Headscratchers / What If…? (2021)

Episode 1: What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?

* It's implied that one choice is what it took to make Peggy become Captain Carter: Peggy chose to stay down stairs in the lab with Steve. But why did Heinz Kruger, the assassin, also follow Peggy's lead? It was his decision on when and where to do the bombing (that caused the change in timeline), but why would Peggy staying down stairs influence this decision? What's more, in the original universe, Kruger destroys the research after Steve's transformation so he could see whether the process was a success, but in this universe, he does this before Steve could be transformed. What if maybe the transformation wasn't a success and the drop was ultimately useless?

• Everyone followed Peggy's lead; the brass in charge of the project chose to stay as well. In order to get his targets, so too did the Hydra agent. As for why they stayed- well, they couldn't seem more scared than the woman, now could they?
• Moreover, the real change was the delay in getting the tesseract. In TFA, Zola, Red Skull and the tesseract had been holed up in the Alps for some time, and Zola had been creating his tesseract weapons that made Hydra a true threat. Without Zola to do the research, Hydra was not a true threat outside of the Nazis.
• Could the real change be that the Germans never invaded Norway in this timeline? Flynn seems surprised that there are German soldiers in a Norwegian town which would not have been a surprise if Germany occupied Norway in 1940. If Norway was allowed to stay neutral then Red Skull and Hydra would have harder time locating the Tesseract's hiding place and would have to sneak in into the country. That would delay them getting the Tesseract till after the Peggy becomes a super soldier.

• Why were Roeder, Schneider and Hutter, the three Nazis killed by Red Skull with the Tesseract in the original universe, replaced by an unnamed Nazi general and two guards of his? Yeah, Red Skull murdered that general with a gun because the Tesseract had been stolen from him, but how did Peggy Carter becoming the first Super Soldier lead that trio to not go to Schmidt's base?
• Why didn't the Allies go try and recover the Tesseract after the avalanche? Sure, odds are that Steve Rogers is dead, but who in their right minds would leave a power source beyond anything known to man behind?
  • They probably thought it was destroyed along with the Stomper. They don't know it's the container for an Infinity Stone.
• Does Flynn actually have the authority to promote Peggy to Captain? Isn't she still an agent for the British?

Episode 2: What If… T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?

• How was T'Challa able to dominate Korath so easily? It's clear T'Challa never got the heart-shaped herb enhancements and MCU Kree are strong enough to hold their own against Asgardians.
  • Korath was a massive fanboy and was clearly holding back.
• So Nebula and Thanos end up joining the Ravagers, and the Black Order ends up becoming the Collector's henchmen. So where does that leave Gamora?
  • I’ll do you one better: WHERE is Gamora?
  • If the image of her with Thanos's sword and armor is any indication, not better.
  • There's a chance T'Challa managed to win over Thanos before he got to Gamora's world. Though that's making the assumption that Gamora is younger than Nebula and both of them are significantly younger than T'Challa, or else a 10 year old boy convinced Thanos to change his ways.
• So does T'Challa have the powers of the Black Panther in this version or not? I would assume he doesn't as in the "main timeline", he got them as an adult. But in his fight with Korath, he seemed to have faster than normal relaxes, fast like his main universe counterpart.
  • It's very likely that he got much of his training from Yondu, who also has pretty good reflexes since his comics counterpart is an archer, which usually have good reflexes, Yakka Arrow or not. It's also likely that it wasn't as bad as Peter's in the Sacred Timeline, either.
• How did the Collector physically move Mjolnir to his trophy room? He isn't worthy.
  • He may have collected it before Odin enchanted it with that property.
  • Alternatively, perhaps Thor was tricked into putting Mjolnir into that display case, and then was disposed of before he could take it back.
  • Or, seeing as he did steal Hela's helmet, he could have just used that to catch the hammer and put it away after he killed Thor.
  • Or maybe the Asgardians needed something from the Collector and he wanted Mjolnir in exchange. Assuming the situation was desperate enough and fighting him was not an option, Thor could’ve willing handed it over.
  • The episode happens in 2008. Odin doesn't give the enchantment of worthiness to Mjolnir until 2011, so there are no restrictions on the hammer.
• How did T’Challa get the name Starlord? Quill was given the name by his mother as a reference to his Celestial dad. It doesn’t make sense that anyone but him would have that name.
  • As noted under Fridge Brilliance, T'Challa is a lord (or rather prince) who travels amongst the stars, so his name comes from his royal heritage. The comics Star Lord was a prince by birth, so it naturally makes sense.
• So is the universe just objectively better with T'challa as Star-Lord?
  • Not necessarily. On an immediate level, though Thanos' reformation has saved many lives (e.g. Drax's family), the Collector has clearly done a lot of violence (to Korg, Steve Rogers, Thor, etc.), if the items in his collection are any indication. In terms of universe-wide crises, Ego's takeover may substitute for Thanos' Blip. This universe seems to be a very extreme side-grade in terms of who lives and who dies.
  • With every alternate timeline story, it mixes up which characters are Spared by the Adaptation or not, since sometimes the timeline changes tend to try and correct themselves to make up for what was supposed to happen, leading to In Spite of a Nail. Case in point? In one comic from which this show is based, Frank Castle's family was spared from the massacre that led to him becoming The Punisher. What happened in the end? They still die anyway and he becomes Punisher just the same. In this series, T'Challa becoming Star Lord instead of Peter Quill means that Thanos reforms and his actions never wipe out half of reality, but then the Collector steps in and just goes about killing people anyway. He was after the Infinity Stones himself, so he might have been planning to do what Thanos was planning to do if his subjects decided to step out of line, but T'Challa halting that meant the timeline sent out Ego to try and fix that change.
  • Are Korg, Steve, and Thor dead? I assumed that the Collector just took their stuff and that the characters were alive and well. Granted, Korg's down an arm, but that doesn't seem too bad for a member of his race.
    • Collector explictly noted that he took the arm from a corpse of a "terribly chatty Kronian", so at least Korg is dead.
    • Thor, if not all of Asgard, is probably all gone. As for Steve, the Collector could have just fished the shield out from his ice-prison and left him there.
  • The ending gives off the vibe that Ego will probably accomplish his plan of the Expansion, considering that he only was stopped because of the Guardians' teamwork originally and they never came together here. Considering that the Expansion would destroy the universe, this shows one way where Quill being Star-Lord is better.
• If T'Challa could redeem Thanos in this universe, how come he couldn't do the same in Avengers: Infinity War or convince Killmonger to give up his mad plans in his own movie?
  • Simple. The Sacred Timeline T'Challa was never able to leave beyond Wakanda's borders until he was a grown man, and thus lacked much of the wisdom that Star Lord T'Challa had from seeing an entire universe and the wide variety of cultures and people within it. Both T'Challa's are good men—amongst the most noble of heroes in any timeline in fact—but in the main MCU, T'Challa was The Stoic thanks to not being able to live out his dream of exploration, and thus a little more closed minded (remember, it was Killmonger who got him thinking that his points aren't entirely incorrect, not the other way around, not to mention it took the fracturing of the Avengers itself to get him to see beyond his desires of revenge) until his respective adventures helped him to see things better. As Star Lord, T'Challa was taken to places he never could have dreamed of, and not burdened with the innumerable tragedies his main counterpart suffered, was able to find ways to inspire others to be better.
  • Regarding Thanos, the only times T’Challa meets him in the Sacred Timeline are in the middle of battle and when Thanos is more devoted to his goal than ever. He can’t really be reasoned with at that point.
  • Also regarding Thanos, bear in mind that T'Challa only learns who he in the Sacred Timeline is when the Avengers come knocking on Wakanda's door asking for assistance in defending themselves from him and his army at most mere hours before they launch their invasion. He doesn't exactly have the time to sit down and talk with the big guy for a few minutes.
  • How would T'Challa know? He didn't try. His Star-Lord self did, saving (half of) the universe.
  • We don't know the circumstances that led to T'Challa being able to convince Thanos to abandon his plan in this universe, but they were almost certainly far better circumstances than his Sacred Timeline counterpart would have had. By the time Sacred Timeline T'Challa even knew Thanos existed, let alone could try to convince him, it was at the point when his forces were attacking his home country and killing his fellow Wakandans, and when Thanos had five Infinity Stones and was within walking distance of the sixth. At that point, Thanos was not going to back down from his plan (especially not after killing Gamora), and given that Thanos was indirectly responsible for killing his people, T'Challa would have been in no mood to try talking him down.
• Why did the Ravagers just give up on abducting Peter Quill?
  • Even in the Sacred Timeline, Yondu gave up on taking Peter back to Ego because he had begun to realize (despite Ego's assurances) that Ego was doing something to the children. Here, presumably he did something to convince Ego that Peter was dead for twenty years.
• Why is Thanos an Adaptational Wimp?
  • He might have softened up after reforming.
  • If nothing else, he's unarmed and unarmored. Who knows what sort of weird super-science and/or magic enhancements his equipment gave him in the Sacred Timeline. For a guy who spends most of his time chatting in bars and fighting an armed soldier with his bare hands, he did pretty well.
• Why did it take someone else to convince Thanos to redistribute wealth and resources to the needy? Wouldn't a genius-level intellect like the Mad Titan come to that conclusion himself?
  • Whatever gave the impression that he had a genius level intellect? He was driven by his ego and a selfish desire to prove himself right. T'Challa showing him a better way is more about his arguing skills.
  • The fact that Thanos ever considered the absurd plan of conserving resources by killing 50 percent of all life is proof that he is not a genius.
• Black Panther takes place in 2016, when Shuri is in her late teens or early twenties. This episode is set in 2008, and yet Shuri's not visibly younger. What's going on here?
  • Writers Cannot Do Math. Or alternatively, they wanted to make sure that the audience recognized this character as Shuri, and prioritized that over any possible post-viewing confusion.
  • Maybe Shuri was born earlier in this timeline, to compensate her brother vanishing.
• Precisely how old is Kraglin supposed to be? In Guardians of the Galaxy, Kraglin is a peer to Peter, coming off like a resentful older sibling. Xandarians being relatively similar to humans, assuming he's roughly the same age as Sean Gunn, he would've been about 14 in 1988. But when they pick up T'Challa, both he and Taserface (played in the film by an actor younger than Gunn and Chris Pratt) are fully grown adults and do not appear to age at all in the 20 year span of the episode. (Or, you know, Writers Cannot Do Math.)
  • Perhaps Xandarians age differently? Alternatively, perhaps he was a few years older than Gunn would have been at the time and he was just Younger Than He Looks.
• Why isn't the Morag temple underwater when T'Challa goes to retrieve the Orb? The DVD Commentary of Guardians states that Morag is flooded and the sea lowers every three hundred years. The episode takes place in 2008 rather than 2014, so how does T'Challa being Star-Lord affect Morag's geology?
  • The process of the waters receding and flooding could just take a decade or two. If the temple's at a relatively high elevation, it would be above the waters longer than most land.

