What If Has a Mid-Credits Scene That's Nice and Cute
[Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for the season finale of What If…?]
The season finale of What If…? confirmed the revelation of last week’s episode that rather than an episodic series of various scenarios, the Marvel animated series was serialized all along with The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) reaching into past episodes to pluck out heroes and villains to fight together as the Guardians of the Multiverse. The group was successful, but Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) was a bit reluctant to return to her universe because she (like her male counterpart, Captain America) still held a torch for her love from World War II. But she then decides to return to her reality only to make a discovery that comes about in the credits scene.
It turns out that in Captain Carter’s reality, Bartoc (Georges St. Pierre) was hijacking the Hydra Smasher, and as Black Widow (Lake Bell) tells Carter, “There’s someone still inside.” The implication is that like Peggy, Steve Rogers was also in a state of suspended animation and that the two will finally be reunited, which is a nice happy ending for the character. It’s also not like “Captain Carter just needs to get her man,” since the entire Infinity Saga ended with Captain America reuniting with Peggy. It’s built as the core love story of MCU, and it’s nice that What If…? chose to reinforce that across its multiverse with this little coda.
Some may have been hoping for a bigger reveal with the credits scene. After all, with What If…? coming on the heels of Loki, which established the multiverse, shouldn’t What If…? at least provide a hint towards Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness? Shouldn’t there be a tease that maybe The Watcher will show up in the live-action shows or movies? And I’ll admit, that as part of the larger MCU, What If…? was always a bit ambivalent. It drew from everything in the MCU up to Avengers: Endgame, but stopped at the edge of going any further.
In that way, What If…? wasn’t so much universe building as much as it was wheel-spinning. It was a pleasant enough distraction that toyed with established characters and worlds, but in terms of doing anything that could be cited in a future movie, it’s likely that it’s mere existence—there is a multiverse, and here’s what it looks like—is all that we’ll get. What If…? never seemed to be an essential piece of the MCU. Yes, it was part of the MCU, but it didn’t want to really affect anything important (likely a consequence of being animated and thus taking longer to produce, so it’s harder to have it in conversation with live-action shows and movies), so it exists as something for Marvel die-hards only. The stories were entertaining enough, and it was nice to see which Marvel actors were game to lend their voices to the series, but it’s hard to make the case that anyone beyond the most devoted Marvel fans needed to watch it.
