New episodes of Marvel’s What If…? are just around the corner. Season 2 of the animated series premieres December 22 on Disney+, throwing viewers back into the multiverse at the hands of The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright). As part of Phase Five, the series “questions, revisits, and twists” classic Marvel Cinematic Universe moments.
To celebrate the upcoming release, The Nerds of Color visited The Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank for a special screening of two episodes, “What If… Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?” (Season 2, Episode 1) and “What If Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” (Season 2, Episode 3).
Here are the episode synopses, per Marvel Studios:
- Episode 1: “In a world where Ronan deposes Thanos long before the events of Infinity War, Nebula is recruited to join the Nova Corps. Desperate to escape her father’s shadow, she sets out to prove her detective chops.”
- Episode 3: “When Justin Hammer lays siege to Avengers Tower during the annual holiday party, there’s only one person left on site to stop him — Happy Hogan. But in setting out to prove his hero chops, Iron Man’s errand boy may end up transforming himself in more ways than one.”
The screening was followed by a Q&A panel with What If…? director and executive producer Bryan Andrews, writer and executive producer A.C. Bradley, and writer and producer Matthew Chauncey. The filmmakers dove into their creative process and unveiled new details about the upcoming season.
Chauncey likened working on the show to being a kid playing with toys. “Creatively, it’s as close as you can get to reconnecting with that sense of play,” he said of the writing process. “We’ve all got our action figures out and are dumping them on the carpet and mixing and matching.”
The writing for this season largely took place over Zoom sessions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We wrote the Christmas episode during the start of the pandemic, March 2020,” Bradley said of the Happy episode, which is a riff on Die Hard (1988). “I was like, ‘Are you gonna be alive at Christmas?’”
One of the casualties of the pandemic was the “lost” Episode 10 from Season 1, which had to be cut. Fortunately, Andrews revealed that the episode, which involves Tony Stark, Valkyrie, and Gamora, will be incorporated into this season.
Some of the upcoming storylines are actually leftover ideas from Season 1, Andrews explained. “We had so many great ideas in the first round for the first season, but there’s only so many episodes you can make,” he said. “But there were all these extra ones that Kevin [Feige] and Brad [Winderbaum] were like, ‘These are all amazing!’ So some of those carried right over.”
Season 2 also presented the opportunity to take creative risks and explore the multiverse in unique ways. “I think as it progresses, we get to move slightly away from some of the MCU movies,” Andrews said. “Like, we know these are the characters. And here’s something we’re riffing on. But we can get a little bit wilder.”
One episode revolves around a completely new, original character named Kahhori and will be entirely subtitled, with the dialogue in Mohawk. “What bigger ‘what if’ is there than what if colonization didn’t happen? What if the Europeans didn’t come here?” Andrews said.
For Kahhori’s episode, Marvel worked directly with Native consultants. “We brought them in for everything. From design, story, costuming, [and] music, it was really a collaborative effort,” Bradley said. “We were so lucky to get all the help. It was really amazing and beautiful.”
“We’re showing it to the First Nations, to the various Mohawk tribes that are all around the area,” Andrews added of the episode. “We’re showing it to them before it airs. Hundreds of members of the First Nations tribal community are showing up, like kids, family, because it’s all in their language … They were like, ‘That hasn’t been done for us before.’”
In addition to new faces, viewers will also see familiar ones. The panelists confirmed that this season will include voice actors Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Rockwell, to name a few. Additionally, Andrews revealed that the Ten Rings seen in the Season 2 trailer don’t belong to Shang-Chi — instead, it’s his dad Wenwu that will be at the center.
Ultimately, What If…? aims not just to simply explore the possibilities of the multiverse, but to let viewers truly live through each one of these alternate universes and feel the stakes.
“I think sometimes when you’re dealing with the multiverse, you’re like, ‘If there’s an infinite number of Peggy Carters, what does it matter if you lose this one?’” Chauncey said. “Hopefully our show is making you invest in all of these worlds and all of these characters, so that you realize everything in this multiverse really does matter.”
What If…? Season 2 premieres December 22 on Disney+, with new episodes airing daily through December 30 for a span of nine episodes total.
