Recap / What If…? S1E2 "What If… T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?"

"What If… T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?"

"But why stop at one world, huh? When we can show you all of them?"

Alternate take on: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Black Panther (2018)

"The Galaxy. To your eyes, a hundred billion points of light. But where you see light, I see worlds and the countless stories that fill them. But in a multiverse of infinite possibility, is your destiny determined by your nature? Or by the nature of your world?"

— Uatu

In 1988, Ravager Captain Yondu Udonta leaves the task of capturing the offspring of Ego the Living Planet to his subordinates. Instead, they unwittingly capture T'Challa, the Crown Prince of Wakanda. Twenty years later, T'Challa has become a Ravager known across the galaxy as Star-Lord.

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"What If… T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?" contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: The entire story/concept, due to the untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman. The episode was intended to also be a Backdoor Pilot and be spun-off as its own series, following further adventures of T'Challa and his merry band of Ravagers. This episode, along with the first season finale, will likely remain the only on-screen appearances of Star-Lord T'Challa.
• The Ace: In contrast to Peter, who is frequently on the short end of the stick, T'Challa is widely respected and known by the galaxy and is shown to be far more competent than Quill. To put it into perspective, T'Challa managed to reform Thanos.
• Adaptation Name Change: Inverted, as it's actually a case of a character regaining their name from the source material. The subtitles confirm that the character known as Cull Obsidian in the Sacred Timeline is here called Black Dwarf (though oddly, he's still called Cull Obsidian in the audio description track).
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • In her Sacred Timeline appearances, Nebula's face was scarred and full of mechanical components, with Black Eyes and Bald of Evil. In this episode, the few modifications to her face are hidden behind her flowing blonde hair, and her eyes have visible sclerae to them; she also has fuller lips. Unlike the other changes in this timeline, these changes likely have nothing to do with T'Challa; she just never was made bald in this version. Given that she's still angry with Thanos, he probably still hurt and augmented her but it never went as far.
  • The Collector in this timeline is absolutely buff, which no doubt is part of his promotion to being the Big Bad of this timeline.
• Adaptational Badass: In the Sacred Timeline, Tivan the Collector was little more than a Big Bad Wannabe who only collected two Infinity Stones before losing them both and was heavily implied to have been killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. In this timeline, the Collector has managed to obtain a number of different artifacts, including Mjolnir, Cap's Shield, what is implied to be Korg's arm (now used as a Power Fist), and Hela's helmet. He's also a significantly more dangerous opponent, using many items from his collection to utterly trounce T'Challa and Yondu simultaneously, and is only defeated by a bit of trickery on T'Challa's end.
• Adaptational Friendship: Several characters whose morally-dubious or outright evil counterparts in the Sacred Timeline opposed T'Challa as enemies or never met him at all, are members of his reformed Ravager crew and close friends with him and each-other here. These include Yondu (his adoptive father figure), Thanos, Nebula, Korath and Taserface.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Ravagers, at least Yondu's division, were originally an Army of Thieves and Whores who, by engaging in kidnapping children, were treated as disreputable even by the other Ravagers. Under T'Challa's command, the Ravagers have gone from being Space Pirates under a Code of Honor to the Merry Men to his Robin Hood, pulling off heists and fighting tyranny for the benefit of the downtrodden.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Tivan, along with his assitant Carina, make their appearance five years before they were introduced in the mid-credits scene of Thor: The Dark World.
  • T'Challa originally didn't come onto the superhero scene until Civil War, released and set in 2016. In this timeline, he becomes Star-Lord and the adventure analogous to Guardians of the Galaxy takes place by 2008, whereas that film took place during 2014 in the Sacred Timeline. Nebula herself makes her appearance much earlier than originally for this reason.
  • Ego and Taserface likewise make their appearance six years before the events of Vol. 2 also being set during 2014.
  • Since Avengers: Infinity War was set in 2018, the Black Order appear 10 years before their original introduction.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • This timeline's Thanos was convinced by T'Challa to give up on his lifelong goal of eliminating half the universe, and instead becomes part of his Ravager clan. He ends up being The Big Guy to the group, and manages to take out a number of the Collector's forces before having to be rescued by Nebula. However, he still discusses why he thought it was a good idea at first, and clearly exasperates/unnerves others when he does.
  • Nebula is a significantly happier person in this timeline, as she wasn't abused constantly at Thanos's hands. Here, she's shown to also work with the Ravagers, has a much better (if still not happy) relationship with her adopted father, and only lost an eye instead of becoming an alien cyborg. She's also implied to have feelings for T'Challa, if her Affectionate Nickname for him is any indication.
  • This timeline's version of Korath is a significantly nicer person than his Sacred Timeline counterpart. He's shown to be a huge fan of T'Challa personally, ends up becoming an Ascended Fanboy by being recruited to his Ravager clan, and becomes a heroic character in his own right during the heist.
  • Taserface remains loyal to Yondu, whereas his Sacred Timeline version sees Yondu's generosity and mercy as weakness worthy of mutiny.
