What If...? - 25 Biggest WTF Moments

With What If…?, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought something to the franchise utterly unique, and unlike anything seen before. Aside from the fact that it was animated, the series finally stepped away from the main continuity from the previous 13 years, and took a deep dive into the multiverse theory.

Narrated by The Watcher, fans were given never before seen glimpses into the extent of the multiverse. It is literally infinite, meaning that just about anything conceivably can and will happen eventually.

Each universe is completely unique, and unlike those around it. While each episode asked one specific question, surrounding the likes of the super soldier serum or the identity of Star-Lord, these scenarios all spun out and had massive ripple effects, causing other, often more drastic changes to the world.

Whether it was a weird, new iteration of a well known MCU character, an unexpected death, a previously unseen cosmic aspect, or even the end of the universe, there were plenty of shocking moments throughout What If…?’s first season that took more than a little while to fully process.

For the most part, What If…?’s first episode was essentially a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger with a few details changed. Of course, Captain Carter took the serum, but by and large the story of her against HYDRA remained very similar. At least compared to the directions other episodes took.

This however, did lead to the Red Skull having the Tesseract in his possession long enough to open up a portal to the other side of space and bring through HYDRA’s true champion, a gigantic tentacled monster that ended up devouring Schmidt himself.

The beast, known as Shuma-Gorath, is typically a Doctor Strange villain from the comics, and though it did come tentacle to face with the Sorcerer Supreme later in the series, few could have predicted that Peggy Carter would have been its first adversary in the MCU.

Her initial reaction of “what the bloody hell?” could sum up just about every viewer’s thoughts quite nicely. For a chapter that, for its majority didn’t generally deviate from the initial series of events, Shuma-Gorath’s appearance came completely out of left field.