What If…? is a poorly animated mixed bag with flashes of intriguing potential

 Kicking off in February 1977, What If has been a recurring comic book series for Marvel Comics that explores alternate scenarios of well-known events from Marvel mythology. These range from slight tweaks (what if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?) to flights of absurdist fancy (what if the original Marvel Comics writing team was the Fantastic Four?). Now, to ensure that Disney+ has nearly weekly doses of Marvel-themed TV programming, that concept has been adapted into the animated TV show What If…?

Guided by the hand of the cosmic being The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), What If…? offers up alternate universes depicting what various eras and corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would look like if the tiniest changes had been made. For example, the first episode depicts a universe where Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) got the super-soldier serum instead. Our second episode features T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) getting abducted into space as a kid and becoming Star-Lord while the third and final episode made available for critics depicts Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tackling a murder mystery that threatens The Avengers.

It’s always impossible to get a comprehensive feel from a TV show just by watching three episodes. But from this trio of installments, it’s already clear where What If…?’s strengths lie. The further these episodes get from just being rehashes of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, the better. The series premiere is the worst example of what happens when What If…? goes in the opposite direction. It’s all just a reheated version of Captain America: The First Avenger, with the possibilities of a new timeline failing to offer up new visions of characters like Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) or Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).

The most inspired bit in the whole episode comes in a dialogue-free action sequence where Peggy takes to the skies to fight HYDRA soldiers accompanied by Steve Rogers in a proto-Iron Man armor. A final action beat where she leaps onto her robotic ally has shades of Big Hero 6 and feels like something that could be only accomplished in animation. The rest is more stagnant and just mechanically checks off recreating big events from The First Avenger. Even a unique climax involving the Tesseract is merely just a rehash of the finale to the 2004 Hellboy movie.

Luckily, things pick up substantially once the second episode begins. Rather than just do a Guardians of the Galaxy movie but with T’Challa headlining the piece instead of Peter Quill, the writers opt to create a fresh new heist movie scenario. This comes complete with fun new visions of familiar Marvel Cinematic Universe staples. These include Nebula (Karen Gillan) taking on the enjoyable role of femme fatale, The Collector (Benicio del Toro) getting to be extra gregarious in his screentime, and one of the more notable baddies of the whole franchise getting reinvented as just a helpful lackey.

None of it’s revolutionary, but it does function as the best example of all the promises in What If…? Rather than retreading familiar ground with just a handful of twists, this episode uses a new face behind the Star-Lord mask as an excuse to go all-in on an entirely new storyline. It helps that the cosmic environments of this story are the most stylized backdrops in all three episodes and thus lend themselves best to being told through animation. The vastness of The Collector’s lair especially feels well-realized in this medium of storytelling.

The final of the three episodes lands somewhere in between its predecessors in terms of quality. Strangely, the biggest flaw of this murder mystery is how it doesn’t function all that well as, well, a murder mystery. The eventual resolution behind who the murderer is comes about abruptly with no real prior set-up. Without delving into spoilers, it involves a radically different occupation and fate for a Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero, neither of which have either been hinted at in any prior projects or get any sort of set-up here. The best mysteries hide clues in plain sight, this episode just conjures up a resolution out of thin air.

But there’s still a bit of fun to be had in this installment, especially with how the writers utilize the novelties of taking place in an alternate universe to commit to killing off notable superheroes. It’s also amusing to see events and locations from The Incredible Hulk get dragged back up after all these years while Lake Bell as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is an inspired choice to take over the role from Scarlett Johansson. Major kudos to Bell for pulling off the hat trick of sounding like Johansson while injecting her distinct sense of wry humor into this version of Romanoff.

Throughout all three episodes, one significant drawback is the animation. What If…? employs computer animation meant to mimic hand-drawn animation while also retaining the physical appearances of the franchise’s live-action actors. The result is a visual style that’s too busy trying to channel a bunch of competing influences to ever look all that interesting. Trying to hew so closely to reality frequently robs the visuals of opportunities to embrace character designs that could only exist in animation.

Going the route of adhering to reality means that the characters themselves are extremely rigid-looking and frequently lack expressiveness in their faces. Everything is so buttoned-up in the designs and movements, why even do an animated show if you’re going to make it look this lifeless? What If…? doesn’t look so much like a costly premium-television show as it does a slightly more advanced version of the animation seen in Spider-Man: The New Animated Adventures two decades ago.

Perhaps all the money on the show went to the star-studded voice cast rather than the animation. What If…? see’s most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s actors return in voice-over form. Some of them are quite enjoyable, with Chadwick Boseman not missing a beat in translating his character’s personality through just vocals. Others, though, deliver lines in a manner that’s oddly detached from what’s happening on-screen. Mark Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston are the most guilty of this, with the latter actor sounding like he’s recording his lines in a cave.

So far, What If…? is more subpar than super, especially when it comes to its visuals as well as several distractingly lackluster voice-over performances. But the promise of its second episode, as well as the best aspects of that murder mystery installment, suggest the better places What If…? could go. Once it embraces original storylines, as well as significantly better animation, then What If…? could really unlock the possibilities of the multiverse or even just diverting television storytelling.