  • T'Challa himself is a lot more relaxed, personable, and jokier than his Sacred Timeline counterpart.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Tivan is able to use Hela's Spontaneous Weapon Creation simply by wearing her helmet, with the implication that the latter is responsible for the former. In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela is shown to be able to create blades helmet or no. In fact, the helmet actually appears to be a product of her powers, not the other way around, since she's able to manifest it at will - which could also mean it is the source of her powers but spends time in Hammerspace when she doesn't want it to be visible.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Yondu is much more heavily scarred up on the right side of his face than his Sacred Timeline counterpart. While one could think its from all the times T'Challa's persuaded him to fight to help people, he bears these scars before the divergence occured.
• Adaptational Wimp: Thanos in the Sacred Timeline was able to duke it out with heavy hitters like Thor and the Hulk and easily get the edge on them; compare that to his showings here, where Proxima is able to stun him and the other Ravagers on one occasion, while she and Black Dwarf later gang up on him with little effort.
• Advertised Extra: Kurt Russell is given top billing in the opening credits, yet his sole appearance as Ego is a minor cameo at the end that only consists of a single line.
• Affectionate Nickname: Nebula calls T'Challa "Cha-Cha".
• Age Lift: Shuri appears to be the same age as when she was introduced in Black Panther, which was either 16 (according to producer Nate Moore) or 18 (according to a tie-in novel to the film), despite this episode being set in 2008. It's possible that she was born a few years earlier in this timeline due to T'Challa being abducted.
• Agree to Disagree: Though T’Challa is able to convince Thanos to abandon his plan for the Snap, Thanos still insists his plan has its merits, even as others strenuously disagree.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Collector, when faced with his exhibits on the loose, tries to talk them down by pointing out all the "good" he's done for them.
  Collector: No, no, no, stay! Stop! Stop and think! I took care of all of you, I put a roof over your heads! Oh, karma…
• Allohistorical Allusion: Particularly from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
  • When Yondu says in the old days they would sell the orb to the highest bidder, T'Challa tells him that if they followed the old days he would be missing half his teeth.
  • Drax thanks T'Challa for preventing the Kree invasion and saving his family.
  • T'Challa mentions that Thanos gardens now.
  • The uprising from The Collector's captives is similar to the fate his brother, The Grandmaster, faced at the end of Thor: Ragnarok.
• Alternate Universe:
  • T'Challa in this universe is playing with a spear when he passes through the border between Wakanda and the outside world, leading to his capture by the Ravagers. The Watcher mentions that Yondu in this reality left the task of fetching Peter Quill to Taserface and Kraglin, who went to Wakanda because they detected the vibranium meteor's cosmic signature and assumed it to be from Ego's child, then abducted T'Challa because he happened to be there and couldn't tell him apart from Peter.
  • Peter Quill leads a normal, mundane life on Earth, working at a Dairy Queen in Missouri.
  • T'Challa has turned Thanos and Nebula onto the side of good, and also prevented the Kree invasion that resulted in Drax's family being killed by Ronan the Accuser. This goes a step further, as Taserface never became disillusioned with Yondu enough to mutiny and remains one of Star-Lord's close friends.
  • Thanos' Black Order has become enforcers for the Collector.
  • The Collector fills the void left by Thanos, and becomes the most fearsome crime lord in the galaxy.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Nebula is embarrassed when Thanos assures Okoye that his original plan wasn't genocide, because it was "random" and "efficient".
• Ambiguous Ending: The final scene is Peter Quill (working at Dairy Queen) encountering Ego. The Watcher mentions that things might end up in destruction, but what truly happens is for "another day".
• Another Story for Another Time: The Watcher points out that the ending of the episode, where Ego confronts Peter at a Dairy Queen, could result in the end of the planet, but he closes with this line, keeping what happens next a mystery.
• Apologetic Attacker: Korath is very reluctant to attack T'Challa when they first meet on Morag, constantly apologizing and asking whether or not he should use his gun against him.
• The Artifact: The alias Star-Lord was the Affectionate Nickname given to Peter by his mother, which he then took up as his codename with the Ravagers. T'Challa is given the same nickname in the course of his radically different adventures with the Ravagers, largely just to fit the premise of T'Challa replacing Peter in this scenario.
• As You Know: When the Collector is first mentioned, Kraglin responds, "The Collector?! As in, the most ruthless kingpin in the intergalactic underworld?!" Thanos then explains that the Collector took his place after Thanos went straight.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Carina is still Tivan's assistant, but while she originally killed herself in an ill-fated attempt to use the Power Stone on the Collector, she has a bigger role here by saving T'Challa from Ebony Maw and later setting Tivan's captives loose on him.
  • After only having cameo appearances in previous MCU installments, Howard the Duck finally has a decent role here as the one who guides T'Challa through the Collector's lair.
• Ascended Fanboy: Korath is a big fan of T'Challa's work helping the poor of the galaxy, and when he comes up against T'Challa, he asks if he can join the Ravagers. He spends the rest of the episode excited about being on a real adventure with the actual Star-Lord.
