While the first two seasons of What If…? bopped all over the multiverse, the episodes by and large featured Marvel Studio’s core Avengers. It’s been explained that there were good reasons for the limited roster of characters and the promise was made that Season 3 would expand on said roster. If a look at the series during Marvel Animation’s D23 presentation is anything to go on, the promise has been kept.
According to various outlets in attendance at the presentation, What If…? Season 3 will feature Shang-Chi, Moon Knight, Ironheart and the White Vision among its cast of characters.
Following the conclusion of the first season of X-Men ’97, Marvel Studios is riding high and once again feeling the love from fans to which they’d grown accustomed. With two more projects from the studio’s newly created Marvel Animation banner due out in 2024, fans have plenty of new content ahead; however, there’s also work being done on future seasons of not only X-Men ’97 but also the studio’s first canonical animated series, What If…?.
The second season of What If…? was warmly received by fans and largely declared an improvement over the studio’s first effort. A first look at Season 3 teased not only that the studio had plans to include several characters who so far had been off limits but also had already done quite a bit of work on it causing fans to wonder how quickly the studio might be able to push it out. In an interview with Comic Book, Executive Producer and Marvel Studios Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation Brad Winderbaum shed some light on the studio’s progress with the project.
“What If…? Season Three is — that might be the one that comes out next, in terms of animation,” said Winderbaum, before calling the project “the culmination of a trilogy.” While that’s hardly a definitive statement, it’s interesting to hear it described that way as it could indicate the third season will be the last.
Though Winderbaum did stop short of revealing exactly when Season 3 could hit Disney Plus, it does sound as though it could be sooner rather than later. “We’re actually close to completing that one, and it really feels like you’ve gone through this amazing emotional experience with Uatu, in a way that’s… What’s great about The Watcher is that he presents himself as uncaring, and cold, and just an observer, but he cares more than everybody [and] anybody. That is on full display in that third season.”
Could What If…? Season 3 find its way on to Marvel Studios’ 2025 streaming slate? It certainly seems possible at this point and if that is the plan, fans could learn all about it during Marvel’s presentation at D23 this August.
Following the Season 2 finale of What If…? on Disney Plus on December 30th, Marvel released a “Look Into the Future” feature for the third season of the animated series. Though no release date for the new season was given, the feature ended with the promise that the new season was “coming soon.” Soon is, of course, relative and with all the changes behind the scenes at Marvel Studios following Bob Iger’s return as CEO of Disney, release dates have never been more uncertain than they are now. In an interview with Comic Book’s Phase Zero podcast, What If…? director and executive producer Bryan Andrews echoed that sentiment while discussing the potential timeline for the release of Season 3.
While working hard to make no promises he couldn’t keep, Andrews revealed that the best fans could hope for is a late-2024 debut of What If…? Season 3. “They move stuff around,” said Andrews of Marvel Studios. “Every time I thought it was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be this!’ It’s like, ‘It’s going to move a little bit!’ So, even I would hate to say something and have people’s hopes come up and then have them be dashed because of the beast of production and when things move around,” he explained. “I thought that it could come out at the end of the year in 2024 possibly, but that would be tight. There’s some other group of people that are masterminding when things [release] and they’re moving things on the board, and I don’t know where we exist on that at this moment.”
So while it’s entirely possible that Marvel Studios rolls What If…? out in 2024, it was not listed on the slate sent out to press in late 2023. However, as Andrews explained, the slate is only the slate until it isn’t and fans should start getting used to the idea that dance.
The second season of Marvel Studios canonical animated adventure, What If…?, took viewers on another trip around the Multiverse, exploring alternate realities where things play out a little–or a lot–differently than on the Scared Timeline. Marvel’s second go-round with the idea produced a stronger season overall, though occasionally the creators weren’t quite as far “out of the box” as they could have been. With all 9 episodes now streaming on Disney Plus, we took a stab at ranking them all…
9. What If…Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?
Unfortunately, like its predecessor from Season 1, “What If…Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?” fails to diverge enough from the film that inspired it. While there were a few changes, including having the Red Room play a role in the episode, it’s still just Captain America: The Winter Soldier but with Peggy in Steve’s boots. Peggy’s given much more to do in the two-part season finale and the character would be better served with more original ideas. Let’s hope we don’t have to see “What If…Captain Carter Started a Civil War?” in Season 3.
“What If…Strange Supreme Intervened?” featured some really cool concepts. The multiversal Sanctum Infinitum. Universe Killers. The Forge. However, the concepts fell victim to lackluster execution and the Universe Killers turned out to be a bunch of characters we’ve all seen before. While this episode certainly feels like a little preview into how Avengers: Secret Wars might adapt the Battleworld concept into the MCU, here’s to hoping Michael Waldron’s script includes at least a couple of characters we haven’t already spent a bunch of time with. Please, stop including the Black Order in things.