Episode 3: What If… The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

• What was the one simple decision that created this universe? There was one present in the 2 previous episodes, what is it in this one?
  • It was Hope van Dyne joining S.H.I.E.L.D., which causes her to die in a mission, sending Hank in a path of revenge that causes the events of the episode.
• How did Hank kill Natasha? Shrink her to death?
  • We see her being thrown around as she tries to contact Fury. He most likely beat her to death.
• Hank was riding the bullet that went in Bruce’s arm. But who was the sniper that fired it? Did Hank have someone working with him?
  • If Hank still owns Pym Technologies in this timeline due to never being ousted by Darren Cross, it's possible he could've had one of his employees act as a gunman to shoot Bruce.
  • Who said it was a bullet? Yes, it looked like one, but who's to say it wasn't just Hank flying at full force into Bruce's Shoulder? Hope did say the Ant-Man in terms of physical strength was like a bullet in the movie of the same name.
• In Thor: The Dark World, Odin condemns Loki for invading Earth and treating humans like as though they're beneath Asgardians. Why is it then that he'd allow Loki to completely conquer Earth and become their God-Emperor in this timeline?
  • Odin was probably too consumed with grief over how it's partially his fault Thor is dead to think straight.
  • He may have also fallen into the Odin Sleep by this point, meaning Loki has assumed the throne.
• While Asgardians are far more powerful than humans, Earth as a location is much bigger than Asgard. In the Sacred Timeline, Loki had the backing of the much larger Chitauri army. Are there really enough Asgardian soldiers and resources to be stretched across the entire planet of Earth while still having any remain on Asgard itself?
  • Maybe there aren’t. It's pretty well established that Loki isn't a great/wise ruler.
  • Regardless of the size of his army, Loki has the Bifrost, which basically means he can bomb any place on Earth from orbit, so his military dominance is assured.
  • More importantly, Loki has the Casket of Ancient Winters, which was previously used about a thousand years earlier to freeze over a good chunk of Norway when the Jotuns and Asgardians threw down with each other. All he had to do was demonstrate that yes, he could just wipe humanity out if they didn't bend the knee, and the world's leaders just unanimously decided it would be better to fold rather than try fighting the clearly psychotic despot with the hand-held superweapon.
• When Black Widow looks through the access records on The Avengers Initiative, the big clue to who is behind the murders of The Avengers is that the files were accessed by "Van Dyne", even though Hope died two years ago, meaning that whoever accessed the files was an imposter using her security clearance. Which raises the question: How is her security clearance still active two years after she died? Wouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have disabled her access at some point in the past two years, just as a matter of standard procedure?
  • Sometimes things slip through the cracks.
  • Plus Hank Pym is one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe. He conceivably could have hacked the system to reactivate the security clearance.
• Why wasn’t Project T.A.H.I.T.I used?
  • It's a magical place. Sorry, where was I? Ah, yes. Probably there was enough GH.325 serum for one or two Avengers, but not for the whole team all at the same time.
  • Mentioned in a note on the recap: in the show, Coulson was against the use of the program due to its side effects making unsustainable over the long term, and this being set before his mindwipe, Coulson would've been against reviving the Avengers using it.
• Why is Emil Blonsky nowhere to be seen during the attack on Culver University, with Ross and his men attacking the Hulk without him? Hadn't Blonsky been injected with the Super Soldier Serum variant by that point?
  • IIRC, during the University fight in the Sacred Timeline, Blonsky didn't get involved until well after Hulk dies in this timeline, due to Ross deliberately keeping Blonsky in reserve to serve as his ace in the hole. Of course, if Pym had known about Blonsky being injected, he'd almost certainly have killed him as well, so he might have been already dead. Watsonianly, not showing him prevents some Continuity Lockout for those who haven't seen that film, and stops the creators from having to make a new model and get more likeness rights.
• Once Hank is arrested and all the Avengers Initiative candidates have been placed in coffins, why there are five coffins? Hulk exploded, so there's no body to bury.
  • Not a whole body, but they could still technically collect the splattered remains and bury that.
    • It also could've been a symbolic empty casket.

Episode 4: What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

• When Uatu said to Strange, "You of all people should know that meddling with time and events, only leads to more destruction," Strange at that point in his life had only seen the benefits of time manipulation. Eg: Defeating Dormammu (Time-loop) and saving the world from the dark dimension (reversing time). As Infinity War was yet to take place in his timeline (and ultimately wouldn't), he wouldn't understand that as well as Uatu claims he would.
  • That's not entirely true. Karl Mordo and Wong were very clear to Strange when he was conducting experiments with the apple that messing with time and events can break reality, meaning Strange directly ignores them when he starts his crusade to bring Christine back. And while defeating Dormammu using a time loop was ultimately a win, constantly dying over and over again isn't exactly a pleasant experience. As Mordo himself once said, when one interferes with the natural law of things, the bill always comes due.
  • At the very moment Uatu said that, the entire universe was in the last bits of being destroyed due to Strange messing with time and events — if he didn't realize the danger before, he sure does now.
  • When Uatu says he can't fix what Strange has done, is it because he can't or because he won't?
• Ancient One states that Christine's death was required for Strange to defeat Dormammu, however we know that Strange losing his hands has the same effect.
  • Different universe with different fixed points.
  • You could also see it as a metaphor. In the Sacred Timeline, Strange loses Christine after he destroys himself financially and lashes out at her in a moment of anger. She still lives, but any romance between them is dead.
  • Yes, because the absolute point was not Strange losing Christine, or his hands, it was Strange losing that which he valued most; because losing the one thing that's most precious to him, combined with his fixation with being able to fix any- and every-thing but not being able to fix this, is what leads to him learning mystic arts and reaching for things that for many others would be accepted as beyond reach and thus ultimately being able to defeat Dormammu. It just so happened, in this universe, that thanks to an earlier decision to pursue a relationship with Christine she rather than his own hands was what mattered most to him.
  • Multiverse of Madness subtly elaborates on this point with the reveal that Christine and Strange not getting together is now a multiversal constant. It is conceivable that this is due to the universal-level threat a grief-stricken Dr Strange poses. It is also possible that their breakup is simply how the Absolute Point manifests in other timelines.
• Was Christine's death truly the point of divergence in this timeline? Because we were actually shown 2 points, Christine's death and Strange debating on using the Eye of Agamotto. And we were shown two versions of Strange, one who used it (Strange Supreme) and one who did not (Doctor Strange). So could the decision to use or not use the Eye be the true point of divergence?
  • Additionally, the Ancient One said herself that she, "Split the timeline." But what if she did the opposite? Maybe she merged two branches of the timeline together? The one where Strange used the Eye of Agamotto and the one where he did not. Allowing two Stephen Stranges to co-exist. Just from 2 different realities. She might have just split his powers in half, not the timeline.
  • The point of divergence wasn't Christine's death, but the decision to pursue a relationship before Stephen's ill-fated car crash (admittedly the episode should have made that more clear). This meant the thing he lost that completely broke him and drove him to sorcery wasn't his career (by way of his hands), but his lady.
• How did Christine die when she and Strange went out dancing?
  • Heart attack.
    • This also implies that this Christine would have died no matter how many times Strange replayed it. Whenever she survives or misses the car accident, she dies anyways.
• It's implied that the events of the first Doctor Strange movie still happened as normal, except that Christine is dead in this timeline. If that's the case, who helped saved Strange when he was stabbed by Kaecillius's Elite Mook, considering that it was Christine who helped him in the movie?
  • The timeline played out similarly, but wasn't identical. For one thing, his hands not being injured would have caused minor changes. Maybe he wasn't stabbed in this iteration.
• Why couldn't Strange just use the time stone to revive Christine's body, just like Thanos did with Vision? Or like Strange did with the apple?
  • But he did use the Time Stone: the whole gist of going back in time again and again to try and prevent Christine's death was Strange using the Eye of Agamotto/Time Stone, except that even its powers couldn't change Absolute Points, which means even it cannot change Christine's fate.
  • But he tried to use the Time Stone to save Christine by going back in time to prevent her death. Why not simply reverse it, like he did to Wong in the first Dr. Strange movie? Or like Thanos did to Vision in Infinity War?
  • Those reversals were done only a short time after the deaths happened. Strange didn’t try it until a few years later when it would have required more effort and have more unintended consequences.
• Where was the TVA? We don't know exactly what they're up to post Kang's death, but this really seems like their kind of thing.
  • After Sylvie killed Kang, a variant of him took over TVA, and it's implied that this is the more ruthless version of him who probably don't care about what happens in other timelines much, and they probably already have their hands full with other things in the chaotic aftermath of the Sacred Timeline breaking as well.
  • Plus, the end result here is that Strange pruned his own timeline, so they don't have to step in.
  • Plus plus, you could ask that question with the basis premise of the show.
  • Doylist explanation is that Loki was not made yet when this series was being made. For now, only the MCU up to "Endgame" is relevant for this series.
  • That's kind of the whole point of the show: Loki and Sylvie's actions (or HWR's actions, depending on how you look at it) resulted in the TVA being crippled, the timeline branching out past the 'red line', and all these parallel worlds existing in the first place.
• What about Christine's death motivated Strange to go to Tibet and become a sorcerer? They were vague on this - he still believed only in science at this point, so he had no reason to go looking for magic to undo her death. And how did he even find them - he had no reason to go to the guy in the movie who used magic to fix his spine.
  • He could have met the same guy who told him of the miracle of a man who walked again, or met a different guy. Or maybe even just came to the conclusion that nothing science could do could save her, maybe there is something magical that could. And then went in search of it.
  • Or he could have taken his fortune and gone wandering around the world to distract himself from his grief, then heard about the existence of the sorcerers at some point during his travel, inspiring him to seek them out.
• How did the Ancient One split Strange posthumously? And what was the point - the deranged Strange was far more powerful than the baseline. If TAO knew what was coming, why not just arrange for Wong, possibly with other sorcerers as backup, to take the time stone from Strange after he defeats Dormammu with it?
  • TAO did not split Strange posthumously. She split him back at the time of Christine's death, when TAO was still alive. As for future plans, TAO was never able to foresee anything past her own death, so she only knew that Strange would try to undo an Absolute Point. Her educated guess beyond that may have been that Strange stood a better chance of stopping himself than any other sorcerers would have ever stood at stopping Strange. And considering that an un-split Strange would have fought just as hard as the 'evil' Strange of this timeline to get at the Time Stone, she may have been right.
  • Strange went back in time at the moment of the car crash that killed Christine, which is when the Ancient One was still alive and most likely noticed the future Strange keep coming back to this event, and decides to intervene. Bottom line is she was still alive at the moment she splits Strange into two halves of the same person. As for how she appears in the future to ask the 'Good Strange' for help against Strange Supreme, I have no idea.
  • If TAO knew what was coming, why not just arrange for Wong, possibly with other sorcerers as backup, to take the time stone from Strange after he defeats Dormammu with it?
    • Given that Strange was still a rookie at the time, it's possible that, had TAO let anything slip about what she believed he would do, Wong and Mordo wouldn't have trusted Strange to help them fight Dormammu, dooming the world to his rule. Admittedly all this achieved was swapping one apocalypse for another…
• It's implied that Strange took centuries to build up power by absorbing plenty of demons and in the process froze himself. The question is, given how many centuries Strange taken, what happened to Thanos? It's implied that he initiate his rampage across the universe two years later for the Infinity Stones, and would've gone against Strange for his Time Stone. So why didn't Strange encounter him yet, and if so, why hasn't Thanos done anything to stop him from continuing the absorption of monsters?
  • Strange's centuries long quest started when he went to the library of Cagliostro, centuries in the past. All of those centuries were spent in the past, not the present/future, it's very much possible that the moment he absorbed the final entity was still before Christine's death and thus before the events of Infinity War.
• Dormammu comes from the Dark Dimension, which exists outside of time. How can there even be a variant of him if he’s not normally affected by its flow?
  • The Dimension exists outside of time. But it's still attached to a universe. And once there was a Multiverse, each universe has its own Dark Dimension.
• Can Strange not just stay in the past and be the Sorcerer Supreme? It's Mental Time Travel where he controls what his past self does. He has his memories and powers from the future and no mentioned time limit of how long he can stay in the past so why not just stay and become the Sorcerer Supreme after saving Christine?

