While Season 1 of What If...? stuck to key moments from the early phases of the MCU to tell its tales, Season 2 will be able to tell even weirder stories.
Director Bryan Andrews spoke to Deadline about crafting the first season of the Marvel Studio's animated series and submitting the fan-favorite Doctor Strange episode for Emmy consideration. Despite the seemingly limited scope of the premise, Andrews said the What If...? creative team actually had way more ideas than they could turn into episodes. "It was a process, but it was pretty amazing coming up with them all once we got our head writer involved. She brought in one of her partners, Matt [Chauncey], so it was AC [Bradley] and Matt and then [executive producer] Brad [Winderbaum] and myself, and we would sit and just spitball," Andrews said. "And we just got an embarrassment of riches. We got so many episode ideas, and Kevin [Feige] was like, 'Just gimme a list of like 30.' And then Kevin couldn’t even whittle it down."
"I think it ended up being 14, and we had to kill the last few to try to get it down to the actual number," Andrews continued. "But funnily enough, there were ideas that just kept staying around, so a couple of those ideas make it into Season 2, and then there's a few that might be showing up in Season 3. So many good ideas, so many fun ideas, some that were just way too crazy. They're just like, 'We're not ready for that yet.' So I think that’s why in Season 3, we'll see some of the crazy stuff that we were pitching out of the gate."
Season 2 of What If...? Will Expand The Show's Scope
Though Andrews promises Season 3 of What If...? will be the most outlandish to date, Season 2 will also up the ante considerably. With the format established and a whole new crop of films and television shows to pull from, Andrews teased an exciting next batch of episodes.
"Obviously, more unique stories that slowly get a little bit wilder," the director said when asked what Season 2 has in store. "The first season, Kevin wanted to keep it a little bit closer to the vest, have a little thing that was different and that little thing made these things different, but still tied very much to either a moment in the movies or a particular film itself. Now, there's more films and things to pull from, so we don't have to have just a tiny moment. We can expand out and things can get a little bit wackier. We take it up a notch in season two and then in season three we just go even wackier. In season two, we have different characters that we haven’t really got a chance to play with before and we see how they’ll integrate with some of the favorites that come back. There's lots of really cool stuff and I can't wait for people to see it."
Season 1 of What If...? is streaming on Disney+. Season 2 arrives in 2023.
Source: Deadline