Last week, Disney held a screening of two episodes from What If…? season 2. At the Q&A that followed, the series’ writers and director shared what could be the biggest “what if?” in the MCU.
Writer and executive producer A.C. Bradley, writer and producer Matthew Chauncey, and director and executive producer Bryan Andrews were asked about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest superhero, Kahhori. Kahhori is a Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) woman living in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in the 1600s. Episode 6, “What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?” will explore the question of what might happen if Kahhori found the Tesseract before Europeans colonized North America.
“Kahhori is amazing, and a special shout out to Ryan Little who wrote that episode, and also the Mohawk community, who really backed us up,” Bradley said, describing how Disney connected the writers to Native consultants through the Smithsonian Institution. “From day one, we were talking with people. We brought them in for everything from design, story, costuming, music. It was really a collaborative effort, and we were so lucky to get all the help. It was really kind of amazing and beautiful. I’m very, very proud that we were able to pull that episode off.”
“It was pretty incredible,” Andrews added. “It was one of the early ideas we had, because what bigger ‘what if’ is there than ‘What if colonization didn’t happen? What if the Europeans didn’t come here?’ And that’s kind of what I keyed into, but we needed more, and when talking with the consultants, getting into their belief system and the rest, we were able to find an in that was solid, and worked.
“When the consultants finally saw the artwork, after giving us some notes, they were amazed,” Andrews continued. “They wrote us a letter saying that they felt for the first time that their people were being honestly represented in media. And that was huge for us to hear.”
What if Europeans never colonized North America? Audiences will get What If…?‘s answer to that question soon. Marvel Studios is holding special screenings of “What If… Kahhori Reshaped the World?” for Mohawk communities, and the episode will hit Disney+ on December 27.
Kahhori won’t be Marvel’s last Native hero, either. Echo, which focuses on the Choctaw heroine Maya Lopez, is premiering on January 10. Echo is directed and executive produced by Diné filmmaker Sydney Freeland (Reservation Dogs).
In the meantime, you can catch all nine episodes of What if…? season 2 over the holidays, when they come out daily starting December 22 on Disney+.
(featured image: Disney+)
