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in: What If...?

What If...? Episode 3.06: What If... 1872?

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"What If... 1872?" is the sixth episode of the third and final season of What If...?.

The legendary Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop search for The Hood in the Old Wild West.

Plot[]

In the Mohave Desert, a cowboy shot a bell in the ruins of a church nine times. Needing for it to ring ten times, John Walker shot it once himself and sets in to wait. Shang-Chi entered the church in response, and simply chucked at Walker stating that showing up would be the last mistake that he would ever make. Having entered unseen from the other side, Kate Bishop commented that she couldn't recall the last time that she had missed her mark, but these folks appeared to need a demonstration. With Walker's permission, Shang-Chi removed his hat first and tossed it up in the air as a distraction. Shang-Chi then attacked Walker and his men with his incredible martial arts skills while Kate began taking them out with her sharpshooting skills. By the time that the hat reached Shang-Chi's hand again, all of Walker's men were either dead or incapacitated.

Shang-Chi and Kate then demanded to know where they could find the Hood who had been ransacking construction sites all across the West and abducting all of the workers building the rail lines. Although Walker didn't care about the fate of a bunch of Chinese immigrants, he told the pair that the Hood was heading towards Point Pegasus after Shang-Chi threatened to hit him again. However, Walker warned them that the Hood came for everybody in due time and rumor had it that the Hood's eyes were fixed upon Shang-Chi. With this new information in hand, Shang-Chi and Kate ride out.

In the Nexus of All Realities, the Watcher commented that his audience by now understood the nature of alternate realities and parallel universes and how small choices could cause big changes. However, out in the farthest reaches of the Multiverse, things could get a little weird and anything was possible to the point that it was more like "what the hell?" than "what if?" The Watcher observed a few such realities, including one where Alligator Loki was chasing after Frog Thor, one where Crossbones was a pirate, and one where Ultron had been programmed to sing show tunes.

Sadly, even in the most far-out worlds of the Multiverse, there remained one constant, injustice, and Shang-Chi's universe was no exception. In this universe, looking to escape the shadow of her father's tyranny, Xu Xialing immigrated to America in the late 1860s in search of the American Dream. However, it was not what Xialing had been promised, and immigrants had become targets thanks to a mysterious crime lord known as the Hood who had realized that he could cement his power by preying on the locals' fear of their new neighbors. Seeing this injustice firsthand, Xialing sought out the Hood and fought back, but she was never heard from again. When rumors spread that the Hood had taken Xialing and her neighbors' hostage, no one cared to look for them aside from Shang-Chi. Desperate to find his sister, Shang-Chi teamed up with Kate who was a sharpshooter with her own bad blood with the Hood and together they became a frontier fable. However, this tall tale was starting to sound more like a ghost story.

Shang-Chi and Kate reached Point Pegasus, which was now destroyed, and Shang-Chi commented that while Walker's tip was good, they were still too late yet again. The two are saddened by the state of the Chinese village as the immigrants already have a hard enough life working the rail lines and Kate's homestead was left the exact same way when the Hood got done with it: no survivors and no trail left to track. Shang-Chi reassured his partner that they were getting closer and would find the Hood at which point Kate intended to put the crime lord dead in the ground herself, although not before the Hood revealed where Xialing was.

A young boy ran up calling out for help and Kate gave him some water. The boy introduced himself as Kwai Jun-Fan and explained that he had tried to ring the bell to call them, but the Hood was too fast. Jun-Fan explained that it had started like any other night with his father telling The Legend of Hawkeye and the Ten Rings, the frontier heroes who fought for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Then the Hood appeared out of nowhere like a chill in the air and took everyone away on a ghost train. Having escaped by hiding, Jun-Fan revealed that the ghost train had headed off down the valley despite there being no tracks. The boy begged Shang-Chi and Kate to go after them, but refused to stay behind when Shang-Chi agreed, showing off his martial arts skills, impressing Shang-Chi. Kate found a faint trail running along the desert floor leading straight into the valleys in the Fury Flats. While the ghost train had a mean head start, if the group road the stagecoach route over the mountains, they'd be able to head the train off at the pass.

The three raced up into the mountains and stopped on a rise to wait for the ghost train. When the train finally arrived, Shang-Chi, Kate and Jun-Fan chased after it and Kate was able to jump aboard the last car while Shang-Chi threw Jun-Fan to her. Noticing that the train was hovering, Shang-Chi ordered Morris not to stray too far away and jumped aboard himself. Shang-Chi, Kate, and Jun-Fan were shocked to see a canyon approaching, but the ghost train was able to easily fly over it using repulsor technology.

