Marvel recently released its third and final season of What If…?, its speculative MCU-adjacent multiverse series that at least at one point, was one of the top critic-scored entries in the whole MCU. Well, times have changed. Season 3 of What If…? has attracted somewhat lower critic scores (though not bad), but awful audience scores to the point where it’s one of the lowest entries of the entire MCU.
Here’s the new ranking order of the worst audience-scored MCU productions with a few caveats:
5) Captain Marvel – 45%
4) Secret Invasion – 43%
3) Inhumans – 42%
2) What If…? Season 3 – 37%
1) She-Hulk – 32%
I believe these are the only Rotten-scored audience entries in the MCU, though again, caveats. Inhumans does not exactly seem like MCU canon as it has more or less been banished from existence, despite attachment to Agents of SHIELD, outside of a brief cameo in Multiverse of Madness for Anson Mount’s Black Bolt (who was promptly murdered).
There is also no escaping the unequivocal fact that Captain Marvel and She-Hulk were very clearly review bombed as part of a culture war movement. Brie Larson made a comment about male movie critics that was blown wildly out of proportion, and Captain Marvel was bombed so hard Rotten Tomatoes instituted policies to verify audience movie scores to prevent this. They cannot verify TV audience viewing, and so even though She-Hulk may not have been the strongest production in the end, it being the worst thing the MCU has ever produced by a significant margin? No, it was also heavily bombed by those protesting its very up-front feminist messaging.
Secret Invasion was just utterly terrible with no caveats needed, and so, it seems, is What If…? season 3, which lands it here. One cause for concern is that the head writer of What If…? season 3 is now writing the second season of the beloved X-Men ’97 after its creator Beau DeMayo was fired for alleged inappropriate behavior (he had some harsh words for season 3 of What If…? himself on Twitter, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence).
What If…? is now over, but it remains to be seen if Marvel is going to do any more animation in this vein. We know X-Men ’97 season 2 is coming, as said, and now soon we’ll be getting the animated Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man series. Hopefully that goes better than what we just saw here.
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