Snark Industries

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Snark Industries makes its first jump into live-action with the Season 7 premiere of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a time-travel episode that lands in 1931 as the team chases the Chronicoms into the past. The full plot gets walked through, from the reactivated Coulson LMD to the face-stealing Chronicoms to the central twist that the real target was never FDR at all, but a Malick whose actions lead to the birth of Hydra, and by extension, S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. Comic roots are traced through Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors run and its focus on the Malick family, with the episode title nodding to the 2002 Captain America: The New Deal limited series and the Chronicoms reaching all the way back to a 1966 issue of Thor. Both hosts come in admittedly behind on the show, but both walk away pleasantly surprised, calling it one of the stronger episodes they can remember while reserving final judgment until the two-parter wraps up.

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New York, 1931. The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have followed the Chronicoms back in time, and the mission is simple in stakes if not in execution: stop the robotic aliens from erasing S.H.I.E.L.D. before it ever exists. A reactivated Coulson LMD wakes into a world of speakeasies and Prohibition, the Chronicoms steal the faces of local police to blend in, and everything seems to point toward an assassination attempt on FDR, the man credited as the spark behind S.H.I.E.L.D.'s creation. A visit to Patton Oswalt's Koenig and a tense party set the stage for the hit, only for the team to discover the real target is Freddy Malick, a low-level worker whose survival is the thread that leads to the founding of Hydra. To save S.H.I.E.L.D., the team has to save Hydra, and that wild contradiction is left hanging as the first half of a two-part story.

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Snark Industries wraps up Eyes of Wakanda with its most MCU-connected episode yet, set against the backdrop of the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1896. The full plot gets walked through, from Prince Tafari and veteran war dog Kuda's mission to recover a familiar vibranium axe to the arrival of a Black Panther from the year 2296 with a very specific request and very little time to explain it. The time travel logic at the heart of the episode sparks the liveliest debate of the series, with one host finding the broken ruleset impossible to overlook and the other genuinely enjoying the episode while freely admitting to negotiating with the material to make it work. Comic roots are traced through the War Dogs, Wakandan isolationism via the Ta-Nehisi Coates and Reginald Hudlin runs, and the Horde itself, which turns out to be lifted from Neil Gaiman's 2006 Eternals miniseries. The episode also serves as a natural full-series retrospective, with both hosts landing on Eyes of Wakanda Episode 3 as their shared favorite of the run.

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Ethiopia, 1896. The Italo-Ethiopian War is raging, and in the middle of it, two Wakandans are on a retrieval mission. Prince Tafari is young and eager, Kuda is experienced and skeptical, and the vibranium axe they are after is buried somewhere in the chaos of an active battlefield. They find it, and they are immediately run off the road by an invisible force. The woman responsible is a Black Panther from 2296, and she has crossed centuries to deliver one message: put the axe back. The world she comes from is being consumed by a horde of creatures, and the only chain of events that leads to a world strong enough to survive it runs directly through Killmonger finding that axe in a museum centuries from now. Tafari and Kuda fight their way back to return it, and the episode closes on exactly the museum scene the future Black Panther needed them to create.

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Snark Industries rides into the Old West for What If...? Season 3's 1872 episode, and it lands as the clear favorite of everything watched on the show so far. The full plot gets walked through, from the opening bell-shooting setup that brings in the Ten Rings to Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop tracking the Hood across a ruined town, a ghost train powered by Stark technology, and the gut-punch reveal that the Hood is Xia Ling, Shang-Chi's own sister. Comic roots run deep here, with ties to the 2015 Secret Wars event, the 1872 limited series by Gerry Duggan, the Master of Kung Fu limited series, and Brian K. Vaughan's 2002 Hood origin run all getting their due. Easter eggs are plentiful, including Jun Fan as a timeline-appropriate Iron Fist, Throg and Alligator Loki spotted in Uatu's hallway, Stark Munitions, Hammer Steel, and Cross Manufacturing all named on signage, and a show-tunes Ultron that really has no business working as well as it does. The episode also delivers a meaningful piece of Watcher lore as Uatu's interference draws consequences from the Eminence, setting up something bigger down the line.

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The American West, 1872. Shang-Chi is hunting a villain known as the Hood, who has taken his sister Xia Ling. Riding alongside Kate Bishop, and, eventually, Kwai Jun-Fan. With a tip from John Walker, the trail leads to a ghost town with one survivor and a story about a phantom train. They find it, board it, and discover a carriage full of entranced passengers under the control of Sonny Burch, a smooth-talking associate of the Hood who uses a hypnotic pocket watch to keep them compliant. The Hood's stronghold is at the end of the line, and the confrontation there ends with the reveal that the Hood is Xia Ling herself, corrupted and beyond reason. Shang-Chi refuses to fight her, kneeling in defiance until Jun Fan rings the train bell and breaks the trance over the other passengers. Kate takes the shot, and in Xia Ling's final moments, the real her surfaces long enough to say goodbye. Uatu, watching from a distance, flicks a pair of goons off the top of the train to protect Jun Fan, and for breaking his oath, the Eminence calls him to account.

