All forms of media are bound to have some kind of a message. But what if the message is not liked by everyone. Ever since phase 4 started, most Marvel fans are showing major disappointments and complaints.
The major complaints include too much focus on females or characters that are not white while marginalizing established white characters who have always been fan favorites. In fact, most Americans and even people from other countries like India call this the “Woke” phenomenon.
Unfortunately Marvel’s latest product, the “What If: Season 3” series have also received such backlash. But are these complaints justified? Or are they just cries from immature people?
What Is The Issue With Marvel Anyways?
Most Marvel movies and television shows have received groundbreaking success due to their unique and intense storytelling. The success journey started from the late 70s and 80s with the “Hulk” TV series that concluded with the movie “Death of the Incredible Hulk” in 1990. After this movies like “Blade”, “Spider-Man” and the “X-men” movies made marvel characters and comics bestsellers during the 2000s and after that.
Such movies ultimately inspired the Marvel Cinematic Universe which aimed to bring all marvel comic book characters into one movie universe. The first 3 phases ending with”Avengers: Endgame” were decently received by everyone since they only aimed to tell stories of good forces defeating evil. However, certain movies and scenes where too much comedy or humiliation of male characters at the hands of female characters were not liked by most people.
Eventually, this became a problem as web series like “WandaVision” and many other movies after this one often showed female protagonists as too strong with not so good motives. However, the constant justification of female characters and why they were too strong or suddenly evil for no good reason brought negative attention from the audience. In fact, most people, especially critics felt that most of these movies have poor storytelling and do not send a good message.
How This Problem Got Shown In “What If: Season 3”
“What If: Season 3” is the third installment of the animated web series produced by Marvel that focuses on parallel universes with different versions of our beloved superheroes. Season 1 and 2 were received well due to their good storytelling and excellent depiction of alternate scenarios.
However, many people felt that some episodes involving certain female characters and a variant of Black Panther voiced by the late Chadwick Boseman were poorly written. In fact, this was confirmed by the critics who said that these characters did not go through a painful but self-discovering journey that one expects from a hero and instead just started doing heroic things randomly.
This problem only got aggravated in the third season. The third season did not have good stories that would make some sense. Yes I know that superhero movies do not make sense but adhering to at least some logic is not harmful. Some episodes like the episode 8 are not even a “What If” scenario and are simply set on an alternate timeline. And the second episode just showed the villain Agatha Harkness in a cringe and unfunny way just to show her to be strong.
The season’s final episode showed the main protagonist, Captain Carter and two original characters as well as the X-men member Storm try to protect the multiverse from some watchers. They seek the help of a variant of infinity Ultron who was the villain in the first season.
Although this character does become heroic in this episode, his heroics are only shown for a few seconds. At the end the evil watchers try to destroy the multiverse and Captain Carter only jumps at them and everything ends suddenly. In fact, this ending is too rushed and nonsensical.
What I Felt By Watching This Season
At first I used to feel that most of the Marvel audience are immature kids complaining about strong female characters. But now I think they were right. This is because the problem is not about female characters being strong but is about weak storytelling, lack of imagination and forced propaganda.
After watching this season, I felt that the creators at Marvel just wanted to make a comedy series and not a serious story about good vs evil. In fact, we have always seen many strong female superheroes in Marvel and DC so why would people suddenly complain about them now. The main reason for this is because people want superhero movies to be more mature and grounded. They do not want characters to be made for children only or to be the butt of jokes. And this “What If” season did exactly that. The success of “ Spiderman: No way home” and “ Deadpool and Wolverine” shows that people want to watch superheroes in action instead of nonsensical comedy. Hence, Marvel and Kevin Feige should start taking notes.
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