*Spoilers for ‘What If…?’ Season 2 Episode 4*
What If…? Season 2 Episode 4 is the story of how Gamora (Cynthia McWilliams) became a hero after being the daughter of Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his best soldier. The episode opens at the final battle of The Avengers as Iron Man (Mick Wingert) goes through the Chitauri portal with a missile on his back which he then launches at the Chitauri mothership to destroy it. The difference here is that Iron Man doesn’t make it back to Earth. Instead, he ends up crash landing in Sakaar, The Grandmaster’s (Jeff Goldblum) planet. The Grandmaster proceeds to invite Iron Man to his 21st birthday party and has him watch the race from the suite. As the race progresses, the audience sees Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and Korg (Taika Waititi) racing in the course before having their cars destroyed by the Grandmaster’s champion. That’s when Iron Man intervenes to try to save Korg from the champion, but instead, it is Gamora who shows up and kills the champion, and then aims her gun at Iron Man right before the Grandmaster shocks all three of them.
Gamora, Korg, and Iron Man are put in a cell together, and that is where Gamora reveals to them that she needs to kill Iron Man for her father since he is the one who destroyed the Chitauri mothership and stopped the conquering of Earth. Iron Man uses his arc reactor to get himself and Korg out of the prison cell. Once out, both of them go looking for Valkyrie at a bar so they can recruit her to their team to overthrow the Grandmaster and free the planet. Iron Man decides to challenge the Grandmaster to a race to decide who gets the planet.
As the race unfolds, Iron Man, Korg, and Valkyrie race for their life and the well-being of the planet against the Grandmaster and Gamora. As Iron Man approaches the Grandmaster, the Grandmaster releases beasts that look like his champion in the first race, to try and stop Iron Man. Gamora ends up helping Iron Man and kills the beasts after he talks her out of being evil and a villain just like her father. Gamora changes her ways and becomes good to help others. In the end, Iron Man wins the race and beats the Grandmaster, freeing the planet from the Grandmaster’s torment. Valkyrie gets selected to be the king of Sakaar by its people, and she elects Korg to be her right-hand man in command. Gamora brings Iron Man to Thanos, but instead of handing Iron Man over to the mad titan, she attacks him, killing Thanos once and for all, freeing herself from the evil life.
This episode is a perfect showcase of the sort of stories a show like What If..? can tell. This episode shows how one little change to the original story the audience knows, can create a completely new timeline for Marvel’s heroes. The writing by A.C. Bradley is good throughout the episode, although the dialogue is not the best and sometimes seems to be very bland. The director Bryan Andrews takes control of the story and takes care of the characters that the audience knows and loves, allowing the characters to stay true to themselves. As far as the voice acting goes, it’s great throughout with the main standouts being Taika Waititi as Korg, Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster, and Cynthia McWilliams as Gamora. Mick Wingert could’ve done a better job with his performance as Iron Man because his performance felt quite lackluster at times.
Overall this episode gives us a hypothetical Iron Man story that is both fun and exciting while being self-contained in its universe. With that being said, the episode suffers a bit through its writing and also voice acting work which hinder it from being a great episode of television.
Rating: 6/10