What If? (2×09) What If… Strange Supreme Intervened? Review

For our review of the last episode of What If?, click here.

We’ve now reached the season finale of What If? season 2. Starting the underlying story late into the season, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this finale is perhaps not as high stakes as last season but nevertheless, Supreme Strange is at the center of it. Saving Captain Carter from 1602, he brought her to his Sanctum Infinitum because he needed her help. He’s been doing a lot of multiversal cleanup in the meantime but now, he needed her help to capture an escaped Kahhari. However, it is Strange who should be stopped. Having lost his mind, his ultimate goal was to revive the universe he destroyed so he could bring Christine back by any means necessary. Trying to stop Strange, absolute chaos ensued as the respective messes he contained suddenly escaped. Creating hurdles for everyone involved, Captain Carter and Kahhari dispatched hordes of enemies revealed plenty of references to past episodes and other MCU Easter Eggs. While getting Strange was one thing, stopping him was another.

The sheer inventiveness and the work done behind bringing the aforementioned chaotic sequence to life, putting so many different characters interacting with another on screen at once was impressive but the lack of a backstory of Strange since we saw him last made it all feel gratuitous. Giving Carter and Kahhari all they could handle, their battle against Strange evolved into several chapters. With most of the episode taking place here, it does somewhat help to keep things interesting but it also gets repetitive. A battle of superpowers, a simultaneous battle was one to appeal to Strange’s humanity. As grief took him over, that secondary battle appeared to be a losing one as he seemed to be too far gone. In the end, it would take a last second assist and a predictable sacrifice to stop him from destroying their universe and maybe more.

Ending on a hopeful note, the series leaves the door for more Captain Carter and more stories if the series were to be renewed. Overall, while offering a majority of strong episodes, the lack of cohesion isn’t quite there in terms of a balance between serialized and procedural storylines. The animation and voice acting (primarily due to the voice cast assembled for this season) both took a leap this season, making season 2 and improvement over the first. Marvel Studios have certainly proven their worth in the realm of animation so it will be exciting to see what they learn from here and apply to future projects (other than the previously announced ones). Some of these stories deserve more room to breathe.

still courtesy of Marvel Studios

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.