Episode 5: What If… Zombies?!

• Wouldn't Hope's attack bugs feeding on zombie flesh cause them to become infected?
  • Bit of a stretch but perhaps if the "not infected" devour the "infected", it's a different scenario.
  • Or since it is a brain infection that "blocks the limbic system", it only affects sapient species.
  • Note that nobody seems worried about infection due to the Bat Scare in the subway tunnel, which implies that animals aren't susceptible to the disease.
• Why did the Avengers decide to take on an entire horde of zombies without special protection/armour or even any support? Did they expect to take on the entirety of zombified New York by themselves? And why didn’t Iron Man keep to the air to avoid being swarmed?
  • It had only been 24 hours since the infection began when they intervened, lack of preparation and knowledge definitely played a part. Not to mention they were ambushed immediately.
    • The Avengers have already responded quickly and made better preparations for other menaces, and in less time. The only Doylist explanation is that they had to grasp the idiot ball so there could be an episode. The Watsonian… Each one of the avengers was holding an idiot ball?
    • Perhaps they weren't familiar with how zombies worked and couldn't adjust their tactics in time. Iron Man and Hawkeye seem like the only two who would devote time to making an anti-zombie plan before the outbreak and Hawkeye, while a Badass Normal, isn't a horde stopper.
  • That still leaves the question of, how did the zombies get through the Iron Man suit?
    • They ripped the nanotech off of his head. Thanos did it easily, a horde of zombies easily could with little to no effort.
    • How would it be little effort when zombies are still basically humans? How are hordes of humans comparable to Thanos and why would armor that makes a person an army into themself be vulnerable to hordes of people? That can't be excused by there just being numbers. Only one zombie would be able to latch on to try and rip the mask off.
    • We don't really see anything after everyone gets tackled, so there's a lot of room for possibilities. Zombie Pym could easily get inside the suit. Captain Zombie could probably rip the mask off. It's only an issue if you assume the zombies that tackled him were the ones that did all the work of turning him.
• How did Thanos get the Time Stone, Soul Stone and Power Stone? Did he sacrifice Gamora?
  • It stands to reason that a 3rd of "Infinity War" (Thor and the Guardians) still happened the same way as it took place in space. The time stone was just lying there on Bleaker Street after Strange had been devoured by Ants, so securing that wouldn't have been difficult. Not to mention that Maw and Obsidian had no trouble finding out where it was anyway. Before they were massacred.
• How did Thanos and his army manage to enter Wakanda if the barrier shield was still up? And better yet, how would the virus infect all of Wakanda?
  • He already collected the Power, Reality, Space, Time, and Soul Stones at this point. It's not hard to think that he can use the Power Stone to simply destroy the barrier. Or more simple: use the Space Stone to just teleport himself and his army inside the barrier.
• Why did Black Panther leave his own country to deal with a threat all in the Pacific Northwest, far away from his people? And why would Bucky leave as well? He seemed content to spend the rest of his days within Wakanda.
  • He could have decided that such an outbreak he couldn’t help but help but to offer resistance since he was opening the borders and the simple logic that something like this needed to be dealt with fast before it got potentially world ending. Plus why wouldn’t Bucky want to help? Especially if he heard Steve got claimed by the zombie virus?
• Is there any reason why Hope can't keep summoning swarms of flesh-devouring ants to fend off zombies?
  • It might be because every other time she encounters zombies in the episode, either there's an entire army of them and she wouldn't be able to summon enough, or they were on a moving train and the ants wouldn't be able to get to her quick enough.
• How did Thanos even get infected in the first place? He’s stronger than the Hulk, who we've seen is too physically resilient to be bitten (which makes sense. He can tank artillery shells, and was only killed in episode 3 by Hank Pym shrinking down and entering his body before Bruce transformed to enlarge him from the inside), and the best Tony was able to do when they fought was inflict a single scratch. Also, depending on when he was bitten, he would have had 4-5 of the 6 Infinity Stones (four if he was infected before collecting the Time Stone, five if he was infected afterwards). And the only being who might be able to pierce his skin and infect him is on another continent (and also seemingly can't be infected).
  • Tony on Titan was able to get a drop of blood out of him after some effort, you seriously think a population of zombies couldn't easily do the same? Hulk's skin is impenetrable, Thanos' skin we've been shown isn't entirely impenetrable.
    • Again, how is it justifiable just because it's an army? Tony barely got a single drop of blood with what's basically a super tank, and even as an army the hordes of zombies are still basically just people.
  • Who ever said he was bitten? The virus is spread by infected saliva getting into the bloodstream, but that doesn't necessarily require a bite wound. If somebody could manage to draw a drop of blood—and it's not unreasonable to believe that if Iron Man could, Wakanda, of all places, also could—the zombies could take it from there. It does raise some questions about the timeline of infection in Wakanda, but not much more than are already raised. The bigger question, perhaps, is what Thanos was even doing in Wakanda? He was there in Infinity War because the Mind Stone was there, but that's not (yet) the case in this story.
    • Presumably, he came to Wakanda because that's where the food (= surviving human population) was.
  • The zombies don't necessarily need to bite. It it's spread by saliva, they could just get their fluids into Thanos' mouth or eyes. He ingests and the virus infects him.
• How is Camp Lehigh still intact, given it was destroyed by HYDRA in 2014 during the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier?
  • Most likely it's a case of Series Continuity Error, or the divergence happens much earlier when Camp Lehigh was not destroyed (although that raises a host of other headscratchers on its own…)
  • Military camps are pretty big. The bunker Cap and Widow were in might have been destroyed but there would still be other areas in good shape.
• The outbreak started around 2 weeks before the episode when Janet brought back the quantum virus, and the Watcher even said that the entire West Coast (or something) was fully infected within a week. It's shown before that Heimdall's ability to perceive the Nine Realms is an innate ability, Bifrost or not. So he should've sensed something was very wrong with Earth during the outbreak, at the very least after Asgard was destroyed, when the Asgardians are already safe inside the refugee ship. So why did he still send Bruce to Earth, assuming the whole world might've already been overrun during Thanos' attack on the Asgardian refugee ship?
  • While yes, Heimdall’s otherworldly senses are innate, he has to be actively looking for something to see it. From the perspective of Heimdall, he was more focused on his main priority: the people of Asgard, Hela’s attack, and later the attack on their ship by Thanos. Heimdall definitely wasn’t looking for the possibility of a zombie outbreak on Earth, in his final moments he was focused on just getting Bruce Banner back alive. Besides, what was Heimdall going to do? Let Bruce stay in space and risk dying while Thanos is hunting the Infinity Stones, some of which he likely knows are on Earth, when he’s the one person he can safely send to warn them regardless of their circumstances?
    • Heimdall can see the Nine Realms at all times, and the zombie infection has been going on for two weeks. He has to have spotted it before that exact moment. We don't really know the status of the other realms beside Asgard and Midgard, but it seems like at least one of them must have been a safer place to send Bruce. Maybe wherever Lady Sif was this whole time, or Nidavellir (where the only who could recreate the power of the Bifrost still lives).
    • While Heimdall is capable of seeing the Nine Realms at all times, that doesn’t mean he’s always seeing them.
    • There’s another aspect to consider. In the Sacred Timeline, it was implied, if not outright confirmed, that Heimdall beamed Banner specifically to New York Sanctum so the latter could get in touch directly with Strange. Other than to have the best chance to warn Earth’s defenders much faster, it stands to reason that it’s because Heimdall and Strange (at least) must have known each other’s presence, given their respective abilities and roles. In this particular universe, Heimdall should’ve suspected something wrong if he couldn’t sense Strange, or if he sensed that Midgard’s Sorcerer Supreme is now “different” somehow.
• Why didn't Hope shed her Wasp outfit after figuring out she was infected? She knew it was a matter of time before she would zombify and the other zombies had no problem using the tech and skill sets. Whether another member of the party could wear it (she could have grown enough for it to fit, and both Banner and Parker quickly figured out suit based tech quickly in the sacred timeline) or not, we've seen just how dangerous Pym tech can be in the wrong hands.
  • Time was just simply not on their side, by the time Hope had the opportunity to shed the suit, she was already overrun by the horde, if she had shed it before walking through them, they wouldn't have been able to make it to Camp Lehigh. There was just no time. Without the suit, the only person of the group that could have possibly made it besides Hope was Peter.
    • The time to try it would have been after they figured out she was bitten on the train, before she walked them through the zombie horde. But most zombie stories rely on people being so wracked by grief / fear that they make mistakes, so it's not that out of place.
• Did Bucky die after being thrown away by Wanda?
  • It's quite possible Bucky managed to survive the fall (being an ex killing machine and all. Not to mention he had the shield which Steve used to survive a fall from possibly the same height in "Winter Soldier"), however, it’s likely he landed among the zombie horde, which the group couldn’t walk through without Hope’s help. Even if he fought some of them off, the zombies would eventually overwhelm him.
• Why did the Avengers just walk to their deaths in their scene? It doesn't matter if it was the Chitauri invassion, Ultron's outbreak or if they were storming an Hydra base: The Avengers never acted did a mindless entrance as in this episode: They just got out of the quinjet, wanket to the enemy (And with a slow walk) In any other medium, Tony would have jumped while the quinjet would be still flying in the air, dropped Clint on top of a skyscrapper and set him for "Watching for patrons and deviants" and Cap would at least have his shield raised! But of course, having the avengers behave as themselves, the zombies wouldn't have a chance and there wouldn't have been this episode.
• When did Janet get infected on the subatomic plain? As we saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp, she was normal and had been able to contact Hank and Hope through Scott. If she had been infected before that, she wouldn't have been able to communicate with them and they wouldn't have been able to attempt to get her (as we see in the film). And had she been infected by something and she started to notice something was wrong, she would have more than likely warned them before that.
  • Perhaps she got infected after she communicated with them.
    • Perhaps she got infected because whatever infected her got the drop on her because she'd been distracted communicating with them and it attacked just after she broke the connection.
    • Well, zombie Hank and zombie Janet apparently retained enough intelligence to use the vehicle to return to the macro world. So maybe zombie Janet had enough intelligence to still call for help.
  • It's possible given their many It Can Think moments that these zombies are MENTALLY capable of speech, just not PHYSICALLY given how they've decayed (especially since most of them don't even have lips).
• What was Thanos doing in Wakanda? There were no stones there.
  • It's clear he is there waiting for the final stone. We only don't know the prior circumstances, such as how he learned it is coming there.
  • Could be he came there simply because it was the last place on Earth with a significant population of human prey. The Quinjet showing up with the Mind Stone was just a lucky break for him.
• Exactly how smart are the zombies? Most of them seem pretty mindless, and they never spoke. But the Strange zombie was still able to use magic, which requires concentration. And the Janet and Hank zombies were apparently able to operate the quantum vehicle thing to return to the macro world.
  • On that note, can zombie Thanos still use the gauntlet? If so, what would he do with it? Would he still wipe out half of all life, or have his priorities changed? I suppose he could just keep creating people and eating them…
  • It's not unheard of for zombies to retain muscle memories of actions they did in life.
• Do the zombies actually need to eat to survive? It doesn't seem that way, so why did the Vision need to feed people to zombie Wanda?
  • He's in grief and wants to be with Wanda because he loves her. His actions aren't supposed to make that much sense.
  • Even if the zombies don't need to eat to sustain themselves, it's clear that they crave flesh anyway and, in the case of the zombified heroes, will use what they have at their disposal to get it. Vision was likely feeding Wanda for the dual purpose of keeping her close and keeping her power in check, lest she go using them in search of food.
  • If they're anything like the comic book versions, then they only need because the virus causes an irresistible compulsion to, not because they need it for sustenance. Even zombies reduced to a mere head still want to keep eating, despite not having anywhere for the food to go.
• Why didn't Hope just shrink to escape the horde after carrying the others across? As far as she knew, the cure was right there.
  • Perhaps she didn't have enough Pym Particles to shrink down after helping them. And since Hank is a zombie and time travel doesn't exist, there's zero way for the group to get more of them.
  • Why were they so sure Hope was going to die? Was it ever confirmed that a non-lethal bite eventually kills you?
  • Or she passed out from having grown huge before she even had a chance to shrink. Remember, Scott got woozy and disoriented pretty quickly after turning gargantuan in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• Spider-Man's goofy orientation video specified that you should wear long sleeves and other protective gear to avoid getting bitten. So… why did no one do that? Happy, in particular, was wearing short sleeves.
  • Given how goofy the orientation video was, and how everyone who appears in the video looks utterly done with Peter's antics when they appear, it could just be that they refused to take anything he's saying seriously. Their loss.
  • A better question is how would long sleeves even help? The zombies' teeth seem to be capable of tearing through human flesh like it's made of paper. I really don't think a thin layer of fabric is going to stop that.
• I get Spider-Man retaining his optimism and humor in the face of the apocalypse. But… putting a goofy orientation video together, for potential survivors who would already be well aware of the situation?
  • Maybe it's a coping mechanism or something to do to keep other people's spirits up, even if nobody's going to see it.
  • That, and it's a satirical nod to how Zombie Apocalypse stories overplay the Apocalyptic Log trope.
• Why, after hearing the Vision's transmission, did no one think to ask if it was a trap?
  • It's a Zombie Apocalypse. When there's a sign of hope, most people are desperate to act upon it as soon as possible, and likely aren't cynical enough to believe it could be a trap.
• How was Hank Pym able to shrink down after being zombified? The suit he was wearing didn't have shrinking capabilities, it was just for him to traverse through the Quantum Realm safely.
• If F.R.I.D.A.Y was still inside the Iron Man suit when Tony was infected, how come she didn't try to take manual control over it so that he didn't kill anyone as a zombie?
  • Maybe she had tried to at one point but the zombie Avengers were smart enough to just smash whatever computer her source code was residing in. Or maybe she just isn't programmed to even comprehend a zombie apocalypse.
• When Bruce is sent to earth at the start to warn everyone about Thanos before learning of the zombies it is said that events of Ant-Man and the Wasp occurred about two weeks ago which means that Scott's sentence of two years of house arrest ends then. But at the beginning of Avengers: Endgame when Clint is with his family before they get dusted he clearly still has the same ankle bracelet that Scott and is still on house arrest but it is clearly taking place at the same time that Avengers: Infinity War ended so how does that work. Is it Series Continuity Error, is it some multiversal drift where Clint and Scott had shorter sentences here than in the movies or did Clint have a slightly longer sentence for whatever reason?
  • In Ant-Man and the Wasp, after Scott’s house arrest ended, it seems at least a week passed before the Snap given that Scott was able to spend time with his family, he and his friends secured a deal at work, Hank and Janet were able to have their getaway vacation, and they were able to set up their Quantum Realm excursion. As for Clint, he would likely have had more charges against him than Scott, since while they both would have been charged for the airport fight, Clint would have received additional charges for breaking Wanda out of the Avengers Compound and illegally transporting her and Scott over international borders, thus he likely would have received a longer sentence. Not to mention they probably weren’t sentenced on the same day.
    • That makes sense especially the part about the sentence probably not happening on the same day.

Episode 6: What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?

