What If...?

The show keeps putting identity-forward heroes front and center. Captain Carter is a main face across seasons. Kahhori is an original Mohawk heroine built with Native consultants. Other big examples include T’Challa as Star-Lord, Jeffrey Wright as the Watcher, and a late multiversal team around those leads. Many side casts just mirror normal MCU diversity without extra signaling.

This is not a lecture show most of the time. Some modern lines still land, like season three accept-us counseling for Banner and Captain Carter sexism beats. The Kahhori episode also puts colonial villains in plain speech. Large stretches of the run stay pure genre and action talk.

The anthology is uneven, but tentpole stories carry a clear empowerment load. Captain Carter is framed as the sidelined woman who becomes First Avenger. Kahhori’s arc asks what if colonization did not happen and centers an Indigenous woman hero. Black hero variants and season three acceptance themes add more of the same, while many pulp episodes do not.

Critique is mild and mostly episodic. Kahhori’s anti-colonial what-if is the strongest hit and leans modern decolonial framing. Season three therapy norms feel current and liberal, not a full attack on men. Soviet buddy-cop comedy is not Marxist advocacy, and there is no series-long claim that the West is pure evil.

The score tracks identity-coded swaps, not every multiverse twist. Peggy taking the super-soldier mantle is the biggest recurring change. T’Challa as Star-Lord and Wright as the Watcher also count. Kahhori is original rather than a swap of an old figure. The multiverse setup softens pure forced-rewrite complaints.

Pushback is real but smaller than for She-Hulk or The Acolyte. Outlets and posts hit season three therapy Hulk and accept-us messaging as woke. Captain Carter also draws girlboss and overexposure complaints. Broader MCU too-woke talk sometimes names the show without a huge dedicated war over it.

Bradley and casting lead Finn sit in a moderate elevated range on diversity-forward hero and recasting priorities. Animation directors and many producers score much lower in the teens to low twenties. Studio voices also linked the series launch and Kahhori path to inclusion and DEI framing. The net is moderate context, not director-driven activism.