What If…? follows hot on the heels of the phenomenal success of Marvel Studios’ first three live-action series for the Disney + streaming service. But in a creative volte face typical of a creative powerhouse that rarely delivers quite what the audience might expect for its next project, What If…? is a powerful animated series that builds upon the MCU’s recent introduction of the concept of the ‘Multiverse’ and asks the audience to ponder what might have happened if certain decisions taken in the history of the movies and shows released so far had been a little different, creating other Universes full of familiar characters in unfamiliar guises. The series takes its inspiration from the Marvel Comics title launched in 1977 but this is no cheap Saturday morning kids’ cartoon series quickly thrown into the mix to keep the audience entertained until the next feature film or live-action series. What If…? is packed with delightful and startling reimaginings of all our Marvel favourites, many of them voiced by the original actors from the films and TV shows themselves. At a recent online press event for the series, some of the new show’s major players – actor Jeffrey Wright (The Watcher), executive producer Brad Winderbaum, director Brian Andrews, and head writer A.C. Bradley assembled, Avengers-style, to discuss what’s in store in Marvel Studios’ most unlikely new offering…
“To be honest, the series came from a stroke of inspiration I had on the drive home from work one day,” says the show’s executive producer Brad Winderbaum. “I found myself on my driveway just texting with Kevin Feige (Marvel Studios President) back and forth about what this show could be. By the next day, the wheels were in motion and we were on our way to making this thing!”
It quickly became apparent that What If..? was ideally suited for the animation process. “It was obvious from the beginning that it needed to be animated because of all the locations and sets and characters and elements from the MCU that we were going to revisit,” said Winderbaum. “It had to be in a medium that would allow us the infinite scope of whatever we could conceive for the show.”
The series revolves around the character of The Watcher who introduces the audience to the concept of the Multiverse and the idea of the characters the audience is used to be becoming something entirely different on the whim of a momentary change of destiny that creates a variation to the MCU world we know and love.
“The Watcher is described in his first appearance in Marvel Comics in 1963 as the most dramatic being in all the known Universe!” explains actor Jeffrey Wright who gives voice to this omniscient being who spends his time observing and compiling knowledge on the machinations of the Universe without interfering in events. “He’s a fairly dramatic, powerful guy overseeing the entire MCU and the entire multiverse. He plays a sort of Rod Serling role, narrating the introductions into the stories. In some ways he’s the biggest Marvel fan in the Universe, watching everything that transpires and dealing with the temptation to actually involve himself but at the same time living vicariously through these characters and these stories and this mythology and just taking it all. He’s also probably got the biggest cable bill you can imagine!”
It was clearly important that What If..? is presented as an anthology show, as director Brian Andrews explains. “I think that was important to all of us, right from the beginning and talking to Brad about it. It’s an anthology show just like The Twilight Zone back in the day in that you never know what you’re going to get. You might get an episode that’s a comedy, you might get an episode that’s kind of dramatic and serious, really emotional and full of action. We all love cinema in all its genres and this show gave us the opportunity to apply a little taste of the variety of genres into the MCU; we can go a little bit darker, we can even go a little bit funnier. That type of variety was written into the comic book itself…what if this, what if that? Things can be so different, so weird, it really just opens the floodgates so that we can do whatever we want to and it was really exhilarating to be able to play it that way. It’s like being handed the keys to the Porsche and being told to have fun and promising not to crash it – hopefully!”
Ultimately, it fell to writer A.C. Bradley to come up with strong, original ideas to power the series and take the characters in unexpected new directions. “To be honest, when it came to creating an episode and figuring out the story of What If..? the last thing we actually thought about was the ‘what if?’ I think we all looked for what was the heart behind the hero. How do we get behind the shield, for example, what’s a part of the story that we haven’t told before? These characters are iconic, we recognise their silhouettes, we recognise their taglines. But what’s important is how we connect to them so it was all about finding new ways to connect to Peggy Carter, to Thor, to Doctor Strange. Luckily we have the Watcher as our guide because he, too, is looking for a connection. Character was really what drove it all and then we figured out the ‘what if?’ element.“
Jeffrey Wright takes up the point about the Watcher’s place in the What If…? scheme of things. “I think he is, in some ways, defined by his need for connection. It’s his life’s passion to observe and connect with them and their heroism and their flaws. In some regard, without them he’s nothing. He adores them, he is compelled by them and in a way it gives his life purpose and meaning. As I think about these characters and what they have come to represent, I think that those of us who watch them are like the Watcher. The passion behind the fans’ connection to these characters has the same level of trust, understanding and hope imbued into them in a way that they may not have found outside this mythology, particularly now in this upturned world where trust is difficult to hold on to and to place in any particular individual. We can always place our trust in these characters.”
