What If...? Season 2 Trailer Unleashes Marvel's Multiverse With A Dash Of Christmas

It's been the year of Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney+ series getting second seasons, first with "Loki" Season 2 earning high marks from critics and fans, and now with the impending release of "What If...?" Season 2. Fans can get a glimpse of the nine new animated episodes in the "What If...?" Season 2 trailer, which shows a smattering of chaotic (and at times quite silly) encounters between different MCU characters across the multiverse.

Season 1 of "What If...?" was mostly an anthology show, with every episode jumping to a different reality where some detail — tiny or massive — had skewed the order of events in the main MCU timeline. However, by the end of "What If...?" Season 1, things got a bit more connected, leading to a climax that pulled in elements from all of the preceding stories. With Jeffrey Wright's Watcher still narrating Season 2 (and the trailer), that will likely be the same formula this time around.

Of course, now that the MCU's multiverse era has been running for a couple of years, there's even more material to pull from. Fans have learned a lot more about the way alternate realities work in the franchise, and there are as many scattered stories and characters as there have ever been. 

The "What If...?" Season 2 trailer opens with an extended sequence of a new Avengers team facing off against what appears to be a young Peter Quill. Complete with a version of his father Ego's god-like powers, the boy is confronted by a crew that includes Black Panther, Black Widow, Bucky Barnes, and Ant-Man. We then leap into a montage of scenes from the various other episodes.

There are a lot of fun details for fans to pick out. We see a series of showdowns between a new Nebula and Yondu. Gamora, Tony Stark, and Valkyrie compete in some kind of "Death Race 2000" competition, alongside Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster. Hela and Wenwu appear to join forces in a battle against Odin. And at the end of the trailer, Darcy Lewis and Happy Hogan bumble through a Christmas attack on Avengers Tower, "Die Hard" style. It's all animated in the same quasi-CGI, cel-shaded look of Season 1, so if you weren't a fan of it then (as many weren't), it likely still won't be your thing.

The most interesting part of the trailer might be the introduction of Kahhori, an all-new Native American Marvel hero of the Mohawk people. According to official info from Marvel, Kahhori lives in an alternate reality where the Tesseract fell to Earth in a pre-colonial America and landed in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Given that she has no history in the comics, her story should be especially exciting to watch.

"What If...?" Season 2 is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ on December 22, 2023. However, it won't roll out like any of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe shows. Typically, streaming seasons either drop all at once or air weekly episodes. Occasionally, as was the case with "Stranger Things" Season 4, two distinct drops will split the episodes in half. "What If...?" is trying a different strategy by releasing one new episode each day for nine days straight, meaning that the whole season will be out by December 30.

Given that holiday release window, it makes sense that the trailer and season both have a bit of festive flair. "What If...?" Season 2 will mark the end of the MCU's 2023 slate, taking fans straight into the new year. All in all, it hasn't exactly been a stellar 12 months for the franchise. Marvel Studios dealt with bombs like "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," casting controversies, and an overall decline in public interest. Maybe "What If...?" is the exact kind of fun, silly, standalone project that can end 2023 on a high note. Fans will be able to judge for themselves when the new season premieres on Disney+ on December 22.