Marvel’s WHAT IF…? Returns for Final Season
By Movieguide® Contributor
Marvel’s animated Disney+ series WHAT IF…? is returning for its third and final season, however, no release date has been announced.
“The anthology series shows an alternative history for Marvel with twists like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) becoming Captain America and T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) becoming Star Lord,” TV Series Finale reported.
“It feels like the completion of a trilogy,” Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Television and Animation, said on “The Official Marvel Podcast.” “It takes us to places that you’d never expect. It goes beyond the first two seasons in its exploration of the multiverse.”
Throughout the series, actors from Marvel movies have voiced their animated counterparts.
“Others who’ve been heard in multiple episodes include Jeffrey Wright, Terri Douglas, Matthew Wood, Robin Atkin Downes, Fred Tatasciore, Mick Wingert, Josh Keaton, Helen Sadler, Samuel L. Jackson, Lake Bell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Ralph, Debra Wilson, Chris Hemsworth, Sebastian Stan, and Piotr Michael,” TV Series Finale added.
WHAT IF…? introduced Uatu the Watcher in 2021. In Season 3, fans can expect to see the show pull “in characters that are very unexpected, and has what I think is an extremely moving and very fulfilling culmination for Uatu the Watcher,” Winderbaum added.
Jeffrey Wright “has voiced the Watcher since the series debuted in 2021, and over the first two seasons, the all-knowing cosmic being has gone from simply watching the events of the multiverse unfold without interfering to ultimately having a major impact in saving his beloved heroes,” Entertainment Weekly reported.
Wright told EW that his character is “not the Watcher that he was at the beginning. He’s a different Watcher now. He’s broken the fourth wall, so that’s wonderful because it gives a nice complexity to the character, and it also allows him to be active in ways that he wasn’t at the beginning of the series. It’s exciting stuff.”
Part of Movieguide®’s review for WHAT IF…? Episodes 1.1-2 reads:
WHAT IF. . .? is an animated series on Disney Plus. It imagines a multiverse where different decisions create different Marvel Comics superheroes in separate universes. MOVIEGUIDE® screened the first two episodes to get a feel for the series. In the first episode, a terrorist act ends up with Peggy Carter having to become the first super soldier for the Allies in World War II. With help from Steve Rogers, Peggy changes the tide of the war and saves the day. In the second episode, space pirates kidnap Prince T’Challa of Wakanda, and he becomes a Star Lord. T’Challa preserves an air of nobility and humility. After a close escape, he’s determined to return home and visit his royal family.
The first two episodes of WHAT IF. . .? are entertaining, morally uplifting, redemptive tales. The WHAT IF. . .? episodes show the heroes overcoming evil and promote sacrifice. However, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children because of strong action violence, brief foul language, some feminism, light innuendoes about a scientist being a playboy, and the false humanist concept of a multiverse.
