YMMV / What If…? S1E3 "What If… The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Hank's murderous insanity entirely driven by grief? In Ant-Man, he tells Scott that he can't wear the Ant-Man suit anymore, saying it has "taken a toll" on him. Could his continued use of Pym Particles in this timeline be affecting his mind, as unstable particles influenced Darren Cross in the film?
  • Does Loki really want to avenge Thor's death or is he doing it because he fears the people of Asgard would rebel against his inaction, or is he using it as a casus belli to take over Earth? Or some mix of the above?
    • It's also possible that given this happens during the events of Thor Loki may have been pushed over the edge by unwittingly arranging events that led to his brother's death, much like his contribution to Frigga's death in Dark World and mixed with his emotional turbulence at the time he just lost it and is misplacing his aggression in conquering Earth.
    • Showing by his track record in the MCU, Loki has shown repeatedly to put his own self-interests above his loved ones, even if part of his motivation is to avenge them, so it is probable that while he wants to avenge Thor, he mainly wants to take over Earth. He still took the opportunity to take the throne of Asgard after Frigga’s death and he wanted to usurp the Grandmaster’s position over helping save his people.
  • Some fans suspect that Hank was actually working with Loki all along, which is why he calls killing Thor a "favor".
• Epileptic Trees:
  • This episode, which sees Loki successfully taking over the world, has some convinced it's the origin of "President Loki" seen in Loki.
  • Hope being killed during a mission in Odessa has some speculating that she was killed by the Winter Soldier in an encounter that Natasha survived in the Sacred Timeline.
• Genius Bonus: Loki responding to the "Pound of flesh" by demanding the whole body comment echoes how, in Norse Mythology, he weasled out of a bargain of his head in a very similar way to how the former was resolved in The Merchant of Venice.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Fury's comments about how Clint would never have killed himself willingly because of the existence of his family sting quite a bit more after the eighth episode has Hawkeye do exactly that, in part because he lost his entire family to a nuclear apocalypse caused by Infinity Ultron.
• He Really Can Act: After previously portraying the character in a Robot Chicken sketch, Lake Bell shows that while she's no Scarlett Johansson, she certainly can play Black Widow seriously here. During the events of this episode, she nails Natasha's stoic Consummate Professional personality from the Sacred Timeline, while being able to give her some vulnerability, particularly when Clint is revealed to be dead.
• Ho Yay: Coulson and Hawkeye both comment on how gorgeous Thor's hair is and Coulson notes that Thor smells like lavender even as he's decomposing. Coulson later admits to Natasha that his S.H.I.E.L.D. password is "#-Steve-Steve-Steve-I-heart-Steve-0704". The second example becomes even stronger when you realize that "0704" refers to July 4th, which is Steve Rogers' birthday.
• Magnificent Bastard: "King" Loki shows himself to be just as cunning and competent a god as in the Sacred Timeline. Arriving on Earth after Thor's death, Loki decimates the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents sent against him before parlaying with Nick Fury to discuss finding Thor's killer. Disguising himself as Fury and luring out the murderer, Hank Pym, Loki surprises and brutalizes Pym in a duel, taking him down and leaving him to be arrested. Without ever losing his cheery disposition, Loki then summons his armies of Asgard and conquers all of Earth with ease, taking advantage of the weakened state Pym left it in, and is ultimately only beaten by the interference of the Watcher much later, after Loki has nearly taken down all of S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as Earth's last defenders.
• Moral Event Horizon: This timeline's Hank Pym, driven mad by the death of his daughter during a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, crosses the line when he decides to take his anger out on several unrelated superheroes and willingly screws over the entirety of Earth just to get revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury for putting Hope In Harm's Way. He justifies the assassination of all of the Avengers by saying Fury would have led them to their own deaths and made them fight the battles Fury was too much of a Dirty Coward to fight himself.
• Older Than They Think: Some reviews criticized the Arc Welding of Iron Man 2, Thor and The Incredible Hulk (2008) as all taking place within the span of five days of each other as feeling like it was a forced narrative decision made for the sakes of this series. The problem with that criticism is that it wasn't. The idea of these movies taking place mere days after each other has been in the MCU's narrative since 2010, as Iron Man 2 has multiple allusions to both The Incredible Hulk and Thor, and was a deliberate decision by the writers to show the films' events running semi-concurrently with one another. And the five day structure is an Internal Homage to Fury's Big Week, a prequel comic for The Avengers (2012) that showed events of these films and expanded on this timeline over the course of the same five days.
• Salvaged Story: For fans of Phil Coulson who were disappointed that the character never interacted with any of the major characters in the MCU at large after Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., seeing him get an expanded role during the events of Fury's Big Week in this timeline was very satisfying to see. Doubly so in that he actually survives the events.
• Special Effects Failure: General Ross' mouth is animated in a way that doesn't always match up with his voice.

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