Review: Marvel What If…? “What If… Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster?”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a timeline where Tony Stark didn’t make it home after destroying the Chitauri mothership, he ends up on Sakaar instead and finds himself adapting to life there. That is, until Gamora, daughter of Thanos comes for revenge, with Tony needing to form the Revengers himself in order to get free.

OUR TAKE

As mentioned last time, this episode is the one left over from the original season that just didn’t get finished in time. Remember how there was a Gamora on the Guardians of the Multiverse team who didn’t get much of an explanation? Well, this is the story that she came from. What’s funny is that last season had a bit of an unintentional running gag of half of its episodes taking place in timelines that Tony died in, so having this one in there…well, it wouldn’t have gotten rid of that joke but it would’ve evened up the score at least. As for how it holds up in this season, it actually might be the first just okay one we have, mainly because it’s kinda just the Sakaar part of Thor: Ragnarok but with Tony instead. There are benefits to doing that and it’s still a fun story overall, but it just doesn’t feel like we’re exploring something that would open up very interesting possibilities. Tony butts heads with the Grandmaster because they both have huge egos, he hangs out with Korg because Korg was just there at the time, and relates with Valkyrie because he also had a drinking problem (even name dropping “Demon in a Bottle”, the famous Iron Man story about his alcoholism).

It’s all perfectly fine in how it plays around with things, it just feels like nothing much surrounding it can change or go anywhere all that interesting. Part of that makes me wonder if THAT’S why this was chosen to sit out the first season when COVID shook up so many productions. But now we have it, so yippee, we have some context for that Gamora that was in the group at the end of last season. Honestly, the teaming up of multiple variants was not an aspect I loved all that much from that season. I know that bringing together seemingly disparate elements into a big team is a microcosm of how the MCU became so successful in the first place, but I’d really rather this stuck with being an anthology of separated timelines, at least until the VERY end. Speaking of, next episode is something we probably shouldn’t expect to happen too often: A follow up to a previous episode! This time was technically a prequel since it takes place BEFORE the end of last…okay, you get the point. See you tomorrow for more Captain Carter!