What If Tony Stark Grandmaster Review: Forgettable

Keeping track, What If…? Season 2 is now batting .500 as the “What If… Tony Stark Crashed Into The Grandmaster?” episode is simply forgettable.

It’s Christmas and for some reason, they didn’t release the Happy Hogan episode, which is a million times better, but they released an episode that was boring and goofy.

The episode takes place after The Avengers movie and prior to Thor: Ragnarork. When Iron Man throws the nuke into space at the end of The Avengers movie to stop Thanos and the Chitauri from invading Earth, instead of returning to Earth, Iron Man goes through the portal and lands on Planet Sakaar.

More Taika Waititi cringe

There, Iron Man meets the Grandmaster who is just as cringe as we saw him in Ragnarok, I think even more so. Taika Waititi, who doesn’t even like any of these characters, is also featured again as Korg. How about since this is “What If” they give us a what if version if Taika Waititi never directed a Marvel movie? Well, I suppose you can just watch the much better Planet Hulk animated movie or for that matter, read the epic Planet Hulk comics that the MCU completely butchered, and I mean completely.

So Tony is on Planet Sakaar and there is way too much over-the-top Tony Stark goofy banter between him and the Grandmaster. For some reason, they come up with the decision to race each other. Yeah, it’s a rip-off of The Phantom Menace. Why are they racing and what are they racing for? Well, Tony puts together a garbage version of the Hulkbuster Suit, so Grandmaster – even though as they say is already in charge of the entire planet – decides to race Tony for his garbage Hulkbuster suit in exchange for the planet. Basically, if Tony wins he can go free, if he can’t, he won’t go free.

We all know how this is going to go, and of course the Grandmaster cheats in the race. We’re shown the same faces in the crowd cheering for at least a half dozen times or so. Oh, Valkyrie is a contender, Gamora is there somewhere. All of Tony’s gadgets are there, he can hack and do whatever he wants blah blah blah. So they get a hold of Grandmaster’s weapon who meets a similar fate to the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz. It turns out Gamora is there to capture or kill Iron Man because of sending the nuke. Tony gives her a speech about fathers, blah, blah blah. Gamora captures Tony. She turns him into Thanos. Oh, it’s a double-cross! They use the Grandmaster’s weapon on Thanos! The End! We don’t even see what happens!

This isn’t a good episode by any means. It seems like a filler episode like they ran out of ideas. You can skip this one.