“What If…?” The Avengers Were Never Initiated

“There was an idea called the ‘Avengers Initiative.’ The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles we never could.” —Nick Fury

These words have become etched into the stone core of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It has been a part of the promotional material for Avengers: Endgame, it found its origins within Captain Marvel, but it was first heard within 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers. Within this episode of What If…? we see the results of pondering and rewriting most of Phase 1 within the MCU.

There is no chance to follow through with this plan for Nick Fury and for S.H.I.E.L.D., but there is only pain and murder. One by one, every candidate for the Avengers Initiative is murdered off by a mysterious killer. This leads to Fury having to manage an impending threat and stop anyone else from being killed.

Instead of Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff providing a remedy for Tony Stark’s arc reactor poisoning him, Black Widow appears to murder Iron Man inside of the donut shop. Instead of Clint Barton watching the God of Thunder try and fail to lift Mjolnir, Hawkeye sends his arrow directly into Thor’s heart. Instead of Bruce Banner losing control, escaping the military’s grasp at Culver University, Hulk literally explodes on the campus. All of these murders appear to be connected. It is all but confirmed once Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff are killed off as well. It does not take a genius sleuth to figure out those are the candidates for Nick Fury’s Avengers Initiative.

Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three arrive on Midgard to get vengeance for their fallen prince, which leads to Nick Fury having to be diplomatic with literal gods. This conversation between Fury and the trickster god has some strong parallels to when the two of them spoke on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s helicarrier, and I loved every second of it.

While the second episode about T’Challa as Star-Lord was easily my favorite to watch, this one I think has had the best question pondered of the three episodes released. In the span of four days, Nick Fury’s life was turned upside down and had some of his biggest allies and assets killed without him having any chance of stopping their deaths. This episode also helps develop Fury’s relationship with Carol Danvers. Even as his candidates were being killed, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. still does not call on Captain Marvel. Fury knows that she is Plan Z and is only called upon as a last resort. While this almost comes to pass, he has a lightbulb moment and ends up stopping the murderer.

Since he believed Nick Fury was responsible for killing his daughter, Hank Pym was the one who killed all of the potential Avengers. This Pym was not the one we knew and loved, but rather a shell of himself who is clearly grieving. I do not know how I feel about Hank Pym being the killer, mainly because it is hard to imagine the S.H.I.E.L.D. hating the Pym we know who would let his daughter join the agency mentioned above. This slight hang-up I have is actually why I rank this episode third so far, but first in potential.

The closing scene of Fury getting his two captains together was the perfect way to tease a potential follow-up, while still being a satisfying end. My belief that all of these episodes occur in the same universe is much less likely now that Agent Phil Coulson’s password was all about Steve Rogers is Captain America. However, I still do believe these episodes are left open-ended to have that option to return to them if Marvel receives enough demand for them and the opportunity arises.

Marvel’s What If…? is now streaming exclusively on Disney+.