The Short Take:
While its plot kept me on my toes, this thematically murky episode undermines the complexity of Killmonger and parades around a charmless version of Tony Stark.
Image Credit: CNET
The Long Take:
[SPOILERS for What if…?, Black Panther, and probably the first Iron Man.]
While this episode isn’t the weakest we’ve gotten so far (I’d still say that’s episode 1), the world it offers is the one I’d least like to live in. And considering we got zombies last week, that’s saying a lot. This timeline is much darker to me because geopolitical warmongering wins the day. And that hits closer to home than ridiculous zombies.
Events branch away from the timeline we know when Erik Killmonger saves Tony Stark from the fateful bombing in Afghanistan that, in Iron Man (2008), led him to create the first Iron Man suit. Since Killmonger swoops in to keep Stark out of harm’s way, he never confronts the death and destruction his military contracts cause, and he never has the change of heart that forges the Avenger we know as Iron Man. He returns from Afghanistan with Killmonger by his side and ready to double down on his own war on terror.
It turns out that a millionaire playboy philanthropist who has no interest in heroics is just an annoying, narcissistic jerk. This version of Stark lacks self-awareness, never realizing how shallow his priorities in life have been and how little he has thought of the ramifications of his tinkering, which means everything he says oozes vanity, corruption, and moral bankruptcy. He has a look to match. I haven’t had any complaints about the animation of What if… since episode 1, but here I kept wondering why Tony’s nostrils were so flared. Robert Downey Jr. did not return to voice the character either, and while I didn’t mind Mick Wingert’s performance, the absence of RDJ certainly didn’t help matters.
Stark and Stark Industries, then, become a corrupting force in the world. And that’s not a world I want to live in. I’ve always appreciated that the Iron Man branch of the MCU took our own post-9/11, WMD-preoccupied world head-on, but the Iron Man origin story at least deluded me into thinking that someone somewhere could do right in spite of all that. And though I appreciated the proposition of non-Iron Man Tony Stark as a thought exercise, this alternate version was too real for me to fully enjoy and too one-dimensional to contemplate in any meaningful way.
While the episode shows us a less flattering Tony Stark, it flattens out Erik Killmonger, who I would have unequivocally designated as the MCU’s best villain until Tony Leung’s Wenwu pulverized my heart in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Sorry, Thanos, the Thomas Malthus bit was intellectually provocative and your choice in accessories cannot be denied, but I didn’t feel your pain in the same way. When I watch Black Panther (2018), Killmonger’s story is so tragic because he is brilliant, with so much potential, yet the white supremacy that has oppressed him and the fraught, isolationist monarchy of Wakanda that has left him behind dull his spirit and destroy that potential. The villains that compel me most are the ones that think they are the heroes, and, on a good day, might be able to convince me that their actions are justified. Killmonger utters one of the most poignant lines of the original Back Panther film with his final breaths: “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage.” The imagery in this one line powerfully evokes the history of Trans-Atlantic slavery and entwines Killmonger’s pain, suffering, madness, and violence with that history.
Some would argue that Killmonger is no villain at all, but a revolutionary. Political philosopher Frantz Fanon, for example, might support his actions, as he argues that decolonization is unavoidably violent because it disrupts an established social order. In The Wretched of the Earth, he says, “And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays.” So while the film may be reassuring viewers that it does not want violence, as Killmonger is clearly labeled a villain, Director Ryan Cooler potentially encourages them to understand his perspective. To cultivate empathy for those ravaged by a colonial past.
This episode of What If…?, however, tarnishes the impact Killmonger may have because it reframes his villainy as more of a power grab. The start of the episode tricked me into thinking that we were suddenly going to get a more heroic, less tragic Killmonger; I naively batted at the happy ending dangling before me. But it quickly becomes clear that the entire chain of events, from Tony’s rescue to the outing of Obediah’s betrayal, to the vibranium deal gone wrong — were all premeditated. Killmonger cunningly plays both sides, both nations, for fools so he can murder his way to the top, taking over Wakanda as the next Black Panther. This new narrative mutes the depth of his psychological profile when the writers could have taken the opportunity to develop his character even more, as they have in other single character-centric episodes, like the one featuring Doctor Strange. At the end of the episode, T’Challa appears in the ancestral plane and asks Killmonger, “Was it worth it, my cousin?” And his answer is basically yes, implying that he has not been affected by the murders he has committed, even when confronted by one of his victims. We see no consequences for his actions. That’s pretty cold. I could argue that this is not that different than the original Black Panther, but then I remember that this is a 30-minute animated stand alone episode that doesn’t have the other, more dialectic conversations, scenes, and lines that Coogler’s longer film does. Imagine if this is a viewer’s first encounter with Killmonger — what would they think? Van Lathan, co-host of The Ringerverse, did note that he thought some of the writing in this episode was subtly very good, drawing our attention to the scene in which Killmonger turns on co-conspirator Claw after the mercenary calls him “boy.” Van Lathan goes in to tell a riveting story about his late father’s fury in the wake of a white man calling him a “good ole boy.” I already agreed with his interpretation of the Claw scene, but hearing the gutting anecdote made me think I might be too hard on the episode as a whole.
