Marvel What If…? Episode 2 Review

Like so many others, I was left stunned by Chadwick Boseman’s sudden passing last year. The fact that he spent his entire time as T’Challa fighting cancer, and letting almost one know about it, serves as a testament to that man’s will. He knew how important T’Challa was, and he tried to see it through to the end. And while we will likely not see T’Challa again in the main MCU, Marvel What if…? offers a chance to see Chadwick have one last hurrah as the iconic character.

Since his passing makes it very hard not to have a bias regarding his episode of What if…?, I won’t bother hiding it. This series will posthumously include Chadwick in at least four episodes, each with a different version of the character. As of now, though, I think this was my favorite, as well as my favorite episode of the show.

What If… T’Challa Became A Star Lord

Whereas the first episode of What if…? started out with a relatively safe story, the second episode goes all in, showing us just how crazy these stories can, and will, be.

In the main MCU, Peter Quill was abducted by Yondu, who got hired to take him to his Dad. However, here he had Kraglin and Taserface do it instead. They grab T’Challa by accident, and Yondu decides to just keep him around.

Flashforward two decades, and T’Challa’s become Star-Lord. And unlike Peter, he’s every bit as legendary as Peter wanted people to believe. He doesn’t just steal from others: he takes the wealth of the powerful and gives it to those who can’t help themselves. In other words, he’s an intergalactic Robin Hood with admirers across the universe.

T’Challa at His Most Free

Given how serious and responsible T’Challa is in the MCU, one would think that What If…? took some liberties with this version’s personality. However, once the show gets a few minutes in, you’ll see that Chadwick’s playing T’Challa as essentially the same person from the MCU. The difference here is that this T’Challa does not have the burden of the Black Panther to weigh on him.

The T’Challa we get in this episode is light-hearted, charismatic, and free-spirited with an insatiable curiosity to explore the universe. He loves being Star Lord. However, at his core, he’s still the same noble and just person who fights injustice. When he steals, he does it to help people, and a lot of characters are in a better place than when we found them in the MCU. Drax never lost his family and is a happy bartender. Yondu and his Ravagers now help people through their thieving activities. Thanos works alongside them.

Wait, what?

This Version of Thanos is a Hero

Yes, you read that right: Thanos is not only a hero, he works alongside T’Challa and the Ravagers. Apparently, T’Challa reached out to him and made him realize that his plan to use the Infinity Stones wasn’t the right answer. Now he focuses on gardening and trying to atone for what he did to Nebula (who flirtatiously calls T’Challa “Cha Cha”.)

Seeing the man who served as the overarching villain for the MCU fighting as a good guy may seem unsettling to some. However, his prescence serves a purpose in the show’s narrative. Infinite number of universes means infinite versions of a character. And some of them can turn out to be heroes instead of villains. Or villains instead of heroes. The possibilities are infinite.

Farewell to Chadwick Boseman

This episode won’t be the last time that we see T’Challa in Marvel What if…? There will be at least three other versions of him in future episodes. However, for all intents and purposes, this episode serves as a send-off to the character, and to Chadwick Boseman.

Looking back, I honestly cannot imagine anyone other than Chadwick playing the role of the Black Panther. He brought the perfect amount of charisma, inspiration, and physical prowess that the character needed. There may not be another actor like him for a long, long time. So, while we say goodbye to Chadwick as T’Challa, let’s remember the impact he had on the world. And this episode’s essentially a love letter to everything he did to bring the Black Panther to life.

I Give “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” A 5/5

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I was going to choose Black Panther for today’s challenge, but then I remembered that there’s another character of royal blood in Marvel that I like. He may not seem like royalty, but he is.

Peter Quill, AKA Star-Lord

No, seriously. I am not joking. While the MCU may have changed who his dad was, the comic book version is very much of royal lineage. Ergo, he gets to be my favorite royal. In the comics, his dad, J’son, was part of the interstellar Spartax Empire.

J’son crash landed on Earth one day, where he met Meredith Quill. They ended up dating while he fixed his ship, but he had to leave her behind. What no one knew was that she was pregnant with their child. Also, J’son was actually the prince of the Spartax Empire, so that kind of makes Peter Quill the sci-fi version of Jon Snow.

Unlike Jon, Peter got to spend his childhood with his mom and live a normal life, until that alien race fighting the Spartoi found out about him and tried to kill him. He survived while his mom died, and vowed to travel to space and get revenge. After NASA wouldn’t let him join, though, he stole a Kree ship from them and ran away.

Peter took the name Star-Lord and fell in with a band of rogues for a while before he finally met his father. They didn’t get along. After trying to force him to become Prince, J’son was instead overthrown. So, Pete ended up becoming Emperor for a while. He even got engaged to Kitty Pryde from the X-Men. Too bad they broke it off in the end.

