Hello!
Today I’m going to write about What If…? episode 2, which dropped on Wednesday 18 August — the points I want to flag, the theories, and my predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this article I’ll briefly write up everything that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then write the theories.
Spoilers ahead
The WandaVision episode reviews from back when it was airing are here!
Click the image below for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews!
Check the image below for the Loki episode reviews!
Check the image below for the What If…? episode reviews!
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun lately. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot Ueno and a few other spots.
Talking Thanos out of his whole worldview, becoming a legendary outlaw out in space — he’s turned out so much more magnificent than the original Peter Quill that it isn’t even a contest, and it made me laugh lol
The Guardians members and Thanos and the rest all look ridiculously happy, which was lovely.
And then at the end, the tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa… May he rest in peace.
He’s the one who turned up in Captain Marvel and the first Guardians of the Galaxy, but this time he’s so comical that I laughed lol
Also the reactions to the T’Challa version of Star-Lord versus the Peter version lol
So it was: what if it hadn’t been Yondu himself but his crew who abducted Quill on Earth? lol
And those crew members being Taserface and Kraglin, familiar faces, scored the episode big points.
That Thanos, of all people, gets talked round by T’Challa and turns good! lol
And apparently he’s a gardener now lol
Proudly telling everybody about his old pet theory, getting called Mr. Finger-Snap — ridiculously endearing lol
Originally he lost his wife and daughter to Thanos’s invasion, but in this timeline it seems there was a Kree invasion instead. Even so, T’Challa stopped that one too, and he seems to be living happily now, which is genuinely great
Calling T’Challa “Cha-Cha” and all the rest of it — those two are definitely a thing, surely lol
Fewer cybernetic modifications than in the main films, and she was seriously beautiful
Some kind of seed? sort of thing, said to be the origin of life
At this point it’s a god-tier item. Personally I was glad to see Knowhere turn up again, the place that probably has a history with the Eternals
In Guardians of the Galaxy she used the Power Stone and died, but this time she gets her revenge on the Collector, which was satisfying
They were loyal to Thanos in Infinity War, but here they’ve defected, or else been fired, so they’d ended up as the Collector’s underlings. Even so, two of them overwhelming Thanos — they really were strong after all. Or maybe Thanos went soft once he became a gardener lol
In the comics the Collector was a god, and a seriously mighty one, but in live action he was just a collector. In this animated show, though, he becomes a villain big enough to fill Thanos’s seat!!
Howard the Duck, Cosmo the Spacedog, a Dark Elf and some ships were in there too
T’Challa’s necklace is vibranium, the strongest metal in the universe, which is how it broke through that window
Thanos coming down to Earth along with them was genuinely funny, purely for the gap with the main films. Especially him getting friendly with the dog lol
I’ll write about it in the theory section too, but how Killmonger gets involved is what I’m curious about.
Quill is working at the shop where Ego and Peter’s mother went on their dates in the second Guardians of the Galaxy (I cried)
Quill looks completely alone here — so unlike Guardians of the Galaxy 2, is he going to side with Ego and lead the universe to ruin…
Going by Thor’s hammer and Hela’s helmet in the collection, it looks like the Collector has actually destroyed Asgard. But the trailer has Thor and Loki in it, as below, so questions do remain. Though there’s also the question of whether it’s even the same timeline to begin with.
Captain America’s shield was in that Collector’s collection as well
But in What If…? episode 1 the shield is the one Carter brought into the present day, and it has the British pattern on it. So it looks like a different shield from the one in the Collector’s collection? Probably
However, the trailer had a scene with the Killmonger version of Black Panther, Gamora, the T’Challa version of Star-Lord and Thor all gathered together. So the possibility that What If…? really is all one timeline can’t be ruled out after all. The Carter business is a genuine mystery, but maybe a multiverse crossover is what What If…? is doing
Gamora wearing Thanos’s armour and turning into a full-blown warrior is intriguing. With Thanos off being a gardener, is she gathering the Infinity Stones and going to do the snap in his place? And then evil Quill and evil Gamora end up as the big bads? Hmm. Very curious…
As the trailer shows, Killmonger apparently saves Tony Stark and generally seems to be doing hero work.
Thought about why that might be. With T’Challa gone off into space, the royal bloodline is in crisis… so maybe Killmonger, the king’s nephew, became the prince?
No idea whether it’s setup for that, but when the adoptive parents and the birth parents all talked together this week, one seat was left empty. Could that possibly be Killmonger’s seat? Looking forward to next week too.
On July 24, 202…