• Why is T'Challa already the Black Panther at this point? Wasn't T'Chaka the Black Panther until his death in 2016?
  • In Civil War, T'Challa says "The Black Panther has been the protector of Wakanda for generations. A mantle, passed from warrior to warrior. And now, because your friend murdered my father… I also wear the mantle of king." This suggests that T'Chaka had already given up the mantle of Black Panther to T'Challa, while he remained king. A deleted scene in 'Black Panther'' makes this explicit. To quote the scene, "He told me he was too old to carry the mantle of Panther. He would pass it to me and just be king."
  • Given T'Chaka's age in Civil War, it's clear that he passed the Black Panther mantle to T'Challa years before 2016, likely because he feels himself too old for that.
• Does T’Chaka suspect Killmonger?
  • T'Chaka does not suspect Killmonger at all and believes he is a fallen son coming back to assist his people.
    • Still though, let’s take a look at the events leading up to Erik’s audience with the Wakandan royal family, more specifically from T’Chaka’s perspective. Your son, the heir to the throne and then current Black Panther, is suddenly and unexpectedly murdered under mysterious circumstances. Said murder has resulted in tensions rising between the U.S. and Wakanda. Then your nephew, the son of your brother you killed all those years ago, suddenly after this time shows up out of nowhere at your doorstep. With not only the corpse of the man who stole from you and your people, but also great insight and knowledge of the Americans’ invasion plan and the mechanics behind their robotic army. As a king and a former Black Panther himself, it seems that T’Chaka would be at least the tiniest bit suspicious of the huge amount of conveniences that all seem to be serving to benefitting N’Jadaka. As he appears to be at the center of all of it and is the only that seems to be reaping the greatest rewards.
    • Erik Killmonger is not only a Chessmaster but he uses False Flag Operation tactics to basically rule over Wakanda. It does make sense for T'Chaka to have suspicion, but Erik literally guilt tripped his Wakandan people (especially over T'Challa's death). So his actions seemed very brave and heartwarming to the family.
  • More than likely T'Chaka is too distraught over his son's death to be suspicious of Erik's motivations.
  • Killmonger's story also isn't that implausible. Basically, he's claiming that he'd been content to live as an American, albeit one who'd cherished his father's Wakandan heritage, until such time as Americans murdered the crown prince and were on the brink of invading his ancestral homeland. Disgusted by the actions of his onetime military and corporate superiors, he quit and changed sides, like how Wanda turned on Ultron and HYDRA once she learned they were villains.
• How exactly did JARVIS record Killmonger's betrayal? Did Rhodey have some kind of camera on him?
  • Tony had JARVIS do something similar in Iron Man 3. He could restore crime scenes through a variety of means.
    • Sure, but a public area that was bombed would likely have more available surveillance cameras for him to use than a beached boat run by arms dealers.
• Why did Killmonger reactivate the drones? He had already earned T'Chaka's trust because his plan worked. This gave him the chance to fight alongside the other Wakandans, but it also resulted in numerous casualties, and made it look like his plan didn't work.
  • If he didn't reactivate them, the plan might have looked like it worked too well. This way, it looks like his plan had merit, but unfortunately, Tony Stark/the U.S. prepared a failsafe, but that's okay because Killmonger is also courageous and willing to fight for Wakanda. Saving Okoye in the battle was the cherry on top in getting the royals' trust.
• Wouldn't Shuri, who has been shown to be at least as smart as Tony Stark and Bruce Banner and obviously knows how the shield works, have known far better than Killmonger and T'Chaka whether Killmonger's plan to let the drones in then reactivate the shield would work?
  • Smart as she might be, she's still just a kid at the time. Her parents are likely waiting for her to become a little more emotionally mature before putting her in charge of Wakanda's technology.
  • The shield did work to cut the drones off from their satellite controls.
• Why is the Black Panther suit bulletproof but vulnerable to sonic weapons? Especially when T'Challa and Shuri knew in advance he would be fighting Klaue?
  • The gun Killmonger used wasn't Klaue's. It was an upgraded version of Obadiah Stane's sonic taser from the first Iron Man movie (the weirdness with T'Challa and Rhodey's veins is its signature effect). It isn't just loud but paralyzes its target, something even T'Challa couldn't have anticipated. As for Shuri, she likely wasn't in charge of government R&D just yet on the account of her only being ten years old.
  • Plus, sonic weapons didn't seem to be MCU-Klaue's "trademark" until his hand was replaced by one, so Wakandans had no reason to think that you would need to be prepared for those when going after him.
• Why did they even need to let the drones into the shield? Did the drones have any way of getting through it?
  • It was part of Killmonger's Chessmaster plan to gain trust with Wakanda, and likely no but they can't be completely certain.
  • It also allowed Ross to briefly see the real Wakanda, which would definitely help to escalate the conflict, playing to Killmonger's favor.
  • And it puts the vibranium within the drones back into Wakanda's possession, thus denying outsider military forces access to one of the few resources with which to challenge Wakanda's own weaponry.
• Did anyone even inspect the crime scene where Tony died? Hard to believe Killmonger didn't leave any DNA or fingerprints anywhere. And if he wiped his fingerprints off the spear, wouldn't the lack of fingerprints tip them off, since the Wakandans would have no reason to bother?
  • Obviously Shuri did.
• After seeing Killmonger betray and murder his allies once already, wouldn't Klaue have had the sense to… not work with him?
  • Klaue betrays and murders his allies all the time too. In the film, he actually laughed when he realized how much Killmonger had screwed him. He is not a man who picks his friends based on if they are stable or safe.
  • Besides this instability, Klaue is also missing a huge piece of information: that Killmonger is actually N'Jadaka. In the Sacred Timeline, Klaue didn't learn this secret until the moment before his death, and here, he didn't learn it at all. As an American criminal, Killmonger has very little to gain by killing Klaue, because he would lose his most knowledgeable contact about Wakanda at a time when he's on the hunt for more vibranium. As part of the Wakandan royal family, N'Jadaka has a great deal to gain by killing Klaue (by earning Wakandan individuals' favor), which we see both in Black Panther and in this episode.
• How did Shuri, an eight-year old kid from Wakanda, get herself all the way to Pepper's office in California? Even if her parents allowed her to go to a foreign nation all by herself (which is highly unlikely), it seems really strange that she got into Pepper's office without any assistance and without drawing suspicion.
  • If bright-but-not-genius Killmonger was capable of wiping JARVIS's memory, then Shuri certainly should able to hack Stark's systems so well as to become the AI's new best friend.
• What was Erik doing in Afghanistan?
  • In Black Panther, it was mentioned that he served in Afghanistan.
• Why reinvent the US Military to wage a war on a third-world agrarian country? The general makes clear that nobody knew Wakanda was secretly a hyper-advanced nation state. Even after assuming control over Stark Industries, building and testing a legion of autonomous vibranium drones would realistically take ages and cost untold billions. Even if the military plans on building the drones anyway, why go through all that trouble to mobilize an untested weapon in a war that, if military intelligence held, the US would easily win?

Episode 7: What If… Thor Were an Only Child?

