Recap / What If...? S2E6 "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?"

"What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?"

Alternate take on: A largely original story, but kicked off by an alternate take on Thor: Ragnarok and with some plot elements of Captain Marvel (2019)

"The destruction of Asgard would lead to new wonders from a single ember from the past. The Tesseract survived Ragnarok and would find a new home in a new world..."

— Uatu

In a universe where Surtur initiates Ragnarok early, King Odin ends up getting killed with the Tesseract getting launched far away from Asgard to North America, specifically in the area where the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) tribes live. Years pass, and the waters where the Tesseract landed are labelled as "forbidden" after several tribes fought for control over the lake. However, one woman is curious about the waters of the Forbidden Lake, and when her tribe's peaceful life is threatened by the Spanish Conquistadors, she ventures deeper into the lake to find a way to save her people. She instead discovers a new world.

"What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?" contains examples of:

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Most descriptions of the historical Queen Isabella say she was blonde, unlike the brunette shown in the episode.
• Alien Space Bats: An alien force sends a magical stone to North America, causing several wars and giving some people superpowers. The Spanish Empire tries to acquire the lake in the 15-16th centuries, but are repelled by the empowered Kanien'kehá:ka, who offer peace terms to Queen Isabella. It's also implied that the lake was the catalyst for forming the Haudenosaunee.
• Artistic License – History: While the episode gets a lot right about the Mohawk people, the same can't be said for the Spaniards.
  • Queen Isabella the Catholic and her court are wearing clothing that would not be fashionable for at least another 30 to 60 years (given the episode had to have taken place within the 1490s). A couple of courtiers are wearing Tudor-style French hoods, whilst many others wear stiff ruffs around their necks (notably the guards and the queen herself). Isabella died in 1504, but the French hoods typically associated with Anne Boleyn come from the late 1510s to early 1520s, whilst the ruff, which is much more associated with the Elizabethan period, would not come into style until the 1560s. Furthermore, the hairstyles are also inaccurate. In general, Isabella looks like the animators patterned her mistakenly after Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II's queen (whose name is the same in Spanish, Isabel), who was born in 1546 and did get to use all of this fashion.
  • There's no record of Spanish Conquistadors ever reaching as far north as the Mohawk Nation territory (head writer A. C. Bradley handwaved It by tweeting that "in this universe, the rumors of the tesseract and forbidden lake made it to Europe so those searching for the Fountain of Youth started looking in NY and not in Florida"). Moreover, unlike what the episode shows, Conquistadors didn't usually act on direct royal orders (they were fundamentally private initiatives subjected to the regional authority) and would not have been employed by the queen in the place of her actual armies.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: "Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo" is wrong for a Spanish name in a variety of ways. The correct names would be Alfonso and Gonzalo rather than Alphonso and Gonzolo, and they still have the additional problem that they are exclusively first names — "Rodrigo Alfonso Gonzalo" would be Three First Names without any surname or toponymic, which at the time would be impossible to find in Spain (using a first name as a surname is highly unusual in the Hispanosphere and was almost unheard of at the time).
• Badass Native: Kahhori refuses to stay in safety in the Sky World and insists on returning to her village, saving her brother, and fighting off the Conquistadors.
• Benevolent Boss: Gonzolo's one redeeming quality is his treatment of his men; when he thinks he's found the Fountain of Youth, he offers several of his soldiers the first dip in it, is horrified when they start disappearing, and desperately calls out to the last one by name in an attempt to save him.
• Big Sister Instinct: Kahhori is furious when she sees a conquistador wearing Waht's necklace and knows it means her little brother is in danger. It reignites her determination to get back to her world and save her people.
• Braids, Beads and Buckskins: The Mohawk all wear these, and Wahht's necklace takes on particular significance when one of the Conquistadors steals it from him. Kahhori later sees it around his neck when some of the Conquistadors come to the Sky World. This reignites her desire to return to her village.
