Anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe touches turns to gold, whether it be racking up box office dollars, garnering widespread critical acclaim or scoring record-breaking viewership numbers and Premier Access sales on Disney Plus. In short; Kevin Feige’s all-conquering outfit are about as unstoppable as it gets in modern entertainment.
That being said, up until Loki‘s jaw-dropping Season 1 finale, fear was beginning to creep in that the streaming shows would consistently fail to stick the landing, after WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s respective finales scored the worst Rotten Tomatoes ratings for each project.
Marvel’s What If…? didn’t have to worry about that as a succession of largely self-contained episodes, and the MCU’s latest foray into televised storytelling currently boasts the highest audience score on the aggregation site, with the animated effort’s 93% just ahead of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s 91%. Admittedly, the former is five weeks in and the latter ran for seven seasons, so it’s hardly a like-for-like comparison.
The tables are turned when it comes to the critical consensus, though, as Clark Gregg’s increasingly outlandish adventures as Agent Coulson boast a 95% compared to What If…?‘s 93%. If we do nothing but crunch the numbers, then it tells us they’re the two best shows Marvel Studios have ever put out. Of course, taste and preference are entirely subjective, so a lot of people might disagree with what Rotten Tomatoes has to say on the matter.
