REVIEW: ‘What If…?’ Season 3 Had a Solid Start But Doesn’t Stick the Landing

For its first two seasons, Marvel’s What If…? felt constrained by previous stories that chased that titular question across comic pages. Confined by comic events, the series never took off for me. Instead, it felt like it was chasing the answer to the question instead of answering it with a full-throated acceptance of genre storytelling. Then, What If Season 3 came around? It felt new.

From showrunners Bryan Andrews and A.C. Bradley, What If Season 3 is a nine-episode addition to the series that makes bold choices deeply informed by the current turn in the MCU. Focused on highlighting characters that we will learn more about in the new phase of movies and series, this third season highlights Riri Williams, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Agatha (Kathryn Han), and more.

Some What If Season 3 episodes still carry comic book hallmarks and nods, but they never feel like a weight. Instead, they’re a runway for something new. With stand-out episodes like “What If…Agatha Went To Hollywood,” “What If…The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier,” and “What If…1872,” there is a love for genre storytelling that goes beyond superheroes. While there are some obvious nods to comic book runs and legacies, these stories feel so contained in their genre sandboxes that they punch above their weight and beyond the confines of the MCU.

What If Season 3 presents bold stories through genre cinema.

From sci-fi to Western, old Hollywood glam, and even mecha anime, this season of the Disney+ series feels like a larger swing out of the Marvel comfort zone than the previous iterations. Here, the takes on the characters feel fresh, dynamic, an,d most importantly, valuable. For six episodes, What If Season 3 excels in a way I didn’t expect. More importantly, in ways I haven’t seen in the first season or second.

Still, that’s just the first six episodes. The series feels unique this season compared to its predecessors, but at the same time, the Watcher, who has been ever-present since the beginning, becomes bolder. He changes things and moves from Watcher to participant. Instead of embracing the anthology series format until the very end, What If Season 3 gives itself a finale that pulls everything together.

What made this season stand out was its unashamed embrace of storytelling, comedy, humor, and genre. In its last three episodes, however, what makes the season collapse is the weight of the cinematic universe from which it was supposed to be detached.

Like Dsiney’s other foray into an anthology, Star Wars Visions, What If had the beauty of escaping its story group. Continuity only mattered in so far as it was being played with by the creators. The animation has always been consistent with little to no deviation from the near rotoscoped vision of the Marvel world. But that didn’t matter because of how many characters and stories it had been able to tell.

However, you lose everything that made it special when you collapse What If Season 3 into one story. We know that the series was coming to an end with this third season. But in closing, the story, with such finite pomp and circumstance, is not just about being killed and buried. It’s also been robbed of the special beauty it held before those last episodes.

The series is only as strong as its detachment from the MCU.

Where anthology films often need a solid wrap-around to contain the vignettes, television series really do not. Some do, like the Cryptkeeper in Creepshow, and others just flow from one to the next, like Mark Duplass’ The Creep Tapes. However, the method of delivering the varied stories has to be thorough, with the end never undercutting the experience of its packaging. What If Season 3 doesn’t use its strengths to do this? Instead, it relies on the same thing we see in every MCU property, and it collapses into something larger.

What If…? as a series has given audiences immensely creative stories, and Season 3 has specifically pushed that envelope even further. And yet, as episodes six through nine played and ended, I somehow felt like we had arrived nowhere. This anthology was meant to capture the concept that any timeline, hero, and story could be told.

In the end, though, a finite ending was more important than allowing the series to exist as a property that can always be added to, something that has grown increasingly important as the comic books themselves add to stories inconsistent with the MCU.

With six episodes that range from near-perfect to perfect, the ending detracts from the power we’ve seen set up. What If Season 3 offered animation that finally found solid footing, interesting handling of genres and tropes that showcased different sides to characters we’ve just now been introduced to and will see more of in the future? Most importantly, it always did it in a fun way.

The ending of the series misses the mark, can’t stick the landing, and every other kind of disappointing turn of phrase you’re thinking. Still, the ride to the end was some of the best-animated storytelling of the year.

What If…? Season 3 is streaming now on Disney+.