Marvel’s film noir episode, the heavy-handed Blade Runner vibes in “What If…Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?” hide some of the blemishes present in the story itself. With the opportunity to diverge entirely from James Gunn‘s Nova Corps mall cops and create something more aligned with the comics, the episode sails along in mediocrity with half-baked ideas. No episode of the season has a more “could, woulda, shoulda” feel than this.
6. What If…Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster?
The “Lost Gamora” episode of Season 1 made its long-awaited debut and did not disappoint. Part The Running Man and part Death Race, the episode reminds the audience that no matter where he is in the Multiverse, Tony Stark is a force to be reckoned with and one of the MCU’s true heroes. It could have benefited from straying a little further from the events of Thor: Ragnarok but it still landed well.
As the creators of the episode pointed out, sometimes a story just needs to be fun. And there’s no doubt that “What If…The Avengers Assembled in 1602?” is a lot of fun. It’s fun because the voice cast is having fun–Jon Favreau really leaned into Sir Harold “The Happy” Hogan and Paul Rudd is always a treat–and because it features some great moments. It lacks the bigger bang of the 2003 Neil Gaiman limited series that inspired it but that may boil down to the inability to include some of the characters and ideas explored there. Still, it’s entertaining and gave a little more insight into the idea of Incursions, reminding us of the possibility that any of these realities–and the characters that inhabit them–could return down the road.
4. What If…Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?
Alternatively titled “What If…Yondu Did the Job Ego Hired Him For?”, this episode takes a pretty sweet left turn and explores an alternate reality where there came a day unlike any other when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat. The all-new, all-different Avengers that assemble in the episode are a fun gang (it’s great to see Bill Foster and hear Lawrence Fishburn!) and there’s a wonderful theme present about the true nature of a hero, in this cast Peter Quill. While you could call into question why some of the characters were included at all–will Marvel Studios ever tell a cool Mar-Vell story?–this is a great example of the type of stories What If…? can deliever.
If “What If…Strange Supreme Intervened?” is an example of an episode with a great concept that didn’t work well in execution, “What If…Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” is an example of an episode with a ridiculous concept that was executed to perfection. There’s no reason this episode should have worked as well as it did…but it did and it was a blast. Favreau’s willingness to go all in on the crazy as The Freak deserves praise as does the work done by Sam Rockwell in his return as Justin Hammer.
It’s hard to imagine how an episode like “What If…Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?” can exist in the same season as something as creative as “What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings?”. It’s especially hard when the beginning of the episode seems to be stepping in the same wrong direction of the Carter story by putting Hela in Thor’s unworthy shoes; however, it takes a hard left turn and tells one of the best stories in the anthology to date. It also has produced an alternate reality as different as any the series has created short of the one in which Kahhori lives. This type of story is why the studio should continue to produce more seasons of What If…? but only if they take care to curate them in the way they did here.
The best episode of the season and of the series to date, “What If…Kahhori Shaped the World?” proves what’s possible when creativity is unleashed. Unrestrained by trying to rhyme with any beats from any particular MCU story before it, the episode introduced the beautiful Mohawk Skyworld, explored the nature of the power of the Space Stone and gave the MCU its first original hero in Wolf Clan member Kahhori. With another season of What If…? on the docket, here’s to hoping the wonderful reception this episode received from fans inspires more stories of its kind.
The penultimate episode of Marvel Studios animated streaming series What If…? saw Peggy Carter transported to 1602 where she joined a small collection of familiar faces in solving the mystery behind an Incursion that threatened their universe. Inspired by Neil Gaiman’s 2003 limited series, the episode had its fair share of cool moments that didn’t quite coalesce into the banger it could have been. Still, “What If…The Avengers Assembled in 1602” is a fun episode that pays homage to one of Marvel Comics’ more entertaining alternate universes and one of fiction’s most imaginative authors. And according to the creators of the series, finding a way to work Gaiman’s 1602 into the series has been a priority for some time.
Director and Executive Producer Bryan Andrews revealed that the episode is one that had been in development for quite some time though the team wasn’t quite sure where it would fit. “[We] needed to find the right time to do it,” said Andrews. “It’s so fun to see such different versions of these characters—Loki and Happy are true highlights in this episode.” It turns out that one of the reasons Loki was such a highlight is that writer AC Bradley had her own agenda for star Tom Hiddleston, who voiced the character in the episode. “Ha! Honestly, this whole thing was just my sneaky ploy to see Tom Hiddleston do Hamlet,” said Bradley. “He’s one of the best Shakespearean actors alive, and it was so cool to see him perform Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy off-book.” All jokes aside, Bradley explained that the episode truly came together because of one simple truth: there was a good story to tell.
