Three days into the second season of Disney+’s What If…? has scored Marvel their best Rotten Tomatoes ratings of the year. According to Comicbook, the animated series has etched the highest Tomatometer rating for an MCU property in 2023. As of three episodes released, the series has an RT rating of 92%. This surpasses the score for this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 which had an 82% rating.
Compared to the other properties this year, What If…?’s second season is in league of its own. Marvel’s two other films this year – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania and The Marvels – both scored below average expectations with 46% and 61%, respectively. And Marvel’s fellow limited series, Secret Invasion, tanked with a 53% rating.
What If…? is based on a series of Marvel comics that explored Earth’s mightiest heroes in alternate storylines, respectfully introducing the multiverse. The show stars Jeffery Wright (American Fiction, Westworld) as the Watcher, a celestial being who observes these many threads with the sworn oath to never, ever interfere. In the first season, this oath is broken as the Watcher witnesses a timeline where Ultron possesses the Infinity Gauntlet. After defeating the Avengers, the powerful being became aware of the Watcher and the many timelines swearing to eliminate them all. With the help of a very different Dr. Strange, the Watcher eventually subdued the threat, changing the face of the multiverse forever.
Season two started exploring alternate narratives with characters from the galactic side of Marvel. Episdoe one imagined if Nebula, free from a defeated Thanos, would have joined the Nova Corps. The Blade Runner-styled episode follows the cybernetic being investigating the murder of a close friend. The second episode went back to 1980s New York with a different Avengers team seeking to subdue a young Peter Quill who grew up with his father, Ego.
The series has boasted voice cameos from Karen Gillan (Dual, Gunpowder Milkshake), Jude Law (Captain Marvel, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew), Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Walking Dead), Seth Green (Can’t Hardly Wait, Robot Chicken), Taika Waititi (Our Flag Means Death, Thor Ragnarok), Sebastian Stan (Captain America: Civil War, Pam & Tommy), Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love & Thunder, Spiderhead), Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Ant-Man & the Wasp), Michael Douglas (Fatal Attraction, Behind the Candelabra), Hayley Atwell (Criminal: UK, The Duchess), John Slattery (Mad Men, The Adjustment Bureau), and Kurt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2).
The remaining six episodes of What If…? will be released daily this week on Disney+.