• Audience Surrogate: Korath becomes this as he mentions the Ravagers' exploits, indicating what type of changes have gone on in the Alternate Universe, and gushing over the idea of T'Challa as Star-Lord.
• Badass Normal: Having not eaten the heart-shaped herb, T'challa possess no super-powers, much to Tivan's disappointment.
  T'Challa: I am just an ordinary human, hardly a work of art.
  Collector: I must admit, now that I see you in the flesh, you are… hm… Are you sure you cannot fly or shoot lasers out of your eyes or something?
  T'Challa: Let's go a few rounds and you can find out.
• Bald of Evil: Inverted; this timeline's version of Nebula is good and has a full head of hair.
• Batman Gambit: Nebula's plan to get the Embers of Genesis involves a heist plan that would inevitably go wrong and a double (later revealed as triple) cross to distract the Collector and Black Order while she lifts the goods.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just as the Collector is about to crush T’Challa, Yondu appears for the save.
• Big Damn Reunion: After two decades away from Earth, the episode ends with T'Challa and the Ravagers returning to see Wakanda again. Father and son have a tearful embrace, the Wakandans are introduced to the Ravagers, and a banquet is held in their honor.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Ravagers defeat the Collector, retrieve the Embers of Genesis and T'Challa reunites with his family on Earth. However, unbeknownst to them, Ego has located a defenseless Peter Quill and the Watcher dryly notes that this could potentially mean the end of the universe.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Thanos, while reformed, still refuses to call his plan to wipe out half the universe a 'genocide'.
• Blood Knight: Much like in the Sacred Timeline, Thanos still seems to have an itch for a good fight.
• Body Horror: Black Dwarf is defeated by putting superpowered seeds inside of him and making giant vegetation sprout through his body.
• Breather Episode: The episode is very light-hearted compared to the pilot and the episodes that will follow it.
• Brick Joke: In the opening sequence, T'Challa is surrounded by soldiers, but proclaims "A Ravager never flies solo!" as Yondu (eventually) arrives to help him out. Later in the episode, T'Challa is captured by the Collector, who mocks him that his friends seem to all have abandoned him; T'Challa replies, "Haven't you heard— a Ravager never flies solo?" just as Yondu again arrives to help him out.
• Buffy Speak: Kraglin's argument that they grabbed the right (human) kid is because T'Challa has "Two see holes, two hear holes, and one eat hole."
• Burger Fool: Peter Quill has the unglamorous job of working as a janitor at Dairy Queen in his late 20's.
• Call-Back:
  • Thanos tries to justify his plan for the universe as not genocide because it's "random" and "efficient". According to T'Challa, he's also taken up gardening after giving up on his scheme for universal order.
  • Kraglin mentions the jump points to a Wakandan and the accompanying facial distortion when jumping through enough of them.
  • Among the weapons the Collector has in his possession are Malekith's personal dagger, and a rocky arm taken from a "a chatty Kronan" strongly implied to be Korg.
  • Korath asks if he should bow or kneel in the presence of Star-Lord, only for T'Challa to tell him that he prefers neither; in Infinity War, Rhodey tricks Bruce into bowing before T'Challa informs him that Wakanda doesn't require such formalities.
  • When Thanos stays back to fight off the rest of the Collector's forces by himself, he rebukes Nebula's exclamation that he's crazy, preferring to call himself "Mad".
• The Cameo:
  • Peter Quill and Ego appear at the very end of the episode in a Dairy Queen in Missouri.
  • Drax shows up as a bartender who insists on taking a selfie with T'Challa.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: At the end, King T'Chaka asks Yondu how his son ended up on his ship in the first place, and Yondu is clearly embarrassed to admit that he accidentally abducted him when he was after someone else. Luckily, T'Challa smooths things over by explaining that he was lost, but Yondu found him.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Peter Quill, working at a Dairy Queen, being greeted by Ego the Living Planet. The Watcher mentions that such a meeting might spell the end of the world, but it's a story for another day.
• Compensating for Something: When T'Challa expresses his surprise over how big the Collector's collection is, Howard the Duck answers that he is compensating for something.
• Continuity Nod: In the 1988 flashback, while T'Challa wishes to see the outside world, T'Chaka tells him he himself already has and only found "destruction and pain".
• Crown of Power: Here it's revealed (at least in this timeline) that Hela's ability to conjure Necroswords was a power granted to her from her Cool Helmet, The Collector being able to do the same with it.
• Cutting the Knot: T'Challa asks Howard the Duck for directions through the Collector's gallery. Howard proceeds to give a very confusing set of turns around various landmarks. T'Challa then shoots the lock on his cage and has Howard lead him there personally.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • It is heavily implied that Korg met his end in this timeline at the hands of Tivan, who explains that his rocky Power Fist came from the carcass of "a very chatty Kronan".
  • Implied to be the case for various characters whose personal items have wound up in Tivan's collection, including Thor, Steve Rogers, and Hela.
