The following contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 2, “What If…? T’Challa Was A Star-Lord.”
The What If…? series from Marvel continues to explore alternate avenues for the Marvel Cinematic Universe characters with the flip of one small event. In the case of episode 2, that change is a mistake made by Yondu’s team when abducting a child from earth. Instead of taking Peter Quill, they take T’Challa, future king of Wakanda. That decision means that T’Challa crosses paths with a lot of the spacefaring characters in the MCU while Peter Quill grows up on Earth instead of in a spaceship.
In addition to Yondu and his Ravagers, T’Challa also crosses paths with Thanos, Nebula, and the Collector. Most of the characters he encounters, in fact, are ones central to the storylines present in the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. T’Challa’s presence causes a ripple effect of change in their lives. There is, however, one character who doesn’t make an appearance who is a big part of Peter’s story: Gamora.
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T’Challa Encounters Gamora’s Family
It’s interesting that T’Challa doesn’t encounter Gamora specifically because he does encounter the rest of her adopted family. Thanos and Nebula play a very large part in this particular episode.
Thanos is essentially a Ravager himself. He’s friendly with Yondu, T’Challa, and even Taserface. That’s because, as Thanos makes clear, T’Challa managed to talk him out of his plan to get rid of half of the universe with the help of the Infinity Stones years earlier. All it took was a discussion with T’Challa to help Thanos see the error of his ways; though he does maintain that he wouldn’t have been committing genocide because which half of the universe disappeared would be completely random.
Thanos is very different from the version the audience sees in MCU’s live-action movies. He’s helping the Ravagers on their missions, hanging out in a bar, and generally having a good time. He and Nebula have a much better relationship as well. Nebula saves his life and he saves hers. Nebula even seems happier, no longer locked in perpetual competition and jealousy with Gamora. That’s because Gamora doesn’t appear to be part of the family dynamic at all, leaving the audience to wonder if she left Thanos when he decided against collecting the Infinity Stones, or if he never went to her planet at all in this timeline.
Gamora Isn’t The Only Absent Guardian Of The Galaxy
It’s necessary to address that Gamora isn’t the only missing Guardian in the story. T’Challa’s path does cross with Drax, but not Rocket or Groot either. Drax is working as a bartender, his homeworld having been saved by T’Challa instead of destroyed in a battle with the Kree.
Rocket and Groot both became Guardians after getting arrested trying to pick up a bounty on Peter Quill in the movies. That bounty isn’t in place for T’Challa since he takes Korvath with him to become a Ravager and Thanos is no longer after the stones. That would seem to indicate that Gamora is also never sent after T’Challa to retrieve the Power Stone like she is Peter. The three Guardians of the Galaxy never cross paths with the Ravagers or Star-Lord because T’Challa’s path is already so different from that of Peter Quill's.
T’Challa’s retrieval of the Power Stone also takes place a few years before Peter Quill went after it, making another change to the timeline. That doesn’t, however, explain Gamora’s absence from the familial relationship between Nebula and Thanos in episode 2.
Gamora Still Has A What If…? Role To Play
It’s likely that there’s not actually a bigger story for Gamora in T’Challa’s because she has her own. Movie audiences have already seen two different versions of Gamora on the big screen thanks to the time-traveling of Avengers: Endgame. Likewise, she’s still to come in the Disney Plus animated series. Each episode of the series is speculated to occur in a different timeline, and one is set to feature Gamora.
Fans know this because a Funko pop version of her What If…? character has been made available to order from the company. She’s also featured in a promotional poster for the series. That version of her character doesn’t appear drastically different from her current MCU counterpart unlike the spacefaring T’Challa or Captain Carter.
Some speculation has arisen that Gamora will be an assassin for hire in her episode, taking her away from the influence the Guardians of the Galaxy provided to do good. It’s entirely possible that could have been the route her character would have taken in T’Challa’s story as well as Thanos and Nebula changed, but she didn’t. Fans will have to wait and see.
New episodes of Marvel’s What If…? are available to stream on Wednesdays on Disney Plus.