I wonder if Peggy was at all annoyed by the name "Maid Margaret"...
Last time on What If…?, Hela
was given the Thor treatment. Rather than being banished to Hela the Realm, she
was instead banished to Earth. Odin also enchanted her crown, but where Thor
had to prove he was worthy, Hela would need to prove she knows mercy. She lands
in ancient China and meets Xu Wenwu, bearer of and leader of the Ten Rings.
Hela tries to steal the rings after it is shown they were powerful and she
couldn’t move her crown, but Wenwu is too powerful for her. She flees his
palace, taking the creature one day dubbed Morris by Trevor, the ‘Mandarin,’ as
the creature told her he could lead her to a source of power. I should note
that Wenwu only said that they should work together, like, dude didn’t even flirt
with her when she wasn’t into it or anything creepy. She travels across China and
ends up in Ta Lo. She’s taken in by Ta Lo and trained by its citizens to harness
elemental power while also working through her issues. She has an epiphany that
while she ‘wants’ to conquer the universe, this is the means to her end, the
end she wanted was merely freedom to choose her own life. She realizes this
just before Odin is informed of her disappearance, Ta Lo is outside of Heimdall’s
sight, and launches an attack on the Ten Rings to avenge his daughter. Hela
rushes to the fortress and she and Wenwu battle Odin. Hela has a speech about
understanding mercy, her crown returns to her and Odin abdicates his throne to
her, acknowledging she learned her lesson far better than he’d hope. The episode
ends by saying Hela spent the next few centuries undoing the conquest she’d
helped and showing her and Wenwu leading an army to battle Thanos. Fun. Enough
Recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 13: What If The Avengers Assembled in 1602?
We open with Loki reciting the “To
be, or not to be,” soliloquy from Hamlet. He’s performing the play for a
crowd of peasants, but also his siblings. Thor is heckling him like Statler and
Waldorf of the Muppets and making Hela laugh. Hela is dressed rather regally so
I assume she’s important here. A bunch of green lightning flashes and a portal opens.
The peasants are ordered to run. Loki is almost sucked up but is caught by the
time displaced Captain Carter and pulled back down. Unfortunately, Hela is
caught and pulled though. Carter tries to save her too, leaping to the sky to
grab her but she can’t get a good grip on Hela’s hand, and she’s pulled through
and the rift closes. Her staff clatters to the ground and the peasants dub Thor
their king. Thor is obviously not happy his sister and Queen was taken and
accuses her of being the cause of the rifts. He exposits that the Scarlet Witch
drew Carter there to stop the Rifts, but they’ve only grown worse since she
arrived. He orders that she be taken prisoner. Carter obviously doesn’t go
quietly, beats up a bunch of guards and then runs off. Thor orders the Scarlet
Witch be brought to him to talk about her ‘hero.’
The Watcher cuts in to give us the
gist of the situation. He explains that Carter was brought here to help this
world but postulates that this strange but familiar time might just be a universe
that is meant to die. But a glimmer of hope can perhaps change that. He explains
that this dimension was collapsing in on itself and in an act of desperation,
Scarlet Witch pulled in a hero from another world to try to save it. She wanted
to help but after weeks of failure, she’s been deemed a failure and is being
hunted for it. As the Watcher pontificates how utterly alone and forlorn Carter
is… she points out that she can hear him. While he’s shocked by this, the
Watcher warns her that this is a situation that she cannot understand. She then
sums it up as this is a reality where the early 17th and the early 21st
century have been mushed together like two pieces of gum and she’ll need to
unstick them before they collapse. The Watcher offers to bring her home, but
she refuses to go. He tells her that worlds die, and he’s seen millions in his
time… which is a severe understatement given his power. This is the Watcher; he
sees all of time and space. The symbol to denote how many worlds he’s seen die
is literally the infinity symbol.
