This is my second favourite episode. Let's see if Episode 9 can top Episode 4 for me
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Not technically fourth wall-breaking, but The Watcher is so aligned with audience's perspective that Ultron's acknowledgement of him feels like it, and that moment feels so jarringly thrilling. Plus, best use of animation's fluidity so far; series-altering serializing with past episodes; and real, hefty stakes both small (Natasha and Clint) and big (Ultron's unstoppable domination that culminates in a Multiverse-leaping fight). Just good stuff all around. Can't wait to see how this lead into the finale.
my emotions have never been played so well, heartbreaking, thrilling, fun, terrifying... PERFECT!!!
Still can't beat episode 4 for me, but HOLY SHIT
A BIG improvement over the last episode. Hope the next one doesn't disappoint.
Also, is it me or Tony Stark dies in every episode that he appears in?
I've been very mixed on the series - before today's episode I only really enjoyed 2. But this episode crushed!!! Big spoiler below.
Plus first Galactus appearance confirmed.
[7.6/10] This was an especially cool episode. When Mega-Ultron can hear The Watcher, let alone when he bursts through his viewing chamber, you know it’s serious business. The moment works because What If? has built to it. The Watcher, true to his name, just observes, god-like, distant and removed from those he watches. So when someone notices, let alone comes back at him, it’s a big deal.
The fight between the two of them is suitably epic, and some of the best combat we’ve seen since the beginning of the show. The two battling through reality after reality leads you to both gape at the sheer realm-cracking momentousness of it and be on the lookout for easter eggs like Steve Rogers being sworn in as president. They really sell the magnitude of the threat in an impressive and impressionistic way.
I also like the fact that once they’re at a stalemate, The Watcher speaks with the only other person (so far) who’s managed to breach the barrier between observer and observed: Cthulhu Dr. Strange. There’s a synergy and attention to detail there that I appreciate.
In the same way, it also screams “This is serious business!” when rather than passively observing Hawkeye and Black Widow search through boxes, The Watcher is actively rooting, almost cajoling them into finding the right info. The show demonstrated how seriously he takes his oath through seven episodes of non-interference despite some pretty big happenings, so his urge to intervene here sells the stakes of the threat. Hell, it sells the stakes better than Mega-Ultron casually plowing through even the most powerful avengers.
The more earthbound stuff is solid too. I like the return of virtual Armin Zola, and again, there’s some neat synergy to hiring one evil A.I. to take out another. The dynamic between Nat and Clint felt a little off here, despite some nice moments, but throwing Zola into the milieu helped their dynamic a lot. At the same time, mirroring Endgame, only with Clint doing the dramatic sacrifice to save the world this time was a nice treatment of What If?’s MCU remix sensibilities.
Overall, all the major parts of this one worked. And I like that after a bevy of enjoyable one-off stories with The Watcher as our guide and narrator, the man himself is deciding to take an active role in the story for once. That portends interesting things, and I’m here for it.
Holy shit, that was something else
unironically better than age of ultron
After weeks of hit and miss episodes (mostly miss for me), WE'RE FINALLY GETTING SOMEWHERE OMG!!! This is what the whole show should've been. Can't wait for the finale!!
The sound design in this episode is amazing!
I agree that this show is still messy, and script-wise unsatisfying, but, hell, does this development for the show is rather compelling and The Watcher as a character is pretty great.
Hawkeye: "I told you, I don't want to fight anymore."
Why can't all the episodes be like this? This is what I was expecting from this series. I'm glad it's finally delivering.
7/10
I feel like I have been watching a different episode than many other people because apparently I‘m taking a trip to Unpopular Opinion Town here.
I didn’t really care for the episode. The concept of Ultron wining is rather interesting, but the execution felt messy and again, a deep problem for the whole show itself, way too rushed due to the 30 minute format.
The animation again was pretty uneven, with some beautiful shots (Hawkeye‘s sacrifice) and mostly weird facial expressions. I also don’t like the character design of the Watcher when he is fully visible. What’s with that giant bobble head?
I still don’t like Lake Bell much as Natasha. She comes off as rather lifeless and harsh in moments when it’s not needed. Ross Marquand does a fine job as Ultron (and yes, he played Red Skull in Infinity War and Endgame), though James Spader is missed.
The Natasha/Clint plot in the beginning of the episode is pretty straightforward, though I still don’t care much about either character, at least it is an sense-making narrative. And Zola-Ultron (Zoltron?) adds a brief and fun dynamic with Toby Jones being as entertaining as ever.
The rest of the episode seems to be bound to plot holes, contradictions and decisions I‘m not particularly fond of.
How stupidly easy was it for Ultron to beat Thanos? Especially when the latter had many more Infinity Stones? If it was that easy, why couldn’t Vision just do it during Infinity War?
Also, "Loki" established that Infinity Stones have no power outside their original universe, so how exactly was Ultron able to use them within the multiverse?