• So Thor & friends go to Earth to throw a party because Heimdall (his babysitter) doesn't pay much attention to it. Okay, but how did they even get there without him knowing? Literally his entire job is standing guard at the Bifrost, which is clearly how they arrived. And if he DID know they were going to Earth, that would wreck their entire plan, since he'd probably pay way more attention to it knowing Asgard's own prince was on it.
  • It is entirely possible that Heimdall does not actually give a shit. He isn’t actually a babysitter, his job is to guard Asgard and the Bifrost, so as long as Thor’s antics don’t interfere with his duties he has no reason to care. Even if Frigga asked him to supervise Thor, he might not be obligated to obey her the same way he does Odin and even then Heimdall has been known to disobey the spirit of his orders when it suits him. The Bifrost isn’t the only way off Asgard either. Thor could have used one of Loki’s Passages or just hitched a ride with the Grandmaster or one of the couple dozen other spaceships he showed up with and thus avoided drawing Heimdall’s attention that way. Or some combination of the two.
  • Thor might have told Heimdall he was on a "study trip" to learn about the Nine Realms. Even if Heimdall didn't believe it, he might be inclined to let it slide since (as noted above) it's not really his job.
• What threat does Ultron/Vision pose at the end there really? Considering that Loki established that (much like the comics), Infinity Stones don’t work and are rendered useless when they’re outside of their respective universe/timeline.
  • It seemed that the stones only didn’t work in the TVA.
    • Well, yes and no. It seems that how the stones function in relation to the TVA and alt. universes/timelines is twofold: In the case of the stones and TVA, it's like surfing the web within a building with Wi-Fi. Once you're beyond a certain radius (i.e. you exit the building), you can no longer have access to the Wi-Fi. With alt. universe/timelines however, that's more like trying to access a site's region locked material without a VPN.
    • The stones worked in different universes in Endgame.
    • Considering what was revealed by the TVA regarding the multiverse, the stones in Endgame likely counted as being from the same universe with any possible fractional differences being too small to affect their function.
  • Presumably, those stone are from that universe and quite dangerous. How Ultron and Vision showed up so soon in the timeline is another question.
    • Who's to say that the Ultron/Vision at the end there is from this timeline and not a variant/variants from another?
    • Since he is in that universe, it makes sense that he is from that universe. There’s nothing to really suggest he was from an alternate reality.
    • The following What If episode clearly shows that this is an Ultron from another universe. So, it shall be seen if the Infinity Stones actually work.
• Where is Dr. Selvig? This episode takes place in the same timeframe as the first Thor movie. Surely Selvig would have been interested in what was happening in Las Vegas since he was initially interested in the New Mexico incident. While Jane does call him at one point off-camera and she knows about SHIELD (Selvig told her about them in the first movie and presumably did so in this reality), one would think he would get a bit more hands-on.
  • Off enjoying a boilermaker?
  • While it does seem to be taking place roughly around the time of the first Thor movie, there's really no logical reason to assume it happens at exactly the same time.
• How was Ultron able to get the Soul Stone at the end? He would be literally incapable of performing the sacrifice needed to get it since he's very much The Sociopath.
  • It's hinted in Age of Ultron that he genuinely cares for Wanda and Pietro, so maybe he managed to sacrifice one of them.
  • Ultron also could have potentially taken the Soul Stone from Thanos after he sacrificed Gamora.
  • The following episode shows that he took it from Thanos after slicing him vertically with the Mind Stone.
• Why does Mjolnir still have the "worthiness" enchantment on it? Thor is able to hold Carol down by putting it on her chest. But Thor is clearly still the arrogant frat boy he was at the beginning of his first movie. He never went on his adventure in New Mexico and Asgard clearly has better relations with the Frost Giants in this timeline so the initial battle never happened.
  • Regardless of how immature and ignorant this Thor may be, one can't deny that giving anyone else other than the God of Thunder the worthiness of wielding Mjolnir could end in untold disaster. It's a safety precaution at best. Plus, given how proud Odin is, it's possible he enchanted it just so that no one else other than his beloved son and heir could wield it.
  • The Thor of the Sacred Timeline was the kind of guy who would declare war on an entire species over three of them attempting a burglary that was doomed from the start. This version of Thor is friends with everyone and just wants them to have a good time. It is very telling that he is able to invite the Frost Giants, the Sovereign, the Skrulls, at least one of Thanos's children, the Ravagers, and fuck-mothering Surtur to his party without anyone trying to kill each other. While Party Thor is far from perfect, he has proven himself to have the capacity to bring peace to the entire universe! And in the end, he also had the humility to admit that Jane was right to call his mother on him. If a guy like that isn't worthy of Mjolnir, I don’t know who is.
• Why isn't Carol Danvers not worthy enough to pick up the Mjolnir? Or was the Mjolnir not enchanted to be wielded by anyone who is worthy in this timeline?
  • Maybe Carol comes close to being worthy, but what holds her back is that she can sometimes be a little headstrong, often throwing punches first and asking questions later (in her defense, she was raised in Boston)
• How is it that Loki in this timeline is a fully grown Frost Giant, while his sacred timeline counterpart was a runt who, even as an adult, is no taller than a regular human/Asgardian? Sure his upbringing alone could not have caused such a huge difference in size?
  • They are called Frost Giants for a reason right. They are frozen giants. Also in Thor's original film, Odin adopted Loki and used Asgardian magic to transform his skin with normal Asgardian Physiology.
  • Potentially, the ultimate nexus event was Loki being born a normal-sized Frost Giant, which caused Odin to return him to Laufey rather than assume he was left to die as a runt.
• How long does it take to travel to midgard by bifrost? In all the films it seems like moments. Here we repeatedly cut back to Frigga travelling while the whole Earth is being cleaned. Is there an answer beyond rule of funny?
  • Probably Rule of Funny to show how quick everyone clean the place to avoid Frigga's wrath. Especially considering that everyone, even Surtur, seems to be scared of her.
  • Presumably, Heimdall saw that Thor was making an effort to clean up his own mess and decided to throw him a bone by slowing the Bifrost just enough that Frigga would only arrive while Thor was “teaching” everyone else about human cultures and whatnot.
• At the beginning when we see stills of Thor's and Loki's childhood in the Sacred Timeline, we see Loki using the Casket of Ancient Winters to freeze Thor. But how was he able to use it without revealing his Frost Giant nature? In the first Thor movie merely touching it for only a few seconds was enough to change his skin blue.
• Is Jane worried about Thor and his buddies trashing the planet or isn't she? She seems to go very quickly from "The last time something like this happened the planet was destroyed" to "Wow, a big blond guy, let's get matching tattoos", even before Thor says that the destruction was a total accident, and despite increasing evidence that they are at the very least going to leave Earth in a much worse state than they found it.
  • Jane gets distracted by ‘hunky blond charming alien is into me’ and probably figures she’s got time before things tip past the point of no return so she can spend one night partying it up before she has to be serious again. Fortunately, she’s right.
• In-universe and out, why wasn't Tony Stark in this episode? We know from canon Fury would go to him long before calling Captain Marvel, and he could approach Thor to talk to him without getting trampled. Plus, Tony's an only-child and former party boy himself so he would have been a good person to try to talk Thor down, which would also create interesting character interactions (admittedly, whether or not Tony would have already learned With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility depends on how you read the timeline of Iron Man 2 relative to Thor)

Episode 8: What If… Ultron Won?

• Why didn’t Uatu call for backup? I know that not all of the most famous and powerful cosmic/multiversal figures, entities, and beings from the original comics’ cosmology have been introduced to the MCU yet. But he could have at least reached out to the other Watchers (considering that we know they’re out there, as we saw them in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2).
  • The same Watchers that in the comics give him scorn for interfering too much? While there might not be animosity in the MCU, who knows if he thinks they are Lawful Stupid enough to not consider breaking their vow when called for help.
    • Further, he really didn't have time. As soon as he realized that Ultron could perceive him, it was already too late.
    • The REAL problem was that Uatu was holding the Idiot Ball in this episode. He's so wrapped up in his non-interference directive that he failed to realize an important pair of points: that once Ultron realized his existence and penetrated the barrier to confront him directly - the non-interference directive no longer applies. Also, since he is singularly responsible for Ultron's discovery of the Multiverse - he is no longer a 'Watcher' , but an active participant in the events. He has a responsibility to clean up his own messes… 'by any means necessary. '
