Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

The fun continues as we get a mix of the familiar and the new

Spoiler Warning

The middle three episodes of the second season of What If change up the theme of exploring the side-characters of the movies, instead delving deeper into very familiar characters before taking a complete swerve into introducing a brand-new character to Marvel: Kahhori.

What If…Iron Man crashed into the Grandmaster?

There is a lot to enjoy in this fourth episode although it’s not without its flaws.

Beginning with the positives – how much did I love The Avengers era Tony Stark coming out to play for an adventure?  A LOT.  I loved it a lot.  Tony’s my favourite character in the MCU and it was great to see another Iron Man story. 

Tony isn’t completely the same character as in the MCU.  For all Mick Wingert gets the pitch and cadence of Tony’s snark just right, he’s not a complete soundalike (which can be waved away as a minor multiversal difference).  But there is also an almost-innocence and Captain America/boy scout edge to Tony here as he talks about leaving things better than you found them that doesn’t come across in Downey’s portrayal – even in the first Iron Man – as he takes on the Grandmaster’s tyranny of Sakar.

Overall, the story comes across as a homage to Thor: Ragnarok – a homage that most of the returning players enjoy taking part in.  Korg and Valkyrie are back as competing chariot racers; Topaz returns as the loyal sidekick muscle to the Grandmaster’s lunacy, and Jeff Goldblum is back as the Grandmaster himself.  Tony assumes the role of Thor in rebelling against the status quo in order to secure a way home.   

There is a joy in having Grandmaster and Tony face off against each other, both in the story and in their wise-cracking repartee. There is a lot of humour packed into the episode.  The inclusion of Korg as one of Tony’s sidekicks also adds to the funny moments, leaving the female characters to provide the straight foils to their more comedic male counterparts.

Which brings me onto the main flaw.

The episode starts out, confusingly for its title, with the Watcher picking up on the character of Gamora in the last season’s Avengers team shot and noting her story begins as part of another’s.  OK.  So was this meant to be a Gamora story or a Tony story or a muddling mix of both? Apparently, the latter.  Which kind of makes sense when it is remembered that this was meant to be part of the first season as in that season’s finale when the Watcher plucked Gamora to be a Guardian of the Multiverse, she was with Tony.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the idea presented here of one character’s story being told through the telling of a story about a different character.  If you’re going to tell a story about Gamora, tell a story about Gamora.  It deserved its own episode and Gamora as a character doesn’t need to be demoted to a side-story in a story about another character, never mind the less than great gender-bias optics of having a female character’s story told through the lens of a male character.  Just telling the whole tale from Gamora’s point of view could have easily switched this up.

Equally, Tony’s tale of not getting back through the portal could have worked well just as the homage to Ragnarok,  A beefed-up Valkyrie’s part could have nicely expanded to fill the space in the story-telling, adding further weight to her taking over as King at the end.  It did not need to include Gamora’s bid for redemption and could have been a compelling tale of its own – if lacking the linkage to season one.  Even leaving the opening reminder team shot to the end after Gamora killing Thanos to make that link might have made this framing a lot less confusing than the opening as it stands.

In the end though, this episode is a lot of fun and it is a nice counterpart to the previous episode which had a Tony who made it home.

What if…Captain Carter fought the Hydra Stomper?

This is the Captain Carter & Black Widow team-up that last season’s What If hinted at in the finale and this definitely delivers.

The story itself is a mix-up of movies although it’s clearly predominately based on Captain America and the Winter Soldier, with quite a few homage scenes replayed out with the different characters – from Peg picking up Natasha running laps, the neck wrap move in the fight with the Hydra stomper, and Director Bucky Barnes running the show with the World Security Council. 

It’s an interesting What If with Captain Carter taking the place of Steve, and Steve taking the place of Bucky, but here the relationship is played as a love story rather than a best-friends-to-the-end-of-the-line deal that was used for the Steve and Bucky dynamic (regardless of any Steve/Bucky shipper goggles that some fans may have worn).  That latter friendship still gets a lovely nod with Bucky standing in front of the Stomper pleading with his best buddy.

I personally loved the take here on Bucky Barnes.  It’s great given the angst of the character in the MCU to have a glimpse of this Bucky – a soldier who made it home, who continued the fight with Hydra and ended up as an old man running the show.  Again, great to hear Sebastian Stan voicing the character as does Samuel L Jackson for the scene with Fury.    

Just as in the original Winter Soldier, Natasha here remains in her role supporting her Captain, but the relationship is played very much as a solid female friendship rather than a pseudo-flirtation.  Because of that what we end up with is very much a great Captain Carter and Black Widow team-up which I adore.