• Bullying a Dragon: Even after seeing her make short work of the guards, Queen Isabella continues to try and throw her weight around with Kahhori, who silences the monarch's ranting by casually lifting her up, then just as casually obliterating her throne.
• Canon Foreigner: This episode marks the debut of Kahhori, an entirely brand new character and super hero within the MCU continuity.
• The Cavalry: The Mohawk of the Sky World at first refuse to leave the Sky World to save the Mohawk of their home world. But right when it looks like the Conquistadors have defeated Kahhori, they come to the rescue.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Strange Supreme portalling into Queen Isabella's throne room and announcing that he has been looking for Kahhori for a long time.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The lines in Mohawk are indicated by white subtitles, while the lines spoken in Castilian Spanish are indicated by yellow subtitles.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once the rest of the Sky People join the battle against the Conquistadors, they quickly destroy their fleet without breaking a sweat.
• Cutting the Knot: Having failed to get up to the portal, Kahhori ultimately uses her powers to pull it down to meet her on the ground. After the Time Skip, her powers have grown to the point that she can simply conjure portals at will.
• Dare to Be Badass: As she prepares to return home to fight the conquistadors, Kahhori challenges the other Sky World Mohawk to join the battle. It takes a while for them to catch up, but they ultimately do follow Kahhori's example and fight alongside her.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Rather than dying of old age and Fading Away, Odin is killed by Surtur in Ragnarok in this universe.
• Does Not Speak Common: The episode offers none of the usual illusion of the Mohawk and Spaniards speaking English for the audience's benefit; nearly the entire episode is performed in their two languages, aside from brief appearances by pre-established characters.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Kahhori makes it abundantly clear that she could wipe out Queen Isabella and her people should she choose to, but would rather make peace with them. Strange Supreme interrupts before we see if Isabella is willing to accept the offer.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Of all the worlds the Tesseract could have gone to following Ragnarok, it naturally lands on Earth. Especially ironic since Odin would have sent it there anyways, yet it still winds up there by accident.
• Evil Colonialist: The Conquistadors are greedy, merciless killers who invade first the native homeland and then the Sky World in search of the Fountain of Youth. When Gonzolo believes their mission has failed, he plans to enslave the surviving Mohawk and take them back to Spain.
• Expy: Except for telekinesis, most of Kahhori's powers are very similar to those that Carol Danvers would gain in the Sacred Timeline (no shock as they come from the same source).
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: There are Sky World creatures that resemble bison, except with extra horns and gem-like fruit growing out of their backs, and like real bison, they're a vital food source.
• Forbidden Zone: The lake area is considered cursed, both because those who went there did not return and because many died fighting over it. The warriors' skeletons are left in place to scare people away, and there is even a small decoy lake to obscure the magical lake hidden below.
• Fountain of Youth: The Conquistadors had invaded the New World in order to find this, believing the Forbidden Lake to be this. Considering no one ages in Sky World, they're almost right.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Instead of a variant of an existing character, or a Butterfly of Doom take on one of the movies, this episode instead focuses on an entirely new character existing long before most of the known MCU came to be.
• Gem Tissue: In the Sky World, the trees and animals have crystals as part of their bodies due to the influence of the Space Stone.
• The Gift: While Kahhori does have some trouble figuring out how to use the power of the Tesseract at first, she is easily the strongest of the natives to wield it, even though they've had far longer to practice.
• Gilded Cage: While Sky World is a beautiful paradise, Kahhori feels like it's a prison since the portal back is inaccessible.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Isabella refuses to accept reports of the Conquistadors' defeat and insists on sending more forces to conquer the New World. When the Sky World Mohawk portal to Spain, Isabella still refuses to accept Kahhori's offer of peace and instead declares that she is ordained by God to rule the New World. Kahhori's magical destruction of her throne finally seems to get through to her, but it's then interrupted by Strange Supreme's arrival.
