‘What If…? – Season 2’ Episode Seven Recap: “What If…Hela Fought the Ten Rings?”

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for episode seven of What If…? – Season 2.

We’re now at the tail end of our latest adventure in the multiverse with The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), with only three episodes left in What If..? – Season 2. As certain story elements were teased for a massive crossover finale with the inclusion of medieval variants of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) plucking Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) from her timeline, with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) also appearing out of nowhere in Kahhori’s (Devery Jacobs) timeline, today’s episode goes back to its purely self-contained roots. 

Episode seven of What If…? – Season 2 imagines if Thor’s main storyline happened with Hela (Cate Blanchett), who is cast out of Asgard by Odin (Jeff Bergman) and crash lands in medieval China as a result. Powerless, Hela is quickly met by Xu Wenwu (Feodor Chin, replacing Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose Ten Rings gives Hela a newfound purpose. With her powers removed from her soul, Hela wants to take control of the Ten Rings to lift her helmet and play in Wenwu’s game to gain his trust. 

This plan doesn’t work, and Hela is quickly attacked by Wenwu’s soldiers. She successfully escapes his palace with the aid of Morris (that’s right, the Morris!), who guides her to the kingdom of Ta Lo. From there, she meets Jiayi (Lauren Tom), who attempts to teach Hela that there are better ways to defeat her enemies than fighting and war. But at that moment, Hela escapes Heimdall’s (Idris Elba) view, and he alerts Odin about Wenwu’s Ten Rings. 

Odin believes Wenwu shouldn’t own the Ten Rings and travels to China to destroy Wenwu’s operation and take the rings from him. Hela, who went from the Goddess of Death in Thor: Ragnarok to a redeemable path like Loki took in his Disney+ series, teams up with Wenwu to bring Odin’s empire down and hope for a better world. The action scene is simple in its execution, but the artistry behind it is beyond compare. I’ve mentioned this already in previous recaps, but the jump in quality from its animation work between seasons one and two is staggering. I rewatched some of the episodes from season one, and the animation is particularly stilted, while Season 2 retains the same style but with more movement and eye-catching images. 

Sure, it’s great that 85% of the main MCU cast went on to reprise their roles in What If…? but this isn’t live-action, and it seems that Marvel has finally realized this in its second season. The moment when Hela regains her helmet, and her suit transforms itself from black to white, a bit like the redemption arc Gandalf had in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it’s such a potent moment of visual storytelling that it’s hard not to root for her ultimately. 

Odin asks Hela what made her transition from the Goddess of Death to, perhaps, hope, to which she replies: “I gave peace a chance.” With Hela so hellbent on destroying the world and taking it over, she never realized that there is a better and more fulfilling life (and world) out there if peace should be considered. This ultimately happens when she stumbles upon Ta Lo and learns the Tao of Peace through her training with Jiayi. Instead of learning how to fight (to which she already knows how to do, and brilliantly, I might add), she learns how to hone in her inner peace, allowing her to become a better person. 

The episode’s most powerful scene, not explored in Thor: Ragnarok, is a flashback between a young Hela and Odin, foreshadowing her dark path to overthrow his kingdom and unleash Ragnarok. In that moment, we realize how hopeful of a child she is and how she was unfortunately misguided by a father who couldn’t see past his own ambitions. The episode’s end sees Hela lead Wenwu into victory during the moment when Thanos snaps Gamora from her homeworld. We don’t know what exactly happened, but it looks like there’s another timeline in which Thanos was erased from existence, and the events of Avengers: Infinity War didn’t happen. All’s well that ends well…but what’s going on in 1602?? Let’s find out together tomorrow. 

The sixth episode of What If…? – Season 2 is now available to stream on Disney+.