After nine solid days of episodes, What If…? Season 2 is finally answering the question “What if… the season was over?” And with the What If…? finale comes a lot of wrap-up… But also an intriguing tease that aligns the series with live-action fare like the end of Loki Season 2.
So what exactly happened in What If…? Season 2, Episode 9, “What If… Strange Supreme Intervened?” And how does it all (potentially) tie into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Read on to find out, as we get into the What If…? Season 2 ending, explained.
What If…? Season 2 Plot Summary:
Before we get to the end [Watcher voice] we must go back to the beginning. Or rather, let’s do a brief breakdown of the plot since there are a lot of elements at play here.
Back in Season 1 of What If…? we met several recurring characters. Those include Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), a version of Peggy Carter who got Super Soldier powers instead of Steve Rogers… And Strange Supreme (Benedict Cumberbatch), a version of Doctor Strange who watched his true love Christine (Rachel McAdams) die in the car crash that, in the MCU, took his hands. Both of these characters and a few others, were recruited by The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) to try and stop a version of Ultron who had possession of the Infinity Stones and was running wild through the multiverse.
In Season 2, we also met Kahhori (Devery Jacobs), a member of the Mohawk Nation who gained some of the powers of the Tesseract, aka the Infinity Stone known as the Space Stone, in pre-colonial America. When last we left Kahhori, she was approached by Strange Supreme who said he had been looking for her for a long time.
Cut back to Peggy Carter, who had been taken to another part of the multiverse where the 2020s and 1602 got mashed together. She managed to solve that whole problem… But was trapped in 1602 until Strange Supreme showed up with a story to tell her.
What If…? Season 2 Finale Plot Summary:
That’s where we pick up in today’s episode. Strange recruits Peggy, telling her that he’s been using his time to make amends by trapping universe killers like the Infinity Ultron, instead of letting them go MTV’s Wild On… The Multiverse. He’s lost one though, and asks Peggy if she can track the rogue universe killer down.
That universe killer? Kahhori, who of course is anything but. Kahhori and Peggy team up, and quickly discover that Strange plans to use the universe killers to power his Forge, to remake his universe and save Christine. Instead, Peggy and Kahhori stage a jailbreak of the universe killers, and head to stop Strange before he can make the situation worse than it already is.
What if…? Season 2 Ending Explained:
Most of the episode is taken up with Kahhori and Peggy battling their way to Strange, and then fighting Strange himself, who last season had consumed multiple demons to power himself up. After a temptation of Peggy involving a scenario where Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton) got the Super Soldier serum doesn’t work, the dynamic duo convinces Strange he’s doing the wrong thing, and sends all the universe killers back to their universes to, er, kill them.
Strange instead sacrifices himself in the Forge: given all the demons he’s eaten, he has more than enough power to remake his universe, with Christine alive. Only catch? He’s not alive with it.
Kahhori also gets to go home, and presumably to What If…? Season 3, or comic books, or live-action or something. Meanwhile, Peggy is kind of bummed about everything, so The Watcher takes her the long way home. Or, more specifically, he brings her to his crystal viewing center, where he watches the multiverse… And then brings her outside of that to show her another view of the multiverse. That view? The Loktree from the end of Loki Season 2.
How The What If…? Finale Connects To Loki Season 2 — And Maybe Avengers: Secret Wars
Though this isn’t explicitly explained, my interpretation is this is What If…? realigning their visual representation of the multiverse to match what happened to Loki (Tom Hiddleston). In his self-titled series, Loki ended by gathering what strands of the multiverse he could hold on to, and sat on a throne powering all the universal threads all by himself. Given this more limited interpretation of the multiverse, this may be what The Watcher will watch in the already-in-the-works What If…? Season 3.
But beyond that, it also offers up a strong possibility that we could see Hayley Atwell make a transition to live-action as Captain Carter, given she’s ended up next to the Loki tree here. And yes, Captain Carter did show up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and get cut in half with her own shield. But that sucked. We need more Captain Carter, and this is the perfect excuse to bring her into something like the forthcoming Avengers: Secret Wars. In fact, we demand it!
Or possibly they just wanted to show off the Loki tree, who knows. We’ll see you back here for What If…? Season 3, when they change the visual representation of the multiverse, yet again.
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