Strange Supreme is back, nothing suspicious about that...
Last time on What If…?,
Captain Carter got to live every Shakespear nerd’s fantasy and traveled to the
year 1602. It’s a weird version of the time period, though, with Avengers, Norse
Gods, and Space all mixed into it. She’s tasked with finding the ‘forerunner,”
another person like herself that is from another time whose presence is causing
this reality to break apart. A job made much more complicated when Queen Hela
is lost to a rift and King Thor declares her an outlaw. With the help of Rogers
Hood and his band of Avengers (Bucky, Scott Lang and some generic guy), Renaissance
man Tony Stark, the man in the Iron Mask Banner, and Sir Fury on the inside,
they’re able to power a device Stark made to do just that. It’s revealed to be
Steve. Turns out, this version is from a timeline where in the battle against
Thanos in Wakanda, his shield clipped the Time Stone in the fight. This caused the
rift which merged 1602 and 2023 timelines together to make this composite
world. Steve, memory restored, chooses to sacrifice himself and go back. The
timeline corrected; Carter goes to get a drink when she’s joined by Strange
Supreme. Enough Recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 18: What if Strange Supreme Intervened?
Quick Recap on Strange Supreme for
those who might not remember him. He’s from a timeline where instead of getting
his hands horribly mangled in a car accident that starts him on his path to be
a wizard, his only friend and on-again off-again girlfriend Christine is killed.
More desperate to get her back than mainline Stephen was to get his hands back,
he sought forbidden knowledge to break a canon event and save her. He absorbed
demons to get the power to do it. He’s able to after beating an absorbing an
alternate version of himself that the Ancient One created to try to stop him.
But in breaking the canon event he broke his universe and it all, including
Christine, melted around him. He was left in that bubble of time, allowed out
briefly to help the Guardians of the Multiverse battle Infinite Ultron but was
put back in with Killmonger and Arnim Zola suspended in a smaller time bubble,
forever battling for the Infinity Stones. Enough Recap.
The episode opens with Peggy Carter
in the bar in 1602, London. After the Watcher gives us a brief rundown of Captain
Peggy Carter’s history, we find her talking with Strange Supreme. Carter is
happy to see him as being stuck 400 years in the past doesn’t sound super fun
to her, and Strange teases her about being sick of first run Shakespear and
outdoor plumbing already. He upgrades their drinks to single malt whisky and
Peggy asks him for a ride home. He agrees to help. The Watcher foreshadows that
these two will need to work together to stop something terrible.
Carter and Strane enter his sanctum,
the Sanctum Infinitum. Carter is shocked to discover that Strange has expanded
his collection of prisoners trapped outside of time from Infinite Ultron. He’s
apparently been traveling through the multiverse, containing Universe Killers,
and sealing them in orbs. The pillars and halls decorated with them suggest he’s
been extremely busy. Carter asks if this is his self-imposed penance. He’s glad
she understands his thought process, and says he needs her help with something
a little embarrassing. When she guesses that one escaped, he asks how she got
that, and she explains that after watching Gremlins, Jurassic Park,
and Aliens, she learned that collect enough dangerous things and one
always escapes. Carter is hesitant to help, as she can already hear the Watcher
telling her that meddling with the Multiverse is always a bad idea. He begs for
her help, and she agrees.
He takes her to some kind of
viewing area and shifts it to a version of the South Dakota Badlands, saying he
lost his Universe Killer here. He upgrades Carter’s armor back to the 21st
century version and tells her that she’ll know her target when she sees her. Which,
Carter admits, is worrying. Carter makes him promise to take her home after
this, crossing his heart, before she heads through the portal.
It's winter in South Dakota, which
can get freezing I can tell you as a neighbor to that state and walks through
the woods. She finds a battered Mount Rushmore, but with the Red Skull’s carved
into the mountain. The Watcher arrives, saying that the bomb at Project Rebirth
in this universe was much more powerful, killing both her and Steve Rogers. Without
as Super Solider Captain to lead the fight back against them, HYDRA unleashed
their tesseract weapons against the world, won WWII but destroyed civilization as
we know it in the process. The Watcher asks her what she’s doing here, as surely,
she’s learned her lesson about meddling in other universes by this point. She
says she’s going to meddle, and they’ll never agree on which is better, to interfere
or just watch. He says it’s not about Watching but about Seeing and that he wants
her to be careful.
