Review: Marvel’s What If…? “What If… the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a timeline where the Eternals were unable to prevent Tiamut’s emergence, the remaining heroes form a resistance to fight back the machinations of Quinten Beck, AKA Mysterio.

OUR TAKE

Day five of the What If week and some change and it’s another episode that connects to The Eternals by having that big gold baby Tiamut come to term and have us dealing with the afterbirth, which in this case is the destruction of our entire planet. Naturally, this episode is about those left behind to pick up the pieces, in this case literal pieces, of Earth, so it’s kind of like the premiere episode in that regard. And, just like the Howard the Duck episode before this, it features a bunch of characters who have never been protagonists before, in this case Riri Williams AKA Ironheart who was first featured in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, though she DOES have her own self-titled Disney+ series coming out sometime next year. I quite liked Wakanda Forever overall and thought Riri was a mostly non-intrusive to the cast, but in terms of characters I liked in that movie, she probably wouldn’t make the top ten. Maybe this was meant to come out after her series but even then, I don’t feel like I knew enough about her here or in that movie. In fact, off the top of my head I probably would have put Shuri here instead, especially since her storyline in Wakanda Forever was about loss in the first place, which everyone is dealing with here.

As for the rest of the ragtag bunch here, we have Sharon Carter, Wong, Okoye, Valkyrie, and Michelle Yeoh’s character from Shang Chi, makeshift team who really feel like they were picked from throwing darts at a board rather than whether they would work well together. Yes, this is meant to be about who would be left to fight after the Earth was blown apart and keeping the flame of hope alive, so I know that none of the heavy hitters are going to be around…except Thor, he should probably still be alive. But I can’t help but think there would be some better combinations of C-listers to use here, like maybe Daredevil or Moon Knight or even She Hulk. Similarly, while it’s nice to see them making use of Mysterio (who I am 90% certain isn’t dead in the main timeline), he’s not quite as interesting here as he was in Far From Home, and I don’t mean just because he’s not voiced by Jake Gyllenhaal. They do at least make use of his fake outs with his holograms, though that also accidentally highlights how Riri is kinda lacking in iconic moments to pull from herself, though the Vision suit is pretty neat. But all of this is apparently meant to lead to The Watcher interfering once again, setting up the final plotline of the series which includes other Watchers. That’s all well and good, I just wish the episode surrounding it was a bit more interesting.