The San Diego Comic-Con bore us a lot of gifts this time. As always, Marvel Studios did not disappoint. They unveiled their TV and movie slate for the future and the number of projects they have revealed is sure enough to induce a proper nerd-gasm. Marvel is set to release a Hawkeye TV Series, a Black Widow movie, the sequel to Doctor Strange, Thor 4 – which will feature Natalie Portman as Jane Foster (and she will lift Mjolnir this time), Wanda Vision, Falcon, and the Winter Soldier, the Eternals and a lot of others. But what managed to catch some much-needed attention this time was a little known project titled Marvel’s What If, a show that will focus mostly on alternate history timelines and tell us stories that could have happened if things played out a little bit differently.
For example – What If Iron Man was never born or What if Captain America never became the Super Soldier? And we are getting the best ever character to narrate us each story in the What If universe. Presenting – What If – MCU’s first-ever official animated series to feature the Watcher!!
The show, which is set to stream in Disney’s official streaming service – Disney+, will feature Jeffrey Wright of West World Fame, as the voice of the Watcher. The animated show will see the return of several major Marvel Cinematic Universe characters, like Captain America, Black Widow, and Tony Stark, who will reprise their characters as voiceovers for their animated counterparts.
The What If storylines are not a new thing that Marvel has cooked up. A lot of such alternate reality story arcs exist in the Marvel lore. DC has its own version of What If storylines called Else worlds. The basic gist of every what if the storyline is that how would have events played out if history was changed just a little bit. It deals with ramifications of what would have happened to the world if a slight change in the timeline took place.
Marvel’s What If will be narrated by Uatu the Watcher, the being that resides on the moon and watches over the Earth, recording each and every major and minor event, cursed with a deal of non-interference in humanity’s affairs. The Watchers were one of the most advanced and ancient sentient races of the Universe. When they started meddling in the lives of other alien races and civilizations with hopes of uplifting them, they were forced to self-impose a pact of non-interference when they realized that the nuclear technology that they gifted to the primitive race of Prosilicans had been used by the latter race to annihilate their planet.
Uatu the Watcher was the first-ever Watcher to be seen in a comic book, debuting back in the year of 1963 in a Fantastic Four issue, where he warned the team of the threat of Galactus. The Watchers were again seen in a Post Credits sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.
The What If storylines will be varied and contained to one or two episodes each. That way, Marvel could get more variety into each episode, showing the world how important it was for the events to play out exactly as they did in the MCU. While Marvel Studios executives are pretty tight-lipped when it comes to revealing secrets regarding their upcoming future projects, Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, slipped up a small hint as to what kind of storylines this series might feature. One example he gave was – What would have happened if Peggy Carter, and not Steve Rogers, took the Super Soldier Serum and became Captain America?!?!
We cannot wait for this series to stream online. What the fans would definitely like is to hear their favorite actors voice their animated counterparts’ role in the series. We could expect Robert Downey Junior and Chris Evans to come back this time, since the show’s premise will have a variable time range. Things are about to get a lot more interesting. But we will have to wait a lot. The 2021 time slot is kind of a buzz kill. But you know what they say – All Good Things To Those Who Wait.
