Watching – Marvel What If … ? Season 2 Ep 7 & 8

Episode 2.7 – “What If … Hela Found the Ten Rings?”

Essentially, what if we took the the MCU Shang Chi and made his mom a power mad Norse goddess with entitlement issues? There’s the classic grade A parenting by Odin when he sees his daughter / weapon of war getting out of hand, he takes away her power, puts it into an artifact usable only by the ‘worthy’, and casts both Hela and her pointy headdress to Midgard. She runs headlong into Xu Wenwu of the Ten Rings and his fanatical legions and gets her first lesson in humility.

Wenwu is of course smitten with this warrior women but she manages to escape to the realm of Ta Lo where she finds a deeper understanding of her own desire for personal freedom. By the end of the episode we get to see the fullness of Hela’s redemption arc and hints of her far reaching battle against despots and tyrants.

There’s a certain draw to the redemption stories, where we get to have our bad boys & bad girls and still be able to cheer them on as champions of good. It’s not the first time this theme has been touched upon this season; Starlord got a hug of acceptance from caring humans to convince him to turn against his dad Ego; Tony Stark charms Gamora to be true to herself and not just a weapon for her dad Thanos. Hela is about as goth girl gone bad as you get as a goddess of death, but she gets to be a force for freedom alongside another tyrant turned crusader by the power of love. I’m still going to call this a middling episode that had an interesting idea of tossing various cosmic toys that would probably never have met otherwise, mix in the origin story of Thor who was originally sent to Midgard as a lesson in humility, and see what comes out the other side.

Episode 2.8 – “What If … the Avengers Assembled in 1602?”

It’s the one I’ve been waiting for! Yet, there are more things afoot here with Queen Hela sitting the throne of an England plagued by destructive rifts caused by the collision of two universes (shades of the 2015 Secret Wars comics storyline – does this mean that the next season of What If … ? will be set on a Battleword? I hope not, for reasons …)

There wasn’t much of the Marvel 1602 storyline to be had here, but plenty of MCU nods with the versions of the heroes of this timeline. I admit, ye olde Hulk’s battle cry of “HULK SMITE!” and the general antics of Loki had me glad to be watching this. They don’t slow down to provide any exposition on hero origins or why the children of Odin sit the throne, just enough background to justify how one multiversally displaced hero is supposed to stop the threat to this world. When the threat is revealed to be another displaced hero, there are enough suspects available that it isn’t completely obvious (though the arrows point pretty strongly to one, for reasons).

Though it wasn’t the 1602 that I wanted, it was enough that I was satisfied with it’s inclusion in What If … ? even though the season arcs have been less “what if” and more “all these alternate timeline worlds are real and more than a few are under threat” stories.