What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 2
By Mike McNulty
In which What If…? shows how the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be better off if T’Challa had been Star-Lord… or is it?
During the marketing of Disney Plus‘ What If…?, one of the more provocative images shown in the trailers was what appeared to be Star-Lord stealing the Orb off the planet Morag, only to reveal T’Challa under the mask. What made this even more compelling is that T’Challa would be voiced by the same actor who played him in the movies, Chadwick Boseman. As Boseman tragically died from cancer last year, this meant this episode would be one of his last performances.
Thus “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” became a worthy tribute to both Boseman and the Black Panther despite T’Challa not being the Black Panther. It also meant seeing a Marvel Cinematic Universe even more different than what we saw in the debut, which also means more potential Easter Eggs for us to find. But how does this second episode of What If…? compare with what happened in the actual Marvel Cinematic Universe? And would the once and future king of Wakanda really become an interstellar outlaw?
Nature or Nurture?
The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) opens this episode by asking a variation of the most hotly debated question in all of psychology: “Is your destiny determined by your nature, or by the nature of your world?” Based on T’Challa’s actions throughout this episode, “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” falls squarely into the “Nature” camp.
Yet we also see that T’Challa still lived his first eight-to-ten years growing up as the crown prince of Wakanda, so it’s clear that he already had the same values and moral principles as his MCU counterpart. So the real question isn’t “Nature vs. Nurture?” It’s the same as it always is with every What If…? “Would events really have happened this way if [insert X scenario here] happened?”
Thus, in order to set T’Challa on the path of becoming the Robin Hood of outer space, the writers instill young T’Challa (Maddix Robinson) with a desire “to explore the world” outside of Wakanda. Except, if you go back through the four movies T’Challa appeared in (Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame) we never saw any hint that T’Challa was ever like this as a kid. And would he really be okay with going off with a bunch of bumbling aliens who just kidnapped him?
Speaking of the Ravagers, it seems the other variant in this timeline is that Yondu (Michael Rooker) outsourced the task of finding Peter Quill (Brian T. Delaney) to his subordinates instead of doing so himself. Hence why they pick up T’Challa instead because, according to Taserface (Chris Sullivan) and Kraglin (Sean Gunn), “All humans look alike.” That and they picked up the enegry signature from Wakanda’s vast quantities of Vibranium, assuming that was Quill’s Celestial energy signature. Not only is this funny, it does seem rather true to character given how the Ravagers were portrayed in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Though they could’ve just dropped T’Challa off with a “No hard feelings, kid,” and be on their way, I suppose.