Re: They need the Avengers to fight Loki…you know what would have been nice at the Battle of Wakanda? What could have really helped the Avengers who almost lost until Thor showed up??
Ohhhhh…any frigging army. And especially any frigging Air Force.
So I admit, that Loki with the Casket is formidable…and the Destroyer is a real game-changer, but the rest of the Asgardians? They would be fucked.
I don’t think so. The Asgardians also have an air force - those sky boats we see hovering over their army and later around the UN building. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, with what we know about Asgardian technomagic, those sky boats are probably effectively impervious to conventional anti-aircraft and air-to-air weapons, and they’ve got beam weapons that would probably obliterate any conventional Earth aircraft or armored vehicles.
And Asgardian body armor and shields are probably impervious to small arms fire, and even tank rounds and heavy artillery might not be very effective.
To answer somethin upthread that no one cares about anymore, but I’ve wanted to respond to…
They definitely couldn’t call on Abomination to help because the fight in What If where Hulk dies is the same fight where Blomsky gets super hurt in the movie, thus making him take the serum and turn into Abomination. If Hulk dies then he doesn’t kick Blomsky in the chest super hard and fly him against the tree to crush every bone in his body
Ok, so no Abomination. Maybe? They’ve got the serum at that point, thought, right? So someone could take it? And with Asgardians conquering the world, it seems like SHIELD and/or the U.S. military may well be desperate enough for someone to volunteer to try it…
That’s not quite what happened, though your conclusion is correct. Blonsky was injected with the cut-rate super-soldier serum earlier in the movie, after the first fight with the Hulk in the Brazilian bottling plant. It gave him some Cap-like powers, seen during the fight at the college, but also screwed him up enough mentally that he was willing to go toe to toe with the Hulk. After the fight, when Blonsky has every bone in his body broken, he heals within hours due to the serum. At that point, he gets a second dose, which makes him even stronger, but even more crazy, and begins to get some of the bone changing effects.
When Bruce and Betty meet with Stearns and realize he’s synthesized a bunch of Bruce’s blood, Blonsky forces Stearns to inject him with the blood, and that’s what turns him into Abomination. So at best, at this point in “What If”, Blonsky is a slightly crazy cut-rate Captain America.
Aw man…I was close…
Getting all the cast back for this week’s Doctor Strange episode made a huge difference. Top performances across the board.
Now thats more fucking like it.
I just want an occasional ep like this…see? We can have it all. We can have the MCU formula eps, and the What If? Comics eps.
Outstanding music in addition to acting.
This was a fun one. It had a bit of Steins Gate to it, with Strange repeatedly failing to save her life.
It seems like the Watcher is getting a little more involved with each passing episode, probably leading to him interfering by the finale.
Nice use of Kirby Krackle in the fight scene. I’m not sure I’ve seen it used in the MCU before. Weird that it would debut in a Doctor Strange tale, though.
So maybe I’m overthinking (or underthinking?) things here, but how can the accident where Strange lost the use of his hands in the original MCU timeline, and Christine Palmer dies in this one, be both a branching point and a fixed point in time? Christine’s death seems to be fated in this continuity, but doesn’t occur in the MCU one… And Strange went back to before the accident happened, i. e. before the timeline we saw in this episode branched from the main one. Yet, at that point, he couldn’t change the outcome, with Christine always dying.
Where better to step up the visual-effects game?
Apparently it’s a fixed point for Strange in this timeline because it’s the reason Strange went in search of mystical power – using said mystical power to undo it would create a paradox. Perhaps if he’d thought of rearranging things so that he had some other reason, it would have worked out…
Considering Thanos knocked her into next week in Endgame and that was before Tonys switcheroo trick, I am going to say, yes.
He has a lab at S.H.I.E.L.D HQ in 1970, when Cap and Tony visit. So, I would say a bit more than a consultant.
Thanos had to use the ‘power’ infinity stone in his free hand to do this - he was unable to do this of his own accord.
It just seems that it would be a better tribute to Kirby to use it for one of his characters. I can’t recall seeing Krackle in a Doctor Strange comic. But I’m not complaining; it transfers to animation really well.
Nice to see a return of the breakout new character from the first episode, Portal Full of Tentacles! I hope that guy gets his own spinoff at some point.
I liked the episode, but I think it would have been stronger without the second Dr. Strange. The explanation for what the Ancient One did was sort of weak, and it muddled the “This is what the universe would be like if this ONE THING changed!” by adding a second ONE THING. And it didn’t really lead anywhere, other than a sweet magic fight, because the time-cloned Strange still gets killed and Evil Strange still destroys the universe. Would have been better if they’d brought in Baron Mordo to try to stop him, instead.
Still, solid episode overall. If they are planning to do some sort of crossover between these stories, this seems like the starting point. You’ve got a character who is aware of and interacts with the Watcher, a returning trans-dimensional element from an earlier episode (Portal Tentacles), and they left this Strange in an excellent position to be a multi-versal threat that finally persuades Uatu to stop watching and bring together a team of alt-timeline heroes to stop him.
I believe this episode is actually the origin story for Tentacles From Another Dimension. It’s Dr Strange trying to escape from his prisonverse.
Strange goes bad because of intense grief and absorbs others power
His enemy is brought in as a last-ditch effort
His enemy loses
Heh. You just wrote the ‘Hal Jordan goes bad story’
It didn’t work for me at all and I should be a sucker for this type of story.
Sliding doors and Mystery Spot (from Supernatural). It was too many things. The Sliding Doors part didn’t work because for StrangeB it was only 5 minutes, so there was nothing to cut back and forth to. The death montage was ok, I guess.
But the real problem is that I only know Stephen & Christine from the MCU and in the movie, she’s not his heart. She is (at various points in the movie) somewhere between a friend and a good friend, but it isn’t a break-the-universe level of connection, partially because Strange is pretty much an ass in the MCU. And while this “what if” is basically saying he’s a different person, so they’re a different couple, the banter in the car wasn’t enough to sell me on either of those ideas.
I also don’t get why Cagliostro/O’Bengh told StrangeA that he was only half a person. He kept that to himself for centuries, could have taken that to the grave.
It was good to see a timeline fold in on itself and to see the watcher actively not get involved rather than passively not get involved. But overall, this was a dud.
BUT…you did give me some ideas for flourishes. Rather then the confusing time split…have The Ancient One banish Stephen several centuries to the past WITHOUT the Time Stone…that way its hammered home that Stephen came back as they say in the comics…‘one step at a time’.
Meanwhile as you suggested, the Ancient One groom Baron Mordo more towards evil. Mordo could even assemble some familiar faces for a massive showdown with Strange…and of course they lose.