• Deadly Dodging: T'Challa tricks Korath into punching the energy field that had contained the Power Stone, which knocks him out.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Korath joins the Ravagers after T'Challa beats him up. Implied to be similar with Thanos, although more from T'Challa's persuasive arguing.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Cosmo was a frequent character and fan favorite in Guardians of the Galaxy (2015), the previous animated series about the Guardians. Here, he only made a small cameo with no spoken (or "thought") lines.
  • Drax is reduced to a cameo appearance as a bartender, who thanks T'Challa for saving his planet and takes a selfie with him.
  • Ramonda and Shuri are reduced to a single unvoiced appearance in the reunion scene, with Ramonda in particular being uncharacteristically silent after being reunited with her son for the first time in twenty years.
  • Peter Quill himself by virtue of the nature of the story. In the Sacred Timeline, Yondu was reluctant to follow through on carrying out Ego's orders and eventually decided to take Peter in himself rather than hand him over. Here, after his men grabbed the wrong kid, Yondu opted to abandon his original mission and just leave Peter on Earth.
• Description Cut: During the heist, one of the Ravagers remarks that he wonders how T'Challa and Yondu are getting on, and Nebula says she expects they're doing just fine. Cut to the two of them having the stuffing beaten out of them by the Collector.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Quite a few, particularly with the Black Order:
  • In the Sacred Timeline, both versions of Corvus Glaive were killed in battle with the Avengers. Here, Nebula shoots him in the heart.
  • In the Sacred Timeline, Ebony Maw got sucked into the vacuum of space, and later his 2014 version got snapped along with Thanos and the rest of his army, both times by Tony Stark. Here, Maw simply gets shot in the back by Carina.
  • In the Sacred Timeline, Cull Obsidian was vaporized by prolonged contact against Wakanda's cloaking force field, and again when an earlier version is crushed by Giant-Man. Here, Nebula makes Black Dwarf swallow a few of the Embers of Genesis and he is blown apart from inside by massive vines sprouting from the embers.
  • Played with for the Collector, for whom the death is only implied in both cases. In the Sacred Timeline, Thanos invaded Knowhere and brought it to ruin during his hunt for the Reality Stone; the Collector is only shown in a hallucination brought about by the Stone, with the real one nowhere to be seen. Here, his assistant Carina betrays him and sets free the numerous lifeforms he had captive; the last we see is him getting cornered by his captives.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Thanos keeps insisting that his plan to wipe out half of the universe's population wasn't technically genocide, since it was "random" and "efficient". No one buys it.
• Ditto Aliens: From the Ravagers' point of view, all humans look alike. Kraglin and Taserface accidentally pick up T'Challa instead of Peter when they go to Earth to retrieve Ego's offspring, simply going where they detected cosmic energy (from the vibranium).
• The Dog Bites Back: Unlike her Sacred Timeline counterpart, the Carina of this timeline successfully pulls this by releasing all of the Collector's prisoners to get their revenge on their captor after the Ravagers turn the tables.
• Doomed Hometown: Yondu tells T'Challa Wakanda was destroyed soon after the Ravagers abducted him, but this turns out to have been a lie so that T’Challa would stay with the Ravagers.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Kraglin does offer a valid defense for grabbing T'Challa instead of Quill when he brings up the cosmic energy they had detected, assuming such a signal could only come from Ego's son.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite T'Challa being angry at Yondu for lying to him about his home being destroyed and saying that he and the Ravagers aren't his family, he later fights The Collector with Yondu without complaints, and when he returns to Wakanda and is reunited with his family, he happily introduces the Ravagers to them as "the family I found along the way". Thanos counts too, since even though he never attempted to wipe out half the life in the universe in this timeline, he still clearly planned to at some point, but T'Challa doesn't hold that against him.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The Ravagers like to tease Thanos by calling him "Captain Genocide".
• Entertainingly Wrong: Kraglin and Taserface landed above Wakanda instead of Missouri because they detected a large amount of cosmic energy radiating from that area and assumed it was because of the presence of Ego the Living Planet's offspring. T'Challa explains it was actually coming from the Vibranium meteorite that Wakanda was built on top of.
• Epic Fail: Yondu sends Kraglin and Taserface to pick up Peter Quill from Earth. They end up kidnapping T'Challa by mistake, who looks nothing like Quill (for starters, they're not even the same race) and lives on a different continent. Yondu immediately calls them both out on their stupidity.
• Evil Power Vacuum: Without Thanos as the galaxy's Big Bad, the Collector steps into the role and recruits the Black Order to his cause. On top of that, when taking a look at his collection that he eagerly shows to T'Challa, it's heavily implied that he's already taken care of (or at least stolen weapons belonging to) various heroes and villains in the MCU, such as Captain America, Thor, Korg, Malekith, and Hela.
• Exact Words: Thanos is technically correct: killing half the population of the universe at random would not, in fact, be a genocide, because that involves killing all of one kind of people. Technically, what he was planning would be a demicide or a hemicide or something like that. In addition, it would be based on species.
