The beginning of the end has arrived for Marvel Studios' What If...? The animated series that launched for Disney+ subscribers in 2021 has begun rolling out its final run, with a new episode premiering every day between now and the launch of the big finale on Sunday, December 29. It's has regularly been a delight, giving Marvel Cinematic Universe fans a tour around the multiverse and offering a glimpse at what might have been had circumstances in the franchise been different – but just because the series is ending doesn't necessarily mean that its presence in the canon is just going to fade away.
Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios' head of Streaming, Television and Animation, recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the final season of What If...?, and right off the bat he suggests that the show is concluding in direct correlation with the trajectory of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before too long, audiences will be preparing to sit down in theaters for the Multiverse Saga's capstone films Avengers: Doomsday (arriving in May 2026) and Avengers: Secret Wars (arriving in May 2027), and where the MCU's first animated series concludes evidently feeds into what is being planned. Said Winderbaum,
There are bigger universe reasons to culminate it now. If you're a fan of the overall MCU, you'll notice that the first season premiered after Loki season 1, when the Sacred Timeline blossomed into a multiverse and all of a sudden all these new stories emerged. That was when we started telling those stories in What If…?
There has been a curiosity pertaining to the potential of What If...? crossing over into the live-action realm since the debut of the animated show, and we still don't know if that's going to happen. That being said, while it has long seemed that the series exists at an arm's length from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline (given the different medium and stories set outside of the main canon), it's intriguing to know that there is a big picture plan that incorporates it as a puzzle piece just like the TVA-set series Loki.
Where What If...? Season 3 ends is apparently a natural conclusion for the streaming series given where things currently stand in the MCU, and just as the end of Loki Season 2 offered conclusion for Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief, Brad Winderbaum suggests that it provides some closure for the story of The Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright). That being said, he doesn't totally dismiss the idea of the animated show making a comeback at some point in the franchise's future. He continued,
And at the end of season 2, when the Watcher takes Peggy to look out at the multiverse, it's taken the form of the tree of stories that Loki sits in the middle of at the end of Loki season 2. So the culmination of season 3 and of the series itself does fit into the overall MCU tapestry in that way. That being said, there's infinite stories to tell with What If…?, and time will tell whether we make more. But for now it is, I think, a beautiful way to end this era and to culminate the story of the Watcher.
At the time of this article's publication, the first three episodes of What If...? are available to watch on Disney+ – the latest adventure titled "What If... The Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?" As for what the future holds for the superhero franchise, you can read about all of the projects currently in the works with our Upcoming Marvel Movies and Upcoming Marvel TV guides.
