Marvel's "What If...?" (Episode 7)

Episode 7: “What if we wanted to be free to do what we want to do, and we wanted to get loaded and have a good time? And that’s what we did, we had a good time, we had a party? Woo yeah?”

The premise here is that a spoiled and feckless Prince Thor of Asgard decides not to fight evil, but rather boredom and the squares, by slipping off while his parents are away (his dad for rejuve treatments, his mom to get wine drunk with other moms) and throwing a cataclysmically large party on Earth. 

Oh dear, you say to yourself, it doesn’t sound like they can fit much punching into that kind of storyline BECAUSE YOU ARE A NAÏVE FOOL WHO KNOWS NOTHING. Thor and co. and I do mean co. as in pretty much every side character from the Thor and Guardians movies gets a cameo anyway they throw a party of such massive proportions that it threatens to destroy the entire planet. Fire giant king and herald of the end of the world, Surtur, rips the Statue of Liberty’s arms off while trying to hit on her. Thor’s lightning accidentally knocks out power to the entire eastern seaboard of the US. Loki develops a plan to use the arch of St. Louis as a giant slingshot. That kind of thing.

It is up to Captain Marvel to stop Thor in a battle of the blondes, by using all of her cunning and crafty wiles or haha no not really, by punching Thor a lot.

It’s mildly diverting though the whole thing is structured like an 80s sitcom episode replete with putting the world back together before mom finds out.

It’s funnier in the premise than the execution, but hell with it, these are comic book characters and it’s oddly refreshing to see them portrayed as such. Sure, it’s a filler episode in a filler series, designed to tide Disney+ audiences over between “Loki” and the next big series, “Hawkeye” (well okay large-ish series, I mean c’mon, it’s Hawkeye) so it’s not exactly essential viewing. But then the whole MCU is about as essential as Twinkie filling anyway, so why not. I did catch myself thinking at one point “ah, not like any of this series is canon anyway” which is kind of a bass-ackwards way to approach entertainment. Of course it’s lightweight, forgettably flimsy fun, what else was it supposed to be? Why should it be anything else?

The expectation that every story link into every other story is probably not a good one for storytelling. This is just kind of its own thing for 30 silly minutes. Good for it. I bitched and moaned about this series not taking its ideas seriously, but if it won’t, then this is the way to go: Dispense with the faux-Shakespearean tragedy about a wizard who gets sad or, um, zombies, and just have goofy, silly characters doing goofy, silly things.