The Disney+ show What If…? featured a series of anthology episodes about alternative realities in the MCU Multiverse. Led by the narrator known as “The Watcher,” viewers are taken into various stories with twists on beloved Marvel characters. The final few episodes conclude the season with an epic battle and unite heroes against the AI, Ultron, who acquired all the Infinity Stones.
A Vision for the Future
In the 2012 film, Avengers: Age of Ultron the superhero team prevents the villain from acquiring a vibranium body. They infuse Tony Stark’s original AI, Jarvis, with this body (powered by the Mind Stone). But in the episode What if…Ultron Won? you witness a universe where Ultron is able to combine his intelligence with the Vision’s body. This gave him the ability to defeat the Avengers.
The Mad Titan Thanos eventually comes to Earth searching for the Mind Stone, but Ultra-Vision (this is the name I will use for this alternate Ultron for the rest of the article) defeats him with ease. Possessing all the Infinity Stones allows Ultra-Vision to fashion a robotic army instantly.
Ultra-Vision sees his purpose as bringing order to the universe. While in itself, order is a good thing, the villain goes about bringing this reality to fruition in a sinister manner. He sees life as a variable too chaotic to allow to exist. Really, it is about free will. The allowance of suffering seems incomprehensible to Ultra-Vision.
Eventually, Ultra-Vision senses the presence of The Watcher and breaks through into his reality. Here’s an exchange between the two:
Ultra-Vision: All those worlds, all that suffering, and you just watched.
The Watcher: I swore an oath. I cannot exert my will on the natural order of things.
Ultra-Vision: I am the natural order of things. I will bring peace. It is my purpose. You lack the will to stop me.
The Watcher: You cannot compute the power of my will.
Since the Age of the Enlightenment, humanity has appeared to be on a new path (or have a New Vision) for the future. A future dictated by pure reason. Logic. Mathematics. But a solely logical view of the world leads to despair and a desire to control every aspect of it.
Ultra-Vision was a being of reason alone. Where human free will exists, he saw chaos. In suffering he perceived purposelessness. This New Vision is less real than the True Vision for humanity.
Infinite Love Comes from the Ultimate Sacrifice
The True Vision had one of the most poignant and salient lines in the entire MCU, “But what is grief, if not love persevering?” Love persists. It is everlasting. Saint Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13. Everything is fleeting except, faith, hope, and love. “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:4).
Ultra-Vision represents the false notion that suffering is meaningless and must be done away with at all costs. Suffering does have a purpose but it only comes to bear fruit when united to the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
Vision’s words about grief hit close to my heart when I first heard them. My wife and I suffered many miscarriages (among the worst of them in 2014 and 2017). Such loss crippled me spiritually and emotionally. I thought life wasn’t worth continuing at times. But God allowed me to experience those intense moments of pain in order to draw me closer to his Love. Sharing my grief led to bringing some comfort to others who experienced similar suffering. I posted about the funeral service we had for our unborn baby and an old high school friend mentioned she would pursue getting a headstone for her unborn baby as a memorial.
Suffering need not always end in chaos or despair. What If…?‘s Ultra-Vision lacked the humanity (literally!) and faith to believe in someone outside of himself.
Love transforms all―even suffering― into something more beautiful than before. The Christian life is about this vision.
All the powers of the Infinity Stones don’t match the combined strength and resolve of the Guardians of the Multiverses, the superhero team assembled by The Watcher, (powered by the love of those they previously lost).
Matt Chicoine
Matthew Chicoine is a free-lance writer, a life-long Catholic, and an avid truth seeker. He earned an M.A. in theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2014 and enjoys binge reading Tolkien, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Fulton Sheen and comic books. Visit his blog at https://thesimplecatholic.