We made mention on how Marvel
Studio’s “What If…?” is too obsessed with downer endings. True it copies the
style of the Marvel Comics it is based on; doing shocking swerves even when
most of a story is uplifting. But the animated anthology on Disney+ pulls no punches
on the grimness. Episode 3: Avengers die before they team up. Episode 4:
Strange Supreme’s universe is destroyed. Even the most lighthearted episodes
are not spared. T’challa Star-Lord sees Ego getting Peter Quill. Only-child
Thor ends up encountering Ultron in Vision’s body with all the Infinity Stones.
In fact, that twist ending is the subject of the penultimate episode of “What
If…?”
Look at the title of “What If…Ultron
Won?” and you know what to expect. The titular Ultron, big bad of 2015’s “Avengers:
Age of Ultron,” was a security program that deemed humans, and later all
organic life, as an existential threat and created an army of android bodies to
wipe them out. His plan even hinged on creating a perfect synthetic body, which
canonically was stolen by the Avengers and animated with Tony Stark’s JARVIS AI
and the Mind Infinity Stone in Loki’s scepter, creating the superhuman
synthezoid called Vision.
Not so in this alternate
timeline. Ultron succeeds in creating his Vision body and uploading his AI into
it. He even discovers the Mind Stone in the scepter he had been using to
mind-control humans to do his bidding. With new body and Infinity Stone, Ulton destroys
the Avengers without trouble and exterminates life on Earth. When Thanos
arrives with the other Infinity Stones, Ultron kills him and claims them all.
His anti-organic programming spurs him on with knowledge of life existing
beyond Earth. So he deploys his drone army to omnicide planets one by one. Not
even the strongest galactic beings can stop him.
However what happens when a
destructive AI that self-programmed itself to kill organic life…runs out of
life to kill in the entire universe? Ultron would have lost all purpose, even
if his programming compels him to carry on, even when all that remains in
existence is metal. Unfortunately for everyone the Infinity Stones in Ultron’s
possession also give him power to cross universes. Now he is set to annihilate
all the living in all possible realities, even beyond reality when he becomes
aware of the Watcher and tries to kill him! The Watcher escapes, but faced with
this threat he must break his watcher’s taboo.
The eighth episode of the 9-part
inaugural season of “What If…?” really sells just how threatening an entity
like Ultron could be. In the Marvel Comics his print version has imperiled the
Earth and even the timeline. He even got a “What If?” comic issue where he
brutally wins against the X-Men. Comic-book fans however feel that the
character was downgraded in his MCU portrayal during “Age of Ultron.” It is
rather ironic that it took a spinoff, and animated at that, to demonstrate why
this Marvel super-villain is scary.
Aside from this “course
correction” in terms of Ultron’s power, the episode also implied even greater
potential in the Infinity Stones sought after by Thanos. Their comic-book versions
the Infinity “Gems” only had power in the universe where they exist (the main
Marvel Comics continuity of “Earth-616”). However the Infinity Stones of the
MCU setting (Earth-199999) retain their manipulative dominion over Space, Time,
Soul, Mind, Power and Reality no matter what universe they are in. In the hands
of (or installed in) an omnicidal force like Ultron, that spells big trouble
where nowhere is safe.
Finally, the penultimate “What If…?”
episode confirms the secret that the episodic nature of the animated anthology
was trying to hide from the viewer. The stories are connected. Ultron’s
trans-universal murder spree has made it so, and now the Watcher is forced to
return to a character from a past episode to ask for aid. This is a
game-changer in the presentation of this show. We need only one more week to
see how it all turns out. Season 1 of Marvel Studios’ “What If…?” comes to
Disney+ October 6.
Image courtesy of Yahoo News
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