Peter continues wandering the universe, either alone or as part of the Guardians of the Galaxy. No matter how hard he tries though, he can’t seem to escape his royal lineage. His own dad even put a bounty on him. Regardless, he still fights for good across the universe as Star-Lord, making him my favorite royal.

Avengers: Endgame Review

If someone had told me back in 2008 that the movie Iron Man was going to start something unheard of, I’d call them crazy. A lot of us would have. A shared universe of superheroes and interconnected stories had worked in comic books. It had even done well in cartoons with the DC and Marvel Animated Universes of the 90s and 2000s. But movies? No one had tried it; people may have thought it was impossible.

Yet Marvel did it; Iron Man was only the start of a larger universe. Eleven years and twenty-two movies (and several shows) later, the MCU rules pop culture. Now the first chapter to this incredible universe comes to a head in Avengers: Endgame, which has already broken the global box office record.

I told you guys in my last post about how I saw the first Avengers movie with my dad opening weekend. Now, I am proud to say that I got to do the same thing for Avengers: Endgame on Friday, April 26th, 2019. After giving myself a day to process everything, I want to give you guys my review for the movie everyone’s talking about. There will be some mild spoilers here, but nothing that will ruin the plot.

The film starts three weeks after the events of Infinity War, and the universe is working to pick up the pieces. Tony and Nebula get stranded in space like we see in the trailer, but thanks to Captain Marvel, they get rescued and get home. While Tony recuperates, everyone else goes after Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. To their horror, though, they find that the Stones are gone. Thanos destroyed them so that a) the Decimation couldn’t be undone, and b) he wouldn’t go mad with power with them. So it looks like the Avenger have lost in every sense.

Time passes, and everyone deals with the effects in their own way, some better than others. Thor took it the worst, though; here’s an out-of-context photo that should give you a hint what’s happened to him:

Use your imagination for the rest. Then suddenly, Scott Lang comes back from the Quantum Realm. He had been trapped in there since the Pyms got dusted. The thing is, while it’s been years for others, it was only a few hours for him. Time doesn’t work the same in the Quantum Realm. Piggy backing off that discovery, the Avengers form a plan to undo Thanos’ actions. Using the Quantum Realm, they will travel back to various moments in the past, grab the Infinity Stones from then, and use them in the present to bring back everyone.

So I guess How it Should Have Ended got it partially right with the time travel part. As for me, what did I think about it? I think that it was a very convoluted plan, and if it sounds like Back to the Future, you’re not alone. Tony Stark even calls everyone out by saying “your plan is Back to the Future?” It was a crazy plan, and by all means, it shouldn’t work. To be honest, though, this wasn’t the first time Marvel’s used time travel; it’s happened in the comics.

I don’t want to give away what happens here, but the second part’s basically revisiting past moments from the movies and stealing the stones. I have to agree with Andy Epsilantis from Pop Culture Uncovered on this one: it was fun, but made for a weak story. It did give us some pretty good moments, though. A few of the characters were even able to get some closure to certain events in their past.

Letting the characters see themselves in the past, though, was pretty fun. For example, remember the scene at the start of Guardians where Quill’s singing to “Come and get your Love”? To everyone else, he looks like a dork singing in an empty room, and it is hilarious. The time heist doesn’t go off without a hitch, though. Thanos learns what the heroes are doing, and becomes determined to keep his work from being undone.

While I admit that in Infinity War, Thanos’ goals, while misguided, were to help the universe. That made him relatable as a villain and even, in some way, respect him for actually winning. In Endgame, though, Thanos becomes a straight-up villain. He vows to destroy Earth for its inhabitants constant interference in his plans. Then he’ll remake the universe with himself as a god. That’s pretty evil! And while I did enjoy how complex Thanos was (and still is), having a straight-up evil goal helped watching the Avengers fight him feel great.

What did I think of how it ended? First, I’m just going to come out and say it: THERE IS NO MID OR POST-CREDITS SCENE! The end credits are still epic, but don’t waste your time.

Second, while a three hour movie is pushing it for me, I walked away utterly satisfied. This film’s basically a love letter to what the MCU’s done and how far its come. It’s got humor, action, drama, genuine loss, and the geeky fan service. It is the perfect cap-off to this story that’s been building for eleven years. If it or any of the people involved in it don’t win an Oscar next year, I will be disappointed.
Third, and finally, I like how this movie has Stan Lee’s final cameo before his passing. Best part is that you won’t even realize it’s him at first glance. Having one of the men who made Marvel appear in the final chapter to one of its biggest stories gives it a form of closure.

In short, I thought that this movie was the best, and not just because of nostalgia bait. I highly recommend that you go see it in theaters while you can.

I Give “Avengers: Endgame” a 5/5. Excelsior!

One problem, though: where do they go from here?

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