Sorry, for crapping out on Friday content last week. At this point it would probably be best to assume I’m going to be missing a day here and there until I start feeling like myself again. Anyway, last week I started in on The Watcher Wave of Marvel Legends with Captain Carter, and today I’m going to check out T’Challa as Star Lord!

As I mentioned last time, I couldn’t get into the What If? series on Disney+, which these figures are based on. I had it on in the background while I was cleaning up around the house, and there were only a couple episodes that inspired me to sit down and watch for a while. I honestly thought the T’Challa Star Lord episode had some interesting ideas, but it still didn’t keep me hooked for the whole thing. Did I mention that I mainly bought this wave of figures for The Watcher BAF? Well, Captain Carter turned out great, so let’s see if the same can be said for T’Challa here.

So, straightaway, I’ll say that I like the stylized look of this figure. Captain Carter’s design works fine in with my MCU or comic based figures, but with T’Challa here, there’s no mistaking that this is intended to be an animated, or at the very least stylized comic-based figure. The limbs are a little over-contoured, and the whole figure has a clean and shiny vibe about him that screams modern animation. I also dig the colors here. The purple vest with gold accents looks very sharp, and contrasts nicely with the gray suit and brown high boots. The whole costume design is pretty damn cool, and has a polished futuristic vibe that I think works brilliantly. It’s definitely a departure from Peter Quill’s rough-and-tumble look. Unfortunately, all of that also makes this figure feel like a one-off, but I’ll discuss that more at the end.

Likewise, the portrait is an animated style through and through. I love it when viewed from the front, but in profile, I think they exaggerated the contours a bit too much. Even still,, it’s a well put together sculpt with some very clean paint, and I’d say the good definitely outweighs the bad here, and this is a nice animated homage to the Chadwick Bozeman likeness.

You also get a second head, with T’Challa wearing the Star Lord helmet. The helmet is clearly based on the MCU design worn by Peter Quill, with the main difference being the purple lenses in the goggles, which match the figure’s coat, and the gray and gold matching the rest of the outfit. It looks pretty snazzy.

You only get one set of hands here, and they are sculpted to hold the included pistols. These hands are pretty big, and they make me wish Hasbro had included a pair of fists with the figure as well. Come to think of it, I also wish the figure had tabs on the hips to holster his pistols like the Peter Quill figure had. Like the helmet, the pistol sculpts are based off of the MCU designs carried by Quill, and these too have been treated to a purple, gray, and gold paint job to accessorize them with his outfit. And once again, they look very snazzy!

I like the way this figure turned out, but it really doesn’t have a place in my collection, and I probably would have passed on it if it weren’t for The Watcher’s noggin being included in the package. I think Hasbro did a fine job here, but with the heavily animated style, he’s just going to look out of place on whatever shelf I put him. Indeed, he looks like he’s from a different action figure line completely. Hell, I couldn’t even think of any other figures to put him with, as I usually do a group shot at the end of the review. I kind of wish they had bridged the aesthetics gap a bit more with this figure, like they did with Captain Carter, but then I think a lot of what makes this figure as interesting as it is would have been lost. In the end, I suppose I’ll just group the What If? figures together in a corner and them all hang as a group.