‘What If…? – Season 3’ Episode One Recap: “What If…the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?”

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the first episode of What If…? – Season 3. 

It’s no secret that What If…? is Marvel’s biggest wasted opportunity. Instead of delivering on the promise of stories that can’t be told in live-action that present a world of ‘endless possibilities’ in the ever-expansive multiverse, Marvel Studios always wants to tie it to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe by culminating each season with an Avengers-like battle and transitioning its animated characters to live-action, most notably the insistence on Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell). 

With Atwell reprising her role in Avengers: Doomsday, one will clearly think she’s not just playing Peggy Carter but another variant of Cap that seemingly won’t be killed off after an expansive battle in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Instead of fully separating it from the wider MCU, its insistence on focusing on characters we know and love offers some rather middling results. It’s why I’m not as bothered by the series ending with a third season compared to if it was significant appointment viewing like X-Men ‘97 was earlier this year. 

But concluding a neverending story full of so many creative possibilities with only three seasons seems too early. The jury will still be out on that front since there are seven more episodes to go, which will be released daily from December 22 to December 29. Marvel also botched the show’s release and would instead dump the final season when most people aren’t at home and are visiting their friends and family to celebrate the end of the year. 

So things weren’t looking good for the third season of What If…? However, the first episode, titled “What If…the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?” is precisely the type of wild stuff you’d only see in a What If…? Comic, imagining the Gamma War between the remaining Avengers, now comprised of Captain America (Anthony Mackie), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Melina Vostokoff (Kari Wahlgren), Nakia (Brittany Adebumola), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), and Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac) fighting an even larger version of The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). 

Through the narration of The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) and an 80s-styled cold open (a refreshing change of pace from the middling animation of the series), we learn that the original six Avengers were killed in trying to stop a mutation caused by Bruce Banner himself, who wanted to get rid of “the other guy” by accidentally bombarding himself with far too many gamma radiation. Known as the “Apex,” the creature has created its own army of monsters, which the Mech-Avengers now track.

Director Stephan Franck visualizes a Pacific Rim-esque Jaeger vs. Kaiju battle, where the Apex has been repelled for over ten years but now returns, stronger than ever, with an army to destroy the world. The Avengers attempt to defeat them individually but are overpowered. With the other team members reluctant to ask for help, Sam asks Bucky to track down Banner’s location, who has been hiding for the past ten years on a remote island. 

Funnily enough, how Franck and writers Ryan Little, A.C. Bradley, and Bryan Andrews introduce Banner’s relationship with Wilson is plucked straight out of the opening scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Yes, Sam says, “On your left,” as Bruce is running, and their friendship is poignantly deepened to a point where he tries desperately to help him by talking about the elephant in the room. However, this proves futile when he eventually transforms back into The Hulk again, forgetting the most human part of himself. 

When Sam eventually reunites with Banner, the doctor does not want to be involved in battling his own creation but tells Cap of the “Mighty Avenger Protocol,” which assembles all individual mechs into one to fight off the Apex. Of course, Banner will not sit idly by and let the Avengers duke it out on their own, which becomes unsurprising when he eventually shows up to the battle and helps them defeat the Apex and his army. 

The action is the clearest the show has so far been in representing large-scale battles with cinematic panache, and some of it is surprisingly cathartic. However, it’s nowhere near as long as it should be to help us appreciate this unique but enjoyable blend of genres that will likely grow even crazier as the episodes progress to the biggest crossover this animated offering has seen. But the first episode of this new season is isolated enough to give us tangible stakes rooted in emotion that the key jangling feels entirely secondary for the overarching multiverse. Still, there are a few more stories that The Watcher wants to tell us this holiday season, and we should let him tell whatever he wants…until time runs out. 

The first episode of What If…? – Season 3 is now available to stream on Disney+.