“What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?”
The question of “What if Kahhori reshaped the world?” is perhaps secondary to “Who is Kahhori?” Rather than an obscure character plucked from Marvel’s archives, Kahhori is a new face entirely, being introduced in this episode with plans of being featured across media going forward. While this is unusual, she’s in good company as X-Men’s Morph, Firestar, and even the Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl all had similar starts. Kahhori’s story has a lot of potential to touch a lot of plotlines in What If…?, Marvel Comics, and socially conscious narratives that are, quite frankly, often fumbled.
The episode opens in Asgard as Odin is defeated by Surtur during Ragnarok and the Tesseract, the cosmic cube whose discovery by Hydra kickstarted the Infinity Saga, was lost. The Tesseract still made its way to Earth but, instead of being entrusted to peaceful Scandinavian villagers, it landed in North America either before or during the Age of Discovery.
Kahhori (Devery Jacobs of American Gods and Reservation Dogs) and her people gave a local area wide berth as legends of a lake swallowing people persisted throughout generations. As she and her brother explore the forbidden area, their village comes under attack by Spanish conquistadors. They flee the pursuing Spaniards and fall into an underground cavern housing the true forbidden lake. Kahhori is shot and lands in the lake, transported by the Tesseract to a mystic paradise where her forebears (those who also braved the lake) make use of an unexplained energy to build, hunt, fish, play, and explore. Never aging or dying, they revel in their new home.
Kahhori masters the energy quickly but sees the eternal haven as a prison as they are unable to get back to their people. When conquistadors fall through also, it sparks the deus ex machina needed to send Kahhori back. She admonishes her new fellows to come with her and defeat the invaders. When the news reaches Queen Isabella of Spain, so too does Kahori and her people, insisting on a world of sovereign boundaries. As it seems world peace is achieved, they get a special visitor from another universe to congratulate them.
There were a lot of bold choices made in this episode. Kahori’s introduction, of course, and the characterization similar to modern Disney princesses: bold, full of conviction, and pure of heart. The episode is primarily in Mohawk and Spanish (subtitled throughout) with only a few lines at the end in English. There is a lot of ambiguity as to where it takes place as most media is attributing the setting to the Iroquois Nations but Spanish colonization is featured. But there’s also dimensional portals made by magic space gems, so it’s not a terrible stretch.
Where Kahhori ends up, in What If…? and in the Marvel omnibus is anyone’s guess. We’ll likely see her in the upcoming 1602 episode and/or the season wrap-up as, much like the comic book Exiles, the theme of What If…? seems to be about making super-teams from across different realities. It’s not broken so they’re not fixing it, but they’re doing a good job with redecorating thus far.
What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World is now streaming on Disney+
