Once again, I'm frustrated that Marvel ignored this show's true potential

Over the past three years, Marvel has released a new chapter of creative, refreshing, and sometimes downright silly animation, with And if…? The MCU's Annual Event Ends (Beyond the Next Marvel Zombies spin-off in 2025) with the release of this year's third season, once again scheduled to release an episode every day during Christmas.

Over the same time, And if…? has consistently strived to reap the low-hanging fruit in its multiverse: actually answering any questions anyone might have about the Sliding doors parts of the Multiverse. The very concept of And if…? As it was originally conceived, it was to explore what would happen if the moments in the Marvel timeline that we all know hadn't played out as they did in canon history. Marvel Studios just didn't do it.

The third season of And if…? now heading to Disney+ for its usual festive period, and it's pretty much the same situation again. Creative – often crazy – concepts pulled out of thin air that don't so much refer to the “real” Marvel story, but to use the concept as an excuse to play around a bit. It was clear that we always knew the end of the title question: What if… Marvel answered questions no one would ask?

You can't argue with quality… Mainly

As with the previous two seasons, And if…? Season 3 is technically impressive: The animation is great and the medium is actively used to show scenarios that simply wouldn't be possible in live action. Fighting between celestials would look silly in the mainline MCU; Mecha-Avengers fighting giant Hulks would, I suspect, be too cartoonish. But in animation everything works and there is a lot of style in it.

It's commendable that more conventional cinematic sequences also work: smaller-scale fight scenes have a habit of looking less impactful in realistic animation (even X-Men '97 proved this), but And if…? It always felt choreographed. And the car chases work well too: in short, the show achieves the same sense of success in realistic scenes that the MCU does in live action.

THE The voice work is generally very good, despite the often controversial decision to move away from actual voice actors. It takes different muscles to be a voice actor, and there are few who transition well into live action because of this. This is exactly why Alan Tudyk voices about 87% of all the characters you'd care to name. Returning members And if…?The cast of other MCU projects does well, sometimes without the higher energy that animation requires. There's definitely a spectrum of quality where David Harbor (Red Guardian), Seth Green and Kat Dennings are at the top, and Anthony Mackie, Oscar Isaac and others somewhere below.

This isn't to be unfair to these actors, they're very good at owning their original characters, and you can admire the brand's decision to bring them back, but it's obvious when they did less voice acting than some of their co-stars. . And it's particularly telling when some of the recasts replace MCU originals who couldn't reprise their roles for whatever reason.

Season 3's storylines and if they seem sillier than last time

After three seasons, I have to accept this I became radicalized by And if…?failure to fulfill your true promise. Even accepting that the production quality is great and there are remarkable moments, it is impossible to ignore the specter of how it all should have been.

Marvel fans wanted to see multiversal variations on real MCU moments: ramifications that felt like they could have happened. Frustratingly, we've seen this more in live action in flashes, thanks to Loki, and Spider-Man: No Way Homewhere the risks are more tangible because there is more sense of investment. I've always wanted to see answers to things like the other half of the universe surviving Thanos' attack, or Tony Stark not sacrificing himself, or Captain America not being lost in time. Instead, I understood what would happen if Howard the Duck married Darcy.

These are not pitch meetings I could have predicted in a million years, because they simply don't register as beneficial to the MCU's brand of history. But maybe that was always the point: It was supposed to be a series of more frivolous free throws that didn't require the same level of homework as the live action timeline. Which would be easier to accept if Season 2 hadn't created a unified but appended timeline and Captain Carter hadn't been in live action precisely because of And if…?

And if the course of the third season corrects a little

The decision to center everything around Captain Carter in season 2 led to a compromise in vision, with limits imposed on the imagination. That's not a knock on the character, and I'm actually glad she made the jump to live action, even if she deserved better. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnessbut it limited the scope a bit. And if…? season three mostly abandons this singular narrative to focus on what amounts to a series of heartfelt PSAs about the value of love and friendship and being nice. I found some of it a bit cloying, to be honest, but if you've ever wanted a Sesame Street vibe with your MCU content, you will be enchanted.

The third season of any show — and the promise of it being the final season, for starters — would typically mean more risks. A kind of second-term presidency, where you can do whatever you want, free from the pressure of having to get re-elected. This appears to have been adopted in And if…? as an opportunity to become increasingly unhinged: a suspicion that reaches its climax when Howard the Duck and Darcy (the Duck) chase across the galaxy trying to stop their children from being turned into weapons for nefarious purposes.

This episode, and let's be honest, most new chapters of the season, is an example of the true brand of And if…?: nonsense. More often than not, when something genuinely interesting comes along, it is crushed by the heaven-sized fist of foolishness. Maybe I'm wrong to expect anything else, but I definitely feel like this is all a case of high-gloss missed opportunities.

So, it's And if…? Is the third season worth watching? Absolutely. It's an undeniably well-made production; the commitment to pure fun is very admirable; there are more than a few popular characters (and reappearances of some more surprising ones); and we really won't see most of what he does in the main MCU. Some of the story's narrative is a little rushed, some of the characters could do with a little more work (and others feel a little uncomfortable), and there should have been a closer commitment to telling stories that matter to the MCU, but if you You already liked it, you'll like it again.

New episodes of And if…? Season 3 releases every day from December 22nd to 29th on Disney+