[MCU Analysis & Review] What If…? Episode 4 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Today I’m writing about What If…? episode 4, the MCU show that dropped on Wednesday 1 September — the points worth flagging, the analysis and review, and predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this article I’ll quickly write up everything that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then get into 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!
The Shang-Chi analysis and review is here!
[MCU Analysis & Review] Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Contents
What I’ve been into lately
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot Ueno and a few other spots.
Episode 4, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?”
The choice that branches
This week it was “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?”
Never imagined that losing the woman he loves would end with him bringing down an entire universe….
O’Bengh
Amazingly, if my memory serves, he’s the first original character What If…? has come up with.
Let me introduce what sort of character he is in the comics.
O’Bengh is a character along the following lines — this comes from the English entry, which I read through DeepL.
Almost nothing is known about the origins of the sorcerer called Cagliostro, not even his real name (it is presumed to be O’Bengh).[1]
Around that time, Doctor Doom, who had travelled back from the present day, was looking for a master of sorcery. O’Bengh, respected by Doom, taught him the secrets of magic. Doom needed that knowledge in order to free his mother from the underworld. In return, Doom handed O’Bengh a casket of jewels, which let O’Bengh buy the ingredients he needed for an elixir of immortality. O’Bengh was hugely impressed by Doom’s ability to travel through time, and he never forgot it.[3] In his pursuit of eternal life, O’Bengh killed Al-Tothas, an immortal Egyptian sorcerer, and took his form.[1]
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Cagliostro_(O-Bengh)_(Earth-616)
So in the source comics, Cagliostro was O’Bengh all along!
As far as episode 4 goes he denies it himself, so there’s no way to know — but nothing about the way he talks and behaves would be out of place for Cagliostro lol
It’d be fun if he turned up in the second Doctor Strange film.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Cagliostro_(O-Bengh)_(Earth-616)
The Ancient One’s handiwork
Using the power of the Dark Dimension to make two Doctor Stranges exist in the same universe — did not see that coming lol
Christine Everhart
The newsreader delivering the report that Christine had died in the explosion is Christine Everhart, from Iron Man 1 and 2!! Never expected her to come back.
All those demons
The demons the fallen Doctor Strange goes around absorbing — are they modelled on demons that have appeared in the comics, I wonder?
The last jewel
It ends with Doctor Strange, and only Doctor Strange, left behind inside that jewel-shaped area in that universe.
I’ll get into this in the theory section, but there was a scene in the trailer where he’s talking to Captain Carter, which is interesting.
After watching episode 4
How the Time Stone gets used
This is the first time anyone has time travelled with the Time Stone.
I think that’s a fairly precious piece of lore to have handed over. In the next section I’ll set out what makes time travel by Time Stone so peculiar.
The differences between the kinds of time travel
The MCU time travel that has shown up to this point falls into roughly three kinds.
- The Pym Particle time travel they did in Endgame
- The time travel that appears in the Loki series
- The time travel using the Time Stone that appears in What If…?
With 1 and 2, changing the past was no problem, because the TVA would correct it. On top of that, even if you did change the past, it branches off from there, so it seems there’s no effect on the time you originally came from. In other words, unless I’ve got this wrong, I’d taken MCU time travel to mean that saving someone who was due to die in the past simply produces a separate timeline where that person is alive, running alongside the timeline you came from.
With 3, though, changing the past means Doctor Strange never becomes Sorcerer Supreme, so as a result the time travel using the Time Stone can’t happen either, a contradiction arises (the so-called grandfather paradox), and the universe collapses — that’s how it was explained. And sure enough, in episode 4 it does collapse.
So time travel by Time Stone might well be what makes time travel possible in the true sense — the kind that changes the original timeline itself. The catch being that changing an absolute point collapses the universe.
It’d be great if these differences get spelled out at some point.
The What If…? finale is set in the Void
Going by the What If…? trailer, the remaining five episodes look like they’ll bring us Gamora wearing Thanos’ armour, Ultron having got hold of Vision’s body, a Killmonger on the side of good, a zombie story and so on. And each of those worlds is presumably its own separate timeline — yet the trailer shows characters from earlier episodes turning up again, like the T’Challa version of Star-Lord with Gamora in Thanos’ armour, or Captain Carter talking to the fallen Doctor Strange.
So the What If…? finale, episode 9, could well have everyone gathering in the Void that appeared in Loki. And if the rumour that Captain Carter shows up in Doctor Strange 2 is true, then Captain Carter straying into the Sacred Timeline at the very end feels entirely possible!
About episode 5
[MCU Analysis & Review] What If…? Episode 5 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
