OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)In a Wild West timeline, Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop travel in search of The Hood, a villain who plans to vilify Chinese Immigrants to gather power.OUR TAKEAnd just like that, we have now had our last regular episode of What If! As if to pre-empt how out of the ball park this one is, the Watcher lets us know that this is basically out on the fringes of the multiverse where there is no clear divergence from the Sacred Timeline version of events. Which I have to admit is a bit of a let down, because when I think of an alternate timeline almost entirely removed from the main version of this universe with only the slightest of similarities, my thoughts turn to something like Spider-Ham or DC’s Bizarro universe or even something super minimalist where all the characters are like amoebas or crazy stuff like that. If you’re going to say this is in the realm of weirdest of the weird, get freak and avant-garde about it! But maybe that’s a bit more doable when you’re making a comic and not a really expensive TV show, so instead that means cowboys, and really only for a handful of pre-existing characters. So, once again, like the last few of these episodes, we get a premise and idea that I actually kinda like but more or less fails to really hit me the right way.First off on the good points, at least they chose characters who have been protagonists before, in this case Kate Bishop and Shang-Chi, so we have some frame of reference for their emotional journeys going into this. Second, Old West aesthetics, like medieval or giant robot, are ones that are pretty fun to work within. And the inclusion and acknowledgement of racism against Chinese immigrants of the era is period accurate in an unexpected and meaningful way, especially with the inclusion of Shang-Chi. But again the cast selections are a bit of a let down. Kate and Shang-Chi, while I’m glad to see them getting more to do, don’t really have much in common as characters to begin with, so pairing them up just feels odd and doesn’t trigger the same chemistry as Agatha and Kingo or Alexei and Bucky. I guess it’s better than the previous episode, but that’s about all the praise I can give it. And of course the ending is more lead-in to the final section of the season and series, which begins with the first of a two-parter.