Anna Daniels
Imagine a movie where Rocket Raccoon and Groot teams up with Chadwick Boseman rather than Chris Pratt. Imagine a movie where Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter took the serum and became a superhero herself.
All of that, including a new Iron Man, will happen in Marvel Studio’s upcoming show on Disney+.
What if?
This upcoming show, titled simply as What If? will ask and animate that question. Anything and everything in the MCU is fair game. Because What If? will be animated, Marvel Studios will be free to do whatever they want with whomever they want, within reason of course.
What If?, as Disney showed in its quick trailer of it, shows many different scenarios happening. Boseman’s T’Challa becomes Pratt’s Star-Lord for a change. Atwell’s Carter becomes Captain Britain, as she’s called.
And indeed, a different superhero, Chris Evan’s Captain America, becomes Iron Man instead of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. In fact, in Disney’s trailer, Evan’s Iron Man teams up with Captain Britain to fight zombies.
Those were just a few of the scenarios that What If? will explore. As ScreenRant reported, as many as 25 MCU actors, both current and past, will return to the recording booth to voice characters in the show. These MCU actors will include famous actors like Josh Brolin and Chris Hemsworth as well new characters, such as Uatu, who will be played by Jeffrey Wright of Westworld fame.
Don’t worry, it’s not canon
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxsysYzcdN4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
If you’re a big MCU fan but you’re not big on the comics, don’t worry, What If? isn’t canon. As far as anyone knows, none of the events that are portrayed in What If? will have any effect on the MCU. What If? follows in the footsteps of many classic comics in the sense that it tells stories in an alternate reality or universe that probably won’t have an effect on the MCU.
That said, some comic book writers like to mess with their readers, and in their stories which are set in a different universe, they created ways for their superheroes to somehow travel between universes and affect those stories or, in extreme cases, destroy entire alternate universes.
This is something that Marvel, as a comic, has done before, so it’s not impossible that Disney and Kevin Feige will do something similar with What If?.
But, at the end of the day, the majority of what we know about these characters are the same. In What If?, Marvel is simply taking the characters that we know and throwing them into completely new situations. So, while Evan’s Steve Rodgers isn’t Captain America anymore, Rodgers will still be the same Rodgers that everyone watching the MCU knew and love.
That said, although many MCU actors have been announced as reprising their role in the show, Evans was notably absent from the announcement.
It’s possible that he’s still negotiating with Disney and Marvel, but it’s also possible that Evans won’t reprise his role at all. It’s unknown who will voice Rodgers if Evans doesn’t do it, but Rodgers will still play a big role as Iron Man in the show regardless.
When will it debut?
As ScreenRant said, Disney is currently aiming for a release in Summer of 2021, so What If? is still far away.
Assuming that Disney+ will be releasing the episodes of What If? like it releases new episodes of The Mandalorian, then What If? will be released every week or so. Comic Book Resources also reported that the first season of What If? will have 23 episodes. It’s currently unknown how long these episodes are.
Because What If? is a Disney+ exclusive, the show will only be available on Disney+.
Written by: Cheat
