MCU What If...? - 7 Biggest Takeaways From Episode 1
5. The Episodes Need To Be Longer
Across the MCU’s Disney+ series, there has been little uniformity in the way of episode length. WandaVision hovered around the 20-30 minute mark, while The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki were significantly longer, with some episodes reaching close to an hour. Episode one of What If…? clocked in at half an hour.
There was a huge story to tell surrounding the inception of Captain Carter in this first episode. Not only was there a lot to be said about Peggy herself, there was Steve’s entire story arc taking on the HYDRA Stomper armour, and the entirely different path the Red Skull took with the Tesseract.
Unfortunately, half an hour simply wasn’t enough time to tell everything that needed to be told. The entire episode felt far too rushed, as it tried to fit what was essentially a whole movie’s worth of story into just 30 minutes.
Why couldn’t this have been closer to an hour, like the two previous shows, and told the story properly? Going forward, if this becomes a trend for the other episodes in the series, MCU fans could become frustrated. What If…? allows for some truly special adventures, but these have to brought to life properly, and 30 minutes simply may not be enough time moving forward.