All storytelling, from the first cave drawings to the modern cinematic universes, is about connection, asking your audience: ‘Is this your story, too?’ The same holds true when adapting beloved storylines and IP. I first seek out the human story—the heart. The world of 1602 is one of chaos and confusion with our MCU heroes trapped in an alternate history. The burning questions are: How did they end up here? How can they restore their world?
AC Bradley
Outside of being full of the potential Bradley described, writer Ryan Little also pointed out that there was another factor involved in choosing to adapt Gaiman’s comic: it was just plain fun. “I’ll always remember the first time I read Neil Gaiman’s original 1602 [Marvel comics] series in high school,” said Little. “We filled this episode with 1602 iterations of characters from across the MCU to share with everyone that same fun Neil created when first exploring Elizabethan Marvel in his original run.” And if nothing else, the creators found the fun in 1602.
All episodes of What If…? are now streaming on Disney Plus.
In 2003, author Neil Gaiman’s eight-issue limited series, 1602, reimagined the existence of a couple dozen Marvel Comics heroes and villains in Elizabethan England. Make no mistake, while it was fun and won an award or two, the series was no critical darling. While it hit the mark with readers and ultimately spawned three sequels, critics were split on Gaiman’s first work for Marvel since he wrote Marvelman in the early 1990s. In fact, Comics Bulletin’s Cody Dolan described the series as a “glorified What If…? series” that was neither “revolutionary” nor “groundbreaking.” Unfortunately for Marvel Studios, their attempt to adapt that very same series into their own animated What If…? series is even less revolutionary.
This is certainly not to say that there’s no fun to be had in Episode 8, “What If…The Avengers Assembled in 1602?”; in fact, it’s rather loaded with solid performances, fun one-liners and even the return of The Freak. However, despite all the magic at the disposal of Wanda Merlin, who is revealed to be responsible for bringing Haley Atwell’s Captain Carter to the 1602 universe, the episode fails to capture even the limited magic of Gaiman’s original and oft-derided series.
Unfortunately, a collection of moments does not a good episode make. And so not Jon Favreau’s Sir Harold “The Happy” Hogan, nor Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, nor even Tom Hiddelston’s Loki doing Hamlet can find the right additive recipe to make the episode nearly as engaging as Gaiman’s comics. In the end, it feels as though the 1602 episode was one that the creators of What If…? were determined to shoehorn into the series from its inception.
Despite the lack of creative chutzpah apparent in it (to be fair, it’s likely that many of the characters that made the comic book series so entertaining were not available to the creators), the episode does come tantalizingly close to entangling the animated series in the larger ongoing issues that predominate the Multiverse Saga. Though it’s not explicitly stated, the presence of Steve Rogers “Hood”–once again the Man Out of Time–in 1602 is causing an Incursion. And, of course, there’s the much more axiomatic premise that no matter where or when these stories take place, Marvel’s core heroes remain Marvel’s core heroes. And as the Multiverse Saga approaches its swan song, “What If…The Avengers Assembled in 1602?” reminds us that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can assemble anywhere and anywhen.
In the most intriguing episode of What If…? Season 2 to date, Episode 7, “What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings?” explores an alternate path for the Goddess of Death. Rather than imprisoning his daughter in Hel, Odin banishes here to Earth where she meets Xu Wenwu, discovers who she truly is and becomes a champion of peace and freedom across the galaxy. It’s a wonderful episode that fully embraces the true nature of What If…? and as the cherry on top, it’s elevated by Cate Blanchett’s return to the role.
Blanchett drew wide-ranging praise for slaying the role of the deranged and bloodthirsty firstborn of Odin in Thor: Ragnarok and does nothing here other than add to an already great character. As you might imagine, in an animated series where the stars who brought characters such as Captain America, Iron Man and Black Widow to life aren’t part of the voice cast, the creators of What If…? were thrilled to have an actress of Blanchett’s caliber on board. “I mean, we got Cate Blanchett! And she’s amazing.” exclaimed director and executive producer Bryan Andrews when sharing his excitement for the episode.
Andrews’ excitement was shared by Matthew Chauncey, who took over writing duties for the episode. “We’re all such huge fans of her work, obviously, who isn’t?“, asked Chauncey. Chauncey went on to explain that the genesis of the episode came not only from loving what Blanchett’s Hela accomplished in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok but also from wondering why Odin treated his daughter so much more harshly than his sons.