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Snark Industries tackles what both hosts agree is the most confusing entry in the What If...? series so far, and neither of them is especially thrilled about it. The full plot gets walked through as clearly as the episode itself allows, from Loki performing Shakespeare in front of Queen Hela and Thor to the cascading chaos of a reality-tearing rift, Captain Carter’s reluctant heroism, and the eventual reveal that Steve Rogers is the forerunner responsible for all of it after accidentally striking the Time Stone with his shield during the Battle of Wakanda. Comic connections to Neil Gaiman’s 2003 Marvel 1602 storyline are noted, though the episode takes enough liberties that the parallels only go so far. Easter eggs get their due, including the Hulk wearing an Iron Man Mark 1 mask as the Man in the Iron Mask, Loki’s Shakespearean performance as a callback to Thor Ragnarok, and the now familiar sight of Strange Supreme appearing at the end to recruit yet another hero. Personal thoughts are in rare alignment, with both hosts landing firmly in the subpar camp, united in their appreciation for the costume design and equally united in their complete bafflement at nearly everything else.

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In an alternate universe set in the year 1602, Captain Peggy Carter is summoned by that world’s Scarlet Witch to help prevent the reality from collapsing in on itself. She arrives to find familiar heroes and villains transplanted into the early 17th century, serving under Queen Hela... until a rift tears open and pulls Hela through it, leaving Carter blamed by Thor and declared a fugitive.

Forced to operate outside the law, Carter enlists the era’s Tony Stark to engineer a solution and teams up with a Robin Hood-styled Steve Rogers and his band of outlaws. Using a Time Stone-powered gauntlet built by Stark, she uncovers the source of the collapsing timelines: Rogers himself, who cracked the Time Stone during a battle with Thanos in the present day and was sent back to 1602 without his memories. Restoring the reality comes at a personal cost, requiring Carter to say goodbye to yet another version of Steve Rogers.

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Snark Industries takes another detour into the What If...? multiverse, this time landing in 15th century North America for one of the more ambitious episodes of the series. The full plot gets walked through, from the Tesseract's arrival on Earth during Ragnarok to Kahhori's transformation in the Skyland and her return to drive the conquistadors back to Spain with extreme prejudice. MCU tie-ins are minimal by design given the branch universe setup, though a late appearance by a familiar Sorcerer Supreme raises some interesting questions about where Kahhori's story might eventually lead. The real comic connection runs in an unusual direction, with Kahhori proving popular enough to make the jump from screen to page in a 2024 Marvel publication, making her a rare case of a What If character becoming part of the 616 universe. Personal thoughts land broadly positive on both sides, with the main sticking point being the creative liberties taken with what the Tesseract actually does, and a shared appreciation for the episode's visual ambition even if it falls short of the Eyes of Wakanda benchmark set just before it.

Dive in at https://www.snarkindustriespod.com/post/1493-06-01-what-if-season-2-episode-6-kahhori-reshaped-the-world

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In a radical departure from the established chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the destruction of Asgard during a premature Ragnarök forces the Tesseract from its ancestral vault and onto a collision course with Earth centuries before the modern era. Rather than being safely recovered by Norse worshippers in Tønsberg, the artifact settles at the bottom of a lake in the territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in pre-colonial North America. Over several generations, the Space Stone’s cosmic energy bleeds into the surrounding environment, transforming a local body of water into the "Forbidden Lake", a portal to "Sky World," a vibrant pocket dimension where displaced Mohawk people have cultivated a thriving, immortal civilization powered by the stars. This divergence fundamentally alters the course of human history, removing a primary Infinity Stone from the reach of 20th-century geopolitical actors and placing it in the hands of a sovereign indigenous population.

The narrative follows Kahhori, a young Mohawk woman whose village is raided by Spanish Conquistadores pursuing the myth of the Fountain of Youth. While her and her younger brother, Wáhta, are being pursued, Kahhori is shot and falls into the Forbidden Lake, she is transported to Sky World and imbued with the raw energy of the Space Stone. Unlike the inhabitants of Sky World who have chosen a life of eternal peace, Kahhori recognizes that her newfound abilities, ranging from spatial manipulation to telekinesis, must be used to protect her people from the existential threat of colonial invasion. Her journey leads to a spectacular confrontation with the Spanish Crown, where she demonstrates that the "New World" is defended by powers far exceeding European steel and musketry. This act of sovereign defense not only secures the future of the Haudenosaunee but also attracts the attention of the multiversal traveler Doctor Strange Supreme, signaling Kahhori’s ascension as a major player in the wider Multiverse.

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