It was interesting to see the Watcher engage in a fight with Ultron (and yes he was previously shown to make his presence aware to other characters) but overall it just felt silly, when the whole concept of the character is that he is a being above everything else, just there to watch.
I‘m personally also not a fan of connecting episodes of "What If." The premise of the show is to explore alternative timeless and stories within the multiverse of the MCU, by suddenly connecting them with each other, they basically open up a whole lot new problems and issues to deal with. And, as this episode shows, continuity is not always their strongest suit.
Lastly, Cap becoming President? Okay then...
As a story about Clint and Natasha fighting ultron in a post-apocalypse this was really good. One of the few what ifs with a sold and consistent tone matching the story its selling and the characters feel in character and make sense.
i'll have to see the season finale to sort out how i feel about the watcher ultron stuff. generally i think it betrays the concept of the show to deviate for the anthology what if structure but if what they pull off in the end it good i won't be too mad about it.
STONES DON'T WORK OUTSIDE THEIR OWN UNIVERSE
I got mixed feelings on this one.
On one hand it builds something and make the shows more than just small soon forgotten stories. The Watcher presence is perceived more and more throughout the season. Powerful beings are aware of his presence. He becomes actor and not just watcher. A story is developed that will be continued.
The Clint/Natasha story is good enough.
On the other, as a standalone episode it's severely lacking and just ignores/breaks every founding concept we know.
Thanos insta-kill ! OK, funny, but wth is up with that ? Ultron has one Stone, Thanos has all others. If it was that easy couldn't Vision have killed Thanos in main timeline ? Was he suprised ? No, he's the one directly jumping to the possessor of the last Stone, he would have been in full combat mode.
Infinity Stones give access to Multiverse. Hmmm, nope. Thanos didn't snap the Multiverse and it was established in Loki that at the Multiverse level Infinity Stones are just trinkets. Though one interpretation of Loki would be that the Mulitverse didn't really exist in MCU until then, so there were no alternate universes at the time we experienced the movies. But Loki itself pretty much contradicts itself on that point. Anyway at this point wouldn't there be other Ultron and Thanos or other people with Stones, and nobody to stop him ?
The Watcher is just not an entity that you fistfight !
This was actually super cool. Way better than tired zombie plot #7890 or what if Thor was a frat bro. More of these episodes should've dealt with the fallout from the various movies failing to thwart the bad guys.
Although I wish there had been at least a bit of a fight with Thanos. One Infinity Stone immediately beats five of them? Kind of lame.
Shame they couldn't get James Spader for this, though.
Why? Massive suspension of disbelieve aside. There are this small freaking "creative solution" that keeps popping up to totally not existing problem that just broke my brain this episode. I mean Aяnim Zola. Really?!
It like if archive was entirely in Chinese, but your main audience knows only English. So you could cut corners, write some gibberish and got away with this... Except, that you surprisingly don't do this. You go out of your way and write everything in proper Chinese, not a single kanji out of place. Impressive!
But there is a problem of focusing your audience attention on correct file. So you just go and label only this one file in English - Arnim Zola. And it works! It pretty understandable solution. But no, there this one a*hole, that apparently works on every movie/tv show/cartoon in existence that got a brilliant idea to stylise character name to look Chinese to feel more "authentic" I guess. So now you have A碼nim Zola with kanji slapped in the middle for no goddamn good reason.
Leave "R" and "Я" alone!
p.s. Kinda liked this episode anyway. Tone was in the right place this time. Although I always found this particular motivation for the main bad guy to be the weakest. But oh well.
After my disappointment in episode 7, this was refreshing. Ultron is one of the most underutilized villains in the MCU for how powerful he is, and this is a "What If" scenario I've been wondering about since I first watched Age of Ultron: What If Ultron had assumed control of his organic body?
I was hoping to hear Ultron's voice come out of Visions mouth, and it did! It was weird, but made sense, and was a little unsettling. He's not a wisecracking wannabe philosopher like he was in the movie, but he's back to his roots as a peace-bringing AI who fully understands his own ambition. And with his newfound power, he's terrifyingly unstoppable.
I liked the stuff with Clint and Natasha as well, plus the little role reversal at the end there (which was a nice touch). We got to see some of the true power of the Watcher, and he seems really cool!
Not bad, but the feminist trend is still going strong. Hawkeye looks like an idiot in everything, but Black Widow just dominates everything ?
If there was more than one of these left I'd be tuning out. what started with a solid couple of episodes has degenerated fast. Will not be back to watch a second season if it happens.
DAMN, Thanos went out like a bitch!!!!!
Watcher knows how things happened in our universe so he always tells us "in this universe". I love how every universe in the series is connected now and Watcher asked Strange's help.
Kinda a crazy episode. I wouldn’t say it was the best one but all the watcher stuff was really good and it was the first time the episodes were really connected. Felt like it made the series a lot better as a whole. Also looks like they setting up a mad season finale
It has a nice tie in to all the other multi-verses. I just feel like none of the episodes have true endings. Maybe the next season will continue each story. Like, I want to see what happened to Quill when Ego took him and not Yondu.
