Warning: Contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 9.
Throughout Avengers: Endgame plot. With the start of Phase 4, the legacy of the end of Phase 3 and Tony Stark’s sacrifice has been strong. All of Marvel’s Disney+ series had previously dealt with the fallout of Iron Man’s final movie, but What If…? returned to some of those key scenes more than once.
After Ultron (Ross Marquand) claims all of the Infinity Stones and uses them to break down the barriers between the multiverses, The Watcher, Uatu (Jeffrey Wright) is forced to break his oath. Teaming up with an iteration of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), they bring together a team with the apparent goal of destroying the Infinity Stones with Gamora’s (Cynthia McWilliams) Infinity Crusher. However, the end reveal is that The Watcher’s plan was always for Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) to betray them and fight Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) for the Infinity Stones as Stephen Strange monitored their pocket universe for the rest of time.
At the last moment, Doctor Strange realizes that The Watcher’s original What If…? plan was only a feint after Ultron has pointed out that Uatu should have known that the Infinity Crusher would not work on his Infinity Stones. Instead, Avengers: Infinity War to predict the one way that the Avengers could defeat Thanos. The Watcher then helps to orchestrate that series of events without revealing what has to happen just as Strange did in Avengers: Endgame.
This mimicry is particularly poetic as in Avengers: Endgame, Doctor Strange guides Iron Man towards making the ultimate sacrifice by indicating that it is the only way. In many ways, the end of Stark’s arc is a redemption for the character after many previous failings from his time creating weapons through the creation of Ultron. However, by having The Watcher take on the role of planner in What If…? and having the evil Doctor Strange have to commit to watching the universe containing Zola and Killmonger forever, it provides a redemption for this iteration of Strange while turning the tables on the man who was forced to orchestrate Tony Stark’s death.
Beyond the plan itself, What If…? makes further allusions to Avengers: Endgame in its concluding episodes. In the What If…? finale the Guardians of the Multiverse end up trying to the Soul Stone around to get it to the Infinity Crusher without it falling into the hands of Ultron, with many of the shots being extremely reminiscent of the Avengers: Endgame climax as the heroes attempt to get the Infinity Gauntlet to the quantum tunnel. This, of course, comes after the previous episode saw a character swapped reenactment of Natasha Romanoff’s (Lake Bell) death on Vormir that used very similar shots as Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) sacrifices himself to allow her to escape with Zola.
