| “ | Mi nombre es Don Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo. Y en nombre de Su Majestad, la reina de España, he venido a reclamar la fuente de la juventud. He oído vuestras leyendas. Tenéis miedo de esta tierra. Teméis su poder. La fuente de la juventud. Vuestro "lago". ¿El Lago Prohibido? | „ |
| ~ Rodrigo Gonzolo to Kahhori's Mohawk tribe. |
Don Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo is the main antagonist of "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", the sixth episode of the Season 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe animated anthology Disney+ series What If...?.
He is a Spanish Conquistador at the service of Queen Isabella I of Spain during the times of the pre-colonial America in a universe where the Tesseract landed on the Earth sometime before the 15th century after surviving Asgard's Ragnarök. By the time of the episode's events. Gonzolo and his Spanish Armed Forces are dispatched by Isabella and her court to find the legendary Fountain of Youth supposedly hidden in the New World, which is actually the Forbidden Lake hidden in America.
He was voiced by Gabriel Romero in his first villainous role.
History[]
Rodrigo Alphonso Gonzolo was presumably born around the early 15th century in Spain. Growing up, Gonzolo rose up through the ranks of the Spanish Empire's military until becoming a conquistador commander of the Spanish Armed Forces. He went on to become one of Queen Isabella I of Spain's most loyal servants, which led the Queen to dispatch him and his fleet to the New World in search of the legendary Fountain of Youth, which was said to be hidden in the Americas, unaware that the 'fountain' was actually the Forbidden Lake, a lake powered by the Tesseract, an Asgardian relic that found it way to Earth after Asgard's desutrction thanks to its Ragnarök.
Arriving in North America, Gonzolo and his men come across a Mohawk village, so they set it ablaze and captured its population. However, as he checks on his men rounding up all Mohawk villagers with hirs hose, Gonzolo spots the young Mohawk woman Kahhori and her younger brother Wáhta, so they run away and Gonzolo orders his men to chase them. Gonzolo's soldiers corner the two Mohawk siblings in the underground cave that houses the Forbidden Lake, where they capture Wáhta and seemingly kill Kahhori, shooting and knocking her into the Lake, unknowingly taking her to the Sky World. Meanwhile, Gonzolo presents himself to his prisoners and explains his reasons for coming to America before threatening a Mohawk woman with his pistol so she tells him where he can find the Forbidden Lake, but then his soldiers with a captured Wáhta come and inform him about their findings.
Glad to have found it, Gonzolo declares that they are before the Fountain of Youth and offers his men to jump into the Forbidden Lake so they can be immortal, but the soldiers who jump into the lake don't feel any effects and soon get dragged into the Sky World, despite Gonzolo's pleas for them to escape, failing to grab the last soldier's arm. Deeming the place as cursed and feeling that the Mohawk tricked them, Gonzolo orders his surviving men to chain the Mohawk villagers, take them as their prisoners and set course back to Spain, where they will sell the Mohawks as slaves. Unaware to Gonzolo, his men attack Kahhori and the Sky World's populace, leading Kahhori to kill them and master her powers to return to the Earth to save her people.
Gathering all his prisoners at the beach, Gonzolo prepares to have all of them shipped so they can go back home to Spain, being aboard in the same boat as Wáhta, but Kahhori suddenly arrives to rescue her people, leading Gonzolo to order his men to fire at the "sorceress" to no avail, as all of them are swatted away by Kahhori. Eager to fight back himself, Gonzolo jumps off his boat and points at Kahhori with his rifle, but ends up changing his mind and orders his men to shoot the cannons of their ships, which Kahhori repels until one cannoball knocks her out, much to Gonzolo's relish, approaching her with his sword to kill her himself, but then, the Sky World's populace led by Atahraks appears to fight the conquistadors. Gonzolo tries to attack them, but they effortlessly run over him, slowly stomp him and gradually sink him into the beach's sand as well as the rest of his men there. As Atahraks' people rescue Kahhori's tribe, Gonzolo grabs from her foot and tries to attack her, but Kahhori blasts him dead to finish him off once and for all.
Trivia[]
- Much like Kahhori and her tribe, Rodrigo Gonzolo is a completely original character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with no comic book counterpart, being an invention of the showrunners of What If...? given Marvel's permission for them to create new characters if a story sees it fit, which was the case in "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?" due to its original premise.
- Rodrigo Gonzolo's existence as a Spanish Conquistador who explores the Akwesasne region for the Fountain of Youth is a major deviation of real-world history. In real life, the conquistadores never went to the New York area but Florida in their search for the Fountain of Youth, not to mention that their most extensive conquests were in Central America and South America. According to Bradley on her X account, this happened in this alternate MCU reality because the Tesseract's creation of the Forbidden Lake led to rumors about it being the Fountain of Youth, prompting Spain to focus on the Akwesasne.
- This narrative decision, however, has received lots of criticism from some Spanish-speaking audiences, as the British and the French were the ones who reached out the Mohawk nation instead of the Spanish in real life, with many feeling that by making Gonzolo, his conquistadores and by extension Queen Isabella I of Spain the episode's villains, Marvel has "demonized" the Spanish when the British and the French were the ones who exterminated America's First Nations.
- "Gonzolo" is a variant of the common Spanish name "Gonzalo". Weirdly, Disney+'s subtitles refer to Gonzolo as Gonzalo, so whether this was a mistake from the streaming service or not is unknown. On her part, A.C. Bradley stated on her X account that she named Rodrigo Gonzolo after Rodrigo Baas, one of her friends and her most frequent collaborators.
