One of the best gimmicks regarding What If…? comics (and their DC equivalent, Elseworlds) is the opportunity to take superheroes and redeposit them in a different genre entirely. Stories about Wolverine as noire private eye in 1950s L.A. or the Avengers as a quasi-D&D party in a fantasy world are fun, break from routine, and don’t foul up continuity any (unless they do).
In the sixth episode of this season, we find ourselves in the old American West, where legendary vigilantes, Ten-Rings (Shang-Chi) and Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), are on the trail of destruction left by a terrifying figure, The Hood. After a brief and curious cameo by this universe’s version of John Walker (Wyatt Russell, 22 Jump Street), Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop ride off to the next town left in The Hood’s wake. The backstory we get is that Kate’s family ranch was laid to waste by The Hood and that Shang-Chi emigrated to the United States in search of his sister, Xu Xialing, who stood up for the Chinese immigrant community against The Hood’s oppression and was taken hostage… he hopes.
Picking up a young survivor, Jun Fan (which is as awesome an Easter egg as you can ask for in show about a guy from China using kung fu to track down a sibling in the Old West), the crew find themselves tracking down a hovering train, dealing with weapons engineer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins, Fallout), fighting off Red Room mind control, and confronting The Hood in a truly trying and tragic way.
This was a fun little foray into fantasy fiction and, as mentioned before, it doesn’t affect continuity… unless it does. The Watcher, Uatu (Jeffery Wright, American Fiction) has had his eye on Shang-Chi and company, but he has a hand in their adventure as well. That hand may have broken the camel’s back one too many times, judging by the final scenes.
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