WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 9, “What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?,” streaming now on Disney+.
One of the most shocking episodes of Disney+’s What If…? was the one featuring a zombie threat that tore the Avengers apart. It stunned many to see heroes like the Wasp, Sharon Carter, Captain America and so many more as the undead, with quite a few of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes being killed in the process. While we thought that reality got decimated when a zombified Thanos arrived, the universe is revived in the Season 1 finale to give the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most powerful hero a tragic ending.
It’s none other than Wanda Maximoff, who in that world was kept prisoner by Vision. The android didn’t want to give up on his beloved Scarlet Witch, feeding her people like Black Panther after she became a zombie. Without a cure, he felt like this was the only way to preserve her, although he would redeem himself as Spider-Man, Bucky and Co. tried to stop her.
It’d end with Wanda unleashing her chaos and hex magic, fighting the Hulk. And it seems like, similar to how Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame confirmed she’s the strongest, Wanda has emerged victorious again.
This is pretty much confirmed after Uatu assembles the Guardians of the Multiverse to fight Ultron and his Infinity Gauntlet. At one point The Watcher needs a distraction, so he and Strange Supreme open a portal, dropping thousands of zombies as well as the Wanda from that reality on Ultron.
Unfortunately, as Ultron uses the Infinity Stones to fry the undead, Wanda is incinerated before she can muster anything much in the way of a fight. It’s disappointing as we’d have liked to have seen her show she could contend with his gems, plus it feels cruel to just bring her in with the horde, then reduce her to ash like this.
It may have been done to illustrate just how powerful this Ultron is, but it feels like the cameo and overall potential of the fight is wasted. And, as a character, you can’t help but feel for Wanda. In WandaVision, Scarlet Witch lost Vision and her sons as she made the choice to return to her life after the Snap, so she just can’t seem to catch a break.
And in this case, the Watcher has no empathy or compassion. He deems her cannon fodder, something to take Ultron’s eyes off his crew of heroes. At that point, Uatu doesn’t care, as desperate times call for desperate measures, with the Mind Stone-powered Wanda being collateral damage and a necessary casualty in this war on a robot god.
To see Wanda meet a tragic end, What If…? Episode 9 is streaming now on Disney+.
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