• How did this universe’s Thanos get the Infinity Stones? And more importantly, where did he find them?
  • Well since we see Gamora die in battle with Ultron's army, he likely sacrificed Nebula to get the Soul Stone instead.
    • Midnight and Glaive could have found the planet and one sacrificed the other for it. Thanos sensing something happen to the Avengers if he was keeping an eye on the planet could have made him accelerate his plans.
    • And for the other stone on Earth, if Ultron was so successful, he probably could overpower the Ancient One and the rest of the rest of the sorcerers, leaving the Time Stone unguarded (it was probably the last one Thanos got before going for the Mind Stone with Ultron, although how he warped to Kamar-Taj, grabbed the stone, and then warped to Ultron without him or his drones noticing is another question entirely).
• Doesn’t all the stuff that went down between Ultron and Uatu in this episode contradict the ending of the last one?
  • In Uatu's perspective, the previous episode happened before and he went to this timeline to investigate how Ultron could get to other universes. He just didn't know he was the reason Ultron could be capable of that. In Ultron's perspective, this episode happens first for him while the previous episode's ending happens later after this episode. The events do take place, just not in the order that we see them.
    • But there is still a problem. In this episode, we know the Avengers were formed and that Thor was a member. We see his dead body just before Vision kills Stark. The previous episode had a different Thor from a timeline where he never joined the Avengers, which means he crossed over to another universe. This isn't so bad but we see the exact moment in which Ultron learned of the Multiverse and his first act crossing over was to fight the Watcher.
    • Yes, and from Ultron's perspective, his arrival in the "What If Thor Was an Only Child?" universe came after that, as explained above.
    • Once Ultron noticed Uatu, he might've tested warping to another universe with his powers, thus he successfully went to Party Thor's one. And then he tried going to the "space between spaces" where Uatu dwells. Given once the Watcher returns to Party Thor he's fighting drones in a still intact Earth, seems like it went this way (Infinity Ultron came, left his sentries and went back to searching for the Watcher).
• Why does Ultron have a cape? The Vision made himself a cape in order to mimic Thor, his biggest inspiration for heroism at the time. Presumably, Ultron would harbor no such sentiment.
  • Given this one still wanted an organic form, it's not a stretch to think that he wanted to emulate the heroes he was surpassing.
  • Ultron isn't above grandstanding.
  • Doylist answer: Vision's CGI model already existed and had the cape, Ultron in the Vision body just reuses it. Also it looks badass.
  • Perhaps as a mockery of the concept of a superhero. To quote him from Age of Ultron: "In the past, people have looked to the skies and seen hope. I'll take that from them first." He doesn't just want to kill people, he wants to undermine the very idea of a superhero. What better way to do that than to take on the appearance of a classic Cape, but bring death and destruction instead of hope?
• Hasn't it been established in Loki (and in the comics long before that) that the Infinity Stones don't work outside of their respective universe? By rights, Ultron shouldn't suddenly be Robo-God.
  • Loki only established that they do not work in the Time Variance Authority Office, which is outside of space, time, and the multiverse. It's unknown if this is because the Stones don't work outside of their own dimension, outside of the multiverse, or if He Who Remains just figured out how to nullify the stones.
  • The stones in Endgame worked in different universes.
  • Endgame stones were in the same universe just later in time to my reading, but the film is very vague about when new universes are created by time travel, even more so taking Loki into account.
  • The comics confirm though that Infinity Stones only work in their home universe, and we know that the MCU is Earth-199999 of the main Marvel Multiverse. So unless that got retconned and the MCU is now its own seperate multiverse with different rules for the Stones, they shouldn't have worked outside Ultron Infinity's home universe.
    • To be fair, that designation isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as comic earth designation. The MCU has been shown to be operating on its own rules separate from the regular Marvel Multiverse for a while now. The separate timelines within one universe when generally going back in time in the comics creates another universe (said several times throughout the comics) are a big example. Another is there being an MCU TVA and a Mobius when there should be one TVA for the Marvel Multiverse as a whole. It’s never been said in an MCU work that the Stones don’t work in another universe so it’s not a thing to be worried about.
  • Further, they worked in Endgame because it was one universe and timeline. Only now are there alternate universes for the comics rule to even be applicable in the first place.
  • The MCU has differed from the comics in the past, so the rules in the comics may not hold true in the MCU. The only thing explicitly confirmed in the MCU is that the stones don’t work in the TVA the same way Loki’s powers didn’t.
  • According to Word of God, that rule still applies, but it doesn't stop Ultron from using the Stones to enhance himself specifically. Since he himself is from his own world.
    • Word of God is likely wrong here, because A. Otherwise the Watcher would have exploited that to fight Ultron in a weakened state B. if the stones are still that useful outside their own dimensions, they're certainly not to be used as paperweights, and C. I fail to see how creating energy blasts or using telekenesis to destroy the mountain counts as modifying oneself. It is, however, explicitly stated in the episode that each set of stones are different across the multiverse, so Ultron's stones likely don't have the same rules. This would also explain how Ultron could One-Shot Thanos with the Mind-stone, when our Iron Man's armor could withstand blasts from the Power-stone.
    • A) How would Uatu be able to exploit it when Ultron's already kicking his ass? B) Unless you're actually from that dimension, the Stones very much would be useless to the TVA, as they require someone from that universe to actually be able to use them (and of course, as Ultron said, each universe and its Stones are unique, so it's possible that loophole isn't something that can be used for every version of them). C) He's empowering himself, not modifying himself. He's using the Stones to give himself those powers as opposed to using them directly against the rest of the multiverse.
    • A) didn't they stage the final fight in Infinity Ultron's own dimension? B) Fair enough, though there'd still be the risk of someone from the stones' original dimension picking them up if they're just left around on TVA desks. C) Also fair enough, I suppose one could consider giving oneself a certain power using a power source, then using that power an action distinct from using said power source to achieve the same result, but it's a massive loophole (to the point of just being a regular hole) that means the stone are still massively useful outside their home reality (just use them to give yourself the powers of complete control over time, space, power, reality and souls) and that maybe Thanos should have won that fight with Darksied.
    • A) Yes, and? They staged the battle in universes already devoid of life to minimize collateral damage, I'm not sure how else Uatu was supposed to exploit that vulnerability anyway? B) There's also the factor of potential backlash from the Stones themselves. Ultron was only able to get around that because his body could cope, but most others wouldn't have been able to. C) Besides what I mentioned about how not every set of Stones would necessarily have that loophole, it's also not exactly a loophole many people would consider. If you already knew about the Stones limitation in other universes or didn't and found that you couldn't use the Stones to affect other realities, you wouldn't necessarily think that using the Stones to empower yourself instead would work.
    • They could have staged it in literally any other universe to limit what Ultron could do with the stones. As for bodies coping with it; sure, Ultron/Vision's body is far from the most durable in the universe, but it was specifically built to use an infinity stone, so not everyone might survive using them that way (does that mean an unlucky visitor to the TVA could end up blowing up the TVA and killing themselves if they tried to use the paper weights?) As for it being an unconventional use; I suppose, but it's not an unimaginable one, and there have been Infinity Stone users smarter than this version of Ultron throughout the history of Marvel comics (Thanos's intellect is supposed to be nearly unrivalled.) If anything, this version of Ultron would have limited knowledge of the Infinity Stones, and especially their trans-dimensional properties, and seems to suffer from overly-simplistic, machine-like thinking, which helps the heroes beat him.
• Why does Ultron go through the trouble of individually destroying every planet he finds to extinguish all life in the universe? What's stopping him from using the Infinity Stones to make every living being die instantly, like Thanos did (halfway at least) with the Blip?
  • Because that's not as fun.
  • He's a machine. He wants to fulfill his programming, but also doesn't have anything further beyond that. Doing it slowly allows him to do so for much longer.
    • The episode strongly implies he only realized that problem after he'd seemingly killed everything. And if he did realize it beforehand, and was capable of fulfilling his primary goal in a less-efficient manner to extend it, could he not decide to bring "peace" to the universe one being at a time (or any other method that would extend his mission more than, at most, a few years)?