The segue from Captain America: The Winter Soldier to the Black Widow movie is well done.  It’s great to have Rachel Weisz return as Natasha’s pseudo-Mom (in a fantastic gleeful villainess performance) and the Black Widow fight scenes are very well done. 

Indeed, the sequence of the fake American town, creepy townspeople robots and the Red Room flying in is all very well done.  It feels overwhelming and understandable how Captain Carter and Black Widow get overrun at times.  But there are some glorious action shots of them and the team of Widows jumping and leaping through/over obstacles which are wonderful.

The not-quite-so-happy-ending is fitting.  Captain Carter and Black Widow survive, Steve recovers himself enough to destroy the Red Room and maybe he’s out there somewhere as Peggy believes.  The actual ending with Captain Carter falling through a magic portal into another universe is clearly going to get picked up in another story so a nice hook to keep people watching.

Overall, I really enjoyed this.   

What If…Kahhori reshaped the world?

This episode was a real surprise given that the ‘what if’ ends up creating a new superhero character rather than focusing on an existing one – whether minor or major. 

The question is of course whether it was a good surprise or a bad surprise.

What I loved about the story was the examination of the historical what if – what if the indigenous people repelled the invasion from the Europeans?  As a historian, sci-fi and fiction geek, I love the premise because if that had happened our world would look very, very different as the consequential ripples would have been immense.  It is a shame that the story doesn’t get to go too far into the consequences beyond the throw-away line of ‘world peace achieved in record time’ at the end with the showdown of the Spanish Queen and Kahhori, but the concept is one which is captivating for me. 

While some may complain about the depiction of the invaders labelled monsters, drawn with only cruel and hard faces, and concerned only with exploiting the resources of the land – historically it is a fact that the Europeans did invade, took what they wanted, and exploited the natural resources they found.  The reality of that adds to the tension with a real sense of danger as the boats are loaded with people, and when the group of Spanish soldiers fall through the portal to the other world.  I also loved that most of the episode was spoken in the Mohawk language or Spanish rather than English as it underlined that this is a historical depiction even if the rest of the story deals with the sci-fi aspects that completely changes the historical outcome.

Ultimately that sci-fi story is a very familiar origin story: a McGuffin gives someone superpowers which they use against an enemy to save someone they love.  We’ve seen it play out multiple times in the MCU.  But there is an expansion here – anyone who falls through the lake and portal created by the space stone end up with superpowers so ultimately there are lots of super-powered people with the same power. 

Is Kahhori a Mary-Sue?  I think Ryan Little does their best to shape Kahhori into a real person rather than a perfect super-powered heroine without flaws within the limited scope of the episode.  In the opening scenes she’s shown as athletic and fearless, with a streak of mischief, and yet caring of Wahta.  There are scenes on the other world showing her learning her powers and often failing or finding out what she can do through necessity.  Her speech to motivate or shame the others when she returns to fight for her people shows she’s determined to do what she believes is right.  She even fails as a lone superhero almost dying at the Spaniard’s sword before everyone else turns up. 

That said…yes, for me, she still is a Mary-Sue in the same mould as Rey in Star Wars.  Once she knows she has powers, they come naturally to her and with more strength and ease than for anyone else ever on the other world it seems.  She becomes a superhero in what seems to be the space of a day, able to drag the portal from the sky to the ground so she can walk through it and fight.  Only she inspires her people to save their land.

Perhaps if there had been more of a sense of time passing differently on the other world and Kahhori had spent weeks or months there learning her powers and becoming the leader there before the advent of the Spaniards reminded her of what she had left behind leading to the final showdown; perhaps if a small group of them had moved the portal and returned not just Kahhori…it may have helped lessen the ‘May-Sue’ feel further.  Ultimately though there is just not enough time in the episode to establish the character as a fully-rounded human with flaws to go with the powers.

It’s a decent episode but I think sandwiching it between familiar character stories in this middle section may have helped anchor it better into the wider story than simply the final scene with season one’s Strange Supreme turning up (and providing that note of ‘season one’ theme to this last middle episode story).

In conclusion

There has been a lot to enjoy in this middle section – a lot of humour, interesting ‘what if’ takes, and a comforting sense of the familiar to help introduce something new.  With only the final three episodes to go, it is clear that the last two episodes of this middle part are leading into the end of the season.  It feels a little clumsy in the bridging and overall construction of the season, but I’ll leave final judgement on that until the end of the final three episodes.