We cut to Thor’s throne room where
Sir Fury says that the rifts are increasing and growing stronger across the
globe. The Isle of Ego, Nebula’s Observatory and Groot Groves have been
destroyed. Thor swears that this is their darkest hour, but he refuses to let
it be their last. He wants Carter brought in. Scarlet Witch tells him that she’s
not the causes but is the one who can save them, along with another from a time
yet to come. This pisses off the king’s aide, Happy Hogan, but Thor tells him
to calm down. She says that this person is a ‘lost traveler’ someone that fell
through time whose presence is causing their universe to collapse. Fury
whispers to Carter, who’d been listening from a window, that she has her
mission, and she leaps off.
We cut to the next morning where
she wakes up Tony Stark, who’s some kind of alchemist in this universe. They
examine the Yorik skull she’d taken from Loki the night before and find that
there are particles of something on it. She postulates that it might be
radioactive, and ye olde Tony says he loves her made up words. There’s a crash
on the roof that distracts them. Carter tells him that she’s looking for another
traveler to their realm and thinks that person will have a similar aura to her.
She asks if Tony can trace it, he says yes in theory, but they don’t have anything
to power that kind of magic. The only item that could is the king’s scepter,
which Thor isn’t likely to give Carter right now. So he tells her they’ll need
to steal it. And they’ll need a thief.
We shift focus to Loki riding in a
carriage, talking about a new play that Will is working on about Iago. Of
course Loki is most interested in the villain of the piece. They’re stopped by
Rogers Hood and his band of outlaws. The group seems to consist of Rogers,
Bucky, and Scott Lang. They steal money, clothes, and cakes from Loki. Before
they can leave, though, Carter walks up and Rogers says he’s seeing a ghost.
His “maid Margaret” died months ago. Guess these two literally can’t be
together in any timeline without cheating. Loki tells his driver to ride off
while they’re lost in each others eyes.
They retreat to the bands treehouse
where Carter explains the situation to Rogers. He seems on board with stealing
the scepter and is impressed with Carter just rolling with the punches about
being sent to another world. He asks if there’s another Steve Rogers in her
time, but before they can hash out multi-dimensional relationships, they’re attacked.
Hogan had found their treehouse and launched squadrons of Yellowjackets at
them, the soldiers being shrunk down before being fired in masse by muskets. The
outlaws do battle with the Yellowjackets, Scott saying he can’t stand copycats
as he also shrinks and grows to fight them. Bucky fires a barrage of crossbow
bolts at Hogan, who freaks out and briefly turns purple. Rogers warns him to
not make Hogan mad. They think they won for a moment, but the Destroyer comes
in and starts blasting. Carter tells them to run, find Stark and get the
scepter. She and Scott hold off the Destroyer long enough for the others to get
away. She’s captured and taken to the
tower.
We see the king’s executioner, the Red
Skull, sharpening his axe. Carter in her tower asks if Uatu is watching. He is,
always, and offers again to bring her home. She refuses, asking him to help her
find the ‘forerunner.’ The Watcher says he can’t see events clearly when a
world is close to extinction. This world is destined to die, and she can’t
change that. She says that if you see someone hurt, you help them. The Watcher
points out that she has no idea what her actions might do. He asks what will
she do if finding the forerunner is the final straw to destroy this universe?
Or if fixing the universe traps her. She says she has to try, because she’s
Captain Carter. She breaks her bonds and breaks out of her cell. She beats her
way through the guards and finds a cell, the ‘monster in the iron mask.’ He tells
her to leave him alone, as it’s quite in his cell. She apologizes to Bruce
before tricking the guards into shooting at the cell, pissing him off and
turning him into the Hulk. She rides on his back to freedom. She promises to
fix things.
They return to Stark’s workshop. He’s
gotten a device together that he says will find the forerunner and blast them
back to their home dimension. They just need the ‘magic stone’ from the scepter
to do it. FYI, if the colors are consistent to the MCU, the stone in question is
the Time Stone. Rogers and his men arrive, saying that storming the castle is there
thing.
