What If…? Season 2 Episodes Ranked

What If…? Season 2 Episodes Ranked 

The second season of What If…? ended yesterday, so today I’m going to be ranking all 9 episodes from the season. Let’s get started!

9. What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World? (Episode 6): Now I can absolutely respect what Marvel was trying to go for with this episode. But I don’t know if telling a story about an original character in this show is the best idea. Like the idea of Surtur killing Odin and Asgard years before the modern day MCU is very interesting. And The Tesseract being sent to Earth and giving people powers. That’s a cool idea, I wish we got that idea with an already established MCU character. But this episode has to set-up the new character, its threat, and the world all in an episode that’s 30-35 minutes long. I don’t feel like we fully understood who our lead character was and why she’s doing what she’s doing. I didn’t hate the episode, again I can respect what Marvel was going for. I just don’t know if what Marvel was going for fully works in this specific show. 

8. What If…Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? (Episode 2): This was an episode that I was actually really looking forward to. I liked the idea of having The Avengers formed in the ‘80s to stop a young Peter Quill taken over by Ego attacking the Earth. And the actual episode was good with some fun moments, but I never felt like the movie was as good as it could have been. For whatever reason the pieces of it just didn’t come together as well as I felt like they should have. I think this was another episode that could have used another 5-10 just to flesh some things out, some things felt a bit rushed especially on the character side of things. I think in general this was a good episode, I liked the episode but I wish I could say I loved the episode. 

7. What If…Happy Hogan Saved Christmas? (Episode 3): While I had fun with this episode, it’s fun that we got a Christmas episode that functions as Die Hard in the MCU. It’s nice to see Sam Rockwell return as Justin Hammer here. I felt like they wasted this episode slot. What I mean by that is there’s hundreds of what if ideas you could do in this show. So when one of the episodes is Die Hard with Happy Hogan, it’s a fun novelty inside of the MCU. But I wish this was its own thing. If they put out the MCU's version of Die Hard separated from this season I probably would have liked it. However, inside of the season it doesn’t fully fit. Beyond that, they tried to force humor referencing Christmas movies and songs, some of it was a bit too cringy to me and felt forced. I had fun with this episode, but I didn’t think it was fully great. 

6. What If…Nebula Joined the Nova Corps? (Episode 1): Now this was an interesting idea and concept for an episode. Where you make Nebula front and center of an episode but it’s a very different version of Nebula. This version was still raised by Ronan and Thanos, but joined The Nova Corp because she has a different moral code. It’s interesting, there’s a great mystery in here that feels like Blade Runner. So there’s a lot of interesting and great ideas thrown in here. And there’s lots of great twists and turns in here, that all worked for me. You get a twist and reveal as to who the actual villain is. However, I felt like they used exposition too many times where they could have shown us what happened to us. But overall, a pretty solid first episode in season 2.

5. What If…Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster? (Episode 4): This was a fun episode that had an interesting concept. The part about the episode that really stood out to me was the cliffhanger, I want to see the next episode after where this cliffhanger ends. I thought they found a way to give Tony Stark a character arc in a 30-35 minute episode and he grows in similar ways to how Tony grew in the real MCU. It was also just nice to get more time with Tony Stark, since he’s an OG character but we haven’t really seen him since Avengers Endgame. They find some ways to have some nice moments of humor with Grandmaster and Korg, both are very funny characters and they lean into that rather well in this episode. And this was the forgotten season 1 episode, that was moved over to being a season 2 episode. There's a lot of aspects in here that I really enjoyed and it was kind of a fun idea for an episode. 

4. What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings? (Episode 7): This was an interesting idea of an episode that culminated in a nice way in the final moments. Where they did Thor (2011) except with Hela but involved The Ten Rings. Seeing Hela as the protagonist in this story makes it super interesting, where she’s somebody that is so evil that’s why Odin banished her. So giving Hela a redemption arc in the process was so interesting to me. Through Hela and her relationship with Wenwu, another despicable and evil person. They change as people, Hela becomes worthy of her helmet. That’s such an interesting idea and it’s more layered then I thought it would be. I wouldn’t have thought to have gone as deep as this episode does at points. So as an episode of this season, I really dug it. 

3. What If…Strange Supreme Intervened? (Episode 9): I thought this was a better season finale then the one we got in season 1. I thought the nature of why the plot lines came together was more believable here. They really brought together all of the plot lines from season 1 and 2 in a very interesting way. They made Strange Supreme the villain of this episode, I thought that was very cool. The Strange Supreme stuff we got in season 1 was great, some of the best character moments for that season. So we get more of him in here and it’s very cool. I love the team-up with Captain Carter and Kahorri in here, where they get super powerful with all of these weapons like Mijnoir and Hela’s helmet. It’s a bit over the top, but since it’s not really canon and it’s animated I think it works well enough. And they set-up Captain Carter’s future (possibly) in the MCU, it was very cool and I’m excited to see where they take her in the future. 

2. What If…Captain Carter Fought the HYDRA Stomper? (Episode 5): This is an interesting episode inside of the season, because it’s a continuation of an episode from season 1. Therefore, there isn’t much of a what if change that happens here, it just explores the modern day through the perspective of what if Peggy Carter became a super soldier instead of Steve Rogers. So this episode has a lot of similarities with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as that’s one of the best MCU movies that’s very much a positive. It’s fun to see where certain characters are at, especially Bucky since he never became The Winter Soldier. We see Bucky in the world as a normal person. I also like how they tie in Black Widow’s backstory with The Red Room into here as well. Also, the dynamic between Captain Carter and Black Widow is handled very well, in a short period of time we buy into their dynamic. So overall, I really liked this episode and I’m curious if season 3 is going to take inspiration from Captain America: Civil War. 

1. What If…the Avengers Assembled in 1602? (Episode 8): This episode I felt perfectly captured all of the potential that this show has. And they delivered an epic and awesome version of it. Where they took the cliffhanger from episode 5 and continued that so we get Captain Carter in a different decade, stopping a threat from 1602 and seeing The Avengers in a different world and time period. I thought this was just so much fun because of it. I love how they matched the characterizations of the normal MCU with these versions, so Scott Lang feels like the Scott Lang we know with all of his sense of humor. We get more of a relationship between Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers, of course one of the most important romances inside of the MCU.  We get some great twists and turns here as it’s slowly revealed who is who and what roles everybody has in here. This was the most well rounded of the episodes, this is the one that had a lot of potential to be awesome and was awesome.