Had an odd dream the other night. It was a romantic scene between a couple of my characters from Fans. I’d never considered pairing these two off, but the dream got me wondering. What would happen if they’d gotten together? How would that affect the rest of the series? Would they turn out better, worse, or just different?
About twenty years too late to write it, my subconscious had generated a “what if” alternate-universe story.
Any story idea begins with a “what if.” What if someone asked the gods for immortality?, after a lot of revisions, gives you the Epic of Gilgamesh. Alternate history goes further by altering the established past, as when Livy’s history of Rome included a section on the question, What if Alexander the Great had tried to conquer Rome? Livy’s answer may have been biased (loosely translated, “We’d kick his ass”), but it counts.
“What if” alternate-universe stories take one step further from reality, changing the established history of a fictional world. I’d call these a subset of the current vogue for “multiverse” stories; in a what-if story, the focus is on the changed universe, and the original version of the characters appear rarely if at all.
You can see this idea in It’s a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey confronts the what-if of a world in which he never existed. But it didn’t really take off until modern fandom, with communities gathering around media properties and telling their stories in different ways. What if Lex Luthor defeated Superman? What if Kirk married Spock? What if Ross was still married to his first wife?
Or: What if Marvel movies and TV shows had stayed entertaining?
It’s an odd paradox: Marvel’s “mainstream” TV and movie output has been more miss than hit lately, but the What If…? TV series has gotten more fun, proceeding from premises like What if the Avengers lived in 1602? and What if Peggy Carter got the superpowers meant for Steve Rogers (Captain America)? (If you’re having trouble remembering who Peggy Carter is, the series does offer a bit of a refresher course.)
More generally, the second season improved upon the first by avoiding a few problems common to what-if stories. First, it cut the death toll.
In the first season, as in the original What If? comic book, well-known characters could often die pretty fast. I understand why—“real” stories can’t kill off major characters too often, at least not so they stay dead. Killing Steve Rogers shows the freedom of this story type and provides an emotional jolt.
But that jolt has to be earned, or it feels like you’re not playing fair. Even if a character’s “unkillability” comes down to luck in the main storyline, a what-if story needs to make them nearly as lucky or it feels like it’s not playing fair. My fellow comics fans and I used to joke that the What If comic would treat each story as an excuse to kill every character it could:
“What if Spider-Man had a blue costume?”
“EVERYONE WOULD DIE! Why would you even suggest that, you MONSTER?”
The What If TV series has also improved by echoing the movies less. There’s a temptation to treat secondary stories as secondary, to imply the best-known version of the story is the “correct” one. That means making other versions duplicate it—or, as above, suffer megadeaths for the crime of doing something different.
A megacorporation like Disney doesn’t like to stray much from the messaging that “We’re great and everything we do is great.” So it may be uncomfortable with its audience considering the idea that its stories could be different or (gasp) maybe better? But after the 2023 Marvel’s had, that idea is probably already on its audience’s mind.
I don’t believe in destiny. I’m not one for regrets, either. But I think one of the best ways to improve our world is to admit that things could’ve been done in different ways. Pondering those alternatives, even in the comfort zone of a fictional “universe,” helps us ponder alternatives to what we’re doing now.
The what-if genre invites readers to free themselves up from old thought patterns, see the familiar mix with the fresh, and let their imaginations run free. And it can work well…as long as the writers of the stories are willing to do the same.
And AUs is another three word! (Of course it was always short for Australia. But still...