Marvel Studios' first animated series What If...? has been a wild ride over the eight episodes leading to the Season 1 finale. "Standalone" adventures featured hero variants of characters from the MCU like Captain Carter, Party Thor, T'challa Star-Lord, and Doctor Strange Supreme, and now the creative team behind the show has revealed a few of the faces that will return in Episode 9.
Appropriately titled What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath? the finale of Season 1 will see Uatu The Watcher revisiting several universes and putting together a team to stop the multiversal threat that is Infinite Ultron. Super-fans who follow every bit of marketing for Marvel Cinematic Universe projects have known that a team-up is inevitable, and now they know who to expect.
The roster will consist of Episode 1's Captain Carter, Episode 4's Strange Supreme, Episode 6's Killmonger, Episode 7's Party Thor, and more according to the creative team consisting of head writer AC Bradley and director Bryan Andrews. They didn't make mention of T'challa Star-Lord or Zombie Hunter Spidey but fans still expect them to play some part in Episode 9.
Head Writer AC Bradley spoke to EW, saying "We will pop into and re-meet some of our heroes from the previous episodes, including the lovely Captain Carter, Strange Supreme, Party Thor, and even Killmonger. Early on in the first season, like day one talking about it, there was this notion of we're creating all these great heroes, but we only get to sit with them for 20 or 30 minutes. Wouldn't it be great to see them again in the finale? And then once that decision was made, it liberated me to make the endings a little bit darker and bigger, knowing that we can give some sort of resolution in the finale."
Meanwhile, Director Bryan Andrews adds, "There's a degree of resolution where it feels like all the stuff that's been percolating across the episodes, the adventure that we bring you into for the ending, ends, to a certain degree. All these universes, when we're done with our episode, those universes continue. It's an ongoing cinematic universe; there is stuff that happens yet to come that maybe we will see and maybe we will not see. But we don't necessarily want to have it all tied up in a perfect bow. There is a level of buttoning up with a certain degree of things that we get into with a certain storyline."
Are you guys excited for a big team-up with Strange Supreme, Killmonger, Party Thor, and Captain Carter? Would you rather the series stuck closer to an anthology approach, or are you happy with things as is?
Regardless of your thoughts, be sure to sound off in the usual spot and be sure to check back tomorrow for our reaction and breakdown of the finale - What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?
Enter the multiverse of unlimited possibilities. Marvel Studios' first animated series, What If...?, starts streaming August 11 with new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+. “What If… ?” features fan-favorite characters, including Peggy Carter, T’Challa, Doctor Strange, Killmonger, Thor and more. The new series, directed by Bryan Andrews with AC Bradley as head writer, features signature MCU action with a curious twist.
Marvel Studios' What If...? finale releases on Wednesday, only on Disney+.