I’m guessing real, since we saw their logos pop up in places where the US Gov and people might never notice, like Ant-Man and Iron Man 2. Why have folks with the symbol of a fake organization bid on technology alongside HYDRA (who’d be able to sniff out fakes) or fund Vanko?
“What If Ironman recruited _____ instead of Spiderman” would make a hell of an episode.
Shang Chi would have been about Peter’s age right?
Tony in researching the 10 Rings discovers their real leaders son living anonymously in San Francisco and recruits him.
Oh wow did the Thor episode go over well in this house. By far our favorite, although it’s not like I didn’t like the others. It tickled me extra because my sister would throw monster parties and I’d have to be the Captain Marvel and be like “Ok, time to stop and clean it up.” Not that I was a party pooper, but she’d have them be Thor-style epic ragers and I was 18 and she wasn’t. The chance of me getting in trouble for her parties was too high. So I just loved that whole dynamic. And I loved the Loony Toons feel, his Bugs Bunny wise-ass attitude, the labeling of places on the earth when viewed from space…
Something about this series just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not enjoying the stories, I’m not enjoying the visuals, and the tone just feels too different to the regular movies. I’ll keep watching, but I’m not ever going to revisit the show or recommend it to anyone else.
What the heck was that last scene about? Was that Ulton with a Galactus face or what? And what does it have to do with the Thor story.
Party Thor is the best episode so far by far. The characterizations were wonderful! For a while it was like watching the red carpet—oh look, there’s so-and-who and that’s whats-their-name, etc. The whole vibe was perfectly on the edge of absurd while staying comprehensible. I’m going to have to watch it several more times. It helps that Thor and Captain Marvel are probably may favorite two heroes.
Ultron with Infinity Stones was a beautiful denouement. The heroes are so screwed that it’s awesome.
Best line: “Mrs The Duck”. Maybe others.
It was Ultron with a Vision face.
I think many of these stories will have sequels next season.
People forget that Vision was designed by Ultron to be his upgrade, before the Avengers jacked the body and installed Jarvis 2.0.
So, it looked like an Ultron from a universe where he completed his upgrade and snagged the Infinity Stones.
I liked the first episode’s story quite a bit. The others were not as good but okay. My least favorite was the Doctor Strange one. The Thor one was basically a 30-minute long joke.
I think putting these kinds of stories under a “What If” or “Elseworlds” label undermines them. They should just be presented as stories without the overt labeling that they are from a “different reality.”
However, I did not like the animation style. It was very uncanny valley. It looks rotoscoped to me. Very creepy. I had to look away whenever they showed a character’s face full-on.
I’m general I’m not too keen on stories that posit that the fate of the entire world or the universe hinges on whether one specific detail about one person’s life had been different. It’s the lazy cliche for a lot of these kinds of stories.
Good point. This character is shown on the series page in Disney Plus but I kept thinking it was Vision. Making it Ultron totally makes sense.
…speculation:
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The scenes we are seeing at the end of some of the episodes are linked to the start of the multiversal war. We are seeing invasions of different universes by various conquerors and dictators, and the Watcher is slowly realizing that some of the things happening just “aren’t right.” Ultron shouldn’t be able to exist in this universe. Which was why he was surprised by the appearance of Ultron/Vision.
My guess is that the last two epsiodes are going to see the Watcher breaking the rules and gathering some of the heros to “fight back.”
A really wild premise would be “What if…the Watcher never broke the rules?” He inevitably always does.
Yeah, but that kind of symmetry doesn’t really work between hero and villain (well, doesn’t work for me, I should say). The bad guys cheat, and that’s how they get to be unbeatable—yet it’s the characteristic of the hero to persevere nevertheless. The hero succeeds despite impossible odds, while the bad guys have the deck stacked in their favor. Invert that, and you take the heroism out of the hero—they just win by default, for no reason other than being the good guys.
As for the most recent episode, I have to say, it didn’t really work for me, either. So Thor and co. break a few things, and SHIELD’s response is to call Captain Marvel and arm the nukes? But well, maybe it’s just that for me, satire and the original coexisting in the same uni-meta-multi-verse or what have you doesn’t work—you can’t play the same tropes both straight and subverted; it leaves both kinda hanging. The same thing put me off Star Trek: Lower Decks—I’m fine watching a Star Trek parody, but a Star Trek parody in the same continuity as Star Trek played straight just kinda grates, for me.
This episode was a nice change of pace, but the internal logic made no sense. How does Loki remaining a Frost Giant result in a universe where Nebula, Yondu, Rocket, Mantis, the Grandmaster, and anybody else I missed end up at the same party? In the T’Challa as Star Lord episode the changing of characters’ fates was explained by his reforming of Thanos.
And speaking of Loki, if that’s his true form why have we never seen him in it? That might have been useful in the first Avengers movie, especially against the Hulk.
This was very much a “don’t overthink it” episode.
You know, what if everyone just quit fighting, and, like, partied together? Be cool about everything, you know. [/stoner logic]
Or don’t overthink it. 
It actually makes a fair amount of sense that without pressure to be the Favorite Son, Thor would express his fratbro side more, and attract a group that liked to party hearty with him.
We have seen it before-in Loki, interestingly enough.
The end didn’t make sense just because I’d swear it was confirmed somewhere that Infinity Stones don’t work outside of their own galaxy/reality. I may well be wrong.
They don’t work in whatever place the TVA keeps its headquarters. Obviously, they worked in Endgame when borrowed from their proper places in the timestream. Apparently UltVision’s situation follows the rules of the latter.
In the Loki series,
The Infinity Stones don’t work in the TVA’s pocket universe. It’s not entirely clear if that’s because they’re outside their own universe, or because the TVA’s pocket universe has its own rules.
But we also don’t know for sure - yet - if the ascended Ultron at the end of this episode is from Party Thor’s universe.
And even if it’s an ascended Ultron from another universe, and even if the Stones normally only work in their origin universe, Ultron may have figured out a way to make the stones work in another universe. Or maybe he just uses them to open portals to other universes, and then uses his drone army to conquer that universe - possibly by capturing that universe’s Infinity Stones first…