Warning: SPOILERS for Marvel's What If...? episode 2, "What If... T'Challa Became A Star-Lord?"

Although the plot of What If...? episode 2 focuses on T'Challa as Star-Lord instead of Peter Quill, the Disney+ series also suggests that Peter Quill's work with the Guardians of the Galaxy was much more detrimental to the safety of the universe than the Infinity Saga established. As a normal human child who was abducted by aliens, Star-Lord, an immature cosmic outlaw, doesn't seem like the kind of character upon whom the fate of the universe rests. Granted, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 revealed that Peter Quill had dormant Celestial genes courtesy of his father Ego, but even then, Quill gave up his godlike abilities before the credits rolled.

Without any superpowers or any real influence to affect the universe, it's Star-Lord's decisions that helped shape some of the most crucial events of the Infinity Saga in the main MCU. Star-Lord helped Gamora distance herself from Thanos, rejected Ego's offer to help him conquer the universe, and founded the Guardians of the Galaxy to prevent Ronan the Accuser from seizing the Power Stone taken from Morag. Star-Lord's most infamous decision happened in Avengers: Infinity War, where his fury and grief over Gamora's death ruined the Avengers' plan to take the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos at the very last moment. What If...? episode 2 makes Star-Lord's influence on the universe even more evident, even with a different Star-Lord.

Related: T’Challa’s New Endgame Solution Proved A Thanos Fan Theory

Since the event that created an alternate reality in What If...? episode 2 is the Ravagers' abduction of T'Challa, it would have been sensible to assume that the events of Infinity Saga would have followed the same course, only with the new Star-Lord as a much more adept and mature hero. Instead, What If...? episode 2 ended up with a reformed Thanos (and one who was much weaker), Drax's family surviving Ronan's massacre, a non-tortured Nebula, and a non-existent Snap — even Carina, the Collector's beleaguered assistant, was saved from her painful death in this reality. If the Ravagers abducing the wrong MCU hero was all that was needed to change the Infinity Saga this much, then one could infer that Peter Quill's absence as Star-Lord saved the universe from a lot of pain.

Peter Quill's Star-Lord in Avengers Infinity War and Thanos in What If? Episode 2

For comparison, Peggy Carter's transformation into Captain Carter in What If...? episode 1 did bring drastic changes, such as Howard Stark's invention of the Hydra Stomper several decades before Tony Stark created Iron Man, but beyond a potentially different Tony Stark, that reality didn't seem to change the rest of the Infinity Saga too much. It only took T'Challa some smooth-talking and better fighting skills to accomplish feats as small as changing the Ravagers and as big as convincing Thanos not to commit genocide. That, of course, also means that without anybody to stop him, namely Peter Quill, Ego has free rein to devour the whole universe. T'Challa's abduction also resulted in an overpowered Collector, a dead Korg, and presumably, the off-screen defeat of the Avengers.

While these changes are exciting to witness, such drastic alternatives put a key element of the premise of What If...? into question. If the small changes in the life of T'Challa, Peter Quill, and Peggy Carter are supposed to be the ones responsible for the creation of alternate universes, why are other unrelated variables like Thanos' power level and Red Skull's Tesseract plan changing independently? Perhaps a future episode will delve deeper into this and reveal that alternate realities are more complex than they seem.

More: The MCU Just Set Up A Worse Disaster Than Thanos' Infinity War Snap

Marvel's What If...? streams Wednesdays on Disney+.

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