‘What If?’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap — A Breath of Fresh Air for the Multiverse

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for What If…? Season 2, Episode 6.

With decades of comics and a whole wide multiverse of characters to choose from, it would take several seasons before Marvel’s What If…? ran out of material. And yet, in Season 2, Episode 6, “What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?”, the series introduces us to Kahhori (Devery Jacobs), a young Indigenous girl living in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in the time before colonization, and who was created specifically for the show. Her very existence is bold enough, and the choice to have the bulk of her episode be in Mohawk is bolder still. But does this episode actually succeed in what it’s trying to do?

What If…?

Based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name, this animated anthology looks at alternate timelines in the multiverse that would happen if specific moments in the MCU occurred differently.

Release Date

August 11, 2021

Creator

A. C. Bradley

Rating

TV-14

Seasons

2

Streaming Service(s)

Disney+

What Is ‘What If…?’ Season 2, Episode 6 About?

The Watcher sets the stage by taking us back in time. Way, way back to before the Tesseract was ever brought to Earth by Odin. Ragnarok came to Asgard, and the Tessaract finds its way to pre-Colombian America. At this point, the episode shifts fully into Mohawk as we meet Kahhori, and her brother Wáhta (Kiawentiio), sneaking out of their village to go exploring. The pair of them stumble onto an old battlefield on the edge of the woods, littered with skeletons still bearing traces of a fight. Wáhta reminds Kahhori they were told to stay away from the battlefield, since it’s supposed to be cursed. But Kahhori counters that the only reason it’s cursed is that no one cleansed it after the fighting and ventures in further.

The lake at the center of it all, she tells Wáhta, contains a power so great that people fought and died for control of it, rather than letting it unite them. Wáhta is a little disbelieving, since according to the stories, the lake ate people — that is, they went in and never came out. The two of them find the lake, and to say they’re underwhelmed is an understatement. Where they were expecting a person-eating lake of great power they instead find… a placid pond with ducks floating on top. They’re disappointed until a gunshot heralds the arrival of a new, more lethal danger: white men.

They realize the sound came from the direction of their village and race back home, to find the entire place in flames, and their people taken captive by conquistadors. One of them spots Kahhori and Wáhta not tied up yet, and pursues them on horseback back towards the lake. The two of them fall into a pit that leads to a system of underground caverns. They follow the path as it leads to a grotto that contains the real powerful lake, glowing a distinct shade of Tesseract blue. The conquistadors follow them in, and their overjoyed reaction suggests that the lake is the reason they came to this corner of the continent in the first place. One of them corners Wáhta, so Kahhori throws rocks at him to distract him away from her brother. Unfortunately, a second conquistador arrives and shoots her, propelling her backward into the lake, and down, down through a portal that spits her out in a forest not unlike the one she left behind… except for the fact that the trees and the people are glowing. She’s greeted by a young man, who welcomes her to Sky World.

‘What If…?’ Season 2 Episode 6 Spotlights Kahhori, an Indigenous Superhero

The Watcher explains that the Tesseract landed among Kahhori’s ancestors and gifted Space Stone powers to the lake after shattering on impact, triggering a war among the nations as many of their own disappeared into the lake, never to return. Kahhori wakes up among them and is stunned to see them using magic to accomplish their day-to-day tasks. The same young man greets her, introduces himself as Atahraks (Jeremy White), and explains that the “blue light” has seeped its way into everything, and by just existing in the same ecosystem, eating the plants and animals that have taken on the light’s spirit as well, it has become a part of the people too.

She thanks him for the quick rundown but explains that she needs to head back home since her village and brother were attacked. There’s just one problem: the portal is still open, but it’s way up in the sky. Atahraks tries to talk her out of leaving, arguing that their immortal, ageless existence in Sky World is where they’re meant to be.

Back in Kahhori’s village, the leader of the conquistadors, Don Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo (Gabriel Romero) declares he’s come here to claim the Fountain of Youth in the name of Queen Isabella of Spain (Carolina Ravassa). Because nothing says “free for the taking” quite like someone else’s definitely-already-occupied homeland. He demands directions from them in Spanish, as though any of them speak the language, or as if they’d tell him even if they did. Luckily for the poor woman about to be shot by a man who thinks repeatedly yelling “¿Donde?” will actually help someone understand what “¿Donde?” means, the two conquistadors who captured Wáhta arrive and tell him they found the lake.