• Fake Defector: As part of her Unspoken Plan Guarantee with T'Challa, Nebula gets him and the Ravagers imprisoned as a way to clear her debt with the Collector. The debt part is true, but she always intended to break them out and steal the Embers after, and is shown in a flashback to have told him the plan ahead of time.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: When T'Challa is confronted by heavily armed Sakaaran soldiers, and the leaders points out he is outnumbered, T'Challa attempts a Pre-Mortem One-Liner, dramatically declaring "It would seem. But a Ravager never flies solo." However, he is only met with silence and repeats himself, and the confused leader asks if that's a catchphrase. Though Yondu finally does his thing and eliminates them all afterwards the dramatic tension is long gone.
• Famed In-Story: T'Challa as Star-Lord is a galaxy-renowned, Robin Hood-esque hero that everyone has heard of.
• Family of Choice: T'Challa introduces the Ravagers to the Wakandan Royal Family as this.
• Fantastic Racism: T’Challa tells Howard he is quite articulate "for a duck." An offended Howard calls T’Challa "very close-minded."
• Fantastically Indifferent: T’Challa takes it in stride when he’s kidnapped by the Ravagers. Lampshaded by Yondu:
  Yondu: You sure don't seem too freaked out by all of this, kid. What you doin' out there all by yourself anyway?
  T'Challa: Exploring the world.
  Yondu: Sounds fun, but why stop at one world when we can show you all of them?
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Commented on in-universe about the Collector.
  Tivan: I simply abhor drama.
  T’Challa: Your outfit would suggest otherwise.
• For Your Own Good: This is how Yondu justifies lying to T'Challa about the destruction of his home. As he reasons, T'Challa was destined for something greater than being king, but would always feel obligated to go back unless he believed he couldn't.
• Foreshadowing: When T’Challa looks back at Korath who he had just taken down and gently put down his offer of defecting; he states that he had taken in worse. We later see who that person worse was…
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you look closely at T'Challa's Ravager ship in certain scenes, you can see that it is named the "Mandela."
• Freudian Excuse: According to Howard, Tivan's tendency of collecting live captives is implied to "compensate for something big."
• Friend to All Living Things: Yondu adopts Cosmo the Space Dog.
• Genesis Effect: The episode MacGuffin is the "Embers of Genesis," which can heal dying planets through Terraforming.
• Gentle Giant: Drax and Thanos are far nicer than their Sacred Timeline counterparts.
• Good Costume Switch: Thanos in this universe is dressed in bright red and blue clothes instead of his Sacred Timeline version's gold and purple.
• Grew a Spine: T'Challa's comment about history punishing those who keep men in cages strikes a chord with Carina. It inspires her to gun down Ebony Maw and the Collector, even citing it as her motivation.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Thanos throws multiple downed opponents at Cull Obsidian, once even managing to hit him.
• Guile Hero: Compared to his Sacred Timeline counterpart, T'Challa here is so brilliant and persuasive that he managed to convince freakin' Thanos to stop his plan of genocide through logical arguments and reform the Titan into a good guy.
• Hat of Power: This episode suggests that Hela's helm was the source of her power to spontaneously generate bladed weaponry, as the Collector wears it to do the same thing in his fight with T'Challa.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: T'Challa has been a positive influence wherever he goes. Yondu's Ravager clan is now a tight-knit group that enthusiastically helps the disadvantaged and are considered folk heroes. Thanos stopped destroying worlds and his quest to find the Infinity Stones, and instead found a more constructive way to reallocate resources to the universe and now fights with the good guys. He also maintains a relatively civil relationship with Nebula, who enacts plans for the greater good, before they reconcile in the end.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Thanos, out of all of the characters, manages to pull one in backstory, as T'Challa convinced him that there are other ways to prevent an Overpopulation Crisis besides wiping out half of all life in the universe.
  • It doesn't take much for Korath to switch sides after encountering T'Challa while trying to take the Power Stone for Ronan.
• Heist Episode: The episode revolves around the Ravagers pulling a heist on the Collector to get hold of a MacGuffin with the potential to end hunger throughout the galaxy.
• Hero Killer: Given the Captain America's shield and Mjolnir are in his possession, it's implied the Collector killed Cap and Thor. He also killed Korg and chopped off his arm.
• Hypocritical Humor: Kraglin and Taserface cannot tell the difference between T'Challa and Peter Quill because they think that all humans look the same, despite Kraglin and Taserface themselves being ridiculously human-looking aliens.
• I Will Find You:
  • King T'Chaka developed space craft capable of interplanetary travel in order to search for T'Challa.
  • Tivan tries to vow this when T'Challa and Yondu trap him in a cage. They're not phased by his threat.
• Idiot Ball: This timeline is created because Yondu sent Kraglin and Taserface to kidnap Quill instead of doing the job personally, and didn't think to give them a picture or a location on the planet to search. As such, the two simply locked onto the largest source of cosmic energy they could find and grabbed the first child that popped up (Even after seeing the picture though, they can't tell the difference between them).
