"What If...?" - Season 1 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Watcher

"Time, space, reality. It's more than a linear path. It's a prism of endless possibility where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities creating alternate worlds from the ones you know."

The Watcher, introducing the stories of "What If...?", is here to be our guide and our narrator, giving a glimpse into a small handful of alternate timelines and realities spawned from other choices made. He can not and will not interfere; he is simply The Watcher.

Answer: A Union Jack

Earth, June 1943. As the Nazis march across Europe, the Allied armies created the super-soldiers. Captain America was created, restoring peace to the Earth. But in another version of this story, Captain Margaret 'Peggy' Carter never enters the booth when Steve Rogers is meant to receive the serum. It's because of this she is present to shoot and kill an assassin, and to avoid losing the project, Agent Carter places herself into the machine, making herself the super-soldier instead of Captain America.

Initially, the decision is met with negativity. Carter, now stronger than any man, is left behind while the forces are sent to war. Instead, working with Howard Stark, she's outfitted with an outfit and a vibranium shield emblazoned with the Union Jack. It's with these that she's able to ambush Hydra, secure the Tesseract in Berlin, and allow Stark to create the 'Hydra Stomper', a mechanical suit of armor allowing him to fight alongside Carter despite his injuries.

What follows is several battles in which Carter saves Bucky Barnes' battalion, pushes back the Nazis, and leads the war, but it puts the spotlight on her as well. Her success comes with danger as Red Skull kidnaps Steve Rogers when on a mission, reclaims the Tesseract from Stark's suit, and uses it to open a portal to another reality. The creature inside kills Red Skull while Captain Carter is forced to fight back and give Stark the opportunity to seal the portal. Steve is able to fend off the creature and save the other soldiers, but Carter has no choice but to push it through the portal to seal it off. She vanishes from the Hydra facility leaving only the Tesseract behind, but she emerges on the other side, elsewhere on Earth, seventy years in the future, before Nick Fury and Clint Barton of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Answer: Thanos

On the abandoned planet Morag, T'Challa, known as Star-Lord, collects the Power Stone. Claiming Korath, who arrived to stop him, as a Ravager, he joins Yondu and heads back into space.

The truth is that in this universe, T'Challa was grabbed from his home in Wakanda in the year 1988. Yondu's men aimed to pick up Peter Quill, but they got the wrong boy. And with that, over twenty years, he grew up to become a famous space mercenary.

Nebula finds T'Challa, who's managed to convince her father not to pursue the Infinity Stones, and hires him for a new mission: finding the Embers of Genesis. This artifact, able to heal a dying planet in minutes, would be able to eradicate hunger across the galaxy. The problem is that the Embers are in The Collector's hands, and it's with that information that the Ravagers head to Knowhere, trade the Power Stone to gain access to Tanaleer Tivan's collection, and grab what they need (with the help of Howard the Duck). It's there, however, that T'Challa uncovers the truth about his past-- that Yondu kidnapped him from Wakanda when he was too young to remember.

T'Challa and the Ravagers eventually managed to get away, escaping The Collector's clutches and henchpeople, and they head back to Earth to revisit Wakanda together.

Elsewhere on Earth, in a Dairy Queen, Peter Quill is visited unexpectedly by his father, Ego.

Answer: Hank Pym

Starting his week on a Monday, Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff travel out to meet Tony Stark at an L.A. coffee shop, inviting him to join the Avengers Initiative and injecting him with what they think is lithium dioxide. It turns out, someone swapped the syringe. Tony is killed by the contents. Though Natasha is detained, Fury break her loose to seek out answers.

On Tuesday, Thor arrives on Earth to reclaim Mjolnir from where it's found in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. Hawkeye, protecting the area, appears to let loose an arrow despite Fury's order for him to stand down and it kills the Asgardian. In captivity that night, Barton dies of unknown causes.

When Wednesday arrives, Romanoff and Fury separately head to Culver University. While the former speaks to Betty Ross about the injection that killed Stark, deducing that it was likely nanotechnology that killed Iron Man, Fury realizes the next target is likely to be Dr. Bruce Banner. Banner is killed as well, exploding when he transforms into the Hulk.

As Loki arrives by Thursday looking to exact revenge for his brother's death, Romanoff ends up being the last Avenger to die. She is, however, able to let Fury know that the connection between all of the murders is Hope. It leads Fury and Loki, working together, to Hank Pym, the father of Hope Van Dyne, who died in the field as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

On Friday, Hank is taken to Asgard to be imprisoned, but with the Earth unable to defend itself, Loki takes over. Fury has no choice but to keep searching for Avengers despite this.

