Marvel’s What If…? has raised a lot of questions for fans, with its concept of multiverses and how that will play into the movies being the primary culprit.
The Disney Plus show takes characters and scenarios we’re familiar with from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and remixes them to bizarre and sometimes tragic results.
Spoilers ahead for What If…? Episode 9
Some may have the urge to point to the existence of an endless amount of different versions of Black Widow lowering the stakes of her death in Avengers: Endgame, as the character is plucked from one barren universe in What If…? and placed in another where that version of Natasha Romanoff has died, giving the hero a second chance at life.
But according to the show’s creators, the events in What If…? don’t negate the past events of the MCU films, as consequential as the multiverse may soon prove to be in the coming movies.
“When it came to resolving Dystopian Natasha’s story, we realized that keeping her on that Ultron world was a fate worse than death. Everyone’s gone. And the Watcher, as he says to her, these stories have become everything to him. It didn’t come from a place of like, ‘Oh, what are we saying about Marvel and the MCU?’ It came from a place of, ‘What are we saying about the Watcher?’ He loves these characters. He loves these stories, these people, these heroes. He would never banish her back to a planet to basically starve to death by herself. We wanted to put her in a world where she could be the Natasha Romanoff that he has watched in different versions and loves. So that’s where the idea came from. Whether or not that’ll be reflected in the greater MCU? Who knows. They always have plans,” the show’s writer, A.C. Bradley, told Variety
We’ll have to see how the implications of the multiverse affect the MCU in the future. For now, you can dissect every minute detail of What…? as the entire first season is now streaming on Disney Plus.