• If Ultron in Vision's body was capable of effortlessly bisecting Thanos, why didn't Vision do so in the Sacred Timeline?
  • Four reasons. One, Vision is a pacifist at heart, and while he will kill if necessary it is not his first choice. Further he won't kill in such a way as to make a target suffer, which highlights another reason why it is a bad idea to put Ultron in his body. Second, he was still recovering from the injury he suffered earlier, he might not have been able to do so even IF he was willing to. Three, he would much rather destroy the Mind Stone and remove any further risk to the universe, even if it would mean his own death. Four, according to Word of God, Thanos in this episode was overconfident and had his guard down. Had he been prepared for a fight, it would have gone very differently.
    • Word of God also implied that Ultron killing Thanos and getting the Infinity Stones was part of the episode's premise, so it's effectively safe from criticism under the Anthropic Principle; like Peggy Carter getting the super serum because she stayed to watch or the Ravagers picking T'Challa out of a literal billion children up, it wouldn't happen in every or even most universes with the observed established circumstances, but it happened in this one.
• In this reality, Ultron gets the vibranium body and manages to get the nuclear codes rather than turning Sokovia into a meteor. He launches all the world's nukes and kills the majority of the Earth's population. Hasn't Odin been living on Earth in a retirement home since Thor: The Dark World? Which would mean he was on Earth when the nukes launched. With Odin most likely being in New York at the time of the attack he would have been killed and Hela would have been released. Where was Hela during Ultron's attack on Asgard?
  • Why do you assume a majority of the world's population was killed? Literally everyone was killed offscreen except for Black Widow and Hawkeye and he has been living in retirement AFTER the events of Thor: The Dark World. So the question about Hela's location should be completely disregarded. Even so, Hela would still be dead on Asgard since it was destroyed in a blink of an eye.
    • I assume a majority of the world's population was killed due to Ultron using all the world's nuclear bombs on the planet. Movies like Threads and The Day After are practically lessons for why that's a scenario we don't want. Clint's pessimism about continuing the fight in the episode makes the most sense. Even if Clint and Natasha manage to shut down Ultron, they still have to deal with living on a planet that is absolutely poisoned by radiation. It just makes sense that Odin would have died when the nukes went off, considering that major cities such as new york would have been targets. Just wondering where was Hela when Ultron attacked Asgard. Even though it would have ended with her death anyway.
    • Hela didn't have a way to get back to Asgard. In Ragnarok, Loki is the one who called for Asgard to send the Bifrost, and then she kinda just hijacked it. In this world, she was probably stuck on Norway and then died later.

• Have we ever seen Uatu having to get his hands dirty and fight a threat himself like this in any other version? (Apart from in Marvel Heroes where he briefly clashed with Doctor Doom but was overpowered by the Cosmic Cube)
  • Not to such a degree where he actually fights. Typically he'll work with heroes and villains to enact some plan or gambit. This is uncharted territory in terms of him, and yet given how often he bends the rules also not out of character for him either. Basically, its AWESOME.
  • What if? (the comic) #41. What if the Avengers (the 1960s team from the Silver age) fought Galactus? It's basically The Coming of Galactus, in a world where the Fantastic Four died in their origin story and never existed as such. Let the Watcher explain the situation
  Uatu: The Avengers were Earth's best hope! But now they are all down… soon, even Thor! I had hoped that the Silver Surfer would see the goodness in man, but he seems more intent to carry out his master's will than ever! Even Iron man has failed me — he will not return with the Ultimate Nullifier! Then, my course is all too clear! There is only one way to avoid Earth's total destruction! I must do what no watcher before me has ever''' done!

• After he gets his hands on all six Infinity Stones, Ultron is, similar to Strange Supreme, powerful enough to hear and see Uatu. If acquiring all six stones enables someone to do this, why wasn't Thanos able to see or hear him after getting the stones at the end of Infinity War?
  • Thanos wasn’t concerned with expanding his consciousness and/or pondering his purpose. His goal was to get the stones, blip away half of all life, and retire. There was literally no reason for him to become aware.
  • For one thing, Ulton and Strange Supreme only became aware of Uatu because he was specifically there, watching them, in Ultron's case, talking to himself about the events he was watching. Perhaps Uatu wasn't watching Thanos when he had the stones, or simply Thanos was too distracted prior to destroying the stones to notice him.
    • For another it was quite some time after getting the stones that Ultron noticed Uatu, perhaps the stones effects increase over time, Thanos only had a complete gauntlet for a few days at most.
    • It also seems implied that it's less a matter of Ultron's consciousness, and more due to the fact that his universe is simply *so quiet* that he can hear the only other life form who is talking about the universe. He's not omniscient, he's just now in such a silent universe that what exists *outside* of it is noisy in comparison.

• If Ultron managed to destroy the entire Earth by nuking everything, how are Clint and Nat able to return to the surface and survive there? Wouldn't the radiation poison them? And with that in mind, how would there be any cell signal to crank call Ultron if all the data towers are destroyed?
  • 1) This might be a reach, but in at least one continuity a pre-Hulk Bruce Banner had designed a gamma bomb that packed all the power of a nuke but none of the fallout, so it's possible something like that happened in this timeline. 2) Most likely her phone was connecting to a network of automated Starktech satellites rather than data towers.
    • So apparently the U.S. completed the Gamma bomb, then decided to hand it out for free to every other country?

Episode 9: What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?

• When the Guardians of the Multiverse meet up with the Black Widow from Ultron's universe, Captain Carter gains her trust by saying her father's name was Ivan. That means not only does the Post Apocalypse version of Nat know her father's name, so does the Nat who lives in Carter's universe. The problem is, the Sacred Timeline version of Nat didn't know her father's name until Red Skull told her in Endgame. Neither one of these Widows would have had the chance to go to Vormir and talk to Red skull.
  • They are not the Widows from the Sacred Timeline, they could've found a way to discover in their alternate universes - the Ultron version even was in a KGB facility, so her finding the Red Room registers on all recruits before Dreykov went rogue could be possible.

• How was Killmonger able to use the Infinity Stones? Thanos and the Hulk were severely crippled by their use of them despite having powerful armor to contain the stones, and Tony Stark outright died from using them to save the universe. Considering that Killmonger is just a Badass Normal human like Stark, how did he harness their power without keeling over?
  • Killmonger was using them against a handful of opponents, as compared to Tony using them against an army and Thanos and Hulk using them on a literally universal scale.
  • The Heart Shaped Herb likely also made him more durable than Tony.
  • Furthermore, he assimilates the armor and chest-plate that Ultron wore, which was presumably designed to withstand/redirect the power of the Stones, much like both Infinity Gauntlets; the vibranium Panther Habit he wore underneath, with its canonical power to absorb energy, could also be further protecting him.
  • Killmonger only had five of the six stones; the mind stone was still in Vision's skull. That probably lowered the stress by quite a lot.
  • Finally, Killmonger didn’t actually do anything with the stones. It’s made clear multiple times in the MCU that there’s a world of difference between holding a stone and actually using it. It’s entirely possible that he had no idea what kind of strain the stones could or would place on his body if he tried.
  • Another factor is that Killmonger isn't from the Stones' universe, so its entirely possible he can't channel their power through himself, which would cause that fatal burn out, and thus can only channel them through the armor.