AC Bradley and I both love Ragnarok and Hela specifically, 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. 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?
Matthew Chanuncy
The result is an episode that creates one arguably the most interesting alternate universes introduced in the animated streaming series. By setting the divergence point one thousand years before Thor’s Sacred Timeline banishment, the episode’s butterfly effect becomes nearly as exciting to ponder as the Asgardian-Ten Rings alliance formed during it.
The first 8 episodes of Season 2 of What If…? are now streaming on Disney Plus with the season finale set to debut at 12 AM PST/3 AM EST.
Derivation is the fundamental underlying concept of What If…?. In both the comic book series and the streaming series it inspired, stories are spawned by imagining an alternate history of a familiar character whose path diverged at some point. That point of divergence–or Nexus Point–begets an entirely new universe on an entirely new timeline. And it also begets an entirely new set of consequences. To that end, Season 2 of What If…? may not have a more intriguing installment than Episode 7, “What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings?”.
Set within the once-hidden history of Asgard that was revealed in Thor: Ragnarok, “What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings?” creates a new scenario in which rather than banishing his sanguinary daughter to Hel, Odin casts her out down to Midgard. The scene unfolds parallel to the more familiar banishment of Thor (as seen in director Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film) right down to the spell the Allfather places on Hela’s signature helm. Make no mistake, this decision sets the episode on the precipice of becoming a boringly derivative adventure where Hela simply follows in the footsteps of the Sacred Timeline’s Thor (watch Episode 5, “What If…Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?” if that’s your thing); however, writer Matt Chauncey‘s creative choices allow for a wonderfully bold new adventure to unfold on Earth…and beyond.
By setting the episode roughly one thousand years before the events of Thor, Chauncey opened the door for Hela, one of Marvel’s most audacious villains, to cross paths with someone nearly as ruthless as her: Xu Wenwu. Awestruck by the now powerless Asgardian’s will, Wenwu proposes an alliance that would see Hela join him in protecting the people of Earth. Clearly uncomfortable with the idea, Hela flees Wenwu’s compound and-with the help of the dijiang Morris–finds her way to Ta Lo where one of its Protectors, Jiayi, helps her break free from Odin’s conditioning and break free to walk her own path and regain her crown. Once reunited with Wenwu the result is hardly what one would expect of the two characters from the Sacred Timeline. Rather than amplify each other’s destructive qualities, Hela and Wenwu choose to become champions of peace and, after defeating Odin, join with Asgard to help rid the universe of callous warlords and conquerors.
What’s put forth on-screen during the episode is worthy enough; however, what’s possible within this new alternate universe created by the divergence is equally fascinating. As the original change to the familiar story ripples throughout time, a fascinating cascade of changes emerges. With Odin storming across the galaxy liberating those who are held down, is Thor ever born? And if he is, it’s highly unlikely his journey would have much in common with his Sacred Timeline counterpart. Given that the Asgardian-Ten Rings alliance is seen charging at Thanos and a young Gamora, it would seem unlikely that the Mad Titan’s quest for the Infinity Stones would ever happen. And since in the Sacred Timeline Gamora and Shang-Chi are the same age and given Wenwu’s partnership with Hela and his lack of interest in seizing the power of Ta Lo for himself, there’s probably no Shang-Chi waiting for his own adventure. Much as the episode allowed Hela to explore her true nature, it also fully embraces the true nature of the premise of What If…?. One change leads to a new one and each new action leads to another until familiar characters exist in an entirely unfamiliar universe. And now, as happened on occasion in the comics, the streaming series has created an alternate universe worthy of further exploration.
What If….? Season 2 will stream new episodes daily through December 30th.
In what was inarguably their most innovative and inspired creative choice, the team behind What If…? produced an entire episode set in Kanien’kehá:ka and featuring members of the Mohawk Wolf Clan including the MCU’s first original hero, Kahhori. An episode that features the kind of unbridled creativity that helped make Marvel’s publishing house known as the House of Ideas, “What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World?” was an achievement four years in the making that required a vast collaborative effort. The end result is an episode with not only original characters but also an original, in-universe mythology rooted in the culture of the First Nations’ people. In an official production brief, executive producer and episode director Bryan Andrews and writer Ryan Little provided some insight into the creation “What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World?”.
The episode imagines a universe in which the Tesseract fell to Earth from Asgard and shattered upon impact allowing the Space Stone inside to imbue a lake in New York in North America’s Haudenosaunee Confederacy with its powers. That Forbidden Lake became a portal to another dimension known as the Skyworld where members of the Mohawk nation existed utopically away from the growing dangers of European colonization. According to Andrews, though the episode didn’t appear until the second season of What If…?, the episode was devised when he first boarded the project.
