A New MCU Superhero Team Perfectly Pays Off A 6 Year Old Marvel Joke

Warning: This article contains spoilers for What If…? season 2.

The introduction of a new superhero team in What If…? season 2 paid off a six-year-old MCU joke, but may have made 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok even darker. What If…? season 2 premiered on December 22, 2023, and has explored several new worlds and variant characters across the MCU’s multiverse. 1988’s Avengers team, a Hulk version of Happy Hogan, the Tesseract-empowered Kahhori and martial artist Hela have all been introduced in What If…? season 2, but the series has also featured more familiar iterations of several popular MCU characters. This included Korg, Miek and Guardians of the Galaxy member Groot, helping to finally pay off a hilarious and age-old MCU joke.

What If…? season 2, episode 1, “What If… Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?,” focused primarily on a hardened version of Karen Gillan’s Nebula, the daughter of Thanos who, in this timeline, joined the Nova Corps on Xandar. After Nova Prime revealed her betrayal, Nebula formed a rag-tag team to bring her down, enlisting Howard the Duck, Groot, Korg and Miek. The latter pair debuted in the live-action MCU in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, joining Chris Hemsworth’s Thor on his quest to save Asgard from his evil sister, Hela, and their reappearance in What If…? season 2 allowed them to deliver the punchline to a joke started in the Phase 3 film.

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What If…?’s Rock, Paper, Scissors Punchline Explained

Back in Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi’s Korg, a being made up entirely of rocks, introduced himself with an ice-breaking joke referring to the game rock, paper, scissors. Noting that Thor didn’t need to be afraid of him, “unless [he’s] made of scissors,” Korg began a joke that would finally get paid off in What If…? season 2’s premiere episode. In Howard the Duck’s casino on Xandar, Korg, Miek and Groot play a game of rock, paper, scissors, with Korg representing rock, Groot’s wood anatomy representing paper, and Miek’s bladed hands representing scissors. Seeing this trio team up to battle Nova Prime was an excellent way to resolve Korg’s Ragnarok joke.

Ragnarok’s Rock, Paper, Scissors Theory Made The Thor Sequel Deeper

Making a rock, paper, scissors joke was the perfect way to bring the obscure Korg into the MCU’s live-action storylines, especially alongside the knife-handed Miek. However, one theory posed by Reddit user dak0tah suggests that this joke could have darker connotations for the overarching narrative of Thor: Ragnarok. In the 2017 film, Korg seemingly kills Miek – though Miek does come back to life – in an expression of rock defeating scissors, and Korg himself was defeated by paper, as he didn’t make enough pamphlets for his revolution. However, this game could be expanded to the rest of Thor: Ragnarok’s plot, specifically the battle between Thor, Hela and Surtur.

In the opening moments of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor is able to defeat Surtur and take his powerful crown, while Surtur, later on, proves himself capable of defeating Hela by obliterating Asgard. However, Hela demonstrates her strength in not only defeating the forces of Asgard, but also bringing Thor to his knees, besting him on multiple occasions throughout the film. This cyclical storyline places Thor, Hela and Surtur as the representations of rock, paper and scissors, with each being able to defeat each other. Nevertheless, the return of the rock, paper, scissors gag in What If…? season 2 was a great resolution to Ragnarok’s joke.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​New episodes of What If…? season 2 release daily at 3am ET/12am PT on Disney+.