• How did the Episode 3 timeline's Loki get the Mind Stone scepter? Since the timeline diverged during the events of Thor, this Loki would have never fallen off the Bifrost and come into contact with Thanos, who gave him the scepter in the Sacred Timeline.
  • Presumably, that universe's Thanos never got the Mind Scepter.
    • That still doesn't explain how Loki has it.
    • Loki has a vast knowledge of life in all the Nine Realms, this is why he is able to get past Heimdall and his Omni-Senses. Loki has a good set of Asgardian magic skills and a vast array of tricks.
  • Maybe Thanos contacted him on Earth to bring him the Space Stone, and in return tipped him off that Captain Marvel had arrived on Earth.
  • Or maybe, in that universe, it was the Other who led the Chitauri in their invasion of Earth, and (ironically) it was Loki and his Asgardian warriors who kicked their butts to defend their newly-conquered turf. He then claimed the Mind Scepter as one of the spoils of war.

• If the planet that the Guardians of the Multiverse use to distract Ultron from his conquest has no life on it, how can they breathe?
  • The specific wording was that there was not enough intelligent life, meaning there's still likely something living out there, including plants to generate a breathable oxygen atmosphere and animals and microorganisms to support a stable ecosystem.
  • Even if the planet was rendered utterly lifeless by Ultron, it could still have an oxygen atmosphere for some time before the oxygen got locked up in various chemical reactions.

• Is there any particular reason why they specifically picked the Soul Stone to steal as part of their plan?
  • While it's entirely possible that T'Challa merely snagged the first one he grabbed, it's entirely possible that it was planned since it's the least dangerous of the stones. First, remember that the Stones only work properly in their universe, and that Ultron was using a Loophole Abuse to empower himself and his weapons, meaning that the Guardians could also likely do the same. Second, the Guardians of the Multiverse all had plenty of time to get the rundown on their abilities from those with the knowledge (Uatu, Strange Supreme and Gamora). With that in mind, let's go down the list.
    • The Space Stone has a lot of power behind it, and it has an empowering ability for weapons. With this in mind, it's possible that Ultron kept a tighter hold on this one, since it would provide a good chunk of his power.
    • The Mind Stone, while not capable of brainwashing unless willed, has shown to be able to subtly influence and heighten tensions, possibly resulting in conflict to the team.
    • In addition, the Mind Stone is embedded in Ultron's forehead, not just slotted into his armour, which means that T'Challa would likely have been unable to take it even if it had been the optimal Stone to remove.
    • The Reality Stone saps the life force of those that are bonded to it.
    • The Power Stone violently destroys all organic life that it comes into contact with, especially if the user isn't strong enough.
    • The Time Stone nearly fractured all of reality when Strange used it in his own film during the time loops. Besides, they already have a Time Stone courtesy of Strange Supreme.
    • The Soul Stone on the other hand, has never properly shown its abilities before. It's implied that it was the Stone that gave Thanos the ability to wipe out half of the universe's population (as it has the ability to control life and death), but since the Stone's full power doesn't work in an alternate universe, this is pointless. All that is known is that sacrifice is required to take it from Vormir in the first place. And since it has already been taken by Thanos before Ultron claimed it, this issue is non-existent.
    • With all this in mind, the Soul Stone was arguably the safest one to snag without any repercussions.
  • It's not just the one he grabbed in the moment since Captain Carter specifies that the plan is to get the Soul Stone. But, from what we see, the Infinity Crusher appears to be powered by the Soul Stone.
  • I assume the Infinity Crusher was supposed to be introduced in the postponed Tony and Gamora episode. It may have had more detail on how it works.

• How was Zola able to delete Ultron so easily?
  • This is a general trope of man prevailing over machine. The fact remains that no matter how much of an advanced AI Ultron is, it pales in comparison to the miracle that is the human brain. An AI will normally go for the most straightforward solution, but a human brain's creativity can think outside the box. Hell, Ultron claims he could destroy all of the Guardians of the Multiverse with a single thought (they were back in his universe, not limiting the Stones), yet he didn't.
  • Strange was protecting them from that.
  • Zola might have a better understanding than Ultron about the workings and vulnerabilities of a cybernetic intelligence, given his much longer experience of being one. This is especially true if Zola created, or at least oversaw the creation of, the Brain Uploading system that preserved his consciousness.

• Didn't Ego need to bring Quill to himself for his powers to work? If he can activate the destructive method on the spot, why doesn't he go to his children personally, instead of relying on space pirates to do the job?
  • Ego's powers wane the longer he's away from his world. Presumably this one hasn't spent as much time away, and thus was stronger because of it.
  • After Yondu failed to bring Peter to him, he might have decided that he needed to take care of it himself even if it meant being at less than 100% power.
  • Or, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "Can't someone else do it?"
    • Ironic, given that this universe diverged because Yondu delegated a the task of finding Peter to underlings who botched it.

• There's a continuity error involving the zombies in this episode. As Captain America and The Falcon are among the horde. Even though they were killed off in the episode they featured in. So, how does this fit in with their timeline, or did Strange just resurrect them in a sense for this purpose, if that was possible?
  • Strange Supreme does possess the Time Stone, so he could’ve easily summoned the zombies he needed from the time before they were killed. Alternatively, this Strange has absorbed a lot of power by this point, including the power of resurrection, as he used it to bring back Christine. A couple of undead creatures probably would be even easier to revive than her.
  • It's possible he pulled it from a slightly different Zombies timeline. In the Zombie world we see, there's an Undead Thanos holding the Infinity Stones. You'd want to be very certain not to bring that guy through and make your problems worse.

• How does Post-Apocalyptic Black Widow have Clint’s bow and the Virus Arrow when both were last seen in the possession of Clint, who got incinerated in the explosion in Episode 8?
  • They presumably had safe houses and places to store gear when they weren't using it. He presumably had an extra computerized arrow that Widow put Zola into.

• How did Ultron's and Strange's Infinity Stones work outside of their own realities? Isn't it established that outside their own universe the stones are little more then paperweights?
  • Them being paperweights was only established to be the case in the TVA’s realm, which seems to be able to remove powers in general, since they made Loki powerless.
  • As mentioned above, according to Word of God, Ultron is using a loophole to get around the "Infinity Stones can only be used in their own universe" by channeling the power of the Stones into himself when outside his universe. Presumably, Strange Supreme is using a similar loophole with his own Time Stone.

• Before deleting Ultron, Zola mentions he finally has legs after a long time. Why does he say that? He had legs in the previous episode once Hawkeye and Black Widow uploaded him into an Ultron Sentry.
  • Legs promptly shot off. And who knows how long between episodes it took, Nat even managed to reupload Zola into an arrow and fly from Siberia to New York.

• Where was Rhodey during the Asgardian fight at the end? Tony died in the Ep. 3 universe after Rhodey stole the Mk.II armor, and I doubt Stark dying would stop Hammer from building the War Machine and the Hammer Drones. Hell, Hammer'd likely use the invasion as the perfect excuse to show off and make himself a hero.
  • Maybe he was somewhere offscreen.

• How did Star-Lord T'Challa know that Erik Stevens was his cousin? He's spent most of his life in space and so barely knows his close family, much less his secret cousin left behind in Oakland in The '90s.
  • It's possible that T'Challa's absence caused T'Chaka to act differently when it came time to confront N'Jobu and thus Erik wasn't kept a secret and T'Challa could have found out about him when he reunited with his family.
  • Or maybe N'Jobu was recalled to Wakanda to aid in the search for his nephew, and was permitted to bring his son with him since T'Chaka now understood the anguish of being separated from one's child. In which case, T'Challa/Star Lord may have become fast friends with his own universe's Eric, same as he's pals with the likes of Taserface and Thanos.
  • He (Erik) was wearing the Black Panther's costume. Even without context and being out of touch with his family T'Challa would surely recognise it (T'Chaka was wearing his version of it during T'Challa's flashback) so presumably T'Challa asked who he was to be wearing the Panther's costume and Erik told him he was his cousin off-screen.

Episode 11: What If... Peter Quill Fought the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?

• If the threat posed by Peter was so bad that the USSR was willing to team up with the USA, why didn't they also send Red Guardian? He was an active state-sponsored superhero at the time, and an additional enhanced soldier would have been potentially useful.

Episode 17: What If… The Avengers Assembled in 1602?

• Why does Tony not have any Iron Man armor? The Forerunner came from Avengers: Infinity War.
• How are the Yellowjackets and Scott shrinking? The sizeshifting tech is more advanced than a normal Arc Reactor.
• Who are these Yellowjackets?
• What empowers Hulk? In The Incredible Hulk, the radiation was on purpose.
• Why is Happy Hogan the Freak? Is this universe also the “Saved Christmas” universe, but why would the writers do two episodes in the same season that focus on the same universe?
• Why are Hela and Loki alive? The Forerunner came from the fight with Thanos.
• If the gem in the scepter is the Time Stone, where's Doctor Strange?
• If the effect of the Forerunner’s Time Travel is affecting characters who were in space at the time (Red Skull, Iron Man), then where are the Guardians of the Galaxy?
  • In space.
    • Red Skull, Thor, Hela, Loki, and Tony all got sent to Earth, though.