I just caught up with What If…? season 2, which Disney is airing nightly until all episodes are out, a format I actually kind of like.
But, I’m not really digging season 2 here as much as I was season 1. While I am impressed at the sheer amount of A-listers this show manages to bring back for voicework, I have not really clicked with this season, short of one very specific episode.
Too much of this relies on “what if hero was villain?” “what if villain was hero?” and I think the show is doing this weird thing where some of it connects, like its desire to keep Captain Carter and the multiverse altered Avengers as a presence, sometimes, but it doesn’t really work. Most episodes have underwhelmed me, though I did like elements of “What If…Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster, but mostly because I think the Tony Stark voice replacement does a good job and it’s great to see Jeff Goldblum back as The Grandmaster.
However, out of seven episodes so far, there is really only one true standout, What If…Kahhori Reshaped The World? This is Marvel finally attempting to create a fully new lead hero, not just your Phil Coulsons and Darcys, but Kahhori, a Native American given powers from a Tesseract-infused lake that links her to the afterlife.
Kahhori is voiced by the excellent Reservation Dogs actress Devery Jacobs. The animation here is great, but what’s most impressive is that this is an entirely non-English episode, where the Conquistador villains speak Spanish but all the Mohawk characters speak Kanien’kéha, the Mohawk language, for the entire duration of the episode.
The concept is cool as well. The idea is that in this alternate universe with these new powers, Kahhori and her ancestors are able to fend off the European invasion of the New World, forcing Spain (and other nations, presumably) to make peace rather than subjugate the Native Americans living there.
At the end of the episode, Kahhori is sucked through a portal by 1602 versions of Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch, an episode which will unfurl tonight. Devery Jacobs has expressed interest in playing the character in live action, and while I don’t know how or when that might happen, you could see the 30 year old actress (who looks younger) perhaps appearing in the upcoming Young Avengers assembly.
If there’s one issue I had with the episode it’s that her powers mainly just seem to be…blue telekinesis, plus some super speed and strength. Cool in animation form, but not exact the most creative of powers. Still, it looks neat onscreen and it makes her very, very powerful at baseline (just don’t call her a Mary Sue superhero I swear to god).
We will see more of Kahhori tonight, and hopefully she can create another solid episode in an otherwise somewhat lacking second season. And then, perhaps, in live action eventually as well.
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