Last week, Marvel kicked off new animated series What If…? with a bit of social media marketing that immediately went viral. Ahead of Captain Carter’s debut in the premiere episode, Peggy took over the Captain America Twitter account, a move which proved surprisingly controversial. It got folks talking, though, so Marvel has repeated the trick in the run-up to episode 2.
Now, Black Panther is the star of the Guardians of the Galaxy Twitter.
The @Guardians account currently sports the display name “T’Challa Star-Lord”, while the profile picture has been changed to the animated cosmic version of the Wakandan royal. The switch-up was announced along with the release of a new poster, showcasing T’Challa in Peter Quill-like get-up. “T’Challa Star-Lord arrives in the next episode of Marvel Studios’ #WhatIf…?, streaming Wednesday on @DisneyPlus,” reads the caption to the poster, which you can check out below:
As this Twitter takeover reminds us, episode 2 asks the question: What if Yondu had abducted T’Challa from Earth instead of Quill, starting a chain of events that led to the future Black Panther’s fate drastically changing. For one thing, as his big grin in this poster shows, this Star-Lord variant of T’Challa will be much lighter and less weighed-down by responsibility than his usual self. This allowed Chadwick Boseman – with the much-missed actor having lent his voice to the animation – the chance to portray a very different version of his character.
We’ll have to see if this Twitter rebranding causes as much of a stir as the Captain America incident last week, but it seems unlikely. By now, fans should understand this is just a running promotional ploy to hype up the show and not a slight at any particular character. Presumably we can look forward to this continuing each week. For instance, look out for Peter Parker hijacking the Doctor Strange account in the near future.
What If…? continues this Wednesday, August 18th on Disney Plus.