They break into the castle during a
royal court session. They all slip in, Carter and Rogers in the crowd, Stark as
a choir boy hiding his box, and Lang and Barnes as horn blowers. Before the
session can get started a rift opens. Scarlet Witch tries to force it shut but
her power isn’t enough. The Hulk bursts in as the ‘signal’ and things kick off.
Thor wants to join the fight, asking Thor where the hammer he got him is and
Loki says he misplaced it. Rogers and Hogan get into a sword fight, Rogers
slicing the feather from his hat. This pisses Hogan off enough to transform
into his hulk form. Carter goes before Thor and begs for his help, but he refuses.
He draws the ‘All-Father,’ a Vibranium sword from Wakanda. Carter says he’s
more of a drama queen that Loki, to which Loki says ‘bless.’ Hulk and Hogan battle,
Bucky and Rogers beat the Red Skull, and Carter tries to overcome Thor. Stark
runs up with the box with help from Lang. Scarlet Witch stops Thor and Carter’s
fight with her powers, letting Fury take the scepter and bringing it to Stark. They
try to activate the machine, but it doesn’t work at first. They get it working
just as Scarlet Witch’s power runs out. A green blast strikes them all and the
Forerunner is revealed.
It’s Steve. The energy wave helps
restore his memory. He reveals that this Steve remembers battling Thanos during
the events of Infinity Wars in Wakanda. In this timeline, he struck the Time
Stone in the fighting, and this must have jumbled the timelines together. Carter
says she can’t lose him again, not like this, and Rogers being Rogers
sacrifices himself to undo the timeline melding. There’s a bright flash and everyone
vanishes save Peggy Carter. She goes to a bar to have a drink. There’s a flash
behind her and she asks if that’s the Watcher come to gloat. It’s revealed to be
Strange Supreme and he says he’s got a story to tell her.
This was an interesting penultimate
episode for this season. I thought the premise was interesting, having this
weird mashup of past and present MCU. I assume all the powers that were shown
off would be explained as Magic in their world, I mean, it’s kind of magic
already. I thought it was interesting to see how their powers interacted with
the world, the Yellowjacket ambush squad being the most interesting use of the
setting and technology. I mean, using muskets to launch waves of soldiers at
your enemy? Brilliant. Happy Hogan as essentially the Sheriff of Nottingham was
probably my favorite character in this one, with the handlebar mustache and
pompous buffoonery. Though the Red Skull as the executioner and Loki as a
literal Shakespearian Drama Queen tie for second. Adding the bit about the
Watcher not being able to see events near a possible extinction/universe collapsing
event was good, smart storytelling. This basically allows them to have finales
with tension despite a near omnipotent voyeur watching, since any threat big
enough to threaten the whole viewed reality is enough to keep him from knowing
what the ending is beforehand. The reveal that Rogers was the man out of time
works, though it was a little too neat for me. I don’t know, I guess I’d
assumed the Forerunner would be someone that benefited somehow in this new
universe and Robin Hood Steve Rogers didn’t quite fit the bill for me. Granted,
that would have needed it to be Fury or Hogan or someone else in Thor’s employe
then, which may have been just as ‘neat’ in that regard, but who knows? I do
like that they decided to tie it back into the battle with Thanos and show how even
touching the Infinity Stones can have incredible unforeseen circumstances. Those
stones are the physical manifestation of the concepts they’re named after, so
yeah, touching the Time Stone could have some wonky effects on time. I did like
Steve’s little speech about how he’s sure there’s at least one universe where
they can be together. I’m curious to see what Strange Supreme has been up to. We
know he’s been out of his pocket of time for a bit now, having interacted with
Kahhori in her timeline a few episodes back. Whatever got him out, be it his
own power or the Watcher needing his backup again for some big project can’t
possibly be good. But we’ll see about it tomorrow. Have a good night everyone.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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