Phase 4 Set Up A Wild Thanos Cliffhanger For Nothing

Phase 4 saw the Marvel Cinematic Universe use Marvel’s What If…? to create a wild and major Thanos cliffhanger – that seemingly will never be addressed again. While What If…? had always been established as a separate entity to the main MCU universe, most of its major threads managed to be tied up by the show’s conclusion. However, one particular thread containing Marvel’s big bad Phase 3 villain seemed to be forgotten about as quickly as the Spider-Man: Homecoming’s interpretation of The Scorpion, a much smaller time character.

The Disney+ series took its name from a classic run of Marvel Comics one-shots – stories that, for the most part, were never intended to tell a larger narrative. At first, the MCU seemed to do exactly that. The first several episodes all appeared entirely unrelated to one another. That is, save for one seemingly arbitrary throughline in Uatu the Watcher. Then came What If…? season 1, Episode 7, “What If… Thor Were an Only Child?” What followed the cliffhanger ending to that episode was an actual climax to the series. One that spanned two episodes and told the tale of a supremely powerful Ultron who not only got his new body but also stole the Infinity Stones from Thanos.

Yet an equally enticing cliffhanger went absolutely nowhere, despite being set up earlier, leaving some questions about whether or not What If…? season 2 will use that potential. The two-episode finale of the first season brought together characters from across almost every single one of the previous episodes, including dark Doctor Strange and Captain Carter, and featured callbacks to the episodes it didn’t. So it was especially baffling that there wasn’t even a mention of the rather enticing cliffhanger to What If…? season 1, Episode 5, “What If… Zombies?!”, as the episode’s last few moments featured a glimpse of a zombified Thanos and no truly powerful Avengers left to stop him from getting the Mind Stone.

MCU’s Zombie Thanos was an unfortunately wasted idea with many questions attached to it. Like, for example, how his plan might change with the universe no longer having that resource problem. The seemingly wasted potential of this idea also highlighted others wasted in different ways. The zombified Scarlet Witch who was ironically preserved by Vision, was the single most dangerous thing throughout the main runtime of that episode. She appeared during the final confrontation as well, summoned by the dark Doctor Strange from What If…? season 1, Episode 4, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” Unfortunately, her appearance was brief and ultimately barely even served to slow Ultron down. Then there was the concept of Gamora, Destroyer of Thanos, who also seemed to simply serve as a last-minute addition to the team in the finale episode.

What seemed like wasted potential, however, could also simply be something set up for later. The Marvel Cinematic Universe recently made a habit of addressing old plot threads and ideas that hadn’t gone anywhere or may not have been handled satisfactorily. The inclusion of Travis in Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings made that clear. The same could be said for Zemo appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Even smaller things, like one of Mysterio’s helpers in Spider-Man: Far From Home being a carry-over from 2008’s Iron Man suggested attention to these sorts of details.

Marvel’s What If…? will return. That means that there’s more to come and the potential for more of these multiversal stories, especially with that being the direction the MCU decided would be its next frontier, thanks to projects like Loki. Ideas that seemed to be forgotten, like Zombie Thanos and Destroyer Gamora, could appear alongside newer ideas and cliffhangers like the return of the show’s early Iron Man, the Hydra Stomper. It was disappointing to see a zombified Thanos denied his chance at proxy revenge for his counterpart’s fate at Ultron’s hands, but while it’s unlikely, Marvel could well have a plan to still utilize all these plots.