Marvel's What If...? animated series saw its episode count reduced for Season 1 as a result of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Executive producer Brad Winderbaum spoke to Collider about the effect COVID-19 had on the show's production, revealing Season 1 will now span nine episodes instead of ten. "We had to push an episode into Season 2. It was just, honestly, like everything else, that was a COVID impact. There was an episode that just wouldn't hit the completion date, but luckily we do get to see it in the second season of the show," Winderbaum said. "Season 2 will also be [nine episodes]."
Inspired by the Marvel comic book anthology launched in 1977, What If...? explores alternate timelines that reveal what would've happened if pivotal moments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe played out differently. Among the episodes confirmed for Season 1 are ones where Peggy Carter takes the Super Soldier Serum, T'Challa is taken from Earth by the Ravagers and grows up to become Star-Lord and Spider-Man dons the Cloak of Levitation to hunt zombie-fied versions of the other Avengers.
As with other streaming series on Disney+ (like The Mandalorian and Loki), What If...?'s episodes vary in length. "We targeted a half an hour for each episode. Some of them come in a little longer, some of them come in a little shorter," Winderbaum said. "We wanted to tell as many stories as we could and we had a certain budget we had to work with so it felt like that ten-episode -- now nine-episode run -- was the right quantity."
Like What If...? Season 1, Marvel's first wave of live-action streaming series felt the impact of the ongoing pandemic during their productions. This led to WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier being delayed from their original release dates to the first half of 2021, with filming on Loki Season 1 halting for four months after the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Unlike What If...?, however, their episode counts didn't change in response to the health crisis -- although it did result in scenes being deleted or altered.
Created by A.C. Bradley, What If...? premieres Aug. 11 on Disney+. Production on the next batch of episodes is already well-underway, with Winderbaum confirming the Captain Carter story will continue into Season 2 and any future seasons of the show.
Source: Collider