What If S02E07 Review: Asgard's Assassin

What If, Season 2, Episode 7: What If... Hela Found The Ten Rings?

I have always noted that some of my favourite What If episodes are the ones that take very under-utilized characters such as the Grandmaster, Hank Pym, Peggy Carter or Killmonger -- these characters that appear in one movie for a tantalizing tease of what they could do, and are subsequently killed off or forgotten -- and do something interesting in it. Top on the list of characters I want to see explored more in an alternate universe? Well, Hela and Wenwu are definitely very high on that list. Wenwu had a pretty great showing in his own movie, similar to Killmonger. But despite a killer performance from Cate Blanchett (and some amazing costume work), Hela's past, trauma and personality remains tantalizingly oblique. Thor: Ragnarok gives us just enough to get the story behind Odin's firstborn daughter, but honestly not quite enough. 

So going into this episode blind, not even seeing the title, and seeing this as a "Hela goes through the event of the Thor movie" storyline makes this episode's concept particularly tantalizing to me. Would Hela have turned out different, like Thor or post-character-development Loki? Hela's bloodthirstiness has always been implied in her source material to be something born out of a mixture of necessity in Asgard's history and Odin's poor parenting, so to see that the 'what if' in this case is Odin having a change of heart in how he handles Hela is pretty interesting. Instead of sealing her away, Hela is instead stripped of her power and tossed to Midgard to try and learn some humility. 

Except that thanks to some time period shenanigans, Hela gets tossed to Midgard in China, where Wenwu finds both the helmet and the fallen goddess. This is a time period very briefly glimpsed in the prologue of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, where Wenwu, leader of the Ten Rings, goes around as a warlord, conquering and consolidating power.

The script for this is rather fun, though I do feel that there's something kind of off by having all these characters switch from Mandarin for two lines back to English after last episode was almost fully done in Mohawk language... though I suppose having Cate Blanchett back necessitates that most of the episode is done with English.

And... for what it is, the meeting between Hela and Wenwu (not voiced by Tony Leung, but a decent impersonator) is pretty neatly done. There is a very heavy "Star-Lord T'Challa" vibe to this entire episode in that there is a gigantic sense of "why these characters", though, with the only real reason as to why Hela is interacting with Wenwu and the people of Ta Lo being a shrug and a 'why not?' To be fair, Hela and Wenwu's dynamic is kind of fun, with the writers injecting a heavy amount of quasi-romantic tension between Hela and Wenwu. There's a fair amount of fun action scenes as Hela fights Wenwu's goons the usual way, then her despair as Wenwu brings her to where her goddess-of-death helmet landed and she is completely unable to pick it up. Again, the setup is rather questionable, but her anger and despair at being reduced to a mortal is a very nice parallel to her brother in the sacred timeline. 

Hela's fighting prowess impresses Wenwu enough to bring her into his base, and she gets a fancy red dress and gets invited into dinner. Wenwu rephrases his proposal as not a marriage, but an alliance... something that Hela, having been turned into a mortal, doesn't particularly care for since she's realized that exploiting her for her fighting abilities is rather close to what papa Odin did. We then lean into bad fanfiction crack-ship territory as the two lean in for a kiss right after exchanging maybe five or six lines... and then Hela bashes Wenwu's face into the table and runs off. Hela is unable to get the Ten Rings off of their master, however, and escapes Wenwu's base. In her escape, Hela runs into Morris -- the Dijiang that befriended Trevor in the Shang-Chi movie. Able to understand the faceless creature, Hela gets convinced to go to the secret realm of Ta Lo. 

After braving the magical bamboo forest of doom, Hela arrives into the mystical realm of Ta Lo. She is attacked immediately by one of the guardians, who uses the secret arts to manipulate wind and leaves and knock Hela flat. This is not Ying Li (Shang-Chi's mom) or Ying Nan (Shang-Chi's aunt), however, which would at least make sense for this what if, but rather Jiayi, a completely brand-new character not to be confused with these other two characters that have more or less the same role that she fills. I was a bit confused about the random new character, but apparently this episode worked off a very early script treatment for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which I assume influenced a lot of the inconsistencies. 

A lot of what happens after this is kind of a montage as Hela gets stuck in Ta Lo and gets trained in martial arts and inner peace by Jiayi and the other residents of the realm. Again, Cate Blanchett's performance is really fun as she tries her bad to (very badly) bullshit Jiayi and framing her quest as one of protection and redemption. I do really love Hela's delivery about how "who better to be trained in the ways of the light, than the goddess of death herself"... and later on Hela's frustration with the meditation and at one point her very enthusiastic desire for 'fire knives'. 

We get what's frankly a rather basic kung-fu training arc, with Hela getting frustrated with the exercises until Jiayi asks Hela what the point of all the conquering and destruction is. She does get through to Hela, and we get a rather nice little contextual flashback when Hela's dog was taken away by Odin to 'tame' her, and Hela realizes that her dad basically did the same to her with her helmet. This causes Hela to realize (or frame) her desire as more of a freedom to choose her own path, rather than conquest for conquest's sake. It's a very nice little analysis on her character, which fits the broken woman we saw in Thor: Ragnarok rather well. 

While all of this is going on, Ta Lo is apparently secluded enough from the all-seeing eyes of Heimdall, causing him to get worried about what happened. A discussion with Odin causes them to speculate that the Ten Rings are powerful enough of an artifact to kill a goddess...

