What If…? Season 1: The Crystal Ball Predictions You’ve Been Waiting For
There are few things in the world of pop culture that has consistently brought us as many entertaining stories as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Now that the MCU has brought its biggest characters to the small screen on Disney+, we get to continue to enjoy the world of Marvel at home. I have been enjoying these shows so much and their latest series, ‘What If…?’ does not disappoint. I still get excited thinking about episode 2, What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?
With the premise of ‘What If…?’, we just never can know what to expect from one week to the next. The storytelling options are truly limitless. I decided it would be fun to try my hand at making predictions for the remainder of ‘What If…?’ Season 1. Here goes. Tell me what you think in the comments below. LOL
What if Howard the Duck was rescued from the Collector?
Howard the Duck already made an appearance in What If…? Episode 2: “What if T’Challa became Star-Lord?” as an expansion on his appearance in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. So while this is something that I would love to happen later on in this season, there’s a pretty low possibility that it will actually come to fruition. But as shown from his appearances in the comics and in the animated series thus far, he is a funny, useful duck to have around. This episode would have the Guardians of the Galaxy take a moment in the menagerie of the Collector to set Howard the Duck free and let him run along for his own adventures. This would be more of a solo adventure episode tracking some of his exploits as a detective duck. It could go the way of the (ill-fated) film as a sci-fi noir film, or it could lean more into the animated medium and explore a fuller range of his intergalactic adventures, like his zombie-fighting stint.
What if Captain Marvel entered the events of Infinity War earlier?
The only reason that Captain Marvel didn’t make an appearance against Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War was for the purpose of franchise-building. The final scene of Nick Fury hitting his pager to call her before he disappeared into dust was one of the most frustrating moments I’ve had in a movie theater. It was like a reverse deus ex machina: when there’s a godlike character who could quickly solve all of the conflicts and then just… doesn’t come into play at all. When Thanos first appeared as a threat to the universe, she should’ve been called to deal with him instead of waiting until the final events of Endgame to wipe the floor with him and turn the tide for the heroes on Earth. Had she been in earlier, the Phase 4 films wouldn’t exist with the trauma and the lessons learned of “the Blip,” and we would still have Steve Rogers as Captain America without the knowledge of time travel, but it would save the Marvel cinematic universe a lot of heartache and pain of half of the global population disappearing.
What if Ultron never killed JARVIS?
The catalyst for the events of the Age of Ultron spinning out of control can be pinpointed to when Ultron’s AI (supposedly) kills the JARVIS AI meant to act as the steward to Ultron’s evil tendencies. By taking JARVIS away as Ultron’s inhibitor, the robot is able to possess Tony Stark’s old Iron Man suits, align himself with the Maximoff twins, set up his factory to create his clones and try to remove that Eastern European country from the global map. If Ultron is squashed and discarded as an ill-fated idea, the Maximoff twins never align with Ultron, and they aren’t exposed to the evil of Ultron that ends up pushing them to align with the Avengers to take him down. As we’ve seen from WandaVision, the Maximoff twins have plenty of reasons to hate anything related to Tony Stark. Their work with HYDRA to take down the Avengers would deliver an interesting story about the lasting effects of American war efforts on foreign policy.
What if Janet van Dyne Never Went to the Quantum Realm?
This is another possibility that would affect the events of the Infinity War saga. The whole reason that they’re able to reverse the events of Thanos’s snap is because of the discovery of time travel in the quantum realm. While the quantum realm is still visited and makes appearances outside of Janet shrinking down into it (Dr. Strange seeing the Multiverses, Scott Lang getting trapped after going subatomic), the whole reason that it’s understood so well is because of Hank’s research to save Janet. Without the research that helps them navigate the quantum realm and eventually develop a way to time travel through it, they are set back substantially for the events of Infinity War and Endgame, and they would have to find another way to return everyone. And if the Soviet missile is safely disarmed by American forces, would that open up a whole new realm of possibilities for Avengers: Cold War?
What if Spider-Man and Venom could still appear in the same movie?
There was once a time when all of the intellectual property within the Spiderman film universe lived under the roof of one film studio. We even got a film that included both Spiderman and Venom, but it was in the early days of superhero films where camp and obvious CGI made up most of the visuals on screen. Since then, both characters have gotten visual makeovers and they’ve been much more fleshed out through their films. If only we could put them in a movie together! It’s disappointing that Spiderman won’t be a part of Venom: Let There be Carnage considering that the symbiotic villains both face off against him in their comic appearances, but I would honestly settle for a 30-minute recap-style episode to get a little taste of what a movie with today’s Spiderman and Venom characters would be like.
