Marvel’s ‘What If…?’ released its third episode, titled – “What If… The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?” The third episode of this animated anthology series revolves around the Marvel characters we are more accustomed with – The Original 6 Avengers. While the story is completely different from the original films (as expected), the short story is still quite entertaining. Similar to the second episode, this episode too has a lot of brilliant call-backs and references. The episode didn’t have a lot of Easter Eggs though, but out of the many references we do get, let’s check out the 8 noticeable Easter Eggs, references and call backs in What If…? Episode 3:
Natasha Handcuffed in a Van
Very reminiscent of a similar scene where Captain America had to fight off a dozen Hydra agents in an elevator, from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. Natasha was handcuffed in this scene, but that didn’t stop her from kicking some major ass. Brilliant callback.
Eyes In The Sky
Literally Barton’s full time job before he became an Avenger. He did the exact same thing in ‘Thor’ and ‘The Avengers’. Been sometime since we saw Barton in any capacity and it is nice to see him doing what he is good at. Another good callback.
The Incredible Hulk
Callbacks galore. This episode shows us the events of ‘The Incredible hulk’ – the Culver University scene. The difference – this time Black Widow is there to “help” (?!) him. No abomination though. Damn.
Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Hulk and Black Widow – All Dead
All the main Avengers, except for the leader AKA Cap ended up dying before the events of ‘The Avengers’ even began. It is as Coulson says, “The Avengers fell before they had a chance to rise”. A dark timeline indeed. A reference to another parallel universe.
Captain America Volume 1 #704
Coulson’s password is the first Easter Egg we get in this episode – “Steve-Steve-Steve-I-Heart-Steve-0-7-0-4”. It is a reference to a Captain America comic book when the Kree empire attacks Earth – similar to how Loki appeared on Earth, for vengeance.
Janet & Hope – A Villainous Ant-Man
Showing Janet Van Dyne’s name among the list of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents was our first clue towards our villain. When Natasha tells us that it is about Hope, we finally got the villain that comic book fans have been waiting for – Hank Pym, The Ant-Man. In the comic books, Hank Pym as the Ant-Man has been a major villain to the Avengers as well as a member as long as we can remember. When Scott Lang took up the persona, we knew that Ant-Man then became good, but while Hank still held the mantle, he had a dual personality and was at odds with the Avengers for a long time, similar to how Iron-Man was at odds with the rest of the Avengers in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and ‘Captain America: Civil War’.
Loki Wins
Well, duh. Without the Avengers, Loki beat Earth in a single day. He just used the excuse of Thor’s death to invade Earth. There was no way he was leaving once he found out that Midgard didn’t have any advanced tech. Especially since the Tesseract was already with Loki. He finally gets the throne he has always wanted.
Fury’s Speech
We heard bits and pieces of Fury’s original speech from ‘The Avengers’ in this episode, but we finally got the entire thing after Earth got conquered by Loki. The Avengers Initiative was an idea which will always be alive as long as there are people fighting for it. We got the two Captains to help Loki this time around – Captain America and Captain Marvel.
Check out the first three episodes of Marvel’s ‘What If…?’ on Disney+ Hotstar.
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