What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 1

The tentacle monster

One consequence of Peggy becoming the “First Avenger” is that supposedly this would’ve delayed the Red Skull obtaining the Tesseract (which I’ve already pointed out was false, but oh well). Thus instead of creating advanced weapons, Red Skull thinks it’d be an even better idea to use the Tesseract to open a portal to summon an eldritch horror straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. Needless to say, this doesn’t prove to be the most brightest of super villain plans.

But what exactly was that huge, constantly growing tentacle monster? A lot of Marvel fans, including myself, believed it was Shuma-Gorath, one of the “Great Old Ones” of the Cthulhu Mythos. First mentioned in the short story “The Curse of the Golden Skull” by Robert E. Howard (the creator of such pulp fantasy heroes like Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane), and later fleshed out by Marvel creators Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, and Frank Brummer, Shuma-Gorath was once the prehistoric ruler of Earth until being cast out by a sorcerer. This cosmic abomination, who had all sorts of god-like abilities, sought to return to Earth but has been constantly foiled by the likes of Doctor Strange.

However, Shuma-Gorath is characterized by a gigantic eye within it’s mass of tentacles. The monster that came out of the portal in this episode didn’t. That’s because it turns out it’s not Shuma-Gorath at all. What If…? writer A.C. Bradley claimed that the creature was based off of the Abilisk from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, another interdimensional tentacle monster. Although if you watched that movie, you know that Drax had to come up with the crazy plan of jumping into it’s mouth in order to try and kill from the inside (even though it didn’t actually work). It certainly didn’t keep growing in size or regrow limbs chopped off by a sword, either. Maybe in this case, it’s better if we don’t know what exactly that thing was.

And speaking of the Guardians, the next What If…? promises to show us what would’ve happened if Yondu (Michael Rooker) abducted T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) instead of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). We’ll just see how much that alters events or, like “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” did, restructured the narrative of an already existing Marvel Studios movie.

Any other Easter Eggs or clues from What If…? episode one that we may have missed? Let us know what they are in the comments section below.