What If...?

I dont get how the Ravagers abducting black panther instead of starlord made Thanos into a D-list nobody with apparently no powers who can get bitchslapped by the Children of Thanos. I mean, in the prime timeline they're his followers, he presumably was powerful enough to either defeat or intimidate them before finding any infinity stones. So wtf?

If theyd just left Thanos out I'd have been content. I liked that the ending implied a big change for this timeline, that was painfully missing from the first episode.

The way the episode ended, universe was fucked. Quill would be alone, had a potentially shitty life, and be more receptive to Ego. Or even if he flipped out at the reveal regarding his mother, he would have no friends there to help him.

Ego would have won and everything would have died. So Black Panther becoming Starlord, while it had some obvious positive outcomes, long term dooms everyone

Cybsled said:

The way the episode ended, universe was fucked. Quill would be alone, had a potentially shitty life, and be more receptive to Ego. Or even if he flipped out at the reveal regarding his mother, he would have no friends there to help him.

Ego would have won and everything would have died. So Black Panther becoming Starlord, while it had some obvious positive outcomes, long term dooms everyone

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I mean I assume Ego just eats him right then and there was where that little scene was going. and I don't know if the writers were even foreshadowing Ego going on a galactic rampage, or if they were just being like 'haha Quill is just a fucking fast food working loser who gets eaten'. The episode itself was funny, but the overall context seems incredibly spiteful. Quill's Star Lord is a petty criminal whereas T'Challa's Star Lord is fucking space Jesus. and it wasn't even a big posthumous tribute for Boseman because he was the one who did the voice work.

I try not to see woke trash in every shadow, but if every single What If? is just 'What if this white male had a superior version who wasnt a white male' rather than a vehicle for genuine exploration then Im gonna be done with this series pretty quick.

Why would he get eaten, though? All the other offspring got killed off because they lacked the needed abilities. Peter was the first to actually have them, so unless the power stone was required to unlock it, he presumably would have still had the power that Ego needed to propagate throughout the universe.

Cybsled said:

Why would he get eaten, though? All the other offspring got killed off because they lacked the needed abilities. Peter was the first to actually have them, so unless the power stone was required to unlock it, he presumably would have still had the power that Ego needed to propagate throughout the universe.

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You're assuming that the writers remember GotG 2 as well as you do, or even care. That scene was unquestionably a 'bad things are about to happen to Quill' moment what with Ego immediately calling himself Dad, getting glowy eyed, and then the camera immediately cutting away to outside the Dairy Queen.

That's a bit of a stretch. It was clear their intent was to say "Well, Ego's plan from GOTG2 is going to succeed now". There is nothing to suggest Quill's base power would change and we saw nothing in GOTG that suggested that he planned to kill Quill - Quill was too useful to his plans, even if he basically had to act as a battery in a worst case scenario.

I’m not asking for an Age of Apocalypse episode, but these are going to be pretty boring if all the episodes are “things slightly changed and it was great!”

The end of episode 2 is more interesting than everything else in the episode.

Ishad said:

I’m not asking for an Age of Apocalypse episode, but these are going to be pretty boring if all the episodes are “things slightly changed and it was great!”

The end of episode 2 is more interesting than everything else in the episode.

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I think a full season Age of Apocalypse style story would be a lot more interesting than these one-offs. The shortness must be a major limiting factor on how complex the story can be.

spronk said:

Thanos felt like a bitch which undercuts his character in Infinity War

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I dunno, I thought warm and fuzzy Thanos was the funniest thing in the episode, especially when he's like "I still think it would have worked" about his infinity stone plan.

As for almost getting killed by the Black Order, keep in mind that he says Nebula almost killed him by herself in Infinity War, and he was fighting Obsidian and Midnight at the same time. Power levels have always fluctuated wildly to suit the story in comics anyway, like the massive power-up Cap got for Winter Soldier, or Thanos casually kicking Hulk's ass in hand to hand combat in Infinity War but having all sorts of trouble while fully armed and armored in Endgame.

velk said:

Maybe ? They might have assumed that people would think Starlord-Jesus would deal with it somehow instead of Ego and the original eating the galaxy.

It doesn't seem very likely though on a logical basis - how would they even know anything had happened until Ego was spread across half the galaxy ?

Of course it could be a balance thing - on the one hand you avoid the infinity war, on the other hand you get an equally bad replacement.

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The actual What If? comics did sometimes have some pretty downer endings.

This series will probably have them as well. They're doing the Marvel Zombies as one of them, so that is going to be a downer as a given.

Evil Dr. Strange will probably be another one

Supposedly a number of voice actors show up in multiple episodes, and I can't imagine they would bring Kurt Russell or Jeremy Renner in for literally one line - we'll probably get followup episodes with Captain Carter in the present and Yondu's crew fighting Ego.

Plot twist: Maybe all of the What If episodes are actually in the same timeline? I haven't seen any ads to know if they contradict each other.

P.S. I hated the concept of this episode. Tchalla wasn't the great persuader, in his own movie everyone is swayed by Killmonger, and then BP himself changes to his girlfriend's opinion.

How do you fight Ego? If he gets the second Celestial he needs, he wins. Quill doesn't have a crew to help him against Ego in this reality.

Unless the Celestial genes didn't take in this version of Quill and he's still stuck searching, it's already over.

Miguex said:

This is the rumor I have been hearing the last week or so. This series is actually building an entire alternate phase 1-4 from the MCU that just finished, within a single one of the other multiverses. All of these episodes are tied together although we have no indication of that so far in the first two.

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I hope not, thatd be fucking lame. The whole point of this is the MULTIverse, not "a single parallel universe"

Miguex said:

All of these episodes are tied together although we have no indication of that so far in the first two.

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Much like Mysterio in the second Marvel Spiderman, it does feel like there has to be a second level twist for the comics audience, and not having this be the What If concept we know by having a single timeline would qualify, as well as providing cover for annoying details people point out, like 'Why doesn't the Red Skull have skin if he didn't have a super soldier dose?"