With Marvel letting it all ride on their big multiverse bet, staked first in WANDAVISION and doubled-down on in LOKI, WHAT IF…? offers the MCU an irresistibly broad canvas on which to work. With canon now being a matter of corporate whim, who knows whether what we’re about to be offered will have ramifications beyond the animated world and into the MCU proper? Strange, then, that the series…

It’s become something of a cliché recently to begin films – especially ones aimed at a family audience – with a car accident, robbing a character of one or more parents. “Dark Phoenix” did it. “Pete’s Dragon” did it. “Shazam!” sort of did it. Even “Frozen” did it, although they used a ship instead of a car. It’s on that particular detail that Zemeckis chooses to turn his protagonist’s world…