• Good Is Not Soft: While Kahhori would prefer to live in peace with Queen Isabella, she makes it clear that she is prepared to use force if Isabella gives her no other choice.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The scene cuts to a long shot when Kahhori strikes the blow that kills Gonzolo; all the audience sees is his dead hand sticking out of the sand.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: The Sky World Mohawk appear through a portal right into Queen Isabella's throne room and tries establishing peace between their nations. It takes pinning Isabella and her guard's weapons to the ceiling and destroying her throne with a gesture before she even considers it though, demonstrating how absurdly outclassed she truly is.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: The Spanish are shown using flintlock pistols at a time when the technology was exceedingly uncommon, if it existed at all. Averted with the muskets being accurately depicted as matchlocks. They're also shown firing with reasonable accuracy from distances over 50 meters (the usual limit for smoothbore weapons) and a few shots clearly show them taking second shots without reloading.
• Historical Domain Character: Conquistador Gonzolo serves as The Heavy, while Queen Isabella of Spain serves as the Greater-Scope Villain.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Queen Isabella is portrayed as a greedy and cruel monarch who sees the Mohawk as just natives to conquer and enslave. Historically, Isabella was against the enslavement of Native Americans, decreeing laws to prevent this from happening under most circumstances. Spain in general is also given this trope, as the country were mainly conquering in Real Life what's pretty much South-America and never reached as far north as the Mohawk Nation territory. North-America was conquered mainly by England.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Kahhori figures out Super-Speed by accident. Shutting it off, however, takes her a bit longer.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the drastic change in Asgard's fate, the Tesseract still ends up on Earth, albeit on a different continent.
• Instant Expert: Within a day or two of Kahhori's arrival on Sky World, she has mastered her powers to a greater extent than those who have been there for years. It's implied that her strong motivation and determination are what grant her such extraordinary power.
• Magical Native American: The fractured Tesseract creates a new dimension where the Mohawk who travel there gain magical powers. When Kahhori and the Sky World Mohawk return to their world, they bring their magical powers with them.
• Noble Savage: Downplayed. Despite all the Conquistadors' violent attacks upon the New World, Kahhori still offers to live in peace with the Spaniards. Kahhori persists even after Isabella angrily refuses her offer of peace. However, there's also the remnants of violent conflict around the sacred lake that resulted in the people there banning it forever.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After Gonzolo's failure, Queen Isabella sent at least two more groups of conquistadors after the Mohawk, but no one ever returned, implying that Kahhori and her fellow Mohawk made short work of them (though it's implied that at least some of them lived long enough to teach Kahhori how to speak Spanish).
• One-Woman Army: Kahhori tears through the Conquistadors on the ground without breaking a sweat. She's only ever in trouble when they use ship-mounted cannons against her, and even then, she blocks dozens of shots before one finally overwhelms her barrier and strikes her in the head, which only stuns her as opposed to killing her.
• Panty Shot: Kahhori telekinetically lifts Queen Isabella, exposing her undergarments to the whole court.
• Place Beyond Time: No one in the Sky World ages, at least so long as they remain there.
• Place of Power: The energies of the Space Stone are suffused into the very ground in the Sky World, imparting those energies to everything that grows from it and to those who consume what the land provides.
• Planimal: The giant, bison-like creatures have crystalline pods that grow from their backs which are referred to as fruit and can be eaten as such, even though their appearance would suggest otherwise.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Surtur causing Ragnarok much, much sooner than in the Sacred Timeline causes the Tesseract to land near a Native American village instead of a village in Tønsberg, Norway.
  • The Tesseract's presence in North America creates rumors that this is the location of the Fountain of Youth, drawing the Spanish Conquistadores farther north than they ventured in our world.
• Power Glows: The Space Stone infuses everything in the Sky World, including the people. When they use its power, their eyes, markings, hands, and feet glow blue depending on how they're using it.
