What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 2

What the ending actually means

Two events happen at the end of this episode. T’Challa returns to Earth and Wakanda, reuniting with his mother and father… and Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell) also arrives on Earth to meet his now adult son, Peter Quill – who works at the very Dairy Queen where Ego planted his seedling for the Expansion. The Watcher just causally remarks that this “probably means the end of world, but that’s a story for another time.” Except, when you consider the state of this universe, there’s no “probably” about this.

If you recall his villainous monologue from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017), the Expansion is what Ego called the terraforming of another planet to essentially replicate himself. Ego needs the DNA from another Celestial like himself in order to complete the process. And Quill was the only one of Ego’s many, many offspring to have that DNA.

Now the reason this plan ultimately failed is because of Quill’s affection for his new family, his fellow Guardians of the Galaxy. Unfortunately, Quill never met Drax, Gamora, Rocket, and Groot because, of course, he remained behind on Earth. Furthermore, as we see throughout this episode, those remaining Guardians never came together as a team. Gamora is notably absent, suggesting Thanos’ conversion happened before he invaded her planet and took her in as his own daughter. Thus it looks like Quill will now be completely under his father’s sway.

Want more bad news? Notice that “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord” takes place in 2008, the same year as the first Iron Man movie. That’s also four years before the events of the first Avengers movie. Since Thanos was behind the Chitauri attack on New York – which is what helped bring the Avengers together – that won’t ever happen in this timeline. Also, based on the items in the Collector’s weapon cache, Steve Rogers is still frozen and Thor (along with his fellow Asgardians) is likely dead.

Even worse, Stephen Strange hasn’t yet become the Sorcerer Supreme. Peter Parker doesn’t get bit by the radioactive spider for another seven years. Bruce Banner is still on the run from the US military. And you might as well forget about the late-to-the-party non-interventionists known as the Eternals. In short, T’Challa’s good deeds have inadvertently resulted in a MCU without many of its heroes, and those who do exist will be too late to prevent Earth’s destruction. Good thing King T’Chaka (John Cani) ordered Wakanda to build interstellar spaceships to look for his son, I suppose.

It’s also possible we haven’t seen the last of T’Challa Star-Lord on What If…? either. Just as it’s also possible we haven’t seen the last of Captain Carter. After all, it’s believed that various characters from different What If…? episodes will end up being brought together somehow. Until then, we’ll continue scouting for clues in a episode which promises to be a murder mystery.

Was there any other Easter Eggs or clues in What If…? episode 2 that you spotted that we may have missed? Let us know what they are in the comments below.