A moment later a familiar blue blur
can be seen in the distance. She’s attacked by the streak, being knocked around
by the speedster. She launches her shield at the streak, knocking her back for
a moment before she strikes again. The streak, yes it’s Kahhori, catches her
Shield and the two talk it out. I guess she’s learned English since we last saw
her. Kahhori claims that Strange is in fact the Universe Killer. Can’t say I’m
shocked. She says that she’s not Carter’s enemy, but the delusional radaen:naras
(according to the subtitles) is lying to her. A glyph appears beneath them
and they’re both captured by Strange.
They drop into the Sanctum and
Strange immediately starts blasting Kahhori. She blocks it with her powers and
is able to tell Carter that Strange is gathering heroes along with Universe
Killers and is feeding them into a Forge of some kind. She says he’s lost his
mind, and that he’s doing this not to save the Multiverse but to resurrect his
destroyed universe. Carter asks him if this is about resurrecting Christine, to
which Strange says yes, but she should understand, as she’d do the same for
Steve. Carter blocks Strange’s attack, saying she’d never do this for Steve. In
part because Steve wouldn’t want her to do it, the price is too high. Strange shrugs
and says in the grand scheme of things, no it isn’t and attacks harder, bending
his energy around Peggy to strike Kahhori. Carter begs him not to do this but
he’s not listening. She leaps through his energy attack and tries to strike him,
but he’s got some sort of barrier around him. He says it’s better this way.
Thinking fast, Carter sees the walls here are also lined with imprisoned beings.
She hurls her Shield at them, knocking spheres free and freeing their captives.
She and Kahhori agree that’ll keep him busy for a bit and they superspeed away
to break the forge.
They stop and see how big the brawl
has broken out into. There’s a cyborg rocket, a Malekith the Accursed, and a
Hulk that seems to be bedecked in Celestial weapons among the masses of
rampaging escapees. Terrifying. Carter is a big enough person to admit that starting
a prison riot of universe killers wasn’t her best idea. They super speed away
again as Strange comes in and starts capturing them. They run into the bowels
of the sanctum and run into the Zombie Scarlet Witch. Shoot. Carter battles the
zombie minions while Kahhori fights Wanda. She slams into Wanda and seems to
teleport her away and then drops down to help Carter against the horde. Their
eyes shift from Wanda’s red to green, and then Hela comes in astride the Fenris
Wolf. She says that Zombies are her kind of party and orders them to kneel.
Kahhori says the last woman to tell her that ended up regretting it, and Hela
counters by saying she’s the Goddess of Death. They’re interrupted by Surtur
storming in and Hela locking eyes on her one true nemesis. As they battle, and
Strange opens portals to capture them, Carter and Kahhori slip away. As they
superspeed away, they run into a Thanos. Before the fight with him gets started
in earnest, someone snaps and dusts Thanos. Who? Killmonger, the one from the
Guardians of the Multiverse. He’d gotten his hands on the Infinity Armor and
was prepared to use it. Carter says they’ll need it to stop Strane, so Kahhori
uses her nebulous powers to pull Killmonger from the armor and teleport him to
the big brawl upstairs. Killmonger is weirdly silent here, but I guess that
they couldn’t get Michael B. Jordan in for 90 second cameo. Carter puts on the
Infinity Armor just before the building starts shaking. Kahhori realizes that
Strange has started the Forge. It’s a huge pit with some kind of gyroscope deep
inside it, and it’s pulsing with energy.
They rush in and Carter asks how
they destroy it. Strange floats in and says he’d rather they didn’t. They start
battling. Carter with the Infinity Stones and Kahhori’s speed prove a match for
Strange’s power. As they fight, they Kahhori and Carter get a few shots down into
the Forge, disrupting it slightly but not enough to stop it. They get Strange
locked in a beam Struggle and Kahhori tells him that he’s lived alone for too
long, and that there’s more of them than him. He decides to test that theory
and makes bunch of clones, and Carter counters with Reality Stone Clones.
Strange tells Carter that it doesn’t have to end this way. Carter tries to
charge him with all her clones, but Strane turns them into butterflies.
Butterflies cover her vision, and she blacks out.
