What If…? season finale recap: Ending, post-credits scene explained for episode 9 – CNET

A whole multiverse of SPOILERS lies ahead. 

Zola’s torso face is a classic comic book image.

Guardians of the Multiverse

Peering in, she sees the Hydra-Stomper armor. And there’s apparently someone inside.
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That’s it for this season of What If …?, but season 2 is confirmed and will likely arrive in 2022 or 2023. You don’t have to wait that long for your next dose of Marvel, though — Eternals hits theaters Nov. 5, and Hawkeye kicks off on Disney Plus Nov. 24.

Taking on Infinity Ultron

Presumably, this plot point will be resolved in season 2.

More mid-credits, but you get it. Peggy suggests she be returned to World War II as a reward (much like Steve Rogers went back in Avengers: Endgame), but the Watcher convinces her that she’s needed in modern times. Back to the SHIELD vessel, her universe’s Black Widow reveals that she’s found a shipping container that’ll interest Peggy.

The villains’ betrayal

It’s unclear what the deal with Steve is — it’s possible he was captured by Hydra after WWII. If he aged normally, he’d be in his mid-90s by this point, but he may have been kept in cryogenic stasis (like Bucky Barnes). The Hydra-Stomper was initially powered by the Tesseract, which contained the Space Stone, so it’s possible Hydra is harnessing residual energy from that.
Strange Supreme agrees to watch over the trapped villains and make sure they don’t escape. Since Strange is already in a pocket dimension, it’s essentially a pocket dimension within a pocket dimension.

Natasha manages to defeat Ultron by infecting him with the AI copy of Hydra scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), as she and the late Hawkeye previously attempted.
Predictably, Killmonger and Zola both make grabs for the Infinity Stones. Killmonger reasons that they can use them to fix their worlds, and prepares to slaughter the heroes when they refuse to go along with his plan.

Home again, mostly

Most of the others are returned to their realities at the moment they left. Since Black Widow from the Age of Ultron reality is the last person alive there, she understandably refuses to return. Instead, she’s sent to the universe where Black Widow and a bunch of other Avengers candidates were slain by Hank Pym, and defeats the world-conquering Loki.
In the wake of that defeat, the desperate Watcher turned to the corrupted Strange Supreme to seek his help and we ask the question: What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?

Post-credits

Peggy gazes upon the show’s post-credits season 2 setup.

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Gamora makes her What If…? debut in the season 1 finale.
Presumably this is Steve Rogers, whom Peggy thought she’d left behind when she traveled to modern times after leaping into a time portal to fight Hydra’s champion back in WWII (that’s a complicated sentence).
The Watcher gathers a bunch of the heroes we’ve seen in previous episodes — Captain Carter, Star-Lord T’Challa, Strange Supreme, Killmonger, Party Thor and Age of Ultron Black Widow — for his anti-Ultron squad, plucking them from their universes at pivotal moments.

Observations, WTF questions and Easter eggs

• What were the actual consequences of the Watcher interfering? He didn’t end up in his manager’s office or anything (at least as far as we saw).
• If Peggy was lost in time, who co-founded SHIELD in her reality?
• Peggy and Natasha have an awesome rapport in the scenes riffing on the events of The Winter Soldier, and Peggy’s stealth suit (with the white Union Jack) is super cool.
• Natasha suggests that Bernard in accounting is interested in Peggy. She makes a similar comment about Lillian from accounting as a possible date for Steve in The Winter Soldier.
• The heroes’ first objective is to grab the Soul Stone and deliver it to Gamora. In the mainline MCU, Thanos sacrifices Gamora to obtain it in Avengers: Infinity War (and Natasha later sacrifices herself to get it in Endgame).
• The sweeping shot of the heroes gathered during the battle with Ultron mirrors a similar moment in the first Avengers movie. 
• Did Peggy think Steve died in the period between WWII and her arrival in modern times?

Captain Carter and Black Widow double-shield Ultron.

After an Infinity Stone-empowered Ultron marched across the multiverse last week, episode 9 — the season finale — of alternate reality Marvel Cinematic Universe animated series What If…? arrived on Disney Plus Wednesday. The deadly AI even beat up the all-seeing Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), revealing that the previously untouchable godlike being was vulnerable.