What if…? episode 2 review: The tale of T’Challa as the new Star-Lord is a captivating one

The second episode titled What if…T’Challa Became Star-Lord is a step-up in quality from the underwhelming first episode.

Story:

The story is about an alternate timeline where T’Challa, the future king of Wakanda and future Black Panther, replaces Peter Quill, aboard Yandu’s ship, and becomes a member of the Ravagers.

Review:

The episode opens with a reimagination of Chris Pratt’s opening scene as Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy directed by James Gunn. Instead of Peter Quill, the scene opens with T’Challa, voiced by the late Chadwick Boseman. The story interestingly takes a very different route after the opening five minutes. T’Challa’s version of Star-Lord is more self-assured and does not appear to have a delusional sense of grandeur like Peter Quill’s version from the live-action films.

The story quickly introduces the other characters with several actors returning to voice the characters such as Sean Gunn as Kraglin, Karen Gillan as Nebula, and Djimon Hounsou as Korath. However, the biggest surprise was Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro returning to voice the Mad Titan, Thanos, and The Collector respectively. There is a significant improvement in how the voice acting has been handled when compared to the first episode.

The animation and the sound design are excellent, as expected from a Disney production. The writers have done well to create a coherent and engaging 30-minute episode that has just the right amount of action and drama. There are plenty of Marvel Cinematic Universe references sprinkled across the episodes which enhances the narrative. Most of the characters have their arcs slightly altered to match with the idea of the multiverse.

However, the fact that the perfectly animated and choreographed action scenes are shackled because of the show’s content rating is disappointing. The same could be said about the customary ‘MCU humour’ in the screenplay. The jokes were cheesy, especially the ones from the opening scene. An argument could be made that it was added to establish the new Star-Lord, but one would imagine there to be several alternative options the writers could have explored to achieve it.

Verdict:

The second episode makes up for the disappointment from the first and shows enough promise to keep the audience anticipating the next one. Just like in the first episode, the second also contains a few surprise cameos at the end of its runtime.

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