‘What If… Ultron Won?’

Apart from the zombie episode (of course), I try not to spoil myself about what next week’s episode will be. The surprise makes it a nice way to start a Wednesday 😊 So seeing ‘What If… Ultron Won?’ pop up on the screen was  a nice little surprise but at the same time, I was a little underwhelmed if I’m being honest. After all… Don’t we all know what would happen if Ultron won? There would be nothing left as Ultron would have destroyed it all. Everything would be ‘scorched earth’ but on the up side, I guess it would be peaceful…

On the whole though ‘What If…?’ hasn’t let me down yet (well, apart from the ‘Killmonger Episode’ but you can’t win them all) so of course I was always going to give ‘What If… Ultron Won?’ a shot and see how it went. As it happened, I’m going to have to wait until next week to give you the full picture as we got the cliffhanger treatment here (I thought we were looking at a season in eight instalments, shows what I know) I can tell you what I thought of things this week though, let’s start there.

As always, the title is a bit of a spoiler so I’m not going to be too fussy about hiding others. Just to let you know, in case you want to go away and watch the show first. You don’t? You’re still here? Cool, lets get going shall we?

Ultron has won and out of all the Avengers, the two most underpowered (and devious) are left to take the fight back to him. But where is Ultron? Mastery of the Infinity Stones has led Ultron out into the universe where he seeks to obey his programming, peace at all costs. But when there’s nothing left to fight, what can Ultron do next. The Watcher might not be just watching for much longer..

I’ll be honest… On the face of it, ‘What If… Ultron Won?’ doesn’t really offer up anything new, at least not in terms of answering that question. Ultron wins by everything else dying and that’s what we get here. It all looks appropriately bleak but it’s nothing more than we were already expecting. Everything else has died so Ultron has won… hasn’t he?

Well, that’s where things get interesting.

Not everything is dead and that’s where we can start thinking about that theme of hope that is prevalent in a lot of these stories. Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton are doing whatever they can to strike back and they’re about to find a new ally who is probably not what he seems but is going to be fun to have around. More than that though, there’s a whole universe out there for Ultron to bring peace to and in doing so, have his eyes opened to a much wider multi-verse with the Watcher watching over it all. And that’s where things get really interesting.

The ‘What If…?’ shows aren’t just about having hope in heroes, they’ve all been about slowly introducing the Watcher to the idea that sometimes, watching just isn’t an option. Sometimes, you just have to fight for what you love (the Watcher loves us, you can tell). And what a fight we get out of it, a fight that takes us on a journey through the multi-verse with every punch. One quick question though, where are all the other Watchers? Aren’t there supposed to be loads of them? That would have made the fight a lot quicker as well as getting Natasha and Clint out of a spot of bother. We wouldn’t have needed an extra episode, to round things off, either.

That’s a small quibble though. The back and forth between Natasha and Clint is as brilliant as ever while it looks like the Watcher/Ultron fight could lead to another human character getting a shot at redemption. Things are set up nicely then, for next weeks finale, but even if good wins, that could leave just two humans and the Watcher as the only beings left alive in the universe. How do you come back from that…? We’ll find out next week.