I’m curious how far along in the casting and VO process on this ep we were when Boseman passed. Lot of heavy hitters in this episode.
Im fearful we are going to get the opposite in this series. Where no one dies except the most repugnant of villains who died anyway.
Second episode was a lot of fun. But I was thrown off by how ordinary they made the “nice” Thanos. If Thanos is on your team, every mission should be easy - we’ve already seen that, even without the stones, he can go toe to toe with the entire Avengers. In this episode he seemed like a weaker version of Hulk, not even able to overpower two of his former thugs without help.
Maybe this Thanos passed up a lot of opportunities or modifications that increased his power.
There is, of course, a TV Trope for that:
It’s literally that, but they really can’t go in depth into stuff like this in a half hour episode not even centered on him. I will point out that he was stabbed by Proximas spear and brutally hammered by Cull Obsidian and took literally no damage from either. He might not be as brutal as evil Thanos, but he obviously can still take a hell of a punch.
Nitpick: The implication is that Thanos is a reasonable man and inherently good. Barring mind-control powers, or meds or T’Challa intervening in some child-hood trauma…its kindaaaaaaa a stretch.
Now if T’Challa introduced Thanos to the Wakandan ‘death plane’ and…basically…did what the Ancient One did to Strange to show a new way of thinking, I guess. But I’d like to see it.
Edit: Basically, Marvel simply didn’t lay enough groundwork to excuse some things Thanos (and Killmonger) did.
I enjoyed the first two, but I hope we’re done with “what if Z became X instead of Y” episodes.
The Watchers made a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
I won’t let the fact that there was no reason for T’Challa to go by Peter Quill’s nickname bother me.
No, that actually bothered me.
A fairly easy fanfix - Quill made up the name to aggrandize himself, but the people of the galaxy gave the name to T’Challa of their own accord (recognizing that it’s actually an appropriate name for him).
The point is, that’s what Quill’s mom called him.
Oh, right. Still coincidences happen 
Especially in the What If… comic books. It’s kind of their thing.
I’m looking forward to the What If…Conan Walked the Earth Today adaptation.
Fun seeing Drax as bartender.
I always liked how the original Human Torch wasn’t human at all.
I’d like to more fanboy What Ifs that actually answer some Q’s out there.
Like What If Thor Went For the Head? or What if Quill had Kept His Cool?
Of course the answer is, “Things would have gone worse.” But it would be nice to see it.
I was really looking forward to this one, but I thought it was disappointing. Too many contrivances
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Thanos as a hero is stupid.
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Where was Gamora?
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Star Lord as a nickname made no sense without context
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They made T’Challa a Christ figure, he made everyone around him the best they could be.
The first episode was a lot better IMHO.
These two points ruined it for me. Well, there was more but also these two.
So Thanos is not planning the snap so he is not looking for the stones. Yet, Ronan still sent his guy to get the stone, who then ran into Star Lord stealing the stone. But Ronan was getting the stone for Thanos. But Thanos had a change of heart so he wasn’t after the stones anymore. So why was Ronan getting the stone in the first place for his guy to run into Star Lord in the very beginning of the episode?
And the way the guy was gushing over Star Lord was so over the top it immediately made my eyes roll so hard they fell out of my head and I couldn’t even see the rest of the episode because I lost my eyes under the couch somewhere.
I didn’t buy Good Guy Thanos either. So Star Lord called up Thanos and they sat down to tea and had a nice polite friendly conversation where Star Lord convinced him his plan was flawed so he gave up that plan entirely. Yet later in the episode Thanos is trying to convince someone else how awesome his plan was and how it wasn’t genocide because it killed indiscriminately so therefore it was fair. That doesn’t sound like Thanos was convinced of anything that Star Lord said when they had a their nice little heart to heart.
I also didn’t buy that T’Challa’s necklace that he had had since he was a kid could interface with the Wakandan space ship that was built long after he had gone off exploring the galaxy with Yondu.
Also blond “sexy” hair Nebula was just weird. And her calling T’Challa “Cha-Cha” was irritating. They should have made T’Challa call her “Bu-Bu”. If your going to be dumb and have “baby talk” pet names at least be consistent .
I get it Chadwick died tragically and they want to pay respects but don’t make the whole episode about Star Lord being loved by the entire Universe so much that the entire Universe wants to marry him and have his babies.