The seventh episode in Marvel’s What If…? anthology series is available for streaming on Disney Plus, bringing us another Avengers story from a different alternate timeline where things didn’t go according to top plan. This Thor installment is different from the others. It has a large cliffhanger that could be used as a post credit scene. The animated series, however, doesn’t have post-credits tags like the movies or other TV shows.
The cliffhanger surprises fans by giving them a villain with the potential to be more dangerous than Thanos, Josh Brolin’s character. More interestingly, the cliffhanger happens to tie the entire What If…? Season 1 gives us all the clues that we need to understand how this Avengers story will end. Mind you, massive spoilers will follow below.
What If…? is canon for the MCU
Before we look at episode 7’s massive villain, we’ll remind you that What If…? It is the MCU’s canon. All that we have seen so far on animated TV was set in an alternate timeline in the multiverse. The stories look very similar to the ones we saw in primary reality. But the Avengers superheroes in these realities had different fates than the primary heroes we’ve grown to love.
Marvel made that clear ahead of the What If…? premiere, at a time when we were already speculating that What If…? Tells stories from the multiverse. This meant we could see some of the characters in What If…? In other Avengers stories.
Already, we have Captain Carter (Hayley Awell) and Doctor Strange Supreme [Benedict Cumberbatch], who will reportedly appear live-action movies.
After the first few What If…? These seemingly different stories were connected in the second and third What If…? episodes. It will all make sense when we get closer to our finale. Episode 7 gave us some clues as to what would happen in the next two episodes.
The What If…? Avengers will assemble
Marvel released a special What If…? Mid-season sneak peak promo gave us a glimpse at some unique Avengers team-ups. At the time, we explained that some of these Avengers teams didn’t make sense at the moment. Every episode seems like it was a different time period. Therefore, the Avengers fighting together couldn’t meet.
Even though the different superheroes were all from the same reality there was an uncommon pairing. Strange Supreme (Chris Hemsworth, Party Thor) speaks to Strange Thor about zombies (see above). This seems like an impossible type of interaction. It seems that the zombie Avengers live in a different universe than Party Thor. We do have a zombie Thanos with an Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity Stones inside it in that universe.
Strange Supreme also destroyed the universe and was left trapped there. There would not be Thor to interact in the universe.
We also saw Uatu, the Watcher (Jeffery Wayne) depart from his storytelling. It’s the only episode where someone sensed his presence. The Watcher is a guide for the audience and shows us how one small decision can have a huge impact on the course of a superhero or the Avengers team. It’s only Supreme Strange that senses the Watcher and interacts with him. Uatu wouldn’t help Strange at this point.
We saw the shocking episode 7 finale and that might be changing.
Will the Watcher intervene?
We see the portal opening at the end of Party Thor, and Ultron robots are stepping through it. Guiding them is a variation of Ultron that we’ll call Ultron Supreme or Infinity Ultron. It’s practically the Vision version of Ultron that Ultron always wanted. And he’s packing all the six Infinity Stones.
The possibility of an Ultron as powerful drew the attention of the Watcher, too. He’s the first to sense the incoming armies, just as he’s giving us an apparent happy end to this story. “Wait, what?” Uatu interrupts himself as Infinity Ultron walks through the portal. Clearly, the Party Thor episode doesn’t have a happy end.
This suggests that the Ultron threat might be so formidable that the Watcher may have to intervene. In the sneak peek video, we saw that the Avengers from various What If…? episodes fight side by side against Ultron’s robots. It seems like the Watcher could be the one who helped put together this particular team.
That’s just speculation, however. What’s certain is that What If…? The heat is on, and episodes 8 & 9 will answer most of our questions. You can stream the first seven episodes on Disney Plus right now.
