REVIEW: ‘What If…?’ Season 3 Episode 1 — “What if…The Hulk Fought The Meh Adventures?”

Returning for its third season, Marvel’s What If…? is back to test fans’ creativity with new concepts, new characters, and inspirations from across pop culture. With Stephan Franck as showrunner, What If Season 3 Episode 1 reopens the MCU animated anthology series by asking, “What if…The Hulk Fought The Meh Adventures?”

The first episode of What If Season 3 focuses on the return of The Apex, the king of all Gamma Beasts, who starts an invasion some ten years after the first Gamma Wars. Opening with an 80s-inspired animation depicting the Gamma Wars, What If Season 3 Episode 1 tackles a reality where the Hulk is bigger, badder, and the Avengers’ Hulkbusters get more impressive. With The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) showing the audience the history of this specific world, the audience learns that the Gamma War began from an act of separation.

What If Season 3 Episode 1 highlights Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) friendship. More importantly, it looks at how Bruce attempts to deal with his rage and trauma, only to desperately turn to, you guessed it, more gamma radiation. When Bruce increases the gamma radiation dose, it doesn’t take back the rage it gifted him with in the first place. Instead, it creates a separate monster known as the Apex Hulk, which grows in massive size and spawns an army of smaller kaiju-Hulk minions.

While The Avengers succeed, they do so at the cost of their own lives, leaving a new team in their stead: Sam Wilson’s Captain America, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Monica Rambeau, Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac), Nakia (Brittany Adebumola), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Melina Vostokoff (Kari Wahlgren). Embracing the new wave of the MCU, What If Season 3 Episode 1 puts our new Avengers into mechs and tasks them with taking in the return of the kaiju-Hulks.

What If Season 3 Episode 1 wears its inspirations on its sleeves.

The visual inspirations for the kaiju-Hulks are clear: Kaiju cinema. With hints of American films like Pacific Rim and Kong Skull Island, the reality is that the creature designs and battle moments are deeply inspired by Japanese kaiju cinema, especially Godzilla. Going hand-in-hand with the kaiju, What If Season 3 Episode 1 also channels inspiration from Power Rangers and the tokusatsu genre as well as American Voltron.

While the new roster of characters taps into younger viewers who will be watching What If Season 3 Episode 1, the artistic inspirations speak directly to the 80s and 90s kids who can see their nostalgia in the mech formations, designs, and even the way the animation displays them as talking heads.

At just below 30 minutes, the What If Season 3 premiere episode offers a finale about taking responsibility and, ultimately, acceptance. When Sam finds Bruce on an island he has been living on in isolation for years, he gets to confront his accidental creations. To help, Bruce gives Sam a new protocol for “The Mighty Avenger, ” bringing the series’ inspiration to fruition as the mechs combine into one massive hero.

The spectacle is everything in What If Season 3 Episode 1. And I mean, can you expect anything less from an episode named “What if…The Hulk Fought The Meh Adventures?” That said, it does attempt to offer audiences some vulnerability as we see Bruce accept his part in it all and who he is, even if it means changing again.

A solid opening for a new season, What If Season 3 Episode 1 blends hero genres in a way that accentuates the exciting elements of each of them. Kaiju, heroes, mechs, it’s just what you would expect, but the execution is what makes it exciting.

What If Season 3 Episode 1 is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes airing every day until December 29, 2024.