Marvel finally gets a diverse character right as the” What If… Kahhori Reshaped The World” episode is fantastic.
The episode does better in less than thirty minutes than the entire Ms. Marvel series on Disney+, The Marvels and Captain Marvel movies, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, etc.
Kahhori is a NEW character who doesn’t replace an existing character. They don’t shit on the fans, the original source material, or its creator.
We’re provided a cool hero’s journey from start to finish, and wow what an ending.
This is contrary to Ms. Marvel who replaced the original Carol Danvers as Ms. Marvel who replaced the original Captain Marvel, Mar-vell — all for the sake of diversity, not to have a great story. Ms. Marvel also never went on any kind of hero’s journey: she was simply given the bracelet and made to be OP as fk. Ms. Marvel is magical, cosmic, a mutant, an Inhuman, has embiggen powers, and now basically has both the Nega-Bands and the Quantum-Bands. It’s ridiculous, and thankfully the fans realize that, too.
With Kahhori her journey is quite different: Again she is a new character, her village gets attacked by the Spaniards, she finds power, she uses the power to save her tribe, but she also doesn’t use it for revenge, she uses it to make peace, which her people all about. She also suffers and she gets defeated. Ms. Marvel? Why is she Ms. Marvel? Because she has some sort of crush on Captain Marvel? It’s so dumb.
Kahhori is a great new character
Anyway, in this episode of What… If? the Tesseract (Space Stone) is shattered while Odin is battling Surtur and lands on Earth becoming a lake that is actually a portal to another world where more of the Tesseract shards can be found that give all kinds of power. On Earth, the lake is near an Indian village, but when someone goes in the lake they are ported to the other world. So the lake is deemed cursed and off-limits. The Spanish attack the village, and then Kahhori and her brother/friend find the lake and Kahhori falls through while her brother and the village are captured.
So when she ports through she arrives at a paradise and comes to another Indian village made up of all the people that have fallen through the lake over the years. It’s a cool take on the Fountain of Youth as in this world they have become immortal. However, with that immortality has come a complacency. That doesn’t apply to Kahhori who wants to return home and save her village. The Spaniards are of course searching for that Fountain of Youth.
Long story short, she manages to return home and she attacks the Spaniards by herself etc. What’s cool is she doesn’t go all OP (she is OP but I’m fine with that, she’s a cosmic character) and actually gets defeated. But then the rest of the villagers from Sky World return and save her and defeat the Spaniards.
I thought the episode would end there, but then we’re taken to Queen Isabella in Spain. She’s told they lost all their men etc. and she can’t believe it. Then Kahhori and her people port to Spain and take down Queen Isabella! Often at times, I said to myself while watching, “Holy Shit!” Lol.
We’re still not done yet! Someone else ports in! Who?! It’s Strange Supreme and he’s been looking for Kahhori for a long time! Woah! The end!
Final thoughts: A very good episode that manages to do more in thirty minutes than what Marvel previously couldn’t do while spending hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s also completely done with subtitles but while watching, you wouldn’t even know it (Devery Jacobs sounds great). There is one cringe scene when they are chasing after the Buffaloes (Kahhori who is new to her powers is the most powerful, and the other village lady has the most shards – eyeroll moment) but I’ll let that slide as they only had less than thirty minutes to develop the character and story. I was actually watching thinking it would have been cool to be a series in itself. It’s Marvel’s The Last Airbender.