Answer: The 'bad' Strange

The Watcher, this time, casts his gaze on Stephen Strange who, aiming for the best of intentions, goes down the wrong path. As Strange and Christine drive to a party he crashes his car and Christine is killed though, in this universe, he never lost the use of his hands. Grief-stricken, he travelled the world and still came across the mystic Arts, becoming Doctor Strange and unlocking the powers of the Eye of Agamotto to defeat Dormammu. He couldn't forget Christine, however.

Using the Eye to travel back two years in time to the day of the crash, Strange tries and fails, repeatedly, to make the changes to the past he needs to save Christine (despite his greatest efforts). His grief and fruitless attempts don't go unnoticed by the Ancient One who, from beyond, informs him that Christine's death is an absolute point in time. Without her passing he would not have become the powerful sorcerer who defeated Dormammu and saved the universe. Changing her death would create a paradox.

Strange refuses to listen, however, spending hundreds of years absorbing the cumulative powers of magical creatures to enhance his own abilities. What he later discovers is that, in being sent to the Lost Library of Cagliostro, the Ancient one split him into a good and dark self with the hopes that the former would defeat the one bound for the Library. Instead, the grief-stricken version of Strange absorbs his counterpart, gaining enough power to purposely create the paradox that brings Christine back, much to her shock and dismay when she sees what he's become.

The resulting paradox destroys this universe and Christine with it. While the Watcher views the ensuing destruction (and Strange begs for his help), there's nothing he will do to assist. Strange seals himself away to save his life, but everything else in his universe is lost.

Answer: Mind Stone

The Hulk, falling from space, crash lands in the Sanctum Sanctorum with the aim to inform the world of Thanos' impending arrival but he finds the planet quite different from the way he left it. Though the New York City streets seem empty, the truth is that most of the planet has fallen victim to a zombie invasion. Even the Avengers, as Banner discovers, have been transformed. He's only saved when Doctor Strange's Cape of Levitation and Hope Van Dyne intervene in the nick of time.

Banner reunites with some of the only survivors remaining, holed up and en route to the labs at Camp Lehigh, to discover that the zombie outbreak spread from an infected Janet Van Dyne who, trapped in the Quantum Realm for thirty years, contracted an unknown virus that Hank Pym brought back with them. It took less than a day before the Pacific Coast was almost fully-infected. Once the Avengers were infected, in their effort to save the world, it was nearly impossible for the planet to make it.

Though they're attacked en route, a small group makes it to New Jersey to meet Vision who, though he has a cure, has been forced to keep Wanda Maximoff locked away due to her inability to be affected by his Mind Stone. She breaks free, killing many of the remaining survivors, and Vision gives up the Infinity Stone in an attempt to allow the others to use it to cure humanity. Only Spider-Man, T'Challa, the Cloak of Levitation, and Scott Lang's decapitated head are able to make it to Wakanda, but little do they know, Zombie Thanos is waiting for them to arrive to claim the Mind Stone, the last piece he needs for the Gauntlet.

Answer: No

In Kunar Province, Afghanistan, Tony Stark's convoy is attacked by the Ten Rings, but before he's blown up by his own weaponry, he's protected and brought to safety by Erik Stevens, a Wakandan who would become better-known as Killmonger. In this version of the universe, Tony Stark would still exist, but he would not become Iron Man.

Returning to the United States, Killmonger is made into Tony's new security officer, and eventually the COO, and the plot to assassinate Stark, put forth by Obadiah Stane, is still revealed. Stark still has connections to Ulysses Klaue, as he would have when Ultron emerged, but his aim to obtain more Vibranium to create new technology results in the deaths of both Col. Rhodes and T'Challa, both secretly at Killmonger's hands. When Stark finds out, Killmonger eliminates him as well, absconding with Stark's 'Liberator' drone technology along the way.

What results is a series of events that lead the American military, led by Thaddeus Ross, to oppose Wakanda where Killmonger, having lied his way to the mantle of Black Panther, deceives the Wakandan people into what may be war. In the Astral Plane, T'Challa warns Killmonger he will be stopped; in the real world, Shuri works with Pepper Potts with the vow to expose the lie.