The Kahhori Skyworld episode is a special one. One of my first ideas when I came on to What If…? was doing a First Nations episode—what if colonization failed because there were super beings already there? It finally came to life in season two and Ryan Little did an amazing job on it and working with our Mohawk consultants.
Bryan Andrews
Writer Ryan Little backed Andrews‘ claim and gave some insight into the work that went into putting the episode together over the last four years. “We spent four years working with historical and language experts from Kanien’kehá:ka, the Mohawk Nation, to craft this episode.” In the episode, members of the Mohawk Nation speak to one another only in Kanien’kéha, their native language, allowing for a much more authentic representation of the people and their culture. It didn’t end with language, however, as the studio’s collaboration with historian Doug George and Mohawk language expert Cecelia King factored into every creative decision in the episode according to Little. “They collaborated with us on every layer of the story from the characters’ names, personalities and costumes to the look of the civilization and the surrounding wilderness to make every facet of this episode the most accurate depiction possible.”
The end result was a strikingly beautiful episode that has been well-received by the Mohawk community according to Jeremy White, who voiced another one of the episode’s original heroes, Atahraks.
From a Mohawk community member…
“Never thought I'd see the day! Kids all across Turtle Island are hearing Kanien’kehá “Mohawk language” on screen! A whole Marvel episode filled with our language and stories?!
The House of Ideas. That moniker has been with Marvel Comics for much of its nearly 85 years in the publishing business. Beginning with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The House of Ideas created a multiverse full of some of the most beloved fictional characters in the industry. For 15 years now, those characters have been at the center of pop culture as the narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to unfold across screens big and small. However, in that time, for all the liberties Marvel Studios took with characters and stories from the pages of Marvel Comics, they had never created an original superhero…until now.
On display in Episode 6 of the second season of What If…?, “What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World?” was, for the first time, the type of unbridled creativity that gave Marvel Comics the House of Ideas nickname in the first place. Set in North America’s Haudenosaunee Confederacy at an undefined time in pre-colonial America, the episode introduced the MCU’s first original superhero, a Mohawk Wolf Clan woman named Kahhori, and then quickly followed that up by introducing a dozen or so more powered-up Kanien:ke people. Throughout the episode, the Mohawk people–whose way of life is being threatened by Spanish conquistadors–speak authentically in their native Kanien’kéha thanks to the studio’s collaboration with historian Doug George and Mohawk language expert Cecelia King. Never in the history of comic book projects has a Native American people been treated so reverently. But the creativity hardly stops with a wonderful new hero and some closed captions.
From start to finish (well, almost–they did drop dickhead Strange in there), the episode blazes its own trail. Beginning with Surtur’s successful Ragnarok set at some undisclosed point in time before Odin placed the Tesseract in the care of the people of Tønsberg, “What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World?” features nary a single familiar beat from the MCU. Beginning with the fate of the Tesseract, creators Bryan Andrews and Ryan Little played very liberally with the premise of What If…? in this episode and the payoff was monumental. With the butterfly effect in full effect, the creatives were able to get schwifty with the possibilities of the Space Stone and its spacetime powers. The inventiveness led not only to a beautiful, new in-universe mythology that introduced the Mohawk Skyworld but also a wonderful powerset resulting from exposure to the Tesseract-powered waters of the Forbidden Lake.
As teased in the closing moments of the episode, Kahhori’s story hasn’t come to a close. While she has a larger role to play in Season 2 of What If…?, it would feel like a missed opportunity if the studio didn’t include the character in one or both parts of the two-part finale to the Multiverse Saga. With some interpretation of one or another of Marvel Comics’ Battleworld stories sure to take place, the inclusion of Kahhori–now one of the most powerful heroes in the Multiverse–doesn’t seem like a bridge too far. Though she was voiced by Devery Jacobs in What If…?, Jacobs is already holding down a live-action role in the MCU. That opens the door for Amber Midthunder, who in 2022 made it clear she was ready to join the MCU and told us her hopes to continue to push for indigenous representation in Hollywood blockbusters, to possibly fill the role.
While the MCU cannot and certainly should not look to create brand new heroes, mythologies and universes in every project, “What If…Kahhori Reshaped the World?” serves as a wonderful reminder of what creators can do when they find true inspiration. Here they have delivered undoubtedly the best episode of What If…? and opened the door for a fascinating new hero to join the best of the rest in the Multiverse should those calling the shots have the courage.
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