Episode 5 has arrived, and with it, a zombie virus outbreak that has overtaken the Earth, as well as its Mightiest Heroes. I was quite surprised at the high number of returning actors in this episode. I think Spider-Man/Peter Parker was the only main character with speaking lines* to not be voiced by their MCU actor.
*Cap is credited by Josh Keaton again, but he had one line near the beginning,, and then just some zombie growls.
While last week's episode focused its grim and depressing storyline on to one character (Doctor Strange), this one pours all of that darkness onto the whole world, and if you're at all familiar with zombie apocalypse stories, this is just about the same, but with the MCU heroes we all know and love, with Peter Parker as a bit of the central hero here, which kind of makes me sad that they couldn't get Tom Holland to voice him, but his voice actor here is a fairly good voice match IMO.
There were some great bits of action and fun match-ups throughout the episode, some funny, some sad, and some that will probably never happen in the MCU proper (my favorite being the ones at the Camp Lehigh). And WOW that ending!!! I really hope they revisit this universe in the second season because I need to know what happens next!
I'd say this is tied with my favorite of the season so far, episode four, both have been very interesting and unique divergences from the main MCU. While episode 1 was just CATFA almost beat-for-beat in parts, and episode 2 was a fairly small and self-contained story about T'Challa, episode 3 at least branched out to other moments within the MCU that didn't all happen in one film. But the whole concept of What If...? definitely was explored much further with these past two episodes. I'm really glad the series is getting better with each episode, and now I am more hyped for this series as we reach the back-half of season one.
Based on promotional material, there's a "Party Thor" episode, something with Gamora in Thanos' armor, an episode where Killmonger saves Tony Stark from being captured by The Ten Rings, and a version of Vision in Ultron-armor with the Infinity Stones in his chest, so I think we've got the remaining four episodes right there, and some sort of Guardians Of The Multiverse team-up as well (probably the finale), which I hope has a good set-up and is a bit longer than 30-ish minutes.
-Marc.