Or party Thor when Ultron showed up. I do like that the show knows how to use Black Widow better than her solo movie did though.
While the Watcher being quite bad ass was a nice surprise. I mean Ultron attacked him and the screen cut away from that. I thought “that’s it, he’s dead.” He held his own though and pretty much turned into a Super Sayan lol.
Would be nice if season 2 didn’t make Thanos a bitch that can be easily defeated though.
Ya know, on one hand I like that the stories can connect and I like the idea of the Watcher scouting out people to bring into what will probably be a team to take down Ultron. On the other hand, I don't necessarily buy him being as overpowered as he clearly was here. I mean hell, if he outright assaulted Thanos before he even obtained a stone, then I could get behind it, but he cut the dude in half when Thanos already had 4 stones. If it was that f'n easy why didn't Vision just do it instead? In Infinity War the avengers threw everything and the kitchen sink at Thanos and couldn't do shit to him until Thor finally got him, meanwhile Vision's laser blast he does couldn't even snag Corvis Glaive. It's only one small bit in the episode, but it makes the whole threat of "Infinity Ultron" pretty unrealistic that there at least wasn't a better fight leading up to him obtaining all those other stones, no mention of how he even got the time stone.
This episode was okay, but it seems like not enough thought goes into these episodes.
Oh, sh*t. Ultron on the multiverse?
After several episodes that were on the lesser end, What If...? goes full force into bonkers territory for the better. This was the good stuff - pure animated bliss, taking full advantage of it's medium from beginning to end. Ultron as a character was, to me at least, one of the stronger villains of the MCU, and while his movie isn't the best he is certainly the best part of it and seeing him fully unleashed once again allowed for his presence to carry the entire episode. He truly is a force of nature, simply existing just for the sole purpose of his own twisted version of "peace in our time", an echo that carries over into this episode as well.
And while I was, and still am, mostly hesitant on the notion of making this series have an ongoing narrative, the implications of seeing the Watcher's own nature and ethics challenged is really fascinating. Here we have a character who almost purposefully acts like a surrogate for the audience, just watching these things unfold never to interfere, but what happens the dangers starts to creep over to him? There is a lot to love here just in terms of the meta narrative that What If...? seems to wanted to portray, and I'm excited to see how the finale wraps up these loose ends!
that's how you do it!! phenomenal watch!!
MAN, this show is so uneven. After last week's awful attempt at comedy, we're now getting a no-holds-barred, intriguing cosmic episode with fantastic stakes and awesome action. Not only was the multiversal fight visually cool and exciting, but it's also the very best we've seen of Hawkeye in the entire MCU. (At least to date! Fingers crossed for the Disney+ show.)
Let's hope the next episode delivers on this fantastic setup.
Imagine the level of threat you have to be to scare the shit out of Uatu.
The only disappointments of this episode? the fact the Uatu/Ultron fight didn't happen on the Big Screen. And Ultron's VA, I don't think he had the same voice in the trailer.
On a sidenote: having tiny glimpses of Steve Rogers as US President (after President Loki), New York with Wakandan and medieval style was fun.
Oh my god, ultimate face palm at Uatu accidentally unleashing Ultron onto the Multiverse lol all he had to do was quietly narrate in his head once Ultron started to become aware. :laughing:
The The glimpses of the different worlds and universes during the battle were great! President Steve Rogers took the cake lol, and the visual of Ultron looking like Galactus was SO GOOD, I had to pause and stare to reinforce that 'nope, this isn't him' to manage my expectations.
Ultron's voice made the character not so intimidating unfortunately. I understand that the voice change is (might be?) because he was in his Vision body and not his mech one, but in lieu of James Spader, even Paul Bettany's voice would have been better. This one made him sound a bit silly and missed marks for me (in my useless opinion).
I also immediately noticed the less that 30-minute runtime for this episode and immediately knew that this would be better than the previous episodes. Because of course the shortest one would be one of the good ones. Whyy — jk I get it, but here's to hoping the finale is a bit longer and good. They built up Ultron as a big, universe-destroying, virtually unbeatable killing machine, hopefully they didn't rush it.
Well, there goes my hope this stayed as an anthology series. It's okay, I guess. I don't really like how the Watcher is portrayed in here. Let's see how the ending pans out.
After a mixed bag of 7 mostly not so great episodes, we finally get something fantastic. Excited for the finale.
Well... well... well... who would have guested it? the tables have been turned.
Holy freaking crap. I can't wait to see how this goes next week.
Shout by Why Not Zoidberg?BlockedParentSpoilers2021-10-05T02:01:18Z
So all it took to beat Thanos (a Thanos with 5/6 Infinity Stones at at that) was to cut him in half with the mind stone? Why didn't Vision try that…?
And then Ultron has all the Infinity Stones but goes planet to planet destroying life when he could just snap his fingers and wipe it out all at once…?