What If, Season 3, Episode 5: What If... 1872?
We return to our irregularly-scheduled What If coverage, after finishing up Daredevil: Born Again!
As a side-note: I have some long-form content set up until around the end of May, but I'll be very busy with IRL moving so I'll not be very active on the blog.
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As the last standalone episode before the two-parter finale, What If's third season takes us to the cowboy time period, where all of the modern heroes somehow exist in the year of 1872. It's a premise that Marvel comics had played with before, and I do enjoy that we get two of the newer, more underused heroes -- Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop -- as the main characters. Using Shang-Chi and adapting his story to tie with the historical enslavement of Chinese immigrants forced to build railroads in America at this time is a bold move... which the episode doesn't really do a whole ton with other than as setup.
In this world, Shang-Chi and his sister Xialing were separated due to all of this nastiness, and Shang-Chi goes off as a cowboy on a quest to get his sister back. At some point, he is joined by Kate Bishop. They both get cowboy-style monikers, with Kate Bishop being (obviously) Hawkeye, while Shang-Chi gets to become the "Ten Rings" after an urban legend where ringing a bell ten times causes the vigilante cowboy to show up. Oh, and he swore not to use guns, which is unique in this time period while he goes around kung-fu fighting everyone evil.
After a nice setup where they beat up a bunch of goons in a saloon -- with a nice cameo by John Walker as a racist goon -- they continue on their journey to hunt down the evil Hood who Shang-Chi thinks has some information about the fate of his sister. In a slight twist of her being driven to heroism because her father died in the prime timeline, Kate Bishop set out to avenge both her parents who were killed by Hood's gang. Throughout their journey, they are joined by a tagalong kid called Kwai Jun-Fan, which fits the genre, I suppose. (Jun-Fan is a very minor Iron Fist in the comics that would be active in the 1800's).
The child endangerment is a bit silly even for a superhero show, especially when Kate and Shang-Chi bring Jun-Fan into a moving train for no real reason. In the train, they find a bunch of Chinese immigrants hypnotized and unresponsive, and it's revealed that they are being controlled by... Sonny Burch, a minor antagonist from Ant-Man and the Wasp who is certainly a bizarre choice to have here. He's also got a hypnotic watch that also feels kind of randomly assigned to him. The bad guys have a monopoly on some strange technology beyond that of the 1800's, which almost feels like magic.
Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop are essentially taken hostage, but Jun-Fan manages to escape after some encouragement from Shang-Chi... but he nearly gets killed because he's a kid fighting against grown men with guns... and once more, the Watcher intervenes, rescuing the heroic boy which is yet another tie-in to how he saved Riri Williams last episode.
There is a pretty cool standoff as Shang-Chi face off against the Hood, who uses a mixture of invisibility and teleportation to run rings around the cowboy. Kate Bishop, meanwhile, deals with Sonny Burch (who is revealed to have been the one that wiped out her family) with the helpful interference of Jun-Fan. The Hood is revealed to actually be Xialing -- who killed the Hood and clawed her way up to becoming the head honcho -- which I thought was a nice, cool twist that helps to give us some modicum of payoff to a plot point teased and shelved thanks to Marvel Studios' very inconsistent sequel output.
The conclusion to the confrontation is also quite nifty, with Shang-Chi managing to talk Xialing down from actually delivering the killing blow. There's also the hint that the mystical Hood is actually influencing Xialing's actions and making her more evil than usual. However, Kate Bishop had no idea what Xialing looks like, and what she sees is the villainous Hood about to kill her friend, causing Kate to take the shot and kill Xialing. The episode ends in a bit of a tragedy with Xialing's death, but at least she dies free of the Hood's corruption. In the denouement, Kwai Jun-Fan is inspired by the heroes, while Shang-Chi and Hawkeye ride into the sunset, ready to right more wrongs.
But that's not the end of the episode, because the Watcher finally gets another storyline of his own after being mostly passive in season two. Three other Watchers (who are really hard to tell apart since none of them really have a personality beyond being outraged at our Watcher) -- called the Eminence, the Incarnate and the Executioner -- appear, and attack the Watcher for interfering one time too many. This should lead to something interesting about the Watcher, about his role in seeing all these multiverses and what the calling of a Watcher is, which the next two episodes will delve into.
Ultimately... I'm not really feeling this episode. I like Shang-Chi as a character, and I'm happy to see him represented anywhere. But I felt that while the climactic showdown between Shang and Xialing are done amazingly well, the rest of the episode felt very perfunctory. Admittedly, part of it is because I'm not the biggest fan of the cowboy genre, but the world of 1872 here just feels quite small. I'm not super impressed when I watched this episode other than the final five or so minutes, but it's still ultimately a pretty neat effort.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- This episode's What If is based on 1872, one of the many 'alternate time period' reinventions of the classic Marvel heroes which was part of the 2015 Secret Wars event. However, the prominence of these specific characters is original to the What If episode.
- Simu Liu (Shang-Chi), Hailee Steinfeld (Hawkeye/Kate Bishop), Zhang Meng'er (Xialing), Walton Goggins (Simon Burch) and Wyatt Russell (John Walker/USAgent) reprise their live-action roles, making this episode one of the few in the third season with a surprisingly full attendance.
- The Hood is a traditional Spider-Man villain, who was originally a petty criminal who ended up by chance finding the discarded equipment of a demon which gave him magical powers. In the MCU, the Hood was supposed to debut prior to What If, season three, as the antagonist of Ironheart, but with that project being heavily delayed, this makes the MCU debut of 'a' Hood.
- Kwai Jun-Fan in the comics is the user of the Iron Fist powers that was active in 1878, wandering Wild West Texas until he was killed by the immortal Zhou Cheng, who hunted down bearers of the Iron Fist.
- Shang-Chi jokes that Kwai Jun-Fan has 'iron fists', alluding to this. While Iron Fist hasn't appeared outside of the Netflix-Marvel shows (which had a complicated relationship with the greater MCU), it's a nice little nod.
- The Eminence (and his two flunkies, the Executioner and the Incarnate) is an original character to What If, although other Watchers have judged Uatu the Watcher for his bias towards heroes. Other Watchers who had judged him have included Emnu, his father Ikor, and He Who Summons.
- Shang-Chi's horse, Morris, shares the name with the magical Hundun that accompanied his ally Trevor Slattery in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
- Shang-Chi and Hawkeye identify the equipment in the train as coming from Stark Munitions, Hammer Steel and Cross Manufacturing, referencing Tony Stark (Iron Man), Justin Hammer and Darren Cross (Yellowjacket).
- The fight against John Walker's goons is started with a slow-motion chest punch by Shang-Chi, which homages the start of the fight against Razor Fist in his movie -- which was prominently shown in a lot of trailers.
- The post-credits scene of Shang-Chi show Xialing embracing the role of being a villain, which has not been followed up yet. This marks the first incarnation of Xialing that manages to do the 'tragic villain' thing.
- Among the other universes seen by the Watcher are:
- A universe where Crossbones is a pirate captain.
- A universe with Throg (frog Thor) and Alligator Loki. Both of them appeared in Loki's first season, though they never interacted with each other.
- A universe where Ultron was a famous singer.
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