• Immune to Bullets: Thanos shrugs off blaster fire like it's not even there. Which doesn't stop Tivan's goons from continuing to shoot at him, natch.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • In the original timeline, Star-Lord was an Affectionate Nickname given to Peter by his mother, which he later took as his codename. Here, the name is given to T'Challa by Yondu.
  • Despite no longer working for Thanos, Ronan still sends Korath to retrieve the Power Stone from Morag as in the original timeline (albeit six years earlier).
  • Although Yondu is nowhere near Ego's planet this time around, he still has his Yakka Arrow destroyed, though at the Collector's hands this time.
  • Just like in the Sacred Timeline, Ego eventually decides to pick Quill up himself when Yondu fails to deliver him per their agreement. Only this time, Quill lacks the same support structure he had in Vol. 2.
  • Quill hasn't given up his gifted Walkman or mixtapes in this timeline, even though he's still on Earth and presumably still in contact with his family. In any timeline, it means that much to him.
• Insistent Terminology: Although he's been talked out of it, Thanos insists that his previous plan to wipe out half the life in universe doesn't count as genocide because it's random. No one is convinced.
• Jumped at the Call: After T'Challa explains to Yondu that he was alone in the field because he was exploring the world, Yondu offers him the chance to join their crew and see all the worlds. T'Challa accepts and spends the next twenty years as a Ravager.
• Just Like Robin Hood: T'Challa has inspired the Ravagers to become this and turn their talents to helping out the poor and oppressed. T'Challa apparently told the Ravagers his inspiration, as Yondu notes that he's just like the Earth hero, but misremembers the name as "Robin Leach."^note Who, ironically, was best known for hosting Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, touring the homes of celebrities, and pretty much the exact opposite of Robin Hood.
• Karmic Jackpot: Before they start fighting, Korath asks T'Challa if there is a possibility of him being able to join the Ravagers because he is open to a career change. T'Challa at first turns him down, but after seeing how earnest and honorable he is, he actually decides to bring him along with him.
• Keet: Korath is much more energetic and excitable in this timeline.
• Kick the Dog: Ebony Maw to Carina.
  Ebony Maw: No, not like that, Carina. Even by a slave's standards, you are foolish.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Korath is totally excited to realize the looter he's confronting is Star-Lord, and considers the opportunity to fight him a huge honor.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • The Collector, who has imprisoned countless species, gets locked in one such cage and left at the mercy of his captives. He even realizes it, squeaking, "Ooh, karma…" as they close in.
  • Earlier, the Collector tries invoking this by saying that T'Challa abandoned his blood family for his makeshift one in the Ravagers, who aren't there to help him while he's at Tivan's mercy.
• Liar Revealed: Yondu told T'Challa that Wakanda had been completely destroyed in a war years ago, meaning he has no home on Earth to return to. But during the heist, he finds a Wakandan starship with a message from his now much older father, King T'Chaka, that they are searching the Galaxy for him and hoping he will return home, revealing that Yondu lied to him.
• Literal Metaphor: T'Challa is said to be keeping his escape plan close to his chest. Turns out the escape plan involves the vibranium claws he wears as a necklace, literally against his chest.
• Literal-Minded: Drax still has trouble with metaphors and social cues.
  Drax: You saved my homeworld from a Kree invasion!
  T'Challa: All in a day's work.
  Drax: No, it took several days. Six, in fact.
• Magnetic Hero: T'Challa is able to persuade the Ravagers, Nebula, Korath, and even Thanos to join his cause.
• Meaningful Background Event: The Watcher's silhouette appears in the sky as a young T'Challa runs out of Wakanda's cloaking force field to retrieve his spear, a sign that T'Challa is about to be adbucted. All while he explains about the divergence.
• Minor Kidroduction: After the Establishing Character Moment of T’Challa stealing the orb and fighting Korath, the story flashes back to when the Ravagers first kidnap a young T’Challa.
  Uatu: Though our hero's destiny may lie in the stars above, the beginning of his journey was much more… down to Earth.
• Morality Pet: Yondu, Korath, and Thanos went from a petty criminal, a mercenary, and a genocidal warlord respectively to becoming good guys due to T'Challa's gentle influence.
• Motivational Lie: Yondu told T'Challa that Wakanda had been destroyed by war years ago, so he wouldn't be tempted to give up his life as a galactic hero and return to Earth.
• Musical Nod: Ludwig Göransson's Black Panther score appears in scenes with Wakanda or the Wakandan spaceship.
  • Tyler Bates’ Guardians of The Galaxy score appears near the end of the episode when Thanos escapes with Nebula. There is even a combination of both scores when T'Challa takes down the Collector.
• Mythology Gag:
  • T'Challa and Yondu's "Sticky Fingers" gambit is similar to how Tony Stark took the Stones from Thanos.
  • The Collector's many trinkets and captives include:
    • Captain America's shield.
    • Thor's hammer.
    • Loki’s horned helmet.
    • Hela's helmet.^note It's also shown that her ability to spontaneously create blades or swords with it comes from the helmet itself. Which by extension also means her sword.
