What If…? Sneak Peek: Cate Blanchett’s Hela Is Dealt a Different Punishment by Odin (Exclusive)

Matt Webb Mitovich
·2 min read
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What If…? Sneak Peek: Cate Blanchett’s Hela Is Dealt a Different Punishment by Odin (Exclusive)

It’s Hela on Earth in TVLine’s exclusive sneak peek from Episode 7 of Marvel’s What If…? Season 2, which hits Disney+ this Thursday, Dec. 28.

In the episode “What If… Hela Found the Ten Rings?,” Odin — having grown weary of his daughter’s bloodlust — opts to teach Hela a lesson by stripping her of her powers and banishing her to Earth.

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As seen in the sneak peek above, when Hela (voice again by Thor: Ragnarok‘s Cate Blanchett) makes her grand entrance in ancient China and first lays eyes on the Ten Rings, she realizes the full extent of her punishment when she goes to rock her signature move. Press play above to witness her amusing humbling.

“AC Bradley (who wrote Episodes 3, 4, 5 and 8) and I both love Ragnarok and Hela specifically,” says Matthew Chauncey, the writer of Episode 7 and well as 1-3 and 9, “but something that always struck us was how her dad did her kind of dirty in that movie compared to how he treated his sons.

“Think about it: When Thor starts acting a fool in his first movie, Odin sends him on a sort of cosmic time-out to Earth. But his daughter? Nope, he just locks her in Hel for all eternity and throws away the key,” Chauncey notes. “It got us thinking: How much of Hela’s villainy is a product of her own nature and how much of it was created by the way her father treated her? What would happen if instead of locking her in Hel, he banished her to Earth to teach her a lesson?”

This much we can share about the outcome: “Cate Blanchett really sunk her teeth into this version of Hela we have,” says Bryan Andrews, who directed Episodes 2-9.

Following “What If… Hela Found the Ten Rings?,” Season 2 of the animated anthology will wind down on Friday and Saturday with “What if… The Avengers Assembled in 1602?” and “What If… Strange Supreme Intervened?,” which together will pick up the Episode 5 cliffhanger.

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