Carter finds herself in the Project
Rebirth lab just before Steve is supposed to go through the process. She almost
believes the illusion, as Steve tells her that they can be together and be
happy here, but she sees through it and punches Steve, who’s really Stephen, in
the face. Strange tells her that she brought this on herself and tries to drop
his prisoners into the Forge. Kahhori says that the protections around the
Forge are weakening and tries to portal everyone home. She’s able to catch them
all with her power and shifts the portals they fell through back to their home
realities and tries to throw them back through. Strange attacks them, catching
Kahhori in a giant hand and keeping Carter pinned in energy. Everyone starts
dropping again, but Carter uses the Time Stone to try to send them back. Strange
is impressed but says he mastered that trick a long time ago. He uses the Time
Stone in the Eye of Agamotto to cancel out hers. She says that his world must
be reborn or countless others will die. He also says that he thought Carter
would understand, but now she’s finished. Hela, who had broken out of the
trance a little says, “Not entirely,” tosses her crown to Carter and says “Give
him Hel” before falling into the Forge. The other trapped heroes and villains
throw their gear towards Carter and Kahhori. Carter uses a sword to blast him back
and gives Kahhori time to save the rest of the prisoners.
The women outfit themselves in the
weapons of the fallen, Kahhori getting Mjolnir and the Ten Rings and Carter
throwing on Hela’s crown and her sword for good measure. They attack Strange in
earnest, blasting him with the combined might of the multiverse. As the
fighting gets worse, Strange loses control of his form, and starts turning into
a monster. They blast him with all the weapons. Carter says it’s over, but
Strange says it’s never over. He morphs into a bat monster and says they won’t
stop him. He starts eating their weapons and grows stronger. Carter charges him
without her armor, but Kahhori throws the Stones to her. She punches Strange
and excises his demons from him for a moment. The demons form into a black cloud
flowing around the real Strange. She begs for his help to stop this, but he
says he can’t, his grief is too strong. It’s grown beyond his control. She says
Christine wouldn’t want this, but Strange’s demon form and Strange say that
they do. The two merge again and attack Carter. She knocks them into the Forge.
She punches Strange but catches herself on the side of the Forge. Strane tries
to blast her but the real Strange breaks through and stops hiss demon side,
they drop into the Forge and the energy blasts out.
Carter wakes up in the Watcher’s
realm, who tells her that Kahhori is safe back in her home dimension. They
travel to Strange Supreme’s dimension. It turned out his plan worked, he was
able to recreate his universe, but it killed him and kept him from being born
into this version of Reality. Carter muses at all the pain that Strange caused
to make this world he’d never see, and that she’d nearly helped him do it. The
Watcher reminds her that she saw the good in Strange and it was in that small
moment that let him conquer his demons and save this world. He says that the
Multiverse didn’t need him to intervene, it just needed her. He offers to take
her home again, which she agrees to, but suggests that they take the scenic route,
surely there’s things to see. He tells her to just watch as the credits roll.
That was a fine finale. We’re
setting aside my knowledge that technically the Infinity Stones should have no
power outside of their home dimension as once again it lead to a kick ass fight
scene. I’ll start by saying I tend to find ‘alt universe version of a hero is the
greatest villain’ stories to be boring. Some can be interesting, like the Boom
Studio’s comics making a version of Tommy Oliver that chose to be evil and
sided with Rita Repulsa only to betray her and become Lord Drakkon. But most
equate to “one bad day can make you a monster” and I personally don’t subscribe
to that school of thought. That said, Strange Supreme’s fall from grace and
into madness makes sense for his character and the fact he let literal demons
consume him like Onigumo from Inuyasha, turning himself into a Naraku
like monster, held together only by his grief at doing his beloved and his
entire universe. Grief and anger like that coupled with his self-imposed
isolation does things to people, terrible things. But I like that the writers
gave Stephen the moral victory in ultimately holding his dark side back and
sacrificing himself to restore the world. The message that the best part of him
survived even if it was smothered by his dark side is a good one. Carter and
Kahhori were a nice pairing for this one. Carter has got the name recognition, experience,
and tactical thinking, and Kahhori has the nebulous powerset that comes with
being exposed to an Infinity Stone. Super Speed plus energy and portal
manipulation, a mixed bag but no more broken then say Captain Marvel. It was
neat to see visual cameos of all the villains the show has done and some other
concepts they haven’t like War God Hulk or Cyborg Rocket. I wonder if they’ll
appear in a future season… they have the assets now. The final battle with the
two heroes bedecking themselves in the gear of others was super neat too. While
Infinity Stones + Hela’s Crown + Sword + Ten Rings + Mjolnir is a lot, I would
have liked to see them use a few more the weapons before the big beam struggle.
All I’m saying. So yeah, fun finale. Oh, and yeah, Marvel, find someway to
bring Kahhori into the main MCU timeline, with Devery Jacobs reprising the
role. Do it. You know you want to. Think of all the brownie points that kind of
inclusion could give you. Think of pissing off DeSantis even more! Worth a
shot. Have a good night, everyone.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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