Inside of the car, the three found a large glowing device that was powering the repulsors which Shang-Chi recognized as one of Tony Stark's inventions. In the next car, they found a massive arsenal of weapons stolen from Tony Stark, Justin Hammer and Darren Cross' companies, enough to take the West by storm. In a coach car, they found the kidnapped railroad workers in a trance and Kate guessed that a bunch of railroad workers wouldn't be a bad start if the Hood was looking for any army. Jun-Fan found his father, but the man was completely unresponsive to his son's attempts to get his attention. Shang-Chi guessed that it was the Hood's work, meaning that they needed to have a word with the man himself.

In the next car, Shang-Chi, Kate and Jun-Fan were confronted by a number of armed men and their leader while more came up from behind, forcing Shang-Chi and Kate to surrender. The man introduced himself as Sonny Burch, and claimed to be a proud investor in the bright new future that the Hood was building. Kate pointed out that it didn't look so bright for Sonny's prisoners, but Sonny called the ghost train a train of liberation while the kidnapped immigrants had been conscripted into a force that was going to change the world. Although conscription didn't sound like freedom to Shang-Chi, Sonny defended it as being free market in action, specifically supply and demand: Sonny supplied them, and they did what he demanded in return. In mandarin, Shang-Chi ordered Jun-Fan to do the Drunken Wasp Sting which allowed the boy to escape. As Shang-Chi prepared to attack, Sonny declared that there was no need for violence as the Hood wanted to see them just as much as they wanted to see the Hood. Shang-Chi and Kate submitted, and Sonny had his subordinates show them to the club car before ordering two of his men to kill Jun-Fan.

Chased by Sonny's henchmen, Jun-Fan fled to the top of the train as the Watcher narrated that the boy had been inspired by Shang-Chi to be the hero of his own story. However, tragedy could often befall even the bravest of souls and Jun-Fan was cornered on top of a car by the two men who intended to throw him off of the train to his death. Declaring that tragedy wouldn't fall this time, the Watcher used telekinesis to send one man stumbling back into the other, causing them to both fall off of the train and saving Jun-Fan's life. As the train entered a tunnel, Jun-Fan was forced to duck.

At night, the ghost train arrived at a well-lit station where Sonny told Shang-Chi that this was his chance to meet the Hood, although not Kate as the Hood only wanted to talk to Shang-Chi. Shang-Chi called out to the Hood, demanding to know where his sister was, but the Hood told him that that information came with a price. With Shang-Chi having proven himself to be a worthy adversary, the Hood invited him to join them, telling Shang-Chi that it was the only way for him to find out what happened to his sister. Shang-Chi refused and the two engaged in a fight with the Hood displaying superhuman abilities as well as martial arts skills that allowed them to block Shang-Chi's blows. After Shang-Chi finally managed to land a blow, the Hood vanished into thin air, becoming invisible.

Sonny began playing music from his pocket watch which affected Kate, making her woozy. Sonny revealed that it was a hypnotic song that he'd used on the entranced immigrants, having acquired the technology on a job he did in Russia. The song was an earworm, and you had to plug up before it bored into your head. As Kate fell victim to the hypnosis, Sonny taunted her about the deaths of Kate's entire family. Sonny revealed that it wasn't the Hood who had murdered Kate's parents, but rather Sonny himself. Sonny gloated that the Bishop family fortune had gone a long way towards funding this venture, but Sonny would be lying if he said that killing her parents was strictly business as it a lot of fun for him.

Using their invisibility, the Hood repeatedly attacked Shang-Chi and urged him to join them in changing this country for good together. Using the Hood's footprints in the snow, Shang-Chi was finally able to see through the invisibility and strike the Hood, knocking their hood off. Much to Shang-Chi's shock, the Hood was none other than his missing sister Xialing, her face now covered in scars. In an inhuman voice, Xialing explained that while the Hood had thought that he was coming for her, Xialing was coming for the Hood instead. Xialing defeated the Hood and stole his power for herself, becoming corrupted by it. Xialing insisted that she was the hero of this story rather than the villain, again urging her brother to join her in saving these people. However, Shang-Chi refused to help his sister enslave people and Xialing declared that she couldn't let him live then and attacked her brother with her rope dart, cutting Shang-Chi's face and bringing him to the ground. As he fought her, Shang-Chi attempted to bring his sister back to her senses, but Xialing was seemingly beyond reason. Xialing again insisted that she was saving these people by turning them into an army that would fight to ensure that this country became the one that they were promised.

