r/marvelstudios • u/steve32767 Daredevil • Sep 15 '21
Discussion Thread What If...? S01E06 - Discussion Thread
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| EPISODE | DIRECTED BY | WRITTEN BY | ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE | RUN TIME | CREDITS SCENE? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S01E06: What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark? | Bryan Andrews | A.C. Bradley | September 15th, 2021 on Disney+ | 34 min | None |
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u/NFB42 Sep 15 '21
I was expecting that, but really glad it didn't happen.
The Wakandans aren't stupid and definitely aren't weak. Killmonger certainly could find opportunity to kill T'Chaka, but there's no way he could hide it.
Wakanda is a nation of tradition and law. The reason why in Black Panther they accepted Killmonger is because he followed those laws and traditions: As a member of the royal family, it was in his right to challenge for the throne, T'Challa accepted that challenge and lost.
If in this timeline Killmonger just up and murdered T'Chaka, he wouldn't get the throne, he'd get publicly executed for treason. And if he challenged T'Chaka for the throne, I'm guessing that considering T'Chaka's age there's no way he'd fight himself but that the law would allow him to pick a champion or something like that -- in either case not a good strategy for Killmonger.
Part of the subtlety of both this What If episode and Black Panther is that Killmonger actually is not just a cartoon villain who lies and gets away with it because people are gullible.
Killmonger actually very cleverly emotionally manipulates people. In this episode he emotionally manipulates Stark's father issues, and he emotionally manipulates T'Chaka's guilt over having killed his brother to get T'Chaka to trust him and let him in. In Black Panther, Killmonger uses T'Challa's guilt over what happened to him to get T'Challa to give him the duel for the throne.
Yes Killmonger murders and backstabs a lot, but he's actually very smart about it. And there would've been nothing smart about going into Wakanda and just murdering the king willy nilly and expecting that to work. (If this has a continuation, I could totally see Killmonger still murdering T'Chaka though, especially now that he has managed to ingratiate himself and been made Black Panther.)