Kahhori remains undeterred in her quest to find a way out of Sky World, and tries climbing the tallest tree she can to get closer to the portal. Atahraks follows her up, and advises her to slow down and try to actually feel the spirit of the world around her, and to let it help her. Fortunately, the connection comes pretty intuitively, and Kahhori is able to jump at much further distances with help from the Tesseract’s powers. Kahhori argues that with all the power they gain from the land, there’s no reason they can’t use it to leave, though Atahraks points out it’s not that no one has ever tried, they just haven’t succeeded. Not that he seems all that inclined to leave, himself. Kahhori uses her new powers to levitate branches to create a makeshift staircase up to the portal, but falls after a few steps. Atahraks tells her it’s not the first time someone tried that either. Kahhori gives it a few more times before calling it a day.

Atahraks hears the call for a hunt and heads off excitedly, and Kahhori reluctantly follows behind, trapped in her beautiful prison for the time being. The hunt, it turns out, is for a jewel-like fruit that grows on the backs of colossal Buffalo-like animals. Atahraks tells her not to worry, that no one manages to get any on her first try, but Kahhori has so thoroughly embraced the spirit of the land by this point that she joins in enthusiastically, accidentally outruns the entire herd, and uses her newfound powers to flip one of them over, shaking dozens of fruits loose in the process.

In the cavern, all the conquistadors except Gonzalo eagerly charge into the lake, keen to finally achieve immortality, but are instead all sucked down below the surface. Though this was clearly done by an external force, Gonzalo decides the tribe is to blame and orders them chained to be taken back to Spain. That’s not exactly a solution to his current problem, but logic never had much place in colonization anyway. The conquistadors fall through to Sky World and spy the tribe having a celebration in the distance, which they immediately decide to ruin. Kahhori spots them in time, and uses her powers to deflect their bullets and take their weapons. Atahraks tries to get her to calm down and talk it out, but her anger and frustration bubble to the surface, especially when she sees one of the conquistadors wearing Wáhta’s necklace.

‘What If…?’ Season 2 Episode 6 Leads to Kahhori Changing the Course of History

The people of Sky World, she argues, have lived locked away for too long. They’re infused with incredible power and yet choose not to seek a way home, where such power might be used to help their people. Her fury and determination are such that she’s finally able to pull the portal down from the sky so she can just walk through it. She tells the tribe she’s going to fight, and urges them to come with her, saying her people don’t have the luxury of being so removed from conflict and danger. She leaves them behind and emerges in the lake, then sprints past her burning village to the shore where her people are being taken to the ships. She single-handedly takes out dozens of conquistadors and their ships, and does a pretty decent job on her own, but is overwhelmed by their forces. Atahraks and the Sky World tribe arrive just in time to reestablish her connection with the Tesseract and help her finish off the last of the ships, and save her tribe.

Naturally, Kahhori doesn’t stop there. In Spain, Queen Isabella receives a report of other conquistador fleets that also set out for the “new world” and never returned. Her emissary advises her against trying again, but Isabella is too arrogant to give up the fight. This must just be a question of some other nation trying to take over what she sees as rightfully hers. Kahhori chooses that moment to arrive at the Spanish court via portal to suggest Isabella simply leave them to their own devices. When Inquisition Izzy smugly counters that she was “ordained” to rule over “your people” (probably a nicer word than she meant to use), Kahhori has enough and uses her magic to levitate the queen right out of her throne before blasting the throne to smithereens.

Now, I’m not naive or hopeful enough to think that a few well-placed threats would be enough to stop European efforts at colonization and to broker a lasting peace — especially with someone like Isabella, whose awfulness extended beyond what she did to the American continent. But I also know there’s no way for a 30-minute TV episode to solve centuries of systemic racism born of colonization, and the arrogance that led a handful of nations of the world to think that conquest was their God-given right to begin with.

However, this episode shines for the way it focuses on an Indigenous hero and an Indigenous language, and allows its characters to express fun, joy, and family without stripping it all away to view in retrospect through a lens of colonial-inflicted tragedy. The collaboration with the citizens of the Kanien’kehá (the Mohawk nation) shows in how it centers Kahhori, Wáhta, Atahraks, and their tribes, rather than the colonizers. It is certainly the most interesting episode of the season, and should be celebrated for how bold it is. This is the sort of story I’d like to see from the series in Season 3, and possibly beyond. Of course, because this is Marvel, and we can’t end things without a cameo, Strange Supreme (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives, saying he’s been looking for Kahhori.

The first six episodes of What If…? are streaming now on Disney+.

Watch on Disney+