    The Collector: That woman had taste! A necrosword, courtesy of the Asgardian Goddess of Death!
    • Malekith’s dagger.
    • A Kronan's severed arm, implied to be Korg's.
    • A Nova Corps ship.
    • The Grandmaster's party ship.
    • Hank Pym's Quantum Realm exploration ship.
    • A Skrull.
    • A Dark Elf.
• New Meat: Korath is treated this way after joining the Ravagers. They clearly indulge him when he goes all "what is your favorite heist?"
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • T’Challa manages to completely stop Thanos’s plan to eradicate half of all life in the universe by debating him into a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Cap's Shield, Mjolnir, and Hela's headdress are among Tivan's treasures. We are never told how he obtained them, but taking his comment about a certain Kronan, it's implied he might have actually faced them to get their belongings.
• Oh, Crap!: The Collector, when he realizes what Carina has in store for him.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Yondu beats the crap out of the Collector for imprisoning T'Challa.
  Yondu: Ain't no way in hell I was gonna leave here without my kid!
  • Thanos does the same for Nebula, covering her escape from Black Dwarf and Proxima Midnight despite their strained relationship.
• Parental Substitute: Like in the Sacred Timeline, Yondu has this relationship with Star-Lord. However, as T'Challa wasn't kidnapped but willingly went with Yondu in this reality, Yondu and his charge have a much more positive relationship.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Given a sci-fi twist and parodied. The decidedly African T'Challa is mistaken for the Caucasian Peter Quill by the Ravagers on account of all humans having two eyes, two ears, and a mouth, hypocrisy be damned.
• Point of Divergence: The new timeline emerges from Yondu sending Kraglin and Taserface to abduct Peter Quill instead of doing it himself, leading to them abducting T’Challa by mistake.
  Uatu: What you call destiny is just an equation. A product of variables. Right place, right time. Or in some instances, the wrong place at the wrong time. As fate would have it, at that very moment, a Ravager spacecraft was arriving on Earth to abduct the spawn of the Celestial Ego. But in this universe, Yondu outsourced the assignment to his subordinates.
• Power Fist: A severed and hollowed out rocky forearm is used this way by Tivan after severing it from the carcass off of "a very chatty Kronan"^note Implying it could be Korg. T'Challa borrows it to defend himself when the former discards it.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Thanos abandoned his plans to kill half the intelligent beings in the galaxy, not because he realized that it would be morally wrong, but because T'Challa convinced him that it would not accomplish his ultimate goal of saving the galaxy from itself. Thanos no longer practices genocide because it is impractical, although he still argues that his plan had its merits.
• Racial Face Blindness: Yondu's alien subordinates excuse picking up a human child of entirely the wrong race with "all humans look alike".
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: As much as Thanos has given up his plans for genocide (though he doesn't like calling it that), he still maintains it had some merit, just that T'Challa had a better argument.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: When surrounded by a group of Kree soldiers, T'Challa proclaims "A Ravager never flies solo!" Nothing happens. He has to say it a second time before Yondu eventually shows up to kill all the soldiers.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Drax in this universe is a bartender, and Peter Quill works at a Dairy Queen.
• Riddle for the Ages: The fate of Gamora, Rocket, Groot, and Mantis in this universe is never revealed, and only Drax is shown to be working at a bar and still have his family alive.
• Role Swap AU: Sort of. T'Challa is raised by Yondu and becomes Star-Lord instead of Peter, and proves to be much better at it, but Peter instead lives an ordinary life as opposed to taking T'Challa's place.
• Series Continuity Error: Despite the fact that this episode takes place in 2008, Shuri is shown to be around the same age as her teenage Sacred Timeline counterpart, though this could be handwaved away as a multiverse thing.
• Ship Tease: It's subtle, but T'Challa and Nebula spend quite a bit of the episode flirting, and she even has an Affectionate Nickname for him, making it seem that she's his Implied Love Interest.
• Shout-Out:
  • Nebula's ocular implant evokes that of Seven of Nine.
  • Embers of Genesis with their World-Healing Wave effect also sound familiar
  • The silhouette of a Harvester from Independence Day and Independence Day: Resurgence is visible in a Collector cell.
  • Earthbound Peter Quill is seen listening to A Flock of Seagulls in the last scene. That band's debut song was about Alien Abduction: the very event that went differently in this "What if…?" tale.
• Skewed Priorities: After T'Challa frees Howard the Duck from his cage, Howard leads him to a bar where he decides it's the perfect time to get another cocktail. T'Challa leaves him to his own devices when the alarms sound.
• Spared by the Adaptation: A lot of people who died in the Sacred Timeline manage to survive the events of this one.^note Although this comes with the caveat of certain characters still dying (but in different ways) or even just being implied to have perished, despite surviving in the Sacred Timeline.
  • Korath isn't killed by the Guardians of the Galaxy here, and so also joins the Ravagers and becomes a good person.
  • Taserface doesn't ever try to betray his Ravager group in this timeline, allowing him to live alongside them and become one of T'Challa's closest friends.
