Seven days from today, Marvel’s What If…? premieres on Disney Plus to continue the franchise’s unstoppable expansion into episodic storytelling, and a second season of animated adventures have already been confirmed. The concept of the show means that nothing can be taken off the table as to where things head in the future, especially when the comic book source material has thrown up some wild and crazy arcs over the decades.
For the most part, we assumed the connective tissue that threads What If…? together would be provided by Jeffrey Wright’s Watcher, who sets the narrative in motion. However, executive producer Brad Winderbaum has now revealed that Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter is the closest thing the project has to a main character, and she’s set to return for Season 2 after grounding several of the first run’s stories.
“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. 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.
We realized, I think, early on in development as we were starting to get A.C. 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.”
With Captain Carter set to recur across multiple episodes of What If…?, connect multiple plot threads together and continue playing a major role in Season 2, so much for Atwell claiming that she was done with the character forever following the events of Avengers: Endgame, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon for a Marvel Cinematic Universe alumni to say they’re done before being roped back in.
Having headlined her own solo series that ran for two seasons before getting canceled, fans have long wanted to see Peggy make a full-blown return to the mythology. Now that the multiverse is in play and What If…? evidently has big plans in store for her, maybe we can start crossing our fingers that we could maybe one day get a live-action prequel where Agent Carter volunteers to become the world’s first super soldier.