Marvel’s What If…? Imagines Thanos as Wolverine in the MCU

Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine took a stab at the multiverse with an onslaught of Wolverine variants (mostly portrayed by Hugh Jackman). There was the “comic-accurate” short king Wolverine; the eyepatch-wearing Patch; the one-handed Weapon X from Age of Apocalypse; Old Man Logan; a Wolverine clad in classic John Byrne brown and tan; and, most shocking of all, the cigar-chomping Cavillrine (former Superman actor Henry Cavill).

After three seasons of introducing alternate versions of characters like Peggy Carter (as Captain Carter), Black Panther (T’Challa Star-Lord), the X-Men’s Storm (the Goddess of Thunder), and Agatha Harkness (the Cosmic Queen), Marvel’s What If…? ended with the all-seeing Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) narrating a montage of mash-ups from across the multiverse. Among them: Weapon X Thanos, a cross between Wolverine and the Mad Titan Thanos.

[RELATED: What If…? Series Finale’s Future Hulk Variant, Explained]

Weapon Infinity

Although there’s no Thanos-verine variant in the comics, Wolverine did wield the Infinity Gauntlet on a Wolverine 50th anniversary variant cover paying homage to 1991’s Infinity Gauntlet #1 (below).

A previous episode of What If…? reimagined the Josh Brolin-voiced Thanos as a member of the Ravagers alongside T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Yondu (Michael Rooker), and Thanos’ daughter, Nebula (Karen Gillan). In another alternate reality, Thanos sent Gamora to hunt down Iron Man on the planet Sakaar; in yet another branched timeline, a zombified Thanos wielded the Infinity Stones.

In addition to the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider as a flaming skull-headed samurai, the six-armed Spider-Man, and the Maestro Hulk as a Master of the Mystic Arts, Sunday’s “What If… What If?” series finale featured such amalgamations as Ironheart/Punisher, Kingo/Iron Man, Jubilee/Silver Surfer, Ms. Marvel/Wasp, Blade/Moon Knight, Scarlet Witch/Howard the Duck, and Shang-Chi/Star-Lord.

Such mashups are a staple of Marvel’s What If…? comic book. Since 1977, the anthology series has marked the debut of such characters as Spider-Girl (Betty Brant), Thordis (the Jane Foster Thor), the Juggernaut (Charles Xavier), Iron Punisher (Frank Castle), and the Sorcerer Supreme Iron Man (Tony Stark).

What if Wolverine Was in What If…?

“In hindsight, I think we were kicking ourselves because it takes a while to set these things up and do these things. We could have done more mutants this season,” episode director Bryan Andrews said in a recent interview when asked about bringing a version of Storm (voiced by X-Men ’97‘s Alison Sealy-Smith) into the MCU. “At the time, we didn’t know that [Marvel Studios was] gonna have all the Fox [X-Men] stuff back.”

“So we could have had a Hugh Jackman [Wolverine episode], but, oh well,” Andrews added. “Maybe there will be some [more What If…? episodes] in the future, and then we get to party with those guys.”

All episodes of Marvel’s What If…? are now available to stream on Disney+.