• Refusing Paradise: The Sky World is a place without war or want, where all the inhabitants have magical powers and neither age nor die. Kahhori, however, eventually decides that she can't leave her brother behind to the conquistadors and heads back to rescue him, and the others follow.
• Scope Snipe: Kahhori telekinetically sends a bullet straight into the spyglass of a Conquistador.
• Shout-Out: The shot in which Kahhori uses her powers to stop the Conquistadors' bullets mimics Neo's use of his powers in The Matrix.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The staff on the episode worked with citizens of the Kanien'kehá:ka - The Mohawk Nation while writing the episode. Many of its citizens also provided "Additional Voices", as listed in the credits.
  • When the women of the village are shown tending to the crops, the crops are the "Three Sisters" of Native American agriculture: corn, beans, and squash, which were traditionally grown together in a mutually-beneficial manner. The corn stalks provide a trellis for the bean branches to climb, the beans add nitrogen to the soil and help stabilize the corn stalks, and the broad leaves of the squash provide shade that helps keep the soil moist and prevent weed growth.
• Slapstick Knows no Gender: Kahhori's painfully failed attempts to climb back to the portal are Played for Laughs.
• Special Thanks: The credits include one for the Kanien'kehá:ka for their collaboration on this episode.
• Trampled Underfoot: When the Sky People mobilize to stop the Conquistadors, they run over Gonzolo with such force that he's completely buried beneath the sand. He still manages to reach for Kahhori one last time, so she blasts him point blank, leaving him buried once more, this time for good.
• Translation Convention: Averted for the Mohawk and Spanish, as they speak in their native languages with the audience only understanding them via subtitles. The only characters who speak English in this episode are the Watcher, Surtur, and Strange Supreme — somewhat muddying the impression, as presumably Surtur doesn't actually speak English, while the very next episode plays Translation Convention perfectly straight for its entire runtime.
  • An alternate cut of the episode with English audio was made available as an Extra on Disney+.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub was only applied for the last scene where Kahoori and Strange Supreme speaks English dialog (while this was extended for Kahoori in her Spanish lines to keep her voice in subsequent episodes).
• Tonto Talk: Averted. The Mohawk speak their own language throughout the entire episode. The one time Kahhori speaks Spanish, she speaks it fluently.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Kahhori against the conquistadors on the beach. Arguably her powers are strong enough to beat the entire army on her own— if only she were trained in tactics and accustomed to what she can do. For example, when Gonzolo orders the ships to fire on Kahhori, she panics, and instead of using her speed to dodge all of the cannonballs and close the distance to the attackers, she puts up a shield that eventually gets overwhelmed. Also, she obviously hadn't figured out before seeing it done during the battle that she was fast enough to run on water.
• Villainous Valor: Even against Kahhori's implacable magical might, Gonzolo refuses to go down easy, having his ships fire their cannons to overwhelm her and, even on the brink of defeat, grabs at her to keep fighting.
• Walk on Water: The Sky People can move fast enough to skim across the surface of the water without breaking it.
• We Have Become Complacent: The people of Sky World have long since accepted they cannot leave and grown to see their immortal lives there as paradise. Kahhori almost begins to accept it until conquistadors arrive and one is wearing her brother's necklace. She grows outraged and admonishes the Sky People for sitting on their gifts when there are threats to their kin back on Earth, mustering the willpower to pull the portal down to the ground and offering them the chance to join her in defending their nations.
• Wham Shot: Right as a largely self-contained story is wrapping up, a voice speaks out in English, and Strange Supreme portals in out of nowhere looking for Kahhori. Additionally, Uatu expresses no surprise at this multiversal intervention, unlike the last episode, so he knows exactly what's going on here.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Kahhori calls out the Sky World people for staying in their paradise when it's clear that the people on the other side still need them. They're initially reluctant, but act as The Cavalry after deciding she was right.

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"So many stories spawn from a choice. But Kahhori's victory wasn't because she merely chose the right path. No, it was her conviction, because she remained true to her course, unwavering in the face of both devastation and miracles alike. Such resolve is often what burns brightest, what elevates an individual to something more."