Episode Two of the series sees Chadwick Boseman reprise his role as T’Challa who is, thanks to a quirk of fate, now Star-Lord rather than Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill. “When it came to actually figure out this episode it was over two years ago and obviously Chadwick was still with us,” explains SA.C. Bradley. “one came about because we had a poster with all the characters in the writers’ room and we realised that T’Challa and Peter Quill are the same age, close enough. So in our story, Yondu takes the wrong kid – and what other nine-year-old kid was running around the MCU at that time? – and if Yondu gets a bit lost he could end up in Wakanda and of course to him, all humans look alike. That’s where that one started from, leading us to find the other side of the hero, which is the whole point of the show.”
It’s certainly one of the most imaginative and poignant episodes of What If..? as the late Chadwick Boseman gives his final performance as the noble T’Challa… but this is a very different T’Challa to the Wakandan warrior fans first met back in Captain America: Civil War who went on to star in his own box office smash solo movie, Black Panther. Working with Chadwick certainly left its mark on the show’s creatives. “It was amazing to be able to work with him,” says Brian Andrews. “We only had a short time with him because our episodes are so short compared to those who got to enjoy his presence on Black Panther or even on Civil War. We had him for a brief moment to do our thing and we’re so grateful for it. I think he may have been one of the first actors to sign on and say “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do that voice” and we were so excited because we really wanted to work with Chadwick and we just loved Black Panther. It was great to hear him talk about it because he was so excited to play this version of T’Challa because it was so different, it was a version of him being able to play the king but the king without the mantle of royalty and all the things that go with it. It was a completely different spin and he could lighten it up, he could get to be a little more jokey and he was really excited to bring that flavour to T’Challa and bring it to the audience. He really wanted to do the recording like a play, reading the scene descriptions in between and really built it out because that was how he was trained and that was what he was comfortable with and wanted to do. It was so much fun being able to do that because basically, we got to read lines with Chadwick Boseman! It was amazing and of course, none of us knew what he was going through at the time.”
“I actually met Chadwick for the first time at ComiCon,” recalls Jeffrey Wright. ”It was in the bathroom as he was just about to introduce the Black Panther film and I was there with Westworld. We had a really wonderful exchange and he said some wonderful things. Then we’d run into each other here and there and we were, in fact, supposed to do Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom together but I couldn’t do it because I was tied up with another film, unfortunately. So it was a lovely surprise to find that we would have the opportunity to at least be in the same space with him on What If..? and with this being the last performance we’ll get from him I find it very moving. What we all discovered was that the kind of mythic quality he brought to these performances paled in many ways to the mythic quality that was his life in terms of the way he was going about his work with grace, dignity, and power. I was really pleased to be able to spend a little bit of time with him on this show.“
“He was a real hero,” adds Brian Andrews. “Working on the show, finalising it in post-production, we were doing the score and he had already passed. We knew we had to make sure nothing went wrong with this episode because it’s his last so we had to make sure that everything in it can honour what he brought to the table, honour the character and, of course, honour Chadwick too.”
One of the great delights in making the show was the opportunity to work with so many of the legendary actors from the MCU who were more than happy to return to provide voice-overs for their iconic characters.
“It really was amazing working with everyone,” says Brian Andrews. “It was truly incredible. I think part of the choice of who to bring back came out of our writers’ room and the who-what stories we wanted to tell and who would be in those stories. And then availability became the issue because everyone’s really busy and everyone’s got a lot of really amazing things going on! So trying to wrangle the schedules to get people involved was tough but we were able to get so many back, it’s been fantastic. It’s like we have a front-row seat to awesomeness! They come in and we get to work with these amazing people who are already familiar with their characters and have done so much in the MCU proper with those characters. They get to play with us and they get to do it in a slightly different medium. What’s extra fun is that I perceive a general genuine happiness for them to be able to riff on those characters a bit and they would really start getting into it as it’s a little bit of a spin-off from what they originally did so they get to play it a bit differently. It’s very freeing for them, it’s fun and it’s open. I think the audience will appreciate that too.”
With around thirty ideas mooted for the series and only ten making it to the screen for this season, it’s clear that there’s still plenty of exploration to do of this fascinating new corner of the Marvel Universe. “Obviously we wish we could have made thirty episodes but we were only greenlit for ten!” explains Brad Winderbaum. “But we are fortunate enough to be exploring some of those ideas in our second season. But the world has changed and the fictional Marvel Universe has changed so new ideas are always bubbling forth too and new stories and new opportunities to tell new stories constantly come about.”
What If?… launches on Disney+ on August 11th.
