2x02 What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

[7.5/10] If I’m asking for anything from the animated wing of the MCU, it’s to do things that you can't do in live action. Now, given the state of special effects these days, that list is ever dwindling. But that's why this episode’s 1980s period piece is so canny. Sure, you could pull off the same thing in live action (and Captain Marvel sort of does it). But it’s a lot easier to include younger versions of Michael Douglas and Kurt Russell and Laurence Fishbourne, and a convincing older version of Hayley Atwell in digital ink and paint than it is to do in flesh and blood.

So I like the concept of this one. There’s a novelty to seeing Hank Pym’s Ant-Man lead a thirty-years-earlier version of The Avengers, against no less a foe than a Celestial-powered Peter Quill.

There’s only one problem -- I don’t care about most of the people in the flashback Avengers. Hank Pym is the biggest one, and it’s a treat to get to see him at his height rather than leading the next generation. Likewise, it’s neat to get to see older versions of Peggy Carter and Howard Stark still in the game for more than just a quick scene.

But the rest of the 1980s Avengers are kind of a yawn or a contrivance. Thor being present isn’t crazy, but it feels a little cheap. Bill Foster and Wendy Lawson participating makes sense, but to be candid, I had to look up those characters since I barely remembered them from their films. And hey, some of that's on me. Both characters had major roles, and a big part of the novelty of What If? is being able to bring disparate parts of the MCU together in unique ways, but they were both pretty forgettable characters, which doesn’t help. Getting to see T’Chaka in action is cool in principle, but we didn’t get much of him in the movies, and he doesn’t get much characterization here, so he’s basically just an ersatz version of T’Challa which doesn’t add much to the proceedings.

Somewhere in the middle is Winter Soldier, who seems like an odd fit for this crew, but whose presence comes with a purpose and one of the episode’s best emotional throughlines. It’s a small part of the episode overall, but Howard Stark talking him down from taking out Peter, invoking Steve Rogers and reawakening the part of Winter Solider that is still Bucky Barnes is a cool moment. As with much of these “What If” stories, it transposes much of the ideas of Captain America: Winter Soldier to a different setting, and makes hay from the difference of it being Howard and Peggy who run into Bucky, rather than Steve and Natasha.

Likewise, I appreciate the parallels and connections between Hank and Hope on the one hand and Peter on the other. The idea that both of these families are dealing with the loss of a mother at the same time, and bond over that makes sense in a way I’d never considered before. Again, that's one of the cool things about these remixes -- finding connections between characters and situations that haven't been explored in the mainline continuity. Hope and Peter forging a fast friendship (replete with a mischievous hope helping Peter escape), and Hank managing to earn Peter’s trust by opening up about his own struggles with loss is all strong interpersonal material that gives this installment something more than novelty and flash.

The flash is good though! Sure, it’s a little easy to have our heroes facing a bunch of stone Kurt Russell duplicates, but it’s still neat seeing Goliath smash them to bits or Peggy Carter fire machine guns at them. And while Peter confronting his dad with Hank is mostly a reskin of the climax of Guardians 2, there’s still resonance in the idea of the young boy self-actualizing and casting off his father’s bad influence.

The funny thing is, despite not caring much about the Flashback Avengers when walking into the episode, I would absolutely watch a series focused on them. We get a good dynamic in small snippets, and there’d be time to develop their specific relationships and character dynamics. I’ve often wondered how many of these What If stories are backdoor pilots, and if anything, this one works better as a starter kit for more adventures than a perfect short story in and of itself.

Overall though, I appreciate this outing for its emotional undercurrent, and also for telling the type of story that you could only tell in this medium, a time-displaced Avengers reimagining that mixes and matches parts of the mainline canon, while giving them new meaning in its flashback context.