What I’m Watching: What If…?

What If…? Season 1, Episode 5 “What If... Zombies?!” (C+)

This episode felt relatively unnecessary to me, since the idea of zombies is always complicated given the way that it slows down or completely neutralizes the brain capacity of those afflicted. In this case, they were still able to use the powers, technology, and portals that they had and still knew how to use, which didn’t exactly track. The notion there, I guess, is that it just turned them into flesh-hungry beings who did everything they possibly could to keep eating. That was even truer for Wanda, who had Vision making sure that his bride had all the food she needed to keep her fueled since she was so incredibly powerful. Yes, it’s fun to hear the voices of familiar actors, especially Mark Ruffalo, Paul Rudd, and, once again, Chadwick Boseman, but it felt far too focused on a different sort of twisted dedication than we saw in “WandaVision” which wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as that show. If this is what future episodes are going to be like, I don’t see a real need to continue watching, but I feel like I want to stay as up-to-date as possible on my MCU fare, so I’m not ready to give up just yet. But I would appreciate an opportunity to see cleverly-plotted alternate histories that make active use of the different characters who we haven’t always seen interact and show how their stories could have gone, like the first three episodes of this show managed to do in a decent and engaging way.