‘What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?’


This is the last episode, seriously, that’s it, no more episodes. We are done, at least with this Season. Sorry, I was so sure that things were going to finish last week and then we got that cliffhanger… I’m just trying to convince myself that it’s done and that’s a real shame as on the whole, ‘What If..?’ was just brilliant to watch. There were a couple of moments where things fell flat but it was the perfect antidote to the slight disappointment of ‘Loki’ (there, I said it!) and as far as I’m concerned, they can do as many new Seasons of ‘What If…? as they like. I’ll watch them all.

But that’s for the future. Right now, lets take a look at this last episode and what happens when the Watcher breaks his oath. Which reminds me… You know how it goes by now, the biggest spoiler is the title so I’m not going to be too fussy about spoilers in the rest of this post. If you haven’t watched ‘What If…?’ yet, you might want to go away and do just that before reading any further.

And with that said, let’s go…

So, what if the Watcher broke his oath…? The short answer is that everyone (more or less) gets to live happily ever after. You can see the Watcher think to himself, “well, I’ve already broken my oath once…” and then just go nuts. Which is kind of sweet when you think about it. We’ve seen the Watcher grow closer to the people he is watching, over the course of this Season, and this is the natural conclusion to that arc. He can’t just watch things play out anymore, he got too close to it all and now he’s a part of the story as well. I wonder what that says about us as watchers? Not quite the same thing (ok, not the same thing at all) but it makes me wonder…

There’s a lot more to it than that though. This episode of ‘What If…?’ has ‘season finale’ shoes to fill and does so in some style, gathering all the heroes (and ‘heroes’) from previous tales and getting them all together to fight Ultron. And it’s brilliant. Everyone gets a conclusion to their arc and the show is not afraid to dish out a little comeuppance at the same time. And the fight scenes with Ultron are just superb 😊 Tons of action with an injection of at least a million zombies, all dropped on top of Ultron’s head. The outcome is in no doubt but as with pretty much all of these stories, it’s the journey that makes it all worthwhile. Seeing Black Widow get a decent send off feels like a much more fitting end, for her, than we saw in the movies. And Sharon Carter… Watching her go back to her world, because she is needed, gave me a little lump in my throat; she is a real hero. But don’t switch off after that, there’s an mid-credit scene that you must stick around for, that’s all I’m saying.

The ‘What If…?’ series, ‘Killmonger’ episode to one side, has just been brilliant and I really hope that there’s a Season Two lined up for some time in the future (not too far away though, I don’t want to wait too long). In the meantime, ‘What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?’ was the best way to sign off on this Season but you know that already, don’t you? 😉 

You can read all my other 'What If...?' posts over Here.

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