it has a different vibe from the first episode, which brought a novelty in a sense. Maybe because of the ending, since the first episode felt too much of a re-run of The First Avenger, at least this one had more different elements, like having Rumlow appear early on in this timeline as opposed to his appearance on Winter Soldier in the main timeline.

I liked the plot twist too, the killer being Pym in the Yellowjacket suit. Again, Marvel pulls the grief card in this episode.

I didn’t like it as much as I hoped, but it was still a fun episode.

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Are you watching What If? What alternate storyline would you want to see?