[MCU Analysis & Review] What If…? Episode 1 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Hello!
Today I’m going to write about What If…? episode 1, which dropped on Wednesday 11 August — the points I want to flag, the theories, and my predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this article I’ll briefly write up everything that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then write the theories.
Spoilers ahead
The WandaVision episode reviews from back when it was airing are here!
Click the image below for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews!
Check the image below for the Loki episode reviews!
Check the image below for the What If…? episode reviews!
Contents
What I’ve been into lately
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun lately. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot Ueno and a few other spots.
Episode 1, “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?”
The Watcher
The narrator of this show is one of a race called the Watchers. The race itself already turned up in the second Guardians of the Galaxy, alongside Stan Lee.
What he gets up to in the comics is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOPlVpMp3cc
The choice that branches
Peggy choosing to watch from up close in that scene is presumably why the others all ended up watching from up close too, and why the bomb got set off earlier than planned.
And sure enough, in the live-action version they’re all up on the floor above.
Going forward they look likely to do things like, what if Yondu had come down in Wakanda instead of America? lol
Posted to the USO troupe
Steve, trying to soften the blow for Peggy, says
“If they stick you in the USO troupe or something, you’ll be in some ridiculous costume handing out smiles all day.”
and knowing the actual film, that line is funny lol
The same fair-play spirit as Steve
Just like the fight with Batroc at the start of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when Peggy gets challenged to a straight hand-to-hand fight she puts the shield down and fights — that bit of common ground with Steve was lovely.
The dance
With Steve and Peggy it always comes down to the dance! When these two dance, presumably it’s “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” here as well, same as the main films!
Father and son think alike
Tony’s father through and through lol
Father and son really do think alike! The reason the HYDRA Stomper’s chest and so on were blue in the trailer is that the thing runs on the Tesseract.
The four of them
Getting to see Peggy, Steve, Bucky and Howard, the four of them hanging out together like that, was the best (I cried)
The emblem
This time HYDRA’s champion was drawn near the Yggdrasil tree. I went and checked whether this emblem was in the live-action version too, but it doesn’t seem to be.
Bucky’s arm
Bucky saying he thought he was going to lose his arm when the train blew up is another one that lands if you know the actual film lol
HYDRA’s champion
The show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had the progenitor of the Inhumans in it, an octopus-faced thing that had been alive for thousands of years — is it that one, I wonder?
The promise of a dance
This scene has them promising the dance “next Saturday” that can never happen, exactly like the main films, and it made me cry… Peggy, time-travelled into the present day.
On to the Avengers
It looks like the Tesseract was used to open a portal to another dimension, but unlike the first Avengers it doesn’t seem to be Loki’s doing. Also, the Japanese dub voice actor had changed. Slight tangent, but almost all of the characters in What If…? are dubbed by the same Japanese voice actors who played them at the time. This time, though, Captain America was somebody else, and I wonder why…
After watching episode 1
Time travel with the Tesseract?
Peggy arrives in the present day, but time travel using the Tesseract??? That left me with questions. Maybe this is a different world again from the one Peggy was in.
Turning up in Doctor Strange 2?
It’s only a rumour, but apparently she turns up in the second Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Not that there’s any credibility to it lol
https://www.frc-watashi.info/hayley-atwell-doctor-strange2-rumor
Where this goes next, roughly
Going by the trailer and so on, it looks like zombie-hunter Spider-Man, the T’Challa version of Quill, Ultron victorious with every Infinity Stone gathered, Thanos and Gamora and more are all turning up!! Insane!!
About episode 2
[MCU Discussion and Review] “What If?” [Impressions and Easter Eggs]
