Portrait of a man and a wingless angel peering into the Twilight Zone 13 years before it was created.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Frank Capra’s beloved classic It’s a Wonderful Life is my wife Anne’s favorite Christmas film. One of the stops on our 2022 road trip was the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls, NY. A full decade ago we were horrified at the news that someone was sincerely planning a sequel, then relieved when it was canned a year later, though I had thoughts on where the franchise might’ve gone next. Thankfully no one was listening to me, but there was so much more to explore in Bedford Falls.

The film is one of the most famous non-geek precursors to pop culture’s recent glut of tales set in the wild, weird multiverse where one character can meet infinite variants of themselves, learn a little something about What Might Have Been, and appreciate their own screwy timeline a little more…or come away twisted with jealous rage and vowing revenge on their past writers. Way back in 1946 a rookie angel named Clarence let despondent everyman George Bailey suffer ninety minutes of tragic setup followed by a half-hour What If…? episode with an ultimately happy ending (even happier if we accept this 1986 SNL sketch as a canonical coda). Whereas today’s heroes sometimes meet dozens or even thousands of distortions of themselves — all the better to generate new action figures and IP spinoffs — just as Star Trek only has the one Mirror Universe, Clarence only takes George on a single measly tour through the looking-glass. That’s probably because Clarence’s trainee power-levels were several billion gigawatts below the all-seeing gaze of Uatu the Watcher, but still…he could’ve tried to access a few more if he liked George that much. Y’know, just for fun.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, Indiana: Top 10 Alternate Realities the Angel Clarence Didn’t Show George Bailey:

10. George quits his family, goes into politics, defeats FDR, then loses WWII to the Nazis

9. The War of the Worlds Martians return but now they’re vaccinated against human viruses

8. The South won the Civil War, everyone has Dixie accents and Annie the maid is a scarred resistance leader

7. George hesitates, lets Clarence drown; archangel Gabriel declares war on Earth

6. Harry gets the ear problem instead of George, has to take over the S&L, but he’s really good at it and everything goes awesomely

5. Ma and Pa Bailey recover baby Kal-El’s rocketship, raise their adopted son to fight mean ol’ Mr. Luthor

4. George patrols the Stewartverse with Mr. Smith, Ransom Stoddard, Elwood P. Dowd and Wylie Burp from An American Tail II

3. Mary Bailey: widow, single mom, Nobel Prize winner!

2. Everyone’s now donkeys evolved from men and won’t stop making that stupid HEE-HAW noise

And the #1 alternate reality the angel Clarence didn’t show George Bailey:

Uncle Billy runs off with the $8000, invests in NFTs.