The What If...? Character We'll Be Seeing More Of In The Future
After a bevy of live-action Marvel shows on Disney+ designed to push the MCU into its fourth phase, the lineup is shifting to a world altogether more animated. "What if...?" (inspired by the comic book series of the same name) is an animated series designed to explore the many possibilities floating out there in the Marvel multiverse.
Some examples: The series will explore a world where T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) was whisked away to space and became Star-Lord; It will have stories that team up Erik Killmonger with Tony Stark; There will even be a universe occupied by the Marvel Zombies.
Largely, "What if...?" stories are designed to be glimpses into alternate histories and the strange futures they yield. With the multiverse set to become a larger and larger part of the next wave of MCU tales, we can only guess who may or may not turn up more than once.
However, there is at least one character from "What if...?" who is already likely to appear in the franchise at least one more time.
Sam Wilson isn't the only Captain in town
With "What if...?" about to come out and its second season already in process, there's one character we now know for certain is set to be a regular fixture — Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell).
On Sunday, Marvel producer Brad Winderbaum commented on Carter's importance to the animated series during a virtual press conference: "We realized, I think, early on in development as we were starting to get AC [Bradley's] scripts and starting to look at the arc of the series that there was going to be a character that bubbled up and became more important. Not more important than the rest, but had a strong relationship with The Watcher, who is really our driving force behind the series, and that's Captain Carter."
It turns out we'll be seeing Carter quite a bit. "We realized as we started developing the second season that Captain Carter was going to be the character who we would revisit in every season and continue that adventure," Winderbaum continued. "Obviously, we're telling a story on a giant multiversal canvas so you never really know who's going to pop up where and when. It's very much an anthology, but there's always opportunity for fun connections to be made."
The really big, unanswered question is whether or not we'll see a live-action version of Captain Carter played by Atwell in the next few years of MCU films. If the character becomes as popular with audiences as she is with Marvel's team, the question may shift from "What if...?" to "When?"
"What if...?" debuts on Disney+ August 11.