Was T’Challa as Star-Lord the best episode “What If…?” explored?
T’Challa was great, charismatic as always and this time in space. Good chemistry with the ravagers. Femme fatale Nebula. Good guy Thanos. And they didn’t disrespect the OG actor by over milking the concept. RIP Chadwick
Commentaires
I found it to be a bit of fun, a little heist is different than most stuff in Marvel. But also weird with the characterization, I don't know why he was so much better at being Starlord?
And since Thanos basically got the “playable character” treatment, it wouldn’t be too out of place.
guardians just ain't the guardians if they're not deeply flawed people, but trying their best despite that
also there was a critical lack of Rocket Raccoon
…wait did they accidentally validate Thanos’s argument
That was kind of crappy, too
People would not like that.
I will also say if you interpret the Collector having Cap's shield and Thor's Hammer in his vault, it means both are likely dead, although T'challa-Lord saving Quill on Earth indicates the Earth is safe, so not really a bad timeline overall.
Bummer because I enjoyed T'Challa Star Lord. As well as his father-son dynamic with Yondu.
Thanos & Korath being hood guys was fun too. Along with Thanos & Nebula's improved relationship.
A fun episode where I liked the whole cast & dynamics.
Edit: Nope, apparently I did see it and it was just completely forgettable.
Flapper girl Agatha
The series had much bigger problems that made me ultimately drop it. But they really missed an opportunity to mix up the animation styles like Love, Death, + Robots for example.
Why set stories in alternate timelines only to have them all look the same?
Which was an even bigger mistake imo.
They should have stayed true to the spirit of the comics and made all the eps "standalones" Instead they made it Captain Carter and The Guardians of The Multiverse.
So much wasted potential.
They made a great decision bringing Charlie Cox back, they really should have done the same with at least May and Quake. Especially when it seems like the Pandemic and the Kang kerfluffle absolutely hamstrung their plans at the time. They had some cool characters right there that you wouldn’t have had to do another extensive origin for, just bring them in with a small exposition of who they are and what they can do, and roll with it.
It makes ZERO sense that T'Challa would take on that name. This episode (season, and series) was an embarrassment.
While I'm at it Gamora didn't get her episode in season 1, so she was the only one in the team whose story we didn't see, except she wasn't even the main character in her story... What the hell? They can make a story with Tony in it and not having him as the lead (looking at the also great Killmonger episode)...
The best episode in the show is the doctor strange one, but to me it is a worse “what if” concept. It’s more of an interesting character study. In the comics it’d be a short run set in an alt universe, but not a what if. Like, Logan isn’t a what if comic but it’s still an interesting alt universe.
All the others had a different plot or something different happen. This just had...and everything was resolved and in the end nothing actually happened.
It felt like a real insult to the whole concept of the Guardians to me - the point of them is that they're flawed characters trying to do good despite their awful pasts. To suggest "Oh but if this one cool guy was there he'd have simply overcome his tragic backstory and sorted everything out" completely undermines all that and frankly comes off like fanfiction.
And none of it really made any sense in-universe either. If T'Challa is so innately good at solving everyone's problems and making everyone get along... why didn't his main timeline counterpart do better at that? And how on earth could anyone talk Thanos round so thoroughly that not only did he give up his decades-long quest, his entire personality did a complete 180? It's stuff that might have been able to fly in a standalone cartoon with its own sillier tone, but this is supposed to be part of the MCU.
The whole episode ended up feeling like bad fanfic to me.
I would not say it was the best What If episode in an objective sense, though. The plot didn't completely make sense to me; it seemed illogical that Yondu would simply keep someone else's kid without any misgivings, that the kid himself would go along with it, and that Yondu and the kid would be welcomed back by the kid's parents after a decade or more. Don't children want to be with their parents? Isn't kidnapping a horrendous crime?
Accordingly (++ for Chadwick Boseman, -- for plot), I rank this somewhere around the middle of all What If episodes in my personal hierarchy.
In the way that Andor does not need to be set in the Star Wars universe because it tells such a compelling and universal story, that Strange Supreme episode is as well. And it is so character driven, but works as a sort of modern day Faust kind of morality tale. The tragedy that he takes an entire universe with him just makes his hubris that much worse, and his punishment is that he will live the rest of his life carrying the weight of that level of selfishness. It also works as an allegory for letting go of the people we love. No, sometimes it isn't fair, and makes no sense to us at all. But if we let that loss consume us, if we become those feelings of devastation that comes with losing someone you love and not take the harder path of healing, then your entire world crumbles and you end up isolated and alone. It is a powerful allegory and a universal lesson.
The T'Challa one is fun, but there isn't much to it. Maybe a sort of "You can go home again" kind of message - and hey, they don't have to have a message, sometimes it is fun to just turn Happy into a purple Hulk and do a Die Hard homage to boot (and any time we get more Justin Hammer is fine by me).
But with an anthology series, you only have a finite number of minutes to tell your story, and it is a difficult thing to do (something the writers of Batman: The Animated Series perfected in the 90s, and yes, Heart of Ice is still amazing). That Strange Supreme story is a perfect self-contained story, even with the end of the season, which again, gives Strange some Darth Vader-like redemption.
Brand new character and an original story. The fact it was in the Mohawk language is a plus, too.
The episode is representative of what What If should have been. An anthology of unconnected stories.
Yes hes a good character.. but to say he could talk everyone into peaceful friendships it too much.. like saying making keanu reeves president would mean world peace because he would convince the world to be nice and selfless..