According to What If...? head writer A.C. Bradley, Season 1's delayed episode is pure comedy.
Bradley talked about the episode in question during a recent appearance on Deadline's Hero Nation podcast. While What If...? Season 1 was originally supposed to include ten episodes, executive producer Brad Winderbaum confirmed that one of them was pushed back into Season 2 prior to the show's premiere. "It was just, honestly, like everything else, that was a COVID impact," he explained. "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."
"We did have another comedy episode in the season... more in the pure comedy vein... which is the one that has been pushed to season 2 due to COVID production issues...," said Bradley. Her comment suggests the episode in question hews closer to Season 1's “What If…Thor Were an Only Child?” or Party Thor storyline, as opposed to a far more serious and somber episode like "“What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?”
So far, What If...?'s less comedic episodes have tackled darker subject matter and complicated questions. For example, the Doctor Strange one deals with the problematic superhero trope of "fridging" female characters -- that is, killing them off in order to fuel a male character's growth. But in the case of the less dramatic outings, the goals are usually less ambitious and more playful for the sake of it.
Bradley acknowledged as much while discussing the origins of Party Thor. "That came from let’s do something fun and silly; one of the mandates for that one is we’d love to have a Thor vs. Captain Marvel fight. How do we get there?"
Interestingly, however, even comedic stories like Party Thor tend to end on a more ominous note. Bradley attributed this to the original What If...? anthology comic book series that Marvel launched in 1977. "What If comics ended abruptly and really dark to prove that the main timeline is the better timeline," she explained.
What If...? Season 1 premieres new episodes on Wednesdays on Disney+. Season 2 is already in development with a 2022 release target in mind.
Source: Deadline, via ComicBook.com