Review: Marvel What If…? “What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
In a timeline where Asgard’s Ragnarok occurred centuries early, the Tesseract ends up drifting through space and landing in uncolonized North America, creating a portal that transfers Native Americans to a strange realm, giving them new abilities. Soon, a girl from the Mohawk Tribe named Kahhori finds this portal and begins learning from the people there. But when Spaniards begin invading in search of “The Fountain of Youth”, Kahhori rallies her people to fight back and even goes straight to the queen to force Spain to make peace. But this meeting is cut short by the arrival of a variant of Doctor Strange.
OUR TAKE
When you go into a show that is specifically made to show alternate versions of pre-existing characters, you figure that, even if they do the craziest and unexpected thing possible, there’s still going to be things you’ve seen before in the equation. Instead, Marvel’s What If decided to go way far off the beaten path by not only using an episode to focus on a completely new character, they also had the whole episode entirely in the Mohawk language. I have no idea if they wrote it WELL, in fact the way it’s acted sounds like everyone is enunciating like they’re saying English, but this is all quite a big swing, and I’m glad to see a show with this big a platform trying this out, especially with an apparently all Mohawk cast (aside from Benedict Cumberbatch and the Spaniards, obviously). And all of that is just talking about what this episode means on a meta level. There’s also the fact that Kahhori is an entirely new character made for this episode with no existing source material. Not the first time the MCU has made original characters, Phil Coulson being the first notable one, but it’s nice to see them still coming up with them fifteen years down the road.
Putting all of that aside, it’s still a pretty strong story on its own. It doesn’t try to inject an expected Marvel structure like trying to imitate Spider-Man or Daredevil’s origins, but it does tap into the core of those characters. Kahhori gains powers from finding the lake touched by the Space Stone and meets more of her people through it that she thought were lost. Once she is there, she is told that it is impossible to return, but when it becomes clear that those she left behind were in danger, she understands that with the powers she has gained, she also has responsibility. And the fact that her efforts take her right in front of the Queen of Spain shows that they did pay off, and that this is a story specific to these people and this culture. How it will be fully received is yet to be determined, and the cynical part of me thinks this will just be used to try and make another big hero to push and merchandise, but for now, I’m just gonna enjoy this story. Hopefully good things are ahead for Kahhori in the remaining three episodes of the season.