Sonny prepared to kill Kate with her own mother's guns while Xialing took Shang-Chi down and gave him one last chance to join her which he again refused. Hiding in the cab, Jun-Fan noticed the train's bell and began ringing it, the noise breaking the trance that the immigrants and Kate were under. With Sonny distracted, Kate grabbed her mother's gun back from him and shot all of his men dead as Sonny cowered behind them. Reinvigorated, Shang-Chi caught his sister's rope dart and broke off the blade. Kate smashed Sonny's pocket watch, but chose not to kill him as death would be a mercy and she wanted Sonny to suffer. Instead, Kate pistol-whipped Sonny unconscious so that he could face justice for his crimes.

Inspired by the bell, Shang-Chi refused to fight Xialing any further, dropping the blade and stating that he wouldn't play the Hood's game anymore and his sister would never kill her brother. As Shang-Chi fell to his knees, Xialing retrieved the blade and declared that she wasn't his sister anymore, but Shang-Chi continued to try to reach her, telling Xialing that his sister had always been his hero and she was stronger than him, and braver than him. Xialing was his life and Shang-Chi's knows that she's still in there somewhere and he loves her. Fighting with herself for control for a moment, Xialing ultimately swung the blade at her brother, only to be shot by Kate. Shang-Chi rushed to tend to his dying sister whose scars faded and who returned to normal in her final moments before dying in her brother's arms. A horrified Kate apologized, having been unaware that the Hood was her friend's sister. However, Shang-Chi told Kate that she didn't kill Xialing, the Hood did. As the Hood's cloak flew away on the wind, the Watcher noted that the Old West had always been a myth of endless adventure and new beginnings, but the truth was sometimes something darker. However, one person's tragic fall was often just the origin story of a new hero's rise.

The next day, Jun-Fan told the story to an enthralled crowd while Kate told Shang-Chi that the kid had some iron fists on him and Shang-Chi might have some competition. Shang-Chi pointed out that the West could always use another hero as the Hood was hardly the only evil haunting these parts. He owed it to Xialing to finish her fight and make sure that all of the Chinese immigrants got a fair chance. Kate agreed to go on another adventure and the two rode off into the sunset together as the Watcher narrated that as long as there were heroes who rode for justice, hope would always be on the horizon.

In the Nexus, the Watcher commented that this was another story that ended up better than it could have. However, the Watcher was confronted by the Incarnate, the Eminence and the Executioner. The Eminence declared that the happy ending was the result of the Watcher once again breaking his oath by interfering to save Jun-Fan. The Watcher swore an oath, but so did the others of his kind and they could no longer allow the Watcher's interferences to go unanswered. The Eminence blasted the Watcher against the wall of the Nexus, cracking it and sending three shards of the glass flying through space.

Cast[]

Non-Speaking Roles[]

The Watcher's Narrations[]

  • "The Old West. A frontier of endless possibility... and untold villainy. But often the most treacherous of places have a way of breeding the truest of heroes. In the Wild West, danger's always lurking just over the horizon. But there are still some heroes who ride right towards it to become a legend."
  • "Alternate realities. Parallel universes. You get it at this point. Small choices, big changes, etcetera. But, out in the farthest reaches of the Multiverse, well, things can get a little weird. Here, anything is possible. Really. Anything. Think less "What if?" and more "What the hell?" In this universe, Ultron was actually programmed for show tunes. But even in the Multiverse's most far-out worlds, one thing sadly remains a constant. Injustice. Shang-Chi's universe was no exception. Looking to escape the shadow of her father's tyranny, in this universe, Shang-Chi's sister, Xu Xialing, immigrated to the United States in the late 1860s, only to discover the American Dream was not what she'd been promised. Immigrants had become targets, thanks to a mysterious crime lord known as the Hood who realized he could cement his power by preying on the locals' fear of their new neighbors. But when Xialing saw this injustice firsthand, she alone sought out the Hood and fought back. Only never to be heard from again. And when rumors spread the Hood had taken Xialing and her neighbors' hostage, no one cared to look for them. Except Shang-Chi. Desperate to find his missing sister, he joined forces with Kate Bishop, a sharpshooter with her own bad blood against the Hood. Together, they became a frontier fable. But this tall tale was starting to sound more like a ghost story."
  • "Kwai Jun-Fan was inspired by Shang-Chi to be the hero of his own story. But tragedy can befall even the bravest of souls. But not this time. Sometimes even the bravest of heroes needs a little push."
  • "The Old West has always been a myth of endless adventure and new beginnings. But the truth was, at times, something darker. Still, one person's tragic fall is often just the origin story of a new hero's rise. And so long as there are heroes who ride for justice, hope will always be on the horizon."

Continuity and References to the Marvel Cinematic Universe[]

To be added

Trivia[]

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Gallery[]

Videos[]

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