Two years ago Disney+ introduced What If…, a cel-shaded CGI animated series starring the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not as people knew it. What if Peggy Carter got the super serum? What if Doctor Strange was a villain? What if what if what if?
The show is based on Marvel’s anthology comic of the same name. Using the framing device of The Watcher, a celestial being who can observe anything in the multiverse but is forbidden to interfere, the comic explored what would happen if a recent major storyline had ended differently, or a superhero had made a different choice at a crucial point in their lives. The format allowed writers to experiment with classic setups and deliberately break them, just to see what would happen. In some cases, the resulting story was strong enough to be spun off into its own comic, like Spider-Girl.
The animated series wasn’t quite as daring as the comic could get sometimes, but it was still worth watching, and the long-promised Season 2 is about to hit the streamer. Unfortunately the below trailer doesn’t seem to indicate any return for Captain Carter (come on, what are we even doing here) but like Season 1, the new season will continue to involve the entire real, authentic voice cast from the movies, with the sad exception of Chadwick Boseman (Season 1 was his last released performance).
Details on individual episodes are light, but the trailer shows off a confrontation between Black Panther, Ant-Man and a telekinetic boy, the Guardians of the Galaxy in alternate costumes, and what appears to be a Mario Kart dimension. There will also be an entire episode set in pre-colonial North America, spoken in Mohawk language, in which an indigenous woman comes into contact with the Tesseract and becomes a new hero named Kahhori.
Marvel’s What If… Season 2 will debut its first episode December 22 and then premiere one new episode every day from there.
