What If…? season 2 episode 8 takes viewers to a universe where the Avengers assemble not in the 21st century but in 1602.
What if the Avengers assembled in 1602? That is the what-if that the penultimate episode of the show’s second season entertains.
However, these Shakespearean versions of the Avengers need one more hero to rescue their universe, which is on the brink of annihilation.
Hero to fugitive
Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, summons a hero from a neighboring universe willing to face impossible odds to save a reality that’s not hers. This hero is Captain Peggy Carter.
This universe is a bizarre merger of the sixteenth century and the twenty-first century that has given rise to cosmic storms that create rifts in the space-time fabric, threatening a universal collapse.
Peggy’s arrival does little to save the universe and fails to save Hela the queen from one of the rifts.
Thor, who is crowned king in her absence, is angered over Peggy and calls upon his men to seize her.
Carter becomes a fugitive and later meets the Watcher, who she says she can hear from time to time, much to his surprise.
He offers to take her to her home universe but she refuses, determined to save this one.
The how of it all
Wanda Maximoff explains Peggy Carter is the key to saving their universe because there’s someone like her yet to come.
She calls them the Forerunner who has fallen through time, unaware that their presence is causing their universe to collapse.
This Forerunner is from the 21st century and by some aberration has ended up in this universe, causing the two time periods to be compressed into one or stuck together like gum, as Carter puts it.
Avengers Assemble
Fugitive Captain Carter meets Stark the mad inventor, releases Hulk from his captivity, and also joins outlaws Lang, Barnes, and Rogers Hood to form an Avengers team.
As per Stark’s plan, his new contraption would weed out the Forerunner, who shares the same energy signature as the storms.
His contraption would need a great energy source, which is encased in Thor’s scepter — the Time Stone.
A massive rift opens up at the court session where Peggy and all others have gathered up covertly.
Wanda holds the rift from becoming worse while helping out Peggy and her Avengers team-up who all hold their own against Hogan and his men.
Fury also lends a hand while Thor keeps antagonizing Peggy and her friends, hearing nor believing any of what she has to say.
Stark uses the stone to power his contraption and Peggy wears it on her hand, shooting an energy blast that pauses time.
Victory at a cost
The Forerunner is revealed to be Rogers Hood, who admits he remembers fighting a space monster (Thanos) and how when he attacked him, he ended up hitting the time stone, which is what led to the timelines merging and the universe collapsing.
For the universe to be saved the Forerunner must be returned to their timeline. Peggy has to again make a decision she doesn’t want to, but Steve Rogers goes ahead and makes it himself, bidding farewell to Peggy.
The Avengers stuck in 1602 all disappear and only Captain Carter is left, wallowing in the cost her heroism incurred, thinking the person who just walked out of a portal behind her is the Watcher, there to gloat over his wisdom.
However, she is wrong, it’s actually Doctor Strange Supreme, who has come to her with some unbelievable news and possibly another multiversal adventure.