This new version of Killmonger still tries to justify his actions, saying, “The cure is power, and now I have it,” and the continuation of the Frantz Fanon I cited earlier echoes this statement: “For him [the colonized] there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.” In the context of the original Black Panther film, Fanon can explain where What if…? Killmonger’s coming from. The only way out for him is to shift the tides of relative strength between him, the United States, and Wakanda. He destabilizes the latter two to strengthen the former. In the context of just this episode, though, because we watch him mastermind his way to a throne and don’t get as much discussion of his experience as a colonized subject, it sounds more like fighting oppression is just a cover for his own personal quest for world domination. It reminds me of the way in which Walter White on Breaking Bad constantly says that he’s committing crimes and horrifically violent acts for his family, when really, as he later admits, he’s just doing it for himself. He likes it. And that makes him a lot less sympathetic. Though, we call him an anti-hero, right? How slippery is the slope between downtrodden underdog fighting back and power-hungry maniac bully?
In the original Black Panther, Killmonger incidentally does good because his death moves T’Challa to use Wakanda’s resources to help those outside its borders, setting up a school in Oakland. Here, though, we get the sense that this Killmonger, now empowered by the Black Panther herb and loads of vibranium, will just “burn it all down” as he says; this will likely lead to more conventional villain as an authoritarian dictator situation. Again, this is the darkest timeline, and I want no part of it!
On a lighter note, it was nice to spend time with Michael B. Jordan again. And the writers of the episode seemed to share this sentiment because there are several Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the episode. Tony says a variation on the line from HBO’s The Wire made famous by the late Michael K. Williams: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” And after Tony jokes that the suits Killmonger designs look like they’re from Dragon Ball Z, Killmonger admits to being a fan of anime. Funnily enough, Michael B. Jordan is also a big fan, though he’s more of a Naruto guy. And many meme-conversant fans have compared Killmonger to DBZ’s Vegeta.
The pairing of Killmonger and Stark does prompt me to consider the spectrum of hero vs. villain more broadly. In the same way that the original Killmonger is a villain whose actions we can’t condone but whose motivations we can understand, this What if...? version of Tony Stark is just two clicks (or should I say martini glass clinks) away from being a villain. I suppose this means that the “what if” conceit of this show is working, because we’re seeing in no uncertain terms how catalytic events in a character’s life can not only change the course of history, but change the arc of their character development, and their moral compass. Still, though, I can’t quite glean any clear thematic takeaways beyond that. Other than threatening us with a scarier, bleaker alternate universe, what does this episode accomplish? No one is acknowledging Killmonger’s grievances; T’Challa just warns him that “unearned power” will catch up with him in this “plane” or the next. What’s anyone supposed to do with that?
Maybe Shuri and Pepper can do something. The one redeeming moment in this episode arrives in the nick of time, as Wakanda’s tech genius and Stark Industries’ steady hand team up to take down Killmonger’s power hungry Black Panther. Even if Gwenyth Paltrow doesn’t remember how many Marvel movies she’s been in, I’ve always responded to her portrayal of Pepper Potts, and enjoyed that writers seem to agree that she’s the competent one in the Stark Industries power couple. She keeps Tony grounded, reins him in, or just prevents him from making poor decisions whenever she can. Her skepticism for the entire episode — the one who is even remotely suspicious of Killmonger from the start — made a lot of sense to me, and gave me some kind of moral mooring during the tumultuous, Game of Thrones-esque cutthroat power plays. I much prefer this type of female empowerment to the token scene of all the female characters in the MCU huddled together during the final Endgame battle. That felt like a tacky, self-congratulatory ploy (“See, look how many strong female heroes we have!”), and I was not falling for it. Here’s hoping we see more genuine collaboration between heroines like this in the future.