Up until now, What If…? has kept its MCU mixing shenanigans strictly in house, only targeting pre-existing characters, locations and scenarios as it attempts to blend random story threads into a tasty cocktail of fan service. However, after giving Captain Carter Steve Rogers’ fate, making Nebula a cosmic detective and killing Tony Stark a whole bunch of times, What If…? is finally going beyond its established confines and creating a new super powered character from scratch.
It’s a bold move for a franchise currently under scrutiny from all sides for virtually every reason you can possibly think of – but in a time when different groups can accuse you of both being too woke and not being woke enough at exactly the same time, maybe Marvel needs someone like Kahhori to try and bring balance to more than just an animated TV show in Disney+.
After being briefed by the Watcher about what the big alteration is in this particular universe, we witness the devastation wrought to Asgard after the fire demon Surtur brings about Ragnarok a good couple of eons way too early. The utter destruction of the Golden City sends the Tesseract spinning off through space before it crash lands – where else – on earth in the area that eventually becomes the land of the Mohawk tribespeople. It’s here that we are introduced to Kahhori, a young Mohawk woman who is out one day playing with her younger brother WĂ¡hta in a patch of forrest that’s deemed off limits due to local folklore of a lake that causes people to disappear.
However, their fears of the Forbidden Lake become secondary when Conquistadors lead by the ruthlesz Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo come rampaging through as they vainly search for the fabled fountain of youth. As fate would have it, while trying to escape, both Kahhori and WĂ¡hta manage to stumble on the actual Forbidden Lake which proves to actually be the resting place of the Tesseract and after Kahhori catches a round of musket fire, she tumbles into the lake allowing the space stone to do its stuff.
The young Mohawk awakens to find herself in another dimension known as the Sky World which is populated by all the people who have even disappeared after entering the Forbidden Lake and she is welcomed into this veritable paradise by Atahraks, who gets her up to speed on the place.
The good news is that once in the lush surroundings of the Sky World, you’ll start developing super powers like telekinesis, super speed and enhanced agility; however the catch is you are unable to leave, something that fills Kahhori with alarm as her tribe is currently being enslaved by Spanish colonisers. However, after learning the abilities this strange land gifts you, she realises there may be a way to change everything – and I do mean everything.
Remember that pre-credits sequence where we’re told about the origins of Wakanda thanks to the prehistoric arrival of a mountain of vibranium crash landed from space? Well, that’s pretty much what What If… Kahhori Reshaped The World? is, only with the African people swapped out for Native Americans and that ever-present Tesseract subbing for that massive stockpile of vibranium. While this story has been highly touted as something of a potential gamechanger for the series, you probably won’t help but notice that this episode is hardly what you’d call original. Like I already stated, the premise is literally just the birth of Wakanda, while someone gaining superpowers thanks to the Tesseract was the basic plot of Captain Marvel too and other aspects of the story unavoidably borrow here and there from other Native American and Native American inspired properties such as Avatar and Prey. Even the notion of a peaceful side-dimension populated by powerful being harkens back to Ta Lo from Shang-Chi and even the powers themselves are vaguely reminiscent of a blue tinted version of the skill sets of the Eternals.
However, while the premise may struggle to tread new ground, let alone break it, it’s how the story is carried out that makes it such a pleasant surprise.
For a start, aside from the Watcher and another character I’ll discuss a little later, all of the cast, be they Mohawk or Spanish, speak their native tongue, with the entire episode relying on subtitles to get its point across. It’s something of a ballsy and mature tactic for a show that features semi-regular cameos from Howard the Duck and its refreshing that such a show would treat its audience as adults, especially considering it’s essentially an animated spin-off. If the odd, Marvel-esque one liner doesn’t translate well to the Mohawk language, it’s a minor issue considering how ambitious it is.
Also, while you could hardly describe What If…? as a drab show, director Bryan Andrew’s outdoes himself, creating a paradise in the form of the Sky World that balances tangibility with the fantastic as we explore a lush new world fused at it’s very core with life enhancing energies. Not only do the population have blue energy coursing through them, but so do the wildlife and even the trees as the Native American belief that we are all one with nature is taken to its logical extremes. Watch as Kahhori joins the Sky People while trying to harvest crystals from the backs of giant, cosmic buffalo or using her new leaping powers to scale a tree as nimbly as a Captain America or a Spider-Man.
However, what’s really impressive about the episode, is how far it’s willing to go to get its point across as the history shifting nature of What If…? means that upon making it back to earth, Kahhori takes her fight all the way to the Queen Isabella of Spain in a revisionist attempt to stop hundreds of years of death and tragedy before they even start. It’s as bold as the show has ever gotten, even more so, I’d say, than Ms. Marvel’s jaunt back to the days of the Partition, as instead of simply bringing attention to it, it full on reverses it, bringing a sense of empowerment that’ll no doubt continue when the Echo show drops in early January. Speaking of Echo, actress Devery Jacob’s (who’ll play a supporting role in the show), brings passion and strength to this new character who seems to be joining the charge for Native American representation.
Bringing our attention back to the season in general, a surprise appearance from Strange Supreme means that Kahhori won’t merely be a one-and-done experiment and will go on to have a continuing voice in the MCU going forward and while some may argue that lumping in a Benedict Cumberbatch cameo may cheapen the experience, for Kahhori to achieve her full potential, she’s going to have to mingle with the Multiverse in order to truly make her mark.
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