What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord? Review

This week’s What If… episode titled ‘What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord’ took us on a journey, with T’Challa taking the place of Peter Quill’s character. The main difference here is that T’Challa was a young prince that was tired of living within the bubble that is Wakanda & sought the outside world, which luck would have him crossing paths with Yondu, leaving the earth to explore the universe & growing up to become Star-Lord.

Outside of the origin story, nothing here was too familiar. T’Challa’s Star-Lord is completely different from Peter’s Star-Lord, Where Peter was a Ravager that only in it for the money & recognition; T’Challa sought out priceless treasures to bring peace to the universe around him. This episode reintroduced us to characters like Korath (Djimon Hounsou), Nebula (Karen Gillian), Kraglin (Sean Gunn), & reformed Thanos (Josh Brolin), The Collector (Benicio del Toro) Taserface (Chris Sullivan) & Howard the Duck (Seth Green).

This episode brought about a warm light-hearted feeling with well-balanced action & comedy. Surprisingly, the heart of this episode was Korath & Thanos. This isn’t to say that T’Challa was lackluster, but his overall “What If…” change didn’t hit as much as Thanos’. Thanos had less screentime than most of T’Challa but seeing a reformed Thanos that was laid back, humourous & loving towards his daughter was deep especially seeing what he was built up to be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I would’ve liked to have seen a flashback of how T’Challa took on Thanos & made him see that wiping out half of the universe was a bad move.

The story written by Matthew Chauncey was well-paced & I didn’t want to leave the world Chauncey built. I felt I could’ve spent another hour with these characters because of how well they were developed. The music that Laura Karpman brought to this episode was great & fit perfectly.

This is a bittersweet episode due to Chadwick Boseman not being around to play T’Challa in the MCU. The words displayed at the end of the episode hit home, but we’ll be seeing Boseman voice other variants of T’Challa throughout the series. Overall, this is a great episode!

• Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

Sean Marshall

Sean is known as one of the toughest film critics from New York City. If you ever wanted to know what a time capsule stuffed with pop culture looked like, Sean is it. Anime, movies, television shows, cartoon theme songs from the 80s to the early 2000s, video games & comics this man knows is all. Sean created 4 Geeks Like You back in 2012 as a platform where every form of pop culture could be discussed. Sean has his Bachelor of Science in Nursing & is a film enthusiast.

seannmarshall@gmail.com

What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord? Review

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Pros

• Well-balanced story
• Thanos. Enough said.
• Laura Karpman's music for this episode is great!

Cons

• I wanted to see how T'Challa & Yondu became so close throughout the years