  • Drax’s wife and daughter are alive in this timeline, as it’s established that T'Challa and the Ravagers managed to stop the Kree invasion that led to their deaths in the Sacred Timeline.
  • Carina never touches the Power Stone here having not learnt of it, allowing her to have a notable Big Damn Heroes moment and even personally get even with Tivan.
  • Yondu Udonta doesn't have to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save his adopted son anymore, which allows him to survive all the way to the end of this episode.
  • Proxima Midnight's Sacred Timeline counterpart was killed in battle by the Avengers and then a previous version of herself was snapped out of existence. Here, she becomes the last member of Black Order still standing by the end of the episode, though because she got caught up in the terraforming of Knowhere, she might not be for long…
• Spit Take: Yondu does this when T'Challa's father asks how his son wound up on Yondu's spaceship. T'Challa is quick to smooth things over before more uncomfortable questions are asked.
• Spoiler Opening: Kurt Russell's name in the opening all but spells out the appearance of Ego in the stinger.
• Sudden Downer Ending: While everything ends up great for T'Challa, the Wakandans, and the Ravagers, it then cuts to Peter meeting his father, implying he's about to go with his plan to destroy multiple worlds.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: While Thanos had reformed and given up his plan to destroy half of life in the universe, the Black Order, with the exception of Nebula, did not and simply found a new leader, the Collector. Just because the leader of a group of bad guys reforms, doesn't necessarily mean his henchmen will.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Yondu berates Kraglin and Taserface for grabbing the wrong kid and asks them if they really think the (black) T'Challa looks like the (Caucasian) Peter Quill.
• Talking the Monster to Death: T'Challa managed to debate Thanos out of his plan to kill half the universe by proposing that he look for a resource redistribution plan instead. And Gamora's absence from the episode implies he somehow did it as a child.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The Collector has this reaction when he sees the hundreds of very angry prisoners in his collection closing in on him.
• To the Pain: Yondu describes how the Collector treats anyone who crosses him.
  Yondu: This maniac won't do you the kindness of killing you! He’ll dissect you for a science project, frame whatever's left, and hang you up on the wall.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • T'Challa fashioned the Vibranium spear that he was throwing when he was abducted into a necklace (which still looks like the Transformation Trinket used by the Black Panther suits) to remind himself of home. It later activates a Wakandan ship in Tivan's hangar, and is also used as a knuckle-duster to free himself from his cage.
  • Even though Peter grew up on Earth in this timeline and would have access to a CD player or iPod in 2008, he still has his old cassette Walkman and his mother's mixtapes.
• Unfolding Plan Montage: The first part of the heist is shown as a montage intercut with the explanation of how the first part of the heist will be carried out.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: At one point, the heist seems to fail due to an unforeseen complication. Then we get a flashback revealing that this was part of the plan all along.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: The Collector tries in vain to convince his now-escaped prisoners that he took care of them and put a roof over their heads, as if they weren't taken in by force and imprisoned to become a part of his collection.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Korath says this when T'Challa tells him and the other Ravagers about their plan.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Korath first appears trying to obtain the Power Stone for Ronan, as in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). That’s the last we hear of Ronan. His reaction to losing the Power Stone (and Korath) is not shown, nor indeed what led him to search for the Power Stone in this timeline, given the position of Thanos here.
  • The Black Order are shown to be working for the Collector in this episode, while Thanos and Nebula decide to join T'Challa's Ravager clan instead. However, whatever became of Gamora in this timeline is mysteriously left unmentioned.
  • Proxima Midnight is caught in the growing expanse of vines that spread throughout Knowhere and is not seen after that.
  • T’Challa leaves Howard the Duck at a bar in the vault shortly after freeing him, after which Howard is not seen again.
  • Carina is last seen releasing all of Tivan's captives, but the audience isn't shown what happens to her after Knowhere gets terraformed.
• World-Healing Wave: To demonstrate their regenerative properties, the Embers of Genesis are shown in a simulation to create an expanding spread of greenery and water on a dead planet.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Inverted, as in it's not serious, but still very important. At the end of the episode, Nebula finally calls Thanos "Dad" in the way an annoyed teenager would do with an embarrassing parent. Previously, she would only call him "The Big Guy", so this is an indication that the two have mended their strained relationship and finally decided to become a family once again.
• You Can't Go Home Again: T'Challa believed this was the case, as Yondu told him that Wakanda was destroyed in a war years ago. He finds out this is not the case when he stumbles upon a Wakandan starship with a holographic message from his now much-older father, T'Chaka.
• You're Not My Father:
  • T'Challa tells the Ravagers that they're not his family after he finds out that Yondu lied about Wakanda's destruction, though he gets over it after fighting the Collector with Yondu.
  • Although she's adopted, Nebula has this dynamic with Thanos in that they clearly have a familial bond, just that she refuses to acknowledge him as her father.

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The Watcher: Too bad this might spell the end of the world. But that's a story for another day…
Dedicated to Our Friend, Our Inspiration, and Our Hero, Chadwick Boseman