What if Ultron won? That is this weeks’ premise on Marvel’s What If? As per the title, I’d say this was big fun, with one annoying detail I’ll get to. Unlike most week’s the title question pretty much sums up the story succinctly. The scenario at play here is simple, even if we don’t get the minute detail. For whatever reason, Ultron succeeded in downloading his body into Vision. Thus Ultron, armed with the Mind Stone, defeats the Avengers in Age of Ultron. Nuclear War leaves seemingly only Nat and Clint alive on the entire Earth. Ok, that’s probably not true, but it’s kinda funny to imagine this scenario all the same.

I’ll get to the spoilers section after a jump as usual. For now, here’s what I thought.

I had a lot of fun with What If? Episode 8, a lot of fun. As said up top, there was one very annoying little detail, which should have been ironed out. If that had been fixed, we could have an almost perfect A+ episode, because everything else here is golden. The animation and shots used are superb and without getting into spoilers yet, this episode goes places I think fans will like. There is a lot to like here and I really cannot tell you why without spoiling some of the best moments.

With that being said, I’ll make the usual call.

Warning, SPOILERS for What If? Episode 8 below! What If Ultron Won?

If you are reading still, the either you’ve seen Episode 8, or you simply don’t care about spoilers, so let’s get to it. Oh, anyone think that image above look’s like Galactus? Anyway.

I’m going to start with the annoying little detail, because it’s bugging me. I’ll point out, I think this was my only issue ion this episode so maybe I’m overthinking things. When Ultron finally conquers Earth, he is faced with one more task. Thanos shows up, wearing all of the Infinity Stones other than the Mind Stone. Classics showdown imminent? Nope, Ultron uses the power of the Mind Stone to cut Thanos in half and take possession of the other Stones.

That’s frankly just stupid. Even with Vision’s body Ultron isn’t as tough as Thanos, as seen in Infinity War and Endgame. Never mind, that here we are talking about a Thanos that has all but one Infinity Stone. There is simply no way Ultron could just cut him in half with the Mind Stone.

I get that the writers did not want to have an episode of Ultron vs Thanos (though, c’mon that would be cool) but this could have been handled differently. For start, in this timeline Thanos actually does not have any of the Infinity Stones, yet, so it was daft for him to show up then anyway. We are then shown a montage of Ultron conquering the Galaxy. All they’d have to do is have that montage include Ultron collecting the Infinity Stones before Thanos and then easily dispersing him once he had them all. There, you go, that would take no extra time and work 100 times better for me. I feel like Thanos has been figuratively defecated upon in What If? thus far.

It is like sometimes What If? needs someone just to rein in the writers when they go crazy. I do hope it is something that improves in Season 2 writing.

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Ok, I have that out my system. The rest of the episode is a delightful and by literally breaking the 4th wall to our narrator things really heat up. It’s cool seeing how powerful Ultron really is with all Infinity Stones, and after dispatching Captain Marvel easily, he has a tougher time with The Watcher. That’s a damn cool fight an the reality shifting as they fight was superbly well done. However, the set up here is for what comes next week. The Watcher defeated, goes seeking help, to one imprisoned and supremely powered Strange Supreme.

Can crazy Strange, and The Watcher gather heroes from the Multiverse to take on Ultron who plans to destroy all sentient life in the Multiverse. You betcha they can. and I can’t wait to see how it plays out next week.

Let us know what you thought of What If Ultron Won? Did you have the same issue I had, did you love it despite this or simply disagree with everything I said? Whatever the scenario, leave any thoughts you have below.

GRADE: A-

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