What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 6
By Mike McNulty
In looking for Easter Eggs in the sixth episode of What If…?, we end up re-examining who Tony Stark and Killmonger really are as people.
Part of what makes What If…? fascinating is how it forces us to look at Marvel’s characters in a new light. And one of the methods it uses for doing this is by taking certain characters who’ve never met in the actual Marvel Studios movies and putting them together. Hence we get episodes like “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” The very title itself makes a wonder why the super villain of Black Panther would want to save the primer superhero of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s also an episode of the Disney Plus show which doesn’t just rewrite the events of a single MCU film; it rewrites the entire MCU from when it began. That makes our task for looking and examining Marvel-related Easter Eggs challenging, considering how much of the episode itself can be see as one giant Easter Egg. There are obvious ones, of course, in that the episode begins virtually the same way Iron Man (2008) started, albeit with some bits of dialogue truncated. Yet taking a deeper dive into this episode of What If…? requires us to take a different approach. Instead of just looking at what is hidden on screen, we must also look at what’s implied.
“Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.”
Earlier in the season, What If…? made the case for the necessity of the Avengers in “What If… the World Lost it’s Mightiest Heroes?”. “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” takes it a step further by suggesting that the Age of Heroes wouldn’t have happened without Iron Man. Or, to be more precise, Tony Stark (voiced by Mick Wingert) becoming Iron Man. It isn’t hard to see just how meta this argument is considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe began with 2008’s Iron Man.
Even so, the opening minutes of “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” make a point that Tony being injured in Afghanistan was the best thing that ever happened to him. Yes, Tony made some colossal mistakes as Iron Man; he did create Ultron, and also supported superhero registration which broke apart the Avengers. At the same time, if Tony never become Iron Man, there would be no Avengers, no War Machine, and no Vision. Peter Parker wouldn’t have gotten so many Spider-Man upgrades (though your mileage may vary on that one).
Moreover, if Tony hadn’t become Iron Man, he wouldn’t have realized that Pepper Pots (voiced by Beth Hoyt) wasn’t just a loyal assistant but the true love of his life. His daughter Madison would never have been born. And he wouldn’t have gone on to save the world, and ultimately the universe, at the cost of his own life. Becoming Iron Man didn’t just turn Tony into a superhero, it made him into a better person.
Little wonder then that a Tony Stark who never put on the suit can also come across like a potential villain. Moreover, “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” suggests that the trust fund kid turned weapons manufacturer shares a lot in common with the kid from the projects turned soldier of fortune. Both Tony and Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) are orphans who grew up in California with severe parental abandonment issues, and both are highly intelligent. More importantly, they’re single-minded individuals blinded by their own ideologies to the point they’re capable of hurting those they supposedly care about. Thus, just as Tony helped to shape what would become the MCU, so does Killmonger in shaping this alternate MCU.