...which is rather hilarious, since What If S01E03 established that the mortal-ized Thor died to a simple arrow, meaning that Hela could've died from anything that could've killed any squishy human. But I suppose Odin isn't quite in his right mind at this point. 

Anyway, the power-hungry Odin decides to go to Midgard and stop the owner of the Ten Rings once and for all. Hela leaves Ta Lo and makes a beeline towards where Odin has arrived, which is Wenwu's compound. Hela and Wenwu have some flirty dialogue before the two of them start fighting against Asgardian warriors and finally against Odin. What If's second season has really improved in terms of what they can do with animation, and I really did like the fight as Wenwu and Hela face off against the Allfather. 

Odin himself is a character that is also rather under-served by the MCU, particularly his more evil, aggressive past self... so it's nice to see him in his full-on arrogant, comic-book self in this episode. It becomes quite clear that Odin's arrival isn't just entirely driven by his desire to 'avenge' Hela, but the very same excuse to fight and conquer that he banished Hela for. Hela herself also sees a fair amount of control-freak tendencies on Odin's part, refusing to be under his control again. Odin is pretty conquer-y in this conversation, and Hela sees through all of Odin's bullshit and we get another sequence of fighting. Again, some really great action scenes (particularly with Odin's magic spear Gungnir) but eventually Hela manages to use the Ta Lo arts to dispel Odin's attacks, get to wield her fire knives, and even plays around with the Ten Rings for a bit. 

With Odin disarmed, Hela shows him mercy. This act ends up making her worthy for Mjolnir -- I mean, her helmet, and it returns towards her. Odin gets a brief hypocritical rant (this time being angry that Hela's no longer bloodthirsty), but then Hela's helmet arrives and transforms her outfit into a white version of her Asgardian armour. Odin realizes how badly he fucked up and abdicates his throne, and Hela decides to use her brand-new power to undo all the damage Odin did in his campaign of conquest. Wenwu and his organization kind of follow suit under her, and they travel across the universe fighting cosmic threats like Thanos. 

And... I'm really of two minds about this episode. Just like "Star-Lord T'Challa", I really did feel like this episode felt utterly random in tossing a character into a completely unrelated cast. I do really like the writing for Hela -- a take on the character that allows her to tread on a different path, particularly one that treads the path taken by a canon character, Thor? That's amazing. Bringing in a more comic-book accurate jackass Odin, with all the hypocrisy that Hela accuses him of in Thor: Ragnarok (which we never get to see, since Odin dies in the first ten minuets of that movie) is also top-notch. Just like what I said with Yellowjacket!Hank Pym from the first season of What If, I really do like it when characters that get adaptational goodness in the MCU get to have a bit more bite in the land of alternate universes. 

But what really didn't work for me was... the inclusion of the Shang-Chi characters. And this is from one of the biggest fans of Wenwu out there. Wenwu is just... he's just there. He shows up, acts all romantic to Hela (for a non-romance), kind of plants the idea that people want to use Hela for her power and nothing else, and then disappears until he shows back up for the final act where he fights alongside Hela and becomes her partner for no reason other than vague shipping. I really do think that this episode would've worked much better if either the entire Ta Lo sequence was excised completely (and Wenwu becomes the mentor, with maybe some handwaving as to why he's not power-hungry) or if Wenwu himself was excised and Hela just lands immediately in Ta Lo. 

The end result is an episode that has perhaps one of the strongest singular character story in What If season two (perhaps only rivalled with Peggy Carter's tragic life two episodes ago) but one that's bogged down with not quite the right scenario. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The events in this episode is an alternate take on the prologue segments of Thor: Ragnarok, as well as the prologue segments of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. 
• Hela launches Mjolnir towards Odin, who crushes it with a single hand. This is an ironic reversal of what happened in the Sacred Timeline, where Hela crushes Thor's Mjolnir similarly. 
• The entire sequence of Odin banishing Hela to Earth is taken almost frame-by-frame, dialogue-by-dialogue, to Odin banishing Thor in Thor.
  
• Hela also later spends some time thinking that everything will be fine once she gets to pull her plot device from the ground, acting all arrogant until she realizes she can't pull her helmet until she truly changes, and despairing amidst a backdrop of rain and lightning. 
• Jiayi is a calm protector that greets people that come into Ta Lo, being heavily associated with the wind, and mentors a villain (Hela in this case) in martial arts. This essentially makes her a stand-in for Ying Li, Wenwu's wife. 
• With this episode apparently being produced and filmed before the release of the Shang-Chi movie, this episode might just be working off of an earlier, different name for Ying Li. 
• Interestingly, this episode kind-of confirms that Hela is Thor's half-sister, with her noting that Frigga isn't her biological mother but a goddess that Odin courted after Hela was already an adult. No real revelation as to who Hela's mother is, though it has to be noted that Hela being Odin's daughter is an MCU invention. 
• Hela as a 'Goddess of Life' has been alternate costumes in some mobile Marvel games, such as Marvel Super War. 
• Returning Live-Action Voice Actors: Cate Blanchett (Hela), Idris Elba (Heimdall)
• Notable non-returning voice actors include Feodor Chin and Jeff Bergman, who takes over for Wenwu and Odin respectively.