Answer: More reckless

Out in the desert, Jane Foster and Darcy Williams investigate the possibility of an alien invasion in the Mojave Desert but find that they're too late. They don't realize that anything is different from normal since, in their universe, the Asgardians (as they would come to be known) have landed in Las Vegas to party. In this universe, Odin returned Loki to his people and did not raise him as Thor's adopted brother, and because of this, Thor is a different type of person.

Thor parties on Midgar/Earth to devastating effect while Loki, leading the Frost Giants, joins his 'brother from another mother'. S.H.I.E.L.D. struggles to keep the Acting King of Asgard at bay and, because of this, Carol Danvers is called in to retaliate. It leads to the two battling in Siberia, where Danvers and Thor can fight without harming too many people.

The only person who can stop the battles is Jane who, contacting Heimdall, is able to lead Frigga to return home to Asgard and motivate Thor to clean up his mess. He sneaks home to pretend he wasn't getting into trouble and the crisis is, at the least, somewhat averted.

The problem really emerges, however, when Ultron arrives on Earth with all of the Infinity Stones in his possession.

Answer: Doctor Strange

When Tony Stark creates Ultron in one universe, Ultron, as has been known in other universes, comes to determine that humanity requires an evolution to proceed. It is with this that he takes on a new form as Vision, harnessing the Mind Stone, and plans an attack, letting loose nukes and a robot army to kill off the bulk of the Avengers, one by one, and bring an end to humankind. When Thanos arrives on Earth hunting for the last Infinity Stone, Ultron destroys him with little effort and finishes the collection himself.

It allows him to destroy most of the universe.

Black Widow and Hawkeye head to Russia hunting for answers and what they find are KGB files leading them to the computer containing the mind of Arnim Zola hidden in a Siberian lab. The two Avengers, along with Zola, devise a plan to upload Zola into Ultron's programming to delete him, but when Ultron leaves the universe, their plan becomes moot. Hawkeye falls in battle to save Romanoff, and she narrowly escapes with the Zola robot.

Elsewhere, Ultron hears the voice of the Watcher and pursues him into the Multiverse, finding him observing all other realities from his station. The two fight and, to the Watcher's dismay, Ultron's powers are too great. He's forced to hide to protect himself, but Ultron, now with the Watcher's observatory, is free to exert his influence over the Multiverse at will.

With nowhere left to go, the Watcher heads to the tiny fragment of a destroyed universe containing the fallen Doctor Strange he recently observed. The Watcher needs his help.

Answer: The Guardians of the Multiverse

With the fallen Doctor Strange in tow, the Watcher commences the creation of a team to bring an end to the Ultron that has taken his claim to the Multiverse, and it starts with reaching out to heroes of the universes he had, most recently, been peering into. He starts with Captain Carter, bringing her along before retrieving Star-Lord T'Challa, a Thanos-defeating version of Gamora, the Black Panther version of Erik Stevens, and the unkempt, partier version of Thor. The Watcher has chosen them for their capabilities. Though he scoured the Multiverse for one true hero, they are the bigger picture. They are the Guardians of the Multiverse.

The Guardians prepare themselves for battle, inadvertently bringing Ultron to an otherwise empty universe and beckoning him early, and they get to business attempting to execute their plan, something they manage to succeed in by combining their powers and letting Star-Lord T'Challa get close enough to steal the Soul Stone from Ultron's armor.

As Strange sends in a deluge of zombies, the Guardians escape into the universe Ultron came from to find Natasha Romanoff, perhaps the last surviving human. Their plot hits a snag when Ultron follows them to reclaim the stone and Gamora's Infinity Crusher doesn't succeed in destroying it. What helps, however, is Clint Barton's arrow, still empowered by Arnim Zola's consciousness, which Romanoff is able to fire at Ultron and score a direct hit.

As Zola takes over Vision's body as a virus, Killmonger, waiting in the wings, moves in to claim Ultron's armor and the stones, claiming he can use them to save all of their universes with himself at the helm. The other Guardians, however, don't agree. As the others are brought to their knees by Stevens, Arnim Zola, now inside Ultron, keeps the Stones away from everyone, giving Strange the chance to seal the pair away in a pocket universe not unlike his own. It's enough to save the Multiverse though it means that he must remain there as its protector.

As the Guardians return to their respective universes, Romanoff, with nothing to return to, is instead sent to the universe in which the Avengers were killed to assist Nick Fury, Carol Danvers, and Captain America in their struggle against Loki.

The Watcher, alone again to watch the Multiverse, vows to protect all worlds and their stories to the end.